text:
Obama Fences, Parries At Start Of Midwestern Tour
President Obama's Midwestern tour is offering a mix of offense and defense that signals both his governing approach for the remainder of his term and the evolution of a campaign message for his re-election bid.
Obama is determined to use the reach of his office to build public pressure on Republicans to move his way on economic and fiscal policies, to counterpunch against the GOP presidential field, and to argue for his presidency with independent voters and rekindle enthusiasm among Democrats.
On Tuesday, the second day of a three-day bus tour, he was to spend the day promoting rural economic policies, among the series of remedies he is pushing to fire up anemic job growth. But the measures are targeted, such as making it easier for rural businesses to get access to capital, and far more modest than the ambitious 2009 stimulus package he pushed through Congress when unemployment was rising but still below the current 9.1 percent level.
The economic message illustrates Obama's current dilemma. Republicans control the House and believe that addressing the nation's long-term debt will have a positive effect on the economy; they have no appetite for major spending initiatives aimed at spurring a recovery.
Embracing that demand for fiscal discipline, Obama has called for both spending cuts and increases in revenue, but he found few takers for that formula during the contentious debate this summer over raising the nation's debt ceiling.
With echoes of Harry Truman's 1948 campaign against a "do-nothing" Congress, Obama encouraged audiences at town hall meetings Monday in Minnesota and Iowa to rise up against congressional inaction.
"If your voices are heard, then sooner or later these guys have to start paying attention," he said. "And if they don't start paying attention then they're not going to be in office and we will have a new Congress in there that will start paying attention to what is going on all across America."
On Tuesday, the president was to preside over a White House Rural Economic Forum at Northeast Iowa Community College in Peosta. There the president was expected to discuss new initiatives and proposals to help farm regions, some of which are already under way and do not require additional government spending.
The proposals include targeting Small Business Administration loans to rural small businesses, expanding job training to Agriculture Department field offices and recruiting more doctors for small rural hospitals.
Though classified by the White House as an official presidential trip, the tour's first day had the distinct feel of a campaign excursion. The president's motorcade, at times numbering nearly 30 vehicles, rumbled over 160 miles through small towns and cornfields in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa. Its most prominent feature was the president's bus - not the colorful transports of campaigns, but a dark, imposing vehicle recently purchased for $1.1 million by the Secret Service.
The settings of the two outdoor town halls were in picturesque locales, one with Minnesota's Cannon River as a backdrop and the other in Iowa amid hay bales against a red barn lit by a setting sun.
Obama's rhetoric had a campaign pulse as well.
He attacked the Republican presidential field, recalling a moment in last week's GOP presidential debate when all eight of the candidates said they would refuse to support a budget deal with tax increases, even if tax revenues were outweighed 10-to-1 by spending cuts.
"That's just not common sense," Obama told the crowd at a town hall-style meeting in Cannon Falls, Minn.
He criticized one GOP front-runner, Mitt Romney, though not by name, for instituting a health care system while governor of Massachusetts that is similar to the Obama-backed federal law that Republicans now oppose.
"You've got a governor who's running for president right now who instituted the exact same thing in Massachusetts," the president said. "It's like they got amnesia."
He cast himself as a compromiser, a trait White House aides say resonates with independent voters and lives up to his 2008 pledge to change the ways of Washington.
"I make no apologies for being reasonable," Obama declared.
But some Democrats maintain Obama has gone too far, caving in to Republican demands and having little to show for it.
His first questioner in Iowa, a woman who declared herself a strong supporter, wondered whether Obama had compromised on key principles by not fighting for the repeal of Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, or for agreeing to make some cuts to Social Security and Medicare during the debt ceiling showdown.
"So I'm just curious, moving forward, what prevents you from taking a harder negotiating stance, being that it seems that the Republicans are taking a really hard stance?" she asked.
Obama said the risk of raising taxes on all Americans forced him to compromise and extend all the Bush-era tax cuts until the end of 2012. He also said the consequences of a government default were too great to risk a failed deal on the debt ceiling.
But he promised to assemble a plan to boost the economy that he will present to Congress in September.
"And if they don't get it done, then we'll be running against a Congress that's not doing anything for the American people," he said, "and the choice will be very stark and will be very clear."
This program aired on August 16, 2011. The audio for this program is not available.


text:
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art of perfuming
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Exp : 10/24

subset: commoncrawl


text:
We love Connecticut. It is a beautiful state that is teeming with interesting tourist attractions. Today, we feature two luxury inns on the historic maritime coast of the Constitution state in "Mystic Country." But first, let us introduce you to the area and Mystic Seaport.
The seaside towns and villages of Mystic Country run 30-miles along Long Island Sound, starting at the town of Old Lyme and ending at the border of Rhode Island to the east.
The Mystic Seaport sign proclaims, "The Museum of America and the Sea." The catchphrase was well chosen because Mystic Seaport is an exciting playground for maritime historians, boaters of every persuasion, kids of all ages, and folks who just love the sea.
We arrived early so we had the streets of the historic port village to ourselves.
Everywhere we looked there were tall ship's masts and sails in the background of the village's authentic 19th century homes and shops.
It was a quiet fall day, and a slight whisper of falling leaves in the breeze made the many historical settings that much more alive and imaginative. We were walking back in time, and looked forward to the experience.
The last of the whalers
Our feet rustled through the leaf covered village green as we made our way to tour the Charles W. Morgan – a sturdy looking wooden whaleship that is now a National Historic Landmark.
In the 19th century, there were over 2,500 wooden whaling ships in North America and now there is one. The Morgan, launched in 1841, is America's oldest surviving commercial ship still afloat. She has resided in the Mystic Seaport since 1941.
During her more than 80-years of service, the Morgan made voyages ranging in time from nine months, to five years. It was on just such a ship that the morose Captain Ahab sailed from nearby Nantucket to seek the elusive great white whale named Moby Dick. Arrr!
Signing on to crew a whaling ship in the 19th century was the fast-track to a harsh life involving hard work and long voyages. Thankfully (for the sake of the whales), whaling was greatly curtailed with the invention of kerosene in the 1840s.
The Joseph Conrad
From the deck of the Morgan you can see the steel-hulled Joseph Conrad. The Conrad was built in 1882 as a training ship for the Danish Merchant Marine Service. For years she sailed with a cadet crew of eighty, and all went well until 1905 when the ship was rammed by a British freighter near Copenhagen and sunk.
Sadly, 20 young cadets went down with the Conrad. However, the vessel was quickly raised, repaired, and continued her mission until 1934 when the ship was sold. The new owner privatized the ship and took her around the world for two years covering 58,000 miles.
The Mystic Seaport gained possession of the Joseph Conrad in 1948, and it has been in the museum ever since.
As we walked the decks, we could appreciate the vast amount of maintenance that is necessary to keep such an important maritime relic in ship-shape.
The Authentic Seaport Village
The faithful Seafaring Village has an active shiplift – that's the seasonal touring steamboat Sabino being readied for winter in the photo above.
There's also a sail and rigging loft – chandlery,
craftsman workshops such as a shipsmith shop,
nautical instrument shop, and a cooperage.
There's also a bank, drug store, school house, and a tavern.
Be sure to visit the small catboat exhibit with its many beautiful varnished toys for grown-ups,
and the Henry B. DuPont Preservation Shipyard to see what wonders marine craftsman can perform in the restoration of a boat or ship.
The kids will love it
Mystic Seaport is the #1 family vacation destination in Connecticut, and for good reason. This is a place for every mood, and every taste. Kids are treated to fun seafaring experiences they could not find elsewhere. Click *here* to see the many learning opportunities available at this 19-acre maritime park.
Fancy a sailing lesson around the harbor?
Get all the additional information you need about Mystic Seaport by checking their website.
If you go
Mystic Seaport is easy to reach and lies betwixt New York City (134 miles) and Boston (102 miles) on I-95 – exit 90. Mystic Seaport is located right on the banks of the Mystic River that flows into nearby Long Island Sound.
Where to stay
We chose two delightful inns for our stay in the Mystic/Stonington area – appropriately, both were on the water.
The Steamboat Inn
Strategically located in downtown Mystic, and close to the famous Mystic River Bascule Bridge,
the Steamboat Inn is an uber-comfortable 11-room luxury hotel. Each guestroom has distinctive furnishings that are in harmony with the nautical theme.
We were in room #2, apply named, "Mystic." Great views of the river activity taking place just outside our windows.
The inn projects comfort at every turn, and the delicious full complimentary breakfast served in the common room is a great way to start the day in Mystic Country.
To view all the rooms and learn more about this recommended inn click *here*.
The Inn at Stonington
Just ten minutes from Mystic lies another village with a seafaring history, the Borough of Stonington. The Inn at Stonington is nestled into quiet Water Street with nearby upscale 18th and 19th century homes. The back of the inn is a stone's throw from Stonington Harbor.
It's just a short walk down Water Street to the Old Lighthouse Museum constructed in 1840 at Dubois Beach.
The lighthouse is no longer active, but the old stone building provides an excellent museum of the history of the village and surroundings.
The little Dubois beach is relatively secluded and just the sort of out-of-the-way place where busy tourists can enjoy a measure of relaxing solitude.
You can chose from a range of bedroom types to suit your taste at the Inn at Stonington. Our room overlooked the harbor and Fisher's Island Sound beyond. Each of the 18 classily decorated rooms reflects the ambiance of the surrounding quaint village.
We arrived at the inn just in time for the evening wine and cheese reception. Nicely selected area wines were accompanied by an ample assortment of artisan cheeses. Yummy.
This boutique inn also provides a complimentary and substantial continental breakfast in the sitting room that overlooks the harbor.
Tasty and filling – another good start for a day of intensive touring.
Look at the website for more information about the Inn at Stonington, availability, and pricing.
Where to eat
This part of coastal Connecticut is noted for seafood restaurants, and you will have no trouble finding palate pleasing fare of any variety in the 80+ local restaurants.
There are four family dining facilities located right at Mystic Seaport. We were told by nearby residents that the dining facilities are all quite good, but we did not eat during our tour of the park, so cannot personally comment.
Another place we didn't eat, but should mention, is the famous Mystic Pizza restaurant – the inspiration for the 1988 coming-of-age movie starring Julia Roberts. It is right on busy West Main Street in downtown Mystic.
We did enjoy some excellent, mega-portion New England fried seafood at the Seahorse Restaurant in nearby Noank. This place we do recommend. The Seahorse serves tasty full-bellied fried clams that are favored by the regulars. These clams taste a little like fried oysters, but not as pungent. Delicious!
There was also a seafood restaurant at the dock across the parking lot from the Inn at Stonington called Swooner.
We had lunch there, and mercifully, it closed soon after our visit. Our helpful tourism contact has informed us that another restaurant named the Breakwater will open at this superb waterfront location in May 2015.
The new proprietor has a reputation for operating successful restaurants. The Breakwater will feature classic American seafood in a casual contemporary atmosphere – not fancy. Can't wait to try it the next time we are in Connecticut.
Also for next-time, how about a day on the Ice Cream Trail meticulously organized by www.Mystic.org – a good reference website to remember. 48 sweet places to relish America's favorite dessert. 48!
We highly recommend Mystic Country for a quality family vacation. In addition to what you see reported here, the area is also home to the Mystic Aquarium, the Goodspeed Opera House, Gillette's Castle, two casinos, and a submarine museum.
The reader may also be interested in the following Connecticut stories and reviews by Wayne and Judy.
Fall Colors in New England at Brainerd House
Visit to Extraordinary Gillette's Castle
Best of Connecticut Resorts and Spas
A Storybook Christmas in Connecticut at the Tidewater Inn
A True New England Holiday Experience
A Historic Inn along the Shore of Fashionable Westport
An Intimate Bed and Breakfast on the Backroads of Connecticut
The Elegant Delamar Greenwich Harbor Hotel
The American Revolution and Curtis House Inn
Happy travels!
"Get out there, but be prepared."
Whenever we travel, we are protected by Allianz Global Assist travel insurance.
You can plan your trips with Google Maps.
© Travels with Wayne and Judy Bayliff
Photos © Judy Bayliff


text: At 11:16 PM 9/27/2004 -0400, Glen Gardner wrote: >I've gone on a bit of a rant here, but I've done this, so I thought I >might share some of what I have learned. >You can see some pictures of what I'm discussing below in the mini cluster >links on my web site at: > >http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze24qhw/index.html > > >I have built a cluster on standoffs, and it has worked quite well. While I >am a relative newbie to Beowulf, I'm not new to computing and electronics. >I have roughly 40 years experience in electronics. > >Hand fabricating enclosures is a lot of work. It also means you hand >fabricate a lot (or all) of the witing and power distribution circuitry. I >can tell you from experience that you will get very tired of drilling >hundreds of holes, and cutting hundreds of metal components by hand. This >needs to be a labor of love, because it is a ton of work. Boy, will I second that... It's one thing to drill a half dozen holes to hold one motherboard, it's entirely another to drill a hundred! And mark, and centerpunch, and deburr, and on and on. If you look in the yellow pages under "sheet metal fabrication" you might find a local vendor who could do a lot of the grunt work very cheaply (things like shearing the metal, punching all the holes in exactly the same place, etc.) Don't discard the idea of contracting out until you've called a couple places. >You can build a cluster in this manner, but you have several problems to >consider. I've listed just a few of the "biggies" for your consideration. > >1) thermal issues >Mounting power hungry boards close to each other can lead to thermal >issues due to heat radiating and/or convecting from one board to the next. <snip> >other due to radiation and convection of heat. You will still need to >provide adequate air circulation (this means fans, no matter what you do) However, a big advantage is that you can use a few BIG fans, which will move a lot more air, more quietly, than a zillion little fans. Fan efficiency goes way up as the diameter increases. >Also, motherboards have internal copper plane layers for grounds and power >which act as rf shielding and to help spread heat more evenly across the >board. You will notice that the mounting holes for most motherboards have >grounded pads around them , and there are sometimes many tiny metal plated >holes around the mounting hole pad. These are "vias" which are connected >to the intenral plane layers thermally ( and to ground electrically). IF >these are mechanically secured to the chassis with a metal standoff, you >not only benefit from an electrical ground to the chassis (allowing the >chassis to act as a faraday shield) , you get a thermal path to the >chassis to help dump some of the excess heat from the board. This is no >accident, this is a design feature of the board, and a common trick used >by engineers to provide for dumping heat from the board itself. For this >reason, and for mechanical reasons, I'd suggest using ALL of the provided >mounting holes. Believe it or not, it costs money to add a hole to a >board. (Yes a hole is a design feature), so you can bet the engineer had a >good reason for putting "extra" holes in a board beyond those required for >a standard motherboard footprint. Of course, most commodity mfrs mount the boards with plastic standoffs. You might actually worsen the EMI performance if you add other ground points. On the other hand, grounded metal planes between the boards can only be a "good thing". >2) RFI issues >The biggest RFI issue is interference to radio and TV reception. Believe >it or not there are FCC regulations governing unwanted radio emissions, >and if your machine is >making a real racket on radio frequencies, you could concievably have a >lot of headaches trying to fix the problem after the FCC shows up and asks >you to shut down. And this can be very, very difficult to fix. Distance from the victim receiver is your friend! >RFI from board to board is something I have yet to encounter in moderm >pc's. I have encountered it many times in radio circuitry. The solution is >always the same. >Use shielding, decouple the power supply properly, and make sure all the >hardware and shielding is in place, and use a tight fitting metal enclosure. > >For us , that means mounting each motherboard on a metal plate, and making >sure that each board is grounded to that plate. In turn , the plates are >securely connected to each other and the chassis. For the enclosure, it >should be metal, tight fitting and not having large holes. Power wiring >should be dressed carefully, and long power leads should be twisted and >may require common mode chokes, etc. > There's a fair amount of information on designing for EMI on the web. As Glen writes, the basic idea is "put it in a box with the minimum number of wires penetrating the box, and shield/filter the heck out of those penetrations". If you can feed in only AC power, and have some sort of wireless scheme for keyboard, video, network, you're way ahead. Before you laugh at the idea of using wireless in a shielded box, consider this... Holes with a perimeter on the order of a wavelength will pass signals of that wavelength or shorter. The EMI you're worried about in a PC is largely below 100-200 MHz (wavelength on the order of a meter), so a pretty big hole in the shield is ok (as long as it doesn't have anything conductive penetrating it (like a wire or conductive bolt). Say you've got a 4 inch diameter hole (for, e.g., cooling air). Such a hole won't leak very much at 50-100 MHz (wavelength 3-6 meters). The signals from a wireless LAN or bluetooth adapter working at 2.4 GHz (wavelength on the order of 12cm) will go right through that hole with little attenuation. Watch out for slots where two panels join. They are notorious for leakage, because they have a long perimeter, and act as a slot radiator. Babinet's principal says that complementary configurations are basically identical: it can either be a void in a solid sheet (a slot), or a solid thing in a void (a wire). James Lux, P.E. Spacecraft Radio Frequency Subsystems Flight Telecommunications Systems Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mail Stop 161-213 4800 Oak Grove Drive Pasadena CA 91109 tel: (818)354-2075 fax: (818)393-6875


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Title: Wobblies! A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World
Contributors: Mike Alewitz, Seth Tobocman, Sue Coe, Sabrina Jones
Edited: Paul Buhle and Nicole Schulman
Published: Verso Books, 2005
Length: 306 Pages
"Happy May Day, friends and fellow workers!"
It is hard to imagine these words would once have been enough to land the speaker in a cramped jail cell, crammed with dozens of fellow workers like so many salty, tinned fish. 'Wobblies!' chronicles the rise of the Industrial Workers of the World from a promising start in Chicago. We are taken through several major strikes and biographies of bohemians and revolutionaries by the comic's several contributors. Curiously, what unites many of these tales is the suffering of their subjects.
Perhaps there is nothing surprising in this. There is a peculiar allure to martyrdom. Saints, mystics and secular heroes of humanity the world over have been canonized by their suffering long before any state or patriarch could place the laurels on their bloodied brows. Hagiography, the genre of saints' biographies, owes much of its enduring popularity to stories of the suffering of those early Christians. In a modern context, today is a commemoration of the deaths of the Haymarket Martyrs, Chicago anarchists who went to the gallows for a crime none had committed. "Wobblies" continues in this tradition.
In its entirety, the book is a collection of short narratives surrounding major events in the history of the IWW. It begins with a detailed recounting of their founding convention, rich in historical personages such as perennial Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs and Haymarket widow (and ass-kicking anarchist heroine) Lucy Parsons. From there, it outlines several major strikes, particularly those associated with the Western Federation of Miners, and the textile strikes in Lawrence and Paterson, a high watermark for union organizing under the IWW banner. This is followed by more strike accounts, then biographical sketches of the highly eclectic bunch of radicals who swelled the ranks of the IWW during its heyday and kept its memory alive through long decades of irrelevance. It ends with two modern episodes. The first details the life of environmentalist and Wobbly Judy Bari, while the second recounts a port strike in Jefferson, Indiana.
Nothing in this critique is meant to belittle the value of the struggles, or the bravery of participants. These are struggles that shaped the lives of generations of Americans by putting a pressure on state and capital alike. The fights found between these pages paved the way for the eight hour day, for wage increases and safety regulations. But they also fell short of the ultimate goal; a society in which the wealth of society is shared equally amongst those who produce it.
These vignettes are a mixture of victory, defeat and sentimental reminisce. Shot through all of them are scenes of agony, of sometimes lethal suffering. Martyrdom is an old and popular theme in heroic narrative, and echoes from Calvary to Tahrir. Looking at these graphic re-tellings, it is impossible not to be reminded of paintings of saints caged in cells, pierced by arrows. They are ennobled, it would seem, by their suffering.
So it is for the workers in the pages of "Wobblies!" They are shot, beaten, jailed, defamed, tortured, bombed, ridiculed and betrayed. The outcome of the struggle is secondary to these latter-day passion plays, showcasing the divine agony of the downtrodden. Anguish is often compounded by anguish, with strikers blamed for the deaths of other strikers.
There are courage and beauty both in the struggles of IWW organizers and members. Their suffering is a credit to their devotion. But it is their vision that matters most to the future, not their pain. They were not shot so our eyes could blear at the mention of their memory. Not for nothing are the words associated with Joe Hill: "Don't mourn, organize!"
In other words, the image of Frank Little that captures our imagination is not his battered corpse hanging from a Montana Bridge, but of the cantankerous old bastard hobbling around America on two crutches. With one leg and one eye, Little walked farther and saw more in the name of industrial struggle than many activists could imagine today. As he is said to have remarked "All we're gonna need from now on is guts!"
It is fitting, then, that the image of Judi Bari that concludes her story is not one of the car bomb that took her legs, but of Bari fiddling. It would be too easy to dwell on the pain of these Wobblies, to accept the tacit coupling of corporal agony and moral ecstasy. But on this May Day, and every day, we have to remember that this is not why blood was shed. This is not why bones were broken. Our antecedents suffered not so that we could romanticize them, but so that we could follow their lead. The general strike is our best hope, and it will take one big union to get there.


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Sacramento ( SAK-rə-MEN-toh; Spanish: [sakɾaˈmento], Spanish for ''sacrament'') is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the seat and largest city of Sacramento County. Located at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers in Northern California's Sacramento Valley, Sacramento's 2020 population of 524,943 makes it the sixth-largest city in California and the ninth-largest capital in the United States. Sacramento is the seat of the California Legislature and the Governor of California, making it the state's political center and a hub for lobbying and think tanks. It features the California State Capitol Museum. Sacramento is also the cultural and economic core of the Greater Sacramento area, which at the 2020 census had a population of 2,680,831, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in California.Before the arrival of the Spanish, the area was inhabited by the historic Nisenan, Maidu, and other indigenous peoples of California.
Neighborhoods in Sacramento, California
Alhambra Triangle, Alkali Flat, Ben Ali, Boulevard Park, Brentwood, Central Oak Park, College/Glen, Colonial Heights, Colonial Manor, Colonial Village, Curtis Park, Dos Rios Triangle, East Del Paso Heights, East Sacramento, Elmhurst
Things to do in Sacramento, California
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text:
Given the last 13 years of somewhat unsuccessful relationship "experience", I have tried to gather and combine a list of things or tips, which I think would make or help in having a satisfying and working long term relationship.
- Honesty; Possibly the most important thing of all. Always be honest and truthful to each other, on all things in your life, be it as a couple or individual. Honesty helps you feel more comfortable and assured on where you stand in your love affair.
- Be respectful – Mutual respect is important in maintaining a healthy relationship. The wishes and feelings of each other are valuable even when you disagree. Be genuine and show interest in your partner's life and hobbies – such things can only bring you closer as a couple.
- Trust – This is the foundation of a happy and fulfilling relationship. It take time to build trust and can be lost in a split of a second if one feels betrayed. Examples of being trustworthy are: being reliable and following up on your promises, share what you feel and always say the truth, be a safe place for your partner, be consistent (not only when it is convenient or things are going well).
- Be considerate – Keep each other in the loop, ask for each other's advise in decision making, especially when this will affect your life together as a couple.
- Affection – don't just say that you love your partner; demonstrate it. Kiss each other good morning, be passionate, hold hands in public, take pictures together – make memories… surprise each other with a romantic date or a gift.
- Know your Priorities – Although we all lead busy lives, we should always find time for our partners. If you don't see this as important, perhaps you should spend some time to think about this and why you are hanging onto a relationship which you don't feel devoted to. If we all invest as much time on our relationship as we do texting, playing games, on social media and watching TV or films, we might actually have a meaningful relationship.
- Security – Show that your partner can count on you to be there in times of need; be it emotionally or physically.
- Be a team – You are stronger together, as a team. Make plans, ensure you have shared goals and same purposes and views long term. Work together.


text:
Do you ever write letters to people in your head—things you wanted to say, unfinished business, sentiments that pressed on your heart and didn't let you go?
Sometimes I wake up at night and have a three-page letter downloaded straight into my heart.
Right now, for my father who is living* through cancer and chemo hell, parts of my letter would look like this:
Dear Dad:
I hate that you are struggling. If I could be with you in person more frequently, I'd just want to hold your hand. Pray silently. Sit at your feet. Watch you sleep. Bless you. Read you Scripture. Share a few memories. Make you smile.
I'd say I didn't always respond the way I should have, that I often was too quick to react in my youth. I'd tell you if I had to do it all over again, I'd talk to you about your "corny" country music and be willing to discuss the different jazz artists you grew to appreciate.
I'd tell you I'm sorry I stuck my tongue out when I was 3 years old, that spitting out my peas onto your dinner plate wasn't nice. I shouldn't have made eating and the dinner table such a scene of drama.
I might state that I could have been more gracious when you taught me how to drive and more grateful when you would pick me up from a late theater rehearsal. While we were generationally farther apart than the parents of many of my friends, I wasn't really embarrassed by you; I was just a teenager who thought that I was.
I would share with you that I watched you healing on that couch from radiation many years ago while you let me put barrettes in your amazing hair because that's what you do when you have daughters. You play barbershop. I'd be less angry that you won UNO sometimes. I'd be more mindful of the times I got to "camp out" on the porch with you in the summers and wouldn't make comments about your snoring.
I wrote a book, Dad. It wasn't everything it could have been, but it was my first attempt. It was about God. I hope you could see the Presbyterian roots deep within my theology, Dad. How I really did understand Christ, the propitiation for our sins.
If I could just lay my head against your robe, Dad, like I used to rest it on your lap during the sermon, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
I can be a spoiled brat, but my heart is trying to be more like Jesus, Dad. I hope you can see that in me. I hope I make you proud.
My letter would say so many other things, but I'll stop there. You get the idea.
What about God, though? What about our Father in Heaven? Read the rest of this entry »


text:
It seems that the book is considered controversial because it shows the Nazi genocide of the Jews as part of a larger complex of state-organized mass murder, by both Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union, with a death toll far beyond the more than 5 million Jewish victims of the Nazi extermination campaign. This is apparently not to the liking of those who proclaim the uniqueness and incomparability of the Holocaust, and thus Mr. Snyder, as mentioned in the Economist interview, has been subject to "a really stinging attack" by Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and "a more measured one" by Yiddish scholar David Katz.
Statements like the following, which are available in the Amazon preview of Snyder's book, must be hard to take for who supports the uniqueness theory – and they probably also would be would be, albeit due to other reasons, for Jew-obsessed "Revisionist" gas chamber freaks if they should read them.
[Introduction, pp. ix/x]
The Holocaust overshadows German plans that envisioned even more killing. Hitler wanted not only to eradicate the Jews, he also wanted to destroy Poland and the Soviet Union as states, exterminate their ruling classes, and kill tens of millions of Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles). If the German war against the USSR had gone as planned, thirty million civilians would have starved in the first winter, and tens of millions more expelled, killed assimilated or enslaved thereafter. Though these plans were never realized, they supplied the moral premises of German occupation policy in the East. The Germans murdered about as many non-Jews as Jews during the war, chiefly by starving Soviet prisoners of war (more than three million) and residents of besieged cities (more than a million) or by shooting civilians in "reprisals" (the better part of a million, chiefly Belarusians and Poles).
[Introduction, p. xiv/xv]
Mass killing in Europe is usually associated with the Holocaust, and the Holocaust with rapid industrial killing. The image is too simple and clean. At the German and Soviet killing sites, the methods of murder were rather primitive. Of the fourteen million civilians and prisoners of war killed in the bloodlands between 1933 and 1945, more than half died because they were denied food. Europeans deliberately starved Europeans in horrific numbers in the middle of the twentieth century. The two largest mass killing actions after the Holocaust – Stalin's directed famines of the early 1930s and Hitler's starvation of Soviet prisoners of war in the early 1940s – involved this method of killing. Starvation was foremost not only in reality but in imagination. In a Hunger Plan, the Nazi regime projected the death by starvation of tens of millions of Slavs and Jews in the winter of 1941-1942.
After starvation came shooting, and then gassing. In Stalin's Great Terror of 1937-1938, nearly seven hundred thousand Soviet citizens were shot. The two hundred thousand or so Poles killed by the Germans and the Soviets during their joint occupation of Poland were shot. The more than three hundred thousand Belarusians and the comparable number of Poles executed in German "reprisals" were shot. The Jews killed in the Holocaust were about as likely to be shot as to be gassed.
For that matter, there was little especially modern about the gassing. The million or so Jews asphyxiated at Auschwitz were killed by hydrogen cyanide, a compound isolated in the eighteenth century. The 1.6 million or so Jews killed at Treblinka, Chełmno, Bełżec and Sobibór were asphyxiated by carbon monoxide, which even the ancient Greeks knew was lethal. In the 1940s hydrogen cyanide was used as a pesticide; carbon monoxide was produced by internal combustion engines. The Soviets and the Germans relied upon technologies that were hardly novel even in the 1930s and 1940s: internal combustion, railways, firearms, pesticides, barbed wire.
[page 412]
The count of fourteen mortal victims of deliberate killing policies in the bloodlands is the sum of the following approximate figures, defended in the text and notes: 3.3 million Soviet citizens (mostly Ukrainians) deliberately starved by their own government in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-1933; thee hundred thousand Soviet citizens (mostly Poles an Ukrainians) shot by their own government in the western USSR among the roughly seven hundred thousand victims of the Great Terror of 1937-1938; two hundred thousand Polish citizens (mostly Poles) shot by German an Soviet forces in occupied Poland in 1939-1941; 4.2 million Soviet citizens (largely Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians) starved by the German occupiers in 1941-1944; 5.4 million Jews (most of them Polish or Soviet citizens) gassed or shot by the Germans in 1941-1944; and seven hundred thousand civilians (mostly Belarusians and Poles) shot by the Germans in reprisals chiefly in Belarus and Warsaw in 1941-1944.
I for my part agree with these statements, insofar as they are in line with a message I've been trying to bring across in several blogs on this forum dedicated to or mentioning non-Jewish victims of Nazi state criminality.
Snyder's estimates of non-Jewish Nazi victims, incidentally, are more conservative than my own or those of German historian Dieter Pohl.


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Please note that there was a full bonus chapter focusing on Dare posted yesterday. If you missed it (congratulations, you get to read the actual edited version without a million typos), you may wish to use the Previous Chapter button above.
The room should have been cozy. Small, with a nice leather couch, plush carpeting, and pleasant pictures on the wall along with a wide screen television on the wall (the remote sat on the arm of the couch, waiting to be used), it should have been a perfect place to sit and wait.
For Shiori Porter, it felt like a prison. The walls felt like they were closing in on her, getting closer with each slowly passing minute. The slightly cool air was somehow stifling, and she could have sworn that there were cameras in the room watching absolutely every move that she made.
She had been sitting there for the past… what felt like forever, but according to her phone, was more like six hours. Not constantly, no. Every once in awhile, those Committee guys, October and Patrick, would pull her into another room to run through the same line of questioning for the fifth, sixth, or seventh time. Did she notice anything off about Columbus, when did she think he'd been possessed by the Stranger who had somehow bypassed all the school's defenses, did she think there were more of them, and so on and so on and so on. It would end, they would put her back in this room to wait, and then twenty, thirty, or fifty minutes later they'd pull her out again to go through the exact same thing. No matter what she told them, they just wanted to hear more.
Not that she was telling the exact truth. Before they'd pulled her into this interrogation, the headmistress had given her a neat little watch that let her bypass their lie-detecting powers. But Shiori was pretty sure that the Committee goons still didn't believe what she was telling them.
It was as close to the truth as she could possibly get without ruining… everything. She told them that she didn't know what the species that had possessed her brother was, only that he had been acting 'off' recently and she'd gotten his team to help her investigate. Somehow, the Stranger that was possessing Columbus had found out that they knew, and had launched an ambush that eventually resulted in Columbus being freed of the Stranger's influence, even as several other students, including a couple of his teammates, were abducted.
That was pretty close. All they really left out was the specific stuff about the Seosten. As far as October and Patrick were concerned, this was some random, unknown Stranger with a possession power. The fact that it had gotten that far, taking over a student and posing as him for months, had obviously sent up a lot of alarm bells.
The trouble was, Shiori wasn't sure how many of those alarms were because of free Heretics being horrified that one of their own students had been taken over, and how many were Seosten being annoyed that one of them had actually been discovered and exposed. And, well, killed.
Six hours. She had been sitting here, in and out of interrogations, for six hours. No one would tell her anything except that Flick and several of the others had been… had been… taken. Flick.
Sitting forward suddenly, Shiori caught her hands against her mouth as bile rose in her throat. She couldn't cry anymore. The fear, the terror of what was happening to Flick, Sands, and the others right then had left her a quivering ball in the corner of the room for the first hour of her time there. She hadn't even been able to move or answer any questions until Professor Dare stopped in to talk to her for a minute. She'd told her that Flick hadn't been knocked out or anything. She'd just killed that Charmeine bitch when she and Roxa were taken by one of those orbs. So there was a good chance that they and the others had been ready for a fight when they had arrived. Flick especially, considering she had just taken the power from one of the Seosten.
Which kind of helped, but… not really. It staved off the worst of the panic for a little while. But the thought of even a combat-ready Flick being stuck out there in Seosten space, it… it…
No. She wasn't going to think about that. She wasn't going to be a baby about it. Flick and the others, they'd… they'd be okay. They had to be okay. It wasn't the first time that Flick had been off on an alien planet with a bunch of things that wanted to kill her. And this time, she had a lot more help. Sands was there, and so was Roxa. Roxa, the werewolf who had killed Lemuel.
Plus, there were several members of Roxa's old team there. Shiori wasn't sure how much they could be trusted, but surely they would all stick by Flick at least until everyone got back home.
And they would be coming home. Banishment be damned, Shiori believed that between Gaia, Wyatt, Professor Dare, and even that Gabriel Prosser guy, they would find a way to bring Flick and the others back. It was just a matter of time, just a matter of trusting them to get it done.
Or so she kept telling herself. It was the only way she could resist the urge to scream about Seosten in October and Patrick's faces. And that… well, that would've made things even worse.
As worried as she was about Flick and the others, Shiori was even more worried about Columbus. All Dare had been able to tell her in the short time they'd had was that he wasn't possessed anymore. But she didn't know what condition he was in, if they were going to let him go, or anything. She'd been here the whole time, desperately hoping that her brother was okay.
Finally, the door opened yet again. But this time, instead of seeing either of the Committee's stooges, or anyone else that would've made her want to scream, it was Gaia who stepped inside. The woman looked worn and ragged, dark circles having formed under her eyes. Honestly, it was that sight that terrified Shiori the most, out of everything she'd heard that day.
"H-headmistress?" she blurted while hurriedly jumping off the couch to her feet, eyes widening.
"I'm sorry, Shiori," the woman spoke quietly. Her voice was a little strained. "I owe you every apology. I was… occupied with trying to help Avalon and handling several other situations, and I allowed you to sit here, being interrogated over and over again. I am truly sorry. But you've been through enough now. Come, that's enough of all this. It's time to meet with your brother."
"It's… it's okay," Shiori mumbled, feeling awkward as she took a quick step that way. Her gaze snapped up at the mention of Columbus. "He.. he's okay then? Columbus is alright?"
The question actually made Gaia give a slight, soft smile. "Yes," she answered quietly. "The short answer is that Columbus is no longer possessed and seems to be well, at least physically. Mentally… that may take some time. He will need help, and… you. He will need his sister and friends to help him understand and accept that what happened was not his fault. Be patient."
Shiori's head bobbed up and down rapidly at that. "Y-yeah, of course. And… and umm…" Biting her lip, she hesitated before asking in a worried, soft voice, "What about the others? What about Flick, and Sands, and… and the rest? What–do you know anything else? Please. Please?"
The woman paused, seeming to take a moment to collect herself before shaking her head slowly. "I will be honest with you, Shiori, we don't know much more. Wyatt has assured us that some of the spells he cast on Felicity are working, even across the vast distance they must cover. He can't tell us exactly where they are, or communicate with them in any way. But he does know that she is in relatively healthy condition. That is basically all he knows for certain. She is alive, and she is healthy. Beyond that…" she trailed off for a moment, looking away before finishing with a simple, "we are looking for options right now. But I promise you," the woman spoke more firmly while returning her gaze to Shiori's, "we will bring them back here."
Gaia led her out of the room then, walking with Shiori through the hallway of the main school building. As they walked, the girl hesitated before asking, "Um. Did Flick really… did she kill–"
Now the headmistress really did smile. There was obvious pride there. "Yes," she answered with a slight nod. "The Seosten who possessed Columbus is dead, Shiori. From everything that I have managed to hear, your brother managed the initial blow, before Felicity… finished her."
"Good." Shiori looked at the floor for a moment, digesting that before repeating, "Good. It doesn't make everything better, but… it's something. I'm glad she's dead. She–" Anything else that the girl might have said was choked off by the lump in her throat. Finally, she just shook her head, unable to find the words for how much she hated that creature for what she had done.
And yet, even in death, Charmeine still hadn't fully lost. She'd managed to send Flick and the others off to Seosten space. Even if they were actually upright and ready for a fight, it was still… bad. Bad enough that the queasy, terrified feeling in the pit of her stomach wouldn't go away.
"What about the… body?" she asked then, as the thought occurred to her. "The Seosten body, I mean. It would be… you know, proof. Proof of everything we know about them. Proof they exist. Proof of all of it. They–" She winced, realizing. "They took it, didn't they? They took the body."
Yet, Gaia simply smiled once more. "Well," she replied casually, "sadly, it seems that whatever creature happened to possess Columbus had the foresight to include some sort of defensive measure to prevent their bodies from being recovered. It disintegrated shortly after Virginia reached it. There was nothing she could do to stop it in time. More's the loss."
For a moment, Shiori just stared, confused by the way Gaia's smile conflicted with her words. Then she understood, her eyes widening at the realization. The body hadn't actually disintegrated. Dare had made it disappear specifically so that the Seosten infiltrators couldn't claim it. Now, they had the body and could examine it at their leisure. It might come in handy. It could be proof of everything they were saying later, at a better, more convenient time. Dare spiriting the body away first meant that the Seosten couldn't make it disappear themselves. And they couldn't exactly accuse Dare of lying about that, at least not openly. It would mean exposing themselves. Hell, that might have been another reason that the woman had done it, to try and coax any other Seosten infiltrators into giving themselves away by objecting too much.
In other words, the Seosten who were possessing those Crossroads Heretics knew that Gaia and Dare were lying. But they couldn't exactly call them out on it without revealing themselves. Hell, the Seosten were probably ready and waiting for Gaia to try to call out their existence specifically so that they could discredit her. But the headmistress was too smart to take the bait.
Before they reached the room where Columbus was, Shiori bit her lip and looked toward the woman, starting hesitantly, "I… I'm sorry about what happened to Mr. Carfried. Is… is Professor Carfried okay? I mean, they were related and I don't know how how close they were, but…"
Flinching just a little bit (but the fact that it was noticeable at all spoke volumes), Gaia gave a slight head shake before answering. "It will take Benjii some time to cope with all of this. He and his great-great-grandfather were close enough that it was Josiah who recommended Benji to fill the position of first-year magic instructor this year." She sighed then, lamenting, "I am afraid that the man somehow blames himself for not being there to help when Josiah needed him."
Shiori's head shook quickly at that. "What? Why would he–" She frowned. "He couldn't have stopped them, even if he was there. I mean, if Professor Dare was there and couldn't stop it, then… then there's no way that he could have. I mean, they were ready for almost everything. They took everyone by surprise. Professor Carfried couldn't have stopped them."
Gaia smiled faintly, giving a slight nod at that. "No," she agreed, "he could not have."
Shiori was just starting to get the suspicion that this wasn't entirely about Professor Carfried when the headmistress stopped in front of a door. She gestured to it. "Take your time, Shiori. When you are both ready to come and face the world again, there will be time to sort everything else out. For now… go and see your brother. We will take care of the rest in time, I promise."
Shiori didn't need another invitation. She immediately moved to push the door open, stepping into what turned out to be a small, private library of some kind. There were several rows of bookshelves, a fireplace, and a leather chair next to a floor to ceiling window that overlooked the grounds. It looked like a place for a teacher, maybe Gaia herself, to relax and read in peace.
And standing with his back to her right there in the middle of the room, staring through that window with his goggles held loosely in one hand, was Columbus. He clearly heard the door open, but didn't move. He was focused solely on that window, his gaze slightly bowed.
"Columbus!" Shiori blurted from where she stood. For a moment, her feet felt like they were caught in cement. She couldn't move. Seeing the boy there, knowing that it was really him and not some stupid Seosten bitch looking out through his eyes, it was completely overwhelming.
Slowly, the boy turned around. He was looking at the floor before his gaze slowly raised to take her in. She saw him gulp, hand briefly tightening on the strap to his goggles before he dropped them entirely. "Shy-guy," he breathed out, starting to take a step before stopping himself. He looked awkward, uncertain, even afraid of her response. He looked completely and totally lost.
He was frozen, so she forced her own feet to move. Crossing the short distance between them, Shiori immediately grabbed onto her brother, hugging him tightly. Her arms slipped around the boy and she clung to him with a weak little sob that blurted its way out of the girl. "Columbus."
She felt the boy stiffen under her embrace before he relaxed just a bit. An unfamiliar noise escaped him, and he breathed out. Making no move to actually return the hug, he spoke in a hoarse, quiet voice. "Shiori, you're…" He trailed off, clearly unable to say what he wanted to.
Swallowing hard, the girl slowly raised her own gaze while leaning back to see his face. "Columbus, I–" Shiori flinched as the thought came. "I'm sorry," she blurted. "I'm so, so sorry."
The surprise on the boy's face could not have been any more complete. His mouth literally fell open. "I–what?" he managed to croak out a bit weakly. "What are you–why are you… huh?"
She met his gaze earnestly, staring up at the boy. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize it wasn't you until… until Flick told me. I had no idea. I should've. I should've known. I'm sorry, Columbus. I'm so, so sorry. You must've felt like–you must feel like I betrayed you, or… or like I didn't know you."
He stared down at her in flat astonishment at that. "Shy–you… you're not…" His head shook then, and Columbus immediately caught onto her hands. "Shiori, I'm not mad at–you should be mad at me!" he blurted the words loudly. "I'm the one who couldn't fight her, couldn't stop her! She could have–she–she threatened to–and I couldn't… I never… I could never–" His voice cut off, and the boy shook his head even more, snapping it back and forth violently. "I'm sorry."
"You were possessed, you big idiot!" Shiori blurted, before snapping her hand against her own mouth with a horrified look. Blanching, she stammered muffledly through her own hand. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I–" Lowering her hand, she managed a weak, "you were possessed. It's not your fault. It's not even close to your fault. It was… it was her." The last word came as a growl.
"She's… she's dead." Columbus's voice made it sound as though he was still trying to convince himself of the truth of that. "Charmeine. She's dead now. Dead for good. Gone." He kept repeating it, like he needed to hear the words over and over in order to make them real.
Shiori gave a single, firm nod. "She's dead, Columbus. She's gone. You and Flick, you made–" Her voice caught a bit, and she had to swallow hard before forcing out the words, "You made sure of that."
For a moment, both siblings simply stood there, staring at each other. Both felt awkward, uncertain, and confused about what they were supposed to say, what they could say.
Finally, Shiori shook off her own confusion and uncertainty about the situation. She didn't matter right then. Columbus mattered. He needed her. He needed reassurance. After everything he'd been through… everything that bitch had made him do…
"Columbus." That time, her voice was firm. When he looked back to her eyes, Shiori spoke simply. "I love you. You're my brother. You're always gonna be my brother. None of what happened, none of it's your fault, okay? None of it. You… you're the best brother in the world. You accepted me when you found out the truth about my… about my mom. You accepted me immediately, you big dork. You're…" She choked up a little then. Flick would've known what to say. Flick could've made him feel better. All Shiori could do was stammer and babble a little.
But at least she could say the most important thing. And she'd keep saying it for as long as it took.
"I love you, Columbus. I love you. You're my brother. You're my family."
For a moment, the boy said nothing. He just stared down at her, a series of tumultuous emotions playing across his face. Finally, he lowered his head, tears springing to his eyes. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I didn't mean to. I didn't want to do any of that. I didn't–I couldn't–I… they're dead. She made me kill them, kill him… she made me–she would have… I couldn't–" Anything else that he might have said was cut off then as his throat closed up.
Shiori took him by the hands, squeezing tightly before guiding the boy over to sit on the oversized stuffed armchair. It was big enough for the two of them to squeeze in next to each other, which reminded her of all the Saturday mornings spent in the recliner at home when they were kids, first watching cartoons and then playing video games. Simpler times.
"We know," she finally replied in a soft voice, still squeezing the boy's hands. "We know, Columbus. It wasn't you. It wasn't your fault." She reached up then, tugging him down. And, despite their difference in size, Columbus fairly collapsed against her. His head fell against her shoulder, and Shiori hugged onto him. She held the boy against her, swallowing a little roughly. What did she say? What could she say that would magically make it better after everything that had happened? What words even existed that could help? Maybe… maybe two words.
"I'm here. I'm here, Columbus."
It was almost ten minutes before either of them spoke again. Sitting there in that chair, thinking about easier times, younger times, it left them both silent until Columbus finally spoke. "… I did try. I didn't want to kill him. I didn't want to–I didn't want to do any of it."
"I know." Shiori's voice was soft. She leaned back, watching her brother for a moment. "Columbus, you were–how… how long?"
He flinched at the question, hesitating before giving a soft, weak answer. "Since the airport at Thanksgiving, while I was waiting for you guys."
Shiori's eyes widened, and she made a horrified sound in the back of her throat. "Th-that long? You–you–oh. Oh my God. Columbus, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
Biting his lip, Columbus rubbed the back of his head. "Can… we just put a moratorium on apologies for now? Otherwise, I'm pretty sure we'll be in here all week."
Flushing a little, Shiori gave a tiny nod before pausing. The thought of all that Columbus had 'missed', or rather, what Charmeine had been puppeting him through, it was… staggering.
"I… umm… I don't suppose you know who the other Seosten are?" she asked, trying to change the subject.
His head shook. "No. Trust me, that was the first thing Gaia and Dare asked me. Charmeine always either knocked me out or wiped my memory when she had to meet with anyone else. Her boss, that Manakel guy, he insisted on it, just in case."
"Stupid competent evil jerk," Shiori muttered darkly. Then she looked up to him again. "What about… Mr. Carfried? If Gaia and Professor Dare made the Seosten body disappear, are… are the Heretics gonna try to… to come after you for what happened to him?"
Columbus shook his head once more. "The headmistress said that they have eyewitness testimony from Scout, Rudolph, Douglas, Avalon, and Sean that I was possessed and that they saw the Stranger who was possessing me leave my body. They can't prove 'giant Seosten conspiracy from the very beginning of Crossroads', but they can prove that there was one Stranger possessing me to make me… to make me do that…." He swallowed hard. ".. that stuff."
Putting her hand on top of his, Shiori asked hesitantly, "Do… do you know anything about where they sent Flick and the others? Or… or…"
He finished for her. "How to get them back? I'm sorry, Shee. I don't know. I wish I did. I…. Charmeine wasn't much for technical explanations. She didn't share that kind of stuff. She bragged a lot, threatened even more. But telling me details like that? She didn't really go for that."
Inwardly, the girl flinched. But she tried to hide it. Columbus already felt bad enough about everything. And he had been there for her, so damn it, she would be there for him.
"I know you're probably tired of talking about… about all of that," she noted quietly, "but would you mind answering one more question for me? Then, I promise, we can just sit here and not talk about it for as long as you want."
"One question?" The boy blinked at that before nodding. "Sure… what is it?"
Shifting in the seat to be closer to her brother, Shiori straightened and looked straight at him before asking her question.
"How good did it feel to blast that fucking bitch straight out the window?"
The question made Columbus blink again. Then he gave a brief, almost choking laugh. It wasn't a lot. But it was something. His arms wrapped around her, hugging his sister to him.
"I love you, Shiori."
"I love you too, Columbus."


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Spending on U.S. construction projects fell in March as the biggest drop in government projects in more than a decade overwhelmed strength in home building.
Construction spending fell 1.7 percent in March, compared with February, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. It marked the second decline in the past three months. January activity plunged a record 4 percent, which represented a downward revision from a previous estimate of a 2.1 percent decline.
Even with the recent weakness, construction activity was 4.8 percent higher in March than a year ago at a seasonally adjusted $856.7 billion.
For March, private residential construction rose 0.4 percent, the only major sector showing a gain. Government construction activity fell 4.1 percent, the biggest drop since March 2002, while private nonresidential building was down 1.5 percent.
The weakness in government activity occurred at all levels. Spending by state and local governments was down 4.2 percent while spending by the federal government on construction projects was down 1.7 percent. Economists are expecting federal activity to be reduced in coming months as different agencies cope with across-the-board spending cuts that went into effect on March 1.
The weakness in nonresidential activity reflected declines in spending on commercial projects such as shopping centers.
The rise in residential construction continued a trend that began last year and showed that the housing recovery is being sustained by rising demand. Spending for single-family homes was up 1.6 percent while multi-family construction rose 0.3 percent in March.
For all of 2012, construction spending increased 9.8 percent. That marked the first annual gain after five straight years of declines. Construction spending is still well below healthy levels although housing is helping to support building activity in the face of weakness in government projects.
Steady hiring and nearly record-low mortgage rates have encouraged more Americans to buy homes. More people are also moving out on their own after living with friends and relatives in the recession. That's driving a big gain in apartment construction and also pushing up rents.
New-home sales rose 1.5 percent in March to a seasonally adjusted 411,000. The level was 18.5 percent higher than a year ago.
Sales of previously owned homes slipped in March compared with February. But they are 10.3 percent higher than a year earlier.
Gains in home sales are helping to lift housing prices and encouraging builders to ramp up activity.
U.S. homebuilders started work on more than 1 million homes in March at a seasonally adjusted annual rate. That's the first time it has crossed that threshold in nearly five years.
Still, a limited supply of homes for sale could slow the housing recovery's momentum. And many would-be buyers are unable to take advantage of low mortgage rates because banks have imposed tighter credit conditions and are requiring larger down payments.g


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In the early 1950s, the U.S. military established a requirement for a high thrust, low weight, mechanically simple jet engine that could perform efficiently at Mach 0.9 cruise and Mach 2.0 combat speeds.
In late 1952, General Electric's proposed J79 was selected and first ran in June 1954. A variable stator compressor made it possible to meet the difficult requirements, providing high pressure ratios with adequate stall margins for high performance aircraft over wide operating conditions. The J79 first powered an aircraft, a Douglas XF4D, in December 1955.
The J79 powered several production aircraft: Convair B-58 Hustler; Lockheed F-104 Starfighter; McDonnell F-4 Phantom II; and North American RA-5 Vigilante. The 1958 Collier Trophy was awarded to the Air Force, Lockheed, and GE team that developed the F-104 fighter, the world's first Mach 2 operational fighter.
The J79-GE-2 was a U.S. Navy engine that powered the McDonnell F-4A and North American A-5A (A3J) aircraft.
For more information, visit the Smithsonians Terms of Use.


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One of the common turns of phrase that seems to come up again and again in Luganda–or in Luganda-speakers' English–is to ask not only about one's family, but about one's place. How is Ntinda? How is America? How is South Carolina? And my personal favorite, how are those ends? (Alternatively, when will you come back to this side/these ends?) Well, until September 2011, I had never considered that any of "these ends" could so closely resemble "those ends," either socio-linguistically or culturally. Then I attended a kwanjula in Boston.
Well, the same bride who introduced her groom to her adoring family that weekend made him a very happy man this past weekend in Chicago. They have since relocated, and their wedding was no less a thoroughly Ugandan affair than was their introduction ceremony. The Boston contingent made the trek in large vans, by plane, and however else they could. I met others who traveled from Minnesota, Michigan, New York, and Ohio. But most–safely over 95%–were first or second generation Ugandan immigrants from Buganda. These are doctors and lawyers, nurses and fashion designers, students and teachers; they are a well-educated, high-achieving bunch, to be sure. It is easy to see how so many of the present generation of Africans in the Diaspora hold so much hope and promise for the future. As I look toward a new phase of research revolving around these Ugandan communities in the U.S., it is very exciting to see the great variety of things its members are doing in the world.
I had not intended my presence at this event to meet with the same conspicuous attention as my performance of the Ffumbe clan slogan at the kwanjula did in 2011. I had simply stayed in touch with the bride and groom, and I wanted to celebrate with them on their big day. As aunties have a tendency to do, however, the bassenga from Boston informed me that I would be reciting the bride's paternal and maternal genealogies at the reception. As this had been become a major opportunity for networking and thinking about new research directions the last time I did it, I of course readily agreed. In any case, how could I say no to this bride, much less her aunties?
When I initially started writing about the 2011 event, the connections between kinship, music and tradition fascinated me. Between then and now, however, I had the opportunity to travel back to Boston and experience some of the rest of the music scene in one of the largest Ugandan communities in the U.S. Traveling to Chicago then came with the promise of new possibilities for discovering how things might be different there…and how different they were.
The nightclub that played almost exclusively Ugandan pop in Waltham, Massachusetts was interesting, and it's a place I hope to return. But the aptly named Club Enigma in Chicago provided a fascinating contrast. Far from the local pub experience that tends to attract Waltham's slightly older crowd, Enigma was like walking into a Kampala nightclub. The ten-dollar cover charge, the security at the door, the lighting, the overpriced drinks, and especially the DJ's mix of contemporary Ugandan and American pop made it seem like the whole place had been transplanted directly out of suburban Uganda's upwardly mobile communities.
I might have come to expect this from a younger crowd closer to the Chicago city limits than Waltham is to Boston, even if both places are fairly typical of immigrant communities in American suburbia. What I didn't expect was the utter disorienting experience that this club offered two completely different cultural experiences in the same building. At the bottom of the main staircase, a right turn means Ugandan Urban Underground, but a left turn translates to Bulgarian Boom Boom Room. The latter was nearly three times as large, and attracted a crowd befitting the space. Managing sound bleed seemed only a matter of cranking the volume in each space loud enough to mask anything coming from the other. For the most part, people came with a culturally specific experience in mind, but they frequently walked over to "the other side" to check out what was going on, do some people watching, hear the music, scope out a fleeting physical interest, or even dance to a bit different beat. Let me just say that the kasiki (a Ugandan version of a bachelor party) and the wedding after-party the next night did not offer nearly enough time to try to parse this one out. Enigma indeed.
Two things remained consistent between Waltham and Arlington Heights/Chicago: these events are still all about networks of kin, and both communities still revolve around Roman Catholic church life.
Above: the groom, Godfrey, with the maid of honor, Vivian and yours truly
One of my favorite images came from the DJ booth:
I call it "Ain't No Party Like a Messiah Party"
(glossy facsimile on turntable)


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Ethan Seifried - June 28, 2020
Uncompromised Faith
From Series: "Uncompromising: A Series in Galatians"
Our culture has sold us the lie that to truly love someone you must accept them completely, even if it means compromising your own beliefs. Inclusivity is everything, even if it means denying Jesus' exclusivity. And Paul takes this notion head-on in his letter to the Galatians. He defends faith in Jesus as the only way to be justified before God, and as the true fulfillment of the Jewish faith. In a word, his gospel is uncompromising.


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Biden: U.S. poised for job, economic growth
Seven to 10 years ago, Vice President Joe Biden told National Urban League delegates Thursday, he would not have been able to present such an optimistic message.
But today, Biden said, the United States is poised for job growth that will pay families a living wage, even as challenges remain to closing opportunity gaps.
"There have to be jobs to fill in order to meet the needs of the community," Biden said in a 40-minute address. "We are better positioned than any country in the world."
Thursday was the second of four days for the 104th conference of the National Urban League, expected to draw up to 8,700 at Duke Energy Convention Center. The convention marked the national group's first return to Cincinnati since it bowed out in 2003, honoring a boycott called to raise attention to racial issues.
Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, mayors of other cities and Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, also spoke Thursday.
Biden opened by listing accomplishments made for African-Americans and low-income Americans since the Lyndon Johnson-era War on Poverty. He said 10 times as many African-Americans are in college and 10 times as many hold elected public office.
Then he turned his remarks to what he called "the franchise," the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
"There has been progress, but something happened on the way to the 2008 election," Biden said of the law that gave African-Americans the right to vote. "The franchise is under siege."
He said 83 efforts in 29 states have sought to "limit access to the ballot box. It's an attempt to suppress American voting rights disguised as an attempt to reduce voter fraud where there is none."
But most of the vice president's discussion focused on the nation's employment, and Biden rolled out a list of numbers including 668,000 manufacturing jobs created in recent years. Now, Biden said, he and President Barack Obama have two important tasks to accomplish to ensure more growth.
First, Biden praised Obama's $302 billion plan earlier this year to increase transportation spending and keep transit programs going for four years.
"We need to modernize our infrastructure – our highways, airports, railroads and canals," he said. "Every $1 billion in investment creates 30,000 jobs, 14 percent which go to African-Americans."
Then he turned to the need for jobs training: "And to keep our manufacturing going we need a highly skilled workforce. They require new skills to build the same product they did five or 10 years ago."
Toward the end of his speech, the vice president congratulated the Urban League for its consistent history and mission of working toward economic equality.
"What you are all about is providing people with a sense of dignity," Biden said.
Priebus, Republican National Committee chair, said his party has offered solutions to increasing African-American employment.
"There's one very important bill that passed the House and Senate and was just signed by the president," Priebus said. "The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act."
He cited comments recently made by National Urban League President Marc Morial, who said, "Millions of under-employed workers and urban youth and youth of color can receive the skills, training and support services they need to chart a path to a better future."
"That is good news for all of us," Priebus said. "We want you to know that the Republican Party is listening and fighting for you."
The Urban League is a nonpartisan organization, and Morial said it welcomes points of view and discussion from across the political spectrum.
The Urban League's annual report for 2014, released in April, titled "One Nation Underemployed: Jobs Rebuild America," noted that the underemployment rate for African-American workers was 20.5 percent, compared with 18.4 percent for Hispanic workers and 11.8 percent for white workers. Underemployment is defined as those who are jobless or working part-time jobs but desiring full-time work.
The report also said African-Americans are twice as likely to be unemployed as whites.
Metropolitan Cincinnati, which includes Hamilton and Middletown among five counties in Southwest Ohio, seven counties in Northern Kentucky and three in Southeast Indiana, has nearly the worst median household-income gap between blacks and whites compared to other metropolitan areas.
The Enquirer reported earlier this week that of the 77 cities analyzed by the National Urban League in its report, Greater Cincinnati ranks 73rd, with median black income at $24,272, compared to $57,481 for whites.
Seven mayors participated in a panel and offered local solutions to the growing jobs and economic gap nationally between whites and blacks. Among them:
Alvin Brown, mayor of Jacksonville, Florida, said his city had 25,000 uninsured young people but used an "all-hands-on-deck" solution to raise $250,000 and get insurance for all of the uninsured students. "You can't learn if you're sick and not in school," Brown said.
Karen Freeman-Wilson, mayor of Gary, Indiana, said her city has aggressively recruited to keep home-grown talent in the city and working on its problems.
"If we all leave, what will happen to the city?" she said. "If you help solve these problems, you can go anywhere in the world and write your own (career) ticket."
Michael Coleman, mayor of Columbus, Ohio, said, "You have to create many kinds of jobs. They can't all be high end."


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FOR THE RECORD: I haven't burnt toast this badly in years, at least the smoke alarm did not go off, the toaster was on the correct setting (in the middle) but didn't pop up in time. I ate one, tossed one and made more toast that was "just right." I jinxed myself by mentioning my long ago burnt toast mornings at Art Circle on Thursday night. I got cocky. Thought I had making toast figured out. Lesson learned. Humility.
January 17, 2016


text: Assistant funeral director Bernie Tiede was one of the town's most beloved residents. He taught Sunday school, sang in the church choir and was always willing to lend a helping hand. Everyone loved and appreciated him, so it came as no surprise when he befriended Marjorie Nugent, an affluent widow who was as well known for her sour attitude as her fortune. He frequently traveled with Marjorie and even managed her banking affairs. She became fully dependant on Bernie and his generosity, and he struggled to meet her increasing demands. He continued to handle her affairs, and the townspeople went months without seeing her. They were shocked when it was reported that she had been dead for some time, and Bernie was being charged with the murder.


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Roger Waters is expected to bring his massive tour of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" to Wrigley Field next summer.
Live Nation has scheduled an announcement for Tuesday at the venerable North Side park, which has hosted a series of concerts in recent years, including two nights last summer with Paul McCartney.
Waters, who brought the Wall Tour through Chicago in 2010 in a four-night residency at the United Center, is expected to set up the massive production at Wrigley on June 8 and possibly June 9, both dates when the Cubs are out of town, music-industry sources say.
A Live Nation spokesman would not comment on the reports, but did confirm that Wrigley will host at least one concert next summer.
Waters recently told Rolling Stone magazine he was working on an outdoor version of "The Wall" to tour in 2012 and had conducted lights tests at several American baseball stadiums, including Wrigley, to accommodate the extravaganza.
"The Wall," released in 1979, was largely written and conceived by Waters with Pink Floyd. It's among the most revered double albums of all time and has sold more than 20 million copies. Waters left Pink Floyd a few years later and has recorded and toured as a solo act ever since. In recent years, he has revisited the band's biggest albums -- "The Dark Side of the Moon" and "The Wall" -- for highly lucrative tours.


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Netflix Upcoming Releases January 2013
Action & Adventure
Avail Now
Batman: The Movie (1966)
Adam West, Burt Ward
In director Leslie H. Martinson's campy action comedy based on the tongue-in-cheek 1960s TV series, Batman (Adam West) and Robin (Burt Ward) battle sharks, Catwoman (Lee Meriwether), The Joker (Cesar Romero), The Penguin (Burgess Meredith) and The Riddler (Frank Gorshin) on the big screen. Can they keep the bad guys from taking over the world? With a "wham!" and a "pow!" the heroes just might pull it off — and maintain their secret identities.
Bad Boys II (2003)
Will Smith, Martin Lawerence, Gabrielle Union, Henry Rollins
In this hyperkinetic sequel, a pair of Miami narcotics cops investigate a Cuban drug kingpin's connection to Florida's influx of Ecstasy.
The Medallion (2003)
Jackie Chan, Claire Forlani
When he's killed in the line of duty, an immigration officer decides to continue his fight from the grave against smugglers wreaking havoc on the system. Now that he's no longer alive, he discovers he's infused with powers he never had before.
Avail 1/1
Sahara (2005)
Matthew McConaghey, Penelope Cruz, William H. Macy, Steve Zahn
Master explorer Dirk Pitt goes on the adventure of a lifetime of seeking out a lost Civil War battleship known as the "Ship of Death" in the deserts of West Africa while helping a UN doctor being hounded by a ruthless dictator.
Avail 1/5
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
Tom Cruise, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner
The IMF is shut down when it's implicated in the bombing of the Kremlin, causing Ethan Hunt and his new team to go rogue to clear their organization's name.
Children & Family
Avail Now
Alice in Wonderland (1951)
Kathryn Beaumont, Ed Wynn, Richard Haydn
Disney's animated, musical retelling of Lewis Carroll's whimsical tale follows young Alice as she falls down a rabbit hole and enters a strange and wonderful world that is home to the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and the terrifying Queen of Hearts.
The Aristocats (1970)
Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Sterling Holloway
When Madame Adelaide Bonfamille leaves her fortune to her prized cat Duchess and Duchess's kittens, her butler plots to steal the money and kidnaps the heirs, leaving them out on a country road.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
Michael J. Fox, Corey Burton
A young adventurer named Milo Thatch joins an intrepid group of explorers to find the mysterious lost continent of Atlantis.
Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (1998)
Thurl Ravenscroft, Deanna Oliver, Eric Lloyd
A spaceship has made off with Master Rob's new baby son and the gang of plucky appliances must get him back to Earth.
The Fox and the Hound (1981)
Mickey Rooney, Kurt Russell, Pearl Bailey
Everyone knows foxes and hounds don't get along. But no one told that to orphaned fox Tod and bloodhound puppy Copper, who become fast friends as youngsters, only to see their instincts drive them apart as they grow up.
Pocahontas (1997)
Irene Bedard, Mel Gibson, David Ogden Stiers
An American Indian woman is supposed to marry the village's best warrior, but she yearns for something more — and soon meets Capt. John Smith.
The Rescuers Down Under (1990)
Bob Newhart, Eva Gabnor, John Candy
A lawless poacher wants to capture a majestic and rare golden eagle, so he kidnaps the boy who knows where to find the bird. Not to worry — the Rescue Aid Society's top agents, heroic mice Miss Bianca and Bernard, fly to Australia to save the day.
Tarzan and Jane (2002)
Olivia d'Abo, Michael T. Weiss, Jeff Bennett
This engaging Disney-animated tale follows Tarzan and his new wife, Jane, during their first year in the jungle together.
The Tigger Movie (2000)
Jim Cummings, Nikita Hopkins, Ken Sansom
Tigger goes in search of his family tree, hoping to find other Tiggers. Along the way, the boisterous bouncer learns the true meaning of family.
Tim Burton's The Nighmare Before Christmas (1993)
Danny Elfman, Catherine O'Hara, Chris Sarandon
Tired of scaring humans every October 31 with the same old bag of tricks, Jack Skellington, the spindly king of Halloween Town, kidnaps Santa Claus and plans to deliver shrunken heads and other ghoulish gifts to children on Christmas morning.
Tinker Bell (2008)
Jesse McCartney, Anjelica Huston, Kristin Chenoweth
Peter Pan's famed sidekick Tinker Bell gets a story all her own in this enchanting tale set in the magical fairy world of Pixie Hollow.
Treasure Planet (2002)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Martin Short, Emma Thompson
A Disney animated version of "Treasure Island". The only difference is that the film is set in outer space with alien worlds and other galactic wonders.
Avail 12/17
Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 (2011)
George Lopez, Madison Pettis
It was love at first yap, and in the continuing adventures of Beverly Hills' most charming chihuahua, Chloe and Papi exchange wedding bow-wows, then plunge paws first into parenthood as their five pups turn their home into a canine fun house.
Avail 1/7
Dr. Seuss' The Lorax (2012)
Danny Devito, Ed Elms, Zac Efron, Taylor Swift
A 12-year-old boy searches for the one thing that will enable him to win the affection of the girl of his dreams. To find it he must discover the story of the Lorax, the grumpy yet charming creature who fights to protect his world.
Avail Now
Half Baked (1996)
Dave Chappelle, Jim Breuer, Rachel True, Snoop Dogg
Three ganja-smoking dimwits hatch a plot to raise bail money for their jailed friend by selling dope on the street. But they'd better spring their incarcerated buddy fast — before he ends up as the "boy toy" of a criminal named Nasty Nate.
Avail 1/1
The Original Kings of Comedy (2000)
Steve Harvey, D.L Hughley, Cedric The Entertainer, Bernie Mac
The film was shot in Charlotte, NC over the last two nights (February 26 and February 27, 2000) of the Kings of Comedy tour with Harvey, Hughley, Cedric, and Mac.
Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider
A delusional young guy strikes up an unconventional relationship with a doll he finds on the Internet.
Avail 1/3
Butter (2011)
Jennifer Garner, Hugh Jackman, Olivia Wilde, Ashley Greene
In small-town Iowa, an adopted girl discovers her talent for butter carving and finds herself pitted against an ambitious local woman in their town's annual contest.
Avail 1/1
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
Al Gore, Billy West
A documentary on Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming is a recognized problem worldwide.
Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2007)
Neil Young, Emmy Lou Harris
A film shot over during a two-night performance by Neil Young at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. From the director of one of the greatest music movies ever – The Talking Heads' STOP MAKING SENSE .
Avail 12/21
Red Hook Summer (2012)
Clarke Peters, Jules Brown, Toni Marie Lysaith, Nate Parker
In director Spike Lee's moving family drama, Flik's summer vacation is upended when he's sent from suburban Atlanta to stay with his preacher grandfather in the projects of Brooklyn. As the old man tries to get religion into his grandson, Flik befriends a mischievous girl from the congregation.
Avail 1/1
Blue Valentine (2010)
Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams
The film centers on a contemporary married couple, charting their evolution over a span of years by cross-cutting between time periods.
Coach Carter (2005)
Samuel L. Jackson, Channing Tatum, Ashanti
Controversy surrounds high school basketball coach Ken Carter after he benches his entire team for breaking their academic contract with him.
For Love of the Game (1999)
Kevin Costner, Kelly Preston, John C. Riley
A baseball legend almost finished with his distinguished career at the age of forty has one last chance to prove who he is, what he is capable of, and win the heart of the woman he has loved for the past four years.
Four Brothers (2005)
Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Andrew Benjamin, Terrence Howard
Four brothers come to avenge their mother's death in what appears to be a random killing in a grocery store robbery. However, the boys' investigation of the death reveals more nefarious activities involving the one brother's business dealings with a notorious local hoodlum. Two cops who are trying to solve the case may also not be what they seem.
Horror & Thriller
Avail 1/1
The Grudge 3 (2009)
Matthew Knight, Shawnee Smith
A young Japanese woman who holds the key to stopping the evil spirit of Kayako, travels to the haunted Chicago apartment from the sequel.
Avail 1/3
Joe Swanberg, Adam Wingard
When a group of misfits is hired by an unknown third party to burglarize a desolate house and acquire a rare VHS tape, they discover more found footage than they bargained for.
Avail 1/1
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
Patrick Stewart, Tom Hardy, Ron Perlman
After the Enterprise is diverted to the Romulan planet of Romulus, supposedly because they want to negotiate a truce, the Federation soon find out the Romulans are planning an attack on Earth.
Avail Now
30 Rock: Season 2: Episode 9 "Ludachristmas"
Jack is amazed by the contrast between Liz's supportive parents and his own mother, whose taunts lead Liz to reveal a Lemon family secret.
Arrested Development: Season 1: Episode 7 "In God We Trust"
The family attorney arranges George Sr.'s release from prison for Christmas. Later, George Michael has to wear an embarrassing codpiece in a pageant.
Glee: Season 2: Episode 10 "A Very Glee Christmas"
Finn tries to get everyone at McKinley High into the holiday spirit. Sue paints herself up as The Grinch to steal back presents.
How I Met Your Mother: Season 2: Episode 11 "How Lily Stole Christmas"
Harsh words exchanged between Ted and Lily nearly ruin Christmas.
iCarly: Season 2: Episode 7 "iChristmas"
After Carly wishes her brother would act more normal, an angel shows her what her life would be like if Spencer were a typical lawyer.
Phineas and Ferb: Season 2: Episode 21 "Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation!"
With Christmas just around the corner, Doofenshmirtz activates his "Naughty-inator," and all of Danville appears to have turned naughty.
The Office: Season 2: Episode 10 "Christmas Party"
Flush with cash from a recent bonus, Michael throws an office Christmas party. Jim begins planning the perfect Secret Santa gift for Pam.


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"Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep,
too grave to laugh, and too self-ful to seek other than itself."
~~ Kahlil Gibran ~~
221 B Baker Street, London….
As may or may not have been noted, I disappeared again; the events in the Big Blue Room have assumed a greater significance for me than spending time at the computer. Not to say I have completely gone off the literary rails I've ridden for so long; it's a matter of dealing with what is happening "in the moment", a place in my mind I am trying to focus upon, for any number of good reasons, not the least of which have been words of advice uttered by many sages in history about the importance of staying there. In the moment, that is….
That said, in lieu of any excuses I might have otherwise been tempted to offer, I have had this Pearl pretty much ready for a couple days, & have just made the time this morning to try to get it posted before getting back to real-time events. Since I have also been practicing getting stuff done without 'fussing' around, this introductory passage will remain as short & sweet as I can make it. How short is that? Well, just this short….
Shall we Pearl?
"Better stop short than fill to the brim.
Oversharpen the blade, and the edge will soon blunt.
Amass a store of gold and jade, and no one can protect it.
Claim wealth and titles, and disaster will follow.
Retire when the work is done.
This is the way of heaven."
~~ Tao Te Ching ~~
Jim Byrnes
Image from MySpace via Google Images
I first heard this artist play when he was a cast member of the Highlander TV series; he played a Watcher assigned to watch Duncan McCleod, the show's primary character. I recently discovered he has a large body of songs on You Tube, which I have included as today's musical selection. He is an excellent guitarist, with a perfect voice for singing the blues; I hope you enjoy his work as much as I have come to do…. Abondanza!….
Blue chameleon
It's hot today, with chances of pain & rain.
So it says on the news.
Guess there's nothing to do again
unless it's sing the blues.
The blues are gettin' old, though.
So I say, & I should know.
I been singin' the bloody songs, y'know?
For what seems a long row to hoe.
S'pose it could get better someday.
I've heard that tune before.
Always seemed out of tune anyway;
I ain't waitin' any more.
Bang those drums & kick the cans.
May as well raise some hell.
Clang together some old pots & pans;
It hides the little voices so well.
Never worry, don't you fear at all.
We've got certificates of note.
Bureaucratic protections, officially small.
Non carborundum illegitimi, he wrote.
Time, and circumstance, wrote me today.
It came in the daily mail from home.
It said I shouldn't write unless I say
you'll be charged for the distance you roam.
~~ gigoid ~~
Naked Pearls
Random notes on Life & Death….
"Grow old along with me!
the best is yet to be,
the last of life for which the first was made."
~~ Robert Browning ~~
"After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."
~~ J.K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, " ~~
~~ spoken by the character Albus Dumbledore ~~
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence
is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being."
~~ C. G. Jung ~~
"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance."
~~ Socrates (470?-399 B.C.) ~~
"The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit."
~~ Nelson Henderson ~~
"I look at you all, see the love there that's sleeping.."
~~ The Beatles ~~
"And though mine arm should conquer twenty worlds,
There 's a lean fellow beats all conquerors."
~~ Thomas Dekker (1572-1632), "Old Fortunatus" ~~
Once again, I can only say, such as it is, here 'tis. In the near future I will try to post something with a bit more cachet, or, at the very least, a bit more intelligent discourse. For now, I'm off into the day, where I'll continue to practice staying present in the present, which is, after all, all we really have to be. "Being" is a good thing, I think…. Y'all stay well, be as happy as you may be, and, for everyone's sake, be strange….. See ya soon, ffolkes…
Y'all take care out there,
and May the Metaphorse be with you;
Blessed Be, dearest Carole, Mark,Theresa, & Richy
and everyone else, too…
When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits loose.
When I thinks, I falls asleep.
Which is Why….
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes,
I just sits.
gigoid, the dubious
The *only* duly authorized Computer Curmudgeon.
"SCRAM!!!!!!!!!!"- Oscar the Grouch
À bientôt, mon cherí….


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We've decided to try out the Delorme Challenge. We're going to start faaaar north this weekend and work our way south.
Any must-see caches in the state? Especially in the north or the west, since those are the areas we are not familiar with and will likely not visit more than once or twice. We'd like to know in advance so that we can be sure to plan those in to the challenge. Ben prefers caches that are hard to find, I prefer caches that take us to pretty spots or cutesy towns.


text:
These thoughts are yours, O Paris,
You who still stays so far away;
Every dream as it arises,
Why don't you laugh and sway?
An evening in Paris is my bliss,
And a night when I no longer travel;
To have a last embrace and a kiss,
Before every lie conspires to unravel.
Like a poem built up of sweet jingles,
Every part of you stands just perfect;
Every cornice and every single egress,
They are all so exact and circumspect.
But, to find meaning in your labyrinths,
Why do I have to descend to the sewers;
Even as my dreams grow colorful,
Why do they have to lose rhythm and substance?


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Perez Hilton Tweeted Another Photo of Miley Cyrus' Crotch
Perez Hilton is going double-or-nothing with his "Is it child pornography?" pageview gambit. "If you're easily offended, do NOT click here" he tweeted today, linking to another photo of 17-year-old Miley Cyrus' crotch, her leotard askew and revealing between-the-legs flesh.
Perez enjoyed last week's Cyrus-crotch-related attention so much, he came back for more. The new photo is from Miley's Much Music Video Awards performance. Her vagina is clothed but the crotch of her leotard is askew, revealing about two inches of flesh beyond the inner crease her thigh. It's not exactly genital, but might be included in a bikini wax. What do we call that region of the body? Mid-pelvic non-thigh? Outer-vulva? Here's the tweet:
Last time Perez posted a "do NOT click here" about Miley's crotch, Salon's child porn legal expert said the first Miley upskirt was "suicidal," even if Miley "is actually wearing form-fitting underwear." Today's photo was more revealing than "form-fitting underwear," but not exactly. (Miley's always half-naked, so even if it's illegal, it's nothing new.) So either Perez has ironclad legal advice about avoiding child porn charges, or he's so addicted to attention he's developed Tourette syndrome for 17-year-old panty pictures.
Alternate explanation: Perez is Geena Davis in Thelma & Louise mode, going down in drunken, oversexed flames. But that's probably giving him too much credit. [Image via Getty]
Will Perez Hilton Go to Jail for Tweeting Miley Cyrus' Vagina?
Perez Hilton Tweets Miley Cyrus Upskirt Photo, Headline Writers Fire Up Engines