alaska vegies

Last week I went to the one of the many local farmers' markets. Now I know many people don't associate Alaska with fresh produce. But we have beautiful and delicious vegetables, and more types than southerners would imagine. Big, expensive vegetables.

Last week I bought some carrots, cucumbers, and parsley. And I looked for cabbage. The usual table cabbages ( not the giants grown for competition every year) were way too big.

I love cabbage - raw or cooked. I can eat the usual supermarket cabbage all by myself in a week or two. And Alaska cabbages are remarkably sweet and tender. But huge.

So I thought about buying a nice Alaska cabbage. I would have to find three other people to share it with me. It was all too much to cope with.

Today I visited another farmers' market. I bought local cheese, mikunya greens, daikon, turnips. And a couple normal size cabbages, one green and one red. I asked the Korean farmers about them. "Pick early," they said. "Too big, no one buy".

Tomorrow, cole slaw with shredded daikon and carrots!

health care reform and stupidity

I am trying to figure out the health care reform protesters. They don't look like wealthy hospital owners, cardiac surgeons, or imaging equipment executives. Most of them look like people who have jobs and the kind of health insurance which will bankrupt them after a trip to the emergency room, the birth if a baby, or an early and treatable cancer. What the hell are they defending?

It can't possibly be health care in the US today. This seems to be a new and mysterious battle in the culture wars, like creationists, vaccination resistors, and gay marriage opponents. Sarah Palin, of course, is right in the middle of it. I didn't think she would just disappear but this is even worse than I thought.

Maybe Charles Pierce is right in "Idiot America", when he says we have become a nation that values ignorance and superstition over knowledge and science.

And the health care reform they are objecting to isn't even the single payer or "socialized" model they are protesting. In fact it looks like a rather wimpy compromise instead of a solution. There are sound reasons why all other major industrialized nations have gone the single payer route.

Obama has only been in office seven months and I am already back to my old angry self!

happy to have herps

I came home from work today frustrated about my job and my life. I am a little embarrassed to report how much my reptile and amphibian pets improved my mood.

I have two great dogs. They greet me with enthusiasm after an absence of ten hours. But they are almost too much like me. They read my moods and respond to them. They know how to get what they want (food) from me.

Tonight we will snuggle in my bed and I will pet them and talk to them.

The herps really don't care about me. This is remarkably soothing.

I have been worried about the frog for six months. He has refused to eat more than once every six to eight weeks. I know that he is an old frog. I am at least his third human and I adopted him four years ago. So I have worried about frog palliative care and frog euthanasia Then a month ago, he started eating. Now he is up to two goldfish (and the occasional earthworm) each week. Tonight I cleaned an enormous poop from his cage and told him how pleased I was.

My brothers used to tease me about being easily entertained.

The king snake had eaten a mouse on Saturday. She was only a week past a shed and was so soft to touch and brilliant to look at that it made my day. She has bitten me twice,so I was pleased when she curled around my neck peacefully as I cleaned her cage.

On careful inspection, the corn snake didn't need anything. I turned on everybody's basking lights for the evening and thought about how grateful I was to be living all these creatures.

Where were you when you heard?

Not Michael Jackson's death. And why is this sad story 24/7 news? Every time I turn on CNN they have a banner that says "Breaking News Michael Jackson". Breaking news? I suspect he is still dead.

I have felt bad about Michael ever since his skin turned white and his nose disappeared. This is a tragic classic American story too much like Elvis. I am looking forward to a definitive biography from someone like Greil Marcus about ten years from now.

But where were you when you heard that Sarah Palin is leaving office? I was in Juneau taking this picture when I heard the news on the car radio. Juneau's roads form an H, with the bar as the Juneau Douglas Bridge. Technically there are four "ends of the road". The one pictured here, "out the road" past Eagle Beach is the most dramatic. Perhaps because it is about 40 miles out from the center of town, this is the one that is called "end of the road".

And Sarah. I have never voted for her and never would. But I'm horrified by the media coverage. This Vanity Fair article is so vicious I can't believe it would have been written about a male public figure. According to the article, Palin is a monster because 1) she is from Alaska and 2) had a baby a year ago.

Todd S. Purdum on Sarah Palin | vanityfair.com

2nd year mammogram is fine!

I celebrated by watching Penn and Teller's Bullshit show on "Breasts"

reading Mrs. Gaskell

The Kindle has changed my reading habits. I cannot resist the brand new $9.99 "hardcovers". But all the great Victorians are available for free or a few dollars. So I've downloaded all of the Brontes and Mrs. Gaskell, big hunks of Dickens and Trollope, and good old Wilkie Collins. I read some of this treasure trove every day.

Right now I'm thinking Mrs. Gaskel is the best of the lot. None of her characters are carictatures. She is so respectful of the people, servants and masters and tradesmen alike, while plying her wicked humor everywhere. She does food even better than Dickens and has pelnty to say about clothes and furniture.

Carol Shields was writing about Jane Austen when she said, "the true subject of serious fictin is not 'current events', on-going wars or polictical issues, but the search of an individual for his or her own true home". I'm fond of Jane, but I prefer Elizabeth.

And Cranford is everyone's own true home. I think of Brendan Behan reading this "very comfortable class of a book" in his borstal cell at the age of sixteen. Lingering over the description of the cherry brandy.

nothing good can possible come of this

I haven't seen "Nurse Jackie" yet but all the reviews make this show sound like the best thing that ever happened to nursing. There is the problem that the lead character is addicted to prescription drugs, takes them a work every day, and trades sex for drugs with a pharmacist. And I should be grateful to Showtime for having a nurse in a feature role?

Then there is another new nursing show (I've forgotten the title already) starring Jada Pinkett Smith. I see from the promos that she is a "chief nurse executive". The promo, of course, features her doing CPR in the ER. I hate to bring this up, but it doesn't take eight years of college to learn CPR. It is taught to anyone off the street in three hours. I would like to see this character do something really hard, like face a federal inspector, negotiate with the nurses union, or approach the medical staff about an abusive and dangerous physician.