A two-orchid household

I thought I'd post some pictures of what's blooming at our house. My second oldest orchid, a phalaenopsis. It's bloomed almost every year since I bought it, unlike the others in my collection.

This is the second blooming of this amaryllis. It bloomed briefly over Christmas, but disappointingly faded quickly. I threw the bulb outside on a pile of sticks and leaves and it stayed there for a month or so. A few weeks ago I was collecting the pile of stuff for disposal, and I found that the bulb had a new shoot forming and there was a nice flower bud on it, so I re-potted it and here's the result.

This is a Bird of Paradise that I've had for a number of years without any blooms. It was an anniversary present from my husband, since these flowers were prominent at our wedding site, but I was beginning to despair that it wasn't getting enough sun to flower. But here we are. Note: Bird of Paradise is also one of my favorite yoga poses!

I bought this miniature cymbidium, my first orchid, on sale because it hadn't bloomed. So the first time it bloomed was a surprise--but I enjoy it every time it blooms. This guy sits outside on our patio all year and I throw some fertilizer on once or twice a year.

SOF: The Gods of Business

Listening to the podcast of Speaking of Faith while at work. The topic is "The Gods of Business" and the guest Prabhu Guptara. He said:
"I think most of us have no problem with a system which allows reasonable accumulation of wealth gained in return for the exertion of intelligence, industry, risk-taking and sheer effort. But I think most people in the world do have a problem with a system which allows unlimited accumulation of wealth AT THE SAME TIME as allowing millions of people to have nothing when they are exerting as much energy and intelligence as other people. Friends, 3,500 children died today — because they had no food or water. Three thousand five hundred will die tomorrow for the same reasons. And the day after. And every day… till you and I decide to do something about it. What was merely a tragedy yesterday is today a tragedy as well as an obscenity, for we live in a time of over-supply of all basic goods for the first time in history, which makes it entirely unnecessary for anyone to starve, or have no clothes or to have no roof of some basic sort over their heads."
This has lead me to set a goal--to educate myself about the agricultural system in the US, how decisions are made about import and export, large and small farm production, organic and GM food, and so on. Once I know more about what is going on, I can decide where to contribute. First stop, amazon.com for a look at the books.

Saved!

I saw this movie this weekend, on Showtime. I thought it was pretty funny, but during a showdown at the Senior Prom (oh, yes!), it devolved into the usual stereotypes about Christians and all the rest of us. Mandy Moore was pretty great, though.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

A great movie. Tommy Lee Jones starred in it, and directed it. The characters and the scenery feel so authentic, not stereotyped in the least. There is a small scene in a crappy little bar in Mexico, open to the desert air, that just sent me back to my last visit to Baja. I could almost smell the air and the dust and taste the Tecate with lime.

Gilead and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I'm about halfway through Gilead. I bought this as an airport novel, just to read and then forget, but this book deserves better. I've been enjoying the musings of an old midwestern pastor, but wondering if there isn't something more to the story that will soon be revealed. I love the way the author uses language, and am thinking of having a look at her most famous novel, Housekeeping.

I have also been listening to a series of podcasts of "Speaking of Faith," a public radio program that I love but can barely ever catch--I'm often at work at 4 on Sundays but I usually can't stay by the radio. I listened to the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a minister in Germany who was part of a plot to kill Hitler. He felt that he was called by God to do this. The plot never succeeded and in fact Bonhoeffer was put to death just before the Allies took over. There is a documentary that I would like to catch on this topic and the interview was with the filmmaker. What I was most taken by is the following quote, from one of his letters from prison:
"I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith."
The opposite of Buddhist withdrawl from the world.

Paradigm Lost

In an attempt to save some money, I am doing this large project on 32 ct ivory lugana, with DMC 3750. It's going more quickly than I thought it would.