MONKEY WRENCHERS WANTED

“…had come of age during the civil rights campaigns, the Viet Nam war, the draft resistance movement—all clearly defined issues in which right, as he saw it, eventually triumphed. His legal experience had reinforced his belief that even when the system is inadequate, the individual can eventually seek redress. Now he was troubled to find that this was not always so: that when government and industry are threatened, these two may close ranks, and, in self protection, militate against the good of the public they are supposed to serve. What happened in Michigan, he believed, involved subtle shifts in the power structure so that bureaucrats ended up protecting corporate giants, not for monetary gain (that might have been easy to prove) but to preserve their own authority and status. Pitted against this was a little band of farmers who had been abused by industry, and failed by their elected officials. Gary welcomed the chance to represent one of them in court. There he believed justice would prevail.

The Poisoning of Michigan by Joyce Egginton page 289

This is the book I’ve been working on. Managed to find a cheap, really cheap library discard. Stumbled across the story just by chance in a TV movie that was made back the eighties. I thought the movie was brutal. More about the book later. But take my last entry. If we could see at the blazing starlight level whether something was sick or well, there’d be no question. No way to hide. No polite fictions.

And justice did not prevail. In light of the current tight symbiosis between big ag, big chemical represented by the likes of Dow and Monsanto and the politicians that are supposed to represent us, I think I need to find my copy of the Monkey Wrench Gang. 

SPIRALING IN AND OUT

The Sioux idea of living creatures is that trees, buffalo and men are temporary energy swirls, turbulence patterns...that's an early intuitive recognition of energy as a quality of nature. But that's an old insight, you know,  extremely old, probably a Paleolithic shaman's insight. You find that perception register so many ways in archaic and primitive lore. I would say that it is probably the most basic insight into the nature of things, and that our more common, recent Occidental view of the universe as consisting of fixed things is out of the main stream, a deviation from basic human perception.

Gary Snyder quoted in  The Spiral Dance

Imagine if we could see the world around us as the energy patterns we really are. We would truly understand the unity/diversity of Creation.

NOT SURE HOW TO TITLE THIS

Supercell weather system from last summer near Glasgow, Montana. The photographer's name is Sean Heavey and the shot is from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. Anything in the sky qualifies. That little speck in the foreground is a tree. Looks like an oak. What, maybe fifty, sixty feet tall? And it looks like an ant. No one is really quite sure if the Celts had a God of Thunder, there are various candidates But who ever he or she was, you can imagine them riding the lightning bolts in those clouds. Go back in time, back to early earth when storms like that ruled the skies. And this one would probably be lost in the immensities. A reminder of the power locked in the earth. A power we can barely imagine and too many of us fear.

THIRTY YEARS OF "PROGRESS"

This is from Bitter Harvest Gordon Kahl and the Posse Comitatus: Murder in the Heartland by James Corcoran. This was written in the eighties but the poison described in the book has slowly been allowed to infect the Republican Party. They did seize control of the party but not the country. So far at least since these idiots just can’t shut up.

“Duke’s victory in Louisiana was the first fruit born of a new strategy endorsed by the so called Christian Patriot win of the extremist movement, said Lynora Williams, executive director for the Center for Democratic Renewal. According to Williams, the new strategy was first proposed in 1987 by, among others, A. Jay Lowry, publisher of the Clinton, Arkansas, based Justice Times, a monthly newsletter that claims to be “The Original Voice of the Second American Revolution!!”

“It is true that many are attempting to drop out of the system by getting rid of bank accounts, drivers’ licenses, rescinding social security numbers, and denying jurisdiction in the courts,” wrote Lowry in the December 1987 issued of the Justice Times. “But, the election process is the game that is played. It is time to unite! Not under a third party banner which has proven so many time to be a failure, but to take over one of the major parties. Some say it should be the Republican Party.”

Williams said one reason the Republican Party was selected is because of its twenty year long “Southern Strategy,” which publicly pandered to racism”  Corcoran then spends a paragraph or so naming conservative members of the party George Hansen of Idaho and state senators from Washington and Idaho Jack Metcalf and Wayne Stump. Hansen was prosecuted in the middle eighties for failing to properly disclose financial information. All three had reached out to the so called Christian Patriot Movement.

Metcalf also spent much of his time criss crossing the country attacking the Federal Reserve system. A letter from Stump was widely circulated by various groups. Titled “To Whom it May Concern” he attacked the fourteenth amendment claiming that the freed slaves were a different class of citizens than the white citizens of the constitution before the first ten amendments were attached. Funny these folks never seem to realize that without those amendments their beloved constitution would probably have never been ratified in the first place. And then was the guy in Alaska last year who claimed that women didn't qualify as full citizens for pretty much the same reason. We weren't voting citizens when the constitution was ratified. 

Fortunately, while the different groups did come together over the years to form the far right base of the Republican Party and the Tea Party they’ve never managed to find a charismatic candidate to rally behind. Of course charisma isn’t everything, look how close Romney came to winning.

In the meantime the party continues to shoot itself in both feet.

RAISIN BREAD

Hauled out the trusty bread bowl.

for a batch of bread. This is one we can't run out of now that I've figured out how to get results I like.

SPICED FIVE GRAIN CEREAL RAISIN BREAD

2 packages active dry yeast

1 ¾ Cup boiling water

1 Cup five grain cereal (used Bob’s Red Mill) rolled cereal not ground

½ Cup brown sugar

1/3 Cup shortening

1 tablespoon salt

5 1/2 to 6 Cups flour

1 tablespoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon allspice

2 Cups seedless raisins

Put cereal, brown sugar and shortening in a large, heavy duty bowl. Pour the boiling water over the cereal mixture and stir until shortening melts. Allow to cool to less than 110 degrees. Stir in one cup of the flour and the yeast. Mix thoroughly, cover bowl and set aside for one to two hours. The mixture should form a nice, bubbly sponge.

Add the raisins, salt, spices and start working in the flour until the mixture is stiff enough to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Turn out and knead for five minutes or so until all the flour is worked in. If the dough is sticky rub a little oil on your hands and continue. I’m not really going for the smooth, elastic bread dough here.

You can do one of two things now. You can put the dough back in the (now clean, lightly oiled) bowl and allow to rise until doubled in size. Then form into two loaves, place in greased loaf pans, cover and allow to rise again until doubled and back for 35 to 45 minutes in a 350 degree oven or until the loaves are evenly browned. Take out, put on racks to cool and resist slicing until the loaves have cooled for fifteen or twenty minutes.

Or you can skip the bowl rising and shape the loaves. Allow loaves to rise until doubled and bake according instructions. You’ll get a slightly coarser loaf that still tastes pretty darned good. The cereal pretty much disappears into the bread, just leaves a nice rustic loaf. 

You can slash the tops of the loaves either at an angle or straight down the middle. The hard part is waiting for the bread to cool enough to slice. You can eat this without butter. But, you don't have to. LOL

FOR MARY ELLEN

My facebook page is being totally wonky about letting me send messages today so for Mary Ellen who responded to a comment about herb combos for blood pressure.

We’re using two. Solaray Heart Blend SP-8 and Healthy Choice Naturals Blood Pressure Formula. I had been going through a company called Viable Herbal Solutions. But, they decided to close down while they built a new plant instead of working out of the old one in parallel. Instead of a few months they were down for nearly a year. That and I think the FDA goosed them over some of the claims they were making about one of their specialty blends. Anyway they're out of business and it was back to square one. The so called alternative sources have to walk a very fine line and I'm sure big Pharma would love to put them out of business entirely. Humans have been using herbs for thousands of years. Modern medicine as we know it is barely a century old and the herbs are called alternative medicine. Go figure. Germany actually has an official herbal formulary and many Germans turn to the herbs first. And probably have a pretty good idea when to head for the doctor's office first. 

Anyway, the herbs in the Solaray blend are hawthorn, motherwort, rosemary, cayenne, kelp, wood betony and shepherd’s purse. The Healthy Choice Naturals blend includes garlic bulb, hibiscus, hawthorn, buchu, juniper berry, and green tea. I’d like to do entries over in Green Woman on each of them. I’m also interested in more dandelion and using olive leaf.

Anyway hope this helps.  Mom’s doing a lot better and my sister and brother in law were nodding their heads yes Saturday evening before I even finished explaining what we’re doing. And even had some good suggestions. THAT went a lot easier than I anticipated. 

BEADY EYES

Hey, I'm little and cute. How come I don't get those neat captions. I'd like a cheezeburger too. 

I have a new post over at Green Woman, The Blood Pressure Monitor, Mom and Me. That blog seems like a good place to write about our attempts to deal with the results of throwing our prescriptions in the garbage.

Herbs, good (I hope) recipes. Ups. Downs.

Spinach impossible pie. Tastes better than it looks. LOL

THE RATS COME OUT

The LA Times cartoonist's take on the current overflow from the conspiracy sewer. Disgusting isn't it. Probably standing on Beck and Rushbo's shoulders.

IF THE CONSTITUTION WERE A PERSON

Sorry, this one is a little disjointed but I‘ve passed pissed and I’m currently headed for totally out of this world ballistic

If the constitution were a person that person would either be on life support or in a psych ward on an indefinite hold.

From Monday’s explosions Friday’s apprehensions. A combination of police work and citizen input led to an arrest and now the Monday morning quarterbacking begins. The brothers were/are Muslim. Apparently the older brother radicalized recently, we don’t know how much influence he had over his younger brother. Anyway here goes. And while we’re on the subject of becoming radicalized. Personhood amendments anyone? For starters anyway.

Some folks want all Muslims kicked out of the country especially the ones who attend a mosque. Never mind that many Muslims are also American citizens whose families have lived here. Never mind that the vast majority are peaceful people who probably want the same things most of the rest of us want. A home, food on the table and healthy happy kids.  What if the next bomber(s) are say Southern Baptists? Want to live in a country where all the Baptists are demonized because of the actions of a microscopic minority.

A New York state senator says “sure I’d torture that punk.” Senator I certainly hope that no one ever believes that you have vital information that we need like yesterday and we don’t much care how we get it.

John McCain and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (among others) want the surviving brother labeled as an enemy combatant. Even though he’s a naturalized American citizen and the crimes took place in here not on a battlefield half way around the world. Senator Graham also seems to believe that we should be able to arrest someone because of what they might do or who they have associated with or might associate with.

Perhaps Mr. Graham would like to talk to some Latin Americans from the seventies and eighties about what it's like to live in a country where the authorities had the power to deal with their fellow citizens based on their ethnic group, religion, who they knew or who the people they knew might have associated with. Especially if those people were considered subversives. And subversive was a very, very elastic term.

Men, women, children, students, church workers, journalists, union organizers, whole villages...anyone who might have had ties to subversives, or to people who might have had ties to subversives. Of course he'd need a séance or a Ouija board to contact them. They’re dead. Many at the hands of troops trained by America, armed with American weapons, using planes and choppers supplied by the US at taxpayer expense.

The only protection we have is our battered, tattered constitution and the constitution is more than  the second amendment so much more.

WHAT LISA SAID ABOUT THE NEWS? YOU'RE RIGHT....

The following does not excuse the actions of the bombers on Monday. The twisted logic that might tie marathon runners and their families to Chechnya probably only exists in the minds of the men who planted those bombs.

Ok, we have faces and we have names. I’ve been dipping in and out of CNN this morning and this is what I am NOT seeing.

The brothers apparently are ethnic Chechans. I assume they came here legally. There is an uncle living here. The younger brother has been to high school here. Earned a wrestling scholarship for college. Has friends who didn’t see this coming, but also hadn’t seen him for a few months. If they came here legally Immigration should have the date/dates they entered and why. The ten year time frame roughly coincides with the second Russian invasion of the ill fated Chechan Republic. Did they claim entrance as refugees? What did they go through between the time they were living in Chechnya and entrance to the US?

Tamerlan is suspiciously similar to Tamerlane/Timur the Lame, the Central Asian conqueror who spread devastation from Persia to India in the 14^th century. The younger brother appears to have been named for Dhzokhar Dudayev the general who was the first leader of the break away Chechan Republic.

As of 2010 Chechnya had a population of just over 1,200,000. Reported casualties in the second invasion? Over 100,000 dead and over 400,000 refugees. I’m beginning to think that the main difference between men and women who are called terrorists is the uniform. If you’re wearing a uniform, you’re just following orders. If you’re in civvies you’re a terrorist. (more on this later)

I’m just a lowly blogger, but I was able to find basic information in about fifteen minutes. But, the story I’m hearing shaped is the “crazed killers.” It would be great if they could catch this kid alive. But right now, a snowball in Hell would have a better chance.

I had the boob tube on early this morning while dealing with kitty breakfasts. (We got Bandit in the habit of a five AM snack at the beginning…) Anyway, Bandit, Midge and Smokie the innie/outie were all looking at me. Cats may not build cathedrals but they don’t blow them up either. 

THE SECRET SERVICE MEOW DIVISION

Damn straight they know too much. They know where you stash the chocolate. They know your opinion of telemarketers. Especially the robo calls when you've just gotten out of the shower. They know which movies make you cry and which commercials make you cringe. They know just which combination of batting eyelashes (if they had eyelashes) will get an extra spoonful of the good stuff. And they know, all protestations to the contrary, that you are really just a big wuss who is firmly wrapped around their furry little paws. 

WATCH OUT FOR SUPER KITTIES

I think this is another on that Lisa posted to FB. Anyway, while I was chuckling over this little guy/gal I looked over where I'd last seen Midge and there was now a lump under one of the little braided area rugs. Just off center with a tail tip on one side and white whiskers on the other. When I looked again, Bandit AKA the Twenty Pound Wonder had taken up station on the empty side of the rug. A little later she had flopped over on her side. TOWARDS the lump in the rug. Anyway she rather relentlessly proceeded to take over the top of the rug. Finally Midge was left with about six inches. She tried one position. She tried another. Finally she gave up and came up for air. She watched Bandit for about half a minute and proceeded to go over and take a seat on her head. THAT got Bandit off the dime and the race was on. LOL

Lisa posted this on FB. I really need to hit the Cheezeburger site more often. This scrap of fluff has more white in the coat , but this could have been Midge last fall. Couldn't sneeze and walk in a straight line at the same time.

Only Midgie's favorite position was, and is, up on the shoulder with front legs extended as far out as they'll go. She gradually leans to the left attempting to go around my neck by arching her back. She's very good at it. Eventually I have to straighten her out or I'd have a permanent crick in my neck. She still gets fed on the tv tray in the evenings. Sometimes she chows down, sometimes she doesn't. She's a talented scrounger during the day, but she knows she'll get a good cuddle for "desert" and she never passes that up.

So little bit, stick to your job and grow. Pretty soon that paw will go really, really far.