Tales from the Microbial Laboratory

Joe Wilson is NOT my South Carolina...

...I just have a minute, but I needed to say that - especially after someone forwarded me this article.  In fact, none of the guys mentioned in the article are MY South Carolina.  I think more South Carolinians right now need to stand up and say that so that we can drown out the other idiotic voices being heard.  What an embarrassment.

"The bill must not suck."

One of the best quotes that I've seen over the past few days was from this post written by Huffington Post's Bob Cesca: 

If they're going to name the final healthcare reform bill after Senator Kennedy, we ought to be demanding with voices as powerful and booming as the late senator's...

The bill must not suck.

~Farewell, Senator Kennedy~

Just for the record...

...I did NOT vote for him.

~~~~~

But there is good news is all of this!!!  Stephen Colbert has declared himself the new Governor of South Carolina!!!!  (I have Janet, The Queen of Seaford, to thank for alerting me to this change in governance).

~~~~~

We should have let him run before.

 

~South Carolina quote of the day~

As some of you may have heard, South Carolina's Governor Mark Sanford is MIA.  This quote, from over at Jeff Tompkins blog, sums up this unusual situation quite beautifully:

Meanwhile, with the Governor nowhere to be found, and no one running the state, residents of South Carolina report "no discernible difference."

(Hmmm...looks like they may have found him).

A Morning in Mid-June (in Zone 8b)

~Rosa moschata~

~~~~~

I'm late for May Dreams Gardens Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - late for tedious and boring and problematic reasons - but I'm pulling out the old 'late is better than never' excuse, which - in most cases - works, right?

Regardless...as I was wandering the garden this morning, taking photographs of blooms in the early morning before the heat of the day became too oppressive - even in the early morning my camera lens fogged up as soon as I removed the lens cap.  Yes, it is summer.

The roses are blooming.

But as I took these images, I was thinking about a place far away - where courageous individuals were gathering to protest injustice.  A place where women were joining in, at great risk.

~~~~~

 

~Mermaid~

~~~~~

With my camera, I moved on to the hydrangeas, knowing that crowds were still gathering in Iran.  I've not gotten on the Twitter bandwagon - but last night after listening to a piece about the use of Twitter in Iran on NPR (cell phones still seem to rule) - and today being glued to The Daily Dish (which included numerous Twitter posts) - the protests in Iran became closer to me, 140 characters each, brief insights into a chaotic day.  I couldn't help but think today that each 'tweet' is like a piece of data, randomized points on a graph that has yet to be filled in.  We don't know what the end will be - but what a beginning!

~~~~~

Tweeting Tehran.

~~~~~

~Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle'~ 

~~~~~

'Annabelle' came from my Mother's Virginia garden - and it is just outside my front fence.  It is growing and it is happy and it is a simply spectacular hydrangea.  I laughed tonight when I realized that I hadn't thought of the connection between Annabelle the Hydrangea and Annabelle the Pointer.

~~~~~

Green Thumbnails.

~~~~~

It was hot today in the garden - and as the Pointer Sisters slept in the air-conditioning, someone (according to The Daily Dish - with the disclaimer that tweets were not confirmed - and posted in green) wrote:

 Helicopters did not spray boiling water. It was a type of ACID, similar to what Mojahedeen used in '78-'82.
 

~~~~~

 

~fading blossoms of Hydrangea macrophylla 'Endless Summer' behind clumps of northern sea oats, Chasmanthium latifolium~

~~~~~

WHOLE city is shaking with very loud screams from rooftops. Their loud voices calling only for God is filled with fear, hatred, and hope.

~~~~~

 

~coneflower~

~~~~~

eyewitness: young protester killed with bullet through the head on Navab street

~~~~~

 

~pineapple lily, Eucomis 'Sparkling Burgundy'~

~~~~~

Zhila Baniyaghoob's (woman activist) home has been raided

~~~~~

 

~bronze fennel, Foeniculum vulgare 'Purpureum'~

~~~~~

The bronze fennel is just starting to bloom - it's over six feet tall, and is patiently waiting to be consumed by the black swallowtail caterpillars.  Sometimes I wonder if it knows this, if when it blooms it also knows that soon it's leaves will be stripped free of it's foliage.   

~~~~~

From President Obama's statement on Iran today:

Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

~~~~~

 

~from my Mother's garden (and now in my own), Hibiscus moscheutos~

~~~~~

I've never been a fan of the huge, saucer-sized flower of this perennial hibiscus - but anything from my Mother's garden is now welcomed with open arms in my own garden.  Today I stopped and looked closely at the pattern of the veins on the flowers - realizing that they resemble the wings of a butterfly.

~~~~~

From the NYTimes - a piece by Richard Cohen: 

I also know that Iran’s women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I’ve seen them urging less courageous men on. I’ve seen them get beaten and return to the fray. “Why are you sitting there?” one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. “Get up! Get up!”

The role of Iranian women in these protests is interesting - and their own personal fight has been intensifying for years.  To see them standup in this way is beyond words.  Their fight is everyone's fight.  It's my fight.  (read the comments on the linked posts - it shows how important a fight this is for them). 

~~~~~

 

~asian pear, Pyrus pyrifolia~

~~~~~ 

I know that these aren't blooms, but I must mention the fruits that are in my garden.  I have at least a dozen asian pears ripening - beautiful round and golden fruits.  Sometimes the squirrels get them before I do - I just accept that reality.  I'm hoping this year to get some for myself though.

~~~~~

We can all throw rocks. 

~~~~~

 

~Ficus carica 'Brown Turkey'~

~~~~~

The figs usually start to ripen around the fourth of July - my tree is now quite large, and I get bowls and bowls of figs.  I even share them with the mockingbirds, who wait for them to ripen as anxiously as I do.

~~~~~

Tehran will not Sleep tonight!

~~~~~ 

~'Dorman Red' raspberry~

~~~~~

I wish that these raspberries tasted as good as they look - but unfortunately they do not.  They aren't terribly flavorful, it's almost as if they taste like textured water (could this be due to all of the rain we've had of late?).  I won't complain though - I mix them with my blueberries and the added color is nice. 

~~~~~

Take a look at this cartoon.

~~~~~

 

~blueberries~

~~~~~

Again, from Roger Cohen's piece over at the NYTimes:

Later, we moved north, tentatively, watching the police lash out from time to time, reaching Victory Square where a pitched battle was in progress. Young men were breaking bricks and stones to a size for hurling. Crowds gathered on overpasses, filming and cheering the protesters. A car burst into flames. Back and forth the crowd surged, confronted by less-than-convincing police units.

I looked up through the smoke and saw a poster of the stern visage of Khomeini above the words, “Islam is the religion of freedom.”

Later, as night fell over the tumultuous capital, gunfire could be heard in the distance. And from rooftops across the city, the defiant sound of “Allah-u-Akbar” — “God is Great” — went up yet again, as it has every night since the fraudulent election. But on Saturday it seemed stronger. The same cry was heard in 1979, only for one form of absolutism to yield to another. Iran has waited long enough to be free.

~~~~~

 

~American persimmon, Diospyros virginiana~

~~~~~

I can't resist to include here, in it's entirety, the latest post (below in italics) from Andrew Sullivan over at The Daily Dish.  It refers to President Obama's statement today about Iran.  This afternoon I spoke with a friend who moved to Canada during the Bush Administration years, and we talked about how thrilled we still were that Obama was elected.  I still remember that day.  As Sullivan writes:  'What a relief to have someone with this degree of restraint and prudence and empathy...'

Did you notice how many times he invoked the word "justice" in his message? That's the word that will resonate most deeply with the Iranian resistance. What a relief to have someone with this degree of restraint and prudence and empathy - refusing to be baited by Khamenei or the neocons, and yet taking an eloquent stand, as we all do, in defense of freedom and non-violence. The invocation of MLK was appropriate too. What on earth has this been but, in its essence, a protest for voting rights? Above all, the refusal to coopt their struggle for ours, because freedom is only ever won, and every democracy wil be different: this is an act of restraint that is also a statement of pure confidence in the power of a free people.

I share the confidence. I wrote a couple weeks back that something is happening in Iran. But it is not the only place where something is happening. The rejection of al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan; the ground-up election of Obama in America; and now the rising up of Iranians for freedom and civility with their neighbors: these are the green shoots of recovery from 9/11 and its wake. Empowered by new information technology, chastened by the apocalyptic conflicts of the last few years, determined to shift course away from civilizational warfare, the people of many countries are grasping for a new order and a new peace. It will not be easy; and it will not be short. But it is the only path worth taking.

And these Iranians are now leading the rest of us.

~~~~~

 

~holding bed~

There's an area in the garden - at the very end of a perennial border, that has become (quite unintentionally at first) a 'holding bed'.  Sandwiched in between the spring-flowering deciduous magnolia ('Jane') and a star magnolia are now tiger lilies and red bee balm (from my Mother's garden) and orange roadside lilies, mexican petunia, coneflower, salvia, pineapple lilies and more...all plants that will need to be relocated in the next year or two, as these magnolias take over this space.

~~~~~

The one quote that I've seen over and over again today is by John F. Kennedy:

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

~~~~~

Happy Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day.

 

~oh, PLEASE~

   

It really is too bad that Robert Ariail is leaving The State.  (The cartoon above can be found here).

~~~~~     

A quote from an article in today's The State:

 “The current economy,” Sanford said, “is a total gut-check of where we are as a civilization.”

~~~~~

Oh please.  Stop the drama.  This quote is from a man who governs a state that ranks the lowest in about every key indicator of what a civilization is all about.  This man needs to cut the grandiose hand-waving crap and govern the state of South Carolina - and represent it's people (and not just his neighbors) the best that he can (which could be what the problem is:  this is all he is capable of doing).

~~~~~   

civ·i·li·za·tion  (sv-l-zshn)

n.

1. An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions.

2. The type of culture and society developed by a particular nation or region or in a particular epoch: Mayan civilization; the civilization of ancient Rome.

3. The act or process of civilizing or reaching a civilized state.

4. Cultural or intellectual refinement; good taste.

5. Modern society with its conveniences: returned to civilization after camping in the mountains.

~~~~~

 

Governor Sanford might want to look at the state of South Carolina, suffering from an unemployment  ranking of 50th in the nation - at 10.4%.  Is he the only one in denial about education statistics, school dropout rates, those living below the poverty level, and elevated clusters of certain diseases, including STDs?  It appears so.

 

~~~~~  

 

So take the dang stimulus money and at least let somebody in the state try to do something good - and would you please quit embarassing our state on the national stage in a transparent effort to promote your own shallow agenda? 

 

~~~~~~

 

Ironically, at a time when the governor of the state that I reside in waxes on about how terrible everything is, I'm sensing positive movement at the grass roots level on many different issues - and I absolutely refuse to accept Sanford's dire view of this country's 'civilization'.

 

I know that I am not a part of Sanford's 'civilization'.

 

~~~~~

 

(And yes, I've lost about half of my retirement savings too...and my job is on the chopping block.  But I'm trying to volunteer more.  I've offered to serve on a local environmental board.  I've always grown 'local'.  I can do more, and I will try - but look around - people are doing things).

 

~~~~~

 

Oh, and it appears that Sanford might be downsizing too... 

~Sanford's Law of (Self) Destruction~

 

~daffodil, in grayscale~

~~~~~

I know, I know - spring is just around the corner, and here I ago, washing the color out of a cheerful daffodil.  It's just been one of those weeks.  Or several of those weeks...or month, year...

~~~~~

So this post over at Kittens on the Keyboard, a local lowcountry blog, cracked me up tonight.  (Better yet:  check out her novel in progress over at Once Upon a Time on Pierpont Avenue).  Yeah, the crazy cat lady is on Henry Brown's 'Most Wanted' list!  Anyway, since she is refraining from being snarky about Governor Sanford, I guess I'll do my part - plus, ironically, a former neighbor who moved up past the Mason-Dixon line sent me the following Sanford quote today, from a 2006 interview: 

Well I think that it’s just, and science is more and more documenting this, is that there are real “chinks” in the armor of evolution being the only way we came about. The idea of there being a, you know, a little mud hole and two mosquitoes get together and the next thing you know you have a human being... is completely at odds with, you know, one of the laws of thermodynamics which is the law of, of ... in essence, destruction.

Where does one even begin with a quote like this?

Well, first...over at Pharyngula I was led to a post at ThinkProgress titled "Sanford Offers Unemployed South Carolina Resident 'Prayers' Instead Of Stimulus Funds".  Read the post - and next, how good is this?  You can listen to our Governor below:

We are so fortunate.  Governor Sanford will pray for us if we lose our job.  That's swell.  Can't you just feel the South Carolina love?  I feel so much better now.

(And my thanks to Pharyngula for mentioning his very own Minnesota Governor in his post.  For only bad reasons, it makes me, and the academic 'us', feel less alone).

~~~~~

The Law of Destruction?

Help us.

(If a South Carolinian screams in his/her own state, will anyone in the rest of the country hear him/her?)

~fair pay~

~~~~~

From NOW's website on July 31 2007:

Lilly Ledbetter had worked at Goodyear for 19 years when she discovered she was being paid significantly less than every single one of her male counterparts. A jury agreed that she had been paid unfairly, and awarded her $223,776 in back pay, and over $3 million in punitive damages, but a judge cut that to only $300,000 because of a 1991 law that limited a company's liability for damages — even when found guilty of willful wage discrimination.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed today by President Obama - and from over at Feministe, I found this link to a NYTimes photo of the signing - yes, his first piece of legislation - and this link to a video of the signing.  Also over at Feministe is an earlier post that discusses the legislation - and the National Women's Law Center has good links to the history of this legislation.

(Am I correct in saying that 177 folks voted against the Fair Pay Act?) 

I could discuss this on a personal level - my own as well as that of several friends - but it would be inappropriate here (and foolish).  I will say that I'm thrilled it passed - but deeply disappointed that this is something that has to be legislated - fairness, equality - it should be assumed, it should be understood - fairness shouldn't take such a battle.

~~~~~

Time to work a bit more on my grant - I needed to take a short break to acknowledge this day. 

~HOPE~

   

~official Inaugural Poster by Charleston native Shepard Fairey~

~~~~~

Update, 6:25 pm:  A few hours ago I posted the 2009 Inaugural Poem, written and read by the poet Elizabeth Alexander (it is still at the end of this post).  The poem was a nice one, but just a bit ago the lab's Poet Laureate, Katherine, alerted me to another poem, written by University of South Carolina Poet-in-Residence Kwame Dawes, who I've mentioned before in these pages.  The poem was published in The State today - and if you go there, you can see a wonderful video of South Carolinians reading the poem.  I'm glad this poem came along - a powerful view of what this day means, and as my friend John B. of Blog Meridian commented (below), 'this day embodies what can come of risk and what we'll have to risk'.  Elizabeth Alexander's poem was nice, it felt good - but Kwame's perhaps captured this day, the shadows on the buildings, the tears, the sense of history - the sense of risk - welcomed scents that oozed out from our television sets and wafted across our rooms.   

~~~~~

New Day by Kwame Dawes

1. Obama, January 1st, 2009

Already the halo of grey covers his close-cropped head.
Before, we could see the pale glow of his skull, the way
he kept it close, now the grey - he spends little time in bed,
mostly he places things in boxes or color coded trays,
and calculates the price of expectation - the things promised
all eyes now on him: the winning politician’s burden.
On the day he makes his speech he will miss
the barber shop, the quick smoke in the alley, the poem
found in the remainder box, a chance to just shoot
some hoops, and those empty moments to remember
that green rice paddy where he used to sprint, a barefoot
screaming boy, all legs, going home to the pure
truth of an ordinary life, that simple place where, fatherless,
he found comfort in the wisdom of old broken soldiers.

2. How Legends Begin

This is how legends begin - the knife slitting the throat
of a hen, the blood, the callous pragmatism of eating
livestock grown for months, the myth of a father, a boat
ride into the jungle, a tongue curling then flinging
back a language alien as his skin; the rituals
of finding the middle ground, navigating a mother’s
mistakes, a father’s silence, a world’s trivial
divisions, the meaning of color and nation-negotiator
of calm, a boy tutored in the art of profitable charm;
this is how legends begin and we will tell this, too,
to the children lined up with flags despite the storms
gathering, children who will believe in the hope of blue
skies stretched out behind the mountain of clouds;
and he will make language to soothe the teeming crowds.

3. Waking Up American, November 5, 2008

She says she never saw him as black, unlike his mother
who said she did. She says she saw him as colorless,
just a man, unlike his white mother who touched his father’s
face, the deep brown earth, the glow. She says it's best
to see him as simply a human in this country that shed
long ago the pernicious sting of race, she says, and I
call her a tenderhearted dreamer, a sweet liar, I say,
a white-lie teller who would rather tell this bland lie
before admitting that walking down King Street
the morning after the votes were counted, she was
scared, but proud, so giddy with the wild beat
of her heart, knowing that her country paused
for an instant and did something grand, made a black
man president, such a miracle, such beautiful magic.

4. Punch-line

I have asked this of them year after year, a punch-line
waiting to happen with clockwork consistency -
raise your hand if you can remember a time
you believed that even you could take the presidency;
yes, you, blacks, poor, women, Latinos - was it when
you were four, five, six? And the believers all
would raise their hands. So the second question:
how many now think you have the wherewithal
to be the chief today - and up go four hands:
a dreamer, a liar, a clown, a madman. What went wrong?
How did you all mess up? Well, it's messed up now, it’s gone
now that a black man has done it! Cancel class, time to hang
a poor joke; can’t complain about oppression no more;
we’ve got to recalibrate who is the man now, that’s for sure.

5. Palmetto

Of course, my home has kept its promise to itself;
the one that made Eartha Kitt, Chubby Checker, Althea Gibson,
James Brown all pack their bags, clean out their shelves,
never to look back, not once. They found their homeless songs,
like people who have forgotten where their navel-strings
were buried. We kept the promise that made those who stayed, learn
to fight with the genius of silence, the subterfuge of rings
of secret flames held close to the heart, kindling the slow burn
of resistance. But good news: despite the final state count,
we know that the upheaval of all things still brought grace
here where pine trees bleed and palmettos suck up the brunt
of blows, and so we can now hum the quiet solace
of victory with a surreptitious shuffle, a quick, quick-step
for you, Smoking Joe, Dizzy, James, and Jesse, slide, slide, now step.

6. Confession

Here is my confession, then, the one I keep inside me -
while the crowds gather in Washington, I will admit this:
it is enough that it happened, more than enough that we see
him standing there shattering all our good excuses: no, not bliss,
not some balm over the wounds that still hurt, but it is enough
to say that we saw it happen, the thing we thought wouldn’t,
and we did it even if we did not want to do it. And that is tough,
yes, but it is good and grand and beautiful and new. And,
more, it is enough, no matter what comes next, that a man
who knows the blues, knows the stop-time of be-bop,
who’s asked from inside out the meaning of blood and skin,
is, let’s just say it, standing there, yes, standing at the top
of the world - it is enough for tomorrow; and yes he is tough
and yes he is smart, but mostly it is sweet and more than enough.

7. On Having a Cool President

He will not be the buffoon and clown; he’s too cool for that.
His cool is the art of ease, the way we drain out tension;
the way we make hard seem easy, seem like it ought.
Cool is not seeing the burn in the fluid grace of execution.
Cool is knowing how to lean back and let it come,
but always ready for it to come. He will be no minstrel show
fool, but a man who shows, in the midst of chaos, unruffled calm.
Like, what-does-he-know-that-we-don’t-know?
Like, I-can-be-brighter-than-you-and-still-be-down, cool.
Like some presidential cool; a cool that maybe hasn’t been seen
in the White House before. You see, he is a nobody’s fool,
kind of cool, the one that makes a gangsta lean look so clean,
kind of cool. That’s what we have now, and to be honest,
you can call this cool what you want, me, I call it blessed.

8. Lincoln, January 1st,1863

I think now of that other Illinois man, pacing the creaking boards
of the musty mansion, cradling a nation’s future in his head,
the concussion of guns continuing, the bloody hordes
of rebels like ghouls in his dreams; he, too, avoids the bed;
tomorrow the hundred days will be over, a million
souls will be free, a million pieces of property pilfered
from citizens, a million laborers worth their weight in bullion
promised a new day across the border, a million scared
owners, a million calamities, all with the flow of ink
from his pen. This is the path of the pragmatist who would
be savior, the genius act of simple war, the act to sink
an enemy, and yet hallelujahs will break out like loud
ululations of freedom. Uneasy lies the head…, he knows -
this is how our leaders are born, how we find our heroes.

~~~~~  

2009 Inaugural Poem by Elizabeth Alexander

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.