AND I KNOW YOU'RE ALL WONDERING:

...why the hell do i still have dial-up?  because i'm a retarded luddite and just haven't managed to get it together to do another thing.  and now i have a new modem, and yes the old one got fried by the lightning yesterday because i had the line directly running from the phone jack to the computer instead of thru the surge protector.  see?  retarded luddite.  anyway, it won't happen again.  and eventually i'll get a whole new computer and then i'll get a better method of connecting.  until when, i muddle on.  but i'm glad to be able to get online, albeit in an antiquated fashion, in my own little home office. 

before the bottom dropped out of my world last month, i was regularly chronicaling the environmental evils of this administration.  since that time i have mostly just been writing of my life events, with a few political musings thrown in.  i do intend to return to providing links and news from the environmental front, but not just yet.  my mental energy has been spent dealing with the constant barrage of news from Iraq and Washington. 

today i finally had the energy to get out into my own environment and start to work on the wild jungle that it has all become.  i had a wonderful time out there, spent a lot of it mowing down the rain forest that is the back "lawn."  because i use a battery-powered mower i can never get the whole thing done in one session.  the battery runs out before the yard is finished, and that's okay because at that point i have about "run out" of juice as well.  i love my mower: it's quiet, mulches the grass as it cuts it, uses no petroleum products so doesn't emit fumes nor smell bad. after i mowed i spend some gratifying time aerobically weeding, pulling out last year's morning glory vines, dead stalks of monarda and other perennials - all things i should have done two months ago. my neighbor strolls through his yard with a tank of chemicals, cheerfully killing his weeds, but i garden entirely organically, so my weeds have had time to grow into the Bionic Plants from Hell.

Tank Gurl has been raving (in this and previous entries) about the 17 year brood of cicadas emerging in her D.C. back yard, but they haven't gotten here yet.  D.C.'s only 100 miles away, so i expect to see them any day now.  in the meantime, the peonies are in full blowsy bloom, the rhododendrons have almost run their course but still quite splendidly blooming.  i'm not sure what the biblical horde of cicadas will choose to munch on;  i'm hoping they go up into the trees rather than devastate my perennials.  despite the weeds, things are coming along beautifully, herbs and flowers anyway.  i never yet have gotten any vegetables planted, though i have three tomato plants a friend gave me from her plantings.  they're delicious little yellow grape babies, we had them last year too.

now i must go take a serious shower, and go off to yet another graduation.  this one is the college commencement - we have eight former ESL program students graduating from the college itself this year.  one of them was my ESL student when he was in high school.  my first teaching experience in Delaware was working with the kids in a local high school who needed help with their English.  it was the very worst kind of ESL program, called a "pull out" program, but we managed to accomplish some good stuff.  this kid who's graduating tonight is Chinese, he and his sister were terrific students in high school, he took some of the advanced level ESL courses, then went into the microcomputers program in the college.  he intends to transfer to the Univ. of Michigan for next year.  someone remarked in a previous post that i sound like a proud parent about these graduates, and yes i guess that's true.  i've know this guy since he was sixteen - i almost feel like a parent.  and i am, indeed, proud of all of them.