Pie Face

FPD 11 Picnic - who's the Pie Face? My sister Ellen, of course!

This fight isn't over until every family is reunified

This fight isn't over until every family is reunified, every immigrant is granted due process, and the Trump administration stops its detention and deportation machine. https://www.aclu.org

It Can Happen Here

Today's reading assignment for patriots. Don't worry, it won't make you depressed, just more informed and smarter!

Cass Sunstein writes, in a review of They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45 by Milton Mayer and Broken Lives: How Ordinary Germans Experienced the Twentieth Century by Konrad H. Jarausch Princeton University Press)

Liberal democracy has enjoyed much better days. Vladimir Putin has entrenched authoritarian rule and is firmly in charge of a resurgent Russia. In global influence, China may have surpassed the United States, and Chinese president Xi Jinping is now empowered to remain in office indefinitely. In light of recent turns toward authoritarianism in Turkey, Poland, Hungary, and the Philippines, there is widespread talk of a “democratic recession.” In the United States, President Donald Trump may not be sufficiently committed to constitutional principles of democratic government.  

In such a time, we might be tempted to try to learn something from earlier turns toward authoritarianism, particularly the triumphant rise of the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s. The problem is that Nazism was so horrifying and so barbaric that for many people in nations where authoritarianism is now achieving a foothold, it is hard to see parallels between Hitler’s regime and their own governments. Many accounts of the Nazi period depict a barely imaginable series of events, a nation gone mad. That makes it easy to take comfort in the thought that it can’t happen again.

But some depictions of Hitler’s rise are more intimate and personal. They focus less on well-known leaders, significant events, state propaganda, murders, and war, and more on the details of individual lives. They help explain how people can not only participate in dreadful things but also stand by quietly and live fairly ordinary days in the midst of them. They offer lessons for people who now live with genuine horrors, and also for those to whom horrors may never come but who live in nations where democratic practices and norms are under severe pressure.

Milton Mayer’s 1955 classic They Thought They Were Free, recently republished with an afterword by the Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans, was one of the first accounts of ordinary life under Nazism. Dotted with humor and written with an improbably light touch, it provides a jarring contrast with Sebastian Haffner’s devastating, unfinished 1939 memoir, Defying Hitler, which gives a moment-by-moment, you-are-there feeling to Hitler’s rise. (The manuscript was discovered by Haffner’s son after the author’s death and published in 2000 in Germany, where it became an immediate sensation.)*

A much broader perspective comes from Konrad Jarausch’s Broken Lives, an effort to reconstruct the experience of Germans across the entire twentieth century. What distinguishes the three books is their sense of intimacy. They do not focus on historic figures making transformative decisions. They explore how ordinary people attempted to navigate their lives under terrible conditions.

Haffner’s real name was Raimund Pretzel. (He used a pseudonym so as not to endanger his family while in exile in England.) He… (Continued behind paywall but you get the idea)

June 2018 Political Memes

Never forget that it was people speaking up that caused the reversal of policy (or at least its announcement - we'll have to see how it plays out.) Enjoy the win, then get back to work!

One way to look at The Red Hen affair - you can't abuse gays and Hispanics during the day, and expect their friends to serve you at night. Your money ain't that good.
Also you gotta wonder how someone who publicly pushes anti-Hispanic and anti-gay movements expects their food not to have additives hahaha. I suppose it's a tribute to the basic decency of cooks that there isn't more special in the sauce.

Succulent Near Bus Stop

It's so very important to keep straight the garden vs. the culinary meanings of "succulent"

Garden of Peas

These are from pods dried a couple years ago. They seem to be growing ok

A neighbor's rock wall sprouts life

I didn't plant this, but it intrigues me!

Arthur Says Good Morning!

I love all my cats, but the one that gets me up in the morning is Arthur.
It's not a question of affection so much as his persistence haha!

Gutter Talk!

Last week I got a bunch of bids and the winner was MVP Gutters. They install my new gutters today, and it looks great. Thanks!!

I Defend Rights Project

There is a new project that was recently launched by some NGOs on human rights defenders. The project is looking for some participants.
What is a human rights defender? The UN says "they can be anyone who acts at any moment for any human rights."
 Have you stood up for any causes yesterday? Do you stand up for causes today? Then participate by telling your story here

And read the stories of others here
https://app.memria.org/i-defend-rights/

Brother Bee in the Poppy Near the Chamomile

Today was spent relaxing and cleaning and watching the bees among my flowers