Finished Zinn and am still trudging through Gramsci. It's dense to say the least, and I can't say I'm getting a whole lot out of it right now. So much of it (so far) is deeply situated in the Italian politics of the time. In any event, this will close out this period of politics and I'll be glad to switch back into spiritual reading (Saint John of the Cross), renewed efforts at regular lectio and so on.
I've been listening to a lot of retrowave via Spotify lately. It works well as background music while I'm working and scratches a deeply nostalgic itch. If you're not familiar, it's electronic music made today, but made to sound like it was made in the mid-to-late-1980s and 90's. A slightly creepier alternative, mallwave, can best be described as the music you might hear in...well, a dead mall: the lo-fi upbeat Muzak-pop-simulacra that you might hear crossing an atrium on your way to the Orange Julius.
Having reached Midsummer, I can report that the garden still seems to be doing well. The squash bugs finally arrived and now it's game of attrition to remove the little egg clusters as I find them. When I find the adults, I pick them off and feed them to the chickens, which is extremely satisfying. When the squash is done, I'll nuke that bed and we'll put something else there. Maybe spinach and mesclun mix. The cukes are booming and the tomatoes are starting to blush. The companion-planting is also coming along, though I think that planting it sooner would have given it a better head start in terms of rain. The hot peppers we direct-sowed also came up nicely. No blooms yet, but the heat is definitely agreeing with them.