Daisy Mae

I lost a good buddy on Monday. 

She has been in  my life almost 15 years.  She never talked about time in terms of years but she was down to the minute about other things.  She always like meal times routine and punctual.  I could find myself deeply involved in a project or a leisure activity and she brought me back to the moment in an second to the hour on the clock, the minute of the day.

She was an English Pointer, mid size, 40 pounds.  She never hunted professionally but could point, even stand on her back legs and look over the tall grass if she sensed the need to follow her instincts.  Her noise was stronger than her eyes. 

My favorite memories of her is the fabulous spirit of freedom that she was capable of.  It was on display as I watched her run the early morning beaches of Sandestin, Florida or Cannon Beach in Oregon or the golf course in Door County, Wisconsin.  It was a flight so fast that  it seemed that the feet only occasionally touched the ground.   I remember a winter in Sandestin with the white sand, the tide slowly coming in, the sun dancing on the straight line across the surface of the water and not a living being there but us.  She made me love that day and that memory. She frighten me, also, occasionally, when I lost sight of her but then back she came full speed, the sand made a noise at my feet, when she stopped.

It was five in the morning and before sunrise on Cannon Beach when we walked together.  It was a new beach to me and she was older but she showed that same spirit was still in her muscles as she run and made huge circles around me.  She exhibited enjoyment that have to be present in all of us, that total ability to feel joy.

Another connection, we shared, that was a bond was food.  She often lay to watch me in the kitchen,  waiting to catch my eye and the moment I would find a morsel for her.  In recent times we have always share breakfast.  I gave her part of my toast and if I have fried eggs it was also shared with her.

She became notorious, food-wise, in her early life by stealing a bit of food from a woman at one of my parties, the morning after a New Year's Eve gathering.   Of course, the woman was lounging in a chair with her hand dropped holding the remains of a breakfast Danish.  It stopped the conversation in the room for a minute or two but it firmly cemented her 'food grabbing reputation'.   One other habit she had in the days of large dinner parties, that some dinner guests found annoying was, to very gently lay her head on their leg under the dining table.  She will circle the table until she found someone that would feed her tiny bits, quietly.  My loyalty was with her, the rest of those people went home at night.

Traveling with her made the trips more deliberate with stops for walks, conversations with strangers came easily and fresh water in the car, standard. She travel north to south from Wisconsin to Florida each way possible.  The two round cross country trips to California included her barking at the elk in Yellowstone Park, walking the streets of Palo Alto and sleeping though the state of Nebraska.

The last couple years, my buddy has lost her hearing and she found that long walks were not much fun.  For last five days I have known that her liver had enlarged and at her age, she could not have got though surgery.  The pain of digesting food was more of an ordeal and meds were becoming less and less helpful.  It was my time to do her a favor and we went to the vet office to say good by.

The important part of our shared time was that she expressed delight in life and grounded me in other ways.

 My life would have missed something if we had not shared time. 

I will miss my Daisy Mae!

things I recently learned

The easy way to use beet greens is to put them on the top steamer while cooking the beets.  Takes only a few minutes and the greens are tender.  I like to take off most of the stem.  Then I eat the greens as a side dish, mix with potatoes, mix with some garlic/onion/cheese.

I have pulled weeds for the last four days in my yard and managed to fill a wheel barrow each day.  Yes, spring was a very long season this year and the weeds got a head of me.  What surprises me is with all the weed pulling my arms still have low flying wings!

I have pruned the espalier trees on the back fence.  They look neat and groomed and healthy.  I am saving all the branches for mulch to go back on my beds.  This Thursday a guy is coming to do ornamental trees and bushes pruning and that will also be added to my pile to chop up.  This resource is valued like good manure for an organic gardener.

My blueberries produced the most this year for me.  Spring rains probably. 

Two female family members have had breast cancer surgery in the last 15 days.  The raise of cancer is all around us.  Hear yesterday that a radiologist in town confirms the same here in Olympia.  She also will never put a cell phone to her head, only uses it to text.  All of us have to ask the question of what are the things about American life style that are related to the raise in cancer?

My granddaughter's new teacher told her students that she will not allow those backpackers in her room.  I guess she read about the over the shoulder  front method of carrying books better for their young backs. 

Purchase some chia seed that Dr. Oz has been talking about on his show.  It is a nice addition to anything.  I understand it can grow in my area so next spring, this plant that is from the mint family, will be seeded in my garden.

Politically, it is hate season.  Surprisingly, Christians are so firm in their superiority of being wise I wonder, who is it that they are following.  The gentle man that walked the earth 2,000 always looked out for the less among the population.  Today's talk is about protecting the elite among those Christians politicians.  Oh, the race thing is a fact, studies show only whites under 30 voted for Obama in the last election.

The signs that my husband's Alzheimer's is progressing when he single handedly decided to eat the whole plate of fortune cookies, or when he put five socks on one foot or ask where is his tie and puts his hand on his head. 

The little comfort I feel in these times after listening to the news, watching the stock market or hearing the latest report of extreme weather somewhere in the U.S. is that my back yard has a garden.   I have some seeds, I touch the soil and I watch my chickens.  My world is small but it is sane.

                                               

The Servant that lives in the White House

This is too interesting not to get posted and read wider.    The US Dictatorship and its White House Servant ‘President’ by Finian Cunningham
Global Research, August 1, 2011
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If there is one thing that the office of President Barack Obama demonstrates it is that democracy does not exist in the United States. This may seem a rather outlandish statement. For many people, the fact that the 44th president is the first black man to preside over the White House – with its American colonial-style architecture – is a tribute to the triumph of US democracy. But many other more telling facts indicate that Obama is but a figurehead of an unelected government in the US. This unelected power of corporate elites – commercial, financial, military – governs with the same core policies regardless of who is sitting in the White House. Whether these policies are on social, economic or foreign matters, the elected president must obey the direction ordained by the unelected elite. That kind of untrammeled power structure conforms more closely in practice to dictatorship, not democracy. As Michael Hudson and Ellen Brown reveal in their analyses of the US budget debacle, Obama is pathetically doing the bidding of Wall Street – much like an errand boy [1] [2]. Brown writes: “The debt crisis was created, not by a social safety net bought and paid for by the taxpayers, but by a banking system taken over by Wall Street gamblers. The gamblers lost their bets and were bailed out at the expense of the taxpayers; and if anyone should be held to account, it is these gamblers. “The debt ceiling crisis is a manufactured one, engineered to extort concessions that will lock the middle class in debt peonage for decades to come. Congress is empowered by the Constitution to issue the money it needs to pay its debts.” Obama’s servile toeing of Wall Street’s line is not the behavior of a free leader boldly defending the interests of the people and the greater good. Rather, his behaviour is that of one doing what he is told to do – and doing it with grateful deference. In this way, of course, Obama is hardly different from his predecessors. But of difference is just how blatant the White House is now appearing to function as a mere tool of the rich and powerful elite. The irony is that Obama’s election was presented as a potent symbol of American democracy; the truth is that the two-party system has become a threadbare cover for immense feebleness when it comes to serving the diktat of elite power as opposed to the good of the people. “The most powerful office in the world” would be more accurately referenced as “the most feeble purveyor of elite interests”. Obama’s presence in the White House indulges a superficial moral/political correctness while the masters whip us all into austere servitude. The US “war on terror” is another illustration of America’s dictatorship of the elite – and Obama’s pathetic servile role of carrying out the masters’ orders in defiance of the will of the people. Recall that Obama’s bid for presidential election in 2008 was avowedly based on ending the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also denounced his incumbent rival George W Bush over the use of special powers that enabled such aberrations as the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp and a host of draconian home security policies infringing on civil rights Obama also signaled in his inaugural speech – reiterated again soon after in Cairo – that under his watch the US was resetting foreign policy – turning away from the militarist policies of Bush to a more enlightened approach for settling conflicts with the Muslim World and Iran in particular. “If they unclench their fist, we will extend our hand,” Obama declared with seemingly heartfelt eloquence. But on every count, Obama has reneged on his supposed opposition to the US “war on terror”. Indeed, under his watch, the US has expanded its militarist foreign policy – which is apparently predicated on the belief that “western democracy is threatened by Islamic extremism”. Obama has done nothing to roll back draconian home security policies, indeed appears to have extended them. And he continues his predecessor’s deception of conflating Iran and its alleged nuclear ambitions as part of this phony “Islamic extremists” narrative. To perform such a disgraceful U-turn on so many election promises, the presidency of Barack Obama is clear proof that the holder of office in the White House is not the one who is setting policy – rather, he is following policy that is set by unelected others. When news broke about the massacre in Norway where more than 70 people were killed in a twin bomb and gun attack, Obama reacted like an automaton of the unelected power system, instead of like an independent, reasonable political leader. Even though it was clear within hours of the atrocity that the perpetrator was a blond-haired Norwegian with fascist and deeply Islamophobic views, nevertheless Obama reacted immediately to present it as an act of Islamic terrorism. Speaking from the White House, Obama said: “It's a reminder that the entire international community has a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring, and that we have to work co-operatively together both on intelligence and in terms of prevention of these kinds of horrible attacks.” The president may not have used the words “Islamic terrorism” but it is clear that he was invoking the massacre as part of the “war on terror” which is predicated on the notion of Islamic terrorism. In this mindset, Obama was not alone. British Prime Minister David Cameron moved into action stations, saying that British intelligence would help their Norwegian counterparts to track down the culprits – again implying that the perpetrators were part of an international organization – which in war on terror code means an Islamic organization. The US and British news media also jumped to the conclusion that the Norwegian attacks must have something to with Al Qaeda or some other “Jihadist” group. That such a widespread and erroneous reflex response from Western political leaders and news media – the so-called free press – can be elicited so uncritically shows how trenchantly the war on terror and its Islamophobic mindset are embedded. The consequences of this are deeply disturbing. For a start, such a mindset of the Western political and media establishment can only lead to further Islamophobia in these societies. There were reports of hate attacks against ordinary Muslims across Europe immediately after the Norway atrocity, no doubt caused by the malign and erroneous way that politicians and the media attributed the incident to Islamists. Even more disturbing is that the war on terror mindset fomented by Western governments and media over the past 10 years has led to the creation of lunatic fascist psychopaths like Anders Behring Breivik who carried out the Norway mass murder. Breivik and others like him think that Europe and the US must be defended from some kind of Muslim threat. This kind of logic does not conjure from thin air. It is rather the logical conclusion of the war on terror mindset that Western governments and news media have pushed down the throats of their citizens for a decade. The sad part is that the majority of Western citizens are not convinced by the phony crusading of their governments and media, nor of the alleged threat of Islamic extremists. Most people realize that whatever Islamic extremists operate, they are either a creation of Western intelligence or a backlash against Western imperialism. That is why Obama’s avowed election promises to end America’s criminal wars and reset foreign policy on a more reasonable, democratic footing got him elected. The even sadder part is that as Obama’s ineffectual election shows, the US (and its Western lackeys) is being driven further and further into bankrupting, criminal wars of aggression that will cause more victims of violence and social mayhem at home and abroad. And it’s all because democracy in the US (and elsewhere in the West) is non-existent. The US is a dictatorship. And Mr Obama is too ineffectual (save for the masters) and irrelevant to be even loosely called its dictator. Finian Cunningham is a Global Research Correspondent based in Belfast, Irelan