The Puerto Rico Thing: Trump's Katrina

History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. -- attributed to Mark Twain

 We'll have to wait till the veil lifts to learn what has transpired in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean islands devastated by the two hurricanes that have passed through so far this year, but a week in to the aftermath it doesn't look good.

Much talk these days that Puerto Rico's lack of relief is the rhyming equivalent of Bush's Katrina.

Yet from the White House -- once they realized there was a problem down there -- we've heard little but happy talk and boasting.

Outside of San Juan, and in parts of San Juan itself, there's been little or in many cases no relief at all. People have no potable water, no food, no electricity, no functioning plumbing, they may have no roofs over their heads, and they have little or no communications with the outside world. They're on their own to manage as best they can -- or to die.

"Help is on the way." But.... It's already been too long, and "help" is either stalled at the San Juan docks, or has only now been deployed to the islands, and won't reach the people for another week or more. Likely more.

The military has apparently taken control of relief efforts, and I saw a report yesterday that an aircraft carrier the USSKearsarge has been sitting off shore since the day after the storm and has been ferrying supplies by helicopter ever since. If true, good. I guess.

Well, what happens to those supplies is something of a mystery, no? Are they pre-positioning for the coming relief-occupation? That's my guess.

Supposedly, 7000 troops have been or will be deployed, along with some 3000 contractors. Their objective, however, remains murky.

Trump has essentially blamed Puerto Rico for its plight, a belief echoed by FEMA, DHS, and other spox, who claim that Puerto Rico didn't "prepare" and there is little local coordination of relief efforts.

The issue is complicated by the fierce austerity regime imposed on the island by the Wall Street vultures who insist on being paid in blood and flesh or money for Puerto Rico's $72 billion debt. Cf: Greece.

Well before the latest hurricanes, the island's infrastructure, never robust, was allowed to deteriorate to the point where much of it simply collapsed. Because there was so little public or private sector money available -- thanks to the extractions of the vultures -- little or nothing could be done to prepare the island for twin hurricanes, and very little or nothing could be prepositioned for relief purposes once the hurricanes passed.

To blame the Puerto Ricans for this situation is outrageous, but that's how the game is played. Almost exactly the same playbook was used in New Orleans after Katrina. It was their fault entirely.

So here we go again, and the regime is whining and complaining that "the media" is unfairly fostering the notion that nothing is being done fast enough to prevent a humanitarian crisis on Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands.

"The media" got over its obsession with Trump's NFL tweetstorm over the weekend and began focusing on Puerto Rico only to find a horrible situation on the ground and a total lack of relief for the residents on the interior and very little relief in San Juan. The fact that they reported on this situation was furiously denounced by the White House as undermining "morale" on the island. What nonsense, but there you are. The fact that Puerto Ricans are suffering and are not receiving aid while containers pile up in the port is not to be reported, apparently, as it is not flattering to the regime. Only "good news" is to be reported.

"The media" is reluctant to play along. But we'll see.

They have a way of failing at crucial moments.

Meanwhile the catastrophe worsens.

Katrina was seen as an opportunity by the Disaster Capitalists, and we can assume the same for Puerto Rico and the other devastated islands. Until profits are assured to the capitalist vultures, relief will be slow walked, the point being to get rid of undesirable and surplus brown and black people on the islands, much as poor refugees from Katrina were left to die, and the survivors were hustled out of the region.

New Orleans' population was cut by something like a third.

The disaster capitalists made out like the bandits they are, and most of the poor and black residents have been dispossessed, exiled, and otherwise "disappeared." Win-win, right?

So it goes, and so it is likely to go in Puerto Rico and the islands.

There will be the usual hand wringing objections, but nothing substantive will be done about it.

"It's for the best..."

One Voice

I wasn't going to post on the NFL Thing, but this is one voice (of many) of someone who gets it:

The protests have been hijacked by folks with an agenda. I tried to set the record straight this morning. I think this is worth your time. pic.twitter.com/p5xmmjeeYY

— nick wright (@getnickwright) September 25, 2017

Let Them Die?

I don't know what's going on in the Caribbean islands and Puerto Rico, but it sounds like something terrible is underway, worse perhaps than the botched Katrina rescue and recovery efforts.

The infrastructure throughout much of the Caribbean and Puerto Rico appears to have been destroyed to the point where there is no electricity, sewage treatment, potable water, and much housing has been flooded, wind-damaged or destroyed completely. This is much much worse than the post-apocalyptic hurricane situation in Florida and Texas. Hospitals are inoperative. There's little or no food available for millions of people.

"Looting" is underway (well, you know who's doing it, so it has to be "looting" rather than scavenging survival supplies.) Desperate measures are being taken by survivors on some islands, as humanitarian efforts appear to be absent or totally inadequate.

Under the circumstances, survivors do what they must, and it isn't always pretty.

There are reports that suggest Puerto Rico is being deliberately neglected by the High and the Mighty in DC, as if to say "let them die." After all, there are too many of "those people" anyway, aren't there?

Much the same was the case in Louisiana after Katrina. Volunteer rescue efforts were organized but not allowed to proceed. Innocent people walking on a bridge were shot and killed by police who then lied about what they had done. Those weren't the only ones killed by New Orleans' "finest." They were on a murder rampage. The lies about what was happening in the Superdome, where thousands of refugees had assembled, were nonstop and some of them are still being told. After all, so many of those who took refuge there were poor and black, and well. You know what that means? Babies are raped and eaten; the dead are stacked like cordwood under the stands; the animals are shitting and pissing everywhere.

Thousands died, to be sure, most of them drowned. Many of the dead were simply left to die.

And here we go again.

Monstrous.



Simple Things: "The Garden"

Over the years, we've tried growing things here with middling success. It's a challenge. This is the high plains/high desert after all. Drought. Altitude. Highly alkaline soil and water. Limited growing season. All this and more interfere with growing things.

Yet just down the road from our place is a very successful 160 acre farm known far and wide for its excellent sweet corn and pinto and bolita beans. Corn, supposedly, can't grow at this altitude, but somehow they manage to do it. Their beans are widely recognized as "the best." They also grow squash, pumpkins, melons, onions, potatoes, berries, beets, and other vegetables, some more successfully than others. Though their corn and beans are spectacular, their other offerings vary in quality. Despite the success of their farm, they face many of the same challenges backyard gardeners do in this area.

This year I set out a lot of tomato plants and some wild flowers, all of them in containers. Though there were losses, all in all, it's been a pretty successful season. We've had tomatoes every day; the flowers are not as abundant as I hoped, but they are doing OK. It's been very dry this season with too little rain. Overall, for the year, rain totals are pretty good, but the monsoon season was less than ideal.

Consequently, the plants had to be watered every day, even on days it rained. That's fine if you can do it and you have the water, but many people can't and don't.

Our tomato losses had to do with several problems one ordinarily has with tomatoes:

• 1) blossom end rot, which some say is due to inadequate water. Others suggest it's due to overwatering. Who knows? As a rule, only a few tomatoes were affected -- if any were -- on any given plant, and even those that had blossom end rot were edible after the rot was cut away. (Ew! But actually it works fine.)

• 2) hoppers. This year we had somewhat fewer hoppers than in previous years, but still there were many of them. They hatched in waves. Most of the young-uns died before their first molt, but there were plenty of survivors. At first, they didn't notice the tomatoes. There are "sacrifice" plants in front (I don't know the name of them, but they grow wild and have small orange flowers -- and the hoppers love them). Once they noticed the tomatoes, though, they came over to the plants and nibbled. They were acting very protective of them, at least from my point of view. They would nibble on the leaves and sometimes on the fruit, but mostly they just seemed to stand guard. The damage they caused the tomatoes was, overall, rather slight. So we didn't fret too much over hoppers. I didn't use NoloBait this year, so we may wind up with a lot more hoppers next year. Quite a number of preying mantis came to call and were seen feasting on the hoppers, too. Nature's balance, eh?

• 3) tomato hornworms. They actually did only minor damage this year. I managed to pick them off one by one before they could do too much mischief, and there weren't that many in any case. They don't just eat the foliage, they eat the fruit, too, so we lost some -- maybe half a dozen tomatoes -- to the pesky green caterpillars.

• 4) leaf curl. It can be deadly, but so far it hasn't been. I managed to trim off most of the affected leaves before the condition consumed entire plants.  I'm just now noticing mosaic virus on one plant, and it can turn into a severe problem too.

It's getting late in the season though, so I'm not too worried about the mosaic. The plants can't survive freezing conditions, so when we get the first freeze-- probably in October sometime -- that will be it. We have had an abundant crop, really quite remarkable for us. Most plants have had plenty of fruit, and we've eaten tomatoes every day for over a month. We even had some delicious fried green tomatoes and will probably have more before the season ends. Ms Che even wants to try pickling the unripe tomatoes.

I tried different ways of growing them. They're all in containers, but the containers differ considerably. Some are large. Some are small. Some are deep. Some are shallow. Some have one plant, others have as many as six.

They are all growing in Miracle-Gro potting soil -- which actually might be a bit too rich for them. It took eleven large bags to fill all the containers so we're talking a bit of expense for soil. Once the plants die back, I'll empty the containers and ready them for use with new potting soil next year.

I wish we could successfully compost here, but so far we haven't been able to. No worms for one thing, and it appears there's very little active soil bacteria. We had a compost pile going for a couple of years, but all that really happened was that its contents petrified. Oh, and the seeds that were supposedly being composted germinated and for a time, before the hoppers got them, lush melon plants covered the pile. It was pretty funny. In other words, there was no decomposition at all.

I'm intrigued with  the potential of humanure, using human excrement in the compost. Needless to say... it's challenging just to think about. But those who do it swear by it. The problem may be with the apparent lack of soil bacteria. If there's nothing in the soil to break down the excrement and sawdust -- or whatever other organic material is included in the compost -- one must wonder at the result. If there is one -- other than petrefaction.

The Garden is sort of randomly placed this year. Containers are scattered on the west and north and I can't say that exposure has had much of an effect on the plants. I started growing some things on the south side of the garage, but they didn't last. The hoppers got the shoots and the few pitiful survivors dried out one hot day and never recovered. Some neighbors grow everything under shade, and that may be the way we have to approach gardening on the south side. One neighbor has a wonderful hoop house, but said that the heavy plastic covering wasn't enough to protect the plants from the sun, and they had to cover the top part of the house with green tarp material, and even then, it was too bright for some plants.

I've found  that growing multiple tomatoes in one large container is the best way. They don't have tomato cages, but they have simple frameworks that help support the plants and the plants themselves help support one another. I assume that's how they might grow in the wild.

The plants in tomato cages actually didn't produce very well at all. The plants that bent under the weight of the tomatoes actually produced very well and I found a number of ways to keep the fruit off the ground -- including using the seedling cells as supports as well as bent wire fencing pieces we had lying around the place.  In a couple of cases, the bent branches broke away from the main stalk. As long as there was some connection remaining with the stalk, I supported the branch with a stick or what have you and the tomatoes were fine. One time the entire branch broke from the stalk, so I put it in a gallon jug of water. So far, it with its budding tomatoes is doing fine, but it is the one showing signs of mosaic virus. I keep it well away from the other plants.

I have most of the materials I need for a mini-greenhouse, and I expect to get it done sometime this fall. If I'm able to, I'll try to start seeds again next March and we'll start again.

UPDATE: One day's harvest.

Simple Things -- Tiny House Thoughts

Tiny house marketing on the teevee and in books and magazines likes to present relatively large, relatively expensive models over and over, models that are anything but "simple." They are often far more elaborate technologically and in every other way than they need to be to function. And of course when the price approaches or exceeds $100,000 one is understandably suspicious of the concept. Just what is going on here?

As I've suggested previously much of the "movement" is about a certain kind of almost entirely Anglo American individualism and showing off; much of the rest of it is pure marketing, hype and salesmanship. We're dealing with what amounts to an aging, formerly disruptive start up "industry". With a product that at best has a limited appeal. At worst, it's simply vanity.

And yet the tiny house idea began as an alternative to traditional urban/suburban American housing, the consumption society, an alternative that has Hippie roots, and one that was intended to become a feature of alternative lifestyles. You can still see early tiny houses, before there was a "movement," in some of the remaining communes from back in the day. Newly formed intentional communities also have unostentatious tiny houses. They tend to be self-built or community built and relatively simple, more like frontier-pioneer cabins than the current phase of the tiny house you find on television or on the proliferation of tiny house websites and in books and magazines.

Our home here in New Mexico began as a frontier "cabin." It is largely self built of adobe dug on the site, and it appears to have started with two rooms around 1900, each about 15x15. Not exactly tiny house standard, but not very big either. Additions followed much the same standard. Rooms continued to be added until the 1950s when the current ground plan was finalized (at least we haven't enlarged it. Yet.)

To me, that represents organic growth over decades, and living in this house now, with all its many quirks, seems quite natural. Sure, there are things we think about doing, improvements and even enlargements, but if they don't happen, the house is fine for us as it is. We don't think we need granite countertops and recessed lighting in every room.

Finishing The Studio presents certain challenges, the first of which is finding someplace else for the things stored in there. Some of it is reusable in The Studio -- things like the Deco tables mentioned in the previous post, a bookcase saved from my childhood, a chair or two, an old electric heater that works well, some cushions, etc. -- but much of the rest, including a wheelchair, walkers, paintings and frames and other things need other homes. We'll find some other place for them, but for now strategizing what to keep and what not to is taking some doing.

What it boils down to is "what do we really need?"

Up the road from us lives a Navajo family. They live on a ranch in a fairly large double wide as many Navajo families do, but they built a hogan too. If you've ever been in a family hogan, you know they're not very large, consist of one multi-sided room with a heat source (usually a wood stove) in the center and enough space around the heater to accommodate four or five people. The door faces east. There may or may not be windows.

The wood stove in the center can be used for cooking; there is usually no indoor plumbing-- but a washing-up area is provided for. If there is no bathroom, there is probably a chamber pot or other receptacle for human waste. There are beds that double for seating along the walls, sometimes bunks, and various storage shelves and containers. There's not much else. But not much else is needed.

Tiny houses, on the other hand, more and more tend to do their uttermost to resemble high end urban apartments or suburban houses or fantasy cabins in the woods and feature the most expensive appliances, finishes, and design ideas imaginable. There are certain "must haves" in tiny-house kitchens these days. Kitchens are generally the center of the newer model tiny house. They must have: granite or marble countertops, expensive faucets and sinks and a dishwasher, top of the line cooking stoves; a full-sized or nearly full-sized refrigerator  -- stainless steel of course. A combo washer-dryer, the more costly the better to fit under the stairs. Stairs instead of a ladder, stairs with clever storage compartments under the treads. Copper or stainless steel surfaces are required. Clever low voltage lighting. Custom made cabinets. On and on. The more complex the furnishings and storage, the cleverer the design of the house, the more there is to satisfy the need for spectacle, the better. The flooring should be exotic hardwood or a reasonable imitation; again, the more expensive it is the more the senses are satisfied. A mini-split heat/AC system has become de rigueur for many tiny houses, along with the most expensive "composting" toilet. Mini-splits are to be supplemented with marine-style propane heating stoves. There must be two lofts, one at each end, both with ceilings nearly high enough to stand up under. The thought of reusing or repurposing materials (which was fundamental to the early tiny houses and still is on the margins) is considered gross. Everything must be new, shiny bright and as costly as possible.

Fit and finish must be precise. No gaps anywhere, no irregular areas, nothing make-do, no improvisations. Why is this? Well, obviously, people with a lot of money are paying a lot of money for... a folly, in the traditional sense of a "folly" -- something you have that is not necessary, but is intended to be possessed and to show off, preferably against a bucolic setting on your own estate or on someone else's where you've taken it or had it built for display. These tiny houses are not meant to live in. They are meant to look at and wonder.

And of course, the traditional folly was in some ways the precursor to the contemporary high-end tiny house anyway, wasn't it? That and the pleasure yacht.

The Nugget micro house mentioned in the previous post looks like a very modest Sears or other catalogue house, shed or garage from the early 20th century -- actually, more like a shed from the era than a house. The wheels, of course, show that it is transportable. But otherwise, its exterior is about as plain and nondescript as can be. Nothing ostentatious about the Nugget!

Yet at $36,000 it is obviously a high-end folly. Something you'll need a trust fund inheritance to purchase.

The interior is as modest appearing as the exterior, but the kitchen has custom cabinets, a butcher block countertop, silestone undermount sink, copper finished faucet. There is an undercounter refrigerator -- but it's a high end three-fuel one. There is said to be a two burner portable cooktop and a convection/microwave oven hidden away, but who knows.

The extraordinary cost of this portable tiny house is said to be due to its off-grid capability including solar electric system (not visible in the photos) and extensive provisions for water. Neither solar nor water systems are visible in any of the many photos of the Nugget I've seen.

A contrast is provided by the Salsa Box (plans only). Essentially the same floor plan as the Nugget, the Salsa Box is considerably less expensive: perhaps $8,000 for all new materials, $15,000 to build complete, minus solar electric system. (Actually, I suspect all new materials would run closer to $10,000 and the completed build would be in the neighborhood of $20,000).

Costs might be reduced with reclaimed, recycled, and repurposed  materials and equipment, but -- and it is a big but -- actual costs to purchase and reuse reclaimed materials can be as much as double new materials and equipment, and even when you can pick up materials and equipment free or nearly so, reuse can require so much extra work that the economic benefit of using reclaimed materials and equipment is lost.

This article goes into some of the costs associated with tiny house building and living. As does this one.

One of the major dilemmas of tiny house living is that in many jurisdictions, tiny houses are not legal dwellings and cannot be made legal. This is why many are built on trailers and have certain electrical and plumbing features of RVs. Still, in many areas, they are not considered legal dwellings, and are only allowed in RV/mobile home parks -- which often forbid the placement of any "tiny house."

Even on one's own land, a tiny house, whether or not on wheels, may face permitting obstacles, just as an RV used for living quarters on private land may not be permitted by zoning and building codes.

In many ways, the Tiny House (writ large) makes no logical sense at all, but it can be emotionally fulfilling, a deeply personal statement, or a necessary project for an individual in need of something to do.

That last would be me, I guess.

In our county, the authorities are not terribly particular about RVs and accessory buildings on one's own land as long as residents don't make a spectacle of themselves or their alternative living spaces  -- and as long as accessory buildings are no larger than 160 square feet (*until this year, the limit was 400 sq ft without a permit*). So I'm not terribly worried about the conversion of The Studio into a tiny house... of sorts. More than likely no one would care. Those who did care might find it charming or at least entertaining.

On the other hand -- apart from needing a project -- I have to ask myself why. The point, of course, has always been to give Ms. Ché a place to write where she can be unbothered by the animals, the phone, or other interruptions, and where she can have a view of the garden. (Potential garden, still have a lot to do on that project!)

As I say, she has a space of her own in the house, a small room we call The Library, currently filled with books, but it has a phone that rings far too much, and the cats love to find her in there and demand her attention. There's a window which faces west -- heat build up in the daytime, wind whistling in the winter. She has a desk and chair and a casual chair the cats tend to sleep in, but no place to stretch out. The Library is at one end of the house, the bathroom is at the other. If she wants coffee, she has to go to the kitchen, another hike though not as far. Same if she wants to go outside for some air.

It would be nice to have everything in one convenient place -- though it's by no means a necessity.

The Studio was intended to be that place.

And so maybe the time has come.

Re: Ken Burns' 'The Vietnam War' -- UPDATED with link to critical analysis

No. Just no.

Many who lived through the era are boycotting it. I'm one.

No apologies. No regrets.

Just. No.

----------------------------------------

Here is a very rigorous and may I say righteous analysis of the series by the Trotsky-ites at WSWS:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/10/02/viet-o02.html

Patrick Martin watched it so I didn't have to -- and his analysis is pretty much what I would have thought.

This is not the sort of documentary about the Vietnam War we need at this time.

Simple Things -- Tiny House Time ?

We call one of the outbuildings at our place 'The Studio". I bought it from Weather King just before we moved here from California so that Ms. Ché to use as a writing retreat. It's not as if there is no space in the house; there's plenty, and surprisingly (or not) the room she uses now is about the same size as "The Studio" -- 8 X 11 (room) vs 8 X 12 (studio).

Of course "The Studio" has never been used as such. My intent was to finish the interior over a year or so, but that never happened for one reason or another, and the building quickly filled up with items we had no room for or need for in the house. Extra chairs, the many, many stuffed animals Ms. Ché has collected over the years, a couple of French Art Deco tables we'd used as for desks in California, picture frames and paintings, etc., some of her mother's things. Lots of stuff -- some of which still is useful, a good deal of which probably needs to find a new home.

I've been thinking about finishing the structure lately, though -- now that I'm able to get around better and do things once again -- finishing it as more of a Tiny House than strictly as a studio/retreat. Thus, multi-use rather than singular.

I've been intrigued by tiny houses for a long time, but I didn't really think of an 8 X 12 structure as large enough. We had a travel trailer that was 8 X 21, and it seemed cramped as heck. A building that was barely more than half that length surely couldn't serve as a "house" could it?

Some friends from the Navajo Nation came to visit one day. One had been to Standing Rock where any number of tiny houses had been built to house the demonstrators. She saw "The Studio" and said, "Oh look, a tiny house!"

And I thought, "Why not?"

Why not indeed?

I've looked into some of the 8X12 tiny house designs at Tiny House Talk, and most of them are unsatisfactory for one reason or another. If they have a bathroom, too much space is dedicated to it, sometimes almost half the floor space. Ridiculous. Kitchens tend to be either inadequate or overproduced and too large. Lounge areas tend to be poorly thought out. Sleeping is almost always in a loft, and a lot of people don't like lofts, they can't climb ladders, they're claustrophobic, and they dread the heat trap so many tiny house lofts become.

But here's one 8x12 tiny house without a loft, with a bathroom and kitchen, that has inspired more than a little interest and controversy:

http://tinyhousetalk.com/the-nugget-micro-house-on-wheels/#more-67953

"The Studio" is quite different. It has two 4X8 lofts with 4' ceilings that could accommodate mattresses though I'm not convinced that would be the best solution to the question of where to sleep.

The Studio

No, properly designed, there's plenty of room on the ground floor of The Studio for a sofa type seating area that can double as a single bed, one of the French Deco tables can be used as a desk, there's room for a chair -- even two -- and  a bookcase (for example the one I've had since I was a child would fit at the end of the sofa-bed.) The other Deco table could serve in a kitchenette as a countertop on which a few appliances -- coffee maker, toaster oven, maybe even a tiny refrigerator -- perch. A tiny bathroom can be put in a corner. A ladder and bridge can make the lofts accessible and usable for something if only for storage.

Cost was a major issue with the Nugget 8x12 tiny house referenced above. As delivered, the Nugget was priced at $36,000 which seems absurd, but it was what the client was willing to pay for a transportable off-grid capable tiny house. So long as people are willing to pay so much -- and some will eagerly pay even more -- for their tiny house, so long will such places be built and sold.

As I said, I've been intrigued with the concept of tiny housing for years, and when the movement started up in earnest more than a decade ago, the idea seemed to be finding ways to provide alternative affordable temporary and/or permanent housing for those who can or want to "downsize" from the ever-larger suburban house that has become standard in the US.

Prices for custom built tiny houses have increased exponentially as buyers desire and will pay for ever more costly features and architects become ever more skilled at designing extraordinarily clever contemporary "small spaces."

It's not uncommon to see custom built tiny houses priced at $70,000 to well over $100,000. Somewhere along the line, the point of the movement was apparently lost in pursuit of profit.

Class issues enter into it as well. The more you pay for your tiny house, the higher your status, no? The more it resembles a high concept contemporary suburban house or a Victorian cottage, the better, yes? There's more than a little element of showing off among some of the adherents of the tiny house movement. "Look what I've got -- and you don't!!" Oh well, if that's what's important to you, go for it. Please.

I paid a little over $2,000 for The Studio in 2012. That included delivery and set up on our property. Of course it's not on a trailer. In fact, it's placed on pressure treated 8X8s placed directly on the ground and shimmed to level. To get it from the delivery truck to its current location, a set of temporary wheels was placed on one end and a motorized mover on the other and it was easily transported to its set up location. It didn't even take half an hour to get it from the truck to set up, leveled and ready at the opposite end of the property.

The Studio isn't insulated -- it's just a shell -- nor are there any windows in the lofts or anywhere other than the front. There are ventilators in the lofts, but they're so small they don't really ventilate all that well. When the windows are open, though, the lower part of The Studio remains comfortable except in the hottest weather. We haven't checked it out when the weather is cold, however.

There's much to think about, much to do.

[to be continued]

Simple Things -- Growing Tomatoes in Central New Mexico

Tomatoes by the shed

[I know it's September 11 once again and the whole wide world seems to be in a state of Apocalypse what with all the hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, solar flares and what have you. It's a mess for so many survivors; but so many don't survive. We're all living on the edge. For now, at any rate, some of the simple things mean more than ever.]

Early in the spring I started some Cherokee Purple heritage tomato seeds. I could barely walk due to the joint pain of rheumatoid arthritis, but I desperately needed a project. I couldn't stand the idea of being unable to get around or do anything useful for the rest of my life for one thing, and for another, I felt the need to do something positive, no matter how difficult my personal situation might be.

This project turned more fraughtful than I ever thought it would. And more rewarding.

I've never tried to grow tomatoes from seed in New Mexico and I had no idea what would happen. I've grown tomatoes from plants started in nurseries here with varying success. One year we picked a tomato or two from several plants before they gave up the ghost; another year, the whole crop might have amounted to seven or eight tomatoes. And we considered that excellent. One year, nothing.

I ordered the seeds (1000 of them) from Johnny's in Maine.

When they didn't come after a week and I got no email that they'd been shipped, I became a little concerned and emailed their customer service. Next day I got an email saying the seeds had been mailed, and sure enough, when I went to the post office later, there they were.

What to do now?? I could barely move, and it was still cold, so I decided to wait until I was in better shape before I did anything with the seeds. In a few days, I was able to get around without too much pain, so I picked up several seventy-two cell seed starter trays and an armload of peat pots and starter soil. Then I had to wait another week before I could get the trays ready and plant the seeds.

That day was glorious, sunny and warm and an excellent early March planting day. Or so I thought.

When everything was set up outside--planting trays, water can, bags of soil, bowl of seeds -- I set to work, planting two or three  seeds in each cell, one cell after another, water after planting, and I thought things were going well until a gust of wind came up and the seed bowl overturned into the dirt and gravel next to my work table. I'd planted a hundred or so seeds by that point. The rest of them wound up on the ground.

It took some strategizing -- I couldn't bend down very well, and if I did, it would be difficult to unbend -- but I figured out a way to get most of the seeds along with plenty of dirt and gravel into a larger container, and I set about with tweezers picking the seeds from the dirt and debris.

It took the rest of the day, but I managed to rescue about 350 seeds. The rest of them had disappeared.

I figured that would be enough in any case. What would we do with a thousand tomato plants? We planned to give away several dozen plants and keep maybe a hundred for test purposes.

So over the next few days, I got the rest of the starter trays planted, and I set seeds into numerous peat pots. The laundry room and kitchen would be serving as hot houses for immediate purposes, but I needed an outdoor greenhouse for the longer term.

A fellow in town has one that would be just right but I had no way to transport it, and neither did he. Besides, he wanted $1000 for it, and that was more than our budget. Way more. So I decided  on improvising something with shelves and plastic drop cloths -- the heavy kind.

It seemed to work pretty well, and after I got the improvised greenhouse put together the starting trays and peat pots went outside, only to be brought in again when the temperatures were slated to fall into the twenties.

That only happened a few times after planting, but with my mobility issues, getting the plants inside the house from the greenhouse took some... doing. But it got done.

Most of the seeds sprouted by the end of April -- seemed late to me, but oh well -- and after they grew tall and sturdy, it was time to transplant to peat pots from the trays of cells. Supposedly, only one plant from the two seeds was to be transplanted; the other was to be composted. In some cases, I transplanted both plants to the same peat pot just to see what would happen.

Ultimately we had about 175 peat pots, some with two or sometimes three plants, close to three hundred plants altogether.

Some didn't do well, and those wound up in the compost. Many did very well, and I had to think about the final transplanting to containers. We've learned not to grow anything in the ground around here, though I suppose we could. It would just be more difficult. We'd have to heavily amend the soil, correct the pH, fertilize, etc, and even then, there would be no guarantee. The farmer up the road has his own wells and says he even has to acidify the water (using vinegar!) in order to make it suitable for irrigation.

At any rate, we use containers and pots and Miracle Grow potting soil for our tomatoes. We have a lot of pots of varying sizes and kinds accumulated over the years. This year, I picked up more, including several galvanized tubs.

We also bought two Cherokee Purple plants from Bonnie. As a test.

The Bonnie plants were put in large terra cotta pots with tomato cages, the rest were put in different sizes and kinds of pots and containers with as many as six plants per container. We're always told to put one tomato plant per pot or container but that's all. I decided to try for more to see what happened.

The Bonnie plants set fruit first toward the beginning of July, but after the first blossoms, there were no more fruits on those plants until mid August. The plants from seed didn't set fruit until the end of July and the beginning of August, but there were abundant tomatoes on the  plants, and most of them are still setting fruit this late in the season. The Bonnie plants are not. Each had about six tomatoes (some with blossom end rot) and that was it. The others have had anything from one to ten tomatoes each so far and most are setting new fruit daily.

We gave away about 45 plants and have kept about 50.  We had more than 60 but some became ill with various tomato scrofulae, so I pulled them out and threw them away. The ones that have done the best, interestingly, are those that were planted six to a container. They don't have tomato cages, though four containers have simple frameworks that can help support the plants. The plants, too, help support one another.

Other containers don't have frameworks, and the plants have curved down with the weight of the tomatoes, but that doesn't seem to be a problem as long as the tomatoes are kept off the ground -- which seems to be easy enough to do.

We've harvested about 30 tomatoes so far. I pick most of them green and let them ripen off the vine, but some were left to ripen on the vine, and truthfully, I can't tell the difference in flavor between vine ripened and those picked green.

One has been gnawed by hoppers

We've given away about half the ones we've harvested. That will probably be the case through the rest of the harvest season.

We haven't seen any tomato worms this season (they may be there, we just haven't seen them) but we do have grasshoppers, and they seem to enjoy munching on tomato leaves -- especially fresh growth -- and they have completely eaten two young tomatoes. Yes, they ate the whole things. They have chewed on a few others, but the damage is very slight, so we're not worrying too much about them. As anyone who's tried to knows, grasshopper control is very difficult. We've used NoloBait repeatedly and the numbers of grasshoppers have declined but there are still plenty of them. I think they're wise and refuse to eat the NoloBait.

Tomato plants take a lot of water, and I think that's something people attempting to grow them don't fully understand. They say that tomatoes grown in containers need more water than you think -- about a gallon a day under "normal" conditions (little wind and relatively high humidity -- 30% +)  Under dry and often windy conditions such as is "normal" in Central New Mexico, a full grown container tomato plant can require two gallons or more water each day. Sometimes our plants -- which are watered no less than once a day -- get dry and wilty. The problem, I've found is that even a heavy watering may not penetrate all the way down the container and the lower parts may be almost completely dry. If the plants dry out, the tomatoes may be susceptible to blossom end rot. A few of our tomatoes were afflicted, but even then, the un-rotted parts were edible.

After my second Rituxan infusion in May, I was able to get around much better, and that made caring for the tomatoes a joy. While the season isn't over yet, I'm very happy with the results so far, and I'm thinking that if I am able to do this again next year, I'll grow as many as I can for my own enjoyment and to share.

Oven Bread

In New Mexico if you go to a Pueblo Indian event, you're bound to encounter the delicacy known as oven bread, rounds of fresh-baked white bread with a very distinctive texture and flavor unmatched by any other bread product I've had. You know it's oven bread by sight, texture and taste, and there's nothing else like it.

Yesterday we picked up some oven bread at the Acoma Pueblo feast day celebrations at their mesa-top Sky City village, Haak'u, one of the oldest continuously occupied Native American sites in North America.







Acoma is the second-best known pueblo in New Mexico, second only to Taos.

I'd never been to Acoma before, but learning about it and what went on there is something that you do in New Mexico, in large part because Don Juan de Onate's nephew Don Vicente de Zaldivar's merciless slaughter of some 800 Acoma and the enslavement of 500 more in January, 1599, as punishment for their resistance to his conquest of their mesa-top city and as revenge for their defensive killing of Onate's nephew (Zaldivar's brother Juan) and about a dozen other Spanish soldiers the month before. And we learn about Onate's order to amputate the right foot of every captured male over the age of 25. Everybody hears about the Acoma Massacre, and to this day, Onate is considered a monster everywhere except in the New Mexico Spanish  community where he is regarded highly as the "last conquistador."

Oven bread is one of the many other legacies of the Spanish conquest in New Mexico, one that has been preserved and continues.

While we hear about the Acoma Massacre, little is said about an analogous episode at Taos Pueblo and surrounding areas in 1847 carried out by American conquistadors. Hundreds were killed, dozens were hanged in the plazas of Taos and Santa Fe, San Geronimo Church and most of the Pueblo of Taos was destroyed, and the entire town of Mora was burned to the ground -- among other atrocities.

But because it was the Americans doing the dirty work of killing and burning, of course little would be said about it. Much as is the case in California where the massacres went on and on and on, but today hardly anybody knows about it.

Acoma on Feast Day is crowded, crowded, crowded. We got there relatively early, traveling from Albuquerque in a van with a bunch of Cherokee elders and a 9 year-old granddaughter of one of them. It seemed already crowded when our driver was hunting for a place to park the van, but little did we know how crowded it would get before we left.

We stood in line at the cultural center at the base of the mesa to wait for the shuttle to take us up to the village, but many others made the climb on foot. I was reminded a bit of the Tome Hill pilgrimage on Good Friday (Ms Ché did it a few years ago) that is a tradition among the Hispanos and Catholics of the region -- as is the much longer pilgrimage to Chimayo.

Well, this was Feast Day at Acoma, San Esteban being the patron saint, though I didn't see him mentioned except at the mission church on the mesa. This was to my eye an all-Indian event. There wasn't even a hint of Catholic observance that I saw.

Ms. Ché said she encountered a number of her friends from other tribes at Acoma, and of course she's Cherokee as were most of those we traveled with from Albuquerque. So it wasn't just Acoma natives celebrating their feast day. Oh no. Indians from all over were there as were a sprinkling of Anglos. Fewer than I expected at any rate.

We've visited a few pueblos but not on feast day, and nearly every visitor at those times has been Anglo. But on Feast Day, I'd say a good 80% or more of those in attendance were Native, Anglos were a distinct though not unwelcome minority.

Especially if they were spending money. There were many, many booths for food, drink, jewelry and pottery sales, and many had wonderful things things to buy and offered easy credit card purchases. The only problem was that there was no wi-fi or cell phone service at the mesa top, and so it was functionally impossible to make credit card purchases. Unless you came with a bunch of cash, you were out of luck. Oh well!

I had enough for a big round of oven bread and a couple of slices of "pie," but that was about it.

Hundreds and hundreds of Indians arrived fully dressed for the celebrations and most eagerly joined the dances through the streets, It was a spectacular vision, and yet... solidly grounded in culture, history, and spirituality. Sometimes these dances are performed specifically for Anglo audiences. I don't want to say that robs them of their spirituality, but in a sense it does. The dancers go through the motions so that the Anglos can say they've been to an Indian dance... but they haven't really.

We've had several opportunities to "really" experience Pueblo and Apache dance as guest observers of Indian friends not participants, where the dances are performed ceremonially for/with other Indians, not as a show for the white folks.

Yesterday was one of them.

There were so few white folks while we were there, I'm sure I stood out among the attendees.

Eek.

Nobody pointed and laughed though...(that I know of) -- whew.

The Acoma Pueblo "Sky City" was largely destroyed by the Spanish in 1599 but it was very quickly rebuilt and reoccupied. The stories of the Acoma Massacre suggest a nearly complete extermination and enslavement of the survivors, but it apparently wasn't quite like that. Not all the Acoma lived on the mesa-top; in fact, most didn't. The defenders of the mesa were vanquished and survivors were punished, but most Acoma were not involved in the fight, and apparently they were left more or less alone. They returned to the mesa after the Spanish went back to their seized pueblo they called San Gabriel and the Acomas rebuilt the village by 1601.

In 1629, construction started on the enormous San Esteban del Rey mission church which dominates a corner of the mesa.

It is said that the church was built over the main plaza of the village and the round kiva that was within it. Could be. Spanish were frightened of kivas and native beliefs and tried without success to stamp out every sign of native religious practice. In the abandoned pueblos near our place in Central New Mexico, mission churches were built near kivas, and the kivas were used as trash dumps. In others, the kivas were burned and filled in. Very few pueblos maintained their kivas, and Spanish padres forbade their use for ceremonies. This would be a precipitating factor in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

Acoma participated in the Revolt, and both priests at San Esteban were martyred. Unlike many other pueblos in New Mexico, however, the San Esteban Mission Church at Acoma was not destroyed. Instead, they say it was proudly preserved by the Indians as an example of their remarkable work of building on the top of the nearly inaccessible mesa.

Acoma provided a refuge for Indians escaping the Revolt as well as those escaping the Spanish on their return to New Mexico in 1692-3. With the help of many allies, Acoma held out against the Spanish until 1698, and even then maintained a fierce resistance to Spanish impositions.

But we weren't there yesterday so much for history -- although I did want to visit San Esteban and I did -- as we were there for a contemporary experience of a thriving (well...) Indian Pueblo community.

They say there are five or six thousand Acoma today, and I swear they must all have been atop the mesa -- they and all their friends and family too. Nearly all the houses were occupied, and nearly every Dodge Caravan in New Mexico had been commandeered to transport families with trays and boxes of food up the newly built (1950's) road to the turn around at the top of the mesa.

As we were waiting for the shuttle back down, a trio of Franciscan padres appeared -- I assume they hiked up from the valley below.Would they be conducting services at the church? Would they lead the procession of the saint through the streets? I dunno. We didn't stay to find out.

When we left we went down to the Sky City Casino for lunch. And contemplation.

Today we had oven bread for breakfast.

Horst Wessel Lied

("Horst-Wessel Song")

As always, a little history is in order.

It may be apparent that there is another of those gawd-awful "national conversations" going on about the recent (re-)emergence of Antifa, the active anti-fascists who aren't afraid of mixing thing up and physically fighting the rightists, fascists and neo-Nazis in street brawls that have gotten a bit of attention among the "news" media.

Yes well.

Horst Wessel was a Nazi who wrote the lyrics to a song that became the anthem of the Nazi Party in 1930 and of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. Some say he wrote the music, too, but it's too close to the well-known hymn "How Great Thou Art" for that to be true.

Host Wessel became a Nazi martyr after his murder by a Communist in Berlin in 1930. Joseph Goebbels masterfully parlayed his death to enhance the Nazi Party and denigrate the Communists. They were, after all, arch enemies throughout the interwar and WWII periods.

For some reason, they're arch-enemies again. "Antifa" you see, are today's "Communists." The "Alt-Right" however you want to define it, are today's Nazis (some are literal Nazis, most are cosplayers).

Street brawls between Nazis and their opponents were a feature of the Late Weimar Republic in Germany. The authorities tended not to intervene (not unlike Charlottesville) and let the boys have at one another as they chose. Horst Wessel was one of the brawlers, but he was killed over a personal money matter between him, his girlfriend, and their landlady. Or so it would seem. The truth of the matter is subject to scholarly dispute to this day. Overlay the politics of the day (then and now) and there's no there's no telling what really happened.

It appears that the rightist media in this country is attempting to turn a fellow named Keith Campbell into a Martyr for the Cause (Horst Wessel?) because he was seen being beat up on camera in Berkeley. Antifa did the deed. Video clips I've seen show him running away from several black-clad dudes who catch up to him and start wailing away as he curls up to protect himself. A black man runs to his rescue and stops the beating while a crowd gathers, some threatening, others attempting to stop the violence. Eventually, the crowd disperses and Campbell is led away, shaken but ambulatory.

According to the reports I've seen, Campbell is a well-known white rightist provocateur who sees his mission as "defeating the left" by any means necessary. Yes well, that always turns out well, right?

As a provocateur, of course, he's more than a little interested in provoking his leftist/Communist/Antifa enemies into a fight, and so when it happened on camera in Berkeley, he gained cred and cachet both with the rightist and mainstream media as a poor little white boy being mercilessly beaten by "Antifa thugs."

Thus a narrative was established about the "violent left," versus the "peaceful right."

Of course it's not true, but that's another issue altogether.

As a sidenote, the use of "peaceful" as opposed to "nonviolent" to describe marches and demonstrations is very grating to me. Peaceful implies passive, whereas nonviolent can mean a lot of not very peaceful things at all. But somehow, during the last few years, demonstrations and marches have been categorized as "peaceful" or "violent" depending on whether somebody breaks a window, starts a dumpster fire, wears black or the police use chemical weapons against the demonstrators. It's bizarre. Another issue is the problem of categorizing protesters, counter-protesters, and civilian observers.  And then there are all the infiltrators...

Now that there are brawlers on all sides, it's all a muddle, no?

Anyway, one of the chief efforts of the Overclass during the current time of troubles has been to keep the Left (so-called) "peaceful" by any means necessary -- primarily by invoking Saints Ghandi (sic) and MLK incessantly and often inappropriately.

The fear of an active and muscular left (real or so-called) that fights back is palpable among Our Betters. There is no such fear of a violent right.

In fact, there's tacit and sometimes overt encouragement of it.

The more violence from the right including the Nazis, the better.

Heather Heyer was killed and dozens of "peaceful" demonstrators in Charlottesville were injured by white rightists rallying and going berzerk a few weeks ago. The white right and their allies have killed dozens of people and injured hundreds in the last few years, but it is always, always, always important to keep the Left (what there is of it) "peaceful," passive, and pathetic in the face of the violence both from the white right and the state. Don't forget what happened at Standing Rock and during so many other demonstrations for justice.

And then there's the whole frustrating and largely bogus "free speech" argument that I won't get into for now.

The point, ultimately, is that despite the disgust most Americans have for the white rightists, keeping them on an even or higher plane than the feared Left, and letting them be as unpeaceful as they want to be, while the Left (such as it is) does nothing or less is the received narrative.

So far, Antifa refuses to play.