Dirt Cheap Salad Fixings

Ingrediants:

Seed packets: very cheap. There are often packets of last year's seeds around that are almost as usable as this years; they're supposed to have reduced potentcy, meaning, that  a fraction of the seeds won't sprout. But they're so cheap or free that the difference makes no difference. Keep your eyes open for neighborhood "Seed Swaps"; often they left over from your last year are what someone else is looking for this year, and vice versa.
Red clay pots: They're all over, especially if you kept you eyes open throughout the year and helped out friends who were ridding themselves of excess pots.. Never buy them new; they are very inexpensive 2nd hand, often free because if they have a slight chip they don't sell even though that doesn't affect the functionality.
Space: there are all sorts of spaces begging for a row of clay pots. Next to your house, or on the edge of a sidewalk next to a wall. No-one walks that close to a wall anyway so why not put the space to use?
Dirt: Oddly enough, this is the part that cost me the most. I got a pickup truck load of nice gardening soil for $20. Your prices may vary.

Directions:
Put it all together according to the seed packet direction. Pad the bottom of the pot with a little extra green and brown matter (leaves, twigs - but not pine needles; they're too acidic). Add dirt, seeds and a little water, and you're almost done.

You don't have to set up a whole lot of pots all at once. Everyone has a different schedule. I like to take a break once a day or so and set out another plant or seed another pot. This method means I'm not doing too much all at one time; I can still get my other work done, and use gardening as a fun break instead of a chore. But you must adopt the schedule that its your lifestyle.

The Payoff:
In a few short weeks, nice salad greens! Or perhaps some chard, or mint, our what-have-you. This arises with minimal effort on your part; the quality is great because you know exactly went into making the plant ... and best of all: it's dirt cheap!

OEF/OIF PTSD lawsuit deadline: July 24

A July 24 deadline to opt-in to lawsuit for OEF/OIF vets discharged due to PTSD and shorted benefits is coming up fast.

That means if you qualify, NOW is the time to sign up and opt-in. If you don't, you can still sue on your own but it'll be a whole lot harder without the help of your buddies or the lawyers who are working on the case at no cost to the veterans.

You can learn about it at this website: http://www.ptsdlawsuit.com, but here are the key points:

"This website provides information about a class action lawsuit known as Sabo v. United States. This lawsuit is very important to some (but not all) veterans who were diagnosed during military service with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and then discharged from active duty due, at least in part, to their PTSD.

This lawsuit does not affect most of the tens of thousands of veterans who have been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) over the last 30 years. It only involves veterans who

(a) served on active duty in the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps, or Air Force,
(b) were found by a Physical Evaluation Board to be unfit for continued service due, at least in part, to the individual's PTSD,
(c) were assigned a disability rating for PTSD of less than 50%, and, as a result,
(d) were released, separated, retired, or discharged from active duty after December 17, 2002, and prior to October 14, 2008 (regardless whether such release, separation, retirement, or discharge resulted in the individual's placement on the Temporary Disability Retirement List).

If you are one of the veterans described above, a legal notice about this lawsuit has been sent to you by the National Veterans Legal Services Program (NVLSP). You should receive this legal notice by January 29, 2010. If you receive this legal notice, please read the four categories on the left of this page and click the category that fits your case. This will describe the additional benefits you potentially could receive if you join this lawsuit.

If you are one of the veterans described above and do not receive a legal notice from NVLSP by January 29, 2010, please click on "I DID NOT RECEIVE THE LEGAL NOTICE" on the left of [the website].

To answer a few more questions that might have occured to you, the website FAQ says

• The lawyers who represent the veterans in the Sabo lawsuit are not charging the veterans a fee for their services. These lawyers have agreed not to charge you or other class members a fee if you choose to join the lawsuit.
• If you join this lawsuit, neither the Court nor a military records correction board can reduce the PTSD rating(s) that the PEB assigned to you absent fraud or unusual circumstances.

One problem that I see with all this is that there may be more than a few people with PTSD who aren't receiving their mail at any address that the government has on file. And sometimes mail gets thrown out; it's not a conspiracy, it's just the way things work. So if you think you might qualify or you know someone might qualify, you have about two weeks to contact the National Veterans Legal Services Program Sabo Class Action Litigation and see if you (or the person you know) might qualify. Why not do it now?

LEARN MORE:

• The Complaint
• The United States Court of Federal Claims (not terribly helpful at this time...) 

And a shout-out to my buddy Susan  Avila-Smith at VetWOW for alerting me to this!

Gambling On Hunger: Evil, Or Very Evil?

Another video today, this one really interesting:

Remember when gas was over $4 a gallon in 2008? Remember the global food crisis that resulted in dozens of food riots around the world and plunged over 100 million people around the world into hunger?

Watch this video and explore the rest of the site to learn more about how speculators brought about 2008’s food and oil bubbles. Most importantly, write to your members of Congress telling them to take action to avoid future bubbles. They need to know that this is important to you. Right now, they are only hearing from Wall Street.

Clearly, this seven minute video is a simplification of a complex issue, but it sums up the history behind and key problems brought on by the deregulation of commodity futures markets.

MORE INFORMATION AT:
http://stopgamblingonhunger.com/
Or if you prefer to read text, try "Goldman Sachs Gambled On Starvation".

And of course this ties into the Giant Pool of Money program a while back. Ya know, we humans have got to figure out what to do with that Giant Pool (or Blob) before it hurts more people!

Neighborhood Reading of Declaration of Independence!

This looks like fun ... next year, try doing it in YOUR neighborhood!
More information here.

Planted This Week: Armpit Mint and more

Mint! Who does not love it?

It grows like a weed, asking for little more than space and time. There are many, many kinds, it's native to this region, and you can get starts from friends or family who have too much.

How can you have too much mint? That just doesn't make sense...

A little bit of mint is a great addition to salads or punches up almost any dish (a low-sodium alternative to salt in many cases); it's a legendary-class tea and also good in coffee. (That shot of mint in your latte? why not use leaves!)

Our house has an angle we call the "armpit", a moist area where an extension meets the body of the building. It's overgrown with ferns and a shrub that really don't please us; we think it's one of the spots we're getting mosquitos. Also, they don't contribute to the economic sustainability we're working towards.

Therefore this weekend I cleaned out a bit of the armpit to experiment with native mint. My mother-in-law provide two varieties of starts from her boyfriend's house, and they fit right into the area. I added some biomass when planting them since the soil felt a little depleted.

While planting the starts, I kept getting whiffs of that wonderful minty smell, making this one of the most pleasant planting jobs ever!

With this planting, we can expect to save a little money over time, since in a few months this source of mint will displace about 1 box of purchased tea per month. This reduces also the energy cost of shipping that product. This impacts are not fantasticly huge, but the start-up costs were zero and every little bit helps!

T-Mobile Tussel Ends OK

A month or two ago, I decided I needed to tinker with our phone plan. We had gotten by just fine with a very cheap plan for years, but now that I'm doing some technical writing, I needed unlimited talk time. Since we were on T-Mobile, I took a visit to a T-Mobile store in a large mall.

First Visit: I paid a penalty to end our 2-year contract early. I got a plan with unlimited talk minutes and some other features (e.g. internet for my phone), but no free phone or other come-on; it was a month-to-month plan strictly. I had to get new phone numbers but I figured it'd be worth it. When the new SIM went into my gPhone, I was told it might take some hours or even a day for it to start working, which was really inconvenient for me (...since the whole reason for the change was unlimited talk about work.) They gave me a loaner for a reasonable deposit.

Second Visit: After a week, the new number still didn't work. I went back and they said, "oops wrong SIM!", popped in a new SIM, and it basically worked. I dropped off the loaner and got a credit for the depost, no problem!

Interim: I was not satisfied with the company, since it'd screwed up for a week and not noticed. I got another deal from another company and decided to go with it, cancelling my month-to-month plan. After all, easy cancellation with no penalty is a major feature of going month-to-month.

Then the bill came. They charged me for a whole month, which seemed incorrect to me, since their phone hadn't worked for about 1/4th of the time.

Third Visit: I went back to the mall and explained the situation. After more than a half hour dickering with a voice on the phone, the clerk at the store said they were willing to give me something like $17 and change, plus tax. They just wouldn't do more. This didn't seem right to me; I did not have the use of the phone so I was not going to pay for it. They suggested I get all my paperwork and come back the next day (PRO TIP: bring your paperwork! While they must and did have the records on their computer, I was wrong to assume they would not fetishize the paper copy. Or perhaps someone in the organization would realize it'd be harder to cover their tracks if I had evidence.)

Fourth Visit: I went back with paperwork, plus some text to edit so I could get a little work done while waiting. This time it took only 10 or 15 minutes to get the correct credit. They suggested that it might take a day to work through their comuter system, which is conceivable, so I'll wait until Monday to call and pay the bill.

The End: I don't think this should have taken four visit. I understand technical problems arise but the business side of things should have been resolvable on the 3rd visit. However, I don't really care, since the money side came out o.k., I will never see T-Moble again (...unless they offer a really good deal ;-) and I got a story out of it ... plus validation of the theory that it's not necessary to complain, just be persistent with what you want!

Apply whatever moral you wish to this story; may it never happen to you!
------------
EDITTED: 
Late in June: T-Mobile sent me a couple of robocalls demanding more money.

I had a long phone call with their customer service in which they admitted they'd incorrectly billed me for an additional month on the month-to-month contract. We settled on an amount and I paid, in the assurance that my balance was now zero.

July 6: I received a bill from T-Mobile dated June 25, 2010 demanding more money. I phoned their customer service number and had another long call. With persistence, it was eventually determined that T-Mobile just hadn't processed that a credit yet. The bill was sent out in error. I don't owe anything. My balance should be zero.

There are lessons here, but I don't think I need to point them out.

Village Green Nursery in West Seattle: We Like It!

Tucked away in a West Seattle neighborhood is a friendly little nursery called "Village Green".

It's as if you had a neighbor who really, really liked gardening and was willing to help you out. The first time we went there, we weren't looking to buy; we just talked about our plans for our land and got a lot of good ideas, with no sales pressure, just a love of talking green stuff.

We actually bought stuff on later trips, and found the price and quality to be great. You can learn more about what they stock at their website. We'll be back often, partly for more plants, partly just to enjoy the neighborliness. We like the lavender mocha in their coffee machine too!

Isn't it great to find a local business that does everything you need AND competes on price? It's a long walk from our house but, on the other hand, a long walk through the neighborhood has benefits of its own ... it's like that classical Americana you hear about but is hard to find.

MORE:
http://villagegreenperennials.blogspot.com/

Fairness and McChrystal

Count me among the few who think the McChrystal flap may be overblown.

Granted, he and his staff said things that were over the line: extremely and inappropriately insulting to their civilian superiors and colleagues. Obama has a right to be angry.

Granted, the UCMJ imposes obligations on military personnel that it does not on civilians.

Granted, that I don't know what the best thing to do in Afghanistan may be, but a shooting war seems unlikely to succeed.

But, let us be fair.

McChrystal did not make these comments in a speech or even in writing. He was bitching about his boss and his coworkers.

Bitching about the boss and coworkers is an American tradition. It happens. It happens a lot.

I believe McChrystal is wrong on the facts about his boss and his coworkers. But he did not disobey orders or publicly criticize his CinC. What McChrystal did unwisely is either forget that he had a reporter around, or not change his behavior when one was.

A reporter's job is to report. If the most interesting thing to report is your bitching, it's gonna get reported. That's the job.

Others may talk about whether McChrystal is a key person at a critical point in Afghanistan and so irreplacable; still others may talk about whether military/civilian relations require more respectful attitudes.

Still others may worry that this situation will result in reporters being even more excluded from war coverage.... and I believe that would be bad.

In my opinion, if McChrystal had made his remarks in a more deliberately public way, then it would be clear insubordination and grounds for dismissal. But this is nothing like the MacArthur situation, in which a uniformed general publicly ignored a clear presidential directive.

But I believe in fairness. Bitching in private and forgetting a reporter is around ... or not faking it when a reporter is around ... let's be fair, folks!

Anti-Social Networking Sites

Facebook, the blogosphere, discussion forums such as Craigslist, the whole panoply of internet facilities for connecting with other people anywhere, any time ... have huge potential for social networking, but like any power tool, also have huge potential for destruction.

The ready availiblity of quick stimulations, endlessly repeatable and effortlessly summonable is as addictive as potato chips; you really can't have just one. But unlike potato chips, you can justify the habit with the work you get done using the internet. It may be the perfect addiction!

When you find yourself ignoring people in the same house "just for another minute" then you should know you have a problem. And you can get to fixing that problem just as soon as you reply to this blog. And one more. And N more ...

... there's a reason this post is tagged "Don't Be That Guy".