Today my friends the Cats came over with Kombucha in a jar. I had pre-washed 4 jars, and I made tea while they took some weird hour-long detour on the way to my house. I made black tea in one container, and ginger/green tea in the other. Both with lots of sugar. He came with a squat, wide-mouthed jar that had 5 or 6 "babies" in it. When the tea had pretty much cooled down to room temperature, we poured it into the jars and separated the babies, putting one into each jar. Then we split the remaining liquid amongst all the jars (the goal is to save 1 cup to put into each new jar of tea). I closed the jars up with paper towels, and held them down with a rubber band or the mason jar rings. Then I had to figure out where the hell to put all these jars- my house seems to have all these moldy spots, and mold doesn't go well with kombucha.
Apparently Herman buys a lot of kombucha, so now he'll be able to make his own. :) After I figure out how to get all these jars to him. :/ I want to find out how to make flavored kombuchas, such as raspberry- it'd probably taste a lot like the raspberry lambic that we like, but with lots less booze in it (around 1/2%).
How to make kombuchaAbout kombuchaThe Manchurian mushroomCooking measurement equivalents
More signs of the crisis in California's "democracy"
I wonder if people are noticing that democracy as a system is more in crisis than in past elections, and that its ineffectiveness and irrelevance are increasing.
Some signs-
really low voter turnout
nearly 50/50 split on a lot of state ballot measures
why the hell is it appropriate for voters, including non-union members, to decide what can be done with union members' dues? that stuff should be decided by the rank and file in each union, local by local!
I think that the influence of absentee ballots is really significant. In my family, going out to vote was a big deal- it was part of a tradition. (the polling station was nearly 2 miles away, at the elementary school that I had attended for 3 years, so we'd drive, and have to look for parking, and it'd be dark out in november, and my mother would go into the booth and pull the curtain closed...) People are using absentee ballots as a way to avoid going in to vote, (further) distancing themselves from the decisionmaking process. Are people becoming alienated and thus avoiding voting, or is the bullshit alienating them?
Sigh. Oh, on Forum on Monday (on NPR), I heard an interview with a couple who had just published a critical biography of Mao. One of the things they said about the people's revolution was that the workers (people) were totally burnt out from long-ass meetings. this is why I continue to say that there has to be some other way to make decisions. Consensus is exhausting, and you have to be trained on how to use it. And if it's not done properly, it is TORTURE! We'll come up with something eventually.
