I love thunderstorms

I grew up with mighty thunderstorms rolling in off the Indian Ocean. We used to sit on the veranda every evening and watch the lightning over the ocean coming closer till the thunder crashed overhead. We used to call them "electrical storms." Most of the rain on the east coast of South Africa comes in summer so, when a cold front moves in, there is a clash of different air masses - one warm and one cool. It's that clash that causes thunderstorms.

That clash seldom happens along the coast of California because all the rain happens in winter and the ocean and land temperatures are almost the same. In the 25 years that I lived in San Francisco, I was lucky if we had even one thunderstorm per year and that was usually in Spring when the earth was warming up and cold air from Alaska moved down which was unusual because most of California's rain comes from the South Pacific.

Up here in Oregon it is different because much of our rain comes from the Gulf of Alaska. At the beginning of winter, most of our rain comes from Hawaii, as it has for the past three weeks. The wind is from the south and warm and there are torrential downpours but no thunderstorms. But, when the rain and wind come from Alaska, as it they currently are, we have that clash of air masses and therefore tremendous thunderstorms.

I did not know that when I first moved here and I was thrilled to find that we have thunderstorms regularly as is happening right now. That wind from Alaska sure is cold. It's 40F but, with a northwest wind blowing steady at 30mph with gusts up to 40mph, the wind-chill factor makes it feel like 10F. It's probably snowing on the coastal mountains ten miles east of us.

The pic below is a screen-capture of the satellite view of our current storm. The red dot is where I live. You can see how the jet stream (green dots) is bringing cold Alaskan air loaded with moisture from the north. You can also see that the rain in California is coming from Hawaii. To see a current (moving) satellite image, click here.

Cranberry chutney

Today I will be making cranberry chutney to go with the Thanksgiving turkey because it needs to sit a few days to "mature." This is the only departure from a traditional Thanksgiving dinner that I do. The rest will be the usual: roasted turkey with mash potatoes, corn bread stuffing, a green veggie, (probably asparagus as that is now in the shops) red garnet sweet potatoes (which they incorrectly call "yams" here on the West Coast) mashed with just butter, salt and pepper, (NO marshmallows - yuk!) drippings gravy and cranberry chutney.

I cannot eat turkey without cranberry - too dry - but I do not like what they call "cranberry sauce." Because my restaurant was a South African restaurant, I used to make lots of chutneys and we had at least ten on the menu at any given time made from whatever fruit was available at the time. For Thanksgiving and Christmas, I used to make cranberry and persimmon chutneys and I have gotten so fond of them that I still serve them nowadays. Unfortunately persimmons are running $2 EACH this year!

(I will also be making piesang blatjang today. That is a fiery hot South African banana chutney with lots of chillies and ginger - delicious with lamb curry. Chutneys, which are served as side dishes like relishes, came to South Africa with the East Indians but piesang blatjang is a Cape Malay dish.)

Here's the recipe for cranberry chutney. Try it - you might like it.

12 ounce bag of cranberries

1 cup of water

half a teaspoon of salt

1 cup of sugar

2 tablespoons olive oil

half an onion chopped fine

1 heaped teaspoon of finely minced garlic

2 tablespoons of finely chopped cilantro

1 teaspoon of cumin

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper or one fresh serrano chillie finely minced

Boil the cranberries in the cup of water with the salt and sugar for ten minutes. The result will seem watery but it will solidify as it cools.

Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet and add the cumin and cayenne (or minced serrano.) As soon as the cumin starts to bubble in the oil add the chopped onion and minced garlic and saute till golden brown - about ten minutes.

Add sauted onions etc to cranberries and stir in the chopped cilantro and vinegar. Let it cool and refrigerate. It will be slightly bitter when you first make it but will mellow in a few days. Use it just like the usual cranberry sauce. It's especially good on cold turkey sandwiches.

Our appetizer on Thursday will be Dungeness crab salad and the dessert will be pumpkin pie of course. I use butternut squash instead of pumpkin because it is firmer and less watery than regular pumpkin and you don't have to add oodles of flour to stiffen it. Just boil the squash and drain it in a colander for an hour or so. In fact all the boiled squash needs before being put in a pre-baked pie-shell is to be mixed with a dollop of butter, a pinch of salt, some sugar and few sprinkles of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. It does not even need to be baked. I don't even add eggs because I like my desserts light and fruity especially after a big main course but of course it must be served with heaps of whipped cream.

The crab will be served with a Washington Gewurztraminer and the turkey with an Oregon Pinot Noir. The pie will be washed down with a glass or two of South African port. (South Africa makes some of the finest ports in the world.)

No, this is not my Thanksgiving dinner but those baked potatoes sure look good especially if they're stuffed with cheddar cheese and bacon. I do mashed potatoes because there's not enough room in the oven when I'm roasting a turkey.

Sinningia aka "florist gloxinia"

Sinningia is a member of the gesneriad family like the African violet and Cape primrose which I profiled last week and the week before. Originally it was thought to be a "gloxinia" (which is also a gesneriad) but the botanist, Sinning, realized that they were not the same as true gloxinias and renamed them but the name "gloxinia" stuck. Sinning also began to develop hybrids of sinningia. There are hundreds of varieties and what we now know as "florist gloxinia" has little resemblance to the original species from Brazil.

Sinningias have some of the most beautiful and most varied types of flower of any house-plant. There are about 50 different species and all, except for a few, have tubular flowers. Most of its varieties are crossed hybrids between Sinningia speciosa and Sinningia regina and there are double as well as single flowered hybrids. They all have large, velvety, trumpet-shaped flowers with either ruffled or plain edges and a cluster of large felted leaves at the base of the stems. The blooms can be 3 inches or more in diameter and can remain in flower for up to 2 months.

The ideal temperatures for sinningia are 70 to 75 degrees during the day and 65 to 70 degrees at night so this is a greenhouse plant unless you keep your house that warm. I don't like our house to be warmer than 65F during the day and 50F at night - too cool for sinningias. They also like lots of humidity and bright light and frequent watering. They will rot if water gets on their leaves so they must be watered from the bottom like African violets and never mist either the flowers or leaves.

Pics 1 and 2 are my old standby pics of an African violet and a Cape primrose just to show that sinningia is related to them. The rest of the pics are just some of the different varieties of sinningia.

Getting the political debate back to sanity

The left has dominated the culture for 40 years and have hijacked the language of political discourse. Before the left began to dominate the culture, there was no need to discuss most of what we know as Americanism.

There was no need to defend our political philosophy. The American Revolution, the Declaration and the Constitution embodied what we believed. Our Founding Fathers created a national philosophy that was more liberal than anything ever before known. And in fact no other political philosophy has ever even come near to the true liberalism of the American Revolution.

The French Revolution was a step backward into authoritarianism and totalitarianism and the European political philosophies of socialism and Marxism came directly from the French Revolution. Socialism and Marxism are not more liberal than Americanism. They are in fact more reactionary. It was a sad day for America when socialism and communism and class-warfare were introduced into this country.

These European political philosophies were, by their very nature, reactionary. They were reacting to entrenched aristocracies and monarchies. We simply got rid of our aristocracy and monarchy. There was never any reason to introduce socialism in America because we were already more liberal and egalitarian than any nation in Europe.

Americanism is based on some very simple truths, human nature and common sense. It isn't really even an "-ism." It is almost impossible to defend it because there really is no reason to - but we have been backed into a corner by the leftists. Before Marx, there was no need to even use the word "capitalism." Capitalism was simply the way civilized people dealt with private property. The left hijacked the language. According to the left, "capitalism" is the opposite of communism. That is a lie. The opposite of communism is simply freedom, common sense and human nature.

In the 1930s American communists decided to start the Big Lie. They deliberately began to substitute the word "liberalism" when they really meant communism because they knew that Americans would not trust communism. The Big Lie has permeated our culture to the extent that the left in America now stands as the bastion of "liberalism" and every argument with the left requires us to tie ourselves in knots REACTING to their lies.

It is time to stop debating with the left. They control the playing-field. They have created the language with which politics is debated in the west. It is impossible to define Americanism inside the political paradigm that the left has created. To try to defend Americanism against leftism requires using their language and we are automatically cast in the role of reactionaries.

It is time to start ignoring the left. I no longer debate leftists. They have debased political discourse with their Big Lie. The language of the left is based on deceit. It is time now to simply put forth our ideas calmly and confidently all the while ignoring the left. So I intend to stop reacting to the left's Big Lie. You cannot defend yourself against lies. All you can do is keep repeating the truth. Eventually decent, honest folk will realize who is telling the truth.

I've spent far too much time criticising the left. It's been fun up to a point and it's been revenge for the 25 years of leftist nonsense that I tolerated while I lived in San Francisco. Now it's time for me to tune out the Big Lie; to turn deaf ears to the deception of the left and ignore their nonsense. It's time for me to go back to square one and start concentrating on what I stand for not what I am against.

There are decent Democrats and I'll debate them about almost anything anyday; anything but socialism. Socialism is a political philosophy of failure. It's all about treating the symptoms of a sickness. It's a band-aid not a cure.

So let's get back to discussing the important things - like how do we deal with the complex issue of Islam; how do we bring about law and order and a civil society; how do we deal with illegal immigrants and what should we do with the health-care biz and Social Security which may well be destroyed by the baby-boomers.

Hillary's "bad dream"

From Neal Boortz:

Hillary can smell the Oval Office. With the Democrat control of the congress, and a president who seems well-suited to the role of a lame duck, Hillary is feeling her oats. She thinks the Democrat nomination is hers ... and its off to the races.

Yesterday The Liar made an interesting statement to reporters in Washington yesterday. She said that "health care is coming back" and "it may be a bad dream for some."

Now just what does she mean by that? Bad dream? What kind of bad dream?

Does Hillary mean that after our government takes control of the delivery of medical services in this country that Americans will have to wait for months, even years, for elective surgery as people do in Canada and other countries with socialized medicine? Well .. .if that's the case, Hillary is right. That would be a bad dream.

Maybe Hillary is talking about what awaits any American who tries to use his or her own money to hire a doctor outside of the government medical scheme. Well, under the Hillarycare proposal she concocted in 1993, if a private individual used private funds to hire a doctor to perform a medical service outside of Hillarycare, then both the doctor and the patient could be arrested and jailed. Being jailed because you dared to hire your own doctor? Again, Hillary is right. That indeed would be a bad dream; not just for some, but for many.

There are many free market reforms that could be made to our health care system that would increase competition, expand availability and decrease costs ... but the problem is that they are free market reforms. Returning free market economics to our system of medical care doesn't enhance the power of politicians, and thus it is a non-starter. The political goal here is to make people dependent on the Imperial Federal Government for their medical care. Once that is accomplished you can almost write the Democrat campaign commercials for them. "Vote for Joe Republican and you're going to have to pay for your own medical care."

I've been saying that socialized medicine in the United States is inevitable. There are two basic reasons: One, politicians want the power. Two, individual Americans don't want the responsibility. The great American love of freedom is now pretty much limited to freedoms not coupled to responsibility. Americans have been taught by the political class to believe that a person's health care is the primary responsibility of either the government or that person's employer.

I read Boortz regularly because he is blunt and tacless, means what he says and says what he means but I was just thinking the other day that there is one thing about him that irks me: he's a snob like most libertarians and ideological purists; he has a very negative view of ordinary Americans. However he may be right about this issue.

One thing is for sure: Hillary is dead wrong about it. I was in the health-care biz for nearly 30 years and watched it grow into the the ugly monster it has become. The problem of exploding costs is caused by socalled "health insurance." What we have right now is NOT "health insurance." It's a mutual benefit scheme whereby healthy people pay for unhealthy people. In fact people commonly call it "health benefits." We need to return to the concept of real "insurance."

Insurance, like home insurance and car insurance, is there in case something catastrophic happens; something that would bankrupt you if you did not have insurance. It is meant to cover unusual circumstances. You don't send claims to the insurance company if your house's plumbing goes wrong or you need a new battery for your car. That's covered by your maintenance budget. You don't even make claims for minor accidents such as dings in your fender or windows broken by neighbor kids' baseballs because you know that the cost of fixing them on your own will be cheaper than increased premiums.

"Health insurance" as we know it now is like making claims for fender-benders and broken windows. That's why the premiums just keep going up and up. Real "health insurance" would cover catastrophies only - if you needed major surgery or had succumbed to a disabling illness; the equivalent of "totalling" your car or losing your home in a fire. The rest of the time, we should be paying as we go.

You certainly don't make a claim on your car insurance every time you have an oil-change but that is how people use "health insurance." Routine doctor's visits, or maintenance, should not be covered by insurance. If it were only used for catastrophic illnesses and not maintenance and the health equivalents of fender-benders, premiums would be much lower.

The real problem with "health insurance" is that most of it is supplied by employers. It seems as if we are not paying for it but of course we are. The employer passes along the costs to you in the form of lower wages and increased prices for products but, because, it appears to be free, people abuse it. People need to pay for their insurance personally. That way we would be more concerned about waste and inefficiency.

And there's plenty of waste and inefficiency in the health biz. Because it is paid by a third party, no one is watching the purse. Every hospital I have ever worked in is over-staffed. Every hospital I have ever worked in operates in a way that would not be tolerated in any other industry. There is rampant waste. Why? Because the "health insurance" scam is totally inefficient. Hospital costs go up so they simply put up the premiums.

Everyone knows about the ten dollar Tylenols on hospital bills. That applies to every single thing on your hospital bill. I know because I saw how much stuff costs and how much hospitals charge for it. Most businesses charge approximately 50% more for their product or service than what they paid for it. Hospitals charge at least 1000% more and often a much higher "mark-up." Why? Because no one is watching the purse.

Socalled "health insurance" IS the problem. And "health insurance" run by the government would be even more inefficient and wasteful as anything run by the government is. We need to get rid of "health insurance" or "health benefits" as they are commonly and more accurately known.

I won't go into boring detail about how this would control costs except for one example. If you're as old as me, then you remember when you paid for your own doctor's visits. Well, if you're as old as me, then you remember when doctors made house-calls. You paid him out of your own pocket. It was expensive and you only called the doctor if someone in your family was really sick.

Nowadays we go to the doctor's office and he charges $200 for a ten minute visit. If I were paying out of my own pocket for ten minutes, I would expect to pay no more than $35 (if you figure that he deserves 200 bucks an hour like a lawyer) but the doctor has to then spend twenty minutes filling out "insurance" forms. Well, he has to pay someone to do it for him. That's partly why a ten minute visit costs $200 and not $35. (Doctors also have to pay crazy "liability insurance" which is a whole 'nother sorry story which I won't get into now.)

I also won't get into the inefficiency of using emergency rooms as doctors' offices. There is a crisis in ERs because of this and, if something isn't done soon to fix the health biz, we'll be waiting for two months to get our tonsils removed. And that is with private "health insurance." With government "health insurance," it'll probably be two years.

Because of socalled "health insurance," we have an insane and out-of-control health-care industry that is run in a way that no business ever should be. We need to get back to paying premiums only for catastrophes and pay as we go for maintenance AND we need to pay for it out of our own pockets not expect it as a "benefit" from employers.

Swan Lake

Last night we watched a movie of the ballet, "Swan Lake," danced by Rudolph Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn in 1965. First - it was a real treat to watch a movie filmed in 35mm. Most old TV shows were filmed in 35mm but it is expensive so they stopped using it. Unlike video-tape which deteriorates, 35 mm lasts a long time and the colors and sound were clear and beautiful.

Maybe you're wondering why I like pansy-assed ballet. I used to think it was ridiculous but that is because the only ballet I had ever seen until I was in my 20s was the ballet shows that were put on in the townhall in my village. These consisted of my sister and a dozen other hefty pre-teen and teen girls gallumphing around the stage accompanied by the ballet teacher thumping out "music" on an out of tune piano. The hightlights of these shows were the accidents such as nearly six feet tall Mavis Mulroney weighing maybe 180 pounds colliding with Cynthia Russell who was four feet tall and weighed 80 pounds after a four-course meal.

Then in 1968, when I went to London, a friend took me to see the movie of Rudi Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn dancing in Prokovieff's "Romeo and Juliet." It was a Hollywood movie with good production values and I was stunned by the athleticism of the two principle dancers. Also I had never heard Prokovieff's music before and I was bowled over by it's originality and have been hooked on his music ever since.

In 1972 in London I met my first wife, the mother of my son, a beautiful Scottish woman - four feet ten inches tall and built like a gymnast. She was a ballerina. She danced for me and I fell in love and married her. Through her I came to see how difficult ballet is; how she suffered with injuries which finally put an end to her dancing career. She made me love ballet. I disliked her ballet friends. Like most showbiz types, they're weird and - well, I did not like them at all but I really enjoyed the art form.

Anyway - back to Nureyev and Fonteyn: In 1962 Margot Fonteyn was 44 and was just about to retire (as most ballerinas do after 40) but then she heard that Nureyev had just defected from the USSR. She invited him to London to dance with her in a benefit show with the proceeds going to help him. Nureyev was 20 years younger than Fonteyn but they clicked and became not only dancing partners but close friends. She put her plans for retirement on hold and they travelled the world wowing ballet fans. (In 1967 Fonteyn and Nureyev were arrested in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco when a party they'd been invited to was raided by police for drugs.)

In 1955 Fonteyn had married Roberto Arias, a Panamanian diplomat. Margot was arrested when her husband attempted a coup of the Panamanian government. Their marriage was rocky due to his infidelities, but in 1965 he was shot by a rival Panamanian politician and crippled. Fonteyn had to shelve her plans for retirement once again. Arias remained a quadripelegic the rest of his life, and Fonteyn cared for him. Arias's medical care was extremely expensive and Fonteyn had to dance to pay his medical bills, despite the pain she suffered from an arthritic foot. Her last performance was in 1979 at the age of 60, something unheard of in the ballet world.

She retired to Panama with her husband, and cared for him until his death. Soon after retiring she was diagnosed with cancer. The years of caring for Roberto had drained her finances, and Nureyev paid many of her medical bills when she was undergoing treatment for cancer. She in turn helped him when he was dying of AIDS. Fonteyn died in 1991 of cancer at the age of 71.

There are two videos an the end of this post. They are from the movie of "Swan Lake" which we watched last night. The YouTube clips don't do the movie justice. Bear in mind that Fonteyn was nearly fifty when this movie was made and nearly twice Nureyev's age.

The first clip is of Fonteyn dancing the role of the evil Black Swan, Odile. The Prince, Nureyev, is beguiled by Odile and betrays his real love, Odette, the White Swan. The second clip is after the Prince has realized that he has been bewitched by Odile and returns to Odette. The version in this movie uses the traditional ending envisaged by Tchaikovsky. Odette forgives the Prince and they are reconciled but a storm blows up on Swan Lake and the Prince is drowned. Curtains.

And, yes, my first wife did look a bit like Fonteyn.

Cape primroses

Last week, when I profiled African violets, saintpaulia, I mentioned that DNA analysis had determined that saintpaulia was related to the Cape primrose, streptocarpus, and that saintpaulia seemed to be a descendant of streptocarpus judging by the development of the DNA.

Both plants are inhabitants of cloud-forests. The African violet grows on the slopes of mountains in the Rift Valley of southeastern Africa. The Cape primrose grows on the slopes of Table Moutain in Cape Town. They both require mild, humid conditions but the Cape primrose, coming from a more southerly area, needs cooler conditions.

I grew them outdoors in my garden in San Francisco. The winters are too cold in Oregon to grow them outdoors but they make excellent house-plants.

The first pic is of Table Mountain, where the Cape primrose grows. The mountain dominates the city of Cape Town. It is 3,000 feet high and stops the fog/marine layer/low clouds from flowing in from the southeast so that the city is sunny. The next three pics show how the fog looks like a table-cloth as it pours over the mountain and burns off. Yes, it is known as "the table-cloth." The fifth pic is an aerial view of the top of Table Mountain swathed in clouds. The southeast side of the mountain is usually foggy and that is where the Cape primrose grows in the low clouds. Cape Town is the most beautiful city I have ever lived in closely followed by San Francisco and Rio de Janeiro.

The next pic is of an African violet just to show the similarities between it and the Cape primrose. Then there are pics of the Cape primrose and the last pic is of the gloxinia which is the Brazilian cousin of the African violet and the Cape primrose. I will profile the gloxinia next week.

I like facts and figures

Yesterday when I was posting about the election results in my county I mentioned that my county, which has a population of 60,000, is the same size as Delaware (1,600 square miles) which has a population of 850,000. That means there are approx 37 people per square mile in my county and 530 people per square mile in Delaware.

I got those facts from the US Census Bureau. While I was looking at the census facts and figures, I decided to compare Oregon to the states in the same latitudes on the East Coast.

With a population of 3,641,056 in an area of 95,997 square miles, Oregon has 35.6 people per square mile. Connecticut has almost the same population (3,510,297) in an area of 4,845 square miles or 702 people per square mile.

Oregon is about the same size as New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania which have a combined area of approx 96,000 square miles and a combined population of 36 million (375 people per square mile.)

Then I compared my Congressional District.

The population of my Congressional District is 795,000 in an area of 17,322 square miles (47 people per square mile.)

District 4 is about the same size as Connecticut, Massachusets and Rhode Island combined which have a combined population of 11 million (580 people per square mile.)

BTW Here's Oregon's ethnic groups:

83.9% White
1.8% Black
1.4% Native
3.4% Asian
9.5% Latino

Now I'm officially a Republican curmudgeon

It looks like every Republican that I voted for in Oregon has been defeated. I'm not surprised. Two-thirds of the population lives in cities (mainly Portland in this state) as is the case all over the nation and that two-thirds of city-slickers like big government, socialism, nannyism and Big Brother to rely on.

The college age vote doubled since 2004. I had hoped that the commies had not brainwashed our kids too much but it looks like they've got them and turned them all into Euroweenies. There is no more hope for the future of the American Revolution and the vison of freedom that out Founders saw. It's over. The commies have won. I am now officially a curmudgeon and won't put up with any commie nonsense in the future.

Neither will I put up with unreconstructed right-wing extremist religious nonsense either. Third of White Evangelicals Voted for Democrats! That's a big change from the 2004 presidential election when 78 percent of white evangelicals voted for Bush and only 21 percent voted for Kerry. Sorry but religious lunatics have not understood what America is all about either. (Did you know that Ted Haggard the fundamentalist pastor who paid for homo sex was a global warming activist? Hat Tip to Hillbilly White Trash.)

The religious right is just as responsible for destroying America as liberals with trying to shove their nonsense about biblical literalism down our throats as much as the commies peddle their atheistic misery and pessimism. The religious right never did understand what the the GOP stood for. They were suckered in by Reagan's handlers and have been useful idiots to the Republican Party ever since much as negroes and gays have been useful idiots for the Democrats. Good riddance. They never understood the American Revolution anyway.

Sure, it was the southern religious right that propelled the GOP to ascendancy since Reagan but it was an unholy alliance and I knew that they would turn against the GOP in the end which is why Goldwater distrusted them. They do not understand our Founders' reservations about religious sectarianism.

I've played nice so far and tried to be kind to people whom I thought were deluded. And I don't mean the commies. I'm talking about socalled conservatives who are anything but. Conservatism doesn't mean shoving your religious beliefs down peoples' throats. It means being cautious and prudent, pragmatic and sensible.

I am sick of socalled conservatives criticizing Bush and the war in Iraq as if they were generals conducting the campaign. I'm sick of any criticism of the Grand Old Party. I'm sick of criticism of socalled RINOS. Most RINOS happen to be in the tradition of the GOP. Just because they don't espouse your particular brand of fundamentalist sectarianism doesn't mean they are commies. Most RINOs are not commies. They're just less authoritarian than what religious extremists like. (Fake Republicans call Giulani a RINO. I call Pat Buchanan a RINO. Giuliani is a moderate. Buchanan is a Nazi.)

Socalled conservatives have destroyed the GOP. The commies stick together no matter what but - no - nothing is good enough for the "conservative" purists who want Jesus in the White House. Gimme a break! When's that going to happen? In my lifetime? The GOP self-destructed. Ordinary everyday freedom-loving Americans got sick of being told what to think by socalled conservatives just as they got sick of being told what to think by the commies.

If you haven't figured out yet that the commies are our worst enemies then there's no hope. The Muzzies aren't our worst enemies. They're a bunch of camel-f**kers who have been empowered by our commies. Without our commies interfering we would have destroyed them by now. If you haven't figured out by now that the American (and European) leftists are tools of the commies, then you won't understand why I detest self-criticism by conservatives. Self-criticism is taken as a weakness by the commies and they have taken advantage of that and gone in for the kill.

These are random curmudgeonly thoughts written late at night so don't try to hold me to them in the clear light of day. If you haven't understood my sense of humor by now, why are you still reading this blog?

PS Like me, the NYSE, celebrated the return to Congressional gridlock yesterday - stocks soared. Like our enlightened Founders, businessmen know that the best government is a government that governs least - a crippled government. Thank God our Founders valued governmental gridlock too. It's built right into the Constitution. Maybe there still is hope but I won't hold my breath.

PPS Meanwhile I'm kicking all extremists out of the GOP. It has always been the party of individual freedom since the days of the Free Soilers who detested slavery. Get over it or get another party.

African violets

Yes, they are African; they originated in the cloud-forests of southeastern Africa. But they aren't violets. Their botanical name is saintpaulia.

I first started growing these when I was about 7 years old. My mom owned a drycleaning/florist shop and our best-selling houseplants were African violets. We started off with a packet of seeds of mixed colors and shapes and then, once we had healthy plants, we grew them by planting leaf-cuttings. They are very easy to propagate that way. Every time I found another variety (and there are hundreds of variations) I would ask its owner for a leaf and grow it until I had a huge collection of hybrids.

I started building another collection of them when I lived in San Francisco but, starting in 1984, there was a seven year drought and we had water rationing. You were rationed according to your prior usage of water. So people who had not waste water were penalized more than water hogs and I knew people who really knew how to waste water.

South Africa also has periods of severe drought so I grew up being very aware of water shortages. When water rationing was introduced in SF, our allotment was so meager that we had to put a plug in the bath when we took showers and save the water to flush the toilet. The houseplants were not essential so I let them die.

African violets are fairly easy to cultivate. Because they are cloud-forest plants, they need high humidity and mild temperatures - not too hot or too cold. Most houses are too dry and hot for them. I keep my house fairly cool and their humidity needs are solved by placing them in a deep dish full of water. They do not like water anywhere near their leaf-crown so I just keep filling the dish with water and they wick up what they need. However the soil should never become water-logged or they'll rot.

Recent DNA testing has shown that the African violet is related to the Cape primrose, streptocarpus, and may in fact have evolved from it. The Cape primrose is also a cloud-forest plant, growing on the windward slopes of Table Mountain in Cape Town. As they originated further south than African violets, they like cooler temperatures and I succeeded in growing them outdoors in a shady part of my garden in San Francisco.

The first pic is of the Cape primrose but I will save the other pics of them for when I do a profile on them and their even showier Brazilian cousins, sinningia, commonly known as gloxinia which is the second pic. The rest of the pics are of African violets of all the colors amd shapes that have been developed from the simple original lavender flower.