I hate hoses!

My task last night should have been simple. Spray fungicide on my ailing roses. This takes literally ONE minute once the sprayer bottle is attached to the end of a functioning hose. In the process I experienced all seven of the issues below, plus a couple more. I was a raving maniac by the time I got the job done.

Why do I hate hoses? Let me count the ways.
1. They never attach fully to the faucet so the water spurts all over you as soon as you turn it on.
2. They always fall five feet short of your watering goal, even when you put your thumb on the hose end in hopes of making the stream go further.
3. If you link two hoses together you get another leaky spurt at the connection point. Only one third of the water you want (and are paying for) reaches its destination. The rest is making a couple of big mud puddles perfectly placed for the dog sho she can track mud into the house.
4. Just as you think you'll be able to reach that distant wilted plant the hose kinks and all flow ceases, except at the leaky points.
5. While you were paying attention to the distant wilted plant, the hose has knocked over a potted geranium and crushed several petunias in its path.
6. Your neighbor's hose always coils up so neatly, but yours is permanently and perversely curled like sheep entrails. There is no hope of getting it back on the hose hook.
7. And now look at you! Your clothes are a mess. Your pants are wet, your hands are filthy and so is every part of your body that came near the hose.

When my ship comes in, my sugar daddy arrives, I am discovered, etc etc I will have three people on my daily staff: a personal chef, a personal hairstylist, and a hose hauler.

What's in the news: the back story

The back-story (a phrase that seems to have popped up overnight) is the story behind the story.

So... I reached into my newspaper re-cycling bin yesterday to retrieve a story I'd missed, and the back-story leaped out of the box and scrambled across my garage floor. Evidently a mouse had taken up residence in the bin and was as surprised as I was. I confess I went right out and bought a mouse trap ... so this rodental back-story is now toast.

The new better mousetrap comes in packs of four, for just a couple of bucks. Instead of having a place for cheese, there is a plastic fake cheese plate - yellow, with holes like swiss cheese. I don't know if it contains an attractant odor, because what it seems to depend on is the fact that mice hug the wall when they traverse a space. If the trap is backed up to the wall, they run under (over?) the fake cheese plate and thwack, that's it.

You would think, with so many big lies afloat today (the link between al qaeda and 9/11, the success of the war in Iraq, our noble behavior towards war prisoners, the private account solution to the "social security crisis", etc etc etc), that one of them would trip the fake cheese plate and the Bush administration would get permanently thwacked. But despite the revelation of some fairly horrific "secrets", the American public is more concerned with Terry Schiavo's life, Michael Jackson's sordid trial, and the next American Idol to care, so the thwacks glance off seemingly without harm.

I loved loved loved Garrison Keillor's rant about the Republicans last August - here's a sample quote about their lies:

Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous. Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight!

More from him later.

Conservative investment in ideas pays off big

Should we be glad that the conservative Olin Foundation has closed its doors? Not really. They have accomplished what they set out to do... focus on the big ideas that shape policy, rather than dither away on the hundreds of separate public policy issues that drain progressive energy.

The out-going director of Olin, James Piereson, is now excited about starting an intiative to counter liberal influence in academia. In the NY Times article he says, "There are some people who are prepared to spend large sums of money to address this problem."

He says investment in ideas takes at least twenty years to pay off. We had better get on with it. Question: Can a whole lot of progressive individuals at the grass-roots level (the hundred monkeys typing) make up for all that time and money invested by the right? I sure hope so.

It's all relative...

We moved to Vancouver thirteen years ago tomorrow. [Little known fact: Vancouver, WA is a suburb of Portland, OR and was here beFORE the "Other Vancouver", which is in British Columbia. Check out our fascinating history.]

In Berkeley, where we had lived for decades, we were moderate Democrats (which in Berkeley meant you were way out on the ragged right) and in Vancouver we are still moderate Democrats (which means we're way out on the left fringe!). The head spins.

The good news is that in a relatively small town, which Vancouver still seems like, you can quickly feel like a big frog - so that when you jump into the water you can make some ripples. In Berkeley I sat rrribitting on the bank because it seemed like a large lake with a lot of bigger louder hungrier fish. [Vancouver has grown significantly since we arrived and at 143,000 is now bigger than Berkeley at 102,000. Two reasons --1) the arrival of new residents: Californians like us; and Oregonians who want a tax break and better funded public schools and 2) because the city of Vancouver has been annexing its neighboring unincorporated areas like crazy. Berkeley is 10.5 sq. miles; Vancouver is now 42.8..]}

I can't believe all the stuff you can find out on the web with a click on google! All that stuff above, and much much more. Find out about your own town by inputting: "population of MYTOWN" into google. From the latest census I see that only 12% of Berkeley's population is 14 and under, whereas we have 22%. Berkeley is racially well-mixed; we are 82% white.

But I digress.

Within a couple of months of moving here (because we had gotten involved in helping a local woman run for state office) we had met in the intimacy of someone's living room or office or club the governors of both Washington and Oregon, one of our senators, our congresswoman, as well as our state senator. Because our state is so small (geographically and population-wise compared to California), and we're the fourth largest city in the state, we get lots of action from politicians wanting to raise their profile. In Berkeley everybody seemed to be politically active, so I never bothered. Here, you have to shake people by the ears to get them to wake up to what's going on around them - and that is kind of fun.

I recently signed up to be a precinct officer for the Democratic party. I've only been to a couple of party meetings, but I can say this - we could probably use some lessons in crisp organization from the Republicans. Locally we're experiencing an influx of new people who have finally been galvanized by the !@#$%# bozos currently in power, and we want to Do Something. This probably means some rude awakenings for our sloppy party faithfuls. More about this after my next meeting.

Where could this lead?

My bloghero, Markos, of www.DailyKos.com started his blog three years ago from the day I started mine. His first post could have been my first post. Who knows where I'll be in three years:

Day 1
I am progressive. I am liberal. I make no apologies. I believe government has an obligation to create an even playing field for all of this country's citizens and immigrants alike. I am not a socialist. I do not seek enforced equality. However, there has to be equality of opportunity, and the private sector, left to its own devices, will never achieve this goal.

Thank God for good friends

Twice a week my best friend, Judi, and I take a long walk. Because I currently live alone and my dog is a poor conversationalist, these opportunities to download what's on my brain and get external feedback are invaluable. I even give her space to do her own downloading.

Or maybe what we're doing is uploading?? Anyway, I always feel much calmer after these walks. A story on the physiology of women's friendships came out in the LA Times last week but passed by before I could get to it. An older study said similar things about the health benefits of these important relationships.

It also helps to get outside where the greenery is growing so effusively right now. Nothing like a warm wet spring in the Northwest to produce greenery. I discovered a prickly dandelionish weed in my yard this morning that had reached a height of five feet, with a stalk that was two inches in diameter at the base. I brought out the heavy artillery to whack it down, but when I reached over to grab it, it came out with just a small yank. Surprising, like when you pick up an aluminum fork.

Turns out the root system for this gigantimongous weed was very shallow and not very broad either. Wouldn't it be great if we could so easily prove the shallowness of the Bush administration weed - and rout them all with a good yank. Such hypocrisy, such greed, such self-centered blindness.

Too many thoughts, too little time to process

Yesterday, in response to a polite "How are you?" inquiry from a friend I said that I felt like the Peanuts character Pigpen, who always had a cloud of dust around him. Except the dirty cloud is swirling around my head - and it's not dirt - it's mental clutter. Too many thoughts, too little time to process.

Usually I bounce back fairly quickly after the election of a candidate I voted against. Not this time. The outrageous doings of the Bush administration have finally lit the fuse under my butt.

I kept wondering what happened. Why had the Democrats missed the boat? Or maybe we chose a fancy yacht when what we needed was a fleet of tugs. I read What's the Matter with Kansas and got even more depressed. Since when do liberals have no moral values? We can be downright goody-goody.

Then I read Don't think of an Elephant by George Lakoff and the light came on. Liberals DO have moral values; we just don't know how to frame tham and talk about them. They're based on a nurturant parent (mother?) model of family values. This past couple of months I've been obsessed with learning how to recognize right-wing frames, which are based on what Lakoff calls the "strict father model" of family values.

Trying to come up with powerful frames that evoke my progressive values is enormously challenging. As I scrutinize the newspapers, read the progressive blogs (especially those concerned with framing) I've gotten to the point where my head is too full - hence the pigpen effect, and hence this blog.

Perhaps I can inspire you to share the journey with me.