Potash Is Back!

Here I am wearing a Party Hat for Potash. The picture isn't very good so it's difficult to see how lovely the hat is. Remember every one is different. Kevin Clancy of Microcosmanaut was the first person to actually request a Party Hat for Potash. He seemed pleased with it and it mailed without damage. He reported that the hat exceeded his quality expectations.

The good news is that after a brief interruption of the Potash supply, he's back. I hope he'll find out about the Party Hats for Potash soon enough. I told him in an email, but he's been only able to manage 10 minutes online a couple of times week recently. I didn't ask his permission, but I suspect he'll play along; after party hats are fun.

The weather has been nice and I've been gardening. My hands have little cuts and my fingernails are little nubs from handling rocks and pruning roses. How lovely the spring is. In the autumn I always feel a bit of melancholy and in the spring a bit of stupor which I call spring fever. I mentioned spring fever to a friend and he said, "Oh, like you're horny all the time." Not quite what I had in mind, but now that he mentions it...

I'm just lazy and there's lots on my plate. It always amazes me what bloggers come up with and my list of links from recent gleenings is quite long. There are certain blogs that are always important to me. Digby's posts at Hullabaloo for example. This morning Digby linked to this AFP report: US considers use of nuclear weapons against Iran. The plan is diabolic; I'm utterly opposed! I can't find the words to say how this story affected me today: my mind was scrambled and emotions raw. Here's Digby's piece. Nothing I've read elsewhere about this mitigates it in the least. I pray that many Americans and people of goodwill around the world will speak out loudly in opposition.

Keguro's posts at Gukira are always a wonder. Often I love the sounds of his words so I read the posts over and over. Today he wrote Yet Another Rape Poem which raises many nuanced points about this horrible violence. He concludes:

I want the rape poems to stop. I want the whispers to be unnecessary. I want young women to stop bearing secrets. I want gendered violence to be a thing of the past, a language and logic so removed from this time and place that we will need a rosetta stone.

Read the piece, in fact, grazing through the archive you'll find a rewarding activity. I want to say "Amen" and it is important to say, and especially for men to say, "I want gendered violence to be a thing of the past." Keguro reminds that we must do as well; consider this post On Silence and this one, Ogre Stories Retold for Today.

I like smart people. Being not so smart myself it's sometimes very intimidating encountering smart people. Compensating for my anxiety is that in my experience smart people are often very kind, a quality I rank above smartness any day. Ethan Zuckerman is both smart and kind. This post pleased me so much because of the optimism about Africa. It's notes for a presentation at the Sweet Mother Tour Conference Saturday. I'd be pleased with almost any organization named Sweet Mother, but that sweetmother.org recognizes "that no society can develop without an understanding of its own worth" puts in firmly in the the "create something good" mode.

I love Timbucktu Chronicles and both posts for today were close to my heart: first on gardening and second about Practical Small Projects. The second was of particular interest because my friend Duane alerted me to it several months ago along with the adventures of his friend Kristin Johnson. Duane blogs occasionally at his MSN Spaces Motoko Room, but if you know Duane or love the music of Muddy Waters read this post at his Friendster blog. He called me up--collect as I remember--to tell me the story soon after it happened. It was great to hear him tell it again.

Smart bloggers, I could go on too long, but there's a pun in mind so just one more. Christian Long is smart, very kind, and extraordinarily energetic. He blogs professionally for DesignShare and that blog is worth visiting to discover how school design really matters to you. He also writes the wonderful think:lab because education matters.

This post today, Live From Monrovia in the Post-Charles Taylor Years, lifted my spirits after the shock of discovering the administrations planning a massive nuclear attack against Iran. An old friend of Christian's, Byron Johnson, among other creative pursuits is a professor of art at the University of Liberia. Johnson was involved in creating a mural on the side of an army barracks notorious for the torture committed there. Take a look at the pictures, art can be a way to remember and to ascend from insanity and chaos.

War memorials fascinate me. In a town nearby is a lovely park and memorial to the Spanish American War. In the North Side of Pittsburgh is one too with a portion of the exploded boiler of the Maine. Word association to the Spanish American War produces: "Bully!" How easily I forget the sadness of the small park in New Brighton. Who remembers the Philippine American War? The bloody awful adventure which dragged on for fifteen years and is the real reason for so many memorials to the Spanish American War; lest we forget.

How will we remember our invasion and occupation of Iraq in the future? Will there even be a future with madmen under my flag brandishing nuclear bombs against another country which has not attacted us; an illegal war of aggression under the doctrine of First Strike? I'm ashamed, angry and very afraid.

Soon I will visit the memorial in New Brighton. George Santayana wrote: "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." And George Bernard Shaw wrote: "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history." I don't know, is it too much to imagine a world without war? Perhaps, but surely we can know that war is a horror and therefore want an end to war.