Strong Man government

How did the young man who became King David distinguish himself?

He killed Goliath.

Humans want their leaders to be strong.

The commentary preceding the presidential debate this evening is focused almost entirely on the body language we will see. We already know their policies, more or less. The primary question is whether Biden is strong and capable. The secondary question is whether Trump is too crazy to replace Biden, i.e. does Trump have enough self-awareness and self-control to behave appropriately.

The debate tonight is the purest example I could create of a central premise of this blog. Presidential leadership is only a little about policy positions. Policy is the scaffolding for presenting what is important: body language, tone, image. Who looks and sounds like a leader? It is a Hollywood casting decision. 

My Democratic readers are hoping for a strong, articulate, clear-headed Biden. My Republican readers expect to see confirmation that Biden is feeble, and hope that Trump avoids looking like the crazy bully that he appeared to be in the first debate with Biden four years ago. 

We describe our leaders in myths, fables, and stories. The Judeo-Christian-Muslim God is all powerful. Greek gods had powers, but constraints. Strong Achilles was the hero of the Greeks, but he was petulant and selfish, and not its political leader, only its warrior. Hector, hero of the Trojans, combined strength and virtue as the brave and respectful son of the king, the heir apparent. He had strength and virtue, but Achilles' strength overcame Hector's virtuous strength, which was a warning.

Schoolchildren in America learn that George Washington was strong enough to throw a silver dollar across the Potomac. We learned that young Abraham Lincoln was an accomplished rail splitter. 

In a parliamentary system Biden's legislative skills and accomplishments might matter. Democrats are frustrated that the voters don't seem to notice or care. In a presidential system, where voters are electing a commander in chief (the electors are simply a way of counting popular votes) voters want a symbol of themselves and the country they want. They elect an avatar. They want strength and virtue, but first of those is strength. Without strength, there is no opportunity to exercise virtue. Remember Hector.

Winners make the rules and decide what is just and lawful. Trump can never admit to being a loser. He cannot submit to laws and courts. Submission would be off-brand for him. Republican voters who have bonded to Trump accept that set of corollaries to stay loyal to Trump. Republican consider laws to be void and illegitimate when it comes to him. They may eventually regret this, but not yet.

Biden is a poor choice of foil against Trump. Former California District Attorney and Attorney General Kamala Harris might have been a good one but the vice ptesident's office, and perhaps Biden, kept her looking weak. She speaks out clearly only on the "woman's issue" of abortion and on "Black issue" of racial justice, but not on NATO, Ukraine, Israel, the southern border, trade, and external affairs. Democrats may regret that, too, but they are stuck with the leadership they created. The Democratic leader is Biden and today is a public test. If he is strong enough to stand up to Trump, he is strong enough to lead the USA. 

That is the only issue in tonight's debate. 

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Americans are the refs, and we are being "worked." Step one.

"Tell them what you will say.
Say it.
Tell them what you said."

          Speech advice from Aristotle, Mark Twain, Yogi Berra, and my former Medford High School speech and debate teacher, DeVere Taylor

It also works for preparing people to interpret what they are about to see.

Newsmax

Donald Trump, Ronny Jackson, Fox News, and Republicans generally are telling us what we are going to see at the CNN debate between Biden and Trump. We will see a senile puppet.

They are working the refs.  If we think we see something else, we are watching an illusion. Don't believe your eyes. Biden is a puppet, an empty shell controlled by his staff and Barack Obama. They explain that Biden is busy this week memorizing lines to parrot, because he won't have a teleprompter to read. It is Biden's way of cheating, a way of rigging the debate. In any case, even if he hides his senility some way, what you are seeing is a doddering, drooling idiot. Watch for signs of it.

This week they say Biden is practicing how to stand for 90 minutes. Watch for his physical frailty.

We are also being told that if, by any chance, we think we see a sharp, credible Biden able to engage Trump, that we are seeing another form of cheating. Biden will be using performance enhancing drugs of some kind, something strong enough to last for the 90 minutes before he returns to form. Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician, sent a letter to Biden and his physician demanding that Biden be drug-tested both before and after the debate. The letter both presumes Biden previously took performance enhancing drugs and that the administration is dishonest about it.

It’s a terrible reality that I am having to send a letter demanding President Biden submit to a drug test prior to this week’s debate, however, Americans are being left in the dark by a dishonest administration regarding what types of performance enhancing drugs Biden is using for high stakes events like the State of the Union. As the former physician to three United States Presidents, and as a Member of Congress, I see it as my duty to do everything I can to hold this administration accountable, especially when it comes to a President’s fitness for office. 

Jackson's letter has been extensively coveed by Fox News. If Biden seems OK, then it's the drugs.

Moreover, the debate is rigged because CNN and its moderators are biased. House Speaker Mike Johnson said:

CNN is going to rig [the debate] as much as possible and make it as favorable as they possibly can for President Biden.

Trump said the debate will be three of them against one of him. Unfair! This pre-positions CNN to be perceived as prejudiced, especially if they fact-check Trump. If Trump makes outrageous claims, as is his habit, and Biden does not, then CNN moderators will frequently attempt to correct Trump but less so Biden. That will read as CNN being unbalanced, harder on Trump than on Biden. Audiences are being prepared to see this as a matter of CNN bias, not candidate behavior.

Forbes headline

The format of the debate may exacerbate the perception of bias because if Trump is still talking when two minutes are up and his microphone shuts off, it may appear they are unfairly censoring him even though it was simply the agreed-upon rule that microphones would be shut off after the speaker's time is up.

The debate will take place. People will see what they see, which is significantly affected by what they were told they would see.

Then the post-debate "spin." Allies of both candidates will tell us what we saw. The GOP has a simple, repeatable frame for understanding Biden. He is a senile puppet. If we didn't see that on our own, they will point to moments in the debate that are evidence for that conclusion. 

One. Two. Three. 

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Trump Rally: Who wasn't there.

The "Make Oregon Great Again" Trump event.

Readers asked:

       -- Were local Republican candidates and officeholders there?

       -- Did anyone local make a fool of themselves?

No. At least I don't think so. 

I attended the Trump event for almost nine hours. 

Some of the most important things that happen in politics and in life generally are what does not happen. It is hard to notice what isn't there. Still, if I didn't see it while looking and watching, and if no newspapers or TV news people reported on it, then for political purposes, it did not happen. To rephrase an old question:

 "If a politician says something ridiculous and self-destructive while walking in a forest, and the media isn't there to hear and report it, did it really happen?"

The event started a few minutes before I got there. The agenda described the time I missed as time for singing the Star Spangled Banner and then some presentations by organizations. I missed those. I was digging holes and replanting grape vines killed by the hard spring frosts. I was there long before the period scheduled for local and congressional candidates.

I freely give political advice to local Republicans, urging them not to do self-destructive things, but they appear to ignore it.  A week ago I shared the thought that local Republicans would do better politically to stay clear of these craziest of MAGA Republicans. Their local GOP already made proclamations saying that the 2020 election was stolen and Biden was an illegitimate president. Attending and speaking at this event would have driven their reputations further into Trump conspiracy-land. That kind of thinking is semi-popular within local GOP circles and among people who decorate their pickup trucks. A Curt Ankerberg-style Republican might start winning primary elections now, but I am pretty sure it would be a way to lose a general election.

It would have been a natural place for GOP candidates to have a campaign table. There was ample opportunity to wander around and greet fellow Republicans. I did not see Jackson County officeholders or candidates doing that.

Dennis Linthicum was an exception. He had joined lawsuits that attempted to void the 2020 election, and he spoke for ten minutes. The speech was the time and audience for some red- meat talk about illegal aliens voting, about Democratic widows voting their husband's ballots, about how election audits failed us, about how Trump really won, the travesty and disgrace of mai-in ballots, the dirty county clerks, the stolen election, and the tragedy of a lost opportunity for Trump to re-make America into a Christian nation. The out-of-town speakers spoke like that and were applauded. But not Linthicum. He spoke in a mellow tone about his life and very generally about election integrity. He said that he and his wife had lived off the grid for 30 years. He sounded like a conservationist hippie, now grown middle age, but still a mellow rebel at heart.

I was ready with three recording devises and back-up battery packs to record local candidates saying those wild red-meat things to feed the Republican carnivores, and they weren't there. The song by the Zombies, written in 1964, that I used to hum to myself in high school, ran though my head.

"Well, let me tell you about the way she looked
The way she'd act and the color of her hair
Her voice was soft and cool
Her eyes were clear and bright
But she's not there."

The local candidates weren't there. I think that was smart of them, although no one asked for my opinion. The recording devices stayed in my briefcase.

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Did I learn anything at the Trump rally?

     "There's no way Joe Biden got 81 million votes. It's impossible. They know they're cheating." 

[Audience cheers.]

       Dave Duquette, founder of Western Justice, one of several speakers who preceded Mike Lindell, the "Pillow Man."

The crowd disabused me of some misconceptions.

I thought a Trump rally might focus on Trump's policy positions. No.  I heard very little about Trump's positions on immigration; on his tilt toward Russia; his criticism of NATO, his support for Netanyahu; his support for more fossil fuel production. Over the course of nine hours I don't think I ever heard the word Russia or Ukraine. The rally was for Trump the person. He is the hero. He is the victim. 

I thought a Trump rally might be an expression of party loyalty. No. It is Trump loyalty. Except for two litmus test issues, guns and abortion, Trump shaped the current GOP. It was a crowd of long term Republicans, but they shed their former policy positions. Former leaders of the party are now enemies since they did not become Trump loyalists. George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Richard Cheney, Liz Cheney, and Bill Barr are all enemies now, even at a rally organized by Republicans. If you are not MAGA, you are a RINO. RINOs are turncoats.

I thought maybe they knew Trump's “stolen election” claim was a con, and a Trump audience liked watching him get away with with a flagrant lie. No. They believe the Big Lie. There is a school of thought that the stolen election claim is a way for Trump to show dominance. There is little credit in agreeing that the sky is blue and grass is green. You show dominance is telling an obvious and outrageous lie, and then sticking to the story and creating a new reality with your facts. He sticks to his story, exasperating Democrats. He shows he can tell the Big Lie right in front of everyone. It is shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, but bigger. In this understanding, Trump voters are cheerleaders and willing participants in the con.They are joining Trump in giving a big "you can't make me" to the powers that be from the media, the courts, the established order they perceive to have been created by liberals.  Trump never surrenders. Nor do they. 

The speakers and audience repeatedly affirmed they think the election was stolen from Trump, by Democrats, George Soros, the mainstream media, strings pulled by Barack Obama, and RINOs. Biden's presumed incompetence is key to the disbelief that he won legitimately. Biden campaigned from his basement to tiny crowds sitting in spaced circles. Trump spoke to tens of thousands at a time. Biden is pathetic. He could not have won.

Mike Lindell put numbers on this. He said that if Democrats had merely rigged a few states, then those states would show outlier numbers which would expose the vote switching. Democrats are evil, he said, and they are clever about it. They rigged all the states, he said. Forget the audits. Forget the recounts. Forget the pre-election polls. Tabulating machines switched votes on a massive scale. In authentic counting, nationwide Trump wins about 67% of the vote and Biden about 33%. That is the reality of the American electorate, he said. 

The audience cheered. This made sense to them. The fixed star of truth is that it was impossible for Biden to win. Impossible things don't happen. Therefore, there must be other explanations.

Multiple polls preceding the 2020 election showed that the election was close and Biden had a small lead. That is how the presidential election turned out. The two Georgia senate elections in December of 2020 brought a result entirely consistent with the presidential vote, a narrow win by Democrats. If Democrats had the power to change 20 million votes why didn't they also change a couple of representative and senate votes so they had majorities in both houses?

None of this matters. Those are my facts, not theirs. Biden could not possibly have won. That is their fact.

It was a well-attended meeting. I estimate 500 people in attendance. It was a large venue, and it was set up to accommodate four times that number. Democrats would take the wrong message by looking at the empty chairs. They should notice the occupied ones. There are a lot of believers.

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Easy Sunday: Photos from a Trump Rally

I spent nine hours on Saturday at a Trump rally in Southern Oregon. 

Mike Lindell, the "Pillow Guy," was the headliner. 

I got some insights into the Trump phenomenon. More about that later. Today, just photos from the event.

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U.S. Code. Yes, the Jan 6 rioters broke the law

Republican friends minimize what happened on January 6, 2021.
    --  It wasn't as bad as the media makes it out to be

     --  The images we have seen aren't typical. 
     --  They weren't Trump supporters. They were Democrats in disguise

     --  They were Trump supporters, but they were egged on by FBI agent-provocateurs.

     — The lawbreakers in Portland we’re not prosecuted by the local DA so the Capitol lawbreakers should not be prosecuted by the federal Department of Justice.

     -- The investigation was partisan.
     -- What they did wasn't illegal.

I followed the riot in real time on TV. I saw people break doors and windows and climb balconies to enter the Capitol against the efforts of police officers trying to stop them.

I don't need a lawyer to tell me it is wrong, dangerous, and illegal to break into a public building by smashing windows and pushing past barricades. I know better than to fight with police officers in a traffic stop or any other time. I consider it axiomatic that a person who uses a flagpole to poke a police officer or who sprays them with bear spray is fair game for being killed on the spot. I think they are lucky to be alive.

In the aftermath of the riot, people who can be proved to have done violent or destructive things are being identified and prosecuted. 

Some of the January 6 defendants are claiming they weren't really guilty of a crime.  They have brought a case to the Supreme Court.

The crimes they are charge with are part of laws written to prevent tampering with a witness or evidence, not for attempting a coup d' état. I assumed that it would be illegal to break into the Capitol, attack officers, and try to stop Congress from doing its work, but maybe the idea of doing it was so unthinkable that there isn't any law that applies to this event. I decided to read the law.

18 U.S. Code § 1512 - Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant

(2)Whoever uses physical force or the threat of physical force against any person, or attempts to do so, with intent to—(A) influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding; (B) cause or induce any person to—(i)withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding; (ii)alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal an object with intent to impair the integrity or availability of the object for use in an official proceeding; (iii) evade legal process summoning that person to appear as a witness, or to produce a record, document, or other object, in an official proceeding; or (iv) be absent from an official proceeding to which that person has been summoned by legal process; or. . . .

It looks clear to me that the law is telling us that it is indeed illegal to use force or the threat of force to induce people to withhold electoral votes in an official proceeding of Congress. That's what the rioters did. They carried signs saying that was their intent. They were videotaped while doing it. Most pleaded guilty. The ones who went to trial were found guilty.

It looks to me like the government is enforcing the laws, which is what they should do.

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95 degrees in the shade, and there is no shade

I am not a gentleman farmer.

I am a farmer. 

Yesterday: Digging holes for re-plants

Planting 

There is a joke I tell: A guy won $50 million in a lottery. A reporter asked him what he was going to do with his winnings. With great enthusiasm he answered, "I am going to farm until it's all gone."

I have been growing cantaloupes and watermelons nearly every year since I was about 11 years old. The farm is property my great-grandfather bought in 1883. There is no glamour in melons or melon-growing. There aren't any "melon snobs," in the way that there are wine connoisseurs. Wine connoisseurs talk about wine and find value in buying expensive wines of supposed superbly fine quality. Until I began growing grapes, I dismissed such people as "wine snobs" and likely poseurs --  people who pretended to know wines and the subtle flavor-notes of great vintages, grown on east-facing slopes with just-so terracing, trellising, irrigation, and soils. Now that I am growing grapes on my own unique soil -- ground up pumice rock -- I hope wine connoisseurs will find something special about the terroir. 

Until I began growing grapes, I told a semi-joke at the expense of purchasers of expensive wine. I said those connoisseurs paid top dollar to satisfy their exquisitely refined taste, but would also eat underripe, flavorless melons that I would cull, taste, and spit out in the field.

When I was a candidate for county commissioner in 1980, a prominent Republican, an orchardist, asked me a "gotcha" question: "How many Mexicans have you got?" He meant it in the way a plantation owner in the ante bellum south might have asked a social inferior how many slaves he owned.  

I answered, "I am the only Mexican." He knew what that meant. I did all the work. It made me a nobody.

I meet some definitions of gentleman farmer. I am a landowner and I have outside income, thank goodness, that allows me to own a farm that usually loses money. But my notion of "gentleman farmers" are people who arrange for others to do all their farm labor. They farm while staying comfortable and well dressed. That isn't me. I get dirty. I get hot and sweaty. I move pipes. I spray herbicide. I hoe weeds. I do stoop labor tying vines to the second wire on the trellis. On days like yesterday, when it was 92 degrees, and today when it will be 95, I will be out there early, before 7 a.m. I will quit at 1 p.m. There is no shade in a field of young grape plants. 

There is "gentleman farmer" status in the celebrity world from owning a vineyard. Trump owns one. Hollywood celebrities and hedge fund billionaires own them. They can put their name on a wine label.

There is another way to own a vineyard. The working-farmer way. That's me. There isn't any status or "romance" in it. It's hard work but there are compensations. It puts me into a time machine. It triggers good memories of my father, Robert Sage, a farm boy who grew up on that land, went to war, met and married my mother, returned to the farm, finished college, became a school principal, and spent summers working alongside his sons on the property his father and grandfather farmed. He would approve of how I am taking care of it.

Robert Sage, about 1928

Robert Sage, late 1960s

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Your vote for president should count. It probably won't.

Message to Oregon Republicans:
     Your vote for president won't matter. Trump has already conceded Oregon.

Message to Texas Democrats:
     Your vote for president won't matter. Democrats pretend Texas is "in play," but they know it isn't. They have conceded it.

America can do better.

This week's email brought yet another iteration of this map and the story that goes with it.  Red states. Blue states. A few contested states.

The map shows which states are the tipping point. If Biden carries Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, he wins. If he doesn't, he loses. Whether he wins Oregon by 1% or 15% doesn't matter. Whether Trump wins West Virginia by 1% or 15% doesn't matter. And, realistically, given the partisan balances in various states, if Biden is tied in Pennsylvania then he will surely win Oregon and Trump will win West Virginia.

Every tiny margin of policy and message matters -- but in only three states. About 92% of Americans are essentially spectators. Voters in most of America will go through the motions of a presidential vote, with their state going to its predicted result, so their vote has no realistic effect on the tipping point for the election.

Republicans in southern Oregon complain about their irrelevance. The voters in the Portland metro area decide everything, they say. They move to undemocratic tactics, like leaving the state capitol during a session to prevent a quorum. They support election-denying candidates. They publish proclamations saying Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. They protest government; they don't share in governing. They fly flags that say F*** Biden.

It isn't an effort to persuade. The signs are a defiant expression of frustration and helplessness.

It isn't good for America's democracy. The problem is bigger than the Electoral College, but our election system is one more reason for Americans to conclude that the institutions of government are rigged against them. The election will be decided by distant voters in a few "battleground" states.

Americans might have a better sense of engagement with their government if they had a rational sense of buy-in. Presidential elections are a bit like a Mega-bucks lottery drawing in which people all across the country are urged to buy a ticket, but everyone knows that the winning ticket is going to be sold in Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin, not in their town.

The current system causes a vote to get swallowed up in the statewide election of electors. In a popular election every vote, every drop in the bucket, adds toward the favored candidate's possible win.

America would be better off with more buy-in to the institutions of our democracy. Knowing your vote counts would be one small step in the right direction.

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The Pillow Guy is coming to town

Mike Lindell is the keynote speaker at a "Make Oregon Great Again" rally in Jackson County this Saturday.

I think this is a foolish decision. Local Republicans are defining their party around its least popular, most extreme faction.

But if Republicans think that the way to win elections is to put election deniers and court critics like Mike Lindell front and center in the public eye, who am I to stop them?

Republican candidates and officeholders will be there. Maybe I will learn something that will help me understand the new GOP.  If nothing else, I can help document what has happened to it.

Some Republican voters have fully and totally drunk the Trump Kool-Aid. That would include Mike Lindell. Like Trump, Lindell believes that Trump won the 2020 election in a landslide. Lindell, like Trump, is a critic of America's courts. Even GOP Speaker of the House Mike Johnson isn't Trump-loving enough for the Pillow Guy. Johnson attended the New York false-document-election-interference trial to support Trump dressed in the dark blue suit, red tie uniform of Trump supporters. Lindell said Mike Johnson wasn't passionate enough in his press conference in support of Trump.

This our guy has no passion for our country, he has no passion for our great real country, this guy has to go, I'm serious.

This is disgusting—him up there, reading off some notes.

If you have passion for our country or passion for what's going on, the travesties going on against our real president, you can speak from the heart and speak out and get the country behind you.

Is there any room in the GOP for people who are simply low-tax, less-regulation, pro-gun, anti-abortion conservatives? To be a Republican must you be so zealous in support of everything-Trump that even Mike Johnson is a heretic? Apparently so, at least in Southern Oregon. Local Republicans chose their keynote speaker.

I think it is a mistake for Republican candidates to get anywhere close to the Mike Lindell fringe of the GOP. Every political party has its extremists who damage a party's reputation with otherwise persuadable voters. Partisans may think a little "red meat" rouses up the party and that it is worth it if it angers some Democrats. That would be a feature, not a bug. 

My own sense is that Lindell isn't moving the window of acceptable thought -- what political scientists call the "Overton window." He is just echoing Trump at his most extreme, when he is complaining about elections and juries, not when he is talking about inflation and immigration. Lindell is attaching the full scent of the Trump/Lindell election-denying, court-denying message to local candidates. 

If you like Mike Lindell, you will love our county commissioner candidate.

I think it is crazy and self-destructive, but nobody asked me. But I will happily sit quietly, watch it happen, and take notes.

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Marching blindly into the unknown

Microplastics. 

It's something new to worry about, as if nuclear war, climate change, pandemics, and Donald Trump weren't enough.

Maybe we have opened Pandora's Box.

The prudent course of action, when facing some new situation with significant potential danger, is to stop. Investigate. Feel our way. Look before we leap.

Too late for that.

Plastics have been around for a century. I am now learning that the most worrisome isn't plastic litter. The bad stuff is plastic too small to see. 

Humanity had plunged headlong into the unknown. I asked for an answer from college classmate Matt Naitove, who had a long career writing about the plastics industry. Should we be worried? A simple, clear, satisfying answer wouldn't be accurate. An accurate answer is unsatisfying. That is the point of the Pandora story. The box is opened before we know what's in it.

Naitove

Guest Post by Matt Naitove

Is It Too Soon – or Too Late – to Panic About Microplastics?

 

Classmate Peter Sage asked me to jump into the debate on microplastics. It is a timely, important and meme-worthy topic, and there is a lot of ill-informed chatter in the news about their presence in our bodies, in the ocean, everywhere.

 

In the spirit of full disclosure, I recently retired from 51 years as an editor (29 of them as chief editor) of Plastics Technology magazine, a trade magazine. I was never a shill for the plastics industry. My work didn’t promote the use of plastics. Instead, the magazine informed manufacturers on how to use plastics more efficiently, productively,and safely. In later years I added the goal of attempting to help plastics manufacturers do so more sustainably.

 

Plus, I am a resident of the planet and hope to live a long and healthy life without despoiling my environment.

 

There are a lot of web references to microplastics accessible from even a cursory search, among them the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and even a Wikipedia page on the topic. One website I consider fair-minded is www.acsh.org, the American Council for Science and Health. They are a pro-science group that took on the tobacco industry for its junk science defense of tobacco, but they also critique alarmist junk science that attacks the drug and chemical industries. 

 

ACSH defines microplastics as particles sized from five millimeters (the size of a grain of rice) down to less than 100 nanometers, which is smaller than the HIV virus.

 

I recently sampled a number of web sources and found widespread agreement on a few points: 

            • Microplastics are everywhere – in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and in our own bodies (one study found them in carotid arterial plaque). They reportedly have been found in freshly fallen snow in Antarctica.

            • There are various sources of microplastics. One is gradual environmental breakdown of plastics trash on land and in oceans. Some sources suggest that everyday use of plastics in the home and in industry causes microparticles to be shed, presumably, by simple abrasion. There’s also the deliberate creation of plastic microparticles as exfoliants in cosmetics – a use that was banned in the U.S. in 2015. And, it is generally agreed that a large component is “microfibers” shed by all sorts of synthetic fibers used in clothing, carpets, furniture upholstery and cigarette filters.

            • They might cause harm. We don’t know. NOAA concludes, as do most responsible sources: “As an emerging field of study, not a lot is known about microplastics and their impacts yet.” The only research pointing to such harm involves exposing cells or test animals to unrealistically high levels of exposure. What relevance such testing has to real-world exposure is, again, unknown.

            ACSH says they might be harmful by causing inflammation, by leaching of chemicals, by causing reproductive and developmental harm, or by being a pathway for other dangerous pathogens to enter our bodies.

 

But the key word is might; we simply do not know. 

Encouraging people to avoid microplastics by avoiding plastics is deficient on the grounds of both practicality and effectiveness. It won’t make much difference to your overall exposure to reheat your dinner leftovers in a glass rather than microwavable plastic container. 

 

Peter may have hoped a career expert on plastics would have some conclusive advice on what we can do about microplastics, and whether they are dangerous, how to reduce them – in short, some plan of action. I can’t do that. I can caution you to adopt a prudent skepticism whenever you hear or read about microplastics. Consider the source. Beware of “junk science.” Beware of political or other self-serving agendas. Some people just want to scare you but have no realistic solutions.

 

The bottom line is that we don’t know if microplastics harm us. Whatever the risks they may pose, we are stuck with them. They are already inside us and all around us. Plastics and synthetic fibers as commercial raw materials are not going away.

 

So, it’s both too soon and too late to panic about microplastics. 

 

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Vineyard update: Puncture Vine

Puncture vine -- sometimes called "goat head" vine --  is a noxious invasive weed.

The weed is like an infectious disease. I am getting it under control.

Clean field, recently drip-irrigated. 

This is a photo of my grapes. The land would be better protected if there were a cover crop. Before I can have a cover crop I need to have a clean, weedless field so that I can see, pull, and eradicate puncture vines that would otherwise be hidden amid the cover crop.

Little puncture vine plants look like this on the pumice soil where I have my grapes. The ultra-fine soil, made up of crushed pumice stone, is an excellent seedbed for puncture vine. The weed is low and flat and hides easily.

Except for the photo above, the photos here are from noxious weed control websites, not my farm, thank goodness. Below is a plant that grew and went to seed. If you see this on your property, you have a big problem.

Here is a close-up of the leaves, flowers, and spiky seeds. 

Below is another photo of the seed that makes the plant so very bad, and which gives it its name "puncture vine." These are rock-hard and very sharp. Mature plants have hundreds of these seeds. They hurt bare hands when you pull the weed. They stick to the bottom of shoes and rubber tires. Puncture vines are found most often alongside roadways and driveways. Your car tire can pick them up and bring them deep onto your property, where they can grow and spread rapidly.

There are bits of puncture vine in three vineyard rows. Two months after the T-posts were placed, I saw a tell-tale line of puncture vine sprouts in three of the 50 long rows where trucks drove. I walk those rows, and the adjacent ones, every three or four days, looking for and pulling or hoeing out baby plants out of the tire paths. The plants grow from invisible to the size of the palm of my hand in three days. I need to stay on this problem until all the hidden seeds have sprouted. Had I missed a baby plant, in about a week they would be the size of a dinner plate. In two weeks the size of a medium pizza. By then they would be forming seeds. Left to grow, they would become a green mat three or four feet across.

Keep an eye out, looking especially at the transition area between the road, any gravel area, and your landscaping. If you see a puncture vine, try to get all the root when you pull a small plant. A spritz of Roundup kills it better than does pulling it, if it is small, because the plant withers and dies before it goes to seed, and if you don't pull the root you haven't killed the plant. If you don't want to use Roundup, use a shovel or hoe to get all the root, and keep looking for re-sprouts. 

If you see a plant bigger than a dinner plate, recognize it likely went to seed. Pull it as carefully as you can and put the plant (ideally with seeds still attached to it) in the garbage. If you feel sharp little kernels in that plant as you put it in the garbage, then it did indeed go to seed and you have a multi-year maintenance problem. Burn the area with a propane torch to try to kill the seeds, if you can do so safely. But that may be impossible.  Assume there are seeds you missed and assume they will keep sprouting for several years. Be careful walking there with rubber-soled shoes or you will spread seeds to your garden areas. Check the area every week from mid-spring through late fall. Don't skip a week.

I realize this is unwelcome news, but that is the reality of puncture vine.

This a political blog, not a gardening blog, so let me make a quick semi-political point. Owning a vineyard is not the  fashionable upscale hobby -- like having a country club membership -- that some people imagine it to be. It involves hard work. I don't feel the same sense of indignation many “city people” do when seeing high prices of groceries. Most people want food to be cheap. I don't. I want food to be expensive enough that farmers can make a living growing food.

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