The Women's Wars: How "Smart Girl Power" Has Wrecked The World, and May Have Started WWIII

We used to hear about how peaceful the world would be "if women ran the world".

Over the past 20 years, we've had a chance to find out what happens when the people at the helm of policy and warmaking for the West are women.

The verdict? Persistent, brutal, genocidal war after war after war. Nations that had been peaceful for a century dissolved into EU/US-women-goaded wars.

The Arab Winter unleashing yet another Islamist jihad of conquest in dozens  of previously stable nations.

Collapse of order on three continents and millions of restless young males on the move, raping and enslaving every woman and child they encounter.

The lands of the Vikings are engaged in a twisted disfunction that allows Moslem men to rape and assault  hundreds of women and children in public places while the authorities cover up the assaults like a neurotic woman hiding the incest in her house from the neighbors.

Nations that had achieved equality of the sexes are promoting sex-segregated trains, telling women not to go out alone or at night,  to protect women from assault by  "asylum seekers" and "refugees".

Nations that had begun to lift their populace out of the stone age into modernity have fallen back into the pit of tribalism.

The habitual use of cruel and unusual punishments for ordinary human behaviors saw resurgence and spread.

What's that you say? Women didn't cause that! We haven't even had a woman president!

What we have had are women National Security Advisors and Secretaries of State and UN Ambassadors. Women who have driven US Foreign Policy and Military Intervention - often overriding the objections of seasoned generals and terrorism experts -  over the past two decades and across the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Angela Merkel, Condoleza Rice, Madelyn Albright. These are but a few of the women who overthrew settled governments, abetted and funded the wrong side in civil wars and regional wars, who failed to intervene when they should have, and who overrode military minds to meddle in the wrong places at the wrong times in the past 20 years.  Let's take a look at their "legacy":

Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State 2009-2013 

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton oversaw the most hawkish, interventionist... and ineffective foreign policy in American history, perhaps in Western history.  She called it "Smart Power". The destabilization of the Middle East and the surge of Islamist groups like ISIS were a direct result of her 2010 program "Leading Through Civilian Power": "centered on the notion of elevating "civilian power" as a cost-effective way of responding to international challenges and defusing crises.... Clinton said of the underlying message, "Leading with civilians saves lives and money."

One of her first actions, in March 2009, was to override Vice President Biden's objections to sending 20,000 American troops to Afghanistan. 

Hillary Clinton delighted in the success of her initiative when 2011's "Arab Spring" started: "Joseph Massad on Al Jazeera said the term "Arab Spring" was "part of a US strategy of controlling [the ovement's] aims and goals" and directing it towards western-style liberal democracy. Due to the electoral success of Islamist parties following the protests in many Arab countries, the events have also come to be known as "Islamist Spring" or "Islamist Winter"."

"The Hillary Doctrine", a push to make "violence against women" anywhere in the world a national security issue of the US, has been a horrific travesty for the Yazidi women enslaved by the ugly army that evolved from Hillary Clinton's meddlesome use of "Civilian Power", for the Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, for all of the European women and girls being assaulted on the street by "refugees" unleashed by her adventurous warring.

Hillary is credited, along with Susan Rice and Samantha Power, with convincing Obama to authorize US military intervention in support of the Libyan version of Arab Spring in 2011, a civil war that destabilized West Africa and continues today.  The NYT said of her insistence: "The consequences would be more far-reaching than anyone imagined, leaving Libya a failed state and a terrorist haven". Her extra-legal blundering into military matters without Congressional authorization, in direct violation of the War Powers Act, earned President Obama a rebuke from the US House of Representatives.

Hillary did not argue for military intervention to save her Ambassador in Benghazi. (The US Embassy in Turkey was also bombed during her tenure - on her last day. )

In 2011, Hillary pointed to her "success" in Libya when she aggressively defended Obama's decision to remove our troops from Iraq, a disastrous and foolhardy move.

In 2011, Clinton attempted to apply her "Civilian Power" techniques to foment trouble in Russia. Fortunately, she was not successful in overthrowing Russian's government and her schemes were found out, forcing her to back away:
" Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin denounced Clinton, accusing her of  backing Russian protesters financially and in fact precipitating their actions."

She turned her attention to Syria in 2012, angrily "predicting" that a coup would take down Assad after she failed to get UN support for the Islamist rebels, and setting out to make it happen with a plan for the US to arm and train them anyway "with help from a neighboring state".

Hillary Clinton was one of the strongest proponents of using assassin drones. Although much is still secret,  Washington Post reported in 2011:
"Key members of Obama’s national security team came into office more inclined to endorse drone strikes than were their counterparts under Bush, current and former officials said.
"Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, former CIA director and current Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, and counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan seemed always ready to step on the accelerator, said a former official who served in both administrations and was supportive of the 
program. Current administration officials did not dispute the former official’s characterization of the internal dynamics."

Gun-Control freak Hillary Clinton armed many of these terrorists by selling  more than $300Billion in weapons to governments she criticized for human rights violations and failure to combat terrorism (yes, at the same time) during her 3 years. International Busines Times reported:

"Under Clinton's leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IBTimes analysis of State Department and foundation data. That figure -- derived from the three full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012) -- represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.

"The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. 

"These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period."

And Hillary chose women advisors who are just as unpredictably fast on the war trigger as she is, including Anne-Marie Slaughter:

Anne-Marie Slaughter, Hillary's Director of Policy Planning at the State Department:

"On 26 February 2015, Forbes magazine published a piece which called for Washington policymakers to be held accountable for another war gone bad. 

"Slaughter was singled out for criticism, for her statement that “it clearly can be in the U.S. and the West’s strategic interest to help social revolutions fighting for the values we espouse and proclaim.” Writer Doug Bandow concluded: "... The Obama administration’s greatest foreign policy mistake can’t be undone... When war-happy politicians... next stand before America, voters should hold these pitiful policymakers accountable for the disaster they created in Libya."

She didn't learn. When it came to Syria, Anne-Marie Slaughter also pushed for outside agitators and US military aid to overthrow Syria's established government. When Henry Kissinger "argued that an intervention would imperil the foundation of world order" , Slaughter poo-pooed his warning and increased her efforts to gain public support for giving heavy artillary to "rebels". 

Susan Rice, National Security Council 1993-1997 (Director Peacekeeping 1993-1995, Sr Director African Affairs 1995-1997), UN Ambassador 2009-2013, National Security Advisor (2013-current): 

*Argued against intervention in the Rwandan Genocide, saying "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November election?" 

*1997: Allowed Bin Laden to escape. Timothy M. Carney, U.S. ambassador to Sudan, reported in 2002 that "... in 1997 Sudan offered to turn over its intelligence on bin Laden but that [Susan] Rice, as NSC Africa specialist.... successfully lobbied for continuing to bar U.S. officials, including the CIA and FBI, from engaging with the Khartoum government. Similar allegations (that Rice joined others in missing an opportunity to cooperate with Sudan on counterterrorism) were made by Vanity Fair contributing editor David Rose and Richard Miniter, author of Losing Bin Laden."

*Susan Rice  "supported the Rwandan, Ugandan, AFDL and Angolan invasion of Zaire (later known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo) from Rwanda in 1996 and overthrow of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, saying privately that "Anything's better than Mobutu." ....the [resulting] Congo Wars spearheaded by Rwanda led to over five million deaths. "

*Urged US intervention in Libya to overthrow its legitimate government and remove Gaddafi. "Together with National Security Council figure Samantha Power,.. and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, ...the three overcame internal opposition from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, security adviser Thomas E. Donilon, and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, to have the 

administration advance a UN proposal to impose a no-fly zone over Libya and authorize other military actions as necessary"

Samantha Power, National Security Counsel (Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights) 2009-2013, UN Ambassador 2013-present

*One of the strongest proponents of US military action in Libya, joining Hillary and Susan Rice in overruling Defense Secretary Robert Gates, security adviser Thomas E. Donilon, and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, all of whom advised against interferring and destabilizing yet another Middle Eastern country. " American Thinker, a conservative blog, complains that Mr. Obama has “outsourced foreign policy” to Ms. Power."

*2015 - Samantha Power's motorcade ran over a child in an African village at a high rate of speed and did not stop "because it was too dangerous". The little boy was killed instantly. She crept back at 25 MPH later that day, met with the boy's parents and promised "compensation" for the little boy's death. 

*Robert Power wrote: [Susan Power] "...operates with glaring selectivity in deciding who deserves protection as she advances a neocon/liberal interventionist agenda. She is turning “human rights” into an excuse not to resolve conflicts but rather to make them bloodier.

"Thus, in Power’s view, the overthrow and punishment of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad takes precedence over shielding Alawites and other minorities from the likely consequence of Sunni-extremist vengeance. And she has sided with the ethnic Ukrainians in their slaughter of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

"In both cases, Power spurns pragmatic negotiations that could avert worsening violence as she asserts a black-and-white depiction of these crises. More significantly, her strident positions appear to have won the day with President Barack Obama, who has relied on Power as a foreign policy adviser since his 2008 campaign."

* 2016 Yemen.  Huffington Post says "The Obama Administration Should Be Guilty of War Crimes

in Yemen" for funding Saudi Arabia's war there: "In the case of Yemen, however, the genocide is not happening due to the mere omissions of the West, and in particular the U.S. — rather, it is taking place with the active support of the U.S., including [Samantha Power’s] own intervention at the U.N. which prevented any independent investigation of the Saudi crimes in Yemen." 

Even the UN has found the Saudi-led "Coalition" is responsible for most attacks on Yemeni civilians. 

Another article notes   the US is helping fund and arm Saudi aggression against religious minorities: Zaydis and Houthis, branches of Shia Islam. Dan Kolvik writes: " the coalition is attacking and starving out the north while allowing humanitarian aid to the south (where members of the Sunni group known as Shafi’ists predominate)."

*Wall Street Journal has called on Power to resign because of the horrible mess her wrong-sided policies have made in Syria. "Susan Power is guilty of exactly the same negligence toward the Syrian civil war that she once criticized when the Clinton administration failed to intervene in the 

Rwandan genocide, and should resign, the Wall Street Journal said in an editorial Friday. ... The Journal concludes that “Power has become an echo of the officials she once denounced for justifying American inaction in the face of mass slaughter. The honorable decision would be to resign.” 

"Breitbart News urged Power to resign in 2013, when she was still a national security adviser at the White House, in charge of a useless committee called the Atrocities Prevention Board that did nothing about Syria."

* Consortium News reports:" It turns out that Gaddafi was not wrong about some of his enemies. Today, Power is a leading force opposing meaningful negotiations over Syria and Ukraine, again staking out “moralistic” positions rejecting possible power-sharing with Assad in Syria and blaming the Ukraine crisis entirely on the Russians. She doesn’t seem all that concerned about impending genocides against Assad’s supporters in Syria or ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

"In 2012, at a meeting hosted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, former U.S. Ambassador Peter W. Galbraith predicted “the next genocide in the world will likely be against the Alawites in Syria” — a key constituency behind Assad’s secular regime. But Power has continued to insist that the top priority is Assad’s removal."

* Ukraine: "Similarly, Power has shown little sympathy for members of Ukraine’s ethnic Russian minority who saw their elected President Viktor Yanukovych overthrown in a Feb. 22, 2014 coup spearheaded by neo-Nazis and other right-wing nationalists who had gained effective control of the Maidan protests. Many of these extremists want an ethnically pure Ukrainian state.

"Since then, neo-Nazi units, such as the Azov battalion, have been Kiev’s tip of the spear in slaughtering thousands of ethnic Russians in the east and driving millions from their homes, essentially an ethnic-cleansing campaign in eastern Ukraine. Yet, Power traveled to Kiev to deliver a one-sided propaganda speech on June 11, portraying the post-coup Ukrainian regime simply as a victim of “Russian aggression.”

"Despite the key role of neo-Nazis acknowledged even by the U.S. House of Representatives Power uttered not one word about Ukrainian military abuses which have included reports of death squad operations targeting ethnic Russians and other Yanukovych supporters."

Condoleza Rice: National Security Advisor 2001-2005, Secretary of State 2005-2009:

* July 10, 2001, Emergency briefing on immanent risk of Al Qaeda attack, held at request of CIA Director George Tenet.   August 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US" Yet, on Sept 11, 2001, she had prepared a security plan that downplayed any threats from "non-state actors". 

* Approved of "Enhanced Interrogation Techiniques":  "on July 17, 2002, Rice met with CIA director George Tenet to personally convey... administration's approval of the proposed waterboarding" "The Senate report also "suggests Miss Rice played a more significant role than she acknowledged in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee submitted in the autumn"

* 2003: Actively lobbied the public to support US invasion of Iraq, claiming Saddam had atomic weapons.

*Senator Byrd argued against appointing her as Sec State because her " view of America is one which encourages our Nation to flex its muscles without being bound by any calls for restraint " and further said: 

"...where in the Constitution can the President claim the right to strike at another nation before it has even threatened our country, as Dr. Rice asserted in that speech?  To put it plainly, Dr. Rice has asserted that the President holds far more of the war power than the Constitution grants him.

"This doctrine of attacking countries before a threat has "fully materialized" was put into motion as soon as the National Security Strategy was released.  Beginning in September 2002, Dr. Rice also took a position on the front lines of the Administration's effort to hype the danger of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

"Dr. Rice is responsible for some of the most overblown rhetoric that the Administration used to scare the American people into believing that there was an imminent threat from Iraq..."

Madeleine Albright, UN Ambassador 1993-1997,Secretary of State 1997-2001:

*UN Ambassador during Rwandan Genocide. Reported to have "avoided describing the killings in Rwanda as "genocide" until overwhelmed by the evidence for it." but she has written "My deepest regret from my years in public service is the failure of the United States and the international community to act sooner to halt these crimes."

* "According to Albright's memoirs, she once argued with Colin Powell for the use of military force by asking, "What's the point of you saving this superb military for, Colin, if we can't use it?" 

* Albright and her State Department ignored direct requests for more security at US Nairobi Embassy before it and the Tanzanian Embassy were bombed in 1998  by an Osama bin Laden group, killing more than 200 people, including 12 Americans, despite multiple CIA reports over the previous year of plans by Islamists to blow up the Embassy. The New York Times reported: 

" In the spring of 1998, Prudence Bushnell, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, sent an emotional letter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright begging for the secretary's personal help.

"Ms. Bushnell, a career diplomat, had been fighting for months for a more secure embassy in the face of mounting terrorist threats and a warning that she was the target of an assassination plot. The department had repeatedly refused to grant her request, citing a lack of money. But that kind of 

response, she wrote Albright, was "endangering the lives of embassy personnel."

"The CIA and the FBI had been amassing increasingly ominous and detailed clues about potential threats in Kenya, officials said. But the State Department bureaucracy still dismissed Ms. Bushnell. She was even seen by some at the State Department as a nuisance who was overly obsessed with 

security, according to one official.

"Albright took no action. And three months later, on Aug. 7, the American Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were simultaneously attacked with car bombs. Twelve American diplomats and more than 200 Africans were killed in Kenya."

*Promoted US backing of Kosovo Moslem Albanians' notorious KLA against Serbian Christian minorities, and NATO bombing in 1999 Yugoslavian civil war, despite the Islamic Albanians' 20 year pogram of ethnic cleansing and war crimes against Serbs, crimes that included organ harvesting. After Independence, Kosovo became an organized crime house of horrors, a center for black market organ trafficking that continues today.

"57,000 Serbs have left Kosovo in the last decade" due to murder, rape and persecution [by the Kosovo Albanian government and citizenry]" – wrote the New York Times in 1982. Slobodan Milosevic gained political power by pledging to discontinue this repression." "During the Kosovo War, over 90,000 Serbian and other non-Albanian refugees fled the war-torn province. In the days after the Yugoslav Army withdrew, over 200,000 Serb and other non-Albanians were forced from the province by Kosovo Albanians"

"The Serbian government and a number of international human rights groups (e.g., Amnesty International) claimed that NATO had carried out war crimes by bombing civilians."

~~~~~

And these events and women are only the tip of the iceberg. 

Margaret Mead observed ""I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce."  She wasn't kidding. As she later elaborated:

"We know of no comparable ways of training women and girls, and we have no real way of knowing whether the kinds of training that teach men both courage and restraint would be adaptable to women or effective in a crisis. But the evidence of history and comparative studies of other species suggest that women as a fighting body might be far less amenable to the rules that prevent warfare from becoming a massacre and, with the use of modern weapons, that protect the survival of all humanity. This is what I meant by saying that women in combat might be too fierce."

US women as leaders have shown themselves dangerously willing to take world-changing risks on their own whims, pushing their influence while ignoring wisdom from seasoned warriors. 

And the consequences of their naive gaming has been unmitigated disaster. 

Hillary Clinton, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Angela Merkel, Condoleza Rice, Madelyn Albright.... have unleashed the massacre. 

Big Texas Weather: Same Old Climate, Same El Nino Events Cause Texas Floods and Texas Rains

There is nothing unusual about the rain or flooding that Texas and Oklahoma are experiencing. It is actually a feature of our same old climate, and happens especially often in El Nino years.  During these past years of drought (which are also a normal feature of our same old climate), we've all been pulling for an El Nino to show up with the lovely rain it always brings. 

We mourn the tragic loss of life... flash floods are the only weather I fear, and they kill more people each year than all other weather events combined. That is no comfort to the grieving families. Please learn how to be safe in heavy rain, and never cross a water-covered road. 

But we must also be grateful for the abundance of rain that fills ranch tanks and the lakes that provide our water supplies. These rains are even replenishing underground aquifers, storing water for the long haul. 

An enlightening statement,courtesy of Floodsafety.com,  gives us the facts about these floods: 

"Flooding from large storms has affected Texas throughout its history...and destructive floods occur somewhere in the State every year. Many of these floods are destructive because they often occur in areas where extreme flooding had not occurred for many years. These floods often are perceived as unexpected or even unprecedented because their peak water-surface elevations (stages) can greatly exceed those of past floods." 

More facts from the same source as of 2002: 

• *Texas has had 256 major floods (41 catastrophic) from 1853 thru 2002. 
• *From 1986 to 2000, Texas experienced 4,722 flash flood events.
• *" Central Texas has been identified as the most flash-flood prone area in the United States by the National Weather Service." 
• *"Texas holds 6 of 12 world record rainfall rates in 24 hours or less - source United States Geological Survey (USGS)." 
• *"Texas leads the nation in flood-related deaths most every year -- averaging twice the next nearest state: California." 

So please, young AP writers, don't be fooled into thinking this rain and these floods are unusual or "historic", because... they are both, but only to the degree that Texas weather is, like so much else in Texas, always larger than life. In fact, if you read Cabeza de Vaca's account of his Travels through Texas in 1528, you might be surprised to find that the climate is much the same as it is today, with the same edible plants growing in the same locations and the same bitter cold coastal winters, even the same merciless mosquitoes. 

How To Create A Morel Mushroom Habitat and Plant Morel Spawn

Morel mushrooms are a rare delicacy.  Like truffles, they have their own unique flavor that is nothing like the usual mushrooms that can be grown in cave-like "farms". They only grow in nature, and have peculiar habits.   I've never lived where they grew naturally, but I've heard tales about people passing knowledge of their secret morel gathering place down through the family.  They are expensive, and I have only tasted them once, when a restaurant used a small dried one to flavor a sauce for pork chops.



Who knew? Someone has a strain of Morel mushroom spoor that can be semi cultivated, and now we can each try our hand at developing a morel plot of our own. Here is my video showing how I dug my habitat for them. The link to the company that I bought them from is on the video comment. :-)

Picking and Cooking Wild Greens From Our Yard

How I gathered, prepared, and cooked Shepherd's Purse and Henbit to have as mixed greens for New Year's!   Shepherd's Purse is a member of the Mustard family, and Henbit is a member of the Mint family.  I was interested to learn from Wikipedia that Shepherd's Purse is a regular part of cuisines in Japan, Korea, and parts of China.  Both are winter annuals that are readily available this year on New Year's Eve in Texas, as they will tolerate freezing temperatures for a while.  I think they are VERY tasty!

When a friend gives you Basil... make Pesto for the freezer!

My latest video gets you ready for one of the easiest, quickest, after-work home cooked meals there is: Pesto with  pecans! :-)  Enjoy!

Foraging Wild Foods In Our Yard

Kon-Tiki - An Exercise in Real Anthropological Science from 1947, and an Exciting Adventure Too!

 Somehow I have a great fascination with first-person accounts of exploration - especially on the ocean or in the arctic. Why I do not know, as I am a wimp about travel and oceans and cold.  But the interest has given me a lot of great, honest history to read.  Kon Tiki, for instance.

I always find something interesting in Mostly Cajun's Today in History.  Today is especially fun: April 28, 1947 was the day Thor Heyerdahl and his companions (this word means the people who are with one in an endeavor or on an expedition - in this instance, his shipmates) set out and proved the workability of his theory that people from South America sailed to Polynesia in prehistoric times, colonizing the South Sea Islands from the West, rather than from the East.

The original Oscar-winning documentary from 1947 is a better way to spend an hour than anything on TV tonight. It is all original footage filmed by the crew themselves - no reenactments.  If you have never read the book, it is great. Copies are available via Amazon (go search from your favorite blogger's blog affiliate link - I am not an affiliate).

Enjoy!

Raising Tomatoes, Part 4: Folklore: Planting Before Good Friday & Rain on Easter

This year, I set a goal of learning how to raise tomatoes successfully. I am part way there, as I raised about a hundred plants from seed. I was surprised at how few died off in the seedling stage: hardly any did. So when I got antsy, and planted after we saw the old mesquite trees leafed out (they are always the last to show up, when it is good and warm), naturally we had a frost before Good Friday (the other rule is don't plant before Good Friday because we often have frosts right up to Easter, no matter how late in April Easter falls).

I covered each of them with glass mason jars or 5 gallon buckets, but they still all froze to death. Fortunately, I still had about 25 left of those I "raised from scratch", and was able to buy some interesting varieties to fill them out. I would have planted today, but IT IS RAINING!!!!! Isn't God good? There is another bit of lore, that if it rains on Easter, it will rain for the next seven Sundays. The last time this happened, I tracked it, and it rained within 36 hours of Sunday on 6 out of the following seven weeks.

Our friend Herb came this week and blessed us by installing a drip system in my garden. This is made with drip tape, so has an outlet built in each 16 inches. He suggested I plant tomatoes 32 inches apart, and put something tall, like corn or okra, between them.  Herb did this out of simple Christian love, recognizing a need without prompting. And then he prayed over Paul while he was here.  If you have wondered, this is what Christianity in action looks like.  We have received so much during Paul's illness and recovery, there have been uncountable blessings from others who follow Jesus Christ.  God has surely given us goodness and mercy.

Back to tomatoes. I was upset for a couple of hours after I discovered the plants I worked so long to raise had died. But I felt better after I realized I can still test a fairly broad array of varieties to see which are best for me, here in the drought-intensified Texas heat. The tomato varieties I have ended up with are:
Homestead
Better Boy
Celebrity
Rutgers
Porter
Black from Tula
Black Cherry
Pink Tye Dye
Old German
Pineapple
Mountain Spring
Black Krim

There might be a couple of others but it is hard to read my writing on the little cups after they have been wet so long. I used waxed Dixie cups to pot them in and wrote on them with black sharpie. It was very clear originally but over time has faded. Next year I guess I will use popsicle sticks.

Some of these tomatoes are bush types, and others are what they call "indeterminate" which means they grow long and tall. I will let them sprawl, since there are too many to try to cage or support.  Plus, since I have the drips on them now, there is less chance of them going to sleep wet (wet leaves are bad for tomatoes - I killed all mine one year by watering them with the sprinkler. They got fungal diseases and turned up their toes.).

Wish me luck - tomorrow they go into the ground! :-)

January Update on My Winter Garden: Things Learned So Far

 I had a lot of fun planting my first "winter garden" this year. Then, Paul got sick. But God was so good that He watered my garden for me with nice regular rains for two months!  As a result, much of what I planted came up. I was able to harvest radishes and several messes of turnip greens!   With turnips, plant them thickly, then when you thin them, just snip the roots off and they are lovely tender turnip greens. All those little weeds you see around the turnips in the picture are just winter annual things like chickweed and henbit - they are edible too, if you want to fiddle with them.

I just scattered all my seeds down the rows in rather wide swaths.  But I learned that I can't cultivate the rows if I don't plant the seeds precisely. So come Spring, I'll use a seeder and put them down One At A Time. Then I can wheel the cultivator through the rows and take care of most weeds while they are tiny.

 I also learned that most things will not live through the winter, so I better limit plantings to those things I can harvest before the arctic air comes in and it gets down to 12 degrees!  Turnip greens I harvested. Turnips? Not so much. Unless they are still alive under their poor bedraggled and dehydrated dead tops - will report back on that in a couple of months!

 I used scallop shells I collected when we lived on the coast for row markers. Just punched a hole in them with a nail, wrote on them with a Sharpie, and wired them to a stick.  They look cute. People can't tell what they are from the street so they ask me about them LOL

Another almost-miracle was when I came home from the hospital and discovered my Saffron Crocus blooming! I planted those bulbs about 5 years ago, and they have never bloomed, not once. This year, three of them popped up their pretty little heads. Naturally, I quickly took my tweezers and collected the stamens. So now I have home-grown Saffron, nine whole threads of it! :-)

The deer always travel through my garden spot, even though we live in town. So I had planned to put up a barrier of plastic Deer Netting to keep them out.  But these are not deer tracks.  It is a tiny town, and most people let their dogs run around so we know most of the neighborhood pets. I thought at first there must be a new dog because there aren't any that large that come through. But then my neighbor looked at the tracks and told me it was a BOBCAT! The way to tell the difference in that cat tracks never have toenails showing, while dog (or coyote or wolf)  footprints always show toenails, since they cannot retract their claws like cats do.  That is one big bobcat!  They are common in this vicinity, but I never dreamed of them following the deer down Main Street!

My son Nick and grandson came a day early for Thanksgiving, and set T Posts around the perimeter of the garden. My grandson is 14, and is just beginning to get his muscles. He is going to have the same powerful arms that his dad and his uncles Nick and Ethan have. He made short work of pounding the posts into the ground. It made me proud to watch them work together so comfortably.

 The posts are spaced far enough apart that Daddy's tractor will still be able to fit between them. When spring comes, I'll attach the black plastic netting to them before the deer get used to finding tasty morsels inside. This is a very inexpensive solve. We can't afford to fence the whole area permanently, and these are nearly invisible from the street until we wrap them. The plastic netting can be replaced annually. And, if we want to enclose more area, these T posts are easy to remove. Well, they are if you are Nick. It was great fun watching him one-handedly pull up some that had been staking trees - posts I had not even been able to budge with all my weight behind it!

Onion plants are in at the local produce market, so I will buy them next time I am in town, and will go ahead and put them out in a portion of the garden I left for them. I LOVE growing onions. They are so rewarding, since we cook with onions every day: it feels good to raise somethng that is a real "staple" for the table.  We plant the little skinny plants, not the hard bulbs, and this far South we MUST have "Short Day Onions", because we do not get the length of daylight hours they have up North. Onions are very dependent on hours of daylight to make their bulbs. If we plant the regular onions listed in most seed catalogs, they might make good green scallions, but would never make bulbs.

Our winter is moving along pretty much as the Almanac predicted: cold and wet. So other than the onions, I probably won't put anything else out until March. Then I will plant more turnips, mustard, lettuces, etc. The seed catalogues are coming in and I'm having such fun reading them and plotting what to buy.  Right now is the pleasant winter day-dreaming time in the garden and I am enjoying every moment of it!

Plowing For a Winter Garden, and Getting Ready Now for Spring Planting

 We are going to raise a garden again. The deer and grasshoppers ate everything I planted this year, but we are going to fence out the deer and the Farmer's Almanac says it is going to be a cold, wet winter - so goodbye grasshoppers (please Lord?)!

Daddy came this past weekend and plowed the garden spot for us. I was impressed with his tractor skill - he can line that tractor up on a dime. He met right up with the stakes I had put out to define the space.  He said "after it rains, whenever that is, I'll come back and plow it again and that will kill a lot of the grass and weeds". And look, we had lovely rain the same weekend - just like washing the car except a GOOD rain-bringer. So I said "Thank you for the rain" to both my heavenly and earthly fathers! You can see in the pictures the difference in the color of the dirt while he was plowing, and after the rain!

 We have decided to use plastic mesh as fencing. Our primary goal is to keep the deer out and this product has really good reviews for such an inexpensive solution. It provides a visible barrier to animals and directs them to find another way to go. Eventually, the deer should forget there is food here. We can use steel u-channel posts that will stay permanently in the ground, and simply replace the plastic every few years.

This space was kept in production for many years by the folks who owned it during the 70s, 80s and 90s. The soil, we hear, is fertile. It has a good loamy feel to it. The big rocks in it are nodules of flint, which the Comanche and other tribes used to make their arrowheads out of. I need to do some research, because there is a great lot of this that I think would surely have been removed over time, unless new nodules keep working themselves to the surface. You can see several of them in the photo below

In Texas, we can grow things all year round. I will plant turnips, beets, chard, onions, garlic, and collards for winter growing. The freezes won't hurt them and the extra moisture will be a boon. Swiss Chard, Collards, Onions and Garlic will keep growing year round - they behave as either perennials or biennials.  Turnips are wonderful - use them like potatoes in stews or serve mashed and creamed. Turnip seed is cheap, and these root crops are easy to grow. They are good practice for amateurs.

Then, come February, I can start planting for early spring: peas, greens & lettuce, onion plants.  We must use "short day" onions here because whether onions make bulbs depends on the number of daylight hours they are exposed to. That is why those record sized veggies come from Alaska, the 24 hour days keep plants growing without stopping to "sleep" at night. In the South, our days are shorter. The longer growing season gives us a longer harvest and perhaps more production but does not give us larger individual produce.

Miss Fuzzy Slippers, of the blog Fuzzy Logic (linked from my sidebar), has a great article about the importance of learning to garden before we need to feed ourselves. For most of us, this is indeed a learned skill, not an innate talent, and we need to begin practicing now to accumulate the wisdom necessary for good harvests in our particular space.  Be sure to read the comments too, there are lots of practical tips in them.

Are you gardening this year? If you don't have a space in your yard, see if your town has a Community Garden. The nearest large town to us has very reasonable fees ($35 for the year) that include water and compost. It is a great deal, especially when you consider that using a community garden plot, like the British "allotments", also gives you direct contact with experienced gardeners who can help and advise you as you learn.  Contact them now just in case they have a waiting list.

Gardening is good for the body and the soul. There is just nothing quite like knowing you are working with God and His creation to make your own food, just like human beings have done since the very beginning.

Happy harvesting and good eating await!

A Nook eReader: Make Room for the Library of Alexandria

Where have I been all week? Wellllll.....Devin and Sandy gave me a Nook for Mother's Day. Oh my!

Here was a gift I didn't know I wanted until I got it! I had been thinking I might "have" to buy an eReader to read some of the new indie work out there, self-published by writers who offer eBooks only.

The connection I had not yet made, though, is that despite a lifetime of avid, eclectic reading, there are still so many great books I have not read.

Among my favorite genres are exploration and true adventure. Many of these books were previously available only in expensive originals, or in hard-to-find reprints. Most of my reading in the subject has been serendipitous as a result. With my Nook, suddenly hundreds of truly good books can be at my fingertips, for free!

After downloading a Bible,  I searched the Barnes and Noble Nook site for "Exploration", sorted by "Price, Lowest First" (to bring up the free books), started with "A", and the first book I downloaded was a gem previously unknown: "A Handy Guide for Beggars", published in 1918 by Vachel Lindsay.

In school, I was exposed only to Lindsay's Jazz Poetry. I did not know he had written his own version of the Great American Road Saga. Like Travels With Charley or A Walk Across America,  A Handy Guide for Beggars records his impressions of the people who sheltered and fed him as he walked around the United States in the opening decade of the 20th century, paying his way with chapbooks and spontaneous lectures.

Among my favorite stories in the book are "House of the Loom" and the beautiful "Lady Iron Heels".  Politically correct? No. Incomplete? Maybe, but far less judgmental - and far more human - than most 60s anthropologists. Naive? Only the bored think that naive is a bad thing. I'll take naive over global sophisticates every day.

Arctic exploration fascinates me, probably because I shiver at 70 degrees. Peter Fruechen's books are favorites. When my grandson did a research paper on Matthew Henson this year, I gave him some Henson memorabilia I had collected: one of the cigarette trading cards printed in 1912 to honor Henson's achievement when he accompanied Peary in the race to reach the North Pole, and a school library book from 1957 that had a whole chapter on Henson.  Now, thanks to my little Nook, it is easy to read Matthew Henson's own 1912 book "A Negro Explorer at the North Pole".
 
Still in the "A's", I've added "Australia Twice Traversed" by Ernest Giles, 1880; "A Summer in Alaska" by Frederick Schwatka, 1893;  "An explorer's adventures in Tibet" by Henry Savage Landor, 1897; "Across the Everglades: A Canoe Journey of Exploration" by Hugh Willoughby, 1898, and "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains" by Isabella Lucy Bird, 1879.  

When going through the list to download a book, be sure to scroll or page through to get to the free version - sometimes Barnes and Noble will mix in "for sale" versions that require payment.

I am still learning to use it, and still prefer to read an actual printed book when I can, but the e-reader is lightweight, and easy to carry in my purse. Sandy said she loves hers when traveling. I can see why - when I used to fly, I often carried 4 or 5 books in one of my carry-on bags, but today's weight and volume restrictions, that is no longer practical.

Reading free volumes on the Nook is like having a lending library next door that is open 24 hours a day. This is definitely a place where technology has its perks.

Heh! While I waited for Blogger to wake up from its Sunday afternoon nap so I could post this, I saw a similar post at "Mostly Cajun, All American and Opinionated". I'm guessing the time is not far distant when even the most passionate reader will no longer argue with the interior decorator over "merchandising" the book shelves!

Roses & Pecan Trees are Blooming!

 These are from the only rosebush that survived the drought, but oh aren't they gorgeous! Paul commented that they "are almost florescent": a beautiful orangey coral color.

Just as glorious in their own way are the fresh, day-glo green, male pecan tree flowers. You can see the long strands of pollen-rich catkins hanging in clusters. The female flowers are too small to see, but they are just above the catkins - Pecan trees only make female blossoms if all conditions are right: enough water, enough sugars and starches....and to date no one has figured out a scientific way to consistently predict the crop. It is so unique each year that pecans are called "God's crop" by the botanists and growers who study these trees.

 

I am betting on a great crop from our trees this year, in part because it has been several years since we had a bountiful one, and we've had good rain (thank you, Father God, for answering our prayers and sending rain to tide Texas over despite all predictions to the contrary. The drought is not gone, but we are grateful things are much improved in most of the state).

One of our trees is a native pecan that has the sweetest nuts. I gathered 100 pounds (before shelling) from it alone our first year here. We are just finishing them up (shelled and froze them in vacuum packs), so it would be a great blessing to have a new crop to stock up again.

If you want to produce as much of your own food as possible, do consider nut trees. You can have them in cities, and even a small lot can have a pecan tree. They produce a huge amount of high-calorie, healthy food with minimal effort once they are established. Pecan trees will not grow everywhere, but here they just come up from forgotten nuts that get buried. So look around and see what grows well where you live, and add the best possible "Edible landscaping" to your yard! :-)

The Word

In the beginning was The Word.....

 This beautiful Icon image was painted by the Russian artist Victor Vasnetsov . It's unusual to see Jesus Christ depicted as the glory of the night sky in this way - but it's a true way to imagine Him, for indeed He is Lord of the Cosmos, and lights our sleeping as well as our waking: "And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not..." 

Or, as the passage is rendered in The Message Bible (linked above): "The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn't put it out."

Sweet dreams! Jesus Himself watches over you!


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On Fact and Fallacy, and How They Can Change: "Ten Thousand Years Ago, A Lemming"

 The most awesome thing about this story: "Scientists in Russia have grown plants from fruit stored away in permafrost by squirrels over 30,000 years ago" (from the BBC, via PopSci.com , via Instapundit),  is that it is one more confirmation of how hardy living things are, how well the Life in our world is protected to assure there will ALWAYS be Life.  Life is abundant and miraculous, and we don't know the half of it.

Caution is warranted, as such finds in past have later shown by carbon dating to have been more modern seeds, buried at Pleistocene levels by modern animals  -  even in burrows that actually did date from the Pleistocene era, and that contained legitimate remains 10,000 years ago!  But we didn't know until 2009 that the oldest viable seeds of proven age are 2000 years old.


40-odd years ago, scientists planted lupine seeds recovered from the permafrost, and they grew.  30-odd years  ago, Nicolas asked a question that led me to write a poem about ancient seeds. 20-odd years ago, it was published in Thistles Magazine. Here it is, in honor of today's version of old, old, news. See if you can spot some other "facts" from when it was written 30 years ago have since been proven inaccurate.*


 Ten thousand years ago, a lemming
hid a hoard of flower seeds
against the arctic dark and rushed
headlong into the sea, or else forgot,
and left his cache of lupine seeds
buried in the permafrost
and time and time and time went by.
Someone dug them up from the cold that never thaws,
found his pantry full of flower seeds,
found the makings of a garden,
from ten thousand years ago
and planted the lemming's hoard again,
in rows like all good lemmings,
lined up against the ocean wall,
spread sunshine on the earth
and sprinkled water.

And the seeds grew.

Blossomed, and made new seeds.

Perhaps ten thousand years ago,
lemmings didn't make the leap
of faith and death into the icy sea,
or the seeking consequence of suicide
chill human consciousness.
Ten thousand years ago we had no Bomb,
no star-hung missles,
no seeping milleniaic poisons.
Little Nicolas says, about the grass,
growing through cracks in the pavement:
"Life is stronger than anything."

Tina Howard



*The truth (based on current knowledge) about a few other fallacies that were believed or theorized 30 years ago (and still to this day are taught):
(1) The "Atomic Bomb", horrific at detonation, has not been the terror we were led to believe, but instead has since been held, wisely, as a deterrent rather than a weapon. To this day, the most devastating effects of war come from sheer brutality and from more conventional weapons;
(2) Concrete bunkers do indeed offer individuals some protection against the effects of nuclear weapons;
(3) The Theory of Nuclear Winter not only did not occur when these weapons were used, but has become highly debatable (and was abandoned for an even sillier theory called Global Warming, now renamed Climate Change)
(4)  Nuclear Power accidents have proven - even as recently as this past year in Japan, as well as long term studies on Chernoble - to be far less dangerous than estimated, with outrageously shorter time periods for natural decontamination than were estimated at the time of the disasters;
(5) Lemmings may or may not dash over the cliffs by the thousands.
(6) We learn much in the course of our lives - and especially, if we are wise, we will learn how to change our minds, and think things through more carefully.
(7) The last sentence is still true, and always will be, because God created Life, and made His lively creations stronger than the inanimate elements around them.

Dr Margaret Mead, on Today's Headlines

Anthropologist Margaret Mead is often quoted as saying "I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce." It's called out with glib bravado, as though it were a Helen Reddy song. But never with thought to why this odd sentence from a champion of feminist mores.

Dr.  Mead's full statement about the danger of allowing women to participate in combat is not often quoted, but it is important - and sobering:

"Women should be permitted to volunteer for non-combat service,… they should not be accepted, voluntarily or through the draft, as combat soldiers…. We know of no comparable ways of training women and girls, and we have no real way of knowing whether the kinds of training that teach men both courage and restraint would be adaptable to women or effective in a crisis. But the evidence of history and comparative studies of other species suggest that women as a fighting body might be far less amenable to the rules that prevent warfare from becoming a massacre and, with the use of modern weapons, that protect the survival of all humanity. This is what I meant by saying that women in combat might be too fierce."
      Margaret Mead, Some Personal Views, ed. Rhoda Metraux, pp. 35, 36 (1979): response when asked her opinion on drafting soldiers for the military, June 1968.


Warfare has changed in the decades since she explained her opposition to "women as a fighting body", a curious stance from one who otherwise championed the idea of "nurture" over "nature" as the primary source of sex roles, but her concerns remain grounded in her lifetime of study and her groundbreaking experience as a clinical observer of human societies.

We are also reminded that Dr Mead opposed eugenics, euthanasia and abortion, and had this to say about attempts to force doctors into these roles:

"This is a precious possession which we cannot afford to tarnish, but society always is attempting to make the physician into a killer — to kill the defective child at birth, to leave the sleeping pills beside the bed of the cancer patient. ... It is the duty of society to protect the physicians from such requests."
      Margaret Mead, Introduction in M.P. Levine, Psychiatry and Ethics (New York, Braziller, 1972), vi-xvi.

I wonder what Dr. Mead's reaction would be if she saw how the language and principles of her field and her politics have been usurped by today's academics and progressives?

Meteor Shower Tonight & the Wee Hours of Morning! November 17 & 18 2011

If you look toward the eastern horizon this evening, from about 9:30 Central Time "straight on 'til morning", you may be able to see falling stars in the Leonid Meteor Shower. This annual event is the beautiful debris of a disintegrated comet. It's called the "Leonid" because it appears (as we see it) in and around the constellation Leo the Lion (but these shooting stars aren't anywhere near those of the constellation).

Astronomers tell us the firedrakes can be seen in all parts of the sky, so you should be able to see it from anywhere in the United States - provided the half moon doesn't glow so brightly as to hide them from view. In fact, the best chance to see them may be by facing away from the moon - and from Leo - and look to the dark part of the sky.

But if you don't get to see it, mark your calendar and save the date for next year: they are predicting a "knock your socks off" display for 2012!

Thanks to Star Date Magazine, published by University of Texas, the McDonald Observatory, for the image used here - and for consistently marvelous information about our beautiful skies.

Praise the LORD from the heavens;
   praise him in the heights above.
Praise him, all his angels;
   praise him, all his heavenly hosts.
Praise him, sun and moon;
   praise him, all you shining stars.

Psalm 148 (New International Version)

Healing the Burns: References For Wildfire & Drought Recovery Plantings

Every landscape contains some plants that will not grow unless they have gone through fire. These seed lay dormant, awaiting their call to action - awaiting the moment God created them for - and burst into life on burnt ground in due time.

But some locations, such as steep slopes that burned with a kiln-hot blaze, may need a little help. Especially, those prone to erosion may benefit from an extra supply of native grasses (pdf link here) mirroring those in place before the burn, so that the root systems can hold the soil in place.

One of Texas' native plant suppliers, "Native American Seed"aka SeedSource.com, has created a Wildfire Reference Guide that provides information, links to resources, tips and seed recommendations.  This company has loads of information about effective use of native grasses in landscaping and in prairie restoration.

Another excellent website is "Firewise", sponsored by the National Fire Protection Association. Lots and lots of information, not only for professionals, but also excellent resources for homeowners. One full page is dedicated to tips for wildfire readiness & evacuation. Another shares plant lists provided by various State Extension Services.

The NFPA's preparedness efforts include "Ready, Set, Go!" Most of these readiness habits are important for any emergency evacuation, so it's worth reading even if you don't live in a wildfire-prone area.
 
We're "not out of the woods yet", but the future calls. Time to get to work on a Texas landscape that's on the mend, that will overcome the continuing drought. Although this drought that affects the entire states of Texas & Oklahoma, much of New Mexico, and even part of Louisiana,  is not expected to end for another year, the Good Lord sends us rain to tide us over until the fullness of time in this natural cycle.

So now, in time for fall and winter moisture, is a good time for scattering locally-native wild seed.

We have not had major fires in our area this year. Our ecology suffers from the lack of moisture, heat and dehydration. As the rest of my St Augustine lawn dies under heavy water rationing, as have 2 mature apricot trees, a young apple tree, three young grapes, asparagus, herbs, and several perennials, I'm starting to think how to reconstruct our yard once the drought ends. And what I'm thinking is wild.

In addition to the resources mentioned above, the always-remarkable Texas Parks & Wildlife department has a great program for increasing our backyard & urban habitats called "Texas Wildscapes".

Last but not in any way least, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center has a Drought Resource Center that is especially inspiring and hope-filling right now.

The one nice thing about this summer has been not having to mow - normally a 3-hour-a-week job. What if, when I put out those new fruit trees on our extra lot,  instead of being blanketed with grass that has to be cut, they were surrounded by permanent paths and un-mown, non-irrigated patches of native meadow and lovely wildflowers, like these from our visit to the Lady Bird Johnston Wildflower Center in Austin:

That could be an unexpected blessing indeed!


P.S. Tuesday, Oct 4th, is when Texas hosts National Night Out, and in our town, with no police force, our local Volunteer Fire Department is having open house - yours probably is, too. Drive over to the fire station and visit, shake  hands with these uncommon young men in your community. Chances are they've spent many hours fighting or preventing fires this summer.

Adding To Our Media Library: Best British Mysteries, Clean Comedy, and Awesome Nature & Travel Documentaries

So today I have been searching for DVD bargains on Amazon. We are fleshing out our collection with clean comedy, documentaries, movies we'll watch over and over. I do not have an Amazon affiliate account, so it you are going to buy from there, be sure and use the Amazon Search Box on your favorite blog. They'll make a little on it and it won't add to your cost. :-)  Amazon has great promos lately.

Clean Comedy: The funniest comedians make us laugh without embarassing us, and comics like Jeff Allen stand right up there with Jeff Foxworthy. My husband has a new by-word: "I'm a happy, happy, man." Heh.

Two great collections to pick new favorite entertainers from are the Apostles of Comedy and Thou Shalt Laugh (several volumes available - we started with Volumes 1 & 2. Read the reviews before buying - viewers say Volume 3 contains inappropriate material).

Used Boxed Sets on Amazon can be a real bargain. Be sure you are getting the DVD version, because there are still some VHS tapes down in the "lowest price first" sort!

If you don't yet own "Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series" with the original David Attenborough's narration, it's a great bargain right now. I got a pristine set last month for less than $15.00. That's 550 minutes - more than 9 hours - of magnificent footage. Get the regular dvd, not the HD one - the regular boxed set contains hours more programming with fascinating "behind the scenes" footage.

I ordered the "Reader's Digest Journeys of a Lifetime Boxed Set" today. It has 13 hours of armchair travel for as low as $5.00. These kinds of things are nice to unwind and settle down with right before bed time.

More than 6 hours of "TV Classics: Westerns Vol. 1 and 2 (Box Set)" for a penny - $3 once you add in shipping. Buy from Amazon for $2.98 with free shipping. Or find a "just launched" seller and buy from them - support home businesses by helping a new seller get of the ground!

The BBC did a series of "The Chronicles of Narnia (BBC)" in the 1980s that reviewers say is even better than the recent movies. One reviewer notes that the BBC version is carefully true to the story as written by C.S. Lewis, so the nuances of the books remain intact. I'm looking forward to seeing this.

Speaking of the BBC and Masterpiece Mystery, some of my favorite recent discoveries on the British Mystery front are:

New Tricks - There just aren't enough praises for this well written, perfectly cast ensemble series about an engaging trio of retired detectives dragged back into service by a cute, tough, woman inspector who's young enough to be their daughter, good (and old) enough to be their boss, and real enough to need their friendship. The age jokes are realistic - and funny - but it's the serious plots that won me over. Interesting cold-case crimes that unfold in fascinating detail, that require both deep historical research and human deduction to unravel. Warm and believable relationships between the characters (nearly all the supporting cast recur, just as they would in real life). Love the characters, love the scripts, love the theme song, love the series!

Sherlock - Another that rates pure applause. The premise sounded like a bad idea: Conan-Doyle's detective set into the 21st century world. I thought: "Yawn." I feared Romeo & Juliet in blue jeans. Then when the show started I sat up and paid attention. Wow. Simply, truly, brilliant.

Here's an idea of how good "Sherlock" is: 259 reviews on Amazon, and 247 of them are 4 star or better (224 are 5 star!)! Smart. Witty. Fast paced. Clever. Not suitable for young children, as the violence is dark, but not gratuitously so, and so far it is relatively "clean".  Martin Freeman's Dr. Watson is perhaps the best I've ever seen, and Benedict Cumberbatch pays tribute to Jeremy Brett's fearless high energy while making the role his very own.

Speaking of Sherlock, Gerard Van Der Leun of "American Digest", has a downloadable PDF of his book "The Quotable Sherlock Holmes" available free to his readers. Or, you can buy a print copy or the Kindle Edition on Amazon.  (I'll also take this opportunity to thank him for permission to keep and display the nifty "Welcome to Texas" Bilboard over on the left (my other left).

Other Greatest Hits of the BBC and PBS Mystery include Mr Palfrey of Westminster - a surprisingly clever (and believable) series about a cold war era consumate British spy catcher working within the heart of London to foil Russian efforts to undermine Western governments. Presents as a "cozy" but it is not.  The cloak and dagger deceptions extend even to his own staff, and Palfrey's counter-espionage skill will keep you guessing. It reminds me pleasantly of LeCarre's low-key approach.

I've written before about Inspector Lewis. It's still a favorite and I plan to buy the series soon. I'll watch this one for a long time. (P.S. Paul says "You forgot Lovejoy. You need to mention Lovejoy in there. It's still a favorite of your husband, who plans to buy the series soon." Hee!)

Once you get past the low budget cinematography, the BBC movies (actually mini-series - some are nearly 5 hours long) made from PD James' books that star Roy Marsden as Adam Dagliesh are very good. The two more recent, standard-length movies in which Martin Shaw is cast as Dagliesh, Death in Holy Orders and The Murder Room, are also excellent. Each man brings a different look at the complex poet-detective's personality.

I ordered a couple more neat dvds totalling less than $5 each with SuperSaver shipping, but I can't mention them here yet because I want to surprise Paul with them, and he reads Pecan Corner. Hi, Honey! Love you much! :-D

So what great media bargains have you found recently? Or have you discovered a fab British, Scots or Irish show that we all need to know about? Do tell!