3748

Crow droppings #3

Sheryl Crow now says it was a joke, but at least it got people talking about global warming. When I first heard it, I thought she was joking. Then I realized liberals have no sense of humor, no irony, nor does it bother them to set rules and standards for others which they never intend to follow (Barbra Striesand's SUVs, Rosie O'Donnell's potty mouth discussing appropriate behavior or gun control, et al) because they have wealth and employ a lot of people who tend to their every personal and transportation need.

I think Sheryl's joke backfired. It did get everyone talking, yes, even other liberals, but about how silly some of the global warming advocates are. Now if we could just get people to wise up about lightbulbs, bio-fuel, and weather patterns over time maybe we won't have to suffer from more disastrous outcomes like the Carson-induced malaria deaths.

3747 Homeowner fights back, gets his way

Amy Ridenour reports on a man in Atlanta who was turned down on his request for a porch by a local historic commission, so he painted his house lime green with purple spots. Eventually, he got his way. This was reported in the 5th edition of her book Shattered Dreams: One Hundred Storiesabout government abuse. However, I know this quote just isn't so:

"Randall Carlson, a builder who has done work in Avondale Estates, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the city's preservation officials should have their power curtailed: "Most people are not going to do anything that would detract from the value of their home. I think the [commission] should be a last resort, only if people do something way out of line." "

We own property in an historic community--people buy there because they love the nostalgia and ambiance, and when the ink on the contract is dry they immediately try to add a 21st century design addition to a 19th century house, or add a huge storage shed that blocks a neighbor's view of the lake, or create a huge footprint to add a garage in an area where many of the lots are only 33' wide. My husband is an architect who probably has had 30+ jobs in that community that make it more beautiful. Now that he is virtually retired, he is part of the design review board. He has seen the problem from three angles--as a home owner who wants to protect his property values, as an architect who wants the best interests and best design for his client, and as a board member with a larger view looking out for historic preservation. The home owner is much more likely to be the problem than the association or the design board.

At our condo we have the same problem. Everyone who has ever visited here remarks on the beauty--if it were to be built today, there would be double the number of units and it would have an army base look with row on row of garages or porches. We have quite a selection of colors available to the individual unit owners, and variety in landscaping, but there are rules. Often it is the wealthiest owners, or those who spend part of the year somewhere else who think the rules are for everyone else and ignore the owner's handbook.

3746

Jazz vs. Rock

At the public library the other day I was browsing the CDs in the music collection. If I wanted Contemporary Christian I'd have a pretty small selection (it all sounds like secular music to me), but since I don't know much about choral or orchestral, the collection suits my needs. Something seemed a bit odd. There were 17 drawers of jazz and 13 drawers of rock. So I asked a musician friend of mine about this. "Isn't rock a much larger, more popular genre of music than jazz?" She thought for a moment, and then said, "It probably reflects the taste of someone on the staff." Then she followed that with, "Well, jazz lovers are probably more likely to use the library, and people who like rock are using a different source--either purchasing or downloading or sharing." I didn't look for the break-out of rap or hip-hop, so I don't know how that is cataloged. I'll have to look the next time.

I'm so glad my library allows journals to circulate. Some libraries don't. And good parking! I was talking to a Worthington Public Library user the other day and she said she likes to use ours just because the parking is so much better. Our new drive through drop off was a huge waste of money, however, as is the proposed coffee shop inside the library (at least I haven't heard that it has been removed from the proposed levy renewal) and the salary of a marketing director.

3745

Crow Droppings, #2

The Sheryl Crow absurd story did inspire me. Did you know the bacteria count on women's desks and keyboards is much higher than on men's? Yes, it's because of make-up and keeping food to nibble. So imagine what is going on in our bathrooms? The toilets are probably cleaner than the medicine cabinet or cosmetic shelf.

Yes, I do eat sometimes at this messy desk. Janeen takes photos of her projects. Here's mine.
So today I decided to do a thorough check of the bathrooms and pitch samples and half-used things. Believe it or not, I threw out a can of Avon bathpower from the mid-50s. Yes, I know people collect that stuff, and I wouldn't have dreamed of using it, but it just felt a little creepy that I would still have something I got from my sister when she sold Avon products (I think she was a sophomore or junior in high school and did quite well at it).

You'd think with all this help I'd be prettier--or at least smarter, since some of these bottles are at least a decade old. Most of this was thrown out.
While I was doing it, I spread out to the upstairs closets and my husband's bathroom. So the whole area is in total chaos, and I've come downstairs for a cup of coffee and a little blog reading.

It's really strange to be inspired to clean by crow droppings.

Update: Now she says she was kidding. A little slow there.

3744

Crow droppings

Have you ever lived in an area where the sky turns black on a sunny day and the grackles or blackbirds or crows descend and roost in the trees dropping a white slimy goo on everything? I remember visiting someone in Annandale, VA and it literally was not safe to breathe the air outside her condo. Dried droppings everywhere, driveway, sidewalks, patio, lawn furniture, flowers, shrubs under the trees; and where it wasn't dry, it was wet, smearing the windshields, covering the lawn, disfiguring the trees, a threat to human health and driving away native song birds.

That's what Sheryl Crow wants for us with her one square of toilet paper per visit to the rest room idea, and special sleeves for nose blowing and mouth wiping. Not for her of course, she has people. To wait on her. Do her laundry. Mop up the floors her bathrooms.

Then in some residential areas, the pest control comes out and tries to scare away the birds with loud noises, gun shots, firecrackers or music. They try to dislodge the birds and make them go elsewhere, to become someone else's problem.

Sheryl Crow needs pest control.

3743

Chemo Brain

Sheryl Crow has reportedly said that we should use less toilet paper. Maybe 1 square per visit to the rest room. I hope this is an urban legend, a misquote, and joke on the conservative bloggers who try to find ways to make fun of the fundy evironmentalists. Perhaps she and her girl friend are whooping it up at the fuss they stirred. Because if it isn't one of those, it's chemo brain, the impaired mental function of some cancer survivors.

"Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required." [Washington Post blog]

They already use this method at the St. Petersburg, Russia top tourist spots. We were well acquainted with the lack of toilet paper last summer. If you didn't take some tissue or paper towels into the rest room, you were out of luck.

Even with adequate toilet paper, women (I don't know about men) have both urine and fecal residue on their hands with every use of a toilet--at home or public restroom--and toilet paper is getting thinner and weaker, especially in public restrooms. Serious implications for women with long or artificial fingernails. This stuff is found in the open sample dishes in restaurants, for goodness sake. How do you think it got there? On hands! They transfer the matter and bacteria to their clothing, their purse, their wrist and hand jewelry, cell phones, the flush knob on the toilet, the door clasp of the stall, the faucet at the sink, and anything else they touch in the rest room. The hand blow dryers just move it all around the rest of your clothing. Then it's back to the children, the car, the restaurant, or shaking someone's hand. (Maybe Sheryl just doesn't want her fans to touch her?)

But who will ever see it?

I asked when I discovered my husband had ordered a mirror for his bathroom from the Frank Lloyd Wright Studio in Oak Park, IL. "I will. Every morning. And I'll love it," he replied matter of factly.



Lots of popcorn packing

The cat had to inspect everything

3741

Short Librarians?

In 1966 I finished "library school" (master's degree program) at the University of Illinois. I didn't have to look for a job because I'd worked in the Slavic Languages department of the library both as an undergrad and a graduate student. Those were the cold war years--today someone with a slavic specialty might have to do something else. Those who entered library work in 1965 were told in a conference with Dean Downs at the University of Illinois there was a shortage and a great future. Those who entered in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and today are told the same thing. We were all pretty much told the same thing--the librarians of the 30s and 40s were retiring--technology was changing the face of the profession. Yet, every year library schools closed limiting regional choices. There is no shortage of librarians. There might be a shortage of students to sit in the classroom or dial in for on-line courses and pay the salaries of professors and deans in the library schools that are left, but there is no shortage. There may be a shortage of librarians willing to work for $25,000 a year after years in graduate school and huge school debt, but there is no shortage of highly qualified people with masters degrees willing to design systems, manage libraries, supervise paraprofessional staff, work with decent budgets, and publish in the professional journals. The big lie. Don't let our Congress build another bridge to nowhere.

3740

The lonesome blog

The lost cause. Unfortunately. The crazy dems and the wimpy republicans killed it. But I blame mostly the Republicans.

3739

Monday Memories--looking back on an employment issue

This memory is taken directly from a letter I wrote to my mother in 1991--16 years ago. We were both Democrats (I no longer am) so it wasn't unusual for me to ramble on about political things, just the way I do now with my blog. I had to give a report at my department's faculty meeting and wasn't too enthusiastic about the topic or recommendations. But given what happened last week with the Supreme Court decision about partial birth abortion, I thought I'd resurrect the letter.

"I have to report to the library faculty on Thursday on a rule change for tenure. It is to allow an extension of time for babies, child care, care of an ill person or personal illness. I was not enthusiastic about the rule, but my committee voted me down, so I have to report anyway.

Why is it I get so suspicious about all these rules that are suppose to help women when things don't get any better? Safe legal abortions were to give women a choice--well, we've aborted 25 million babies and 54% of women with children under 6 are in the labor force. In 1950, only 12% of women with children under 6 were working. There is more violence against women, more child abuse, and recently I read that the surplus of women in all age groups is shrinking, not because men are living longer, but because women are dying at a faster rate than they used to. Meanwhile, I think we inched up about 5 percentage points on closing the income gap.

The reason I wasn't enthusiastic about the rule change is because tenure is already a much too long, grueling process--this is just a band-aid on a big wound. But without acknowledging it, they are saying that Yes, all those services women supplied in the home for families in the past are important and do have to be accounted for (the rule applies to both men and women, although I don't think the men are rushing home to take care of the children.)"

Hmmm. Sixteen years. Aren't women still asking for special exceptions and exemptions on the job for family needs?

You do the math

Which presidential appointee has given orders that killed more Americans? Attorney General Janet Reno (Clinton) or Attorney General Albert Gonzales (Bush)?

Which organization has promoted legislation and law suits which have killed more babies able to live outside the womb? The NRA or NOW?

Which are vilified more in the media?

The shy bridesmaid

After a week of really heavy emotions and anger at all the talking heads and media types both liberal and conservative, I just laughed out loud at this wedding photo, which I'm calling, "The camera shy bridesmaid." I was looking for a website that would tell me how to wash a silk garment (the Ohio State extension folks said be very careful, but a site that sells silk by the type and yard gave some good additional information). Somehow, I wandered into a message board for brides-to-be losing weight. One bride then posted her wedding and honeymoon photos, which is where I found this. Maybe one of her friends didn't meet her goal weight.

3736

Noonan knows

the press, and she really laid it out in Week-end edition of WSJ in "Cold Standard." In describing how common sense has broken down in many areas of our lives, particulary the mental health gurus uprooting the walls that used to protect us and then blaming someone else,

"The literally white-bearded academic who was head of the campus counseling center was on Paula Zahn Wednesday night suggesting the utter incompetence of officials to stop a man who had stalked two women, set a fire in his room, written morbid and violent plays and poems, been expelled from one class, and been declared by a judge to be "mentally ill" was due to the lack of a government "safety net." In a news conference, he decried inadequate "funding for mental health services in the United States." Way to take responsibility. Way to show the kids how to dodge."

the politicizing of every tragedy and event, and the Bush derangement syndrome,

"The anxiety of our politicians that there may be an issue that goes unexploited was almost--almost--comic. They mean to seem sensitive, and yet wind up only stroking their supporters. I believe Rep. Jim Moran was first out of the gate with the charge that what Cho did was President Bush's fault. I believe Sen. Barack Obama was second, equating the literal killing of humans with verbal coarseness. Wednesday there was Sen. Barbara Boxer equating the violence of the shootings with the "global warming challenge" and "today's Supreme Court decision" upholding a ban on partial-birth abortion."

culminating with the inexcusable actions that NBC took (and other networks followed) to allow Cho to glorify his insanity,

"Brian Williams introduced the Cho collection as "what can only be described as a multi-media manifesto." But it can be described in other ways. "The self-serving meanderings of a crazy, self-indulgent narcissist" is one. But if you called it that, you couldn't lead with it. You couldn't rationalize the decision. Such pictures are inspiring to the unstable. The minute you saw them, you probably thought what I did: We'll be seeing more of that."

For some reason Noonan chose not to list among the demise of common sense Cho's course work in literature (and I'm guessing other humanities and social sciences), might have included the bizarre twisting of every thing that might be positive in western literature and history (it did when I was on campus in the 90s). This is one area of his ramblings which pretty much reflected what he was being taught in college.* For that, one only needs to open a syllabus of a freshman lit or history course to find the poison that will rot a young, unstable mind, and turn off a health one.

*You can fulfill an English requirement by studying movie Westerns, or gangsterism in hip hop music, or sexuality in disabled women or probably even the fantasy life of your professor if you make a good case. It's ideology before thinking and politics before craft.

3735

Is Al Gore the new Rachel Carson?

Were you surprised that the Christian Science Monitor declared Al Gore "the Rachel Carson of global warming?" [Story was in Wall Street Journal by Katherine Mangu-Ward] I was stunned. This should be an insult, a death blow to his movement. Do the editors not know? More Africans have died of malaria since the 1970s when her book was read by do-gooders and entertainers who then lobbied and protested DDT off the market than were killed in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Malaria was all but defeated. They aren't apparently being killed by the increased use of pesticides to deal with the resurgence of mosquitoes, although that can't be too healthy either. Then when I checked Amazon.com I see that he wrote an introduction to a new edition of one of her books, so I guess he just doesn't care about black and brown people, to turn on a phrase of a well-known comedian.

Now, through Al Gore's misinformation and whipped up hysteria, the West will be shutting down factories and mines in developing countries, even as we try to find places (outside our own country) to manufacture energy saving lightbulbs that contain mercury. And then the food stuffs we might have sent them to keep their poor babies alive (assuming we don't send in medical teams to abort them), we'll be burning in our SUVs.

I don't think this is good for your movement, Al.

3734

Ten great Christian biographies

was the name of the radio program I walked to for exercise yesterday. I'd never heard Albert Mohler before, but a very interesting program for a librarian. He says he's done shows on a number of different biographies, his favorite genre. I'll have to dig around and see if they are on-line. I walked 2 miles before lunch, and 2 miles in the afternoon. So now I have 21.5 miles in my 50 Days of Easter Walk, which I do with other bloggers. I should have really done a few extra rounds and clipped off that .5 mi. I think he said it was G K Chesterton who thought fast walking was best for thinking. Because of time for commercials and finding it a bit late, I heard Augustine, Aquinas, Luther and Chesterton.

3733 Many conservative bloggers are rude

to their peer bloggers on the left. They call them names like moonbats and wingnuts, change their surnames, i.e., Moore and Moran might become Moron, disparage their 19th century Marxist reasoning, or bully them for having no reasoning at all, point out the failed socialist programs that undergird their solutions, ridicule them for misleading the poor to get votes for the Democrats, post unflattering cartoons of leftists or videos of mumbled speeches that go nowhere, and upload photos showing lines and wrinkles on has-been senators or a covered humble head of an attractive Californian visiting a dictator. For shame!

Yesterday I was reading a media site for information on new and discontinued magazines for my other, other, other blog. And I discovered they keep an eye on Rush Limbaugh, excerpt part of his monologue, and put it out like raw meat for the wild dog, scavenger bloggers. There were two obvious errors, both of omission, in what was posted, because I was listening to that show.

First, Rush had either seen or been sent the information from the website at VA Tech (said it was in the English Dept. site). He quoted some of it, apparently not realizing it was from Nikki Giovanni's poem read at the memorial service--at least he never mentioned it. The poem included the usual concern for the poor, dispossessed, and baby elephants who also don't ask for their fate and the violence done to them.* Rush then went on to comment, that based on Cho's manifesto which railed against the rich and the bullies and the fact that he'd been in this English class, the only conclusion was that he was a liberal. Rush parodies the left all the time (knowing they have no sense of humor), and although this was not said to be funny, it was said to be ironic (left also has a problem with irony), and to juxtapose a madman's ramblings with the marxist, deconstructionist blather that passes for literature and writing courses on our campuses of higher education.

Second, most of his program yesterday was devoted not to Cho, but to his favorite charity, leukemia research. He has raised approximately $17 million dollars in the last 17 years devoting just a few hours of air time one afternoon a year. His listeners contribute, but this year he personally was donating over $300,000. I doubt that any left of center media watch organization or left wing blogger ever mentions this, choosing instead to pull several sentences out of his monologue, and not mentioning the context in which it was said. Then that fuels the fanatics who don't do their own listening and research.

*from Giovanni's address: "We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy."

Friday Family Photo--Cousins

Sister on the left, me on the right, and our cousin Dianne in the middle
I think this was taken in October. We weren't doing anything special--just sitting around having a cup of tea. My cousin had stopped by on her way to visit her mother, and I was in Illinois visiting my sister. We've lived in Ohio for 40 years, so times with my family are done in little snatches--mini-vacations, weddings, funerals, health emergencies and reunions. When I was a child it never really occurred to me that I would be away from my siblings, or lose touch with the cousins I saw every Sunday at grandparents. Then I got married, moved to another state, and became part of another family, and saw more of them in Indiana than mine. Now it seems normal, and our holidays and special times revolve around our little family here, but for many years I felt adrift.

3731

Dear Bill O'Reilly,

Your using the Cho clips while discussing whether it was gratuitous, was ridiculous. We are regular watchers of your show, but this is a story you bungled.

Bill's note to me:

"Dear Valued Visitor,

Thank you for contacting the Customer Service Team at BillOReilly.com.

[publicizing his show]

Sorry, but due to the overwhelming volume of emails, we are unable to respond to specific show content questions for The O'Reilly Factor."

I'll bet you are.

3730

What it means to be me. . .

Cynthia Blair Kane in The New Standard (central Ohio's largest circulation Jewish newspaper) writes:

"I have always been a Jew.
I was a little Jew in my mother's womb,
I was a Jew before my parents knew if I was going to be a boy or a girl and
I was a Jew before they picked out a name."

Reminds me of Psalm 139.

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was made in the secret place...your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before they came to be." Psalm 139: 13-16

3729

Hoping-for-Defeat Harry

Senate Majority Leader Hogwash Harry Reid (D-Nev) said Thursday the war in Iraq is "lost." Heedless Harry Reid (D-Nev) said he told President Bush on Wednesday he thought the war could not be won through military force, although Haughty Harry (D-Nev) said the U.S. could still pursue political, economic and diplomatic means to surrender in Iraq.

"I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and - you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows - (know) this war is lost, with my help, and the surge is not accomplishing anything as we've successfully blocked funding, as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday," said Help-the-Enemy Harry Reid, (D-Nev). slightly adjusted for truth from Associated Press story on MyWay News

The Democrats. Constant in criticism, sniveling in surrender, but bold against the unborn.