Empty Mailboxes Salute Ford

All federal facilities, including post offices, will be closed on
Tuesday in honor of former President Gerald R. Ford.

Not getting mail for two days in a row will certainly cause Ford to be
remembered, though not necessarily in a good way. One man suggested a
better way to honor Ford would be to allow everyone to mail letters to their
friends and relatives free on Tuesday. This, he said, would be in line with the
Republicans' concern for "Family Values".

I'm thinking of those, especially some of the older folks, for whom going to
the Menlo post office every morning is a highlight of their day. They may get
only a bill or an advertising circular, or nothing, but that isn't the only reason
they go. They see other people, exchange greetings, stop to chat awhile.
Some will not have heard and will go anyway, stare blankly into their empty
boxes, try the inner door, even though it will be covered by a blind, the lights
off. I saw folks reading the sign on the outer door on Friday, shaking their
heads in dismay.

Most already remember Ford as the Man Who Pardoned Nixon, and many
believe he would never have become president had he not agreed to the
pardon in advance. I'm sure all the young people drifting through the county
jails because of various petty crimes remember that a president who
masterminded breaking-and-entering, burglary, sabotage and worse was
pardoned, while they had to serve time.

For children who have been told that any child can grow up to be elected
president, Ford means that some children can grow up to be president- and
vice president- without being elected.

The business of pushing hero worship is getting harder in this age of
information. People are making their own heroes, as witness the accolades
to James Brown. When the man had been dead three days, he was packing
them in at the Apollo, capacity crowd. And the tears shed for him were real.

I think of those who waited for hours along the route to glimpse the train
carrying FDR's body from Georgia, and can't imagine such a scene for
either father or son Bush, Carter, Clinton, or Ford. The last mass
outpouring of grief over a president's death was when Kennedy was
assassinated. But that was before we knew he'd tried to have Castro killed,
approved the clandestine bombing of North Vietnam, and instigated the
assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Seymour
Hersh in his book, The Dark Side of Camelot, told how reporters shielded
from public view JFK's sexual escapades that included having law
enforcement officers in various cities bring to Kennedy's hotels high-priced
call girls, two at a time for Kennedy and one apiece for other members of his
entourage, and other such activities that could have made Clinton, with his
blow job in the White House, look like a choirboy.

But the reporters were following tradition. Voters never knew the terrible
extent of Franklin Roosevelt's infirmities. He was never photographed in
the wheelchair to which he was confined, and only those present saw what
an ordeal it was for him to pretend to walk, with his son dragging him along,
what agony to stand while he gave speeches. If the voters had know how
unfit he was to serve, they may not have re-elected him.

Nixon and Watergate punctured the media conspiracy to perfume and
powder our nation's great leaders before allowing the public to view them.
Now a new book which I must read: A Century of Media, A Century of
War, by Robin Andersen. Publicity about the book states that it "traces
media gullibility, official deception and propaganda through the years. It's
a reminder that the media's role in making the case for the Iraq War is part
of a larger story, that of a press corps that regularly cheers on American
military action while shielding readers and viewers from its consequences."

I hope it lives up to its promise. Shine a little more light this way, please.

Peace on Earth?

Author William Blum writes in the preface to the British edition of his
book Rogue State:

"If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United

States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize -- very publicly

and very sincerely -- to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished

and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American

imperialism.

"I would then announce that America's global interventions -- including

the awful bombings -- have come to an end. And I would inform Israel
that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but -- oddly enough -- a
foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90%
and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage
from the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more
than enough money. Do you know what one year of the US military budget

is equal to? One year. It's equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every

hour since Jesus Christ was born.

"That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth

day, I'd be assassinated."

You can read more about Rogue State at William Blum's website.

And the Band Played On

Lighted Christmas trees can still be glimpsed through windows. Little
bulbs that would be white if lighted drip from eaves, emulating icicles
in temperatures that would melt ice during the day, re-freeze it at night.
Inflated Santas and grazing reindeer are stranded among the string after
string of colored lights that still outline windows, walls, and trees. They
have the lost and forlorn look of waiting, their blaze of glory ended,
time to crawl away unheralded into their almost year-long hibernation.

The poor children who were gifted and feted go quietly about their
business of living in poverty, conveniently forgotten except as adjuncts
to the warm glow still occasionally remembered by those who Helped
Make Christmas For Those Less Fortunate.

Walmart can take down their giant overhead posters showing smiling
people with new cell phones, jewelry, computers, children sitting in a
plastic car, all with the large words: "Be Bright". Took me a few minutes
to connect those words with one of the songs that kept erupting from the
radio if one didn't keep the dial moving. Your days will "Be Merry and
Bright" if you buy all this stuff, particularly if you buy it from Walmart.

Shredded wrapping paper and strands of tinsel lay across the glass
and plastic dead soldiers on the trash heap. The party's over.

There'll be another burst of merriment, real and artificial, as the year
grinds to a halt. Then the cold dawn. Then the credit card bills will roll
in. Bankruptcy courts will be crowded when the Piper cannot be paid,
even though the new laws have made it so much more difficult and
expensive that debtors will have to seek new loans, going even further
in debt, in order to file. The rate of home foreclosures, already the
highest in years, will accelerate.

One of the houses outlined in lights and flanked by several large
Christmassy figures is, according to notices in the newspaper, in
the midst of foreclosure now. And all the lights are lighted. A last
hurrah....

I lit a candle to celebrate the shortest day of the year. Now that
it's gone, each day will be seconds and minutes longer. Available
light, truly a gift.

Expensive Creationist Stickers

Four years ago, Cobb County Georgia school officials had placed inside

35,000 textbooks stickers that read "Evolution is a theory not a fact".

The lawsuit by opposing parents has finally ended. The judge ordered the

stickers removed last year and school officials had them scraped off, but
appealed. Terms of the recent settlement include no altering of the evolution
material and $166,659.00 payment toward attorneys fees by the school
system.

I cannot help thinking how enriched the school libraries would have been

if the $166,659.00 could have been spent on books. And it's shocking that
books were defaced by those who tell children not to deface books.

Below are the ending paragraphs of the article as printed in the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, or read the whole thing (you may have to sign in).

"They were trying to do the right thing," said Taylor, a parent of three Cobb
students. "It's terrorist organizations like the ACLU that are hijacking our
country's educational system by imposing their own secular agenda on the
rest of us."

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church
and State in Washington, D.C., hailed the case's conclusion.

"Students should be taught sound science, and the curriculum should not be
altered at the behest of aggressive religious groups," Lynn said. "Cobb County
school officials have taken the right step to ensure that their students receive a
quality education."

Incoming school board member John Crooks, a Baptist minister who opposed
the stickers, said he was pleased the board reached a settlement.

"Moving on to more important educational matters is essential," he said.

Here Comes the Sun

It was 70 degrees on Saturday and I was working up a sweat, leveling
the ground with a mattock, setting concrete blocks to extend one of the
garden beds. No need to think of ice frozen across the creek only a few
days ago and more bitter cold to come. This may be December, but it
won't officially be winter until the solstice, so it must be autumn still.

I have to dig into the chert below the bare inch or so of soil. It's a slow
job. I have to stop every few minutes to remove the rocks, and I've had
to use a crowbar and hammer to dislodge some of the bigger ones. In a
normal subsoil, the smaller rocks could help promote drainage, but in chert
they serve to bind the clay into something resembling concrete. Occasionally
I expose an earthworm and quickly re-bury it so it can continue to hibernate.
Buckie eats the grubs I uncover. Sometimes he starts trying to dig with me
He seems to think I am trying to dig out some creature, such as a mole,
for that is the reason he would have for digging. But the chert is so hard
packed he loses interest and wanders away.

There's a ridge to the west of here so these short days are even more
quickly truncated as the sun drops low in the sky. Then I have to put
on my coat. It feels like autumn again.

I'm thinking about the last year my maternal grandmother was alive and
we sat outside without sweaters on Christmas Day. Ever after we called
it the shirtsleeve Christmas.

And I'm thinking of how the seasons of the earth have been used as an
analogy for the ages of humans. There's the September Song, for instance:
"and the days grow short when you reach December..."

Mother used to say she was living on borrowed time after she'd passed the
Biblical three score and ten. Falling leaves, bare skeletal trees,
teetering on the edge of winter.

Well, we are all living on death row. The difference between me and that
teen-age boy who was killed in an automobile accident last week is that I
have been fighting gravity for enough years that I'm aware there can't be
too many left. Yet it is still fall for awhile...

Heavy rains have leached the bright colors from the leaves carpeting the
yard and left them a motley brown. So far I've filled seven trash bags and
still have no rake to replace the one destroyed in the house fire, but the
leaves are so deep in some areas it's been easy to gather them. The large
leaves from the sycamore tree quickly fill a bag. I've set the bags up
near the road where the sun will hit them and help turn them to compost
for my garden beds, and where they will help insulate the place where a
water pipe cracked last summer and spouted a geyser that cost me a $60
water bill.

When I was acquiring this place, the seller, who built the house and lived
in it for a few years, told me, "Don't rake the leaves! Let them rot,
they're good for the ground!" And he was to tell me again, and yet again,
as if he had invented the idea of enriching the earth with rotted leaves. Or
did he think I was decrepit and hard of hearing, I was only in my 60's then.

Gil and I, as first time gardeners on the Menlo lot, had subscribed to the
magazine "Organic Gardening", so I knew something about using leaves to
build good earth. So I didn't rake them. And when the creek flooded the
yard in February, as it does almost every year, it pulled into its swirling
waters all the leaf remains along with any topsoil they'd help create when
it receded.

The next year I bagged some of the leaves and set the bags, three or four
of them, beside the house foundation, thinking they could help insulate and
maybe help keep the waterpipes from freezing.

And when the creek rose again the bags were broken open, the leaves
carried off.

I'd like to think of fall as a time of rest after the harvest, of fields lying
fallow. But just like the farmer who didn't actually rest, but turned to different
chores, there's plenty here to do outside, and not just work.

My middle son, who is a forest ranger, bought me an LED light on an elastic
band to wear on my head. He said I could walk along the creek at night and
see any animals more easily in its bright light. It's also good for a night walk
in the woods, it leaves my hands free to push aside branches and briers. By
the time Buckie and I started out on Saturday night it was down to 35 and
the brilliant white light showed my breath as a dense curling fog that obscured
my vision. There was a clamminess to the cold that made it seep into me, so
we didn't go far before we turned back.

Then Sunday it was again up to 70! The crows seemed especially
delighted, flying from tree to tree and calling to one another in their
raucous voices. They seemed to be playing a game. I frequently see
them in the pasture looking big as chickens walking around. One is
crippled, so I know it is the same bunch that has been hanging around
for years.

I worked a little while at the garden bed, then I put the tools aside and
spent the rest of the afternoon just dawdling and poking around. I was
sorry I had taken down the hammock and stored it away.

It is good to have this hiatus, to be able to be outside in the sunshine on
these warm December days. It is good just to be.

Deep Freeze in the Sunny South

There was frost on my pumpkin Friday morning, or there would have been
if I had a pumpkin.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution predicted the lowest Georgia
temperatures in two years With "Deep Freeze in the South" headlines.
Strange to walk on frozen ground, like walking on concrete, the grass
glinting with ice crystals. Ice on the creek made it resemble a still pond,
but the water was flowing under the ice covering and tumbling over the
rocks just beyond the bridge. Buckie walked across the creek, then tested
the edges with his paw until he could press the ice down and drink the water
that puddled on top. We've had cold nights, plenty of frost and some ice,
but this was our first hard freeze.

After seeing the forecast, I crawled under the floor to check on the water
pipes. It was the first time I had been under since I repaired a bad leak in
mid-summer, and I was dismayed to see several wet spots on the ground,
indicating minor leaks and drips. Maybe those drips would help prevent
freezing, I thought, along with the faucets dripping inside all night. I hope to
be able to wait until spring to start replacing the pipes, for the builder who
sold the building to me wrapped all the pipes in plastic and wound electrical
tape around the plastic.It was harder to cut this material off than it was to
replace the cracked pipe last summer.

When I first acquired the building, there was an outside hydrant flush against
the house, but the water turn-off valve was past it, under the house, and there
was no way to turn off the water to this hydrant except by turning it off at the
meter. Builder had encased the shaft up to the handle and spout in concrete in
an effort to prevent its freezing, but it had apparently frozen anyway, for there
was a constant dribble through a crack in the concrete. Still, it came in handy
as my sole source of water when I had the hot water heater moved from the
pantry, where it crowded the space and was warping the floor, and a washer
connection installed in the utility room I had built on half the back porch. I
still haven't installed another outside hydrant. I made one attempt, but gave
up, there's a rock that will have to be broken up before pipe can be
connected. I've always just carried water from the creek for my plants.

My learning to plumb has been like someone re-inventing the wheel. I had
watched Gil when he laid a pipe from the old house to the garden, and
that was the first plumbing he ever did. Not long afterward, being faced
with being without water while he was away for several days was a great
incentive to my learning to replace a pipe or two. It was a skill that came
in handy during his long illness. It's amazing what one can learn when there's
little money and things have to be done. I also re-wired the telephones after
lightning struck and fried them.

Now I still repair when I can, replacing washers in faucets for instance, for I
can eat for a week for the total of one plumber's bill. My daughter-in-law,
who had to serve as an apprentice plumber for several months as training for
her job as office manager and sales rep for a huge plumbing supply company,
installed my new toilet and will be bringing a new faucet and spray set for my
kitchen sink, but she lives too far away to call on often. I've bought a new
pipe-cutting tool, no more tedious hacksawing and filing off burrs, and I'll be
working on the pipes next spring- if they only hold until then. And if only the
pipes outside under the ground don't freeze, as they did one year at the old
house.

By afternoon it was up to 40, the sun shining, the air still. Buckie and I
walked down the creek bank, breathing in the cold, clear air. The
ground stayed frozen and not much of the ice melted, for the sunshine was
pleasant, but seemed to lack heat. I finally had to come inside, my toes
were numb. Back down in the 'teens on Saturday night. The hard freezes
will kill off a lot of the destructive and annoying insects, unlike last winter
when, although it stayed cold longer than usual- I had to have heat in
early June- there were no really low temperatures. I read there were
problems with huge swarms of yellow jackets in Alabama, and this was
blamed on the lack of a hard winter.

Yes, I know our winters are a joke to those in the north. I lived in
Chicago for 20 years. But the cold here never lasts, it will gradually
warm up until it rains again. Then cold and freezing again. One can
never become used to the cold so that each cold spell is something of
a shock. But then again, after it has been so cold, a day when the
thermometer reaches 50 will feel almost balmy, especially if the sun
is shining and there's no cold wind.

I wish we would have a real snow this year. It's cold enough to snow
throughout the winter, but seldom does. When even a light snow is forecast,
people flock to the stores and buy up all the bread and milk, children are
sent home from school and the mills let the workers out early. We have hills
and no salting or snow removal equipment. A deeper snow can shut
everything down for days. If it warms up enough to partly melt and then
re-freeze at night, the ice can bring down power lines, and what is common
in the North can become a crisis here in the South.

I've filled jugs with water and stocked my pantry, and I still have the
concrete blocks and metal plate I used to heat food and water for coffee
by the gas wall heater the last time the power was out, so I'm ready.
Let it snow!

Living Off the Land

Not exactly.
I never have.

My mother gardened when I was in my teens and my husband had a garden
some distance from our house. I was never invited to work in them, nor did I
volunteer.

Mother raised tomatoes, green beans, and usually a few stalks of corn. She
canned tomatoes and blackberries, but wouldn't try canning green beans and
corn for she didn't have a pressure cooker. She also made blackberry jam
and jelly and once someone gave her some apples. Our old house had no
closets so she stacked the jars of food against the wall in the middle room,
supposed to be a dining room, but we needed it for a bedroom. After the
apple jelly had cooled and sealed she was putting it away as I passed
through on my way to the kitchen. She was holding a jar to the light,
admiring its amber contents.

"Look," she said, "isn't it pretty!"

I mumbled something, thinking I'd appreciate it more if she'd offer me some
for the biscuit I took from the warming oven. And someone should have
slapped me up side of the head for not appreciating her and the work she'd
done, but my head was full of school and boys and the need to polish my
black-and-white saddle oxfords for the next day.

Then I was grown and I was canning and freezing and preserving food in an
attempt to make a cotton mill worker's wages stretch to cover the needs of
six people. I was also washing, ironing, sewing shirts for the boys and dresses
for the girl, cleaning the house and attending PTA meetings, and I had little
time for gardening. We did, when the children were old enough, go berry
picking, and I made blackberry jelly, and yes, the jelly was pretty in the jars.

When Gil and I moved to North Georgia to a house with a large garden plot,
we gardened with zeal, at first from necessity, later because the food we grew
tasted so much better than any we could buy. The garden grew up in weeds
during his long illness, though we usually could manage three or four tomato
plants.

Now it is necessity again that is making me into an avid gardener. I want to
grow my own spinach and green onions and not risk death or paralysis from
buying them. And the store prices of produce continue to climb commensurate
with the price of fuel for transportation. This past summer I was able to buy
some produce for less at the flea market from local growers, or from some
who haul the produce in to sell with no store overhead, and I shall continue
to buy some there, for I won't be able to grow all I need.

This lot used to be part of the pasture that borders it, and the ground should
have been made rich from horse and cow droppings over time. But the
ground here is low, and the man who built the house didn't want to spend
the money to have good fill dirt hauled, so he filled it in a little with chert,
which is a mixture of red clay and rock, frequently used as a base for roads.
It supports a mix of grass and weeds that pass for a lawn, and that's about
all. In order to garden, I've had to build raised beds, rectangles enclosed
with concrete blocks and filled with some bought dirt and composted cow
manure, sand from the creek for drainage, compost from my two plastic
trash cans, a slow process, and some good earth from the woods when
I can get it, carrying two half-filled buckets at a time.

So far my beds are raised only by about 3 inches. When I get enough dirt in
them, I will start another one. This past summer I had tomatoes, jalapenos,
and zucchini. Squash borers got into the stalks and cut the zucchini harvest
short. But I also had basil, marigolds, and garlic chives, all in the two small
beds. And I planted sage and rosemary in two hollow slices of the tree that
fell and had to be sawed up, and oregano, thyme, pennyroyal and rue in
pots. All but the pennyroyal have been unscathed by the frost.

Coleslaw is a staple for my dinners through the fall and winter, cabbage still
being priced reasonably, certainly so compared to the so-called iceberg
lettuce, which has little taste and little nutrition. Romaine and the other good
greens have become dear. Alas for the spinach. I used to buy some for
salad once in a while, no matter the cost. No store seems to be carrying
any now, probably thinking no one would buy it if they did.

The American Cancer Institute's research showing that consumption of
cabbage as well as other crucifers decreases the risk of some cancers
helped me to resign myself to having coleslaw nightly instead of salad.
For awhile, that is. Then, just as I enjoyed the wildflowers that I didn't
grow, I began to look for food I didn't have to cultivate. There is
chickweed, it grows everywhere, dies back and gets tough in summer
but flourishes in the spring and fall. It is a good source of copper and is
sold in herb stores in mixtures reputed to aid in losing weight. Supposedly
the copper gives one added energy which causes more calories to be
burned. Years ago, my mother told me two of my great-half-aunts had
ordered some chickweed in capsules through a magazine ad. She said
she didn't think they got any slimmer from taking it. They could have
walked out the door and gathered all they wanted free if they had
known what to look for.

So now I gather a handful of the chickweed, a few of the smallest
dandelion leaves, just a bit of the wild onions, a few leaves of wild
clover, and the garlic chives that are still green around one garden bed.
This evening I found two dandelion blossoms, even after these several
frosty nights. The greens chopped into the shredded cabbage and carrots
make a delicious salad-slaw, especially with my good reduced fat dressing.

When some restaurants advertise "creamy coleslaw" it means shreds of
cabbage embedded in a blob of mayonnaise. I use half mayonnaise and half
plain unflavored yogurt, mix thoroughly, then add juice from a jar of dill
pickles (my favorite is Clausen), stir thoroughly and add more pickle juice
if a thinner dressing is desired. A sprinkling of dried Dill will make it even
tastier. I mix the dressing in a margarine cup, making enough for about a
week of coleslaw. An economical, tasty, cancer-fighting dish. What more
could one ask?