The generosity of the universe

Arpad (pronounced Ar-pod), our Great Pyrenees and security chief for Goat Rope Farm, loves this time of the year. As deer hunters hit the woods, they often leave behind such tasty offerings as legs and spines, sometimes both all joined together. These are sources of delight for a good month or two starting when the leaves start to turn.

The above picture shows his treasure haul for the day. And the season is still young.

For Arpad, it's proof that the universe is bountiful and generous. It's all good. The Pod abides.

HOW BOUT THOSE POLLS? It looks like the government shutdown/hostage crisis thing hasn't worked out too well for House Republicans.

A GRIEF OBSERVED. My friend the Rev. Jim Lewis recently lost his wife Judy after a long battle with cancer. Here are some of his reflections on dealing with loss.

ELEPHANTS get the point. Too bad some people don't.

ENDING THE (REAL) HUNGER GAMES. Here's a look at some recent reforms that provide free meals for all schoolchildren. We're working on that in WV.

WE KNOW FROM "OKLAHOMA" that the farmer and the cowman should be friends. Apparently, it wasn't that easy even thousands of years ago.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

As goes the creek...

There are any number of ways to assess the state of the world. One measure I use that is entirely personal and arbitrary is the state of the creek that runs through the yard. As goes, the creek, so goes the world. More or less.

When it is flowing continuously and full of minnows and crawdads and such, all is well or at least more tolerable. When it is dry and lifeless, as often happens in late summer, the world at large seems the same way.

It's not that things are all that great when it's healthy; it's just that things seem all that much worse when it isn't.

Sometimes when the creek goes dry, it can be months before minnows show up again, even after the water comes back. When that happens, I check each day and usually celebrate the first arrival of fish. (Search this blog for "fish day" and you'll see what I mean).

I am pleased to announce that although it ran dry recently, heavy rains earlier this week restored it for now anyhow and somehow minnows have reappeared from whatever isolated holes they were surviving in.

All of which is to say that there may be hope for the world after all.

MAKE THEM. Here's a proposal for reviving the progressive agenda.

OH REALLY? Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry recently suggested that there was no broad scientific agreement on climate change. Here's a bit of fact checking.

ABOUT THAT WAR ON COAL. It doesn't seem to be going well, since mining employment has actually gone up.

URGENT THINKING ELEPHANT UPDATE here.

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. I really screwed up and reversed the key words in a metaphor about gold and silver in yesterday's post. My bad.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Tradeoffs?

Random animal picture. Can you spot the crawdad in the creek?

First up, here's a good analysis from the Economic Policy Institute about the deficit and proposed budget cuts.

Sample:

The bottom line: reckless spending didn’t get us here. What got us here was reckless gambling on Wall Street and policymakers’ failure to rein in these excesses because it would have required confronting politically favored constituencies in the name of protecting America’s working families. Note that none of this is solved by cutting taxes even more, as many conservatives are proposing.

The issue comes down to a question of priorities. If we can afford tax cuts for the middle class and the wealthy and corporations offshoring jobs, we can afford to keep teachers in the classroom and cops on the street. Budgeting is about tradeoffs. Trading an estate tax cut for the wealthiest one-quarter of one percent of Americans—a costly provision in the tax compromise—for budget cuts in child nutrition, grants for college tuition, and food safety (all in the Republican budget) is a really bad trade for the middle class. It’s bad for jobs, bad for our kids, bad for our health, and bad for competitiveness. It’s good for inherited wealth and big donors—that’s about it.

The prevailing sense of Congress seems to believe that deficits don’t matter when it comes to tax cuts for the already privileged, but do matter when it comes to spending. This is job-killing hypocrisy, and a textbook recipe for “starving the beast” and hurting the middle class, not for creating jobs.

NOT GOOD. Things aren't looking good in Japan's post-tsunami nuclear crisis.

AN END OR A BEGINNING? Did the struggle against union busting in Wisconsin wake a sleeping giant?

CLASS WARFARE? More like a one-sided class beatdown.

SOCIAL SECURITY. Progressives in the US Senate are trying to protect this program from yet another cave-in.

PLAYING CHICKEN. Most Americans oppose a government shutdown. However, a majority of Tea Party supporters are in favor of one.

GOOD ELEPHANTS gone bad.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Mama-san

I've read and re-read Beowulf several times in recent months and still can't find the part where Grendel's mother looks like Angelina Jolie, as she did in the 2007 movie version. Say what you want about Ms. Jolie, but she is hardly the "monstrous hell-bride" described in the poem, although the original term is ambiguous in Anglo-Saxon.

In that poem, she doesn't show up until the night after Beowulf's fight with Grendel, in which he tears off the monster's arm and hangs it as a trophy in Heorot, the mead hall.

(I guess people had other ideas about interior decorating in those days.)

After the mortally wounded Grendel runs off to the haunted mere (lake or swamp) where he lives with Mom in an underwater chamber, there is much feasting, drinking, story-telling and gift giving among the humans. It never seems to occur to anyone that Grendel had any family members who might seek revenge. This is kind of ironic, since the feud-oriented raiding culture of the North Sea as depicted in the poem was all about avenging family members. I guess there is a double irony in that the family that seeks revenge here is that of Cain, which originated killing within the family.

Holy double parallelism, Batman!

His mother, unnamed in the poem, broods over this injury and the bad fate of the children of Cain

She had been forced down into fearful waters,
the cold depths, after Cain had killed
his father's son, felled his own
brother with a sword. Branded an outlaw,
marked by having murdered, he moved into the wilds,
shunned company and joy. And from Cain there sprang
misbegotten spirits, among them Grendel,
the banished and accursed....
...But now his smother
had sallied forth on a savage journey,
grief-racked and ravenous, desperate for revenge.

It's not uncommon for mothers in the animal kingdom to be fierce where their young is concerned and I guess that's also the case with monsters.

FEDERAL BUDGET CUTS won't create more jobs.

THIS GUY thinks so too.

SUIT UP. Massey Energy just got hit with more lawsuits in the wake of last year's Upper Big Branch mine disaster.

PASS IT. Here's an item about some worthwhile legislation in WV which would create an Office of Minority Affairs. If you live in WV, please consider contacting your senators in support of HB 2161.

ELEPHANTS can co-operate. We, however, seem to have some issues in that department.

NOTE: Due to having to hit the road at an ungodly hour again, this post was scheduled in advance. Well may the world go.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED