Food for thought ... and comments?

I just read an article in the NY Times, "One First Is Celebrated. What About the Second?" It addresses the fact that the Democrats seem determined to downplay Barack Obama's race in the campaigning that leads to the election. I found myself pretty divided (which is a very bad way to find oneself, BTW, because you're not sure you're finding all the pieces) about this issue/idea. I can see why race shouldn't be a factor: it shouldn't define who one is, nor one's capablities, etc. But I can see also why it should play a part: Obama IS the first non-white candidate e.v.e.r (!) and as such is a huge symbol of the (slow but steady?) work of many, many Americans to eliminate race as a factor. 

So there's a pretty interesting dilemma, I think. Play up race too much and you risk the loss of disaffected white voters who see affirmative action as always bad--and many other negatives about non-whites of any color. Downplay race too much and you might not get as many non-white votes as you would otherwise. (Not that I think many would vote for McCain because of that.)

I'm no political pundit, obviously. But I think this is an interesting question and worth discussing. Want to make a comment? 

Grammy Again!

I can finally say in public that I'm going to be a grammy for a second time. Elise is due with Baby2 in March! I'm very excited. And I deserve a gold star because I didn't say anything to my siblings, etc., at the wedding; Elise was so thoughtful: "Mom, it's Alex & Jessie's day, not mine. I won't say anything till after."

So Stan & I will go down in a couple of weeks to visit & babysit while Elise & Pedro go to other weddings. I'm really looking forward to that. Then I come back to teach two sections of my old course. Ugh. BUT ... the course will be over mid-October. I can make it through.

I'm off to a Trout Unlimited summer picnic. We finally have a day (so far) without rain--I think it's the first in August!

Of Birds and Bees

My sister Amber sent some photos of her fabulous fuschia plant. Wow. I haven't had a fuschia since I left the "city" (that would be Plattsburgh) and came to live in the boonies (that would be Cadyville--well, actually we have a Saranac phone exchange, we pay property taxes to the Town of Schuyler Falls [pronounced skyler in this neck of the woods], a Cadyville zip code but we live in the neighborhood [?--not sure what its official designation is but we have a road sign that tells you you're in it!] of Woods Mills).

ANYway, Stan & I buy a new hanging plant each year for the front corner of the porch and this year we chose one that we both thought was a bit unusual.
What do you think?

It's a begonia. At least that's what the tag stuck into it said. Who knew there were begonias like this??


There's a hummingbird feeder just behind it (talking about second photo here) and the birds like to hang out in the plant and ambush any bird that's not supposed to be at __(any given bird's name here)__'s feeder. They also sit on the cable TV cable just above and to the left of the feeder and dive bomb interlopers from there. The dogfights are amazing to watch. Stan & I are convinced that one day one of us will innocently step out the porch door and get nailed in the forehead by a mach-speeding hummingbird--looking much like we just got hit with a dart since they fly FASTFAST beak-first!

This last hummingbird one is dreadfully out of focus and I apologize for that but the little bugger was just about to leave and I hit the zoom on my camera and snapped a nanosecond before it took off, so focusing just wasn't possible. You can see the beak that will someday wind up in my forehead if you look at about 2:30 from where it joins the bird's head. It whited-out near its head but the last part of it is visible as a diagonal line.

We really do love these birds, and Stan is filling the 2 feeders we have about every 2-3 days now. We figure all the clutches of eggs have hatched!

As long as I have your attention I'll throw in a couple more pictures--to make up for last night's post. These are Blackberry Lilies, so called I think because of their seeds, which for such small flowers--only about 1 1/2" - 2" across--are pretty big. Think of the seed balls that form on many Asiatic lilies or common tigerlilies. Impressive seeds. These are my only checkered flowers. (I'd love to get fritillaries, another checkered flower, just so I could say "I have fritillaries in my garden," love that word, but we're too cold for them. Check 'em out in a bulb catalog.)

August

I'm not a very good blogger. I just don't have the push to do this every day. I admire those who do but it'll be awhile before this becomes a daily task for me. Mainly because I'm just not that interesting. And this isn't meant as a whine, just an observation.

I did have fun at my nephew's wedding in Milwaukee last weekend. Jane & Dan came from NE and Elise & Kyrin from FL, so I got to spend a lot of time with them and it was a blast. Kyrin got to know me enough to come running down the hall in the hotel saying, "Mimi!" Or "Grammy" sort of. (I think Mimi is pretty neat.) She's at the age where she's growing so fast that a break of a few months in seeing her (like 6!) means she's a whole 'nother person. And a total cutie. And dancing with Jane & Dan was so much fun. First I love to dance, and second, I'm always in awe of my daughter's gracefulness. Elise was a gymnast--perfect petite bouncer--and Jane a dancer--totally focused ballerina, and I got to see that in them again for awhile. What fun.

It is rainininininininig here, what feels like constantly. Actually real raindrops have not fallen from the sky for a few hours now and it feels 1) like a miracle, and 2) like they don't have to fall because the air is already so wet. It's been raining for what feels like forever. In June it rained 27 out of 30 days; July it was 21 out of 31. So far August is 3 for 3. We're all beginning to check for mold or algae in armpits, elbow and knee bends. The house smells a bit musty--no sun to dry ANY air will do that here. My garden's flowers are working hard at being pretty but ... ah, it is NOW falling out of the sky, and we so needed the rain ... they could use sun, really! Snails will be taking over everything soon. GACK. Stan picked about a dozen snails off the hosta just outside our back door last week--I mean picked up with his fingers! Talk about GACK. But I saw my snake in my garden today so some bugs will meet their demise; I wonder if snakes eat snails.....

Okay, no photos this time so I'll go away. Maybe I'll get back more frequently; I'm trying to turn over yet another new leaf (do I look like a shrub to anyone out there?).

Woodsmen's Days

We did a fun thing yesterday: went to the "Woodsmen's Days" in Tupper Lake, NY. It's a (very) small town in the heart of the Adirondacks, beautiful to drive to, about 80 miles from here. The weather was gorgeous--you should see my sunburn. Or maybe not.

ANYway. Readers from Wisconsin will recognize this kind of event as one held in Hayward every year; I'm pretty sure Hayward's has been on ESPN. Tupper's is probably smaller but it's still a really big deal to them.

We got there at about 10:30, the time that the newspaper had given for amateur competitions to begin. All that was beginning at that time seemed to be the set-up for the competitions, which IMHO should have been done the day before! So competitions didn't begin until about 12:30. Truly annoying, especially because we never intended to stay all day. As it was we left well before the events I had really wanted to see. What we did watch were chain-saw slicing--three slices as fast as you can from a clamped-down debarked log; log-rolling--40' in one direction until it touches a stake at either end, then 40' back to touch stakes again; ax throwing--double-headed ax thrown at a target; and bucksaw log slicing--a 4' bucksaw to slice 3 slices from the chain-saw log. Impressive. Really. Fairly dangerous, especially in inexperienced hands, I imagine! And there was a chain-saw-carving competition from which the resulting sculptures were auctioned. (I cannot imagine what the liability insurance must cost for an event like this. Got to be godawful!)

The events that we didn't hang around for, which probably didn't take place till 5 or so--grrr, were a springboard chopping contest and a tree-felling contest. The latter was to be done using about a dozen 20-25' poles (basically limbless trees) set into the ground that contestants went about debarking and marking for their cuts. I heard another spectator say that not only would they be battling for the best time but the "tree" was also supposed to smash a watermelon. So it had to be fast and precise tree-felling!

The other event was to take place using a larger-diameter but shorter limbless tree, about 7-8' tall. On the top of this was staked a 2-foot "log" similar to the ones used for the chainsaw competition (but much shorter ;-) ). The contestant had to use an ax to cut a chink into the "tree" and drive in a springboard, then hop onto that and chop the log on top. Apparently this is somewhat equivalent to what loggers actually used to do to top trees in the forests. Sort of like standing on a moving limb, I would guess. Talk about dangerous.

You can see why I did want to see these events, but it just wasn't worth getting caught in the traffic jam that would happen when everyone left. Traffic jams in small towns are more annoying than in big cities, I'm convinced, because they never happen. So we left about mid-afternoon. I didn't bother to take my camera because I knew I wouldn't get good photos of the events.

It was fun. The equipment was impressive, probably the most eye-opening piece being the bucksaw. Four feet of unbelievably sharp steel teeth--teeth about 4" deep--that apparently cost $1500-3000 and $500 to sharpen! The women pairs we saw competing were tough, tough, tough. Wow.

And we ate Italian sausage with peppers and onions, which is standard "fair-fare." Yum. Now my sunburn will tan so I'll look great at the wedding in Wisconsin in a couple of weeks. Cannot wait for that!

Parallel Lives

You know how everyone is supposed to have a doppelganger somewhere on this planet? I actually met someone yesterday who may be mine. There are life parallels that are remarkable.

First, she has a beautiful and somewhat unusual name: Athena. She doesn't look like me but she's very attractive, I think. (Don't you?) It's her background and possible future that are eerily like my life was/is. I have my B.A. in Theatre. Athena has a B.A. in Theatre. I then became a librarian. Athena wants to get her Master's in library science--that's actually how the conversation started, when she found out I was a librarian. Then it turns out that she spent a semester at a famous fashion school as a fashion merchandising major, just like I spent a semester at Stout State University, part of the Wisconsin State system and one of the top home ec schools in the country. Her birthday is in August, as is mine. She's more than 30 years younger than I but that's okay. We got along famously nonetheless.

She's currently working for an Arts Council. I met her at a meeting I had to attend because I'm writing the grant proposal for the Oratorio Society I sing with. (I believe that if you belong to an organization and it gives you something, you need to give back. So you volunteer or run for an office or the like.) We had this very, very nice conversation after the meeting. I'm hopeful that she'll get into the Syracuse University online M.S.L.S. program; she would only have to go to campus a few times for 2-3 weeks and could do the rest from her home in northeastern NY.

I'm really hopeful of seeing Athena again. I'm going to get someone to go down to a production at the theatre her husband manage and will definitely look for her. I just had to share this with the five people who read this!

What else ... my garden

So I was talking on the phone to my sister and I stood at the window of my den, which I'm looking out right now, and named what was in flower currently in my garden. Here's the list:

• penstemon (a.k.a bearded tongue)--purple
  
• astilbe--white and pink
  
• bee balm--red(pink not quite in flower yet)
• ladybells--purple
• marguerites--white (like daisies)
  
• purple salvia (I think it's also called mountain sage)
• heal all--purple
• yarrow--red
• dianthus--fuschia
• candy tuft (almost gone by)--lilac and white
  
• Stella d'Oro mini daylilies--gold
• hybrid daylilies--PINK! (actually kind of salmon)
  
• foxglove--yellow, and pink, which I just planted yesterday, in bloom)
• Jacob's ladder--blue
• Shasta daisies--white
• Asiatic lilies--red-orange, white-w-deep pink, light orange, deep orange-w-cinnamon (and more in bud--different varieties)
  
• gerbera daisies--red and yellow (only annuals in my garden)
• yarrow--white
• nicotinia--deep deep pink
  
• evening primrose--yellow (a.k.a. sundrops)
• veronica--purple
  
• lavender--duh
• daylilies--soft yellow
  
• tickseed coreopsis--yellow
• coral bells--pink (the red-leaf variety)
  
• gallardia (blanket flower)--red and gold (one of my favorites)
  
• rudbeckia (yellow-orange with cinnamon ->brown centers)
  

and two different plants that I don't know the names of!--purples of different shades

Here's a photo from my den, but it REALLY does not do justice to my garden. This year it's a real garden.

See why I like July?

I tried again. Maybe a better shot:



Still to come into flower are more daylilies, blackberry lilies (if anyone wants seeds I'll mail them to you; these are very neat plants), liatris (a.k.a. gayfeather), sedum, ground geranium, perennial chrysanthemums, more veronica (tall variety), and phlox. I think that's it. There are a few plants gone by: centaurea (cornflower), euphorbia, Siberian iris, both purple and white, white bleeding heart, some more candy tuft (white and pink), a new plant I can't remember the name of but it's pink, creeping phlox. Now you have an idea why I obsess over this place; it's worth it!

Coming soon, MY GARDEN--The Movie.