Wednesday, May 13, 2009
No boys allowed?
I think single sex education is very beneficial. Kids can really buckle down and study when they don't have to worry about attracting or performing for the opposite sex. But if there were special programs excluding young girls from getting a step up to a good career in the sciences, I can't even imagine the line of lawyers ready to take that case.Here's a few summer engineering programs just for girls I noticed, beginning with Ohio State. I also noted that "fun" and "social life" were promoted features of these camps. So that's what it takes to attract girls to the sciences?
- The Ohio State Women in Engineering Program is still accepting applications to the 2009 CheME & YOU @ OSU Summer Camp, a six-day residential summer program for girls who will be entering ninth grade in the fall of 2009. Participants will live in a university dorm and will explore chemical engineering through fun, hands-on activities. The camp will run from Sunday (8/16)-Friday (8/21). Applications must be postmarked by Friday (5/15).
- At Purdue they call it EDGE. Session I: July 19 - July 24, 2009, Session II: July 26 - July 31, 2009. EDGE is for students who have just completed 9th or 10th grade. Apply your creativity to hands-on engineering projects with teammates! Meet women engineers who are shaping our world! Discover how your talents can lead to an exciting career in engineering! Have fun working with current Purdue engineering students!
"Kathy Johnson, director of undergraduate student enrollment in the College of Engineering at UC, says that the camp helps motivate high school students. “It’s a chance for students to come see if they are interested in math, science and engineering,” she says. “Through the camp, the girls get a great overview of what’s available. They get to meet our faculty members and receive information on all the disciplines offered here at UC.”
- My alma mater, the University of Illinois, calls it Girls Adventures in Mathematics, Engineering, and Science, or G.A.M.E.S. It is an annual week long camp, designed to give academically talented middle school aged girls an opportunity to explore exciting engineering and scientific fields through demonstrations, classroom presentations, hands-on activities, and contacts with women in these technical fields."
- The Women in Engineering Summer Camp at the University of Dayton is a Sunday-through-Friday experience that gives girls the chance to dabble in engineering through hands-on, learn-by-doing activities they can't get in high school [why not?].
“Guided by UD professors, you'll conduct experiments, innovate, make cool stuff, take things apart — then put them back together again — in engineering classrooms and laboratories on campus. You'll visit a job site. Meet women engineers. And spend time checking out new innovations and more.”
Death at the Camp Liberty Counseling Center
“Monday's shooting also raises new questions about how the U.S. military screens and treats soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other combat-related psychological maladies.” Wall St. Journal story . WSJ, the most liberal newspaper in the country, provides a nice side bar chart of all the military deaths for the last 7 years--less than the number of teens we lose in a year of auto accidents or soldiers in one battle in WWI.Yes, and the anti-war, anti-military talking heads will come out of the wood work on this one. Actually, have you ever worked or associated with a mentally ill, depressed or “stressed” person and tried to get help? There is no easy way to do this--I’ve experienced it and you might be safer to transfer or quit rather than try to battle the system that protects everyone except the friend, co-worker or boss who knows there’s a problem. Just yesterday I stopped to visit an OSU friend--we worked together 30+ years ago, and Oh the stories we could tell about our former boss whose mental stability was fragile (she was brilliant, but thought everyone else was dumb and against her). At one incident (physical danger) we just stood in terrified disbelief and one of the calm Christian student employees, who probably didn’t know enough to be scared or felt closer to God than I did, softly and quietly talked her down. She wasn’t fired or transferred--but her contract wasn’t renewed the next year and she went on to become someone else’s problem at another university.
The Virginia Tech Korean immigrant student Cho had a long history of problems and “help” dating back to middle school before he went on a killing rampage, as did the immigrant center killer Wong in Binghamton. And for all the talk about “bullying” in schools after Columbine launched a thousand workshops, that turns out not to be the case in so many situations. We have a local case in Ohio where a teen has committed suicide after sexting her own nude photos, but the parents want to blame the school for not confiscating cell phones and checking them (this is illegal). And like the unfortunates at those other “gun free” zones, “Troops at Camp Liberty are supposed to keep their weapons unloaded, which may have made it harder for soldiers at the clinic to defend themselves when the assailant started shooting.” Obviously, the shooters don’t follow all the rules, do they?
I’m thinking a lot of people who worked with Army Sgt. John M. Russell knew he was in trouble--the trouble he hid from his family and close friends, because if you are stressed or depressed or even paranoid--you aren't that way 24/7. He loved the military and obviously wanted this career--he wanted to stay in, and he hadn’t risen in rank. The investigation hasn't happened yet but we know the military and the war will be blamed--at least in the media. We don’t even know how much combat he’d seen; but someone knew there was a problem and referred him for help. And 5 people died. At least six families are suffering, and our prayers are for them.
Mayo Alanen on Dancing with the Stars
We watched "Dancing with the Stars" Season 1 which was a fun summer replacement and enjoyed it, but lost interest as its popularity and complexity grew. I was flipping through the channels last night bemoaning all the “reality shows” wondering how crazy is it that people watch "reality" with a script and camera crew, believing it is real. Everything from housewives gutter sniping, to brides being bridezilla, to the obese exercising in the desert, to little people going to work, to fashion police trashing wardrobes of sweats and t-shirts, to parents raising 8 children with the papparazzi: all so the fans can thank God for their own lives. Then suddenly I saw this flash on the screen “Mayo Alanen” and a phone number to vote. I nearly fell out of bed! Unfortunately, that's all I saw--he had already performed to be voted on as the professional for next season.Mayo’s father Erkki, a very talented tall, blond architect and cartoonist, lived with us for a few weeks back in the early 70s when he first came to the United States from Finland. Eventually, he and his wife settled in El Paso and raised three children. I have school photos of the children sent with Erkki’s original Christmas cards, although I can’t tell one boy from the other now that so many years have gone by. Somewhere I think I have a either a bookmark of a website or a disk of him and his dancing partner that his mother sent us.
Anyway, our phones are dead again, or I would have voted for Mayo Alanen. Bio and details here .
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
One Republican with a backbone--are there any others?
Here's one who won't roll over. A rare bird. I've never seen such a bunch of wimps--they are really an embarrassment. They should have been more concerned about conservative values and less about pork and getting reelected as "moderates."- "Cheney, who has taken heat for remaining so vocal, told FOX News that the Obama administration is "dismantling" the national security policies that kept the country safe since the Sept. 11 attacks. He said he continues to speak out to combat the mounting criticism of Bush-era interrogation policies and weigh in on what he called the "outrageous" debate over whether to punish the officials involved with designing those policies.
"I don't think we should just roll over when the new administration ... accuses us of committing torture, which we did not, or somehow violating the law, which we did not," Cheney said. "I think you need to stand up and respond to that, and that's what I've done."
Bigots attack Christians and Jews for their beliefs on marriage and family
Homosexual “marriage” and religious liberty cannot co-exist—because gay activists will not allow it. As marriage expert Maggie Gallagher puts it, same-sex “marriage” advocates claim that religious faith “itself is a form of bigotry.” Perez Hilton's recent attacks on a white, heterosexual woman are just the tip of the iceberg of bigotry and intolerance.Read why at Chuck Colson’s BreakPoint
Photos of the library protest
Pretty quiet as protests go. A grad student told me someone from security stopped by and left--I guess a bunch of old folks waving signs about books isn't too threatening. I wore scarlet and gray and made my own signs. Some of the media was there--must have been a slow news day in Columbus. I did enjoy talking to some of the grad students--they are very knowledgeable about computers, but believe the books too are necessary. They don't want to wait 3-4 days to get it from Akron or Youngstown. One man married to a librarian who works in another city says her public library depends on DVDs to keep the circulation records up.Story about the protest here.
Channel 4 story here. I'm on about 2 seconds in the video at the beginning.
Something's lost in translation
I've apparently blogged about this wonderful CD from Concordia before--at least I had the photo in my file. It's the text and music of Luther's Small Catechism narrated by Rev. Dr. Ken Schurb (1986). When we joined UALC in 1976, they weren't using the regular small catechism for adults--and I don't think that my kids got one either when they were confirmed in the early 80s. But now I have a nice hard bound copy. The explanations of the 10 commandments, the Apostle's Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the sacraments are really amazing--and he intended the explanation for fathers to teach their children and other family members. It is by far the clearest summary of Christian faith I've ever read, and I've seen a lot of Christian books--most full of "me, my, mine and myself."What is interesting is that older translations from German to English read:
- “The Simple Way a Father Should Present it to his Household “
but the modern English reads
“As the head of the family should teach them in a simple way to his household.”
I've been using this disc on my walks--the question/answer format of the catechism and the wonderful hymns keep it from getting boring. I believe Luther wrote all the hymns on the CD, although I'm not sure about the tunes. "These are the Holy Ten Commands" was written before the catechism in 1524. He even versified the Nicene Creed--not an easy task. "Our Father, Who from Heaven Above" was written in 1539, and the hymn about our Lor'd baptism "To Jordan Came the Christ, Our Lord" in 1541. We saw the River Jordan on our recent trip to the Holy Land.
- "These truths on Jordan's banks were shown
By mighty word and wonder.
The Father's voice from Heav'n came down.
Which we do well to ponder
"This man is My beloved Son,
In whom My heart has pleasure,
Him you must hear, and Him alone,
And trust in fullest measure
The word that He has spoken"
Urgent! Save OSUL from destruction!
A great library is not a building; it is not the director. It is the collection. It's the thousands of ideas and Aha! moments yet to come. And for students and faculty in the humanities and social sciences, monographs (aka books) are the basic equipment in their laboratories. This is a cause that conservatives, liberals, progressives, and tenured radicals can all link arms and yell, "Not on my watch, you won't destroy this library!"OSU Libraries has been in renovation mode since before I retired in 2000. Now it's just about finished (main library on campus) and they are trashing the monograph collection because all the books won't fit (didn't anyone think to measure?). Not only will they not fit, the collection in the social sciences and humanities can't grow without pulling more of the collection for disposal. I can understand that Joe Schmo might think everything's on the internet, but Joe Branin (soon to leave for Saudi Arabia) and Jim Bracken and the sub-directors and the University Senate advisors? And why did President Gee cave on this--the big library supporter of the 1980s? What's up with that?
Read the statistics and weep. We can't save these, but there are more where they came from and they're going out the door!
- Monographs decommissioned by OSU
January 2009 15,466
February 2009 14,588
March 2009 13,412
April 2009 12,440
1. These are monographs: the total does NOT include duplicates of journals withdrawn -- that would substantially increase the total
2. These 55,906 monographs are not going into storage: they are being trashed or given away. We can never recover them.
Today I'm going over to demonstrate on the campus in front of BRICKER HALL at noon with my home made signs "BUCKS for BOOKS" and "STOP the BOOK ABUSE," and my personal favorite attached to a hanger, "DON'T ABORT THE BOOKS."
Photos of the protest
Chronicle of Higher Education story
Guns and Butter
This chart always amazes me--particularly reflecting on the outrage during the Bush years about the paltry spending on social programs. One of the reasons Bush had so much tax money to direct to two wars and all sorts of little social wars at home was his tax cuts. It's unfortunate that he didn't decrease government spending, but like the rest of us, it's easy to spend when the wallet is fat. Obama is doing just the opposite, and business investment has been dropping and unemployment rising since the summer of 2008 when he became the heir and parent. Capitalists aren't stupid--they can go elsewhere to invest. He's raising taxes and creating more social wars at home as well as increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan. But instead of corraling terrorists, he plans to loose and lose them in Europe and America--and why not--they certainly aren't wanted back home where they are tainted!
Monday, May 11, 2009
Like something in the oven
"Nothing says Happy Mother’s Day like a gift in honor of your mother to an organization that makes sure a woman doesn’t become a mother." LaShawn Barber on Judy Blume's solicitation for funding for Planned Parenthood, a pro-abortion organization that also gets your tax dollars.Judy Blume is a children's author I've never read, nor do I think my kids read her either. It's a tricky balance isn't it, since children have to be born in order to grow up and read. She's sort of promoting killing her readers! Planned Parenthood, which supports abortion rights, sent her letter of support as part of a Mother's Day fundraising push, distributing it to more than 200,000 people who had signed up to receive e-mails from the organization. If nothing else, it's in really poor taste to call a donation to an abortion organization a "gift any mother will appreciate," as Blume did. Let's give the unborn and the tough decisions some women make a little respect, OK?
LaShawn continues, "After a flood of “hate” mail to Blume, PP’s begging other pro-deathers to back up the author. President Cecile Richards said, “We rarely respond to these outrageous attacks, but when it comes to Judy Blume … well, I can’t stand by and do nothing. Please, let her know how much we appreciate her courage.”
It is outrageous, says the killer of the unborn, for “anti-choice extremists” to express their displeasure not only about the slaughter of babies but to also criticize a very important person like Blume, who’s using her name toward the cause of baby murder."
I didn't look for the link--I'm trusting LaShawn to have the story straight. She has appeared on CNN, the BBC, MSNBC, C-SPAN, and several national talk radio programs. Her political blog has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, and in the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. And don't call her an African-American--she prefers "black."
Things you never thought you'd have to defend
Isn't this just the dumbest?- "Prejean's brief reign [Miss California USA pageant] has been clouded by controversy over semi-nude photos and her comments on gay marriage. She made national headlines last month when during the Miss USA pageant she said that marriage should be between a man and woman."
This is so obviously a smear against her because of her "traditional" views--the same views that are expressed by the holy books of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and those other religions I know nothing about. I never thought I'd have to defend the writers of the Old and New Testament, who frame all of life from Genesis to Revelation within the context of male and female, where God's relationship with Israel and Jesus Christ's with the church are expressed in bridegroom and bride imagery. There is zero tolerance for homosexual behavior in the Bible and the Koran (along with adultery, fornication, abandoning family, stealing, coveting, greed, etc). Christians, Jews and Muslims are being or will be denied their freedom to worship with laws on the books defining scripture as hate speech, and castigating people who have an opinion that fits in the majority of Americans, and then ridiculed and thrown out of their job (competitions) for expressing their beliefs. We are all being denied our First Amendment rights if we fall for this. It won't stop with an enhanced blond bouncing in a skimpy bikini, it won't even stop with teachers or preachers in their own churches using coded terminology. This isn't about marriage and never was. There are laws on the books to protect the 1% of the population that want to have same sex partners. If they were serious, they'd put their partner's name on the checking account, or on the investments, or on the house deed, or the insurance policy, or include them in their will, or give them power-of-attorney.
"Perez Hilton," the man who took the name of a quasi-famous woman to grab attention on the internet for his gossip column, is too low for words. And Donald Trump who owns the Pageant, if he falls for this scam, is under him.
Update: When I was walking on the OSU campus today (May 12), I saw three co-eds in the same semi-nude poses with which some tried to smear Prejean's reputation--lying in the grass east of Morril Tower.
Obama's war on health care
Or War on America, I'm beginning to think. One more sector of the economy falling into the trenches without a fight. I hope to have a doctor write from his perspective as a guest blogger. (Note: JB--hurry!) But just on a personal note, I learned today that a friend is now battling his fourth type of cancer--not a metastasis, but all four different. Obamacare, or to-the-bone care, will never help those dear people. It will be triage, wait and ration care. There will be no debate; it will be flown through Congress, past Fancy Nancy faster than you can say botox, much faster than Air Force One flying past the Statue of Liberty. You just have to hope that he doesn't decide that each American can only have one cancer and that no one over 70 should get anything so there is enough rationed care to go around. Good luck, Democrat Baby Boomers who voted for this mess! Think of it this way, with only 2% of our fuel needs currently met by alternatives like wind and solar, you would have frozen to death anyway. The heating up green movement can dovetail nicely with the healthcare meltdown."A recent study by the Lewin Group estimates that almost 120 million Americans could be forced from employer-based coverage into government-run insurance by the kind of two-step strategy the Democrats envision. Americans with stable job-based insurance do not know this is what Democrats have in store for them, and they will not be happy about it. Last year the Kaiser Family Foundation found that well over 80 percent of insured Americans rated their health insurance as excellent or good." Stop ObamaCare.
How ObamaCare will Affect Your Doctor
Sometimes routines hurt
This morning I headed for the coffee shop and put on a navy blazer over my navy print slacks and matching T. I patted the pocket to check for tissue, and felt something hard--my credit card. My heart sunk--not because I found it, but because I should have hung it in my clothes closet yesterday, but instead put it in the downstairs coat closet. What if. . . I would have been calling all over trying to locate it if I had put it where it belonged.I stared at it in disbelief. How did my credit card get in my Spring linen blazer that didn't come out of the closet until yesterday? (It's been a cool Spring). I almost never use a credit card, and if I need something on Sunday I usually pay cash because it's so small, like a quart of milk or bunch of bananas. I started reviewing the week-end in my mind.
I'd bought 2 CDs of Karen Burkhart at the concert Saturday night with a check. I'd bought 2 DVDs of the prayer breakfast film with a check on Sunday. So I began to think about what I'd been wearing--it was Mother's Day and I wore a nice outfit to show off the gardenia corsage from my daughter and son-in-law. After church I needed to make some photocopies of the art show list at Mill Run, so I drove home, changed clothes to a red dress and fired up the computer for a master list. Then I selected the blazer because it was getting warm and I didn't need a coat. Went back to church, used the photocopier, and then drove to the other campus (we have 3). I placed the copies on the table next to the art show and put the master in my husband's file in the church office, and went back to the parking lot.
In my mind (figuring this out), I'm sitting in the parking lot. Then I remembered. The low gasoline light had come on while I was on the bridge over the Scioto River, and I decided I'd have to find a station before driving home. I just never pump gas, so that's how the credit card got from my purse into my pocket. I had inserted it into the pump and then into my pocket, and never put it back in my purse.
And that's how I almost lost my credit card--because I might only pump gas once a year, and it was so out of my routine, I'd totally forgotten it.
But you would never misplace anything, would you?
BTW, the Upper Arlington Art League Spring Show will be in the Church at Mill Run Gallery (2nd floor) until June 10. Building is closed Friday and Saturday. At Lytham, my husband and I have a show of about 30 pieces, all done by Ohio artists in the main hall, the fireside lounge and the library lounge.
Where our nation has gone wrong
I've only skimmed it, but I'd say, along with this reviewer at Amazon that it's right on target. It's easy to spot the liberal book reviewers. They rarely speak to the overwhelming content and intent of the authors--just to the typos or incorrect citations, even if they are minor. Then that's the grounds for the rant.- ". . . those who find fault with the citations cannot really overcome the overwhelming evidence in this book that the current courts have far overstepped anything that the founders intended in not recognizing and establishing a single church vs. their views that religion is a fundamental foundation for the Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitution.
If you read this book, you should also read the Federalist Papers, the words and works of the founders, including Washington's first inaugural address to understand that the current courts have radically departed from the intentions of the founders when it came to the role of religion, vs. established churches in the USA. For many generations, the original intent of the founders was well understood, but it was only until the 20th century that judges decided to re-write the Constitution and take on the role of "a national theology board" that makes earlier debates about how many angels fit on the head of a pin look enlightened.
Now, you might love and support the changes of the 30s and 60s, you might say "The Founders are dead and gone and I'm here and I want an entirely different constitution." That's your right as an American the last time I checked. But then you might not like the results, and there are a number of disturbing charts to chronicle the unintended consequences. This is just one scan, and like it or not, agree or disagree, we pay for both results either in health care for long term and life time consequences of STDs, or in poorly educated citizens.
This book, Original intent; the courts, the constitution, and religion by David Barton, WallBuilder Press, 2000, is available both at the Upper Arlington Public Library [342.73 Ba, 2000] and the Upper Arlington Lutheran Church Library, Lytham Road, [973 Bart]. Whether you're liberal, progressive, conservative or libertarian, and even if you hate the theme of the book, you'll find the 200 pages of citations useful.
I'd never heard of this publisher, WallBuilders, so I took at look at their webpage. It gives a pretty good idea what to expect, which is more clear in intent than the real meaning of say a Norman Lear patriotic song, "Born again American" that's been whipping around the globe or an ACORN mortgage assistance website.
- "In the Old Testament book of Nehemiah, the nation of Israel rallied together in a grassroots movement to help rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and thus restore stability, safety, and a promising future to that great city. We have chosen this historical concept of "rebuilding the walls" to represent allegorically the call for citizen involvement in rebuilding our nation's foundations. As Psalm 11:3 reminds us, 'If the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?' "
Sunday, May 10, 2009
The housing mess has a long history
We've all seen the pressure to lower standards and make homeowners of people who can't save the downpayment, can't pay the mortgage, can't meet the minimum standards, but I was unaware how far back government interference in the housing market went--back to the early 1920s with Herbert Hoover when he was Secretary of Commerce. Or even 1913, if you figure the home mortgage deduction. And I knew about rent controls creating an artificial "housing shortage" after WWII. I knew what had been required of us even with our first home purchased in 1962, but we never used FHA or VA, and sort of assumed that's the way it was until the 70s or 80s. Guess not. There's a lot I didn't know about how housing became a political football for both parties and invited crime and corruption to flourish. Catch up on the history beginning with Hoover, and follow it all the way up to now. See Obsessive Housing Disorder.- "The next stop on the road to 2008 was a fateful campaign to lower lending criteria, which, the housing advocates argued, were racist and had to change. The campaign began in 1986, when the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) threatened to oppose an acquisition by a southern bank, Louisiana Bancshares, until it agreed to new “flexible credit and underwriting standards” for minority borrowers—for example, counting public assistance and food stamps as income. The next year, Acorn led a coalition of advocacy groups calling for industry-wide changes in lending standards. Among the demanded reforms were the easing of minimum down-payment requirements and of the requirement that borrowers have enough cash at a closing to cover two to three months of mortgage payments (research had shown that lack of money in hand was a big reason some mortgages failed quickly).
The advocates also attacked Fannie Mae, the giant quasi-government agency that bought loans from banks in order to allow them to make new loans. Its underwriters were “strictly by-the-book interpreters” of lending standards and turned down purchases of unconventional loans, charged Acorn. The pressure eventually paid off. In 1992, Congress passed legislation requiring Fannie Mae and the similar Freddie Mac to devote 30 percent of their loan purchases to mortgages for low- and moderate-income borrowers."
- "As Harvard economist and City Journal contributing editor Edward Glaeser has observed, mortgage lenders have finally “recovered their sanity”—only to have government dangling subsidized low interest rates and tax credits in front of them and their potential customers all over again. Behind these efforts is a fundamental misconception among politicians that housing drives the American economy and therefore demands subsidy at virtually any cost."
It didn't work, but alarming nevertheless
"The Connecticut state legislature recently considered a bill to wrest property away from the Catholic—and only the Catholic—Church, giving ownership of Catholic parishes to boards of local parishioners. The bill never had much chance of enactment: Nearly every available law professor declared it wildly unconstitutional, and a quick bout of agitation from the state’s Catholics sent the leaders of the legislature backpedaling in panic.Still, the sheer fact of the bill revealed something about the character of our present moment. It had about it a mildewed, musty scent, as though we were witnessing the return of, say, 1979—as though thirty years had rolled back without a trace. The effort to strip the public square of all religious content may have sat in angry abeyance for a while, but it now feels bold enough to overreach, and who’s to say that what appears overreaching today won’t seem the norm tomorrow? The exercise carried a revenant, graveyard odor: the stench of ideas we had long thought buried, clawing their way up to confront us once again." The Public Square
No, it's not the 70s. It's much, much worse. It's not even the 30s, unless you count the mock Soviet trials. Oh, 'scuse, please! Is that hate speech? Or is it just a look back on recent history?
Happy Mother's Day
Even if you're not a mother, you had a mother, or maybe two or three, so go ahead and celebrate. This is the most amazing mother story I've ever read, and you'll think so too.The bat, the cat, and the splat
I don't even step on ants; when I find an insect in the house, they are waterboarded into the toilet, where I'm pretty sure most survive the cruise through the pipes and live to fly another day. I certainly don't kill animals! But when desperate to protect my health, family and pet, I can call on some reserves of evil.Last night about 8:45 I was checking my e-mail, the cat was in my lap and something making a shadow flies past my head. There was no noise so I am pretty sure it wasn't an insect, and the cat went berserk. I look around and can't see anything. Kitty is sure there was something--maybe Abbie our grandpuppy come to pester her. I call to my husband in the living room--"There's something flying in the house," I shout. "What?" he shouts back. Then he said, "Oh my gosh, there's a bat in the living room," and he leaves to use the rest room. Faithful kitty, who is 11 years old and weighs 7 lbs, goes into action and transforms herself into a large mountain lion protecting her territory. I'm ducking, cowering and yelling as the bat swoops lower and lower, first my office, then the hall, then the living room, around and around. I am afraid to open the door because the cat might chase the bat outside, and she's an indoor rescue cat who used to be homeless and has serious issues to this day about being on the street. Also, I have no idea how the bat got in--and maybe he has cousins and brothers looking for him. I had just walked in the front door at 8:30, so possibly he quietly crossed the border then.
I run to the basement and grab the first weapon I can find, a yellow, pink and green duster with a long handle--I think it cost $1 about 10 years ago and is very fluffy and colorful. Meanwhile, the cat has actually made contact on several swoops of the bat by jumping up, and the bat is tiring, gliding more slowly and lower. Smack--the cat knocks the bat to the hall floor, blending with our tasteful brown and gray marble; splat--I hit the bat with the duster. The bat, completely covered now with the colorful fringy duster is squealing and screaming. On my knees I reach for the door knob. The door is locked! Holding the bat down firmly with the duster, I unlock the door, and with my other hand scoot the bat across the marble, across the threshold and flip it out the door, my eyes tearing as it screams in its little bat alarm voice (probably calling for reinforcements).Bats are some of God's most amazing creatures--he must have had a blast designing their incredibly ugly faces. I know bats are very useful creatures--they eat 2000 insects a night and pollinate plants, and only a few are rabid, but I couldn't take any chances--he might be one of those few. Their little bat bites are so tiny, we might not even know if we or the cat were bitten last night. After all, he was confused, and tiring easily--signs of a virus, possibly. Maybe he was sick. Ten minutes later (my husband was out of the bathroom by then) I open the door just a bit (they can enter spaces as small as 1/4")--he had stopped struggling and was in a little brown ball on the green porch mat. I look again in 20 minutes--and breathe a sigh of relief seeing he is gone. I didn't want to pick up a dead bat on my way to coffee on Sunday, and really was hoping he'd survived my cruel blows. I probably just stunned him, and in the cool air, he collected his thoughts, spread his wings, and flew off to catch some bugs. With a great story to tell the other bats.
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