Sit down, shut up, and pay attention

I was listening to the local (Cincinnati) talk show in the car this morning and the host Mike McConnell was talking about how over protected children are today. His plan, if he were in charge of the U.S. Dept. of Education, would be, "Sit down, shut up, and pay attention," and it wouldn't cost the tax payers a penny. This made me think of one of my high school teachers, Warren Burstrom, and I think those were his exact words to Glenn Orr and Marv Miller in Chemistry class. We all loved him and learned a lot. Murray sent me these memories of the "good old days" when we were in school. He was class of 1956. I, of course, am much younger.

Scenario: Jack pulls into school parking lot with rifle in gun rack.

1956 Vice Principal comes over, takes a look at Jack's rifle, goes to his car and gets his to show Jack.

2006 School goes into lockdown, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.

Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school.

1956 Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up best friends. Nobody goes to jail, nobody arrested, nobody expelled.

2006 Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario: Jeffrey won't be still in class, disrupts other students.

1956 Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by Principal. Sits still in class.

2006 Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.

Scenario: Billy breaks a window in his father's car and his Dad gives him a whipping.

1956 Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.

2006 Billy's Dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang. Billy's sister is told by state psychologist that she remembers being abused herself and their Dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has affair with psychologist.

Scenario: Mark gets a headache and takes some headache medicine to school.

1956 Mark shares headache medicine with Principal out on the smoking dock.

2006 Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations. Car searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario: Mary turns up pregnant.

1973 5 High School Boys leave town. Mary does her senior year at a special school for expectant mothers.

2006 Middle School Counselor calls Planned Parenthood, who notifies the ACLU. Mary is driven to the next state over and gets an abortion without her parent's consent or knowledge. Mary given condoms and told to be more careful next time.

Scenario: Pedro fails high school English.

1973: Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.

2006: Pedro's cause is taken up. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English banned from core curriculum. Pedro given diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he can't speak English.

Scenario: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed.

1956 Ants die.

2006 BATF, Homeland Security, FBI called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from home, computers confiscated, Johnny's Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.

Scenario: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary, hugs him to comfort him.

1956 - In a short time Johnny feels better and goes on playing.

2006 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison.


Gimme 1956 back please!

3332 My letter to Oprah

My husband suggested I turn on the Oprah show--she was doing a program on "class." I watched a few minutes (it was a rerun of an April show), but couldn't handle the twaddle of Robert Reich, Clinton's former Secretary of Labor. Her web site summarizes his thoughts:

Reich "says that a family's ability to provide their children with a quality education, health care and access to other resources determines one's class. "A lot of kids who are poor or working class are not getting the schools that they need and are not having the connections and the models of success that they need."

He notes three indicators of class: "weight, teeth and dialect. In terms of appearance, people who are overweight or have poor teeth are generally regarded as lower class."

I didn’t see the part about teeth but did hear him saying they (lower class and poor) aren't getting good schools. That's been proven false by putting lower class district children into stunning new schools with incredible technology. New bricks don't turn out new scholars. Old values and concerned parents do. Poor families who take the initiative to get their kids into charter schools benefit in the long run. Immigrant Vietnamese and other Asians and even some immigrant Mexicans have managed to move their families into the middle class by hard work and strong family values, not good teeth and good schools.

Here’s my letter to Oprah.

I was disappointed in your "class" show because of the misinformation Robert Reich presented.

The growing gap is not between classes, but between families of married couples and unmarried women with children. Women can virtually eliminate poverty by 1) finishing high school, 2) not having babies as teen-agers, and 3) marrying the father of their children. If her husband takes a job, any job and keeps it, he will almost guarantee their success.

There is still plenty of opportunity in this country--illegals who flood over our borders seeking it is proof of that. But young women need to get smart and stop listening to musicians and boyfriends who call them "Ho" and "bitch" and get down to the business of saving their future children with some backbone and pride.

Maybe you could also open a school for girls here in the U.S.

Source update: William Galston, a Democratic strategist and former domestic affairs adviser to President Clinton is usually acknowledged as the source of the statistics on the relationship between poverty, education and marriage. See James Q. Wilson, City Journal, Why we don't marry. The original Galston source doesn’t seem to be on-line, but every one quotes him. You can look through his bibliography--may be co-authored with Kamarck.

Source update: Kansas City--money and school performance, Cato Policy Analysis . "The lessons of the Kansas City experiment should stand as a warning to those who would use massive funding and gold-plated buildings to encourage integration and improve education."

Robert Reich
Oprah show
poverty
marriage

3331 What I had for lunch

As I noted in September, I decided to lose weight (my 20 blogging pounds) by paying attention to food triggers that made me more hungry. I've lost 17 lbs. and lots of inches where I blog. I've learned to eat to love some foods I'd almost never eaten before, like greens and peppers. Collard greens, turnip greens, bell peppers--red, yellow and orange, and lots of onions. The greens are high in anti-oxidants which help fight all kinds of degenerative diseases and contains trace minerals and calcium. Collard greens (1 cup) have 118.9% of the daily value for vitamin A and 57.6% of vitamin C. But turnip greens are even better with 158.3% of vitamin A and 65.8% of vitamin C. If you have thyroid or gallbladder problems (which I don't) you might want to be cautious about greens, according to The World's Healthiest Foods.

It's awfully hard for one person to eat a bunch of greens before they would go bad, so here's my trick: I lightly saute them with onions in a small amount of olive oil and put them in small individual packages for lunch and freeze them. I don't like those dull, limp, gray blobs you see on steam tables, so these stay bright green.

Today I quickly grilled with a touch of olive oil about 1/2 cup of frozen organic sweet corn with one of my packages of turnip greens and onions, and about a fourth of a red pepper--maybe 1/4 cup. The corn adds a touch of sweetness to the turnip greens which aren't as mild as the collard greens. The mild peppers add color and crunch, and are also excellent sources of C and A. If I were eating a cup, it would be even higher than the greens. My, it was so colorful. Just a pleasure to eat with my book.

With lunch, I was reading The Trouble with Africa, by Robert Calderisi, a Canadian who has worked in Africa since 1975. Africa has received some $600 billion in aid since 1960, yet it has actually gotten poorer since then. It's no longer useful to point fingers at colonialism or slavery, the Africans themselves are making a mess of things, and foreign aid seems to be part of the problem.

For dessert I had fresh pineapple. . . and a Christmas cookie.

3330 So you want to be a writer

A snippet from a poem by Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), who published his first book of poetry when he was 39. To support his writing, I think he must have worked every job except library clerk.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.

unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

I think this applies to bloggers too, although he was writing about poetry. I've seen a lot of blogs with only 4 or 5 entries over months and years. Bukowski went on to write more than 45 books. I like to write; hate to publish.

Tomorrow I will start working on Poetry Thursday and won't do Thursday Thirteen for awhile. I'm about out of lists.

thursday thirteen
Poetry thursday
Charles Bukowski
writing
poetry

3329 WSJ features two stories about libraries

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal featured librarianship in its Career Journal section. Gee, most of this good news should have been withheld or the profession will never get the new blood. Must have been a woman writer (see my previous article here).

The writer opines (parentheses are my comments):
1) An aging profession (therefore, there must be opportunity--and haven't we been hearing that since the 1960s when I was in grad school?).
2) Low salaries (you don't want to know how bad they are).
3) Limited opportunities in desirable areas (in rural areas it's $25,000/year and all the snow you can shovel).
4) Expensive advanced degree requirements--ca. $20,000 at a top school like my alma mater. (It's not unusual to find librarians with 2 or 3 advanced degrees because they keep going to school while job hunting.)
5) 80% of the profession is female. (This always depresses salaries and causes a problem in a field that increasingly is computer dependent, a field dominated by men).
6) 89% of the profession is white. (It's not called welfare for the middle class for nothing!)
7) The better salaries are in the private sector (i.e., corporate, but the profession tends to be anti-capitalism).

Then today there was a lengthy opinion piece in the WSJ by someone named John J. Miller, who suggests that libraries should hang on to Hemingway, Proust, and Solzhenitsyn even if it means crowding out the latest John Grisham and David Baldacci. He uses the Fairfax Co. VA system which apparently has installed a circulation system that will flag books for withdrawal (that's the librarian's sexy term for "dump it") when it hasn't circulated (librarian's term for check-out a book) for two years. He thinks libraries should be cultural repositories because they can't compete in today's world of Amazon.com, i-Pod and MP3.

". . .librarians should. . .discriminate between the good and bad, the timeless and the ephemeral . . . as teachers, advisers and guardians. [They shouldn't be] clerks and stock boys at grocery stores."

Oh dear! Sometimes it is hard to know if someone is writing tongue in cheek. He apparently doesn't realize that librarians already are acting as guardians of the public welfare. They are more liberal than the ACLU or Barbra Streisand and Tim Robbins combined. Just go look at the issues and forums on the web page for the American Library Association and read the Bush bashing.

E.S. Browning pitches like a girl

Several times I've written posts about the differences in writing style between men and women. Most of my examples come from the Wall Street Journal. Women staff writers of this publication use fewer idioms, less colorful language, and usually include more direct quotes. Their articles also contain a "yes, but. . ." lead if they are presenting anything positive about the economy or culture. Or they hate to commit. The good news will be placed near the bottom, if you persevere through their stodgy style. Let me offer some examples by writers whose names clearly indicate their sex.

First the guys in yesterday's paper:

"The hedge-fund locomotive ran into some impossible obstacles but for the most part kept chugging ahead in 2006." Gregory Zuckerman

"Latin American stocks surged to a 4th straight year of double-digit increases, their longest streak in at least 19 years, as global investors increased bets that big economies such as Mexico and Brazil have bid "adios" to a rocky past of one crisis after another." John Lyons

"The deal-making world can hardly suppress its glee about 2006, which will go down as the best year to date. Business has been so good that some are gritting their teeth, afraid their luck may somehow run out." Dennis K. Berman

And now the ladies:

"Bond investors enter 2007 divided about the prospects for the U.S. economy. They will find out in the coming months which camp has it right." Serena Ng

"Asian stocks logged another year of gains, but it wasn't an easy ride for investors." Laura Santini

"As the air rushed in and out of the crude-oil market in 2006, the breathless rise and surprising fall dominated discussion of whether the commodity boom could last." Ann Davis

Notice the next time you read WSJ, Forbes or Business Week: The men who write about business, politics and economics heavily use gambling, sports, technological, automotive and agricultural idioms, anecdotes, methaphors and analogies. They play games with words and tease the reader just a bit--using double meanings, puns and ambiguities. They coin new words, invent proverbs, use slang, and get sloppy with foreign words, like using "adios" in my second example (for Brazil it should be Portuguese, not Spanish).

The women, on the other hand, are more literal, timid and bland. If they do use figurative language, the phrase is probably so commonplace, we don't even notice, i.e. they are as dull as dishwater but hit the nail on the head. They tend toward touchy-feely and weakly emotional words to humanize the markets--"disappointing performance," "hoping it starts strongly," "outlook is cloudy," "could fizzle," etc.

So all this leads me to E. S. Browning. He writes like a woman. The exception that proves my rule. In fact, because of his use of initials (his friends call him Jim according to one article I Googled), I'd always figured he was a female--that and his straight-forward, gloomy, no-nonsense writing style. He's a 27 year staff writer veteran for the Journal and is the writers' union representative, according to articles that quote him.

"Investors are approaching 2007 with a high degree of optimism--perhaps too high, some skeptics worry." E. S. Browning

3327 Today is the day

to send thank you notes for the gifts you received, the parties you enjoyed, and to the people who were a bit less fortunate, losing a loved one over the holidays or experiencing a reversal in good health or personal life. And I don't mean e-mail. E-mail just doesn't cut it for special occasions, sympathy, or sincere thank yous. Open the desk drawer, pull out a card, find a pen and a stamp. Then you can lie awake at night solving the world's problems without these details popping up. If you're a Democrat, write a note to remind your congressperson about all the promises made. If you're a Republican, drop a note to those who are still in the game about why the others were voted out. Those guys don't need paper and stamps--send e-mail--it will all go in the circular file anyway.

Oh yes, and take down your outside lights.

3326 Losing weight isn't rocket science

says Tara Parker-Pope, the health writer for the Wall St. Journal. Make tiny changes she says, and see some amazing results. If you love a daily Starbucks Grande Latte (260 calories) on your drive to work, switch to coffee three times a week, and you'll save 21,840 calories, or 6 lbs a year. Skipping shredded cheese on your lunch salad is 10,000 calories a year, or another three pounds. There--you've got a good start on the next holiday season.

3325 Correcting the myth of DDT

Steven Milloy of Junk Science.com had a letter in the WSJ last week correcting the myth of thinning bird eggs that had appeared in one of their articles.

I can't find the letter online, but he essentially provides the same argument in this Canadian publication, "Bald-eagle DDT myth still flying high."

As early as 1921, the journal Ecology reported that bald eagles were threatened with extinction – 22 years before DDT production even began. According to a report in the National Museum Bulletin, the bald eagle reportedly had vanished from New England by 1937 – 10 years before widespread use of the pesticide.

A 1984 National Wildlife Federation publication listed hunting, power line electrocution, collisions in flight and poisoning from eating ducks containing lead shot as the leading causes of eagle deaths. In addition to these reports, numerous scientific studies and experiments vindicate DDT.

So millions in Third World countries needed to die and continue to die for lack of DDT, and birds' eggs weren't even thinning. Where are the bleeding heart liberals when the poor and brown of the world need them? Probably off somewhere supporting Castro and grieving for Saddam.

3324 Columbus' first baby of 2007

is Miguel Angel Naranjo. His parents Maria and Rodriguez left Mexico four months ago. Fearing a birth defect that runs in the family, they wanted the good care their infant would get in the the USA.

No word on legal or illegal entry, or whether they are married, or how they made their way to Columbus, Ohio, or who is paying for this. On the plus side, the child didn't have the defect, so we've been saved that cost and the child has been saved corrective surgery.

Cross posted at my blog on illegal aliens, Illegals Today.

3323 Listening to beautiful hymns

The hymns sung for the President's funeral have been wonderful. Right now, I'm listening to "For all the Saints." It makes me wonder if today's thingies sung at contemporary church services, the "it's all about me 'n Jesus" repetitious choruses, will ever sound this good if repeated often enough?

3322 Art is an investment

in beauty, the future, and good thoughts. We buy a lot of art. In fact, we have so much art we didn't know what we had until we threw an art party in December 2001 in our former home and set everything out for display, including t-shirts with original screened art for Bible school.

However, we don't buy and collect for investment. I don't envy our daughter trying to figure out what to do with it after we're gone and she and her brother have their walls and closets full. We already store some of my husband's paintings on their walls. At Christmas our son was "loaned" a golfing painting and a fishing painting for his house.

The December 18 WSJ had an article on investing in the art market. Art is illiquid, unregulated, commissions can eat you alive, galleries do not need a license, the art indexes do little, and no one seems to track unsold art. Whew! So much for investment value.

Our way is much better. 1) Buy what makes your heart skip. 2) Buy from artists who are also your friends. 3) Buy from a menu of representational and realistic art, with an occasional "mystery meat" to spice it up. 4) Buy small enough so it can rotate in and out of the storage closet. 5) Buy what works with your tastes and decor--it's your home, not a museum or gallery.

I've updated my spread sheet on artists and media, and we have 70+ artists in our collection--each one a little treasure. Friday we're taking down a show, and bringing one home that my husband bought from another watercolorist--I haven't seen it yet, but I'm sure I'll love it.

3321 WTVN drops Glenn Beck

And they hear from me. (I've yet to find that writing a letter does any good, but I do it anyway.)

Program Director
WTVN 610 AM Radio
2323 W. 5th Ave.
Columbus, OH 43204

Dear Sir,

When I heard last week that you were dropping Glenn Beck for a locally produced talk segment, I couldn’t believe my ears. I immediately started switching to 700 am in Cincinnati just to see what was available nearby. And although it is irritating to hear all the commercials and announcements for events or companies I’ll never patronize, it will be better than listening to more hours like the Saturday morning guys who call Bob Connors to whine about the Buckeyes or pot holes .

My husband and I were furious when you dropped Dr. Laura in the fall of 2001, apparently for her opposition to gays adopting infants, because nothing else she was saying was politically charged--unless it was urging people to be faithful to their spouses. I suppose that might have offended some of your staff. When I called the station to complain, I got no response except “We’ll pass your comment along.”

It took awhile to get accustomed to Beck‘s style, but I do listen about 3 out of 5 days, depending on what my schedule is, and always in the car during drive time. I’m tired of being jerked around for whatever your program director’s personal biases are. I appreciate good business methods, and Beck was #1 in this market. Hello! Get smart this time. You’ve got a winner on radio!

You’ve lost this listener, not just for this time slot, but for others like Connors and Corby. I can get great talk shows from California on the Internet. I’m not going to take a chance on being part of your audience in this time slot again.

Glenn Beck
talk radio
WTVN Columbus
Dr. Laura

Monday Memories

In honor of the Dream Girls movie, which I wrote about here, I'll throw in a memory from the mid-60s when we were briefly landlords. The movie is based on the Broadway musical, which is loosely based on the lives and careers of the women in the Supremes.

Our first home in Champaign, IL, purchased in 1962, was a duplex--not a real one--it had been converted from a one family house, so the renters had 2 bedrooms, living room, bath and kitchen upstairs, and we lived downstairs. After we bought our home on Charles St. in 1965 we rented both units, and that paid for both mortgages.

Although we really didn't want to rent to female students (we preferred married couples), after a few weeks of no rent for one unit, we relented. Not. A. Good. Idea. Oh, did they party (we found out later from the other renter). And didn't pay their rent. Finally, they just left, owing back rent. When we let ourselves in, things were a terrible mess. Spoiled food. Dirty clothes. And bills from the local hospital for food poisoning. Also bills for pregnancy testing and services. We weren't the only people in town these girls stiffed. I called their parents (on their university records) who were clueless--thought they were enrolled at the university living in a dorm. They had left behind all the "free" records on a membership in a record club (33 1/3 at that time), including the first by the Supremes. We may still have it somewhere.

This record by the Supremes was a keepsake of our years as landlords and I got a lot of enjoyment from it. Wikipedia lists the songs as:

Side one
"Love Is Like an Itching In My Heart" (Holland-Dozier-Holland)
"This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak For You)", (Holland-Dozier-Holland, Sylvia Moy)
"You Can't Hurry Love" (Holland-Dozier-Holland)
"Shake Me, Wake Me (When It's Over)" (Holland-Dozier-Holland)
"Baby I Need Your Loving" (Holland-Dozier-Holland)
"These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" (Lee Hazlewood)

Side two
"I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" (Holland-Dozier-Holland)
"Get Ready" (Smokey Robinson)
"Put Yourself in My Place" (Holland-Dozier-Holland, John Thornton)
"Money (That's What I Want)" (Berry Gordy, Jr., Janie Bradford)
"Come and Get These Memories" (Holland-Dozier-Holland)
"Hang on Sloopy" (Wes Farrell, Bert Russell)

View More Monday Memories Participants
My visitors and those I'll visit this week are: Anna, Becki, Chelle, Chelle Y., Cozy Reader, Debbie, Friday's Child, Gracey, Irish Church Lady, Janene, Janene in Ohio, Jen, Katia, Lady Bug, Lazy Daisy, Ma, Mrs. Lifecruiser, Melli, Michelle, Paul, Susan, Viamarie.

3319 Judith Who?

Reviews of the this Prada look-alike book almost make me wish I liked fiction:

From Booklist--[Bridie] Clark, who once worked for publishing mogul Judith Regan, makes her debut in a devilishly funny companion piece to Lauren Weisberger's Devil Wears Prada (2003), substituting the book business for the fashion industry. Claire Truman, who works for a top-tier New York publisher, is about to lose her beloved mentor to retirement. Then she runs into her old college crush, wealthy Randall Cox, who begins squiring her to all the trendiest restaurants in town and lands her a job interview with Vivian Grant, a highly successful publisher known for churning out best-sellers on porn, pulp, and politics. Things start promisingly, especially when Claire is given the go-ahead to sign up talented first novelist Luke Mayville, but Claire soon starts receiving midnight phone calls full of impossible demands from her imperious new boss. Faced with a soul-crushing workload and a marriage proposal from her too-good-to-be-true boyfriend, an overwhelmed Claire must suddenly make some life-altering decisions. This entertaining novel rises above its predictable plot and sometimes-flat characters on the strength of its humor--Vivian's vitriolic tantrums are laugh-out-loud funny. Joanne Wilkinson

According to Readers Read, "Judith Regan had no comment about the novel, no doubt because she's busy getting ready to sue HarperCollins for millions of dollars for wrongful termination, slander, libel and who knows what else."

I thought there must be something other than the O.J. debacle that led to her demise.

3318 New treatment for wrinkles approved by FDA

Possibly you were too busy over the holidays developing wrinkles and frown lines while buying gifts for the in-laws and anticipating those January bills to notice that the FDA has approved a new treatment for those deep lines--something that lasts longer than Botox and Restylane. It's called Radiesse and is produced by BioForm Medical Inc.

And if you don't care about lines and wrinkles, you might use it to plump your retirement portfolio (while it flattens your wallet). Sales are expected to rise 15% annually through 2010--just 3 years away-- to $935 million.

Cross posted at Growth Industry, the blog I write for people over 50.

3317 Can universities tolerate free speech?

Mike Hardin's column in yesterday's Columbus Dispatch would indicate that some Ohio State officials can't handle criticism. You're aware that each time you buy a t-shirt, ball point pen, tail-gate supplies, necktie, billiard balls, floor mats, shower curtains, thermometers or piece of stationery bearing your college or university logo, you are buying into a license agreement that the vendor has to obtain. In towns like Columbus, this is a huge business ($5.7 million in royalties last year to OSU with 500 licensees) and if a local vendor would lose the right to OSU logo merchandise, his business would be in huge trouble. AP story on sales.

Hardin reports that a west side vendor, Mike DiSabato asked questions in the Dispatch about Nike's attempts to get an exclusive sweetheart deal with the university which would cost him 56% of his business in jerseys. He was terminated as an OSU licensee. He had also been attempting to get permission from the university to use the logo and name to donate some of his proceeds to a local charity, a fund raiser to honor an OSU athlete killed in Iraq. A percent of sales would go to the Ray Mendoza charity. Mendoza, 37, a former OSU wrestler, was killed on his third tour of duty. Two of Mendoza's brothers work for DiSabato. 5 page form for a proposal

Rick Van Brimmer, Director of Trademark and Licensing at Ohio State, refused to comment according to Hardin, so we haven't heard OSU's side. It will need to be really good to clean up this PR mess. In 2003 Van Brimmer, whose deceased wife Barb was a university librarian and curator of special materials in the Health Sciences Library, and who worked with me in planning the new Veterinary Medicine Library, developed an innovative program, "Treasury of Fine Art," to license the various art stored in the university libraries. Whether the OSU Libraries gets a percentage, I don't know.

DiSabato and his brothers are former OSU athletes. He also believes the athletes should be getting some of the license fees (in a trust fund), which obviously wouldn't make him too popular with Van Brimmer.

3316 Happy New Year!

Now there's an original post. As I drifted off to sleep about 11 p.m. last night I said to my husband, "Remember when we stayed up to watch the millennium events of 2000 . . . zzzzzzz."

3315 You are so blessed

This one will make you think about your blessings as we enter 2007.

You are so blessed

3314 Dream Girls

is the movie I wanted to see this week-end, but there is wall to wall football, and you know what that means. A stunning review in Rolling Stone.

My husband says it's a chick flick, and even if there were no football he wouldn't see it. What do you think?