Lettuce Time Is Ending; However …

Today was the first time in three months that the lettuce wasn’t harvested for the evening salad.

Today it’s going to be soup.

We are going to use the recipe from Chalet Suzanne – a place in Central Florida that we used to go to to stay in re-purposed chicken coops and to have those little bitty potato pastries – rolls one might call them – and cream of romaine soup.

Suzanne, so the legend went, was the widow of an Eastern Airlines pilot.

We never knew whether that was true; we never met her.

I always had their filet mignon.

It was on-the-moon good.

I have no idea what that might mean; but I liked the euphony of the phrase.

But I, and it – the filet – were here on earth.

So why would I say anything about the moon in relation to Chalet Suzanne?

Here is why.

That soup – in cans – went all the way to the moon with our astronauts.

Even on earth it was so good it was scary.

How can a soup that is so good that it went to Luna with America’s Grande Explorateurs be made out of romaine leaves?

On va voir ce soir.

I should mention that the little bitty cinnamon rolls that Chalet Suzanne served for breakfast were in league with the little bitty potato rolls.

But that was all then.

And this is all now; now we have donnie, and he spoils everything; but we need to keep some perspective.

So I just won’t let ce con spoil my post.

Here is the rest of it.

Our lettuce has been bolting for a week or so and we are coming to the end of home grown salads; that is really sad; but if we can ring in a week or two of home grown soups – maybe things will seem to be better.

And the zucchini is just coming on.

Here on the Island there is a joke: the only time of the year anyone locks their cars or their houses is zucchini season.

Our zucchini have just started and we have already twelve harvested.

We have wolfed down three of them; they have an amazing taste when steamed for three and a half minutes.

But you can’t eat zucchini fast enough to keep ahead of that run rate.

Twelve in two days.

Luckily we have a recipe for zucchini soup.

It’s really good.

Only six of the twelve are in this image.

;

Russian Infestation Part Two

I don’t know if it means anything.

But on an Island with a permanent population of 2600 or so it seems odd.

Two of the three candidates’ lawn signs that I have seen here have apparently Russian surnames.

The “donnie and the russians syndrome” has stretched its tentacles deeply northwest into the Salish Sea.

Or so it would seem.

Probably The Senator Knows More Than donnie

Ben Sasse, the junior Senator from Nebraska, was interviewed this morning.

He said a variety of things that one might interpret to be 180 degrees off of what donnie keeps saying about trade.

My summary of what Senator Sasse said is that donnie doesn’t understand trade because he thinks it’s just like real estate which is a transactional business.

As a follow on he pointed out that trade is a matrix of transactions, relationships and business types: business types like “stuff” (Ben’s term for manufactured goods) “services” the export in which America dominates the world, and FDI, direct foreign investment in entities of another country (a category of investment in which America has few peers.)

Senator Sasse pointed out that from this viewpoint our trade relationship with – oh say Mexico, just for example – is quite healthy.

Trade with Mexico is much more sophisticated than building hotels in Russia.

And our trade relationship with Mexico, like that with the rest of the world is quite positive.

America is prospering from that matrix that is World Trade.

donnie is too ill informed, ignorant and self impressed to even want to know about that “fact” (problem there) let alone actually know anything about it.

He’s a self proclaimed genius, so he doesn’t need to know anything.

Too bad for America.

As he thrashes about on tariffs, with no checks from the legislature (who actually own the Article I Constitutional right to impose tariffs) causing untold economic damage, a lot of little people are getting hurt.

A lot of big agribusiness corporations are probably being hurt also, but donnie and his congressional lackeys have already taken care of them by freeing them up from that “little people” thing of paying taxes.

So donnie has decided to give 12 billion dollars to the farmers.

I guess that is supposed to be the little farmers.

Not the giant agribusinesses.

I guess we will see.

Ben said this morning that that will barely cover the losses to the bean farmers in his home state.

At least I think I heard him say that.

Another Walk On The Boardwalk At The Ferry Terminal

Two Insects

We had friends visiting over the weekend.

Things started relatively badly.

I was driving to the Village to go to the store for some supplies and a couple pieces of that great LVM fried chicken when the car started swaying side to side like a boat.

I get seasick really fast.

I thought the car must have had all four tires lose most of their air and that that was making the thing sway and squirm and rock from side to side and from front to back.

I knew that that wasn’t true; I was sure it was something wrong with me, but it was a thing so far outside anything I had ever experienced that I clung to the belief that it was the car.

I even pulled over and kicked all the tires; they were hard as tires.

In spite of a cold sweat and a mounting desire to puke I kept on to the market where I finally faced the fact that I couldn’t walk a straight line and would be arrested for public drunkenness if I tried.

So I opened both front windows, letting a beautiful cool wind into the car which made the squirming, rocking, nauseating life I had suddenly found myself to be existing in, possible to navigate; and it dried the fountain of cold sweat that was pouring off of me.

I got home.

After Mysti and I Googled symptoms ad nauseum (odd isn’t it?) and settled the fact that I was having neither a stroke nor a heart attack she called 911 for some advice.

They are designed to act, not to advise.

Five dedicated women appeared within minutes.

I had – some of them remaining attached to me until I found them the next day when I took a shower – multiple suction cup attached electrodes on me and a big boom box looking sort of thing talking to the electrodes in no time.

It’s amazing how much work five dedicated women can accomplish in no time.

The boom box kept saying that I was healthy as a horse.

Then I started puking.

That was received with applause.

After some more electroding and stuff they gave me a shot to control nausea.

I thought about talking about Sartre but decided against it.

Then a physician on the phone on our father island said that I should go to the clinic.

The reason we had called 911 in the first place was because the clinic doesn’t take drop ins any more.

They have recently reorganized under a different medical organization and improved their operation so much that they can’t take ER incidents any more; it’s sort of like the vino Rossi I mentioned in a previous post that the ferry had until it became so popular that it was too hard to keep it in stock; so they discontinued offering it.

So I went to the clinic on a gurney.

They said I was healthy as a horse and needed to come back the next day for deeper analysis.

I did fill the anti nausea drug prescription; I didn’t go back for deeper analysis; the pills and shot made me sleepy so I went to sleep and woke up after a couple of hours feeling hungry – I hadn’t gotten my fried chicken – and refreshed.

I think I can recommend without reservation a 911 encounter with the Lopez Island EMT.

Not long after I woke up Mysti went to the ferry landing to pick up our guests.

Unfortunately they had gotten on the ferry to Friday Harbor – they left their car in Anacortes and walked on – so they weren’t going to be with us until mid the next day, ferries from Friday Harbor to Lopez Island being not a frequent and convenient mode of transport.

By the time they arrived the next day we had finished all the cleaning and primping that had been not done due to my swaying and squirming episode.

We all had Campari spritzes and started laughing and being happy.

We did have some tales to tell and share.

The insects and guest deal happened the next day when Brian came out of the guestroom with a bug on Pendleton shirt.

The other one was the next day after they left; I saw a dragon fly on a poppy seed pod.

I thought you might like to see these.

On The Ferry

I got slot one in the left middle lane.

I remembered to switch the anti alarm device on so I shouldn’t (I may have to make a donnie disclaimer of the “n’t” if the alarm goes off anyway - which it does sometimes) have to run down to the car deck to discipline my car.

And, being first in the cafeteria line, I was able procure an over priced plastic glass full of marginal red wine from San Juan Vineyards.

The vino Rossi they used to carry was too good, making it hard to keep in stock so they discontinued it.

The Yakima left about 10 minutes ahead of us in the Hyak, but since the Yakima has a wounded propeller, we passed it with ease about ten minutes ago.

If all of this is as mind numbingly boring to you as it is to me I apologize.

The Wine

The Yakima

Frieda

The last one is from Frieda’s in Anacortes where I had a great lunch.

I always have lunch at Frieda’s or next door at The Brown Lantern Ale House.

Maria Butina: Part Of An Infestation?

donnie was probably thinking of Russians when he bleated about the “infestation” recently.

Given how he can’t carry a lucid sentence in a basket (“I misspoke; I obviously meant wouldn’t”) he probably just forgot what incursion of non Americans he was railing about.

There sure is an infestation of Russians, no matter what donnie thinks, however.

Genocide, Micro And Macro

donnie has always practiced micro genocide.

That’s how he gets rent controlled tenants out of properties that he wants to gentrify and turn to gold.

Micro genocide involves donnie and the Kushners making life so untenable for people living in rent controlled spaces that they fear death or decide to move.

The micro sort of genocide may or may not involve the death of the target; the macro sort, as we all know, is a mass, and maliciously calculated form: and it has only death as its result.

donnie does both.

He and the family of his son in law utilize the micro type as a business practice.

Not all of their victims die.

One would hope.

When they are homeless and on the street they probably find a great American Haven - we all know how that works - so, no damage done.

However and but: most of the Puerto Rican victims of donnie’s macro genocide - al of them American citizens - will die.

Pretty much like the Katarina Crowd.

In New Orleans.

Back with George W.

He was a republican also.

But I think he was just incompetent.

donnie wants to kill “those people”.

Water Lilies

Back in the summer of 2014 I made a visit to Giverny.

When I looked at the pictures recently I thought some of them were pretty good.

The Economist Called It Correctly

Back in 2016, early in the donnie debacle, The Economist pointed out that donnie is pretty much P.T. Barnum reincarnate.

The publication pointed out that the suckers who were born every minute whom Barnum targeted with his various ruses always kept loving him even after the rat headed woman turned out to be an old man with a paper mache rat’s mask over his face.

“It’s the Barnum Syndrome” said The Economist: once a person has invested in something pretty obviously bogus, the person doubles down in the face of the bogusness becoming a an obvious fact visible to everyone.

No one wants to be snookered.

And the more often one is snookered, and the more obvious is the nature of the snooker, the more those who have been snookered avow undying loyalty to the snookerer.

In the 19th Century at a run rate of a nickel a snooker, the economic loss was great enough to induce the phenomenon.

But the actual consequences of the snooker – for example, an old man in a rat mask being offered as a rat headed woman - were not very consequential.

Declaring his loyalty to Puty put the phenomenon as it relates to here and now America in a whole different category: donnie’s snookers are threatening our country’s continued existence.

And saying that after examining the transcript of the Puty Suzerainty Ceremony he realized that “would” should be “wouldn’t” is the crown jewel to date in the history of snookerdome.

And all the snookerees are tripling down.

donnie The vassal

Did you ever think this would happen?

Did you ever think that the president of the United States of America would be the vassal of Russia?

Today you saw it happen.

I guess I wonder why.

Too bad the “Base” is brain dead.

If they weren't they would wonder why also.

And that would be at least one good thing to emerge from a debacle.

Even a lot of republicans are making negative remarks about the president's performance.

But nowhere near all of them feel that way.

I just heard a congressman from Oklahoma condemn the American press for asking a question on "foreign soil".

That was why donnie made such a bad showing: he was asked a question on foreign soil.

That seemed ridiculous; but then I remembered the source.

It Ain’t Over Until It’s Over

I recently read Grant by Ron Chernow.
It’s a really good book.
And I learned, in detail, something I never knew.
I have heard the concept bandied with ecumenical jocularity, but I have never had reason to take it seriously.
Chernow has lifted the curtain: the Civil War never ended; it has just morphed over the last 143 years into an increasingly sophisticated guerilla action.

A Brief History Of The World

Egyptians.

Chinese.

Persians.

Et cetera.

We know a lot about them.

But there are a lot of humans about which we don’t know much.

The Celts, for example – and those people may be the most significantly forgotten members of the human race; but, as I said, we don’t know much about them.

The highway system of Europe is thought to be laid down on the old Celt roads,

But, who knows?

We seem to know quite a bit about about the Etruscans, the Carthaginians, the Mongols, the Gauls,

The recurring theme, though, that anyone paying attention might notice, is that too much of the resource base of the planet has fallen into the hands of too few humans.

And that windfall has always been to the benefit of men; it is always men.

Hitler for example.

Or, maybe more accurately, Hitler had a pretty vast resource available and he he deployed it with malevolence.

Who cares; the results were catastrophic.

So, with the fact that we don’t know a whole lot about a whole lot – of human history – here is my brief history.

Greece was the first to become noticeably educated in what is now called Europe.

Most of that thinking subsequently migrated to Egypt at Alexandria – the Phare – the lighthouse.

Rome inherited Greek thinking, linked it with economics (trade) and warfare and ruled the world for a noticeable period.

When Rome fell chaos reigned: the best example being that the French language is thought to have been distilled from Latin in the North Eastern trenches of the 300’s.

Over centuries some dominant wannabe replacements for Rome emerged.

But none of them had the ability to replace Rome.

Seventeen centuries of wars and bloodshed ensued in the pursuit of being the replacement for Rome.

But it never happened

Replacing Rome.

But across the Atlantic there were some English settlers in a vast wilderness, and lots of other people not of English heritage who just kept going forward, pretending that they were a real country.

In 1787 those people ratified a document that has made them the greatest assembly of humans in the history of humanity.

Subsequently those people have fulfilled the function that Britain used to provide to the European Continent: balance of power.

America made the difference in two world (European) wars.

Wilson was inept and didn’t get done what needed to be done at the end of the first one.

Roosevelt and Truman were quick studies; they made sure that America could control events in Europe, paramount of those events being the eternal staving off Russia’s never ending desire to cross the Pyrenees.

Roosevelt and Truman got the deal done.

The deal was pretty simple; the U.S. will put all the money that needs to be put into the project to avoid future catastrophic European wars.

And, oh by the way, we want to have an American/European military alliance to back that financial commitment.

And we got that alliance, ratified by the US Senate and signed by Harry Truman in 1947: it is called NATO; it is the most successful military alliance in history

And now we have donnie the fucking moron.

He wants to end the most successful alliance in history and be friends with Russia.

There is strategy; then, to support a strategy, there are tactics; until now no one has ever described an element below a tactic.

There has never been a need for such a concept.

Until now.

I suggest that we use the word travesty.

A travesty is something one does in the absence of a clue, a strategy or tactics.

It can best be described as breaking a lot of eggs without wanting to make an omelet.

Or even knowing what an omelet is.

Depends On How One Uses Photoshop

Here are three views of the Eiffel Tower at night.

One is as shot, one has been touched with auto tone and one with auto contrast.

 

Slime Nominates Slime

It’s been about twenty four hours since donnie pulled the rope trigger on his fog machine and out popped a Kavanaugh.

I always thought that that name was spelled with a “C”.

Must be a different branch of Catholicism.

But, back to the story.

And then some kids popped out.

And then an apparent woman popped out.

And then we heard the theme song from Leave it to Beaver.

And then all the republicans shrieked with ecstasy.

And then the factotum spoke.

And the history of the Republic began to fade into oblivion in my view of it.

And then, I couldn’t help seeing slime begin to traverse the arena.

Have any of you ever seen The Blob?

I have.

And I keep seeing a great orange one every day.

It slides under the door of America.

Every tweeting morning.

Other times it speaks.

It bleats like a goat.

It actually has the head of a goat.

But then I have been hallucinating since 11/09/2016.

I was in Paris that day.

As an afterthought, I can’t help but say: Thailand and the Wild Boars give us all something better than the slimy donnie and the slimy Kavanaugh and Mr. K’s slimy family are.

Better to have heroes than slime.

Or so it seems to me.

The statue is Thomas Jefferson – a la Seine.

Some Prominent republican Stars

I was perusing one of my image files the other day and came across some images from 2016.

I really thought that Clinton was going to win.

It had seemed at the time intuitive and obvious that these guys would create such a farce that Hillary as President was a slam dunk.

WTF?

donnie and his sycophants, cabinet member imposters, ne'er-do-well hangers on and hoards of republican lackeys all have several new programs and policies to make america great again.

Ending the Western Alliance, dismantling the World Trade System and fostering relations with the worst of the world’s leaders are among the most popular.

But hands down the most widely endorsed is building a wall on our southern border, barring any of those brown skinned Spanish speakers who lurk furtively south of that border from getting in to our rapidly greatening america and purging as soon as possible all of that ilk who have managed to get here already, including those who have become or been born citizens.

I got an email from Medicare the other day telling me I was going to get a new Medicare card pretty soon.

(I must be pretty old, I thought to myself.)

Since I didn’t have enough to do I went to the link that the email said would tell me whether my card had been mailed yet.

It hadn’t.

But there was a picture of what it would look like when I did get it.

I am posting that picture here with arrows pointing to the WTF? of this post.

.

Une Image De La Vitrine

Some time ago my wife bought me a folio of the pictures of Eugene Atget.

She probably did that for a variety of reasons, but one was that she knew I would be interested in seeing a volume of images of Paris taken a long time ago by a master.

I have been wandering the streets of Paris for several years taking pictures – one five month period’s images drove my digital image count on an out of the box new camera past 10,000 to 00000; seeing Monsieur Atget’s work was indeed a spiritual experience.

One of the things that was fun was the number of images he had taken that I have also taken.

One of the other things was that he had taken genres of images that I have also taken.

An example is “images of window displays”.

And just as is the case with images from the Twenty First Century, if one looks closely at Eugene’s images from the Nineteenth Century, one can see the photographer.

That is sort of spooky – like making new dinosaurs out of blood extracted from a mosquito preserved in amber.

Anyway, here is an example of the modern day phenomenon.

I took this in Bordeaux, not Paris, but it works just the same.

Here is the Twenty First Century Version:

But to make it an homage, here it is in grayscale:

Unlike Monsieur Atget, who had to lug around huge and heavy cameras and equipment, I had a little almost weightless digital camera. 

And I have absolutely no idea what I am doing when I use a camera.

Alfie The Cat

He likes to go for walks on the Beach.

“Security” And “Being Safe”

I said in a post here – from Paris a while back – that being safe is tantamount to being dead.

I was thinking of a rhetorical, personal, spiritual even, sort of death; I was not thinking of the physical, stop breathing sort of death.

Sorta like the nausea of Sartre.

At the time I was making fun of the commonly used salutation shared by Americans: “be safe”.

I found it ridiculous for the nation that had conquered a continent, had been to the moon and back numerous times and had in general always said “let’s go for broke” (I know that phrase was confined to a small group of Japanese Americans, but the phrase summed all of us up at the time it was in common use) to have been reduced to being afraid to go out on the street and was more worried about being safe than about being alive.

“What had happened to the spirit of ol’ John Wayne” I wondered.

(I have always thought his hyper aggressive form of looking at things to be ridiculous, but most Americans bought into it as being our Great National Template; how had we come so far away from that viewpoint?)

How had the acolytes of John Wayne dissolved into a sniveling puddle of herded sheep, all in a circle, all bleating “be safe”?

It had something to do with agendas.

It had something to do with control.

It had something to do with breaking the spirit of a fearless and independent people.

It had to do with bringing them into line and turning them into docile Eloi.

Marching under the banner of being safe those people would all go underground to be used by the Morlocks.

And many have joined the Morlocks.

That was the NeoCon agenda.

But that was then; this is now.

Now that the Morlocks reign supreme “national security” is being deployed as the reason for Agenda Supplement One.

Today donnie shrieks“national security” as he plows forward with his program of religious and ethnic cleansing, economic ruination and international diplomatic and political suicide.

“America First” means “America Gone”.

And nobody seems to want to stop it.

I have had a lot of fun writing this.

I have no idea what it means.