Oh, having grown up with a front yard in which my Dad A. tried to have a zen garden theme and B. made his children do all the yardwork, I can say with authority that bamboo grows really really REALLY fast.

Scrappy, you just reminded me of when my parents tried to grow a tiny, bonzai-sized Japanese garden. There was bamboo in it, and yeah, it grew quickly.

Bamboo is mostly environmentally sound. But there are assholes who clear cut old growth wild bamboo instead of cultivating, and that is horrible for the environment. How you make sure the bamboo fabrics you buy are not grown that way, I don't know. Maybe I'll "Ask Umbra" over at Grist. [link]

Oh, I have a regional dialect question. I just saw Nikki Giovanni speaking and she talked about having grown up in Cincinatti but she pronounces it Cincinattah (uh?) is that a generational thing

It *might* be a generational thing, but I hear people of all ages say it. And my automatic response is: much like Missouri, Cincinnati ENDS IN A GODDAMN "I," NOT AN "A"!!!

Ahem.

I don't get it. I like Nikki Giovanni, though. Hometown girl makes good.

Supposedly anything more than about 400 is actually bullshit, Tom.

I heard 300. (You pick these things up on the streets.)

She was great.

Scola, the New York Times did a shopping article on sheets recently that talked about thread count: [link]

In fact, he advised, “Once you get beyond 400 threads per square inch, be suspicious.” The standard for counting is to add each warp (vertical) and filling (horizontal) thread per square inch. The most that normally fits, he said, is 400, after which the threads are thinner and weaker. Some companies use two- or three-ply threads and multiply the count. “An 800-thread-count sheet made of two-ply yarn should legitimately be relabeled as 400,” he said. “That’s how you get 1,000 threads per square inch: creative counting.”

In the slide show there's some recommended bedding at BB&B.

It sounds like bamboo grows like mint. (Mom learned her lesson about putting mint in the garden--it soon took over that corner of the yard!)

IpoliticalN, the Tennessee State House Democrats pulled a fast one on their Republican counterparts.

To boil it down, Repubs have a House majority for the first time since Reconstruction, but it's a thin lead of 50 Repubs to 49 Dems. When they convened yesterday, they voted on their new Speaker, whom most of the Repubs thought would be the hard-right guy who had the backing of the Repub caucus. What they didn't know was that the Dems had approached a moderate Repub about running as well. The House Clerk called on all of the Dems to vote first, and they all voted for the moderate Repub. The clerk then called on all of the Repubs, and they all voted for the hard-right Repub, except for the moderate Repub who was running, who of course voted for himself.

So, the Tennessee House now has a moderate Repub Speaker who owes his position to the Dems and won't forget that fact. The rest of the Repubs tossed him out of their last caucus meeting and are debating what to do now.

It sounds like bamboo grows like mint. (Mom learned her lesson about putting mint in the garden--it soon took over that corner of the yard!)

Ha ha! Mine too!

Muah ha ha.

Tom, I'd recommend sateen finish cotton sheets in about 300 to 400 thread count. Feels much smoother and silkier than basic Egyptian cotton.

That synthetic silk fitted sheet I bought myself several years ago is 800 thread count and does legitimately feel a LOT finer and smoother than 400-count sheets I've had, but at least some of that may be due to the material, and I paid out the wazoo for it.

I have 1 set of 600 thread count sateen sheets, and they are HEAVEN. I did pay a whole lot for them, though - and I made sure that they are actually 600 count.