Housekeeping

Quiet day.

I forgot to remove the pump from the truck when Maia left (we have a flat) so I had to dragoon Alexa to head to OSH with me. I wanted some copper tape to defeat some of the snails. They are having a no sales tax sale, so we got a bit more than that.

Some more soil, four plants in 4" pots (two lavenders, french tarragon and a dill), a fly trap; and a zapper (the weather is warming up, and the effluvium of hundreds of rodents breeds them, even with composting), a long pot (window box type) some fertilizer (Whitney Farms, 7-4-2, with various baccilli and mycorryzidae) a couple of paintbrushes; so I can linseed oil Maia's pottery bat, and some more small pumice.

Came home, drilled out the bottom of the last half-barrel, taped the bottom with the copper, started mixing soils; while the grape soaked, and then planted it. I didn't recall that this one (the volunteer, sprouted in a pot of tri-color garlic three years back) was in a two-gallon pot which was half pumice. It came free pretty easily. It also has very nice roots. With a little luck they will have lots of character and maybe even some bankon structure at the base.

Put the dill (which is not the best thing to try and re-pot) into the pot the grape came out of.

Cleaned up the dog-yard, and have some bread rising (beer-bread, San Miguel dark). I have to find out when Maia is getting home (she has a study session after work) and whether she will want supper. For me, I think some Irish potato omelettes will suffice.

The Danish were, so-so. He calls for too much butter, and I needed more sugar, since I didn't glaze them. The nectarine filling was superb, the cheese needed a touch more lemon. So, next time remove another 1/4 cp of the butter, and make it 1/3rd salt, instead of pure sweet. Maybe thin the neufchatel with a bit of double cream, and try the trick of mashing the butter by hand, under cold water, before rolling it out, and putting it in the dough.

Call it a qualified success. Not what I wanted for three hours of labor, spread over two-days, but no one here has complained, and the prospect of more experiments got favorable response.

Liberal Ideals

There's a lot of talk about what the Liberal, and Conservative sides of the american public believe.

Me, I used to be centrist. These days that's seen as liberal. So be it.

So what do I believe? More to the point how do I explain it to the rest of the world.

I believe liberty is local. That one's freedom isn't abstract, it's concrete. Freedom to not be searched at whim, to say what I want; when I want and to whom I want. Freedom to worship, or not, as I see fit. I'd go on, but my restating the Bill of Rights, as I see it ought to be applied would get tiresome.

So, what do I want from Gov't? That's a little harder, but not much. I want government to see to it that those rights are secured. I also want it to secure a couple of things not in the Constitution, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." It's worth noting the writers of the Declaration of Independence didn't say property, which would have been far more in keeping with the political philosophy of the day. No, they were liberal to the point of radical in that regard.

Liberalism is at the heart of the American philosophy. It was the conservative who wanted to keep slavery legal. It was the conservative who resisted women getting the vote. It was the conservative who opposed a minimum wage, and Social Security (and they still do). It was, and still is, the conservative who wants a regressive tax structure, where the rich get their social services from the sweat of the poor.

Sure, they talk a good line, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the servings the middle class, and the poor, have been getting from the folks on the right, is some pretty thin stuff (look at the loopholes in the bankruptcy law which just cleared the senate... if you can afford to have your assets put into a trust, you can keep them, and even avoid having them counted as part of your net worth when you file Ch. 7 and get your debts erased. Ken Lay isn't going to suffer, but the employees are. Then ponder that there is no cap on the interest credit card companies can charge, they defeated an effort to make it 30 percent).

Digby, over at Hullaballoo says it better than I can.

The case for responsive government that provides services to the people and keeps the market functioning in a healthy way springs from the liberal belief in justice, equality and liberty. The bill of rights is the founding document of American liberalism.

We believe that while property rights are fundamental to American law, liberty means more than property rights only. There is a reason that Thomas Jefferson wrote "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" instead of the more familiar (at the time) "life liberty and property" in the declaration. Even then, America was about more than this cramped view that freedom is nothing more than freedom from taxes. Freedom is also the inherant right of each individual to dominion over his or her identity, body and mind.

We believe in free speech and freedom of religion with almost no exceptions because no individual can be trusted to make such distinctions without prejudice. We believe in the right to a fair trial and we believe that those who represent the government must be held to a very high standard due to the natural temptations the government's awesome judicial and police power can present. We cannot have a free society where government does not adhere to the rule of law.

We have fought for universal suffrage, labor laws, civil rights and the right to privacy among many other things because we believe in fairness, equality and social justice. We believe those principles require a society such as ours to ensure that all people can live a decent and dignified life. We think that democratic government, being directly accountable to the people, is the best institution through which those pinciples can be successfully translated into action. We are always on the side of progress, looking forward, stepping into the future.

The founding fathers were liberals. Our tradition is as American as apple pie.