Saturday, November 27, 2010

Sunday, November 21, 2010


Forgot where I got this. If you know, let me know, and I'll attribute it. I think it's astonishing.

Friday, November 19, 2010


novembergale

Thursday, November 18, 2010



A L L Y U P D A T E !


Wednesday, November 17, 2010 6:44 PM, EST


Tomorrow Ally has a HAMA draw. We will find out the results next Wednesday; to see if we are headed back to NYC, or if we need to wait it out longer.

Ally has been doing well lately. She is enjoying school. One of her favorite games to play is "Circle Time." This is when we all circle up (stuffed animals included) and we sing, Ally reads a story, and other activities happen.

That's it for now. Thanks for checking in on us!

P.S. The new picture is Ally "knitting." She likes to copy what we do, and I have been knitting like crazy lately!

Monday, November 15, 2010


travelingangel2003

Thursday, November 11, 2010

11th hour, 11th day, 11th month

Thank you, daddy. I won't forget.

Saturday, November 06, 2010

Ally Update:

Saturday, November 6, 2010 5:42 PM, EDT


I started this journal on February 15, 2008.
Today is the first Saturday since that day that Ally has not had to take medicine!

In News & Analysis

OpenSecrets Blog | OpenSecrets.org

Who's Buying This Election? Close to Half the Money Fueling Outside Ads Comes From Undisclosed Donors


| More
congress-money.jpg
Of the nearly $300 million spent by outside groups so far in attempts to influence the election, the public remains completely in the dark about who’s behind 42 percent of these expenditures, an Election Day analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics indicates.

Some groups spending big bucks in advance of the election -- namely nonprofits that classified as 501(c) groups under the U.S. tax code -- are not required by law to disclose their donors. And their political investments this year have proliferated, with some of these groups taking advantage of the new campaign finance landscape that no longer prohibits their use of corporate cash in the final stretch of the election.

At the federal level, more than $123 million has been donated by anonymous sources to nonprofit organizations that have run television and radio advertisements, sent out direct mailers and bought up Internet ad space ahead of today’s election.

Many of these nonprofits are affiliated with explicitly political groups registered under section 527 of U.S. tax code -- political action committees, “super PACs” or other 527 organizations, entities that must disclose their donors. Oftentimes, one organization’s different legal entities use the same name, so tracking where the money is coming from -- and which one of those legal entities is making the expenditures -- is all the more difficult.

Some of those 501(c) groups include Planned Parenthood, Equality California and American Rights at Work on the left and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, the National Rifle Association and Americans for Prosperity on the right.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a 501(c)6 business association that isn’t required to disclose its donors, ranks as the top outside-spending group that is not a party committee, such as the Democratic National Committee or Republican National Committee. The Chamber has spent $35 million this election cycle on “electioneering communications,” targeted broadcast messages that include a visual or audio reference to federal candidates but don’t expressly advocate for or against those candidates.

The next three of the top five outside spenders are all conservative groups that share office space, operatives and a similar lineage.

American Action Network, a 501(c)4 organization headed by former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), has spent $26.6 million on a combination of general electioneering communications and “independent expenditures” that expressly advocate for or against federal candidates.

american crossroads.gif
American Crossroads, a 527-organization-turned-“Super PAC” that promoted to donors by
Karl Rove, has spent $21.6 on independent expenditures, mostly advocating against Democrats. All of its donors -- many of which are corporations or billionaires -- have been disclosed, as OpenSecrets Blog has previously reported.

American Crossroads’ sister 501(c)4 organization is not required to disclose its donors. This group, Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, has spent $17.1 million on independent expenditures and electioneering communications.

The only liberal-aligned group in the top five outside spenders is the Service Employees International Union. The SEIU has spent more than $15.7 million on ads and other communications as it works to elect Democrats.

Overall, for every $1 a liberal group has spent on these expenditures, a conservative group has spent $2, the Center’s research shows.

Friday, November 05, 2010

40º and no snow yet. Just sayin'. . . .

Nancy *did* say that it was snowing lightly up on her ridge around five. Ain't seen nothin' down here, though.

40º and no snow yet. Just sayin'. . . .

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Wednesday, November 3, 2010 8:04 PM, EDT

Every night we read Ally 2 books after we have hooked her up to her pump; one of which is a goodnight book. She has been choosing Good Night Moon for the past couple of months. We have gotten into the habit of letting her choose what is jumping over the moon. Here is what transpired this evening:
Daddy: What is jumping over the moon tonight?
Ally: Pa pa pa pa, something that starts with pa pa pa
Daddy: Penguins?
Ally: PIGGIES!!!!!
Daddy: Ok
Ally: Tomorrow night it will be wa wa wa dubba dubba dubba doubleyou WORM!!!!!
Daddy: WOW! "In the great green room....."

What a fun kiddo we have!

On Tuesday Ally got to be in a marching band at school. All the kids had instruments (Ally had something that shakes and make noise) and marched around the playground. She LOVED it! She is VERY secretive about what happens at school, and rarely shares anything that happens there, but she was willing to tell us about the marching band. In fact, we now have several homemade instruments around our house. Super fun!

As of right now we are in a holding pattern for 3f8 treatment again. She gets HAMA drawn on the 18th, with results on the 24th. Hopefully it will be a great Thanksgiving with plans to go to NYC the following week. (Anything is better than the Emergency Room Thanksgiving of 2009.)

About that smile. . . . Grandson, 1992; Grandfather, 1942. Ages 28 and 33. . . .

Tuesday, November 02, 2010



Search for truth

restless monkey brain

not in objects

but the art behind ...

impression as memory

of a time when "justice"

had meaning

and corporations

were not people.

Fish lying dead on the beach

are not fit to eat.

Plant seeds.



By Phil Specht on Nov 2, 2010

I VOTED!!

I don't think though that I've ever realized until today how much like Christmas voting is to me. It's all anticipation. Now I feel letdown and worried; it's all over for me, but the counting. And I'm afraid that's going to be really *ugly.*

Next life, I'd like to live in a country full of patient realists instead of antsy two-year olds.

from East Coker


katy99780




Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

~~T.S. Eliot


Monday, November 01, 2010

TODAY I saw a pair of pileated woodpeckers, on *this* side of the river. Right out my front window!



Thank you Wikipedia for the pic!


Freedom Of Screech

College | North Carolina, USA

(I’m an Admissions Officer and am working at a college fair. We are not religiously affiliated. I run into an alum.)

Me: “Hi, is your daughter interested in [college]?”

Alum: “I’m an alum. Class of ‘83.”

Me: “Fantastic! I’m Class of ‘04. Can I answer any questions for you?”

Alum: “I won’t be letting my daughter look here. I have some issues with how [college] is being run. God is not happy with you, and neither am I.”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. If you’d like, I’d be happy to take your comment back to the Vice President of-”

Alum: “Are you aware that you let in students with liberal views and speakers with socialist leanings?”

Me: “Ma’am, we have a great deal of speakers on campus with a variety of view points.”

Alum: “The school has gone downhill since we let in those people! So I’ve stopped giving money. You can take that back to them. You’ll no longer see my $25 a year.”

Me: “Ma’am, as an alum myself, I’m proud to have graduated from a school that encourages both freedom of thought and speech in our students and speakers.”

Alum: “You don’t need freedom of speech if you let Jesus think for you.”