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Callow, crude, childish crumb crunchers

I'm leaving the rude, childish comments on my Hilliam entry, although I could delete the insulting and derogatory, so you can see the level of conversation from the left wing blogfesters.

Here's one bellyaching, whiny response, written by "anonymous," of course, who can't handle the content, so goes to personal attacks on my typo: "Not that grammatically rewriting your post would mitigate the idiocy of its content, but the past tense of "lead" is "led." Most third graders have mastered this one." I would match my third grade teacher, education and experience against anon's any day. Miss DeWall even had time to teach us good manners (missing from the life experience of anon), respect, kindness, orderliness, thrift, consideration for others, basic principles of good health, care for the environment and our community, in addition to all the basics like reading, writing, math, geography, and civics. All without a federal requirement in sight. Thanks for the memories, anon.

Whiny, sniveling, unhinged bloggers here.

Friday Family Photo--The Goff Family

This week we've been bustling about trying to create more storage space. I know none of you ever have this problem. My husband had already talked to one of his favorite contractors about building a slotted storage file to fit in the down stairs shower for our art work. Usually I'm aware of pending projects, but this one I didn't know about until Mark knocked on the door on Tuesday. I was horrified--where would I store our off season coats, I asked. Plus, we've actually used that shower once in 5 years for guests. I launched into planning mode, rushing around looking at all the nooks and crannies. I was completely successful and the shower has been saved. I have one large empty shelf; I've taken two sacks of books to the library sale I would probably never read; some suitcases are under the bed; and I found the photograph of my husband's great grandparents, Sarah and Herbert Goff.

Back: Charles, Herman, Walter; front: Edna, Sarah, Herbert, Eula, Irma
I checked my FamilyTreeMaker database and I did have all but one of these people, but other than their last known address, Crown Hill Cemetery, 700 West 38th Street in Indianapolis where they are all awaiting the resurrection, I knew very little, and my husband couldn't remember much. I asked him why his grandmother and one of her sisters had the same married name, but he didn't know. I asked him if he could remember meeting any of them, but he wasn't sure. So, I'll need to call my sister-in-law who is a little older and probably hung around when the relatives were visiting, or maybe might have gone to funerals. From the sleeves, I'd date this about late 1890s. The photo is in very poor condition and appears to have been enlarged from a smaller one maybe 10 years later from notes on the back.

Just by chance, I googled "Herbert Goff + Vernon Indiana" and found this article at a website for the Ironton, Ohio Register, and I'm pretty sure I've found him, plus the name of his father.

Ironton Register, clippings from Oct. 25, 1888: "In a private note from our old friend, S. W. Goff, who is with his son Herbert, at Vernon, Indiana, he says "my first vote was in 1836, when I voted for Harrison. I, also, voted for him in 1840, and will vote for the grandson in 1888."

Isn't the internet amazing?

"Crown Hill is the third largest cemetery in the United States at 555 acres (2.2 km²). It contains 25 miles (40 km) of paved road, over 150 species of trees and plants, over 185,000 graves, and services roughly 1,500 burials per year. It sits on the highest geographic point in Indianapolis. (Wikipedia)." "Crown Hill Cemetery was constructed in response to a movement for a new cemetery in the 1860s. Unlike the tidy rows of pioneer cemeteries, Crown Hill was large in scale and picturesque in appearance. Its massive stone gates and Romanesque Revival waiting station gave the cemetery an imposing quality. The individual stones and mausoleums provide a remarkable collection of sculptural work.[National Park Service]" If you think you may have family there, the data base is terrific. I've only been there once that I can remember, in 1996 for Aunt Babe's funeral, but it is lovely.

I know just how he feels

This blogger was writing about comments that go off-topic here,

"That actually validates my thesis. When you read my blog, you read what you want to read, or what you think I ought to have written, rather than what I actually said"

but what blogger hasn't experienced the same results regardless of the topic (his is "sacramental magisterial authority" and I have no idea what that is).

Scrolling down to his bio, I read

I've been blogging for a long time. Since any other detail I could put in my profile would either offend somebody or be used as a launch-pad for personal insults, that's all you get to know.

I should have thought of that. Too late now.

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Should women look to the government to be a sugar daddy?

This has to be the dumbest survey I've ever read about gimmee women.

"In an electorate that is hungry for change, this cohort [unmarried women] is the hungriest, with 78 percent saying the country is on the wrong track. Unmarried women’s ire is focused firmly on the Republicans, and this is reflected in new poll findings that show Democrats poised to blow Republicans out among this group in 2008. In a generic presidential match-up, unmarried women favor the Democrat by a 70 - 24 point margin." Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner report in my mailbox today

With Democrats in charge of every major city in the U.S., sinking under the weight of their own failed social programs, why would any woman with half a brain look to Democrats as a sugar daddy? Women can solve the poverty problem in this country all by themselves by finishing high school, marrying the father of their children, and not starting a family until they are adults. Unless you want the government making those "intimate" choices for you, ladies, I don't think I'd ask the government for any more help than they are already giving you with Title IX, affirmative action, extra time for tests and tenure, welfare, special housing allowances, women's studies programs, sexual harrassment laws and speech codes. Someone might conclude you're the weaker sex.

About that poll and those scary numbers? Librarians vote 223:1 Democrat to Republican, and no one's afraid of them.

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Hilliam Clinton

Today's WSJ has an excellent editorial on the candidacy of Mrs. Clinton--the name, the dodge, but no pizzaz.

"The political strategy is clear enough. Mrs. Clinton wants to roll to her party's nomination on a tide of "inevitability" while disguising her real agenda as much as possible. But Democratic voters ought to consider whether they want to put all their hopes for retaking the White House on Mrs. Clinton's ability to obfuscate like her husband without his preternatural talent for it. Aside from lacking her husband's political gifts, Hillary's challenge is that we've all seen this movie before. And performances like Tuesday's might be enough to convince voters to opt for a candidate who is his own man."

We know the Clinton years' incompetencies lead up to the Iraq War; let's try something--someone--fresh. Like Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney or Tom Tancredo.

Late October Walks

In Ohio we had a very late spring, and a rainy August, and that has made for an interesting mix of colors this fall. No frost and not many storms have kept the leaves on the trees, although not as vivid as some years, with some still being completely green today. The maples are coming through for us, however. Our hydrangea bush didn't bloom all summer, then budded in September, and gave us 3 small blooms in October. The flowering crab apples, which usually drop their leaves in August and messy fruit in September are green and fruit-free. I've had some beautiful walks.

Maple on Lane Road

Late for the party?

Not so crabby and still green on Nov. 1

Along the creek
Now aren't you sorry you don't live in the Midwest?

Notes for bookclub on McCullough's 1776

Non-fiction books don't usually bring me to tears (well, the documentation and notes for Seabiscuit did), but there were times I had to stop reading David McCullough's breath taking 1776 and go for a walk--even the second time around this week. And this morning, I went out and bought the new boxed, illustrated, coffee-table 1776 with 140 images and 37 removable replicas of the sources he used. I had planned to loan it out, or donate it to the church library, but it is such a treasure, I may just hug it for awhile.

First a note about reviews and questions. Unlike most of the other books I remember reading for bookclub over the years, I couldn't find any questions for club discussions on the internet, although I found many clubs reading it and interviews with McCullough that included questions. Second, there are wonderful reviews available on-line, but I want to point you to two that are not so wonderful--one on the right and one on the left. Their distain for anything patriotic and dislike for a book about politics and war which isn't anti-war, political or flag waving is quite apparent--at least to me.

The first is "With God on our side," reviewed by Preston Jones for Christianity Today, in July 2005. Jones teaches at John Brown University, a small Christian college in Arkansas. This vacuous and inaccurate comment really turned me off:

"Either you like this kind of history or you don't. Of course, it's possible to enjoy a well-told, well-documented tale while yet recognizing that it's couched in fluff. Even leisured academics, one hopes, can see that if books like McCullough's pull people away from the tube, then a good thing is happening."

And then he goes on to ask some "interesting questions" that make you wonder if the 18th century was even covered when he went to school. What was the editor thinking when he accepted this piece?

The second is the review that appeared in The New Yorker, also in 2005, by Joshua Micah Marshall. He is best known as a blogger, who early on saw possibilities for moving from cyberspace to print, as long as he hung way left of center. 1776 is completely built on the character and leadership of George Washington, whom Marshall decides was half marble, a man who invented his own persona by copying "101 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior," as a child and reading deeply in the classics and history. God forbid that a gen-xer steeped in gaming, downloading and digital wing-dings would think books could improve a man! Apparently no one told him that most children for several centuries, even in the 19th century, used something very similar for learning good manners and deportment. There are several versions, and I think some homeschoolers (the kids who are beating the pants off the public school grads) are still using them. So far, no more Washingtons have emerged from exposure to these rules that I know of.

I also want to refer you to some important maps which you can find at Military.com. I printed The battle of Long Island, the Northern campaigns, Operations around Trenton, and the Battle of Trenton, and the Christmas Campaign. You'll see multiple maps on one page, but it only takes one page to print each selection, so I had 3 printed pages. They will be useful in following the important battles of 1776.

Finally, we have read McCullough before (John Adams) and most of us are acquainted with his works. If we had a national historian, it would be him because his writing is so accessible to the layman and the envy of the academic whose prose eludes most of us. One of the best sites on McCullough I found was "The Glorious Cause of America," where he lectures without notes on Sept. 27, 2005 at Brigham Young University. This is reprinted at http://magazine.byu.edu, and if you don't have time to read the book, I'll give you a pass and let you in with this article. If you read nothing else, it's worth it.

See you at Peggy's on November 5.

Where's the down side?

One of the unintended consequences of the crack down at the border is fewer illegals coming in and a reduction in illegal immigrants being used as "mules" for drug smuggling. But there is an increase in the professional drug runners. So apparently, the guys who we were told just wanted to work, were bringing it in before and now the pros have to do it. More drugs are being confiscated as they crack down on the dealers and drug cartels. [story in WSJ 10-25]

Message to Mexico: Keep your poor at home, improve your job opportunities and infrastructure at home; you're a wealthy country. Arrest and jail your own drug dealers--again, at home--our jails are full. Both countries will benefit and you won't be emptying your small towns of their young generation.

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See Hillary Run

Last week I saw something about the election that stated about 45% of the voters will line up for the Republican candidate no matter who he is just because it's their party. Same with Democrats. That means everyone is going after the currently undecided, or the so-called moderates and independents--or maybe 6% of the voters will decide whether Mrs. Clinton returns to the White House. If you aren't registered to vote, or you sometimes don't bother to go to the polls, you'd better start thinking in that direction. Obama has nothing to offer--especially not African-Americans (have you ever seen the photos of his supporters--they're whiter than my suburb); Edwards is coming across as a whiny rich kid-lawyer with good hair. Mrs. Clinton has the money, her husband's base, and gaggles of feminists clucking and ducking. Never thought I'd say how good Al Gore is looking these days. Whatever few successes the Clintons had during their 8 years, he was behind a lot of them, and then they stabbed him in the back when it was his turn.

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A good rule of thumb

If it sounds too good to be true, someone's going to print it anyway. Peggy Noonan commented on The New Republic getting snookered by Scott Thomas Beauchamp (pseud. Scott Thomas, author of "Shock Troops" his diaries) in the week-end edition of WSJ. She says she smelled a rat early on, as she did when TNR published the Young Republicans piece by Stephen Glass in 1997. OK. Hindsight. But apparently there was an actual investigation and nothing he wrote--places, people, events--checked out. TNR begged him to confirm, but he's abandoned them, just as he did his fellow servicemen. Now TNR is getting all rathered. According to the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz

"The soldier whose New Republic article about military cruelty in Iraq was labeled false by Army investigators refused to defend his accusations when questioned by the magazine, even after being told that the editors could no longer support him unless he cooperated.

In a recorded Sept. 6 conversation, the writer, Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, said from Iraq that the controversy had "spun out of control" and had become "insane" and "ridiculous" and concluded: "I'm not going to talk to anyone about anything."

TNR has pulled his comments from the web, so I couldn't check it. Even Wikipedia, which I don't usually check because it is written by biased users, is blocking any further editing of the story, waiting for some confirmation.

Michael Yon, one of the best known journalist/photographers of the Iraq War wrote on Oct. 25

I was in Iraq when it first hit the stands and someone asked me about the plausibility of the events described in the article. I skimmed the story but it did not even pass a simple sniff-test. With a shooting war going on, there is no time for trivial pursuits, so my only comment was something like, “It sounds like a bunch of garbage.” Turned out it was.

Someone at TNR needs the journalist's version of gaydar. But it's just more sad evidence of how desperately the left wants the U.S. to lose this war. They say they just want the truth; no, this story will never go away. If the Dems won't cut the funding or set a deadline, the media will just lie. Fellas, war is hell; people die and those who don't do awful things. Young people have their lives changed forever, if they survive. Let's not make it worse than it is.

Checking the stats

They are way down. Don't know why, but there's been about a 1/3 drop since last fall. I know I'm tough and I don't write about comfortable things, but that has always been the case. Certain topics always bring people in--like the Dodge Magnum. Yes, that's one of my most popular entries; and fixing broken zippers, opening frozen door locks and my Fornesetti Julia plates.

Lately there's been an uptick on Agnes Sanford. Maybe she was mentioned on a Christian talk show and people have been googling her (she died in the 1980s). I wrote about her maybe 1.5 years ago, and here's a rerun, just in time for the Halloween stories of spirits and vibes.

Agnes Sanford belongs in a public library

but not in a church library. I was browsing our Mill Run campus library today (I volunteer at and use the church library at our Lytham Road location) and saw her autobiography on the shelf. I don't know why Christians think Sanford is a Christian, but they do (God has the final say, but I don't think she recanted her writings). Even pastors who don't appear to make serious errors about other teachings see no harm. Sure, she was a sweet, dear lady (died in 1982) who said and wrote "spiritual" things, but if you get a paperback of one of her titles and underline the nonbiblical drivel in red, and the Gospel based material in green, you'll see my point. About 25 years ago I actually did that, and hid her books in my laundry room packed inside an old briefcase. And although I don't believe her nonsense about vibrations, and auras and spirits, I could swear I felt a heaviness unrelated to the ironing basket when I entered that room. So I threw them out. Better she should give off her vibes at the dump rather than inside my house or the church building--if you believe that sort of stuff, and she does. What makes her so harmful is that she has so many spiritual descendants who are still speaking and writing on the inner healing circuit. It's snake oil folks. Don't be taken in.

I'm thinking that there are just fewer people looking for the Dodge Magnum, but it still gets my vote as the best looking car on the road. It's being "refreshed" for 2008--hope they don't ruin it.

Fellowship of the Cane

If you read no other blog today, stop by Arkansas and read Hokulea's Fellowship of the Cane, or what she learned after breaking her foot. It's better than anything I ever heard at a "sensitivity training," disability workshop and she speaks directly to all of us, able-bodied or not:

"I found myself saying that I don't think I could do this forever, and whining about my little issues. I have learned what a wimp I am in general and as this episode winds down and my mobility is returning . . ."

Then hang around a bit and look through her beautiful photos of Arkansas and Hawaii, as well as other travels. She's a writer with an artistic eye and a sensitive soul.

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St. Paul to Richard Dawkins

Yesterday when clicking through the channels I saw Richard Dawkins for about 10 seconds--probably a C-SPAN rerun. Nothing new here--someone or other has been saying the same stuff for 2,000 years. Including Paul, the author of most of the New Testament. He too was an educated man persecuting Christians, probably saying the same things as Dawkins, although he didn't have the benefit of C-SPAN to spread his views, or the internet for people to down load it.

Here's Paul writing to Titus, which just happens to be the Oct. 28 selection in my One Year Bible (NIV), but he could just as well be writing to Dawkins (all Christians could be praying that Dawkins have a Damascus Road experience). He would be a terrific Paul Jr.:

At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and peasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life."

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Community Theater

Last night we drove 62 miles (round trip) to see the premiere of David Meyer's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Condominium Association, Inc." performed by the Pickerington Community Theatre at the Violet Grange in Pickerington, Ohio. It takes a lot to get me out at night, and Pickerington seems like we're driving almost to Wheeling. Only for a friend. However, we had a good time and enjoyed the show. I think community theater is great fun, and I love seeing people I know on stage (David had a cameo appearance at the end). It's a perfect Halloween vehicle, too, with all the Sleepy Hollow stuff and Rip Van Winkle and a headless guy. Auditions for the next production, Godspell, will be January 4,5, and 6, for performances March 21-31 on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

One performer, Karen Haueise, who played Madame Perdieu/Roz Purdy was so gifted and natural I inquired about her and was told she had never been in a theater production before. I think some people can fill a stage without overdoing it or stealing attention from other actors and yet make it all seem real. I hope she continues to do community theater.

OCLC has a new logo

Let me just say for starters, congratulations OCLC on your 40th birthday. It's probably a good time to put out a new corporate logo. The concept (news release) has a nice, trinitarian feel to it, not exactly Father, Son and Holy Ghost, but close.

Connecting libraries at the local, group and global levels
Connecting people through libraries to knowledge
Connecting past, present, and future through access to library collections

Saying things in threes is just so . . . rhythmic. "OCLC. The world's libraries. Connected." "Enhance processes. Extend collections and access. Strengthen your users’ experience." "Establish, maintain and operate a computerized library network." "The evolution of library use, of libraries themselves and of librarianship."

This knowledge thing is inaccurate, however. "Information" is not "knowledge," and that's what giant corporations like OCLC have--it harvests, stores, compacts, reconfigures and distributes information, not knowledge. You wouldn't say wheat is bread, or sugar is candy. Don't say information is knowledge. Nor is it necessarily power. Of the top 15 management posts at OCLC, 4 are held by librarians, who should be the most powerful people in the world if that old saw were true.

I think I know what a local level is and possibly what a global level is. However, level is one of those squishy overused English words that is forced to work overtime at low pay--tool, device, line, measurement, equal, balanced, surface, magnitude, calm, proportional, governmental body--so you almost can't go wrong by using it.

When I arrived in Columbus 40 years ago to catalog Russian books at The Ohio State University Libraries (I also had to type the cards on a manual cyrillic typewriter), the Ohio College Library Consortium (54 libraries) had 3 employees, one of whom was the founder and visionary, Fred Kilgour, and was located on the 3rd floor of Thompson Library. I used to go to lunch with one of them whose name I've forgotten, because we were both new in town and didn't know anyone. Then it moved over to Kinnear Road for awhile, eventually changing "Ohio" to "On-line," and "College" to "Computer," and then to Dublin, Ohio, changing its legal name to an acronym, serving 60,000 libraries in 112 countries.

Observing All Hallows' Eve

Although Halloween looks pagan, especially considering the slutty costume you can buy for $30 to make your 5 year old daughter look like a slutty prostitute, its origins are Christian according to Fisheaters website:

The Vigil of All Hallows' ("Hallows' Eve," or "Hallowe'en") came, in Irish popular piety, to be a day of remembering the dead who are neither in Purgatory or Heaven, but are damned, and these customs spread to many parts of the world. Thus we have the popular focus of Hallowe'en as the reality of Hell, hence its scary character and focus on evil and how to avoid it, the sad fate of the souls of the damned, etc.

How, or even whether, to celebrate Hallowe'en is a controversial topic in traditional circles. One hears too often that "Hallowe'en is a pagan holiday" -- an impossibility because "Hallowe'en," as said, means "All Hallows' Evening" which is as Catholic a holiday as one can get. Some say that the holiday actually stems from Samhain, a pagan Celtic celebration, or is Satanic, but this isn't true, either, any more than Christmas "stems from" the Druids' Yule, though popular customs that predated the Church may be involved in our celebrations (it is rather amusing that October 31 is also "Reformation Day" in Protestant circles -- the day to recall Luther's having nailed his 95 Theses to Wittenberg's cathedral door -- but Protestants who reject "Hallowe'en" because pagans used to do things on October 31 don't object to commemorating that event on this day)."

On All Saints Sunday, which this year is November 4 (first Sunday after All Hallows'/All Saints Day, Nov. 1) our church remembers/memorializes the Church Triumphant, saints of the church in heaven, by reading the names turned in by members. The other day while delivering the intercampus mail, I picked up a stack of cards so the names of my deceased family members and friends (the saints) could be read at the 8:30 service at Lytham Road. Then I noticed the cards are for Mill Run services. So forgive me, dear ones, if I scribble on your cards. It's the thought. . .

Friday Family Photo

This portrait was probably taken 120 years ago in 1887 when Stanley C. Byrum was about a year old. It hangs in our cottage, in a fragile old frame coated with thick paint. I was the only one who wanted it when my in-laws' home was being sold after their deaths. He was my husband's grandfather, and the single most important adult in his life. "Biggie" is always in my husband's conversation when values, character or family come up. I never met him; he died in 1955 at 68 while my husband was still in high school. The little face is amazing--it has reappeared in several generations. My mother-in-law had this face, but not her sisters; his great-grand daughter Julie, but not her sister, had this face as a baby, as did her daughter Erin.

Adverbosity

I'm a sucker for qualifiers--"sort of," "rather," "just," "quite," and "too." And I'm crazy for dashes. Every editor wants to chop my adverbs. Zinsser says,

"Most adverbs are unnecessary. You will clutter your sentence and annoy the reader if you choose a verb that has a precise meaning and then add an adverb that carries the same meaning. . . "blared loudly," "mostly flabbergasted," and "moped dejectedly."

But then, Zinsser doesn't think much of adjectives, either--"stately elms," "frisky kittens" and "hard-bitten detectives.' He likes strong verbs. At nHumanities it was suggested

"Kill the modifiers. This is machete work, so wrap a bandanna around your face and grab some shop goggles. No reader is going to believe that your process is innovative or your product is world-class just because you say so, so kill those adjectives. Don’t feel sorry for them. They have no feelings."

So I struggled with film critic Joe Morgenstern's article today on Dan in Real Life, and the new Jimmy Carter documentary. There were so many adverbs (and adjectives), I was mostly and dejectedly flabbergasted.

strives desperately
romantically involved (if a man and woman are involved, doesn't that mean romantically?)
awfully heartily (adverb modifying an adverb--double whammy)
singularly unpleasant
notoriously homely
inexplicably awful
terribly tedious
extremely small (how about tiny?)
quite disarmingly
genuinely sweet

unquenchably energetic
singular passion
slightly stooped
essentially undiminished
mostly calm
patiently didactic
uncomfortably admiring advertisement
narrowly focused
mostly uncritical view
uncritical but not unaffecting
peregrinating conscience (I had to look this one up--means traveling)

Whew! Is it just me? Maybe he's British. They like their sentences fully and heartily packed.

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Pumpkin ice cream

This is one of my fall favorites (Sept-Nov), and it's only available a limited amount of time. Today I bought two half gals of Edy's. Well, not really 1/2 gallon, because they are all cheating on their measures (1.75 qts), but you know what I mean. And technically it isn't ice cream because Edy's calls it "frozen dessert." I take one of these, softened, and mix it with a small carton of thawed sugar-free Cool Whip, then refreeze. This reduces the sugar content, lowers the calories, but hardly affects the flavor or texture, because it is the fat that makes ice cream wonderful. Edy's also makes an apple pie flavor and a peppermint flavor that are seasonal.

INGREDIENTS: Whey (Dairy), skim milk, cream, sugar, corn syrup, pumpkin, maltodextrin, spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger), salt, guar gum, Propylene Glycol Monostearate, citric acid, monoglycerides, Yellow #6, carrageenan.

Propylene Glycol Monostearate. Isn't that C21H42O3 an ingredient in antifreeze, solvents and detergents? On second thought. . .

Are Georgians an endangered species?

I sure hope not. We University of Illinois Alumni (plus one IU) spent a lovely 10 days with University of Georgia Dawgs in September touring Ireland. Midwesterners are so practical and blunt; in Georgia they know how to sweet-talk-ya'll. I loved it. Anyway, to the point. Did you see the article in today's WSJ about that little mussel that's protected by all the government agencies, but who's looking out for the people?

The Amblema neislerii, or as it is widely known by a more unflattering name, the fat threeridge mussel, is on the endangered species list according to Ann Carrns, "Atlanta is flexing muscles," p. 1, WSJ, Oct. 26, 2007. Georgia has filed suit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers which controls the reservoir, Lake Lanier, from which Atlanta gets its drinking water. It's a busy little lake--sending water also to rivers downstream including one in Florida where these endangered mussels live--and it cools 2 power plants and freshens the spawning grounds of Gulf sturgeon.

In a drought year (it's Bush's fault that we got too much rain in Ohio and not enough in Georgia), that's a lot. Not only do you have several state governments involved--Georgia, Alabama and Florida--but also FEMA, the Corps, EPA and Fish and Wildlife. Not to worry! There's 9 months of water left!! Florida (pot to kettle) is accusing Atlanta of over development, squandering its water resources. Well, ggggolllleeee, like we've never seen the countryside and drained wetlands eaten up with housing developments in Florida!

This is why I don't like burning corn in our cars, Mr. Gore. The inputs including fertilizer, water and herbicides are humongous--it's a negative energy balance. We on the Great Lakes (11 states and provinces) can see the rest of you eyeing our water. Stop it!

After thoughts: Isn't it scary that there are some willing to fight for the mussel which needs a flow of water to survive who think it's OK to stop the survival of a baby moving down the birth canal ?