Olla Podrida

Woke up this morning feeling a little sorry for John Edwards. Not that he isn't entirely responsible for his own mess, but still, think of the psychic hell of becoming a pariah to both the nation and one's friends (and perhaps family), while it slowly dawns on you that the rope of lies you'd hoped would swing you to safety is covered with grease. Even so, I admit to being as fascinated as the next gal watching this drama unfold; is there anyone that doesn't think it's going to get messier? An opinion not dissuaded by the National Review online this morning asking how, the day before Edwards' ABC news confession, Rielle Hunter, a woman with "no job, no money, and no means of support, was flown on a private Learjet from California"  to St. Croix, where she and her baby "stayed in a luxurious oceanfront home owned by controversial trial lawyer Lee Rohn, another close friend of Edwards." My favorite Edwards-Hunter watchdog is Lee Stranahan, who a few days ago over on Huff Post predicted where the John Edwards scandal is headed, and who, should Edwards decide to actually come clean, offered this post-confession suggestion:

John Edwards could go to work chopping wood and carrying water for a couple of years to reflect on his mistakes. Building houses full time with Habitat For Humanity would be a great start for his redemption. No speeches, no suits. Just let your hair get messy and hammer nails all day, John and then go home tired and be a good father at night.

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Readers of this blog might be wondering why, the morning after Tafv's fashion show, I am posting no photos. The answer lies in Din's digital camera, which last night seemed to be on some sort of lag, so that every time he took a shot of a model standing at the base of the staircase displaying an outfit, the camera did not get the message for a few seconds, clicking only when the girl had turned and was on her way back up the stairs.

"Great, so now I have like twenty photos of their asses," Din said, a vexation I decided to amplify by telling him he'd now have a reputation as being Tavie's pervy old stepdad.

But how was the show? It was lovely, really fun, and we were all very proud. Were there glitches? Sure; the music cut out, several friends of Tafv's arrived late, and there was, I could see in my child's post-show countenance, the slight if inevitable letdown; you work and work and work, and then it's twenty minutes later, and it's over, and what do you do now but breakdown the hanging racks and load up the car? But she also sold many pieces and had, we knew, launched herself to the next square on the board. Onward.

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When I moved to Portland, I joked that on the very wind one hears the mantra, local local organic sustainable local. It's an ideology that works for many of the chefs here, and we do eat well. The region is ideally poised -- agriculturally, in terms of climate, philosophically, financially -- to support organic farming, not merely pay it lip service. The media lauds Portland for doing so, and as I have written before, if the chefs here could make their own water, they would.

Nevertheless, said ideology is not going to save the planet, a suggestion that, should you raise it in certain sectors, will garner you a perplexed, even hurt look, or a lecture about how it will take enacting laws and forbidding certain foods and labeling others as the evil spawn of Satan Monsanto and planting seeds of change and all of us pulling together to create a greater world for every little boy and girl, during which one very badly wants to ask whether the lecturer has read Animal Farm, but does not.

Instead, I might make copies of an article in yesterday's Science Times, a conversation with Dr. Nina Fedoroff, who explains why most genetic food modifications are based on evolution; how "if everybody switched to organic farming, we couldn't support the earth's current population -- maybe half," and that global conflict is often not about politics, but resources, and that only science will help fix this. A clip:

Q. YOU BELIEVE THAT ENVIRONMENTALISTS SHOULD BE EMBRACING GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS. WHAT’S YOUR ARGUMENT?

A. If we put more land under cultivation to feed the world’s growing population, we’re going to pull down the remaining forests.

And if that happens, it will contribute tremendously to desertification. The more we can grow on already cultivated land, the better. Europe, North America, Australia, Japan — we’ve been extremely successful in applying science to agriculture and we can afford to say, “Let’s go natural.” But there’s collateral damage.

When I went to Rwanda, you saw farmers with holdings of less than an acre.

If their population doubles again, we’re looking at more strife. Arguably, Darfur isn’t about politics, it’s about water. Many of the conflicts in the poorest countries are about too many people chasing too few resources. Do we have time to transition something that looks like Rwanda to a more efficient agriculture and to do it wisely enough to absorb the people?

Comments

[Zev]

The radical Greens are perfectly willing to see half the world's population die off if it means an end to industrialized farming. They view humanity as a blight upon the planet.

[Snoop-Diggity-DANG-Dawg]

Exactly. Humans have no more value than microbes to radical greens.

[Mike LaRoche]

The way that John Edwards is handling this scandal is truly bizarre. It's as if this is all playing out according to a script with the ultimate intent of causing maximum damage to the Democratic Party.

[Nancy Rommelmann]

I was thinking the same thing this morning.

[Angela DiOrio]

Sorry to hear about the camera problems but glad that the show went off well and that Tafv sold some pieces.

I've encountered Lee Rohn in the course of business before and I'll refrain from making any public comments and just say that "controversial" is a decent way to describe her.

[Zev]

Off-topic, I know, but have y'all seen this article about Obama's half-brother? It reflects quite badly on the prophet for Hope and Change.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/news/newstopics/uselection2008/barackobama/2590614/Barack-Obamas-lost-brother-found-in-Kenya.html

[Brett]

Dr. Norman Borlaug has done more than anyone in history to feed the hungry. Unfortunatly his work has been so politicized that some countries in Africa have refused offers of donated food for their starving people because it is genetically altered food even though the people are starving with no food at all.

He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007 for his efforts.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/27665.html

[Loren Minnick]

The whole GM/"green revolution" blowback reminds me of the revolt against immunization: the "natural" options now available to people who have been spared the ravages of malnutrition and disease that attacked the thousands of human generations that came before the mid-Twentieth Century. (See the August 27th Oregonian for the perils facing Oregon from legal immunization refusal.) I can remember friends in the 50's who contracted polio and other diseases that are now largely defeated in this country due to immunization. (There's a junior high school in Spokane named after Dr. Jonas Salk, for a damn good reason.) As long as the number of "non-immunizators" (as W would likely put it) remains below the "herd immunity" threshhold, everything is (statistically) cool, but several places in Oregon are now seeing double-digit exemption rates. Who are the refuseniks? The Oregonian has found "it's likely that most parents who seek the exemption are doing so for reasons that aren't religious."
Who are these people? Any thoughts welcome.

[Nancy Rommelmann]

Some no doubt are the same people who refuse to have their children treated for what are initially small illnesses that turn lethal, pneumonias and bacterial infections and treatable conditions that, without something as "simple" as an antibiotic can run rampant and kill. The O has several times in the past year run, with some breast-beating, articles about a religious community not far from Portland whose members believe only in the power of prayer to heal; the community has lost two children in the past year, though one was an older teenager and the parents claim, he didn't want to see a doctor. Gee, wonder where he learned that. Anyway, now some of the parents are in jail (or on trial), which helps no one. They prophesize they be persecuted by the mainstream if they don't see a doctor, and they are, thereby cementing their beliefs. Why they don't just want to see their children get well, I cannot answer.

There's a bit of a cult book from the 1974 called, "Cissie: Sweet Child of Grace," written, if memory serves, by the mother of Cissie, who at something like 12 was diagnosed with cancer. One of 12 kids, living in a house with no electricity and a half-blind father who did something like bind books for a living (I kid you not), the book is very tough; the girl suffered a lot, but she so believed in God, in Jesus, as did the whole family, the her year-long progession toward death was... different, full of small joys and bathed-in-gold-light understanding and, of course, the one big epiphany. If you can find it, it's worth a read. I think the family self-published.