"I don’t think I have ever been so behind in everything I am obligated to do"
Oh, god, tell me about it. My old friend 'nagging physical injury' is slowing me down.
"how the friend who’s helping us transform it from a haven for thistles and knapweed into a place where food grows said that everyone around here has clay soil (true) but you could actually throw pots with ours."
Mine is red clay and practically mortar when it dries. The only way to dig it is to go after it with a pick axe and then shovel. Unless there's a heavy rain, and then maybe you could throw a kind of crumbly pot with it. (Also the source of my 'nagging physical injury'.)
"I have no idea whether substantive protection for liberty has long been controversial in legal circles or not, but the focus on it seems understated in conversations about this decision"
It is when you are talking about that and Jim Crow and the Federalist Society. The entire argument that segregation was constitutionally legit was based on the argument that state governments in the South need only meet formal procedural requirements, and then they could racially segregate away. That understanding went way out of fashion in the 50's and 60's and racial conservatives hated that. So they created the Federalist Society to plant lots of judges who would work to reverse that and here we are. The fighting (and the lying about it) has been constant and intense my entire life (and was obviously the same during Jim Crow). Normal Americans think that means, coarsely, that the government cannot go after you on the basis of race, as the obvious reading of what a Lincoln Republican Congress was intending to do, and Neo-Confederate Americans think that they just need to come up with a way to manage a de facto nullification the amendment because racism is awesome. 'Equal treatment' arguments are the underlying basis for pretty much all the opinions that came out of the 'rights revolution', so nuking the basis for those decisions would allow all those state governments to go back to their previous shitty laws and the shitty and oppressive behaviour they used to engage in.
Thanks for this post. It has revived my spirits. When face with Ukraine, Uvalde, and the ongoing ills of a planet that we are relentlessly pushing toward its pull date, it's difficult to know where to aim my anxiety and anger. Or where to temporarily store it so I can think about the mundane tasks that keep chaos at bay.
Right now, I'm reading The Nutmeg's Curse, by Amitav Ghosh. It's a moving and brilliant analysis of how we got to where we are now, and it brings to mind many of your posts about ownership, the commons, and personal liberty. So, please keep up the good writing. In the meantime, searching for something that might bring me a small measure of peace of mind, I'm going to try making a version of your friends' cross-stitch art that's addressed to SCOTUS.
I'm so behind too. Ugh.
"I don’t think I have ever been so behind in everything I am obligated to do"
Oh, god, tell me about it. My old friend 'nagging physical injury' is slowing me down.
"how the friend who’s helping us transform it from a haven for thistles and knapweed into a place where food grows said that everyone around here has clay soil (true) but you could actually throw pots with ours."
Mine is red clay and practically mortar when it dries. The only way to dig it is to go after it with a pick axe and then shovel. Unless there's a heavy rain, and then maybe you could throw a kind of crumbly pot with it. (Also the source of my 'nagging physical injury'.)
"I have no idea whether substantive protection for liberty has long been controversial in legal circles or not, but the focus on it seems understated in conversations about this decision"
It is when you are talking about that and Jim Crow and the Federalist Society. The entire argument that segregation was constitutionally legit was based on the argument that state governments in the South need only meet formal procedural requirements, and then they could racially segregate away. That understanding went way out of fashion in the 50's and 60's and racial conservatives hated that. So they created the Federalist Society to plant lots of judges who would work to reverse that and here we are. The fighting (and the lying about it) has been constant and intense my entire life (and was obviously the same during Jim Crow). Normal Americans think that means, coarsely, that the government cannot go after you on the basis of race, as the obvious reading of what a Lincoln Republican Congress was intending to do, and Neo-Confederate Americans think that they just need to come up with a way to manage a de facto nullification the amendment because racism is awesome. 'Equal treatment' arguments are the underlying basis for pretty much all the opinions that came out of the 'rights revolution', so nuking the basis for those decisions would allow all those state governments to go back to their previous shitty laws and the shitty and oppressive behaviour they used to engage in.
elm
sorry for mansplaining
Thanks for this post. It has revived my spirits. When face with Ukraine, Uvalde, and the ongoing ills of a planet that we are relentlessly pushing toward its pull date, it's difficult to know where to aim my anxiety and anger. Or where to temporarily store it so I can think about the mundane tasks that keep chaos at bay.
Right now, I'm reading The Nutmeg's Curse, by Amitav Ghosh. It's a moving and brilliant analysis of how we got to where we are now, and it brings to mind many of your posts about ownership, the commons, and personal liberty. So, please keep up the good writing. In the meantime, searching for something that might bring me a small measure of peace of mind, I'm going to try making a version of your friends' cross-stitch art that's addressed to SCOTUS.