The grapes really came in this year. They’re ripe now; reminding me that nature has its own schedule, regardless of what I else I think I have to do.
So I was out early this morning, cutting clusters, hoping to get some juice pressed before the day’s (previously scheduled) activities began. The sun was just clearing the trees and it was already hot, having only gone down to 70 or so last night.
The bees were active, heading out toward the fields of goldenrod by the barge canal and hydrangeas of the neighborhood for pollen. The grape arbor is adjacent to the hives and the bee smell was strong in the air. (It’s the goldenrod pollen. My friend Bill says, “People think it stinks. Unless they happen to like it.”) Adrienne calls the bee smell sweet; I think it’s nutty. Either way, it was heavy and cloying in the close morning air. All the odors of the yard – flowers, vegetables, bees and compost – are heady these days with the final fullness of summer.
Grapes don’t ripen simultaneously, even those in the same cluster, so the idea was to find those bunches with the fewest unripe grapes. The big steel salad bowl was quickly filled and many left hanging, but I had at some point to find an accommodation between nature’s agenda and my own.
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Look at Vermont
Look at Alaska. Senator Lisa Murkowski conceded the Republican primary Tuesday to tea party/Palin candidate Joe Miller. In conceding, Ms. Murkowski criticized what she called distorted and personal attacks against her by Mr. Miller in the campaign. For his part, Mr. Miller accused Mr. Murkowski’s campaign staff of illegally interfering with the recount.
Look at Glenn Beck (I never said this would be easy.) I’m not sure what he was attempting with his rally at the Lincoln Memorial Saturday, but it seems he has ambitions beyond being on Fox News forever. I try to put myself in his shoes. Here’s a guy who used to be a disc jockey and now he’s got a tee vee show, a radio show and his own “university” (however much damage his institution does to our understanding of that word). I’m sure there are people out there telling him he’s a prophet, naming children after him and so forth. It would be hard for me not to get a bit messianic if I was subject to all that and I think my grasp on reality is more tenacious than Mr. Beck’s.
Look across America. The current wave of Islamophobia has given an escape valve to the huge pressure of racism that has run beneath the surface of our continent since Mr. Columbus first made landfall. In Tennessee, western New York, Washington state and Connecticut racists are attacking (respectively) a mosque, a Sufi mosque (Sufis are like the Quakers of Islam, as mild and gentle a people as you’ll find anywhere), a Sikh (who is not a Muslim: what next – attacks on Buddhists?) and a hookah bar (one featuring belly dancers, no less – not exactly Sharia law, dude).
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