State of Grace

"Totally Pecan-Tasting"

Santa Cruz cookie company label.
Originally uploaded by GraceD

Santa Cruz cookies by Santa Cruz dudes. They are totally yummy.

More Out-of-Touch-Elitists for Obama

Rednecks for Obama3
Originally uploaded by Youth Radio

Happy Sunday, dollins. More chardonnay and brie type liberals for your viewing pleasure.

Paul Newman - Believer in Luck

Painful news this morning - we lost Paul Newman. 

In this video from Newman's Organics - co-founded by his daughter Nell who resides in the next town over from us - Paul Newman says he's a "great believer in luck." 

Lucky indeed -  We should be so lucky to have been as successful as Paul in all of his many endeavors.  We should be so lucky to race fast cars and win those races and we should be so lucky to share the movie screen with Elizabeth Taylor. We should be so lucky to have raised millions of dollars for philanthropy through great salad dressing.  We should be so lucky to have loved your spouse as deeply and as long as Paul has with his amazing wife, Joanne Woodward. 

We should be so lucky, but we should also be so willing and committed to do the very best we can in our lives.  This is the lesson of Paul Newman's life.  We are lucky to have had him in our lives.

At the end of the video, he bids us farewell.   This must have been filmed in the last few months as it is clear that this magnificent man was so very ill.   But, Paul Newman's last words to us are robust and compelling - he urges us to "just lay back and raise hell."

Then he said "...bye." 

Peace and love to all.

Back to the Land

My kid's dad is out of the hospital, I am armed and dangerous with new allergy/asthma meds and the polls are still looking great for an Obama win.  Praise the Lord and pass the taters.

That's all good, but this spooky economic crisis continues and my response is to start digging up the garden.  Growing our own food suddenly makes sense, going off the grid is just as sensible. Think I'm getting all survivalist on you dollins? You may think right.

However,  these ambitious agricultural endeavors are not limited to growing organic vegies, I am also getting the land ready for two June events - Molly's graduation from high school and the wedding of our kid Jenn and her very excellent partner Mike.  We're thrilled to be hosting the graduation party as well as the wedding and reception. Our house has been tested successfully for large scale events, of which the most significant of these occasions was the Hubs and my wedding in 2000.  We had the fenced off area of our land converted from an eroding hill to a multi-level garden with a stone patio.  Landscaping the yard for the wedding was cheaper than renting a venue for the wedding and we were rewarded with great results.

Unfortunately I don't have the before and after pictures of the landscaping scanned. I do, however, have a picture of me sniveling and snorting during the ceremony.

Sadly, in the past eight years, I have have let the garden go.  For this I blame the rattlesnake I saw in 2002, coiled under the pine tree adjacent to the raised beds.  I am a snake wuss of the highest order and because of that, I have not been in the garden since.

Really, this is no way to live.  I have access to a lot of dirt and it's a shame to just let it go.  So, earlier this year I planted some heirloom tomato seeds, sat them under a light on the kitchen table and watched them grow into seedlings then real plants.  I felt like a happy third grader, triumphant with her science project.  Snakes or no snakes, poisonous vipers or harmless king snake, I had no choice but to get my tomatoes out of their yogurt cartons and into the outside dirt.  And I did that, though I planted way too late, like June, and I expect we'll harvest in the latter part of next month.  We can get away with that in Northern California, our warmest months are September and October.

I'm a self taught gardener, which means I've done some foolish if not blatantly wrong things in and around our dirt.  I've killed many plants by positioning them in sun that's too hot or shade that's too chilly.  I have over fed, over pruned and under watered.  The latest gardening crime I committed was to plant the heirloom tomato seedlings too close together  and that doofus move resulted in one giant tomato bush.  Big, big no-no as you really need to get in between the plants to add compost and weed.  Now I have to commando crawl under a canopy of tomato branches to get those essential jobs done.   

The one big tomato bush.  Error duly noted and I will never plant so close together again. Live it, learn it, but, in the meantime, crawl under it.

I do give myself many breaks. I have indeed documented my failures and the successes in spiral binder notebooks because I'm a wonk that way. I also wonkishly conduct extensive gardening research both online and at our local nurseries.  Most importantly, I am uncharacteristically patient as a gardener.  In most things of life, I'm a twitchy-nervous, impatient wreck.  Gardening, I am your local Buddah (though not necessarily with snakes.)

The hubs is also supportive and gets me whatever tools I need, though he does get twitchy-nervous when he sees me wandering  outside with the big hedge trimmers, aiming the blades at the overgrown rosemary or the rose bushes.

This time  around, I will be enlisting help for the garden/landscape renewal project.  I've already recruited Moll's boyfriend Jordy (short for Jordan, aka "Jordy Meister" as he asked to be called when summoned by the principal to receive his high school diploma) who has been most useful around the yard hauling loads of clippings and branches to the dump's composting center and doing any and all heavy lifting.  He's also been grand company though I probably talk way too much for his centered surfer sensibility.  When Jordy does speak up, he's delightfully monosyllabic - "Whoa...Cool...Good" and delivers these grunts of approval in low, soothing tones.

I'm also getting estimates on what it will cost to dig and grade terraces for a multi-tiered edible/perennial garden.   A landscaper came over the other day, a really great guy who took a look at my yard.  We ended up talking about a million things including sustainable agriculture in Ecuador where he taught university, how my house can blend into the outside and the outside blend into the house, creating little environments/rooms in the yard, plants that can hold the hill down, and the promise of Barack Obama and why the planet needs him now.  His plans for the yard range from grading and soil prep of the existing terraces along with strategically place plantings to the whole hillside fully terraced on three levels, held up by retaining walls of recycled patio concrete. 

So, dollins, here's what I'm talking about.  Wish me luck. -

The slope that needs to be more clearly defined as terraces.  Jordy removed a very ugly and gnarly rosemary bush from the center.  It now stands as a blank canvas for the edible/perennial garden.

Check out the steps - these are made from recycled soda bottles.  Eco chic!

Another view.  That's a railroad tie you see towards the top of the slope.  Should be replaced with something far sturdier like the recycled concrete.

Our patio.  Once the work on the slope above has been completed, I will be planting creeping thyme and dichondra grass in between the pavers.

The slope leading down from the patio cannot be terraced without screwing up the roots of this giant oak.  For now, I'm going to broadcast wildflower seeds in successive plantings to pretty it up.

We also have this charming little patio that will be revived with plantings and ground cover between the pavers.

Gratuitous picture of Malcolm.  No, he has not been helpful, but he certainly has been decorative, not unlike a garden gnome.

Hope is What I Have Left

BO 2008-09-18 178
Originally uploaded by Barack Obama

Since I last posted with that merry picture of the kids at breakfast, I proceeded to endure a pretty shitty week. I was sick with asthma and allergies. These flare-ups were accompanied by a bout of menopausal exhaustion and a little but nonetheless trying episode of menopausal depression. All that was topped off with a case of menopausal lack of libido and that's all I'll say about that.

Then! Then! Then! The fall of Lehman, Merrell Lynch and AGI, causing our friends on fixed retirement incomes uneasy and queasy.

And, did I mention that my Good-Ex and Molly's Dad was admitted to the hospital early yesterday morning for pneumonia and possible lung clots? That scared my girl - and certainly the rest of us who love and respect her dad - right down to the core of her being. Bearing witness to your kid's utter pain and fright is the hardest thing in the world because you can't do anything about it other than offer deep solace and long hugs. You just stand-by and make sure you have plenty of snacks and love available and urge her to go out with her friends.

Bad, bad week. Yet, we have these signs of hope:

Sarah Palin as Bright and Shiny Thing is losing her fake luster.

McCain is clearly confused about pretty much every issue on the national and global landscape.

Thus, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are ahead in the polls once again.

And, Molly's Dad will get better because he's from South Dakota and those folks are tough, tough, tough.

And, we will get our sexy mojo back. YES WE CAN.

Hang in there, dollins. I'll hang in there with you.

This is Bliss

Breakfast at home with the kids.
Originally uploaded by GraceD

Last Saturday morning -

Your girls bring home their boyfriends for a long and lazy breakfast with you, just you.

Your daughters are beyond the crushing embarrassment that used to overwhelm them when they hear you cuss at the stove in front of company ("damn fuckin home fries!").

They no longer shake their heads at your less-than-chic outfit - some weird old top (not "retro" or "vintage", just weird and old) and knee high Uggs (ugh).

None of it matters because your girls have grown so far beyond their teen/young adult angst that they are, in fact, happy to be home and actually proud to hang out with their boyfriends around the table to eat, gossip, laugh and candidly discuss their lives with you.

You may no longer be the center of their world, but when they show up for breakfast with the boyfriends, they're sharing their world with you.

Then, what happens is this: Your world, and your big fat weepy mommy heart, expands joyfully and gratefully to take it all in - the lively talk, the earnest discussions, the bad home fries and all that unspoken but very present big fat wonderful love.

"And in the end,
The love you make
Is equal to the love
You take."

Seven Years Ago

On the day after, Molly wrote and sent this to Mayor Giuliani of New York City:

Flowers, summer fruit and some words of hope.

  Indian Summer Bounty
  Originally uploaded by GraceD

This image - bounty from the local farmer's market. Enjoying the white nectarines while they're still in season.

Recently  the e-mail linking Barack Obama to Islamic terrorists - the one that you probably received from freaked out relatives that rarely send you emails but forwarded this racist one -  showed up again in my inbox. In this go round, I received it from a friend I've known and loved since high school.  I was so horrified and angry that it came back into circulation, by an old friend no less,  that I pounded out a carefully worded response in a red hot rage. Of course, style and grammar errors flew off the keyboard and onto the monitor but, our old high school English teacher be damned, I didn't care. I clicked 'send' then went outside to water my tomato plants and calm down.

Some months ago, that same friend and I exchanged pleasant, chatty messages about the primary, who we may vote for, that sort of water cooler talk. When I said the Hubs and I were supporting Barack Obama, my friend replied with that alarmist email.  I wrote back to my friend saying something to the effect that this had to be a joke, this is not the pal I know from the old days, etc. But, my friend wasn't kidding, not at all.

And to confirm that this was really not a joke, my friend re-sent it again as a group message. This time I fired back with the truth, the full paragraph from Senator Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope", that exposes the lies in that email as propaganda and blatantly out of context. 

You know, I can say that my pal should have known better and ask how did such a smart, well informed person turn into a weirdo crackpot, but we're back to the culture wars of the 90s, the dark Newt Gingrich "Contract ON America" days and the rise of conservative  ditto head talk radio.  Liberals are evil.  All Muslims are out to get us. That ugly xenophobia is back again and it looks like my pal drank the right's Kool Aid. But, there is a smug, justification in holding such views and what is clearly weirdo crackpot thinking to us is a party platform for them.

Therefore,  while I called out the email's shameless inaccuracies, I have no interest in convincing my friend that Obama is a gifted and effective leader and we desperately need his wisdom to get our country back to a nation of integrity and decency. Rather, I believe that the real work now is to talk to our friends who are undecided and have the willingness to conduct a thoughtful discussion about this critical fork in the road, the 2008 presidential election.

My plan is to continue the dialog with my friends who are Hillary supporters.  They are still in pain from the primaries, but they will understand that a vote for McCain could be a vote for the end of reproductive choice (two Supreme Court Justices may be replaced with anti-Roe activists) and that they must hold on to that frightening thought as they walk into the voting booth. The Hubs speaks of his support for Senator Obama in his professional community.  His physician and scientist colleagues are Democrats (most are), but he will talk openly about his support for Obama". Certainly, our older kids talk to their friends, but theirs is an easy task - Obama has the Gen X and Y vote down.  Finally, my Molly, a well informed feminist and environmentalist, talks to her 18 year old friends with intelligence and passion of her support for Barack Obama.

I know some of you are scared.  We could be headed for another four years (if not one hundred years) of war. Republicans are not addressing rising unemployment, foreclosures and the unresolved crisis of the dysfunctional health care system.  And, if McCain wins, reproductive rights for women are in grave peril.

I'm scared too. And, as they say, if you're not scared, you're not paying attention.

This is what we must do now -  we must channel that fear into action and work hard, very hard for a Democratic victory.  We must send in whatever cash donations we can afford, stuff envelopes at the local Obama headquarters, throw a fund raising party and talk, talk, talk clearly, calmly and with conviction with our friends and associates. We must always call out the bullshit and deflect it with the truth.  I honestly believe that this is how we must proceed in the next 59 days.

Be brave in these scary times, dollins. Embrace the audacity of hope. 

Barack Obama for President

I got your elite right here - Ohio farmers painting their barns for Obama!

  DSC_0045 
  Originally uploaded by Barack Obama

Folks, this pic was not taken in brie eatin' country. The gentlemen in this picture are proudly standing in front of one of the many Barns for Obama that's cropping up in rural Ohio and Indiana.

Truly one of the best campaign photos so far.

Click the image for the full flickr set.

Jack Russell Terrier in Your/My Face

  Welcome to my life. 
  Originally uploaded by GraceD

A Malcolm moment.  After two political conventions back to back, I know you need one.