Tag: Politics

  • Saying it with Flowers

    • Camellia japonica, state flower of Alabama

    I’ve been staying away from politics in this blog — well, mostly — but I think there’s one political issue that hasn’t gotten enough discussion this election cycle: State Flowers.

    No, I’m not making it up:
    State mushrooms: Minnesota: morel; Oregon: pacific golden chanterelle.

    State muffins: Maryland: corn muffin; Minnesota: blueberry muffin; New York: apple muffin.

    State bat: Virginia: Virginia Big-Eared Bat.

    No, really, I mean it. If our elected officials feel that the selection of a State Mushroom, State Bat, and State Muffin is important enough to occupy their time and attention, then perhaps it should occupy a little bit of ours.

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  • Not quite lost in the weeds

    • Sweet Peas, Lathyrus odoratus, from last year’s garden.

    I’ve started soaking Sweet Pea (Lathyrus odoratus) seeds that I saved from last year’s garden, in preparation for planting in this year’s flower beds.

    The seeds are hard and dry after a winter spent in a zip-lok bag in the crisper drawer of my refrigerator, and a day or two in warm water will increase the likelihood of germination. I’ve built a sort of bamboo trellis that will support the vines when they begin to grow; I still have to come up with a system to protect them from the neighbor’s chickens, who dig relentlessly in any disturbed soil, without much concern for what I may have planted there.

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  • Stop me if you’ve heard this one…

    • Oh, my! So many choices!

    No, really. Stop me. I keep drifting into politics in my posts, despite my best efforts. It’s as if this year’s Presidential election has created some kind of low spot in the universe, and I keep rolling downslope, no matter what direction I start out in.

    Every day I sit down with the spark of an idea that I’d like to pursue, something that I hope will rise above politics, and I begin to type, and things look fine for a paragraph or two, and then gravity takes over and up pops Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich — there. Just like that, dammit.

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  • You’ve come a long way, baby…

    • Attorney and women’s rights advocate Sandra Fluke

    Baby? Maybe women have not actually come all that far.

    Rush Limbaugh’s bizarre tirade against Sandra Fluke generated headlines, but was not completely out of left field; his remarks seemed to reflect attitudes that are widespread, if not so explicitly stated, far beyond the walls of his radio studio.

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  • Basically Bad?

    • Just can’t trust them?

    Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum — and in somewhat less strident tones, Mitt Romney — keep telling us that we as a nation are going to hell in a handbasket, and that only God can help us, and that He will only do so if we allow organized religion to exert more overt control over such institutions as education and government. Many Americans are clinging to these statements as if they were — well, gospel. The facts, however, may confuse things a bit.

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