After reading email and news, at dawn, I check the new vegetable bed.

The lettuce is arisen!

Five days after planting.  The seed packet says 7-10 days to germinate.  Perfect late September weather  has speeded the process–midday in the nineties and cool nights.  I’ve kept the beds damp.

I also greet last year’s food surfacing from the compost in the soil—-peach pits, bits of egg shell.

And the chard thrives–another  meal soon.

Peter emailed this from Canada under the subjectline “Harvest Time”:

On Sep 25, 2008, at 10:58 PM, Scott wrote:

SHOCK (Bush) doctrine all over again — good lord, no shame?

I replied:

Yes, but does this perspective now put us in bed with the right wingers that McCain is playing to?

Naomi Klein says:

“What Gingrich’s wish list tells us is that the dumping of private debt into the public coffers is only stage one of the current shock. The second comes when the debt crisis currently being created by this bailout becomes the excuse to privatize social security, lower corporate taxes and cut spending on the poor. A President McCain would embrace these policies willingly.”

But the right wingers now are blocking that dump.  Do they want to force the markets to drop further to increase Shock enough to not only cancel debate but cancel the election?

Is any of this going according to plan, or are the plans off?  Are Cheny and Bush and Paulson being outflanked by their own buddies?

What unthinkables are now being thought?

Please do not vote for a blank check to be provided to Paulson and company.  He and his cohorts are the problem not the solution.  Their insistence on the present emergency and the need for a gift of  700 billion dollars of taxpayer money is the latest and most outrageous example of  “Disaster Capitalism.”  The U.S. Congress has fallen for this before: the Patriot Act, Iraq, the Surge, to our growing regret.

It is your job to check and balance the Executive Branch, especially in cases like this when that branch is attempting an economic coup d’etat.  This amount of taxpayer money could do more good for the economy by being distributed to pay off people’s mortgages and providing them with health insurance rather than being handed over to those carrying out an immense extortion scheme.

Yesterday was the equinox.  I planted lettuce mix in the shadiest corner of the new vegetable bed I built next to the deck, with Chris’ help.  We dismantled the ziggurat on the top of the hill I constructed out of railroad ties to get additional materials for this and the two additional beds I’ll put in just below it.  Doing this physical work is an antidote for my growing sense of personal futility stemming from:

• the less than erratic progress of the Cal Poly sustainability projects I’m involved with
• my inability to get adequate mastery of SC accounting and fundraising
• the demands of Jan’s electoral campaign, even though I’m not taking any real responsibility and just doing support work
• several weeks of computer foulups
• the impending doom of one more stage of takeover of the country by a syndicate of mafiosi–this time the Wall Street crooks commanded by Paulson and Bernanke. What’s been going on this week is a sequel to the hair-raising horror story by Naomi Klein I’ve been reading for the last month: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Days to germination: 7-10

Days to Harvest: 40-60

This planting is about hope and the illusion that I can do something to provide for our needs outside the collapsing system.

The terrace for the beds next to the front deck is the only place on this north-facing lot that gets enough sun to grow any vegetables.  I put in the first bed to grow cherry tomatoes when I took out the ivy and first built the ziggurat. Here’s Ian getting into them six years ago:

Basil and lettuce and snow peas and chard have done fine.  Pole beans and squash and peppers not very well because of the lack of sun.  I put in another bed after extending the terrace with fill from the excavation of Jan’s office extension two years ago. But I never properly leveled or fastened the railroad ties, and lately they started separating as a result of the ground settling and soil expansion with watering. I pounded in fence posts to stabilize them temporarily, but that fix didnt work and looked terrible.  I got sloppy about planting and watering and harvesting, so for the last few months, all that remained was a patch of chard that I wouldnt even bother to harvest.  I also refused to water the gardens all summer to see how far they could be stressed.  The front didnt look that bad, a range of dry colors and textures offset by the brilliance of the California Fuschia.  But the back hill looks wasted, in the side yard the fifteen foot redwood died, and cobwebs covered plants and every nook and cranny of the house, many of them around the front door. While precinct walking I’ve noticed how sad those cobwebs look on other people’s places.

So cleaning them up and reviving the garden and planting vegetables is serving as my bailout. Today I put in spinach and trimmed the carex in the side yard and started watering it and the strawberries and the remaining redwood and the dried up Fremont Iris and the Yerba Buena.  Tomorrow I’ll complete the planting with Arugula.  I’m heartened by the survival of the chard.  I’d transplanted it to the lower bed while demolishing the top one and then two weeks later retransplanted it back.  With regular watering during the interval, it produced enough fresh leaves to supply the main dish for supper last night.

I wanted to stay focussed on the pure pleasure of placing those seeds in the soil–this activity being the goal of much preparation–but it wasnt easy to stay in the present.  I tried to revere those little bundles of promise and and ask for their blessing.

Dear Lois,

As my beloved representative in Congress, I beg you not to be stampeded into accepting the swindle proposed by Paulson, Bush and their cronies.  This is pure crisis manipulation, just like 9/11 and the rush to bomb Iraq.

The accompanying article from The Nation is the first sensible proposal I’ve seen on this crisis.  Please join others in Congress to slow down this insane rush to reward the villains and create even more profound and lasting damage.

Sincerely,

Steven

Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle
by William Greider

Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope. They are rallying explosively because they think they have successfully stampeded Washington into accepting the Wall StreetJournal solution to the crisis: dump it all on the taxpayers. That is the meaning of the massive bailout Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has shopped around Congress. It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their losses–many hundreds of billions, maybe much more. What’s not to like if you are a financial titan threatened with extinction?

If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historicswindle of the American public–all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called “responsible opinion.” If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics–exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice. (more…)