Cocoposts

Halloween Vacation

I was called a "prideful cynic" yesterday, with the suggestion to tone down the prideful part.  Now I can't think of anything to say. The most blog hits I've had lately are on that damn Palin Pumpkin post. 

Kunstler podcast this week he tells his young host some political history and why he's a Dem.   Pretty not-boring.  In an earlier one he narrates "The City" - Mumford's commentary on planning.  Also not-boring.

I've been walking the dog a lot and enjoying the water in the ditches these last days of irrigation.  I think they shut the water off today.  Good crawdad catching this afternoon.

I came across a family catching crawdads in the ditch this summer and asked if they were going to eat them.  The father answered, shocked. 

Oh No!  I would never eat anything out of that water! 

Yep.  Those are bottom-eating shellfish all right.

I walked on and wondered how careful he is about everything else he eats. And how hard it is to know where all your food comes from.  And the last time I had Cajun food. 

Spread the Wealth

Hertzberg in the New Yorker: 

The Republican argument of the moment seems to be that the difference between capitalism and socialism corresponds to the difference between a top marginal income-tax rate of 35 per cent and a top marginal income-tax rate of 39.6 per cent. The latter is what it would be under Obama’s proposal, what it was under President Clinton, and, for that matter, what it will be after 2010 if President Bush’s tax cuts expire on schedule.

(Via TPM and friend.)

Houston, We Have Corruption

Houston Chronicle reports on Harris County land deal shenanigans that sound painfully familiar - conspiracies involving public contracts.  The latest in a litany.  Such is a favorite practice of  government officials who were determined to follow the government is the problem Reagan creed by fixing it for their own benefit  - thereby making it true.  

Some of them were Democrats (I'm gonna keep using past tense here, since I'm on a happy vacation) who just sold out to the exploit-the-government thing, like Manny.  That pendulum was swinging hard enough rightward to catch them in the back draft, or so I like to think.  

Betrayals of the public trust are usually symptomatic of big bonded construction projects with lax oversight where those in power are contemptuous of good government,  purely cynical and thoroughly conceited.

Meanwhile, in Houston: 

"Harris County received a federal grand jury subpoena asking for 10 years of records relating to two politically-connected local developers who were indicted this year on federal conspiracy charges relating to city contracts. ... 

The court approved a report that suggested it more closely analyze all major real estate transactions in the future.  That report focused on seven deals in which Harris County has leased property developed by Schatte and Surface and been given the right to buy it for a nominal fee at the end of a lengthy contract. Such arrangements allow the county to buy property without issuing bonds, which appear on the books as debt and can require voter approval.

The report found the county spent at least $4 million more through the deals than it would have spent to buy the properties. The report also raised questions about monthly administrative fees the county paid."

We need more reports. 

Widening Gyre

Krugman is quoting Yeats in the NYT's, which is enough to spoil the morning.  But then, he's only talking about the Bush administration,  the U.S. Treasury and the economy.    Thank goodness.  Hank Paulson is the hapless falconer.

"There’s also bizarre stuff going on with regard to the mortgage market. I thought that the whole point of the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the lending agencies, was to remove fears about their solvency and thereby lower mortgage rates. But top officials have made a point of denying that Fannie and Freddie debt is backed by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. government — and as a result, markets are still treating the agencies’ debt as a risky asset, driving mortgage rates up at a time when they should be going down.

What’s happening, I suspect, is that the Bush administration’s anti-government ideology still stands in the way of effective action. Events have forced Mr. Paulson into a partial nationalization of the financial system — but he refuses to use the power that comes with ownership."

In Hillerman's Memory

For inspiration - a drive west to Navajo Country.  (Well, maybe at least as far as Laguna Country.)  I'll be wanting Anne Hillerman's photography book too.   And I'll watch The Silence of Cricket Coogler: A Political Murder again which features Hillerman musing about that mystery.
From the Journal:

"The landscape out there just always blew him away. It's just an incredibly vast and gorgeous, gorgeous country," said Anne Hillerman. 

That landscape, Tony Hillerman would say later, is where he took long drives when stuck on a plot."

 From the New Mexican:

"To get inspiration, her father and mother, Marie, would drive west to Navajo Country, where he 'enjoyed watching the thunderstorms build over the vast and magnificent landscape.' "

Ansel Adams photo, obviously.

UPDATE Tuesday:  His excellent obit in the NYT
and this sweetness by Belshaw in the Journal.

Long Live Opus

 Ominous Opus,  in Salon.  There is also this interview with Breathed from October 18th.   

I agree with those who opine that he's actually a puffin, not a penguin. 

That last panel?  He is just reading in the bathtub - living like he's on vacation.

Live Like I'm On Vacation

My energy level and attention span have a huge impact on my ability to absorb and understand  information.  That just makes sense.  It stands to reason that if I nurture those things - my health and my ability to concentrate -  it would be a good thing.  

I thought about this as I was sitting around, being disoriented, after a daytime nap.  I'd sought refuge with the cat in bed under the down comforter after an exhausting barrage of meaningless images (aka, watching TV). 

Daytime naps are disorienting but energizing.  On awakening, it can be difficult to tell day from night.  I like that.  You can also forget where you are sometimes.   Every good vacation I ever took I'd get that wonderful feeling of waking up and not knowing - being one place but feeling in another.  Those in-between moments are magic. 

A few weeks ago I decided to try and carry that disoriented feeling forward day to day.   Be on vacation.  See everything afresh.  Nap a lot.  Drink wine at noon.  Go to museums.  Sit outside.  Stare at nice things.  Eat well. 

So far so good. 

There are no boring routines if I see them as if I'm  doing them for the first time.   There is no achingly familiar sense of loss if everything is accepted open-heartedly.   Memories of lost landscapes and loved ones will still be there.  I don't need to take them on vacation.   I can see things as they are now.  Context and history can become so much baggage if I presume to carry it all on my back. 

Besides, I can know the past of a place or a person without continually personalizing how they shaped me.  If I can back-off a bit, my energy is freed-up from attachment to those historic harms. 

Better than bitter.  Cheaper than Italy.  Working on the concentration thing next. 

Al Romero, Dick - Pat Rogers, Dick Head

The New Mexico Independent covers local GOP tactics and the involvement of the NM Republican Party attorney, Pat Rogers, in hiring a private investigator to rough-up old ladies.   NM fbihop  calls it classless.  It is worse than lowly behavior.  It indicates vicious desperation. 

Broken Moral Balance

Here's part of a remarkably simple and simply wonderful NYT essay by Margaret Atwood on the economy and the Broken moral balance of the debtor-creditor bond.  Her heavy conclusion:

"As for what will happen to us next, I have no safe answers. If fair regulations are established and credibility is restored, people will stop walking around in a daze, roll up their sleeves and start picking up the pieces. Things unconnected with money will be valued more — friends, family, a walk in the woods. “I” will be spoken less, “we” will return, as people recognize that there is such a thing as the common good.

On the other hand, if fair regulations are not established and rebuilding seems impossible, we could have social unrest on a scale we haven’t seen for years.

Is there any bright side to this? Perhaps we’ll have some breathing room — a chance to re-evaluate our goals and to take stock of our relationship to the living planet from which we derive all our nourishment, and without which debt finally won’t matter."

Big Ass Car

Thy days are limited to parades.