Shopping on St. Croix

Going food shopping in my house is referred to as going over the hill. i can't do a major shop unless i drive at least 15 minutes to the first large grocery store but i can do baby shopping all along the way and that is what this piece is about today because i was noticing there are a heck of a lot of people out trying to make a buck on the side of the road. i don't know if the numbers have increased with the economic downturn but it sure seemed like newbies were out hustling.

Commerce on the island of St. Croix is a constant pressure for those folks that make their living selling goods on the thoroughfares. They have to compete with the large bulk stores that get everything shipped in and although their things are usually fresher on the road the selection is small and spread out over miles of roadside.

Wednesdays or Thursdays are usually good days to go out and bulk shop. The container ships have arrived from Florida or Puerto Rico laden with fresh food that the small mom and pops and the big grocery stores will use the new inventory to restock the shelves for another week. Produce is relatively fresh and most things are available at the commercial establishments, but the best stuff is found along the road if you have the patience to make a lot of stops.

i pretty much have to get completely over the hill before i start to see the roadside stands. The first one to greet me this morning on my journey was a Rasta(not guy in pic) with jelly nuts piled high in the back of his pick up truck. Having just finished eating breakfast and not needing a drink i watched him stand at the back of the truck with two or three people waiting patiently for him to hack off the top. His face was beaming so i guess business was good.
Just down the road from the jelly nut man was a largish woman with a home made wooden table. Off to the side were big red coolers and a sign up saying fish. She didn't have any customers but her table looked wet so i was betting that she had probably just finished up with someone. She usually has local pot fish which is as fresh as you can get. After her i came up to the post office where the lady that sells the bananas had them all laid out on the concrete wall that surrounds the parking lot there. She was sitting in the shade talking to a man not doing much business but patiently plying her goods. i just got those sweet little bacubas yesterday from my neighbor so wasn't in the market for bananas.

Over by the fisherman's market (which is no longer functioning) there were more stands set up just off the road. One of them had what looked like a dolphin slit down the middle, and an old man and the sea type standing behind the fish with a machete. A man was standing in front of the table looking like he was waiting for the fisherman to whack him off a nice slab from that fish. i had quite the time watching them, wondering how he had caught that fish while i waited for the light to change. Shades of Hemingway.

Heading towards Sunny Isle down Queen Mary Highway some of the stands were empty and some full. Two ladies were sitting behind a table that had guava liquors, jams and cucumbers. They had a beautiful umbrella up and were chatting away as the cars streamed past. I always need cucumbers and hadn't seen any so far. No one was stopped there but they didn't seem to mind. i was going to stop but put it off until on the way back. Across the street a lady had her table spread with some squash, okra, bananas and small red local peppers.

Rounding the corner the Rasta artist was busy working on what looked to be a charcoal drawing of a family. He was holding a picture in one hand and drawing with the other, oblivious to the traffic streaming past. All around him tee shirts were fluttering in the wind beside his Jah rules flags. Business was bad there, no cars stopped and i wondered how having people stop to buy things might impact his drawing.

At Sunny Isle there was another pickup truck loaded down with jelly nuts. Two guys were at the back of that truck doing a booming business whacking away and handing out the refreshing drinks. More ladies had a table set up with jams and an assortment of baked goods, they looked to almost be sold out. People were milling around and i couldn't figure out if they were buying something or waiting for a Taxi Van. Sometimes my people watching skills have to be retired in order to focus on driving. i have been known to be honked at for not moving along fast enough when mesmerized by human activity. i am definitely a people watcher.

Heading out from the intersection the action going east was non-existent except for one woman with a table filled up with nothing but avocados, our tree is pumping them out now so didn't need them. But on the other side of the road a couple of guys had a cage set up and big land crabs were crawling up its sides, that was a treat but business was slow there too.

At Cost U Less the parking lot was full and long lines of people were backed up at the check out stands. The produce section was weak and i left thinking i should have gone shopping tomorrow as they were out of a lot of things. Sometimes you have to make lots of stops to get all the things you need and even then you may end up at home still needing to fill a third of your list on the next trip out.

Shopping here trains us to improvise, it educates us in the ways of denial and gives us lessons in using products that are produced locally rather than shipped in. People all along the roads are trying to make a living selling us their goods, they need us to patronize them just as regularly as we patronize the big stores.
Patience is a real virtue on St. Croix and i think it trains us to realize that we really can't have everything we want which is a good thing.

See Ya Next Week

Occupy Wall Street

Over on Red State Erick Erickson has a picture of himself holding a piece of paper saying “I have 3 jobs, I have a house I can’t sell, My family insurance costs are outrageous, I’m paying massive student loans, But I don’t blame Wall Street, Suck it up you whiners, I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain. Get a job hippies.”

Occupy Wall Street has finally caught the media’s attention and that of right wing blogs that have been hammering on the “jobless hippies” that are showing up to lend their support. The issue is complicated at best.

As they are wont to do conservatives have lumped those protesting into the “dirty hippie” category to demean them and turn conservative followers away from considering what has really galvanized them to come out and protest. The fact that the protestors are a mixed bag of people from all income levels, races, working and not working…rich and poor seems to escape them.

Concealing the fact that it is a mixed bag of people is paramount. Those controlling the purse strings and the media do not want you to ever consider that these are normal people who are fed up with the status quo.

What is lost in the above screed of Erick’s is that the protest concerns the out of proportion influence corporate money has in government. It’s about the slow decimation of the middle class and Erick is a prime example.  He has put up a picture of himself, in his tee shirt, with his screed to prove his ideology is working when it isn’t. He’s working 3 jobs and is still not comfortable. Why isn’t he comfortable? Why isn’t he able to make a decent living on one job? He can’t blame anyone because it would trash his world view.

In April of this year McDonalds held a job fair. They wanted to hire 50,000 people but ended up hiring 62,000. Sounds great right, all these people got jobs even if it was part time, but the sad part is that ONE MILLION applied. Percentage wise it would be easier to get into Yale than to get a job at McDonalds. The admit rate at Yale is over 7% this percentage is 6.2%.

Maybe if Erick the poster boy gave up two of his jobs other people would have some work. But then he'd really be in a fix, not able to pay his mortgage or student loans. How many are out there working two, three maybe even four jobs and still aren’t “comfortable?” Where is the American Dream if even one of its staunchest supporters hasn’t found it?

The issues are complex and not simple. Why aren’t companies CEO’s that didn’t fund pensions in jail? Why are banks that were bailed out by all of us still awarding huge bonuses? Why hasn’t anyone been prosecuted for bundling sub prime mortgage securities and selling them on the open market? But those are just my questions not necessarily the picketers. There is a lot of discontent on both sides. The Tea Partiers are upset with government control and the Occupy Wall Streeters have had it with profit over people.

In my mind there is only one solution and that is to sever the connection between Wall Street and Washington. Outlaw corporate campaign donations and corporate funding of political parties.

Somewhere in the middle we should be able to find some common ground that we as a whole nation can consent to. Trickle down doesn’t work, it’s been trickle up for three decades and the middle class is feeling the heat, Erick Erickson is a prime example…go look at his picture, he is totally stressed. These people occupying Wall Street are tired of shoving our problems under the carpet; they want to have a national discussion about where we are going. The time is now and this will spread as more and more middle class wake up. 

See ya next week

Rich pay more taxes...duh!

Some brief thoughts about the environment, why are large international companies planning for man induced climate change? Why is the US military in their long range plans that they publish every year planning for man induced climate change? And especially why are insurance companies also planning for man induced climate change?

If, as the deniers claim, there is no such thing as man induced climate change, why then are all these groups planning for it? Do they know something the deniers don’t know?

Taxes

A lot of people get confused when doing the math concerning who pays the most in income taxes. On the right the argument is that the wealthy pay the majority of income taxes. Well duh i say.

If you have the top 1% making more money than 150,000,000 million people at the bottom end of the pay scale of course they will pay more, even when taxed at a lower rate because they make more than all those people combined. Remember that salient fact…they make more money than all those people combined.

The real problem is that the middle class pays more in taxes than those making over $1,000,000 a year and that just isn’t right which is why the Buffet Rule is so popular with 73% of the country according to Public Policy Polling. Even middle class Republicans like this rule.

Loopholes in our tax code allow the super wealthy who can afford to take advantage of them get away with paying a lower percentage in tax.

Example…the rich guy makes $1000 and pays $100 in taxes which equals 10%

                   The poor guy makes $10 and pays $2 in taxes which equals 20%

Who pays a higher percentage of their income in taxes?

To make the percentages equal the rich guy should be paying $200 in taxes and yes it looks like more money but percentage wise it isn’t.

Some will argue that 40% of the population pays no Federal income tax at all. i’m not sure if those statistics are true but let’s look at it. All those workers are paying payroll tax (paid by those making less than $106,000/year), sales tax, state tax etc. They are not getting off scott free. In fact the bottom 40%(120,000,000 million Americans) own a mere 0.3% of the wealth while the top 20% own 85% of the nations wealth.

In 2008, only 19% of the income reported by the 13,480 individuals or families making over $10 million came from wages and salaries. (See Norris, 2010, for more details.) They only get taxed the same as the rest of us on that 19% the other 81% is taxed at a lower rate.

One of the problems with taxes and the arguments about who is paying more(which is really a non issue) is each individual’s deductions and use of loopholes varies according to how savvy you are. Like so many of these "articles" that discuss taxes they all totally ignore what is actually paid – because in the end they can’t take into consideration loopholes, exemptions, deductions, capital gains and shelters.

So when you hear that 40% pay no taxes don’t believe it, they pay more than you think just trying to exist.

C'sted, VI Steeple Bldg. Views

i'm pretty prejudiced when it comes to St. Croix and its historical beauty compared with other islands through out the Caribbean. We were very fortunate to have the  Danes layout Fredericksted and Christiansted and throughout our history to have concerned citizens that fought to preserve and renovate important historical structures.

In 1952 The Christiansted National Historic Site was created to preserve the Fort, Customs House, Steeple Building, Danish West India and Guinea Company Bldg., and Government House. These structures located within walking distance of each other have been re-done many times since their original construction in the 1700's and are a small representation of how the Danish economy churned from then until they sold the islands to the United States in 1917.

Today some of these buildings are getting a lot of loving TLC from contractors hired to do some needed renovations. After too many hurricanes passing through the buildings were looking stressed and the Park Service put in their requests to the Feds for funds to do some much needed repair on all the buildings.

The Customs House is the biggest part of the project, its getting rotten wood that had been impacted by water and termites replaced and or repaired. Park Service personnel and government architects have put a lot of effort into maintaining the integrity and antiquity of
all the buildings even down to reproducing the lime plaster that goes on the outside of the structures.

They are repairing windows and doors, the gallery roof, replacing shingles, repainting and putting the weather vane back on top of the Steeple Building. The Scale House, the bathrooms and both of the Guniea House kitchens are getting attention. The Fort was tended to first and the project overall is scheduled to be complete sometime in April.

But the reason i wanted to write this piece is more about the views that can be had from the top of the Steeple Building. Christiansted is beautiful, people from all over the world photograph it from all angles and lighting conditions. It is a never ending study in architectural beauty across all the ages.

Access to the tippy top of the Steeple Building has been cut off for a long long time. When i heard they were doing repairs up there i asked if someone could take a camera along and snap a picture out of all eight sides.
Since access is limited and timing for the lighting was not going to happen i had to be satisfied with what ever results were obtained. The day of the shoot it was cloudy but i think St. Croix shines even on a cloudy day.

Enjoy the spectacular views from a building your government is renovating because it wouldn't be happening without them!

Potpourri

Originally this weeks edition was going to focus on local architecture and the continued support for its preservation but the pictures i wanted to publish aren't available right now so its on to other things.

There is a contest going on in England to develop a new design for Pylons(electrical wire support structures) that grace countrysides everywhere. England has decided to update theirs so they solicited the help of designers from all over the world through a contest. The contest closed in July with 250 entries but is now down to the final 6. Over at http://www.ribapylondesign.com/shortlist you can view the finalists and comment if you so desire. i kind of fancy number 4 because it keeps the lines in a vertical configuration and looks esthetically pleasing. i do wonder if it will hummmm in high winds and also how easy or difficult it will be to climb if repairs are needed.

Guess where this is.

This is a new one for me. Apparently in Cameroon women in the mistaken belief that they are protecting their daughters from advances by men will iron their daughters breasts to make them unattractive. The Association of Aunties has been trying to educate rural women about their sexual health and how to teach their daughters to protect themselves without doing physical damage. A study has found that 1 in 4 girls are affected by this practice. All of the 200 ethnic groups in Cameroon use some form of breast ironing.

This mornings moon and clouds

So i was reading an article on psychology that had researchers studying students at Columbia University by asking them a series of questions that would divulge their confidence levels and how that affected their overall grasp of reality. The study revealed that if you were 100% confident that your view of the world was correct you were less likely to absorb factual information that would challenge that view. The article claimed that if you didn't want to be stupid you should not let emotion drive your intellect.

Did you know that Google Maps has opened up their editing to volunteers from around the world? If you have been upset by misleading map features you may want to check out their policy and send in your fixes.

Green Heron thinking he's hidden!

Hope the Whimbrel, who was fitted with a satellite transmitter in May of 2009, and that some of us here on St. Croix have been following since she landed here in August of 2009 finished her Northern migration and took off for St.Croix a few days ago. Before the final push she had attempted to fly home in August but got caught up in Tropical Storm Gert and used the slingshot effect to fly back to Massachusetts at 92 miles per hour. She rested up and moved south to Virginia where she was originally caught and fitted. She sat out Hurricane Irene and then tried again a few days ago flying straight into Tropical Storm Maria. Her transmitter is still working and the last location showed her at sea but closing in on us so we are hoping she makes it home maybe today. If you'd like to watch her you can learn more about her travels at http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/index.shtml?tag_id=88043 
and even sign up to get e-mail alerts.

i don't recall if i updated you on the Kingbirds that had been building nests in our West Indian Cedar tree. i think when i last left off they were working on their third nest. Well they failed again and gave up. i'm hoping next season they will do it again and have more luck. The one i called the Protector still comes and sits on the railing or visits for a bit on his old outpost, i think he learned that we were Ok to hang around and is not skittish like the other Kingbirds.

See ya next week!

Sharks Oh My

Sargasso seaweed  and fishermen

By 2012 sharks that have been facing extinction will now have a sanctuary. In July the governors of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, Republic of Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia signed a resolution to create the worlds first marine protected area for sharks.

Sharks have had a bad rap but the on going slaughter of sharks for their fins forced the islands to band together in order to protect the biological diversity of their marine environments. The area created (2,500,000 square miles) will be larger than the United States and will ban the possession, sale or offer for sale of any shark fins. The islanders claimed in their resolution that the lack of full scientific certainty about the size of the remaining populations of sharks was no reason to delay action.

Manta Rays will be protected in all the waters of Yap state.

People working together

Here in the Atlantic NOAA and France have recently partnered to protect the Humpback Whales that migrate each year from Massachusetts’ Stellwagen Bank to the French Antilles Agoa Sanctuary. The agreement will strengthen the relationships, monitoring and management of the whales between the two marine sanctuaries’s and help to preserve the species.

Our East End Marine Park here on St. Croix is part of a larger trend around the world to create areas of protection that are managed by local governments. Managing locally means the needs of fishermen, residents and those being protected are mutually compatible. Our park provides a host of allowable activities unlike the shark sanctuary. Some fishing and recreation is allowed in the turtle nesting areas; while on the underwater banks, no-take areas have been developed to protect spawning fish and their nursery’s freeing them from human predators.

Ready for visitors at Rainbow Beach

St. Croix’s other protected areas include the Buck Island National Park, Sandy Point National Refuge, Jacks and Isaacs run by the Nature Conservancy and Southgate managed by the Environmental Association. All these protected areas add to the rich environmental diversity St. Croix offers to its residents and visitors.

But is that enough, have we protected enough or are we just scratching the surface? On St. Croix environmentalists have been working on an Area of Particular Concern out at Great Pond. Great Pond is regularly visited in the spring and fall by migratory birds going back and forth between North and South America. We are a refueling stop for most species of sandpipers and some warblers. The endangered Least Terns nest at Great Pond over the summer and a small group of Whimbrels one of which has been tracked to Alaska spend the winter there feeding before they make their great migration back to the Hudson Bay area and further points west. Although we aren’t the biggest land mass compared with other islands we are just as important in the over all scheme of things. Every preserved step along the way of a migratory path for marine animals and birds means a greater chance for survival.

Sunrise

As more and more trans boundary endangered species face extinction nations have to come together to create safety zones where these species can reproduce and grow unhindered by commercial concerns. We share whales, sharks, dolphin, turtles, game fish and other migratory species such as birds with many countries. It is imperative that we cooperate with other nations and amongst ourselves to preserve their habitats so they can continue to thrive and be available to enjoy and cull for future populations.

There can never be too much preservation.

See ya next week.

Sunset

American Dream

i was reading (reading you know is a form of work) a piece on Red State(a conservative website) about secular journalists getting Christianity and creationism all wrong. The piece found fault with the continual regurgitation of this one sentence.

If we establish Earth’s age at 4.5 billion years, then we contradict the biblical view that God created the world just 6,500 years ago.

Erik Erickson claims that no Christian he knows believes the earth is only 6,500 years old. The reason for this is that in the first days when God was creating the world there was no sun or moon so how could anyone know what length a day was. But he does go on to say that according to Gallup polls many Christians believe that modern man was created in the past 10,000 years.

According to the fossil record so far…Homo sapiens (that’s us) started spreading out from Africa 200,000 years ago and became fully modern approximately 50,000 years ago. These numbers could still be significantly wrong and may need to be pushed back further because relying on fossils to paint an historical picture is only valid when you can find fossils.

All sorts of climatic conditions and geologic strata are necessary for the preservation of bones. Unless sediments quickly hardened into stone the bones would have decomposed. Finding an area that has all the appropriate conditions for fossilization plus is in a vicinity that humans occupied is like finding a needle in a haystack.  Digging up the entire land and ocean bottoms is never going to happen so we have to make do with the little we find. In some parts of the world excavation has barely begun.  These new areas of exploration can contribute a wealth of information that may in future change prevailing views concerning mans age.

So in changing prevailing views you must be wondering where i’m going with all this. If a large percentage of Christians (according to Gallup polling) believe that man was created within the last 10,000 years then what other misleading information have human beings in general bought into?

Can you see a misleading mechanism in the term “American Dream?”  The two words alone are so well known all around the world that there is no need for me to define it. One mechanism that is used with these two words is the idea that everyone can be wealthy if they work hard enough. Just repeating the words “American Dream” will induce the reader to identify with the outcome or ideal even if it will never occur in their lifetime.

The significance of the fact that most hard workers will never be wealthy is lost in the pursuit of the dream. The dream of wealth holds more weight than the reality of a life spent working hard, paying bills and putting some away for a future retirement that hopefully will not be decimated by a medical bankruptcy.

Someone, probably not you will get there and even if it isn’t you, you will continue to support the idea that the “American Dream” is not a myth.

Depending on a folk tale to get you to the pot of gold maintains the status quo for those who have already achieved that status. All of us create the misleading reality by buying into the idea that hard work will make you wealthy. It might make you comfortable but it probably won’t make most of us wealthy. It will most definitely make you want more than you can afford by keeping you in debt for most of your life but the upside is that your wants will help to churn the economy.

Popular culture is limiting when it pigeonholes the ideals of wealth and hard work. There are a lot of wealthy people that don’t work hard in the physical sense of the word just as there are a lot of people that do work incredibly hard in the physical sense of the word and are not wealthy. So how do you rationalize these two types of people with the ideal of hard work and wealth?

Intellectual wrestlers will note the exaggerated example; ideological purists will argue the fine points. The ideological audience accepts the suffering and punishment of the hard workers that haven’t become wealthy. It is their fault for not having “made it” they must not have worked hard enough or saved enough because everyone can make it otherwise the ideal would be false and therefore a myth.

This myth that wealth and work go together is perpetuated by an elite that uses the media to keep those less comfortable from ever considering what the definition of work means. As long as you are in debt you can’t fight the myth. The truth is everyone will not be wealthy or even comfortable even though they have spent their whole lives working hard.

i started writing this piece yesterday so i thought it was appropriate to end it with a quote i saw this morning from a fellow who calls himself the

Ministry of Truth

“Corporate profits are at record highs, and so is poverty. There is a reason for that. Your poverty is their profit. Keeping you poor means keeping you dependent on the loan sharks. As you get poorer, they get richer. It isn't a coincidence. It is on purpose.

Republicans like to cry that the government is enslaving us, but the reality is that Wall Street and the Banks are enslaving us, the rich are enslaving us and starving us so they can charge us a fee to lend us money." Ministry of Truth

If you are in debt the things you think you own you don't. You are just renting them from the bank or the credit card company or the credit union until you have everything paid off. Only when it is all paid off do you truly own it.

Tropical Storm Irene

Flooding

Patterns occur in everyone's life, the predictable summer, fall, winter, spring, the twelve months, the holidays, the celestial milestones, full moons, solstices and eclipses births, deaths and tropical storms. St. Croix is so well situated that a pattern has developed over time that brings the eye of storms directly overhead, aren't we lucky!

Our language for all these patterns take into account the regularity by which they occur. Our insight is gained through annual experience that helps us communicate to newcomers the after effects of even a mild storm. In ancient times and maybe even for some today calamitous weather events were and are attributed to the wrath of God. This was done as a practical matter to explain away disruptive life altering changes. Any kind of divine reasoning behind why it all happens has really got holes in it. If there is a God i don't think he would regularly batter places like Haiti, making their lives that much more difficult. You might think God is doing you wrong but the odds are its the annual weather pattens and your ability to withstand its effects that are doing you wrong. Negative things happen to every human alive on this earth, no one is singling any of us out.

Run off at Cane Bay

Tropical Storm Irene  had been slowly building all day Sunday, dark skies, squalls, wind shifts and the ocean build up. She really started her visit around 2:00pm Sunday afternoon with heavy rain and winds; by 6:00pm we were all feeling the eye for about an hour and knew the worst was yet to come. Typically the back side of storms tend to be more damaging and i've never figured out exactly why that is. After the eye passed the winds picked up so we put up a few panels on the north side of the house and basically left the rest exposed. The power went out about 8:00pm and we were plunged into darkness. Not wanting to turn the generator on we lit the kerosene lamps, stayed up for another hour and went to bed for a fitful nights sleep.

Flooding

Irene was very kind to us...she decided to grow into a Level One Hurricane while passing us by and up here on the hill we probably only had gusts of about 75k. Which when you think about Hugo and its 200k was a blessing.

Tree damage was mild, we only lost some limbs off the Flamboyant  and Turpentine trees plus two of our banana trees were uprooted. The Avocado tree dropped small avocados that only filled half a bucket while most stayed on the tree. Otherwise the most annoying part of Irene is the lack of power.

Irene

We have been on the generator since Sunday. They say it may come on today but i've heard a transformer blew on our hill, i've also heard an electrical wire is rubbed off and that is what is delaying our section being turned on. Who knows, but i can tell you if we follow the regular pattern we will be the last to be turned on.

The phone works but the cell phone is still down. Rumor has it that AT&T lost 6 towers, if it is true it explains why i can't get any bars on my cell anywhere on the island.  i already have bad service so this doesn't bode well.

All in all Irene spared us her rath. i hope those further north are spared as well.

See ya next week.

Buffet and Trump

That time of year again, they almost have it all devoured

When you go to the conservative sites they claim that Warren Buffet must be a socialist because he thinks the rich should be taxed more. i love how the word socialist is used so much on the their sites. You’d think they’d all get sick of seeing it in every conceivable piece of political counter argument. If a piece these days doesn’t have “socialist” in it i think God they’ve lost the thread, they might loose their masses if they don’t repeat it over and over. In the conservative world that word is so fraught with terror, the commies are coming, the commies are coming its become an outright joke to the rest of us.

So today i’m wondering how they will respond to Donald Trump saying Monday that he is not averse to paying more taxes but that the oil companies won’t want to pay more because they aren’t patriotic. Is he a socialist now and if he isn’t how come? Trump claimed that he would be willing to pay more in taxes because he is patriotic but that other’s in his wealth strata aren’t and will leave the country before agreeing to up their ante.

Sargasso grass reminds me of the century plants curves

Here is a man that wanted to run for President on the Republican ticket. The Tea Partiers loved him but how are they going to reconcile his agreement with Buffet that the country needs the wealthy to pony up? Trump just stabbed the Tea Partiers, the Birthers, the Deathers, the Republican Party, Koch Bros., Rush Limbaugh and Fox News in the back, and gave President Obama a big leg-up politically. i wonder what all those millionaire congressmen and representatives will do now that one of their own has gone to the dark side. i’ll bet Trump wishes he had kept his mouth shut.

i read somewhere that some on the right think that the two of them (Buffet and Trump) should just donate their money to the government. The writer i read claimed that taxes are imposed thus making us slaves of the United States and not free human beings. i think he or she has no idea what they are talking about and probably spouts off about the Constitution without really understanding that taxes are an integral part of those documents. 

An early morning birding spot with moon bonus

Paying taxes are specifically laid out in the Constitution and are to be used to promote the general welfare of its citizens and the defense of the country. If he and anyone else on the right doesn’t support paying taxes then they are not patriots and that is where Trump really stuck his foot in it, Republicans don’t like paying taxes.

Liberals support paying taxes, they understand what the common good means, they understand what defense of this country means and that they both cost money. i’m curious to see if more wealthy come out of the woodwork to promote more taxes, wouldn’t that be a shift.

Next topic…corporate personhood. From the tenth century up until the early 1900’s corporations, churches and government were considered artificial persons. Natural persons were and still are you and i.

i love the places that have showers on the beach

If you are at all concerned about the ever enlarging power of corporations to control politicians, judges, natural assets, jobs and the law you might be interested in supporting Move To Amend, a group formed to amend the constitution. This group believes corporations are not persons and possess only the privileges citizens and their elected representatives willfully grant them. They do believe corporations can engage in a limited form of personhood which includes entering into contracts, suing and being sued etc. They don’t believe corporations should enjoy certain rights elucidated in the Constitution that were intended for natural human beings. Their Amendment will reverse the Supreme Court’s (Citizen United) recent invention of corporate personhood and limit corporations to their proper role: doing business. Go visit their site and learn more. http://movetoamend.org/learn-more

See ya next week

Ten inventions that improved our lives

It’s a tidbit day, lots of littjavascript:void(0)le interesting bits of trivia that you may not know about but have contributed to making this world a better place for all of us.

The Chocolate chip cookie…did you know that when Ruth Wakefield turned her toll house building into a restaurant she ran into difficulty while creating a common chocolate desert for the establishment? She had run out of baker’s chocolate but had Nestlé’s bars on hand in the candy counter. She grabbed a few of these, crumbled them up thinking they would melt and threw them into the dough. Ouila, chocolate chip cookies.

Paper bags…did you know that paper bags first resembled envelopes until Margaret Knight decided the bags should have a square bottom. She figured that with a square bottom more things could be carried in it.

Windshield wiper…how many of us take these simple devices for granted when we need to clean off our windshields? Well Mary Anderson while on vacation in New York took a tram during a storm. The tram driver had to stop frequently to go outside and clean off the snow that accumulated on his windshield. Mary thought this was a complete waste of time and invented the windshield wiper.

The Zipper…went through a few designers before Gideon Sundback increased the number of fasteners on the C-curity device his wife’s father’s company produced. He was distraught after her death and focused exclusively on improving the four per inch hook and eye to eleven per inch facing rows of teeth which later became known as the zipper when B.F. Goodrich decided to put it on their boots. It took twenty years before the fashion industry in the 1930’s used it in children’s clothing and today you can hardly find a piece of clothing that doesn’t have one.

Scissors…I’ll bet you thought these are a modern invention; I know I did but have come to find out that there are examples of scissors dating back to the First Century but becoming more popular in the Fifth. Cross bladed shears were used to cut hair in the barber shops of old. Researchers have found scissors in the shape of male and female figures carved into each blade of bronze apparently complementing each other during the act of cutting. Hmmmmm

Seat Belts…Volvo started use of the first seat belt in 1849 and by the early 1960’s they had introduced the shoulder strap which is standard in all cars sold today.

Candy…The first combinations that ancient man used to attend to his sweet tooth involved the use of honey. Farming bee hives until the advent of sugar in the middle ages was the only way to get that rush unless one ate fruit. During the middle ages only the rich could afford candy made from sugar so the masses had to make do with whatever they could find. It wasn’t until the Seventeenth Century that hard candy became popular and affordable.

Flashlight…Joshua Lionel Cowen invented the flashlight while trying to decorate his potted plants with light. He was the original owner of Eveready but wasn’t interested in the company. He passed it on, along with his design for a tube, light bulb and battery to Conrad Hubert who patented the idea and made millions. Lionel went on to invent toy trains while trying to come up with an idea to light up a display window.

A marshmallow…The root of the marshmallow plant was used in ancient Egypt to cure sore throats. It was mixed with honey originally but in a later Asian version it was mixed with egg whites and made into a lovely meringue. After many reincarnations through the ages our marshmallow’s no longer have any of the original plant included in the ingredients.

Umbrella…We have all seen pictures of native peoples holding large plant fronds over their heads to ward off rain but the idea for an actual umbrella came from wanting to ward off the sun not the rain. All cultures made shading devices but the Chinese were the first to lacquer their paper umbrellas to protect them from the rain. Later in the Eighteen hundreds Samuel Fox invented the steel ribbed umbrella and from there they invented the collapsible one most of us use.

And so these simple items have made huge differences in all our lives but we hardly think about them, today you did.

S&P Downgrade

President Obama will probably become the conservative’s scapegoat for the Standard and Poor’s downgrade. As a group, accepting blame for anything is an anathema, conservatives are never to blame, but this time this is their baby.

If President Obama hadn’t gone completely against his base and offered to put entitlements on the table he might be culpable and have to share part of this. But as it turns out the conservatives are the ones that rebuffed his offer to put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the table in exchange for closing some tax loopholes. When Cantor and Boehner walked out of meetings during the most recent debacle because of their refusal to even consider anything revenue based they took on complete ownership of the downgrade. President Obama tried to negotiate much to the chagrin of liberals, i don’t know what else he could have done.

We do have a debt problem, but it could be solved by raising revenues. Unfortunately Standard and Poor's came to the conclusion that our government will never again be allowed to raise revenues as long as the loonies on the right continue to block that avenue. Their adherence to the “no taxes” mantra for the wealthy has ruined our credit rating. They own it now, no one else. They do not care what happens to the country or to you.

Will they accept responsibility for the mess they have made of our country since 9/11, i doubt it? Although i don’t put much value on the S&P assessment, according to reports their initial accounting was off by 2 trillion and their evaluation of the mortgage backed securities as triple A credit worthy was a complete disaster, just the fact that it is out there gives the vulture’s carrion to eat.

i don’t usually post on the weekend but i want this out there. The ideology of the right has ruined our credit rating, chew on that and pass it on.

Music

John Lee Hooker: This song is so good go listen...
http://youtu.be/DtbtONej4ao

Music Makers!

Music is a binder, it draws people together and is a way of life for many. i'm a listener, a foot tapper, a windows rolled up in the car belter outer and a dancer when it moves me. i've always listened to music in the car and for some strange reason switched to talk radio trying to get a handle on local happenings. That was a huge mistake all it does is makes me depressed so i switched back to music and seat dance my way to where ever i'm going. i usually arrive feeling good which is definitely a good way to start out anything.

Night time in F'sted

John Coltrane
http://youtu.be/8j_TDoOPnIA 

Lately i've been listening to a variety of music. Jazz, blues, reggae, rock and roll, and some alternative stuff i find around the web. When you have Emilies threatening the region, constant power outages, no phones for over a month, dysfunction in DC and 8% across the board wage cuts in the islands i find music to be the great soother.  It makes me feel good no matter what else is going on and probably makes you feel good too.

Malathini & The Mahotella Queens
http://youtu.be/TEWYFkjH2jc

The Guardian newspaper site is an amazing place to pick up music you might have missed, mostly European bands that don't get much recognition here. Pandora is great for setting on your computer and piping into your home to fit whatever mood you are in. You can pick bands you like and their algorithm finds other bands you might also enjoy. i've been listening to them since they first started and although sometimes they can get the music really wrong for the most part they do a good job. Allmusic and Pitchfork do reviews and AOL lets you listen to bands on their site. My favorite Lulu was bought out by Apple and shut down. i still haven't found one i loved as much as that site. Apple really saw their competition as a threat and solved that one fast. i wish they hadn't done them in, but i still have hopes that someone else will come along and do it again.

Early evening at Sprat Hall

Gregory Issacs: Night Nurse 
http://youtu.be/K6oYyG0KcvQ     
Gilberto Gill:
http://youtu.be/wVEZzX214FQ 
Elite Gymnastics: So Close to Paradise
http://www.myspace.com/elitegymnastix
Barrington Levy: Black Roses
http://youtu.be/KG39b3GNCXg 
Portugal. The Man: Got it All
http://youtu.be/8JyZZIQC3v4
Toro y Moi : Still Sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gqh4e1S6j0
The nice thing about music today is you don't have to buy all the crappy songs on an album just to get the one you like. You can mix and match.

Emilies purple sunset

Music unites and all over the world people work together to raise awareness to teach and inspire others to express themselves through this medium. Music can help people sympathize with those they might not understand, musicians use it to protest everything and to speak of love, love lost and love found. We all can reach across religious, ideological and cultural divides by introducing others to our music, i've put a few links up...check them out, stop them if they irritate you and move on to a next one. But think about this if you can't reach someone through talk or writing, try music.

See ya next week.

Is it five or more senses?

Did you know that we have more than five senses (hearing, taste, sight, touch and smell)? Each of these senses has organs that have special receptors to take in specific stimuli, we know them intimately as our ears, our tongue, our eyes, our skin and our nose.  The other senses outside of these five you probably do know but you just haven’t really thought about it.

So...think about the last time you went to the bathroom, was it because you felt an urge to purge or you just went for no reason. Most likely the sensors in your rectum or bladder noted a certain pressure being exerted upon those organs and got you off your duff to go expel the waste your body had accumulated. This is the purge sense, bet you never thought it was a sense but if you are like me i don't think you would ever want to be without it.

We all get hungry and thirsty and those senses are pretty self explanatory. You can’t go too long without having to eat or drink, if you did ignore these two you would certainly put your body at risk. Some of you may say Hey! These could be lumped under taste, but taste doesn't make you eat. Just tasting something is vastly different from tasting something because you are hungry or drinking something because you are dying of thirst. The hungry and thirst comes first before the taste and that usually stems from activity inside your body not your tongue.

The sense of pain is another sense that goes under a special label called nociception. Nociceptors detect mechanical, thermal or chemical changes above a set threshold and send signals along the spine to your brain. Without these wonderful nociceptors there would be nothing to tell you to stop inflicting pain to your body and nothing to notify you that you have pain in your body and you should probably start tending to it. The sense of pain saves you from yourself, something i think we can all relate to.

So look outside...today is a pretty hot day for those of us in the islands, most of us try to avoid being outside under the sun for prolonged periods of time. If we are outside we usually spend some time trying to cool off either in the ocean, a pool or under a hose. If not doing that we are not outside at all and are hiding inside a building with AC or fans or limin under a shade tree. Somehow we all try to cool down to keep our body temperature at a comfortable level.  If we were in a cold climate we would be doing the opposite to warm up our bodies. Thermoception is another one of those senses we don’t think about as being a sense but if we didn’t have it we would probably do serious damage to our bodies if we couldn’t recognize excess temperature ranges.

Have you ever had that sense of toppling over but catching yourself in time and managing to maintain your balance? Well equilibrioception or the sense of balance is what keeps you standing upright whether you are standing still or moving. Three systems, the eyes, ears and the bodies sense of where it is in space operate together to keep you vertical. Without these you would have difficulty moving around and would have to be trained to overcome any lack of one of these three. The sense of balance helps us everyday as we navigate our world on two feet.

Knowing where your body is and what it is doing is also a sense. You always know what your body is doing in relation to itself unless you have some underlying kinesthetic deficit. Anything you do with your body like taking a piece of food and putting it in your mouth, or reaching over and picking something up or even driving involves the nervous system and its ability to keep your body functioning without actively watching it. Closing your eyes and putting your finger to your nose is a good demonstration of this sense. Your body knows how to find your nose without looking. It always knows where you are.

According to some of the things i have been reading we really have between 9 and 20 separate senses depending on which sense researcher you follow. Time, itchiness, internal perception, a host of touch and eye senses etc. are all considered respectable groups that deserve their own studies. Who knows maybe extra sensory perception will some day be listed among those for more serious consideration. Anyway if you are still stuck believing that we only have five senses maybe you don’t need to go to the bathroom and have toppled off your chair taking the computer with you.

See ya next week.