Purchases of the day.

From the February 17, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

Snyders Old Fashioned Pretzel Sticks 3 pounds 7 ounces (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $1.00)

(3) Jones Oboe Reed Medium (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $2.82)

ch ching:

Black & Decker SPCM1936 19-Inch 36-Volt Cordless Electric Self-Propelled Lawn Mower With Removable Battery (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $33.67)

... and 57 other items purchased — at no additional cost to the buyers — giving the blogger that warm, sweet, softly piercing, lush, straight untwisted feeling of being appreciated by some of the greatest blog readers of her generation.

Thank you.

Are "community gardens" too ugly to have in a conspicuous place in a city park?

Controversy in Madison, Wisconsin.

Critics of the plan say weeds and scraggly vines would be visible to nearby residents and cars rushing by on West Washington Avenue, and that public park land should not be carved up for gardens used by only a few.

But.... vegetables!!!!

"Listen, I like stopping by Althouse, but let's get real. Althouse and Meade are living a high-income, privileged life that many of us can only dream about."

Rants Jeffrey in my "time to stop talking about the election and have our lives be about love and beauty" post.

It takes a day like today to put all of that into focus. Cultivate your garden?! I've seen the photos of where she and Meade live. C'mon. Many of us would love to live surrounded by all those expensive toys and have the summer off to order a pile of books for the Kindle and take a few leisurely vacations.

The class (and income) issue rarely comes up here. I think it's about time we hashed this out.

As others have pointed out above, Ann's cavalier, gather-ye-rosebuds response is predicated on being financially stable for the rest of her life. She has the good life NOW and will have it till the day she dies (or almost).

Let me repeat, though. I generally enjoy Ann's blog, but today seems like a good time for people to discuss this issue.

I'd said "cultivate your garden" in a comment in that thread. It's a reference to Voltaire's advice in "Candide" — damn, I typo'd "candidate"! — where it's not just advice for the comfortably affluent. Here, you can put it in your Kindle — in English — for $0.00 — absolutely free. You can read the greatest books ever written and never run out of reading material — all free. 

And I have the summer off because I choose not to teach during the summer. I choose not to make more money. As for Meade's economic choices, you don't know what they are, and I choose not to invade our privacy by explaining the structure of the economic unit that is our household. But we do, in many ways, choose noncommercial activities over moneymaking things, and we take advantage of the wealth that we have built up in our lives by enjoying our home and the natural beauty of our state and our country. We buy a state park sticker for our car every year and county ski and bike trail passes, and we never run out of incredibly cheap things to do.

If Meade and I were starting our lives together and in our 20s — a topic we've discussed many times — we would put a premium on love and beauty and on maximizing our free time... and our freedom generally. But that isn't where we happened to meet. You may be somewhere else, and if you are, use your brain. Figure out what your values really are and what you should be doing with your life. You are not your job. You are not a slave. Think! Pay attention! Do something with what you have. Don't pester your mind with envy. It's perfectly idiotic to wait for the world to change into a form you like.

That's what Voltaire was talking about when he had his long-suffering character Candide say:

"I know... that we must cultivate our garden."

"You are right," said Pangloss, "for when man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, that he might cultivate it; which shows that man was not born to be idle."

"Let us work," said Martin, "without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable."

The whole little society entered into this laudable design, according to their different abilities. Their little plot of land produced plentiful crops. Cunegonde was, indeed, very ugly, but she became an excellent pastry cook; Paquette worked at embroidery; the old woman looked after the linen. They were all, not excepting Friar Giroflée, of some service or other; for he made a good joiner, and became a very honest man.

Pangloss sometimes said to Candide: "There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts."

"All that is very well," answered Candide, "but let us cultivate our garden."

At the Garden Angel Café...

... there's a seat for you.

At the Topographic Café...

... get cultivated.

At the Blue Rail Café...

... you can settle in for the night.

At the Garden Bench Café...

... I'll just wait around until somebody says something interesting.

At the Events Garden Café...

... you could walk down the aisle.

At the Salad Garden Café...

... you can eat all you like.

In the Foxglove Café...

... it's a digital café and a digitalis café.

Weed Searing.

It's Meade versus weed in this searing story of a man and his blowtorch:

At the Winter Fountain Café...

... you can see things you're not meant to see.

NYT "Frugal Traveler" comes to Madison.

Concentrates on biking, eating burgers, and drinking Wisconsin beer (including Leinenkugel). Following some rule of frugal traveling, he stays in the outlying town of MacFarland, and then has to bike 10 miles to get back to his room at night — after tanking up with beer. I don't quite get that. He went to some of my favorite places — Olbrich Gardens, Picnic Point, the Capitol building. But he doesn't seem to notice any protesting. In fact, there's nothing about politics at all!

At the Serenity Café...

... I'm off tonight. I know there was a debate. Feel free to talk about it or anything else. I watched it. We talked amongst ourselves here at Meadhouse. But any written commentary will have to wait until morning.

ADDED: Here's my son John's live-blog of the debate.

"School garden organizers around Madison say running a garden is not without its challenges, and one of the biggest is getting teachers involved."

Should school teachers be doing the gardening?

"Teachers just don't have the time," [Mary Michaud, a parent who started the garden at Madison's Van Hise Elementary.] "And many don't have the training or the instructional support to do it."

Suddenly, they want you to be a farm worker!

As a result, many school gardens primarily are run by parent volunteers, who can be in short supply in schools with high poverty rates where parents don't usually have time for gardening.

Poverty? Do middle-class parents have more time?

But Max Lubarsky, who has worked as an Americorp volunteer at Glendale and this fall will be an educational assistant, and Joe Muellenberg, youth nutrition educator with UW-Extension, have in the last two years revived the school garden. They hope it will attract more parent and teacher interest.

The two moved the garden from the back of the school where it often flooded to the front and built 11 raised beds, including three in the shape of pizza slices growing basil, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant and cilantro.

Lubarsky said students participating in a Madison School & Community Recreation program do most of the work at the garden now, but incorporating it into curriculum is "definitely a goal for the future."

So... there's no teaching. Just farm work for the kids. But it's okay to compel this for them because... why? Because you think they're fat? But your garden is premised on pizza!

Teachers don't need to go out and dig in the garden; they can simply hold math class among the tomatoes to get students thinking about the environment and being outside, he said.

The old outdoor class. Does that ever work? I say teach in the classroom and then give the kids some time to go out and play, freely. Not work in the sun.

I'm not against gardens, by the way. I love gardens. And I think a school garden could be a great learning experience. I just have a problem with underdeveloped feel-good projects and compulsory menial work.

At the Reflection Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

At the Graffiti Bridge Café...

... you can hang out and talk about anything... except the President's speech and the football (and baseball) game. (Scroll down if you're looking for a place to talk about those things. This is a grab bag. Anything else!)

At the Leaf-Green Café...

... don't be hostile.

"We use a lot of rocks in our landscaping... Every time we take a trip, I'm somehow able to take a rock home in my suitcase."

Okay... but I remember when Lucille Ball did that in "The Long, Long Trailer." It was very disturbing!

"I didn't mean to lie to you, [R]icky. But they mean so much to me! [R]icky, stop it!"

"Do you realize she could have killed the 2 of us? She and her rocks and her raspberry jam!"

(Harrowing driving scene at the second link, and if you keep watching, you'll end up with hot Lucy-and-Ricky sex symbolized by the flapping of the trailer door.)

At the Indoor/Outdoor Café...

... the desk-bound half of Meadhouse is standing up and the lawncare half is sitting down.



That's the way it is right now.