Pawprints From Space

Okay, I'm a little confused and slightly annoyed. All this brouhaha over Mr. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his underwear bomb (there are plenty of jokes in this situation but at least for now I am not going there)... let's step back a bit here and look at some details at least as I understand them: 1. The TSA was created after September 11th - during the Bush Administration; 2. The Terrorist Database, Watch List and No Fly List were all part of the September 11th response - during the Bush Administration; 3. The boy boarded the plane in Amsterdam (NOT at an American airport where we have control over the security process), was screened and went through security in Amsterdam - they didn't use a full body scanner and the normal scans showed nothing; no dogs were used to sniff out anything odd because this was not part of the normal procedure - body scans over there are possible but were on that day voluntary (they are now going to be mandatory it appears at least for flights ...

Funny thing about sinus trouble... there are times when it isn't pain that makes you feel odd it is a pressure that makes you feel a bit drunk, the difficulty breathing that adds a light-headedness. And to think people probably pay great sums of money to achieve this floating strangeness. Add that sensation to the year coming to a close AND toss in the fact that New Year's Eve offers up a blue moon this year and you've got a tendency to ramble, wax philosophical and wonder where the "funny" brownies went. The year in review... it began with excitement, a new president and a sense of hope and change. Eventually the economy did begin to turn somewhat and the stock market seems intent on ending the year on a positive note (of course I have just now jinxed it). Throughout the year there were friends who dealt with awful health problems, the fun of a high school reunion, the joy of taking in a wonderful abandoned kitten, great book club reads, not nearly enough time to...

We are now a mere week away from the new year. Lower case so as not to be confused with the "holiday" of New Year's Day. Strikes me funny at times that we celebrate the end of the year when the calendar itself was created by human beings, revised a number of times over the centuries and different cultures actually follow different calendars... so which is the REAL day the new year begins? Should it matter? I say no it shouldn't because why should we limit ourselves to resolutions, new beginnings, promises and hope for the future to one arbitrary point in time? Couldn't we be hopeful and determined to make our lives (and ourselves) better for more than one day? Or maybe two? Be honest how often do your resolutions last longer than that? How about we attempt to do this, to have an attitude of hope all year long? Yes! Let's endeavor to do that.... let's decide to be positive and hopeful and determined to be better people every single day. Adopt the ancient cu...

For some odd reason I was up at 5:00 a.m. for those who know me even only slightly you know this is beyond rare... we had a guy in college who touched off odd happenings and disasters when he got up too early (e.g. one day when he got up before 8 a.m. the Pope was shot) hopefully nothing like that will happen today. It wasn't kitty craziness that got me out of bed today, just a general sense of "eh" and the need for more cold medicine. Hitting the paper I saw where the State Legislature has decided (at least in the Senate) not to enact the latest round of scheduled income tax cuts for 2010. Meaning that the taxes in 2010 stay the same as 2009. Status quo. No change. The same. But when you listen to the Republicans and our local loony paper they are screaming that this is a tax increase, OMG your taxes are going up! Four words: No. They. Are. Not. Not going down is not the same as going up. And this is not a matter of perspective, this is fact. Q: Are taxes increasing? A: ...

Here were are about a week from Christmas and yours truly - Ms. Ultra-Organized - has not finished shopping, has not put up the tree and has barely decorated. What decorations I did put up were torn up by the high winds of a week ago. Hopefully tomorrow I can repair the damage. Despite the insanity, I have had time to ponder. Thanks to a conversation at book club last night, I have been pondering religion, faith and spirituality. These are not all synonyms you know. Religion is an organized belief system, it has traditions and structure. Faith is highly personal and hard to define - something you have or you don't. Something you can find and lose several times in the course of your life. Spirituality is more of a sense of being, a connection to something greater than the self, those rare moments of awe... this is where the soul lives. A person could be highly spiritual and yet not participate in an organized religion. Could be a profound and "deep" person of great compass...

Okay, I need $200,000. Not to pay medical bills or pay off loans or credit cards... okay I could use it for that too but that's not the urgent need of the moment. I need $200,000 to go into space. Yup... space. Okay near Earth orbit, the edge of space but you get the idea: SPACE!!! ME!!!! The NASA junkie, the kid who loves all things to do with space, astronomy, etc. For a mere $200,000 Virgin Galactic will take you into space. Around 300 people have already plunked down the cost of the ticket to reserve their seats. Now this would make a fabulous birthday present people... that big one is coming up in 2011. HINT HINT HINT But seriously, think about it. For those of us who were wide-eyed kids in the late 1960s when Apollo 11 touched down on the lunar surface, those who believed that by the 1990s there would be a lunar colony, flying cars and other technological wonders thanks to the space program... this space tourism thing is a dream come true. What stinks is that the dream is onl...

So I'm curled up with the ill kitty last night watching TV and this commercial comes on... It is a weight loss ad (surprise!) for a local "medical" practice that claims to be able to design a plan that can help anyone whether they want to lose 20 pounds or 200. The kicker? Both of the practitioners in the ad are quite overweight themselves. In fact, in one vignette you can't tell which is the patient and which the practitioner, both look to need to lose at least 75 pounds (or more) in order to prevent heart attacks, etc. So I'm shaking my head and rolling my eyes and it got me thinking.... Years ago we had a family doctor who kept after my mother to stop smoking. All the while puffing away on cigarette and cigarette in his office. And he was not the thinnest person around either. Go to any hospital, any floor and a good number of the medical professionals are not just overweight, many are actual candidates for that Biggest Loser program. Why is this? Weird shifts,...

I was reading postings on Facebook this morning from friends far and wide and some of the content got me thinking. We've just crossed the Thanksgiving threshold into the holiday season, "Black Friday" has expanded to a weekend madhouse of shopping (pushing, shoving trying to get the 'door buster' specials) and we will soon be bombarded with holiday "cheer" every which way we turn. There will be those insisting that there is a campaign out there to kill Christmas - how DARE you say "Happy Holidays" after all, it's "Merry Christmas" damn it. Personally I find that rather amusing since Christmas isn't the only holiday that occurs this time of year. There's the celebration/observance of (in no particular order) Guru Tegh Bahadur Martyrdom, Samhain, Eid-al-Adha, the Ascension of Abdu'l-Baha, Hanukkah, the sacred month of Muharram begins mid-December, there's Kwanzaa, Boxing Day (okay not religious but it is a holiday), ...

Every day we are bombarded with information, advertising and out-and-out "spin” on the issues. It seems as though every organization out there is yelling for our attention. One of the greatest strengths our nation can bring to bear is an informed electorate but how does one become an informed voter and citizen? Thanks to the Internet there are a lot of options, perhaps too many. The following list compiles a few of those web sites that attempt at least to provide an unbiased look at the issues: The U.S. Senate: www.senate.gov The U.S. House of Representatives: www.house.gov The Library of Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov (track legislation as it moves through Congress) Congress in general: www.congress.org (these guys have a great email newsletter you can sign up for too) To research the issues: www.factcheck.org (they beat up folks on both sides of the aisle) Now most of you have figured out I tend to run a bit left of center politically and otherwise, so for t...

So... late last night after our local paper went to bed the US House voted to pass their version of health care reform. No one should celebrate just yet. The Senate has not yet brought its bill(s) to the floor yet - for some reason I thought they had but that must have been all the hype over the Baucus bill. In any case, the Senate needs to pass something before any reconciliation of the bills can happen. And reconciliation is usually a LONG process. Things can change a lot during this process, compromise can rewrite all sorts of things. So the battle is far from over and both sides are going to gear up and flood the airwaves with all sorts of spin and insanity. There will be polls, and commentary and all sorts of silliness on the various talk shows. The funny thing is that prior to this vote the majority of the polls were reported as indicating that the public did in fact want a public option and yet the opponents of health care reform kept (and still keep) saying that "the Ameri...

Okay I think we need a tiny bit of perspective here. When I graduated from college in early May 1983 the unemployment rate for that month wasn't out yet but in April that rate was (brace yourself) 10.8%. Today it is 10.2% Okay so a 0.6% difference may not seem like much but translated into jobs that's a lot of people. Yes! That's right! 10.8% in 1983. And even then the numbers did not include those whose unemployment had expired, those who were no longer actively looking, just the way the numbers don't include them now. Now think a minute folks... which president was called upon as a beacon throughout the entire campaign last year? Ronald Reagan. Who was president in 1983? Ronald Reagan! He was half-way through his first term then (or nearly so) and we had unemployment that high. Inflation was at 6.68% in May 1983. Today that rate is - 1.29%. Can you see the difference? When I was first entering the "real" work force in 1983 unemployment was higher, the rate o...

As you know by now the voters in Ohio have passed a ballot issue to allow casinos in four major cities in the state. This was the fifth time the idea was on the ballot and even though this was a constitutional amendment the thing passed. By a decent margin. So now the state legislature is having a fit. Some of them are putting together a ballot initiative for 2010 that will amend the casino issue to charge higher fees to the casinos claiming that other states charge more for licenses etc. than Ohio will according to the amendment that passed on Tuesday. Yup, the Greedy Gus Guys are already at work to torpedo the whole thing by wanting more money. So we could potentially have the ability to have casinos here and yet charge so much in fees, etc. that no one will want to build one. Again Ohio is doing everything it can to scare business away no matter what the voters want. The ironic thing is just last week it was I think that one of those organizations known for ranking such things liste...

Well "silly season" is officially over for another year. The Mayoral race is complete... and the "good guy" won. Unofficial final count called in to headquarters was 55% us, 45% them. Funny comment heard from several people in the room: "oh thank God, now we don't have to move!" Of course this would not have been funny if we had lost. Literally more than half of my neighborhood would have been out of a job come January and would have had to move, the rest of us would have left because living under a "my way or the highway" style of mayor would have been intolerable. We can now look forward to the sheriff and police chief continuing to work together, someone with vision leading the administration and my company gets to keep a client (can you say "win win"?). The school levy passed. Folks seem to finally understand what a renewal levy is... took only HOW many tries on the ballot? Sales tax in the county however did not survive. Once a...

Time has just about run out for the candidates and issue promoters/preventors, the last flurry of campaign ads is hitting the airwaves and it is not a moment too soon people!! We have mayoral candidates, we have school levy insanity (it is only a renewal they say, no new $$ - but if I have less $$ right now won't it still hurt more?), we have state issues that no one seems to really understand but everyone is yelling about, we have city charter changes that again no one seems to understand even the people working on them, etc. etc. etc. And this is an OFF YEAR. Just wait until 2010 when the congressional nuts come out of the woodwork and this state has its districts redrawn thanks to the census - then the fun will REALLY begin. But it is almost over... tomorrow we vote. And that's where you come in.... Wherever you live, whatever your politics you should get out there and exercise your right to vote. Polls open early and stay open long enough for even us working fools to make i...

It is countdown to the local elections and the silliness continues. Hard to believe it has been a month since last I typed - silly high school reunion took up a HUGE chunk of that time, my apologies. The fourth debate between the mayoral candidates was last week and the final is this week. This would be interesting except that we keep going over exactly the same territory, which can happen in a one-note opposition campaign apparently. Last week's debate was interesting in regards to the questions being asked by the business person on the panel who wanted to know what good the challenger would and/or could say about the city if faced with the prospect of a company wanting to locate here. Apparently nothing. Or maybe the gentleman simply was unprepared for the question. Interesting timing in today's paper however, on the front page TA DA! a new business bringing new jobs and YUP! the current administration was involved and the company in questions was quite impressed with the spe...

As you may have gathered... assuming anyone is reading this... we have a few City elections coming up and thus silly season has begun. Silly season typically starts a month or two out from the election. It is safe to say we are there. We have mayoral candidates and their trusty sidekicks disrupting council meetings with schoolyard taunts regarding various aspects of male genitalia towards those who disagree with them. Followed a day or so later by a threat to file a complaint/lawsuit claiming other council members were in violation of open meetings laws when having a brief conversation prior to the official start of the meeting. So how does this person who feels so violated know what these other two were talking about? Unless he was standing right there. And by standing right there and not calling fellow council-folk to task on the spot (or at least reminding them with a gentle 'hey guys, not a good idea') does this not make him culpable? If not standing right there, eavesdropp...

You may not remember all the back and forth over whether the Hubble Telescope should be repaired or allowed to simply die... how it was too dangerous to send a repair team up to fix it, etc... Well if there was any doubt as to whether or not it was worth the risk, the new images released this week ought to put those doubts to rest. If you haven't seen them, check them out at the Hubble Web Site Of course this service mission is being billed as the last service mission to the telescope - partly because the shuttle fleet itself is being retired not too long from now. It was only fitting that the repair work be done this year - which in case you missed it - is the International Year of Astronomy. So called because this year marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo's use of a telescope to view the night sky. Back then of course HE didn't have to worry about light pollution. Even though I live in small city Ohio and am surrounded by farm land it is still not possible to get far en...

The Mayor's race here is starting to get "interesting". Yesterday we learned that the opposition candidate (and by that I only mean the guy NOT currently in office) was served with a "cease and desist" order by the local NBC TV station because his YouTube campaign ad not only used copyrighted news broadcast footage without permission but it was altered in such a way as to change the meaning of the reporting. Funny that this bit of info did not make it into the local paper this morning. It was on the 6 p.m. news last night, plenty of time to make the press... Today the candidate called yet another press conference (he did that earlier in the week too, code enforcement issue) to rant about a company called Global Energy - a project that is admittedly on hold. I didn't see the entire report as of yet but from what I gathered the gentleman was casting aspersions over the fact that the City's has "dropped the ball" on this thing, that permits have e...

It appears the real audacity of President Obama's hopes was bipartisanship. As the health care reform debate continues to move along - flaring up here and there in town hall meetings, talked about on all the news programs and talk shows (please note, there IS a difference between journalism and entertainment, to whit: The CBS Evening News is journalism; Glenn Beck's radio show is entertainment), ranted and raved over on the editorial pages of those papers still in existence, blogged about, etc. - the one thing that seems clear is that there will be no bipartisan effort on this subject. Over the weekend some administration folks stated that the so-called "public option" might not actually be necessary to passing the bill. This "public option" has been the big beastie under the bed for those opposed to the potential legislation. Republicans have been screaming about the addition to a "public option" from Day One. Some have guaranteed that there will ...

In all the brouhaha over health care reform and the economy; let's not forget about Iran and what its people are going through. In typical agenda setting fashion, the media has turned its attention away (for the most part) from Iran and the aftermath of the elections. By doing so the topic has lost its "top of mind awareness" and when that happens Americans tend to think the problem is over. It is not over. The media has simply gotten bored with it. They are setting the agenda for what we are to think about, not exactly what to think mind you but certainly what to think about. The famine, for example, in Ethiopia hasn't gone away simply because we haven't seen it in the news lately. Those arrested in Iran are facing trials that are travesties of justice. Some of the clerics on the ruling council are calling for the execution of those who have taken part in the protests, people are being killed while in custody, women are being raped and now Mr. Ahmadinejad is sayi...

The yelling continues across the country at the various town halls. The misinformation continues to fly from both sides. And in our area no one wants to hear about it. Not that I can completely blame them. I did find an interesting link to a summation document on the White House web site. Check this out: http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-insurance-consumer-protections/ It boils down what the President's thoughts on the subject are. Gee, don't see "single payer plan" on that at all. In fact, he doesn't seem to be for that one bit. The public option is just that, an option. It isn't the only option, just one of them. The insurance companies would compete for our business along with this option. Competition is a good thing. As the President noted, Fed Ex and UPS do quite well in competition with the US Post Office. What I like about the President's ideas are the elements aimed at that insurance industry. I mean come on, when I moved to Hartford the Aetna comp...

Been a while, been busy with the new kitten funny how a small fuzz-ball can take over your house, your life and your wallet. But I have been paying attention to the "news" and other assorted insanity ... The fact that we have a version of democracy that allows us to shriek and yell and be idiots in public towards our public officials is a good thing. Freedom to speak one's mind without fear of being locked up (most of the time) is a good thing. The ability to act like a rational adult and discuss our concerns with each other as if we actually are civilized beings is a much better thing. I am referring of course to the recent outbursts during town hall meetings regarding the proposed health care reform bills. I say "bills" because as I type this there are at least four of them in one stage or another of development. This too is a good thing, it means there are options, there are things we can discuss and tweak and refine until we get something that will work. I a...

It is as I feared and actually expected. The stimulus package is six months into its two year life span and the public (or at least the pundits) are complaining that everything isn't all better yet. Well the unemployment tsunami has slowed and if the states weren't hanging onto the money to patch holes in their budgets and putting it to work as they were supposed to their projects might very well be further along. In our little community we received some stimulus money for projects that we had had no idea how to fund, no ground hasn't broken yet but the projects are further along now than they were. "Shovel ready" after all does NOT mean that the crews have been hired and are just standing around... it means the plans have been approved and so forth now all we need is the funding. Oh sure, all across the country money will get redirected and misdirected but if even three quarters ends up where it supposed to things will improve. Financial institutions aren't l...

President Barack Obama entitled his second book "The Audacity of Hope" and yes perhaps it was audacious for a young African American man without benefit of an elite family background to aspire to greater things. But look what he accomplished! The way I see it today however, the real audacity of hope is coming to life in Iran. It is audacious to think that after 30 years of tight-fisted rule by a small number of clerics groups of outspoken people taking to the streets can honestly hope for and achieve change and freedom in their lives. And yet they are calling for it. Despite arrests, despite being killed, despite clerics now calling for the participators in these demonstrations to be executed... they have hope. They want change and now their government knows it. A government that is frightened and now weakened by this vast out pouring of anger at them. It must be quite a shock for them to realize that the control they have isn't as powerful as they had thought. Once upon ...

A young woman died yesterday. Neda Soltani. I didn't know her. And yet when I heard about her today on the news, saw the cell phone video of her bleeding to death from a gunshot wound I cried. 27 years old, a philosophy student. Gone. Sources told NBC that she was not involved in the protests yesterday, she was walking on a neighboring street when she was shot in the chest by alleged plain clothes Basij on a motorcycle. She has come to symbolize the struggle over there now. Being called by some the Angel of Iran, by others the Voice of Iran. Either way, the government forbade mosques from holding memorials for her and she was quickly buried. They don't want her to become a martyr. Too late for that, she became one the moment she was shot. Half a world away, knowing no one in her country there are tears tonight for Neda.

Good grief! I haven't posted since April????!!!! Okay, random rant and comment time then, buckle up this is gonna bounce all over the place: Other than to be an idiot, why would a volunteer at an event for a local art gallery sponsored by one political party wear a T-Shirt bashing that party? Sources confide that this person does this at every event - he finds the most obnoxious shirt possible in counterpoint to whatever the sponsor stands for and that's what he wears. Even when asked not to. When asked last evening to change his shirt, he refused, cited free speech and convinced the organization that they would lose this volunteer if they pushed it. The VP of the Board caved since he is one of their best volunteers and the shirt stayed. Personally I wasn't offended since it made him look like the small minded moron that he apparently is. Coordinating volunteers for a fun event that includes beer is a hell of a lot easier than coordinating them for an event that aims to cur...

This November our little city will hold elections for Mayor. So far there are three candidates and the primary is just under two weeks away. I did not make it to the candidate forum sponsored by neighborhood associations tonight but I did attend the first one and I doubt the rhetoric has much changed since then. One candidate has been our Mayor for several terms. He is competent, calm and in full command of the facts. Next is a former sheriff who has convinced himself and is trying very hard (for about three years now) to convince the rest of us that the city is going straight to hell - crime is out of control, housing is falling apart all around us and the immigrants are going to steal our jobs in our sleep. Vote for him or else we're doomed, we're all going to die. Candidate three has been on city council for some time. He represents a particularly troubled part of town and is the only minority on the ballot. Unfortunately he also struggles with putting a coherent sentence to...

I am presently a good 14 hours into a bathroom update (not counting the exhausted sleep of last night). This should have been a simple one day event. Nope. Not in this house. As some readers may know, anything troublesome in this house has its base in water. This project revealed another level of that problem. I ventured into the project with the idea of pulling up the old vinyl because, due to some odd staining, I believed there to be mold growing beneath it. The other simple part of the project was to replace an old, water-hogging toilet and faucet. The vinyl was stubborn and finally came up but left its felt backing stuck to the subfloor. Apparently someone had used what I like to call "adhesive-from-hell". So off to Lowe's to find an antidote to adhesive-from-hell. That accomplished the goo was applied. Oddly enough even after using the entire bottle and three hours of waiting and scraping nothing was happening. Upon closer inspection a "mushy" area was pull...

Ah Spring! Early Spring means very few flowers but one thing you can generally count on is the bright shiny face of a pansy. Can't find any ANYWHERE! Found heather supposedly hardy heather but it is only hardy to Zone 6, this in Zone 5 so it'll be dead this time next year. Bought it anyway. And some rosemary. Had to buy something.... it IS Spring after all. And Spring makes me think of Summer which makes me think of all the days gone by when hours were spent writing adventures and poems and assorted silliness. Gotta love the silliness. I miss the silliness. Speaking of silliness... have you seen the MoveOn.org chart showing the tax rate that the wealthiest will pay under the Obama plan? Quite a bit lower than they paid under Reagan (who was praised all during the campaign as the gold standard). Kinda sad to have your hero end up being harder on "those who create jobs" than the vile Democrat in office now. Hard pill to swallow, eh folks?

And on it goes... In the uproar over the AIG bonuses finger pointing has become an art form. Who knew what and when? Who added what to which bill and why? How dare they (AIG) use bailout money for bonuses (and give some to their partner banks while they were at it)!?!! And yet when the President was out and about this past week traveling hither and yon the folks asking him questions didn't mention AIG, unless they were members of the media. Could it be that the average person is more concerned about the state of their own household "economy" than AIG? Or do we all simply have burn out? I'm thinking it is a bit of both. Heard an interesting story on NPR that cast some of the blame for the mess we're in WAY back to the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Hmmm, that wasn't this Administration then was it? Lots of the same people were in Congress then though weren't they? You see, these lovely derivatives (such as credit default swaps) that sent the...

The tulips, irises, and daffodils are peeking up through the soil. Younger trees are just beginning to bud (you can see a bit a green if you look closely) the older trees seem to know better and are waiting a little bit longer. Isn't that funny? Even in the plant kingdom the elders are more cautious than the brash youth. I am a bit concerned about the flower bulbs though. While another hard frost won't hurt them, snow and ice especially would damage their leaves and stunt the flowers a bit. The leaf damage is the worst since it is the leaves as they die back later (after a good several weeks of producing chlorophyll) that feed the bulb for the following year. The weather is going to be flirting with 50 degrees from today through to next Saturday (which is the first day of Spring) but you just never know. We've had nasty weather in April. Have not yet completed research and plans for the now empty spot where once a mighty blue spruce stood. That part of the yard looks horrib...

As many of you know (assuming there are even "many" of you out there) I simply love words. I like to play with them, use big ones in sentences and watch the faces of the folks in this town freeze up as they try to figure out what the hell I just said and so forth. We over-educated folks have to have SOME fun after all. Well, heard a new one on the radio (NPR of course) the other day that made me shriek in delight (that is the only shrieking I ever do since my terror scream is more like a cross between a shout and a growl, but that's another story). Punditocracy Yup. They have a class. Or at least a classification. Those "experts" whose job it is to tell you what to think about, what to talk about at the proverbial watercolor. Yup, the agenda-setting media and politically minded folk who sally forth on all things cultural and political. Keep in mind I said 'what to think about' not 'what to think', there is a difference, a fairly significant one t...

You'll notice I titled this with a reference to "Chicago Politics" not Illinois Politics. This is partly because the media are still reporting the on-going insanity from Chicago as if that city was in fact the capitol. I say again... it is not. Now Senator Burris seems to be gathering support from Chicago which, in my opinion, ought to make anyone with half a brain suspicious. The state governmental seat is in Springfield, a good 4 to 5 hours south of the windy city. Ladies and gentlemen of the press, how about if we start reporting on statewide governmental matters from there? The Trib will still be commenting and you can gather quotes from them with those new-fangled telephone things. Or - oh hey! - the Internet! I find it interesting that the support being rolled out by the media for Senator Burris is coming from this or that pastor of this or that African-American church. That's nice. That's fine. Is it the only support though? And - I'm sorry I have to go...

Another Saturday night after a long week that included a seminar today on the Fair Labor Standards Act, which actually went better than expected. In my silly world another Saturday night means not doing much of anything. In tonight's case it meant (gasp!) cleaning the aquarium, catching up on show TV shows that I had taped during the week and eating various junk food. Ah yes, the single life is full of such riotous joy! Trust me, after "une certain age" it ain't all it's cracked up to be. Although even at an early-twenty-something I'm not sure it was all it was cracked up to be. But that is another tale, for another time. I do have one rant to rave on about. I have been seeing many an aspersion cast at the song Kumbaya of late. Now I went to Girl Scout camp as a child. I loved it. Being out in the woods, the campfires, the s'mores and YES! DAMN IT! singing Kumbaya - complete with assorted hand gestures around said campfire. It was great. It is a fond memor...

As you know, one of my favorite commentators/editorialists is Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald. Once again, he has a good point. For the full text of his thoughts check out: http://www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/leonard-pitts/story/914575.html Today he is talking about how we really don't talk about race. Not in any meaningful way. We dance around it, we don't listen to each other (not really at any rate)... we simply don't "get it" when folks of one race are trying to talk to folks of another race... neither side gets it by the way. Pitts doesn't shy away from pointing out that there is fault on all sides. He doesn't have to do that. After all, he is African-American, he could jump on the Sharpton bandwagon and see racism everywhere and blame the non-African-Americans alone for this silliness but he doesn't. So it got me thinking. When was the last time I had a meaningful conversation about race with a person of another race? Sad to say it...

I have a nasty sinus something. My doctor is treating it as an infection since it has been hanging around since December. I finally got fed up on Friday last and went to see about it. The problem at present is that the first antibiotic he prescribed was too strong and made me quite ill. So today he gave me something else which is so far working well. The problem? I have a bottle of pills that I have only taken one from. I attempted to return it to the pharmacy for disposal, since according to the state's information "most" pharmacies will do that. Apparently not Walgreens. In Ohio we also have a drug repository program for unused meds, but no collection site in this county. This program was signed into state law in 2006. Three years later and it isn't state-wide. Shouldn't the county health departments be collection points? So I ask how to responsibly dispose of these meds since I don't want more antibiotics to end up in the landfill and eventually the ground ...

Enough about the stimulus already... I've been wondering about something else and wondering why I'm not hearing anything about it... could it be folks are AFRAID of being un-PC?? No! Gasp! Never! Oh please, in a frickin' heartbeat they run screaming away from a topic that mg ht brand them as having played "the race card". I'm not playing it, I'm just wondering... Michael Steele seems like a really decently successful Republican. He has just the right amount of conservatism to fit into that crowd without being too over the top (nice change). He gave from all accounts a decent speech at the 2004 Republican Convention as counter point to Obama's speech at the Democratic Convention that same year. And yet, the media went ga-ga over the man who is now Prez. Hmmm... Now, of course there are African American Republicans. Some successful ones I am sure but for some reason you just don't hear that much about them which makes a person wonder.... is the Repub...

I've been watching the assorted brouhaha over the stimulus package with some amusement and no small amount of desire to slap somebody. The latest urge to slap a member of Congress came when I started hearing that there was a proposal in the Senate to reduce the proposed funding to the states because that money wouldn't create new jobs. On the surface this seems perfectly logical and "penny-wise". Until you look deeper and realize that by not sending that money to the states those same states will then have to lay off people currently in jobs thus adding to the unemployment numbers and putting a greater strain on the support programs. So by being "penny-wise" in this case, Congress is being "pound-foolish" and actually making the overall problem worse at the state level. And ladies and gentlemen a good many of the states have higher unemployment rates than the general national number. Heck, the county I live in has a higher number than our state lev...

Being a wordsmith and "she who eats dictionaries for breakfast" there are a few recent trends in the vernacular that are driving me nuts. "Peeps" is one of those trends. When I think of peeps I think of those horribly sweet little marshmallow things parents put in Easter baskets. They come in obnoxious colors and taste awful. Those are Peeps. The company even has a trademark on the name. "Peeps" are not people. Hangin' with your peeps is not a phrase that makes you sound cool or even "G" (gangsta - and how in the world that term became something to strive for eludes me). You sound as those you slept through English class in the seventh grade. Now I love slang as much as the next person, maybe more since there are fun things that have been done with language over the centuries thanks to the use of slang. And as everyone who knows me is aware I do so like to have fun with language. But you have to draw a line somewhere and frankly I do not want...

Thank You God! Yes indeedy Blago is gone. He is outta there. And yet he continues to act as if he was "railroaded". There have been a lot of jokes but the best bumper sticker I have seen is: Illinois: Where Our Governors Make the License Plates The new Governor Quinn has been sworn in and if he has half a brain he will behave himself through the rest of this term. Of course if Blago had had half a brain he would have behaved too but oh well... It will be interesting to see where the Feds go with their case. Not that Illinois has had problem governors before. We have (I can say "we" even though I don't live there any longer - I did live there for 23 years) had more than our share: Ryan is still in jail being only 2 years into a 6 1/2 year sentence; Walker served 17 months of a 7 year sentence; Kerner served 3 years (he was in the 1960s) and Stratton was acquitted. And we won't even go into all the other politicians who have server or are serving time. Yup, Il...