Vespro, City, Urban Development, Compost and Raised Garden Bed

As we climb that long ladder out of 2010 to the high board, we realize we are not as young as we were and we instinctively grip a little tighter.  Well we got up here! The new year 2011 is just ahead and optimism puts a little spring into our step as we strut out onto the board. We will be alright if we don’t look down. Heck we’ve done this 60 odd times before. Just step to the end of the board trust in our experience and greet the new year with a perfect swan dive. Good spring, great form if I say so myself! Now look at the water to…- Sh** who drained the pool?

Well, it was just a matter of time but Harvard has 25 raised beds–lettuce, onions, peas and other traditional New England kitchen crops–; food harvested will be consumed in undergraduate dining halls and any food left over will be donated to the Greater Boston Food Bank.

The heavy rains on the West Coast strikes a further tonic, a reminder that Spring Planting in your raised bed is just the ticket to remind us of the Victory Gardens planted  during the last Depression.

If your trying to get to sleep,  it is sometimes hard to find the right “thoughts” preparatory  to put you in dreamland. Hell is paved with good intentions is a little too robust because you may start thinking about the financial problems ahead.

Instead of running budget deficits to increase government spending in the real economy–capital and labor–social security may end up in the stock market after the Republicans get their hands on it.

Here the pump priming will inflate the biggest  bubble of all: think of the stock market itself as a hot air balloon sailing over head into the blue pavilions of eternity fueled by a constant source of retirement dollars.

I can’t understand why Rubin, Greenspan, Summers and all the rest weren’t rounded up into a poultry lorry , shackled and sent to prison. And why has Washington refused to write down the bad debts of the homeowners, cities and states? These guys have saddled the taxpayer with 13 trillion dollars.

Inimical to public virtue, this crowd and the Fed Reserve  fired back easily enough, I guess. Reminds me of those “wine bricks” manufactured during the Great Depression ( 1930′s)  with the printed injunction  on the brick: Caution, do not immerse in water and is may turn to wine.

Just in case you haven’t started already, there is all kind of great material around at this time of year to get that compost started.  First of all, unpack that Earthrecycle composter one of your more thoughtful relatives gave you. http://vesproinc.com/compost-bin.htm

Five minutes to set it up. Now to work off some of that festive fat.  Let’s start with the leaves, they’re all over. (Anything but black walnut is good) Rake them up, if you get worm cast from the lawn, so much the better! Pile them in the composter – full already? Don’t worry, within a couple of days that pile will shrink right down.  What about all those stalks and greenery from last years crop – in with them too. A bit of pruning of those fruit trees and flowers and bushes? Yes, chop the pieces as small as you can and put them all in!

Now, isn’t the place tidier? By spring you will have beautiful black soil. If you are going to add kitchen vegetable scraps, eggshells etc., you will need to cover the bin with a weighted piece of plywood or chicken wire to stop the local fauna from foraging. If you are just using garden waste, this is not necessary.

The more you can throw in there, the less goes to the landfill and the healthier your veggies will be next year from the rich and fecund mixture you will be creating. (yes I said fecund.)

Happy composting!!

As senators and congressmen show their humanity by weeping at the drop of a hat, and rail against working over the holidays, there seem to be no tears shed over filibustering a bill to help the legion of ailing ground zero workers in their hour of need.
These folk who gave up their Christmas 9 years ago and many of them their lives and health must take a back seat until the richest in the land have been given their tax presents.

I’ll take a cuppa with the Mad Hatter’s party if they can stop the pork laden ‘omnibus’ from rolling out of town.  The Obama Republican ‘compromise’ bill has in the name of saving Christmas for the long term unemployed,  paid a ransom which will break the bank for years to come.

The Bush tax cuts were designed to sunset. They didn’t put people to work, they didn’t save the economy, but they did help break the bank. They were a temporary exercise which did not work. Letting them all sunset is not voting for a tax increase, simply a resumption of the status quo ante.

By all means give businesses tax breaks on capital items, that has a direct effect on investment and thus for the economy, but carving something off the already stressed social security deposit is like lending a drowning man a gold bar to hold. When businesses have customers and demand for their goods and their employees can’t be squeezed any more, they will hire, messing about with marginal tax rates will not cause hiring.

I think Obama should show some gumption, put his red pen through all the earmarks on the omnibus bill, let all the tax cuts sunset, let the estate tax cuts sunset, and then tackle the question of unemployment payments as the separate stimulus issue it rightly is.

Watching the UK’s ex prime minister Gordon Brown virtually skip onto the stage to meet Jon Stewart the other night,  I was struck by the pure sense of relief he was exuding. Relief at being out from under the crushing load of misery he had passed on the next government to dole out in heaping portions to the multitudes in Great Britain. The booming high spirits with which he was able to finger the bankers for their culpability in the general collapse, seemed at such odds to the spiritually corseted and tightly wound figure his countrymen would recognize!

No doubt, the bankers are very much to blame with their staggering greed and hubris and their unfortunate addiction to gambling with their customers money. Mr Brown’s solution?  Some form of international agreement regulating the banking industry, which he cheerily pointed out is now so multi-national that no individual country on earth can actually pin them down.

International agreement? God help us.

This stuff is way above our pay grade.  Our advise? If you have access to even a few square feet of land – put up a raised bed and plant veggies!

Try this link:   http://kellogggarden.com/projects_garden_box

The matter has come up that my persona has popped up in somebody’s dream.
I condemn this in the strongest possible terms.  Perhaps it has to do with film “rights” ,
paranoia, or advice and consent. After all, it is this persona that makes the dreams memorable.
About this point let there be no mistake.

I can appreciate the selfless service I provide for the  dreamscape,
providing primary materials  and a critical  apparatus to get through
the night, but what I fear is that the empty chamber will fall short of
observable reality–telegenic, suave and kindly withal.

No, I am not talking about the first two years of the Obama administration,
where dreams of serious action gave way to the diluted reality of wakeful compromise. I use the word compromise by the way, as one might ‘compromise’ with a great mindless boulder blocking the road forward. If you stop crashing into it headlong, are you compromising?

Now this pitiless self satisfied boulder proves it’s mindlessness by blocking even eminently practical legislation like the ‘Dream Act’ .  Legislation which should
have given a path to citizenship for a couple of million of the youngest, best and brightest immigrants to join the tax payers club. Once there, to help support the retirement of the aging herd of boomers and tea partyers. Youngsters by the way who for some reason, still ‘love’ America! Go figure.

Time to light a stick of dynamite under the boulder and let the tax cuts expire en bloc.
We are in this predicament in large part because they were unfunded in the first place and they sure haven’t worked to generate wealth to keep us out of debt.  I would suggest that we let them go as Bush planned and then see if the rock heads, still want to deny unemployment compensation at Christmas to a load of people, many of whom probably voted for them in the first place.