Something must be done. And not because this lawlessness will only continue to spread across the US border, but because there is such evil and death and unimaginable suffering going on in our neighbor to the South. We should be ashamed to stand and watch. Our neighbor, Mexico. Our neighbors, the Mexicans, and the hundreds of thousands of Latin people crossing the country standing between them and what they believe will be a better life in the States. They need our help. And I don’t know how, but we must find out how. This is not meddling, not another attempt to police the world or strong arm another nation and bend its will to ours. There will be no invasion, Mexico has nothing we want. Other than the drugs we do, I suppose, but we have those delivered almost to our doorsteps.

We must help. We must do it because it is the right thing to do. And to do nothing the wrong thing.

from Reuters

The article where I found the photo tells of the difficulty journalist/photographers have in reporting these crimes, and of the fear that haunts the people who live and work in these lands and infects anyone who visits them:  http://blogs.reuters.com/photo/2010/09/24/so-much-news-and-no-way-to-cover/

Lying in bed later, R becomes quietly serious: Earlier, when you asked if I was looking at your feet, I was. My confused smile. I like to look at you. There’s an elegance to you… to your shapes? how they’re put together. But you’re bigger too, you know. It’s interesting.”

“So who is David Lee Roth?” I ask through the darkness, mostly for effect. Conversation stops. Eyes widen. After a few seconds, D breaks into a smile, makes a sweeping gesture with his hand, “Why, he’s that constellation right there…”

“Yeah… the brightest star’s his ego.” Matt says quietly. Then laughing, “And the smallest star is his neck!”

So my sister and I begin with a sushi dinner and then jump on the interstate and head to urban-sprawled and corporate-chained West Oklahoma City. We exit when we see Paradise City’s eight or twelve 15′ neon palm trees. Inside, the club is a cavernous warehouse, completely black-washed. There is a regular-sized wrestling ring at one end. From the entrance I can see a match in progress and two little people I recognize from the photos bounding around the ring. There’s not exactly a crowd, but it’s not completely dead. What I find awkward is the lack of cheering. Everyone is dead silent, staring boredly into the ring. Dull thuds when the midgets make contact.

Of course, “Mike” is not at the door where he assured me he’d be, so I try to explain to the girl at the counter who I am and why I am here; I offer up the few Gazettes I’ve brought, pointing to the photo of two midgets locked in a wrestling embrace that I placed in our weekly events section. Three security guards immediately surround us, suspicious and looking as if they think we want to pull one over on them. I explain again and one of them runs off to find this “Mike”. He returns minutes later, Mike is “very, very busy, surrounded by promoters right now”. The relative emptiness of the club makes this hard to believe. I try to explain that I don’t need to talk to him, that he just told me to come up. Again I point at the Gazettes. “Oh it will be at least twenty minutes before you can talk to him, ma’am. I’m sorry” Whatever, Amy and I smile tightly and decide to make an exit if this is going to be such a problem. At the last minute another security guard walks up and ever so graciously motions to us to go on in. He is please with his own immense generosity. Amy later said he felt like he was ‘parting the waters’.

Now we’re in and we find that the awkwardness only intensifies the closer we are to the ring. This is clearly not for us. I say to Amy ‘Maybe we should go in a minute’ and she says with relief, ‘God, yes. Let’s go right now.’ So we make for the exit. As we are passing the third or fourth palm tree headed to our car we hear a voice calling, “HEY”. We turn and it is the illustrious Mike himself. Small, rotund and balding, with the air of a pornographic movie producer, he is calling to us without getting off his phone. When he lifts his arm and starts giving us this impatient finger thing Amy is done, and I hear her getting into the car. I start to follow suit when he hollers, “Hey, I thought we were going to talk some advertising!” What? Nevermind. Sigh. Step into car. Drive off laughing.

All change is sweet – Aristotle

I have to smile when I see the big, red Lifechurch.tv sticker smack in the middle of the rear windshield of my new Honda Accord. I don’t think I’ll be able to take it off now. Maybe I can balance it a bit with a new equality sticker.

• Created in 1843 by James Wilson
• Owned by The Economist Group, of which half is owned by the Financial Times, a subsidiary of Pearson PLC. The remaining 50% is owned by a group of independent shareholders, including staff members and the Rothschild banking family of England.
• A board of trustees appoints the editor, who cannot be removed without its permission.

The Financial Times is a British daily newspaper that can be likened to our Wall Street Journal. It formerly competed with four other UK financial newspapers, the last of which it absorbed in 1945. FTG was purchased by Pearson in 1957. Wiki defines Pearson PLC as “a London-based education and media conglomerate. Thanks mostly to its subsidiary The Penguin Group, it is the largest book publisher in the UK, Australia, India and New Zealand and the second largest in the US and Canada.” The company has three operating divisions. The Penguin Group, acquired in 1970, is the most ubiquitous, with only Random House publishing more trade books. Penguin has many imprints, most formerly independent. Pearson’s other two divisions are Pearson Education and The Financial Times Group (who have the 50% stake in The Economist Group). Pearson has revenue of £4,811m and employs 34,000 people (2007).

sources: Economist.com, wikipedia

So I’ve grown a container garden of varying size on and off  the past six years. Tomatoes and herbs always make up its bulk, with eggplant, squash and peppers sometimes in the mix. This year I got everything in the ground by mid-May (I think). The July/August heat wave slowed everything down significantly and even caused me to toss a few plants. Good job to the remainders for surviving a neighborhood switch August 1st though. Since then we’ve had so much rain, sometimes I didn’t need to water for days this fall. Must figure out what went wrong with my strawberries; possibly it was potting all three plants together. There were blossoms and even a few tiny, tiny fruits early on but that’s all. On the phone one night in September, my uncle said his strawberries were really starting to produce. Damn. The peppers and tomato plants came from my uncle (bought at a Tuttle nursery); all others from Lowe’s. I think the difference in quality was enough for me to only use local nurseries next year. Even though I kept the transplants in their plastic containers at least a week before planting (a no-no), my uncle’s still seemed healthier than the chain-bought ones. The higher cost of each plant should be offset by their higher yield.

Planted this spring:

cherry tomato (2 plants):  yielded approx. 30+ tomatoes

tomato (early girl?):  yielded 3 medium tomatoes,  culled during August heat wave

banana pepper (3 plants):  two plants yielded 10 or so; culled non-producing plant in July

bell pepper:  yielded 3 RED(!) peppers

strawberry (3 plants):  yielded 0 strawberries despite nice foliage, culled in Sept.

Herbs

Basil: went to seed in early July, cut back in late August to try to keep

Cilantro: went to seed in early July, didn’t manage to save coriander (seeds)

Dill: dead within weeks of purchase (was in bright sun)

Oregano: really takes care of itself, continues to increase in size

Thyme: stayed relatively same size, period of ill-health during heat wave (was in bright sun)