Colder-than-normal and wetter-than-usual

That’s the Farmer’s Almanac prediction for the winter of 2014-15.  It was correct last winter.

http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/apexchange/2014/08/24/us-farmers-almanac.html

Uniters have a dream, dividers have a scheme

Monday Memories—summer of 1956

During yesterday’s sermon Pastor Jennings was preaching about Joseph and his brothers and said something about kids of 16 or 17, and from there on, all I could think of was, “what was I doing the summer I was 16.”  I have a clear memory of summer 1957, 1958, 1959, and 1960 but am drawing a blank on 1956.  I figure I worked at Zickhur’s Drug Store; I think I’d dropped out of the high school band where I played trombone, so I wasn’t doing the summer practice.  I found one mention at my MMHS blog—a going away party for our exchange student Klaus at our house, before he returned to Germany.  My boyfriend had graduated with the class of 1956 and was getting ready for college in Iowa, but can’t remember if we did anything special or went shopping. My family still lived in the big white house on South Hannah. I was the art editor for the Mounders yearbook for 1957, so the junior editor and I did get together to do some drawings that summer. I knew I would have to do a 25 page report for history, so I collected articles all summer about the election in hopes it would be my topic.  Julie Clark was born in July, so I probably spent some time there (they lived in our back yard in a trailer). So, what happened in 1956?

 

If I needed another t-shirt. . .

Suicide attempts among transgendered

The prevalence of suicide attempts among respondents
to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey
(NTDS), conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian
Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality,
is 41 percent, which vastly exceeds the 4.6 percent of
the overall U.S. population who report a lifetime suicide
attempt, and is also higher than the 10-20 percent
of lesbian, gay and bisexual adults who report ever
attempting suicide.

http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/AFSP-Williams-Suicide-Report-Final.pdf

The Williams Institute is dedicated to conducting rigorous, independent research on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy.  A national think tank at UCLA Law, the Williams Institute produces high-quality research with real-world relevance and disseminates it to judges, legislators, policymakers, media and the public.

The Williams Institute has done a state by state economic analysis of how gay marriage can boost state economies.  Ohio has about 20,000 same sex couples, and if 50% wanted to marry that would bring in about $70.8 million in spending on weddings and "tourism" (aka people traveling to attend the wedding). Well, if that's all it takes to boost Ohio's economy, why not insist that all couples living together without benefit of marriage just get married? Elsewhere I've seen estimates of the number of same sex couples that want to marry, and it really isn't all that high. The reasons are about the same as men everywhere give. 

Prominent Conservative Think Tanks

The term “think tank” seems to have arisen in the 1950s, but there were organizations of that type even back in the 19th century.  Many were established to address the problems of war (not successfully I’ve noticed), and others social, environmental and education policy.

The three most-cited conservative think tanks are

the Heritage Foundation, fifth most influential think tank in America.

the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the seventh most influential think tank in America.

the American Enterprise Institute, the eighth most influential think tank in America.

One can only conclude from 5th, 8th and 7th being conservative, that 1-4, 6, 9 and 10 are liberal think tanks and reporters would be quoting them more often. But this list is for my own convenience so when I read quotes, I’ll know whose bias is what.

Other conservative think tanks include the following:

Cato Institute
Hoover Institution
Manhattan Institute
Lexington Institute
Project for the New American Century (according to Wikipedia, is extinct, 2006)
Center for Security Policy
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Center for Immigration Studies
Claremont Institute
Hudson Institute
http://www.ehow.com/list_5553767_list-conservative-think-tanks.html

Where are the war protesters?

Peggy Noonan and James Taranto (Wall St. Journal) have noticed the lack of war protesters over Obama's recent war action. In 2001 Bush had near 100% support and in 2003 he had 70% and he had made the rounds for international allies. Still, he had protesters marching at the White House. I remember a corner in Columbus where they gathered to call him names and chant War is not the Answer. So where are they when Obama didn't ask Congress and didn't line up allies? Did they all go to Ferguson to divert our attention?

http://online.wsj.com/articles/best-of-the-web-today-the-missing-protesters-1408735767

http://online.wsj.com/articles/a-new-kind-of-terrorist-threat-1408662080

Corbat the Norman

I was reading an Ancestry.com explanation of English surnames, but mine wasn't included because it came with the Norman invasion in 1066, and of course, the Normans were descendants of those terrible Scandinavians, so who really knows. Here's to you, Corbat the Norman.

http://www.1066.co.nz/library/battle_abbey_roll1/subchap133.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbet_family

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/corbettonenamestudy/First/People/anglo.htm

Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler

After the Women's Club book sale at Lakeside Chautauqua a few weeks ago, I tucked the bag of books under the wicker on the porch. Yesterday while waiting for our guests, I poked around in the bag and found Anne Tyler's Noah's Compass. I didn't remember buying it, but there it was. Although I'm in the middle of two other novels, this one has been holding my interest. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/books/review/Harrison-t.html?_r=0

“At 61, Liam has lost his job “teaching fifth grade in a second-rate private boys’ school,” an embarrassment he accepts with the informed stoicism of someone who completed all but his dissertation for a doctorate in philosophy. Now he can settle into retirement in a smaller, cheaper apartment on the outskirts of Baltimore, the city Tyler owns as a novelist, so faithfully does she return to its setting. But before Liam has spent even one night in what he expects will be his “final dwelling place,” a would-be burglar comes through the back door Liam failed to lock.

The next thing Liam knows, he’s in a hospital bed, his head bandaged, with no idea of how he came to be there. The burglar may not have made off with any of Liam’s material possessions, but he hit him hard enough to obliterate a few hours’ worth of his memory, and it is this loss — rather than that of a teaching position he didn’t much like — that serves as a catalyst for all that follows. Neither his ex-wife nor his three daughters, who consider Liam so obtuse they call him Mr. Magoo, understand his growing fixation on retrieving what he can’t remember, especially as it was, presumably, traumatic. But as Liam understands it, “his true self had gone away from him and had a crucial experience without him and failed to come back afterward.”” NYT review

Joann gives it 5 stars: “I love the way Tyler takes everyday happenings and makes the reader realize that nothing is really insignificant, that everything has meaning or value.While reading the book, you hardly realize the layers of character development that she has woven into the story. Her observations of the human condition are always so on-target, but she never makes judgments about what she sees.”

Who is this WWII soldier?

This is going around Facebook with the following explanation: 

“My mom found this behind a picture she bought at a garage sale. The artist is K.B. Ransley - Chicago circa 1943. Please help to share this through Facebook and any other social media in hopes of finding his family. I'm sure they would love to have it!” (https://www.facebook.com/lori.seifert.3)

The artist, K.B. Ransley made over 1400 of these portraits of military passing through Chicago during WWII, according to this website:

“Kenneth Brown Ransley (March 21, 1893-June 12, 1989) was a female portrait artist who painted thousands of paintings in her lifetime.

A native of Dawson, Ga., she studied art at the School of Art Institute of Chicago and met her husband, artist Frank T. Ransley, while in school. The couple settled in Park Ridge, Ill., where Kenneth painted portrait commissions and held open studio sessions with live models.

Park Ridge attracted many artists. "Other artists who also lived and worked in Park Ridge include Albert Krehbiel and his wife, Dulah Evans Krehbiel, Alfonso Iannelli, Grant Wood, Eugene Romeo, Kenneth Brown Ransley."
During World War II, she donated her talents to the war effort, visiting the Service Men's Center in Chicago twice a week to sketch portraits of enlisted men. She executed 1,400 or these portraits and gave them to either the sitter or his family.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-06-29/news/8902130434_1_girl-scouts-nursing-home-memorial-services

He looks a lot like Kirk Douglas who was in the Navy in WWII.

Is the president giving signals?

From Roland Lane’s Facebook page:

“ Most every thing a President does is seen as a signal. If you announce further reductions in our military budget the same week the Chinese increase theirs, that is a signal. If you withdraw Poland's missile defense system on the 70th anniversary-on the exact day no less-of the invasion of Poland by Russia, that is a signal. If you give money to Hamas while Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc. are trying to put a lid on it, that is a signal. If your neighbor's house burns down and you decide to roast hot dogs, that is a signal. If you go golfing seven minutes after one of our own gets his head chopped off, that is a signal. Signals make policy. How do you think moderate Arab nations interpreted this? The Prime Minister of Great Britain cancelled his activity and flew home. That was a signal. We cannot excuse the President's behavior as something that only a social moron would do. At the very best the President's behavior suggests the characteristics of an individual detached from his leadership position and that scares our friends and allies to death. At its worst we see the possibility that President is not on our team, and perhaps never was.”

No wonder

Iceland is under a volcano alert

“An intense earthquake swarm began Saturday deep beneath Bárðarbunga, Iceland’s largest volcano complex. (Here’s how to pronounce it.) As of Tuesday, the Icelandic Met Office cautions there’s no evidence yet of magma moving toward the surface or that an eruption is imminent. Still, Iceland is springing into action, which suggests the threat is real. These people know their volcanoes.”

Global cooling is a great possibility, and interrupted air flights are virtually assured. Ohio used to be covered by glacial ice.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/08/19/iceland_volcano_bardarbunga_how_bad_would_an_eruption_be.html

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/17/1322378/-Just-To-Let-You-All-Know?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/02/somalas-volcano-little-ice-age_n_4029092.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

Not me

Not me. I read books like the dieter sneaking snack food. I even cheat by reading the ending or sometimes just the footnotes. I like them free or cheap at the resale shop, and I won't read them if underlined. I keep some for pets and adornments. I hang on to some because my mother's name is inside. I keep a book in my lap just in case the TV show is boring, and a few in the car in case the trip is endless. A house without books might as well be haunted.

The double standards over Israel

“Why are Western liberals always more offended by Israeli militarism than by any other kind of militarism? It’s extraordinary. France can invade Mali and there won’t be loud, rowdy protests by peaceniks in Paris. David Cameron, backed by a whopping 557 members of parliament, can order airstrikes on Libya and British leftists won’t give over their Twitterfeeds to publishing gruesome pics of the Libyan civilians killed as a consequence. President Obama can resume his drone attacks in Pakistan, killing 13 people in one strike last month, and Washington won’t be besieged by angry anti-war folk demanding ‘Hands off Pakistan’. But the minute Israel fires a rocket into Gaza, the second Israeli politicians say they’re at war again with Hamas, radicals in all these Western nations will take to the streets, wave hyperbolic placards, fulminate on Twitter, publish pictures of dead Palestinian children, publish the names and ages of everyone ‘MURDERED BY ISRAEL’, and generally scream about Israeli ‘bloodletting’. (When the West bombs another country, it’s ‘war’; when Israel does it, it’s ‘bloodletting’.)”

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/theres-something-very-ugly-in-this-rage-against-israel/15400#.U_R2n2d0zGh

Walk a mile in ALS shoes-the ice challenge to raise awareness

1. Pick up a 10-pound weight. Now imagine it’s your fork and move it from your plate to your mouth repeatedly without shaking.
2. Sit in a chair for just 15 minutes moving nothing but your eyes. Nothing. No speaking, no scratching your nose, no shifting your weight, no changing the channel on the television, no computer work. Only your eyes. As you sit, imagine: this is your life. Your only life.
3. Borrow a wheelchair or power scooter and try to maneuver quickly through the aisles at Walmart, without speaking. Note the way people react to you.
4. Strap 25 pounds to your forearm. Now, adjust your rearview mirror.
5. Using none of your own muscles, have your spouse or child or friend get you dressed and brush your teeth. Write down some of the feelings you have being cared for in this way.
6. Before you eat your next meal, take a good, long look at the food. Inhale deeply and appreciate the aroma. Now, imagine never being able to taste that – or any other food – for the rest of your life.
7. Put two large marshmallows in your mouth and have a conversation with your friends. How many times must you repeat yourself? How does this make you feel?
8. Go to bed and stay in one position for as long as you possibly can, moving nothing.
9. Strap weights to your ankles and climb a flight of stairs, taking two at a time. That’s the kind of strength it takes for someone with ALS to tackle the stairs on a good day.
10. Install a text-to-speech app on your phone or iPad and use it exclusively to communicate for one day.

From a blogger whose husband has ALS

The woman going after Rick Perrry

Ferguson, Missouri

If the race of the victim and the police officer had been different or reversed, it might have had a paragraph in a St. Louis newspaper/evening news. I am waiting for the investigation. If Brown was in fact a threat, or was stealing, as some videos show, it still is not a death sentence; if the officer has been trained to shoot if he feels threatened, we also need to know that. Beyond the investigation of his death, there's the other issue of the rioting and looting. If it were your neighborhood, what would you want police to do? Beyond the death of Brown, I do question some decisions of the police--like releasing the name of the officer, and the incredibly heavy armaments that only alarmed the residents. And I would ask any reflexive "it's police brutality" person, who do you call when there's a break-in or robbery at your business or residence? Al Sharpton or the police?

Yesterday at Lakeside Chautauqua chaplain hour Dr. Ronald White Jr. had us examine an 1838 speech by Lincoln, and we'll follow the development of his thought over the years through his speeches. This one for the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, IL was during a time of mob behavior, and he was addressing the dangers of mobocracy following the death of Elijah Lovejoy, who had left St. Louis to be safer in Illinois. Same words true today about mobs. "Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy."

Why do the media focus on Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin when their tragic deaths are not the norm? They refuse to do the real story--the high abortion rate and it being the number one cause of death for African Americans. A billboard in NYC "The Most Dangerous Place for an African-American is in the Womb" had to be removed not because it was racist as liberals charged, but because it was true.

Doctors squabble over editorial on Gaza

The August 2 The Lancet, published online July 28  (prominent medical journal) carried an editorial, not only supporting Hamas, but condemning Israel. Now there is a petition circulating to dismiss Richard Horton as Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet .

Here is a sampling of comments from subscribers and readers of Medpage,  where I noticed the controversy, which asked readers to comment on whether medical journals should be political.  The editors of Medpage also seemed to miss the bias—being political isn’t the problem.  Hating Jews and Israel definitely is:

“The editor is an ignoramus-Gaza and Hamas are daggers poised as Israeli's jugular vein. Hamas has declared it will destroy Israeli and all Jews. This idiot sitting behind a desk at a safe distance has the nerve to comment on the ability of a free people to defend itself. For 1800 years western Europe raped, murdered , and vilified Jews. The best of you turned your heads from the slaughter. The worst said so what. Anti-semitism is bred in your marrow. But not this time. Kill one of us and we will kill 1000 of you. No slight will go unanswered. If you want to wallow in blood and slaughter than so be it. OUR LEADERS HAVE SAID IT-NEVER AGAIN!”

“This is a rather prejudiced and hypocritical article, to say the least. Israel is indeed, far from perfect. But Israel is too small and outnumbered, surrounded as she is by enemies funded by Iran, to allow herself to be destroyed. (Like the Yazidis in Iraq). The terror tunnels, built over the past 5 or 6 years, ironically with cement that came from Israel, posed a direct threat to Israel's survival. 500 Hamas terrorists were preparing to launch a huge Mumbai style attack on Israeli civilians this Yom Kippor. There may be tunnels to the north as well, built by Hezbollah and coming from Lebanon. This is being investigated now. The editor might save some of his anger for the UN, who has permitted Hamas to build tunnels on UN premises, and who allows poisonous anti-Semitic lessons to be taught in UN schools in both Gaza and East Jerusalem. The editor might also reflect on Britain's history of anti-Semitism, going back to the the 13th Century in York and elsewhere. Not to mention British soldiers who armed Arabs while simultaneously disarming the Jews in 1948 when the State of Israel was declared a nation. I suggest this editor might want to widen his outlook by reading Brendan O'Neill's excellent online article in Spiked, "There's Something Ugly in This Rage Against Israel."

‘'I strongly suggest you read the balanced response from the Chair of the Israel Medical Association and the Director of the Israel Ministry of Health to the letter recently published in the Lancet. http://www.ima.org.il/Ima/FormStorage/Type8/response.pdf This issue should be of interest to readers of Retraction Watch - not just the dismay felt by medical academics at the political hijack of the Lancet by supporters of Hamas but also the lack of editorial discretion and the non-disclosure of conflict of interest - where the authors of the letter did not acknowledge their long-standing activism against Israel and in favor of Hamas - including apparently the support of some of them for acts of international terrorism: http://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2014/08/05/lancet-a-home-for-evils-useful-idiots-n1874715/page/full. It is a very nasty and dangerous world we live in. There comes a point where you have to stand up and speak up.’'

Being political about moral issues is nothing new in medical journals, from climate change to abortion to causes of poverty. Apparently everything medical is also political.  Reminds me of my career field.  Librarianship leans left perhaps because it is so dependent on government largesse.    Getting published outside the approved opinion or research direction is difficult.

Monday Memories of visiting grandparents on Sunday

I lifted this memory from another blog I wrote 10 years ago on the subject of cartooning.  I wandered a bit off topic, so thought this was worth another look.

“When visiting my father's parents in Mt. Morris, Illinois, we cousins could walk to The Lamb, the town movie theater, to get away from the boring adult conversation. However, when visiting my maternal grandparents, who lived on a farm near Franklin Grove, entertainment was a bit more old fashioned--playing in the out buildings, climbing trees, creating villages with a box of wooden blocks, playing the card game "Authors," or looking through dusty, old books. Not a bad way to spend a boring Sunday afternoon.

When my own family visited that same farm house, about a decade after my grandparents were gone and my mother had converted the house to a retreat center for church groups and family reunions, my children entertained themselves with the same activities (no TV). They would reach for a favorite book which was a compilation of cartoons from the late 19th century through the 1940s, Cartoon Cavalcade. It was most likely a People's Book Club selection (like Book of the Month but through Sears). It was my mother's book, and I had spent many hours browsing it when I was little. Many of her books migrated to the farm house to provide just such entertainment for quiet week-ends.

Someone in the family has this book, but I don’t recall who.