Q quarreling...Roses...Tomatoes

   Roses to you, in fact roses to all of us who have endured the horror show of 2020. Living through the pandemic has been demanding enough, but the political/cultural skirmishes have pushed us to new and uncomfortable places.

    Economic woes, as personal financial crises, concern over children's education and well being, and personal health worries have driven far too many in the nation to the brink.

    So, enjoy the roses from Lana and a diversion about tomatoes. The analysis piece of this post comes later. 

the crop report 

    Growing tomatoes is a big deal when you grow up in Indiana. 

     Bless her heart, my mom set out tomato plants every year but I am hard pressed to remember there ever being a bounty of the summer fruit. We ended up buying them from farmers and growers or were gifted them by neighbors who had more luck.

      Luck changed when Lana entered my life. Her mother was a master gardener, and it must be in the genes. Lana has lamented that living on a hill side on a ridge affords precious little flat ground. So she has taken to what I call the Frank Phillippi school of tomato growing.

        The crop is distributed in pots. My pal Frank amazed me decades ago when he was living in an apartment in Georgetown with a tiny balcony and a couple of sunny windows where he introduced his tomatoes in pots technique.

     A few years later when he owned a home in Alexandria, but with limited sunny garden space, he upped his game by putting the pots in wagons and moving them into the sun.

       People from Indiana will swear the best tomatoes and corn are their province. They are indeed joys of an Indiana summer, but we've found excellent corn and tomatoes here  in the California Republic.

     If you are a long time reader you will recall we've experimented with our tomato crops. We've sheltered them in visquine "huts," wrapped them in plastic, and have tried raised beds. This summer it's pots, in sunny and warm zones on the back hill and at the back of the house.

      I'm a devotee of the San Marzano and yellow varieties.

      Lana is not overly fond of tomatoes, except in cooking, but she put out a variety this year and they seem to be flourishing. She complains that she's not growing enough to "put them up" or can them as she did when she gardened Indiana's flat land.

      Another favorite is the cherry tomato. And again she's got a prolific pot. Next year though, she's got designs on a piece of the hillside where flowers may make way for a new tomato bed. "They need to be in the ground," she insists. That means some ground work, flattening, perhaps roto tilling and soil amending will be on the fall and winter do list. 

a mask-less confab

     Generations hence will find this time fraught with lunacy and perhaps inexplicable behavior. 
      In unpacking how we got to a Trump, they will learn he is the poster boy for a fractured culture where self indulgence   and entertainment challenged thoughtfulness and a common good. 
      There were some during the Spanish Influenza pandemic in 1918 who refused to wear masks. There were super spreader events even then. 
      Xenophobes, nationalists and white supremacists have always been with us, but usually marginalized by an intelligent society and a conscientious political code. 
       Science has had its doubters forever, but for most of our history the ignorant have lacked political power.
       Conspiracy theories probably began with the dawn of humankind. 
       What makes this time different is the ubiquitous hum of media, mass and social, and combined with the intellectual decline of the nation. It is exacerbated by the tectonics of media economics that has left us with fewer gate keepers, fact checkers, time tested aggregators, trusted delivery systems, and the rise of the importance of opinion. We forget everyone has one. The value of opinion was once commensurate with the quality of a life experience, training and education. Now blowhards make their living bloviating and sad, weak, easily led, ill informed people, challenged with thinking, allow others tell them what to think.
      And so we have Trump, and now Q. 
    

textures and shapes

     

battling Q's 

      I would not be surprised to learn that Steve Bannon is somehow a godfather to the Q silliness. It fit's his MO of cultivating fringe and marginalized and intelligence challenged demographics.
     He may have nothing to do with it. Maybe Bill Maher was not joking when a couple of years ago he admitted to being Q.
     I'm sorry, if you think there is a shred of credibility in any of the QAnon goofiness, you have just relinquished your privilege to speak about anything other than fairy tales, and cleaning out horse stables.

     a true Q?

      If you are interested in intrigue about the idea of the letter Q, then do a little reading about the Q source used in Biblical criticism and scholarship.
      For some 120 years scholars and theologians have discussed, debated and studied what is called the Q source-a compendium of statements and thoughts attributed to Jesus, the radical, reformist rabbi for whom Christianity owes its origins. Some hypothesize these thoughts of Christ were drawn from the faiths early oral tradition and thus explains how and why some of the Gospels are similar.
     The research, scholarship and debate is fascinating and endlessly more stimulating that thinking Donald Trump is the savior of the world, doing battle with pedophiles, the deep state and aliens. 
      I've been saying for almost 4 years, Trumpism is fascism, and authoritarianism. Some of you Trumpists and/or QAnon devotees may read this as Trump is the Anti-Christ. I'm not saying that. But believe it if it will help you come to your senses. 
     Jesus might get a kick out of that.

  

    Stay safe. Take care of each other.

    See you down the trail.

WOW-THE WEEKENDER

AS SUMMER ROUNDS THE BEND

   I have no explanation for this.  This summer we've been growing tomatoes with noses.  Amusing, yes, but also delicious.  As you might imagine they've prompted plenty of comment, none of which I will repeat here. 

A MIND BOGGLING REPORT

    Thanks to my friend and tennis mate, Janos for bringing this extraordinary report to our attention. This offers huge potential for all us but in the shorter run a reason for hope for those with particular disabilities.  Mind over matter and mechanics to be sure.

and finally,

A TRIP TO THE SHORE

here's a couple of minutes captured just a couple of miles from here

    Enjoy this long weekend.  See you down the trail.

RICH MAN A JAILED MAN & CALIFORNIA SNAPS

JUSTICE TASTES LIKE PRISON
FOR A ONE PERCENT MOGUL

     The Associated Press and the Sacramento Bee report the fall of a food industry tycoon and one of America's super rich.

     Frederick Salyer was one of the most influential and powerful men in the agriculture industry, but is headed to prison, convicted of price fixing and lying to consumers about the quality of his tomato products.

     US Attorney Benjamin Wagoner says, "This is a tremendous fall from power. He was one of the richest and most influential..."

     Salyer was accused of bribing buyers for companies such as Kraft Foods and Frito Lay to pay inflated prices for his products which were then passed along to consumers.

     Federal Prosecutors say Salyer told his workers at SK Foods to lie about the quality of his product, the mold content and whether the product was organic. Government records say moldy tomatoes were processed into paste, pasta sauce and salsa.

     Salyer's tomato farming-canning empire dominated 14% of the market.  The AP says Salyer is from one of the West's oldest land and farming dynasties, going back generations. 

     The government found that Salyer and co-conspirators manipulated the price and quality of millions of pounds of tomatoes, paying bribes of up to $100 thousand.

    Government records indicate Salyer tried to move some of his fortune to Andorra, a small nation between Spain and France. He made a down payment on a condo there. He is under house arrest at his Pebble Beach mansion. The wealthy captain of industry has been sentenced to six years.  

     I wonder if he'll eat the prison tomato sauce. I also wonder if Banking and Wall Street regulators or US attorneys have the same verve as the team that brought down Salyer. US Attorney Wagoner says he hopes the conviction will send a message to the agriculture industry to keep fraud out. Fraud-Investment banking?  Hey, Mr. Attorney General Holder, are you listening? 

CALIFORNIA ODDS AND ENDS

This beauty graced Main Street in Cambria's West Village.

   Wasn't the original color either black or green?  What do you think of this upgrade?

  Sometimes a sun dappled day at a winery is not complete without paella.  

Good night sun.

  Do you see those fresh oranges, hiding away?

 Odds and ends indeed!

     See you down the trail.

EXPLORATION

PUSHING BOUNDARIES

     Here's some context.  Jimmy Carter was in the White House, Magic Johnson was at Michigan State, Stephen King released The Shining, Tom Watson won the Masters and Apple released their new color logo. 
     35 years ago today one of this planet's greatest accomplishments was launched. Voyager 1 began the journey that today has taken it 11 Billion miles and to the edge of our solar system.  Voyager 1 and companion Voyager 2, now some 9.3 Billion miles in another direction, continue to mine data of deep space, soon to be interstellar space. Voyager has gone the farthest human kind has reached.
     On board are those gold discs containing sounds, data and renderings of human life, in case an intelligence encounters our sub-compact car sized "human offspring" wandering beyond our knowledge base.
     Alicia Chang of the Associated Press reports each Voyager "has only 68 kilobytes of computer memory.  To put that in perspective, the smallest iPod-an 8 gigabyte Nano-is 100,000 times more powerful. Each also has an eight-track tape recorder."
     Mind bending isn't it?

THE OTHER BOUNDARY

      Jack Kerouac's cult classic On The Road was published by Viking Press on this day in 1957.

From back cover of ON THE ROAD

       The original manuscript, a long continuous roll of type written script, now belongs to Jimmy Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts.  

        A few years ago the late George Plimpton told me he was in an office as the On The Road manuscript roll was being read and considered.  He said while it may be revered now on that particular day, people in the office were having  fun unrolling it across the floor and back, like a kid's toy.

Photo from mountholly-lamano.com

DAY FILE

GARDEN NOTES

      We've got a "volunteer" and "mystery" squash growing
down the back hill side.  

     Not sure what it is-something like a butternut or summer squash.  We've had a few and it bakes and sautés nicely and is great in a casserole.  I decided to pick a few when they were smaller.  One that had "hidden" beneath a slope side leaf grew to the size of a small pumpkin. That "prize" went home with a stone mason working on a neighbor's fire pit. He was delighted.

     A tomato update.  The "beautiful" greenhouse continues to endure evening breezes and winds and the crop inside flourishes. It ain't pretty, but the crop is.

      It continues to amaze us that we can grow tomatoes in this climate near the Pacific fed by the cooler than 
hot and humid mid-west conditions which favor tomatoes.

See you down the trail.

THE HIGH GROUND-FLAT AS WELL

PART 2

      My thanks to those of you who responded here or in e-mails about the beautiful work Lana has done.  Today we continue. 

THERE IS ALSO THE VEGETABLE GARDEN

     You may recall from an earlier post that we dubbed a section of high ground that we tilled, Indiana. Flat and with good soil, it is a perfect place for the kind of veggie gardens we kept in the Mid-West.

 These "book end," shots, from north and south, provide a low ground view of the raised bed garden.  You can see the bird net hoops as a marker.

More about those steps in a future post.

Up in Indiana Lana has created other beds for lettuce,

parsley and other goodies.

Veteran readers may also recall the "original" raised bed

and Tomato Tent at the side of the house

We borrowed the tent idea from a veteran gardener and friend, Nan, last year.  It is the only way to get tomatoes to ripen well this near the Pacific. The tent maintains warmth.

Lana is happy that after a couple of years in a pot

the Camilla is now blooming.  

And for those of you who suggested I put down the camera
and do some work, well.....
Someone needs to report. And it is Lana who has the 
green thumb.  I'm her #1 fan.
See you down the trail.

WHY IS IT?

ARE THESE PROBLEMS IN DESIGN?

As a former executive and CEO I understand

and appreciate the intricacies and demands

of product development and eventually packaging.

What I can't understand is how some

of the packaging today gets approved.

 Haven't you also encountered similar, what I call

"impervious plastic" encased items?  It can be dangerous

trying to use scissors, shears, knives or chain saws to

open some items.

Maybe at risk of sounding like an old grump, why can't these

type of seals be made to actually unseal as they would

pretend to do.  You find these little tabs on all manner of product, like this container of cocoa, or on aspirin bottles, or fruit juice bottles, or boxed almond milk and the like.

There's that little tab and you think OK, pull it carefully and it will open and peel back.  Are you kidding?! Don't you

have to rely on a knife, fork, fingernails or crowbar?

And I won't get started on how much flimsier the cartons and containers are these days.

WELL, EVEN NATURE HAS DESIGN ISSUES

We've noticed more tomatoes with design flaws this season.

They taste great, but what is it with these extensions?

Little tails, noses, horns or whatever your imagination

might find.

 They are just odd.

I'm waiting for a nouvelle cuisine chef to 

give these a name and design a dish around them.

Like Halibut cheeks-although I guess Halibut are 

supposed to have cheeks.  I didn't know about them

until seeing it on a menu.

Tomato beaks on romaine, perhaps?

Oh, Good luck opening that new CD or DVD you just bought.

Be careful.

See you down the trail.

AN OLD FASHIONED SKILL

CANNING

       Daughter Katherine moved her mother when she said one of her great memories of childhood was the aroma, sound and sight of her mother canning tomatoes.  Lana learned from her mother and so the tradition continues. Our eldest
Kristin says she remembers summer naps hearing the canning jar lids pop sealed.

       Katherine and friend Dennis rounded up tomatoes and with Lana's assistasnce created sauces, juice and canned tomatoes.

       It is a labor intensive process.  A stop action is helpful to see what is in the blur.

      Who knew that as Californians an old Indiana tradition would be carried on.  Including the use of some Ball jars!

        BTW, I have plans for some of those sauces.

         See you down the trail.