The Oxford Project

This evening Judy, Rick, and I went to the Englert Theater in downtown Iowa City for a reading from The Oxford Project, a new book from Peter Feldstein and Stephen Bloom. Peter is a friend of ours, and has been a friend of Judy's for years. The book gives an intimate and honest portrait of the small town of Oxford, Iowa, through photographs of people taken 21 years apart and through candid interviews with them. The reading tonight was in a theatrical style, with individuals reading the things that townspeople have said. Very effective, quite touching, and a wonderful look at small-town America. As Bloom said this evening, when you want to understand the real history of America, you won't get it from Sarah Palin or Barack Obama -- you'll get it from understanding the lives of people like these. A remarkable project about a very real town and the very real people in it.

My spam filter must work

I keep reading about email "whispering" campaigns that spread rumors about the Presidential (and Vice-Presidential) candidates by anonymous or pseudonymous email. Either the spam filters on my Mac or the filters that Stanislaus uses must be doing a good job, because I'm just not seeing them. In any case, I would never believe anything that did not come with full and verifiable citations, because I have never taken anyone else's word for anything like that. Perhaps this is part of my training as a mathematician; perhaps it is a trust in my own ability to discern; perhaps it is too much early exposure to preachers who told me that I must believe only what they told me.

It really doesn't matter anyway, because I got my mail-in ballot in the mail today. There are some local candidates I need to look at, but I expect to return the ballot by Monday. November 4 comes in September this year -- which would probably be a better title for this entry anyway!

Nobody asked me, but...

Interesting watching and listening to the political developments in the last few days. I had a strange thought about the Republican VP situation today. I suggest:

* Johh McCain knows that Palin is not really capabile of being a worthwhile Veep. He'd have to be as dumb as W to believe that, and he isn't.

* When JM is dealing with a real issue, Pailin isn't with JM -- Lieberman is.

So I'll put up the following two-part conjecture:

* Palin was chosen as eye candy and as a frisky distraction, and if JM is elected she'll carry out the public duties of the Veep. But the real contributions that a Veep would make won't come from Palin -- they'll come from Lieberman.

* if JM should become seriously ill, Palin will resign JM will name Lieberman as VP so he can take over.

As I said, nobody asked me, but this just might be plausible. YMMV...

First touches of fall

Fall is here -- it sneaked in while I was being vetted for the jury on Monday -- but it really doesn't feel like it yet. The temperatures are still in the upper 70s and lower 80s, with lows only in the 60s. Not at all fall temperatures in the upper Midwest. But this is good, because corn and soybeans are delayed from the late spring and floods, and this will let farmers get in those crops.

There are ways we can tell that fall is getting here, though. Our bush that turns bright scarlet is starting to get some red highlights, and the first newspaper story about a vehicle hitting a deer appeared the day before yesterday. Time to start slowing down on the roads in our neighborhood that go through the woods; I don't want a repeat of my deer collision a couple of years ago!

Jury duty

I've had jury duty the last couple of days. I was selected yesterday for a criminal jury, and today we heard the prosecution testimony before a recess; after the recess we heard that the defendent had reached a plea agreement and we were released. The details aren't important, but I am comfortable that justice was done for both society and the defendent.

Johnson County has an interesting jury system. The shorthand name is "one day or one trial" -- you come in on Monday and are either selected for a jury that day or released. In either case, this is your jury exposure for four years (or longer). Because of the modest requirements, there are very few exclusions; everyone serves. This is a better system than the one-week exposure in Stanislaus County, California, but even that was better than many other counties. So I'm pleased to have been able to serve, and pleased at the treatment that jurors and potential jurors received. And it doesn't hurt that the jury payment was actually reasonable, given the amount of time I had to give -- much better than the minimal wage.

Our snake

Yesterday Rick and I saw a snake by the retaining wall in front of our house. It was a very small snake, probably just hatched this year, but I didn't recognize it (not that I have such a broad herpetological experience or anything). I took a photo (below) and looked it up online, and it seems to be a brown snake; Rick verified it with a better online reference. As we were looking at it, it crawled into the wall in a very small space between blocks. So now I guess we have a Resident Snake to help protect us from small insects.

Amana artisans studio tour today

There was a tour of artisans' studios in the Amana Colonies this weekend, and Rick went with us today to look around. It was a lovely warm not-quite-fall day, and a great excuse to be out. There were a number of places on the tour, but -- this being the Amanas -- some of them weren't open on Sundays. We ended up visiting a glass studio (mostly layered glass), a tinsmith who was both making new objects and re-creating antique pieces, a broom and basket shop that had some wonderful art baskets, and a coppersmith who mostly made oversized insects and frogs-with-martini-glasses. I really didn't get it on that last one...

At the broom and basket shop we found this hard-working fellow connected to a windmill that kept him going. There was a large woodpile out behind the basket show, so he must have put in a very productive summer. Wind power for the worker, firewood for winter -- sounds like a localized solution to energy problems to me!