Today's naked redneck chick blog post

34 hospitalized after co-worker sprays perfume:

FORT WORTH, Texas - At first, fire officials suspected that carbon monoxide or some other toxic fumes had sickened almost 150 people at a Texas bank call center.

It turned out that perfume was to blame.

MedStar ambulance spokeswoman Lara Kohl says 34 people were taken to hospitals, 12 by ambulance, after reporting dizziness and shortness of breath Wednesday at a Bank of America call center in Fort Worth. Medics treated 110 at the scene.

I'm not that fond of strong perfume in the work place but how can perfume make you sick? Sounds like mass hysteria to me - like when my chickens freak. One hen starts freaking and that freaks all the other hens and the next thing you know the feathers are flying.

Zora Neale Hurston

John J. Miller:

The author Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) has been in fashion for a little while, partly because Oprah Winfrey likes Their Eyes Were Watching God so much. But did you know that this exemplar of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s was also an anti-New Deal Republican who supported Robert A. Taft for president in 1952?

I learned this a few months ago from Jonathan Bean, when we were discussing a piece that he co-wrote for NRODT on Booker T. Washington. Bean's new book is now out—an anthology called Race & Liberty in America: The Essential Reader, co-published by the Independent Institute and the University Press of Kentucky. It reproduces everything from excerpts of the Declaration of Independence and the speeches of Frederick Douglass to the modern-day works of Shelby Steele and Clarence Thomas.

My favorite entry may be the one from Hurston, whom Bean introduces this way: "Hurston believed in the power of individual freedom, in both the creative and political realms. She refused to be a 'race woman' and criticized those who took pride in group achievements, noting that only individuals merited praise." Bean also notes: "Her reputation declined in the late 1930s as left-wing writers objected to her apolitical fiction and her classical liberal ideology."

Her reputation soars today, so it would be wrong to say she needs a revival. But perhaps her repute would benefit from a bit of refining. Conservatives and libertarians know their movement's history well, but there are still plenty of holes. They should fill one of them by claiming Hurston. A first step would be to publish a collection of her political writings. Any takers?

Hurston's politics:

Hurston was a Republican who was generally sympathetic to the Old Right and a fan of Booker T. Washington's self-help politics. She disagreed with the philosophies (including Communism and the New Deal) supported by many of her colleagues in the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston Hughes, who was in the 1930s a supporter of the Soviet Union and praised it in several of his poems. Despite much common ground with the Old Right in domestic and foreign policy, Hurston was not a social conservative. She was essentially a libertarian in philosophy. Her writings show skepticism toward traditional religion and affinity for feminist individualism. In this respect, her views were similar to two libertarian novelists who were her contemporaries, Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson.

In 1952, Hurston supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert A. Taft. Like Taft, Hurston was against FDR's New Deal policies. She also shared his opposition to the Roosevelt/Truman interventionist foreign policy. In the original draft of her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston compared the United States government to a “fence” in stolen goods and to a Mafia-like protection racket. Hurston thought it ironic that the same “people who claim that it is a noble thing to die for freedom and democracy ... wax frothy if anyone points out the inconsistency of their morals. ... We, too, consider machine gun bullets good laxatives for heathens who get constipated with toxic ideas about a country of their own.” Roosevelt “can call names across an ocean” for his four freedoms, but he did not have “the courage to speak even softly at home.” When Truman dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, she called him “the Butcher of Asia.”

Hurston opposed the Supreme Court ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954. She felt that if separate schools were truly equal (and she believed that they were rapidly becoming so) educating black students in physical proximity to white students would not result in better education. In addition, she worried about the demise of black schools and black teachers as a way to pass on cultural tradition to future generations of African-Americans. She voiced this opposition in a letter, "Court Order Can't Make the Races Mix", that was published in the Orlando Sentinel in August 1955. Hurston had not reversed her long-time opposition to segregation. Rather, she feared that the Court's ruling could become a precedent for an all-powerful federal government to undermine individual liberty on a broad range of issues in the future.

From Roger Clegg's review of Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd:

Two neologisms attributed to Hurston during those heady days show her sense of humor: The "Niggerati" at that time frequently had white patrons, the "Negrotarians." Hurston wrote plays and poetry, but her career was really based on her prose, both fiction and non-fiction. The former included novels like Their Eyes Were Watching God, novellas, and short stories. The latter included journalism, essays, and an autobiography. In between fell her collections of black folk stories, like Mules and Men and the relatively recently found and posthumously published Every Tongue Got to Confess.

Over the decades and until she died in 1960, she never stopped writing — in large part because, financially speaking, she had no choice. It's not that she was extravagant; she wasn't. She just never made much money. But she was not bitter about this, apparently never complained, and cheerfully took work as a maid toward the end of her life to help make ends meet.

...

But what is most refreshing is not so much her overt politics as her attitude toward race, and race relations — and the very fact that she was obsessed with neither. She was criticized by black activist authors like Richard Wright because she did not believe that African-American artists had a duty to advance some political agenda. W. E. B. DuBois had declared in 1926, "I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda." So Hurston knew that "Negroes were supposed to write about the Race Problem," but maintained nonetheless, "I was and am thoroughly sick of the subject. My interest lies in what makes a man or woman do such-and-so, regardless of his color."

"Races have never done anything," she also wrote. "What seems race achievement is the work of individuals." And "all clumps of people turn out to be individuals on close inspection." She told Countee Cullen, "I mean to live and die by my own mind." Hurston

delineated her own political philosophy, which valued individualism over "race pride," a social construct that she believed divided people into separate camps in a manner that was particularly explosive. "And how can Race Solidarity be possible in a nation made up of as many elements as these United States? It could result in nothing short of chaos. The fate of each and every group is bound up with the others," she argued. Hurston saw America in more complex terms than limited racial thinking allowed, and she saw black America as more complex than most "race leaders" acknowledged. "Anyone who goes before a body and purports to plead for what 'The Negro' wants, is a liar and knows it. Negroes want a variety of things and many of them diametrically opposed," she stated candidly. "There is no single Negro nor no single organization which can carry the thirteen million in any direction."

This was in 1942.

Hurston condemned racial bloc voting, criticized many black colleges as fraudulent and for providing inferior educations, and frequently decried light/dark color prejudice among African Americans. She had an "impatience with 'race leaders' of dubious moral character":

The day of the race leader was done, [Hurston] proclaimed [in 1938], even if the race man did not realize it himself. "Though he is... paid scant attention, the race man is still with us," she complained. "His job today is to rush around seeking for something he can 'resent.'"

Hear that, Reverends Jesse and Al?

She had what Thomas Sowell praises as a "constrained vision"; or, as Boyd puts it, Hurston saw that "there is no such thing as a perfect people or an earthly utopia. And freedom is an elusive thing — won, day by day, from within." Hurston herself, in discussing one of her novels, said, "I do not attempt to solve any problems." She went on: "I know I cannot straighten out in a few pen-strokes what God and men took centuries to mess up. So I tried to deal with life as we actually live it — not as sociologists imagine it."

Throughout her life, Hurston refused to be "overly sensitive about race," recognizing that, in her words, "you are bound to be jostled in the 'crowded street of life.'" "I am not tragically colored," she declared. "There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature has somehow given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it.... No, I do not weep at the world — I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."

She would ignore slights. One occurred when she met with her publisher and others at a restaurant, and the waiter was rude, infuriating the rest of her party, but she refused to be bothered: "His whiteness notwithstanding, he was only a waiter, after all; she was the published author." That was her way in matters racial and nonracial. Toward the end, debilitated by a stroke and now in a nursing home, "Zora refused to style herself a victim and she exhibited no traces of self-pity." As she put it, and as Boyd quotes her in the book's last line: "God balances the sheet in time." With her posthumous veneration, He has done so.

Maybe social conservatives can't claim Hurston as one of their own but us secular libertarians sure can.

Woolly pussies and other weeds and wildflowers

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote:

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Well, he'd love my garden because half the flowers here are weeds - er - wildflowers. When I first started gardening here 6 years ago, I used to pull out all the wild plants that I had not planted the way I had always done. But, by the time the first summer rolled around, I had to throw up my hands in despair. There was no way that I could eradicate all the weeds and, since then, I've resigned myself to a wild garden.

(Note: when I post a lot of pictures like this, people who use Explorer complain that they are spaced too far apart. This post is best viewed with Firefox.)

Some weeds we had to eradicate. Scotch broom (below) is beautiful but it was officially declared a noxious weed in Oregon and we had to uproot hundreds of broom bushes.
















Butterfly bush (buddleia) has not yet been declared a noxious weed but we are encouraged to get rid of it because it is an illegal alien invasive species.























The South African orange crocosmia lily has not been declared an alien invasive species but it has naturalized all over the South Coast.






















Here are a few of our true native wildflowers. We have less than half of all the native wildflowers on our land. This is what greets me every time I come home: the driveway lined with oxeye daisies. Below are close-ups of the oxeyes.
















































One of the most beautiful native shrubs is the seafoam bush. Here it frames Digby.


















The most common weed/wildflower is hawkweed which is a relative of the dandelion. There are several types one of which is known locally as woolly pussy ears.
































Some of our native wildflowers (like this ceanothus) are so beautiful that they are now cultivated.


















Here's a pearly-white everlasting. Soon the garden will be full of them and they will last right through winter because they naturally dry out and go dormant.


















Another beauty: the wild columbine.























Beach peas are all over the dunes and part of the farm is on dunes.























Our common blue daisy which I no longer can treat as a weed.


















Our native Oregonian bleeding heart.

















Fireweed.























California poppies.


















Pacific iris.

















Sticky monkey flower.























Wormseed mustard.














Oregon oxalis.


















Prunella aka self-heal because it is used as a poultice to heal wounds.


















Buttercups.























Blue-eyed grass.























Red clover.














White clover.























Sweet clover.

















Yarrow.


















Skunk cabbage grows along the creek. Some of ours are five feet tall.








































Lastly, one of Oregon's favorite weeds, trilliums.























And the guinea fowl decided to come check out what I was doing.

Two top tourists spots are in South Africa

The annual list of the "World's Best Cities" as chosen by readers of Travel + Leisure magazine:

Completing the top 10 list of best cities behind Udaipur, India, this year were Cape Town; Bangkok; Buenos Aires; Chiang Mai, Thailand; Florence, Italy; Luang Prabang, Laos; New York; Rome and San Francisco.

Other No. 1 spots went to Bushmans Kloof Cedar Mountains in South Africa as best hotel.

Cape Town is dominated by the 3,000 feet tall Table Mountain:















And a blast from my past - 1954: my sister and I with our grannies, Oumies and Flossie, and auntie Leone on the back porch of our house at the foot of Table Mountain which you can see in the background.

"First Aid" vs advanced medical care

"First Aid" or free basic medical care is already available to everyone in America. No hospital will turn away sick or injured people because they don't have insurance. That's part of the reason that medical costs are so high: those who can pay are paying for those who can't. That's the way a civilized society operates.

Sure, more expensive advanced medical care is only available to those who can pay for it. That's the way it's always been. It may not be fair but life isn't fair. Advanced medical care in the US is so expensive because it is the most advanced in the world which is another reason why our medical care is the most expensive in the world. Nowadays we can cure or ameliorate almost all medical problems. That was not the case in the past. If you got cancer, you died.

I don't object to providing free basic "First Aid" to everyone but I do object to providing advanced medical care to those who cannot afford it. Sure I like being able to afford advanced medical care but I've worked hard all my life to achieve that. Obama and the Democrats want to offer that to everyone - free - that is free to the poor but the rest of us will pay for it.

But I don't think that's what most Americans want. Yes, they are scared that they will lose their jobs and their employer provided insurance. The Democrats know this and are playing on our fears. My hunch is that most Americans are content with the current situation but would like portability and not have to rely on an employer for their insurance.

The solution is portability not universal healthcare.

So who (or what) is really in control?

Dinner conversation.

Chas: Mullah Hemorrhoidallah today said, "Blah blah etc etc."

Andy: But President I'm-a-fanatical-sheethead said, "Blah blah etc etc."

Me: Who cares what they said? And who cares what Americans think about what they said. We don't know what's really happening in foreign countries. It's all guess work. Can you remember when all the talking heads were going on about South Africa and getting it all wrong? I spent 7 years writing a book about it in order to show that leaders and politicians were not in control of South Africa and that there is a lot more grey than black and white.

So who (or what) is really in control?

It's not the talking heads. It's mostly the demographics but...

The ordinary people of the world who are "multiplying and being fruitful" and working hard to raise their kids to have a better life than they had have a lot more control than socalled "leaders." "Leaders" are simply spokesmen. The dumb "leaders" have their fifteen minutes of fame. The smart ones tap into the zeitgeist and express what the mass of humanity thinks. The mass of humanity simply keeps "multiplying and being fruitful" and the talking heads either adapt or they don't.

I know that we are evolving into a socialist Brave New World. I used to think that I'd hate living in a ten foot by ten foot cubicle taking soma and watching the feelies all day but even that does not freak me as much as it used to - as long as I'm an alpha - and soma is less destructive to the liver than booze.

And after the Brave New World - finally maybe centuries from now, when people are bored with soma and feelies, the brilliance of the Enlightenment and the American Revolution will be rediscovered and we'll go where no man has gone before. I wish I could say "wanna bet?" but I can't because none of us will be alive at that time.

So call me a pie-eyed optimist but I know that this universe is created out of truth, beauty and goodness and that's what's really in control. Yes, there is ugliness and evil but they won't win because humans are created in the image of God and most of them love truth, beauty and goodness. That's what's really in control. I call it God.

That's why I prefer reading history, philosophy and literature to blogs about gossip and the day to day political nonsense. It's all so temporary in the bigger scheme of things.

Marxism-lite vs individual sovereignty - the GOP needs "independents"

In a post below I wrote:

Even I criticized Mac BEFORE he won the nomination. But, once he was elected as our the candidate, I was loyal to him because he was our squish.

At the time, I didn't really believe one of the arguments that I used (in real life and on this blog) to rally the troops around Mac: that Mac's squishy "maverickness" was a plus because he could attract Democrats. I really tried to believe (and convince others) that sane Democrats would vote for Mac. I was wrong; most Democrats voted for Obamugabe. That's because most Democrats are ideologues. They believe in "social justice" and equality aka Marxism-lite.

That's why, after the election, I morphed into talking up an alliance with libertarian-minded independents and dropping moralistic "social conservatism" from our political platform. The thing about "squishes" like me and "independents" is that we don't march in lockstep with the party lines. Republican "squishes" like me obviously toe the party line at least a little bit out of loyalty to the brand.

"Independents" are another story. The "independents" that I know personally (or on blogs) range from eccentric populist curmudgeons to intellectual libertarian/Objectivist snobs with a bunch of very sane realists in the middle. They all have one thing in common: they don't like being told what to do or how to think. They're individualists.

The difference between "independents" and GOP "squishes" like me is that we don't mind compromising in order to get things done. "Independents" are a bit more whimsical and unpredictable. My hunch is that a lot of the more pie-in-the-sky type "independents" voted for Obama but very few of the realists or more cynical libertarian/Objectivist intellectual elitist "independents" voted for McCain.

It's hard to court uppity "independents" but my hunch is that two words (backed up by sincere belief in them) will do the trick: "individual sovereignty." This nation was founded on that basic principle. All Americans - even the commies - relate to that. (That's why American commies are so weird: they love freedom and capitalism for themselves but want to enslave the hoi-polloi.)

But even the American hoi-polloi are uppity. I own and manage a trailer park. People who don't have a pot to piss in are as proud as European aristocrats or naked fags prancing around in the "Gay Pride" parade. (Of course, unlike shelter and food, pride is free like the air.)

It's simply a matter of re-educating people who have been brainwashed by commie teachers for the past 40 years to show them that "social justice" and equality are the antithesis of "individual sovereignty."

Did I say "simply?" Be prepared to preach the truth till the cows come home. Unfortunately the truth is so obvious that it's usually overlooked just like the booger hanging out of your own nose right before your eyes. It takes patience to teach and nagging doesn't count as "teaching." So, let's tell the moralizing nosy-parking busy-bodies to butt out and go tell it on the mountain.

Now's the time to patiently (and politely) explain what is meant by these two words: "individual sovereignty." My hunch is that all human beings will eventually respond to those two revolutionary words. No normal adult American likes to be dictated to by prince, pope, priest or political pundit.

Today's naked redneck chick blog post

Here are the new kids on the block. From Chas' Farm Report.

[O]ur three new Buff Orpington's are maturing. Here they are with Pat:

And here are the four new hybrid (cochin X bantam) experiments:

In the center foreground is Heather the hen. Behind her are her two brothers, Heathcliff and Heathcliff Too. Peaking in on the right, is our white-faced hen, "Freezerburn" [who] was hatched later than the other three, from an egg I had accidentally put in the refrigerator for two or three weeks.

Andy bet me that it wouldn't hatch after being refrigerated, so I tried it as an experiment, and well, it hatched! She was raised by a Bantam hen who hatched the egg. She turned out smaller than the others, with a white face. I called her "Sputnick", but Andy and Pat call her "Freezerburn" because of her white face and her, uh, history of pre-hatching refrigeration. I've relented and gone with their name for her, because, well, if the shoe fits...

Freezerburn is awful ugly but she's very affectionate towards her three daddies.

Why I hate government # 13 trillion and 87 - Social Security

In March I applied for SS on line - as we are now urged to do. I was given a confirmation number and told that I would be emailed info in 10 days to two weeks telling me when I would have to take my ID to the local office.

April slipped by and I paid my protection money to the thugs at the IRS. May slipped by and I became eligible for SS at the age of 62. Payments were supposed to kick in in June but June slipped by with nary a peep from the SSA.

So I called them and had to push 1 for English which I resent especially since English is my second language - last time I checked you had to be proficient in English to become a citizen. I spent 20 minutes talking to a machine. It was an unctuously polite machine but it did not understand my African accent. For example:

Machine: Please state and spell your first name.

Me: Patrick, P. A. T. R. I. C. K.

Machine: Please confirm that you said "Pairtruck."

The machine eventually gave up in despair and said, "Please wait to speak to the next available agent." I waited for 20 minutes listening to the most God-awful muzak. Finally a unionized toenail painting semi-human answered.

Semi-human: This is Gorble-snorble. How can I help you?

Me: Good morning, Gorble-snorble. [That's what it sounded like to me.]

Semi-human: My name is not Gorble-snorble. It's Garble-farble.

Me: Good morning, Garble-farble. How are you doing today?

I finally figured out that the semi-human's name was something like Ghana-lakwonda - and she was pissed that I had interrupted her while she was fixing one of her "hair extension" fake dreadlocks that had fallen out of her macrame hairdo. To cut a long story short: Ghana-lakwonda told me that I had to make an appointment with my local SSA office to submit my ID in person.

Sounded simple except that, when I went to phone the local SSA office, I discovered that it does not have a local number. I had to go back and talk to the machine that seemed to only understand Ebonics or Spanglish not plain English, wait for 20 minutes and then get hold of Ghana-lakwonda's equally annoyed second cousin whose 3 inch long fake purple plastic fingernails had just become caught in Ghana-lakwonda's fake dreadlocks that had fallen out of her macrame hairdo.

Ghana-lakwonda's irate cousin then told me that I could not make an appointment but had to "walk in." So I schlepped down to the local SSA office and took a number. The office was filled with what looked like 30 year old meth addicts in withdrawal all coughing and scratching like rhesus monkeys on crack. One hour later I was called. It took one minute to photocopy my ID.

Now Obamugabe wants Ghana-lakwonda and her irate cousin to run our "healthcare" - and every other aspect of our lives.

Sotomayor

I watched some of her "hearing" today and, when one guy started screaming and got dragged out, I thought it was shaping up to be more entertaining than Jerry Springer. But I eventually got bored with it and switched to Beverly Hillbillies. (Seriously - I'm not being snarky.)

Sotomayor's smart in the same way that Obama is smart - which means that they both overestimate themselves. In other words they just aren't smart enough. Not the brightest stars in the highest heavens - simply satellites in orbit 11000 nautical miles above the Earth. They will eventually crash and burn in history's "bonfire of vanities."

It soon became obvious to me that, like Obama, Sotomayor is a fibber and bullshitter. In other words an American Marxist - which is quite a different beast from an honest straight-forward wealth-envying European prole.

American Marxists must by necessity lie through their teeth because they know that most Americans don't like socialism/communism. They are incrementalist stealth Marxists or Fabians:

The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement whose purpose is to advance socialism via gradualist and reformist rather than revolutionary means...

The group, which favoured gradual incremental change rather than revolutionary change, was named – at the suggestion of Frank Podmore – in honour of the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus (nicknamed "Cunctator", meaning "the Delayer"). His Fabian strategy advocated tactics of harassment and attrition rather than head-on battles against the Carthaginian army under the renowned general Hannibal Barca.

PS Obama sure does seem to like hefty heifers with either strong triceps brachii and/or big testes.

The GOP - adapt to the demographics or die

Since the last election I've posted excerpts from a number of writers pointing out that the GOP has to adapt or die. Most have pointed out that it's the demographics: white married Christians have been the backbone of the GOP but there are no longer enough of them to guarantee election.

Every time that I brought up this fact, I have been told that the GOP is not winning elections because we have strayed from our "conservative" message and are not running sufficiently "conservative" candidates. That the GOP has been taken over by "RINOs." The demographics are totally ignored. I finally had to accept that there is a lot of denial going on here.

I understand that it is hard for white married Christian Americans to relinquish their cherished traditions for the simple reason that it is those traditions and values that have created this wonderful free civilized nation. But the demographics show that white married Christian Americans will soon be a minority. That means that the GOP will become a minority party.

There's nothing wrong with that. I belonged to a minority party in South Africa that was opposed to apartheid for years because I refused to compromise my principles. However it does mean that the GOP will shrink and eventually become the party of only white married Christian Americans mostly from the South. That's fine but it also means that the Democratic socialist juggernaut will never have to face any real challenge.

So, because conservative Republicans insist on "all or nothing" ideological purity, refuse to work realistically and incrementally to oppose Democratic socialism, label any dissenters as "RINOs" and resent compromising with old-fashioned Republicans of the progressive persuasion in the tradition of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower, we will cease to be relevant.

One of the reasons that I became a Republican when I became an American citizen is because I was sick of Leftist ideology and hyper-partisanism. The GOP seemed to me to be the party of normal people who cared more about America than ideology. But that's changed in the past decade. It's become the party of ideological social conservatives.

I don't want to be a party-pooper. So maybe it's time to leave the GOP to the white Christian ideologues and think about joining the Modern Whig Party which calls itself "a party for the rest of us. "

All I know for sure is that I'm tired of the state of denial of the demographics that socially conservative Republicans seem to have fallen into.

Fairy wands

Every July I post pictures of my fairy wands (South African dierama lilies.) This year I decided to post a picture of a human beside them so you can see just how big they are. So yesterday I asked Andy to snap me standing next to them and he ended up taking a lousy pic of me squinting in the sun. So I took a pic of him next to them. Doesn't he look like a hillbilly? Were both 5'10" so you can see that the fairy wands are about 5 feet tall.

Since I had the camera, I started taking some other pics of Robin's Wood.



























































































































































And here's a pic of fairy wands growing in their natural habitat in South Africa.