and it may snow tonight here. Mixed precipitation now. We could do with a break from grey skies and rain. And snow.

I have vegetable plants to put in the ground. Tomatoes and peppers will not be happy being set in cold wet ground. So I hold from planting. Meanwhile, I have to plant most in pots; topsoil is very shallow here, and I have shade from forest trees moving in every year. My tomato crop last year, 4 pots, was less than 10 fruits. But I try. If I did not have the $$ to buy, I would likely be food insecure. Appalachia is 4 miles down the road here. I doubt most of any food produced on that land has not been grown in oil-soaked soil. Next to single-wides. The poor kids at the local elementary school. Food drives from faculty parents constantly. Christmas present to generic boy or girl in December.

Gotta say, I don't have much experience with collard greens having grown up in the Yankee north. But a strange recommendation as a major food source it seems to me. My family came out of Eastern Europe, and everybody but everybody had some sort of garden both here and there. In fact, lawns were a mystery to me even in the US when you could use even small parcels to grow veggies, etc.

So I know plenty of people in Eastern Europe who did rely on small plots to grow veggies, etc. to keep them ALIVE. Not fed, but ALIVE especially through the winter months. And nobody but nobody would grow anything resembling a leafy veggie. Why? From what I read about it, very energy intensive to store it like refrigeration is necessary. My peasant relatives only grew what could be preserved through canning or storage like in a cellar of various sorts. Leafy veggies? Fourgettaboutit.

So hey, collard greens come out every 35-45 days. What do people eat during those in-between days? The answer seems to be collard greens day in and day out. So it looks like to eat collard greens every day, one must have 35 in rotation. And that is a single plant.

And you know, the food grown in previous summer and fall, ran out by spring. My relatives would joke very darkly that they counted each other's chews to make sure nobody went over the limit. You want to laugh and cry at the same time.

So for our Southern friends, what might be the foods that can be grown in a small plot which can be persevered. Tomatoes? Cucks for pickles/Big ass yummie cabbages? onions? How about plums and apples from trees? Strawberries--give me a break.

Just as a side note. My peasant relative planted all sorts of flowers around their little plots. Seemed strange to me. But I understand some flowers can act as insect repellents. Those flowers were absolutely cherished.

By the way--great essay. And FUCK YOU to any democrat who ever voted to decrease food stamp benefits to our fellow citizens. And FUCK YOU to any democrat who supported Clinton's so-called welfare reform that took food out of kid's mouths.

Thank you for this essay Steven D. Thanks a million. My new weight goal is 120 pounds, can't even maintain 125 toward the end of each check anymore. It is my own stubbornness for refusing charity, which I think is big part of the broken system so don't want to play the part. Too bad being skinny has bad health affects too, like high blood pressure and stuff.

Hunger must be in my DNA, because great-grandpa emigrated here to California from Ireland to escape the "potato famine", yeah right. Same as it ever was.

... included at the Zinn Education Project website students investigate who or what was responsible for the famine. The British landlords, who demanded rent from the starving poor and exported other food crops? The British government, which allowed these food exports and offered scant aid to Irish peasants? The Anglican Church, which failed to denounce selfish landlords or to act on behalf of the poor? A system of distribution, which sacrificed Irish peasants to the logic of colonialism and the capitalist market?

These are rich and troubling ethical questions. They are exactly the kind of issues that fire students to life and allow them to see that history is not simply a chronology of dead facts stretching through time.

My bold, describes current California in a nutshell I think, at least where I am.

I remember being denied table-grapes growing up, activist family boycott in solidarity with the UFW, the field workers. So what happened? BigAg moved table-grapes to Mexico, so if you ever see "Bottle Shock" about great California Wine, please know the marketing hype behind it is fucking bullshit, as far as human decency goes. The landlords are still starving people today, right now, right here, plus now there's a housing crisis. Not Britain, not aristocracy, but Hollywood money, Gay money, Real Estate money, the high society upper class, The Incorporated.

Judge Franklin A. Griffin was my maternal grandpa, maybe why I obsess about corruption and lean toward conservative lately. I transcribed this from the book, so if there are mistakes they are mine:

The Mooney Case, by Richard H. Frost
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mooney's Trial

My name is Ed. Cunha, don't think I'm a luna-
Tic loosed from the Agnews confines;
I am from Milpitas 'mid mud and mosquitoes,
On politics I have designs. -- Stanford Quad '06

All loyal citizens appreciate Mr. Oxman's sacrifice in coming here as a witness. --Fickert, January 1917

Judge Franklin A. Griffin presided at Mooney's trial, Griffin's background was Progressive. As a young lawyer in Sacramento he had worked with Hiram Johnson, had moved with him to San Francisco, and campaigned for him in 1910. After Johnson's election he became his executive secretary. A member of the Native sons of the Golden West, a society of native-born Californians, Griffin once tried to have a Grand Parlor of that organization endorse the Johnson administration, but the proposal was howled down as an "unprecedented attempt to foist politics on a nonpolitical and highly respected organization."* In 1913 Johnson appointed him to the Superior Court of San Francisco. His reelection the following year was endorsed by Fremont Older, and by Paul Scharrenberg and other labor leaders. He was recognized in a Chronicle survey of the San Francisco bench and bar tat the time of Mooney’s trial as “a most capable jurist, firm and trustworthy.” 1 A conscientious judge, Griffin was to provide Mooney with as fair a trial as lay within his power and knowledge.
Page 173
(Notes at the bottom of the page)
* Martinez Contra Costa Gazette, April 25, 1914. The Native Sons of the Golden West, traditionally concerned about California's pioneer history, was in fact influential in California politics by the 1910's as an organization anxious to keep the stat a "White Man's Paradise." (Carey McWilliams, Prejudice: Japanese-Americans: Symbol of Racial Intolerance[1944]. pp. 22-34, 31. See also Grizzly Bear, the official magazine of t e Native Sons and Native Daughters of the Golden West, July, August, and November 1912, and March 1924, for anti-radical editorials.) Fickert, Cunha, and Judge Frank H. Dunne were members of the organization. (Grizzly Bear, September 1915, supplement; Lewis F. Byington and Oscar Lewis, eds., History of San Francisco [1931],II: 479.)

1 Bul, 12 Au, ‘13, 29, 31 Oc ‘14; Chr, 12 Jan ‘16. Most of the newspaper citations in this and the following nine chapters are from scrapbook clippings, 1917-1923, assembled by the Mooney defense and now in the Bancroft Library. These clippings are largely from the five San Francisco dailies and from labor weeklies around the country.

I like to think I am not a racist like grandpa seemed to be, got woke the fuck up and healed that part, as much as possible. I don't know what to do about the other stuff. Yet.

Peace