Listics

Cousin Betty who raises organic beef (Scottish Highland Cattle) up near Douglas City, wrote a letter to the editor regarding another corporate push to usurp local control.  Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) represent at once a tremendous dream of agricultural productivity and a tremendous substantiated risk to biodiversity and protection of the gene pools in food crops and the native ecology of wild places surrounding farms and ranches.  GMOs threaten the food purity of organic operations.  Since there is little short term profit in preservation and since American corporate interests are simply rapacious, it remains for local government to discern what is best for a community, its farmers and ranchers, and its environment.  Here is a link that can help you follow the issues and get involved in your neck of the woods.  And here, blogged with her permission, is what Betty Jo had to say about the corporate end-run around local democracy in California:

To: Editor, Trinity Journal
Re: CA Senate Bill 1056 - GMO and local control.

And so, like thieves in the night, legislators do the bidding of their corporate financial sponsors. An unrelated air quality bill (SB 1056) is "amended." The amendment changes the Food and Agriculture code to rob communities of their rights to protect their grass, forest and farmlands from contamination by Genetically Engineered seeds. Even labeling and notification of use are excluded by this bill from local control. Under this act local communities are not to be allowed to know when or where GMO seed is used. They are not to be allowed to choose.

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A friend is
in jail. Details are sparse, but it is a
civil matter, not criminal… eyes not crossed, teeth not dotted, that sort of
thing.  I’m not sure how to help.

He needs representation.  He needs some kind of nunc pro tunc thing to straighten out the matter.

Ronni Bennett reads my blog and she likes it.  What a wonderful warm review.  Thank you Ronni!

Unsolicited-opinion-i.e.-venting dept:  State of universe is most dire I’ve 
seen, since I have no recollection of J McCarthy, Louis Quatorze or Torquemada. 
Technique of Right:  gatling-gun approach.  Zap them w/so many outrageousnesses
they get demoralized, fragmented, & diverted from actual top priorities
while Right sneaks around in the background doing invisible sometimes visible
mischief.  A recess appointment?  A constitutional
amendment sanctifying the flag, for god’s sake? The US capitol & various ofc
buildings are high-rent properties & they’re vandalizing them.  Friday
afternoon news conferences?  Trashing wildernesses?  I say all this, of course,
doubtlessly trite by now, w/o benefit of blogs of which I’m illiterate.  I just
get my stuff from evil NPR & varied print media.  Check out –if there’s
time –the 6/27 New Yorker piece re Patrick Henry college, which uses amazingly
sheltered Boy & Girl scouts as raw material for ghastly Christian
politicos.  Don’t you love adverbs?

[To which I fearlessly reply that indeed they are among my favorite modifiers.]

There’s a poet who’s a ham
And she’s filled with
Comment spam

In her poetry
there’s no cheese
no rye bread
no mustard
no indefinite articles preceding vowel sounds
used correctly

Her feelings
like bug bites
huge welts, itchy
discomfort concern for her own

Boundary unconditional
boundaries so nutritional
eat me she seems to say
eat me raw or lightly sauteed with a dash of lemon
and fresh ground pepper

A recipe for ill feeling.

(This bit of frothy goodness shared with you after reading the stuff presented by Madame Levy… a lover of good things poetic, yet not one to suffer fools lightly).

Reading Brian’s post I’m reminded that it’s more than the occasional stab of blindingly painful arthritis, the fading, vision, the occasional and mildly malignant actinic keratosis.  It’s a whole way of life — if you can call it that.

"No matter where you go, there you are."  - The Buckmeister

Ronni Bennett has started a companion blog to "Time Goes By" called "A Sense of Place."  Wendell Berry has always been one of my cultural touchstones, and in a former life I studied the amazing product of Stegner’s writing program at Stanford.  The Kentucky boys - Berry, Norman, McClanahan, and to a lesser extent Jim Hall - fed into my fantasy of the writer’s life.  That observation stubs up to several essays worth writing, but in this little blog post, I’m just thanking Ronni for reminding me of the Stegner/Berry connection.

And, by Googling around to see just how those old boys are representing on the web, I found a new voice… Bobbie Ann Mason.  Thanks Ronni.

I need a GratefulDad tag.  Lacking that, I uploaded a bunch of pix to Flickr and tagged them sula2005.  Family and new friends….  check them out.