Category: education

Continued Adventures in Gardening

Next time I write about the garden hopefully it is in the context of me gorging on its bounty! Considering we had a long winter and a cold spring, how early I planted, and the fact that this is a first attempt at gardening I’m impressed with myself. The garden really seems to be doing well, despite the tomato plants just sitting there not giving me tomatoes. I’m excited to see how much we get of the garden this year and how much more I can get out of it next year.

When did I last write about the garden?  In April, May maybe?  I don’t recall and despite that fact that right over there to the right of this text box is a tool to help me find it, or perhaps even a direct link to the entry I’m thinking of I’m not going to bother looking it up.  I’m going to go with it has been awhile.  How do I know?  Look at that picture up there!  Last time my tomato plants weren’t the same size as me, nor were the zucchini plants growing outside of the planter.

So what all do I have going on in there?  Besides the hyperdeveloped tomatoes and zucchini?  I’ve got some soybeans growing, which I’ll be eating as edamame.

The cucumbers are starting to come in, they are still tiny, around the size of an adult’s pinky finger

My pepper plant is really starting to produce, everything is still to small to eat but there are a lot of them on the plant.  I wonder if I should prune it back in order to make the plant focus on fewer peppers?

What else is there in the garden box…?  I have an eggplant as well and it’s started blooming but there isn’t any fruit on it, yet.  I didn’t take a picture of it.  I have some pole beans too but , they haven’t produced anything either.  The beans have grown all over their supports and have co-opted the tomato plants as well… I’m hopeful they’ll start producing soon.

Despite the monstrous size of my two tomato plants there still isn’t any fruit on them.  My tiny cherry tomato has started producing though

That is about it.  Next time I write about the garden hopefully it is in the context of me gorging on its bounty!  Considering we had a long winter and a cold spring, how early I planted, and the fact that this is a first attempt at gardening I’m impressed with myself.  The garden really seems to be doing well, despite the tomato plants just sitting there not giving me tomatoes.  I’m excited to see how much we get of the garden this year and how much more I can get out of it next year.

Revisiting Same Sex Marriage

the essential civil right is not the right to be different — because difference, in this context, is the prerequisite assumption of bigotry — but the right to be the same.

With the recent legal activities in Iowa and Vermont, the Same Sex Marriage issue isn’t going away, as some proponents of Prop. 8 hoped it would after the proposition passed.  I stated then that people don’t stop fighting for basic rights regardless of how many times those rights are denied them. 

Now, this issue will be taken up and debated at the Federal level by the Congress.  Not because there is any politician brave enough to address the issue, but they’ll be forced to by the District of Columbia City Council who have proposed to recognize the same sex marriages performed elsewhere.  I’ve been thinking about the arguments against Same Sex Marriage as well and I agree with Peter Sagal, who lumped them into 3 groups:  It is against God’s law, it is against tradition, and it’ll destroy heterosexual monogamous marriages. 

I’ve covered these arguments in the past but thought that I’d do so again, if perhaps you missed it or didn’t understand.  The first one isn’t an argument at all, and is irrelevant.  What if my God told me it was okay?  What if he told me to kill kittens, and build giant obelisks to his glory?  It doesn’t matter. My and your personal religious beliefs aren’t an argument for denying people their rights in a secular nation that doesn’t recognize any religious belief as valid.  That whole ‘wall’ Jefferson talked about. 

Arguing marriages traditional place is also a poor argument, the whole liberal enlightenment movement of which the United States is probably the best product of is based on overcoming narrow-minded traditional beliefs, laws, processes, etc.  Slavery has a long tradition in the world, Misogyny does too, as well as genocide, torture, pedophilia, polygamy, etc.  The list could go on and on, these are all traditions that we’ve overcome and are better off for it!  I won’t mention the fact that what is presented to Americans as traditional marriage is younger than our country, but that can be for another time. 

The final argument that same sex marriage will destroy heterosexual ones is ridiculous on its face.  What is the divorce race in our Nation?  50%  How many more heterosexual marriages are loveless or festering wells of spousal and children abuse?  According to the Center for Health and Gender Equality 22% of women interviewed admit to domestic violence abuse.  This actual incidence of domestic violence is almost always under reported.  In some surveys the number has been as high as 50-70%!    It appears that heterosexual marriage doesn’t need any help being destroyed, heterosexuals are doing a bang up job all on their own.  All of this and I haven’t even begun to question how what two people do in the privacy of their own home effects what you do in the privacy of yours?  You might not like it, but besides not being comfortable with the idea of two men or two women raising children and having sexual intercourse it can’t do anything to your marriage.  What is much more likely to destroy it is money issues or infidelity.  Besides there’s no evidence to support this, the divorce rate in Massachusetts hasn’t spiked since the same sex marriage became legal, for the few weeks that it was legal in California the only statistics to see a spike was the rate of marriage…   They used this argument too when it came to giving Woman the vote, passing Civil Rights legislation, and abolition…  Nothing was destroyed then either…

Finally, those opposing same sex marriage will fail for one reason, the young don’t care.  It might take more years than it should, but it is inevitable.  Look at some exit polling from last year’s election concerning Proposition 8 in California:

           Yes   No

18-29 (20%)  39   61
30-44 (28%)  55   45
45-64 (36%)  54   46
65+   (15%)  61   39

As older voters die off and younger voters replace them and the LGBT movement continues to press for equal rights, laws protecting “marriage” will fall and the LGBT community will be able to enjoy the same rights heterosexuals take for granted.  As Andrew Sullivan stated, the essential civil right is not the right to be different — because difference, in this context, is the prerequisite assumption of bigotry — but the right to be the same.

Davis’ Historical Resources Management Commission meets Tonight

Tonight is the monthly meeting of the Davis Historical Resources Management Commission (HRMC), of which I am a commissioner. The HRMC isn’t the most important commission the city of Davis has, I’d say that’s those are the Planning Commission and the Finance and Budget Commission. But, the city of Davis has restricted growth since the 1970’s and because of this there are a relatively large number of historical resources in the community and issues involving relocation, preservation, destruction, etc., all come before the committee.

In the current economic climate though, the city is cutting its budget by leaps and bounds just to stay solvent, nothing about development or movement/destruction is going to come before the board. So, we’re taking the opportunity to reassess the Commissions purpose and goals as well as get in some training for Commissioners and members of the community.

The Commissions largest project right now is working on insuring many of the city’s historical resources are documented and put on the State’s Registry of Historical Places as well as the National Register. This doesn’t guarantee that they’ll be preserved but it insures that they are at least fully documented so that their memory is, at least, preserved. Tonight’s meeting will be a discussion of resources that could be nominated to these registries, as well as putting up signage in the city to bring attention to them.

The city of Davis is at a crossroads. The city has been hit hard by the recession and this has only been compounded by it’s growth policy. The local school district is also being hit harder than most. If the city fails to weather the storm a new public policy might be instituted, one that is more pro-growth, and that possibly could effect the city’s historical resources and those arguments will come before the committee…

Getting back to Thinking – Part 1 – Time

Help you find some time

Remember when you were a child? Well skip a few years ahead, I can’t remember much of my childhood at all. Remember when you were a teenager? Remember all the thoughts you had?  All the thoughts you thought, all the moral, ethical, philosophical quandaries you deliberated with yourself in your head? All of the things you solved. You solved a lot and you shared it with your friends, and together you solved a great deal more!  When you took your thoughts to another adult though, one older than you, they were disregarded. Superficially investigated and then thrown away… why?  When I was a teenager I didn’t know why and it seemed awfully unfair… then I graduated from high school, got into college, began working and guess what? I stopped having those thoughts, I stopped being torn by ethical dilemmas and philosophical debates with myself and I stopped sharing with my peers.

I think I know why and how that happened, I think I know why “grown-ups” and adults don’t listen to teens.  It isn’t because we know any better, or have valuable life lessons, or whatever bullshit you were given or are now giving out. No, its because I don’t, and most other adults don’t, think anymore!  We simply don’t have the time… we’re too busy working, or pursuing our careers, or work on ourselves, or trying to relax, you can insert whatever it is you do, or see your peers doing.  When was the last time you didn’t have to worry about anything and could just think…

Been quite awhile hasn’t it?

So how do you find these thoughts?  It comes down to time. As a youth, as a teenager you had a lot of time… Time to think thoughts, follow chains of them, reject hypothesis after hypothesis and then synthesize your results from dozens, hundreds, or thousands of little conversations in your head into a cogent (mostly) theory.  All that takes time though, and once you’ve left school, and left home, time becomes a commodity more valuable than gold. So valuable is it now that careerists – those stuck on the corporate or free-lance treadmill are trying to find a way to convert their money back into time! My guess though is that you have a lot of time, you just don’t realize how much of it gets wasted.

First you need to find time then. Where?

Like I said, you probably have mcuh more time than you think you do, you just don’t know how or where you’ve spent it. Here is where something I like to call a time budget comes in.  Just like a normal bugdet, which takes expenses, cash flow, debots and credits a time budget tracks where and how you spend your time.  Keep a time journal for a week, noting how long you spend doing any item, or nothing, after keeping meticulous track of how you spend your time analyze it.  Where are you spending more time than you’d like to?  Where are you wasting time?  How better can you manage it? Once you’ve found areas of improvement, act!  Stop spending so much time in front of a screen (TV, PC, or other).

Once you’ve found the time (and you will!) it’s time to start thinking about what helps you think most!  Which is what the next post on this topic will be about.

Helpful links for finding time:

Finding Time – Stepcase Lifehack

Reclaim your Time – Zen Habits

Finding Time – In Context

%d bloggers like this: