It's a fact

A cop touched me today.

Another one today told me about "coming up" in the Northeast back in the 80s.

"D'you know the Concourse?" he asked me, as if it were possible for a newspapergirl not to. It wasn't the best of conversations. We had very little in common. Conversationally paralysed, instead of asking him some cool question like, "So, what's your favorite patrol zone - who has the best commander?" I attemped to clarify the headlights laws, and I felt like the biggest nerd on the planet.

The traffic cop called me "Sarah," which, I guess, is a version of my name in some parallel place, such as a very large urban greenspace, where the wind was chilly and myself and most of the children there for their event underdressed. At any rate, it illustrates how hard it is to talk to law enforcement, even when you're not being enforced upon.

Is it hard to make friends when you're a cop?

When I left that scene and went to get lunch at the Subway, yet another officer was encountered by me. I recognized him, but he didn't me, just expanded his banter with the cashier girl. She said, jokingly, "You gave me this penny too late; I don't need it," as she gave him back his change.

"You see how we're treated?" the cop said, trying for a joke at me. "Everyone hates us."

"I like the police," I said.

"Sure, until we stop you."

"I don't break laws. . .," which led to him complaining that he had gotten a parking ticket recently, etc., sure, haven't we all, and someone else in the store said that her friend got one but it was only $2 and wasn't due until 2008. Incredulous comments came from the few worker guys having their sandwiches. I said, "Yeah, Lawrence, Kan. parking tickets are only two bucks."

Then I took my sandwich to a neighborhood meeting, where an officer I do like (and who is married with kids and whom I've known for several years) did teasingly bump up against my shoulder before sitting down in a chair next to me. We both were "job"-ligated to be there.

Disclaimer: there was nothing negative I could feel about that contact, no matter the "effect" my opening paragraph.

Is it odd that a person like me would so frequently be in the presence of law enforcement? There were a number of other officers in my day, though our interaction was indirect. They're everywhere.

But no one I know has a police officer as a friend. I certainly don't.

I have a friend whose friend is in the police academy, and it will be interesting to see how that goes.

It's likely I saw her standing at attention Monday morning on Truman Road, one woman in one of two rows of new recruits.

I feel that I am just (obviously) too liberal to be involved on a genuine personal level with anyone who makes money (my recycled tax money) enforcing laws in which I don't wholeheartedly believe.

Of course I "agree" with some laws; inconsistency is the hallmark of humanity. So is thievery. I am irritated, naturally, when some danged opportunist chooses me as their slave and makes out to steal my things; then "laws" seem like some recourse.

However, I don't recall seeing rehabilitation or punishment work much in real-life scenarios. Twice, I should say, I did see jail-terms transform two cocky youngish males into more responsible and productive people. They had a good foundation, though. I was so scared of cops back then that I wouldn't even visit the one guy, and when I did see the other, I was half-implicated in the whole mess and therefore a nervous, defensive wreck. (I was not a conspirator nor charged, for the record.)

But sicking the system on someone doesn't usually produce better behavior. It certainly doesn't get you your car or your peace of mind back. We don't have enough jails to contain all the predators, and if you're a victim of one, the cops usually aren't going to make it to your aid until you're already bleeding.

Ms. didn't contact me

. . . or anyone I know that I know of.

It's weird how you can be going along, doing your own thing in your head and then someone comes along and usurps it.

The film.

Now this.

It's all good.

Even if "evil" is evoked. I shudder that MSN "news" is all involved.

My uterus is my own.

Long live the Hystera.

WHA.

(that, at least, is mine.)

It's not that. . .

It's just that, what do you do with this kind of information about women at the Planned Parenthood:

biker chick, struck up converstation, third (at least) abortion, tried all the various methods. . .she almost skipped over to the counselor's office when her name was called. . .two people, a couple, with a friend there too in the waiting room, and that one, she, was chattering away loudly on her cellphone, despite the signs in every eye-shot stating "please be courteous; no cell phones," and eating chips loudly from a crinkling bag, despite the fact that every other woman there for her surgery hadn't been able to eat since the long night before, a kind of minute Ramadan or Yom Kippur or Lenten Friday amid the yowling devil. And she looked for the journal she had donated to the communal experience there on the coffee table that never had anyone's coffee, just magazines - only to be told by the receptionist, that, yeah, someone must have stolen it, along with all the others that had been written in.

People keep stealing the stories, and people keep breaking the rules, and people keep having to do this nonetheless.

Foley

It's some kind of job on a film set.

He's a man I respect and/or had a crush on for being so damned smart.

He's also a freaked out congressman who gets his freak on by sending freaky e-mails to younger males who work under him, but gives the reasoning that he, first, was "sexually abused" by a clergyman.

And, oh mi god, he's a minister/molester too.

Been there, done that.

No longer shocked.

This is what's "wrong" with Americans.

12th & Vine

"Going' to Kansas City" optimism
almost makes The Paseo
look like Ward Parkway.

35th and Broadway

Proving graffiti can come in many forms:

bread
stickers
scratches
scrawls

There are a number of such bun-decorated poles on this block, at least recently, as if an Atkins dieter had been walking along chomping meat patties with distain for feeding the pigeons, rats or trashcans and with a new view on what ketchup can do.

Ferally new

This little kitty kept me up Wednesday night. It wasn't because she was mewing in my ear or jumping around while I tried to sleep (annoying features that pro-cat people celebrate for some reason), but because I am too easily touched with the plight of beasts who are pitiful.

She is a relatively new semi-resident of the apartment's lot/alley, and the grey kitties who have been around for years don't seem to be territorial about the food my neighbors put out for them.

However, she's bony and wheezy and her eyes are weepy. She is not really feral, as she wanted to purr and be petted the first day I had time to try. That was Wednesday, and all night long, like a homework assignment that you didn't finish, a medical test result that you won't know until "later," a job interview that you can't stop obsessing over in advance, she and her fleas and her wheeze were all over my mind.

I don't feel this way when I see homeless people - why?

Occasionally I will be overwrought from an encounter with a child who is attached to a bad-seeming parent, an addicted one or homeless one, outright mean or negligent one. Yet, what, beyond a smile straight to their eyes, can I do?

I haven't found people to follow migratory habits I can track. They come and they go and are transient in the deepest sense of the word. They are flickers in our minds, like the man who was sleeping on the 11th Street sidewalk Tuesday morning - a block from City Hall, the Police Headquarters, people with jobs and court dates and "lives." Unlike a dirty cat at my door, a man completely underneath a blanket, to me, is not approachable.

I don't think I've seen the same "homeless person" twice. Therefore, there is no possibility of a relationship, the thing that comes easily with a desperately friendly cat, the thing that opens the way for you to help out without condescending.

We are taught early on to avoid strangers.

D-town KCK

It's new. . . .more finished now than was in this shot, includes characters.
. . .will be finished soon.

(By "finished," I do not mean tagged up by toys.)

Credibility

You can kind-of figure out your credit score based on the number of unsolicited card offers you receive in the mail. Frequency matters, as does the interest rate offered and its duration and associated fee. Usually, there is a fee, something like three percent, "no less than $5 and no more than $150," one of my recent ones read. For paying off one credit card with another equals a cash advance. I consider it refinancing.

Currently, I am nothing like my 70-year-old friend who went against his wife's wishes and purchased thousands of dollars of video recording and computer equipment; he's paying hundreds of dollars a month in interest. A balance transfer would suit him well, and he tells me that's what he's waiting for. My father is also of high debt and 70 years, and he periodically retells me the cautionary tale of how banks are allowed to raise your rate at any time for whatever reason. Yes, I think that man on the AM radio talks about that all the time. Too bad it's not better-packaged and retransmitted in something appealing to the younger people who need such advice.

If I were to preach, I'd say that schools are not teaching consumer finance. Wouldn't you think that managing money would be a priority skill to bestow on your "future?" Please tell me if I'm wrong about today's secondary curriculum, but "when I was in school" (can you hear my bones creak?), we did not learn anything as practical as how to balance a checkbook.

I would have to say that the kind small-town staff at Cloverleaf Bank taught me. Perhaps it was the printed instructions on the book? I am one for picking up things the "regular," academic way. I was lucky to adapt to the presented (forced) model of compulsory education. I also, ring my privleged bell, happened to aviod public schools until the university level, which, of course, is also not free of charge. Part of my father's debt comes from his charging his portion of my tuition.

(It was split with his ex/my mom, the part left after what was covered on an increasing basis by generous scholarships was deducted - merit-based, never upon "need"; somehow the world thinks that loans are an acceptable way to handle higher education. My brother will provide an interesting case study on this in less than a year.)

But just because ones parents did not demonstrate the making of decent investments doesn't mean that one couldn't break such a cycle by learning finance in school. Math class would be more compelling, at least if it offered some of the time, such quantifyable truths as, "if you screw up too much here and don't graduate, you'll likely have a minimum wage job and be considered as living below the poverty level. This is especially true if you want to have children or already do. You literally will not be able to afford them."

Does anyone want to be poor? I don't know, it seems if you put it to them like that they'd get the picture. Do they "get" how much it costs to rent and utilify a stupid apartment?

On a side note, when did the custom of waiting until one had enough money to establish a household before marrying or shacking up or getting serious end? No one plans very well, it seems to me. At least not the people I'm looking at on a daily basis. Remember, I have little access to the world of the $3,000/sq.ft. people.

I used to be a saver. I don't know what happened, probably mostly travel, clothes and travel. Car things. Time off from job months. My seemingly instinctive money-management habits were mostly accidental. I'm sure I remember my mom saying something about the importance of saving. She's still a better manager of money than I am, and certainly she's better than my father at it.

Unlike my old-man friend, my dad chooses to live off his small retirement and some Social Security or something and not get a job. He seems to have a good health plan, despite his bitterness at the feds for failing to increase such things on a cost-of-living basis.

I'd say my own wages don't keep up with my material desires. I always pitch those as quite small. I can't judge myself there; I would need an outside entity and a private discussion. I can say that I am learning to be a saver again. It's been a bitch. I hate dumping carts of cash to past purchases.

I think I've mentioned, however, my crappy car. My health insurance premium went up, and I won't even be able to decipher the "look at your options" pages that they sent in case I wanted a lower monthly payment and crummier coverage without consulting the agent.

Even though my credit is good and the feds did manage to hold interest rates steady once again, I always want more money and always don't want to spend it on a car or anything not investment-like. Cars do nothing but depreciate and suck money from your savings.

Cars necessitate yet more insurance, too. The only "good" thing about that kind, though, is that it goes down as the vehicle ages, unlike health insurance. (Yes, I compared us to vehicles.)

Anyway, you can have the banks stop cruising your credit rating and wasting paper junking up your mail box with things others could potentially steal and use in your name by writing to the three credit-reporting agencies. You also can opt out online.

If you can judge your credit-worthiness by the amount of junk mail you get, you can also start to notice the tellingness of your age by the number of meds lying around the place, no longer confined to the "medicine cabinet."

As president of me, my cabinet includes a number of notable Secretaries of Health. I hate them all and their invasion of my self-government. I'm almost done with my stupid ear-infection killer-pills, and yet I still can't hear half the time due to fluid. I feel like I'm swimming again. I looked up my "anti-nausea" things and it turns out they are actually an antihistamine that can kill you.

Upon further inspection, I noticed that all that junk I bought was generic; those shitty high prices were not for name-brand drugs, and even after my "insurance" did its thing, I still paid out the equivalent of a 100-degree-month electric bill for air conditioning (an apartment; about a Franklin).

Even though I hate their pill butterflies and drug flowers on that commercial, I am almost proud of Wal-Mart's balls-out move to continue to low-ball everyone else on the planet by offering 291 'scripts for only $4. It's funny they're starting in the retirement state with that. Their next market could be Phoenix, I hear.

For some reason, the announcement made its stock fall 17 cents to $48.70. At last trade, it was $48.29. It doesn't seem to move much throughout the year.

Maybe it's this:

In a conference call with reporters, (Bill) Simon (executive vice president of the company's professional services division) said that the generic drugs would not be sold at a loss to entice customers into the stores, a strategy that has been used in Wal-Mart's toy business.

Maybe the business world can't believe Wal-Mart admitted that you can make a profit by selling people their meds for only four bucks.

At any rate, I'm still not going to shop there.

Eighth and Woodland

Franken-coli

As a defender of whole foods and wishing to dispell the myth that the contaminated spinach was suffering from intentional organic fertilizer (cow manure), I present this opinion from Nina Planck about what to do to keep leaves we eat free of harmful bacteria.

It seems that our practice to fatten cattle faster (while also making them require medications to deal with the extra gas and troubles of an all-grain diet that is not natural), also has created a monsterous strain of E. coli bacteria:

Where does this particularly virulent strain come from? It’s not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. No, O157 thrives in a new — that is, recent in the history of animal diets — biological niche: the unnaturally acidic stomachs of beef and dairy cattle fed on grain, the typical ration on most industrial farms. It’s the infected manure from these grain-fed cattle that contaminates the groundwater and spreads the bacteria to produce, like spinach, growing on neighboring farms.

E. coli O157:H7 survives just fine in our stomachs because it likes acid (like our own E. coli, I guess), but causes abdominal cramps, diarrhea, fever, and sometimes, fatal kidney failure.

Plancks' suggestion is what I've heard from others who are pro-cow and pro-cow-eating, feed the animal what it's supposed to eat — grass.

Of course, it may not be the water.

Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer for the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the Food and Drug Administration, is saying it's "way too early" to blame skunky irrigation water, while the veggie-growers work on a new bunch of safety guidelines and whatnot, after 157 or so people got sick, 83 went to the hospital, and a few have died.

I thought it was funny to read these conflicting "rules" for eating greens that may be contaminated, as presented by our local daily:

Q: Can I wash E. coli off spinach?

A: No. To kill the bacteria, you must cook spinach for 15 seconds at 160 degrees, the FDA says, and wash your hands, utensils and cooking surfaces with hot, soapy water before and after.

So why can't you buy spinach anywhere? Because you can't trust people to follow cooking directions, I suppose. I mean, what person gives their two-year-old a spinach smoothie during a "don't eat spinach" lock-down?

The kind that sleeps with a baby (never advised) and allows the baby to fall into a bucket of spew that got there while mom was sick and passing out from too much partying, perhaps?

Fall snap red dragons

Stick to rice

Beef (which exists in slab form in the fridge presently) can give you mad cow disease, possibly Alzheimer's/dementia; spinach (which often is in the fridge) can give you a mad e-coli death, lately too. Common denominator may still be cattle. Whole food, raw food, supposedly healthy food is not necessarily clean food, I guess.

Some people, a couple of people, from my neighbor's description, tried to take my car last night or maybe just switch out the plates. They had other plates with them. They parked in our alley in a car very much, if not exactly like, mine.

That explains how they opened the door. . .all those old Japanese cars have the same keys. Unless I left it unlocked, the thing you think every time you get out but are too non-obsessive-compulsive to verify in any way other than an over-the-shoulder glance. It was late, dark/I was tired when I got home.

They got run off, thanks to good neighbors, and left the trunk open. There was jack-squat for them to find. I doubt there was even a quarter or dime in the whole vehicle. They broke my cup-holder, though.

They failed to notice my salvagable hubcaps, and I'm not sure if they noticed the spray paint. Didn't steal the X-acto blades. I'm glad they didn't break any windows.

If they had been successful at driving off, I think I would have found my car very near by later. Gas is already on E, oil is already stinking, car still only accelerates to 20 mph on any incline.

We were watching the NOVA show about how the Twin Towers fell because the floor trusses bowed to the point that the snapped the outer walls. It's a revision of the 2002 NOVA theory that the trusses themselves broke.

A main point seemed to be the dangerous narrowness of staircases and the weak-sauce nature of spray-on fire-proofing unless it is mixed with concrete.

Ergo, stayed up too late.

Rose inlaw

Constitution/Citizenship Day

September 16 was Independence Day in Mexico, while up north, today is Constitution Day, which used to be Citizenship Day, and is actually being celebrated all week.

In 1787 on this day, the 55 delegates of the Constitutional Congress finally agreed on that oft-misquoted document, our Constitution, and submitted it to the states for ratification.

The Nashua Telegraph sorts it out:

Constitution Day became a holiday in 2004 with the passage of an amendment by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. He inserted the amendment because of the apparent ignorance many Americans display in regard to their nation’s history. Prior to being known as Constitution Day, Sept. 17 was referred to as Citizenship Day. Beyond changing the name of the holiday, the amendment required all schools receiving federal funds to offer educational programming about the Constitution every Sept. 17.

Our current executive branch manager declared the holiday anew, as presidents, governors and mayors are are wont to do, despite recent minterpretation of its delegation of powers:

America is grateful to those who have worked to defend the Constitution and promote its ideals. During this observance, we also recognize the profound impact our Constitution has on the everyday lives of our citizens, and we call upon all Americans to help uphold its values of a free and just society.

If you can't name the rights in the First Amendment or the Amendments in the Bill of Rights or need help with that Preamble you memorized in grade school, Cornell Law School's site is one place to study.

There are a number of other annotated sites out there, and the official Constitution Center's site has downloads, an image of the four-parchment original, and even translations in Spanish, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Simplified Chinese.

This is Snow

Snow belongs to Dusty.

(Yeah, I know.)

I saw them Tuesday, when I was walking. I was still sick, but you can always stop for a neighbor and a dog.

I'm bettering. It's an ear infection (yes, we know that was obvious). What's amazing is to find out how much Flonase, the much-advertised medicine for runny-nose people (who don't know how to use a simple saline wash because that would be "too hippie") costs: $75.

My insurance "bargained" GlaxoSmithKline down to $44.12.

The antibiotic of choice, "Cefuroxime," was also $80 itself, which I got at the bargain rate of $48.99.

In sickness

We don't take vows when we take up a job. No one promises to tax their body beyond what is reasonable in order to receive money for food and shelter and transportation (the latterest of which is only necessary for said job), do they?

It's not like an ailing corporation is going to coddle you when it crashes and burns.

At any rate, I didn't take any such vows. The elements of the employment "contract" are vague. "May be terminated at any time without notice," seems to appear in that fine print at the bottom of every application, though custom and courtesy dictate that if you are the one leaving, you should politely give them a fortnight to adjust.

At the moment, I'm trying to determine why three kinds of decongestants have no pull on what is happening in my head. I can barely hear, but at least unlike last night, I am not crying in "there's an icepick in my ear" pain. I don't think I have had this feeling for 20 years.

Drugs are annoying. Sickness is it's own drug, but the bottom line is a lack of coherent thought.

Yesterday, one of my brakes make a squishing noise when I sat in the car (door open, one ear functioning) and, yeah, that's brake fluid spontaneously coming out, saying, "wow, you're heavy." Call me underadapted for life on this planet, but I am unable to deal with two kinds of clogging/draining/need doctor or mechanic issues at the same time. Especially (sentence fragments rock) when I have to leave town Friday for some work-related thing I could care less about, and it's all because my fellow humans haven't figured out how to transport ourselves around like they do in Star Trek.

Pestilence

Do I spend an inordinate amount of time discussing and photographing insects? They outnumber everything, after all, on the planet.

Is this annoying illness of mine a virus or bacteria, then? Do the flea bites have anything to do with it? Did I really catch it from my living partner? Why was he unfunctional longer? Am I actually pushing myself to some silly worse thing? Has anyone ever threatened you with "walking pneumonia?"

I went to work Saturday. Not Friday. I'll likely go today, as well, trudge up to the Northeast Fall Festival, starting around noon, perhaps, to catch sight of the women making pancakes in the park. It's in Concourse Park, home of the weak fountain and the random-seeming JFK memorial flame.

Anyone hungry for pancakes and pagentry? The business-owning and otherwise leaderly women of Historic Northeast are almost all over 50 years old, and thus they qualify for the International Red Hat Society. A-hem. You see how well someone like myself fits in.

They have a sense of humor, albeit not so funny to me, though the name "Real Ladies of Independence Avenue" does have its ring. There is no doubt, as my Saturday afternoon drive confirmed, that the place is rife with unhealth, some of which is prostitution-related, and I admire anyone who can take that in stride while also working half-heartedly to eradicate it.

The cops do help, I should say. The other night, they did a decoy on the Avenue and made over 40 arrests. Too bad hardly any of those people will serve any time or pay much of a fine. . .judges in Jackson County continue to make it the choicest spot for petty crimes. There are jokes about drug dealers who will meet their Platte or Clay County customers right on the Jackson County state line. Crossing over means risking real time.

But I digress. Forgive me if I seem, well, ill. I am. It's a sinus thing or perhaps avian flu, is making my throat and ears ache and obviously is also inducing me to be awake at this time.

I've eaten these Northeast Red Hat pancakes before, and the city's health department does come about and inspect the process, which is more than I can say for most of the mobile vendor units that crop up like mushrooms around Northeast parks and intersections. The pancakes are good, and I hear that the coffee is from the Roasterie.

Meaning, if you have six bucks and don't mind the scenery of a sleeping-carnival, stop by St. John and Benton (right by St. Anthony's Catholic Church/Cliff Drive/The Kansas City Museum) this morning between 10:30 and 1:30 (for the lazier of us and/or those who are awake at 3 a.m. but have recently taken Tylenol p.m., only getting now the joke that, hey, it's not yesterday anymore).

Speaking of fun and such, the actual festival wraps up today from 3 to 11 p.m. Expect free musical entertainment, kids' stuff like art and goofy little shows, bouncy tent things, aforementioned carnival rides to pay for, as well as people galore, food from places like Knight's Barbecue and Del Porton, Solgado Fruits and some place from up north called the Corn Crib, and even recycling.

I can't predict how the Chiefs home opener outcome may affect the atmosphere.

I will conjecture that my personal atmosphere will be cloudy and have something to do with Sudafed. Yes, I bought some of that again.

Ladybugs 11

They are not chatting away at the Ladybug Picnic, this representative group of burned out beetles' shells resting on the round illuminators encircling the Liberty Memorial tower.

September 9, 1997: nine years and counting (on ladybugs).

Moony

Tri-bug-fecta

This is a visual summary of the three insects which "attacked" me Saturday.

I'm sure they feel the same way, but still, when you have to battle a praying mantis stowed away in the back seat of the car with the cardboard recycling, watch a broken-legged cicada hobble around 39th Street's sidewalk and then find a giant grasshopper on your clothes you're airing out on the porch after a night of taking them to bars, it just adds up funny.

Big buggy eyes everywhere. . .

Just east of some big city

Tonight, folks will be a'gatherin' to discuss big ideas - things like Freedom, Democracy and Greatness. Alors, Voltaire is dead, mes amis, along with Rousseau and even the more visceral Cortes. I wasn't there, so I don't know if the romantic notions we assign these men, whose placement in time made them "englightened" is deserved, only that they are considered gods, especially since one of their idealistic creations is the U.S.A.

In an August 15 article that might not be up on the Star's site anymore, an AP writer describes the Overland Park Minuteman chapter and their mission to rid the local area of illegal (Latino) immigrants.

I was struck by the logic employed by one of the quoted men, Ed Hayes, 64, "grandfather." He asserts that immigration status can be determined based on a person's English language skill.

He said:

"If you go to the stores on Saturdays, they're full of people who are legal immigrants, I'm sure. But many of them don't speak our language and you can be assured that they're illegal."

You can be assured that there are a lot of people around here who can't speak English. A certain old Italian-American man, who shall remain nameless, frequently comes to our office to place classified ads but can barely string a sentence together in his heavily-accented broken English.

Plenty of the Vietnamese refugees who came here in 1975 or since then to join their families, did so at the ages of 30 to 50 years old. Their English is not great by any means, I can say based on experience as a teacher exposed to bunches of cultures and language levels.

Some Somalis who have lived here a decade are not able to carry on multi-sentenced conversations.

And I found Mexicans in Mexico who knew perfectly communicable English just based on their watching bilingual broadcasting of American movies and shows.

So I take exception to the view of another man featured in the article, Greg Thompson, also of Hayes' generation, the "bored baby boomer afraid of his own workforce." He describes his training technique:

The Minutemen pick out people (based on their skin color or use of Spanish or ?) and then ask them a series of "simple questions," such as "what is your favorite food?" If people can't answer, a Minuteman is to assume they are illegal and report them to the boss or the cops.

Excuse me, did I just lose my right to refuse to answer some dumb cluck's irrelevant questions?

I'm getting itchy. Little picky bumps of self-righteous discontent are starting to brew under my skin, and I'm getting irritated enough to play at protest. . . .I have brown eyes, so it's not inconceivable that if my Spanish were to get really, really, really good (roll eyes and say "right!"), I could pass for someone foreign or even illegal. It doesn't neccessarily have to be Spanish, but Minutemen right now wouldn't bother with a French or Russian or even hijab-wearing girl right now, would they?

"My favorite food is salsa, mothertrucker, now get out of my space!". . .creepy invasive male. . .

I'm glad the Minutemen named Kansas City a so-called "sanctuary" city (along with Houston), because I don't fancy living somewhere police randomly stop people and ask "papers, please."

When we can't keep people from crossing over freely, even when they are convicted criminals or smugglers of drugs (which I imagine Hayes and Thompson to fear), what is the point of running around attacking people at work and tagging them "illegals?" Yup, yup, yes, it's against the law to cross over without paying the proper ticket-seller, I know. The legal lines are a bit backed up then, wouldn't you say?

That the Minutemen questioner crew also targets employers is a balanced approach, I suppose, to a singular goal. The work-givers do complete the cycle and prove content to soak up the cheapest labor and allow others' wages to be "driven down." Tell me, laborers of Kansas City, has your wage kept up with the cost of living?

Mine has not, but I'm not competing with Latinos. A market is a market is a market. In publication, as in neighborhoods, we seem to be co-existing, and we cross over from time to time culturally. We all have to adapt to get on with things. However, it's much more than language that separates people. Language, in other words, is really not the strongest barrier.

Anyway, should you care to hear "the British are coming!" straight from the horse's mouth or its other parts, I'll make you aware of this:

Help Defend: The Nation’s Borders.
Help Protect: Personal Freedoms.
Help Keep: America and the “State of Missouri” Great.

Membership and Sign-up Meeting
When: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 7:00 PM
Where: Comfort Suites Hotel, 19751 E. Valley View Parkway,Independence, MO.(South of I-70 at Exit 17, west of Little Blue Parkway.)
Who: Members, guests, anyone interested in current immigration and border issues, open to the public.

For more Information Contact Us:
Minuteman Civil Defense Corp
“Missouri Chapter”
P.O. Box 2241
Independence, MO. 64055
(816) 478-0942 or (816) 522-3858

Email: mo_minuteman@comcast.net
www.minutemanhq.com/
http://home.comcast.net/~mowater/MO_MMWEB.html

Disclaimer: I'm probably too much of a bigot to show up there myself; I'm afraid of "those people."

*(a description that might make you giggle, if you look at things from the buddhists' point of view, or that of a whale, perhaps)

Mexican cement

Everyone has favorite foods, and if they're like me, those change over the years. I recall being addicted to white bread-and-hard salami sandwiches in high school, so thick that the ounce-conscious me of today would have said, "um, you know, that meal represents at least two servings of meat. . . ."

When I was slightly younger, I remember eating about seven Oreoes and a glass of 2% milk on a near-daily after-school basis, and there are strong pre-adolescent memories of ice cream with Cool Whip and Hershey's syrup backgrounded by "She-Ra, Princess of Power" cartoons.

Television, tons of sugar - by America's trends, I should weigh about 250 pounds. Even though during my first year of college, I used to eat dinner, plus three bowls of cereal, plus ice cream over cake, plus sometimes a grilled cheese sandwich in the dining hall, by the grace of genetics, I am not fat.

Eventually, I'll go to the lab and get that cholesterol count done, but let's say that right now, my food of choice is "anything with tomatoes and especially hot peppers."

In other words, I love salsa, I love corn chip products* and recently, I've started in on the bean thing.

A friend of mine who is slightly older than I and thinner, used to amaze me several years ago with the fact that she would bring refried beans to work for lunch. She's not Latina, and neither am I. Back then, I really relegated such fare to "only when it comes slopped on the side of a plate of Mexican food, usually sprinkled with some white cheese and destined to make me gassy and angry later because I ate them after finishing the very-big-enough main dish already."

In the 80s, a babysitter used to make tostadas for us, but I think it's because it was a cheap way to feed four kids.

However, in recent times, I've found that a can of beans (which now come in non-lard varieties, fat-free or "vegetarian") can become quite satisfying for a munchaholic when mixed with fresh jalapeños and other vegetables. A little can costs about $1.29, however, and is only a few servings, especially if they are dished up as part of what goes in the beef, etc. tacos/burritos/whatever one is sharing with ones family of two.

So, imagine my happiness when one day at the Northeast Price Chopper, I saw a whole cart full of 10-pound bags of pinto beans, discounted to $2.

The "El Guapo" beans hung out in my car for a long time after that. Carrying ten pounds of beans up three flights of stairs is something that's very easy to procrastinate, when other perishables are calling out or after work every day when "I'm just too tired" and inevitably lugging other stuff.

Besides, I was hoping someone would notice. Also, I'm one of those people who justifies keeping random stuff in the car "in case of emergencies," and dry beans seem like something you could suck on during the apocalypse to keep you busy and semi-nourished.

For the record, the El Guapo pintos were produced in Iowa.

The directions for how to transform cute speckled beans into the pastey mash I came to know as the "frijolitas" served every morning with the tortillas and eggs when we stayed in Tangancícuaro a few holidays ago were printed in English and Spanish.

I can do this, I said to myself.

It's a simple process, and I've made other beans before. What takes the longest is waiting until you have three solid hours to devote to the task, since waiting for pintos to cook down takes, well, a couple of hours of stove-time.

A few Saturdays ago, I had time.

Since this post is so dragging on, I will summarize my observations:

1. waiting for beans to cook is boring. . .you can fall asleep and burn down the house, if you're not paying attention
2. even though the recipe didn't call for salt, you really have to add a lot, otherwise, well, refried beans taste just like they look, umm, like mud
3. mashing up beans "with a large spoon" after they're cooked requires the strength of an ox (and is where the third hour goes)
4. I need someone Mexican who can tell me how much salt/water/chili powder really goes in them
5. refried beans, when being prepared by a novice, have a tendancy to "get everywhere," leaving fun blobs of concrete-like starch product on walls, towels, cookware, etc. but unlike meat, are so easy to clean up it's charming
6. as you might guess, I still have a lot left

* (I really only like one kind of corn chip, Art's blue corn ones, which are perfectly pure and have probably one-hundreth the salt that, oh, say, a Tostito or even a Silva's does, so I hope the Gutierrez family never, ever stops making them.)

Did hell freeze?

Wow, our FDA - famous for approving medications that can kill you - finally followed suit of at least 40 other civilized nations who, like me, have been watching its ridiculous politicial stalling all these years, and approved a common chemical form of contraception.

So, U.S. women (who over 18, the rest of you should cover your ears and remember that it's not legal to do it until you can vote), you can now buy an over-the-counter "Plan B" super-pill, A.K.A. "the morning after pill" (or "f**k! the condom broke" pill or, as I've seen a few friends use it, the "I presume this person is disease-free and choose to accidentally forget what day my cycle is on until the next day when I start feeling remorse" pill).

In 89 percent of cases, it prevents implantation/impregnation when used within 72 hours of unprotected sex, and you used to have to go search for a danged Planned Parenthood to get it. Since most of us have "emergency sex" on weekends or abroad, this emergency contraception was heretofore sitting behind a big, insulting wall.

This ain't no RU486, though, so if zygote is created, well, "Plan B" won't work. . .they say, but read any usual package of birth control pills and you'll get confused like a Conservative that it could.

You'll find EC behind the counter with the Sudafed. . .wait to go on that spree - it won't be out there (except from your doctor/PP) until "the end of the year."

And even the president said it was o.k.

Reading

This is just to say (that I'm not William Carlos Williams),
but that I am also already "Autremollusk" over there on the sidebar,
if you didn't already know,
and that that shell is where I have placed the books meme,
should you care to read it.

Thanks, God

. . . literally. Finally, humans have gotten, it seems, close to figuring out how to make stem cells without killing embryos (that are already destined never to grow up into bigger humans anyway, but that's another story).

And, well, it may be inefficient to just take one cell, and those particular researchers did get rid of the embryos from which they took the single-cells, and, of course, there are those who will argue:

. . . .that the new procedure solves nothing, because even the single cell removed in the technique could theoretically grow into a full-fledged human.

I think it's weird that federal funding bans research that harms human embryos, yet the same government allows people (approx. 1,000 a year in the United States) to use fertility methods to help identify lethal/severe birth defects in embryos, when clearly, like all in-vitro fertility treatments, pre-babies are created that are not brought to term.

This procedure, known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) takes one cell and checks each 10- or 15-cell embryo for the defect. Likewise, stem-cell researchers also can take just one cell to grow their stem cells, rather than the more efficient way, that kills the five-day embryo outright.

So, are there just freezers and freezers full of "didn't make it" in-vitro creatures sitting around somewhere "unharmed?"

See!

The g-darn "network cable unplugged" just as it was publishing!

I can't take this much longer. . .

United States of False Advertising

We're all familiar with the commericials, should we be of the "I watch TV" type, in which Cingular Wireless touts itself as the network with the fewest dropped calls. . .don't know how that can be, while Verizon proclaims to have the largest all-over network. . .just that Sunday, while talking to my brother, who is a customer of the little orange man team, our call was disconnected twice.

The service was poor all around. He was calling from the middle of Kansas, with a Texas number. His "customer service" person was trying to make up some fancy explanation about why that would be a reason, but we say, a tower is a tower, and are left with only the explanation that maybe it's interference from Fort Riley.

My phone company has never not delivered on its weak little promise of my "getting more," as I got married shortly before buying such a thing as two phone numbers that can talk to each other without counting. Never have we overstepped our minute-limit; however my being under 30 (no - wait, that's not true, and I don't have an I-Pod either, so I can't say I'm technologically young and sound) - anyway, I've overtexted almost every month. . .at least since 2006 started.

No, I'm not going to pay five more dollars a month to make that stop. I'll do better next time, I promise. Of course, when I dial the "tell me how many I have left number," all I ever get is an unsatisfying "stick it" (this network function can not be completed).

Is it true like it is on "CSI" and "Prison Break" that the evil G-men and other enemies of my state of mind can't intercept texts?

By the way, my blog is not a reflection of my efforts. . .a whole bunch of wondrous thoughts and junk are still trapped in my head, due to the fact that every time I try to upload a photo here, my browser crashes (Safari; this now is coming from Explorer on the slow PC, and the Explorer solution on the Mac is also unsatisfactory, as the damn thing won't load at all and leaves out the insert photo icon when it did, once. I'm not even confident this is getting up.)

I hate computers; my sources tell me that "something's going on on the Internet." Something like "we're all gonna pay" and "hey, why can't I navigate to that government site anymore?"

Anyone else notice? Is it true that MySpace is going to charge, too?

Good thing I saved the pigeons and the Underwood, eh?

Walnut way

August progress

Such is the fate of all things juicy: brown withering and bugs.

Now that the primary election is over, and once again we see that only 12% of people care (in Kansas City, Mo), we can look forward (?) to the onset of fall when I won't have to go through six hours of delerious fever and active nausea just because I was outside for three and a half hours in the sun without "adequate" breakfast. (I guess, what else is there; there is no zygote nor fetus or other noticable parasites besides bright red ankle-biting insects I think jumped on me from concrete when I was staring at that parking lot sunflower.)

Yes, I drank water, a quart in fact.

Somehow, though, I came out in worse shape that this fellow who tried his luck in the Cliff Drive Classic on Saturday in Northeast, against men who shave their legs and wear slick spandex clothing.
I guess commuting to work on two wheels makes a difference?

Find the frog

Remind me

How does raising the interest rates on my existing consumer debt help offset the fact of inflation? Productivity is low and labor costs are high and we are all more likely to lose our jobs. . .those in the trucking industry report that there isn't anything to ship around, despite the usually-heavy summer season. We'll know more when they start getting the Christmas 2006 items to the warehouses this month.

Since June 2004, "the Fed" has raised rates a quarter-point 17 times, taking it from that sweet one percent, 46-year low! to the "it's okay if you want to buy Certificates of Deposit, I guess" 5.25 percent.

So, sure, it's better for us all to dump more money towards banks, creditors, etc., while core inflation (which does not include the things that eat up most of the household budget anyway - energy and food) "rose by 2.4 percent in the 12 months ending in June, the fastest clip in 11 years, and above the Fed's comfort zone of 1 percent to 2 percent."

Forget "the Fed's" comfort zone, we're looking at an 8.25 percent prime!

If you see me "not eating" or "not doing" anything that requires fossil fuels (like blogging - why haven't they invented a laptop I can wind up like those radios yet?), you'll know why.

Dang, I shouldn't have skipped that "It's all about you" free lunch at the Barreto Family Funeral Home this afternoon.

I know there's a Day of the Dead cultural level of different comfort with such things and all, which I may not automatically share, but eating lunch inside a chilly marble mausoleum/chapel in which walls some people are "resting" was just a bit difficult the last time I tried.

If you think you have what it takes to see a memorial park for a park, swing by their Hispanic/Samoan Fiesta Luau on August 19. It won't change interest rates, but there will be free food and entertainment and tours of the famous peoples' graves in Mt. Washington Cemetery.

Awl nostalgia

Yes, I desire to "return home" to ballot-stabbing.

Wow, leave it to Diebold to turn a fun time with a punch card and stylus into a throw-back to some of our worst memories of sitting in sweaty desks hunched over a standarized test with a hard, non-mechanical pencil cramped in our fingers.

At least with voting there is no time limit. (I don't imagine it would take one 13 hours to figure the new system out, though my poll line was the least efficient I've seen it, my election judges dull enough to require two minds to determine what to do for Voter A whose name was not on the list but who had changed his address over four weeks ago, he said.

(Isn't that one of the most standard scenarios? Call the Election Board, darn it! It was funny that one of the judges said, "what's the number?" Good freaking gracious.)

I burned through my whole pencil-tip blackening in the huge ovals, and I didn't even cast a vote for the unopposed chumps or certain others I don't want to support either way. The "voting booth" was a three-sided screen propped on a bumpy, plastic table.

The ballot, three times as big as the punch card, was a graphic design disaster that made me doubt, as I left the church/polling place, that I had even cast a vote in the 10th District state senate race. I do have an opinion about Flaherty, I. Burnett, Klumb and Justus. . . .oh well, I'll never know.

I don't like to sit down and vote, either, so I didn't, and that was uncomfortable. Not as bad as the cold metal chair I avoided, but still, not fun.

Guess I should have used the touch-screen?

Other persistent things

D'

As seen in the East Bottoms but known north, south, east, west, top, bottom, outside and 'round the inner world that is each human body's universe. . . though sometimes spelled differently.

Viva la diversité et liberté. . . and graffi-tay, too.

Coleoptera encounters

While the small, round black beetles that have a magical tendancy to find their way to sheets to take disturbing nips at the skin have faded from our apartment's windowsills (and stopped chomping up the potted avocado trees), the smaller tan ones with black spots still travel occasionally around the bathroom window ledge, wondering, I guess, how they were able to squeeze through in one direction and not the other.

This ground beetle, for example, is one such creature that didn't find its way back to the outdoors until I swept it there (note hair and dust-bunny fluff).

I found it at the back door, between the big wooden part and the flimsy screen part that surely any enterprising insect could pass through.

It's the same beetle I had encountered one night in the bathroom weeks ago. We bonded, you see, and well, I am not versed in insect and had no idea what this thing was, so I feel responsible for its death.

Women have the unique position to be able to contemplate the floor and all its shadows at 4 a.m. from the toilet. . . .bare feet on tile, eerie glow of streetlight in window, sound of snoring nearby. . .

Usual dialog with self: "There might be something crawling around in the dark." You have to be prepared for anything. It's stupid, I know, but some of us only hunt because we don't like getting bitten or crawled on. Most of this "instinct" is reserved for campgrounds and latrines and such, where bugs are expected and thus allowed (by me at least) to remain unadulterated.

Usually, of course, there is nothing in a city apartment water closet.

So I was fairly suprised, being mostly asleep, to see the one corner, one foot from my feet, that always kind of looks like something black and creepy is sitting in it actually come alive with this swift-footed thing.

I assumed it was the once-a-year roach and got ready to smush it with a hairspray bottle (no shoes! insect traveling fast!), but it ran and ran and seemed to be unaffected by my very inaccurate blows. If I had only known . . . .

When ground beetles enter homes, it is an accidental invasion. They cannot survive and reproduce there.

I made so much ruckus about finding this imposing-looking bug that all of us were up now, me, birds and husband, who comes in in time to see me kneeling on the floor, with the lights all on now, peering under the clawfoot tub trying to locate the mega-beetle.

Location of beetle is essential to peace of mind.

No sign of beetle anywhere.

I go back to bed all full of fight and fear. I don't like to leave a job half-done. I don't like to leave a member of the world's largest specied order (350,000 kinds of beetles, or 40 of the insects humans know about) tramping about.

I was sad to discover it last week when I was putting out some plants. We hardly use the back door, barricaded against human invasion as it is. I guess the ground beetle sustained more damage than I thought.

In any kind of war, it's always more disturbing to see corpses when you're not expecting them, after the thrill of "kill, kill, kill" has worn off.



This dying beetle, which I think is a green June beetle, was struggling for life in the Walgreen's parking lot next to my car this morning.

I did not try to save him.

For more photos (not mine, someone named Poul Beckman) of other beetles I'm glad not to encounter, see Living Jewels.

Reunited

Back from maneuvers, the twin roamers enjoy a brief flat-cat respite together before high temperatures return to Kansas City.

There is nothing I can do about it but complain that 106 ºF is what one expects from Las Vegas or the California valley, for example, but not of the Midwest.

Fried

Exactly

This is the kind of weirdness you get when morality meets fascism meets poverty, a woman who seems to walk the walk (she adopted four other-race-than-her kids, who came from the same drug-addicted mom), but also walks the streets promoting paying people for going on birth control or getting sterilized.

I've never seen her, though apparently she's been in my neighborhoods recently. I don't know her real feelings, and disagree with the reporter's lead that she's asking drug addicts to "give up" their right to procreation.

The human body seems to be able to procreate even when it's suffering from toxicity, depression, hunger, illness - amazing. Equally amazing is that since creating reliable birth control methods, humans are so shy about using them. I'd take $300 to supplement my $600 annual contraception bill. Does what I do qualify me as an addict? Personally, I believe my lifestyle as-is would be detrimental to a baby, though I wouldn't ask the state to help me deal with it.

A critic of Project Prevention is quoted as saying that it "ignores the real problem."

Real.

Yes, people on drugs need much more than reproductive choice. But what's wrong with helping combat a real symptom? People on drugs tend to be unmotivated, you know. . .is this an appropriate nudge?

I don't mean to be flippant by suggesting children are mere side-effects of sex, though on a biological level, the situation is a straight-forward cause and effect. Who can argue that it's better for drug addicts to give birth to children than not? It's not like anyone is forcing them one way or the other.

And there's no abortion involved, so no one's dying.

It sucks, though, that Barbara Harris is teaching her kids that it's o.k. to post signs on public utility poles.

Inmate foeti

Court ruling today makes Missouri's unique policy of denying women prisoners the option to have an abortion obsolete for now:

At issue was a policy against helping prisoners obtain abortions. In the summer of 2005, the state abandoned a long-standing policy of providing transportation and guards for inmates wanting abortions, except in cases where the inmate's life or health was endangered. The state cited costs and security concerns.

Getting the Jane Doe in this instance to a clinic in St. Louis cost about $350 for the van and guards. Nationally, the average price for a first-trimester abortion (medical or surgical) is $350 to $700, so this was about a thousand-dollar event.

Apparently between 35 and 50 women inmates in Missouri are pregnant on any given day.

Would providing more abortions be too expensive?

The recent explosion of "meth mouth" in our prisons already is requiring a surge in inmate dental care, especially for dentures to replace speed-rotted teeth, though this hasn't resulted overall in a significant cost increase:

In Missouri, such major dental work at state facilities is subcontracted by the company that handles inmates' medical care. The state currently pays $7.50 per day per prisoner for health care, regardless of what's needed, so no major cost increase has been incurred.

However, letting incarcerated women do what non-incarcerated women can legally do, is against our "traditional Missouri values," according to the governor.

What is the sanctity of life?

Admittedly, it's gross to picture the racists and righteous creeps chuckling to themselves about "who's gonna want to take care of a prisoner AND her baby, go ahead, let them abort. . .they were probably sired by some loser anyway - they're probably on drugs," I still think that if a woman who finds herself both in a family way and in "the system," she should be able to get out of the 18-year term part, at least, if she wants to.

On the second day

Noticable difference in bloomage.

Was only comparing it to the sunflowers towering in a friend's yard, anyway;
by those standards,
it's small and tardy.

Root room means a lot.

July

For this sunflower the summer so far has been arduous. The soil in which its roots tap water is shallow and concrete-bound.

Happy birthday to Allie. And to all the (half the) people I know who are also July-ites like me: Tracy, Mike, David, Diane, Tricia, Melissa, Damien, Wendy, Grandma, Malcolm, John, James, Kelli.

Crabs of a feather? Am I forgetting anyone? Seems like Gabe was of July also.

Still

Let's sing a song about J.

Can pure charm float a sucessful political career?

Annie Fischer, gush-crush reporter at the Pitch, seems to think so in this week's "This week we love" column.

Exccept when Tony Ortega wrote about dead Confederates unearthed during Sprint Arena excavation, I can never figure out the sarcasm in the too-hip-4-me Village Voice baby that is the Pitch, so I can't be too flippant about Fischer's evaluation of Missouri Representative contender John Joseph Rizzo.

But. . .

I guess Annie Fischer (or Nadia Pflaum, who was the only Pitcher I spotted at the candidate forum) went to college with J.J.? That was his name the last time he ran for office against now-incumbent John Burnett, back when he was indeed a student at Rockhurst.

I've heard the elder Rizzo refer to his son as "Johnny Joe," though, so that supports Fischer's "he's so sweet" take, too:

But we're impressed that Rizzo — still a little shy, by all appearances, but not lacking self-confidence — wasn't fazed by his opponent's jab. Yeah, OK, so he's young. With that beautiful youth comes optimism, tenacity and longish hair shinier than the coat on a black lab in a dog food commercial. Things could certainly be worse, right?

Yup, the kid of 25 does have self-confidence. He is confident enough to stop mid-sentence and say, "no, wait," then back up and continue, almost as if he's memorized a statement and can't catch up with the facts when off-structure.

He was confident enough to gloss over the fact that he really hadn't graduated yet from college during his campaign two years ago. ie: He lied to my face (and my tape recorder).

I'm over that, though, and was hoping that this time around, the young man who, finally, we appreciate, moved out of his parents' home, had learned a thing or two about government.

So far, I see a smoother coat, yes, Annie, and increasing alacrity with "the issues" that people he meets and greets door-to-door are telling him are important, but he's still really, really bad with facts.

Could it be worse?

Indeed, as demonstrated by the last campaign. This year's is charmingly free of antics, though, and if charm can build alliances with rural Missouri House Republicans who don't care about substance, maybe cute and optimistic is the way to go.

Post-Script Basil

It's my day-of-birth anniversary.

I'm older than this plant (which is from the kcsoil garden of Joe Miller and tastes quite lovely), but much younger than the Ocimum basilicum line stemming from Asia and flavoring all things Mediterranean, Thai and Vietnamese.

As far as I know.

1320-22 Admiral

The boulevard seemingly named after a ship's supercaptain could use some steering.

I spent some time watching an apartment fire on Admiral at Lydia early this afternoon.

While the fire department's investigation won't be official for three days, the story on the street is that crack heads were trying to force out the two people charged with "securing" the empty building these past three months while the property owner, who's "out of money" in midst of renovatons of some kind, found some kind of buyer.

Apparently, when some people want a vacant place to do their drugs and lay their hoes, they get it. No matter how many times the buildings were boarded up and locked down, the squatters came back.

Threats, assaults, the usual baloney, and today a fire-starter lobbed through the window, an apartment unit burned out, and the whole place shut down.

"Anyone who goes in them now will be arrested." - KCFD

The two people who lost all their stuff were slightly pleased at the hint at extra vigilance, given the fact that the police so far hadn't been too interested in helping maintain order around there. The couple had been hearing that one response you sometimes get when asking for help in the grittier sections of the urban core. . . containment. . . . if you don't like it, you should move. . . .

"I don't know how I'm going to get out of this place except in a box." - authorized tenant #1

Six years under

Absence on blogs is reprehensible. If tenacity were a credit rating, mine would be falling. Like a credit rating, though, blog stewardship impressions do not reflect the cause of apparent poor management. For example, most people come back to their blogs with confessions of having "been busy," but I am not one of those who has "just so many other better things to do."

You can trash your credit rating in three inquiries, you know, which has nothing to do with solvency. Likewise, remember that while blog entries may grow stale, there are current writings all over the place; I perfer the ebb and flow of voice to land where it matches best.

In other words, the things I've had to say can't come ashore here.

I have been summ-bering, which is a kind of slumber that comes over the brain as summer takes over the temperatures. I haven't been compelled by much I've seen or heard or read, at least not enough to detour back to a computer and get it down to you on this public beach.

A fancy dramatization would involve tropical cocktails, tequila drinks and mojitos as barriers. In real life, the colors are not so simple.

The title of this post is clearly a death metaphor, messy, since so far all I'm doing is casting subliminal lines out towards imagined oceans. Death and ocean meet frequently, but my only intention was to say Happy Anniversary to me, for having stayed at a single job for six years and produced 312 consecutive issues of a many-1,000s-worded publication.

And that was just treading water.

Former homes

Here's another blogger helping us all remember what architecture used to be part of our "old" city:

click for photo of what was at 3600 Broadway, a Bird home I didn't know before.

Pretty mansion. I wonder how it fared with fireplaces and radiators. . .today, it would be as inefficient to heat as Union Station, which manages the Kansas City Museum collection, which is where this photo's credit line says it's from.

Unbeknownst

Troost and Truman: some tagger is using Miss Doxie's name far outside her physical realm, or she's got more mileage on those dogs than we knew and artistic ambitions beyond the cartoons on dog-washing.

Blue wall

Step cat

Feral friend shows off brilliant white new paint job on apartment stairs.

Fighter fish

When I see them at the pet stores, I always think that these fish are lonely in their very small fishbowls of isolation.

Vietnamese God sheds some light on the species and its use by humans in this entry.

Apparently, in Nghi Tam village, some sellers go through hundreds of these fishes a day, because it's summer and fighting the fish is a popular "sport."

Delicious

It takes a long time for legislation to change culture, so I am dubious at how revamping the federal nutrition guidelines (which are slightly younger than I am) will make people stop eating fatty and sugary foods.

Some bipartisan group wants this done.

What they should concentrate on is how quickly the bad American diet has interfered with the health of people in countries where KFC, McDonald's and other calorie-laden, hydrogenated, meat-ful and fried food companies are relatively new imports.

Or how government promotion of pork, cheese and beef, coupled with corporate promotion of chips, soda/pop and all things high-fructose corn syrup has led to really horrible fodder for "the children are our future."

With the onset of summer, the Center for Science in the Public Interest released a "report card" on school lunch.

Missouri (and Kansas) are among the 23 states that failed miserably. All you have to do is look at us to know this is true.

Solutions include (gasp in amazement, everyone) designing human living zones to be walkable/non-car dependent.

Not having a car this past month has even shown me that a tiny amount of walking, which is easier to do if you are actually going somewhere and not just circling about, actually makes a difference.

Of course, I'm down with having the car back. Even if it is as slow as the bus and leaking precious resources all the time.

PS: I'm mad because the car-repair people I was all ready to ban from my life and money only ended up charging me $10 to plug up a nail hole in one of my tires.

They came out yesterday and today to start and retrieve my car that's been parked in the same spot for a fortnight. Turns out the only issue with starting (and I hope they're right) is that some wire from the engine to the distributor had gotten loose. Since they put that part in a while back, the work fell under some kind of warranty, more or less.

PPS: These nails are all from the parking lot over the last year or so. When it rains, nails of all sorts emerge from the remains of nearby "remodeling" projects. And/or we are under sabotage.

Dinner plate

We almost ran over this guy last night. He's resting here on the sidewalk, after having flippered north across St. John Avenue at breakneck-turtle speed, around Kensington.

For a water turtle, this creature was at least a mile away from anything I would call habitable for a foot-long softshell.

So, in case he was someone's meal ticket or perhaps a displaced "pond ornament," we took him to the closest nature-place to be found after 8 p.m. in Northeast.


He swam away when we set him closer to the water. He has a bum toe. He might get caught from Cliff Drive Lake, but I hope not.

I'm pretty sure he was better off there than in the middle of a concrete jungle. There would have been at least five more streets to cross, and even in the light, he looked really "easy" to run over.

Of course, I acknowledge that I might have ruined his reproduction or other reptilian plans. I do not claim to know anything about what animals are really up to and how much they "need" human intervention.

Or, he may be traveling in disguise.

But he did not object to being placed in a box and he did not grant us any wishes like those magic talking Chinese carp in fairytales.

Street art in Columbus Park

While it seems to be targeted against annoying people, pubic parasites or those of us born under the sign of Cancer, this sidewalk splash of opinion only took out a couple of earthworms.
Today is things that make me smile.

Forgive me

If this is your fancy Corvette, I apologize for being so much like the Big Sister Parking Camera, but I just couldn't help but chuckle at the parking violation-combo you pulled off Friday evening in the downtown art district.

(I don't know if parking in front of a mail box is any big deal, but the ass-out-in-lane glossy black vehicle seems kind-of close to the fireplug to me. Also, it's hardly visible in this photo, but notice the pole and it's red "no parking" sign prohibiting anyone from parking there anyway. This is right next to a pay-parking garage . . . I guess that's how rich people stay rich?)

I like the red spray-paint arrow pointing, too. Courtesy of whoknowswhom.

Math wrath

Perhaps it's not been here, but some of you may have heard my rants lately at the education system's broad strokes in mathematics and geometry and algebra and trigonometry, while basic useful things such as compound interest, gas milegage calculation, checkbook-balancing, the perils of credit cards and solid measuring skills are not emphasized enough, leaving "graduates" with a vague sense of how to function in this paperwork-and-pecuniary planet.

It's what makes payday loan stores so successful, after all.

But, today, while my husband was playing with some online IQ test, I was magically able to recall the formula for calculating the hypotenuse of a right triangle, given the length of the other two sides.

Weird.

Still, I don't think I've ever measured anything in real life that way. Who needs to know the height of trees based on their shadows?

Tone deaf?

Yesterday on KMBZ, Jerry Agar was trying to complain about kids' using cell phones in class and how it represents bad parenting and that families should rely on school administration to pass emergency and important messages back and forth "like in the old days," and the item of the "silent ring tone" came up.

This is the one that only young people are supposed to be able to hear.

It's dumb anyway, because it's not like teachers or whoever can't see kids mini-typing the messages back. Clicking away like insects. . .

Birdchick did an experiment that proved hearing it was not all that age-related, either.

The sound reminds me of an ear infection or of what I hear for hours after a live music show. I read once that you should turn your car radio down to just audible before going to a concert, then see if you can hear it afterwards. If not, damage has ensued, which is pretty much always.

My friend who teaches English as a Second / to Speakers of Other / Language(s) at UMKC has to deal with students who presumably are paying to be taught but who insist on "forgetting" the classroom rules of silencing the electronic crap while in class. Will she be hearing the screech of the silent ring tone next?

There are so many ringing annoyances out there already. . . the computer screen, the refrigerator, the air conditioner, the traffic. . .that it's kind of surprising to me that I can hear this tone at all. But I can.

Ingenuity

Not to be confused with disingenuousness, the technical savvy of the public works worker or electrician who had to resort to the "it can fix anything" qualities of duct tape to maintain this signal pole at 11th and Grand is laudable in these trying times of city cutbacks on necessary things.

Don't worry, though, the city is on it. Or full of it, the pride, yes, in "40 traffic signalization projects completed."

Better locks

My recent relationship with the police department has been friendly. It has taught me new acronyms such as CPTED and SNU, and that cops aren't scary when they aren't arresting you.

I've learned a number of home-barricading techniques, too, that might come in handy should the police want to search the place.

Those extra few seconds it takes them to bust through all the crime-fighting locks might come in handy; news from the courts suggests they're going to be breaking down the door anyway, instead of waiting for you to open it like a civilized person.

Our Supreme Court, sans O'Connor-the-Fleeing, ruled today that it's ok for the police to enter your home with their court warrant, even if they don't knock first.

While I'm in favor of protecting evidence that otherwise might be discounted in court due to faulty police procedure, faulty police procedure in the case of Booker Hudson of Detroit would have freed up another jail spot for someone violent.

Hudson, whose home was searched in 1998 without the proper knocking notice, was convicted of mere drug possession.

From now on, of course, it won't matter. Remember, no need for warrant to tap your phone, and with warrant, cops don't have to knock to come in.

How much difference does it make to have the cops wait a few more seconds after they bang on your door "like the g-damn police," when as the COPS show and my friend's experience with being raided demonstrate it's always going to happen when you're naked anyway?

That Constitution is mighty thin clothing these days.

!Viva la seguridad de la tierra!

Hot stilts

These tall women had my attention.

What person wearing red body paint and towering over everything wouldn't?

They are part of Carpetbag Brigade, and while I didn't get to see them perform, only talk to these fans at the Smoky Hill River Festival, they are coming to Kansas City this Friday. I like how the woman in the powerchair matched their outfits. She got their autographs, I noticed.

"The Vanishing Point" (Part One) is scheduled for June 16 at 8 p.m. at The Pistol Social Club in the West Bottoms.

(Check the Carpetbag site for details under "calendar.")

More than pennies

I was never the kind of kid who "took things apart." When stuff broke, I would always try to reassemble whatever pieces fell out, but after spending hours with inadequate tools, I generally would give up. Some of my strongest claims to Depression-style DYI-savings include repairing a set of sandals with simple white string, using a safety pin as an awl and to sew the leather back into itself (while tramping around Europe at 20, when I still understood the perils of credit cards' meeting shoes), and various other little incidents of thriftiness.

Once I walked up and down the block barefoot in the snow, just to see what it might feel like to be desperate.

I think I busted up a reproduction wind-up alarm clock once, but such a thing is non-electronic, there are no wires at work.

This curling mass of unoxidized copper fell out of a security light that was crushed in the parking lot. I didn't know such treasures lurked inside such things.

I saw the shiny threads densely and precisely wound around their transformer-whatever-battery base. They trickled apart when I picked it up, and this is what's left of the item.

Lately, lots of people have been stealing copper from others. The houses on Tracy Avenue, at least one of them, suffered its new wiring pulled out mid-renovation. A community center and an apartment complex are two recent victims I know in the Northeast area that have had their air conditioners hacked apart for copper wire.

Back in February, people were so desperate to cash in on the relatively high price of this and other metals, that they were breaking into
161,000-volt substations and stealing the copper wire grounding the place.

Now that's smart.

However, in January and December, the area's two major power brokers reported having this happen to at least 20 of their properties. Looks like the thieves were on to a method that allowed them to remain untoasted after all.

Three years ago, a pound of copper was about 75 cents. Now, it's over $2, and substations can yield 100 to 600 pounds.

All I know is that it's a really bad time to try to renovate a raw space that needs electrical and plumbing put in from scratch.

Bus Day 4

There is a part in the recording of the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" when someone shouts in the background, "I've got blisters on my fingers!" It sounds like John; did he play guitar? Anyway, if my feet could shout, they would announce their collection of various raw spots, after my spending three days making bad transfer decisions and having to walk eight to 16 blocks to make up for my inability to communicate with the Metro.

It's getting better, though.

Today, on the official "go on, take transit, gas is expensive" rally day, I only had to walk three blocks to get to my actual appropriate get-to-downtown stop.

I'm finding that the bus drivers, even the one who passed me up back in May, are friendly enough and answer questions. I can't make much sense out of route maps or what direction to face downtown with everything all blocked up, so the only recourse is talking.

I did not notice anyone riding the bus today who would not otherwise, though.

The 18-year-old mid-level security officer at Worlds of Fun taking the Troost line with me last night was only doing so because someone crashed into his car.

The 40-something Kansas City Museum staff person taking the 30 to Northeast this morning was only doing so because he currently has no car.

And I, the 30-something you-know-what who has experimented with a number of lines and a number of pedestrian "connections" (various shoes, as one must rotate blister-points and no shoes are really freaking made for walking except athletic ones, which I might be saving for pretend-its-casual-Friday), am only doing so because my car's starter is fried out.

Antique

Name that feeling you get when you run across a toy or dress or car you used to have but now is represented in a museum or exhibit or "antique show."

Nostalgia-shock? Garage-sale regret? The quote of recognition is about the same for everyone: "I used to have one of those!" Mass-produced items produce a strange solidarity.

There's the whole flood of sensory memories that come along, too. Like with this Fisher Price camper set, under glass and taunting me with Little People whom I miss as finger-smooth plastic faux inhabitants of the brick patio, the shady clover-speckled back yard, the summertime cool basement.

Of course, the kids of today only have fat, chunky Little People to play with, because somewhere sometime someone was stupid enough to try to swallow their plastic friends.

Evil hunger

Today, in addition to being all about three sixes, is National Hunger Awareness Day, and as a person who is without a car, sense of planning or cash-money-on-hand, I kind-of feel the pangs.

IE: I have not eaten today. Sometimes, it doesn't matter; today, I'm actually hungry, distracted because of it and feeling weary.

I am lucky to say that unlike a friend of mine who once reported that he used to sneak into the fridge and eat butter when there was nothing else, I never, ever was hungry as a child. It must be a harrowing thing. We "most Americans" tend to think of hunger as something that annoys us when we're on a diet. Or something we try to feel sympathy for when confronted with images of famine-stricken refugees in Africa. Or of stadium-bound Katrina evacuees sitting in the dark.

How do you tell if a kid is hungry? Our local mega-pantry distribution network, Harvesters, has a few programs specifically targetted towards children, things like a "backsnack" program, pretty much a back pack of snacky foods low-income kids can take home to tide them over between school lunch and whatever dinner is coming their way.

In the part of the city where I work, so many of the kids' families are poor that everyone gets free lunch from the government. I think the school has to have 90% or so of its students living at or below some poverty index and then they don't mess with paperwork, just let everyone eat for free.

Of course, we've all seen what kind of food that can be, pretty much everything that I avoid due to its meat-like-ness and preservative-laden status: industrial pizza, breaded reconstituted chicken, hot dogs, "fruit cups" and, well, milk.

I'm having a hard time not just staring unproductively at this Drum Room menu that came as part of some PR for the restored downtown (Hilton) President Hotel. . . .chorizo and manchego stuffed fried mushrooms, tempura fried vegetables, crispy flashed spinach and corn fried snapper salad, miso calypso bean soup, crab and serrano ham tater tots with garlic tomato sauce, salads of diced veggies, mixed greens and tomato basil dressing, of cashew and ginger chicken with artichoke pasta and miso vinaigrette. . . .

Suggestion

If you live in the Cincinnati metro, go see this show.

If you want to get a copy of the DF crew's book or a really dope limited edition print not featured on the gallery's page, contact this guy.

Birthday

Today my brother completes his 29th year of life. That's my unconventional way of aging us all prematurely. Instead of saying "I'm 29," he should acknowlege he's entering the 30th year of non-fetalhood.

Happy Birthday.

Mushiness time is going to be pre-empted by my quick list of "how to have a bad Thursday:"

1. stay up too late, after being at work until 8 p.m. with "issues"

2. wake up too early, 5 a.m., after only sleeping four hours

3. have lines from "Charlotte's Web" running commentary: When you're stomach's empty and your mind is full, it's very hard to sleep.

4. be nervous about pondering property ownership potential and problems, get sick

5. not use extra time to leave early for work due to husband's leaving town later

6. leave for work on time but find that car does not start (again)

7. go back upstairs to ask husband to move items needed for trip from working car to non-working car for temporary storage and later packing so can use working car to get to work

8. arrive at work late

9. discover that office door closed last night does not have working lock and spend 30 minutes jacking at handle assembly with butter knife, screwdrivers, etc., until production staff arrives and demonstrates correct knife-placement gleaned from having seen previous operation on door by boss, and then allow stronger sales staff to apply necessary combination of force and finesse to spring it

10. welcome new intern whose office door is now open and now henceforth will have no door handle, as people here can't be trusted to label broken doors of doom with "do not lock" signs