In 1983, while living on Avenue A at 12th Street, right around the corner from a 5 floor walk-up that was called "The Poet's Building" because, among other poets, Allen Ginsburg & Peter Orlovsky lived there, I hung out at Saint Mark's Church in-the-Bowery where The Poetry Project had readings on Monday & Wednesday nights; other nights of the week I might be found at the bar of Paul's Lounge, 3rd Ave & 10th St, watching the Yankees on projection TV and listening to the jukebox.

Joey Ramone lived over Paul's.  When the Ramones were not playing at CBGB or another punk venue, Joey  would come down and take a side table   The bartender gave me several red quarters to put in the silent jukebox; my first selection was Billie Jean.  Hearing that base line, Joey looked up from his beer and stared at me with a look that said you dumb fuck.

Shearing Movie

Lambing Movie

On March 2 of this year, David Hughes, our man in Havana, came up for shearing and shot video of what we do to shear a flock of sheep; he came back in April for lambing to shoot video of a lamb being born, but as often happens ewes don't  lamb on someone else's schedule, and they didn't.   As he was leaving, I told him that I would film the births with my video camera, and I did.  Davy edited and included my footage of lambing; which, with the exception of shearing, is  the busiest time of year on a sheep farm.

In his opening monolog on June 8, David Letterman lamely joked on The Late Show:

"One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game," Letterman said, "during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez."

By using her daughter, Sarah Palin exploited the joke for it's maximun political capital and Letterman subsequently apologized to the Palins, again and again, giving a bad joke long Republican legs.

But where was his apology to Alex Rodriquez...a Palin?  Oh David, shame on you!

"So if you know the gauge used in your pattern and the gauge listed on your yarn are the same, why can't you just knit your project with confidence?

The answer goes back to the idea of the "average knitter." In reality, there is no average knitter. Everyone knits a little differently; some people knit loosely, while some knit very tightly (it shouldn't surprise you that gauge is also referred to as tension). When you give the same yarn and the same sized needles to two different knitters, the odds are very good that they will come up with a different gauge, and they might both be different from the gauge listed on the yarn label.

It's important to check your gauge before you start a project and see how your knitting compares to the gauge of your pattern."

From  Knitting Gauge: Why Knitting a Gauge Swatch Matters

By Sarah E. White, About.com.

Dominique takes the special care lambs to her place; these lambs are weak or are lost or have been deserted—often times they are at death's door.  When they have recovered well enough to join the flock she will bring them back.

With a scourable spray Dominique marked the recent returnees—123 is sprayed like a hot cross bun—so they can be easily monitored from a distance; not that 123 needed to be marked, when you're walking among the lambs, she follows you everywhere you go.

Barg:

(I) have been following the Iranian thing on Twitter...very interesting how these Iranian kids are finding ways around the internet and cell phone blackouts with open source, block-breaking soft wares and satellites...  My heart goes out to them. All they want is to live in the 21st Century and make their own choices.

Eugene:

I love to see people in the street moving against the state; it stands the hierarchy of power on its head, if only for a moment.  At times like these, the people do not refuse the state in their manifestations (as media believe and say), instead they no longer refuse themselves in their gift-of-power to the state as they do on the days of giving, the days of métro, boulot, dodo. In the street they take their gift back.

Foucault is right, power is always offered from the bottom up (by the people) and they effect this in their thinking that assumes that power, and its oppression, is inflicted on them from the top down (by the state)—such beautiful, antithetical Derridian logic we live under—we are our own best policemen, what we believe is our penal sentence, and our sentence is for life...

As reported by the AP, PETA wishes Obama hadn't swatted that fly.  PETA has turned its ethics on insects.  Next, will they work to protect vegetables from toothy deaths; if so, we all starve.  No one will be left to form PETU, People for the Ethical Treatment of Us, all living things.

Ewe lamb 61 was born on  26-Mar; her dam is 1987 and she is a twin.  Ewe lamb 140 was born on 4-Apr; her dam is 267.  Both lambs were sired by a  ram from the Bullamalita 76 Syndicate of 4 rams, his grandsons from the AI of 2005, that joined the ewes at breeding.

In July, Penny will be taking these girls to her farm in Connecticut where they will have a happy home.

See a photo of Bullamalita 76 in Australia in 1991on the Saxon Merino page.  Good Saxons have airs about them, they know when they're exceptional; 76 did and these great granddaughters of his do too.

Last week we brought green garlic to the stand that was not planted last November, but was planted the November before, 19 months ago!  It comes from the heads that we didn't harvest last June because weeds overgrew them.  Now, from those same plants,  we have more garlic than we would have gotten had we picked  it then: underground, each unharvested head ripened into many cloves which sprouted anew. The lost garlic business is a banker's dream of compounded interest.  These unintended, but welcome plants, are called "volunteers" by vegetable growers.

This week we will have more volunteers, but the week after we will begin to draft this year's better weeded crop pictured here with the lambs in the background.