http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2009/08/cash-geezers-lower-retirement-age-55-now
The overriding theme of the link you included is that we need to tighten the labor market to drive wages up, which drives up the economy as a whole. Below are three ideas for doing that—tightening the labor market by legalization of labor, and taking older Americans out of the workforce:
1) An employment-related issue that should have been expanded on further is immigration. Having allowed our own to atrophy, America needs an infusion of physical muscle. This should come from Mexico. There are about 12 million undocumented Mexicans who should be legalized and made to pay into Social Security (SS). Beyond this, a guest worker program would also ensure order, higher wages, and increased SS coffers.
2) We could experiment. The government could leases land conveniently juxtaposed to public transportation. People over 50 are given an option. In exchange for full medical insurance coverage and a stipend, they forfeit regular SS benefits through age 70. During that 20-year window, they can live for free on the government-leased property and produce their own food while also planting trees (or something similar).
3) Create a jobs core for youth that could work pretty much along the lines of article 2).
Monday, October 25, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
TENT ROCK
The tent rock landscape, seemingly about a square mile of mostly cliffs, is biscuit colored. Parts of it that we walked close to were like bread with crunchy, nutty stuff (small rocks in this case) added to the crust. Rounded larger rocks darker and sometimes bluish in color stuck out here and there from the cliffs like accents.
Countless volcanic layers are separated by bands of hardened dust. This landscape must have been underwater for eons, since the winding forms are smoothed out and serpentine. It’s called tent rock because of bountiful pyramidal shapes that have the curious feature of round mounds atop them—like ice cream cones turned upside down with the scoop attached to their apexes.
We walked upwards through a canyon that is often very narrow. Large trees have fallen across the top in a few places, like beams, and boulders get wedged into it. The largest bolder I saw was about the size of the largest whales.
Since the canyon was formed by nature it doesn’t necessarily go along the ideal route of a trail, and so boulders might have been artificially located to create rugged steps that lead upward in a predetermined manner.
As so often these days, poor sleep made walking a strain, but I managed to not lag far behind Sandi. As usual, I improve when I get thoroughly warmed up. We got almost to the top, then hearing from a downward trekker that there wasn’t a loop to take us back down on the other side, we started back the way we came.
Three-quarter of the way down we came across a party: a young, good looking couple with the woman holding a baby, and an ancient couple standing in the shade. Before I took time to audit my words, I blurted out: “You can do it. I’m in my seventies, and I went all the way!” To which the old man responded, turning to his smiling wife, “Seventies? What about (something I didn’t hear)?” It could have been eighties, or maybe even nineties. They were very old, and did well to get that far. At the rate I’m going, I wouldn’t be able to make it there at their age. It was stupid of me.
Countless volcanic layers are separated by bands of hardened dust. This landscape must have been underwater for eons, since the winding forms are smoothed out and serpentine. It’s called tent rock because of bountiful pyramidal shapes that have the curious feature of round mounds atop them—like ice cream cones turned upside down with the scoop attached to their apexes.
We walked upwards through a canyon that is often very narrow. Large trees have fallen across the top in a few places, like beams, and boulders get wedged into it. The largest bolder I saw was about the size of the largest whales.
Since the canyon was formed by nature it doesn’t necessarily go along the ideal route of a trail, and so boulders might have been artificially located to create rugged steps that lead upward in a predetermined manner.
As so often these days, poor sleep made walking a strain, but I managed to not lag far behind Sandi. As usual, I improve when I get thoroughly warmed up. We got almost to the top, then hearing from a downward trekker that there wasn’t a loop to take us back down on the other side, we started back the way we came.
Three-quarter of the way down we came across a party: a young, good looking couple with the woman holding a baby, and an ancient couple standing in the shade. Before I took time to audit my words, I blurted out: “You can do it. I’m in my seventies, and I went all the way!” To which the old man responded, turning to his smiling wife, “Seventies? What about (something I didn’t hear)?” It could have been eighties, or maybe even nineties. They were very old, and did well to get that far. At the rate I’m going, I wouldn’t be able to make it there at their age. It was stupid of me.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
WEEDS
Mary-Louise Parker is a very sexy actress. She’s around 46 but looks 36. My interest in the TV series, “Weeds,” now in its sixth season, is centered on her.
She plays Nancy Botwin, a seemingly Jewish suburbanite who, who, after the death of her husband, turns to marijuana dealing as a way to support her two sons. Although the show has many strange turns over its long history, I am going only on what I saw in a single evening—around four episodes during a marathon airing. Without knowing details of the evolving drama, what I saw presented a huge, self-sufficient narrative of its own. Of course, this narrative has as much to do with me as with the show itself.
Being from Jamaica, and quite familiar with the intricacies of the marijuana culture, I am on familiar ground. I’m also preoccupied with class and race—another bi-product of Jamaican heritage. And this show, while its ads feature all white people, the episodes I saw speak strongly to the melting-pot aspect of America. True, the staple characters are Botwin’s brother-in-law; a male city-council ally; her two sons; and a female part-nemesis whose story seems slightly detached from and parallel to the main one. But I was fascinated by non-white characters who might well not be part of the long-run of the series.
A Hispanic drug dealer is an unwelcome ally for Botwin; her wholesale dealers are an African-American mother and son, Conrad, an infatuated young worker in the bakery she owns is East Indian. The men, in their various fashions, are magnetized by her sensual allure, her classiness, her intelligence, her spunk. While the official descriptions of the series don’t mention this, her sexual proclivities, her openness to sex with men of any background—as in a very steamy sex scene with the Hispanic man--are very central to my take of the show’s meaning. This woman is a devoted mother. She doesn’t consume weed herself. The edginess of her world gets her into endless difficulties. She is also highly sensual, and can more easily engage sexually with someone for whom she has no tender feelings than with someone dear.
The themes I take away from my brush with the show is how hot it is. It’s a maelstrom of evolving cultural patterns in which class, race, sex, gender, drugs are seen from a perspective of change. And Parker as Botwin is the nexus of these changes.
She plays Nancy Botwin, a seemingly Jewish suburbanite who, who, after the death of her husband, turns to marijuana dealing as a way to support her two sons. Although the show has many strange turns over its long history, I am going only on what I saw in a single evening—around four episodes during a marathon airing. Without knowing details of the evolving drama, what I saw presented a huge, self-sufficient narrative of its own. Of course, this narrative has as much to do with me as with the show itself.
Being from Jamaica, and quite familiar with the intricacies of the marijuana culture, I am on familiar ground. I’m also preoccupied with class and race—another bi-product of Jamaican heritage. And this show, while its ads feature all white people, the episodes I saw speak strongly to the melting-pot aspect of America. True, the staple characters are Botwin’s brother-in-law; a male city-council ally; her two sons; and a female part-nemesis whose story seems slightly detached from and parallel to the main one. But I was fascinated by non-white characters who might well not be part of the long-run of the series.
A Hispanic drug dealer is an unwelcome ally for Botwin; her wholesale dealers are an African-American mother and son, Conrad, an infatuated young worker in the bakery she owns is East Indian. The men, in their various fashions, are magnetized by her sensual allure, her classiness, her intelligence, her spunk. While the official descriptions of the series don’t mention this, her sexual proclivities, her openness to sex with men of any background—as in a very steamy sex scene with the Hispanic man--are very central to my take of the show’s meaning. This woman is a devoted mother. She doesn’t consume weed herself. The edginess of her world gets her into endless difficulties. She is also highly sensual, and can more easily engage sexually with someone for whom she has no tender feelings than with someone dear.
The themes I take away from my brush with the show is how hot it is. It’s a maelstrom of evolving cultural patterns in which class, race, sex, gender, drugs are seen from a perspective of change. And Parker as Botwin is the nexus of these changes.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
ABIQUIU STUDIO TOUR, 2010
ABIQUIU STUDIO TOUR, 2010
Driving north on Highway 84, you jog left on Fairview Drive in Espanola, which, at the first stop light, reconnects your with 84 north. Keep straight on 84 till you reach Abiquiu, the former homestead of the legendary Georgia O’Keefe.
On 84, you pass through a funky landscape of mobile homes, abandoned vehicles, and the churn of owner modified construction, unique with each home, that give a sense of joy and utility. This scenery is replaced by more open landscape as you near Abiquiu.
My wife and I took the drive today, intent merely to skim the surface, visiting the few sites that resonated favorably from the tour brochure. At the local inn and tour headquarters, we had delicious brunch, perused the store, and checked out the backyard shaded with large cottonwoods and which led across a stone bridge to site #16. From there, we headed to our clear favorite, the site (#30) of Armando Adrian Lopez.
Lopez , a native of Mexico, works in the tradition of such Mexican greats, all women, as Frida Kahlo, Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington. But there is a more inventive, materials-focused slant to Lopez. His approach to sculpture is experimental, informal, and ever evolving. He often uses found materials, combining industrial stuff like wire with organic substances like corn husks to make fantastic, delicate figures which suspend from above. These forms emerge only from his creative process, and not from pre-design. There is a feminine aspect to his work, and his fine paintings that organize the picture plane with sophistication and enchant with imaginative and sensitive imagery often feature androgynous figures.
Gabriel Cisneros at site 24 promised (from the brochure picture) to have a similar kind of enchantment to Lopez, but turned out to lack his creative fire and power. The land around his house was worth the excursion, however; it featured a powerful little waterfall that led into an acequia system. Beside the waterfall were Basquiet-like paintings that drew us up to an open air exhibition. These were the works of Isaac AlaridPease, who also did painted sculpture of naïve, folksy vehicles— childlike alligators, fish and other images carved out of wood and fitted with functional wooden wheels he also made. http://picasaweb.google.com/alaridpease/RocketBirdArt?authkey=q5cZb-dOJVg#
We ended up at the Purple Adobe Lavender Farm (#13). The central feature here is the store, where one can buy all sorts of lavender-enhanced products—cookies, drinks, soap, etc. I stayed outside, enjoying the wooden deck chairs under the largest cottonwood trees I’ve ever seen. We later looked inside the wooden playhouse, and, as we left the premises, commented on the lavender-colored flags sticking up from lavender-painted irrigation fixtures lining the driveway.
Driving north on Highway 84, you jog left on Fairview Drive in Espanola, which, at the first stop light, reconnects your with 84 north. Keep straight on 84 till you reach Abiquiu, the former homestead of the legendary Georgia O’Keefe.
On 84, you pass through a funky landscape of mobile homes, abandoned vehicles, and the churn of owner modified construction, unique with each home, that give a sense of joy and utility. This scenery is replaced by more open landscape as you near Abiquiu.
My wife and I took the drive today, intent merely to skim the surface, visiting the few sites that resonated favorably from the tour brochure. At the local inn and tour headquarters, we had delicious brunch, perused the store, and checked out the backyard shaded with large cottonwoods and which led across a stone bridge to site #16. From there, we headed to our clear favorite, the site (#30) of Armando Adrian Lopez.
Lopez , a native of Mexico, works in the tradition of such Mexican greats, all women, as Frida Kahlo, Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington. But there is a more inventive, materials-focused slant to Lopez. His approach to sculpture is experimental, informal, and ever evolving. He often uses found materials, combining industrial stuff like wire with organic substances like corn husks to make fantastic, delicate figures which suspend from above. These forms emerge only from his creative process, and not from pre-design. There is a feminine aspect to his work, and his fine paintings that organize the picture plane with sophistication and enchant with imaginative and sensitive imagery often feature androgynous figures.
Gabriel Cisneros at site 24 promised (from the brochure picture) to have a similar kind of enchantment to Lopez, but turned out to lack his creative fire and power. The land around his house was worth the excursion, however; it featured a powerful little waterfall that led into an acequia system. Beside the waterfall were Basquiet-like paintings that drew us up to an open air exhibition. These were the works of Isaac AlaridPease, who also did painted sculpture of naïve, folksy vehicles— childlike alligators, fish and other images carved out of wood and fitted with functional wooden wheels he also made. http://picasaweb.google.com/alaridpease/RocketBirdArt?authkey=q5cZb-dOJVg#
We ended up at the Purple Adobe Lavender Farm (#13). The central feature here is the store, where one can buy all sorts of lavender-enhanced products—cookies, drinks, soap, etc. I stayed outside, enjoying the wooden deck chairs under the largest cottonwood trees I’ve ever seen. We later looked inside the wooden playhouse, and, as we left the premises, commented on the lavender-colored flags sticking up from lavender-painted irrigation fixtures lining the driveway.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
OUR SQUIRREL FAMILY
I’m starting to appreciate better the squirrel family that lives under the shed. Only one individual comes out to eat. Or, lets say that I’ve only seen, or seen evidence of, one in recent days.
We had been disheartened by the nibbled cantaloupe near the front door. Such a waste, we thought. Why just nibble into one, leave it to spoil, then nibble into another? Recently, however, the cavity in the fruit was clearly being further deepened each day. (Apparently, a partly eaten fruit can still ripen more.) So it must have become more enjoyable with time. Yesterday I noted that the cantaloupe was gone altogether. Maybe it was a treat for the kids. Or maybe it had to be dislodged from among the other remnants of spoiled melons and squash that I had been putting beside it.
The family is large enough that it could devour or compromise all my fledgling melons, but yet it hasn’t. It must have a diverse source of food, and be pretty discriminating about how to manage it.
We had been disheartened by the nibbled cantaloupe near the front door. Such a waste, we thought. Why just nibble into one, leave it to spoil, then nibble into another? Recently, however, the cavity in the fruit was clearly being further deepened each day. (Apparently, a partly eaten fruit can still ripen more.) So it must have become more enjoyable with time. Yesterday I noted that the cantaloupe was gone altogether. Maybe it was a treat for the kids. Or maybe it had to be dislodged from among the other remnants of spoiled melons and squash that I had been putting beside it.
The family is large enough that it could devour or compromise all my fledgling melons, but yet it hasn’t. It must have a diverse source of food, and be pretty discriminating about how to manage it.
MY ANIMAL DAY
On two occasions I went out the front door, only to see a squirrel, mostly tail along the cement walkway, scurrying away.
I am trying to decide which, the squirrels or the rabbits, are most destructive to my garden. But I will give the prize to rabbits. Squirrels eat what’s on the surface, and, we hope, mostly what is plainly visible to the eye. I’ve seen a squirrel sitting upright, hands to mouth, eating a flower just the way a human would. Rabbits are completely different, burrowing under the earth and eating the roots of edible plants.
I struggled to establish my squash plants and, rabbits having decimated two early starts, I was down to one incredible zucchini squash. It grew to be the hallelujah chorus of zucchini plants, a thing of glory. Two days ago I went outside only to see these unbelievably thriving leaves all wilting. Only today after cutting away dead leaves did I see the mound of earth from rabbit burrowing entangled with the base of the plant. Similar things have happened with my cantaloupes.
Rabbits appear to be drugged, standing still when a normal prey animal should run away, and definitely not taking no for an answer. The concept of it being my garden and not rabbits’ garden is surely not computing.
The peculiar thing is that squirrels eat the fruit of the very plants of which the rabbits eat the roots, therefore destroying the fruits. You'd think that critters would at least cooperate among themselves.
I am trying to decide which, the squirrels or the rabbits, are most destructive to my garden. But I will give the prize to rabbits. Squirrels eat what’s on the surface, and, we hope, mostly what is plainly visible to the eye. I’ve seen a squirrel sitting upright, hands to mouth, eating a flower just the way a human would. Rabbits are completely different, burrowing under the earth and eating the roots of edible plants.
I struggled to establish my squash plants and, rabbits having decimated two early starts, I was down to one incredible zucchini squash. It grew to be the hallelujah chorus of zucchini plants, a thing of glory. Two days ago I went outside only to see these unbelievably thriving leaves all wilting. Only today after cutting away dead leaves did I see the mound of earth from rabbit burrowing entangled with the base of the plant. Similar things have happened with my cantaloupes.
Rabbits appear to be drugged, standing still when a normal prey animal should run away, and definitely not taking no for an answer. The concept of it being my garden and not rabbits’ garden is surely not computing.
The peculiar thing is that squirrels eat the fruit of the very plants of which the rabbits eat the roots, therefore destroying the fruits. You'd think that critters would at least cooperate among themselves.
ANIMAL FARM
We’re beset by squirrels. At first I thought there was only one living under the Morgan shed, mostly out of sight and out of mind. But with my clearing out a lot of junk to hang a show, the squirrels are scurrying around trying to decide what happened to their hiding and feeding--because they seem to eat old cardboard and even plastic bags full of trash—places.
I am wary of them, inconsistent person that I am. I have a dearly held vision of humans living in glorified cages (quite comfortably) while other creatures take over all the remaining free space, with no walls to hinder their migration. So here I am shooing squirrels away when they get too close. I’m afraid they’ll bite somebody, or march into the house and take over. An old, emaciated coyote also seems to be taking a shine to the place. By storing all manner of junk in arrangements that resemble animal settings--wild—I invite wild critters to hang around. My gardening style is pretty wild also.
But my St. Francis complex is being challenged by simple fear.
The squirrels don’t so much resemble cute little animals as a bunch of naughty children who run riot on the substitute teacher. They climb on everything, crawl wherever they can, decimate my food plants by eating their roots. There’s got to be some order here! What do I do???
I am wary of them, inconsistent person that I am. I have a dearly held vision of humans living in glorified cages (quite comfortably) while other creatures take over all the remaining free space, with no walls to hinder their migration. So here I am shooing squirrels away when they get too close. I’m afraid they’ll bite somebody, or march into the house and take over. An old, emaciated coyote also seems to be taking a shine to the place. By storing all manner of junk in arrangements that resemble animal settings--wild—I invite wild critters to hang around. My gardening style is pretty wild also.
But my St. Francis complex is being challenged by simple fear.
The squirrels don’t so much resemble cute little animals as a bunch of naughty children who run riot on the substitute teacher. They climb on everything, crawl wherever they can, decimate my food plants by eating their roots. There’s got to be some order here! What do I do???
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