Pawprints From Space

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...

A friend of mine in Australia has a lovely blog about a wonderful thing she is doing: taming feral cats. Oh I know, feral cats get a bad rap everywhere. There is even a small town nearby whose Council wanted to authorize citizens to shoot them! The cats, not the Council. Although after reading about that idea in the paper I wanted to shoot Council. In any case, read this blog: http://tameferalcats.blogspot.com

Well, he's done it again. Governor Blagojevich of Illinois has opened his mouth and let a whole bunch of nonsense out. So if you didn't think he ought to step aside before, this ought to do it. The latest silliness occurred yesterday when Blago held a news conference and proceeded to give a long roundabout ramble of how he was like a cowboy in the old west being accused of stealing a horse. That maybe he was going to get a trial but the guys in the black hats would hang him anyway and he couldn't bring his six cowboy friends along to testify on his behalf. The reason Mr. Governor that you can't have witnesses testify to matters being investigated by the Federal government at your impeachment trial isn't because those black hats in Springfield are just being well, black hats. It is because the Federal government has told them the impeachment trial can not deal with matters being investigated by them. You can't testify on those matters, your friends can't test...

The folks on television, especially the network Sunday news shows are supposed to be experts in one way or another. They should also be able to pronounce words properly, put together sentences that actually make sense and otherwise sound as if they really are educated people. Today's rant is on the proper pronunciation of the word "ideology" a noun defined by the Oxford American Dictionary as 1. the principal idea or beliefs that characterize a particular class, group or movement and 2. the ideas that form the basis of an economic or political theory, etc. As you can see ideology refers to ideas. The word idea is pronounced with a long I not a short i. According to the dictionary so it ideology. There is no second listing for pronunciation as sometimes occurs but even in those cases the first listing is the preferred choice. This morning on Meet the Press several (I didn't count could have actually been half) of the round table guests pronounced the word with a short ...