Dear Diary

Keeping a Diary

It's now after the Fourth of July and my first entry for 2011 is: "April 25th Mysore raspberries." I usually plod along till mid March with the daily "orchid house," the weekly, "Netflix, Open Sat."and then even that fades away. Well, V. S. Pritchett did say that the secret of happiness was "a pleasing monotony." Obviously the Mysore raspberries this year were a total disruption.

Every December when I buy calendars for Christmas I choose a diary for the New Year. Should I go for a real leather one with all the maps and international time zones? The one with the daisy on the front and This Diary Belongs To..? But of course you don't want your name there if you are actually going to write Dear Diary stuff. And being the trad English type, I don't go in for expressing deep thoughts though looking in the mirror, I think about old age and death quite a bit. That should remind me to keep a diary as memory fails because as Donald Rumsfeld said: stuff happens.

If we do something really big like going to India or North Carolina, then I take along an exercise book and it all goes in there right from the airport:"Buy NYT." But day by day? Well, until 2011, dear diary started on January 1st, with all the other resolutions; tea, skim milk, half grapefruit. That diet one was on its way out by Jan 2nd because of New Year's Day football: (wine, popcorn, chips.)

People coming and dogs needing shots go on the calendar with tax deadlines and Recycling days. Really big things get engulfed in their bigness. I don't remember sitting with my diary on the night Andrew or any other hurricane arrived. I do have one other entry for this year when our son got engaged and we all had dinner. Not even an exclamation mark but next to it, "fish and broccoli."

Hurricanes? Think Italian

We have gas. A gas stove. If the power-lines go down, unlike most of our neighbors, we will enjoy hot tea and three meals a day. Bummer. When an advanced civilization collapses and we are back to foraging for food, that should be the good part, guilt-free survival on chips and cookies.

But, in fact, after Andrew we had so much stuff to eat out of the freezer, we were eating heartier than we had done for weeks. Slaving over a hot stove, even by candlelight, was not my idea of the aftermath of a hurricane.

Anyway, when the ice in the cooler finally melts, you need a plan. Basically, you return to pre-fridge days: think old gnarled peasants, their old gnarled garlic sausages hanging from sooty beams, with a string of onions. Add a can of tomatoes, red wine and good old happy-to-be in-a-cardboard-box pasta. Think Italian!

In fact, getting ready for a hurricane is just like preparing for our Fourth of July party- Not how many people do we estimate are coming? But how many days do we need to provide for? How many paper plates? napkins? chips? crackers? water? sodas? fruit juice? red wine? Get Jim Bean.- No one wants warm beer.

And then not dusting and polishing but fill water bottles, find hurricane lamps, nail plywood over windows and sit in front of the TV in the gloom, while there's still power, waiting for the big news. When is Andrew, Gustave, Pedro or Doris arriving - how far away. That's why, when the hurricane misses us, we are resentful. We did all this? For a no show, for a cancellation? Nothing but a few leaves and twigs on the ground! We gave a party and nobody came!

But now forecasting is sharper; no longer: "Tie down your trash cans and bring in the dogs! From Key West to Orlando!" On the other hand, things appear to be heating up and we may find in the future our quaintly named hurricanes are not so much expected guests as mindless party crashers.

Hurricanes and tornadoes

We were the veterans, the year of '92, the big one until Katrina. After August 1992, whenever a TV reporter "in the eye of the storm" stood in a puddle with his collar turned up, we rolled our eyes. Whenever they recounted the terrors of the wind, against a backdrop of palm fronds and leafy boughs, we'd chant:

"Leaves on the trees! Ain't no hurri-cane!"

Hurricane Andrew gave us our standards and our bragging rights. But only about twenty-four people died. Five of them, a mile or so away, had been in a small apartment complex. The way the building had been tossed around it was said, meant "That had to be a tornado."

Joplin, Missouri looks now like Homestead and Redland in August 1992. Andrew also had winds of 200 miles an hour. But hurricanes are better than tornadoes, we say- you can prepare. You can buy bottled water and baked beans and nail plywood over windows. Andrew was strange though, came up suddenly, out of the blue. We were OK. No last minute hysteria at Home Depot. We already had plywood and double headed nails and an old house with wooden window frames you could hammer nails into. That's why our house held while most around us popped. Would plywood make that difference now?

Maybe this hurricane season we'll find out.

Redland Orchid Festival: Origins

The last big orchid event of the year has come and gone and here I am mentioning it now: The Redland International Orchid Festival. Well, exactly, because now it's all over I have the time. But it's also hard to decide: What is a blog? Is it basically just to promote your stuff like a tupperware party? It seems tacky to write up events In Which We Have a Commercial and Monetary Interest. (So Republican!) On the other hand there is the Need To Put Food On the Table. (Another whiny Dem!)

Well, Redland is the Big One - biggest orchid happening in the US! And the Motes's should make something of it because it was Dr. Motes who invented it. And it was an invention. A new mind set.

The idea of putting on an orchid show in the middle of May, outdoors, in South Florida, was considered nuts. Too hot. The season is over and everyone who could (i e the sort of people who had money to buy orchids!) was out of here. As though Miami Dade was the backyard of Buckingham Palace and after the races at Ascot, all the toffs motored up to Scotland for the grouse shooting. Or colonial India when the Brits made for the hill country, leaving the peasants sweating in the plains. Well, that does still happen. Apparently you can't swing a cat in the hills of North Carolina in the summer without hitting a wussy South Floridian.

Anyway, the reaction to Dr. Motes' proposal was: No-one wants to be here in May and those who are, won't come (too hot) and You're nuts.

Dr. Motes' argument was: Precisely because there was nothing on- what a great time to have something on! And more importantly, it would give orchid lovers the chance to see and buy orchids blooming at that time of year- All the orchid shows were clustered in the cool season - October through March.

And surely orchid lovers were used to working up a bit of sweat, looking after...their orchids!

And talking of sweat - who needs big exhibits? Bring in your plants for sale, lay them out on the tables, someone opens the gates and stand back!

And that, my children, is what happened.

The Wedding PS

I was too cynical about the BBC and the wedding- about the whole thing. I watched loads of it, actually starting out with Katy Couric on Channel Four whom (see I'm English!) I will always love because of Sarah Palin. (You had to have been there.) I was like some old cockney Gran, with bad teeth, interviewed at the Palace railings: "Wha' a loverly pair!"

"Oh the English organisation..."etc. And we go, Yeah, OK. But, when you think about it... Did anyone see sniffer dogs and black vans parked behind the trees, and cops with bullet proof vests talking into electronic devices? Well maybe that was the Household Guards with their shining breast plates..Somehow I feel if this had been in the great US we would have all been made aware of What Perils Are Lurking.

Well, I'm American, too. So God Bless America, but just this once, I think England really is tops. It was a loverly job.

Kate Middleton in Berkshire! Me too!

Bucklebury!

This should really be a tweet. - I grew up in the same county as Kate Middleton! No wonder they call it the Royal County of Berkshire. There's Windsor at one end and Wallingford at the other where Saxon King Alfred had his HQ or something. - Anyway, he fought the Danes and there are lDanish broad swords in the Reading Museum; apparently they kept losing them overboard as they came up the Thames. And now there is Bucklebury - a rather posh Berkshire village where Kate Middleton grew up.

Many a time as a damp young thing in my school uniform, I have watched the big red double decker Thames Valley buses grind by, with BUCKLEBURY or more often, BUCKLEBURY COMMON on the front. Little did we know!

And Kate is so lovely - she has all those mandatory inches between bust and waist that make looking good so much easier. And she has that lovely dimple when she smiles. She's absolutely Bucklebury's Shirley Temple.

Can't wait! But watch out with BBC America. From what I've seen, they're ladling out the treacle so thick I can hear those cynical, young English producers saying: "Lard it on! Yanks love this stuff."

The little black dress

Continuing with the Arab-Moslem theme here, I would like to put in a word for the little black dress. We are supposed to bewail the idea that so many of our Moslem sisters must encase themselves in black from head to toe. All I can say is that for many a day, right now, and for the whole of my adolescence that would have been a dream come true.

For a teenager obsessed with legs, hips, how awful you look from behind, to be able to step out protected by that cave of black would have given me a carefree youth. And when I think of my despair at and hatred for my nose, my skin, my hair, the bonus of being able to cover all that up too, would have been sheer heaven. Personal bias noted here: Growing up I always heard: "-She has lovely eyes!" (i.e. "At least there's something we can salvage.") So for me, the whole black outfit was just tailor made.

Well, you may say: we in the west have sweats- but sweat pants are clingy. And the western version of Don't look at my shape- the caftan - is so forlorn. Unless you are a lean six footer who doesn't need one, you look like an abandoned, graffiti-smothered traffic cone.

Safi, whom I met in Italy all those years ago, the young revolutionary journalist: ("I am the first Arab girl to hitchhike!") has adopted Moslem dress, including the veil. So I was told when I tried to contact her at her Cairo newspaper when I was in Egypt a few years ago. Had she

become ..a devout Moslem? "Well," said one of her colleagues slyly, "when women get to a certain age...it often seems a good idea."

The colors of the prophet

So Gadhafi has claimed the color of the prophet as his own in a bright, optimistic shade, miles away from the standard, somber Muslim green used mainly in the west for agricultural machinery and school uniforms. His supporters only need shamrocks on their head gear to look like a pub crowd promoting St Patrick's Day.

Gadhafi green, like every other color, is there in India. When we were hunting for orchids along the country roads of Kerala, I was recording the colors of Kerala's mosques: pea green, lime green, that bright Caribbean, cabbage green, chartreuse. And that's just the start. I saw a lime green mosque with mint green trim. A bright Gadhafi green with orange accents. A deep violet, mixed with a lighter shade. And how about periwinkle blue and marigold? And why not pinstripe your minaret? In fact, some were turned into candy canes of pink and purple.

It was as though they'd let the Imams' children loose with paint cans - Let's have purple walls and a green arch! Well then, half a mile down the road we'll do a lime green mosque with a baby blue gate! And then they went on to the churches; a lavender church, a pink and white church and a Christian orphanage, all in sugar candy colors.

But when the colors fade this time they may stay faded. The money for such exuberance came from Muslim Indians working in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and the Gulf states, out of work now, refugees from the Arab revolutions.

The Arab Revolution

If I'd been around for the French and Russian Revolutions I'd have been watching TV all day. But they might not have been so inspiring, close up, as the Arab Revolution. I am so proud of the Arab people. (What, all of them?) All the people I've seen on TV. The brave, the articulate - Who knew there were so many articulate English-speaking students, young doctors, beautiful young mothers, in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, in Yemen. Why weren't we told? And all crying out for freedom, passionately alive.

But these are backward societies. We in the West are way past that. We mumble and sigh, especially us Democrats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity...."

The Arab world is fresh as Wordsworth's: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,/But to be young was very heaven!"

And it's not just the young who are in heaven: it's the solid women all in black, like gleeful nuns, the Tunisian engineers and Egyptian managers and gap-toothed, worn out laborers.

Well, we all know how the French and Russian revolutions went... but what about the British or American ones? Well, that pair were Anglo-Saxon. The Arab Revolution is full of Arabs. And we know they lack discipline and civic pride...except for the Egyptians and the citizens of Bengazi... and they don't value human life like we do...except for the Libyan pilots who crashed their planes rather than bomb and all the soldiers who refused to fire... and they are not really ready for the modern world except for twitter, face book, etc. And by the way, who was it in Egypt who ordered a pizza for the Union protesters in Wisconsin?

And just a note to all the Anglo-Saxon students who need to get fueled up to march and shout: Most of the Moslem crowds are totally, deliriously sober in their joy.

Tamiwhat?

Start a blog and you are buzzed in to that hive of interconnectedness, The Social Network. Read The Does and Don'ts of orchid selling.. and it's on to Orchid Territory -a fun read and buy it here! Kosova Kosovo too - (Hey, did you know there are still our boys stationed in Kosovo?) - and of course, front and center, Motes Orchids and its delights. And now comes Motes Orchids family members actually putting on a whole show- the Tamiami International Orchid Festival!

....Which you didn't read about here. Which actually was two weeks ago, more now. I didn't blog about the Tamiami International Orchid Festival because I was too busy getting orchids ready for The Tamiami International Orchid Festival. That should have made me the perfect Twitterer. If there was ever someone primed to make short, breathless statements at irritating intervals it's definitely the person scrambling to fill a truck when an orchid show is on.

Breaking flower spikes, Biggest blue-just snapped off! **ghhjxxx!! (Can you swear on Twitter?) Where are eight inch baskets? Cash box! Loading 7 am. Bloody cold! C U there!

Then there was the Egyptian Revolution! Check out the Revolution but don't forget at Tamiami this weekend our Indian Species Special: Ten dollars each- three for twenty-five!

And who on earth is reading this anyway? I know my daughter has corralled about three colleagues in California but we can hardly expect them to be interested in ten dollar dendrobiums in Miami, even with three for 25,00. There's the great young orchid-loving dentist I met in India- to whom I owe a great long email - t0 also thank his Mum, etc. But By now be rude just to email... should really send a card...what's the postage to India?

Now when someone says "I loved your book when's the next one?" I say read my blog and email me! Let me know if you like it! But most people reading Orchid Territory are like me: the internet is not central to their lives. And they are puzzled by new words like "friending.' I need to use the old currency: You liked OT? The blog? Let me know. Just drop me a line - it's 44cents.

M for Murder

So Mubarak supporters are crashing the party.

The President of Egypt is joining the contemporary M series:

Milosevic, destroying Yugoslavia in order to gain power.

Mugabe, destroying Zimbabwe in order to hold power

Mubarak destroying Egypt's peaceful protest in order to hang on.

But then there's Mandela.

Hurray for Egypt and Tunisia!

A few years ago I was lucky enough to visit Cairo; I had friends there. Everything I'd read or heard about Egyptians, and Cairenes especially, was good: mellow people. And there they were, in the midst of lethal traffic jams, the taxi drivers smiling and joking. I never felt worried to be A Woman Alone though of course by this time I was seen as nothing more than an LOL (Little Old Lady) Alone. (Go East, ladies, as you age and certainly in Moslem countries you will find the man in the street will treat you with respect and kindness, in total contrast to how they'll treat you when you are young and pretty.)

ANYWAY this is just a shout out to all Tunisians and especially Egyptians. Someone on CNN this morning reported that there were many lighthearted signs in the massive crowds calling for President Mubarak to go. One man was holding a sign up high, saying, "Hurry up, Mubarak, my arms are getting tired!"

One Egyptian in their very own Rally to Restore Sanity.

Heritage TV, the Big House

Watching Downton Abbey, the latest TV Heritage dose from the UK, I thought of my grandfather, head groom, my grandmother, the lady's maid, (a union not so much of Upstairs Downstairs as Inside Outside,) and my mother who recounted how she'd eaten stolen nectarines in the hayloft as a child, and ridden down to the village in the estate's dog cart. And then it all ended, just like it always does on the TV series, with the First World War.

When my mother left school she learnt shorthand and typing and worked for the LNER: the London North Eastern Railway and then, she landed right back in that declining Heritage world. My father, just married, was being taken on as a head gardener. He had, as they said, bettered himself. One of six, a mother widowed, living "at the rough end of the village," he had left school at twelve, to work in the fields. But he had a chance to go to the big house: being 'in service' was the education you could get as a poor child in the country.

They went straight from the wedding to the gardener's cottage at Rushbrook Hall, to be greeted by the housekeeper, Polly who opened their front door with a big iron key, which she then put back in her apron pocket.

Rushbrook Hall was Elizabethan. I saw something from it, I think a section of panelled staircase, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. For my mother, the biggest problem there was the worry that my elder brother when he was small would wander off and fall in the moat.

The PBS Downton Abbey, like the movie, Gosford Park, shows the rules that bound the upper class as tightly as the servants: the upset that a gentleman would serve himself wine, put on his own coat. It made me think of our hotel stays in Malaysia and India: someone to pour the tea, add the milk, someone else to pull out the chair, to hover. If you do these things, the modern young man is asked in Downton Abbey, then what will he do? How will he earn a living?

Every detail is delectable: the gleaming antique furniture, the feathered hats, the bosomy blouses but one thing now is always out of place. As someone who was sent to classes to learn how to speak like a "Lidy," a little suburban Eliza Doolittle, I can't help but register the accents.

The young'uns in Downton Abbey, speak with the casual voices of modern upper class England. Posh voices now are funny. The dowager Aunts, the Maggie Smiths, can drawl and purse lips and raise their eyebrows and their sentences but if the young mangled their vowels, full of frightfullys and Mummys and Daddys - more Bertie Wooster than Prince William - we'd see them as posh, out of touch, spoiled rotten upper class twits. But back then they would have spoken like that and the servants would have bowed in acknowledgement and taken their coats and hats and polished their boots and, like my grandmother, who started off as a tweeny maid, lowest of the low, too low even to have a uniform, would have washed their floors and cleaned their grates.

Kerala, view from an SUV

Kerala means land of coconuts and the Indian-thin lanky coconut palms rose up everywhere beside the roads, behind the tiny shops festooned with clusters of bottled water and bananas. Like Malaysia, there was a heartening mix of churches, Christian schools, Hindu temples and many mosques, most newly painted. Must be money coming in from the Gulf states. So many people working there, said our Indian friends, so much money coming in: every home has a computer. And why so many school children? Kerala the state with the highest literacy. Two young boys did beg -they each asked for a pen. First the Christian missionaries established schools and now the Communists are a big part of government here. "Through the ballot,"as one of our colleagues said because they were seen to be good candidates but now just as corrupt as other politicians.

Everywhere words: on the trucks, FRIENDS, Bismillah!, Jesus Never Fails and on the back of trucks and buses, the most unnecessary command of all: Sound Horn! Above the shacks and tiny shops, signs promising a future: Digital Workshop, Beauty Academy, Internet Institute, Talent Academy, Perfect English Institute. Signs painted on fences and walls. Ideal Vests Briefs and Trunks painted on a succession of private garden walls, followed us all the way down to the Cape.

First day back, never before had the standard silent suburb seemed more like an empty stage set. Every house, every gate, clear cut and on display but where are the signs, the ads, the words, where is the noise, where are the trucks, the buses, the scooters, where is the color, where are the children? where are the people?

Notes on India -Where are the beggars?

OK so we didn't go to Mumbai or Calcutta but we were in Bangalore, (the information capital of the world, according to President Sarkozy, who was there at the same time.)

But no keeping the head down, barging through a dozen outstretched hands, no averting the eyes or handing out cheap coins to the maimed and old at our feet. All I can remember were two young girls outside a big temple, a dignified old man, like a monk; a girl, making faces, pressed up against the car window.

In fact, all the children we saw seemed to be coming home from school, the boys cheeky, the girls bashful. All in uniform, clean and tidy. And there can't be a more beautiful sight than a line of Indian school girls, slim and graceful, dark hair to their shoulders, walking home under those big old orchid-hosting trees, their uniforms a delight: deep blue scarves over pale blue tunics and deep blue trousers, cream colored tunics with vermilion.

I asked about poverty. The poor can buy rice at a special rate. That's one thing. Pressure to survive is obviously intense. In The Hindu Times: six lottery sellers have committed suicide because lottery draws were to be limited to one per week and "a number had turned to begging to make ends meet."

Orchid Hunting in the Western Ghats

We have been orchid hunting in the Western Ghats. I should really leave it at that. We went to Kerala, Southern India just before Christmas because that is the season for the flowering of Vanda wightii - a Vanda not seen in Western greenhouses, and not recorded in the wild for a hundred years. We also needed to check on the range of Vanda tessellata -we have the smaller northern Vanda tessellata in the greenhouse and the much bigger Sri Lanka version. These from Travancore were betwixt and between.

I had planned to stay back at the hotel with The Hindu Times and CNN. I've read enough old accounts of orchid hunting: "Despite the terrain we only lost one man..." But orchid hunting in the Western Ghats turned out to be a lot less strenuous than Christmas shopping. It involved an SUV on loan from the Trivandrum Botanical Gardens, with driver, and Indian colleagues with my sense of humor. Sorry, America, only those who have been through the British school system and the old caste system of the English can, deep down, be on the same wavelength.

We were hunting orchids along the roads because that is where the oldest trees are: not chopped down but left for shade, not jungled up but separate, receiving their share of sunlight. And it's only on the oldest trees, Dr. Motes says, seventy-five years or more, that orchids have time to grow and can find that crusty old bark they love.

Kerala is the most populous state in India. True, whenever we stopped under a particularly old tree on those country roads, there was always a house and garden nearby where we could negotiate for a bamboo pole, be observed by grinning groups of school children walking home or locals on crowded buses charging by, their elbows jutting out of windowless sides.

We did not lose one man on those trips; we did find a Dr. Motes, more than happy, as he saw these Vanda species in the wild. And I was more than happy to just slide into my SUV seat to go hunting orchids in the Western Ghats.

India ate my homework

Home from two weeks in India. Back in BC (before computers) that would explain silence but with laptops and wi fi (a whole line in Abu Dhabi airport) it's no longer an excuse.

But pounding away on greasy metal keys? Now the closest the big old desk computer. And pounding along later, one is less likely to announce I'm at the airport! OMG need coffee!

So Toronto to Trivandrum, Southern India on Etihad, the Emirates airline. (Cheap joke: "Jihad" airlines?Ha Ha!) Maybe had is a verb or noun, just meaning a journey... and ji is the nasty bit. Ask the handsome young Arab attendant who bashfully explains Etihad is Arabic but a made up word. Like those Japanese car names.

ANYWAY, Etihad, economy class, is the way to fly: foot rest, individual movie screen, real earphones, printed menus with choices! (Not everyone needs to eat mutton) AND free drinks. Scotch, wine - and the smiling attendants return unbidden to refill your good-sized glass with no hint of disapproval. My advice to strict Moslem parents: book your children and wives on American Airlines where the head sets cost, the drinks cost, the glasses are small and the attendants hide behind the curtain in business class to avoid refills.

Watched a great Indian movie, "Three Idiots." Students at Imperial College of Engineering, pressure to succeed. The young flight attendant said it was made in response to the great number of student suicides. Note: Read later in The Hindu Times it's the biggest grossing movie ever.

Nearly asleep: changed categories to Arabia. The young gardener is falling in love with the rich young daughter who lives on what looks like a golf course and goes riding in jodphurs with a little scarf at the neck just so. They hold hands passionately in the shrubbery; no kissing. Years ago I hitchhiked down to Florence with two Egyptian girls I met at a youth hostel in Venice. Safinaz said for an Arab girl to kiss a man is like sleeping with someone. She was a journalist- sat up at night in the hostels writing her articles: First Egyptian girls ever to hitch hike! Forget how she got her material back to Cairo. Sent me a magazine. There we are, thumbs out, by the side of an Italian road. Said she told her readers how surprised she was to find she could be friends with an English girl. (We have ended the Suez crisis! she announced.)

OK. Trivandrum, Kerala, three in the morning. Hundreds of people waiting, dark faces, flashing smiles like it was midday. Down the darkened streets but could see hammers and sickles painted on walls and fences. Yeah, Toto we're not in the US anymore.

Playthings

For play, young children need two boxes. When they are really small they need a box with three stones in it. Then it will rattle. And a somewhat clean box is best because they are going to gnaw on it when they are teething. When children start to run around they need something more. That's when parents need to go to ToysRUs, to the back entrance and ask for one of the large boxes that The Princesses Castle came in or The Big Plastic Slide.

That's it; dump the plastic castle and keep the box. In a big cardboard box you can serve tea, plot war, hide from the enemy. You can cut windows and doors or slits for arrows. You can't carve your will on plastic or if you do your Mum and Dad will be angry and worry you'll grow up to be a vandal.

Another thing: I was hanging up the washing the other morning and spread a King-sized sheet across the two laundry lines to dry. And there it was- the secret tent- the shadowy sides moving mysteriously in the breeze. So go green, employ the latest sophisticated solar technology,(hanging out your clothes in the Florida sunshine) and give your child an extra, organic hide out.

Not everyone has the space for a tree and a dog or a laundry line but everyone with a child must find room for the big cardboard box.

We need trees more than birds do

Coral Gables: the City Beautiful. What's the difference between Coral Gables and the rest of us? Trees. The whole place is like the Brazilian rain forest. Yes, there are million zillion dollar homes crouching behind those tree trunks and leafy branches but it's the trees, stupid.

When we moved into our place the first thing we did was plant trees- well, actually, the first thing we did was plant selected seeds of live oaks and gumbo limbo and satin leafs into big old baked bean cans and, bless the South Florida climate, in a year or two they had left their cans behind.

But the point is, you can sit on a crate, you can eat off a piece of plywood (cover with a clean, bright cloth!) and later on you can buy your fancy Italian leather couch and table that seats eight in an afternoon but you can't wake up one morning and say I'm going to be surrounded by leafy branching trees this evening; where's my wallet! It doesn't work like that. (Well, the very rich and impatient can truck in instant trees complete with scaffolding and irrigation and good luck with that.) But the Brazilian rain forest or the gentle beech woods of southern England or just your shady corner were not built in a day - though I suppose our Creationist friends would beg to differ.

Does this blog make me look fat?

I'd given up on the election: it was the Rally. And the vital thing about the Rally was the numbers. As Napoleon said of the Pope:How many divisions does he have?

Well, this Pope has numbers. Doing the wave at the Rally to Restore Sanity was a great way to emphasize the sheer number-ness of it all; all those arms, raised up, two at a time, all the way down the Mall.

Now I can face Tuesday. Though I am still extremely peeved and mystified as to why my powerful letter to The Miami Herald, concerning the electoral process, did not make the cut. Mystified because it had the winning ingredient: it was short.

Having total copyright control etc, I am going to print it here: even more shorter, it might have made a good Rally sign.

Buying Elections the Old-fashioned Way

Why don't we go back to the buying of elections the old-fashioned way? All those millions of dollars spent hiring ad men and political back-room boys...Let Scott, Rove and the others really do something for the unemployed. Maybe not the Oprah-level of a car for everyone - but a new washing machine or TV, or at least a gift voucher for Macys for the ladies and a quart of Jim Beam on election day as you ride to the polls. Cut out the middle men and we might get something out of this election!

Note: I have never forgotten a picture in The Herald some years ago, of a Mexican politician addressing a rural crowd, while behind him, like a Sunday choir, stood a semi circle of gleaming white washing machines.