Ethel is a good cat.

• Let her spin around the house and have a good life!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbaQ5sYYqHE

#OIIAI #cat #OiiAiCat #meme #memes #Ethel #BlindCat #blind

Lillian Graham (L), Clark Jordan (C), Ethel Conrad (R), and Mrs. Singleton (front seated) [no date recorded on caption card]
Bain News Service
1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in. or smaller.

#Photograph #Portraits #GroupPortrait #BainNewsService #glassnegatives #news #photography #Clark #Ethel #Lillian
https://www.loc.gov/item/2014686285/

Ethel Conrad [no date recorded on caption card]
Bain News Service
1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in. or smaller.

#Photograph #Library #Research #Academic #Vintage #EthelConrad #Blouse #Hat #Portrait #glassnegatives #news #photography #Ethel
https://www.loc.gov/item/2014686284/

Sia’s Big Adventure

James’s work schedule is Sunday through Thursday. After running some errands in the morning, he opened the run door to let the chickens wander their own little garden. It has cooled off to more seasonable weather, and James didn’t have the sliding glass deck door open, but the chicken alarm was so loud he still heard it.

He hurried out to the chicken garden to see Ethel standing near the garden shed calling out in a panic. Mrs. Dashwood was on top of the compost pile sounding her alarm. James didn’t see what had spooked them, so for safety, he scooped up first Ethel, then Mrs. Dashwood, put them in the run and closed the door. 

Then he looked around for Sia. She was nowhere to be found. He looked in our main garden. He looked in the neighbor’s yard. He went out the gate into the alley, calling Sia! Sia! Not along our alley fence nor across the alley. James was panicking himself by this point.

He walked down the alley, calling and looking in yards, and finally, across the alley and nearly four houses away, there’s Sia, standing in a little grassy patch by a garage and looking a bit confused and lost. 

In spite of her white bouffant impairing her vision, she is a fast and wily chicken who is hard to catch. James approached slowly, talking to her quietly. When he bent down to scoop her up, she tried to make a run for it. James cut off her escape and because she wasn’t familiar with where she was, she didn’t know where to swerve, so James was able to catch her.

He held her tight against his chest and could feel her pounding heart. She struggled, but James kept up the soothing talk while he just stood holding her. She quieted, and James carried her back home. He deposited her in the run where Ethel and Mrs. Dashwood were still fretting. With the flock back together again, they could all calm down. 

Given the unknown reason for their panic, Sia’s escape and the upset it caused the other two, all three of them got to spend the remainder of the day in the run to keep them calm and safe. Saturday they were back out in their garden as if nothing had happened.

It probably won’t be much longer before they will be able to come into the main garden. We had a frost warning Monday night. James and I covered the tomatoes and peppers, but the frost didn’t happen for which I am glad. There are still quite a few green tomatoes, green cayenne peppers, and green chili peppers that need to get ripe. But we’ve seen the last of our truly warm days and now temperatures are mostly around 60F/15C – 70F/21C, not exactly encouraging for ripening the tomatoes and peppers. 

I’m still picking pod beans. I also still get a small handful of green beans most days. The collards are loving the cooler weather, and I’ve got some snap peas and a few garden peas from my late summer planting.

I’ve not picked any carrots from the garden, waiting for James to tell me he is ready to make carrot top pesto since the greens don’t last in the fridge. Well today is the day. And oh my goodness did there turn out to be a lot of carrots in the garden! 

I knew there were heaps of beautiful greens, but that doesn’t always translate to big carrots. In fact I’ve not had luck with growing anything but stumpy carrots not much thicker than a pencil. This made me decide to plant scarlet nantes carrots, which are generally shorter. I also had some leftover purple carrot seeds from last year. These are a longer carrot and last year I got one tiny one.

I’m not certain what was different this year. Maybe it’s because I sowed them in early May instead of late April. Maybe I was better at keeping the sprouts watered. I know I was definitely better at thinning them—thinned them twice and probably should have done a bit more. For the first time ever I got actual honest to goodness full-sized carrots! To be sure, the spots I didn’t thin quite enough had the usual small carrots, but overall they did so well I am giddy. As I pulled them out I hummed a happy tune.

Now James is in the kitchen making carrot-ginger soup and carrot top pesto. We’ll freeze the pesto and eat that later. The soup we will enjoy for dinner tomorrow night and as leftovers. I baked a multigrain sourdough loaf today that will go along with the soup quite nicely.

Soup season is here! Earlier in the week we had miso-tofu soup. Carrot-ginger soup this week. Next week it will probably be apple-sweet potato. Pretty soon we’ll be able to start digging up sunchokes and they will make it into all sorts of dishes, but especially soup.

I had been planning on talking about some fantastic books I’ve read recently, but my day is running out so I will give you some online reading instead.

If you think the law and legal writing is boring, y’all are in for a surprise. Legal briefs and court opinions can be extremely dull, but there are plenty that make for compelling reading. One of them that had been filed with the court but not yet published was obtained by the press and wowza! The case, American Association of University Professors, et. al. v. Marco Rubio, et. al., is about whether non-citizens lawfully in the United States have the same freedom of speech first amendment rights as U.S. citizens. The judge, D.J. Young, ruled yes they do.

That’s not the most remarkable part, however. Starting on page 147, yes, it’s a really long decision, with Judge Young’s conclusion and his argument for determining a remedy, things really get going. We leave behind all the technical legalities and launch into a scathing rebuke of Donald Trump and his administration. Winding down, he quotes Ronald Reagan in his inaugural address as the Governor of California in 1967 talking about how freedom is a fragile thing. And then Judge Young concludes:

I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.

Is he correct?

Judge Young clearly has integrity and courage unlike Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who quit teaching his class at George Washington Law because the Dobbs ruling overturning legal abortion generated some “unpleasantness” from his students. You can read a snarky take on it at Above the Law, “Justice That Said Abortion is Unconstitutional Fails to Carry Semester to Term.”

In the meantime, Trump hosted a round table to talk about Antifa, a nonexistent “terrorist” group. Apparently Antifa has infiltrated the entire country and wants to destroy the American people and their way of life, whatever that means. There is no such organization or network called Antifa. But apparently being anti-fascist is unAmerican these days.

We are going backwards in time to the McCarthy era, only instead of Communists, the government has it in for trans people (but have you noticed it’s only trans women? They never mention trans men) and anti-fascists and is allegedly even developing secret watchlists.

Groovy.

No doubt, in spite of Antifa’s nonexistence, there will be a great made up fantasy created and many people will fall for it. We will have people reporting on their neighbors before we know it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The Conversation published a good article, “The science of defiance: A psychology researcher explains why people comply—and how to resist.”

Defiance, it turns out, is all about choosing to act in line with your values. It can be as simple as saying no when pressured to do otherwise. Complying stems from a very human behavior of not wanting the other person to think you don’t trust them and the discomfort you get if you say no. The article suggests we can build our defiance muscles and provides a framework for action for difficult situations. They conclude that defiance takes practice, that “each act of consent, compliance or defiance shapes not just your story but the stories of our societies.”

Have courage my friends! Take care of each other. And just say no.

Better Together feat. Jack Johnson | Playing For Change | Song Around The World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuTIFsvlmAM

#Antifa #beans #carrots #ClarenceThomas #defiance #Ethel #freedomOfSpeech #JudgeYoung #McCarthyEra #MrsDashwood #peppers #Sia #soup #tomatoes

Wer von #Sadcore spricht, redet jetzt von Ethel Cain : #folk #Folklore #Americana #ethelcain #Ethel #singersongwriter #Singer @ethelcain :
http://www.popmonitor.de/ethel-cain-willoughby-tucker-ill-always-love-you/

Ethel Cains neues Werk ist finster und symbolisch! #ethelcain #ethel #perverts #pervertsalbum #ambient #darkambient #Folk #slowcore : http://www.popmonitor.de/ethel-cain-perverts/

Ethel Kennedy Dies: Robert F. Kennedy’s Widow & Human Rights Advocate Was 96
#News #Obituaries #Politics #BarackObama #Cheers #ElectionLine #Ethel #HBO #JohnFKennedy #Obit #Robertfkennedyjr #RoryKennedy

https://deadline.com/2024/10/ethel-kennedy-dead-rfk-widow-1236111082/

Ethel’s biological clock has decided to tell her she needs to stop laying eggs and hatch some instead. So she’s gone broody. It doesn’t matter that we have no rooster and the eggs will never hatch, her hormones win out. First she sat on her egg, but we took it away. And since she hasn’t laid since, she sits on Sia’s eggs and the occasional egg that Mrs. Dashwood lays. 

She looks so stalwart spread out in the nesting box, and I feel a bit bad for her. Behind the nesting boxes we have an access door, so I open the door and reach under her and take the egg. Then give her a nudge to get her out of the nest and the coop to eat and drink. She is not happy about being ousted from the nest, and sometimes there isn’t even an egg underneath her. Unlike the time Mrs. Dashwood went broody and growled when we nudged her off the nest—if you have never heard a chicken growl, it’s a bit unsettling because it is not a sound you expect to come from a bird—Ethel doesn’t growl at us. She just complains in a low pitched “werk werk werk.” Sometimes she will fluff herself up at us and werk werk werk, but that’s as aggressive as she gets. Saturday she started throwing herself down in the dirt and having an angry wallow in the resulting impact crater.

She stays out for a little while and then goes back in the coop to sit on a nest. There is nothing we can do while her hormones are raging except exactly what we are doing. We all just have to wait it out. It could be a couple of weeks. Mrs. Dashwood was broody for just short of a week. Ethel has been at it for a week now. Hopefully she’ll be back to her old self soon.

Since the garden was all planted last weekend I’ve been able to walk around and assess how everything is going. The beans are looking good. There are even some lima beans that the squirrels didn’t dig up, not a lot, but a few. And those butternut squash seeds I shoved in to replace the plants that were dug up, they have all sprouted. So instead of the five original plants I now have eight squash plants. Good thing I like butternut squash and the variety I am growing stores well!

After the zucchini seeds were planted the squirrels did some digging in the bed and I couldn’t tell if they had dug up the seeds or not. Two came up and one got smashed in a downpour early in the week. So I shoved in a bunch of zucchini seeds Friday afternoon. By a bunch I mean eight, possibly ten seeds. We had originally planted six. But Saturday afternoon it appears the squirrels were digging again. So I shoved in a bunch more seeds. 

If I’m wrong about the seeds being eaten and If the zucchini end up doing what the butternuts did, I am potentially going to have a whole lot of squash. But that’s ok, zucchini bread is amazing. As are zucchini pancakes. And we also make zucchini sweet relish. If I have a huge glut we will try fermenting them too. And if all else fails, I can go out in the night and leave them on porches in my neighborhood. Heh. 

Speaking of glut, my rhubarb is doing amazing this year. I already have a big bag of it chopped up and frozen for later use. But I love rhubarb so much that when someone left a bag of it at the library service desk the other day and I couldn’t convince anyone else to take it, I brought it home. I have no idea who left the rhubarb at the library desk, it was there when I arrived Thursday morning and no one would confess. I think it was a stealth act akin to my potentially leaving zucchini on porches in the middle of the night. Some of it was beginning to get a bit squishy, so James was kind enough to jam it up for me right away.

I love the tart, so he added only a small amount of maple syrup to slightly dampen the edge. Then I had him add in ginger, cinnamon, and allspice. He thickened it with chia seeds. I love using chia to thicken jam, it works great, is inexpensive, and is a good way to sneak in some of those important omega-3s and omega-6s. Maybe I’ll try growing chia in the garden sometime minus the goofy pet part. Though I must say, a Bob Ross Chia Pet would be pretty amazing.

Growing chia in the garden is apparently pretty easy. They can grow 2-5 feet tall depending on the variety and get pretty purple flowers. I suspect the bees would love them. And since they are in the mint family and have a minty aroma, the squirrels might leave them alone. Ok, on the list of plants to try growing next year!

And while I’m on the topic of squirrels. I was looking out into the garden from the deck sliding glass door Saturday evening and saw a squirrel digging in the radishes. Squirrels have never bothered the radishes so I didn’t think much of it. But then They kept digging, so I opened the screen door and stepped out on the deck and yelled at the squirrel to stop digging and move along.

The squirrel paused and looked at me, then quickly finished digging, grabbed the radish they had just dug up, paused to look at me with the whole radish plant in their mouth, then scampered away. The bold little effer! I suspect this may have been the same squirrel who was climbing our screen door earlier in the week.

James and I are usually in bed by 8, asleep by 9. We like to read in that quiet hour. The day had been warm and the deck door was open. We heard a weird scritching noise, like something was stuck on the screen. James got up to investigate to find a squirrel playing Spiderman on the screen. He yelled at them but they ignored him. He walked up to the screen and the squirrel didn’t move. James poked the squirrel through the screen and the squirrel didn’t leave then either!. Finally he started opening the screen door and the squirrel jumped down and ran away.

James blames me for the bold little squirrel, suggesting they are the purring baby that befriended me two years ago. I scoff, of course. We have so many squirrels traipsing through the garden, I can’t tell who is who. Maybe this is the one who lives in the apple tree in the front yard? Or maybe they are the one who lives in the nextdoor neighbor’s overgrown juniper (or maybe it’s an arborvitae since it doesn’t appear to get berries?). Whoever it is, I refuse to take responsibility for this fearless squirrel’s actions.

Time in the garden this weekend was mostly spent weeding. I know a lot of people don’t like to weed but I rather enjoy it. I weeded the 2-inch tall lettuces. They are doing great, better than lettuce has done in the garden for years. Cool weather, lots of rain, and a good lettuce blend. The snap peas are starting to flower and my mouth is already watering in anticipation. Have I mentioned how much I love peas?

The shelling peas are flowering too, and are looking gorgeous. This makes me so happy because I haven’t had fresh shelled peas from the garden in a couple of years between rabbits mowing them down, trying a new variety that did not do well, and suddenly hot springs, it was a sad affair. But I am back to Lincoln peas, which love the garden, and the cool wet spring got them supercharged. Go peas!

International Garden Journal Week concluded Saturday. I drew something every day. Some were better than others. Actually, a few were terrible. But that didn’t matter, it was the process of stopping and looking that was important. I smooshed quite a few mosquitoes too. They are gigantic this year, the size of small flies. Seriously. Of all the things I am allergic to however, mosquitoes are oddly not one of them. I never get a raised bump and rarely even get a bite mark. Still, they hurt when they bite and some of them carry diseases, so I try to not be bitten. Which meant, while I sat in the garden trying to draw, I spent a good amount of time swatting them away.

I enjoyed drawing so much I plan to keep doing it. Not every day, more like a once a week thing on the weekend when I have time to sit longer instead of scribbling something in 10 minutes. I’ll be digging out my colored pencils to add some flavor. And I asked Julé, who used to keep a fantastic book blog but folded up shop to devote more time to her own art making, for some journal suggestions, which she kindly gave me. And I’ve been looking at travel watercolor sets that have brushes with little water reservoirs.

But, I am just looking at those things right now. I feel like I need to show some commitment before investing is yet more craft/art supplies. Thus, I will use graphite and colored pencils on some larger index cards I found. I still want to keep it low pressure and fun. But I also want to get better at it, so I have a couple books on botanical art drawing on their way to me at the library.

James also brought home Amy Tan’s new book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles. In 2016 Tan started her own nature journal, drawing and writing about the birds that visited her backyard. She got really good at drawing and the book is filled with her gorgeous art as well as pages from her journal. Inspiration!

Reading

• Poetry Collection: You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World edited by Ada Limón. A slim anthology of fifty previously unpublished poems focused on the natural world. The collection includes poems from Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Camille Dungy, Carl Phillips, Carolyn Forché, Diane Seuss, Ellen Bass, Jericho Brown, Joy Harjo, and so many more. An amazing collection.
• Interview: Ada Limón on Finding Poetry in the Natural World. An interview about You Are Here.

Quote

To A Blossoming Saguaro

You have kin in Mexico.
Shooting you is called “cactus plugging.”
Humidity & wind speed shape the path of a bullet.
Your shadow will outlive my father.
That’s kind of comforting.
Ghost-faced bats pollinate your dog-eared flowers
which smell like a wet rope, melon.
The sky is a century with no windows.
I say things like that. Sorry.
You have more rights than the undocumented:
I need a permit to uproot you.
Ofelia believes only rain can touch all of you.
My mother is my favorite immigrant.
After her? The sonnet.

~Eduardo C. Corral, in You are Here

Listening

• Podcast: Seeds & Weeds: Climate Change Gardening with Kim Stoddart. A short gardening podcast that I just discovered. This is the first episode I’ve listened to, and I immediately requested Stoddart’s book from the library.
• Podcast: Planet Critical: The Politics of Food—Chris Smaje. I read Smaje’s book Small Farm Future not long ago and I have been following his argument with George Monbiot over lab grown food. I’m with Smaje, in a low-energy future growing food in a lab isn’t feasible. Plus no one seems to be talking about the nutritional profile of lab food. Is it comparable to the real thing? Or is it just one more highly processed food that will lead to even more health troubles down the line? One of the best segments of the conversation is when they aren’t even talking about food at all, but about language and how we frame discussions and politics as left versus right. Rachel Donald, the podcast host, actually has some good suggestions on how to stop using such binary adversarial language.
• Podcast: Imaginary Worlds: Books Under Fire. A discussion of the rise in book banning.

Watching

• Movie: Nyad. Jodie Foster and Annette Bening, two good actors that go great together. Plus the story was well done too. While I have never hallucinated on a 200+ mile bike ride, I am familiar with the boredom and the mind games one plays to keep going. Nyad is an all-time great athlete and her swim from Cuba to Key West at the age of 64 proves that even older athletes can accomplish great things.

James’s Kitchen Wizardry

I cut garlic scapes from the garden garlic during the week and James made them into a wonderful pesto that we enjoyed on toast alongside spaghetti. He likes to make treats on the weekends and I requested something that wasn’t chocolate. So he made chokeberry (aronia) scones using berries we had frozen from last summer. He’s not quite got the flakey scone thing down, they were a little cakey, but they tasted divine nonetheless.

https://astoneintheriver.net/2024/06/09/broody/

#Broody #chia #Chickens #Ethel #InternationalNatureJournalingWeek #peas #rhubarb #squirrels #zucchini

Whitney Peak Joins Shira Haas & Sarah Paulson For Aisling Walsh’s ‘Ethel’; Bankside Films Scores A Number Of International Pre-Sales For Biopic About Pioneering Conductor — Cannes
#Festivals #AislingWalsh #BanksideFilms #Cannes #CannesFilmFestival #Ethel #SarahPaulson #WhitneyPeak

https://deadline.com/2024/05/whitney-peak-joins-shira-haas-sarah-paulson-for-ailing-walshs-ethel-bankside-films-scores-a-number-of-international-pre-sales-for-biopic-about-pioneering-conductor-cannes-1235920785/

‘Ethel’: Shira Haas Joined By Sarah Paulson In Aisling Walsh’s Biopic Of Pioneering Conductor; Bankside Launches Sales — EFM
#News #EFM #Ethel #SarahPaulson #ShiraHaas

https://deadline.com/2024/02/shira-haas-sarah-paulson-aisling-walsh-ethel-stark-conductor-efm-1235826631/

I recommend #Ethel on #Max by #RoryKennedy so well done. So moving. #BobbyKennedy 😭

#Ethel #NewMusic #8tunesat8
Ethel - Andromeda (Official Music Video)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=1uk2V-ABifo&feature=share

Old girl saturday selfie. #ethel #dogsofmastadon

Was thinking about how times have changed, and this sprang to mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jV_puhanl8
#Ethel Merman #music