fire 'em all

Of course Chuck Todd should be retired, for both his frustrating, lazy-ass reporting and his insufferable smugness.  I think we all can agree about that.

My beef, this morning, is with NPR, to which I have been a loyal listener and supporter since its birth around the time of the Watergate hearings.

At the top of the hour today, NPR mentioned that Obama spoke this weekend at a memorial service for the recent DC mass shooting.  The reporter hastened to add that this was in the face of the recall of Colorado lawmakers who had favored some modest curbs on gun accessibility, then quickly moved on.

Thank you, we have been reminded that the National mood will not tolerate any changes in gun laws.

If you google 'colorado gun recall' you'll see dozens of stories that use phrases like 'big victory for the NRA' and 'loud and clear message', etc.  I had to dig before I found this page, which tells you that John Morse lost by 319 votes, with less than 22% of eligible voters showing up.  Nice work, Colorado.

Yes, I know only the final tally ultimately matters, but a little perspective, due diligence, and very little effort among reporters might have lessened the false message of  'big victory' and 'loud and clear message'.

Which brings me to Cokie Roberts.

Cokie's voice has been in my ears for decades. During her glib summary this morning of the current preposterous House Republican chicanery, she said (paraphrasing) 'the Republican-passed bill reflects polls showing that the majority of Americans do oppose Obamacare.'

Why, oh why, did she not take a moment to add 'of course, there is a calculated, overwhelming lack of public understanding about what Obamacare actually is, and when people are asked about specific actual provisions of the law, polling is always positive.'

But no.  In the current world of NPR News, the pulse of Americans is definitively against toughening access to guns and the (sic) government takeover of health care.

At every opportunity to provide perspective and counter the determination of the Wreckers (a handy term originally used in the old Soviet Union), the opportunity quickly passes. It's the way 'news' is handled in all the highly-visible outlets - the Corporate view must not be challenged.

Following these few minutes of news 'summary' (i.e. castration), NPR Morning Edition then spent the majority of the half-hour on a detailed story concerning the science advisor to the 'Big Bang Theory', with interviews, audio clips, and many details reflecting the thorough reporting that went into this story, which closed out the half-hour with this final stab into my heart: 'This is NPR News'.

Fire them all.

then and now

In the summer of 1967, I traveled to Europe with a group of students from my home town.  As I look back on the experience, I've often wondered what those Europeans made of us well-fed, naive tourists, a mere 20 years after they had experienced horrendous destruction and death.

Here is the group, at the Chemung County airport prior to departure. That's me on the left - yes, people back then actually wore coats and ties on airplanes.

One of the nice features of the program was that we stayed with families in 4 places: England, Austria, Denmark, and Holland.  For the Austrian home-stay, we were in a tiny village in the country.

The home I stayed with had pigs and chickens in the courtyard, a privy rather than plumbing, and a nice family, who served me sausage, mustard-from-a-tube, and their own white wine.  They spoke little English and my German was, at best, rudimentary.  I do remember sitting in their kitchen watching the news from Vietnam, and all agreeing that it was a terrible thing.

I took some slides of the mother and father, a son, and the house.  I was there for maybe 4 days, then we were off to Vienna, then Prague, then Berlin, but that's another story.

Decades have passed.

Now Karen and I are planning a Fall trip that will take us back to Prague and down the Danube from Passau, Germany to Vienna.  I pulled out my old slides and, for the first time in many years, remembered much about that time in Austria.  After a few days, I was able to remember the name of the teeny hamlet where we stayed (Elsarn), and found it on Google Maps.  Turns out that, on the final night of the bike tour, before heading to Vienna, we will be staying about 20 km from Elsarn.

I then tried to remember the name of the family and, after a couple of days, I remembered.  I asked Google if anyone with that name was still in that village, and up popped a name and an address - I could see it was the same place.

I had some 4x6 prints made of my slides, wrote a letter in German (with the help of Google Translate) and sent it off, at the end of May.  I checked my mailbox frequently for several weeks, then gave up looking.

Last week, I received an email, in English, from the grandson of the people I stayed with.  He thanked me for the photos.  The grandparents are long dead.  My photo from 1967:

We have exchanged several emails and it is possible that I may be able to see his father, now 77 and speaks no English, when we are in the neighborhood in October. I don't remember if I met his father that summer - he would have been 21 (I was 16).

Here is my 1967 photo of their courtyard - the little boy is the younger brother of the family, who I do remember.

The grandson just sent me a photo of the house as it is today.  As you can see, much is totally recognizable.

Time warp.

feudalism, 2050

This piece got me thinking (always a dangerous prospect).  To summarize, a real-estate guy in Arizona sells 'protective services', which are actually highly-armed, paramilitary mercenaries, to private corporations.

This, of course, is a teeny bit less alarming than having official Government military forces protecting private assets, which, (not so) oddly, has happened before with the mine industry (but I digress). Let's leave aside the Fascism of government involvement for now.

No, I'm thinking about a future distopia, where wealthless masses and scarce food/water/power resources exist in a world of (largely-but-not-totally metaphorical) islands of (relatively) great wealth, luxuries, and comfort, protected by private armies of highly-armed mercenaries.

Isn't this where we are heading, with the astonishing stratification of society and wealth concentration?  Instead of today's 'gated communities', where an attendant has to push a button to open the gate for your car to enter, imagine confronting a line of 'defenders' making it clear that you are definitely not going to gain access to the resources of the privileged few behind the walls.

As long as the Master can pay/feed/arm the troops, it's a sure bet that the angry/hungry masses at the gates will be 'handled'. The upside of this is full-employment for ex-military guys who have the perfect skills for the task at hand. The downside is archetypal.

It sounds like Europe in 1100 to me.  Given the history of Greed, I expect this Wikipedia page will get bigger in time.

In other news, I have to get my car's AC fixed today - another heat wave coming next week.

finally moving in the right direction, for electric cars?

A couple of years ago, I remember seeing a presentation on what seemed to me to be an outstanding model for dealing with the issue of electric car batteries.  It is simply this:

Since the battery is one of the most-expensive components, you do NOT include the price of the battery in the purchased car.  Instead, you subscribe to a battery-swap service (monthly-fee?).

Existing gas stations (who participate) would have Battery-swap stations, where you would simply drive in, present your credit card (or subscription card), and have a quick-as-a-bunny machine pull out your low battery and drop in a fresh one, and off you drive.

Obviously, there is a chicken-and-egg issue with setting up battery-swap stations around town (and along Interstate highways!!), but doesn't this make total sense?

If you elect to ALWAYS recharge your battery at home, you can cancel the swap-service after a while, but, given that everyone is already used to pulling into a gas station to get fuel, it's the same idea, and less hassle than plugging in at home.

In fact, the innovative folks at Tesla appear to be moving exactly there.   Cool, huh?

Man-O-Manzanita

Spending a couple of days in Manzanita, with doggie. This morning, despite clouds and the promise of drizzle (a promise that was indeed fulfilled), we hiked up the north side of Neahkahnie Mountain, a trail that, amazingly, I have not ever done in the 36 years (!) I have been meandering thru these parts.

Here's the start of the hike, looking back towards Cape Falcon (all photos via cell-phone - sorry).

Big old trees and ferns along the trail.

A (more) open area nearing the top.

And, this afternoon, down on the busy, busy beach.

Back to Portland tomorrow.

not dead yet

For context, see yesterday's post.

When Karen and Eric left Santa Cruz, around 2 this afternoon, Sylvia was mostly comatose, and everyone assumed that death was near. Tears were shed upon parting.

It's now 8:30 pm.  They arrived safely in the LA area, and are, at the moment, in the Burbank IKEA (Karen's idea, not Eric's), en route to the family house above the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

I called Santa Cruz and talked to Lola for a bit.  She said that Sylvia rallied later in the afternoon, and actually went for a (very) short walk in the neighborhood.  On speaker phone, I heard that familiar raspy voice, not at all weak, saying she was happy to hear from me.

I reminded her I am doing my once-a-month radio show next Sunday and she said she'd tune in (over the internet, as usual).  I asked if she had any requests and, without missing a beat, said firmly, "My Yiddishe Mame".

Sylvia Stolzberg: 102 years + 2 days, and continuing to amaze.

Just thought you should know.

and that was the last time I saw him

July, 1983

My father had been in poor health for a couple of years, but as the summer of 1983 began, it was clear that he was dying.  After a number of operations and setbacks, he was moved into a room in the hospital where I had been born, 31 years earlier.  Arnot-Ogden Hospital - Elmira, New York.

I am now almost 62 - so these events happened exactly half a lifetime (so far) ago.

I had taken a leave of absence from my Portland job and flown home, to be with my mother and brother.  There was nothing to do but sit in the room, read, doze, wait.

I remember two sounds, as the hot, humid summer days dragged on and on.  My father did not talk.  Each breath, in and out, was accompanied by the sounds of air bubbling thru the fluid constantly filling his lungs.  The nurses drained fluid frequently, but it soon returned, as did the bubbling sound deep in his chest.

That sound was disturbing enough, but, every few hours, we were asked to leave the room while the nurses turned him in the bed.  His cries of pain reached the corridor - no words, just hurt.

There was nothing to be done.  Each night, we'd return to the house my parents built before they were married, and was the only home I knew until I left town for college, in Baltimore, at 17.  Each new morning, we'd dress, eat something, and drive to the hospital.

There were bad days, when we were certain that the end was near. I remember waking up one morning and saying to myself, 'this is the day my father dies'.  But he kept on, without any of us trying to fool ourselves with hope.

This went on for many, many weeks, but it was eventually clear that nothing would change soon.  It was time for me to fly back to Portland, to attend to matters there.

It was my father's 75th birthday, July 8th, when I was set to leave.  It was another bright, hot, humid Upstate New York summer morning.  I went up to his bed - his eyes were closed and his labored breathing regular.  I can't remember if I held his hand, but I said something like, "I always hoped you would be proud of me."

It was over a month later, in mid-August, when I got a phone call at work from a family friend who said, "you better come immediately."  I quickly made a plane reservation, left work and went home to pack.  As I was waiting for a taxi to arrive my phone rang again.  It was my boss's secretary who said, in a quiet voice, "we just got another call for you.  Your father died an hour ago."

It took me well over a year before I felt like a human being again, and 1984 turned out to have a couple of major, very positive, turning-points in my life, but that's another story.

Why am I having these memories today?

Karen's mother, the inestimable Sylvia Stolzberg, turned 102 yesterday.  Karen has been there, in Santa Cruz, since Tuesday, as Sylvia is now in that twilight period, 'between two worlds' as a friend put it.  Very weak now, she is at times conversant, joking, and eating - at other times simply sleeping, sleeping, sleeping.

Between two worlds.

Tomorrow, Karen and her brother are driving down to Pasadena, to check in with the workers who are doing some long-deferred painting and repairs at the now empty family home, where we have had so many joyous (and a couple of somber) family events over the decades.  It was originally planned that Sylvia would also be going to Pasadena for a big family birthday party, but that was cancelled when she began this last big decline, last week.

At some point tomorrow morning, Karen will have to say good-bye to Sylvia. My poor father, 30 years ago, showed no sign of knowing me the last time we were together.  I am hoping that Karen is able to have more.

Here is Sylvia, with a friend, last Thanksgiving:

it might as well be Spring

There is actual sun in Portland today, and it's positively mild - what a change!  Time to get out in the yard and do a few long-postponed chores.

Here are two of our (several) vegetable plots that, last year, held tomatoes (very good year, both for Cherry and Early Girl), bok choi (very tasty - ate 'em all), purple bush beans (meh!), squashes (zucchini and summer - moderately successful), and a smattering of herbs, which were, sadly, mostly destroyed by the cats.

Patches are now freshly weeded and spread with a lot of our abundant compost.

I'm thinking potatoes in one of them (did potatoes in the back yard last year - pretty good yield), and more tomatoes and POLE beans (quite successful, a couple of years ago) in the other.

This afternoon, compost on the asparagus bed!

(By the way, if you click to enlarge the photo, and it was a perfectly-clear day, you'd see Mt. Hood in the spot above the neighbor's chimney.)

a tale of three phone companies

Well over a year ago, I noticed that I get a busy signal whenever I dial (from our home land-line) a phone number in the 503 area code, that is outside of the Portland area (i.e. Salem, the coast, etc).

Such numbers require a 1 prefix before the (503).  We rarely need to make such calls, but yesterday I needed to send a fax and remembered that it doesn't work. I sent the fax from Karen's office, but, when I got home, I thought I'd bite the bullet and try, again, to get it solved.

I worked on this a year ago, and Qwest directed me to Verizon (my long-distance provider, I learned), who insisted they were not the problem.

That prior sentence, of course, represents *hours* of phone-tree navigation, repeated explanations of the problem, transfers, long waits, and denials of responsibility.

Same thing yesterday.  Two Qwest reps, FIVE different numbers within Verizon, and an actual Verizon trouble-ticket that was quickly closed with a 'not our problem' comment.  I reopened the ticket and, late yesterday afternoon, a Verizon technician actually called me, to tell me it was not their problem.

However, Verizon directed me to Credo Long Distance, who we pay for long distance (remember, it was Qwest who said it was handled by Verizon).  The Credo guy was very helpful, had me do several tests (while talking on my cell phone), and ended up actually making a suggestion of a change to be made by Qwest.

Back on the phone to a Qwest customer service guy, who heard the whole story (yet again) and agreed that the suggested change was worth a try.  He transferred me to a technician who actually did it, and said to try everything again tomorrow morning.

We shall see.  In the meantime, I am thanking God today, that, with any luck, I will never have to call Verizon again.

 

since we are never going to do anything about the guns...

I think the Egyptian Pharaohs had it right.

When a new one came to power, he often ordered that all images of the prior guy be defaced, and his name erased from History for all time.

I would never dream of advocating laws that dictate what Media can say (slippery-slope #1), but perhaps we can all urge the TV and Radio media to STOP spending countless hours, after these events, focusing on the shooter.  The current repetitive amateur psychology never 'explains' what happened, and only demonstrates to like-minded/susceptible young men how they can achieve (perverse) immortality, too.

Over the past couple of days, I did hear a report that one town's local newspaper, after one of these tragedies, made a policy decision that school shootings would NEVER appear on Page 1, and the shooter's name would never be mentioned.

That might help, but I can't honestly imagine the 24/7 TV news business ever adopting a policy that would just make viewers turn to a more-sensational outlet, and that would hurt ratings/revenue, so screw public interest.

...Unless they all agreed, and, come to think of it, thanks to the unprecedented Media Consolidation of the past 20 years, that would only require action by about 6 CEOs.  Hmmmmm.

on iconic images

We remember the photo of the North Vietnamese POW, an instant before being shot in the head.

We remember the photos of the jet hitting the 2nd WTC tower.

We remember the photo of John and Jackie arriving at the Dallas airport that sunny Friday morning.

Photographs of impending tragedy have an understandable fascination because we know what is about to happen, and our helplessness to prevent it raises an emotion equal parts horror, frustration, and, let's face it, schadenfreude (oh, those sophisticated Germans).

It is happening again, with the photo of the subway guy trying to escape from the onrushing train.  In that blink-of-an-eye (or 'augenblick', again the Germans with the perfect word for 'moment') image, there is the possibility that he'll make it.  That we know he didn't is what turns the image into a perpetually-haunting one.

We observe, we know what is about to happen, and we cannot stop it.

The point here, is that I am nominating this photo as best metaphor for Humanity, in the face of the now-inevitable 2 degrees Celsius average global warming, from carbon that has already been burned.

The train is coming. and, unfortunately, the engineer is actually accelerating, not slowing down.

In this case, weirdly, all of Us (and our children) are both the Engineer and the Scrambler.

another day

Got up at my usual time, dressed quickly and headed out the door with the dog.  Totally typical.

Our house is at the top of a small hill, and, when it was originally built, back in the 1930's, it must have had a spectacular Mt. Hood view, which is now obscured by neighboring trees.  You have to walk 50 yards to the street before you get a clear view to the east.

This morning, the cloud bank just to the right of the newly-white mountain had that luminous border that said the Sun's appearance was happening quite soon.  While the dog sniffed around, I stood for several minutes, appreciating the scene:  a few birds above, leaves drifting down, the steam from my breath, the increasing sense of the beginning of a new day.

The Sun appeared to rise above the cloud bank (a persuasive illusion indeed) and its light and promise of warmth filled the scene.  A miraculous, everyday thing.

This morning I am attending the funeral of a wonderful person my own age, who died suddenly on Tuesday.  The world goes on; glad I stopped for a moment.  Next, coffee.  Little pleasures.

celebrating the release of Windows 8!

I finally decided to bite the bullet, and retire my extremely trusty primary development PC, a Windows XP machine that my son, Ben, built, a couple of years ago.

craigslist to the rescue: I found a guy selling a quad-core PC, with Windows 7 and 1 gig of RAM, for $60.  I contacted him, and he turned out to be a local retired fellow, from whom I bought a PC for Karen's office last year.

We chatted about this and I asked how much extra it would cost to throw in another gig of RAM, and he said $5.  I said, 'go for it'.

I picked it up and plugged it in (using the monitor from my main PC) and, sure enough, there was Windows 7, and it seemed pretty zippy, as expected.  I soon realized that having a 2nd monitor, to enable normal work while everything was getting configured, was going to be necessary.

craigslist to the rescue again - I found a local kid who was selling a perfectly good 17" LCD monitor for $15 - he took $12!

With all that in place, then began the horrifying process of installing and testing all software and development tools, my code-signing certificate, my Favorites.  Configuring SQL Server so that I can see it from Access took a while, as did restoring database backups from my development PC (hint:  the default permissions are not sufficient). 

Then, I spent hours (thanks to a USB external drive) copying over photos, documents and music, copying and testing Karen's web site tools (which, incredibly, require Java 6, not 7 - THAT took a while to solve), etc. etc. etc.  All that took the better part of two days.

To connect the new guy to the internet, I was using a USB wireless adaptor.  Finally, this morning, I reached the point where I was ready to unplug my old guy and plug in the new guy at my desk.  Oh no - ethernet was unable to see the Internet (a direct cable connection to my router)!!!

Windows 7 seemed to want my ISP username and password to establish the broadband connection.  This was puzzling - it should just work.  I reinserted the USB wifi dongle and was able to continue working, while trying everything I could think of, without success.

I talked to 3 Comcast people.  The first ended up giving me 2 phone numbers to call.  One was disconnected and the other was technical support at Netgear - totally useless!  The 2nd Comcast person had a very friendly manner and tried reprovisioning my modem, but that made no difference.  She ended up transferring me to a 3rd technician.

Suffice it to say that I hung up in disgust after 20 minutes on the phone with her, after she told me that I cannot do something that I have been doing all along with the old computer.

Just about at my wits end, I had the bright idea of checking the NIC card in Device Manager and, it wasn't there.  All of a sudden, the veil was lifted.

I rebooted, frantically pressed F2 and, amazingly, the BIOS program came up.  Sure enough, the setting for 'OnBoard LAN' was disabled.  I enabled it, exited the BIOS and, voila, I am (obviously) connected to the Internets, sans wifi.  It all seems so obvious.

Once this hurdle had passed, all that remained to configure and test was the connection to my trusty HP printer/fax/scanner.  I turned it on and Windows 7 did a fine job of installing the driver.  The final step in all this, to prove to myself that all capabilities I need are present and working was to initiate a scan from within Adobe Acrobat.  That seemed to work, although Acrobat crashed after I said 'go ahead and download updates from Adobe' (and that eventually crashed).  Sigh.

At any rate, I did a Speedtest with the new PC, connected via ethernet, and got an A-.

It has taken 5 elapsed days from the point of bringing the new Windows 7 PC home to having everything set up with all tools and files. 

For some reason, I am reluctant to do this any time soon, for Windows 8.

oh, blog, I have neglected you!

Sorry, but quick Facebook posts are so much easier, and you get instant feedback (especially when posting pointed political stuff).

Fear not, though.  We are headed to France for two weeks in a couple of days, and I hope to do some posts as we go.

opposite world

Yesterday, one of my Facebook friends (a former co-worker) posted a link to a Conservative Facebook page that included this graphic, and a bunch of quotes from Founding Fathers, which implied that they would be outraged to hear that their descendants are considering increasing taxes on the wealthy.

I thought about this a while, and see this meme as an extremely-effective talking point, aimed at the Social-Security-is-an-entitlement and my-wealth-is-mine-and-the-government-has-no-right-to-use-it-for-THOSE-people crowd.

The more I thought about it, I realized, however, that the above alarmist sentiment is entirely correct.

Except.

Take a look at this graph, which is one of many at this site.

A MASSIVE redistribution of wealth has been going on at an accelerated rate since the glorious days of St. Ronald.  It has indeed been a theft from the 99%, cleverly engineered through tax, banking, and manufacturing policies that heavily favor the Very Rich, to the detriment of the Rest of Us.

Read any of the wonderful books by David Cay Johnston, who has been relentless in trying to expose this.

So, Dan, my friend, I am in total agreement that "Redistribution is not 'Fairness', it's THEFT".  Unfortunately, I must conclude that you are confusing the Victims with the Robbers.

today's news

Listening to the news this morning, I hear:

disappointing monthly jobs number, disappointing monthly jobs number, disappointing monthly jobs number, disappointing monthly jobs number, disappointing monthly jobs number, disappointing monthly jobs number...

immediately followed by...

romney says, romney says, romney says, romney says, romney says, romney says, romney says, romney says, romney says, romney says, romney says, romney says, etc.

Meanwhile, buried on page 14, it seems there is another number that just might be more meaningful in the long term.

Normally, I am quite in favor of Evolution, however, it certainly is too bad that the short-sighted gene won out over the long-term-vision gene.  It makes sense that this is so ('OMG, is that a tiger lunging at me?'), but, still, considering the general absence of tigers, why is it we are still so unable to hear the horn blaring and recognize the oncoming headlights pointing at us?

Simple, in the words of Upton Sinclair:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Substitue 'lifestyle' for 'salary' and it's all clear.




PS:  received this mass email this morning, from 'The Washington Times':


Say “no” to higher electricity rates!
Protect your family’s affordable electricity.

At a time of great economic stress, the EPA is enacting a series of back-door mandates that threaten to increase the cost your family’s electricity. EPA’s rules on coal will curtail America’s more affordable energy from the nationís most abundant energy resources. Click here to sign our petition against higher electricity rates!

American job losses.

With 14 million Americans already out of work — these EPA mandates could cause another 250,000 job losses across the country. We can’t afford to lose these well paying middle-class jobs. Click here to sign our petition.

    You can help. Stand up to keep energy prices low and protect
    American jobs! Sign our petition today.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Did you know that Denmark has significantly cut its carbon emissions chiefly by raising the cost of electricity?  You can look it up.

a visit with Mr. Pessimist

It's me again.  Can't help it - I've read too much history to convincingly portray myself otherwise.

This piece in the New Yorker is one in a long series of valuable Climate reporting they have published over the last few years.  See also Elizabeth Colbert's many pieces.

The Michael Specter article is about Geoengineering, and you should read it because, I believe, this is our future. This idea was reinforced when, a few months ago, we heard a presentation by Paul Gilding.

The basic idea is simple, and even a shallow look at human history reveals the long-standing pattern:  societies always reach points of crisis because they refrain from dealing with threats until the level of disruption discomforts the comfortable.  Duh!

At the point when the crisis becomes devastating (whether it's the Mongol hordes burning your cities or 'clever' financial manipulations crashing your economy), the society may or may not collapse (see Jared Diamond's work).  Many societies have ultimately not survived those types of crises.

Now, back to Geoengineering.

I firmly believe that the Political and Industrial Powers of our world will do NOTHING to scale-down the fossil-fuel economy.  We are too comfortable with the world we have created, where extracting and burning carbon at an ever-increasing rate is absolutely necessary.  Add in the clearly-emerging feedback loops in the Arctic and the oceans, and it becomes very difficult to envision any public policy shift that will effectively mitigate disaster, especially for coastal cities around the globe.  Sorry.

My prediction:  at some point, the world-consciousness will arrive at the penultimate "Oh, Shit!" moment.  Grasping in panic towards any possible way out, Humanity will have no choice but to turn to the Geoengineering community and plead, "save us."

One or more of the grandiose Geoengineering rolls-of-the-dice will be attempted.  We can only hope that one or more of them will work, although the problem with rolls-of-the-dice is that the Law of Unintended Consequences then becomes the Supreme Law of the Land Planet.

Oh, well, as George (W) Bush once said (paraphrased):  "I'm not concerned about how the future regards me, since all of us will be dead by then."

it drives me nuts - mid-May edition

Several times over the past few days, as NPR continues its 'balanced' approach to covering the Evangelical 'concern' (i.e. hysteria) over the Obama Same-Sex marriage announcement, I have heard several presumably-sincere individuals saying that their opposition is simply and firmly because it 'violates Biblical teachings'.

Case closed.

Reminds me of the viral email that periodically circulates (at least among Friends of Mine), reprinting a satirical letter to Dr. Laura, that Snopes accepts as pretty legit.  You can read the letter here, along with Snopes' comments about Dr. Laura, etc.  It's a brilliant piece of writing.

IMHO, anyone using the 'Bible tells me it is an abomination' argument as their reason to STRONGLY oppose Obama's re-election, and continues to, for example, eat those forbidden pork and shellfish products (not to mention refraining from stoning to death a neighbor who violates the Sabbath) is either a pathetically-manipulated sheep or a hypocritical bigot.

Or both.

men behaving badly

No, I'm not talking about World War I and II, although these are conspicuous examples.

Here's a thought I just had.  SOME White, Christian men are still so upset the a you-know-what is President, that they grasp at any of the many memes (both jokes and out-right lies) circulating thru the hatemosphere (I thought for a moment that I just made up that word, but I see a band has already claimed it).  This serves to bolster their sense that 'I am still superior', which was, after all, the subtext behind a lot of social thinking, prior to the 1960s.

I'm thinking that the recent right-wing state laws concerning contraception, forced probing, etc are yet another chapter in the same vein.  That is, their usage of 'take our country back' means SOME White, Christian men are fighting to return to the days when women and blacks knew their place (i.e. the slave quarters, the kitchen, and the laundry room).

Certainly not in the White House.  Certainly not in control of their bodies. 'Must assert dominance' (rinse and repeat).

Thinking of Gandhi's famous dictum ("First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."), I guess the most hopeful way to look at this current spate of shameful state laws is that, maybe, we are at stage 3 1/2.

Unfortunately, many of them are armed, and not part of a well-regulated militia.

just another accolade

In this case, an Accolade Elm, planted this morning.  Check back in 10 years and it should be much taller!

Many thanks to my good friends at Friends of Trees.  If you don't know all about them, why not?