Showing posts with label cotton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cotton. Show all posts

Friday, September 13, 2024

harvest, dangerous rhetoric, weird dreams


It’s a good thing I took my picture of the cotton field when I did because it’s been harvested the last two days.

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Now that Trump was fact checked during the debate about his untrue hateful claims that hardworking, tax paying LEGAL Haitian migrants, who were invited to come fill factory jobs, are eating neighbors’ cats and dogs and geese from the pond in the park and ridiculed soundly on social media for saying it, he and his rabid supporters have tripled down on the claims to the effect that Haitians are being targeted in the community with vandalism and verbal attacks making them fearful of even leaving their homes. Not satisfied with that, when the mayor of Springfield OH had the audacity to state unequivocally that the accusations of pet eating are completely unfounded, agitators called in a dozen or so bomb threats against various government buildings and schools. While no bombs were found it did disrupt the city and cause a lot of fear. Nice going assholes. Trump and his hate filled minions are getting more dangerous by the day and are showing us exactly what we can expect if he gets elected. 

I do feel that Harris has the popular vote but we all know that is no guarantee she will win when it is the electoral college that decides who our president will be. It is crucial that people check their voter registration frequently since republicans are throwing people off the rolls left and right and doing what they can to restrict early voting and voting by mail. Now that Kennedy has switched parties in a bid to become part of Trump’s administration if elected, he has sued 10 states, especially swing states, to remove his name from the ballot in an effort to send his potential voters to Trump. North Carolina just allowed his name to be removed 5 days after the deadline for removal causing millions of ballots already printed to be destroyed resulting in delaying the mailing of absentee ballots scheduled to be sent out the same day shortening the time allowed to receive and return ballots by mail. It’s even more crucial that Harris voters do not let these tactics prevent them from voting.


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Pictures from the yard to wipe the nasty taste of republican politics away. The surprise lilies are opening,


the white philippine lilies surprised me with blooms this morning,


and the indigofera.


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I enjoy having a cocktail in the evening before dinner but I have refrained a few days before and after the different procedures over the summer. For this last one, I stopped a week before and now two weeks after the procedure I have still not had a drink, thinking I would wait until my heart tissue had grown over the watchman device, a process that takes about 45 days that will be confirmed by the follow up TEE. I’ve noticed two things since I stopped having my evening cocktail. One, I’m sleeping much better, which I like, not waking up nearly every night for hours of sleeplessness. Usually I wake up about 2 AM and it’s generally 4 AM before I get back to sleep. The second thing is I have been having the weirdest fucking dreams almost every night. I mean weird crazy shit and I’m not so sure I’m liking that. 


Last night I dreamed that I went to SHARE and they had completely rearranged things so the building was empty except for tables around the perimeter and people would now have to go to each table and ask the volunteer for whatever food item that table had. I thought this was a bad idea and asked one of the volunteers to step out for a conversation in which I expressed my views and he said they were going to try it out anyway. As I walked away heading home the street became flooded, the water getting higher and higher until it was about chest level when the street turned into a sort of concrete canyon where I stepped out onto dry ground but I was surrounded by water and the only way to get home would be to fly which I did. My sister was there flying beside me when we came to a building with a window just above water level and we managed to open it and step into the bathroom of a stranger’s house. We went into the adjoining room to tell the people that everything was flooded and we came in through the window wanting them to follow us and show them. Then I left with a friend to go borrow some guy’s sailboat and we would spend the day sailing. We got to the building where the boat was and the guy was helping get it rigged but it was taking forever. I tied the line from the sail to the mast with a bowline knot which I wanted him to notice and remark on it but he never did. Then another guy showed up and it gets a little murky, something about not getting the rigging right but the first guy, the one whose boat it was, and I started flirting and I’m thinking, this is the one. My friend gets angry when I tell her he is going to go on the boat with us because this was supposed to be just the two of us. I go off the bathroom (?) to change or something and when I come back everything is still not ready and I’m getting impatient because it’s getting late and he is putting together food for three when there are four of us. It’s almost 2 PM, I tell him, he says it's fine and to help and make the sandwiches. I’m trying to figure out how to put the three sandwiches together in a way to feed four people when I wake up.


I mean really, what the fuck was that about? I may have to start drinking again.



Wednesday, September 11, 2024

hurricane, the debate, Texas snow


Monday I was all ready to start going back to the yoga class twice a week in El Campo but I accompanied my friend undergoing cancer treatment to her appointment in Galveston for a liver scan, a two hour drive there and a two hour drive back, and didn’t get home until 3 for a late lunch after which I had about an hour before I would have to leave again. So I didn’t go but I am planning to go tonight.

Monday evening it looked like TS Francine was going to skirt the coast before making landfall somewhere around the border between Texas and Louisiana giving us two days of rain but yesterday it had moved farther away from the coast while it strengthened into a hurricane. This morning it’s already past us and landfall has moved farther east heading for New Orleans. For which I’m grateful since I’m still dealing with the damage from Beryl. As for rain, we got about a five minute shower around 5 PM Tuesday. 


So, of course, the debate was last night. We didn’t watch it. I just cannot tolerate Trump’s voice, his butthole puckered mouth, his accordion hands, and his constant stream of lies, conspiracy theories, and hateful rhetoric but now I kind of wish I had seen Harris’ masterful handling of Trump. I did monitor social media and my grandgirl Autumn watched it and we texted back and forth so the following is gleaned from what others have said and an article from NPR. Trump was Trump and he got played like a fiddle by Harris. Harris had clear answers to the questions while Trump, as usual, did not answer a single question, the closest he got was saying he had ‘concepts’ of a plan for healthcare which he did not elaborate on, but instead went off on his riffs though Autumn said he was a little more cognitive than he is at his rallies. While he tried to goad Harris, she never took his bait but she cleverly pushed every one of his buttons during her clear answers and then stood by while he reacted. The moderators gave Trump more speaking time and more chances to speak in rebuttal than they did Harris, which on the face of it was unfair and unbalanced, but it also seemed to be giving the man all the rope he wanted showing the world how unhinged and completely unqualified he truly is. And he really didn’t like that the moderators fact checked him. Harris’ prosecutorial style put Trump on the defensive and he wouldn’t even look at her during the debate. A poster on social media wrote that he practically ran off the stage when it was over. One commentator later criticized Harris for not controlling her facial expressions, her looks of humor and disbelief at Trump’s responses but did not criticize Trump for his facial expressions of disgust and distaste when Harris was speaking. Because we women are supposed to be pliant and demure I guess. In a call to Fox this morning Trump said he wasn’t sure if he wanted to do another debate (I guess not) even though he previously tried to goad Harris into one on Fox and of course he thinks ABC needs to be punished. 


Even so, the media is still saying that this election is neck and neck and that Trump could still win according to the ‘polls’. I don’t give much credence to the polls especially this election cycle because people under a certain age don’t have land lines, over which most polls are conducted, and they don’t answer calls from unknown numbers on their cell phones. I know I don’t. We can’t get complacent though, we can’t assume a victory. We still need to campaign and get out the vote and most importantly, vote. Be sure to check your voter registration regularly because red states are removing millions of people from the rolls and in Texas and Florida, the governors are actively using the police to conduct raids and voter intimidation.


I finished my drawing of the tallow tree leaves but haven’t started on the watercolor yet. I may do another drawing of something else first before I put my colored pencils away. The page in my sketchbook is 8.5” x 5.5”.


Some pictures from the yard…yellow bells aka esperanza, porterweed, morning glory bush (one of my favorites)


and it’s cotton harvest time, the field at the end of my street.