it's not very often that I get completely, or partially for that matter, distracted by events unrelated related to my business. Sometimes events come along so rapidly that absolute control isn't a possibility anymore. Mere maintenance is all that's manageable. With the time and effort I have to put into my Garden Center & Nursery, the business has always won out over other events. Until now.

Sidetracked.
In previous years, I devoted myself to my business at my Garden Center & Nursery. During the busy season from March through December, spending as much as 18-20hrs each day, seven days per week there doing what needed to be done to make it a success. It was something I had to do. I knew that going into it the situation, back in '89-'90.
I didn't take any time off; time was too precious back then, and there was too much to do and too few people to rely upon and help out. But I did have one day to get married, one day to get divorced (two years later), and 6-7 days down with the flu in eight years. Somehow I even felt guilty about that much time off. Vacations were simply out of the question. This Type A Personality is just a way of life.
The old rule-of-thumb was that the first five years are critical to a new business; most fail within two, and if one can last five and make money, it's a sealed deal. Well, we're well past that point now, in our 8th year and haven't looked back since day one.

How To Make Money On The Web.
That' the topic I'll be addressing next Friday, June 26th, in Greenville, SC, at the '98 SGCTS (Southeast Greenhouse Conferencee & Trade Show), a large, regional (7 states), annual, grower-oriented event. Several thousand people will be there and it should be a good show. (Follow the Education Program Link on the left-side, nav-bar; look for Friday, 7:00pm.) There'll be some real high powered speakers preceding and following me. And hopefully, everything will run smoothly at the Garden Center & Nursery when I'm away, since I have some exceptionally good people working there, making me look very good.
Since I'll be out of the office for 4-5 days, it'll almost seem like a vacation. Almost. But I'll have a Micron Laptop along and will stay online, courtesy of my new friend from Ranier, Oregon, Lynetta. She's flying into BWI next Tuesday, staying here and we'll drive to Greenville on Thursday. We met through the Net, have several things in common, and like cats. What does all that mean? Who knows? Film at 11.

Pesto. Part 2.
In my continuing search for the perfect pesto sauce, I experimented with white cream sauces and folded in the rich and raw pesto paste. But somehow the sauce looked like the pea soup puke that what's-her-name threw up in The Exorcist. Yikes.
So I gave up on a creamy, white sauce and merely refined the paste into its own sauce. To the 6lbs of paste from the initial harvest last week, I added 5lbs of sauteed onions and 1lb of garlic. No parmesan or romano was added; that's best done grated fresh and right before serving over angel hair pasta.
After two hours of sauteeing and remixing the paste with garlic, onions and additional extra virgin olive oil, I got the past into a sauce, and it's just right. Plenty of extra Ball Jars were filled and will be distributed to friends this week. Next week, I'll do another harvest and a batch for customers who've expressed an interest in having some. I might even get some for myself, eventually. Wonder if I need a license for this stuff?

Harbingers of Impending Disaster?
In 1989 in Canterbury, England, the world's leading experts on frogs and other amphibian gathered for their first ever world congress. In the lobby, in the bar and in chance encounters in the hall, the experts swapped frog stories. At some point they realized that they were all seeing the same problem: Their frogs and toads were dying — not just in disturbed habitats, but in the most pristine nature preserves — from brown toads in Yosemite National Park to Golden toads in Costa Rica.
Today the case of the dying frogs is well documented, but what's interesting is that no one still knows exactly why they are. So conservationists are asking: Are the frogs the canaries in our coal mine? Miners used to take canaries underground with them; if the canary died, that would indicate the presence of deadly but odorless carbon monoxide and warn miners to flee. Are the frogs sounding such an alarm?
"Things go extinct all the time," said William Brown, science adviser to the Secretary of the Interior. "But when species like frogs and toads that have been with us since the Jurassic period suddenly start to disappear — without us understanding exactly why — you have to take notice."
Is it something mankind is doing, and if so, is it something that will eventually threaten mankind? Is it the increase in ultraviolet light from holes in the ozone that is reducing the frogs' immunity to viruses, parasites and fungi? Is it chemicals and pesticides in the atmosphere? Is it rising temperatures?
These questions were worrying enough for the National Science Foundation to bring together in Washington last week a group of top environmental scientists to swap research on what might be Killing the frogs. Their emerging consensus: There is no single smoking gun, rather the combination of all the "insults to the environment" over the last 50 years. To follow up, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who attended the seminar, has initiated an interagency task force to monitor the frog decline.
Frogs and other amphibians have very permeable skin, which makes them very sensitive to changes in the environment, whether water or the air. "They are one of the first animals to disappear when there are threats to a habitat, because they are so sensitive to water and air degradations," said Roderic Mast, vice president of Conservation International. "You have to assume that what impacts frogs will eventually impact everything else in the ecosystem. That makes it a biodiversity and a human health issue."
There is something so humbling about the idea that at a time when everyone is talking about the year 2000 computer bug, Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests and the "information revolution," a group of animals that are so familiar to us all — frogs — can start to die out without anyone knowing why. Who knows what's happening to the millions of other species we haven't identified?
Worse, this loss of biodiversity is happening just as life-science companies are making real breakthroughs in their ability to collect plants and animals from highly biodiverse environments and screen them for useful genes that can be isolated from that plant or animal and then used for medical cures or to stimulate agriculture. For instance, it's genes from the rosy periwinkle, a flowering plant from Madagascar, that are now used to treat childhood leukemia and Hodgkin's disease. To the extent that we are losing biodiversity through extinctions, we are shrinking this natural storehouse of lifesaving genes, and we will never have access to them again.
"To prevent that, we conservationists create protected areas," said Mr. Mast. "And yet we have creatures like frogs going extinct in protected areas. So that is not enough. It calls into question what is enough."
It also calls into question the distinction too often made between home and away, between protected areas and nonprotected areas. Home is where you keep clean, and away is where you pollute. But maybe the frogs from Canada and Costa Rica, Yosemite and Australia are telling us that this distinction isn't valid anymore. Maybe they're telling us that home is home and away is home, and if you pollute one you pollute the other. Maybe they're telling us about the limits of our knowledge and warning us to do something about the silent species we are losing through development and deforestation — before it's too late.
I don't like anything Clinton has even a modicum of involvement with, but here's something which may pay off over time. I just can't tell if it's for show or for real. Sounds like the sleazy lib-dems trying to court the conservationist votes for 2000.

Execution Needed.
Why do some states have mandatory and pathetic life sentences for murder, when the death is more than called for? This scumbag punk got two life sentences and 140 years. What a waste of jail space and time. He should die for what he did.
And so should these lowlifes after they're convicted. No appeal, no waiting; terminate all three for this race crime.
Allowing murderers, rapists and child molesters to live and languish in prison sends the wrong message to criminals: hey, whack all you want, we won't hurt you for your heinous crimes.. It's horribly wrong not to exact justice quickly and directly upon those who deserve it. Justice should be color blind, swift, sure and final. The message should be: if you murder, rape or molest, you die. Nice and simple.
By giving murderers an out — aka a life sentence — justice is perverted and the innocent victim(s) are further denigrated as expendable trash. Criminals think that they can get away with it, and they do when all that happens is a life sentence is mandated. Execution rectifies that error in our sadly-disabled legal system. Time to fix what the liberals have f*cked up through the years.
And let us not forget the murdering Brit bitch who whacked an 8-month old baby in her care. She needs to die, instead of being free on bail and getting all the breaks our liberal scum courts are providing.
And while we're all in the executing mood, waste these scum, too.

More Liberal shit.
The lowlifes at The White House are at it again: trying to deflect public attention from Clinton's crimes by pointing fingers at Ken Starr and accusing him of leaking details of grand jury procedings.
This ruse, and all of their other bleatings, are merely smokescreens designed to divert attention from finding the truth out about Bubba's lies. It's pretty transparent to anyone with a thinking and functioning brain. I'm surprised that they haven't been charged with obstruction of justice yet. That's exactly what they doing.
Bubba's moron advisers, Berger, Begala and Emmanuel, are true scumbags and so is the degenerate, Brill; liberal morons, all. Just another effort by the disgraced Clinonites to try to get Starr.
It's a sorry day again, as it has been for the past 6 years, when subhuman garbage like the Clintonites can play this kind of shell game and fool so many millions of Americans. America needs to (collectively) wake up and see the truth about those criminals. Is America asleep (collectively) or is is that we (collectively speaking, again) just don't give a shit?
Meanwhile, Starr weakly lashes out at the lib-dems. He should keep his mouth shut, investigate the case, and file the charges as soon as possible. That should be the only reponse. Nasty banter in the liberal media forum is highly unproductive and ludicrous.

Communist Unions.
Under the guise of worker benefits, and controlled by corrupt scum and mafia, the United Auto Workers (UAW), AFL-CIO et al are ruining this country's economy.
In the early and mid 20th century, unions were formed to better working conditions for the unfortunate slave-like workers in mines and mills. Today, lowlife lib-dems and corrupt politicians run and control the unions pension funds and members. Americans enjoy the highest standard of living anywhere in the world, except where unions cause strikes and adversely affect workers lives. Organized crime pervades all union management, at all levels. They're evil, communist-socialist symathizers who ruin the American business ethic by striking at every inopportune, opportunity.
In York, PA, the UAW morons ruined a major piece of industrial business and hurt this city's ecomony irreparably. Caterpillar is defunct here. Almost 8,000 people lost their jobs due to union stupidity. And that story is repeated all over the country as unions destroy workers lives, local economies and businesses.
Unions are now becoming too politically active, using members monies without permission to run media campaigns for lib-dem scum politicians who are sympathetic to union corruption. When appealed, the lib-dem judge scum sided with the commies; no surprise there. A more conservative court was needed to curb and reign-in union filth.
At one time, unions did serve a worthwhile purpose. Now they're out of control and need to be controlled by strict government action. While I hate government interference in anything, in this case it's entirely necessary. The only other option is to completely destroy all unions. And that's an option I favor most.

Obscene Money.
It's in the papers and on the Net everyday: millions of dollars paid to some lowlife, arrogant games (not sports) player, who, in a multi-year contract, gets more money per minute than any 10,000 US families earn in two years, combined. No one is worth anywhere near what games (not sports) figures are paid. They're all morons.
The free market should be capable of determining the value of each sport and the worth of each player to that team. Instead, baseball and basketball and football fans (read morons) pay any amount of money for seats and team gear, thereby artificially driving up the team's cost and asking price for all games players.
The TV industry is just as guilty of this mindless stupidity. Hype all over the place. Paying $500 million for the rights to braodcast those ridiculous games (not sports) is obscene. Driving up the cost of entry (read salary) for so-called atheletes ruins it for everyone. Teams should pay the networks to broadcast their games; when the shoe's on the other foot, it's feels very different. And all games (not sport) agents should be required to get a real job, preferably digging ditches somewhere where malaria-carrying mosquitoes are prevalent. They're truly the greedy, scum-de-la-scum.
Although I hate any government intervention, it's clearly called for here. A salary cap of $1-2 million per player per season should be set. Not the $45,000 per minute that some scum are now paid. Notice I didn't say earn, because they don't; not by any stretch of the imagination.
Sure, all atheletes have a viable lifespan in that sport, and most are so stupid, they need a pension set up for their waning years. 99% aren't even capable of selling burgers at McDonald's, but are adept at wearing shorts and dribbling a ball down a wooden floor. Or whatever it is that they do to the public's pathetic adulation.
The fault isn't all at the feet of the players; it's the public's for paying the kind of prices for tickets to these idiotic and boring games. Actually, that's what these events are: games. They're not sports. I started my boycott of all professional games many years ago. It's time America woke-the-f*ck-up and put the arrogant sports industry back into its rightful place: simpleton games that big-bodied, small-minded boys play and are paid accordingly in chump change.
This sleazy lawyer scam is obscene in its entirety. At least the GOP whacked the liberals' underhanded attempt at controlling our freedom of choice.

Wonder No More.
And I thought Spam was evil. Compared to what's really in sshitple, all else is a delicacy. Find out for yourself why Pennsylvanians (not me) cherish as part of their Dutch and Amish heritage, along with hog maw, shoe fly pie, hominy grits and other culinary feats of daring-do. Yum.