9-11 Remembrance

Please, Lord, this...

...not this....

Journey To a Consecration in Navajoland

Just home from Navajoland, the Shiprock and Farmington area to be more precise.

I had the pleasure of traveling with 40 good souls from St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, Trinity Cathedral and other valley churches. David Kaiser was our trusty "motor coach (not bus!) operator". Janet Kaiser was our very able organizer and Cruise Director.

Our journey's purpose was to celebrate the consecration of David Bailey as bishop of the Navajo Area Mission.

Pictures and more information are at Flickr.com under my files as Patinphx.

Cathy Eden for US Senate

I'm stumping by telephone for Cathy Eden, the only woman candidate on the Democratic primary ballot.

It ain't easy.

First my only working phone is my cell phone. And because I don't have the company with the best coverage, I must call from the front porch in order to get calls to go through.

Most people have voice mail and it is a simple matter to leave a message from the script provided by Eden for Arizona campaign. Interestingly the only time a human answers the telephone, the person to whom I need to speak is not there. Every single one of them has given me permission to call back later. I must sound good to them. As for the left messages, I sound like a canned message. I try to personalize the message by using the voter's name at least once. Best I can do.

Cathy's website is www.edenforaz.com.

I'm happy I can help Cathy Eden's campaign in the way.

Oh, yes! Vote for Cathy Eden on your Dem ballot by mail or at the polls on August 24th.

Go Cathy!!

July Respite

Phoenix Arizona blisters from mid-June through September. During monsoon season, we get an occasional break from the 105 -- 115 degree (Fahrenheit) temperatures. Now is such a time.

Our dew point and humidity rise and the cloud cover shades us. Over the past three days we have enjoyed mild temperatures under 100 degrees. I resumed walking and busing for pleasure, not just for getting to work. Summer in Phoenix is estivation time for me. I just hide out in air conditioning until a respite like this.

Joy to the world! It's cool this morning. Only 86 degrees. Our respite will end today or tomorrow. But I will remember this blessing as we resume hot, hot weather.

Happy Independence Day

God Bless America!

Here's my favorite celebration for today courtesy of cartoonists Cantu y Castellanos:

I am an immigrant to Arizona, having lived in the Phoenix area over 35 years. I don't expect to leave, though one never knows what the future will bring. Many people in Arizona have worked themselves into a miserable frenzy over Mexican border immigration laws and policies. Rather than evaluate each new neighbor as an individual, many in Arizona have formed a blanket belief that anyone coming to AZ from Mexico is inherently evil, a bringer of smuggled people or drugs, an automatic addition to urban gangs, or a sneak thief intent on sucking up American benefits without paying taxes.

I know Mexican nationals living here without valid documentation who have started businesses, paid taxes, bought their home, contribute to their churches and charities. In short, they live just as I--a transplanted Nebraskan--live. Responsible people should be recognized and welcomed. People who come here from anywhere to create trouble, divert resources, or especially commit crimes need to be deported and KEPT THE HELL OUTA OUR NATION, not just Arizona.

Right now my chosen home state is not behaving as I would prefer. We will have a new law, SB1070, by the end of this month that is an embarrassment to me and quite a few other Arizonans. It is sufficiently egregious that even our state courts may stay its implementation. This law attempts to usurp federal border and immigration policies for local enforcement. Although I disagree with this law personally, if it drives immigration reform at the federal level, it will have served a noble purpose.

In the meantime, Baldo is my neighbor. I don't care where he was born!

God bless America!

...as I understand God.

As a child my understanding of God came from Christian teachings, specifically the Episcopal Church's teachings. As an adult I can't just shake off my understanding of God as Creator, Redeemer, and Guide-Teacher-Friend. Yet my understanding has repeatedly changed, grown and expanded as my life progresses.

God, as I understand God, is beyond the confines of the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Quran, or any other sacred writings. God is beyond human understanding other than how we choose to anthropomorphize a deity. God is productive in far more ways than male or female. God is the sum and substance of all that is seen and unseen in and beyond the known universe.

As each element of creation comes into being, it is imbued with the nature of the Creator. Stars, planets, black holes, little planets like Earth have life in ways beyond human understanding. So, too, do paramecia, amoeba, viruses, seeds, nuts, and all plant and animal life.

For me God is present in all Creation. How could it be otherwise?

Waiting

Waiting is usually not too hard for me.

So I've been waiting. It seems like I've been waiting a long time. Waiting to hear if lender(s) will approve the short sale of a home I'm trying to buy. There is absolutely nothing I can do to hurry the process.

I was carefully cautioned by my real estate professional that short sales take a long time and can even fall apart on the day of the final signing. Final signing. Doesn't that sound like a prized ritual of commerce? Then I read an article in the Arizona Republic that made more clear what a "long time" really meant. Ouch. We are just at the beginning of a long time.

It feels like it has been six months, but it has only been six weeks. Prayers are welcome! I wrote a prayer asking Abba to help me awaiting the perfect timing and solution. I'm pretty sure He knows I meant "Hurry up, Dad, please!" But I know that perfect timing and perfect solution lead to the best outcomes.

So wait I will!

Practicing perpetual patience,

Pat

Now I'll Git Fit

I came home from work today to find my latest issue of AARP Magazine. Opening to a random page I found myself looking at advice for gardeners regarding bending, raking, pushing a wheelbarrow, and doing squats. Each gardening activity was accompanied by an exercise to improve muscle performance for each job.

I was not gardening today, but my work involved bending, lifting and carrying light loads. After every workday, I feel like I need a total back replacement. Mercifully a warm shower and a good night's sleep followed by a day off from work relieves the aches and pains until the next work day.

Semi-retirement: What a blessing! Think I'll try a couple of these exercises. Maybe.

That's How She Is

Recently I re-wrote my e-mail tag line to say that I don't do social networking, but I write a blog.

In all honesty I play with a blog. I am more apt to embed a video I like or comment on someone else's writing with a link to the original material. It took me a while to learn how to upload pictures, embed videos, and create links that worked. So I guess it is useful to practice those skills sometimes, but I feel myself filling up with the Great Unwritten. It's time to live up to my tag line, to relieve the clogged up case of literary constipation.

Yeah, yeah. Promises, promises.

Okay now: once a day, every day, write, write, WRITE!

Wolfram Alpha Search is Phenomenal!

Give this fascinating search resource a try. For an introduction: Wolfram Alpha .

It's like an instant Almanac only better and with greater scope. This is a must for mathematicians, chemists, physicists, astronomers, and even biologists. But there's terrific uses for the rest of us mere mortals as well. Stock and bond info, anyone? Enjoy!

Thanks to Auguste Charles for this treat.

Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke of Insight (Ted Talks 2008)

This is a lively and fascinating video I saw before. Every time a friend has a stroke, I recall Jill Bolte Taylor's 18 minute message and I search it out on Ted Talks (www.ted.com) . I'm sharing it here and now as I think of a friend recovering from a stroke:

Superstition Reigns

Part of me wants to tell you all about a house on which I have made a buy offer.

Part of me is superstitious enough to keep my mouth shut.

All of me is getting a little impatient with the real estate face-saving practice called short selling. And if you think I'm having a little problem with this, please try to imagine the struggles of the home seller who is valiantly and honorably trying to stay ahead of foreclosure.

My ReMax Professional, Danielle Martinez, warned me that making an offer on a short sale would be setting myself up for a long drawn out process that could fall apart even at the last minute of closing. Caution to the wind, I made the offer. (I've always been this way. Give me advice and watch me ignore it!)

So now I sit in short sale limbo. And wait.

More as the process continues..... (Is that a promise or a threat? Lol!)

As for why short sales take so long? Check out this Arizona Republic article. Scary. Very scary.

Where in the World is Lubna Hussein?

Okay, let's put M. Lubna Hussein, journalist and Sudanese woman activist, in the history book of Diverse Mind. One more short chapter and we are done: M. Hussein was freed after serving one day of her jail sentence after the Sudanese journalists' union (government sponsored) paid her fine. That was on Sept. 9th last year. (London Times Online) She has left the Sudan and continues to work for 'the emancipation of Muslim women'. (London Times Online)

The second article is a good summary of M. Hussein's fashion crime, the trial, her unwanted early release from jail. The article details several practices common in The Sudan that are demeaning to women and even little girls, including female circumcision (clitoral removal and partial closure of the vaginal opening). Lubna Hussein has much educating and and agitating to do.

My hat is off to her for her activism on behalf of Muslim women.

Lubna Hussein Takes Jail Time -- Belated Report

Last fall as Lubna Hussein's trial for public indecency was postponed, my life was in flux on a lesser but turbulent track. However belatedly, here's the follow up story from an Huffington Post report on September 9, 2009:

KHARTOUM, Sudan — A woman journalist was convicted Monday of public indecency for wearing trousers, but was spared a sentence of flogging. A defiant Lubna Hussein said she would not pay a $200 fine and would take a month in prison instead to protest Sudan's draconian morality laws.

The 43-year old journalist has set out to challenge the police and courts since her arrest in July by insisting the case go to trial, aiming to embarrass the Khartoum government with the publicity. Her prosecution – and the prospect that she could get the full sentence of 40 lashes – drew an international outcry.

The judge's decision to impose a fine equivalent to $200 appeared to be an attempt to curb the criticism.

"I will not pay a penny," Hussein, who during the court session wore the same trousers that sparked her arrest, told The Associated Press after the ruling.

Read the rest here.

Freedom from Facebook

This is independence day.

I just zapped all that I could out of my Facebook presence and deactivated my account.

I removed my pictures, my friends, my places, and even my family. Try as I did, I could not seem to remove my log in data. FB wished me fond farewell and hoped I'd be back soon. "Just log in as before...." Ah.

While it was mildly entertaining to peer into the lives of friends and acqaintances and downright addictive to play the games, Facebook doesn't make much of a place for self-expression. It also channels my known demographics to advertisers so I can be blitzed with any service or product suitable for retirement age spinsters with left-leaning tendencies. Or at least what they think I want. I don't need this; I don't want this.

Buh bye FB; hello Diverse Mind!

Where the Dickens Has She Been??

Where the heck have I been?

Oh it's a long, long time from May to December--and seems even longer the other way around. The winter garden failed. Michael opines that we chose a place too much in the shade, and that is likely so.

On a sunny, warm March day I replanted the garden. Last week I ate beets and lettuce and three vestigial green onions. I harvested the spinach, too, but I plowed it back into the soil as pre-composted nutrients. It looked like something the earth would enjoy more than I would. Let's face it. I'm hopelessly spoiled with store-bought pre-washed velvety baby spinach leaves. This spinach was probably the stuff of Popeye's strength. It certainly looked like it! With sunshine, the spring garden grew just dandy.

Some kind of financial guru has been whispering in my ear as I go to sleep. Dave Ramsey coaches people to get out of debt and stay out of debt. He also talks real estate a lot. Somehow all this late night subliminal chatter has me house-hunting. I'll keep you posted on this adventure later, but at this point I have an offer in on a home at an ideal (for me) location. The sellers are happy, I am happy, however it seems to be taking the lender(s?) forever to make up their mind. I'm told this is the nature of short sales, so I am practicing patience and trying my best not to count my chickens before they are hatched.

I was thinking about starting to write again and I browsed through some of my old posts. I laughed. I cried. I clicked on links. I even sang. I really need to keep doing this. Who cares who--if anyone but I--reads it? It is pieces of my life well worth keeping.

A Favorite Secular Christmas Song

Billy Squier rocks Christmas in this three minute delightful song from the MTV heyday:



Update April 24, 2012:  Ouch!  Nabbed by the copyright police and well I should have been.  Shame on me!

Sprout It! Lettuce!!!!

Okay. See all that light brown to medium brown stuff laced with little black specks of Heaven-Knows-What? Now look very closely at the tiniest specks that aren't brown or black; they are pale GREEN: tiny lettuce sprouts on their first day above ground, November 28th.

I am so proud. More to come!

Planting It!

Today is Day 5 after planting. On Wednesday, the crops were planted in my autumn garden. The upright sticks mark the rows of planted seeds. Why two rows in one? 'Cause I love green onions. Bring 'em on!



Leaf lettuce was the only one that specified a need for some direct sun, so it's planted at the north end. See the light? Spinach is next to it in the 'inner north', then green onions in the 'inner south' plot and the Chioggia beets in the southern most plot.

Here's a pic of Chioggia beets. Pretty, huh? They are Italian in origin:




I used some plugs of grass from allotted gardening plot to transplant into thin or--like below--barren patches of lawn. Looks like they are surviving and may fill in nicely.



More will be revealed as the crops sprout over the next few days. Spinach may be the first to peek up into the world. I'll keep you posted.

Digging It!

Remember Michael, "Blue Rider"? Michael is happily off the road and back at his home in Phoenix. There are things he misses about traveling the western United States with a Werner truck, but he admits he doesn't miss the stress.

Michael is a master artist in his own home as well as on the road. About 10 days ago, he was planting his winter flower beds and urging me to help him. I demurred, saying that gardening was not my thing.



Then I began to see the results of his labor. And make no mistake, there is a lot of hard work in Michael's gardens.

Michael has customized his flower beds and lawns with a computer directed watering system, so each area of lawn and each flower bed can be watered as needed. As you can see above his results are breath-taking! And I became respectful and a little envious of his artistry and skills. Well, I harrumphed, I don't do flowers. But I might do vegetables.

Michael assigned me a plot of land and said go for it! And I'm going for it. Sunday I dug it up, and today I groomed it by picking out grassy clods and shaking off the dirt. I conserved the grass by replanting it in some thin spots. It may or may not root again, but it's better than having it go to waste.

No, this is not a grave!

My plot is about 3 feet by 9 feet, and it will be divided into four sections: Green leaf lettuce, spinach, green onions, and beets.


Michael and others speak of the joy of working the soil. I must admit it is a good feeling.

Folks, you know what this means? More blogging! Brace yourselves!!

Pat Oliphant Rocks The Silliness

I can't pass this one up!

Pat Oliphant, usually on the political/policy beat, occasionally takes a jaded look at Anglicanism and the silliness of the day. His cartoon speaks for itself. And I'd guess he has actual life experience with various facets of Anglicanism!

Fear of Superior Parenting

Today President Obama will speak to children and teens to encourage them to be better students, to develop and work toward good life goals, and to believe that with a good education they can grow up to have a good life. He will point out that he got where he is by following that advice.

Parents are horrified and are blocking their children's access to this message. And why?

Mr. Obama will be demonstrating better parenting skills in one brief video message than the 'parents' have shown in the child's lifetime.

Well, we can't have that!

Dear Governor Brewer:

My letter to Governor Jan Brewer, today:


I support you completely in your insistence for a sales tax increase (referendum). Wish we didn't have to wait for voter approval.

Please continue to hold the budget line, Governor Brewer. Arizona needs and deserves good government and most of us KNOW it takes money to operate efficiently and effectively.

Thank you,
Pat Klemme
Active Registered Voter (!)

I am living proof that a life-long Democrat can support a Republican. We ALL need to be going where Gov. Brewer is: to the practical middle where business--yes, government business--gets done well.

Lubna Hussein "Immodest Dress" Trial Postponed

The judicial court in Khartoum Sudan has postponed the trial of Lubna Ahmed Hussein on a charge of wearing indecent clothing, specifically trousers. The trial is being adjourned for a month while the court investigates whether Ms. Hussein's former job for the United Nations confers immunity for her sartorial indescretion.

Here is Ms. Hussein, not only in 'trousers', but blue jeans. Wicked, I'm sure!

Ms. Hussein was arrested by the Islamic fashion police at a cosmopolitan restaurant where she was wearing a pair of green slacks with her dashiki and head scarf. Having been exposed (oh my!) to western immorality through her employment with the United Nations, Ms. Hussein decided she would not take the 10 lashes plus a fine (which other women with her meekly accepted) until she had had a well publicized trial.

Ms. Hussein is quoted in this article by the BBC, "Flogging is not pain, flogging is an insult to humans, women and religions." She means this to be a test case, one which will call the world's attention to abhorrent treatment of women under a civil law that is more severe than Sharia law is. In order to force the court to put her on trial, Ms. Hussein resigned her United Nations job to neutralize the immunity issue. The court is clearly embarrassed to be put into this position, and is deferring its action until media attention dies down.

Good luck there.

To get a clearer understanding than I'm providing, click the highlighted link above for a professional journalist's factual report.

SEAPLEX and Project Kaisei Visit The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Holy Science Friday!

This afternoon on NPR's Science Friday, Miriam Goldstein described a three week scientific mission to study the ecological mess we call the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. She is a graduate student at Scripps Institute of Oceanography and she and her colleagues have obtained a grant sufficient for three weeks' use of Scripps research vessel, New Horizon. You can hear her account of the team's plans here. The project is called SEAPLEX--Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastics Expedition. SEAPLEX has its own website, and a newly started --you got it!--blog.

SEAPLEX will be working with Project Kaisei. While the New Horizon leaves San Diego, Project Kaisei's ship will depart from San Francisco with a similar mission:

"Project Kaisei will examine the largest area of the Plastic Vortex, an ocean gyre, situated to the North East of Hawaii, and approximately five days by boat from the United States (San Francisco area). The expedition will consist of a large pass through the Plastic Vortex, with the aim to collect and study plastic and other debris forms from the ocean in order to showcase some of the new technologies that will be used for processing and recycling."

These two expeditions working together give me hope that this environmental mess and its effects on ocean life can be studied and ultimately cleaned up.

I'll be following their progress with interest.

Don't Blame Me, Blame Karen J

Karen J sends this goody along today:

THE WIFE FROM HELL

A police officer pulls a speeding car over. The officer says, ' I clocked you at 80 miles per hour, sir.'

The driver says, 'Gee, officer I had it on cruise control at 60, perhaps your radar gun needs calibrating.'

Not looking up from her knitting the wife says: 'Now don't be silly dear, you know that this car doesn't have cruise control.'

As the officer writes out the ticket, the driver looks over at his wife and growls, 'Can't you please keep your mouth shut for once?'

The wife smiles demurely and says, 'You should be thankful your radar detector went off when it did.'

As the officer makes out the second ticket for the illegal radar detector unit, the man glowers at his wife and says through clenched teeth, 'Dammit, woman, can't you keep your mouth shut?'

The officer frowns and says, 'And I notice that you're not wearing your seat belt, sir. That's an automatic $75 fine.'

The driver says, 'Yeah, well, you see officer, I had it on, but took it off when you pulled me over so that I could get my license out of my back pocket.'

The wife says, 'Now, dear, you know very well that you didn't have your seat belt on. You never wear your seat belt when you're driving.'

And as the police officer is writing out the third ticket the driver turns to his wife and barks, 'WHY DON'T YOU PLEASE SHUT UP??'

The officer looks over at the woman and asks, 'Does your husband always talk to you this way, Ma'am?'

(You'll love this part...)

*

*

*

Only when he's been drinking!

Skirts vs. Trousers for Modesty

Reuters reports on the trial of a woman who had the temerity to wear 'trousers' in public at a restaurant bar in Khartoum in Sudan:

Woman in court in trouser "test case"

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – A Sudanese woman facing 40 lashes for wearing trousers in public made her first appearance in a court packed with supporters Wednesday, in what her lawyer described as a test case in Sudan's decency laws. She attended the hearing wearing the same green slacks that got her arrested for immodest dress.

Indecency cases are not uncommon in Sudan. But Hussein has attracted attention by publicising her case, inviting journalists to hearings and using it to campaign against dress codes sporadically imposed in the capital.

The article continues to explain that Ms. Hussein is insisting on this case being adjudicated in court--even if she must resign her United Nations job--to focus an international spotlight on the form of punishment: 40 lashes plus a fine. The fine is not the objectionable point. She contends that lashing a woman 40 times for wearing slacks instead of traditional dress will be viewed as a human rights violation. She hopes to end this punishment, at least for the crime of 'immodest dress' in Sudan.

Good for her! But here is my question: In what way are trousers more immodest than a skirt?

Traditional dress in Sudan is influenced by Islamic definitions. Basically modest dress would consist of clothing that covered a woman's body from the neck to the feet, and the lower portion would be a long dress or skirt. A skirt is open from a waist band to the ground, a fabric tube that encases the legs, but has no closure between the legs to cover genitalia. Sounds pretty immodest to me!

Trousers are open at the waist, then narrow to two fabric tubes, one covering each leg--and they are closed between the legs to completely cover the genitalia. Sounds pretty modest to me!

I have worn slacks, jeans, trousers most of my adult life. When I wear a skirt I feel slightly exposed even with appropriate underwear.

When I wear pants I feel dressed, quite modestly dressed.

I ponder why society has put men in trousers and women in skirts. In patriarchal societies it seems a distinct access advantage for men. Just pull up that skirt and have at it. Anthropologist Margaret Mead would have a field day with this observation, if she didn't already.

My salacious observations are tangential to Ms. Hussein's legal test case. I will be watching with interest as this story unfolds.

The link to Reuters' story is: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090729/od_nm/us_trousers_odd_1

August 1 Update: Here is an interview of Mrs. Lubna Hussein in the London Telegraph.

Happy Birthday (Belatedly) to Diverse Mind

I discovered that I've posted a blog now and then for over a year. Sometimes I'm fairly sure no one is reading but me. Other times I've been gratified by written or face-to-face comments, a sure sign that I'm not alone here.

Diverse Mind has no one particular advocacy. This lack of focus is probably disconcerting to visitors from other blogs that are topically focused. But everyone is welcome come and browse through this Diverse Mind, or to just drop in and see who that commenter is over on Inch At A Time, Telling Secrets, Wounded Bird, or others of my blog friends.

I am in awe of those who can produce a blog post at roughly the rate of one or more post a day! In slightly over a year, Diverse Mind has produced 70 posts. I'm going to give myself an at-a-girl for an average of roughly one a week.

The greatest joy in this is looking at what I've offered and being proud of all but one of the posts. And I'm not ashamed of the one; it just doesn't represent my better choices. My favorite is a mini-meditation that my Higher Power strongly suggested: Respiration. There is resonate core truth in that one that came from Someone greater than me.

Thanks for a good year, Diverse Mind!

Great Pacific Garbage Patch Redux

This is Jan Eliot's marvelous family strip, Stone Soup, on July 28, 2009. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is real, and some estimate it may be approaching the size of Africa. When this blog was new, and I was still learning how to embed pictures, I wrote about this phenomenon here and here.

The name 'Garbage Patch' is deceptive on multiple levels. I always think of a patch as being a small piece of fabric or other material designed to repair something. This patch is immense and destroys rather than repairs. I think of garbage as being the biodegradable leavings from food preparation such as used coffee grounds, vegetable shavings, fat scraps and the like. Garbage is stuff that comes from the planet and returns easily to the earth, even improves the earth with nutrients to support new growth. What circles in this enormous floating morass is not garbage. It is non-biodegradable trash, much of which is plastics.

We need to stop calling this the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. That's entirely too cute. And the only truth in it is 'Pacific', denoting the location of this one. (No, it is not the only one, just the worst.)

Maybe the Indestructible Pacific Killer Waste Dump. How about that? I'm open to reader suggestions in comments.

More important, the world is open to suggestions on ridding our oceans of killer waste.

Thanks to Jan Eliot whose Stone Soup I read at Go Comics and Arizona Republic newspaper.

Health Care Reform: The Republican Option

Heaven help us all!

This about sums up my Republican Senators' point of view.

Senator Kyl and Senator McCain are emotionally stuck in the middle 20th century. I don't think there is any hope of them ever getting gay-friendly.

But worse they are committed to allowing bloated big businesses in pharmaceutical and insurance industries continue to pile up mountains of profit at the health expense of America's uninsured and 'uninsurable'.

Let's remember this when we vote to fill Senate seats in the future. We need senators who will care about their voters, not their money baggers.

Political cartoonist David Horsey comes to me via Go Comics.