Greens

Yes, greens! It's CSA season. I picked up my first Green Thumb Farm dividends last night: two heads of lettuce, a bag of spinach, bunch of spring onions, clump of asparagus, bunches of pepper cress and oregano. Big salads in the near future.

In my change I found a 100 Yen coin, which is slightly larger than our nickel. Did I get it at Tazza (chocolate croissant) or the cafeteria (lunch) in Stamford? Cherry blossoms on the obverse, “100” on the reverse, along with a smaller “63” amid the Japanese characters. Examples I found on the ‘net have “45” and “52” in this spot. What does this smaller number mean? Note that the 500 Y coin has a paulownia design. Everything connects.
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It was 19 years ago today that the Chinese state sent in the tanks to crush its own people’s hopes in Tiananmen Square. The state remains as brutal as ever, but has, for the moment, purchased its legitimacy with the baubles of capitalism and the red shirt of nationalism. I was in Beijing in May of 1989, after the first small gatherings in the Square but before the great flowering of people’s democarcy there; one night, going across town in a city bus after dinner, the warm spring air was absolutely electric with promise. That will return, for the corrupt military-Party oligarchy can’t hold the mandate of heaven forever.
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We were reminded that when Obama was 2 years old, African Americans in Southern states were still disenfranchised after a century of American apartheid. Today, he’s virtually the Democratic Party’s candidate for President. You keep hearing Clintonites saying, in pique, that they will vote for John McBush. So they think he’s her compliment, eh? Then maybe she’d make a good GOP VP candidate. Obama needs a fighting populist like Jim Webb as his running mate, not another triangulating soft-Republican hack.