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An update from the curmudgeon emeritus

It is not like me to go several weeks without writing, and as this site continues to evolve I wouldn't want my long absence to suggest anything other than that I've been absent.

And in that absence, I've been busy.

The greasy beans are now picked, though we might be able to scrounge one more mess of them for dinner in a couple nights. Today I went through the cranberry beans, an heirloom sent kindly by a seed saver up east who I've never met and picked them, and began to shell them. Colorful, they are, though I've no idea yet what they taste like. And I pulled all the popcorn we planted, though I've no idea how much of it the bugs left alone nor what my wife means to do with it. (It was, I'm told, a great exercise for preschoolers.)

Having worried all summer that we would not have peppers and okra, it's now finally time to begin harvesting those happy vegetables, as well. This morning I cut up three cookie sheets of okra and put them in the freezer. With the half-dozen chickens now roosting in our freezer, that pretty much guarantees a pot of gumbo at least once a month over the winter.

The tomatoes...well...we planted poorly, too many heirlooms and not enough simple red canners, but we'll fix that next year. I mean to keep a notebook next year, so as better to know what we've done and what didn't work.

When it's all done, we'll have to burn the garden this year. Too many bugs, especially those little yellow bean-eaters. And then we'll spread leaves and chicken manure over it, and begin the process of setting new fence posts and doubling its size. Mostly so we can keep the blackberries we planted down the hill away from the deer.

In the evenings, I've been reading. And, of course, watching the political conventions. (And we tore down a wall in the Fuzzy Duck over Labor Day. There's that.)

A couple other times I've written here about torture, and my simple but acute horror that our nation, our people, our government, has found it necessary and appropriate to engage in this practice. The irony that the ruling party has nominated a former POW, that I watched Fred Thompson speak last night at some length about the horrors of Senator McCain's treatment by the North Vietnamese...all that makes little sense to me.

Regardless, I am here to beg.

Please read Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.

Please.

This is not how government is supposed to work, and it is especially not how our government is supposed to work.

And if torture is the new norm -- if we really and truly believe this is how to combat Islamic extremists -- it's something we as a society should have a long and profound discussion about.

I am not yet through with Ms. Mayers' book. It is difficult to read, shattering even to an old cynic's ideals.

As a tonic, I have taken up Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. It is a kind of updated and nonfiction version of The Ugly American, though that old Cold War classic is usually misunderstood in caricature: The ugly American was the hero of that novel. Greg Mortenson offers a different solution to our relationship with the Muslim world.

Both of these books are selling well just now. Our hopes and our fears.

Please read them. Please make time.

This is the season of hope, possibly our last season of hope.

Posted by grant on September 3, 2008 11:15 AM | Permalink