...to a 40-year-old love letter last night. Sweet potato Kept it too long. Shriveled scabby skin. So I peel it, down deep. Pale flesh inside, not orange. Is it OK to eat?
Search engine Yields ag-school info. Found a yam variety named "Vardaman". Whoa.
English major Went to my shelf, retrieved Faulkner. Yep. Vardaman character in As I Lay Dying. The letter Tucked inside the front cover. From a lover, posted 40 years ago this week. He's in New Haven, then; I'm in Austin.
Six months earlier I'd met my future husband, for better, for worse, in Austin.
Jim's letter spoke passionately of life and death, meaning and purpose--concerns felt keenly by brilliant youth. He sensed I'd said goodbye.
He wrote, "Your letter read like a tickertape from a news service as I just read it again for the tenth time--not so warm & human and loving as it was the first several times. It seemed very distant & cold this time--maybe that's me..."
Oh no, dear boy. It wasn't you.
It was I, delivering what you sensed. Distancing myself. Hedging my bet. Hoping the new boy would be the man in my life. He was, and now he's passed away.
Wonder what I wrote you then. Wonder where you are now.
Yesterday's top story in my local rag (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)--Texas ranks last in health care and education. Ya think? Uhhm, yup. See today's story:
Burleson’s Taylor Elementary School was briefly evacuated Wednesday morning when a toilet paper roll was set on fire in a restroom at about 8:30 a.m.
Emergency personnel responded and put out the fire, which melted the plastic housing around the toilet paper holder and created a large amount of smoke.
The school is at 400 NE Alsbury Blvd.
Campus administrators decided to relocate 13 classrooms to temporary buildings so maintenance staff could clean and air out the affected area.
WAR. We broke the 4-minute million. As in dollars. I clocked it twice. About every 3:56 minutes we waste $1,000,000 on war. At 4pm CDT today we'd squandered $908,653,700,000 in 8 years of war Stop the killing, start the healing!
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' HEALTH. $484,000,000,000 in estimated benefit payments for 2009 Medicare . (from the July-Aug 2009 issue, AARP bulletin,pg 9)
Can't afford both now. Shall we keep on killing people 8 time zones away? Or shall we take care of the elders who took care of us, right here?
In naming its new center for international students after former Vice President Dick Cheney, the University of Wyoming made a mockery of itself.
Yesterday the Cheneys went to Laramie to dedicate the Cheney International Center at UW, an educational monument whose namesake embodies rapacious wanton evil.
Ex-Veep Dick and cohorts Bush and Rumsfeld are war criminals whose legacy includes heinous acts of torture, gross violations of international law and the widespread suppression of civil rights that defined the Bush era. Will UW be naming its new business school Bernie Madoff Hall? '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' At least there were protests.
LARAMIE -- The Cheney International Center became part of the University of Wyoming campus Thursday over the objections of protesters who carried signs in opposition. . . .
(Really I feel their pain, the folks who protested this travesty at the U of Wyoming. I live 30 miles away from W's new home town.)
Milton Whitley displays his Twisted Yam on a Stick — a fried, spiral-cut sweet potato on a 13-inch skewer. S-T/Max Faulkner
The Texas state fair is on, and the winners of the wretched-excess-in-fried-food contest hit the paper yesterday. Yeah, it's gross. Deep Fried Butter proved a strong contender, winning 'Most Creative' but losing to top winner Fernie's Deep Fried Peaches and Cream. Read the whole story and look at the pix.
S-T/Max Faulkner
Gary Duddleston samples Fernie’s Deep Fried Peaches and Cream during judging for the Big Tex Choice Awards. S-T/Max Faulkner
I could not figure out what one of the finalist's dishes was about, only hearing the name on TV. Twisted Yam on a Stick. Then I saw Max Faulkner's photo in the Star-Telegram yesterday. Oh, Milton, you are my hero.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
A local story from the Saturday Sept 5, 2009 Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The paper had a picture not shown in the link. From the cutline: Hundreds of statues of Pak, the monk who brought Buddhism to southeast Asia from India, melted in the fire...
Little statues of the monk sitting in the lotus position, hands folded, all charred and melted. Very sad. I hope they restore the temple quickly.
FORT WORTH — Wat Lao Thepnimith looks like a postcard from Southeast Asia planted in a suburban patch of houses nestled in northwest Fort Worth.
The Buddhist campus is the heart of a Lao-American Buddhist community that began resettling in North Texas in the mid-1970s. Many of the estimated 11,000 members are refugees of Communism who fled after the Vietnam War — a conflict in which many Lao were allies of the United States.
On Aug. 24, a fire destroyed the campus temple, the Sim Building. Rebuilding is the only option for a structure described as a labor of love. "We are really so, so sad," monk Kommana Vongphakdy said. [more...]
They started out like so many faith communities as a house church, in a trailer. I feel a kinship for this, as it mirrors the origins of Quakerism. Small groups worshiping anywhere they could. Today Buddhists and Quakers both turn inward to listen to the "still small voice" speaking to us, in our worship, in their meditation.
Outwardly quite different, as we have no temples or rituals (in my form of Quakerism), and temple and symbols are quite important to these Buddhists--gold tiles and mirrors of Lao architecture. And the little statues, thank-you gifts "given to people who donate to or volunteer with their Buddhist community."
Ten years ago there was a rash of church fires nationally, and here in Texas. Quaker workcamps were organized to help some of them rebuild. Perhaps they can help again.
1. El estúpido. This belongs in the dictionary to illustrate "racial profiling", starring los pendejos del Servicio Forestal.
Ya know how the Forest Service wants us to be their eyes and ears and nose out in the forest? It's the Smokey Bear* thing, "Only you can prevent forest fires." Good deal. My family has a house in a national forest, and I always appreciate watchfulness. But not this kind.
DENVER (AP) — A federal warning to beware of campers in national forests who eat tortillas, drink Tecate beer and play Spanish music because they could be armed marijuana growers is racial profiling, an advocate for Hispanic rights said Friday. . . .
. . . The U.S. Forest Service quickly retracted the warning. . .
. . . Michael Skinner, a law enforcement officer with the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado, said warning signs of possible drug trafficking include "tortilla packaging, beer cans, Spam, Tuna, Tecate beer cans," and campers who play Spanish music. He said the warning includes people speaking Spanish. . . . [and] this may or may not represent criminal activity, but are indicators, and he urged any campers who encounter long-term campers meeting the profile to "hike out quickly" and call police.
OK. So now Smokey says, "Only you can become a brownshirt." And indulge yourself in racist paranoia and rat out your brown brothers (can I get an 'amen' for the brown-brown irony there?), the ones that you find in the forest.
You know, the ones saying, "Guey, más espam, por favor." Gimme a break! Sure, the megazillion-dollar-deadly-serious-way-too-successful drug cartels are going to stash a couple campesinos on a Colorado mountain. With a case of Spam, some cervezas and a copy of Jerry Garcia's wife's book.
Oh yeah, and a boom box to play their reggaeton music. Real loud.
(note: click on the book, then click 'Quick American Archives', see a big list of books of related topics. Far out, man.)
Excuse me, but I think you can probably grow pot anywhere from Vail to Veracruz, most of which is mountains in Mexico, and the Forest Service wants us to stake out Colorado mountains for them? Huh?
Nope, those drug cartels are way way too organized and industrial for that stuff. They are fatally serious agribusiness with a real lucrative crop.
To catch the people hiding in the forest growing dope, they should be profiling guys named Mountainsong Peace Herb, 50-something, long long grey beard, silly grin, white skin, red eyes. Listening to "Strawberry Fields" on the boombox. Hey, you could follow him back from Burning Man! Whoa. It's happening tonight!!! Y'all should follow everyone home from Burning Man.
2. El horrible. This one from yesterday, on the border where I grew up. This is how the drug cartels work, on a massive scale. Right out in the open, in your face, gun you down. Import weed by the ton. Et cetera.
The brutality of a massacre at Juárez drug rehabilitation center in which 18 people were killed shocked a city already plagued with record-breaking violence.
A motive for the attack was under investigation, but it appeared to be linked to feuding drug trafficking groups.
The sad part:
Chihuahua state public safety secretary Victor Valencia said such drug centers are sometimes fronts for criminal gangs and one narcotics expert said the slayings are unlikely [to] make much of a difference in the overall balance of power in the drug war. [emphasis added]
They lined up 19 "men ranging in age from 17 to 51" against a wall and shot them with AK-47s. It's cartel-on-cartel violence. La Linea vs La Familia. Juarez vs Sinaloa. Some victims may have been Aztecas gang members. They coincidentally run drug-treatment centers. (Did you know we have gang members in the Army? Oh, that's another story.)
Go ahead, read this story of violence in Juarez. Learn that Sinaloa Familia bring religion into their drug gang cult. Click here. Look at the raw video footage from the carnage. No audio, only the street sounds of Juarez at night as gurneys load slowly into ambulances.
Death, big and bloody. It's what's happening on the supply side of our demand for drugs. Think about it, particularly if you use the kind we can't grow domestically. The high-dollar kind that people in Mexico are fighting a war to supply you with. Check into the Betty Ford Center. You probably won't get gunned down there. ------------------------------------------------- *footnote re Smokey: He was a real bear cub found after a fire in the national forest where my family has a home. Marketing made him a legend and made babyboomers aware of fire safety in the wilderness. Smokey is buried at his museum 165 miles north of Juarez in Capitan NM.
A Quaker, politically active. Semiretired now that I got old enough to get survivor's benefits. So now I don't "do", I'm semiretired.
Recently I said this to a friend, "That's so American, to identify our self--our very selves--as the answer to 'what do you do?' Me? I dream, I create, I love, I survive. And I don't worry. blah blah"
