Tom The Breadmaker

Tom's new leisure has lead to all sorts of pursuits. Lately he has been making bread. Igniting his interest: a recipe for sourdough starter using natural yeast from organic grapes. It's a long procedure taking days but we just ate the first loaf of his efforts and it was really good. Today he's making more which he swears will be even better.

Little Gymnist

Andy began gymnastics recently and here he is swinging on rings, climbing down bars and jumping on the trampoline. (Notice the shark drawn onto the mat as incentive to jump high.) Far from my camera's flash he also jumped into a pit of foam blocks, ran in circles, walked backwards and performed other such exercises.

Wall Street Heal Thyself

According to Robert M. Morgenthau, district attorney for Manhattan, N.Y., in today's WSJ (Too Much Money Is Beyond Legal Reach, September 30, 2008, Opinion, WSJ) trillions (that is, $3.4 trillion to be exact) sits in secrecy jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands. It seems that the financial industry could help itself out if it was just willing to fund its failures with its financial successes. Here is what Morgenthau says,
A major factor in the current financial crisis is the lack of transparency in the activities of the principal players in the financial markets. This opaqueness is compounded by vast sums of money that lie outside the jurisdiction of U.S. regulators and other supervisory authorities.
The $700 billion in Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's current proposed rescue plan pales in comparison to the volume of dollars that now escape the watchful eye, not only of U.S. regulators, but from the media and the general public as well.
...
If Congress and Treasury fail to bring under U.S. supervisory authority the financial institutions and transactions in secrecy jurisdictions, there will be no transparency with the inevitable consequences of the lack of transparency--namely, a repeat of the unbridled greed and recklessness that we now face.

To have Wall Street now point a finger of blame for the 700 pt drop in the market proceeding the failure of the bailout in Congress is both incomprehensible and infantile. Though it certainly hurts us all, it should serve as a lesson in greed for Wall Street, don't you think??

Jerry Large in his Monday, September 29, 2008 column in the Seattle Times quotes David Korten, Bainbridge Island author and lecturer (When Corporations Rule the World), "It is an illusion that if you are making money you are creating wealth. Real wealth is created by investing in the human capital of productive people, the social capital of caring relationships and the natural capital of healthy ecosystems." According to Large, What he rails about is not the bank on the corner, but the guy in a penthouse in New York buying and selling paper. His criticisms are shared by far more people now. Hardly anyone with a functioning brain still thinks the current system is fundamentally sound.
Large goes on to paraphrase Koren, Main Street is where people produce, distribute and consume real goods and services. It's where real wealth is created and where business activity, at its best, is rooted in community. But today, where Wall Street and Main Street interact, Wall Street is a predator...It buys businesses to break them up and consume their assets, and it turns home loans into fodder for speculators.
Finally, he concludes that we must be "willing to retool our institutions and our culture to produce a healthy economic system that works for all of us" if we want to learn a lesson from the current mess.

'Nuff said.

Obama on bailing out the rich

What were all of those wealthy citizens doing with their tax breaks? And now they need a bailout from you and me? Jeez. Things have certainly gotten weirder and weirder in this administration's eight-year run. I'm a contributor to Obama's presidential campaign. As such, I get frequent emails from the campaign office. Below is today's correspondence to supporters as he weighs in on the present crisis.

Denise --

The era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and in Washington has created a financial crisis as profound as any we have faced since the Great Depression.

Congress and the President are debating a bailout of our financial institutions with a price tag of $700 billion or more in taxpayer dollars. We cannot underestimate our responsibility in taking such an enormous step.

Whatever shape our recovery plan takes, it must be guided by core principles of fairness, balance, and responsibility to one another.

Please sign on to show your support for an economic recovery plan based on the following:

• No Golden Parachutes -- Taxpayer dollars should not be used to reward the irresponsible Wall Street executives who helmed this disaster.

• Main Street, Not Just Wall Street -- Any bailout plan must include a payback strategy for taxpayers who are footing the bill and aid to innocent homeowners who are facing foreclosure.

• Bipartisan Oversight -- The staggering amount of taxpayer money involved demands a bipartisan board to ensure accountability and oversight.

Show your support and encourage your friends and family to join you:

http://my.barackobama.com/ourplan

The failed economic policies and the same corrupt culture that led us into this mess will not help get us out of it. We need to get to work immediately on reforming the broken government -- and the broken politics -- that allowed this crisis to happen in the first place.

And we have to understand that a recovery package is just the beginning. We have a plan that will guarantee our long-term prosperity -- including tax cuts for 95 percent of families, an economic stimulus package that creates millions of new jobs and leads us towards energy independence, and health care that is affordable to every American.

It won't be easy. The kind of change we're looking for never is.

But if we work together and stand by these principles, we can get through this crisis and emerge a stronger nation.

Thank you,

Barack



I have one question for the administration -- how much stock will I personally own in these companies once my taxes have bailed them out?

'Nuff said.

Power vs. Leadership

Not so long ago I read that the fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats is that the Republicans, like the rich corporations and wealthy that support them, are seeking power not leadership. If you run government like a business (which Republicans always tout) then you run it aggressively (swim with the sharks), ruthlessly, with winning the only goal, at great risk for the majority and the most benefit for the few. As for Democrats, (and I know I'm generalizing here) the party of diversity which includes all of the rest of the population, governing is about leadership. That McCain would laugh -- laugh! -- at Obama for his public service tells a lot about the differences between the parties. That the Republicans would choose a supremely unqualified candidate as VP is the height of cynicism. As syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. wrote in today's Seattle Times wrote about Palin,
Does she [Sarah Palin] actually think living across the Bering Strait from Russia constitutes foreign policy expertise? Does she really take the parable of Adam and Eve as literal truth?
He goes on to say that his first question to Palin would be about the books she wants to ban (apparently, the list I earlier blogged about Pitts says is a fake, but she did fire the town's librarian because she wouldn't agree to remove controversial books from the shelves). Pitts concludes his editorial with this:
We are becoming the stupid giant of planet Earth: richer than Midas, mightier than Thor, dumber than rocks. Which makes us a danger to the planet--and to ourselves. This country cannot continue to prosper and to embrace stupidity. The two are fundamentally incompatible. So do us all a favor: Annoy Sarah Palin. For goodness' sake read.

'Nuff said.

Sylvia's Walking!

Sylvia walked through the door - WALKED! - looking very medieval in her French chain-mail like dress (hand-me-down from Maddie who probably was more like 5 years old when she wore it instead of 12 months, but Sylvia is tall). While we were at Cama Beach this week, Sylvia started walking on her own. She worked up a sweat last night scampering around the condo, loving her new upright mobility.

Last of summer fun at Cama Beach

We spent the last of the warm summer days at Cama Beach, a perfectly-restored fishing camp on Camano Island. Rows of cabins sit along the beach. They are comfortable and have basic amenities. Many volunteers worked to restore the Washington State Parks site and one of the more charming things they contributed were hundreds of homemade quilts for all of the cabin beds. The Center for Wooden Boats (Union Bay in Seattle and Port Townsend) has an outpost here with volunteer craftsmen working on boats year round.

We read, boated, fished, picked blackberries, drank wine, and relaxed. Perfect end to a great summer.

Sylvia Turns 1 Years Old

Sylvia turned 1-years-old yesterday. Beautiful Seattle weather (in the 80s), a large crowd of supporters, and a sweet little girl made for a perfect day. Butterflies and sherbert colored decorations made for a festive atmosphere. Mom set the perfect party stage and baked and decorated the most colorful butterfly cake. Sylvia was a bit overwhelmed having slept through the beginning of the party to waken to her crowd of fans, but quickly got into the festivities.
Andy was a sweet brother and perfectly behaved throughout. Grandpa spent a lot of one-on-one time with Andy who likes to talk with him about all sorts of things, pretty much non-stop and Grandpa is all ears.
Couldn't resist the sweet moments with Karen, Sylvia's most wonderful Nanny who is a poet, artist, and exceptional woman.

The Dresses! The Hairstyle! What a Throwback to My Childhood!

Di Madre In Figlia (From Mother to Daughter) will be appearing on Sunday, September 28, 2008 - 7 PM, as part of the UW World Series. I plan on seeing this feisty troupe from my motherland. Below is the promo for this group and they do have a video of their singing on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR2VR_Dslr8). I believe there is a documentary on these women -- Mondine - As a Mother to Daughter, but I wasn't successful in viewing it on YouTube.

Mondine di Novi (mohn-DEE-nuh di NOH-vee), an Italian female chorus from the Modena lowlands, teams up with Italian/Celtic folk band Fiamma Fumana (fee-AH-mah foo-MAH-nah) for an unforgettable concert experience. Beginning in the early 1900s, the "mondine" sang together as they weeded the rice fields of the Po Valley. Here an older generation of music-makers meets a younger in a celebration of survival and song.

Did you know? Some members of Mondine di Novi worked in the Italian resistance movement during World War II, smuggling messages to the partisans in their hair curlers, shopping bags, and the handle bars of their bicycles.

BRAVA!

Is Palin For Real?

Another day, another email about comments and actions by the Republican's selection for VP, Sarah Palin. It's really scary to think this woman could be a heart-beat away from being president. REALLY SCARY.

Here is a list of books that Sarah Palin tried to have banned from the Wasilla Public Library, according to the official minutes of the Library Board. When she was unsuccessful at having these books banned, as reported in several newspapers, she tried to have the librarian fired. She now claims that she was only asking a rhetorical question about book banning.

The librarian was indeed fired shortly afterwards, along with 6 other department heads who had suggested alternatives to Palin's city policy ideas.

Note from editor -- the list was long and maybe incorrect so it was deleted.

And this --
Courtesy of R. Matter
Subject: Fw: Gov Palin Quotes Posted on MSNBC

This is unreal. Below are some actual quotes by Governor Palin during a series of interviews by the Anchorage Daily News in 2006 when she was running for Governor...

On Creationism:
The simple yet elegantly awkward moose proves God's creation and not evolution is the source of all life. How could something as oddly shaped and silly looking as a moose evolve through so-calle "natural selection?" Is evolution a committee? There is nothing natural about a dorky moose! Only God could have made a moose and given it huge antlers to fight off his predatory enemies. God has a well known sense of humor, I mean He made the platypus too.

On oil exploration and drilling in the ANWR:
God made dinosaurs 4,000 years ago as ultimately flawed creatures, lizards of Satan really, so when they died and became petroleum products we, made in his perfect image, could use them in our pickup trucks, snow machines and fishing boats.

Now, as to the ANWR, Todd and I often enjoying caribou hunting and one year we shot up a herd big time, I mean I personally slaughtered around 40 of them with my new, at the time, custom Austrian hunting rifle. And guess what? That caribou herd is still around and even bigger than ever. Caribou herds actually need culling, be it by rifles or wolves, or Exxon-Mobil oil rigs, they do just great!

On Alaskans serving overseas in Iraq:
Well, God bless them, and I mean God and Jesus because without Jesus we'd be Muslims too or Jewish, which would be a little better because of the superior Israeli Air Force.

Putting Palin in Perspective

The following is from an email sent by a fellow book club member (love my book club!) from an op-ed by Gloria Steinem.

Palin: wrong woman, wrong message


Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
By Gloria Steinem September 4, 2008

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the 'white-male-only' sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.


Join the reader discussion on Gloria Steinem's Op-Ed article

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, 'Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs.'

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience. Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, 'I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?' When asked about Iraq, she said, 'I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq.'

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax.

Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on 'God, guns and gays' ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency. So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom.

If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act. Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves 'abstinence-only' programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family.

Of course, for Dobson, 'women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership,' so he may be voting for Palin's husband. Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest. Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women. And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it.Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children. This could be huge.

Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women's Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama.

Walla2

The road home from Idaho took us through Walla Walla and, of course, we stopped to taste some wine. Walla Walla has certainly changed since the last time we were there. There are numerous upscale restaurants, lively entertainment, great local art, and many winery tasting rooms on and around Main Street. The town is looking more like a mini Napa than ever before. We also happened on a huge antique car show with more than 400 cars on display. Our favorite, a 1930s Model T Ford with the original exterior paint, motor, and interior upholstery, complete with window shade that belonged to the owner's grandmother, Mabel. Even the license plate is the original but he has never been stopped or given a ticket for the (really) dated 1930s plates. He drives the car to work every day and intends to pass the car on to his own son (who is a toddler right now). (FYI - he did put new tires on the car.)

Among the highlights was a side trip to Milton-Freewater (OR) to the Blue Mountain Cider Co. to purchase some wonderful hard cider. There, we were tipped off to a fantastic chocolate boutique down the road after we tasted a Petits Noir chocolate truffle with Blue Mountain cherry-flavored hard cider. At Petits Noirs, www.petitsnoirs.com, we were greeted by a little nymph is a blur of pink and a heart-melting smile who beat us to the front door. She happened to be the proprietor's young daughter. The gracious couple are recent transplants from New York City who made a life change two years ago when they opened their boutique in this Walla Walla area community. She was in advertising and gave that up to apprentice to a NYC chocolatier, he is a artisan bread maker. We tasted some of the best chocolates ever. They specialize in matching their chocolates to specific Walla Walla brand varietals. She even gave us an extensive chart with chocolate/wine combinations. The chart needs to be updated each year to accommodate changes in taste profiles from vintage to vintage. (Boutique colors - turquoise and Chinese red -- see gift boxes this page)

Some additional photos from this beautiful area include Long Shadows newly built winery, photos from the farms between Walla Walla and Milton-Freewater, and an old
hops drying barn. We didn't capture pictures from our Bocce Ball game, but suffice it to say, I (Denise) beat Tom. Yeah!