Our yard is full of state-of-the-art solar panels that cost us $10 to purchase and install and almost $0 to maintain. They will generate enough free power this summer to pay for most of our food for the next 6-8 months.
These solar panels are attached to the stems of our tomatoes, peppers, peas, beans, spinach and potatoes.
I’ve noticed that Barack Obama mentions and namechecks Native Americans in virtually all of his speeches. This is not just a speechwriter’s affectation, it’s because it’s where his head is at. For me this is totally transformational because I have never heard a presidential nominee prominently and repeatedly mention Native Americans. I wish the dumbfucks running Massachusetts would be so aware. Massachusetts is a land of irony. While we have the most progressive and logical gay rights laws in the United States, our state government has a mentality toward Native Massachusett and Wampanoag and Nipmuck citizens that has not evolved since King Phillip’s War.
I can't imagine a day in which we can leave politics behind and concentrate on art, and not just because we have so many examples of people throwing themselves into art while people were getting killed, as a false engagement with the problem or an escape from it (e.g., a lot of art in the sixties).
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - The state of Alaska will sue the U.S. government to stop the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species, arguing the designation will slow development in the state, Gov. Sarah Palin said on Wednesday. --
Can we put these hateful, greedy fuckers on an ice floe and kick it to the North Pole ?
According to GOP orthodoxy, if we could only break into that cabin full of scotch across the dirt road our drinking problem would be solved.
The average miles of commute for Americans to their job today, compared to 1970, is greater by one to three orders of magnitude.
We are a nation tied to our automobiles in a way that we were not during the Arab oil embargo. Land use patterns are a huge factor in petroleum consumption. If you drive 70 miles round trip to work each day, this is not a consumption pattern that you can easily alter.
In 1975, my father drove 50 miles from Easton, Mass. to Bolton and Sterling, Mass. during the winter to prune commercial apple orchards. At that time, a 100 mile per day commute to work was considered bizarre; and my father stayed overnight at the orchard several nights a week to save on gas.
Today, a 100 mile a day round trip work commute is considered quite normal. Nobody bats an eyelash.
I tell my wife that from an evolutionary perspective, men who open the door for women would be penalized because that split second could mean getting stepped on by a brontosaurus and not reaching the coal deposits safely to collect fuel for the evening meal.
It's not just that scrap steel prices are much higher than they used to be (due in part to the crashing value of the dollar vs. other currencies). But that's only one part of the equation. The second and necessary complement is that lots of people in Maine need cash because, like scrap metal, the price of everything people must buy to survive is skyrocketing.
Suddenly, people who never would have done it before are piling up every piece of unwanted metal they can find and hauling it to scrap dealers for instant cash.
This reminds me of those times when you have no $$$ and you search all your pockets for pennies, cash in that coffee can of pennies and dimes, and bring every last bottle and can to the redemption center.
Click beetles mate during the first few weeks of spring in Maine. During this time they are very visible, usually perching prominently on the ends of twigs and leaves. Or in this case, on the end of a bottle of Elmer's glue in our yard. Click beetles are probably the coolest creatures God has ever created. Click beetles are my personal favorite bugs of all time. If Click beetles would let me have them as pets, I would do it. I would like to talk to Click beetles on a daily basis and ask them how their day has been and ask them if there is anything they need at the grocery store.
These bottles were fired at the end of March at the soda/salt kiln at the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Edgecomb, Maine under the expert supervision of my wife, Lori Keenan Watts, who knows how to do this shit. I stood around in the snow and drank PBRs and made dumb jokes and got a third degree burn which my beloved then made fun of in her artsy-fartsy blog.
Peas sprouted today. 4/28/08. I planted them Saturday, April 19th. Note the 9 foot maple branches that will support the "Telephone Pole" shell peas and the "Mammoth Melting" snow peas. These were purloined from the psychiatrist's office across the street before they went into the wood chipper.
Big came outside today, April 17th. Big is 22 years old. Big is the turtle child of Peter Washburn, who rescued him from Duke University in 1986. Big is sometimes a bit odd. Every day for Big is a Big Day. Big is called Big because he is bigger than Red. Who is redder than Big. Big is very pleased that Barry Ritholtz has made an entire huge website about Big.
"Reacting like a scared ninny to the prospect of Republicans saying bad things about you has been a recipe for Democratic failure for almost half of my life."
“Unseasonably cooler weather created a challenging sales environment for many apparel retailers last month,” said NRF Chief Economist Rosalind Wells. (4/14/08).
Warm weather blamed for first retail sales slip in 18 months (Independent, 11/16/01)
Mild weather blamed for slowing retail sales growth (Independent, 12/20/02)
"Retailers on Thursday reported sluggish sales for August, as store chains blamed adverse weather..." (CNN/Money, 9/2/04)
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Retailers on Thursday reported sluggish sales for August, as store chains blamed adverse weather and a late Labor Day for hurting back-to-school business. (9/2/04)
Weather blamed for slow economy (AP, 1/16/06)
Hot weather blamed for cool retail sales (USA Today, 10/11/07)
Worst Retail Sales Gains in 37 Years - Blame The Weather! (Reuters, 1/9/08)
Just finished reading Stonehenge, Biography of a Landscape, by Timothy Darvill. It is excellent. He's an archaeologist who knows his Stonehenge and all of the remarkable barrows and earthworks from 5,000 B.C. that surround the chalklands between the Avon and Till Rivers in Wessex, southwestern England.
In the end, Mr. Darvill concurs with Nigel Tufnel's summation from This is Spinal Tap:
Nobody knows who they were Or what they were doing But their legacy remains Hewn into the living rock Of Stonehenge.
BRUNSWICK, Maine (AP) — Thousands of acres on midcoast clam flats are closed because the state failed to complete shoreline surveys that are required by the federal government.
More than 50 commercial clamdiggers in the Boothbay Harbor region have not been able to dig clams because of the lapse.
"We are really cornered right now," said David Cheney, a clam digger from Bristol.
The flats were closed when officials learned that the staff person assigned to the region failed to complete the surveys, said David Etnier, deputy commissioner for the state Department of Marine Resources. The staffer, who was not named, retired in January.
The surveys must be completed every 12 years to comply with Food and Drug Administration and National Shellfish Program requirements. The surveys involve property-by-property assessments of potential pollution sources, such as failing septic systems or illegal washing machine discharges.
The FDA started to pressure the state last year when the missing surveys were discovered, Etnier said. The FDA has been monitoring the DMR’s shellfish program since 2004, citing concerns about understaffing, he said.
"From their point of view, this was unacceptable," he said.
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