Garden Edibles

We haven't planted many veggies in the garden for a while.  We have a lot more shade than we used to have and all the farmers markets have much more variety than we could ever grow.  But with the virus coming on, we got a few seeds and we're starting to see the results.  Not a lot, but it feels good to see food grow so relatively easily.   

The beginnings of a broccoli stalk.

The most advanced of the snap peas.

And I like the sharp flavor of the nasturtium leaves in the salad.

And the raspberries, well I just have to cut off the old stalks at the end of the year and they come back and gives us raspberries without us having to do much except pick them.

And I'm just adding in the begonia flower because I like it so much.  But, no, I don't eat them.  

Green Things From The Trees, Bushes, And The Ground

Spring has come to South Central Alaska.  Enjoying the wonders in our front and back yards.







Bleeding Heart.

Cottonwood leaf.  The sticky outside - leaf bud scales - fall off and stick to everything.  A good reason to take your shoes off before going inside.  The saving grace for me has always been their wonderful sweet scent.  But it appears they are much more useful than that.  From the Statesman Journal:

"Honeybees collect the resin from the spring leaf bud scales and take it back to their hives as an antimicrobial and sealant, called propolis. It is powerfully anti-microbial, inhibiting fungal and bacterial growth.
Pacific Northwest tribes and early Euroamerican settlers collected and used the bud scale resin as well. Infused into oil, the resin is known to help soothe swollen arthritic joints and sore muscles. Resin was used to waterproof boxes and baskets. The bark was made into buckets for storing and carrying food. The leaves, buds and bark of cottonwood were used to lower fevers and reduce inflammation and pain. Plant chemists isolated this analgesic compound and call it salacin; it is found in all cottonwoods and willows."

The daffodils are popping up.  The last couple of years only a few of the bulbs I planted came up.  This year I planted some with my granddaughter on Bainbridge Island over Thanksgiving and they were blooming by the beginning of March.  All them.  And it looks like the vast majority made it through the winter here and are coming up.








I thought this was kind of funny when I saw it on Carr's online order app.  I've been benefiting from our abundant back (and front) yard supply the last few summers.  Ours too have no artificial fertilizer or pesticides.  And they are starting to come up already.




When you see them in your yard, instead of cursing them, think:  $3.49 a bunch.  And remember they are full of vitamins and other health promoting properties.

Governor, oil has tanked, but we've got an endless renewable resource in dandelions.  And at $3.49 a bunch, they're probably more valuable than oil was when it was $60 a barrel.  And health food stores have all sorts of pricy dandelion products.  Here's a dandelion extract at $14 an ounce!

There's economic value all around us if we just have the right eyes.  But lets not value our flora and fauna only for their economic value.  They play an important role in keeping the earth vibrant and healthy.  If you haven't seen my post on The Overstory, I do recommend it.

High bush cranberry leaves are budding.

 Lillies.

Tulip buds are growing.

Wild geraniums.  From Common Sense Home:

"Early Native Americans [Is that as opposed to late Native Americans?] recognized the value of Wild Geranium and used it as an ingredient in many medicinal treatments. Chippewa Indians used dried, powdered rhizomes mixed with grape juice as a mouthwash for children with thrush. A poultice from the base or pounded roots of the plant was used to treat burns and hemorrhoids. The leaves and roots were used to treat sore throats, hemorrhages, gonorrhea, and cholera. Like many other tannin-containing substances, Native Americans also used Wild Geranium as an anti-diarrhea treatment. A plant- infused tea was made to achieve this purpose, though some sources say the tea could have had the opposite effect, causing constipation."

And we have visitors out for the summer too.

This fly was cleaning my breakfast plate out on the deck.

And I'm guessing this dead tree was sculpted by a woodpecker.  Dead trees often have more life than living trees.

"Great ideas often come out of tough times"

When I took out the waffle mix Sunday morning, I noticed this on the box:

"Great ideas often come out of tough times, and times didn't get much tougher than 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression.  That year, a few women who traded recipes conjured up an easy-to-prepare pie crust mix and named it "Krusteaz" (crust + ease).  They went for to door, café to café, selling their creation.  A few years later that same entrepreneurial spirit led us create the first-ever just-add-water pancake mix."

Mixing the ingredients - the oil made a happy Rohrschach.













And Sunday was the first day that we ate out on the deck.  Warmly, but not overly so, dressed.

Krusteaz is the original product of what is now Continental Mills.  Here's the introduction to a 2017 interview in Snack and Bakery with the new CEO

We recently spoke with with Continental Mills president Andy Heily for a look into some recent innovations at the company, including its successful moves into a new product category with the Buck Wild tortilla chip launch, as well as a packaging and non-GMO update for its flagship Krusteaz pancake line—making it the first major pancake brand to do so.
As a third generation, family-owned company, Andy is taking the reins from his father and current CEO, John Heily, and undertaking major initiatives to keep an 85-year old company at the forefront of consumer trends and preferences.

For those of you who fly through Seattle, the company is headquartered in Tukwilla, one light-rail stop from SeaTac.

An April 10, 2020 article in Prepared Food tells us they are expanding.

Continental Mills, Inc., the maker of premium baking, breakfast and snack brands, including the beloved Krusteaz speed-scratch mixes and others, purchased a 175,000 square foot facility in Effingham, Ill., located adjacent to its existing manufacturing facility in Effingham. Acquired from Hodgson Mill, the facility will provide Continental Mills the capacity it needs to support continued growth.
The renovated facility is expected to be up and running sometime in 2021.  In addition to providing increased capacity, the Effingham facility offers excellent proximity to Continental Mills' customers in the Eastern US, Midwest and Southeast.

I guess a company that started in the Great Depression is confident in expanding during a pandemic.

Here's a company made video.  It's obviously a public relations film, but the values they emphasize are good ones.  And it's still a small, family owned business.  It hasn't sold out.




This seems like a pretty decent company.  I did look for problems.  There are three complaints  at a Better Business Bureau website - one about a piece of metal in a mix, another about bugs, and a third customer complained that it wasn't GMO free.

Indeed is an online job search site which has a space where people can leave company reviews.  Most of the ones for Continental were pretty good.  There was one malcontent.  (I thought about whether I should use that word.  Given all the other reviews, I'm guessing this person brought the problems with him to the job.)

They've managed to keep out of the spotlight.  They are a privately owned company so they aren't required to make public the kind of information other companies are.  There's not a lot out there on the company.  The expansion of the Effingham facilities was covered by a lot of media.

And they are sponsoring the Seattle Seawolves Rugby team.

Do It Yourself Matzahs For Pandemic Pesach

The shopper texted that there were no matzahs the other day.

So, we just had to make our own.  Google helped with a couple of recipes and this one looked easiest.

After mixing the flour and water and kneading, it said to cut the ball in half, and again, and again, until there were eight pieces of dough.

Then flatten them with a rolling pin - thinner and thinner and bigger and bigger.













Then into the oven quickly.  Two minutes per side.






We baked several times to get all eight done.

They don't look anything like what comes out of the box.  Much more exotic looking.



[UPDATED April 8, 2020 8:15pm:  We ended up with a clean table cloth, the old candelabras, the kiddush cup from our wedding, and an abbreviated Seder.  It was a great break from our self-isolation to observe an ancient ritual during this time of pandemic.  And to remember the ten plagues in Egypt as the Jews fled the Pharaoh.  It broke the routine and put today into a much larger perspective. Even if it was just the two of us this year.]

How To Make Quarantine Enjoyable And Productive

There are ways to put a little low cost luxury into your cocoons until we become post COVID-19 butterflies.  Instead of whining about what you don't have.




We started the day off with an out of the ordinary (for us) breakfast.  It was wonderful.  It's not hard to do.  But if you don't have a waffle iron, you can make pancakes or French toast.







And in these months of never-ending hand washing, get some really nice soap.  When we cleaned out my mothers house after she died, we found lots of wonderful soap.

We still have a few bars left.

On top is an I. Magnum French milled bar.  It smells so good, I may just keep it for sniffing now and then.  In the middle is Origins Lime and Geranium, and then the Yardley April violets.  The other three are soaps we bought in the San Telmo weekend market last summer in Buenos Aires.  A husband and wife make the soap, under the name Paskarito.  These are glycerin based soaps.

The price of many good soaps is less than what many people pay for a coffee these days, and a soap can last you several weeks or more.  For example










I went back and found this picture at the market where we bought the soaps.  She's mixing ingredients here.  (I also saw how many pictures I took that never got to the blog!)










And you can also go pull books off the shelves and read.  All those books you've never gotten too.  Or the ones you've promised yourself to read again.  And magazines too.  The only one I intentionally subscribe to is The Sun.  There's always one big interview (this month with Randy Blazak on why white supremacy persists), short stories, poems, a readers write section (a different topic each month and this month is 'shortcuts').  And there are black and white photos, "Sunbeams" (quotes on a selected topic, which this month seems to be 'masculinity').   I'm

"The American ideal of masculinity . . . has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black and white.  It is an ideal so paralytically infantile that it is virtually forbidden - as an unpatriotic act - that the American boy evolve into the complexity of manhood"   - James Baldwin 

"I do like men who come out frankly and own that they are not gods."  - Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys

"There be certain times in a young man's life when, through great sorrow or sin, all the boy in him is burnt and seared away so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of manhood."  Rudyard Kipling, "The Dream of Duncan Parrenness"

I've only just started Overstory by Richard Powers.  I love the The Echo Maker  which had sandhill cranes as an integral physical and metaphorical role in the book.  I'm not too far into Overstory but it's clearly about the importance of trees to humans and to the earth.

And for those of you who have little ones home with you, challenge their curiosity.  Make learning an adventure.  There's so much available online that even with the libraries closed, there's lots to do.  For example:

 http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/gamesactivities.html,

http://www.kidsites.com/sites-edu/art.htm

https://www.puzzle-maker.com/CW

https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/easy-recipes-for-kids-to-make-by-themselves/


And don't forget - forced isolation means you can get your income taxes done on time this year.  Or you can clean out that closet you've been avoiding.

Lists are a good way to get more done in less time.  Just a thought.  While you're eating your waffles.

New Inventions At The Invention Fair

The conference this weekend set me behind on lots of things here.  So let me catch up on the invention fair at my granddaughter's school.  This is a K-6 optional program where all the kids are in two giant connected rooms.  There's an emphasis on independent learning and working cooperatively.     This is part of the local school district.  Sort of like Steller in Anchorage, or Polaris.

They have a three year cycle:  1.  science fair; 2.  environmental project; and 3.  invention fair.

All the kids have to come up with a problem.  Figure out a solution to the problem (the invention).  The presentation at the fair is supposed to cover the process - problem, solution, steps to the solution, materials used, etc.

So here are a few.  I don't post pictures of kids except in rare circumstances with parent permission so the focus is on the project here.

This is a special backpack to carry school papers, using a paper sized folder so papers don't get all wrinkled on the way to and from school.


I need to say there were maybe 50 or 60 projects by first graders to six graders.

This one quantified the number of plastic, non-biodegradable sandwich bags a kid uses a year and talks about the time it takes for the plastic to degrade (400-100 years), the toxic materials in the plastic bag you wrap your sandwich in, and the harm bags do to the animals that ingest them.

And I'm afraid I can't remember the edible material they used as sandwich bags.  It seems that side of the-poster is blocked by a head.  It isn't seaweed because I thought of that as a possibility and they used something else.

This one was my personal favorite.  (After my granddaughter's, of course.)  The inventor explained that her mom kept getting on her for leaving the light on in her room.  So she designed a little M&M holder (in the middle)  contraption to put above the light switch.

And when you turn off the light switch, it causes an M&M to drop out to reward the energy conscious kid.

Here you can see an M&M just released from turning off the switch.





All the kids were at the projects and eager to explain them in detail to anyone who asked.  Even people who didn't ask but were close by.  I know that some of these kids would not willingly talk to a strange adult, but they were so into their projects they all just wanted to tell me everything.






The student who made the Mopping Slippers has a dog that regularly comes into the house with muddy feet.  So she made these slippers with sponges and scrubbers on the bottom that she can wear that help clean up the mess when she walks around.  (She being the student, not the dog.)

I did ask whether the dog jumps on her bed.  She sighed, said yes, but you just have to wash the sheets.

This was another popular invention - a new cookie recipe.  She tried a number of different new types of cookies and as you can see on the poster, Mango won.

Not only is she a good inventor (no one else seemed to think about inventing a new recipe) but also a good marketer.  She had pieces of the mango cookies there to taste.  And I can vouch for these cookies.

This student's problem related to reading in the dark.  So she invented a book mark that had a light on it.

You can see it at the bottom.


Another student had a very similar idea.  He said when he wanted to read at night in bed under the cover, he could never find the light.  So he invented a strap that goes around the book - which I think could also be used as a book mark - that holds a small light.

Another book related invention solved the problem of arms getting tired hold the book.  He took a bike helmet and put two extensions and connected them to the sides of the helmet.  At the end, they had clips to hold a book.  So you could sit with the book held out about 15 inches in front of you.

And this student enthusiastically explained his project.  When I jumped with his skateboard, it often falls away and he falls off.  So he invented a magnet to attach to his shoes and some metal on the skateboard.  He demonstrated the electromagnet he made with the battery and the nail wrapped in wire.  He could then turn the magnet on and off in his hand.

And finally my granddaughter's invention.  Her problem was that her arms get cold, so she wanted to invent arm warmers for her forearms, sort of like leg warmers.  She used toilet paper rolls (with a slit so they could stretch for bigger forearms) and material from old pants and tights to wrap around the rolls.

As demonstrated in this project, the instructions were to recycle materials for the poster boards and most projects did that.

This is a reminder that if you let kids chase what they're interested in, they've got all kinds of creativity and enthusiasm.

We Need Less Junk News And More Nutritious News That Helps Build Our Understanding Of The World

We've heard of Fake News.  That's disinformation and propaganda, and, for the most part, the so called mainstream media doesn't intentionally offer Fake News.

But the the mainstream media is guilty of feeding us a steady diet of what I'm calling JUNK NEWS - the news equivalent of Twinkies and Coke.  It titillates, not with sugar, but with violence, sex, gossip, and cute.  It feeds our hunger for news, but without us actually gaining any understanding.  We end up growing facter and facter, without gaining greater understanding or knowing what to do to improve the world.  We get irritable and depressed instead of taking on the system.  (And yes, that work is left to the relative few who have figured out how to consume news in a healthy and productive way.)

We get so much trivia about the presidential candidates, for instance, and who's up this week and interviews with people who may or may not be representative of what others are thinking.  Basically it's random facts (this lady, from this town, who works in this organization, is this age, and she says this) used to create the reporter's opinion as though it had meaningful factual basis.  NPR doesn't report the news, it serves news stories, news nuggets, that make it easier for its listeners to consume.  Like fast food.  (I'm not saying that reporters shouldn't make the news accessible, but that the news, not the story telling, should be the top priority.

Trump successfully manipulates the media with his Tweets to bring attention to himself and distract from what's really important.  Our collective outrage over his thinking the Chiefs are from Kansas is totally wasted energy.  A reporter might say that it's important to show you this isn't just a single incident, but that it's a pattern, and that that matters. But Trump has done this so often that no one can any longer claim that the collective weight of his nonsense matters.  All the time we spend watching, reading, surfing the news, should actually be spent learning about how things work. How banks, treaties, arms sales, military spending, and dead  soldiers and civilians all fit together.    Only when you know how it works, can you focus on how to dismantle or repair things.

So I'd like to call attention to an article that dives a little deeper than most into how the sanctions on Iran work (or don't work.)  Esfandyar Batmanghelidj at Bloomberg News looks at the details of US sanctions on Iran, specifically a section on humanitarian aid.  Here's a brief excerpt from the article:

"But hidden in the mechanics of SHTA’s [Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement] initial 2.3 million-euro transaction is an unprecedented provision that could help address growing concerns that the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign will be impossible to lift even in the aftermath of new negotiations with Iran.
The relevant provision is hidden in the jargon of a statement issued last October describing Treasury’s framework for SHTA: 'Provided that foreign financial institutions commit to implement stringent, enhanced due-diligence steps, the framework will enable them to seek written confirmation from Treasury that the proposed financial channel will not be exposed to U.S. sanctions.'”

And there are plenty of others who do this sort of in depth and breadth understanding building reporting.  Chris Hedges is one who ties lots of loose ends together. Much of his writing is too scary for most people.  Citizens Climate Lobby does a good job of explaining Climate Change.  Dahr Jamail is another.  Hasan Minhaj is another who tells the news in the Daily Show fashion.  Here's a whole gallery of people who try to offer more serious news.  Though in many cases, it doesn't come in convenient, tempting fast news wrapping.  This may mean reading books and other radical activities.

 We need more of this kind of reporting and a lot less of the junk news.  Media offer the news that sells.  There are huge corporate pressures for profits in the food industry and in the media.  But just as health food advocates have changed what corporations serve, so can healthy news advocates can do the same with the media industry.  There will always be consumers of click bait, we just need to keep increasing the proportion of people who make most of their news consumption serious news.

Can You Guess The Mission Of The Center For Consumer Freedom?

I'd seen the full page ad in the LA Times.  There were two lists of chemicals.

From Center for Consumer Freedom

 The tiny line on the bottom says, "Paid for by the Center for Consumer Freedom."  My guess was this was paid for by the beef industry.   But I had other things to do than pursue this.

Then today's LA Times had an editorial titled:

Beef sellers vs. faux meat  (In the print version)

The beef industry is freaking out over plant-based meat? Too bad (online version)

It starts out telling us the impossible burger is hard to tell from the real thing.  And that's scaring the meat industry which put out this ad through the Center for Consumer Freedom.  There used to be research institutes that did reasonably objective research.  Places like the Rand Corporation and the Brookings Institute.  They may have some built in bias, but they had really smart researchers and they aimed at giving their clients the most accurate information they could.  When wealthy conservatives saw the influences these 'think tanks' had, they began creating their own which would produce 'research' that supported their political pet projects.  

Here's what the website Consumer Deception found when they asked "Consumer Freedom or Deception?"

"The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit corporation run by lobbyist Richard Berman through his Washington, D.C.-based for-profit public relations company, Berman & Co. The Center for Consumer Freedom, formerly known as the Guest Choice Network, was set up by Berman with a $600,000 “donation” from tobacco company Philip Morris.
Berman arranges for large sums of corporate money to find its way into nonprofit societies of which he is the executive director. He then hires his own company as a consultant to these nonprofit groups. Of the millions of dollars “donated” by Philip Morris between the years 1995 and 1998, 49 percent to 79 percent went directly to Berman or Berman & Co."

Sourcewatch's introduction to its research on the Center for Consumer Freedom  says:

The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) (formerly called the "Guest Choice Network (GCN)") is a front group run by Rick Berman's PR firm Berman & Co., originally primarily for the benefit of restaurant, alcohol, tobacco and other industries. It runs media campaigns that oppose the efforts of scientists, doctors, health advocates, animal advocates, environmentalists and groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, calling them "the Nanny Culture -- the growing fraternity of food cops, health care enforcers, anti-meat activists, and meddling bureaucrats who 'know what's best for you.'"
More recently CMD revealed that the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation is funding CCF to attack environmental groups with pop-up websites, like the "BigGreenRadicals.com" website, as well as to assist and train other Bradley-funded organizations in crisis communications (more below).[1]
CCF changed its name to the Center for Organizational Research and Education in early 2014[2] but uses both names.
CCF is registered as a tax-exempt, non-profit organization under the IRS code 501(c)(3). Its advisory board is comprised mainly of representatives from the restaurant, meat and alcoholic beverage industries. As of its most recent (2015) tax filing, Berman was its principal officer and held its books.[3]

The LA Times, to their credit,  did a pretty strong editorial exposing the ad. Some excerpts:

"While it’s true that a plant-based meat alternative is processed — meaning altered in the preparation process, like just about everything else at the grocery store — and it’s true that eating one is not as healthy as say, a pile of raw vegetables, it’s best to take the ads with a generous pinch of salt. (Or sodium, which the ads correctly note is higher in precooked plant patties than in the beef kind.). . . "

"And if methylcellulose, a food thickener, sounds unappetizing, it’s really nothing compared with the E. coli or salmonella poisoning you can get from regular meat. The truth is that beef and other industrial meats are often packaged with things a lot more dangerous to human health than food additives. You want to talk about a public health threat? The widespread prophylactic use of human grade antibiotics in cows and other livestock has contributed greatly to the rise of lethal antibiotic-resistant organisms. . . "

Then they take a totally different tack.  They talk about eating burgers guilt free, because fake burgers don't increase climate change by cutting down the Amazon forest for cattle grazing.  And then they talk about the brutal lives that beef and chicken lead before being slaughtered.

"So why do we still do it [eat meat]? Because meat tastes soooooo good and is such an efficient source of protein. Plus, did we mention it’s so tasty? A plant-based meat that satisfies meat cravings and delivers protein but with a smaller climate footprint is a potential environmental game changer and the reason Impossible Foods was one of the recipients of the U.N. Global Climate Action Award in 2019. No wonder the meat industry is on guard."

What I take from this is:

1. Check the who the groups that sponsor such ads are.  If their name seems suspiciously goody-goody, look them up online.  There are lots of legitimate sites that check out such organizations and tell us who pays for them.  
2. Give credit to the LA Times for putting up a prominent editorial exposing an advertiser in their paper.  
3. Remember how much beef impacts climate change.   

LA Shots, Discussion With Waiter At Persian Restaurant [Updated]

Here's from a couple of nights ago.

We've had sunny days and I have not being able to ride the bike.  I can pretend to walk normally now, but the right knee is still bigger than the left.  But now when I do something wrong, I feel pressure instead of serious pain.  The pressure is a buffer that stops me before I get to the pain part.  And I can move the leg more - obviously enough to walk.  Getting into the car required some thinking about how to position my leg to get it in.

It also means that I let J do the driving today, which means I can take pictures.  I had an eye appointment.

We could see the mountains in the distance, but the sun seems to have gotten rid of most of the snow we saw last week.

The doctor's office is in Beverly Hill, but it still costs much less than it would in Anchorage.  Besides, I've been going to this doctor since 1975 as he reminded me today.  "You're one of my oldest, no I should say, longest regular patients."  We were both young back then and we've seen each other once every one to three years or so all this time.  We talked about grandchildren today. He has a new granddaughter as of Saturday.  And I'm also one of the most distant patients he has.  Last year when I asked him how long he'd be practicing, he said as long as you keep coming, I'll be here.  We'll see.  Here's what my eyes looked like today.  Or one of them at least.

This vehicle was in the parking lot behind his office.  Is there any hope for global warming when people have enough money they can buy toys like this and they do instead of working to slow down global warming?  But, of course, I know nothing about the owner of this vehicle.  I'm creating a persona based on big wheels.

On the way back we decided to go to a Persian restaurant in Westwood.

While I eat very little meat, Persian lamb shank once a year is one of the exceptions.  And as I was paying, I realized this was a good chance to ask someone with Iranian connections about the US assassination of General Soleimani.  While I kept hearing quotes about what an evil man he is and how many Americans and civilians he's killed, I thought about how the US helped get rid of President Allende in Chile in 1973.  And all the civilians who have died as 'collateral damage' of US strikes in the Middle East.

The waiter said they weren't allowed to talk about this in the restaurant.  And then he did.  I didn't tell him I was a blogger or ask for permission to post his comments, because I didn't think about it until we left.  So I won't.  But did just recently get back from visiting his family and he's worried things will get worse for them because things will get worse for everyone.


Here's the window of a bakery we passed.

And a Persian book store.

Meanwhile I checked and the subways in Santiago are working again, but protestors are still out on the streets.  I guess since they aren't being violent, we don't hear any more about it.

[UPDATED Jan 4, 2020 12:20 am:   Since I shortchanged you on the discussion fo the assassination, I thought I'd offer this insight from Chris Hedges.  Hedges resigned from the NYTimes after an award winning career covering the Middle East and other key areas.  He's way out of the mainstream, but that's because he isn't afraid to take on the taboo subjects of American journalism.  Here's the link to the article  and an excerpt:

"The targeting of Soleimani, who was killed by a MQ-9 Reaper drone that fired missiles into his convoy as he was leaving the Baghdad airport, also took the life of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, along with other Iraqi Shiite militia leaders. The strike may temporarily bolster the political fortunes of the two beleaguered architects of the assassination, Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it is an act of imperial suicide by the United States. There can be no positive outcome. It opens up the possibility of an Armageddon-type scenario relished by the lunatic fringes of the Christian right.
A war with Iran would see it use its Chinese-supplied anti-ship missiles, mines and coastal artillery to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which is the corridor for 20% of the world’s oil supply. Oil prices would double, perhaps triple, devastating the global economy. The retaliatory strikes by Iran on Israel, as well as on American military installations in Iraq, would leave hundreds, maybe thousands, of dead."] 

Some LA/Venice/Santa Monica Views

We're at my mom's house in LA. The bike still gets me around and things are in decent shape. Here are a few photos.

Venice Beach at Rose.

Santa Monica is doubling the bike path along the beach so there will be separate space for pedestrians and bikes

Pelicans at Santa Monica Pier.


















When you bike, you get to see signs like this.  We're going to see if we can get in tomorrow.

This is at a Persian ice cream shop in Westwood.

Back at the beach, this is a view looking north toward Santa Monica from the Venice Pier.











Looking south now from the pier.