3768

My son had a date with a stranger

the other night. By that I mean I don't know her (I never do). I wonder if he told her about the livestock, Rosa, who can knock down a grown woman with her tail, and Edie, who looks like a fat sausage link on toothpicks. Aunt Purl has a post about how to tell a guy on the first date (or first pick-up line) that you have four cats. A lot of people must identify, because when I read it she had 199 comments.

Samples:

When I was dating after my divorce, I used the cats to test the dates! If the cats didn't rub on them and totally fur-a-late them the first time they came over---no more dates! Bad mojo! If the cats didn't like them, I was suspicious. I swear, it worked! When I ignored the cat hate of one guy, he totally turned out to be a jerk later! I swear! When my now-husband came over, one of my cats sat on his lap and rubbed his face on his jacket zipper--love at first sight!

Sorry, I have you beat here :) I'm a librarian! Thankfully I only had one cat when I meet my husband. Now we have 3 adorable fur babies. And he kids me that he saved me from becoming "an old maid librarian with cats".

I will trade two teenage boys and dog for a cat. Any takers?

I only have 1 cat but 3 ex-husbands, and let me tell you, THAT is a serious dating handicap, in my mind, at least!

3767

Walking with 1776 by David McCullough

Four miles yesterday and two miles today, 45 miles for my 50 miles of Easter Walk (it started to rain so I quit). I'm in chapter two, "Rabble in Arms." Deeply moving to know the deprivation, hardship, and yes, ignorance that undergirded the poorly clothed and dirty men in the army of General Washington. It was a very long war, and the book just covers one year. Today I listened to the story of 16 year old John Greenwood, a fifer, from Boston.

"After reaching the army encampments, he was urged to enlist, with the promise of $8 a month. Later, passing through Cambridge, he learned of the battle raging at Bunker Hill. Wounded men were being laid out on the Common. "Everywhere the greatest terror and confusion seemed to prevail." The boy started running along the road that led to the battle, past wagons carrying more casualties and wounded men struggling back to Cambridge on foot. Terrified, he wished he had never enlisted. "I could positively feel my hair stand on end." But then he saw a lone soldier coming down the road.

. . . a Negro man, wounded in the back of his neck, passed me and, his collar being open and he not having anything on except his shirt and trousers, I saw the wound quite plainly and the blood running down his back. I asked him if it hurt him much, as he did not seem to mind it. He said no, that he was only to get a plaster put on it and meant to return. You cannot conceive what encouragement this immediately gave me. I began to feel brave and like a soldier from that moment, and fear never troubled me afterward during the whole war.

3766

Nancy Pelosi on partial birth abortion and your daughter

"Here is how the law defines partial birth abortion:

"An abortion in which a physician delivers an unborn child's body until only the head remains inside the womb, punctures the back of the child's skull with a Sharp instrument, and sucks the child’s brains out before completing delivery of the dead infant."

Here is what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says about partial birth abortion:

"This is about a procedure that any parent would want her daughter to have access to if she needed it. And to frame it as an abortion issue is doing a disservice to medicine and to our young women and our country. So I hope we can get the focus back on the fact that this Supreme Court is deciding what medical procedures are necessary for child-bearing women."

from Denny Burke's blog

How could any abortion supporter say she would want her daughter, or anyone else's daughter to have this procedure, killing her grandchild in such a vicious, cruel way? Wasn't she parading her grandchildren before the TV cameras not too long ago?

3765

Will Sweden disappear? And who's next

"Sweden was presented during the Cold War as a middle way between capitalism and Communism. When this model of a society collapses – and it will collapse, under the combined forces of Islamic Jihad, the European Union, Multiculturalism and ideological overstretch – it is thus not just the Swedish state that will collapse but the symbol of Sweden, the showcase of an entire ideological world view. . . Native Swedes have thus been reduced to just another ethnic group in Sweden, with no more claim to the country than the Kurds or the Somalis who arrived there last Thursday. The political authorities of the country have erased their own people's history and culture." Read here about what's happening in Sweden's third largest city.

HT Mere Comments, which includes a lengthy poem about the requirement that Swedish men sit when urinating. Yes, feminism as come to this. Excerpt from Here sits Sweden:

"Should some Swedish Rip Van Winkle
Wake in Stockholm, all a wrinkle,
Still he'd have to sit to tinkle.

So he sits, obeys our rule or he
Finds how fast we punish foolery --
Confiscate his family jewlery!"

3764

No, it's not a good idea!

I was browsing a library blog today reading about all the things he'd seen at a conference. He said he could hardly wait to apply some of the new ideas to his library's web page. Thank goodness, I thought-- library web pages are often awkward and hard to navigate. Not the most exemplary sources of information I've seen on the web, especially for clarity and readability. So what was his brilliant idea? To jazz up his 404 page. That's the error page. No, a thousand times No. Get to work on correcting the four columns, the things that wiggle, and the no-way-to-contact-the staff-by-name problem.

Is your constipation contributing to greenhouse gases?

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/2004/es399/lec02.html
Another thing to worry about! OH NO! "The degree of breath methane production in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) correlates with the severity of constipation, Los Angeles-based researchers report in the April issue of the American Journal of Gastroenterology 2007;102:837-841." [from Rueters story on Medscape.com]

Not to worry, though. The sufferers with IBS who have diarrhea instead of constipation have less methane produced by the bacteria in their intenstines, so maybe you can work out an exchange (we won't call it carbon credits--have to think on that one--maybe a stool swap?).

3762

Old photos of lighthouses are sought

On Friday I uploaded a photo of a small, historic moment in 1916--rural folks gathered for a ride in an airplane. Here's your opportunity to look through grandpa's photographs. In the latest Keeper's Korner of Lighthouse Digest written by Timothy Harrison, there is this note about the removal of the Vermilion Lighthouse.

What Happened To Moving Photos
We know it is difficult to locate photographs of lighthouses and keepers in the era when the camera was just becoming available to the average person. But, by 1929 the camera had been around for quite some time and many Americans owned and knew how to use a camera. However, photographs of the removal of Ohio’s Vermilion Lighthouse seem to be non-existent. In 1929 the lighthouse was removed from Vermilion and shipped to Buffalo, New York. In 1935 it was barged to its new location to become the East Charity Shoal Lighthouse six miles south of the St. Lawrence River on Lake Ontario. Someone must have photographed some parts of this historic move. Yet photographs seem to have disappeared. There are many mysteries like this. For example, what happed to the photographs of the first Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in North Carolina? It is amazing how much of our nation’s lighthouse history has been lost. Will it be rediscovered someday? We can only hope.

Someone somewhere (probably a young boy) had a camera that day.

If you vacation or own property near or just love old lighthouses, you'll enjoy Lighthouse Digest.

3761

Unintended consequences of emissions control

In my opinion, the most sensible gas saving regulation ever to go into effect was the 55 mph speed limit back in the 1970s. I'm sure it cut into someone's profits, but overnight it saved many lives--thousands a year--and miraculously, it seems to cut down on travel time because there were far fewer accidents holding you up on the roadways and interstates. One benefit never measured was that on the cardiovascular system of the drivers and passengers who weren't driving at 75 mph in a moving parking lot with their heart in their throats.

Now there are hearings for new regulations on emissions control of heavy trucks, which really are the life blood of this country. Virtually everything we eat, or wear or use one square of each time we go to the rest room, is shipped by truck.

Stricter emissions:

Worse mileage will mean more fuel. 1 mile less per gallon

Worse road conditions for other vehicles. Longer, heavier trucks will need to make up the added costs for everything moved by truck, tearing up our asphalt and concrete, causing more fatal accidents when we hit them.

More unsafe trucks. Current trucks will be kept in service longer because they will not be covered by the new regulations.

Hotter trucks. Engines need to burn at a higher heat with the new standards.

Reduced competition. New standards hurt independents and small truckers, and some will go out of business.

Stockpiles. Larger companies have stockpiled new trucks built before the new standards, raising costs for independents.

Add to this the cost of gasoline blends we're going to be forced to burn in our cars, and we're going to have a huge increase in food prices, hurting the poor who spend a larger percentage of their dollar on food.

I like clean air as much as the next gal, but green air costs you the green.

Why I agree with Bernie

From a blog I wrote March 3, 2007

"[I asked him to] cite a single program proposed by the liberals in the last 20-30 years that had been defeated by the conservatives. Couldn't do it of course, because liberals try to put up conservatives, particularly Christian conservatives, as some sort of powerhouse bringing down the government. No one has been a bigger spender on social programs than the Bush administration. Medicare. Biggest gains under Republicans. Illegal immigration. Huge muck job by Republicans--who was president in 1986 for IRCA? Social Security. Reagan was President when I lost mine. Legal abortion. Last time I checked, we're still killing babies--what--25-35 million since Roe v. Wade? If Christian conservatives manage to roll back a week or two in a sparsely populated rural state, the Dems go crazy ("oh no, a baby's made it out alive"), but the law's still there. DDT. Last time I ran the numbers, we'd killed more Africans with malaria in the last 30 years than died being shipped across the Atlantic as slaves in the 18th century, but not a single bird, let alone human, ever died from spraying DDT on mosquito eggs in standing pools of swamp water. . . Clean air laws. We've got bunches of empty factories in Ohio that have no smoke belching from the chimneys--the jobs went first to the southern U.S.A., then to Asia. Women's Rights. Leading cause of poverty in the U.S.A. is unmarried women having sex and babies before finishing school. The poverty gap is no longer racial, it is marital. And Democrats have a fainting spell if someone introduces an abstinence program or a chastity pledge."

Bernard Goldberg's new book.

Friday Family Photo

This is such a great photo, I wish I could tell you more.


The information on the back is that it was a "barnstorming airplane pilot" in 1916 in a field at the O.D. Buck farm in Franklin Grove, IL. For those of you who are from Mt. Morris, the Bucks were parents of Lucille Kinsley, wife of our high school principal; like my grandparents, the Bucks were members of the Church of the Brethren in Franklin. The little girl in the white dress and hat holding her father's hand is my mother. She's much more interested in her brother Leslie, who is taking the photograph--he would have been about 14 years old. You can see some automobiles over on the left, one of which they would have driven to see the plane. The pilot charged $2.00 for one or two customers to go up with him. I suspect the little boy on the right might be Clare, my mother's other brother (1910-1944). He died in WWII as an aerial engineer for the 24th Mapping Squadron of the 8th Photo Group, Reconnaissance (10th Air Force) which served in the China, Burma, India theater. Sort of ironic when I look at this photo seeing what may have been his early interest in planes.

There are lots of elements of 1916 high-tech in this photo--a young teenager with a camera (this print I scanned was made from a glass plate--he also did his own developing), an airplane, electrical poles with lots of lines, and numerous automobiles. With a magnifying glass I can see 3 women in the most visible car. The women seem to be wearing hats, and the men dress clothes, so it might have been a Sunday.

3758

Why I'm not voting for the library levy

SNP Publications

The Editorial in the April 25 UA News urged readers to 'keep the library at top of the class.' I don't plan to vote for the levy, although I use the library frequently and appreciate many of its good features, such as pleasant, helpful staff, digital genealogy sources, circulating magazines, and easy parking.

What I don't like is the response to concerns of the people the library serves. When parents came to them about the free-circ, sexually explicit journals and newspapers stacked in the entry way for pick-up by anyone coming or going, the library's response was to bring the material inside and build expensive shelving for protection of the distributors, not the children. No public library has a mission or responsibility to distribute free-circ material, which essentially is an advertising medium. And then there was that recent dust-up reported on TV because the librarian says she can’t block inappropriate material for minors at check out.

Money for the recently hired PR person could have been much better spent to upgrade the salaries of current staffers, or to add a librarian who would balance the lopsided collection or improve the catalog.

The library installed a very expensive drive-through drop off, destroying some nice green space and spending foolishly while Lane Road's plumbing rotted. I don't know if an in-house coffee shop is still being planned for Tremont Rd, but that idea definitely is poorly conceived.

The turn-key, on-line catalog is awkward and difficult to use, riddled with mistakes, and contains 2-3 hot links for each entry that go nowhere. The subject headings are inconsistent, and if there is keyword access (the easiest method), I haven't found it. The library web page is more attractive and helpful than what most libraries have, but could be much better.

The library regularly prints wall size posters in vivid colors and individual announcements on upcoming events and new acquisitions, using its supplies budget carelessly if the cost of my ink cartridges are any indication. The lyceum programs it sponsors duplicate many other activities and organizations in the community and Columbus. It increases the gate count, but not much else.

The current selection policies reflect the tastes of the staff--15 hard copies of Bob Woodward’s latest book, everything Michael Moore ever produced in every possible format, every anti-Bush administration book, 30 new cookbook titles always on the new bookshelves, a stunning collection of scrap booking titles, and a college-level collection on film, media and celebrities. I don’t know much about music, but 17 drawers of jazz CDs?

At Christmas, UAPL couldn’t even find a Christian title to include in its recommended nine new Christmas books published for a local magazine. Although Upper Arlington has three Lutheran churches, one of which is among the largest in the country, it has only 9 books on Lutherans, 2 of which are biographies of Martin Luther. There is more on Wicca and Wiccans than Lutherans in the UAPL collection. Methodists and Presbyterians don’t fare much better, and the Baptist title count is inflated only because of books--probably over 100--on Martin Luther King. There are probably more titles on the Amish than other Christian groups combined other than Catholics. The blatantly anti-Christian books, however, cover many shelves in the 300s and 900s. They are biased, hate filled, and political. You want to raise our taxes by $800,000 for that?

You say we UA folks are only paying 40% of the library’s operating budget? No sir, we’re paying ALL of it--just from different pots of taxes.

<------------------->

For other essays on UAPL where I site specific titles and subject headings, check here.

3757

Smoking bans

Ireland was the first country to implement a true smoking ban. Not very many states have a ban, but Ohio is one of them. Unfortunately, the legislation is poorly worded, so there will probably be lawsuits. Like if a cross country trucker is driving through Ohio, is it illegal for him to smoke in his cab. Huge parts of Canada are smoke free (although that's sort of to be expected since it is much more socialistic than the U.S.), New Zealand has a full country ban and most of Australia.

I heard two guys on a morning drive/talk radio show discussing this as a loss of freedom. Saying only the restaurant owner should decide, and then determine if he needed smoke-free sections. That view totally ignores the needs of the wait staff, kitchen and janitorial staff, the band and musicians. And as a non-smoker, I could never get away from it even in the non-smoking section of restaurants. I can remember when clerks in stores smoked at the cash register, when librarians smoked in their offices and at public desks, and people smoked inside our church in the classrooms and fellowship hall. It wasn't pleasant. Everyone stunk smelled bad.

Clean air is good for the tax payer (lower health costs which we hope will offset the decrease in tobacco taxes), good for the worker, and good for the brain. So on this issue, I definitely side with the liberals, who are the folks against personal freedom, because the freedom of others matters too. If you have a partial ban now in your city, state or country, eventually it will be total. There's absolutely nothing positive about poisoning yourself and the air around you. Get over it, and get on with living.

3756

Why older Democrats left the party

This looked like a pretty balanced explanation of what has happened to the Democratic Party since the early 1960s. The author is wondering why there aren't Moslem Methodists, i.e., mainstream. If you've watched the flap about PBS using our tax money to create a film on moderate Moslems, then refusing to show it, this explanation starts to expose some of the bizarre behavior of liberals. Still, it was written in September 2005, and since then the Democrats in Congress have gone completely over the edge, groveling before their New Left, socialist party leaders.

"The biggest problem in analogizing Democrats to Moslems is that the former did have other voices surrounding them, voices that were pointing out the radical nature of those organizations [Matt] Barr mentioned (NOW, the unions, and the teaching establishment): first, the Republicans, of course; in our republic, the critiques from the GOP could not be entirely shut out, even back in the 60s and 70s.

But second and more important, we need to bear in mind what Barr himself noted: Democratic leaders and organizations were not always so insane. The switchover (I'm using Judge Bork's timeline here from, I think, Slouching Towards Gomorrah) was when the New Left began to arise following the Port Huron Statement, released by the SDS in 1962 (the Students for a Democratic Society was the group from which the radical faction the Weathermen later spun off).

Most older Democrats never particularly embraced the New Left -- which was radicalized, hard-core, and Stalinist, inexplicably combined with feverishly anti-science, anti-technology, Luddite "environmentalism" -- and the New Left didn't take over the Democratic Party until, to be blunt, the older generation died off.

Thus, there has been reasoned resistance to the radicalization of the Democratic Party from the very beginning, coming from sources with unassailable liberal credentials, such as Hubert Humphrey and Pat Moynihan. Many Democrats retained their basic love of America... and unfortunately for the new radicalized Democratic Party (but fortunately for the country), that meant a lot of people left the Democrats and joined the Republicans, bringing the two parties into rough parity (during World War II, I would guess the Democrats enjoyed at least a 2-1 advantage over the GOP)." Big Lizards Blog, Where are all the Moslem Methodists?

Decides to remain seized of the matter

If you ever wanted proof that United Nations Resolutions are hole cloth worth not even one square of toilet paper per toilet use, just scroll to the bottom of the U.S. Treasury Sanctions Program Summary on Sudan for the list of their resolutions on Sudan going back to 1995. Each resolution about Sudan in the last 12 years ends with the phrase, "Decides to remain seized of the matter," whatever that bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo means. And the 1996 Resolution 1044 lists all the letters and condemnations that came before then.

If you google that phrase you get about 34,000 hits, and it seems to mean, "It's not going away, but we're not doing anything about it, now or ever" so keep sending money.

No matter how you seize it, the war in Sudan has always been about Arab Moslems killing black Africans, until 1997 it was African Christians, more recently African Moslems.

Thursday Thirteen

13 things I've learned this week or forgot and had to relearn

1. Always take your slacks off when sewing a button on the waist band.
2. Don't eyeball where you think the button should go if you have trifocals.
3. If you add about l/2 pumpkin puree to your favorite peanut butter pie filling, it tastes and looks about the same and has a lot fewer calories (in my recipe).
4. If your garage door goes back up after you've pushed the down button when you've pulled the car in, don't push it again; you didn't get the car in far enough.
5. Home made mashed potatoes taste 50% better than packaged, even with lumps, and at a fraction of the cost.
6. After a tragedy, the talking heads don't know as much as the investigators and police, so hold off on judgement.
7. If you weigh exactly what you did 25 years ago, the distribution is very different.
8. When you volunteer at the food pantry, you'll see some of the same people you saw three months ago. See Matt. 25.
9. Friday date night at the Bucket is more fun when shared with another couple or two.
10. When something goes wrong, whether it is pet food, home mortgages or a mentally ill college student, the proposed legislation and regulations done in the heat of the moment will probably be worse, cost more and lay the ground work for future problems.
11. Loyalty and reward cards whether offered by airlines, retailers, or supermarkets, are like an additional tax--very few benefit, but everyone pays.
12. If you contact someone in charge of a web page, a library, a church, a network, a party, or a government office, concerning something very urgent and important, you will hear nothing, or get an "I'm out of the office today" reply, or a canned response.
13. If you drop a line to just let them know, "I'm here and like what you're doing," you'll be their best friend and forever on their mailing list.
    

3753

Minorities hit hard by subprime loans

is the headline of USAToday's latest article on how the poor and minorities are victimized in the U.S.A. It really makes you wonder if the journalists learned anything else in college! A closer look at the middle paragraphs:

• Minority home buyers helped fuel the housing boom--49% of the increase between 1995-2005. [Note that this trend of "empowering" minorities by burdening them with impossible debt began under Clinton, and any attempt to reverse it has brought condemnation on Bush.]
• 73% of high income ($92,000-$152,000) blacks and 70% of high income Hispanics had subprime loans, compared to 17% whites.
• Lenders were supported by politicians and "community leaders" eager to promote minority home ownership.
• When Illinois (Cook Co.) tried to establish credit counseling programs for new minority buyers by targeting ZIP codes, the program was pulled as being "racist".
• Access became a buzz word at the expense of sound lending policies.
• Buyers/borrowers with poor credit or low salaries who wanted a cheap deal is a large part of the problem.
• Investigation by a counseling group found 9% of those in trouble were victims of fraud; the rest was poor judgement and poor financial skills.
• Rather than focus on the borrowers' poor financial skills, it appears that new regulations and programs will pounce on predatory lenders.
• Government investigations of charges even before the current problem came to light showed a "good chunk" [not my term] of higher loan cost is attributed to borrower's income, not to race or ethnicity.

But this is America, where nothing happens if it isn't about poverty, race, gender or disability.

No one wants to be reminded, but here's what it took in 1968 to get a home mortgage (our third home): the monthly PMI didn't exceed one-third of the husband's income; there were married parents/in-laws to chip in on the down payment to help a young couple; most mortgages were for 20 years; typical mortgage rate was around 6.5%; the average home and what owners expected was smaller and less grand; a typical applicant for a mortgage wasn't also paying for a leased a car, or a cable bill, monthly broadband, or a cell phone bill, nor did they eat out 2 or 3 times a week and take vacations at resort spots.

Yes, I know it sounds terribly fusty and old fashioned back in the old days when the state and federal governments weren't our foster parents, overseers and field bosses, but that's just how it was.

3752

David Sarnoff Library damaged

When I read a lengthy description of the damage to the valuable archives caused by the storm in the northeast about 10 days ago, (at the listserv of archivists) the first thing I asked myself was why any library anywhere with a valuable historic collection would store items in the basement. Especially since the companies that do this kind of rescue work from mopping up to freezing paper items to stop the rot will be stretched to the max because everyone in the area probably has damage. True, a tornado can take the top floors, but even a sewer backup can take your basement storage. Story in Philadelphia Inquirer

"Just outside Princeton, the building housing the David Sarnoff Library took nearly two feet of water in its basement, a level the staff had never expected. The water damaged a collection of laboratory notebooks, technical reports, manuals and manuscripts from the early days of radio, television and electronics.

The library rushed to hire a document-repair company to try to dry them out and save them.

"We saved these files in the first place because of their importance in documenting the birth of modern communications, from broadcast microphones to color TV picture tubes, from satellite communications to the microchips that surround us in cars, computers, and cell phones," library director Alexander Magoun wrote in an e-mail seeking donations to offset the cost of the emergency repair work."

I probably ought to check my own basement. For 34 years we lived in a house without a basement, but it's really easy to slip back into old habits.

It's not your father's marijuana

"The marijuana being sold across the United States is stronger than ever, which could explain a growing number of medical emergencies that involve the drug, government drug experts on Wednesday.

Analysis of seized samples of marijuana and hashish showed that more of the cannabis on the market is of the strongest grade, the White House and National Institute for Drug Abuse said.

They cited data from the University of Mississippi's Marijuana Potency Project showing the average levels of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in the products rose from 7 percent in 2003 to 8.5 percent in 2006." Reuters

And the druggie bloggers are out in full force denying any problem, but they did that 35 years ago (without blogs, of course).

3750

Rosie's anti-Catholic, anti-Christian tirades

She's gone from The View (although probably not from view), but I don't think her virulently anti-Christian, bigoted remarks are the reason. A new columnist for the St. Louis Dispatch, commented on the long term affects of the Catholic compromise beginning with JFK in her February 2007 piece. So I doubt that they really bombarded Barbara Walters and Disney with their anger:

"What role should a Catholic politician's faith play in his governing decisions? After dominating U.S. headlines during the 2004 presidential contest between Catholic Senator John Kerry and Methodist President George W. Bush, the question has emerged again. The midterm elections of 2006 swept pro-choice Catholic Senator Nancy Pelosi into the third-highest position in the U.S. government, cost the pro-life movement more than a dozen House and Senate seats, and found Catholic voters migrating back to the Democratic Party despite its staunch support for legal abortion. Pro-choice Catholic and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has informally launched a presidential bid, as has pro-life Catholic Senator Sam Brownback. And the U.S. bishops recently released a statement affirming that Catholics must uphold Church teaching in public life if they wish to receive Communion." Collen Carroll Campbell

If there's a group wimpier than Republicans, it has to be Christians. The PC chat that a Lutheran pastor gave at the VA Tech memorial clearly demonstrates that.

Is this like that?

While browsing through some "Rachel Carson is our hero" blogs, I noticed a carbon neutral festival. I didn't click on it because it seemed to be serious. But it would be a great put up/down, wouldn't it? "What if we gave a festival and nobody came?". Just ask the folks to mail their ticket money and stay home. That would be carbon neutral. No cars driven from the neighboring city, no food stands burning fuel, no fast-food-consuming people wandering the booths expelling CO2, no trash to clean up, no garbage to bag, no Sheryl-porta-potties. I love it.