Sunday, July 14, 2013

Fence Garden (note that I've divided Rene's Bluebells so there are two plants now!)


14 comments:

  1. Nice weather for Howard to stop by, eh?

    On the way home today, around sundown, I stopped off and gleaned some onions, red and yellow both, from fields that had been harvested. It wasn't long ago onions were being harvested by hand, but now there aren't enough field workers in general. The machines are expensive, but require few workers. But they leave tons of onions in the fields. It's like cotton--the machines work fast and cheap, but leave a lot more than hand pickers.

    --Alan

    The cotton blossoms are pretty--mostly light yellow and pink, and rather large.

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    1. Ah, all the better to keep Leviticus 23:22 by. ;-)

      "Leviticus 23:22

      New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

      22 When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am the Lord your God."
      http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+23%3A22&version=NRSV

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  2. In California Zimmerman would have been charged with, and probably convicted of, first degree murder. Taking a gun someplace and discharging it, killing someone, is defined as premeditation. The jury must consider the death premeditated--there is no legal alternative.

    --Alan

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    1. So often I find myself thinking that it must suck to be President.

      Highlighting this was necessary, though. I am not sorry the penalties will be stronger. It's just not to be tolerated. How else to quell such atrocities?

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  4. listener, your shad must get a good deal more sun than mine. My sarvice berries are smaller than split peas by a good deal.

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    1. It could be a different species of Shad up here, I suppose. Ours is indeed in full sun, since that's what they prefer and we were planting them from nursery stock.

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  5. This day, forty nine years ago, I spent in a labor room in Providence Hospital. With Nurse Ratched. Hubby had called home, and was told that a cousin had already picked our boy's name, so we were picking a new one from the back of the dictionary. Finally made him leave as soothing his worries were too much work. Got scopolamine, which doesn't actually relieve pain, but makes you forget afterward. Sort of.

    My first baby, boy, was born a half hour after midnight. After 22 1/2 hours of labor. And worth ever moment of it.

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  6. listener--Re Obama's intemperate or foolish words with respect to sex assaults in the military, it is one thing to emphasize that they are severe crimes and to emphasize that justice should be done; but it is another to give an order, albeit indirect, about what the outcome of a group of trials should be, without knowing the facts. That is interfering with the course of justice, and the courts martial strive just as much to be fair as do the courts civil. But military personnel are trained to follow orders. Consider Henry II's words (whatever they might exactly have been) re Thomas a' Beckett, and the results:

    Assassination of Thomas Becket [Click]


    As for what can be done other than mindless punishment, here's an example:

    At Navy Installation, Sexual Assault Prevention Begins at Boot Camp [Click]

    And the alleged victim may be clearly a victim, or otherwise; not infrequently both are drunk and make very poor decisions, maybe even without remembering. I'd hate to see someone who is guilty as sin get off because of interference with the jury [panel in military parlance]. Certainly that would cause a mistrial or a retrial in civilian court, and quite possibly criminal prosecution for jury tampering. If nothing else, it is going to make selecting a jury extremely difficult until the statement fades from common memory. I learned long ago that I must not let my imagination and prejudices interfere with my role in court. Sometimes it isn't easy, but I have also learned that one may well not hear the whole story from the attorneys for only one side.

    [Speaker steps down from soapbox.]

    --Alan
    --Alan

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    1. I think it's clear that Obama had no intention of giving an order. No civilian would take it as anything other than an expression of personal opinion. But the idea that some in the military might view it as an order is not entirely unreasonable.

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    2. Thanks, Alan. It never occurred to me that a military person would honestly take it as an order. I forgot how that system works.

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