stolen from HEP. . . .

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Traveling mercies, please

Off to a weekend grassroots retreat with Thankful, jjem! and Free Spirit among others. Subject: Election Integrity. Should be fun on a number of accounts, lol!


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2008's gonna be fun. . . .

The party of "Family Values" three front runners have five divorces, and at least four adulteries amongst them. The Democrats' top three on the other hand, have none. How's this going to wash with the American Taliban?

Lurking just over the horizon are liabilities for three Republicans who have topped several national, independent polls for the GOP's favorite 2008 nominee: Sen. John McCain (affair, divorce), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (affair, divorce, affair, divorce), and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (divorce, affair, nasty divorce). Together, they form the most maritally challenged crop of presidential hopefuls in American political history.

For original, click title.

Daylight exacerbates warning

You may have noticed that March of this year was particularly hot. As a matter of fact, I understand that it was the hottest March since the beginning of the last century. All of the trees were fully leafed out and legions of bugs and snakes were crawling around during a time in Arkansas when, on a normal year, we might see a snowflake or two.

This should come as no surprise to any reasonable person. As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they ?

Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal Congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat. Perhaps next time there should be serious studies performed before Congress passes laws with such far-reaching effects.

CONNIE M. MESKIMEN / Hot Springs

For Sam's father. . .

For Sam

Click! The big pic is amazing!

The War on Babies

In 2004, Gov. Haley Barbour came to office promising not to raise taxes and to cut Medicaid. Face-to-face meetings were required for annual re-enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP, the children’s health insurance program; locations and hours for enrollment changed, and documentation requirements became more stringent.

As a result, the number of non-elderly people, mainly children, covered by the Medicaid and CHIP programs declined by 54,000 in the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years. According to the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program in Jackson, some eligible pregnant women were deterred by the new procedures from enrolling.

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To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9.

At what point do you simply call it murder?

August 25, 1992 by NOAA GOES-7 weather satellite


The most beautiful earth on earth

~~ Subway Seranade

It's Mama's Day. Honor her.

Bless the Animals

Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilize their country. —George W. Bush


Image via Shakespear's Sister

Gosh, I do love the Serviceberry!

jc ~~

♥

There are days I *really* miss the redwoods. . .

Aren't grand bebes wunnerfull?

Matt Gentry, The Roanoke Times via Associated Press

April 19, 1995, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building

Columbine High on April 20, 1999.

April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech

The Waste Land

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD


APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.


T.S. Eliot

Virginia Tech

A White House spokesman said President Bush was horrified by the rampage and offered his prayers to the victims and the people of Virginia.

"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," spokeswoman Dana Perino said


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Holocaust Remembrance Day

NO, WE DO NOT FORGET




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Cat is about to have a nervous breakdown over this storm: woke me up this morning with "Come see, come see." Worried himself to death. I put him out. He started patting the window to get in. I went out to check the rainbuckets, he came, and insisted I come back in. Then he wanted me to take a nap, and pretend nothing is happening. So I put him out again. Now he's at the window, wanting in. Poor baby. . . .

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.


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WooooHoooo ~~ Mama's Mad!!

Sunday morning news

The butterfly machine

Training hearts

to sing as one


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click!

Happy Friday the Thirteenth

You will be missed, my friend, you will be missed

"in his classic novel Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut explains how the world is divided into two types of social organizations: the karass and the granfalloon. A karass is a spontaneously forming group, joined by unpredictable links, that actually gets stuff done— as Vonnegut describes it, 'a team that do[es] God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing.' A granfalloon, on the other hand, is a 'false karass,' a bureaucratic structure that looks like a team but is 'meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done.' ... When you find yourself in a karass, it's an intuitive, unplanned experience. Getting into a granfalloon, on the other hand, usually involves showing two forms of ID.. . . "

To Mr. Vonnegut, the only possible redemption for the madness and apparent meaninglessness of existence was human kindness. The title character in his 1965 novel, “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater,” summed up his philosophy:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”

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Beauties and the Beast

(Mike Derer / AP)


(Mike Derer / AP)






I have a grandson who is twelve. I fervently hope by the time he's old enough to go to college, that Imus is picking up bottles off of the street in Hell's Kitchen.


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Jerome Delay/AP

The moment became symbolic across the world as it signalled the fall of the dictator. Wearing a black vest, Mr al-Jubouri, an Iraqi weightlifting champion, pounded through the concrete in an attempt to smash the statue and all it meant to him. Now, on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, he says: "I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day."


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Today was a good day.

April 05, 2007 at 09:38 PM MDT

You'll never believe what we did today. We all went to the zoo. Tanner's liver doc gave him the OK. She just said to stay away from birds and reptiles and anyone with a cold!

Tanner fell asleep on the way there, and stayed asleep when we put him in the stroller. I kept thinking that he'd sleep through the whole thing and when he woke up he'd wonder when we were going to the zoo!

He woke up when we were looking at a leopard. He sat straight up and was so excited...he ran from place to place, pointing and squeeling and saying hi to all the animals. It was fun to watch. Not only for us, but I noticed other people enjoying his enthusiasm, too. "Hi Zebra...can't reach him...get him." "Elephant." "Hi giraffe. Where baby giraffe?" "Elephant." "Monkeys, go find monkeys, go find monkeys." "Elephant." Tanner even got up close and personal with a baby orangatan. (With glass in between, of course.) The batteries on my camera chose that moment to die! But, it was the cutest thing ever. I just love Tanner's excitement for life. I think that he thinks the world is his. Everything is here for him. He doesn't care how many people are around, he shows his enthusiasm. I LOVE IT.

Several times I noticed people look at Tanner, or staring. The adults look away really quick, as if I didn't see them looking. The kids, though, get closer and just stare, or even say something! I love that about kids. It's funny, because I forget that Tanner has a feeding tube and hearing aids. He's just my Tanner.

We figured since this was our first real outing as a family since Tanner was diagnosed over a year ago, we'd make a stop at the gift shop before we left. (The kids wanted to ride the train, but the line was way too long, so this was a trade.) Tanner is too funny. I'm pretty sure he thinks that stores are like great big places full of stuff that is all there for him to choose between. He can have anything and everything, right? Well, no. haha. He came away with a little brown monkey, a purple monkey, and a tiny pvc tiger. You should have seen him holding them all tightly in his little arms. You would be able to see it....if I had thought to take a picture! The older boys both chose books. (although their first choice was a huge, $40 stuffed crocodile....um...no!)

Today was a good day.

Sometimes it just seems to good to be true. I have my days, too many really, where I feel so depressed about how life is turning out, and how hard it is. But, this was definitley not one of those days.

Today was a good day.

Megan


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for what it's worth

My blog is worth $6,209.94.
How much is your blog worth?

Tulip mania

Among the various historical accounts of the tulip crisis, one writer put it this way:

The immense expansion of commerce [in the Netherlands] encouraged gambling upon profits to be made from speculation in all kinds of products . ... It was the price that had to be paid for the increased efficiency in the complex system of business. But now and again speculation intensified into a frenzy of what the Dutch called windhandel, literally trading in the wind, that is, buying or selling in futures without actual possession of goods.

The most famous example of such gambling was the tulip mania of 1636-37 involving the bulbs of tulips and hyacinths which had become the modish flowers of the day in their myriad new varieties. Rapidly escalating prices spurred the gambling instincts of all sorts of people, especially in the district of Haarlem. ...

But suddenly in 1637 after prices had soared to fantastic heights, the speculative castle in the sky collapsed. For those who lost fortunes there was tragedy."

(See The Low Countries in Early Modern Times, by Herbert H. Rowen.)

Another account says,

Bulbs were bought and sold and resold dozens of times. They were bought and sold unseen. ... One Amsterdamer made 60,000 gilders in four months, when his annual salary as a burgomaster [mayor] was only 500. ...

The fever kept on getting wilder and wilder until suddenly at the beginning of 1637 the market cracked. In a few days hundreds were ruined. The losses were such that the whole credit system, not merely for tulips, was endangered.

Such was the mania. Among the casualties left out in the cold was Jan van Goven, the Leyden painter. It was remarkable that Rembrandt was not involved.

(Jeffery Cotterall, Amsterdam, the Life of a City.)

Rembrandt tulips

Tanner update

April 04, 2007 at 03:46 PM MDT


The day we get lab results or any test result, I always seem to have a knot in my stomach. I try to brace myself for the possibility of life-changing bad numbers. Well, this month I can breathe easy.

Tanner's AFP is 4.1 it has been between 4.1 and 4.4 the last four months. The rest of his labs are pretty good as well. Last time one of his liver numbers was elevated for some unknown reason, and although it's slightly elevated still, it's lower than it was. AND the BUN (kidney function) that has been elevated, is the lowest it's ever been.

Grateful for good labs, Megan

Was I wrong?

Today, Bloodroot!



AND




Serviceberry. Which I just found out is a member of the rose family. (And no thorns, either. . . )



So Serviceberries are something like rose hips?

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My first occurrence of Coltsfoot, this year

was yesterday. Three weeks later than last year. My earliest and most reliable spring flower. Can Bloodroot be far behind?

The war against terrorists. . . . .

In fact, according to Frances Williams of the Financial Times, the International Red Cross says the proportion of Iraqis imprisoned by the Empire who have done nothing at all may be as high as 90 percent!

Coalition military intelligence officers believed 70 [percent to] 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were "arrested by mistake," according to a leaked Red Cross report on prisoner abuse, further details of which were disclosed on Monday [May 10].

The confidential report, given to the U.S. and British governments in February but covering events in March to November last year, describes a pattern of indiscriminate arrests involving destruction of property and brutal behaviour towards suspects and their families.

Ill-treatment during capture was frequent and "appeared to go beyond the reasonable, legitimate and proportional use of force," the report said. Such behaviour "seemed to reflect a usual modus operandi by certain CF [coalition forces] battle groups." ("Most Iraqi detainees 'arrested by mistake,'" May 10, 2004)

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Rumpelstiltskin gets his knickers all in a twist. . .

Where are the liberals now?
Posted: 3/31/2007 4:48:33 AM

The cowards are in hiding!

The British female soldier held HOSTAGE by Iran is FORCED to wear Muslim attire but she is not Muslim. This flies in the face of the Geneva convention and should have Amnesty International, The Red Cross, the ACLU, Rosie O'Dummy and other "bleeding hearts" but not one damned word!

NOT ONE!

They all piss and moan if we try and learn from our mortal enimies what they plan to do next. They protect their rights (that they do not have), but fail to see the double standard. They are a sick bunch of terrorist lovers that need to be deported to Iran to see how they would be treated there! None of them would last a day.

SPEAK UP AMERICA!
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This is the picture of the poor tortured sailor:


Faye Turney in pictures broadcast on Iranian television. Photograph: AP

I'm just soooooooooooo relieved that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales solved the moral dilemma for us by declaring the Geneva Convention "obsolete" and "quaint" ~~ What a great service the Bushies do us all. . . .


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