Shopping in the Boycott Age

I do my best to do the right thing.  Usually, the right thing aligns with my own self-interest.  I lose nothing and I feel good about myself.  It's win/win until it isn't.

We have run out of QTips.

I have tried a variety of off-brand and generic cotton swabs and none have come close to the consistency, shape, durability, flexibility, and overall wonderfulness of the patented QTip.

QTip is manufactured by Elida Beauty , a subsidiary of TIGI Linea Corp.  I've never heard of either of them. In this political climate, that's a good thing.  So far, so good.

I've been fairly successful at weaning myself off Amazon.  It's amazing how deep the stores in my closets run.  Before he neutered the WaPo and threw himself a wedding that had an entire city begging him to just go away, Jeff Bezos was the asnwer to problems like this.  Now, not so much.

I could go to Walmart, but they aren't much more palatable.  I could go to CVS or Walgreens but they are presenting problems when friends show up for "no prescription needed in AZ" COVID shots.

I'll end up at Costco, a worthy concern, and come home with 1,875 individual cotton swabs.  

That's a lot of QTips.... the price of trying to live up to my own expectations.

Time Passes - Nothing Changes

There are so many shootings.  

What is wrong with white men in America today?  Can you imagine if these shooters were women?  Commissions would be empaneled, laws enacted, restrictions placed.  

I try to avoid going down that rabbit hole, but a random Substack post today got me thinking and hurting and ultimately posting a comment about what it's like to experience gun violence on a mass scale in your own town.  

Commenting on gun violence sent me back to my early, post-perforation posts.  From the Before Times, I found that I had plans to be in Chicago, celebrating the birth of a grandchild with a friend from junior high and seeing a play at Steppenwolf.  

I know that I lost the first three days after not bleeding to death on the sidewalk (which I do remember) to morphine and surgical anesthesia in the hospital.  But the fact that I was going on a trip to Chicago is new news to me. I had no idea.  Not about the trip, FAMBB's grandbaby, the tickets I'd somehow managed to secure.    

After almost 15 years, the experience continues to jump up and surprise me. I still haven't met up with FAMBB; another loss to toss on the pile.  

Anyway.......  

I never anticipated that The Burrow would be a big blog.  It was built on friends, and family, and fellow bloggers from the early days (2009) when BlogHer conventions were friendly reunions instead of marketing seminars.  Once I was outed, my readership grew exponentially then dropped off again over time. I replied to a post on Substack recently, and The Burrow had 765 visitors in one day, a gazillion fold increase. 

For those of you who have no idea what I'm typing about, here's the start of my daughter's post on January 9, 2011:

(M)y mom attended the Congress on your Corner event yesterday at her local Safeway. Just as she reached the front of the line to shake Ms. Gifford's hand a gunman appeared and began shooting with an automatic weapon. My mom was shot three times.

That's a sentence I never thought I'd have to type.

There it is, in a nutshell.  A sentence she never thought about was suddenly her all encompassing reality.  That's the piece that people seem to forget.  Gun violence is a Before/After event.  It turns the unimaginable into the here and now.  Safety is no longer blithely assumed to exist.  Caution's the new normal.  

It's also more than a personal event.  It's more than family and friends whose lives are touched.  All of Tucson was traumatized, and that trauma turned into love.  I wasn't the only one to notice it; there was, for a while, kindness in the air.  Even now, when it comes up, people know where they were and how they felt. 

And still, the violence goes on and on and on.  I've been railing about it for more than a decade.  I wrote this about two weeks after I intersected with bullets:

America is not going to get better unless we are all in it together again.  ........ let's do something..... Christina will never be able to fulfill her incredible potential..... it's on us now to do it for her.

Giffords.org  is a good place to start.  Electing responsible humans at all levels of government is even better.  Be sure that guns are safely locked away before you or your children visit someone's home; being brave enough to ask an uncomfortable question comes with the territory these days.  

Let's tone down the rhetoric and all agree that neither sitting at a bar on the waterfront, nor shopping at Walmart; nor going to kindergarten should require constant vigilance and a bullet proof vest.

I'm so tired of singing this song.

Exhausted

That's the second time this week I've started with that as the title.  I think my fingers are trying to tell me something.

I'm taking the day off, and hope you'll understand.  It's been an interesting week.

To occupy yourself during these minutes when The Burrow would steal your time, why not 

            Call Congress   (202) 224-3121 main switchboard

            ~ NO CR until the recissions are restored along with the Medicaid and SNAP-Ed funding                       allocated by Congress, which holds the power of the purse

            ~ Release the Epstein files.  I want to know if my President is a pedophile.

            ~ Investigate vindictive prosecutions by Pam Bondi's DOJ

Have a great weekend.  

Modern Medicine, Part 2

 Yesterday's post (also published as late as this one.... sorry..... life, y'know?!) laid out a nightmare scenario. The comments pointed out that I have good insurance, a connected network of physicians, friends with the ability provide specific advice, and the mental acuity to handle it all.  

And none of that meant anything at all, until this morning.

The triage nurse called and we have an appointment! She explained why we wait until Tuesday; it's medically appropriate.  She apologized for my having to call so often, adding that my calls did, in fact, move us to the top of the list.  They are overwhelmed; nine of the doctors in the practise have recently resigned.

Lesson One: We are lucky to have Medicare coverage and a local hospital with an excellent Emergency Department.  Still, there was a slight delay in registration until the insurance goes through. If it were denied, would they ask for cash up front?

Lesson Two: Our network of connected physicians seems to be shrinking every day.  It's easier to make more money near Phoenix than it is here in Southern Arizona.  That's how we lost our wonderful primary care doctor; more money, fewer patients, more time for everyone.  Most everyone we know travels to the Mayo Clinic.  Records are being requested now.

Lesson Three: We have great friends, and between them they know everyone.  The father of a friend of a friend's son, a specialist in the area, provided a script for me to use.  I read the text message into the ear of message taker.  She asked me to repeat it back, to be sure I get it right.

Lesson Four:  There is absolutely nothing wrong with being the strongest advocate imaginable.  I led with worry and fear and concern.  I never blamed the message taker.  But I damn well let them know how unbelievably pissed off I was that nothing was being done to fix the problem.  I reminded them that I'd called before, and that I would be calling back in a few hours.  I did all this with good humor and ferocity.

It's a lot easier to think rationally once a plan is in place.  If your red flags went off at the simultaneous departure of nine colleagues, so did mine. I'll do a little digging.  Pain is well controlled without anything more than OTC remedies.  Showered and fed and loved, patient and spouse are doing just fine.

The sun came up and we were here to see it.  By definition, it's a good day.

Modern Medicine

We took a trip to the ER yesterday afternoon.  We were seen immediately, treatment was given immediately,  a lovely PA spent quite some time explaining what was happening and what needed to be done.  We felt great when we left.

Follow up with the GP and the specialist was called for in 1-2 days.  Easy peasy, right?  After all, it's written in the discharge orders so it must mean something, right?  

HAHAHA.

The GP was prompt in responding that the specialist was needed to respond to the ER visit since they couldn't handle the next step in their office.

The specialist's triage team has been an entirely different matter.  No call back yesterday. No call back this morning.  I have now called and spoken to their scheduling office more than I've spoken to my kids.

Their first available appointment is in December.  Yes, not today or tomorrow but three months from now.  The scheduler was really really sorry she couldn't help me, but only the triage team can find an appointment and there is no way that I can contact the triage team directly.  I'm certain that she and her colleague have forwarded my requests, my urgent requests, my this needs to happen now requests, to whatever the triage team might be.  If they exist.  If they care.

There is no one in the office who can help - not another physician nor a PA nor an RN or an NP nor anyone else.  

This leaves me wondering why someone who is unreachable would take on the responsibility of being the point person for a serious disease.  It took 4 days and many phone calls and finally a personal appearance in the office lobby, with a loud voice demanding answers, that gave us a paper with test results but no explanation.  That took another appearance in the office the next day, refusing to leave until we had an answer. 

There is not another specialist in town with an appointment before May, even though we need someone today or tomorrow.

Is this the state of medicine today in Tucson?  We moved here in 2006 for the weather, the cost of living, and the miles of doctors' offices lining every other street.  Since then, we've gone through 4 GP's (3 left for pregnancy, one for a more lucrative practise) and then no GP when the last one left.  

Not to worry.  Our NP and PA caregivers are wonderful, responsive, and available by message board.  

The practise was unable to hire another GP for over a year.

I'm off to see her for the first time this afternoon, leaving my patient at home with telephones and liquids and blankets at hand.  I scheduled this appointment when she was hired last month; I had my choice of days and times.  I hope I like her.

Meanwhile, we have sent information up to the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix to their triage team.  Fingers crossed.............

(please don't ask for more details)

Filling My Soul

I went to Grandma's Garden today.  It was only in the high nineties, versus the triple digits we're promised for the rest of the week. The kiddos were glad to see me, happily occupying themselves by pulling out the weeds which have completely covered the ground. It rained yesterday and the dirt was forgiving, easily releasing the roots,  to everyone's delight. 

The Most Wonderful Social Worker dropped by to tell me the SNAP-Ed folks had dropped off an irrigation system.  After losing their funding they are closing up shop, distributing goodies from their storage to those they know and love. 

The Perfect Principal thanked me for walking the littlest kiddo across the playground while rubbing his back and murmuring soothing nonsense about why he couldn't play with the hose. 

The high achievers are planning a unit on garden to table produce; their teacher asked if I had any ideas as she guided a line of scholars I'd watched grow over the years up the stairs.  I told her about the unused hydroponic systems languishing in the far end of the farthest hallway as she disappeared onto the 2nd floor. 

After 90 minutes,  I was exhausted. 

As always,  I'm in awe of those who do it all day. I'm grateful that they make me feel like family. 

Something Else We Can Do

Credit to E. Jean Carroll's Substack for this simple idea.  Joyce Vance restacked it and wrote about it and that's where I found it.

During World War II,  Norwegians wore paper clips on their clothing to signify their resistance to the Nazis.  E. Jean is suggesting that Americans now do the same.  

In her own words:  Why the paper clip mutiny? The president can't sue the paper clip. Can't ban it. Can't deport it. Can't arrest it. Can't defund it.

I came home and made sure I had a clip for every occasion:

It's simple.  It's less provocative than a t-shirt.  It makes a statement with less chance of engendering violence against my person.

And it will feel good.  

It's one more arrow in my quiver of resistance, alongside the phone calls and the postcards and the protests and the signs.  We can get this done.  I have to believe that or I couldn't get out of bed in the morning.   

And then there is Mayor Pete (will I still call him that when he's President??) telling Instagram that:

Donald Trump is way less 

popular than he wants you to 

believe.

And you are significantly more 

powerful  than he wants you to 

think.

 

 So, open your junk drawer, find a paperclip, and join me.  

Disney+

If you are the parent or caregiver of children under 12, this is not for you.  I understand the importance of Nemo and Mickey Mouse to those adults who need a moment's peace.  Far be it from me that your offspring be denied the pleasures of the Clubhouse.

But, for the rest of us, the reckoning has arrived.  I cancelled our subscription to Disney+ today.  It took a few minutes with a live person on Xfinity's chat.  It felt really good.

The historians are right - they come for the comics, first.  

It's not just Disney and ABC, of course.  MSNBC sent Matthew Down packing for reminding us that hateful words lead to hateful actions.  CBS canned Colbert for..... I'm really not sure.  Big business means big mergers and that means that the government gets a say in what happens, and apparently what is said, too.

So, what do we do?  I've been noodling on this all day.  I graduated from high school with Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney.  Our parents were friendly.  His parents always impressed me with their openness, their generosity, and their commitment to doing the right thing.  His father served on the school board and was involved in social justice causes.  As Daddooooo would say after running into him in town, he's a mensch.

When he died, his obituary asked for contributions to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I found that factoid while ruminating and stewing and fuming and trying not to weep about what FFOTUS and his fiends are doing to our country.  It gave me an idea.

SPLC isn't exactly focused on free speech, but it's adjacent enough for me to feel satisfied making an $18 donation (my usual) in memory of Arthur Iger, who always tried to do the right thing, and sending an email card from SPLC to my old classmate (at Robert.A.Iger@disney.com) announcing the fact.

I don't know what else to do.

That Face

We are visiting the littlest grand babies and their parents.  Hence,  my days are full of love and oatmeal on the face,  with little time to blog.  Sorry this is late. 

Knit One, Purl Two

The talking heads were having a hard time figuring out where to focus.  There was just so much there there.  

Is Kash Patel worthy?  Better yet, is he capable of answering a question instead of spewing unrelated bile at the inquirer.

FFOTUS is in Great Britain, much to the disdain of their media.  According to Rolling Stone, British station Channel 4 will broadcast a marathon of Donald Trump's lies during the president's planned state visit with King Charles III.  That's our President they're trashing.... except it's not trashing when it's true.  

Half-staff flags honoring a person who was perfectly comfortable with a few gun deaths competed with Mrs. Kirk stepping out of her trad wife role and taking center stage.  How long can one side mourn and the other decry when the real issue isn't what kind of man he was but the fact that guns are everywhere and no should feel safe anywhere and school kids are dying and ... y'know, I'm so tired of reminding people of that.

And then there's the Epstein Files.  Will they?  Won't they?  Where are they?  And the most interesting question to me, from both a gossip and blackmail perspective, is who's on the list.  Cabinet members for sure, but who else?  

Actually, a written list would be dangerous.  Madame DeFarge was right. I'm thinking we should be looking for an intricately knitted scarf, long and twisted and delivering the goods in an artful way.  

If someone wants to start naming names, I've got the needles and yarn.

What's The Difference?

I spent last Sunday scrolling through the interwebs. 

It left me feeling informed, amused, and aware of what to expect over the next week.  Also,  my fingers were achy, my eyes were burning,  and I was vaguely displeased with myself. 

I wasn't sure why. 

I wasn't on Facebook or Instagram, following the algorithm's highways and byways. I dove deep into the longer Substacks. I looked at the music venues in town, and did some research on the artists I didn't recognize. The local reporting, published on Substack but narrowly focused, alerted me to an issue I needed to raise with my county supervisor. 

But I'd spent most of the day on my phone. That just felt wrong.  

But then I remembered the Sundays off my youth, lying in the living room floor with the NYTimes. 

Arts and Leisure, Opinion, the front page.... amusements,  ideas,  and facts.  Just exactly what I had gleaned from scrolling. 

Was that better?  Why am I judging myself? 

Who knows. 

It Has Gone Too Far

No, not flying the flags at half mast. 

No, not inflammatory Presidential remarks. 

No, not the price of hamburger. 

What pushed me over the edge, after a day spent with dark thoughts about the state of the world,  a world where a school shooting is the second story on the news,  came when ESPN's football coverage revealed a colorful graphic with this headline: AI-Generated Fantasy Insights.

Is irony dead? No,  I think it's worse. 

Fantasy creating content for fantasy and calling it insightful has got to be a significant sign of the approaching apocalypse.  

Google search shoves AI generated responses in my face, with a tiny AI responses may include mistakes disclaimer after I scroll through all the verbiage. Why take the time to create something that might be wrong?

Because it's easy.  Because it's easy to blame the other side. Because it feels good to say the subject is in custody. Because facts are for those who think, and who wants an educated populace?  

It's so much easier to create the fantasy and believe it is real. 

Little Cuter has been saying It's all pretend for a long time.  I'm getting closer and closer to saying it too. 

Political Violence Has Absolutely No Place In Our Nation

CAVEAT: This was written Wednesday afternoon,  based on the first reporting.  Given my history,  I know enough to doubt that the facts in these early reports will stand the test of time.  Still.....

*****

Another young man was assassinated, in front of a crowd of college students, and his wife, and his 3 year old, and his 1 year old.

Sit with that for a minute.  

Babies watched their daddy die, right before their eyes.  The first, unfiltered reporting spoke of lots and lots of blood on his neck.  They saw that.  

HoneyBunny is 2-going-on-3; she remembers minutiae from our past visits. I'm not going to think about what she would have made of that scene, now and for the rest of her life.

Mark Kelly was without words.  Nicolle Wallace looked stricken.  

Political violence has absolutely no place in our nation.  Lots of politicians on the left and the center and the right said that.  I felt like screaming I ALREADY LEARNED THAT LESSON - WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN???

I knew of Charlie Kirk. I knew of Turning Point.  That about sums up the depth and breadth of my knowledge.  I had no idea he was only 31.  I didn't know about his work with Don Jr on the 2024 campaign.  I was completely unaware of Turning Point's focus on motivating young conservative (sic) activism.  

I didn't know this appearance was the first stop on his American Comeback Tour, where was willing to enter into Prove Me Wrong conversations.  The first question was about the number of transgender mass shooters in America.  There was no second question.

But I wonder where it was going. Trans-phobia?  Gun Safety?  We'll never know if a provocative conversation might have changed someone's mind.  

This moment isn't about him, really.  Except for his family and their friends, this is just one more episode of gun violence silencing free speech.  I'm not that enthusiastic about what he was selling, but he certainly should have been able to do so, and live to tell the tale.  

Just as Christina-Taylor and I should have been able to get our handshake from Rep. Giffords, back in 2011.  Just as she should be celebrating her 24th today, September 11th.

*****

I've been working on birthday card post for a week or so.  It was all edited and ready to go.  

It doesn't seem inappropriate to append it here.

I've been thinking about her more than usual lately.

I'm not surprised; my life includes interactions with kids at all the ages she was when I knew her, and with young adults who are the age she'd be now.  

Every new school year, I notice the ones most like her.  The outspoken ones, the thoughtful ones, the snarky ones who help before they are asked - they are as appealing to me as she was.  

When a strong for her age 3rd grader hefting a bag of soil over her shoulder laughs at my surprise, I'm reminded of my young friend whose presence on the boys' baseball team invited derision.... until she hit one out of the park.  Would she be playing in the Banana Ball League in the fall?

I watch Amster's boys embarking on adulthood and I wonder what advice she'd offer, being just a few years older and, presumably, wiser.  The Mr. 20-somethings are moving out of town.  Would CTG have stayed close to home?

It's hard for me to imagine her as an adult.  Mostly, we're spending time together in the way-back machine, playing pickup sticks on my living room floor.  We're cruising the neighborhood, leaving our homemade flyers for CHRISTINA'S BUSINESS in every mailbox, except those she and her mom had excluded for a variety of reasons.  She had a list.  

Sure, I remember her at the Safeway, but that's not where I usually go.  

For me, she's six and seven and eight and nine, and for some part of all of those years, she was mine.  And she still is, all these years later.

Happy Birthday, Christina-Taylor.  You are not forgotten.

The Extraction Economy

All those tracking cookies are extracting your habits, your likes, your spending, your gaming, mining the agglomeration for information they find useful. I knew all this, but reading Amanda Hess's memoir , Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age, opened my eyes wider than they ever expected to be.

Technology was alternately terrifying and exhilarating and worrisome, but always a cash cow for the corporate world.  Her book is personal and universal.  The loss of self, subsumed by the master status of pregnancy, morphs into becoming a magnet for brands offering everything baby.  

People wanted her when she held all the potential of another human being, a being who would require all sorts of equipment (her take on the Snoo is hilarious and heartbreaking) and whose patterns could be added to the algorithm with alarming speed.

She was much less valuable once she gave birth.  Diapers, belly bands, wrinkle creams at staggeringly high prices guaranteed to erase stretch marks and every other sign that once you were carrying a person inside your body.

Everyone wanted a piece of her body - to inject or remove or examine or medicate - hoping to learn something, in addition to reaping staggeringly great financial rewards from performing the procedures.

So I started thinking about what's being extracted from my life.  Google Maps knows where I've been and when, what route I took and where I stopped and shopped on the way.  Various search engines and blogs and Substacks and company and university' and magazine websites have me in their systems.

The convenience is worth the intrusion, I suppose.  I clear my cookies and my cache sometimes, but I'm always peeved when I have to reintroduce myself.  I made a calculated decision to expose myself to the extractions because free information at my fingertips is invaluable.

But I started reading Erik Larson's The Demon of Unrest today, and suddenly free was less than valuable.  I didn't want to be overwhelmed by information about the Civil War.  I didn't want an AI interpretation of events.  I didn't want to fall into a rabbit hole of link after link.

I wanted a concise, factual, unbiased recounting of the days leading up to the firing on Ft. Sumter, the subject of the book. I asked TBG to grab the C volume of The World Book from the shelf above the tv.  

The volume was published in 1983.  The article was written by a professor well versed in the Civil War.  Though it's more than 40 years old, the information presented complemented rather than disputed Larson's rendition.  Both focused on the same major points, Larson in great detail and The World Book right there with an additional factoid or two.  

The World Book has asked nothing of me over the decades.  For a while I subscribed to the yearly Annuals and their glue in stickers alerting me to the articles which had been updated.  But mostly the volumes have sat patiently waiting on the shelf, ready to answer a basic question without having to log into anything.

Big Cuter spent hours with the A book; he learned to differentiate more types of aircraft than I knew existed.  That volume still opens to those pictures.  Nobody would know that unless we told them.  Nobody sent him recruiting letters from the Air Force.  There were no commercials featuring flying toys suddenly appearing on tv.  

I paid once and it was satisfied.

Nobody buys books any more, I'm told, much less hard backs, much less encyclopedias.  But look at this:

worldbook.com

No longer plain white or gold or red, now it celebrates jazz while inviting you in.

And it only costs $1,175.

Under the Wire

At least in Pima County, SNAP-Ed lives.

I received a quick response from the grant administrator at our local Cooperative Extension office, who was happy to attach an application and some reminders. There is still $500 for stuff that promotes healthy eating.  Gardening is Ground Zero for them.  

I spent today crafting a proposal.  

I did a deep dive on olla balls, with and without a renewable water source.  Passive irrigation may be the solution to my long running feud with Grandma's Garden's drip system and its evil master, The Controller. He has dials that click and change his display and a big, black, plastic, on/off button; with evil intent he entices little fingers to twist and push them.  The kids just can't help themselves.  

I turns out that there is a factory right here in Tucson.  Their on-line chat was very helpful.

I researched raised beds and soils and rakes.  It took a lot longer than it might have because this time the grant does not allow on-line ordering.  I'm happy to shop locally, but that means I also have to organize the transportation of all this largesse.  As much as I am weaning myself from Jeff Bezos, Amazon Prime's free delivery service is looking quite appealing right now.

I totaled it up and asked for the herbs and veggie starts and fabulous soil, promising to shop at Cooperative Extension's own Tucson Village Farm and Rillito Nursery, keeping my tax dollars at home and returning some to the source of it all in the first place.

I shared the completed Google Doc application this afternoon.  

I love when a plan comes together. Thanks for the encouragement.

Scratching My Itch

There's no other excuse for my dropping $50 at Sprouts for five absolutely stunning but utterly inappropriate 5 gallon pots of mums.

The first thing the label told me was how much they really don't like hot weather.  Did I mention that it's going up into the triple digits again this week?

My zinnias are thriving in the containers which would normally house fall blooms, if it felt anything like fall.  It may be just a couple of weeks from the change of seasons, but here the drama is the occasional day in the 90's.  

We do no leaf peeping here in the desert. 

The migrating birds seem to be hanging out a little longer, the quail babies are a little later in appearing, but I'm still not doing much of anything outdoors after 9am.  

But Little Cuter has been talking about buying her seasonal mums and my news feed can't resist tempting me so when I went into Sprouts and saw those beauties begging me to take them home and make them mine I was powerless to refuse.  

Of course, with summer blooms still blooming in the pots that were to receive them, I had a problem.  In addition to not loving the heat, they enjoy an evenly moist soil.  

Moist is not a word we use very often in the desert. 

I spent far too long moving the newbies around, comparing and contrasting, shifting and lifting, and then realizing that all six of us were wilting from the heat.  I placed each one, still in its pot, at the receiving end of an emitter that was already watering a container.  

It's not gorgeous, but it will get the job done.  I'll take pictures once they look as good as they should.

SNAP-Ed (Continued)

Our local paper, the Arizona Daily Star, ran an item today about this loss of funding.  You can read it here, if it's not behind a paywall.

The suggestions in the comments yesterday to write letters about this are lovely, but are inadequate.  The decision has been made and there's no getting around it.  A phone call to your Congressional delegation might be useful (phone number below if it's not already in your speed dial) but I'm holding out little hope.

I did not know that Melania is interested in this issue.  I'm not sure she's talking to FFOTUS these days; she's certainly not living in DC.  I'll send a postcard to her at Trump Tower anyway.

Who knows what kind of inquiry that postcard might start?  If they come for me, I'll let you know.

 United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121

And welcome to those of you who found me from my restack on Substack.  Keep making those phone calls.  It's only a republic if we can keep it.

Hitting Close to Home

Hidden amidst the hue and cry, buried beneath vaccines and tariffs and cankles (all of which are unpleasant but manageable for us), came something that touched me directly.  My news and Substack feeds led me to this tidbit:

FNS encourages state agencies to submit notification of termination by Aug. 15, 2025, and to return unexpended FY 2025 SNAP-Ed grant funds by Dec.1, 2025. 

Let me explain.

Grandma's Garden has been the recipient of much wonderfulness from the USDA's SNAP-Ed school garden program.  We received a hanging garden grant (including plants and soil and irrigation) when we were first starting out.  Later on, they funded tools and trugs and fertilizer.  They went shopping for vegetable starters with me at Rillito Nursery, providing both sage advice on edible flowers and a credit card to pay for it all.  

Each grant was worth about $500. It was good, seeing my tax dollars spread throughout the community, benefitting hundreds of kids and their families every year, through an occasional contribution from my government, one that wouldn't even show up as a rounding error in the federal budget.  

It felt good in ways that funding weaponry did not, not to mention that I was personally benefitting from some of the actual dollars we'd paid in taxes.  I didn't have to dig into my own resources; my tax dollars covered it all.  

All that is soon to be lost, per the tidbit above.

Food and Nutrition Services (FNS) administers the SNAP-Ed piece of USDA's alphabet soup.... at least until December 1, 2025.  I'm not sure if that's a random date or a budgetary mandate but the upshot is that there won't be any more federal support for exposing the Prince scholars to the wonderful world of vegetables.  

Further investigation reveals that funding for the Arizona Health Zone program, which oversaw my grants, ends October 1, 2025.  (AZ Health Zone was nothing but wonderful; it's worth checking out what's being lost.)

The Prince scholars' free lunches will continue; I should be happy about that, I suppose.

I fired off an email to my last contact at Cooperative Extension, which bounced back.  She left her post early this year.  

Her successor is now the recipient of my query.  Are there unspent funds in the grant program before the scythe cuts them down?  I'm less than thrilled at the recission and the demand that they be sent them back (unlawfully?) to an ungrateful Treasury.  

It was worded more politely but still got my message across.  If there are dollars to be had by legitimate means, I'm all over it.  

I've been raging against the machine for a long time.  It will be nice to get some tangible payback for my participation in our democracy...... and in the lives of little kids in my small corner of the world.  

Sweltering in the Garden

We huddled under the umbrella, seeking shelter from the sun.  

The soil itself is just too hot to support new life.  We can't plant any of the seeds Rillito Nursery donated.

The weeds which had overgrown the ground have been trampled and smooshed by little feet.  Broken and despairing, they succumbed to the sun and the lack of water.  They are now remnants of their former selves, lying there, pale and yellow.

The gardeners noticed a new hole at the edge of one of the big, please-don't-jump-on-that, rocks.  Being children, they were curious and their curiosity led to poking their feet around the edges, which led to kicking loose dirt in its direction, which was headed toward poking a stick inside to see what was in there.

Remembering that Poison Control in Arizona calmed my reptilian qualms by pointing out that 99% of snake bite cases are the result of drunken young men with pointed sticks, I stepped into the conversation, explained that it was some beast's home and that they might not welcome our intrusion.  

Yes, it might be a lizard, but it might be a snake.

That put an end to that adventure.

We moved on to watering our citrus tree, and sending seeds home in Solo cups filled with soil, and standing under the hose.  The principal came by to say hello, smiling at the soaking wet students as they ran to line up.

It was a lovely day.  Thanks for being here to read this so that I can remember it.  The Burrow is a two way street.

A Disappointment

I was really looking forward to getting back into a classroom.  The Humanities Seminars at the University of Arizona have kept me entertained and educated since we moved to Tucson.  Between COVID and grandkids and life in general I've been enrolling less frequently, but this term I was intrigued.  

I signed up. I did the reading.  I studied the slides.  I was prepared.  This morning, I took a seat in the front row, opened my yellow legal pad, clicked my ball point pen, sat up straight, and smiled at the teacher.

It was all downhill from there.

I did the reading and studied the slides the night before, wanting the keep the information fresh in mind.  Science isn't my strong suit; I wanted to do my part.  So I was mildly surprised that his introduction sounded familiar; I must have really understood what I read to be going along so easily with his lecture.

But as he went on, my surprise turned into dismay. 

He displayed and read aloud the slides that were included in the homework.  He spoke the words I read in preparation for what I thought would build on the framework outlined in the text.  Instead, he was reciting the text.

There were a lot of typos and grammatical errors in the pdf he supplied, which, I suspect, is an almost final draft of his latest book.  I'm not at all surprised the it's all that's occupying his brain.  It is fascinating and interesting and well written and will, I am sure, be all cleaned up when it is released to the public.  

I thought I was getting insights beyond the text, not a living audio book.  I'm looking into a refund.

Thank You

I was feeling listless.

I couldn't get myself motivated.  TBG couldn't do anything to help.  

Even a breakfast of champions didn't perk me up.  And it tried its best:

snoozeameatery.com

Avocado and caramelized onions and sunny side up eggs and spinach salad (mine had tiny tomatoes, too) - except for a banana that fulfills my potassium quotient for the day.  That's the diet that's supposed to put spring in my step and vim in my vigor... or at least help to keep my heart pumping and my blood flowing.

I read a YA novel about suicide.  As I turned every page, I remembered Little Cuter asking me why the books I brought home from my YA For Your Middle Schooler book club were all so damn depressing.  There was a good message buried beneath all the good intentions but ultimately it was probably not the best choice.

But it was the shortest library book on my shelf, and we have plans for tonight.... ok, watching Bill Belichick coach college football, mostly for the train wreck vibe, may not count as plans for most people, but in this house it's appointment television.

I sat myself in front of the keyboard, opened to my blog's dashboard, and for the first time today I really smiled.  

The dashboard includes the number of page visit each post garners, usually 30-40 views per day.  But then long weekends happen and suddenly 250 and 125 and 78 are populating that column.

It's marvelous to think of you spending some of your free time with my thoughts and me.  Come back anytime.  I'm always here.

******

Question:  Do I have to put my white skirt away?  It's after Labor Day, but it's 105 degrees outside and not getting any better in the foreseeable future.  Inquiring aspiring fashionista wants to know.

 (This is one of my favorite posts, every year.  Slightly abbreviated, with a somber coda, for 2025.)

My Zaydeh was a paperhanger. So was his son, my uncle. They belonged to the Paperhanger's Union. When he retired, my Zaydeh got a lapel pin and a photograph of himself and the also-retiring Union Rep. The Union Rep got a pension and health insurance. No one knows if he got a copy of the photograph, too.

It was that kind of complicated relationship to Labor, with a capital L, that dominated my growing up years. Daddooooo's father owned a business. G'ma's father was a worker. That dynamic influenced their relationship in the same way that her parents' accented speech and his parents' religious devotion were there, bruising the edges of what must once have been love but wasn't anymore.

I sat on my Zaydeh's shoulders as he bounced me around the living room, singing Zum Gali Gali, a Zionist work song with one line, repeated over and over: the pioneer is meant for work; work is meant for the pioneer. When I needed a biography for a book report in second grade, G'ma suggested Eugene Debs. I was the only one in the class who wrote about the Wobblies, who knew that a Socialist ran for President from prison, who understood the plight of the working man.  

In my house, there was a sense that Zaydeh was on the right side of an argument I didn't know we were having.

Daddooooo inherited his parents' wedding dress business, working alongside his brother and the cutters and pressers and seamstresses he'd known his entire life. He took care of the girls, the worker bees, the ones who created what he tried to sell. He struggled to make a success, and failed, and among those to blame were surely the Union Guys.

We needed unions - the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire proved that protections were necessary and that management had no interest in protecting the welfare of the worker. He knew that.  He showed me the location in NYC, decrying the entire incident.

I didn't understand his anger. I'm not sure that he did, either.

G'ma told me stories of her parents marching in Solidarity Parades, though never when Daddooooo was around to hear.  It wasn't worth giving him the chance to trash her parents' politics.

The battle between labor and management, waged over my kitchen table.

*****

I'm not sure why FFOTUS decided to share the facade with TR (a true champion of workers' rights), but draping his big, beautiful face over the Department of Labor right before Labor Day feels like something right out of Orwell's 1984.

https://tinyurl.com/3mwubt2f