Giving Thanks

It's trite, but true, that most of us living a comfortable middle class lifestyle take a few perfunctory seconds each Thanksgiving to "count our blessings" and give thanks before or after we tuck into a gigantic excess of calories.  We went around our table and each person thought about what to give thanks for and for the most part it was the usual litany of being happy that our friends and family were gathered together to reflect on our fortunate position.  The possibility this was merely a happy accident and that we could just as easily be homeless in America or living in a hut in India does not occur to most people, including yours truly.  I think most of us feel we have made our own reality and the fortunate combination of stable home lives, mentoring and just being born white in America in the latter part of the 20th century is an afterthought, when in fact it has more to do with our social status than any conscious decisions on our part.  Just as the children of the 1% will never know what many of us deal with on a regular basis; job security, health issues we can't pay for, etc., we in the middle class will probably never know the grinding poverty which forecloses many of the options we take for granted.  College education, an extra pair of shoes, knowing at the end of the day we will have a full stomach are all things most of the rest of the world deal with on a daily basis.  So, yes, I am thankful for all the things I mostly take for granted, but I hope many of the people I forget about on a regular basis will someday experience the bounty we celebrated yesterday.

Health Care for all

The news for the ACA, aka Obamacare is getting better by the day.  Even the news media, with their fascination with the good news, bad news meme is finding it harder to come up with equivalent horror stories about rising premiums or website delays to balance the good news of formerly uninsured people finding affordable insurance.   NPR explored the private insurance exchanges being used by large companies to try to rein in health care costs.  By giving their employees a fixed amount of money each month to find their own insurance, companies with thousands workers can now figure exactly how much insurance is costing them.  Also, they can now cap the amount they give to employees and leave said employees holding the bag if costs go up.  I believe this will eventually drive a groundswell of support for "Medicare for all".  This was not politically feasible until now, since the vast majority of Americans with healthcare through their employer were not willing to change something that worked for them.  However, by forcing most people to deal with the bewildering complexity the insurance companies deliberately use to drive up costs, there will be more support for the simpler, single payer system.

Changing tastes

Apropos of my post regarding carrot storage for the winter, I find the changing tastes of Americans interesting and in some ways troubling.  As recently as my own childhood, I remember eating lots more potatoes and root veg during the winter and mostly canned green vegetables.  The fresh versions of green beans, greens and other summer vegetables were either not available or of such poor quality when they finally made it to our local A&P that my mother bypassed them.  The interstate highway system, the development of post harvest cooling techniques and the overall improvement of the cold chain have led to a revolution in fresh vegetable options for winter consumption.  Blast freezing has also vastly improved the frozen foods section, so the possibilities for eating a balanced, healthy diet have never been so good.  So why is obesity endemic in the population?  If you casually check the shopping carts at most grocery stores, the proportion of processed foods in most are very high compared to fresh or minimally processed vegetables.  As the cartoon character Pogo (another holdover from the 1950s) has famously said, "We have met the enemy and he is us".

Freeze and aftermath

Winter made an early visit to the NCR on Saturday with a couple of inches of the white stuff and temps in the single digits this morning.  Anticipating the onslaught, I harvested the last of my carrot crop and am trying an old storage technique.  I dug a trench in one of my cold frames and buried a 30 gallon plastic tote up to its rim.  I put the carrots in the bin, layered the carrots with clean sand, snapped the lid on the bin and mulched the frame with straw.  I put the lights back on the frame and now I'll wait until February or March to see if the carrots hold up.  Otherwise, it is back to the tasteless supermarket imposters for the spring.  I filled up a spare refrigerator with spinach, broccoli, parsley and carrots, so we'll eat garden veggies til sometime in December.  By then, the seed catalogs will be coming in and I'll start planning for next year.

Where were you in 63

Not quite as catchy as the slogan from American Graffiti (Where were you in 62), but for many of my generation  it was a point of pride to remember exactly where you were and what you were doing at 12:30 central time on Nov. 22, 1963.  I can still remember the light shining through the streaked windows in the library at St. John the Evangelist catholic school that afternoon when the news reached the nuns who in turn told us the president was in hospital after being shot in Dallas.  The rest of the afternoon and evening were a blur, and the indelible images of the horse drawn caisson rolling into Arlington cemetery took up the rest of the weekend.  As a 7th grader I was curiously detached for the most part, but at some level I realized history was being made.  Catholics in particular took the assassination very badly.  One of our own had been gunned down and the world would never be quite the same again.  A Canadian friend was commenting on the approaching anniversary the other day and casually stated the FBI was behind the death as if it were established fact.  I wonder what the verdict will be 50 years from now.

Finding a voice and a champion

Although many have known she was the champion of the middle and working classes for years, the senior senator from Massachusetts came out swinging on perhaps the most pressing issue for baby boomers facing retirement.  Elizabeth Warren said it is not the time to cut Social Security, but expand it as the only retirement plan most Americans can really count on when they stop working for pay.  The loss of defined benefit pensions which a more highly unionized earlier generation used to stave off poverty was traded for the grand experiment of the 401K plan.  Employers would match the contribution of workers and the resulting investment in the stock market would create a wealthy retired class...NOT.  When the dot com bubble burst, many lost almost all their retirement savings.  The real estate bust continued that crisis.   The stagnating wages of most in the middle class prevented much saving and now the "grand bargain"  sought by many in D.C. would chip away at the last refuge of  60 somethings on the verge of retirement.   Enter Senator Warren with a diametrically opposed message.  Let's say something about our society by treating those who worked all their lives and played by the rules to enjoy a decent retirement.  The naysayers on the right who feel we can afford endless war and 550 billion dollar "defense" budgets have no reply to the Ms. Warren's economic populism. 

Food Security and the produce business

People got no jobs, people got no money.  That is the quote Charley Pierce uses to describe the current economic situation.  Most economists call it a lack of demand and cluelessly wonder why, calling it is a lack of business confidence.  I guess that is technically correct, but it misses the point.  Without money to spend, the middle class and the working poor can't generate demand which might inspire business to expand and create more jobs.  It is a virtuous cycle, but the starting point is money in people's pockets.  That is the problem today.  Everyone in the produce business is lamenting the poor business conditions of the last few weeks.  They have run out of possible explanations as to why the slowdown is happening just before Thanksgiving.  The massive cuts to the food stamp program are probably the single most important reason for the slump.   With billions of dollars more being cut from the program later this year and unemployment benefits running out for millions of people, conditions will only get worse.  Cutting money from people who will spend it immediately for necessities like food and shelter is not only cruel, it is economic suicide.  The lemmings on the right in Congress are diving off the cliff and they are dragging many of us with them.

Magical thinking and the American Polity

We seem to be at the threshold of a possibly disastrous era in American governance.  We have a two party system, but only one is committed to governing the country.  The Democrats want to increase access to health care, rebuild the country's infrastructure and reduce the inequality which is ripping America apart, physically and emotionally.  The Republicans are not a partner in these projects, nor are they the loyal opposition.  Rather, they are a guerilla movement dedicated to sabotaging and destroying anything originated by the Democrats.  The health care plan is a case in point.  A cobbled together monstrosity with more moving parts than a Swiss watch, the ACA was designed using the talking points of the conservative Heritage Foundation and the actual mechanisms of Romneycare, the Massachusetts health care plan.  The repubs  fought the plan at every step without offering any constructive alternative.  Since the rollout of the plan they have seized on every glitch as evidence the entire plan is unworkable, despite the evidence to the contrary in the Bay State.  Meanwhile, as they proved during Bush's two terms as President, the GOP has no interest in governing, unless you count wealth transfer from the poor and middle class to the top 10% as political engagement.  If they gain control of all three branches of government, we can count on republicans to shred the social safety net and hand the keys to the economy to the multinational corporations and banks who will loot the treasury and accelerate the climate change which will leave an uninhabitable wasteland within a few generations.  Is this the legacy we want to leave our descendants?

Weather and Time

The late fall honeymoon is looking like a very short term deal here on the NCR.  50 MPH winds are blowing Sunday's mild temperatures out to sea and the big chill will be here for the next few days.  The garden is getting tired.  I harvested a few items for the Divine Mrs. M, but the foliage on the beets, carrots and turnips were damaged and I had to peel several layers off the nappa cabbage to reach leaves that were undamaged by the last cold snap.  The warm rain yesterday and today will put life back in to the broccoli.  I may get out the flashlight tonight and pick the last few heads.  Meanwhile, the golf courses remain optimistic, but so do the local ski areas.  I mowed the lawns for the last time on Saturday and if I had been ambitious, I could have skied and played golf on Saturday and Sunday. 

Milestones

Birthdays are highly overrated.  As I told one well wisher this morning, it is the moment between the milestones that I most appreciate.  The weekend promises to be mild and clement, so golf, gardening and yardwork are in order  (probably in that order also).  Whiteface mountain will be open for the first skiing of the season.  So much to do, so little time!

The new apocolypse now

The devastation left in the wake of super typhoon Haiyan is mind boggling.  One weather forecaster compared it to a 50 mile wide tornado.  He didn't add the storm surge the 175mph winds generated to his description.  The combination leveled a city of 350,000 people and killed at least 10,000 so far.  The final toll will probably be higher since many will die of disease and exposure.  There is no shelter, food or clean water nearly a week after the storm hit and despite robust efforts by the Phillipine government and other nations and aid groups.  The problem is the infrastructure has been wiped out, leaving helicopters as the only viable relief delivery vehicles.  What is happening on the ground must be terrifying disaster planners all over the world.   In a climate change driven scenario, these types of disasters could very well happen all over the world every year.  A category 5 hurricane hitting the east coast of the US could generate a trillion dollars of damage and untold suffering.  The negotiations at the Warsaw conference on climate change are taking on a newfound sense of urgency, but can they deliver the kind of tough love the human population of spaceship earth needs to survive the coming century?

Veterans and policies remembered

I have always had an ambiguous feeling for Veterans' Day or as the Canadians put it Remembrance Day.  As a child of the 60s, I grew up with the Vietnam War and its aftermath.  It was the beginning of the polarization of  America. As an eighth grader in 1965, I remember jeering war protesters in New York on a class trip.  By 1970, I had come around 180 degrees and joined the anti-war movement.  With a high draft lottery number, I never had to make the decision not to serve in what I considered an unjust war, but many in my generation served enthusiastically or reluctantly and over  50,000 paid the ultimate price for their country.  These policies were mostly set by WW2 veterans who felt they were doing the right thing in combatting communism.  History has provided a harsh judgement  of their actions.  Many of the small and larger conflicts since then have been orchestrated by a succession of "chicken hawks" who never served in the armed forces, but presumed to use them for ideological ends.  The evolution of the conscript army to an all  volunteer force has reduced the involvement of the average American with the military.  We all pay homage to our vets by rote, but what are we celebrating?  Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children have perished in our wars over the past half century and for what?  I think everyone between 18 and 20 should have to serve the nation either at home in a civilian service or in the armed forces.  An involved citizenry is essential to democracy.  If everyone is a veteran, then we all have a stake in and a voice for and against policies promulgated by our representatives in Washington.   Perhaps we will want to be represented by people who have had the experience of service.  Veterans' Day will be a truly national celebration.

Getting the message

I guess the conventional American is a racist bigot whose gag reflex is triggered by the sight of NYC's new mayor with his black wife and biracial children.   At least that is what Richard Cohen of the Washington Post opines in his latest descent into the underbelly of American politics.   As I have pointed out numerous times since President Obama's election, more that 50% of the opposition to his policies is driven by the racism that is still alive and well in many areas of our nation.  Even though a recent poll shows 87% of respondents approve of interracial marriage, I still think many of the affirmative responses are approvals in the abstract.   "Not my son or daughter", would probably be the response if the question were "Would you approve your child marrying a black man or woman".  Of course we have come a long way from the anti miscegenation laws of the Jim Crow south.  But we still have a long way to go if the WaPo's op-ed pages are any indication of present attitudes about race in these United States.

Golfing with geezers

With another Sunday in the 40's it was time to make obeisance to the golf gods for perhaps the last time this year.  My friend and I went to one of the local courses expecting to be among a few hardy souls, but to our surprise, a golf tournament was in the process of being organized.  There were about 30 hardy golfers, mostly in their late 60s and early 70s ready to go, so we joined the fun.  Dressing for late fall golf is about the same as any cold weather outdoor activity.  Several layers of clothing, but loose enough to allow full movement.  The weather was cloudy and although it stayed in the low 40s, the northeast breeze was damp and chilly. Making a birdie on a difficult par 3 was the highlight in an otherwise forgettable round.   The weather forecast for next weekend is predicting warmer temps after a midweek cold snap, so it's possible the garden and the golf course will remain open for business next weekend.  So it goes.

Garden redux

Despite the cooler than normal temps, the garden continues to yield surprises.  I harvested some broccoli, kohlrabi and some truly gigantic daikon radishes for the local co-op last night.  A couple of nights in the upper teens and lower 20s damaged the turnip greens and broccoli rabe and have pretty much stopped anything from growing, but a warm rain yesterday has perked up most of the foliage.  I expect to harvest quite a few items this weekend for short term storage since we are supposed to receive an arctic cold front on Tuesday and Wednesday.  That will keep the temp below freezing for 48 hours and probably freeze the top several inches of soil.  Time to get the nappa and bok choy out as well as beets and turnips.  The spinach, carrots and winterbor kale can survive the blast as long as it warms up by next weekend. We'll see....

The Chinese Free Lunch

The Chinese are bent on proving the old adage "There is no free lunch", wrong.  With their purchase of the Smithfield Packing company, they have secured a huge supply of pork for their 1.4 billion people, and left much of the mess for the US taxpayer to clean up.  That's Marc Bittman's take on it in yesterday's NYT.  Bittman, who aggressively advocates for a meatless diet doesn't even weigh in on the ethical issues of the pork business.  He points out that China maintains a strategic pork reserve, much as we do with oil.  By buying Smithfield, they strengthen that reserve with some of the most advanced food production technology on the planet.  Instead of stealing that information, they were able to buy it.  Meanwhile, the nastier aspects of pig farming, the confined feeding operations the vast manure lagoons and all the environmental costs associated with it will be passed on to American taxpayers.  I don't see how this is a good deal except for the Chinese and the top executives at Smithfield.  It's just another example of global capitalism at its worst.  The profits are private and the costs are socialized.  Meanwhile, we give a potential enemy a strategic advantage.  Dr. Strangelove would appreciate the irony.

auguries

The political high priests of the left and right will be digging through the entrails of last night's elections to justify their own prejudices and assure the faithful their auguries are the correct insights.  That a liberal won the NYC mayoralty should come as no surprise, nor should Christie's win in New Jersey or even the detestable Macauliffe in Virginia over the even more vile Cuccinelli.  So what can the average person extrapolate from these results.  Precious little in the overall scheme.  Although with Diblasio's win, the message is a template for a national democrat in 2016.  Don't be afraid of a progressive, populist campaign.  It will resonate with many who feel disenfranchised.  It is not only a "Tale of Two Cities", but of two nations; one with seemingly limitless opportunities for the 1% and severely constrained limits for the rest of us.  Show us the way to level the playing field and take on the entrenched plutocrats and most of us will rally to you.  Taking 400 big ones to make a speech to the likes of Goldman Sachs is not going to get it done, Hillary.  If both sides cast their lot with those who would wreck the hopes and dreams of the 99%, then despair it the harvest they will reap and we will be a poorer nation, psychologically and economically. 
 As a side note, the Divine Mrs. M takes umbrage with my implication she takes her excellent health care policy for granted.   Having seen the results of poor coverage for the less fortunate over the many years of her career, she is cognizant of her advantages and thankful for them; as I am for her.

Health care blues

I think most Americans feel the way I do about Obamacare.  It doesn't really affect me since we have had health care through the Divine Mrs. M's job since the 1970s and it has served us well.  Intellectually and now by personal experience as our offspring get their own policies we know there are people at risk due to the soaring price of care, but it doesn't impact us directly.  We smugly go about our business thinking we made the right decisions and fellow citizens with junk policies or no health care at all were foolish.  Unfortunately, many did not have the option to choose gold plated policies to protect their families.  As Alan Grayson once famously put it the Republicans have a health care plan for those without insurance.  It's called the "if you get sick, die quickly", plan.  While it is not Medicare for all, the ACA at least makes a dent in  the ranks of the uninsured.  There is no good reason not to give the law a chance to prove its worth, except in the minds of those who feel that its success could spell the end of the party of angry old white men.

Slip sliding into winter

The big cool down continued this weekend.  After a soggy Saturday spent harvesting for the food co-op and cleaning up the tomato patch, the temperature started dropping during the night and finished below freezing on Sunday morning.  Despite lots of sun, the mercury or digital, depending on your generation, never got above 38 degrees.  I harvested beets, celery root and the last planting of romaine.  The latter was only good at the heart, but made a tasty end of season salad.  Aside from the winterbor kale and spinach, which shrugged off the temps, the rest of the greenstuff looked ragged, even at the end of the afternoon.  I doubt things will get much better in the short term, but a warm midweek rain and rising night temps should keep the broccoli and other greens going for another week. 

Musical evolution

Thanks to the miracle of satellite radio, I can shuttle among several formats on my drive to the office each day.  Today, the Nice Polite Republicans on NPR were annoying me with their apologetic coverage of national affairs.  It seems almost every development in Congress is an opportunity for republicans and a disaster for democrats.  The sophomoric host of this morning's obfuscation, Steve Innskeep was cheerleading a little too loudly, so I switched to the music channels.   I usually listen to 60s and 70s pop, but I decided to check  the channel which replays the hits of the 2000s.  First up was a reminder of why I listen to the 60s., Smash Mouth singing "hey now you're an all star".  My oldest daughter was a senior in high school when this was a a hit.  I switched back to the 70s and a hit from 1970, "Everything is Beautiful"  was playing. I was a freshman in college at that time..   What a difference in sentiment.  That song could have been playing in 1950, 1960 or 1970.  It would never be a hit now.  I'm sure every generation says this, but if the music we listen to shapes our world view, we are in big trouble now.