Pasta, yogurt, and fun.
Zakopower III
One more from Zakopower.
The Financial Crisis, Explained
A fairly succinct explanation.
In the Orchard
I don't understand why the apple had to take the fall. It's not a terribly exotic fruit, and it doesn't seem to inflame the passions like, say, a mango. But perhaps that's the point: sin isn't supposed to be exotic -- it's the everyday things that get you.
But the everyday can be miraculous, and I suppose that's what Thoreau was getting at in Walden.
Maybe he had an apple orchard nearby. (I can't recall. I haven't read Walden since college. I set out to read it again, but my timing was off: I was coming back after two years in Poland and I got absorbed in the sit-coms shown during the flight and I ended up leaving my copy of Walden in the seat pocket in front of me. I'd like to think that brought some joy to the next passenger, but I know full well that the cleaning crew got it first. Hopefully someone read it.)
Apples in an orchard become out of the ordinary -- exotic even. After all, a day spent in the orchard can end with a bag of Pink Ladies in your kitchen and a feeling of satisfied exhaustion.
We spent the day at Sky Top orchard in Flat Rock, North Carolina. Our goal was simple: arrive when the Pink Ladies are ready. K called earlier in the autumn and we planned a visit for mid-October.
Pink Ladies are tough to get: they appear late in the season and disappear quickly. K and I discovered these slightly tangy, crisp apples in Asheville, and we always bought as many as we could as quickly as we could.
Today, we had our pick -- literally. We met a group of friends (I represented exactly 50% of the non-Polish delegation), had a picnic,
and then set off in search of Pink Ladies.
We passed by Golden Delicious, Fuji, Rome, Stayman, and other varities. Good apples, each and every one, but not as multidimensional as a Pink Lady.
For those of you who've never had the treat of crunching into a Pink Lady, it's an apple that starts of slightly sweet but has a tang that appears moments after the first bite and seems to grow as you eat the apple. It's sweet without having the cloying flavor of a Golden Delicious and it's tart without the alum-esque qualities of a Granny Smith.
The Pink Ladies were all the way at the back edge of the orchard. Past the newly planted grape vines and the empty McIntosh trees.
We were about the only ones out there. Does no one else know about Pink Ladies?
After walking, picking, and more walking (the second installment being more difficult carying a basketful of Ladies), we had break, led by L.
Then we had a pumpkin photo session, also led by L:
And now, finally having a bag full of coveted apples, we're all so sick of apples they are still sitting, disrespectfully, by the door, right where we put them when we came home.
Words, Shortcuts, Longcuts, and Sentences
It's 5:20 on a Saturday morning. K wakes me up: "Can you go get some milk for L and make sure she's covered up?" If K goes, L starts fussing and crying when she leaves the room; it works out better for everyone if I go.
I stumble downstairs, warm some milk, and head to the Girl's room. She's asleep in the corner of the crib, blankets strewn about her but not a single one on her. I pry her sippy cup from her hand, causing her to wake up. With the refilled cup in her hand, L is about ready to go back to sleep, but she has one more request. She raises her head and says sleepily, "Banket."
As I start to spread a blanket over her, she begins fussing. "Tata, no! Banket! Banket." "Banket," you see, is not just any blanket, but her favorite blanket, a soft yellow blanket she's had since birth. It's a bit too think for a chilly evening like this, so I spread the blanket over her, wait for her to drift to sleep, then cover her with a second blanket.
L's vocabulary increases daily, and she's begun making sentences and even her own shortened versions of words. Often, I'm not "tata" but "tat."
"Chodz, tat!" she'll say to me when dinner's on the table and K's sent her up looking for me.
Our cat, Bida, is sometimes "Bid." "Trzymac" ("hold") is "trzym," pronounced "cim" ("chym" in English transliteration). "Jacket" is simply "Jack."
And yet she'll also unnecessarily extend some things. "Bida" can also be -- indeed, usually is -- "Bida kicia," which would roughly be translated "Bida kitty." And all cats, in books and in real life, become "Bida kicia." We recently met a new cat named Kissy and tried to explain to L that this was "Kissy kicia," but to no avail: "Bida kicia!"
"Kupa" and "siusiu" ("poo-poo" and "pee-pee") are always said together. In fact, L likes to call Bida to the door, open it, and encourage her to go relieve herself in the yard. It sounds like this: "Bida kicia, chodz! Idz! Kupa siusiu!"
When Bida is outside and we ask L, "Where is Bida?", the reply is always the same: "Kupa siusiu!"
Black Armstrongists
If you listen to the first two minutes of Rod Meredith's Feast of Tabernacles 2008 opening message, you'll hear this:
God has been very, very good to us this past year. We deeply appreciate it. Even now, as I make this sermon, a little before the Feast, God has blessed us financially, and we're running around 8-10% increase in our financial income. We're very grateful for that. He's moving us ahead. The new television network we have, the Black Entertainment Network, is producing great fruit!
I wonder how that could possibly be working out? After all, the Living Church of God, of which Rod Meredith is the leader, is an Armstrongist sect, which means one thing: theological, institutional racism.
But does that mean individual racism? Can a church be xenophobic and its members not? Can a theology be racist and its adherents not?
I grew up in the Worldwide Church of God, an organization that was founded on a racist theology. The leadership denied the cornerstone of the group's theology was racist. "We don't believe non-whites are inferior to whites, but we believe interracial marriage is a sin." Or worse: "We believe all humans are equal before God, but in the Kingdom of God will be segregated." Yet those protestations don't stand up to what the founder and leader, Herbert Armstrong, wrote.
The church believed that the white, English-speaking nations of the world were God's chosen people. America, Britain, France, and the other white European countries were the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, with Britain, America, and the other English-speaking nations having special status.
God had always favored whites. Indeed, Adam was white, as were Noah, Jesus, and all the other patriarchs and prophets. Armstrong wrote,
There was rampant and universal interracial marriage--so exceedingly universal that Noah, only, was unblemished or perfect in his generations--his ancestry. He was of the original white strain.
It is amply evident that by the time of Noah there were at least the three primary or major racial strains on earth, the white, yellow and black, although interracial marriage produced many racial mixtures.
God does not reveal in the Bible the precise origin of the different races. It is evident that Adam and Eve were created white. God’s chosen nation Israel was white. Jesus was white. But it is a fair conjecture that in mother Eve were created ovaries containing the yellow and black genes, as well as white, so that some of the children of Adam and Eve gave rise to black, yellow, as well as white.
The one man God chose to preserve the human race alive after the Flood was perfect in his generations--all his ancestry back to Adam was of the one strain, and undoubtedly that happened to be white--not that white is in any sense superior.
If you are a livestock breeder, planning to enter your prize animals in a livestock show--perhaps at a state or county fair--you will be sure to enter only thoroughbred or pedigreed stock! Mixing the breed alters the characteristics.
God originally set the bounds of national borders, intending nations to be Separated to prevent interracial marriage. Notice, “When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance [speaking of land or geographical boundaries], when he separated [notice–he separated] the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people . . .” (Deut. 32:8).
But people wanted to intermarry--until there would be only one race!
That desire seems still inherent in human nature today! (Mystery of the Ages, pages 147, 148)
God is a livestock breeder, and we his chattel. We whites are the thoroughbreds; breeding with other races will only alter our original, perfect, blameless strain.
Furthermore, the world was originally segregated, and the Kingdom of God would be, too:
In Noah’s day, the chief cause of the violence and chaos of world conditions was racial hatreds, interracial marriages, and racial violence caused by man’s efforts toward integration and amalgamation of races, contrary to God’s laws. God had set the boundary lines for the nations and the races at the beginning (Deut. 32:8-9; Acts 17:26). But men had refused to remain in the lands to which God had assigned them. That was the cause of the corruption and violence that ended that world. For 100 years Noah had preached God’s ways to the people–but they didn’t heed. [...]
Noah merely preached to people in his human lifetime. But Noah, in the resurrection, immortal, in power and glory, will be given the power to enforce God’s ways in regard to race.
It seems evident that the resurrected Noah will head a vast project of the relocation of the races and nations, within the boundaries God has set, for their own best good, happiness and richest blessings. This will be a tremendous operation. It will require great and vast organization, reinforced with power to move whole nations and races. This time, peoples and nations will move where God has planned for them, and no defiance will be tolerated. (Mystery of the Ages, pages 341, 342)
Never mind that that the "evidence" Armstrong gave about a white Adam and the "project of the relocation of the races" was his own assurance that "it seems evident." Armstrong was God's spokesman, and that was sufficient.
What's odd, though, is how selectively this kind of racist tripe was preached. I, for one, never heard anything like that in the congregation I attended.
Perhaps that's because there were three black congregants.
"Apostle" was the highest rank, but there was only one of those: Herbert Armstrong. The second highest rank would be "evangelist," which might be thought of as a cross between a bishop and an archbishop in the Catholic hierarchy, except they had no say and who would be the next Apostle should the current one die before the end of the age, which is what happened.
It is indeed difficult to imagine that any African Americans would be interested in a church whose theology included the literal proposition that "blacks will be sent back to Africa where they belong," but there were. Indeed, there was one black evangelist -- the highest rank attainable in the church.
In our congregation, there were exactly three African American congregants: a late-middle aged couple and a young lady. They sat together on the second row, always in the same seats, just a few seats down from where my family sat.
For a long time I thought the young lady -- an attractive woman in her mid-twenties I'll call Natalie -- was related to the Smiths (obviously not their real name). Indeed, I thought she was their daughter. Why else would they sit together?
Perhaps because they were three in a congregation of 200. They represented around 1.5%.
Eventually, Natalie moved to another congregation of the same sect. There were more African Americans in that congregation, allowing for greater socializing for her: the church wasn't segregated, you see, but it did ban interracial and outside-the-church dating, so Natalie was a condemned single had she stayed in our area.
It's difficult for me to imagine, looking back on those three individuals' self-imposed segregation, what would have drawn them to the sect to begin with? What, to African Americans, is attractive about the notion that white, English-speaking individuals are God's chosen people, the original Lost Ten Tribes?
All of this makes me wonder how much the executives at BET really know about Meredith and his theology.
Another Brick in the Wall
In the Park (Redux)
Cleveland Park in downtown Greenville has undergone a renovation, and it's a favorite destination for the Girl.
We only took the Sigma 10-20mm lens with us. It's a challenging lens to use because it's so difficult to fill the frame.
It also severely distorts some things: lengthens noses (for all the obvious reasons) and generally does weird things to body shapes.
But it can certainly provide some interesting perspectives.
They’ve Lost It
If they ever had it. Common sense, that is. Republicans see “politically motivated attempts to damage the [Republican party]” everywhere. Even when it’s a Republican-selected prosecutor:
After his investigation, Steven Branchflower, a former prosecutor hired by a Republican-controlled legislative committee, concluded that Monegan’s rebuff of the entreaties played a role in his firing but was not the only reason.
Palin’s supporters argued that the report, released less than four weeks from Election Day, was a politically motivated attempt to damage the Republican presidential ticket. The report initially had been due at the end of the month, but the Democrat managing the investigation said its release was moved to Oct. 10 so it would not come on the eve of the election. (washingtonpost.com).
Shades of Kathleen Parker.
I’m so freaking sick of that — anything critical of the Republicans is just “politically motivated.” Yet this kind of crap is fine:
With Mr Obama leading in the polls and only 24 days to go before the US presidential election, the series of outbursts have sparked the interest of the Secret Service, which guards the candidates and other dignitaries.
They launched a brief investigation after a man was heard — but not recorded — by several journalists shouting “kill him”, when Mrs Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, was speaking of Mr Obama’s links to Bill Ayers, a former domestic terrorist who is now a professor in Chicago. The two men sat together on educational committees but have rarely been in contact for six years.
Before a rally in Pennsylvania this week, local Republican leader Bill Platt warmed up the crowd by several times referring to “Barack Hussein Obama,” focusing on the Illinois senator’s middle name, trying to highlight his differences with other Americans.
When John McCain asked “Who is the real Barack Obama?”, a supporter shouted back: “He is a bomb.”
Chants of “Nobama, Nobama” mingled with cries of “terrorist,” as one banner in the crowd declared: “Go ahead, let the dogs out.” (telegraph.co.uk)
Astounding: was it a political rally or a potential lynch mob?
They might as well have said, “Turn the dogs loose on that darky socialist pink commie bastard, boys!”
A comment on the Post piece pretty much sums up how I feel about McCain now: “Well that’s the end of her political career. Now McSame has no where to go. Just think this was a man I use [sic] to respect. Now with all of his hate motivated rallies leaves him with shame. HOW SAD.”
And just below it:
Remember to Win Back America:
Last census
Whites=80.2% of population
Blacks=12.8% of population
Proof positive that this is bringing out the worst honesty in people. And here are two videos to prove it:
The McCain-Palin Mob in Strongsville, Ohio, Part I
The McCain-Palin Mob in Strongsville, Ohio, Part II
Two for Palin
First a joke my friend sent:
While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old rancher,whose hand was caught in the gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Palin and her bid.
The old rancher said, 'Well, ya know, Palin is a 'Post Turtle.'' Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was. The old rancher said, 'When you're driving down a country road you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle'.
The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued to explain.
'You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, and she doesn't know what to do while she's up there, and you just wonder what kind of dummy put her up there to begin with'.
Second, the Palin debate flow chart:
Make a Face!
And she did…
Issues or Popularity
I've been thinking about writing, for some time, about the coming VP debate. "Palin won't touch the issues," I was going to say. "It will be a personality show. She'll tell some cute stories and avoid saying anything of substance."
The BBC beat me to it.
"She has an amazing ability to turn a 45 second answer into a folksy story... she's never been forced to know the issues."
Mr Halcro said Mrs Palin's biggest strength is her ability to "fill the room with her presence". (Palin: The great debater?)
The article goes on to suggest that the economic crisis might make a difference, that people might expect the candidates to know the issues.
And it's clear Palin doesn't know the issues:
It’s the End of the World as We Know It…
That's what the rest of the world is saying, anyway. The Spiegel staff writers, and hence a certain segment of Germany, certainly thinks that America's world dominance has come to an end:
[Bush] talked [at the UN] about terrorism and terrorist regimes, and about governments that allegedly support terror. He failed to notice that the delegates sitting in front of and below him were shaking their heads, smiling and whispering, or if he did notice, he was no longer capable of reacting. [...]
"Absurd, absurd, absurd," said one German diplomat. A French woman called him "yesterday's man" over coffee on the East River. There is another way to put it, too: Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN.
The American president has always had enemies in these hallways and offices at the UN building on First Avenue in Manhattan. The Iranians and Syrians despise the eternal American-Israeli coalition, while many others are tired of Bush's Americans telling the world about the blessings of deregulated markets and establishing rules "that only apply to others," says the diplomat from Berlin.
But the ridicule was a new thing. It marked the end of respect.
The article continues,
Is it only President George W. Bush, the lame duck president, whom the rest of the world is no longer taking seriously, or are the remaining 191 UN member states already setting their sights on the United States, the giant brought to its knees? UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon referred to a "new reality" and "new centers of power and leadership in Asia, Latin America and across the newly developed world." Are they surprised, in these new centers, at the fall of America, of the system of the Western-style market economy?
The fall of America? We were always taught, as citizens of any great empire in history, that our global empire would last forever. The American middle class rules the world, right? Not anymore -- the middle class is disappearing, and the UN Secretary General is already talking about "new centers of power."
I don't know if any news agencies are reporting about this kind of pessimism in Europe. Obama, though, at least recognizies America's fall from grace. Does he see how bad it really is?
The banking crisis in the United States has shaken many things in recent days, not just the chancellor's affection for America and the respect the rest of the world once had for the US as an economic and political superpower. Since the US investment bank Lehman Brothers plummeted into bankruptcy two weeks ago, the financial crisis has developed a destructive force of almost unimaginable strength. The proud US investment banks with globally recognized names like Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs have all gone bankrupt, been bought up or restructured. The American real estate market has essentially been nationalized. And the country's biggest savings and loan, Washington Mutual, has failed and been sold at a loss.
In light of the almost daily reports of losses in the financial sector, it seemed almost secondary to note that the disaster had also turned into one of the biggest criminal investigations in American history. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is already investigating 26 large financial corporations as well as 1,400 smaller companies and private citizens for possible fraud.
Economists now characterize what began two years ago with falling prices in the American real estate market as the biggest economic disaster since the world economic crisis of the 1930s. No one knows whether and how the meltdown of global financial markets, which would have grave consequences for the world economy, can still be prevented.
And now, of all times, the world is faced with a preeminent power that no longer seems capable of leading and a US president who is not even able to unite his divided country in an hour of need.
For weeks, Bush ignored the crisis, insisting on the strength of the market and telling Americans: "Everything will be fine."
Indeed -- we might finally be reaching the point at which Americans are no longer pacified by such platitudes. We are in a new America.
This is no longer the muscular and arrogant United States the world knows, the superpower that sets the rules for everyone else and that considers its way of thinking and doing business to be the only road to success.
A new America is on display, a country that no longer trusts its old values and its elites even less: the politicians, who failed to see the problems on the horizon, and the economic leaders, who tried to sell a fictitious world of prosperity to Americans.
It's a very long series of articles, but take the time to read it: The End of Arrogance.
A lot of zeros…
What is to blame for not getting the rescue plan through? Republican ideals or Democratic politicizing?
Representative Adam Putnam of Florida, the No. 3 House Republican, said Pelosi's "speech cost us votes" because it set a "partisan tone," a reference to her comment before the vote blaming Bush administration policies for the crisis.
Democrats voted 140 to 95 in favor of the legislation, while just 65 Republicans backed the bill and 133 opposed it. Bloomberg.com
If so, what did that look like?
"Bush's policies got us into this mess."
Joe Blow Republican replies, "That's a personal and party insult! I'm voting 'no'!"
I'm not sure whether the bailout is a great idea, but I'm a little nervous about the alternative. On the other hand, I've a feeling that this is only a plan to get us through November 2008. With banks failing throughout Europe, this crisis is taking on a semi-global dimension, so I'm not sure buying bad debt in America will do much good at all in a globalized economy.
Besides, I'm not sure that $700 billion is really a significantly large number:
The Dow Jones-Wilshire 5000 folks say the stock market lost $1.2 trillion in value today. Year-to-date, the figure is $4.2 trillion. [...]
If the stock market closes tomorrow unchanged, this will be the third-worst month for the S.&P. 500 since World War II. The two months that were worst marked panicky lows, so perhaps there is hope. (NYT)
Bets for tomorrow? I'm thinking we'll see another significant drop. Maybe the index will drop a cool 1k in a day?
German Economics Experts
The German perspective on the bailout:
It’s not a call for assistance; it’s a scream for help. US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is asking other countries to help buy up bad US debt. The US government is putting up $700 billion in taxpayer money in the hopes that the measure might restore stability in the financial system. Some countries are planning to help. But the German government has answered this call quickly and clearly: no.
Economics experts think that’s the right response. As they see it, in the long run, those responsible for the crisis — who have been cashed out with high salaries and bonuses for years — will not be penalized for billions “but will be let off the hook like everyone else,” says Carsten Meier of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy IfW. According to Meier, by injecting capital into the market, the US government is putting everyone who speculated and lost back on their feet and thereby standing in the way of a market cleanup.(Spiegel Online)
I’m not sure I’ve heard anyone in the States formulate it quite that bluntly.