April 2006 Archives

Having my first meal of the day at 3:00 p.m. at Sonic. Feel yucky.

Before I go, allow me to share with you three sentences:

People have arrived at my website in the last week by searching for "ungrateful ninja.com," "prig libertine," and "difference between diet of a vegitarian and a non vegetarian."

Anyone who has ever called me obsessive can fuck right off.

I love these lanterns very, very much.

Bye!

I had seen a reality check on the estate tax back in 2005: no one can find any farmers who have been forced to sell their farms because of the estate tax.

Now via a post on Echidne's blog, we find a report by Public Citizen detailing the insanity of the estate tax repeal efforts. Super-wealthy people have spent lots of money to convince Americans that not-so-wealthy people are victimized by this tax, which is a crock.

Make sure to check out Appendix C, containing the myths that have been used to argue against the tax.

I'm always interested to see people's thoughts about who makes quilts and what quilts are like.

Christine Liu, a guest poster on Decor8, saluted hip quilter Denyse Schmidt but contrasted her work with Christine's image of quilting: "At least for me, quilting seems still relatively entrenched in the German Dutch tradition and midwestern generational home-making." Then Brent Myers, a Decor8 reader, commented that "I've been looking for books that teach you how to take traditional ways and put a new spin on them." Decor8 posted his his cool men's suiting quilt the next day. (Definitely check it out.)

Then on Whip-up I saw the post International Quilt Festival: What's a Modernist To Do?:

The show always makes us feel a bit lonely, wondering whether or not there will ever be a critical mass of really interesting quilters at one of these shows. There are some contemporary quilts on display but few vendors carrying fabrics or books we would buy. Mostly there were a whole lot of versions of 19th century patterns and predictable novelty fabrics one might expect to find used in pediatric nurses’ uniforms. Need any tea-stained lace? How about a CD you can stick in your sewing machine so it can automatically embroider a Disney character onto your quilt? Lonely, very, very lonely.

I blinked a little bit after reading these. I forget that not everyone has gone through the process I did. When I started quilting I saw all the boring junk, but since then I've developed a bit of selective blindness. The quilting industry flourishes because of the huge market for pastels, florals, novelty prints, patterns for traditional blocks, etc. However, I've tuned it out. Unless I'm making a kid quilt, in which case novelty prints can come in handy. When I'm at IQF, I don't notice how many booths are full of boring stuff, because I'm caught by all the booths that offer hand-dyes, batiks, and Japanese fabrics. (Though the 2005 show did seem a little drab.)

My dominant impressions of quilters are people like Ruth McDowell, Judy Dales, and Hollis Chatelain, who are seriously boundary-exploding artists. They are the stars of the quilt world, the sought-after speakers and teachers, and the award-winners. I guess I look to them and others like them as what "defines" quilting for me, rather than the mass-marketed products that support the industry.

In fact, I've stopped subscribing to one of the quilt magazines I've taken for over 5 years because it's full of pictures of modern, artistic quilts and I'm getting tired of it. I'd rather focus more right now on things I might actually make.

I'm not saying these folks are wrong to feel that way. When I first tried to get involved in the Austin Area Quilt Guild I thought I was doomed to hearing about Sunbonnet Sue for the rest of my life. But there's a heck of a lot out there on how to break out of the block-block-block-all-identical-all-pastel routine, even before this recent crop of hip young quilters.

The hip young quilters are cool, though, and you should check them out. Kim from Dioramarama is a Whip-Up quilt correspondent who knows her stuff when it comes to the intersection of art and quilt. Check out her profiles of quilters Wendy Huhn, Lisa Call, and Angela Moll. Way to smash those preconceptions, ladies! And I'm loving Denyse Schmidt's new book.

I wish I'd had my camera in the parking garage:

I'm for separation of Church and Hate!

Right on, unknown coworker. Right on.

I'm sure this would be a better blog post if I had insightful commentary, but my brain's a bit worn out from all the not sleeping I've been doing. So I will just present these three pieces, arranged on a spectrum.

From an e-newsletter from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a short article describing the author's daughter's decision to donate her beloved teddy bear Rosy to the survivors:

We can all help. Not with platitudes about programs or promises of political investigations. Instead, we can donate the cost of this week’s frivolous “business” lunch to the Red Cross. We can give the cash for our next movie to the Salvation Army. And we can send our clothes and toys.

In the next night or two, Rosy - not some ideological opinion or political pipedream - will bring a simple expression of love from one child to another who urgently needs it.

That may be the best public policy imaginable.

A speech by Bono:

6,500 Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store. This is not about charity, this is about Justice and Equality.

Because there's no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa and, if we're honest, conclude that deep down, we really accept that Africans are equal to us. Anywhere else in the world, we wouldn’t accept it. Look at what happened in South East Asia with the Tsunami. 150, 000 lives lost to that misnomer of all misnomers, “mother nature." In Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month. And it’s a completely avoidable catastrophe. [...]

Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market: That’s a justice issue. Holding children to ransom for the debts of their grandparents: That’s a justice issue. Withholding life-saving medicines out of deference to the Office of Patents: That’s a justice issue.

An article at Slate describing an ad by the Red Cross meant to encourage blood donations:

You can do good both ways, the PSA suggests. But consider the difference: Giving blood is easy, it's over before you know it, and it's a tangible way to help people. On the other hand, social agitation (staging protests, organizing boycotts, writing letters to big corporations) can have complicated consequences, and the results can be difficult to quantify. [...]

Since when do charities bash the competition? Imagine a spot arguing that Ethiopian orphans are more worthy than Somali orphans. That tsunami victims are more worthy than Katrina victims. Wouldn't happen. Yet this ad argues that giving blood is a better choice than advocating on behalf of those child laborers. It presents do-gooding as a zero-sum game.

Individual acts of charity are not the same thing as fixing systems, especially those that create a need for charity by keeping people from succeeding.

You should check out Hard Green by David Roberts, posted at Gristmill:

What, then, is environmentalism? We want to save the set of ecosystems and species that happen to exist at this point in the earth's history. Why this set? What makes it more special than the six other sets that have come and gone?

Here's an obvious answer: This set includes us.

I don't quite agree with the implicit logic that since we don't feel very bad about the Permian-Triassic extinction event, we don't grant animals any intrinsic value, but I like his central point.

Really, he did. Or she. Is Homework a boy's name or a girl's name?

H-E-B grocery stores close on Easter.

The Amy's Ice Cream on Burnet Road does not.

My sister was in the habit of dressing up her first daughter in pink whenever I was coming to visit, because she knows the girly-girly look grates on me. Now she doesn't have to pick my niece's clothes to make sure they're pink. My niece does it herself, being somewhat Barbie-inspired currently. I wear a little pink myself these days, every so often, but I'm still deeply suspicious of it.

But I don't think it's just my aversion to the color pink or the girly thing that makes this report at Avast! Feminist Conspiracy! so appalling. This is happening in a preschool classroom:

Every few weeks, the class focuses on a different color, and they use that color exclusively to paint, draw, and learn what things in the world can be that color. At the end of the phase, they'll have a day to celebrate that color. The kids are supposed to wear something with that color on it and bring in a toy or something for Show and Tell, and they have a party featuring food of that color. Blue Day went by without a hitch, so did Green Day, and Brown Day.

Then came Pink Day.

The night before, when we were picking out her clothes and trying to find the pink stuffed dog that had gotten lost in her toybox, LC informed me that the boys don't wear pink, so they didn't have to participate in Pink Day. They didn't have to wear pink or bring in an object, but they could eat the food at the Pink Party. She said it again, to make sure I understand: Boys can't wear pink. It's a girl color. ONLY for girls. Her teachers said so.

I haven't been very enthusiastic about this homeschooling thing that C-Man leans towards, but I might reconsider.

What you should read this week, in my opinion:

Fred Clark's Empathy Part 4:

"What's the matter with Kansas?" Thomas Frank asks.

That's a good question, and a fair one. The majority of Kansans, after all, continually vote against their own economic self-interest. That's how Frank puts it, anyway.

I would put it somewhat differently: The majority of Kansans continually vote against the economic interests of the majority of Kansans. I don't really care whether or not you cast your vote in your own economic interest, but when your vote betrays the interests of most of your neighbors, well, that's a sin.

Flea's Letter To Alex and Chris, Twelve Years Into The Future:

As young white men, you sit at the pinnacle of opportunity and privilege. All the power in the world can be yours, but as the old saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. You may be faced with situations where causing harm is an option. You may be faced with situations where refusing to cause harm may cause you to lose face. You may be faced with a situation where you know you can easily get away with causing harm to another living being. And when the road ends here, my sweet boys, I beg you to remember my words, and the example of Hugh Thompson: It is your duty to protect those who can not protect themselves.

Talking with my 11-year old daughter about abortion, and other difficult but necessary tasks on Running with Scissors:

And as she sat down with me this morning, taking in this enormous news story that was all but buried within mainstream television media, she immediately understood. Her eyes widened. No exception for women who are raped? She knew that was bullshit. (No, I don't let her use words like bullshit. Yes, in lots of ways I'm a conservative and hypocritical mom, but anyway...)

AngryBlackBitch's By request, a bitch's thoughts on South Dakota...:

The sad reality is that anti-choice advocates are creating more unplanned pregnancies through their ignorance is bliss policies…and those of us in the trenches are shoveling in a downpour. A bitch struggles to understand the logic and finds that there is none.

Refusing To Choose One Racial Box by Sasha Debevec-McKenney:

If administrators at Windsor High School had their choice, would I be considered black for just the days of the interdisciplinary writing and response to literature tests? That way, I could help boost the scores for blacks, making the school district look better. And then, when the math and science tests rolled around, they could just switch me over to white - a racial group whose statistics could afford to take a hit from my test scores. Wouldn't I be so convenient?

And though this is part of a speech reported in the New York Times (now only accessible in the NYT archives), I bet the speaker wrote it down while he was working on it, or at least rehearsed it - so I'm including it:

As the scrape of silverware quieted at the breakfast, the Rev. W. Stewart MacColl told the audience how a Presbyterian church in Houston that he had led and several others had worked with Planned Parenthood to start a family planning center. Protesters visited his church. Yet his 900 parishioners drove through picket lines every week to attend services. One Sunday, he and his wife, Jane, took refreshments to the protesters out of respect for their understanding of faith, he said.

Mr. MacColl said a parishioner called him the next day to comment: "That's all very well for you to say, but you don't drive to church with a 4-year-old in the back seat of your car and have to try to explain to him when a woman holds up a picture of a dead baby and screams through the window, 'Your church believes in killing babies.' "

Mr. MacColl said of the abortion protester: "She would, I suspect, count herself a lover of life, a lover of the unborn, a lover of God. And yet she spoke in harshness, hatred and frightened a little child."

Mr. MacColl quoted the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: "'Sometimes the worst evil is done by good people who do not know that they are not good.' "

The crowd murmured its assent.

Then Mr. MacColl challenged them. "The trouble is, I find myself reflected in that woman," he said. "Because I can get trapped in self-righteousness and paint those who oppose me in dark colors they do not deserve. Is that, at times, true of you, as well?"

But don't ignore it.

Attitude.

Science fiction.

There, aren't you happy you didn't ignore it? Especially you, I-ROCK. I know how you love robots and the undead.

Of Republican rule? No.

Of blogging for me? Let's hope so, because I quite like it.

I actually started blogging over four years ago, but I let several posts go when I moved from Blogger to Movable Type. So the first entry on this blog was on April 14, 2002. I complained about my newly purchased toothbrush. Nothing like setting a positive tone...

Feds Pounce on Student Dressed As a Ninja

Running through the University of Georgia campus as a ninja can elicit a prompt response from authorities, a UGA sophomore learned.

Federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm agents, on campus for a community training project, detained Jeremiah Ransom of Macon Tuesday as a "suspicious individual" when they spotted a masked figure darting near the Georgia Center.

Ransom told The Red & Black student newspaper that he had left a Wesley Foundation pirate vs. ninja event when he was snared by agents with guns drawn.

"It was surreal," Ransom said. "I was jogging from Wesley to Snelling (cafeteria) when I heard someone yell `freeze.'" At first, he thought a friend was playing a joke.

University Police Chief Jimmy Williamson said Ransom was released as soon as he was found to have violated no laws.

Vanessa McLemore, the ATF special agent in charge, said agents thought something was amiss when they "noticed someone wearing a bandanna across the face and acting in a somewhat suspicious manner, peeping around the corner" then breaking into a run.

Williamson said Ransom was wearing black sweat pants and an athletic T-shirt with one red bandanna covering the bottom half of his face and another covering the top of his head.

From brownglasses.com, an amazing photo of a staircase. Really. This woman is an amazing photographer. Should I use the word amazing again?

From red current, an amazing (ha!) photo of a window and some...something. Panels. I don't know. All I know is, this is part of her house, which makes me want to go live there. Gorgeous.

From Digital Apoptosis, eggs. Representing love, racism, rage, courage, despair, shyness, revulsion, and sadness. (You can start on love and just click forward if you want to see the whole series.)

Sadness kind of reminds me of Debbie Gibson in her sad music video, but what the heck.

I try not to call anyone names online that I would not say to their face. Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher is acting like a jackass, though, and I'm pretty sure I would tell him so if I met him in person.

Gay state workers and job candidates have lost anti-discrimination protection as a result of an order that Gov. Ernie Fletcher issued yesterday as part of the state's "Diversity Day."

Fletcher replaced the 2003 employment policy of former Gov. Paul Patton with one that bans employment discrimination because of "race, color, national origin, sex, age, religion, veteran status and disability."

It makes no mention of sexual orientation.

Patton's policy included protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

But Fletcher spokesman Brett Hall said the governor has no intent to discriminate against gay workers. Rather, the new order mirrors federal affirmative action policy and is meant to prohibit all discrimination, he said.

"This is in no way to discriminate against anyone," Hall said.

Hall said the administration was concerned that the Patton policy on sexual orientation was too broad and extended to others, such as transgender people.

That caused a dispute at the state Environmental and Public Protection Cabinet over which restroom an employee undergoing a sex change should use, he said.

"These types of special privileges are not only difficult to comply with, but it's very expensive," Hall said, saying it could lead to lawsuits or require the state to build additional restrooms.

Mark York, a spokesman for the environmental cabinet, said a question arose last year about which restroom a transgender employee should use, but it was resolved by setting aside a particular restroom for the worker.

"We were able to work something out to everyone's satisfaction," he said.

Not for my budget, but damn.

I have always wanted to fuck up billboards. My top targets would tanning salons and that horrifying "vaginal reconstruction" place in San Antonio that advertises in Austin.

But I am neither brave nor bold. So I share these instead of doing it myself.

First, This is How To Do It.

Also see Exo Dis! for an online example

Finally, Subversive Road Signs Ahead.

If you're like me, you're fantasizing about a 10 foot ladder right now...

In case the previous post is not enough artistic endeavor for you, I give you the results of a performance piece by The Dog, entitled "How I Feel About Thunderstorms."

I suspect it doesn't have as much impact as seeing the piece in person, but neither C-Man nor I had that privilege since it happened while we were at work. The laundry began its day innocently stored in the basket, which was stored upright in the cabinet. C-Man came home to find The Dog trapped in the bathroom with the upended version. There were muddy paw prints in the bathtub as well. He had to disturb her creation by shoving the door open to allow her to escape, but she seemed glad of the trade-off.

Come to think of it, perhaps it was not art, but actually a pitched battle between mighty foes?

Yesterday I did get off the computer as promised and work on a quilt. Though it did not have the mood-lifting properties I was hoping for, I got a lot done.

This will become one of the two quilts for Jped's twin girls:

I'm still deciding whether this blue is a good border (it's brighter in reality than in the picture). It sort of jangles me to add a blue border to a red, yellow, and cream quilt, but adding a red or yellow border looked like overkill. We shall see.

This is the quilt that I was trying to complement, which I got up on the wall in March:

I didn't want to make these two quilts matchy-matchy just because the girls are twins, but I didn't want one to look amazingly more elaborate and complicated than the other. Because of the fighting, y'know.

But here's the question. When you're making quilts for twins, which one is for which?

"I thought about you this weekend. We made some granola."

This is me procrastinating going to bed because I've been godawful cranky all day and now I'm afraid I won't sleep well and will be even crankier tomorrow. Which I will if I stay up much later, but C-Man is playing with the XBox and not fulfilling his responsibility to manage my behavior.

Here are my three favorite search phrases that have led people to this blog in recent months:

• jujitsu a woman's perspective
• fun fake online marriage certificate
• pictures of dreadlocks on children

I have none of these things! My perspective on jujitsu is "Ow!" and that's really more about my pain threshhold than about a woman's perspective.

52 Projects: A Not-To-Do List

Having re-read that list, I'm going to get off the computer and work on a quilt.

What can I say, Saturdays have been strange around here for a while. Some of this stuff is old, some new, but all worth reading.

Bark/Bite had two good pieces inspired by the Super Bowl. It's worth reading them as a set. First, Ah, the Superbowl:

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that a large portion, if not the majority, of my readers did not watch the Superbowl. Which means you did not see the ad that had me grinding my teeth and trying really hard not to swear at the TV in front of my children.

And then Do You Tell a Football What Time the Superbowl Starts?:

[...] this is bad enough when it results in married men acting like children. I'm not saying that all men do this, but I am saying that all men are exposed to strong pressure to do this. And in all seriousness, the more beer commercials they watch during sporting events, the more of this pressure they will feel.

UnwiredBen sent over this movie review of Ultraviolet by Marcus132:

I've seen movies before where I've said "they showed all of the best parts in the trailer." Ultraviolet is the first movie that ever made me say, "They showed all the best parts in the poster."

Dawn posted a great piece called Invisibility=White on her blog I am doing the best I can:

When my mother in law says this phrase “White people are crazy” this is what she means. White People are the dominant culture in the United States. They are the holders of nearly all the political, social and economic power in our society. They design and control our government, our schools, and our legal system. White people control most of the media outlets - radio, television, and newspaper and book publishers. White people have designed a total system that grants them implicit favors and privileges as they navigate these systems. Yet, they blatantly, as a group, deny this.

Though it's been a long time since I identified as a Christian, I found Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger on Slacktivist quite compelling:

The book was, of course, attacked as a redistributionist, socialist, Communist, even Stalinist manifesto. It was called a "guilt trip." It was endlessly attacked by rich Christians insisting that the "age of hunger" was not their fault.
This last was particularly odd. Sider wasn't saying that global poverty was their fault. He was saying it was their responsibility, and that it was their opportunity.

Binyavanga Wainaina published a great piece called How to Write About Africa in Granta. While you read it, if you're laughing, make sure you're also thinking:

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it - because you care.

I was confused when I started reading Why I am not a feminist on Creek Running North, but I stuck with it. You should too.

I see my name mentioned in more and more places in the feminist blog world as “one of the rare men who gets it.” This gratifies and depresses me, and confuses me not a little. I suspect that some of this is that privilege mentioned above, in which a man who says certain eminently sensible, obvious, just, and humane things about feminism and sexism gets more recognition than a woman who says the same things. I suspect some of it is that I love women, and no matter how you parse that you will likely be right. I suspect some of it is that I cannot imagine my freedom, my rights to be fully realized in any system that deprives others of those rights and that freedom, and women are systematically deprived of those rights and freedoms.

I am not a feminist.

Last, let me say that I have NO IDEA what combination of drugs produces the writing on the blog I'M ON YOUR COMPUTER. But The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony for Childs cracked me up. For half an hour.

Get this, imagine if you were just a Sweet Innocent Baby, nothing to read, saving up $$$ for your future so diligently but yet thinking "I wish there was some Book I could read to make time go faster until I grow up to be fucking ill".

You can tell that some of the commenters are trying too hard to be funny in the same style, and they're just not. But perhaps practice makes perfect.

And lastly, this one is good writing combined with cartoons, so there isn't much I can excerpt. But please do check out There is Life on Mars, which I found via this post at Arse Poetica.

You'll be glad you did.

• Ben Folds Five - Kate
• Jonathan Richman - Velvet Underground
• New Model Army - Stupid Questions
• Suzanne Vega - Calypso
• Ruby - Tiny Meat
• Depeche Mode - I Feel You
• Dinah Washington - Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby? [Rae & Christian Remix]
• (skip another Ben Folds Five Song)
• (skip another Jonathan Richman Song - c'mon, you have 2,467 songs to pick from!)
• Solas - Paddy's Taylors / McFadden's Handsome Daughter / The Narrowback / Frank's Reel / Esther's Reel
• Pete Yorn - Sense
• Golden Palominos - Pure

I enjoy reading The Decembrist a lot. Mark Schmitt doesn't post to this (his own) often, but he's a deep thnker.

The "BS Human Capital Story" is about the possibility of educating people - increasing human capital - as a solution to the employment problems our country is facing.

Quick take:

The “Human Capital Story” isn’t an answer today because it’s not really possible to move people across these two labor markets that are pulling away from each other. There isn’t enough of a middle to train people up into, and the medium-skilled are going to have a hard time moving in to the highly-skilled elite.

He also offers a few solutions. It's not long, and it's worth a read.

I promise I will run out of gloom and doom posts within the next few days.

Excerpted from BOTTLED WATER: Pouring Resources Down the Drain, a report by the Earth Policy Institute:

The global consumption of bottled water reached 154 billion liters (41 billion gallons) in 2004, up 57 percent from the 98 billion liters consumed five years earlier. Even in areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for bottled water is increasing—producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy.

In contrast to tap water, which is distributed through an energy-efficient infrastructure, transporting bottled water long distances involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels are also used in the packaging of water. The most commonly used plastic for making water bottles is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is derived from crude oil. Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year. Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year.

After the water has been consumed, the plastic bottle must be disposed of. According to the Container Recycling Institute, 86 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or litter. Incinerating used bottles produces toxic byproducts such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals. Buried water bottles can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade. Almost 40 percent of the PET bottles that were deposited for recycling in the United States in 2004 were actually exported, sometimes to as far away as China—adding to the resources used by this product.

In addition to the strains bottled water puts on our ecosystem through its production and transport, the rapid growth in this industry means that water extraction is concentrated in communities where bottling plants are located. For example, water shortages near beverage bottling plants have been reported in Texas and in the Great Lakes region of North America.

Studies show that consumers associate bottled water with healthy living. But bottled water is not guaranteed to be any healthier than tap water. In fact, roughly 40 percent of bottled water begins as tap water; often the only difference is added minerals that have no marked health benefit.

Use What You Have Month originated with a post at Simple Sparrow. Every quilter I know has what's called a "stash," and apparently it's common to other kinds of crafters as well. The idea is that for the month of April, you only make projects from what you already have in your stash. I cheated by going to the fabric store on Thursday to buy a yard of neutral for the background of one of my works in progress. But other than that, I think I'm going to finish up quilts for JPed's twin girls this month just out of what I already have.

It's kind of a nice antidote to the American shop-shop-shop mentality.

I do worry (imagine that!) about how much pesticide is used to produce all the cotton I buy for quilting. So it's nice to see organic fabrics starting to come out. Check out HarmonyArt and Mod Green Pod. They aren't really for quilting, but I'm confident we'll get there.

Each month, Grace is posting a description of where she's donating money. I'm enjoying distrbuting the 5% of my take-home pay that I currently have budgeted for giving away, so I think I'll do the same.

Last month I donated to Medical Students for Choice. I wrote on my donation form "South Dakota really pisses me off." My mailed donation receipt had a hand-written note from the Executive Director: "We'll see what we can do about South Dakota." Very satisfying to both support a good cause and commune with good people.

I also donated a few bucks to NativeEnergy to offset the carbon costs of my trip to Colorado. I came back from that trip with a wicked cold but a clear conscience, having supported a privately held Native American energy company in its efforts to produce domestic renewable energy. Yay for that.

In March, I had to postpone my giving due to a last-minute IRA contribution that took a lot of the cash I had on hand. So in April, I've had LOTS of money to give away. Barbara Ann Radnofsky is running for U.S. Senate. John Courage is running for Congress in U.S. District 21. Radnofsky's campaign has a logo I can download from their website, Courage does not. However, both are serious candidates who could do a good job representing Texas in Washington, and both have been working hard campaigning and raising the visibility of Democrats. So I threw some money their way, hopefully enough to subsidize pizza for volunteers or some other worthy endeavor.

Texans, do note the Radnofsky message: vote for her in the Democratic runoff election! Early voting goes through Friday, and you can vote if you voted in the Democratic primary or didn't vote in either primary. Her opponent is Gene Kelly, who perpetually puts his name in and then does nothing. As far as anyone can tell, he gets votes just because his name is Gene Kelly. And he supports the Patriot Act (see this League of Women Voters Guide for details - PDF).

If you're eligible to vote and you skip this runoff, I don't want to hear you crying when Kay Bailey Hutchison does something you don't like.

From the World War II era, but relevant today.

From just last month, but I haven't tried the numbers yet.

(Hat tip to small hands on that second one.)

I really like Etsy.

Yesterday I watched a woman walk up to H-E-B with several plastic bags full of plastic bags. She put them into the recycling bin and then went inside, presumably to buy some groceries and bring them home in more plastic bags.

I'm developing a tic just thinking about it. There's a reason that the mantra is Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. That third option is kind of crap compared to the first two.

Correspondent tesseract26 sent in this report a couple of months ago, but I had forgotten about it until she dropped off one of the bags she describes at my house:

On my pilgrimage to the downtown Whole Foods today, I noticed they had some of these bags. They're WF branded, of course, so you're walking product placement; but on the upside, they have a bottom panel, so they're structured (so much easier to deal with than floppy canvas), and they're only $3!! I bought three of them to round out my collection.

I guess I have to give it back, since I have one third of her collection.

Another fun link to check out, via a post on Treehugger: Take Your Bag For A Walk. You don't have to buy theirs, you can buy (or make) your own and it will work just as well.

Honest, it's not that hard. Especially if you drive to the store in a car, which most of you do. Just keep a bag or two in the car with you. I'm not just talking grocery store either - do it at Fry's, at CVS, at Walgreens, etc.

Of course, the most common cashier response to "I don't need a bag" is "What?" So you'll probably have to say it twice. But really, who can blame retail employees for zoning out a little from time to time?

When January rolled around this year, I was still working on my end of October resolutions to finish up all of those quilts. Sometime in February I was stuck somewhere with only a pen and paper to amuse myself, and the quilts were done, so I came up with a new list of resolutions.

I halfheartedly tried to make it a short list, because part of me knew that something was going wrong with my life. Part of me knew that feeling tired and angry and hopelessly stressed all the time was not sustainable, and that part of me realized that adding a bunch of tasks onto the top of that was not going to help. So I tried to make a short list, and then then shoved it in a file folder and went on about my business. Not my usual behavior with lists.

Earlier this month, the other half of me realized that just trying to work harder wasn't making me feel any better. C-Man challenged me to come up with a list of what sucks for me right now. It goes like this:

• I don't feel like I have any time.
• I spend most of that time doing chores.
• And yet the apartment is always messy.
• I'm always tired.
• I hardly ever sew.
• I hate all my shoes.
• I lost my watch.
• I don't have enough comfortable clothing.
• C-Man's preferred sleep/activity schedule is different than mine and I feel oppressed.
• I feel guilty because The Dog doesn't get enough exercise or playtime.

I usually approach resolutions as an opportunity to accomplish more. Send more birthday cards, exercise, walk The Dog, etc. But this year I noticed a huge disconnect between my draft resolutions and the list of things that suck.

I've already gotten a few items done off the resolutions list. I've switched my IRA to a company that offers socially responsible mutual funds and I've started to buy more organic food. Bully for me. Do those changes assuage my guilt for leading a high consumption (e.g. American) lifestyle and align my actions better with my values? Yes. Do they make me happier? Not really. They are value-adds, but they don't fix the underlying issues.

So I have recycled the original list and instead I am addressing the "suck" list.

I'm starting with the stuff that's easy to figure out. I have no idea how to resolve my perpetual wardrobe dilemma. I have no idea what to do with C-Man liking to sleep 4-5 hours longer than I do on weekend mornings, which knocks out my prime cleaning and bustling around time. When I try to be quiet and sit around reading or whatnot for 4-5 hours after I wake up, I am a zombie for the rest of the day. How to compromise? Don't know yet.

But I know how to feel more rested, so I'm back to sleeping on a set schedule. And it's no more difficult to walk The Dog for 15 minutes in the morning than to take her out 2 or 3 times in between shower and breakfast, etc., so I just started doing that one day and have kept it up. We walk further than we would in 2-3 short trips, she gets more outside time and exercise, I get a little exercise, all is well.

That gets at two of the "suck" items without putting more items on a checklist for me to churn through every day when I already feel like I don't have any time. Not more to do, just do it differently.

(And we are currently trying out a new dog in our home so The Dog will have some additional companionship, which I know adds more work in terms of training, walks,etc. But that is a price I am willing to pay - in addition to keeping up the morning walks - for getting right with The Dog and getting that guilt off my "suck" list.)

I'm not giving up my task orientation or my enjoyment of lists. That's who I am. I'm not going to be chilled-out-in-a-meadow girl this lifetime. But I'm going to get some sleep, and I'm going to mix it up a little so that every night isn't a parade of "must get done." Two weeks ago I took an entire week off, did not much more than go to work and make sure everyone got fed and we had clean dishes. It helped. I wanted it to help more than it did, because I always want instant gratification from my efforts to catch up on sleep, but it did help.

So that's where I am. In case anyone asks.

Via a post on Bark/Bite, a quote from Jamie Raskin, who is a professor of Constitutional Law at American University:

People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution. They don't put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.