Random rocking chair thoughts

When I first started blogging, I used to post a few pics of my garden on Sunday and a poem. There aren't many poems that I like so I ran out of poems after a year or so. I still kept posting garden pics and then got too technical because I started using it as a way to organize and categorize gardening instead of just posting pics for their beauty.

I was sitting in my rocking chair on the verandah last night thinking about this. It was cold - in fact near freezing, 36F (that's 2C for my South African and European friends) - but there was no wind so it felt like 36F. Sometimes it can be 50F out there but, with the "wind-chill factor" of a 30 mph icy-cold northwest wind blowing out of the Gulf of Alaska, it feels like it's way below freezing.

Anyway - a wind off the ocean started up and I got chilled. This focussed my mind somewhat and I began to think about what flower pics to post. It's winter and all my flowers except my Christmas cacti are dead. The cacti are blooming like mad but I already posted pics of those. I didn't have a file full of carefully categorized and organized flower pics so I wondered if I should just write something pretty.

Nope - the fact is that I can sit in my rocking chair and think beautiful wonderful thoughts but, when it comes to actually writing them down, I chicken out and opt for pretty pics. If I knew how to embed music files here, I would. Music and flowers convey beauty to me much bettter than words. And I like to communicate beauty. It's a lot more fun to shed light than to cast darkness.

Anyway, here are some random flower pics. It's so cold right now that I'm dreaming of lush tropical islands, juicy tropical fruit and tropical flowers just bursting with warmth and joy.

A canna pic that I forgot to post when I wrote about cannas last summer. My cannas didn't bloom this year - so much for global warming.


















A prickly-pear flower. If you've never eaten prickly-pear, you haven't lived. Of course the first time that I picked them I didn't use old newspapers to protect my hands and ended up with swollen fingers from the nasty hairs in the "pears." Next time my Mom armed me with an old Sunday paper and a used potato sack.



















Anyone and everyone can grow marigolds. Because they have even more pyrethrins than chrysanthemums, insects won't touch them and they have no other pests or problems. They remind me a lot of my old home-town, Durban, because Durban's population of 2 million is three-quarters East Indian and the Indians use marigolds as decoration and as garnish for food. They are ubiquitous.
























I can remember like it was yesterday when I bought my first ixora. I was about 14 or so and had never been to a plant nursery before. I had a some money to burn and bought an ixora. I've never tried to grow ixora since I left Durban. Some people succeed in growing them as small plants in pots indoors but it seems silly to fuss over little plants when you know they can grow into large shrubs in their natural tropical habitats.





















Tibouchina or Princess Flower. These grow into small trees in Durban. They're from Brazil and I did not even try to grow them in California so I was surprised to find that our neighbors here in Oregon had a sizable shrub growing in their garden. They gave me a cutting which grew nearly a foot tall and survived one winter but was killed off by a late spring snow last April.



















My Mom had a tibouchina bush growing in her back yard that was nearly 15 feet tall. The thing about tibouchina is that they bloom from spring through fall non-stop. I'm going to have another go at growing one here. My mistake was not to protect it from the "wind-chill factor." Next time I'll plant it on an east facing wall (like my neighbors bush) away from the prevailing cold westerly winds.

Shore Acres

No flower pics today but here are some pics of our local botanical gardens, Shore Acres. The head gardener's pet project is a garden of South African flowers which do well in our mild climate.

Louis B. Simpson, the lumber tycoon, developed Shore Acres as his summer retreat in 1906. He built a 3-story mansion with a heated indoor swimming pool and a large ballroom. The grounds contained 5 acres of formal gardens, including a Japanese-style garden built around a 100-foot lily pond. When fire destroyed the mansion in 1921, Simpson began to build an even larger replacement - two stories high and 224 feet long. However, financial losses in the 1930's caused both house and grounds to fall into disrepair. In 1942, Shore Acres was purchased by the State of Oregon for use as a public park.

Simpson's father first arrived in this area in 1856 and built the first sawmill here. In 1874 he sent his son, Louis, to South Africa with a shipload of timber to sell. Louis sold the timber for a huge sum of money (Johannesburg was a booming goldmining town and needed the lumber for new construction) and then decided to stay in South Africa. It took him six months to spend all the money and then he sent word to his father that he needed more but dad refused and Simpson had to return to Oregon. He eventually married and settled down and built Shore Acres for his bride.

Every winter between Thanksgiving and New year's Day, Shore Acres is lit up with hundreds of thousands of Christmas lights and people come from all over Oregon to see them. The display also attracts foreign tourists. Last year, when I took my sister there, a busload of Japanese tourists arrived and there were Norwegian, Argentinian and German tourists too.

The only original buildings left are the caretaker's cottage and the bandstand (which you can see in the pics below.) Free coffee, hot cider and cookies are served in the cottage for those who have come to see the lights. The house is almost as small as a doll's house. People must have been smaller in those days because you have to duck to go through doors and the rooms are tiny.

Hot water bottles

As a kid in South Africa, my mom used to use hot water bottles to warm our beds in winter. It has been very cold here since the rain stopped and last night was especially chilly (in the low 20s) so I hunted down my hot water bottle which I haven't used since last February, filled it with boiling water and popped it into my bed before tucking in for the night. What a treat to climb into a toasty bed.

My Granny Flossie used to knit woollen covers for our hot water bottles which made them much more cozy. I guess I'll have to dig out some knitting needles and make a cover for mine because it isn't nearly as comfy without a cover. Yes, Flossie taught me how to knit and it's something I really enjoy doing. In fact the first thing that I ever knitted was a hot water bottle cover. Then Flossie taught me how to knit bed-socks. Those were great. Maybe I'll knit some of them too. The hot water bottle covers and bedsocks are easy to make - basically rectangles that are stitched together in the right places.

I'd never used an electric blanket until I moved to England. The first winter that I was there, I was invited to spend Christmas with my lady friend Jill's family and the bed that her mom made up for us had an electric blanket. It made my skin crawl and itch all night. I just don't like being hot all over. I prefer being slightly cool in bed as long as my feet are warm and that's what makes hot water bottles the perfect winter bed warmer. Once they have warmed your feet, you kick them out. I haven't used an electric blanket since then.

This has made me think about that first winter in the UK. On Christmas Eve it began to snow. Although I was already 21, I had never seen snow before. It made me high as a kite and I laughed and danced in the street through the gently falling snowflakes as we walked to midnight Mass. Oh, okay - I was already high because Jill and I had smoked a few doobies after dinner. Of course I slipped and fell but didn't notice my bruises till the next day.

Later that winter I ended up with chilblains for the first and only time in my life. Chilblains are caused by damp cold rather than the icy dry cold which causes frostbite. The blood-vessels in the feet break and bleed into the surrounding flesh and cause pain and itching. I soon learned to put on dry socks as soon as soon as my feet got wet. Anyway my feet were so badly swollen and sore that I took a day off from work because I could barely stand. I decided to take some mescalin which a hippie friend had given me. (Hey, it was 1968 and every self-respecting rebel took psychedelics in those days.)

Just as I was settling down with a doobie and a nice hot cup of tea in bed to watch TV and was starting to get the warm fuzzies from the mescalin, there was a knock at the door. My landlord had decided that my apartment needed to be redecorated and had sent over two crazy Irishmen to paint it. Well, I spent the rest of the day laughing my ass off watching Pat and Mick paint the walls (and themselves.) When they finished the job, they went out and bought some fish and chips and Guinness and we all got drunk and had a lot of fun until the Guinness made me puke.

That was the winter that I learned that I did not like electric blankets (or Guinness) and have never used them since. Give me a hot water bottle (and a glass of wine) anyday.

Christmas lily

The Christmas lily is also known as amaryllis but that is a misnomer. It's real name is hippeastrum. The true amaryllis is a monotypic (only one species) genus of plant containing the belladonna lily (amaryllis belladonna) and is a native of South Africa. I mentioned this in August when my belladonna lilies ("naked ladies") were in bloom in this post, Naked ladies and hippie ass trims.

Hippeastrum is a genus of about 70 species and 600+ hybrids and cultivars of bulbous plants in the family Amaryllidaceae, native to tropical and subtropical regions of South America from Argentina north to Mexico. Some species are grown for their large showy flowers one of which is known as the Christmas lily.

The first commercial breeders of hippeastrums were Dutch growers who imported several species from Mexico and South America and began developing cultivars and hybrids from them in the 18th century; the first of these reached North America early in the 19th century. In 1946 two Dutch growers moved to South Africa and began cultivation there. Although most hippeastrums come from the Dutch and South African sources, bulbs are now being developed in the United States, Japan, Israel, India, Brazil and Australia. The double flowers from Japan are particularly beautiful.

Dutch bulbs usually produce a flower spike first, then, after it has finished blooming, the plant will begin growing leaves. Bulbs from the South African growers usually put up a flower spike and leaves at the same time. These are the ones usually sold by nurseries and other stores for the holidays in December.

The flower colors include red, rose, pink, white, orange, yellow and pale green with variations on these including different colored stripes and edges on the petals. Some flowers have uniform colors or patterns on all six petals while others have more pronounced colors on the upper petals than on the lower ones.

In most parts of the USA, bulbs can be moved outside by the end of May. This is a sub-tropical plant that needs an extended growing season and there is not enough light in the average home for them to do well. I used to grow these outdoors in San Francisco but, because they flower in winter, I cannot grow them outdoors here.

Whenever it does not rain here in winter, we have freezes as has happened since our last storm. We had a couple of early frosts in October but then it rained most of November and the first half of December. The southerly winds that bring most of our rain raise our day-time highs into the 60s and night-time lows into the 50s. Now that the rain has gone, day-time highs are only in the 40s and night-time lows are below 30F. That would kill Christmas lilies outdoors.

Except in very hot climates, stop watering in September. If it continues to rain in the plant's location then move the bulb inside or to a covered porch. Otherwise, bulbs can be left outside in the sun until the night temperature reaches about 50 F. Bulbs can survive a light frost, but not a heavy freeze. Hippeastrums produce more flowers when they are pot-bound and are not putting their energy into growing new roots so many can be left in the same planter year after year. Leaving them in the pot all year round works well. You can put them out in summer to get light and bring them in before the first frosts.

There is a misconception that hippeastrums need a period of total darkness before they will bloom again. This is not true, what is needed is a rest period in a room with average light where the temperature is between 45-60 F. (That may be too cool for most people but that is what the temp inside my house usually is.) This confusion no doubt comes about because two other popular plants sold during the winter holidays, Christmas cactus and Poinsettia, do require exact periods of complete darkness to set buds.

The first pic is of the true Amaryllis ("naked ladies") which bloom in August. The rest of the pics are of hippeastrum, the Christmas lily.

16th December - The Day of the Covenant

The Dutch settled in the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. In 1687 a group of French Huguenots (among them my Joubert ancestors) arrived in the Cape. The Huguenots intermarried with the Dutch and, by the time the British took over the Cape Colony nearly 200 hundred years later, the early Cape settlers had become the people whom we now know as Afrikaners.

The British began to impose their language and laws on the Afrikaners and many left and moved east. Those who migrated east became known as trekboers (Afrikaans for travelling farmers.) The British then expanded their control to the Eastern Cape and, in the 1830s, the Boers (as the British now called the Afrikaners) began to migrate north and became known as Voortrekkers (literally forward travellers or pioneers.)

Some Boers migrated north-east into Zulu territory. In 1838 their leader, Piet Retief, negotiated permanent boundaries for a settlement of Boers with the Zulu king, Dingane. The deed of cession was signed by Dingane on 6 February 1838. Dingane then invited Retief's party to witness a performance by his soldiers. Upon a signal given by Dingane, the Zulus overwhelmed Retief's party of 70 men.

Retief, his son and the other men were taken to Kwa Matiwane Hill where their brains were smashed out with clubs. Their bodies were left on the hillside to be eaten by wild animals, as was Dingane's custom with his enemies. Dingane then gave orders for the Voortrekker camps to be attacked and for all Boer women and children to be killed.

In November 1838 Retief's successor, Andries Pretorius, planned an expedition against Dingane. The Boers numbered 464 against the 10,000 Zulu warriors. On December 9th 1838, the Boers made a covenant with God that, if He would give them victory over the Zulus, they would commemorate the event annually with a day of thanksgiving. The Boers repeated the covenant every evening until the day of the Blood River battle on December 16th.

When the battle was over, 3,000 Zulu warriors lay dead. Only three Boers were injured, one of whom was Andries Pretorius. The 464 soldiers didn’t credit the miraculous victory to their military power. Instead they were grateful to God for His deliverance. As was vowed, the Day of the Covenant was instituted and was observed annually from that day by the Afrikaners.

The Day of the Covenant was a national holiday up until the handover of power to the ANC in 1994. The 16th of December also happens to be the day that the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party celebrate the anniversary of the 1961 founding of their joint venture, Umkhonto we Sizwe, the terrorist wing of the ANC/SACP whose motto is "One settler, one bullet."

Nelson Mandela changed the Day of the Covenant to the “Day of Reconciliation” and that is what will be celebrated today in South Africa. Of course a few Boer old-timers still gather at the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria to give thanks for their victory at the Battle of Blood River.

When I was a kid we lived mostly in the former British colony of Natal (now known as Natal/kwaZulu.) The British used to call December 16th "Dingane's Day" to show their contempt for the Afrikaners.

"The Covenant" is the title James A. Michener gave to his historical novel of South Africa published in 1980.

It was a dark and stormy night....

I was expecting gale-force winds yesterday and, after 28 years on the West Coast, I'm used to the fierce weather that comes off the Pacific Ocean and blows trees down like they were match-sticks but I was not prepared for hurricane-force winds.

The winds were strong when I set off for work yesterday morning - sustained at 40mph with gusts to 70mph. Then I got to my "office" which is a trailer in my RV park on the coast. The first inkling that I got that this storm was stronger than most was a gust of wind that almost pushed the trailer off its moorings. After lunch I tried to take my usual afternoon 20 minute catnap on the couch but the wind shook the trailer so much that it was impossible.

I decided to leave early and drive home before the full force of the storm hit. The wind buffetted my truck so much that I began to prepare myself mentally for crossing the bridge over the bay that stood between me and home. On the way through the small town that lies between the RV park and my farm, I stopped off at the liquor store to get a bottle of cognac (yes, I gave up boycotting French products when they condemned the Turkish for their Armenian genocide.)

I parked outside the store and started to open the truck door. It took every ounce of strength to push the door open against the wind. While I was in the store the electricity started to flicker and then went out. I bought my booze just before the store closed down for the night. Then I set off home and realized that the whole town was dark. The one traffic light that is in the middle of the town was dead. That was a mess because some idiots ruined everything by not remembering (or not knowing in the first place) that it becomes a four-way stop when the traffic lights are dead.

The bridge - I approached it cautiously. By now the wind gusts were stronger than anything that I had ever driven in before. I'd seen lesser gusts push oncoming traffic over the yellow dividing line before and by now the gusts were probably approaching 90 mph. I gritted my teeth. Not one single gust happened as I sailed smoothly over the bridge. I relaxed on the other side and set off on the causeway that spans the rest of the bay. Then the wind hit. A semi approaching me suddenly veered across the yellow line into my lane and was coming at me head on. Thank God the causeway is wider than the bridge and I managed to swerve out of the way of the oncoming semi.

The next ten miles on the highway were smooth sailing and I began to think. "I know what I want for Christmas," I said to myself - silently of course (I have realized that it's best not to talk to yourself out loud unless you want to be carted off in a straight-jacket.) "I want a generator." It's not the first time I've thought that I need a generator but we've only had two power-outages in three years so I keep forgetting.

By now I was only a few miles from home. The one paved street through the small village near the farm was littered with branches. I began to hope that there wasn't a tree blown down on the dirt road up the mountain on which I live. I turned onto the dirt road and sure enough, a few miles up it, there's a tree across the road. Fortunately it was a deciduous (brittle hardwood) tree that had broken into two pieces and not a coniferous (pliable softwood) tree.

I got out of the truck and puffed and panted to move the smaller of the two pieces of tree-trunk out of the way. Boy, I'm getting old and weak. It's not easy moving a quarter ton of wood when you're my age. As soon as I got home and had kissed the four dogs all lined up with wagging tails, I poured myself a stiff drink.

Dinner - dungeness crab, fresh-baked sourdough bread, home-made coleslaw and a bottle of Riesling. I was starving and tucked in greedily. Then the lights went out and we finish dining romantically by candle-light and hurricane lamps.

After dinner I said: "No TV tonight. Let's go for a walk in the wind." It was really dark. Even with electricity, it's dark out here. The house glows like a spaceship when the lights are on. With no electricity, it's hard to tell which way is up let alone sideways. Off we went up the driveway. Our house is half-way down the mountain and the mile-long driveway leads to the top of it. The southwest wind was at my back and propelled me up the slope.

Coming back down the hill was different. This time we're facing into the gale. My ears were tuned to every creak in every tree listening in case there's a snap and a tree comes crashing down on us. There are no lumberjacks out here to yell "Timber!"

When I got home, I sat in the dark feeling exhilarated. What a treat not to have TV and computers; to just listen to the wind whistling through the pine trees outside my bedroom window. I hadn't felt that empty and silent and still since I was a kid on my grandma's farm in the middle of nowhere in Africa - but I still wished for a generator for Christmas.

This is what John Muir, the famous California naturalist, (1838-1924) said about our Pacific windstorms:

After one has seen pines six feet in diameter bending like grasses before a mountain gale, and ever and anon some giant falling with a crash that shakes the hills, it seems astonishing that any, save the lowest thickset trees, could ever have found a period sufficiently stormless to establish themselves; or, once established, that they should not, sooner or later, have been blown down.

And here is a drawing that he did of one of those storms:

We won in Iraq a long time ago

I've seldom voiced an opinion on the war in Iraq because I'm not an expert on war and actually cringe when I read the armchair generals spouting off about what we should or shouldn't do. I prefer to leave that to the experts but one thing I am not happy about is the ISG's recommendation to embed our troops with the Iraqi forces. Sure, we have to train the Iraqis but do we have to put our troops in the middle of the Iraqis while they are busy killing each other?

My hope is that we will stay in Iraq to train Iraqi troops but stay out of their sectarian battles as much as possible. Let them kill each other. Our job is not to bring about and maintain law and order in their society. They have to do that for themselves. Our job is to represent our own interests; destroy as many Islamofascist terrorists as possible; restrain Iran's intereference and most importantly make sure that the oil does not fall into the wrong hands.

A stable Iraq is of course in our best interests but that may not happen for decades while they sort out their sectarian differences. All out civil war in Iraq and a greater conflagration between Sunni and Shia all over the Middle East may be inevitable. We cannot control whole nations. We can't stop or rewind history and, in the end, full-scale internecine warfare between Muslim sects may not be such a bad thing in the long run - for us.

We won the war in Iraq a long time ago when we deposed Saddam. Now we have to stay there simply to represent our own interests and manage any developments that may affect us. We can't impose democracy on Iraq the way we did with Germany and Japan. The majority of the populations of Germany and Japan were already mostly civilized and they had social institutions that were cultivatable beds in which we could sow the seeds of freedom and democracy. The majority of Iraqis are not yet that civilized.

No matter what we do now - increase troops or pull out altogether - our enemies will spin it to make us look bad so their opinions of us should not be a consideration. We did not lose the war in Iraq. We won when put an end to a rogue government there. Now all we need to do is stay and take care of OUR business. Our main business is to make sure that the oil does not fall into the hands of terrorists or tyrants and bringing about about law and order and democracy furthers that aim but we should not meddle too much in their sectarian warfare.

Yes, we already won the war in Iraq. The war against Islamist totalitarianism will probably take decades and our presence in Iraq is only one front in that war; only one battle not the entire war. Sure it would be nice to have a civilized democratic ally in the area but we can't expect that or rely on it. Basically I just want to see our military being used to further our best interests and not the interests of others.

We need to do what's best for us and that means adapting to changing circumstances. All the pundits and armchair generals in the world can sit around yakking about what to do and how to do it but, in the end, we have to play it by ear. Theories only work before the battle not on the actual battlefield. Americans are practical and sensible people. We will adapt to changing circumstances and we will win the war against Islamist totalitarianism despite what the "nattering nabobs of negativity" say.

Poinsettias

The spurge (or euphorbia) family of plants is huge. Its members range all the way from little weeds to cactus-like trees. The euphorbia that everyone knows is euphorbia pulcherrima, the Christmas poinsettia. (The name was originally poinsetta but somehow an i got put in there somewhere along the way.)

The euphorbias that are grown in gardens all come from the subtropics of Latin America and Africa. The Christmas poinsettia, euphorbia pulcherrima, comes from southern Mexico. It was named after Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first United States ambassador to Mexico, who introduced the plant to the USA in 1825.

As this is a subtropical plant, it will die if the night-time temperature falls below 10° C (50° F) so it's not suitable for planting in the ground in milder climates. Most people throw them away after Christmas because they can be difficult to induce to reflower as it requires a period of uninterrupted long, dark nights for two months in autumn (when our temperatures are too low) in order to develop flowers.

What we think of as the "flowers" are actually specialized leaves or bracts. The real flowers are the little round yellow thingies in the center. The euphorbias all contain a white milky latex sap which can be irritating to the skin and mucous membranes and cause nausea and vomitting if ingested but are not deadly poisonous as the urban legend has it.

The South African euphorbias are very different from the Christmas poinsettia and fill the ecological niche of cacti in their native habitat. They range all the way from tiny "button cacti" to "cactus trees." The one that is most commonly grown in gardens is euphorbia millii or the "crown of thorns."

(Before you compliment me for the pics, let me say that most of them are from a commercial grower's catalogue.)

1) The African "cactus tree."


















2) The "crown of thorns."
























3) The African "ram's horn poinsettia" bush.



















4) This is how large poinsettias usually grow in South Africa.

















5) A very large poinsettia tree in Bermuda.



















6) Here you can see the little yellow flowers in the center of the bracts clearly



















7) Pots of commercial poinsettias ready to be shipped for Christmas.



















8) Poinsettias only come in white, yellow, pink and red. All the other colors like blue and purple are white flowers dyed.



















9) A plain white poinsettia.



















10 through 19) Varieties of poinsettia with variegated and blotched leaves that are not dyed but occur naturally. Poinsettias with curled bracts are hybrids between the Mexican plant and the African "ram's horn poinsettia."

Barry Goldwater

I found this on Right Wing Nation:

This is the best campaign idea for 08 I've seen yet. Exhume Goldwater.









Definitely, everybody who identifies as a conservative needs to re-read this book:

I credit Goldwater and Reagan with helping me to see through the fallacies of the left but I doubt if anyone like him could win the GOP primaries nowadays. Those same Southern religious conservatives who voted for him in 64 because of his opposition to the Feds forcing states to accept integration (eventhough they were then Dixiecrats) would disapprove of him today (eventhough they now call themselves Republicans) because, like Giuliani, Goldwater was a maverick - pro-choice, not anti-gay, distrustful of the religious right. He would have cringed at the Marriage Amendment, Congress' interference in the Schiavo case, the Congressional Republicans' doubling of government bureaucracies in the past 12 years, their out of control spending and new entitlements such as the Medicare drug boondoggle.

From Wikipedia:

Barry Goldwater (January 2, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–87) and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. He is the American politician most often credited for sparking the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s.

Goldwater rejected the legacy of the New Deal and fought inside the Conservative Coalition to defeat the New Deal coalition. Goldwater lost the 1964 Presidential election in a landslide to incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. The Johnson campaign and other critics painted him in 1964 as a radical reactionary, while supporters praised his crusades against the federal government, corrupt labor unions, and the welfare state. His defeat allowed American liberals to pass their Great Society programs. However the defeat of so many older Republicans in 1964 also cleared the way for a younger generation of American conservatives to mobilize, but they followed Ronald Reagan not Goldwater.

By the 1980s, the increasing influence of the Christian Right on the Republican Party so conflicted with Goldwater's libertarian views that he became a vocal opponent of the religious right on issues such as abortion and gay rights.

[...]

With the onset of World War II, Goldwater received a reserve commission in the United States Army Air Forces. He became a pilot assigned to the Ferry Command, a newly formed unit that delivered aircraft and supplies to war zones worldwide; he spent most of the war flying between the USA and India, via the Azores and North Africa or South America, Nigeria and Central Africa. He also flew "the hump" over the Himalayas to deliver supplies to the Republic of China. Remaining in the reserves after the war, he retired with a rank of Major General. By that time, he had flown 165 different types of aircraft. Following World War II, Goldwater was a major proponent of building the United States Air Force Academy, and later served on the Academy's Board of Visitors. The Visitor Center at the Academy is named in his honor.

[...]

Goldwater soon became most associated with labor-union reform and fighting Communism; he was an active supporter of the Conservative coalition in Congress. His work on labor issues led to Congress passing major anti-corruption reforms in 1957, and an all-out campaign by the AFL-CIO to defeat his 1958 reelection bid. He voted against the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954, but himself was much more prudent than McCarthy and never actually charged any individual with being a Communist/Soviet agent.

[...]

Goldwater supported the Arizona NAACP and was involved in desegregating the Arizona National Guard. Nationally, he supported the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960. However, he opposed the much more comprehensive Civil Rights Act of 1964; he argued that it unconstitutionally extended the federal government's commerce power to private citizens in its drive to "legislate morality" and restrict the rights of employers. Since conservative Southern Democrats were the main opponents to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and previous civil rights legislation, Goldwater's opposition to the 1964 Act, in which he was joined by only four other non-Southern Republican senators, strongly boosted Goldwater's standing among white Southerners.

In 1964, he fought and won a bitterly contested, multi-candidate race for the GOP's presidential nomination. His main challenger was New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, whom he defeated in the California primary. His nomination was challenged by liberal Republicans who thought Goldwater's hardline foreign policy stances would bring about a deadly confrontation with the Soviet Union. He would eventually lose to President Lyndon Johnson by one of the largest margins in the history of U.S. Presidential elections. Consequently, the Republican Party suffered a significant setback nationally, losing many seats in both houses of Congress. Goldwater carried only his home state and five (formerly Democratic) Southern states. Many Republicans at the time angrily turned against Goldwater, claiming that his defeat had significantly set back the party's chances of future national success.

[...]

Goldwater was an unwavering supporter of Wisconsin's Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy to the end (one of only 22 Senators who voted against McCarthy's censure). He was also friends with Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts; in fact, Goldwater anticipated that a contest for the presidency between John F. Kennedy and Goldwater himself would have been an enjoyable experience, with lively debates between them, one of which was to be held on board a plane in flight. Goldwater disliked Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas (who he said "used every dirty trick in the bag"), and Richard M. Nixon of California, whom he later called "the most dishonest individual I have ever met in my life".

[...]

By the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan as president and the growing involvement of the religious right in conservative politics, Goldwater's libertarian views on personal issues were revealed, which he believed were an integral part of true conservativism. Goldwater viewed abortion as a matter of personal choice, not intended for government intervention. In fact, his own daughter Joanne chose to have an abortion before her first marriage at the age of 20, and he supported her decision. He was also not against homosexuals in the military. As a passionate defender of personal liberty, he saw the religious right's views as an encroachment on personal privacy and individual liberties. In his 1980 Senate reelection campaign, Goldwater won support from religious conservatives but in his final term voted consistently to uphold legalized abortion.

And here are a few things he said about the growing influence of the religious right in the GOP:

On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.

I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.

Goldwater's grandfather was a Jew but his father had converted to Christianity. I agree with him 100% on this particular issue and I have a hunch that so do a lot of ordinary non-ideological non-partisan middle-class center-right Americans. We don't like being dictated to by anyone whether they're rightwing moralists or leftwing secularists. There's a delicate balance to be kept in the affairs of state and religious beliefs (whether it's Christianity or Marxism - yes, that is a equally unscientific religious belief system albeit atheistic) need to be kept out of politics.

Bandon

Irish firm eyes wave energy park off Bandon

This is the second wave energy project on the south coast of Oregon.

Bandon is a village of 2,300 people about 50 miles south of where I live. Friends of ours from San Francisco moved there just before we came here and I did consider living there but too many former Californians now live there (probably because it is so picturesque) and they have brought their pie-in-the-sky liberalism with them.

Although this energy project probably has nothing to do with it, there is a historic connection to Ireland. In 1852, Henry Baldwin, from Cork County, Ireland, was shipwrecked in this area and decided to settle there. In 1873 another Irishman, George Bennet, settled there and named the town after Bandon, his hometown in Ireland, because it reminded him so much of Ireland. The next year, Joseph Williams and his three sons arrived, also from Bandon, Ireland.

Bandon has a large dairy industry and used to have a famous cheese-factory which was bought up by a big dairy conglomerate and put out of business. They kept the name "Bandon Cheese" but it is now made by Tillamook Dairies on the north coast of Oregon.

Bandon is the main center of cranberry production in Oregon. More than 100 growers harvest about 1,600 acres around Bandon, raising 95 percent of Oregon's cranberries, and about 5% of the national crop. The town is surrounded by cranberry bogs.

But THE main industry nowadays is golf. A few years ago a world-class golf-course was built on the dunes. Yep, it's called the Bandon Dunes Golf-course. Since then we have seen a huge increase in the number of private jets that land at the small local airport and oceanfront properties now cost millions of dollars. The harbor is full of fancy yachts moored beside the old fishing boats and the restaurants all charge California prices.

It's still a very touristy town and people come to see the famous old lighthouse and the seastacks of Face Rock State Park.

Pics from top to bottom:

1) Cranberry harvest

2) Cranberry bog

3) The "Old Town"

4) The Coquille Lighthouse

5) The seastacks of Face Rock State Park