Garden Journal #5

That's right people...drool...experience envy...hate me if you want.....but that is from my garden! I have been away from it for nearly two weeks and it's killing me that I can't see and pick and eat it. Kyle actually harvested that haul and posted it on Facebook. He managed to completely leave out my participation in the garden....out of sight out of mind I guess. Oh well.

Onions, tomatoes, squash, soy beans, jalapeños, banana peppers, pears, fennel, cucumbers zucchini, tomatillos. I wanted the onions to get bigger, but Kyle tells me that a week of rain while I was gone really challenged them. If only all that rain would have come in June when we had to water almost every day! For now I am not eating the fruits of our little piece of earth......if Kyle is letting this stuff rot I will kill him. At minimum he should be giving this stuff away.

Graph of the Day - July 17th

Okay, it's not the greatest graph from a basic design standard. The visual hierarchy is a little funky since the title is so understated, but the point of this graph is obvious: traditional fossil fuels is already highly subsidized more so than renewables.

For those market-worshiping conservatives (remember, libertarians wouldn't be supporting those huge market altering tax breaks for oil, gas, and coal), this is what people mean when they say that renewable energy doesn't get a fair break in tax incentives.

A very important distinction between the fossil fuel subsidies and the renewables is that the former are written into permanent U.S. tax code and create predictable incentives that drive business decisions. The latter are temporary and are approved year to year and sometimes not. The renewable energy industry doesn't get to plan for continued and efficient growth like the fossil fuel industry.

The Democrats want to end some of those Big Oil subsidies, but good luck ever getting Big Coal to ever pay it's fair share. The subsidies for Corn Ethanol are listed under "climate protecting" but that is highly controversial. All of this might create decent economic policy, but it is horrible environment policy. Energy policy must be somewhere in the middle.....it cannot be considered merely a part of economic policy. The renewable energy subsidies should be made permanent and predictable. Europe has figured it out...why can't we?

Read more at http://www.eli.org/Program_Areas/innovation_governance_energy.cfm

Garden Journal #4

It only makes sense that these garden journals speed up in mid-summer. It's when things start getting ready for harvest and eating. I suppose I could have written heavily about all the hard work of bed preparation and seeding, but those things just don't seem as exciting. Plus I didn't have my nifty phone with camera capabilities back then!

So this the Potato Journal. Potatoes were a complete experiment/accident for me. I had a few grow up in my compost pile and I decided to give it a go. They were put in pretty late if I understand what I have read about potatoes. They should have been much further along before the heat of summer. I will remember that for next year.

I read about mounding potatoes, so I knew what to do. I decided to start them low in one of the boxes and mound up as they grew. I didn't think about the fact that I was planting them in the worst clay soil at the bottom of the bed. They grew tops at first and I hilled up some new good soil around them, but then they seemed to quit. The summer heat hit and I guess they were just done. The tops slowly died off and I finally got impatient and pulled them this morning. This is what I got:

I am a little disappointed after my great success with the green beans. As an experiment and accident though, I should be happy. I have a few small potatoes that I coaxed from the earth. I will use what I have learned for next year: start earlier, have nice rich, fluffy soil below them and more to mound with, and have patience.

Garden Journal #3

I guess all the garden really needed was the heat to turn on...and turn on it did! Though I had some faith that these things work themselves out, I was skeptical that my yard was going to produce something worth eating. Some things have not worked out the way we envisioned, but other things have surprised us.

Green beans are surprising me right now. Kyle "let" me have a 12 foot row in the yard. He doesn't care for green beans, but I think they are the perfect reason to garden. I will eat green beans out of a can, but nothing beats the fresh ones. They are pricey at the farmer's market, so it makes sense to grow them yourself. Green beans are BUSH beans, not pole beans. And no, they are not string beans...breeders bred the strings out years ago. We turned over a 1 foot by 12 foot strip of yard and worked in a bag and a half of Scots garden soil amendment. That's it. Stuck the beans in the ground. Watered. That's it. We didn't even weed the row, as the beans grew faster than anything could have tried to get into the good soil.

Result?

That's the first picking. 14oz and pretty good looking. The second picking had ever better looking beans and was 3lbs. The next was 2lbs and was a little rougher looking. There is probably one more good picking out there. If I had known how easy it was going to be, I would have planted three times as many and provided everyone I know with beans. I did give some to my mother...after all, it was her mother that was big on growing beans and making great dinners out of them. Speaking of dinner:


This is why God created the green bean. Green beans and potatoes. I cannot think of a better way to eat green beans. This was always one of my mothers's best dishes and my grandmother's as well. It is pretty simple. Unlike my girl Misty with her detailed recipes over at Popcorn on a Skillet, I only give rough estimates of what went into my dishes.

1 pound of fresh beans
Some potatoes, peeled and quartered (I was trying to get rid of old ones and used too many this time)
4 oz black pepper ham (the nice stuff...like $7 a pound nice)
1 clove garlic
Salt and pepper
Water

Clean and snap beans. Put beans, crushed garlic, and enough water to half cover beans into a wide skillet. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Add diced ham, potato, salt, and pepper. Add more water if you need. At this point I went out for a run, and came back about 45 minutes later to a perfect dish. The potatoes should be cooked, but not to the point that they totally fall apart with a fork. Now, in my family we eat this as a complete meal, so this amount should only feed two people.

So my little bean row has done me proud. Nearly six pounds so far, and more to come. Because I have been too busy to cook lately and because Kyle doesn't eat them, I actually had too many to eat. Though I hate the texture of frozen green beans, I did freeze a pound or so. Clean, snap, and blanch for three minutes, then three minutes in an ice water bath. Into the freezer in a ziplock. They will be stirfry I suppose.

Keeping busy

Usually I do an amazing job of keeping myself busy worrying about things I can't change. More recently I have been keeping busy worrying about stuff I CAN change. This has resulted in a little more satisfaction from a sense of achievement, but there is still an element of worrying that is probably not useful. Not just not useful, but wasteful actually.

I have been doing way too much work for my organization, the NWA Center for Equality. With two very hardworking board members checking out two months before the end of their terms and with the new board members not yet contributing at full speed, there was a lot of work to do. Much of it is the day-to-day "busy" work that makes organizations, especially successful ones, run. I don't much like small detail work. I tend to stay lost in the big picture, looking at everything from a bird's eye view. I notice details...and know a bunch of the small steps it takes for things to succeed...I just don't like doing them. I think my mind is already jumping ahead while I need to be focusing on getting the next little piece of something done. Sometimes you are needed for your great, brilliant, strategic ideas. And sometimes you are needed for thankless grunt work. It's another one of the humbling experiences that we all need to engage in more often. A life of service should be filled with those kinds of moments. Even if you think you are SO amazing and that you have SO much to give the world. Get over yourself and pick up a shovel. Your big ideas will have their day. Sandbags need filled 24/7 during a flood. Shovel.

That little email newsletter that has never been sent out on a regular interval? Well, gathering the relevant info, writing it, getting the appropriate links, testing it, fighting piss poor online email software.....probably 2.5 hours a week or more. Helping keep the Facebook posts and status fresh so that people get the info they need? That takes some time too. Opening the office for a volunteer who needs to do some work? A drive across town doesn't take that long, but it breaks up your day and your plans. A board member or volunteer needs this or that contact info for that one person? Yes, the other board members technically have access to our HORRIBLE online email database, but really it's useless unless you have already wasted hours in it learning. So there is a little more time. Of course with our All OUT June (pride month), there was more planning and organizing than we have EVER had as an organization and it comes just as those retiring board members mentally check out and as the newbies get elected. This means the existing folks have to pull extra hard.

That kind of transition is very normal and to be expected. Those headed out will pull away from duties (though hopefully gracefully by empowering their replacements) and the new folks will have a learning curve as they realize what they actually signed on for. This is the flow of organizations. And yes the natural evolution of organizations includes controversy and disagreement and making some people mad. If you seek to make 100% of people happy 100% of the time you will end up achieving your mission 0% of the time. I have far too often heard people, especially in the LGBT rights movement, say that groups and associations don't last because of some quality of those people involved. I disagree. Those failures are more about the qualities of the people who quit or who never get involved. And I don't mean positive qualities.

The measure of a good organizer is that they organize themselves out of a job. Recruiting, training, empowering, and motivating others to get stuff done is the essence of organizing. I appreciate the volume of work done by the folks that have gone before as I am now doing much of it. However, I don't feel proud because I am doing it. I actually feel like I have failed because I have not figured out away to delegate some of this work to the other board members so that there is a equitable sharing of burden. Though not everything thing can go to volunteers outside of the board, what can must identified and distributed to others. After all, people WANT to help...they just don't know how or aren't asked to. Doing all the work yourself is not a sign of leadership at all. And congratulating yourself and doing the whole martyr thing is not productive.

Many people can get a job done. Far fewer can multiply their effort through the work of others. Even fewer can get that work from people for free. Those who can are called organizers.

Keeping with the idea that I should be worrying about things you have some control over, I guess I should end with the simple, common, and well-known serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

Garden Journal #2

Produce in the Kitchen

Bit of a stretch here, but half the greens are from the garden and the cilantro in the naan is as well. Radishes in the chholey from our garden and Kyle's mother's.

Pulled my first green onion to go into this and decided it would be an Italian flavored soup so in went dry basil from the garden.

Blooms in the Garden

Green beans are blooming. I can't wait for huge pots of green beans!

The mimosa in the back yard is just divine. It makes me appreciate the South.

How a Red State flipped Blue

I wish this was a master discussion of the work I got to help with in Florida during the Obama campaign in 2008, but the state I am talking about is Colorado. I read a good book describing what some might call the "inside baseball." Incidentally this was my first book purchase from an independent bookstore. I tend to get used books from the bookstore, online, or from friends. The trusty library usually helps me as well. This time, Nightbird Books in Fayetteville on Dickson Street special ordered the book for me. I even got a 10% discount for reciting a poem at the counter because it was Poetry Month I guess. Actually I recited two: one in English and one in Spanish. Anyways, onto my book review.

The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care) Adam Schrager and Rob Witwer (@ Amazon.com)

I learned about this book on DailyKos, a very popular progressive political blog. A much better review of the book can be found there, but I wanted to share a bit of what I read and what I thought about it.

Long story short: Colorado was a solid conservative state where Republicans ruled and few thought anything otherwise. In less than a decade a concerted effort flipped both houses of the state legislature, the governorship, and two U.S. Senate seats. Though some demographics where trending towards the Democrats, the real reason for the change was political organizing. How did the Democrats pull it off? Well it wasn't really the Democratic Party of Colorado, but I will get to that in a moment. How did they do it? Money, Discipline, and Unity.

Money
Colorado reformed their campaign finance laws in a way that limited how much individuals could give to candidates. It was intended to decrease the "buying" of candidates and officials by wealthy interests. This law made a national appearance in the form of the McCain-Feingold Act. What these laws did was close the door for donations from the wealthy to candidates, but opened up a new class of political organizations that could act politically, though NOT in direct concert with candidate campaigns. Arkansans got a great taste of these organizations in the recent primary between Senator Blanche Lincoln and Lt. Governor Bill Halter. Anyways, some hugely wealthy folks in Colorado were hugely pissed about the antics of the Republicans in the state government. They decided enough was enough and the way to stop it was to strategically pick off candidates that were most vulnerable and replace them with Democrats.

Discipline
These donors funded multiple organizations with different spheres of influence: a House campaign org, a Senate campaign org, a media watchdog, and others. Each organization was staffed by experienced political organizers (operatives). Though each organization was a separate entity, the donors and even board members had great overlap. With a clear mission, no group had to try to do everything. The ability to have discipline towards mission was granted from the donors: these donors made huge and continued investments and did not meddle in the details. They did NOT micromanage. They hired competent people and let them get to work.

Unity

Though these donors were in general progressive, they had their differences. They also picked the most electable candidates in many of the districts and this lead to differences between the political positions between the Democratic candidates and the progressive donors. They stuck to what they could agree on 90% of the time, and agreed that the mission (turning the state legislature) was worth supporting candidates that did not all have the same beliefs.

So...the campaign finance reforms really killed the "party" as the active machine of getting candidates and agendas into office. What replaced this machine was a loose group of organizations that were more nimble and less likely to be afraid to get dirty. For sure, many of their tactics would be considered "dirty" politics. They did what conservatives (through churches and religious organizations) had done for years. And they did it better than they had ever done. Karl Rove perfected micro-targeting and the Georgia Republicans perfected the 72 turnout machine, but Colorado Republicans never saw it coming. A group of Colorado millionaires decided to put those to work electing a party that would work for the people. And that is what Colorado got.

The Donors: Tim Gill, Jared Polis, and Pat Stryker were the LGBT and Allied ones. Others joined in.