Sept. 23rd: This is the corn crop I was able to grow this year, less one serving I shared with Virginia late in the summer. Worked out to about 14 ears ranging in size from finger size to about short hot dog size. 13 oz, including cobs and some shucks, but not the stems on shrub's pot.

    

      

     

Thomas L. Friedman definitely gets it on how deep and systemic the problems with consumer culture are. Hot, Flat and Crowded explains a lot of the problems and puts them in perspective very well. I think his rose colored glasses obscure his view in some ways, but that's a minor bone to pick. For sure he's collected a lot of stories that are worth reading into his narrative. Yes, they do add up to a real need for change in the United States. Reading it, I was glad to see evidence of a journalist with mainstream pull "getting it."

     

Read The Kite Runner on my eastbound summer vacation trip. It's an Afghan-American story of how war came to Kabul and how one family escapes. They end up in Fremont, California. That's where the author finished growing up. If you want to know something about Afghan-Americans, this is probably a good book to read. It's a fun read. I gave it away at the Green Party Convention so I'd have room in my kit for stuff like Jill Stein buttons to bring back to San Jose.