Ailantha - Blog

Oh Great, Now We're Enemies With France

9/18/2021

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OH GREAT, NOW WE'RE ENEMIES WITH FRANCE

In a nutshell, Australia had a $60 billion deal to buy a dozen submarines from France. In the meantime the United States snuck behind France's back and offered Australia better deal for a better sub. Australia dropped the France deal and took the U.S. deal. Britain is somehow involved in the stew on the side of the Americans and Australians, but I'm not altogether sure how. Now France is somewhat ticked with Australia and Britain, but is enraged with the United States and has called back it's ambassadors from Washington and also cancelled what was to be a joint Franco-American celebration of a Revolutionary War battle.
But here's what I'm wondering: When we're told that France is enraged against the United States, what exactly is meant by "France?" and "The United States?" Is "France" the 67.06 people who live in that country and are they all now the enemies of the 328.2 million of us who live in the U.S,?
Or does "France" and "The United States" really refer to the leaders of each of those countries,

...and the billionaire submarine-makers who stand to gain more billions from the submarine deal?

They're the players who have the dog in this fight. Surely not us Americans and not the French, all of us who, though living on other sides of the pond, are just trying to cobble together reasonably pleasant, productive lives for ourselves and make it through this miserable pandemic.
As for Australia - that to say the 26.35 million good folks who go about G'day-ing each other, not the the Prime Minister,

...or the Commander of the submarine fleet - do those Australian citizens really care whether their navy's submarines can stay underwater for weeks - as the more conventionally-powered French product can - or weeks, months, years, depending on how much food they can stock - as the American nuclear-powered subs can? (BTW, I'm assuming that nobody weighed in with the Australian sailors who'll soon have to stay submerged indefinitely what they think of the the French vs. the American product).
The reason Australia wants the subs is to keep an eye on China, which everyone seems to think to a good idea. Except that France - that is to say the President of France and the French billionaire submarine makers - want to be the ones to sell Australia - that is to say, the Prime Minister and the submarine fleet Commander - the eyes.
All of this begs a really big question: Why are all these wealthy, resource-rich countries worried about their war games and war toys when The United States, France, Britain, Australia, China and the rest of the World - and I'm talking about the human population, not the leaders or the military construction billionaires - are suffering in the midst of a terrible pandemic? Aren't enough
people dying as it is without these countries spending their time and resources on their plans and their machines designed to make more people die? Why don't the U.S., France, Britain, Australia, and China forget about their hostilities and their submarines and form an alliance to defeat the insidious enemy that's decimating all their economies and sickening and killing all their people?

No, instead these leaders will make us, the people of each country, believe that the people of the other countries are our friends or enemies depending on what profits their position of power,

...and lines the pockets of the billionaires.

What fools we mortals be.

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Banana Pear Bread

9/16/2021

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BOOKS BY PATTI LISZKAY
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Available on Amazon.

BANANA PEAR BREAD

Last week I found myself in possession of a lone spotty, over-ripe brown banana well past its eating prime. Ah, I lamented, if only I had a second spotty, over-ripe banana I could whip up a loaf of banana bread.
However it just so happened that I also had in my fruit bowl two spotty, over-ripe pears. I looked at the banana and the pears and the idea hit me: might there be such a thing as banana pear bread? I decided to find out.
Now, this was not the first time I'd dabbled in pear pastry. A few months back I also found myself with a surplus of ripening pears,

...and had decided to try making a pear pie. The result was surprisingly auspicious. (See https://www.ailantha.com/blog/pear-pie).

And so I pulled out my banana bread recipe, substituted the two pears for one of the bananas,

...and came up with:

Banana Pear Bread
1 banana
2 pears
1 cup sugar
a dash of cinnamon
1/2 cup shortening, butter, or margarine, softened
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a loaf pan with shortening, butter or margarine (Not oil spray) .
Peel and thinly slice the banana and pears.

Mix the banana, pears, sugar, cinnamon, shortening and eggs. Beat about two minutes at medium speed.

Add the flower, baking powder and baking soda. Beat into a batter, about two minutes at medium speed.

Pour the batter into the greased pan.

Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.

Cool for ten minutes, then remove from the pan. Cool completely before cutting.

The bread looked pretty nice out of the oven, but after it was cooled came the taste test.
Tom gave it a rousing thumbs up.

Theresa pronounced it better than banana bread.

As for me, I think I'd say this: If you are a true banana bread purist who savors the banana, the whole banana, and nothing but the banana, then this bread may not be your jam.
But if you're willing to travel off the egg-beaten path flavor-wise, then I'd recommend giving banana pear bead a try if for no other reason than that this loaf came out super, melt-in-your-mouth moist and tasty. Not exactly banana bread-style tasty, but tasty unto itself.

Not that it hurt to slather on the butter.

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Concrete

9/11/2021

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BOOKS BY PATTI LISZKAY
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"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Available on Amazon.

CONCRETE

Over the summer while our daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren were visiting us from Los Angeles,

…Tom recruited our son-in-law to help with some heavy-duty projects around the yard and house,

…including an area of cracked concrete in our garage.
The men used a concrete saw to cut out the broken patch of floor.

…then they hauled the chunks of concrete into a pile outside the garage.

This was by no means a huge pile of concrete; when it was removed the hole it left was an irregular quadrilateral, about five feet long on one side, maybe six on the other, by two, two-and-a-half feet wide on either end, with another little rectangular area at the top. The hole was about four inches deep, more of less.

And yet the relatively small amount of concrete that had filled that relatively small hole looked so heavy to me lying there in in a pile in my front yard. I doubted I could easily lift even the smallest chunk.
I asked Tom how much that pile of concrete weighed. “Just about half a ton,” he said.
“Half a ton?” I said. “That little pile of concrete weighs a thousand pounds?”
"Probably close to it,” said Tom. “Concrete is heavy stuff.”
Incredulous, I did the math:
To refill the hole they would use thirteen sixty-pound bags of concrete, plus twenty-six gallons of water with which to mix it. One gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds. Altogether that’s 996.84 pounds. Just about half a ton.

This morning I found myself thinking about the little pile of a half a ton of concrete that was in my yard. And I wondered how many tons of concrete lay on the ground on that day twenty years ago after the world came crashing down.

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Good-Bye, Lucy

9/9/2021

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Books by Patti liszkay
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"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Available on Amazon.

GOOD-BYE, LUCY

Although Lucy - also known as Lucita - lived most of her fifteen years as our family pet,

...she was technically my daughter Claire's cat.
Claire acquired Lucy in 2006 during the months she worked in Chacraseca, a jungle village on the outskirts of León, Nicaragua.
Here's Claire at the market in Masaya,

...and here's her sister Theresa playing with some of the village children when she came for a visit.

...and here's me riding on the city bus in León when I was there visiting Claire. (I eventually gave up my seat to a bent-over old lady who said, "Gracias, chela." ["Thank you, white woman."]).

At that time Claire's living quarters were in a house in León which she shared with some elderly Maryknoll nuns and from which she commuted each day to "Chacra," as the village was called.

It so happened that the house had a mouse problem. The little critters would be heard scratching around in the walls and rafters. Claire learned that a neighbor's cat had had a litter of kittens, and so she asked the neighbor if she could have one of the kittens to be a mouser. The neighbor invited Claire to help herself, and Claire chose the little black one, for whom she paid the neighbor seventy-five cents.
As it turned out, little Lucita had no appetite for chasing mice. What she loved, however, were the giant Central American cockroaches (blaberus giganteus - and BTW, that's not me holding the roach in the picture),

...that also shared residency in the house.
Lucy ate the roaches and left the antennae and wings, which Claire would find gathered into neat little piles around the house. One time during my visit when I was taking a shower I spotted a blaberus giganteus - a good three-incher - crawling up the wall of the the stall. Aw, now where the heck is that kitty, I rhetorically wondered.
After spending the better part of a year working in the jungle, Claire decided to do a stint as a volcano tour guide for Quetzaltrekkers.

Quetzaltrekkers is a volunteer non-profit group that raises money for Las Tias, a shelter for street children in León,

...by leading tourists on hikes up the the volcanoes in the vicinity of León.

Volcano guide Claire with two volcano visitors - her brother Tommy and sister Theresa - hiking Cerro Negro.

After Claire started working for Quetzaltrekkers she and Lucy left behind Lucy's beloved cockroaches to move into a room that Claire rented from a family with a house in the center of León, close to the Quetzaltrekkers office.
When Claire returned home to Columbus, Ohio she brought Lucy with her. Claire would ever after swear that it took far more paperwork and administrative imbroglio for a cat to leave the country than for a person.

And so our little Nicaraguan immigrant kitty joined our family of animals at that time, our odd-eyed cat Tansy,

...and our house bunny Daisy.

Tansy and Daisy hanging out.

Claire eventually left Columbus for Chicago, where she works these days as the charge nurse on the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit at Northwestern Hospital.

But Lucy stayed with us, and after a while we no longer thought of her as the cat from Nicaragua with the notable back story, but just our sweet Lucy,

...who loved her catnip toy,

...and good music,

...and holidays,

...and snitching my ice cream,

...and my chair,

...and stalking the fat resident groundhog in our backyard,

...and sitting in the garden,

...and all her family, except maybe Dory, who joined the family a few years after Lucy.

And we loved our Lucy.

Last week Lucy left us to cross over the rainbow bridge. Perhaps it was providence that her time came on a day when Claire and her husband Miguel happened to be visiting us from Chicago.

Claire called Lap of Love,

...and kind, soft-spoken Dr. Nellie came to our house,

... consoled and comforted us,

...let us say good-bye,

...then took Lucy to the other side.
Now Lucy will always be out in the garden where she loved to be,

...while throughout the day I find myself reflexively glancing at the back door, wondering if Lucy wants to come in.

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Abortion Vigilantes And Bounty Hunters? Theater Of The Absurd In The Wacky New Texas Law

9/4/2021

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ABORTION VIGILANTES AND BOUNTY HUNTERS? THEATER OF THE ABSURD IN THE WACKY NEW TEXAS LAW

Has anybody read about the particulars of the new Texas anti-abortion law? I mean beyond that the law prohibits all abortions for whatever reason - unless the mother goes into a life-endangering medical emergency - past six weeks from conception?
I just finished reading a couple of articles on the Texas law and, frankly, what I've read has blown my mind. Not because the law is so harsh, repressive, and misogynistic, which it is, but because it's so wacky.
Apparently post six-weeks abortions are now illegal in Texas, but - and this is according to the New York Times - "No law enforcement officer or other government official is tasked with upholding the new law. In fact, they are explicitly barred from doing so." Rather, the law is meant to be policed by private citizens who bring lawsuits against abortion providers. Not against the women seeking or receiving abortions; in fact the law forbids suing those women, the principle being, I suppose, that a woman mustn't be held responsible for making such a decision for herself.

However, according to the law, anyone else in Texas - besides the woman who gets the abortion - who "aids or abets" in the carrying out of a woman's abortion can be sued not only by anyone in Texas, but by anyone anywhere in the United States. The category of people who can be sued includes not only the medical personnel who perform the abortion, but anyone who is even tangentially involved, such an Uber driver who brings a woman to a clinic or someone who helps a woman pay for an abortion.
A plaintiff who sues someone for violating the abortion law will be awarded $10,000 if their case is successful, the money to be paid by the person who aided or abetted with the abortion, who must also pay all their own legal fees as well as those of the plaintiff. If someone brings a frivolous lawsuit against someone else - say there's a neighbor you hate and so you groundlessly accuse them and sue them for breaking the "aiding and abetting in an abortion" law - the defendant is still required to pay their own legal fees, even if the lawsuit is deemed ridiculous and thrown out, nor can a frivolous plaintiff whose suit is thrown out be punished by being required to pay the defendant's legal costs.
And this Texas law that takes its enforcement out of the hands of the public criminal justice system and puts it into the hands of vigilantes and bounty hunters, this law that defies Logic 101, was upheld by the Supreme Court, five:

...to four:

The Court made the ruling quietly and hastily just before midnight on Wednesday, without the law having been fully briefed or considered by lower courts, which, frankly seems a somewhat sketchy move for the United States Supreme Court. In truth, even some of the justices seemed not quite to know what to make of the thing they'd been called upon to so quickly adjudicate.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who ruled against upholding the Texas law,

...said he would have temporarily blocked it from going into effect until there was more time to determine whether this was a case of a state passing a law then avoiding responsibility for it by delegating the law's enforcement to the population at large.
Astute observation, Chief Justice.
In the meantime, in the two days since the Texas anti-abortion law was upheld, anti-abortion websites have popped up on the internet asking for tips on alleged violators of the law. However, at least one of these websites, a Texas Right to Life site called, "Pro Life Whistle Blower," has already been deluged with phony tips by TikTok activists.

TikTok is obviously better at responding to absurdity than the Supreme Court.

References:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/03/us/what-is-texas-abortion-law-as-equals-intl-cmd/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/us/supreme-court-texas-abortion-law.html

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/02/1033048958/supreme-court-upholds-new-texas-abortion-law-for-now

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/03/1034008380/tiktok-texas-abortion-ban-spam-website-activists

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The Disappearing, Re-Appearing Mountain

8/31/2021

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First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is .
― Donovan, "There Is a Mountain"

For the past two weeks Afghanistan has loomed like a mountain in the American consciousness. But prior to the fall of Kabul on August 15 and the subsequent nonstop images of the storming of the Kabul airport by more than a hundred thousand desperate people trying to escape, when did any of us last give a thought to Afghanistan? A year and a half ago when Donald Trump ceded to the Taliban and promised to remove all American troops from Afghanistan by May of 2021? Last May when one Afghan military post after another began surrendering to Taliban forces, villages and towns along the way falling like dominoes?
Or wasn't the last time Afghanistan was a mountain in our national mentality actually twenty years ago, after our country was attacked by Al Qaeda, which operated out of Afghanistan?
After 9/11 Afghanistan was huge, news of it was constantly in our eyes and ears. We thought about it, we talked about it. Then a year and a half later the United States invaded Iraq and Iraq became the mountain, while Afghanistan disappeared even though our military continued waging a simmering war there for the better part of two decades.
Until two weeks ago. Now Afghanistan is a mountain again, but America's war there ended yesterday and so it may not be long before Afghanistan disappears again.
Oh, and does anyone know where Iraq went?

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The Case Of The Sunflowers And Inattention Blindness

8/28/2021

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THE CASE OF THE SUNFLOWERS AND INATTENTION BLINDNESS

Last week a friend of mine, a dedicated emergency room nurse who spends long, stressful, exhausting days on the COVID-19 front lines in Columbus, Ohio, texted me and a few other friends a photo of a field of sunflowers.

Beneath the picture my friend wrote, "Check out beautiful sunflowers in Gahanna Granville Street. Take a drive and get pics. Share pics. Let's keep up our spirits."
Upon receiving my friend's picture I thought, Wait, what? There's a sunflower field on Granville Street and I didn't know about it?"
Granville Street is the main thoroughfare through my town of Gahanna, Ohio,

...and is also the route from downtown Gahanna to downtown Columbus and other points east, south, north and west where I don't often venture these days. These days I don't often venture much of anywhere beyond the supermarket.
That being said, it's not as if I haven't driven down Granville Street at least a handful of times over the summer. So why did I never notice the sunflower field growing in downtown Gahanna?
I chalked it up to a phenomenon called "inattention blindness," which occurs when something passes before one's eyes which one is not expecting to see, therefore one does not see it. A corollary of this concept was expounded upon in the movie "What the #&*! Do We Know?"

...in the fable of the Native American Indians on Caribbean Islands who did not see Christopher Columbus's ships on the horizon because, supposedly, people can only see what they believe is possible.

Not that I wouldn't believe that a field of sunflowers growing between the buildings in downtown Gahanna is within the realm of possibility. It's just that in all the years I'd been driving up and down that stretch sunflowers had never gown there before and nobody told me there were any growing there now, so I wasn't expecting to see any, and so I didn't see any. I guess.
But, whatever, I decided to take my friend's suggestion and go see the sunflowers.
As I live not far from Granville Street I decided to walk. And notice things along the way. And snap pictures of the things I noticed.
Hamilton Road

Big Walnut Creek

Gatsby's, a popular local watering hole

Some nice clouds over the Dairy Queen.

Rocky Fork Creek

When I reached Granville Street I kept my eyes peeled, though I even worried that, by looking too hard for the sunflowers, I might somehow miss them. Overattenion blindness, perhaps.
But no, probably from my constant scanning for the sunflowers and my firm expectation of seeing them, I caught sight of their yellow heads far off in the distance:

Do you see them?
Look on the left side, just a little beyond that gold car.
Here's a closer shot:

The little sunflower field had been planted between a small strip mall,

...and the parking lot of an abandoned bank building.

But it was nonetheless delightful.

There was a sign naming this sunflower oasis Little Mammoth Meadow, planted, according to the sign, by Start A Seed.

I don't know who the individuals behind Start A Seed are, but I would like to thank them, and also to thank my friend for opening my eyes to the sunflowers growing on Granville Street. And, as my heroic friend requested, I'm sharing my pics. May we all keep our spirits up.

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The Fog Of War

8/24/2021

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THE FOG OF WAR

The United States could have treated the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as criminal acts masterminded by Osama Bin Laden and put our resources into capturing him and his accomplices instead of plunging into what turned out to be a decades-long war with Afghanistan that is ending in a costly, dreadful defeat that has degenerated into a terrible human rights crisis.

But on the other hand, if the U.S. had not invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 that country might have subsequently turned into a haven for emboldened Al Qaeda terrorists who might have launched more deadly attacks.
After the defeat of the Taliban regime by U.S. forces in November 2001 Taliban leaders offered to surrender peacefully in exchange for amnesty. Had the United States accepted the terms of the Taliban's surrender instead of insisting, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, "We don't negotiate surrender," and demanding Taliban members be captured, imprisoned or put to death,

...then the Taliban wouldn't have fled for their lives to hide out, regroup, recruit, grow, and keep fighting.
Unless the Taliban opted to flout the terms of their surrender and continued to hide out, regroup, recruit, grow, and keep fighting anyway.
Spending twenty years and $300 million dollars a day trying to transform a tribal, disparate, geographically rugged country like Afghanistan into a modern, Western-style democracy now looks like a fool's errand. Except that in those twenty years of American occupation of Afghanistan the citizens of that country gained access to internet, iPhones, social media and news outlets. A whole generation of young Afghans grew up in a society with some degree of civil liberties, especially women and girls,

...who under Taliban rule had been forbidden to go to school, to work, to appear in public with their faces uncovered and, in some areas, to leave their homes unaccompanied by a male relative.
Is Afghanistan's past under Taliban rule to be its future under Taliban rule? Or will the modernization and liberation of Afghan society that was achieved by twenty years of American protection and defense ultimately force the Taliban to bend? And what presence, if any, will terrorist groups have under the new Taliban regime?
How long after that day in October of 2001 when U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan did it become clear to those with knowledge of such matters that withdrawing those troops would be disastrous? Was it clear after five years? Ten years? Was it clear soon after the day George W. Bush started the war? Or just two weeks ago when Joe Biden ended it? Did Obama know, and is that why he avoided bringing American troops home after their mission of killing Osama Bin Laden was accomplished? Did Donald Trump know, and is that why he and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo negotiated with Taliban leaders (but not with the leaders of the Afghan government) a withdrawal, the terms of which required the United States to concede everything but required nothing of the Taliban in return - not the continuation of Afghan women's rights, not safe passage out of the country for citizens, not the return of American military equipment - nothing, except the Taliban allowing the retreat of U.S. troops from Afghanistan?

And did Joe Biden know, and is that why he has toed the letter of the Taliban's terms that were agreed to by his predecessor Donald Trump? Even as Biden learned that Taliban fighters were capturing Afghan military posts along with the American weapons provided for the Afghan army, did he not dare to send in more American troops to retrieve our equipment because he knew such action would be the equivalent of kicking a hornet's nest? Did he know that facilitating a mass exodus of Afghan civilians in advance of the American pullout - something Biden had been warned against doing by Afghan President for fear of Taliban reprisals - would likewise enrage the Taliban?
Did Joe Biden lie awake at night knowing that his decision to be the one to bring American troops home from Afghanistan and finally end this forever war could be politically disastrous for him? What voice told him that it fell to him to accomplish this mission?

And, bad as the situation is in Kabul is at this moment, how do we know that, with the Talban holding all the cards and calling all the shots, a different plan of action, a more aggressive evacuation plan, might not have caused the situation to play out even worse than it is now playing out?
Today there are only two things that are unequivocally true about Afghanistan.
The first is that there was no way the United States could have saved this country single-handedly, and the abandonment of the Afghan people by both their government and their military guaranteed that the evacuations would play out at least as badly as they are at this moment, if not worse. On the other hand, if it were the Afghan army surrounding Kabul airport instead of the Taliban soldiers, the scenes we would be seeing from that place would be much different.
And the second thing is that twenty years later it is the Taliban who now have the option of saying to the United States, "We don't negotiate surrender."

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The Lesson Of The Toothbrushes

8/22/2021

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"Liszkay continues to dazzle with fresh and funny characters from beginning to end." -Daniel B. Oliver, author of The Long Road

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THE LESSON OF THE TOOTHBRUSHES

The day before yesterday I was at Target,

...picking up some household provisions.

I happened to be in the toothbrush aisle at the same time as a woman and a little boy who appeared to be around six years old; presumably a young mom and her son.
"We don't want to get an electric toothbrush because the people might not have batteries," I heard the mom say to her son. "Here," she said, "you can pick out five nice toothbrushes from over here." Which the little boy then proceeded to do.
I continued my shopping and I expect they continued theirs.
Now, this short story is, perhaps, not particularly memorable. Chances are the little boy won't even remember the day his mother took him to Target and they bought five toothbrushes. But I got the impression that they were buying the toothbrushes not for themselves but for people who needed toothbrushes. Maybe they were going to donate them to a food pantry, or through their church or some other charitable organization. Or maybe they were buying the toothbrushes for someone they knew who was in need.
And it occurred to me that even if the moment soon fades from the boy's memory, the lesson of that moment will stay with him, for this is the kind of lesson that a child unconsciously absorbs from their parent: in this case a lesson in thoughtfulness, in generosity, in caring for the needs of others.
True, buying a toothbrush for someone who needed a toothbrush was only a small lesson, but it was perhaps just the right size for a child.
So thanks to that mom and her little boy in the Target toothbrush aisle. You thought you were only giving toothbrushes. You also gave a bright spot to my day.

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Little Things Around The House

8/19/2021

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LITTLE THINGS AROUND THE HOUSE

For the almost three weeks that my grandchildren and their parents stayed at our house, every day was Anything Can Happen Day,

...as well as Anything Might Be Found Around The House Day:
A guitar in the family room;

...a soccer ball under the piano,

...a bean on the banana hook;

...bears on chairs;

...and various groupings of objects in unanticipated places, the discovery of which was a reminder, in case one was needed, that there were children in this house.

Most curious was the presence an old toy tank that had been my son's when he was young that tended to pop up in settings inside and outside the house.