Laconic Taconic
Saturday, 21 July 2007
Drove a lovely stretch of the Taconic today, amidst the lush green of a rainy summer. Blooming chicory (Cichorium intybus) bordered some stretches.
Musings
Rain-train
Friday, 20 July 2007
Rain.
Train.
East line westbound into Atlanta. Main tracks.
Containers, every flatcar. Many double-deckers. No empties.
Many from China, a few from Hamburg Sud. One from Linea Mexico. Some miscellaneous that I couldn’t decode.
In a still car, watching the train pass: took me back to my childhood.
Evie: a huge thanks.
Weeding ahead
Thursday, 19 July 2007
Thunder-boomers rolling through. Maybe they’ll produce enough precip to soften the soil (sigh) to make weeding easier.
Silence
Wednesday, 18 July 2007
Thomas Perry, “Silence” (2007). Saw it recommended somewhere. It’s another of the interminable detective/mystery titles that I inhale regularly. Time frame is “present.”
First wrong step: main good guy is an ex-cop private detective who apparently isn’t aware that high(er)-end rental vehicles are likely to have GPS units that would allow someone to track his (car’s) whereabouts. The guy’s otherwise quite sharp, so this is annoying.
Second wrong step: main bad guy offs a cop in his cop car on a road near rental car outlets at a mid-sized California airport, without any concern that such events and his own (rental) car’s license* plate may well be visible to surveillance cameras.
Annoying missteps.
And (sigh) this is less than half-way through….
Ten pages later. Oops on me. Second step developed into a plot line as cops checked out that vehicle when its drivers were getting a bite in a highway diner, and, but that’s enough for now!
Still.
* Brit./Can.: licence
Today’s vocabulary:
freemartin
female offspring of placental mammal who was a twin with a male in utero and the male’s hormones affected the female such that she is sterile; most commonly noticed and applied to cattle and sheep.
Temp plate
Tuesday, 17 July 2007
We thought this was our temporary plate, but, as The Guru pointed out, it looks like it’s good for a whole millennium!
Watch cat
Sunday, 15 July 2007
We went for a walk at dusk and in the unexpected cool of the evening, the cats were out (I think we saw five). This one was napping when we spotted it, but posed by the time I got the camera turned on.
Compromise
Saturday, 14 July 2007
Revisiting the Fourth’s fireworks….
Recently when I was in the library I saw a copy of Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope (2006) and nabbed it, thinking, well, I should have some idea of this guy that’s a bit deeper than a sound bite or even a speech. Then I got busy, and didn’t even flip it open until today when I decided to skip around and see if anything seemed, well, notable. Not a fair assessment, I’m sure, but then I could turn in the book knowing I had spent at least a moment on it….
I flipped to late in the book, wondering out what Obama would chose to reserve for the end. I was in the Epilogue (p. 360):
I remember a conversation I had almost twenty years ago with a friend of mine, an older man who had been active in civil rights efforts in Chicago in the sixties and was teaching urban studies at Northwestern University. I had just decided, after three years of organizing, to attend law school; because he was one of the few academics I knew, I had asked him if he would be willing to give me a recommendation.
He said he would be happy to write me the recommendation, but first wanted to know what I intended to do with a law degree. I mentioned my interest in a civil rights practice, and that at some point I might try my hand at running for office. He nodded his head and asked whether I had considered what might be involved in taking such a path, what I would be willing to do to make the Law Review, or make partner, or get elected to that first office and then move up the ranks. As a rule, both law and politics required compromise, he said; not just on issues, but on more fundamental things—your values and ideals. He wasn’t saying that to dissuade me, he said. It was just a fact. It was because of his unwillingness to compromise that, although he had been approached many times in his youth to enter politics, he had always declined.
Against all odds, I had found something that stood out to me, but not something that Obama had said (oops), but something someone had told him. Oh, well. I guess Obama chose to tell the tale, so he gets points for that.
As to the content, is the guy right? Is compromise that fundamental to law and politics, and to the role of those people leading in our representative government? I think he’s right that compromise is has a high stature in the Constitution, since checks and balances are all about compromise. On the other hand, we look to candidates to have firm opinions, voice them clearly, and adhere to them. Historically, we have always prized public leaders who demonstrated a reflectivity about their policies, ideas, and values.
Nowdays, there are factions within the populace, some quite vocal, who do not revere this idea of thinking, pondering and reevaluation, who, effectively, do not revere wisdom. I’m looking forward to this round of electioneering, to see how this all plays out this time around….
Condo investigation
Friday, 13 July 2007
Dracula chicken is (almost) burbling on the stove.
Today’s highlight, I guess, was taking a look at a condo Bob’s thinking about buying. It’s offered “as is”—rare in this market—so we all poked and prodded in all the corners and closets. (Good sign: all roaches we saw were dead; no rodents, no termites.)
Eggshell(s)
Thursday, 12 July 2007
These are freshly washed….
It began when Lou Bigelow and Toby Maytree first met. He was back home in Provincetown after the war. Maytree first saw her on a bicycle. A red scarf, white shirt, skin clean as an eggshell, wide eyes and mouth, shorts.*
Sweet image. Except for the clean eggshell idea. I suspect anyone who’s collected chicken eggs doesn’t think of eggshells as clean. Remember where they come from….
Thinking of two close friends today: gallstone surgery for one; first dose of chemo for Kevyn.
* Annie Dillard, “The Maytrees” (2007).