Weekend Assignment #318: The Great Unknown

Weekend Assignment #318: The SCOTUS Choice

Recently, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced that he will retire, at the end of his term, later this year, leaving the position open to be filled by President Obama. As you know, Obama has chosen Elena Kagan as his nominee. I would like to hear your thoughts about this. Good choice? Bad choice? Indifferent? Who would you like to see appointed to the high court? Are you happy with the justices currently serving, or do you believe they leave something to be desired? Tell me what you think!

Extra Credit: Write one paragraph about a supreme court decision you felt strongly about either positively or negatively.

I watched coverage of Elena Kagan's nomination on the day, and a few Comedy Central pieces about her as well. Tonight I did some Googling and some reading, and even founds a few articles she wrote as a Harvard professor, which I might or might not be able to access from the University of Phoenix online libraries (probably not):

Representative Publications

• Kagan, Elena. "Presidential Administration," 114 Harvard Law Review 2245 (2001).
  Full text: HEIN (Harvard Users) || HEIN || LEXIS || WESTLAW
• Kagan, Elena & David Barron. "Chevron's Nondelegation Doctrine," 2001 Supreme Court Review 201 (2001).
  Full text: LEXIS || WESTLAW
• Kagan, Elena. "Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine," 63 University of Chicago Law Review 413 (1996).
  Full text: HEIN (Harvard Users) || HEIN || LEXIS || WESTLAW 

The upshot of my reading and tv viewing is that because she has never been a judge and has expressed very little by way of personal legal opinion over the years, she's a largely unknown quantity in terms of her legal and constitutional views. She clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988, which is something in her favor in my book. On the other hand, she has argued in favor of Monsanto's genetically modified alfalfa and, more troublingly, indefinite detention without trial in certain circumstances (e.g. for a terrorist captured in a non battlefield situation). These are very much not to the good, in my opinion. But are these her personal opinions, or was it merely her job to espouse them on behalf of her employers (Monsanto and the government) in each circumstance? That is not clear to me, and it makes a difference.

There is a claim that she's a consensus builder, which could be good, and she seems likely to sail through her confirmation, because Republicans have been hard-pressed to find any dirt on her. Yes, good, fine; but what kind of consensus can she build on the Supreme Court as it stands now? President Obama may know, but I certainly don't. Nobody else seems to know, either. It could be that this bright legal mind will help balance out the right-leaning court, but there's precious little indication of that. My worry is that President Obama has gone for a safe, inoffensive choice here, rather than one calculated to start undoing the damage caused by the increasingly activist conservative court.

For example, apparently the Supreme Court substantially weakened the Miranda rights of accused suspects today, ruling that the suspect must specifically tell police that they are exercising the right to remain silent, and that even a one-word answer that self-incriminates results in waving those rights completely. Very, very dangerous stuff, this, opening the door for innocent people to be badgered into false confessions - and yes, it does happen.

On balance, I don't have a strong opinion about Elena Kagan. I assume she is as brilliant and as qualified as the President and others claim, and I hope the President knows what he's doing in nominating her. It will all depend on the stuff we don't know about her yet. Time will tell - it always does.

Karen

P.S. Meanwhile, I personally have to be in federal court five hours from now. I had jury duty today, and I forgot to call the phone number. So I'll be showing up a day late - yipes! Sorry!

EMPS: Not Your Average Flower

I knew Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #92: State Flowers was going to be a challenge for me, not just because I really, really don't like flowers but because of what Arizona's state flower is, and where and when it is to be found. Keep in mind that Monday was the last day in May as you read this excerpt from Wikipedia's description of these particular blossoms:

The night blooming flowers appear April through May and the sweet, ruby-colored fruit matures by late June.

One source I looked at did admit that the flowers are "sometimes" open in the mornings as well, but I didn't feel like driving out to see them at dawn. So I checked my photo archives, four years of April and May photography. No luck.

I got up late Monday morning and headed out, half expecting to fail at finding this almost-out-of-season flower at definitely the wrong time of day. It was past noon when I reached the flower's habitat:

From Mount Lemmon Highway

Do you see them?



How about now?



Yes, I'm talking about Arizona's state flower, the Saguaro blossom.



Saguaros grow all over the foothills of the Catalina Mountains, especially near my faithful Babad Do'Ag Vista pullout, about three miles up Mount Lemmon. Nor was I the only person taking pictures of them.



The tricky part, aside from the end-of-season issue and the night-blooming schedule, is getting close to the blossoms, which grow at the tops of the saguaros and at the ends of the arms. At Babad Do'Ag, one can look down the mountainside at some of the giant cacti, but that doesn't bring them in close. Here's one where I got lucky, with blossoms on a low-hanging arm.



For other shots, I tramped around in the desert a bit, zoomed in the best I could and hoped!



Most of the saguaros had a mixture of open blossoms, closed blossoms and former blossoms, well on their way to becoming fruit. The native Tohono O'odham and Pima tribes traditionally harvest saguaro fruit for jellies and candy, knocking the fruits down with long poles. High end local restaurants sometimes use saguaro in a sauce for one expensive menu item or another.

So anyway, yay, I win! On the last day of the season, I found and photographed this elusive state flower. So there!

Karen

EMPS: Is It Food Yet? Says the Dog

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #91: Ready, Set, Go, I always knew I'd post something that featured the dogs. Well, that or preparations for mass, but I kind of forgot about that this morning until the last minute and then decided against it. I hoped to have some kind of dramatic, frozen action sequence, like the dogs preparing to jump on or off the bed, or trying to catch a fly. In the end, though, that proved too hard for me, the dogs and my camera. So, back up plan, devised last night: feeding the dogs their Sunday breakfast!

John does the honors on Sunday mornings, and here I was, the maniac with the camera, making sudden photographic demands. Plus John was not at all sure the kitchen was presentable enough for the posting of such pictures. In the end, I tried for something a bit experimental in my editing, partly to fit the theme and partly to allow John's concerns. I'm not sure it worked, but here are the pictures anyway!


Get ready: John has measured out dry Beneful Healthy Weight for each dog,
but that's just the first step in feeding them!


Get set: John adds flax seed oil capsules, because we're out of fish oil.
This is to combat dry skin and coats on the dogs, especially Pepper.

This is version 2 of this shot (version 4, really, but who's counting?). Does the solid color work better for you? The red canister, by the way, is where we keep the Beneful so we don't have to dig into the big bag every day.


Go! John has added enough canned Alpo "to make it interesting."
Now for the last step: put the dishes down in each dog's special spot.


And go-go-go! Cayenne digs right in.


But Pepper needs a moment to get ready, make sure it's food, and that
nobody is going to take it away from her. Go for it, Pep!

(This is also a revised version of the shot, going for a more solid color.)



Carly also wanted to see a black and white version of a shot. Here you go. Doesn't that look appetizing? What do you mean, no? This is what Cayenne sees and it doesn't bother her a bit!


Karen

Weekend Assignment #319: Not in Play

Weekend Assignment #319: The Play's The Thing. Nowadays we get most of our comedy and drama from television, from movies and even from internet downloads. Perhaps we sometimes forget that all of these evolved from a much older art form, the stage play. Do you ever attend plays, musicals or operas? Why or why not?

Extra Credit: Have you ever seen anything by Shakespeare performed live?

Sad to say, I hardly ever get to any sort of live performance these days, aside from the occasional convention appearance by a writer or actor. The last live acting I saw in person was an outdoor Dillinger Days reenactment in January 2008. I've been working through my memories this afternoon, and the most recent play of any sort that I attended was a Gaslight Theatre show circa 2006 or early 2007.  That hardly counts, I think. As I wrote a year ago, the Gaslight's stock in trade is deeply silly musical melodrama pastiches, full of puns and send-ups and satire. The last Gaslight show I went to, courtesy of First Magnus in the days when they were riding high on the housing bubble, was Sgt. Preston of the Mounties, or Yukon Count on Me. It was a lot of fun, and I'd like to go again sometime, but somehow it never seems important enough to spend the time or money to do so. And that's the basic problem: money. The big touring companies charge so much per ticket (because they have to) that I can't justify the cost of a ticket, even for a show I really want to see. On the other hand, smaller productions don't even hit my radar.

But I have seen Shakespeare performed, twice. The first time was way back in 1974, on a school trip to New York City. The play, The Tempest, was one of my favorites. This particular production, at the Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theater, starred a familiar-looking young woman as Miranda. Carol Kane had just appeared in a comedy melodrama Dr. Pepper ad. Within a year or two she would be famous for her role as Simka, Latka's significant other on Taxi. I enjoyed the play very much, far more than the other two shows I saw on that trip: Carol Channing in a dreadful show called Lorelei, and the Madame Butterfly at the Met. Glorious as the music of that opera may be, I was really annoyed by the title character's relentless (and by today's standards, needless) suffering.

More recently, but not recently enough, John and I saw an RSC production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Stratford-Upon-Avon, circa 1994. I was a little thrown by the sparse set design, which consisted mostly of three rope swings hanging from the rafters, but other than that I liked it a lot. For me, the pastoral comedies are the most accessible and enjoyable of Shakespeare's works. Call me a philistine, but I generally don't like tragedies. They're depressing, and too often it seems that the characters could get out of their predicament if they just behaved more reasonably.



Still, there is one Shakespeare tragedy I'd like to have seen live in 2008. It was my least favorite Shakespeare play, Hamlet, starring my favorite actor, David Tennant. I recently got to see most of the BBC film of the production on PBS, starring Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as both the murderous king and his ghostly brother. It was a modern dress version of the play, with Hamlet sometimes in a t-shirt, sometimes in evening clothes, often brandishing a handheld video camera. I still dislike Hamlet's whiny indecisiveness, but this particular cast and director made for a fascinating, eminently watchable update.

Karen

Round Robin: Saints, Missionaries and Statues That Remember Them

For Round Robin Challenge: Statues, I asked folks to "photograph a statue of some sort. It can be as large as the Sphinx in Egypt, or as small as a bowling trophy." When I first proposed the topic two years ago, I had already photographed a number of statues, some for a "Public Art" Challenge, others for other reasons and purposes. This time out, though, I want to focus on the confluence of statues, religion and history. After all, I live in Tucson, where religion played a pretty large role in local history. When people want to commemorate historical figures, they often do the same thing as people who want to commemorate saints. They make statues!



Let's start at good old St. Michael and All Angels Church, established in 1953. The place has more than a few items of donated religious art, including a number of statues, more properly called icons. Some of them are in better shape than others. My absolute favorite is one that's tucked away in a cardboard box, under a table used to prepare bags of food for the needy. It seems serenely unconcerned about its headless condition as it blesses the work that sometimes goes on above it.



And here is St. Michael himself, looking a bit cherubic as he guards the west side of the memorial garden.



Here is a statue I've wanted to photograph for about twenty years, but didn't until today. The man on the horse is Eusebio Francisco Kino S.J. (1654-1711), best known to Tucsonans as simply "Father Kino." It amuses and frustrates me that the hat the man wore to keep the sun off his face performs the same function on his statue. The artist, by the way, is Julian Martinez of Mexico. The statue is dated 1988, two years after we moved out here.



A Jesuit missionary, Padre Kino traveled around the Southwest on both sides of the modern border between Mexico and the U.S., bringing Christianity and farming techniques to the indigenous peoples he found there. Unlike the Spanish Conquistadors, he opposed the exploitation of the tribes as a source of forced labor. Father Kino's travels led to the development of roads in the region, and the eventual establishment of Tucson as a non-native settlement.

From Mission San Xavier del Bac

One of the Missions started by Father Kino was Mission San Xavier del Bac, nine miles south of Tucson. The present church was built by natives nearly a century later, in the late 1700s, under the direction of Franciscan priests. Little is known about the designers and artisans behind the many ornate details, including the four statues you can see in the photo above, in the reddish central section of the front of the mission. Today the church serves the Tohono O'odham Nation, descendants of the original local population Father Kino served back in 1699.


Like the Saint Under the Table, one of the statues in the alcoves in front of the mission has lost its head.



Inside are many religious icons, statues and frescoes, most in better condition than the headless saint.

I was only at Mission San Xavier del Bac for about ten minutes today, but I got a few more decent shots you may care to check out. One of these days I'll make a proper visit and do a full gallery of images from this historic treasure.



And lest you think only Catholics are significant to the history of the Southwest, here's a closeup of the Mormon Battalion Monument in El Presidio Park, behind the old courthouse.

Now let's go see what statues the other Robins found!

Linking List
as of Sunday, May 23nd, 11:22 MST/PDT (Carly)

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Rich **Welcome, New Player!** - Posted
richimage
http://richimage.blogspot.com/

Dawn - Posted!
Dawn Elliott Photography
http://dawnelliottphotography.blogspot.com

ellen b. - Posted!
The Happy Wonderer
http://happywonderer.wordpress.com

Sherrie - Posted!
Sherrie's Stuff
http://sherrie-plummer.blogspot.com/

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Suzanne R - Posted!
SuzyQ421's Photo Blog
http://suzyq421sphotoblog.blogspot.com

Sandy - Posted!
From the Heart of Texas
http://sandyfromtheheartoftexas.com

Erin **Welcome, New Player!** - Posted
A Hardcore Life
http://erin-hardcorehensel.blogspot.com

carolynUSA - Posted!
Ford Family Photos
http://carolyn1209.blogspot.com

Peggy - Posted!
Holmespun Fun Memes and Themes
http://holmespunfunmemesandthemes.blogspot.com

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

maryt/theteach - Posted!
Mary Tomaselli Photos
http://marytomaselli.blogspot.com

Manang Kim (new blog) - Posted
At my Tabletop
http://manangskusina.blogspot.com

Hip chick
hip chick's photos
http://hipchickphotos.blogspot.com

Ruth - Posted!
scrabblequeen
http://scrabblequeen.wordpress.com

Gattina - Posted!
KEYHOLE PICTURES (photos only)
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

Duane - Posted!
Meanwhile...
http://fdtate.blogspot.com

Cheryl Ann **Welcome, New Player** - Posted!
Desertsouthwest
http://desertswest.blogspot.com/

and
Cheryl Ann - Posted!
Deserts and Beyond
http://desertsandbeyond.blogspot.com/
And in case you're interested, here are more photos of Tucson statues:

RRPC: Public Art, Privately Provided, Part One

RRPC: Public Art, Privately Provided, Part Two

A Reid Park Ramble, continued

Two from Tombstone

Karen

EMPS: Mostly Say Hooray For Our Side (Part One)

Tonight was the 31 year anniversary of the day John and I got married. We had intended to go out to dinner, but John was hemming and hawing over the specifics. As he flicked through a few cable channels, away from an annoying interview with Rand Paul, he happened upon two local news stories on the same subject. It was Opening Night for the 2010 Tucson Toros! It took us about two minutes to scrap our nebulous dinner plans, and decide to head out to the ballpark instead. On the way out the door I grabbed fresh AA batteries for my camera, because I had an idea for this week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #90: Sides. How about taking sides at a baseball game?

Action shots at sunset are not my camera's forte.

From Return of the Tucson Toros

Being foolishly concerned with eating the chicken Caesar salad I'd chosen over hot dogs or a barbeque sandwich, I didn't really start taking pictures until daylight began to fade. This is a problem for my camera, which really doesn't do low light conditions very well, especially for action shots. But I tried.


Toros players and coaches watch from the sidelines.


A good size crowd on the first base side.


A bit less of a crowd on the third base visitors' side.

Eventually I discovered a setting on the camera that helped a lot. Hey, I've only had the thing for a year.

So how was the game? Scroll DOWN to Part Two for the answer.

Karen

EMPS: Mostly Say Hooray For Our Side (Part Two)

I'm breaking my EMPS entry into two parts this week. This is Part Two. Scroll UP for Part One.

As I mentioned in the entry I'll be posting about two minutes after this one, the theme for this week's EMPS is Sides. The term applies in a couple of ways at a baseball game like the one John and I attended tonight as our 31st wedding anniversary celebration. The right and left sides of Hi Corbett Field, and ballparks generally, are referred to as the "First Base side" and the "Third Base side," or the "home team side" and the "visitors' side." And of course we take sides at sporting events. We're supposed to "root, root root for the home team," right?

But tonight it looked as though we were heading for "If they don't win it's a shame." Toros starting pitcher Vince Davis gave up four runs in the first five innings, and the Toros batters only managed to score once in seven innings.


Lino Garcia doubles, eventually going 4-4 on the night. But Toros batters
score only one run in seven innings.

So. Bottom of the 8th, down 3 runs. John's talking about going home. Then:


Two out, bases loaded, team down 1 run to 4. Wally Backman Jr. evens the score 
with a 3 RBI triple! "Wally! Wally! Wally!" the crowd chants.

Suddenly it's a ball game! And the relief pitcher, Andrew Snowdon, celebrates his first professional ball game by striking out four batters in two and two-thirds scoreless innings. Way to go, kid! These late game heroics lead to a classic bottom-of-the-ninth battle, which I persuade John to stick around for. With Toros at second and third base, the Calgary Capitals intentionally walk Josh Womack, who has no hits on the night. Jose Valdez, also hitless, steps to the plate.


Bottom of the ninth: full count, tie score, one out, bases loaded!


The opposing pitcher walks in the winning run! Toros Win!


5 Runs, 9 hits, 1 error. Party on the First Base side!

Karen

More about this game: Toros Deliver 5-4 Walkoff Victory On Opening Night