Cold, juicy watermelon

And fresh garden tomatoes

Watermelon screams summer to me and always has.  It was a regular family treat, to be eaten  after chilling on ice and sliced into chunks on the backyard picnic table. So very cool and refreshing, so sweet and juicy, running down your chin and staining your t-shirt.

I know it has become a  must-have, Fourth of July symbol but I’ve always thought the August and September Melons  have the greatest flavor, and we usually buy more then. My wife and I bought a 16 pounder last night and  about 10 pounds are left. I had watermelon for lunch. I’ve been known to eat watermelon for breakfast. I make a great Watermelon Ale. I think I’ll cook up a batch on Monday and it should be ready for drinking by the end of September.

I feel almost as strongly about tomatoes. Fresh from the vine, garden grown tomatoes. Not those  flavorless, gritty, imposters decorating the  shelve of your nearest supermarket, I’m talking about the kind of tomatoes your neighbor, or perhaps you, grow in your own garden, or the kind you can buy at farmer’s markets or your local food co-op right now. The kind bursting with tangy sweetness that you slice and serve with  a little vinegar and oil, some fresh chopped basil, a little pepper, some slices of buffalo mozzarella and a good crust bread. A cold beer goes well (perhaps a watermelon ale) or a glass of good Chianti. This is food paradise, my friends. I think I’ve just planned dinner. Watermelon for dessert.

I seldom eat anything but canned or sun-dried tomatoes in the off-season. I know the stores are stocked year round with red imposter and I sometimes succumb to a pretty face, but I’m always disappointed.

One last word on watermelon. A few years ago a produce man of my acquaintance told me to purchase watermelon by choosing  the melon that seemed to weigh the most relative to size. I’ve not had a bad melon since. I also like the  new seedless varieties which seem to have taken over the market, but kids who had never had a watermelon seed spitting contest with their friends and siblings, are really missing something.

Chinese Peak

Bannock County Sheriff’s Office press release:

Due to the recent “DRIVE-IN FIRE” the burned area is extremely sensitive.  The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has started recovery efforts on the hillsides and areas of impact.  We have vast concern for the possible effects of future erosion and flash flooding in the burned areas.

In saying this, effective immediately, and until further notice, the burned areas of the “DRIVE-IN FIRE” now have a total ban on all motorized vehicles, hikers, bikes and any other forms of recreation.  Any access to the towers will be opened for technical support only!  Please be advised both BLM and the Bannock County Sheriff’s Office will be enforcing this ban until further notice.

To address any public concerns and the erosion in this area, there will be a meeting Wednesday, August 31, 2011, at 7:00 P.M., at the Bannock County Sheriff’s Office Training Room.  (The Sheriff’s Office is located at 5800 South 5th Avenue.)

This meeting has been scheduled to offer information to the residents in the effected areas in addition to any concerned citizens.  There will be a presentation of the recovery efforts already under way as well as information on short term and long term plans. The meeting will also cover what can and cannot be done with Federal and County resources. A question and answer period will follow.

Poky on the practice field.

I really hated two-a-days in high school. You know, in the two-week period before school starts when you’re practicing and working out twice-a-day in the heat. Still, it’s a sign that autumns it just around the corner. I know my friends and colleagues are getting ready to go back to school, but for the first time in 21 years I’ll not be among them.  One advantage of  being retired is that I am no longer in a position that requires my neutrality with regard to school sports. I’m a Poky fan. Go Indians!

Stephens Performing Arts Cntr.

In Old Town Pocatello, we have the Weekly Farmer’s Market, Revive at Five, the First Friday Art Walk and events like last week’s Pocatello Pride Festival, the Pocaroo Music Festival and  more. It seems like something  is happening every weekend. This weekend it’s  the Bluegrass Music Festival at the Bannock County Fairgrounds.

We have great Bars like the First National, The Flipside Lounge, and many other watering holes all over town. Something for everyone.  We have The PortneufValley Brewery for great beer , good food and good music. Like good food? In Old Town alone you can get Italian, Thai, Chinese, Sushi and Japanese Fusion, Greek, Indian and Tibetan, Colombian,  Mexican and  get great sandwiches with a side of homemade potato chips. Not a single one of these places is chain or corporate , just local folks doing their thing. In fact Old Town and all Pocatello has many, many locally owned and operated business. The box stores and   corporate behemoths haven’t killed us yet.

ISU Quad from Red Hill

Fishing Hunting, Skiing, we live in the great  the outdoors. Sure, Jackson has the Tetons, but can you afford to live there? You can afford to live in Pocatello amid  our own beauty and  yet the Tetons lie close at hand;  visit them when you want. Hiking and walking, mountain biking? Try the City Creek Trails, s Jack,  Scout Mountain, or any of the growing number of trails in the Portneuf  Greenway System. Last week on Gibson Jack I was hiking through beautiful Aspen groves, yet I was only 15 minutes from Downtown Pocatello.

Revive at Five

We have a great school system, despite the effort of the legislature and the governor to drive public education into the dirt. We have  religious diversity, political diversity, civic pride and a concern for the welfare of others. There is something here for everyone. It’s a great and beautiful place where you can afford to live. Pocatello deserves its high ranking on the Forbes list. Let’s just hope that it doesn’t cause too many people to want to move here.

Related articles

• The 3/50 Project: Perfect for Pocatello (billspeasoup.wordpress.com)
• Riverfest: Another Reason To Love Pocatello (billspeasoup.wordpress.com)
• Pocatello Pride Celebration (billspeasoup.wordpress.com)
• One more reason to love living in Pocatello: Portneuf Valley Farmers Market (billspeasoup.wordpress.com)
• Happy Birthday, Pocatello Co-Op (billspeasoup.wordpress.com)

Hello Seattle. On this day, in this place of great beauty we celebrate the beauty of nature The wondrous nature of each other. Our presence here binds us as a community. It empowers us. It strengthens us. We become most visible, en mass. We extend our reach. We sense new possibilities. And the creative spark which births action can usher in a new world.

Open America! Show yourself! Mass action! This is why, and how, recent movements for freedom in Tunisia and Egypt gained momentum.  This is how Gandhi’s march to the sea cast off the British Empire. This is how America’s suffragette gained for women the right to vote. This is how Dr. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington became a pivotal moment in the history of the civil rights movement.

People became visible. They went to the streets. They linked arms. They marched. They sang: “We Shall Overcome”. They walked the uplit path of social and economic justice. They marched to glory, not for themselves, but for generations to come.

We gather in a common determination for change.  A sense of commonality of purpose awakens. An awareness grows. The moment arrives to exercise a new commitment to cast off an old order of things. This same awareness brought America’s founders to put in writing a Declaration of Independence to proclaim “A New Order Follows”.  Today it is not a financial deficit that will bring America down, it is a deficit of public action. When people discover what happens when one person determines to make a difference and then merges with the many like-minded, new possibilities unfold.

Seattle, you understand this. Because in 1999, tens of thousands of citizen activists, including Teamsters and “Turtles”, coursed through nearby streets on behalf of social and economic justice. They marched. They chanted. They sang: We Shall Overcome, and Solidarity Forever!” They spoke of Union. Acting in unity their presence was felt.

The Seattle WTO protests shined light upon the World Trade Organization‘s workings. Seattleites, union members and trade activists helped spark a world-wide awareness that trade agreements must have enforceable workers’ rights, human rights and environmental quality principles. You identified the child labor, slave labor and prison labor that was driving international corporate profits. While the cause of justice in our trade agreements has yet to be served, you, Seattle brought it forward.  You nurtured it. You kept it alive.

Large, intentional gatherings can be a catalyst for dramatic change. But only if we are prepared, as George Bernard Shaw wrote, “to dream things that never were and ask: ‘Why not?’  Let us dream about the America we want. And let us give our dreams firmament.

Let our dreams, our thoughts, become words. Let our words become deeds. Let our deeds bring action. Let our actions build a new America and a new world.

Seattle, you shook the world once, can you shake it again? Will you?

Are you prepared to declare and demand, here and now that it is time United States bring an end to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya?

Are you prepared to demand our troops be brought home?

Are you prepared to demand America end our world-wide military presence?

Are you prepared to demand America must lead the world in the abolition of nuclear weapons?

Are you prepared to demand the Patriot Act must be repealed?

Are you prepared to demand that government spying, eavesdropping, and wiretapping of law-abiding citizens must end?

That our sisters’ Right to Privacy be protected and decisions about women’s reproductive health be between a woman and her doctor?

Are you prepared to demand that our brothers and sisters who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered have equal rights, including the right to marry?

Are you prepared to demand we decriminalize and legalize marijuana, demand hospitalization not incarceration for those with drug problems?

Are you prepared to demand Not-for-profit Health Care for All?

Education for All?

Retirement Security for All?

Jobs for All?

Are you prepared to rescue our federal government from corporate interests by calling for a constitutional amendment which establishes only public financing of federal elections?

Are you prepared to rescue our planet, to protect our air, water, and land from further exploitation by demanding an end to drilling the earth, fracking the earth, cracking the earth, and end to poisoning the seas and the skies with carbon based energies, and a rapid transition to an environmentally friendly, socially responsible green economy?

This day, here and now, you have now voiced the Seattle Declaration. Let the sound of your voice be heard far and wide. Let your affirmations give birth to new actions, a new nation and a new world. Let your voice cause America to march. Let your voice cause America to sing. Let your voice cause America to seek new freedoms. Let your voice cause America to seek a newer world.  Ours is a restless quest for freedom.  We know wars make us less free. Fear makes us less free. Social and economic insecurity makes us less free. If it is for freedom’s sake we gather, so then let it be for freedom’s sake that we act!

Our individual desire for change carries extraordinary power to become more than we are. Better than we are.  Forged in the human heart, ignited by love and passion for transformation, our common unity, our common purpose and our common action carry the power to change everything.  This is the power of human unity. This is the power of our Oneness. Feel it. Own it. Act upon it.

Thank you Seattle.

The Co-op is turning 4! We would love for you to stop in and help us celebrate! Everyone will be honorary members all week, from 8/22-8/27, and will save 7% at the register and 15% off of special orders. If you are not a member and shop that week you will be entered into a drawing to become a member.

And to show our members how grateful we are we will enter you in a gift certificate drawing, one entry for every $10 you spend in the store. You can use the gift certificate for in-store purchases or special orders.

We are so glad to be here for everyone and can’t wait to see you here!

Thank you Pocatello, for four fantastic years, and many more to come!

While the mindless Faux News crowd waves the flag, the Bible, and chants USA-USA-USA, our country moves steadily down toward mediocrity and worse.

Enough. I’m looking for something else. Since I’ve been old enough to vote  I’ve been a Democrat. I cast my first vote for George McGovern. I’ve always  thought of the Democrats as embracing and representing certain ideals and practices which I also embrace. No more.  The Democratic party has moved so far to the right that Ronald Reagan would be comfortable with their so-called ideals.

I started looking around and I finally came to The Green Party, USA. Their Motto, Another U.S. is Possible-Another Party is Necessary, struck a chord with me as it echoed my thinking. I checked their platform and discovered that most of what I had previously sought from Democrats and was no longer finding, concepts of social and economic justice, ecological justice and long-term sustainability, they were all encompassed in the Green Party Platform. A foreign policy based on peace and disarmament rather than economic hegemony and sustained violence. A domestic policy based on truth, respect, and justice for all. It all there, enumerated in the 10 Key Values of the Green Party . I’ve posted them below.

So now what. There has been a Green Party in Idaho , although you wouldn’t know it. It seems to be in some kind of state of flux now. It is my intent to ignore them for now and ee if we and a get a Green Party going in SE Idaho. I’m going to start spreading the word and see if we can organize a meet-up of interested persons for some date in mid-September. If you are interested in participating, let me know. If you think I’m crazy, let me know that too. Now, here are the  10 Key Values:

1. GRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY
Every human being deserves a say in the decisions that affect their lives and not be subject to the will of another. Therefore, we will work to increase public participation at every level of government and to ensure that our public representatives are fully accountable to the people who elect them. We will also work to create new types of political organizations which expand the process of participatory democracy by directly including citizens in the decision-making process.

2. SOCIAL JUSTICE AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
All persons should have the rights and opportunity to benefit equally from the resources afforded us by society and the environment. We must consciously confront in ourselves, our organizations, and society at large, barriers such as racism and class oppression, sexism and homophobia, ageism and disability, which act to deny fair treatment and equal justice under the law.

3. ECOLOGICAL WISDOM
Human societies must operate with the understanding that we are part of nature, not separate from nature.  We must maintain an ecological balance and live within the ecological and resource limits of our communities and our planet. We support a sustainable society which utilizes resources in such a way that future generations will benefit and not suffer from the practices of our generation. To this end we must practice agriculture which replenishes the soil; move to an energy efficient economy; and live in ways that respect the integrity of natural systems.

4. NON-VIOLENCE
It is essential that we develop effective alternatives to society’s current patterns of violence. We will work to demilitarize, and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, without being naive about the intentions of other governments.  We recognize the need for self-defense and the defense of others who are in helpless situations. We promote non-violent methods to oppose practices and policies with which we disagree, and will guide our actions toward lasting personal, community and global peace.

5. DECENTRALIZATION
Centralization of wealth and power contributes to social and economic injustice, environmental destruction, and militarization. Therefore, we support a restructuring of social, political and economic institutions away from a system which is controlled by and mostly benefits the powerful few, to a democratic, less bureaucratic system. Decision-making should, as much as possible, remain at the individual and local level, while assuring that civil rights are protected for all citizens.

6. COMMUNITY-BASED ECONOMICS AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE
We recognize it is essential to create a vibrant and sustainable economic system, one that can create jobs and provide a decent standard of living for all people while maintaining a healthy ecological balance. A successful economic system will offer meaningful work with dignity, while paying a “living wage” which reflects the real value of a person’s work.

Local communities must look to economic development that assures protection of the environment and workers’ rights; broad citizen participation in planning; and enhancement of our “quality of life.” We support independently owned and operated companies which are socially responsible, as well as co-operatives and public enterprises that distribute resources and control to more people through democratic participation.

7. FEMINISM AND GENDER EQUITY
We have inherited a social system based on male domination of politics and economics. We call for the replacement of the cultural ethics of domination and control with more cooperative ways of interacting that respect differences of opinion and gender. Human values such as equity between the sexes, interpersonal responsibility, and honesty must be developed with moral conscience. We should remember that the process that determines our decisions and actions is just as important as achieving the outcome we want.

8. RESPECT FOR DIVERSITY
We believe it is important to value cultural, ethnic, racial, sexual, religious and spiritual diversity, and to promote the development of respectful relationships across these lines.

We believe that the many diverse elements of society should be reflected in our organizations and decision-making bodies, and we support the leadership of people who have been traditionally closed out of leadership roles. We acknowledge and encourage respect for other life forms than our own and the preservation of biodiversity.

9. PERSONAL AND GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY
We encourage individuals to act to improve their personal well-being and, at the same time, to enhance ecological balance and social harmony. We seek to join with people and organizations around the world to foster peace, economic justice, and the health of the planet.

10. FUTURE FOCUS AND SUSTAINABILITY
Our actions and policies should be motivated by long-term goals. We seek to protect valuable natural resources, safely disposing of or “unmaking” all waste we create, while developing a sustainable economics that does not depend on continual expansion for survival. We must counterbalance the drive for short-term profits by assuring that economic development, new technologies, and fiscal policies are responsible to future generations who will inherit the results of our actions.

Ten Key Values from other state and local Greens.
There is no authoritative version of the Ten Key Values of the Greens.  The Ten Key Values are guiding principles that are adapted and defined to fit each state and local chapter.