Grist for the mill(er)
I had a splendid day at the mill (West Point on the Eno in Durham) on Saturday. I finally got to do some grinding, in addition to taking about a bazillion pictures inside and out (including the spiders, see below). I think this flower is nightshade, but I'm too lazy to look it up; maybe later. I took oodles of people pics, but I don't feel like posting them just now.

Then, of course, another picture of the waterwheeel and dam. I don't know why mills are so photogenic, but they are.

Then a (rather poor) picture of Kent, one of the millers (I could be called a 'miller's apprentice', I guess). I blame him for the poor image (notably the rope hanging in front of his face; I was lucky to get ANY shot of him. Photographing some people is like stalking wildlife with a camera! Kent's standing behind the Meadows Mill checking out the feed rate from the hopper into the shoe.

The shoe itself is the last picture; it screens the grain (yellow corn or maize, in this case) from the hopper and feeds it into the stones for grinding. All these mecahnisms (the shoe, the stones, the sifter, the elevators to move the meal or flour) are run by belts which are are (ultimately) run off the waterwheel shaft. I love the mill - the way everythign runs together, the smell of grease and corn meal or flour, the sounds, the openess and sturdiness of the building, the other millers, the people who come by ... everything!

The Yates Mill, which is very close to my house, just opened, and I was very excited about the prospect of milling less than a mile from where I live (the drive to Durham is 25 miles). But it turns out the Yates Mill project is more about restoration than actually having a running mill - at West Point they had (unfortunately in many ways) that dilemna 'solved' for them by the simple fact that the original mill had collasped before work could begin. Therefore they just rebuilt a very nice and functional mill in the great tradition of rebuilding after a flood, and didn't have to fuss about authenticity so much. I know there is a place for both approaches, but for me I much prefer having visitors poking around the mill's innards than fussing about them scuffing up the restored floorboards and roping them out. I love letting kids smoosh grease in the fittings, I love the workaday shoplike feel of the place, the casualness of it. Firing up the stove when it's chilly, making a natural working mess and cleaning it up, not freaking at the use of an electric fan when it's hot. It's a mill, not a museum, and I like it that way!!
    ¶ 3:33 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Arachnophilia Bill and I adore spiders. I've been trying to photograph them lately, but they're pretty hard to get good shots of. It's helps when they are HUGE, though, as was this one I found Saturday in the cogpit (where the main gears are) of the grist mill I do some milling at.

The first picture is not-so-great, but is there for scale. There were two of these giants in the 'pit, each one about as big as the palm of my hand. The second picture shows the other one. I kept trying to show the people walking by the mill how cool they were; as you might expect, the reaction was quite varied :) One woman really ticked me off by insisting her 6-year old (who was clearly indifferent to the spiders) was 'terrified' of spiders. I wanted to shake her and tell her that if she kept telling the kid that enough it would eventually be true! Talk about projecting your own tastes to your children!

Maybe there's some evolutionary point to systematically teaching kids to loathe spiders, but I think we're sort of beyond that now - or should be.

But I wasn't meaning to go all preachy :) just to put up some cute spider pics. The third picture is our 'kitchen spider', who has lived in the same spot by our kitchen window right above/behind the sink for nearly a year. Like us, she isn't the tidiest of housekeepers - although she does periodically clean out the carcasses. She had a big kill last week, as you can see! A moth and a fly and ... maybe a miniature Hobbit ;-) Architechturally, she's no Frank Lloyd Wright, as she seems to prefer the 'crazy tangled mass' of web construction. But it works for her, I guess!
    ¶ 3:17 AM 1 Comments Links to this post

  unexpected answers to age-old questions     ¶ 6:28 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Applesauce and the Cultural Revolution I couldn't resist a half-bushel box of Rome apples for $5 at the farmer's market the other day. Unfortunately, Romes really aren't the best eating apples (although the beagles seem to like them just fine), so I was planning on applesauce. While looking around for recipes, I stumbled across the website of an American couple with lots of canning information - but the interesting thing was that this couple had obviously spent lots of time in China. They had listed a bunch of Maoist stuff that a Chinese friend of theirs was trying to sell. That got me looking at Maoist propaganda posters and wondering why Mao still seems to be damn near revered inmnay quarters while no one really likes Stalin. Maybe because Mao was seen as more of a 'thinker' and less a plain thug than Stalin?

So then I was Wiki-ing about Mao and the Cultural Revolution and came across a reference to the "Democracy Wall", and to an essay by Wei Jingsheng. I'm no fan of democracy of course (or socialism, which Wei still seems to embrace), but I think in context this is pretty wonderful stuff for China in 1978.

Read this selection, and mentally replace the word 'democracy' with the words 'freedom' or 'self rule':

Those who worry about the defiance of human and divine laws as a result of democracy are like those who had the same worry when the emperor was dethroned in the 1911 revolution. They are reconciled to this line of reasoning: Be at ease and submit to oppression. Without oppression, the roof of your house will fly sky high!

Let me respectfully remind these gentlemen: We want to be masters of our own destiny. We need no gods or emperors. We do not believe in the existence of any savior. We want to be masters of the world and not instruments used by autocrats to carry out their wild ambitions. We want a modern lifestyle and democracy for the people. Freedom and happiness are our sole objectives in accomplishing modernization. Without this fifth modernization all others are merely another promise.

Let me call on our comrades: Rally under the banner of democracy and do not trust the autocrats' talk about "stability and unity." Fascist totalitarianism can only bring us disaster. l have no more illusion. Democracy is our only hope. Abandon our democratic rights and we will be shackled once again. Let us believe in our own strength! Human history was created by us. Let all self-styled leaders and teachers go. They have for decades cheated the people of their most valuable possession. I firmly believe that production will be faster under the people's own management. Because the laborers will produce for their own benefit, their living conditions will be better. Society will thus be more rational, because under democracy all social authority is exercised by the people with a view to improving their livelihood.

Amazing stuff, eh?  ¶ 9:05 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Map to location of Beagle walk
For those joining the Beagle Meetup tomorrow:

Click on the picture to see it full-sized. The Middle School is NOT where the little Google-blurb says it is, but is rather on what Google calls "Crump Drive" - and can only be approached from Trailwood (off Tryon) or Gorman St. Questions? Please call me (number in the email you got) or email me.
Anyone's welcome to come along - it'll be fun!    ¶ 2:05 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Less Platform, More Manifesto! I figured there must be a 'Capitalist Party' somewhere, and sure enough there are several. Some are obviously one guy at a computer. There's something fascinating about one-man political parties. I looked around a bit at various CPs (gotta love the initials - in your face, Joe Stalin!)

This one: http://www.capitalistparty.org.uk/ got my attention.

(Yes, I know it's the UK, the title of this post was fanciful; I'm not thinking of moving to the UK just to join the CP.)

It seems to be the child of Henry Afton, who I would bet is a big fan of Ayn Rand (not-that-there's-anything-wrong with-that, of course). Oh, yes, there it is in the 'acknowledgement'. Funny how you can tell from only about 100-400 words whether somone was heavily influenced by Rand. I guess a person who wears a Carl Menger t-shirt really doesn't have much call to mock others, though :)

Observations:

(1) Forget a puling platform; you can't go wrong with a Manifesto!

(2) Is that light bulb thing a lame logo or what? Get a gold brick or something! Afton's forte seems to be words rather than graphics; I can certainly empathise with that. I guess I should be glad it's not a cigarette :)

(3) Speaking of the Manifesto: check out the Education 'plank':

Privatise Education

It is cultural suicide to allow the state to control our children's minds.

Now that is refreshing simplicity indeed! What more really needs to be said on the subject? (He does, though, link to an essay he wrote on the subject for those looking for more substance).

(4) He (let's drop the illusion of 'they' created by the idea/fact that the CP is a political party) thinks NAFTA is a Good Deal for the UK. Interesting, since most serious US capitalists think NAFTA is the satanic offspring of the UN and the Trilateral Commission. Or maybe I've just been hanging out with too many Birchers.

(5) One benefit of parliamentary systems is that they seem to encourage these small parties.

End cute commentary on Afton's CP - begin rant on American parties:

We have the same sort of thing here in the US, but most parties don't have the hope of ever seating anyone in the legislature. This, alas, leads to either a sort of hopelessness on the part of many members of small parties or (worse, perhaps) the misguided notion that if only they act just like the big boys, they will become a 'major party' themselves. Here's the thing, though: it isn't going to happen. Elections are basically just opinion polls in our system, and the role of the smaller ideological parties is to give people a way to state their opinion more clearly. If you vote for Republicans or Democrats, you're voting for the status quo - you're saying "I am not (too) displeased with the way things are being handled." If you vote Libertarian or Green or Capitalist Party, you're saying "Hey, you jerks, you are waaay off-base. And at least some people are noticing." Once enough people notice, then the D/R folks need to take heed and try to woo some of us 'radicals' back to the middle (and good-luck-with-that, in my case, but, hey, I guess it'll work for some people). Ideological parties like the Libertarians and the Greens in the US are what keeps the two power parties from forming one disgusting centrist blob. It is the exclusion (deliberate, natrually) of these ideological parties from the debates and elections wich allows the blob to grow. We need to make that case. We need to have small parties on the ballot for their own sake, not because they are 'this close' to being a 'major party'. Because they aren't. The Green Party isn't, the Libertarian Party isn't, the Constitution Party isn't. America has a two-party system which is rapidly degenerating into a one-party system.

I'm not saying that the Libertarian Party should not run candidates - and win elections! Of course it ought to do that. My point is that in the larger picture our influence will be felt way beyond the number of offices Libertarians happen to occupy, and we should not shortchange that influence by obsessing about winning especially if 'winning' really means 'Say and do whatever it takes to get elected.' Let's have fewer "Plans for America" and more "Manifestos of Freedom". Let's court the hearts-and-minds of freedom lovers and be there for them when they are finally ready to send a message to those in power in the big four-year national opinion poll called the general election.  ¶ 11:34 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  What are they thinking? I took this picture a couple of evenings ago from the car window (the car was stopped - I'm not that good:) while we were on our way to a nearby walking place.    ¶ 2:54 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Lion's tooth Possibly not the best use of my time 'off' work, but I have always wanted to take decent pictures of flowers (ah, the secret ambitions of Ordinary People:)

This flower is one that blooms exuberantly through our yard. It seems to be some sort of dandelion, but the leaves are bigger, there are multiple flowers per stem, and the stems are several feet tall. They are quite showy - in the morning. Afternoons, the flowers close up for a 'siesta' and then re-open the next morning. They do this for about a week and then turn white and fluffy to disperse seeds just like their more modest cousins, the common dandelion (I feel very sure they are related. Any botanists reading this?) I picked a few and put them in a mug in the kitchen, and, fascinatingly, they do the open-and-close thing on the same schedule as their still-growing outside brothers.    ¶ 12:10 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Easy Bake OK, confession time: I always wanted an Easy-Bake oven (and it seems like at one point I probably did have one; probably I baked two things in it and got bored, my usual pattern with toys). However, since we got rid of the hideous electric stove/oven that came with the house (well, it's still outside waiting to be hauled to the dump... but at least it's not in the kitchen), I have gotten close. I have toaster/broiler oven - which is actually horrible for toast, but great for baking the small amounts of stuff we need baked (bread we bake in a bread machine). That's a mini-muffin pan in the picture.

Last night I had a craving for chocolate, and we happened to have some powdered baking chocolate, so I threw together some of that, some flour and rolled oats, suagar and margarine and vanilla and a touch of cinnamon and salt - and water, of course. I discovered while rooting through the spices some bourbon in an airline bottle and considered adding that for flavoring, but happily decided against it. I was aiming at drop cookies, but must have got carried away with the baking powder (I didn't measure anything, which was fun), and wound up with brownie/muffins instead. They were a bit ... boring when hot, but after they cooled down they actually tasted pretty good. Soon I will be able to throw a fresh egg into a spontaneous recipe like that :)

As may be apparent to the careful reader, I do in fact have this week (and probably next) off work. They assure me I will be 'slammed' with work after that. Aside from the whole not-getting-paid business, I'm pretty happy to have these beautiful spring days at home with the dogs, playing homemaker, hanging out with the hens, puttering a bit in the garden, and reading. Right now, though, I'm having way too much fun driving the colliething and the beagleXJRT nuts with the noises on the Easy-Bake oven site. Go there with the speakers on and move the mouse around - UNLESS you're at work! :)

OK, I'm off to sort out the kitchen cabinets. Maybe. I don't want to get TOO carried away with this homemaker thing.    ¶ 11:17 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Angry chicken video
Since I don't watch TV any more, I have to get my advertisements via the 'net :) But this one is very much worth watching - even if the chicken doesn't look so angry to me! Bill ran across it while doing some reading about Parkour.  ¶ 11:07 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Shiny bird I gave the hens some apple pieces this afternoon and then plagued them with the camera. Even though they are called 'black Sumatra', their feathers have an awesome metallic blue-green sheen in the sunlight.

You definitely need to click on the picture to get the full-szed image in order to best appreciate the color and sheen. Do it... you know you want to :)  ¶ 7:17 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Goodbye, warranty! 69,999 --> 70,000

Fortunately, I got it in last week to have them look at the gears - it was slipping out of fifth, which they agreed they should fix under warranty. Now I'm involved in that crazy dance all auto shops put you through: they tell you the part will be in 'in a few days', and 'we'll call you'. So you wait. Then after a few days you decide to call, and they say either "No, the part's not in, we told you we'd call you!" or "Well, the part came in two days ago." Today I had the worst of both approaches: "The part came in today, and Bob was supposed to call you and make an apppointment. It's been really busy, but he'll call you back within 30 minutes." Naturally, that was hours ago. Guess I'll call them again tomorrow.

Leaves on the dash are some dried alfalfa left from pickings I brought home to the hens from a dog walk a day or two ago.    ¶ 6:38 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Savage hypochondriac The chicken on the left is me these days.
Maybe I have a brain tumor :)  ¶ 1:32 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Radical Krewe Here's a bunch of WakeLP homies writing letters to try to get H88 - the Electoral Fairness (or reasonable fascimile) Act passed out of committee in an unbastardized form and then PASSED.

Yeah, we're still trying to play nice. No funny white powder in the envelopes.    ¶ 8:54 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Bra strap saves woman from gunshot... or not Here's a giggler from rec.guns:

Post:
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - A 44-year-old woman escaped serious injury from a gunshot Sunday thanks to her seat belt and a thick bra strap, authorities said. ...
Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies said a .38-caliber bullet smashed through the windshield then bounced off Key's shoulder - thanks to a seat belt and a thick bra strap.

Reply:
That's nothing. As I recall, some of the trickier straps can successfully stop a 180 lb. teenage boy.

Another fellow pretty reasonably pointed out "ya know sometimes i shoot at phonebooks and its amazing how page 673 is bulletproof sometimes but i dont say "bullet stopped by phone book page"".  ¶ 4:55 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Behold the State incarnate I came across a pretty good non-hysterical description of anarchy today; it avoids the pitfall of many anarchist articles of being asolutely convinced that socialist or capitalist anarchy is the 'true anarchy', and instead talks about anarchy as simply the absence of a ruler. Kauffman cements this detente by bookending anarchy as socialist and capitalist voluntarism with quotes from Peter Kropotkin and Karl Hess, and then going on to describe America as having more of an anarchist flavor than philosophy.

But mostly this entry is an excuse for me to quote a poem by Ernest Crosby that Kauffman dredged up:

They talked much of the State—the State.
I had never seen the State, and I asked them to picture it to me, as my gross mind could not follow their subtle language when they spake of it.
Then they told me to think of it as of a beautiful goddess, enthroned and sceptred, benignly caring for her children.
But for some reason I was not satisfied.
And once upon a time, as I was lying awake at night and thinking, I had as it were a vision,
And I seemed to see a barren ridge of sand beneath a lurid sky;
And lo, against the sky stood out in bold relief a black scaffold and gallows-tree, and from the end of its gaunt arm hung, limp and motionless, a shadowy, empty noose.
And a Voice whispered in my ear, “Behold the State incarnate!”  ¶ 12:40 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Wheat ... or barley?
Probably barley since I'm told that awnless wheat is all the rage these days, but these were obviously experimental plots, so it could be wheat. Silly of me not to be able to tell :-/

I took this while walking the dogs yesterday evening. The colliething hates it when I bring the camera along. It slows us down, and I always pester him to pose for pictures. He pretty much ignores me these days. Grr.

Other pictures from the walk.  ¶ 11:58 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Hens finally venturing outside





I rushed home at lunch, stapled myself into the pen (still thinking about a gate), and opened the door. Then I sat back with a camera and watched the hens peek out, change their minds, look over each other's shoulders, scratch around the door, run in, peep back out... it was fun.

I'm actually glad they're so cautious - I want them to run inside and fly to the roost when scared, and so far that's what seems to be happening.

I left them out after lunch, and when I got home I took a sling chair out and sat reading while they scratched around under the holly bushes in front of the henhouse. They are still not venturing more than 3-4 feet from the henhouse, but they seemed to be having a lot of fun in the leaf litter.

  ¶ 10:41 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  World's silliest dog confuses hail with manna Don't get me wrong. I adore Ed. He's very affable! But that doesn't change the fact that he isn't the brightest bulb in the fixture. We had a brief hailstorm on Sunday, and Ed was very excited afterwards about eating hailstones off the ground.





He must have thought the Ice Cube Tree had fruited, just like he keeps checking on the pear tree in the yard to see if the fruit is falling yet.





The problem with ice-as-manna, as opposed to the mulberries he came across the other day on a walk, is that eating ice makes the poor thing shiver. I had to drag him away. The voices in this brief video clip are my husband and my friend Dahlia; the sporadic giggling (and associated camera shakes) are me. The vid clip is almost 9M, so don't bother dowloading if you're on dialup - it's cute, but not THAT cute.

  ¶ 8:47 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  I'm a racist! Well, according to the Seattle Public Schools, anyway. I'm guilty of 'cultural racism':

Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and
normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label
people of color as "other", different, less than, or render them invisible.
Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh
colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed
to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and
identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.

Please! I'm afraid I could probably slide by on "having a future time orientation" because I'm such a present-oriented slacker, but I totally turn up racist on the "emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology" coin.

Is it just me, or is the idea that valuing individualism and planning for the future are Whites-only values in itself incredibly racist? That was a rhetorical question: it's not just me, of course. This is the equivalent to suggesting that a liking for apple pie is 'cultural racism'. Or maybe they have another category - call it "gastronomical racism": "The desire to eat bland foods, boiled or baked; the identificationon of pastry as the highest art form; the dislike of maize as a bread grain."

How anyone can stomach sending their children off to be instructed by such fools and charlatans is beyond me.

  ¶ 4:56 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  My sister's rooster [UPDATE! Thanks to the poultry newsgroup folks, I've found out this guy is probably a Silver Dutch Bantam. Sounds like a fun breed; I hope I can wheedle Bill into letting me have a few of the peeps.]


One of my sisters, Doris, is also a poultry fancier. Right now she has only one pair staying with her; I don't know the breed/cross, but they are very small (large pigeon size, it seems I remember). The hen just started brooding a clutch, and if they hatch Doris has said she would be happy for me to take a couple. I'll have to see what Bill says, because I suspect we'd wind up with a male, but they are sooo small they really don't make that much noise. Doris has them on her enclosed porch and even in the kitchen - which looks out into the porch - the sound isn't at all loud. He does have a funny voice, though :)

Anyway, she took this shot with her 'phone - it's better than half of my 'real' camera shots!  ¶ 11:36 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Free at last!! (Chickens, and only relative freedom) Finally! Fresh air for my hens. I've been feeling really guilty about not finishing the outdoor enclosure and keeping them 'cooped up' (can't resist the pun), but finally last night I fnished all but the gate, which I will rig up enough at noon to allow the girls out. I can't wait for lunchtime! The thing is a bizarro construction of plastic chicken-fencing and bird/deer netting, tied together with string and staples (at least no baling wire or chewing gum:)

Many thanks to my friend Dahlia who worked through hail and rain on Sunday to do the major portion of the work. I'd hoped to release the girls last night, but they were roosting comfortably long before I was done, and even the staplegun didn't keep them awake. It's always amused me how easily chickens drift off whne it gets to be evening, and how soundly they sleep.

Oh, and Pete got to meet the hens this morning, inadvertantly. I left the (rigged and unwieldly) door cracked as I was putting their food out this morning, and Pete was looking in, and suddenly he was in the henhouse - which I knew because the hens took alarm and (very cleverly) flew to their roosting spot. I don't know what Pete's intentions were, but he was certianly fascinated by them. He wouldn't stop staring. I put him out, then I judged he'd better get used to seeing them and they him if they were going to be in a pen outside much of time, so I had him come back in. I tried to explain to him that they were my hens and I didn't want him chasing them or playing with them, but I'm afraid he wasn't listening very well :-/ We'll just have to see how it goes. We once brought in a sweet domestic bunny someone had dumped near a pond on one of our walks, and Pete was utterly fascinated by it and would sit and stare at it for hours (we found the bunny a home; incidentally, our beagle at the time, Honey, ignored the bunny altogether, although she tracked wild bunnies all the time. Hunters tell me this is normal.). I can't tell if his interest in the hens is from his herding side or his predatory side, and I am disinclined to find out the hard way.

Pictures later!  ¶ 10:53 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Bluegrassy and chickeny Listening to XM, I heard The Wiyos playing "Who Stole The Lock Off the Henhouse Door" which of course I had to look up. Go listen!  ¶ 10:45 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Fist of Freedom! (or quality vs quantity) [WARNING: this is likely only to be of interest to my fellow Libertarians (not only is all politics local, most of it is intra-party!) and to those who are morbidly obsessed with me. The rest of you are better off skipping over to the right menu and picking out some nice chicken postings :)]

I am active with the Libertarian Party of NC, both at the county and state levels. I worked with Michael Badnarik's presidential campaign and help moderate a list of people working on ideas to grow the LP. Other than the list and helping out with the Badnarik campaign in NC, I have stayed away from national LP politics. We have a lot of work to do here. I do try to stay aware of what's going on nationally, and the rumblings of the reformist and/or 'neolibertarians' I find disquieting, but the LP has been around a lot longer than I've been politically active, and these "Let's disguise ourselves as statists to get the votes of statists" types have apparently always been with the Party, so I don't let that get to me (much).

So. All this is prelude to an interesting conversation I had via instant message today. And here's more prelude: There's a young fellow from Florida who will occasionally message me to ask me about running for office or supporting some candidate he likes or whatever. So far, so good - except that he insists on popping up and insulting Badnarik even after I've explained why I liked Mike as a candidate enough to work for his campaign. Even that wasn't so bad until he started pushing his hopeful for the LP pres nomination for '08, and when I demurred (I think the guy is a horrible choice for the Party) he became insulting and left, promising to annoy me regularly in the future. Oh, well; we all have our off days, as I myself well know.

So today the kid pops up and offers his new plan to revitalise the LP and wow the voting public: "Operation Fist of Freedom". The name itself is a monstrosity - it smacks more of Bushist you'll-be-free-or-else than libertarian non-iniation of force - but branding aside it's a misguided idea. Ambitious, yes, and not without some merit, but premature at best. His idea is to have a Libertarian candidate for every race in 2008 - every race in the COUNTRY, mind you. I'm not going to spend time running the idea down, but I will say that not even the Ds or Rs accomplish this (0f course thanks to gerrymandering, they don't HAVE to... but that's another story). And of course there's the fact that because of ballot access hurdles that need attention now it's not even likely to be technically possible.

Anyway, the punch line is this part of the exchange:

Him: a candidate for every race in 2008 is the goal

Me: in the country?

Him: yes - I call it Operation Fist of Freedom

Me: be careful not to sarcifice quality for quantity

Him: true, but you have to admit, alot of LP members are not quality

Me: Umm, OK, so why do you want to encourage them to run for office?

Him: to raise the bar of debate

Him: 2008 is going to be the biggest election in long time, we have to fully partcipate 110% - we won't get an opportunity like this for a long time

It pretty much deteriorates from there. Aside from the 'biggest election in a long time' nonsense (isn't that what people said the LAST election, and the one before it, and the one before THAT? You'd think people would eventually catch on!) and the "110%" business-speak silliness, how is drafting a bunch of people you think are 'not quality' to represent your ideas going to advance them at all? How can the 'bar of debate' be raised by a bunch of sub-par candidates? It's just not logical!

Let me make clear here that I do not agree with this fellow's assesment of 'a lot' of LP members as 'not quality'. I think every person who has thought about politics enough to explore third parties and has decided that the LP most suits them has displayed some qualities I can admire. However, that doesn't make them all spectacular candidates or spokespeople for the Party.

Ah, well. Everyone does what they can for the cause. I do appreciate the effort and energy he's showing; I just wish it could be redirected into more profitable projects.

  ¶ 4:03 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Ewww... This site looks terrible in Firefox. Time to tinker with the template again. I havd been putting it off but really need to worok on the look of the right bar on Firefox.  ¶ 6:41 PM 2 Comments Links to this post

  Quality time with hens I've been feeling guilty about not spending enough time with the hens lately. I've even been dreaming about them. So I stopped on my way home and grabbed some snacks I thought they might like (and my spiffo 70s AM radio I just snagged on ebay; isn't it a beaut?) adn brought a sling chair out here to hang with them for some quality 'pecking'.

All the yummy snacks I got them, and what they are most interested in is the handfull of grass I picked. I thought they'd go nuts for the fish snakcs, but not so. Live and learn. I really need to get the outside part of their home done; poor things have been 'cooped up' (sorry for the pun) for way too long. This weekend will be the pen-building for certain!

Awww... they've just settled in at my feet; grooming and picking a bit at the grass laying on the straw.    ¶ 6:34 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  It's sunny out, and I know this because... I checked the online power meter Bill has posted to show how much solar energy we are collecting. It's a bit pathetic that I'd do that rather than check out the window (which is across the Sea of Cubicles). 3.5 kilowatt-hours so far! But I also see he is trying to make up for the cloudy days earlier this week by running the generator. It's fun picturing him in the shop with the generator running. It's be a lot more fun if I was there!  ¶ 2:39 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Out of the lab and back into CubeWorld Working a lab again was fun, but towards the end I was starting to remember why I left grad school. Research is stressful. It got slow, and so I'm back in the cubicle, wrestling with styles in Word.  ¶ 2:23 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  LPNC Convention '06 To make up for my shoddy on-the-spot photoblogging from the LPNC Convention in Burlington this past weekend, I'll put down some of my impressions/observations from the weekend, with some more pictures. It will be highly Susan-centric, because... well, it just will. Figure it out for yourself.

To begin with, I expected the weekend to go something like this:



Both because of (quite natural, considering the crappy position that everyone's enemy, the state, has forced us into) internal tensions in the Party and because that's just the sort of thing you expect when people of different stripes within a broader ideological movement get together and discuss their differences. For those who don't get the joke, Bernard is a neo-geo-Libertarian (longhand for 'socialist' in my book) and I am a Rothbardian paleolibertarian anarcho-capitalist type (possibly shorthand for 'whacko' in Bernard's book). Well, that's part of the joke - the other part is that I have serious Hair Envy and sometimes it just bubbles to the surface around Bernard, who has spectacular hair.

But instead of the Total Warfare Scenario, everyone seemed to be determined to be nice, and things went a lot more like this:




I will leave it to the Reader to decide which outcome was better. The former may have been more exciting, but sometimes exciting isn't always fun, ifyouknowwhatImean.

On Friday I left my exciting and rewarding job early (oh, the sacrifices we comrades make for the Good of The Party!) to rush home and pack. Well, actually, that should be: to 'pack'. My packing strategy was simple: go through the shelves full of ... stuff ... that Bill and I refer to as the 'propaganda shelves' and pull out anything that might concievably be of any use for the convention, jumble it all into boxes so that it would be nearly impossible to sort out when arriving in Burlington, and drag the Big Black Box (BBB) containing the LPNC traveling dog-and-pony show (i.e. the State Fair Booth) out of Bill's shop. After looking in vain for my wallet and forgetting an auction item, Phil Jacobson and I heaved/pushed/hauled the BBB into Phil's van, fed the dogs a carrot, waved bye-bye to the chickens, and hit the road (in the glass-is-half-full department: we already have one item for our next LPNC Auction!:)

Arriving in Burlington, I suspected there was setup work I could be helping the other 2/3s of the convention committee (Barbara Howe and Bev Wilcox) with. So naturally to avoid this I headed straight for my room and a hot shower (still working on the solar-hot-water-thing, but that's another story...). Passing Barbara on the way, she pointed me to the room I was sharing with Bev and said "You'll know which bed is yours," which I thought was odd. When I walked into the room I saw on the pillows of 'my' bed four boxes of Peeps from Bev and a package of the can covers I had admired at Barbara's house ( great for those of us who like to nurse half a Diet Pepsi all evening and finish it off for breakfast). How sweet! Not only had these two done about 90% of the convention committee work between them, but they'd found time for a simple friendly gesture. Well, that set the tone for the weekend and in a fit of warm human feeling I stowed away the peashooter I'd brought along 'just in case' things got heavy on the floor.

The Friday night reception was getting up steam already as I joined in. I decided that my best contribution for the evening would be to stand behind the drink table and 'suggest' that folks make a donation for the bounty provided. I was persuaded to let it go at a sign reading "Fill your glasses and empty you wallet!" which seemed to do the trick nicely. Here's Mike Gardner doing just that (and sorry I cut your head off and gave you demon eyes, Mike. What can I say? - as a photographer I am seriously flawed):

I am sure all kinds of politicking and ear-bending and smoky-back-rooming went on Friday night, but I wasn't privy to most of it, or more accurately I wasn't sober enough to grok any of it. I drank a horrific combination of drinks which left me feeling, as they say 'very mellow', and although I imgained I was only acting intoxicated and that my mind was as sharp as always (actually, sharper), the idea that I could beleive that in all seriousness shows that in fact I really was intoxicated. I knew it was hopeless when people saying "Wow, you're really not a bitch." Building a reputation up takes time, and to lose it all at once like that was a bit of a blow. Fortnately Libertarians seem to be Happy Drunks, and even better, a slight hangover seems to mellow then out considerably the next day, too. Now I see the true value of these pre-convention socials. Some more pics from the reception, featuring Paul Elledge, me and Chris Spruyt, Jess Bailey, Bev Wilcox, Tom Bailey, and last-but-not-least, Barbara Howe and Doug Adams:






Finally to bed, and up early Saturday morning (surprisingly un-hung-over) to try to be of some help to Bev with setting up. The registration table was more than capably in the hands of the UNCG Crew (ack! I forgot to take a picture; sorry) and Jess Bailey put together the "Pledge" board for people to sign. Here's Phil Jacobson doing just that:



Then down to business. The first order item of the day was for Bev's glasses to break in half. Since she is the Recording Secretary, this was naturally a problem. An emergency delegation was sent to obtain SuperGlue. When this failed to do the trick, Douglas Adams came through in true engineering fashion to save the day and give Bev a bold new fashion look:


Sorry the picture is so small (though you can click on it for a bigger one) but the glasses are taped and braced with a good old number 2 lead pencil at the top.

The funny thing is that for five minutes afterward, Phil was looking for his pencil. The funnier thing is that Bev was helping him! By Sunday we'd grown so accustomed to it that we wondered why kids were giggling at us in the Golden Corral.

I gave the membership present-and-voting numbers, managing to mis-divide by two in the process (so much for not being hung over). Phil gave his state-of-the-Party spiel along with an introduction to a rather controversial poll to ask people about their view of the LPNC's priorities. Obligatory dim and blurry view-from-the-floor shot:

This poll included panel discussions later in the day, comment periods, lots of hall-talking, etc. The results were collected and tabulated Sunday, but to spare you the agony of waiting (I know you're all dying for this info and have only waded through this 'account' this far to get it): Paid petitioning beat out lawsuit by a margin of about three to two. Numbers (everyone had ten votes to distribute among different prorities):

158 for petitioning, 102 for lawsuit 48 for outreach and 10 for candidates, dozen for 'other'. I'm not prepared to comment on this right now from my position as a member of the Executive Committee, but there's a lot of information to digest, both in the numbers and it the comments I heard during the convention. One very strange comment from the floor came from one of the Buncumbe Boys (I beleive Carl Milsted): (and I paraphrase freely here) that we should not oppose ballot restrictions because, sure, they're hard for us, but they're harder for Greens, etc., and it's good to keep other parties off the ballot when we CAN concievably still make it on. Unbelievable. I had to step out for a second there, so I missed the general outcry, but I hope there was one!

A couple of resolutions were offered, some for the LPNC to offer the Outside World, and some really having more to do with real politics, which is to say internal Party politics. I'm not recording the minutes here, so I feel no special compulsion to put down all the parliamentary wrangling. I do wish I had made some notes, though, because some of it was mighty entertaining. I will say this: Watch Linda Ellis! She is going to be a parliamentary force to be reckoned with in the LPNC's future. She has a keen mind and once she has an idea, she will pursue it until it has fully played out. No shrinking violet there!

I should include that we DID pass a resolution calling on the General assembly to end ballot restrictions. I think it's important to come out of every convention with things we can say together directed at the legislature. Yeah for Linda Ellis, who got this resolution passed! A lot of times everyone wants a resolution to pass, but a few people are really insistent that their changes be considered. Parliamentary magic - as much as people hate it sometimes - lets just that happen: everyone (mostly) gets their say, and the result is something most people can get behind. What's sad is when we don't get to the final stage, and that DIDN'T happen this time, and so again - thanks to Linda!

Of course we had the obligatory wrangling over the phrase "cult of the omnipotent state". Eric Smith became the unlikely torchbearer of the Rothbardian standard, trumpeting his challenging to the cult at every oppurtunity, and that particular flight of flowery language survived yet one more attack from people afraid that voters will be turned off by a political party which wants to end all taxes, legalize everything that's voluntary and consensual, and let furriners overrun the country because of one bit of passionate rhetoric in our platform.

Cathy Heath and John Hopkins gave a rousing why-we-hate-Municiperialism talk; so rousing that the convention attendees wanted to vent about forced annexation more than focus on how to stop it.

I noticed Barbara Howe then and at other times during the convention tactfully bringing people back to task-at-hand by quietly asking "But what can we do to help stop this?" I want to be like Barbara Howe when I grow up!

The lunch speaker was Mike Munger, who gave a great and stirring talk that somehow managed to seem scholarly at the same time. Wonderful speaker (and great hair!). Here is a copy of the text of the talk for those who missed it. The next day Mike announced his candidacy for governor!



The afternoon speaker was Roy Cordato, Libertarian and Locke-er, and the most notable thing about that was the offering by (surprise? Not!) one of the Buncumbe folks that (again I paraphrase) Libertarians need to demonstrate their concern for the environment by getting behind a CARBON TAX! Cordato, I am happy to report, was properly horrified and wondered if he had come to the right convention. Libertarians PROPOSING taxes?! All too common, these days, I'm afraid, and maybe it's never been different. How embarrassing! Next thing you know they'll be calling for a national sales tax ... oh, wait! they have! Cordato did recommend that the LP get on the cusp of a movement to fight/resist the threat of NC's Global Warming Commission. That bears some serious consideration. Here's Cordato looking properly horrified at a floor suggestion that the LP embrace a Carbon tax:



The dinner speaker was Jim Lark. Sorry, no pics. I got speached-out and listened from the hallway. Strange, but being in an audience is tiring after a while. The awards banquet was touching - I am afraid we came perilously close to a Group Hug. But the awards were as follows:

- Most valued college affiliate: UNC-G
- Most valued County affiliate: Wake
- Most valued activist: Susan Hogarth (oddly enough, my 'speech' consisted of "thanks. thanks. thanks." Which - given my usual ... loquaciousness ... was probably a shock to some, although no doubt a welcome shock ;)

The auction was - as always with Eric Smith at the helm - awesome and very entertaining. People were totally into the spirit of the thing: a plastic penguin cup that Thomas Hill donated, for instance, was the subject of a hot bidding war between Doug Adams and Bob Ritchie, with Bob taking it finally for $400! (Note to self: seat Bob and Doug together again at the next convention). There were some sentimental objects, too; Jess Bailey cast two penguins from melted silver coins Tom had given her and they brought in a total of $850. It was just awesome! (I have one of the penguins - woo-hoo! thank you, Jess, Tom, and Richard!).

Later Saturday people drank more, talked more, campaigned for spots on the EC. I got the DVD rolling and fell asleep watching The Prisoner, then woke up long enough to put myself to bed.

I'm rushing here because I am going to be late for work. Sunday I didn't take any pictures. We elected people. Here is how it shook out:

Changes to EC:

Chair: Phil (not really a change I guess) Notable: Allison Jaynes
nominated Eric Smith and Brian Irving urged delegates to write
in Lee Wrights who had told Brian he was not in the running. When
Phil took the vote tally, Brian immediately and publicly resigned
from the EC.
Membership: Richard Norman
Political: Eric Smith
Newsletter: Barbara Howe (Max Longley did not make it to the convention)
Outreach: Susan Hogarth (this was the result of a smoky-back-room-deal
- sans smoke or back room - between Richard and I, as we both agreed
the best 'fit' was him doing database stuff and me pestering people to
do things)
Press: Tom Howe

At-large: Joy Elliott (Raleigh), Robert Sinnott (G-boro), and Stephen
Burr (Charlotte)

Eric auctioned off a few more things, we raffled off the Libertarian Lotto basket, which Lee Wrights won and promptly auctioned off for ballot access :) and eventually we finally finished up. We ended up with piles of cash, which Barbara and Alex are still counting, a lot of enthusiasm, and some very tired folks.

Other convention pictures are here.

  ¶ 1:54 PM 1 Comments Links to this post

  Saturday at LPNC Convention '06
Richard Norman signs the pledge ("I DO NOT BELIEVE IN OR ADVOCATE THE INITIATION OF FORCE AS A MEANS OF ACHIEVING POLITICAL OR SOCIAL GOALS") .

Eric Smith shows off another tattoo during floor business.

Cathy Heath of StopNCAnnexation is Fed Up With Municiperialism!
    ¶ 11:38 AM 5 Comments Links to this post

  More pics from the LPNC Convention reception
Some more pics from last night. Featured are Bernard Carman, Carl Milsted, Susan Hogarth, Lee Wrights, and Chris Spruyt.
    ¶ 11:33 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  More pictures from the LPNC '06 Convention reception


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  Pictures from the LPNC '06 Convention social
Pictures from the LPNC '06 Convention social.

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  Barbie Goes to Jamaica Barbie Goes to Jamaica

I was going through some old email (archiving my gmail account locally) when I cam across an email about a friend's trip to Jamaica.  ¶ 7:15 AM 0 Comments Links to this post