Not for the Faint of Heart

The day started badly when B realized the scratching at her door wasn't the usual nuisance - Jake signaling for Murphy to come out and play. But Jake had neatly peed in her shoe and was futilely scratching around the shoe to cover it up. (Did I mention that B and Jake don't like each other?)




She came downstairs in her stocking feet to start Saturday morning chores. Stepping into her boots, she found them filled with black walnuts. She dumped them out and tried again only to find there were still nuts crammed into the toe. Red squirrels are compelled not only to gather every walnut they can find, but to move them around periodically to thwart any other squirrel who might have discovered their various hiding places. (In fact, later in the day when I put my boots on, I found the squirrel had retrieved the nuts B had dumped out and stored them in my boot.)


Soldiering on, B filled the birdfeeders and scattered some feed on the ground for the turkeys and crows. Then off to take fresh water to the chickens and add some straw to cover the chicken coop floor. Chickens are alarmists about the tiniest sudden movement. So, naturally, scattering the straw completely panicked them. The youngest rooster fled out to the yard, landing in a deep snow bank. He was half immersed in the snow but with his feet not reaching the ground - effectively immobilized. I wish I had a picture of that.


Heading back to the house, B found the deer happily licking up the feed she'd left on the ground for the crows and turkeys. What's the use? B likes crows and turkeys, but not chickens or deer and especially not Jake.

The Herd

I've adjusted to the deer wandering through the yard nibbling the shrubs.


I know that after avoiding them on the long drive home at night I still have to look out for them as I pull into the driveway.


I've even accepted that our bird feeder herd has doubled from two to four.

But somehow this image of them loafing in the garden just seems like the last straw.

Fresh Starts

In this imperfect world I find myself irresistibly drawn to blank slates, tabulae rasae, fresh starts. I need as many New Year's Days as I can possibly find.

In ancient Pagan traditions, November 1 is New Year's Day. It makes as much sense to me as January 1 (basically no sense at all) so I'll take it. There's the first day of spring; the first day of school; and frankly, every Monday morning.

Happy New Year.
Thanks to friend and artist Jack Lambert for this reminder of HOPE in 09.

Ho, Ho, Meow

I'm pretty sure this will be my holiday card next year.







What is it with cats lying on things? Jake's on a piece of wrapping paper; Murphy's on a bit of black tissue paper and that's Tang in the back on a box.





Still Magda's got the best spot - on Bill's lap as he tries to eat his Christmas morning waffle.

Just In Time

As always, I wish I'd taken daily pictures of the amaryllis as it grew. It grows an inch a day - no kidding - for the first month. My reading chair is right next to the indoor garden and it astonishes me every evening.

The second month the enormous buds start to fatten tantalizingly slowly. Every night I think surely it will bloom by weekend. And yet another week goes by. This one opened on Christmas Eve and I couldn't have been more pleased.

Thanks to Photoshop, there's more fun to be had. Zooming in as far as possible makes individual pixels visible. I imagine this is how Martha Stewart comes up with her fantastic color combinations.

Penguin Pond

I yielded to the temptation of one made-in-China, pink-flamingo type decoration for Christmas this year. Maggy has been drawn to penguins since she could walk. I admit, if she'd been attracted to something less cute, I might not have encouraged it as much as I have.

These little guys are about eight inches tall and that's a string of regular christmas tree lights around them giving the illusion of a skating pond. We definitely got our $10 worth of pleasure from them but I feel guilty about the inappropriate use of plastic.

Delivering the Mail

Bill brings the mail in everyday but yesterday it was more of a challenge than usual. First he had to search for the mailbox.

He found it several yards down the road in the snowbank. The steel is stronger than it looks. He couldn't bend it enough with his hands to get it open. So he brought it to me like this. Notice especially the package inside.

I should mention that the mailbox was mounted on a well designed pipe that's installed about five feet back from the shoulder of the road and extends horizontally far enough for the mailman to reach it. In fact, it's designed to swing aside if it gets hit. And it's survived this way for decades.

For some long forgotten reason, this part of Neimi Road is a county road. In the past, through a shared services agreement, the town has been responsible for plowing it. Maybe that's why the county has neglected to resurface the road for such a long time. This year , for reasons too complex to describe, the county is plowing it and so far I'm not that happy about it. Sigh.

Leslie's ...!

Let's just say she's celebrating another one of those birthdays ending in "0."

We're always grateful to her for leading the way into the next decade.

Clothespins

I don't know why B finds this laugh-out-loud funny. But she does. This cleaning cloth has been on the clothesline for weeks. (Yes, I use cleaning cloths and yes, I wash them and hang them to dry.

Walking by it on my way back from other outdoors errands I thought I might as well bring it in. It occurred to me that we're not using the clothesline much in this weather, so I might as well bring in the clothespins.

B says, "Why didn't you just drop the pins into the cloth?" In my own defense, I had other stuff in my left hand and it didn't occur to me to make a pouch out of the cloth.

Cats

Maggy's getting ready to go back to New York. I don't know if the cats are saying, "Don't go." Or, "Take me with you."

Jake's more nonchalant, but I think he's sad, too. Or maybe that's just me.

They're Back

There were a dozen turkeys at the feeder for Thanksgiving. It's not a turkey feeder, but the blue jays and squirrels manage to scatter enough seeds on the ground to attract the big birds.

I admit, we had turkey for dinner - a beautiful, big, fresh, organic turkey from Wegmans. And squash and burssels sprouts and cranberries and potatoes... And two kinds of pie.

Of course, Maggy's here, too - doing her favorite things: resting and reading. She says this picture looks just like me but without the coffee cup and cigarette.

It has been, once again, a Thanksgiving that couldn't be beat.

"They Believe In Different Things"

I've only written about Barack Obama once (okay, twice) since I introduced him to this blog and my other blog in 2006. So, it's possible you don't know what a big deal this election has been to me. I still think this speech in Iowa in 2006 is Obama's best.

[T]here’s always been this other idea of America. This idea that says we have a stake in each other. That I am my brother’s keeper. That I am my sister’s keeper. That I’ve got an obligation. Not just for my self, not just for my family, but also for you. That every child is my child and every senior citizen deserves protection.

A commenter at Dryden Democrats said, "Barak Hussien [sic] Obama's motto could be: 'From each according to his abilities. To each according to his needs.' I understand that this was meant as a warning. But I have to say, it's not the worst idea in the world.

I was talking to a Republican colleague about it recently. Pretend for a moment that we don't know who originated the idea. Just think: in my family (neighborhood, company, community, country) everyone does the best they can and everyone has what they need. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? The idea obviously had some appeal for my Republican friend. I watched his face as he silently puzzled out, "So, why doesn't that work?" He realized quickly that some people don't do the best they can. Some people just head for the break room when the shop still needs cleaning up. And I'll tell you the other part. We don't make sure that people who are doing the best they can get what they need. Maybe it's impossible. But it's not a bad idea. Wouldn't it be good if people could believe that hard work would keep them safe?

Last year in my office there was a "Secret Santa." You know the drill. You draw the name of a co-worker and anonymously give them a gift. No one in my office is particularly well off. But no one's actually hurting either. This year, we called the local school district and got the name of a family that needs help. Well, we didn't actually get the name. We got a description of the four children and what they're wishing for. You can't read the description with out getting a little chill. The teenager wants a scientific calculator and the six year old wants a pink dress. You can't help thinking how easy it would be to provide the things these kids need. Or, of the unused things on your shelves that would really enrich their lives.

If you live in this district and want the contact info for the person who can hook you up with someone who needs help for the holiday, call me. Or just call your school district. They know who needs help.

Prepaid Bank Cards

I heard an ad on TV for a prepaid Visa card. "Low fees. No interest. Helps control overspending." Well, that sounds like a good idea in this credit crazy culture.

• Shop online or by phone
• Pay bills
• Easy way to track your spending and stay within budget
  

Oh, Wait. There may be a catch. Oh, yeah.

• Activation fee.
• Reload fee.
• Monthly maintenance fee.
• Withdrawl fee.
• ATM fee.

Oh, look: purchase transactions - free. Live customer service - free.

Okay, Now I'm Worried

Despite my feeble, intermittent efforts to train the cats, I've never really succeeded in convincing them that they don't own the tables and countertops. Magda, especially, delights in the game my kids use to play: go from one side of the house to the other without touching the floor.

This may take her from my desk, to the dining table, to the wide windowsill obstacle course that requires her to wend her way between the houseplants and the window - often tipping one or more of the plants onto the floor.

If I'm not around to disqualify her, she's nearly home free with a stroll across the counter with the glass surface electric range, an easy hop to the kitchen table, a longer leap to the kitchen counter and perhaps onto the top of the refrigerator for the coup de gras, up through a ventilation space into the second floor bedroom (the door of which is closed to keep cats out. Sigh.)

Returning for a moment to that counter with the electric range... I'm resigned to wiping off the kitty footprints in the morning and picking up the pile of papers they've pushed onto the floor. But last night they apparently turned on the stove. I'm serious. See those knobs on the right side of the range?

I came down this morning to notice the little glowing light that warns, "Hot Surface." I know I don't use the electric range this time of year, so I couldn't have left it on. I thought maybe the sensor that turns that light on was broken. So, in my pre-coffee fog I didn't look at the burner knobs, I just put my hand on the burners, one by one. Sure enough, one of the back burners was HOT. And sure enough, its knob was turned to "medium." Even when I use the range in the summer, I only use the back burners if the front ones are already occupied, maybe for a dinner party.

Then I noticed that one of the little wicker bread baskets that normally hangs above the stove was on the floor. Now I'm imagining that basket having landed on the hot, or at least medium, burner. And I'm thinking of the pile of papers that the cats push onto the floor most mornings. It could almost as easily go the other way onto the stove. So, I'm thinking, "What are the chances?"

Googling "fire caused by cat" brings me lots of stories about cats dying in fires and a few of cats saving people from fires. But the ones about cats causing fires should more properly be headlined "Carelessness causes fire," tho' that isn't really so newsworthy. I'll skip the one from the NYT in 1884 caused by the cat knocking over a coal oil lamp. And I'm ruling out unattended candles and faulty electric strips. Uh oh, this one looks bad: Fire Officials Blame Cat for Fire:

The gray and white cat apparently jumped on an electric range in the basement of a two-story home at about 4:30 a.m. Wednesday and turned on the push-button control, said Darrell Christy, the fire department's chief of operations. Plastic containers on top of the range smoldered.

"We eliminated everything except for the cat," Christy said. A smoke detector alerted at least three people in the home, who were not hurt, Christy said.

Push button control?! Who thought that was going to be a good idea? At least I've got knobs. Plastic containers on top of the range? I don't know.

I'm going to check my smoke detector, right now!

Bird Feeder

Hawks give new meaning to the term "bird feeder." Yesterday the sound of two birds hitting the window made me look up to see if anyone got hurt. No. Everyone seemed okay. But a hawk was perched on the log beneath the bird feeder. I'm not sure what "disappointed" would look like on that fierce hawk face. But as least she didn't have a bird in hand. Could she seriously be waiting to see if a bird would come back?

I watched for a minute, debating whether to savor the moment or risk scaring her off to get the camera. I backed off cautiously and snuck to an upstairs window with the camera. No dice. She flew off leaving me with only this picture.

But it's a good camera. And I've got Photoshop. One square inch in the middle near the top looks like this.

Weblog

I was a computer programmer in the very early 1970s. Remember the mainframe Univac? Fortran and Cobol? Keypunch cards? I think the computer room in this photo is actually the one I used back then.

My first home computer in the 1980s, set up on a card table, gave me easy access to a little wordprocessing and a lot of Pac Man. In the 1990s I plunged into the internet with AOL and a dial-up connection (where I'm pretty much stuck.) My teenage daughter and a friend quickly figured out IRC chatrooms. But I stumbled around thinking, "There must be something interesting here somewhere."


Voila! Along came web logs. Very early web logs were literally simple lists of new web sites as they came on line. As the number of sites exploded, lists of favorites were born and the terms "web log" was shortened to weblog and blog. I still think the best feature of blogs is the links. (And one of these days, I really must update my sidebar.)

So, here's today's link. Last week Intercollegiate Studies Institute released the results of this year's America Civic Literacy Program quiz. Last year the quiz was given to 14,000 college students and the average score was about 53%. Pretty dismal. This year, for comparison, the quiz was given to 2,500 adults of various backgrounds. The average score was 49%. Even more troublesome, the average score of the 164 people who reported having held an elected government office at some time, was 44%.

As I took the quiz, I wasn't sure whether or not I'd share my result. But I'm happy to say I scored 91% (and apparently I need to know more about Puritans.) I will say that some of the questions are deliberately tricky. But how can it be that 83 of those people who said they'd held an elected office can't identify the three branches of government even in a multiple choice quiz?

My experience as an elected official and the 2008 campaign for president have shaped my thinking about qualifications for elected office. There was the Sarah Palin interview in which she said she'd consider becoming McCain's running mate if someone would tell her what the Vice President actually does. There is no job description for President of the United States and the only qualifications are age and birthplace and the ability to survive a two year campaign. No job description for Vice President. Or Congressman and on down the list. So, if we're making our choices based on, "Well, this person seems to know what (s)he's talking about..." no wonder we're sometimes disappointed.

Blogging Habit

I'm not sure quite when or why I started to let go of the blogging habit, but I want it back. I started writing for the fun of it in 2004 and absolutely no one else read the blog. Near the end of 2005 I began getting comments from strangers who apparently stumbled upon the blog by accident. In 2006 other bloggers and some local friends chimed in and readership peaked last year when I campaigned for a local elected office. That turned out to be a mixed blessing.

I'm starting over. Bear with me while I get back into the habit of thinking like a blogger. That is, actually having something to say. Since the last time I wrote we started siding the new part of the house. We've finished the log part and will continue on the second floor with cedar shingles. I use the pronoun "we" very loosely. I actually had very little to do with the siding.


I judged the local Halloween costume contest.

There are lots of prizes. But this might be my choice for cutest.





And most elegant.

I baffled someone by saying Halloween's my favorite holiday - except for the candy and costumes. I don't like sweets and I don't like to dress up. But Halloween is New Year's Eve in the Pagan calendar and I grasp at every opportunity for a fresh start - New Year's Day, first day of spring, first day of school, Mondays, daybreak, whatever...





I campaigned for Barack Obama and for Congressman Arcuri (far right) as well as our local candidates Don Barber, Jason Leifer and Joe Valentinelli.




And voted, perhaps for the last time on our beloved lever machines.


The cats are reminding me that the weather's turning colder and they're no longer willing to spend all day outside. Thanksgiving is around the corner. Before I know it Christmas will be past and I can celebrate another New Year.

Ally's 50!

And we've been friends for 14 of those years.

Happy Birthday, Ally. Many happy returns.

This morning Simon provided a link to this NYT article. Paul Krugman provides this background to the ongoing financial crisis:

First, a capsule analysis of the crisis.
1. It all starts with the bursting of the housing bubble. This has led to sharply increased rates of
default and foreclosure, which has led to large losses on mortgage-backed securities.
2. The losses in MBS, in turn, have left the financial system undercapitalized — doubly so, because levels of leverage that were previously considered acceptable are no longer OK.
3. The financial system, in its efforts to deleverage, is contracting credit, placing everyone who depends on credit under strain.
4. There’s also, to some extent, a vicious circle of deleveraging: as financial firms try to contract their balance sheets, they drive down the prices of assets, further reducing capital and forcing more deleveraging.

Starting with point #2 (I'll be returning to #1) let's unpack the language here. "The losses in mortgage-backed securities have left the financial system undercapitalized." Undercapitalized means short of cash. "...levels of leverage that were ... acceptable are no longer OK." leverage means borrowing or debt. Translation: we have too much debt and not enough cash. That's us - collectively, all of us. Sadly, we're all in this together.

Returning to point #1... Far be it from me to disagree with Paul Krugman, but it didn't start with the housing bubble. It started when we began to believe that it's acceptable to have more debt than cash. Even after the painful lessons of the 1930s, it was only ten short years before we began rewarding ourselves for the years of deprivation during World War II by turning to banks for mortgages for new homes. The Levittown housing boom was off and running. It was another ten short years before we began thinking, "Well, maybe if a home mortgage is okay, a car loan would be okay. After all, the car has value, too."

And then came credit cards. Yep. Just thirty short years after the worst credit crisis in history, came credit cards. At first they were loosely backed by bank accounts. I know this 'cause I had one of those first credit cards. I was seventeen years old when the bank where I had a checking and savings account sent me, unsolicited, a shiny new BankAmeriCard. Its credit limit was less than I had in my savings account. So, that was pretty safe. But, of course, as I used the credit card and paid the full balance every month, the bank increased the credit limit. By then I was a grad student. In those days, if you were smart and you worked hard enough, you could actually get through college and grad school without student loans.

It's been all downhill since then. And make no mistake about it, we're all in it together.

Earth Centered Holidays

The trouble with Earth-centered holidays is that you can't make them happen on Monday. And even if you could, for some reason they still wouldn't get the recongition that Columbus Day and Memorial Day do. They happen, in their own time, whether anyone's paying attention or not and I'm happy that this one is on a Monday and I don't have to go to the office.


Today is Autumnal Equinox. At 15:44 GMT (or 11:44 EDT) the earth is at a point in its journey around the sun where it is not tilted toward or away from the sun. Everywhere on the earth today will have roughly twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness. In that one respect, we're all equal today. I think that's worth celebrating.

Leaving my office near sunset last week, I noticed the sun coming straight in the west facing atrium window, all the way down the east-west hallway to the east facing back door. The United States is such a young country that many streets and roads laid out due east and west or north and south. Consequently, many buildings facing the road are mini-temples to the rising and setting sun.

Autumn Equinox means the busy summer season is drawing to a close and we're headed toward the shorter days of the season of rest and reflection. If you've been growing things, you'll now be celebrating the harvest, as I was yesterday.

I get a sort of mini spring cleaning drive this time of year. The housecleaning I haven't had time for all summer is glaring. There's plenty of outdoor clean-up to finish. Oh, my. It's time to get at it.