Le Monde Circa 1975

Michael (Crossed Out)

The Girl 2008

Sacrifice I

Michael Out Of Egypt June 21, 2008

Zyema's Garden June 3, 2007

Hello Kitty Admires The Baby Jesus March 8, 2005

My daughter hasn't quite got the hang of religion yet.  She wanted a nativity scene, and we got her one from Saint Vincent DePaul. She called it her Jesus set, and mixed in Hello Kitty and farm and jungle animals. I figure the Mary I grew up with wouldn't mind that much.

Jasmine March 14, 2005

My Night Blooming Jasmine has started to bloom already. I have two big plants in pots in my sun room. I bring them inside in the Fall and put them back out on the porch in the Summer. They've never bloomed this early before. It's amazing to sit in my sun room in the evening, look out at the moonlit snow and smell Jasmine. I just have one little cluster of about 10 flowers on one plant, which is lucky, since my wife hates the smell. But I grew up with it. One whiff transports me back to hot summer nights in Galveston, Texas, reminds me of the warm waters of the Gulf Of Mexico, brings back the heavy scent of the perfume on the necks of the Mexican girls I held in the back seat of my old man's Pontiac. I worry about what kinds of smells my young daughter is going to remember from her childhood, growing up in Wisconsin. Wood fires maybe. Other Winter smells. But Jasmine, too, come to think of it. She loves it. She tears off one flower every night and takes it to her room.

Deformed Monarch Butterfly March 9, 2005

Princess Zyema January 3, 2005

Princes Zyema Velvet Kitten sits on my lap, purring, and kneads my stomach while I consider this post. She slips behind me on the chair, rubbing her face against my back. This is my daughter's cat, rescued from the Humane Society. She's too young to hunt anything except her little, rabbit-fur mice. She leaps into the air, back arched, tail curved, and comes down on them with all four feet. For some reason, she likes to drop them in her water bowl. There are no mice in the garden now. Everything is under 6 inches of snow.  Where are the mice?  I picture them in their little burrows, sitting in rocking chairs, knitting, sipping tea or smoking pipes. They have no idea what awful deaths await them in the spring.

The Right Way To Secure A Border

Whenever politicians and pundits talk about infrastructure projects that create jobs and put people back to work, they invariably trot out their favorite projects and hook them up to as many current issues as they can.  If they think green jobs are the wave of the future and global warming is a dire threat to the survival of the human race, they come up with something like a massive investment in renewable energy to put people back to work and slow down global warming. Things like that.

I have my own pet infrastructure projects  -- cleaning up Fresh Kills Landfill and other toxic dumps across America, for example.  That one might be incredibly labor intensive. 

Or how about something like the Tennessee Valley Authority along the Rio Grande and the Colorado rivers?

I don't know what it would take to clean up and dam up the Rio Grande and Colorado rivers along the U.S. - Mexico border to produce hydroelectric power, but I know you could put solar and wind farms, desalinization plants and hydroponic gardens along those rivers.  You could put factories with fences around them there. You could create Economic Development Zones -- joint ventures between the U.S. and Mexican governments, the border states and communities, and the private sector -- guaranteed to attract businessmen eager to create great fortunes by getting in early on government programs.  And the power plants and solar and wind farms, along with the desalination plants, factories and who knows what else entrepreneurs might crowd into the development zones, would create a massive barrier to illegal immigration, while providing thousands of jobs.