I've written about some of my favorite podcasts in the past, but have started listening to a few new ones and wanted to share them. I love that more and more radio shows are now available, which means I can listen to them in the lab whenever I like. All of these are free, and easily available on iTunes, which updates and downloads your subscribed podcasts automatically. If you sync your iPod (you can edit the settings for podcasts), iTunes automatically refreshes your podcasts so that it replaces the ones you've listened to with the most recent. Or, you can listen from your computer, which is what I generally do (with external speakers).

Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Most of you are probably familiar with NPR's weekly news quiz. Unlike some public radio shows, this one is actually funny, and unapologetically liberally biased. They have awesome celebrity guests, too. A fun way to keep up with current events.

The Stephanie Miller Show and The Rachel Maddow Show (audio and video versions are available) Two of my favorite women on the planet, both icons of liberal talk radio. Listen to Stephanie Miller for funny (and often refreshingly low-brow) commentary, and Rachel Maddow for brilliant political geekery and spot-on opinions on current events. Both are excellent interviewers.

The Thomas Jefferson Hour I recently stumbled across this show on Colorado Public Radio - I can't believe it's been airing for so long and I've never heard of it! Clay S. Jenkison plays Thomas Jefferson (brilliantly), and is interviewed about past and current events. He has a wealth of knowledge about Jefferson, and puts contemporary issues in the context of American history, culture and the Constitution. I can't say enough good things about this show.

Geek Farm Life They're geeks! With a farm! Enough said.

The Savage Love Podcast Hilarious sex columnust and gay rights activist Dan Savage has a weekly podcast! It's even better than his column, and just as smart, wise, and honest.

I've uploaded my photos from Mexico! Some turned out nicely, though as usual I'm unhappy with how few I took - I took many more than what I posted here, of course, but I'm referring more to content. I have next to nothing that captures the colorful city of Merida, or the rural Mayan villages where people still live in houses made of thatch and wood. Evrything is open to the air, and washed with pink, or white, or turquoise. Butchers and food vendors have carts on the street selling panuchos or chili-covered mango...One of my priorities for the next few years is to get a good camera with a telephoto lens, largely to be able to capture people discretely from afar.

( Ria Celestun & Chichen Itza... )

In short - I loved Mexico, and I can't wait to go back as soon as possible. I couldn't help but feel that I was in a land of wild,  ancient gods quite different from my own (even before I went to Chichen Itza). It's a wonderful place with so much light and color, incredible food, generous and warm people, and a fascinating history. Merida is fantastic, and I'd definitely recommend it over the more touristy Cancun.

I recently discovered Radio Dismuke, an internet radio station streaming popular music and jazz from the 1920's to 1930's, twenty-four hours a day (and even with the occasional period commercial!). I tell ya, it's the bees knees, and certainly beats the housework blues! I'm wearing a checkered red apron and sweeping away.

I've been feeling incorrigibly vintage lately. I've crocheting to classic films all week, looking up clothing patterns and fabric reprints (Repro Depot is amazing), and have decided to abandon my plan to grow my hair out in favor of the Castle Bob I had last fall, which was probably my favorite haircut of all time.

A little snippet of what I'm listening to right now (But I Can't Make a Man):

"I can make pajamas,
Like the Yokahamas
Make 'em out of silk in Japan;
I can make most anything,
But I can't make a man.

Now, I can make a dinner,
Not like a beginner;
I won't have to open a can;
I can make most anything,
But I can't make a man."

I've been crocheting Leo the Lion (a free pattern from Lion Brand's website) for a friend's toddler, and it's led to some rather interesting living room conversations with Jeremy. Right now, the project consists of an unadorned head, a body, one front leg, and one back leg, sill separate. The fun began when the lion was just a head and a body, and he started talking. In a Russian accent. Never mind the fact that he's a toy, for a toddler, and a sweet little girl at that (if the pictures are any indication). He is a rude, arrogant smartass, and his name is  Yussupov.

I had just finished his body, when he announced (in a Russian accent), that he was very pleased with himself, and that he was a lion, and his body was nine inches long. I asked him what his name was, and somewhere from the recesses of my memory of my high school Russian History class, I recalled Mr. MacLean lecturing about Felix Yussupov, the nobleman who killed Grigory Rasputin, and the name stuck.

Yussupov's attitude began when I had to rip out two inches of his body length, because I'd misread the pattern and made him 9" instead of 7". His favorite activity is to make snide remarks and back-handed compliments to Jeremy when he's on the computer ("You are a not very handsome, Mr. Jeremy. Not like I am handsome.")

In other words, he's a feisty Russian lion with a short-man complex.

Last night, as I finished his back leg, I told Jeremy about  Yussupov's namesake, knowing he'd appreciate the connection to his (and everyone's?) favorite death-defying Russian mystic. I did a quick googling, on a whim:

YUSSUPOV LION

Third down was a link to an article on Maria Rasputin, the daughter of the infamous healer. After her father was killed, she left Russia, and became a writer (penning a cookbook, among other things), and was later a riveter in the United States during WWII (a la Rosie).

In between those two varied but not surprising careers, she was also (you'll never guess)....a lion tamer for Ringling Brothers.

Yussupov, indeed.

Joan d'Arc took William de la Pole, who fled the Maid to Jergaux; thirteen thousand Brits and French gave way to Rommel at Saint-Valery-en-Caux. Thomas Gage declared martial law in Massachusetts, pardoning all but Adams and Hancock; Grant's retreat gave Lee his victory at Cold Harbor. The KKK killed Medgar Evers, and OJ may have killed Nicole and Ron. Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life by South Africa, David Berkowitz for 365 years. A California actor said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" - four years later, Boris Yeltsin was elected.

And for nine more nights, the days will lengthen.

After jackshoegazer's revelations about Cinco de Mayo and the Civil War roots of Mother's Day, I became curious about the origin of Memorial Day. Modern observances usually include barbecues by Boomers and younger generations, and visits to family grave plots for the  placement of flowers, flags, and plastic wreaths by the elderly. I  knew that Memorial Day was a day to remember the dead, and had vague notions of it originally having something to do with those killed in battle. A quick googling revealed that, like Mother's Day, Memorial Day has roots in the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression to those born below the Mason-Dixon line); it began as a way to honor the Glorious Dead.

I think of the New England towns of my childhood and their Memorial Day parades; the veterans in with their medals (the numbers dwindling every year), the Shriners in their tiny cars, girl scouts and bagpipe  groups, Clydesdales and fire trucks. Typically, the Homecoming Queen or the Strawberry Princess would drive by in a remodeled pink convertible. A couple of clowns would throw dum-dums and Bazooka Joe gum into the crowds, lining the streets in their lawn chairs. Afterwards, we'd go home for the obligatory burgers and dogs, accompanied by potato salad and watermelon. I have one memory of accompanying some anonymous great aunts to a cemetery to place flags on the graves of dead relatives I'd never heard of. I don't even know if they died in one of the various wars, or of more domestic causes.

I actually have a relative who died in battle, though I never knew him. Great Grandpa Gill was killed on the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor; his is a watery grave, and his name is on the memorial in Hawaii. My dad told me the sunken ships still leak oil into the sea, and people get very poetic about it being like a metaphor for blood. They don't clean it up, of course, because that would be unpatriotic.

The first decades of Memorial Day must have been so different, when it was a Dio de Los Muertos for husbands, fathers, and sons...killed at Gettysburg and Antietam. And then they became famous but unknown uncles and grandfathers, and finally forgotten; new wars brought new dead. People no longer wore black armbands as a symbol of grief and memory, and politicians no longer gave speeches about fallen heros and noble widows. The number of soldiers in the parades shrank as the civilians grew, and eventually Memorial Day became a bookend of summer, its roots forgotten in much the same way as its September counterpart, Labor Day. I'm sure some will still visit the graves today, and some parents, spouses, and children will think of their loved ones who died in the desert that was once called the Fertile Crescent. Most, however, will fire up their grills and ferry dripping kids home from the beach, drink their Budweiser, and implicitly congratulate themselves on being successful Americans.

I'm not a patriot in the Fox News sense of the word. I don't support the war in Iraq, and I do believe that citizens have a mandate to criticize their government and its Commander-in-Chief. But I do have respect for our military and the sacrifices many have made because of a cause they believe in, whether or not that cause was morally right or just. I differ from many of my liberal friends in this regard, which likely stems from the fact that my father, stepfather, grandfather, and mother were all in the Navy, and that was a very formative aspect of my childhood. I lived in Italy for three years while my stepfather was stationed there on the USS Orion and was later on the USS Nassau (an aircraft carrier) during the Gulf War; my father was on submarines out of Portsmouth and Virginia Beach, and then a recruiter in Colorado; my mother started her nursing career in the Navy. My best friend is an ex-marine.

I believe that most of the troops we have stationed in Iraq are small-town kids who went into the reserves for the college money, and not brainwashed baby-killers. I believe that war is a terrible thing, that most military conflicts have been for unjust causes, and that the United States is guilty of terrible crimes (though almost every other nation in the world has dirty hands in that regard). However, I do believe that we do a terrible dis-service to millions of people who died in conflict (either in the military or as civilians) by failing to recognize that and allowing Memorial Day to become just another reason to have a three-day weekend and try out the new Weber. Yes, I agree with the common argument that, like Earth Day or Mother's Day, we should be mindful of these things every day, but I don't believe that honoring something on a particular day belittles its meaning.

I am ashamed that I don't know more about my family history, that our oral tradition only goes back to a "Gill" on a stone tablet on a tropical island I've never been to. We live in a comfortable time, where wars are fought on the other side of the globe and rarely by people we know.  There have been times in our nation's history where every family was touched in some way by conflict; these were our families, once. I will not plant an American flag in the ground today, or buy a plastic hoop of polyester roses. But I will be mindful of and grateful for those who have died afraid, alone, without glory; in the mud, in the sand, in the sea; thinking of their mothers, sweethearts, and unborn children; for causes just, or false, or utterly confused; for the freedom of people they'd never met, and for mine.