About that French guy with the girl's name...

Dominique something?

I was trying to imagine the mechanical aspect of his interaction with the hotel maid. How do you, without a weapon, force someone to commit a Lewinsky? Didn't the woman, er, have teeth?

Just asking.

And the victim! A black, single mom, unlettered, a widowed undocumented immigrant, who undoubtedly attended morning mass every day. All she needed to make her the perfect victim was a wooden leg. Too good to be true. Sadly.

Another chance for untold wealth

If only I had $389,00 lying around...

Good day,

I have been trying to reach you for sometime now, so i just want to inform
you that I have deposited your ATM MASTER CARD of $800,000,00 USD United
state dollars to the FedEx Delivery services here in England, and i
packaged the ATM MASTER CARD inside a magazine where nobody will notice
the content. Insurance and delivery charges have been paid for, but the
only fee remaining is the security safe keeping fee of $398,00 US Dollars
only, which you will be required to pay before delivery.

However, this was not paid for because of demurrage. Well, I did forward
them your delivery address, but a re-confirmation is important when
contacting them if you want to change your address. I advice you quote the
parcel and shipment code to them for onward delivery to your re-confirmed
address. The Universal ATM MASTERCARD has pin number is 1407, and the
maximum withdrawal limit per day is USD$ 9,500 (Nine Thousand, Five Hundred
United States Dollar) Only.

Please make sure you contact the shipment officer through his correct email below.
Contact the shipment office with the below information and re-confirm your present
mailing address to them:

Attention: Mr. West Newton Shipment Officer Of FedEx delivery services
London, England.
E-mail: fexexpress@post.com
Tel: +44 740 519 1732

Full name......................
Present Home address............
Country....................
Telephone...............

Below is the Deposit details:
Deposit Number: PLCC-101-PL45
Sort/Clearance Code: PLC/101-45/P50
Deposit Certificate N0.: 405576
Shipment Code: CBEL/OWN/0087
Parcel Number: EG2272-UK
Consignment Description: British Magazine
Depositor: Barrister Greg Williams

I am travelling out of town and will be back in three months time.
Note that I packaged the ATM MASTER CARD inside a magazine where nobody
will notice the content, I also told the shipment officer Mr. West Newton, that it
is ordinary British magazine I want to deliver to my friend abroad to avoid
further delay unless you delay to send their security safe keeping fee. You have to
inform them on how you are to send the security fee to them, so they can instruct
you on how to send it to them to enable them dispatch your package immediately to you.

Remain blessed and enjoy your funds.
Barr. Greg Williams.

Happy Independence Day

 

Genealogy

I've been doing a bit of genealogical research lately. Traced my father's father back to Hungary, where I was stopped dead. My father's mother came from a large family, but no trace of them. Everyone on both sides of my family changed their names, which doesn't make it easy. My father's sister was Julia in Hungary, but was transmogrified to Helen here. His brother Gersh became Andy.

My dad's father was known as Wolf when he came to this country, but soon became William P. A friend suggested that wolf was a translation of Zev, and what do you know, he was buried under the name of Schlomo Ze'ev ben Rab Ya'akov. This indicates that his (Wolf or William) father was a rabbi. But I always understood he was an orphan.

My mother's father had a couple of brothers named Feibel and Velvel. I found immigration records for them and they then disappeared into history.

I was contacted by someone else who shares some of my relatives; I'll call him Steve. Steve was able to give me some information which was interesting about a cousin of mine. Then he started discovering new and distinguished ancestors of dubious provenance: Eleanor of Aquitaine, for instance. Except for a gap of a century or two which somehow got lost, Steve claims relationship to her and to various other august personages.

Not me. All my ancestors were mediocre and respectable.

Does Romney remind anyone else of Dudley Do Right?

The TSA strikes again.

I don't think they were purposely being mean, they were just "doing their job." They probably didn't want to "get in trouble." This is how the government handles everything. Independent thought is dangerous in a government job. The government is a blunt weapon. Its methods--no doubt comprising pages and pages of procedural rules--are akin to performing brain surgery with a broomstick.

Curses on Mozilla

Every time I upgrade Mozilla Firefox, all my bookmarks vanish forever, along with the toolbar. I can't even download new apps to restore the toolbar. Internet surfing without toolbars or bookmarks is like taking a shower in a raincoat. I hate you, Mozilla Firefox, you dumb asses.

How to lose weight

Now that Mr Charm is being rehabbed and I don't have to cook for him, it's an ideal time to tackle that weight loss diet.

Here's how a proper, healthy, but low calorie diet plan works.
1. Plan meals.

2. Buy healthy food, like veggies. Spend time selecting the most luscious, freshest produce.
3. Spend hours assembling, dicing, chopping and stirring really yummy meals.
4. Eat yummy meal.
4. Clean up mess in kitchen.

But this is what I usually do:
1. Go to frozen food department, fill basket and get out of there in 10 minutes
2. Microwave something.
3. Eat not so yummy but admittedly convenient meal.
4. Throw out box.

I get a new car

 

But this isn't it.

Doing my bit for the country's economy, I finally got my first new car--a Nissan Sentra, just what I had always wanted. It has everything--GPS, Bluetooth, power this, power that! Cupholders in the back seat! Car payments!

Why I love my brother

 

That's him, holding my hand.

This picture was on display at a memorial service for my father, which the whole family attended.

He told everyone who would listen, "Miriam was really gorgeous in those days--I'm not kidding." He is so loyal, I could probably shoot him or set fire to his hair and he wouldn't hold it against me.

Making really wonderful pizza

Much to-do about pizza  from Ann Althouse, re a gushing article in the New York Times:

Heat the oven and pizza stone at 500 degrees for one hour (if using a baking sheet, heat it for 30 minutes). Roll out the dough and top your pizza, then slide it onto the pizza stone or baking sheet. Bake it for three minutes.

And then you have--pizza! Yes, the same mediocre fare you can get delivered all over New York City in 30 minutes! Or you could go out to a local pizzeria!

Pizza is pizza. There's a limit to how good it can be, and no matter how good it is, it's pizza! Pizza can only reach a certain level of wonderfulness, it's not pate de fois gras.

What next; making your own Wonder Bread?

The money just keeps rolling in

MONTH OF JUNE ONLINE LOTTO AND GAMING CORPORATION.

WINNING NUMBER: OL/656/020/012

OUR DEAR WINNER,

THIS IS TO NOTIFY YOU THAT YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS HAS WON ONLINE LOTTO AND GAMING CORPORATION SUM OF (ONE MILLION EURO), THIS ONLINE LOTTO AND GAMING CORPORATION PROGRAM WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY GROUPS OF INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES THAT DO ADVERTISEMENTS ON THE INTERNET TO APPRECIATE EMAIL USERS.

ALL THE E-MAIL ADDRESSES USED FOR THIS ONLINE LOTTO AND GAMING CORPORATION PROGRAM WAS SELECTED THROUGH ELECTRONIC BALLOTING SYSTEM OF INTERNET E-MAIL USERS, FROM WHICH YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS CAME OUT AS THE WINNING COUPON.

WE THEREBY CONTACT YOU TO CLAIM YOUR WINNING AMOUNT QUICKLY AS THIS IS A MONTHLY LOTTERY. FAILURE TO CLAIM YOUR WINNING WILL RESULT INTO THE REVERSION OF OUR FOLLOWING MONTH LOTTERY. (THE EXPIRATION DATE IS 30TH OF JUNE). PLEASE CONTACT OUR APPROVED AGENT BELOW WITH YOUR WINNING NUMBER ABOVE.

ONLINE LOTTO AND GAMING CORPORATION AGENCY.
MRS. ANA PAULA FILIPE.
(DIRECTOR OF WINNING CLAIMS DEPARTMENT).
TEL: +31-622-915-948
E-MAIL: globalworld2009@aim.com

WARNING: YOU ARE TO KEEP EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS YOUR WINNING PRIVATE, UNTIL YOU RECEIVE YOUR WINNING PRIZE BY THIS ONLINE LOTTO AND GAMING CORPORATION PAYING BANK, CONTROVERSIAL CLAIM WILL LEAD TO DISQUALIFICATION. BE WARNED.

REGARDS,

MRS. MANUELA JOHNSON.
(DIRECTOR OF ONLINE LOTTO AND GAMING CORPORATION)

And I didn't even buy a ticket!

At the orthopedist's office

As many of my diehard fans know, Mr Charm has a broken leg for which he is getting rehabbed. To check on his progress, we had an appointment with the orthopedist who inserted unspecified metal parts in his leg.

He made the trip in a wheelchair--he still can't walk any distance. The doctor's waiting room looked like the ante-chamber to the Miracle Department at Lourdes--casts, crutches, splints, bandages and wheelchairs were the order of the day. To make the visit more memorable, the outer office featured a non-accessible door, and the inner office, where the great man and his acolytes dispense wisdom, also has a non-accessible door. These inconvenient doors were each in a tight corner, making them even more challenging for the halt and the lame. The only thing missing was a spiral staircase.

Fortunately, a couple of the able-bodied patients or their companions held the doors for us.

The inner office is decorated with pictures of various bones you might break if so inclined. I made a note to myself to avoid breaking any of them if at all possible.

Mr Charm's leg is coming along nicely.

Deja vu all over again

Obama wants Puerto Rico to have a referendum on whether they want statehood or what. It seems we did this already, didn't we? Are we just going to continue to hold these referendums (referenda?) until the Puerto Ricans decide the matter in the "right" way, or to Obama's satisfaction?

I thought these matters were decided once and for all. Puerto Rico had a referendum. They decided on their current status. It's over. They don't vote for president. And they don't pay income tax. A trade-ff they are probably glad to make.

Are we going to allow Arizona--for instance--to decide whether they still want to be a State, or if not, what they would like to do? Perhaps they would like to be a province of Canada or Brazil. Why not? Oh, I forgot--the Civil War.

Don't take my Weiner away from me

My father died in April, my husband broke his leg and my portfolio has taken a nose dive...The only source of innocent merriment available to me has been The Weiner Story, the unfolding of which took my mind off all this stuff.

Now President Obama wants Weiner to resign! Let Weiner remain in Congress--he is the gift that keeps on giving.

The money from Internet scammers...

just keeps rolling in.

I received this e-mail this morning:

We wish to inform you that We have sent $5000.00 USD already ,that was
given to you by the European Union, as we are mandated to send you the
total sum of $300,000USD through Western Union.send name, address,phone
number.Processing your first payment of 5,000 USD.to collect /
Sender;s first name:Nelson last name:Rowland Mtcn: 2774950359

You are required to check your transfer status online at our link for
confirmation by clicking on the link below:
https://wumt.westernunion.com/asp/orderstatus.asp?country=global

Regards
Rev Jose Alex
Phone:+447424262370
E-mail: western.uniondept1@helixnet.cn

Gosh.

About government corruption

I'm reading a book called "Jersey Sting," about a bunch of crooked government officials and others who were caught in a sting in--believe it or not--New Jersey.

It is totally understandable how a situation like this comes about.  Our elected representatives--municipal, state, federal--makes laws, which are then interpreted by unelected bureaucrats, which create rules about zoning, safety, etc, which makes accomplishing anything slower and more expensive for business.  The creators of capital who want to build something realize that the only way to get anything done is to bribe the bureaucrats and politicians.  So they do, and projects go forward.  And everyone is happy, until they all get arrested and go to jail.

Don't get me wrong.  The crooks, particularly the elected ones, are betraying a public trust and richly deserve to go to jail.   But the system as it stands is an invitation to corruption which few can resist.

Incorruptible government officials are often worse.  My friend who wanted to build a house on acreage she owned in California was thwarted by a bureaucrat who arbitrarily denied her request and made it stick.  Perhaps she should have bribed him, but did not, but  he was implacably opposed to her project and was able to prevail.  So my friend now owns a piece of expensive land that is essentially useless to her.

Couldn't some of this be avoided by having fewer public officials, any of whom can throw a monkey wrench into any  plan?

And then there the environmentalists and the NIMBY folks.  Sigh.

Musical notations for life

Very useful.

Especially  grumposo and grumposo ma non troppo.

From willtypeforfood.

Teaching hospitals can kill you

This has a special resonance with me, as a teaching hospital recently killed my father.  True, he was 99 and needed a pacemaker; but did he really need one that was infected due to carelessness?

There is ample evidence that this infection killed him; his body, at his age, could not fight off the infection.

What angers me is that the lounge chair in which they had placed him had a thick layer of dust on its platform.  When I mentioned this to one of the nurses, she stated, "That is not our first priority,"  the inference being that she was too busy saving lives to worry about mere cleanliness and did not need to be taught her work by clods such as me.

I also noticed hospital personnel coming and going from his room without gloving or sanitizing their hands.

Isn't scrupulous cleanliness the minimum one can expect from a hospital?

Library satisfaction

There is a new survey on job satisfaction at Library Journal, and it led me to ponder a library personnel issue: full-timers vs part-timers.  To put it in more understandable terms, there is plenty of gravy to go around, but it's not on everybody's mashed potatoes.

The only libraries I know are in New Jersey, so my conclusions are strictly about that state.  Benefits were generous at most libraries I've dealt with in 28 years of library administration.  For professionals, 20 days vacation to start, 15 paid holidays, 15 days of cumulative sick leave.  Add to this enrollment in the pension system, paid health insurance, and the availability of deferred tax accounts, and you have another 30-40 percent of non-taxable income.  Not bad.

Full-time non-professionals don't get quite as many vacation days, but otherwise the benefits are the same.  In addition, if your library has civil service status, you are virtually fireproof, except for egregious misbehavior.

For part-timers, nothing is guaranteed.  New Jersey insists that employees earning over a certain amount must be enrolled in the pension plan, unless they are temporary.  High school students, for example.  Under civil service rules, there are procedures for firing staffers, but they don't have to be fired, their hours can be cut to almost zero.  No vacation, no sick leave, no anything.  Libraries have been known to hire two employees who each work 20 hours a week so as to avoid offering benefits to either.  Their pay is abysmal, too.

This  is analogous to the faculty situation in universities, where tenured professors teach two courses each while adjuncts do all the heavy lifting.  The adjuncts, meanwhile, have about as much chance of gaining tenured status as they do of winning the lottery--no, make that the Irish Sweepstakes.

Is it any wonder that these serfs and vassals are joining unions to get a fair shake?

An ominous sound

I came home on Sunday afternoon to an ominous sound.  A noise, sounding like a cross between an off-balance clothes dryer and  a  power lawnmower, threatened to shake the house down.

My attitude toward household appliances combines utter dependence  with fear and loathing.  The basement is usually the venue where ghastly noises originated.  But all the appliances were sitting there looking innocent.  There was no water on the floor. The central air conditioner was softly huffing, but it was a hot day, so it had an alibi.  I looked at the circuit breaker box, but all was calm there.

Was one of the neighbors was mowing their lawn with a clothes dryer?   Then again, maybe the sound would go away--denial works wonders, at least in the short run.  I heard it a few more times, then it stopped, an encouraging  sign.  Whatever it was, maybe I had been hearing its death throes.

That night, as I was preparing for bed, the racket resumed.  It was louder in my clothes closet.  The plumbing works are inside the walls, where they can't be seen, aren't they?  I decided to call the plumber in the morning.

After a night of broken sleep being serenaded by the sinister appliance six or seven times, I thought of the attic fan which supposedly exists, if the previous owner was to be believed. I had never heard the thing operate, and the rooms upstairs are  hotter than the downstairs ones, so I had forgotten about it.   In the 28 years we owned our New Jersey house, I had never gone into the attic, although Mr Charm had.  He described it as a hot, stuffy, low-cieilinged crawl space.

I finally found an attic fan contractor who is coming Friday, either to fix the thing or put it out of its misery.  Meanwhile, the noise is gone.  For now.

Fraters Libertas: There's A Program For That

Fraters Libertas: There's A Program For That

I think there's a simpler reason for all the testing.  Follow the money.  The schools get more money for "special needs" children, so there is a temptation to place more and more children in that category.  Good idea for school district.  Not a good idea for the child.

A friend of mine who is a school psychologist told me that if a kid is pigeonholed into one of these programs it is impossible to get out.  The tag sticks to the child through his whole academic career and he is labeled a "problem," or "learning-disabled" when he is no such thing.

A Valentine out of season

This is a love letter to the Delaware Symphony.  The season just completed was an artistic triumph. Their performance of Mahler's Second (Resurrection)Symphony was awesome, a word I don't use lightly.  It was one of the most moving orchestral performances I've ever heard and invites comparison with the very best orchestras in the world, like the New York Philharmonic or the Boston Symphony, even though the Delaware's resources don't come close to matching those of the bigger, wealthier groups.

Residents of Delaware, do you know what a jewel you have?  Please support the orchestra, and even better, purchase a season's ticket for the upcoming season.  You'll be glad you did!

Polishing dog turds.

How many ways can you say broccoli?

Broccoli is very big these days, in many guises.  I've had it raw, I've had it cooked.  Sauteed with baby carrots.  Some of it is purple, some has been mated with cauliflower. Broccolini is everywhere.  Broccoli shoots ditto.  But the other day, I was served something broccolish which I did not recognize.  It consisted of little knobs, half the size of Brussels sprouts.  Since it was served with butter and pancetta, it tasted pretty good.  Turns out it was baby broccoflower.

What is next for the broccoli family?  I await developments.

A mistake to prosecute John Edwards?

I will leave it to the legal pundits to disentangle this one.  Instead, I'd like to ask a question first poised by our beloved President:  "Isn't it ever possible to have enough money?"  The answer clearly is no, since no wealthy person ever wants to shell out his own money for anything if it is possible to avoid it.

John Edwards paid upwards of $200 for a haircut.  Couldn't he have rented a cozy love nest for his girlfiriend out of his personal funds?  The man had the largest house in North Carolina! *

*Or was it South Carolina?

The Anthony Weiner situation

Aren't tightie-whities supposed to be white?

This is pleasant news

A garden to comfort relatives of fallen soldiers.

Bessie Coleman, aviation pioneer

Every Memorial Day, black men and women aviators fly in formation over the grave of Bessie Coleman, dropping bouquets of flowers on the grave of the first black woman ever to earn a pilot's license.
Coleman was born in 1892, the twelfth of thirteen children. The family earned their living picking cotton. It was an impoverished existence, and as her siblings reached adulthood two of them left for Chicago, where opportunities were better.

Bessie Coleman followed when she grew up. She trained as a manicurist and got a job at the White Sox Barber Shop, situated on the Stroll,an 8-block section of State Street where black-owned businesses flourished. It was there that she encountered Robert S. Abbott, the editor of the Chicago Defender, a prominent newspaper read widely in the black community.

She developed a desire to become a pilot, inspired by stories of the derring-do of the Wolrd War I flying aces. This was an unthinkable ambition for a black woman at the time. Yet Abbott saw something of the potential in Bessie, and offered her financial help to attend a French flying school. He guessed that she would make great copy, and he was right. On her return from France with her pilot's license, she was greeted by representatives of both the black and white press.

Beautiful and flamboyant, she became an overnight sensation. Barnstorming and stunt flying were all the rage at the time, and no one's exploits were more daring than Coleman's. She became a hero to the black community, who dubbed her "Queen Bess." Her ambition was to start a flight school for black people, to encourage them to follow careers in the promising new field of aviation.

Her career was fraught with peril: many of the barnstorming stunts were daring and dangerous. Coleman also suffered from a lack of sufficient funds and therfore often relied on decrepit and unsafe planes. In California, on February 4, 1922, a plane she was piloting stalled at 300 feet, smashing into the ground. She suffered multiple injuries which landed her in the hospital for three months.

Undaunted, she relocated to Texas and resumed her barnstorming career. She had previously performed in the North, to appreciative white audiences. She now visited venues mainly in the South, where African Americans were her most enthusiastic fans. They opened their homes and hearts to her. Colemans' beauty, skill and daring inspired her African American fans.

According to her niece, "The airplanes she was flying, they were just old things....They weren't worth a darn." The lack of adequate funds did not stop her, however, from planning a flight in Jacksonville, FL. in a ramshackle plane.

Coleman was planning a parachute stunt, so she went up to scout the territory with her mechanic, William Wills, at the controls. Wills lost control of the plane, and Coleman, with neither seat belt nor parachute, was hurled to her death. She was 34 years old.

Her influence, however, lived on. Within a few years William Powell founded the Bessie Coleman Aero Club, both to honor her and to inspire other African Americans to follow her example. Her dream lived on, and still lives on to this day.

Curls

My latest painting.

Trolls need to improve their vocabularies

I moderate comments on my blog and do not permit trolls to express their opinions.  I like my blog to feature only constructive and laudatory comments.  It just seems to go better that way, at least for me.

Here's my advice to my troll(s).  Your vocabulary lacks variety and originality.  Calling someone a fascist is not an unassailable  argument.  Try to learn a new word every day, starting with words of one syllable and working your way up to multisyllabic words.  You might even entertain an original thought from time to time, or is that too much to ask?

Borrowed relatives

Since I ran out of amusing family members, I thought I'd borrow a few from a friend.  This is about some relatives of hers.

The couple had been married over 60 years, but still disagreed about many things, including a big thing--where to live.  He wanted to live in a brownstone in Brooklyn; she wanted to live on a family farm she'd inherited, on a hilltop somewhere in New Hampshire.   The hilltop was inaccessible during a snowstorm, which is just one objection.  It was remote, far from their children and anyone they knew--except one of her sisters, who she wasn't speaking to anyway.

They lived on the farm, but out of spite he would not permit her to install a furnace.  So this old lady, in her eighties, chopped wood and heated her house with  a wood-burning stove.  It didn't seem to do her any harm.

He was dictatorial--a European of the old school.  So he ruled the roost.  He told her what she could do, and what she couldn't do--watch certain television shows, play the radio, or smoke cigarettes.  So he got his way in everything, except living on the farm, of course.

He died at 92, leaving her a widow.  She immediately installed a furnace in the house and took up smoking cigarettes.

Kindle? Or Nook?

I never wanted either one, but trying to read Margaret Thatcher's memoirs in bed led me to reconsider.  One volume easily weighs nine pounds--and there are three.

I haven't the least notion of the pros and cons of these gadgets.  Anyone?

I'm famous for buying gadgets I can't figure out how to use.  Speakerphone. mp-3 player, bluetooth.  So I need something idiotproof.

Mr Evans Cox is cursory

I feel cheated that Mr Evans Cox--nice name!--is so perfunctory in his attempt to swindle me.  It seems like his heart isn't really in it.

There is a business i will like you to handle with me which will be very
profitable to both of us.
For more information concerning this transaction contact via email.

I feel insulted!  You're not getting my money that easily!  What about that Ugandan business partner, or the funds in the Swiss bank account, which most of my swindlers mention.  And the request for my social security number or bank account, where is that?

Blogger is becoming unworkable

Blogger is so hard to use lately.  The most recent headache is the inability to link to another site, which makes blogger almost useless.  There is absolutely no customer service, nobody is minding the store.  We are supposed to solve problems by discussing them on "forums," where we pool our ignorance.

This is not a struggling start-up, folks.  Blogger is owned by Google, a company whose shares are putatively worth a lot of money.  I bet they have a company cafeteria for the employees as well as a gym, and maybe a jogging track.  Would it kill them to sub-contract customer service to a call center in India?

Seen at the nursing home

Mr Charm has a broken leg and is getting it rehabbed at a nursing home.  It's a nice one, it couldn't be nicer, but it's a sad place to visit.  Some of the people are very old, some look like  marionettes who have lost the strings which held them together.  Some are barely conscious.  I should say, barely sentient.  Their relatives visit and try to talk to them, but it's a maximum effort with minimal results.

Yesterday a man brought his father's dog to visit him.  The father said, to the dog:  "You and I used to do everything and go everywhere together"  as he caressed his pet.   It was a poignant moment.

I've been thinking about my father's last illness which ended in his death.  He declined suddenly and his last months were rough, but he was master of his fate until almost the end.

Rushing the growler

I was informed by a good authority, an Irish guy who grew up in Jersey City, that "rushing the growler" meant sending the kids to the local tavern to bring back a pitcher of beer.  Why growler, I don't know, but the reason for the rush seems obvious--dad was thirsty and wanted his beer ASAP.

Frater libertas puts a slightly different spin on it.

Little girls in tree

Of pedicures and the government

Medicare pays podiatrists to cut the toenails of seniors.  The last time I looked, the government paid Dr X $65 to cut Mr Charm's toenails.  To reach Dr X, we needed an appointment, and upon arrival, we had to walk down a long hall, Mr Charm had to climb up in a chair, and wait.  And wait.

So I am bypassing the government.  I now take Mr Charm (and myself) to the Vietnamese nail salon.  No appointment.  We park in the handicapped parking spot, Mr Tran comes out with a chair and helps Mr Charm into it.  He helps him climb into the pedicure chair.  Then he washes his feet up to the knees, scrubs the bottoms of his feet and removes any rough skin, and gives his legs a nice, soothing massage.  He also cuts Mr Charm's fingernails.  For this we pay $35, plus tip.

Why doesn't the government pay Mr Tran or his staff to cut toenails?  Dr X could sub-contract the task. Mr Tran could be a paraprofessional, a parapodiatrist, if you like.

Dsitinguishing one terrorist group from another

The Economist has a long disquisition this week in which it analyzes and explains in detail the differences between the various terrorist groups who are plaguing mankind.  Very erudite and impressive, I'm sure.  If you need to know the difference between al Queda in Iraq and other branches of this unholy alliance, you can read the article at the link.

I don't think there is any significant difference among them.  They are all enemies of mankind, thugs and murderers.  And they are not retired murderers and thugs, sated for the time being and content to rest on their laurels.  They are still actively seeking innocents to destroy, as they destroyed a three-month-old Israeli baby in her crib.

The Economist explains it  as one would explain the difference between  Rotary and  the Lions Club or the difference between Unitarianism and Roman Catholicism. None of this matters.  The salient fact about terrorists, whatever flag they fly, is that they are murderous thugs.

Much is made of the fact that Osama bin Laden was or was not given a proper Muslim funeral ceremony.  I think the least important difference between religious groups is the disposition of the dead.  It is a housekeeping decision.  Burn them or bury them, say prayers over them or not, dead bodies must be disposed of for the good of the living.

How do we know Osama is really dead?

Do we need pictures of his dead body?

How do we know Hitler is really dead?

Should I work some more on this one?

Or sign and frame it? I thought it came out pretty well.

I don't know how much of this book I read...

before I concluded that it was hogwash.  Quite a bit, actually.  I think I read it until he started having heart-to-heart talks with the Taliban, or al-Queda, or some other stone killers who just rolled over and acted like pussy cats when he let loose the charm.  It seemed a bridge too far.  It had a few things going for it: 
Exotic setting--check.  Noble altruism--check.  Appealing kids--ditto.  You want to believe life is like that.  That the only thing standing in the way of educating little girls in a hellhole like that is lack of motivation.

In truth, it takes a lot of work to get anything organized, from the U S government to a library book sale.  Sigh.  I should have known.

My first thought on watching this was:

 This woman has to have gone to Harvard. So glib, so self-assured, so dead wrong  Another Jamie Gorelick, leading her country over a cliff with complete confidence..

I beat Dell

I've been pissed at Dell, once my favorite computer company, for years. We've been buying their products for years, and were happy until Dell sold Mr Charm a computer that didn't work. We called the company and got the usual runaround, the one where they imply with more or less contempt that you are an idiot.

Reader, it never worked. I blamed Mr Charm and he blamed me and we both blamed Best Buy. But when Mr C was in the hospital the first time, no-one could remember his password. So I took the computer to Staples and they couldn't fix it. The problem was a defective motherboard. Turns out the Dell Corporation knew these motherboards were no good but shipped out a number of them nevertheless just in case the consumers didn't notice. Or they might work. Or something.

The latest dust-up was about another of the computers we bought from them. (We bought about ten in the space of four years. Dumb? Yes.) They raised their rates in the middle of our financial disputes and started assessing penalties, late charges, interest, etc etc. By this time the amount owed had snowballed to the point where you would have thought we had bought a private jet.

At some point I stopped paying them. And they started calling me. I told them to stop calling and to sue me if they thought they had a case.

So--they sued me. I received a very legal looking notice which was supposed to scare me, I guess, but both my parents were lawyers and gave me legal documents to draw on the back of, so I had seen plenty of them.

So I wrote a letter to the Court explaining that I had plenty of time and would be defending myself pro se and requesting certain information. They sent me copies of spreadsheets that meant nothing to me, but they postponed the trial date. I was supposed to see them in Court on April 29.

Well, they finally called off the lawsuit. Dell Computer Co, it turns out, is a paper tiger. Nyahhh!

Shopping cart multiculturalism

 

Seen at a shopping center near me.

A Gregor Samsa moment

Something awful happened to me this morning. No, I didn't turn into a cockroach, sorry to disappoint you. But when I opened the morning newspaper, I realized I could not read it with my 2.00 reading glasses! Overnight my vision had worsened.

I had to go to the dollar store and buy six new pairs of readers in 2.50 before I could face life.

Let's close fraternities

They might upset some of the girls.

This woman strikes me as a person whose sensibilities are too delicate for modern society:

My fourth night at [the University of Virginia] , I went with some friends to Rugby Road, where the fraternity houses are located. They are built of the same Jeffersonian architecture as the rest of the campus. At once august and moldering, they seemed sinister, to stand for male power at its most malevolent and institutionally condoned. I remember standing there thinking I'd made a terrible mistake. It wasn't worth it, I decided. The next day I withdrew from the university.

I hope nobody ever tells her that half the human race are males. I don't know whether she could withstand the shock.

Shame on the Wall Street Journal for publishing drivel like this.

How could I skip Poetry Month?

My mind is coming unglued. I always, always celebrate Poetry Month!

so, a poem:

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons--
That opresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes--

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us--
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the meanings are--

None may teach it--Any--
'Tis the Seal Despair--
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air--

When it comes, the Landscape listens--
Shadows--hold their breath--
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death--

-- Emily Dickinson

Whew! That was close!

Speaking of poetry, I've always thought T S Eliot's "April is the cruelest month" absolute rot. You want a cruel month, Tom? Try February in Nebraska. You'll find it way crueler than April. April is pretty. Flowering trees flower. Spring flowers spring.

Another poem, more cheerful this time:

AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

I used to like Hopkins more than I do now. I do like several of his poems, though.

Both these poets lived in obscurity--poetic obscurity, that is. Neither was published in his or her lifetime. That has got to suck, no? I would hate to be posthumously famous. However, there is no danger of this at present. For one thing, I am not dead.

By the way, it is also Occupational Therapy Month. Let's hear it for the OT workers!

This is the painting I am working on now

 

If I ever have time.

Here we go again.

People are getting ready for Passover.

When I was a child seders seemed to last for eons. All my mother's family, my parents, my two uncles and their wives and children were always present, because anything bubbe hosted was a command performance. The good linens, china, and silver made the table gleam under the light of bubbe's two candelabras.

We children were excited beyond hysteria until the ceremony began, and we were forced to come to the table and stop hanging upside down from the sofa, climbing the walls, and knocking down the furniture. I particularly enjoyed the presence of my cousins because I was an only child at the time, and lonely. My eldest cousin, three and a half years older than me, was a goddess of sophistication to me; her brothers were rowdy playmates. Uncle Doc's little girls were too young to play with but they were mighty cute and dressed to the nines.

Once the youngest child present had recited the four questions the prayer competition began. Both my uncles and my cousin Bernie read the haggadah aloud --individually--in Hebrew as quickly as they could. The conversation went like this:

Uncle I: It's time for the first (or second, third, or fourth) cup of wine.
Uncle II: I haven't gotten there yet. You read too fast.
Uncle I: It's a long service.
Uncle II: All right, all right. Come on everybody. Drink the fourth (or third, or second) cup. Where's the bottle? Pass me the wine, somebody.

They raced through the prayers and then had to stop and wait impatiently for the others to catch up. It was rather like riding in a car that alternately speeded up and stopped dead, causing you to lurch forward and back.

Meanwhile, my cousin Sam and sometimes one or two of the other children would drink too much wine and slip quietly to the floor. It taught me the meaning of drinking yourself under the table. After a brief nap the culprit would re-appear, refreshed.

The two little girls were too small to read, so they raced around the table fighting with each other until Uncle Doc started yelling at them and threatening to spank them. My aunt, his wife, would burst into tears because he had shouted at the girls. She would threaten to leave. They would yell some more until he calmed down and apologized to the girls and gave them some candy or gum he just happened to have in his pocket. The girls, of course, would stuff themselves with sweets and would not eat the festive meal when it appeared.

The festive meal! Chicken soup with matzoh balls. We called bubbe's matzoh balls cannon balls. They were heavy but nourishing. Then we had chicken. With the chicken came potato kugel and chopped liver. Gefilte fish. Someone probably slipped a green vegetable in there somewhere, but I don't remember it. Bubbe didn't hold with all this greenery anyway. Her idea of a salad was: take one cucumber; add pint of sour cream; eat. And we couldn't have that, this was a fleisheke meal.

Bubbe would heap each of the children's plates with massive portions of food and then bawl them out for not eating it all. We were starved and ate voraciously. If someone had thrown one of us into the river we would have plummeted to the bottom and sunk without a trace.


Dessert featured, but was not limited to, Manischevitz macaroons, served in the can. The featured wine was Mogen David.

After eating, there was a timeout while the children searched for the afikomen and the adults sat still and burped.

Since I was not used to staying up late, the remainder of the seder was one big blur to me, except for opening the door for Eliyahu hanovi. Then came Chad Gadya, which meant the end of the service and blessed release.

And then we did it again the next night.

Monument among the blossoms, Brandywine Park

Hospital red alert!

So Mr Charm broke his femur, and was taken to the hospital, where they set his bone. They made three neat little incisions--arthroscopic, don't you know. We have a view of the river this time, which beats last time, when we had a view of a cemetery.

However, Mr C has a roommate who is deaf, and confused. The nurse who was attending him raised her voice in an effort to make him understand. And what a voice! A fine Wagnerian soprano which caused the bedpans to rattle. Really--it was an assault on the ears and the nerves.

This hospital did not have a guy riding a huge floor polisher, but of course we were there on the weekend, and maybe their floor polishing man works Monday to Friday.

However, they did make a serious medication error--one that I've corrected several times, but which persists on the hospital database. Tomorrow I will talk to the doctor. I will not shriek! I will not shriek! No! Will not...

Could I be fated to enter the Guinness Book of World Records as the person who had two relatives murdered by hospitals in one month?

I asked my uncle many years ago what the date was when doctors started curing more patients than they killed. He looked pained and said he wasn't sure we had passed that date yet.

I will calm down. Have a cup of tea. Serious sedation is called for. Where are those beta blockers?

my dad in his youth

We have few ppictures of him; he was always behind the camera, as he is here.

It wouldn't be Passover without it

The Maxwell House hagaddah.

I still have a few copies.

My father, December 1911-April 2011

So my dad died, hastened to his end by the wonderful folks at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital, where he got the infection that did him in. No biggie, he was almost 100; but I wanted him to reach 100 and get a letter from the President, something he would have cherished.

I wanted to post a picture of him in his youth, but can't get Blogger, or Picasa, or either, or both, to work. I'm working on it, in my baffled, disgruntled, tooth-gnashing way.

He was fun to be around. He loved to tell stories of his adventures, some of which were actually true. My uncle, his brother, remarked that you could only believe half of the things Nate told you, but you didn't know which half. For instance, did he grow up in a house with a dirt floor? He did. How about taking his first airplane ride in 1926--doubtful, he would have been 15 then. Having a play optioned by a Broadway producer in 1939? Maybe.

He was very smart, and a quick study. He could understand the workings of various gadgets around the house. He could fix things--replace a light switch or fix a toilet, talents which have eluded me, as has his aptitude for math.

He didn't seem to get old, like other folks. When he was 90, he acted and looked like a man of 62. He was a writer, a painter, a cook, and he could balance his checkbook with ease. Just lately, though, he began to slack off, and we feared the end was near. I wanted him to have that signed letter from Obama, though. Dang.

1234

At last--the reason spent fuel rods continue to pile up--in the U.S. and not in other places

Why spent  fuel rods continue to pile up.

After World War II, Congress created the Atomic Energy Commission to oversee military and civilian use of nuclear phenomena. That action held that only the feds could make plutonium.
Under A.E.C. control, utilities built nuclear power plants and jointly built a fuel rod reprocessing plant. In 1978 the reprocessing plant was ready to start, but President Jimmy Carter, saw that it would produce a small quantity of plutonium.
Therefore, Congress prohibited civilian reprocessing of fuel rods and bumped the cost of nuclear power. Utilities can take 3 percent of the power from fresh fuel rods before reprocessing is needed.
The “spent” rods are stored until the day that Congress permits reprocessing. Meanwhile other countries reprocess their fuel over and over again.

The New Jersey Turnpike

I'm out of practice in driving the New Jersey Turnpike.  I had to drive it yesterday during the Friday evening rush hour.  What a relief to get off, finally!  I think you have to keep in practice to drive the thing, just like an Olympic athlete has to keep in practice.  Otherwise it's a bit intimidating.

I used to be scared of driving the turnpike, but since I am scared of lots of things I have to cope with, I ignored my fear.  If I let my fears govern me, they would get worse and worse, and eventually I would crawl into the hall closet and huddle into a ball among the winter overcoats.

Hospitals are dangerous

My father is in the hospital right now.

Among the mysteries of modern life is the  disappearance of the notion that hospitals should be quiet.   Remember those signs that used to be posted on the street?  Or am I revealing my age?

I visited my dad yesterday and was surprised by how noisy it was. Everyone appears to be shrieking at everyone else, unless they are too sick to move.  There is a clatter of trays and other equipment,  personnel coming and going and filling each other in on their private lives, greeting old friends and just gabbing.  To add to the confusion, a maintenance man was driving a  floor polisher which is so large he was seated on it.  It reminded me of a large tractor or a zamboni.  He must have driven the thing past my father's room six times.  What zeal!  Or maybe it was just fun to ride the thing.

My father's chair was in the reclining position, and the platform underneath was crusted with dust.  We called attention to this to his nurse, and she said that was not "our first priority" right now.  This was richly ironic, since my father was there in the first place because he had had a pacemaker inserted in this very hospital and received a blood infection from the procedure.  If they had been a little more obsessed with cleanliness, my dad would be home right now, watching a ball game and drinking a martini.

Getting children into the right school

The process begins at an early age.

It's necessary to go to the best schools from the getgo, so that after getting in the best pre-school you can get into the best elementary school, then the best high school and  the best college so you can get to the top of the tree and be very rich and successful so you can visit some undeveloped country, say in Africa, where the people are dirt poor and are by no means certain to have clean water.

Then you can observe how happy these poor people seem, and how material things don't necessarily make people more contented.

Nothing gold can stay

by Robert Frost:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Mother's real estate empire

Mother really liked real estate.  She used to buy houses and fix them up, with the aid of my unwillling brother and a one-armed painter named Jimmy.  Jimmy was one of her homeys, as we would say today.  Actually, he was a client who never went away, but continued to do little things for mother, such as picking her up when she forgot to put gas in the car again or getting her in her house when she mislaid her keys or dropping off her glasses when she forgot them. 

The houses she bought were unpretentious.  She fixed them up, minimally, got the leaks in the roof repaired, slapped on a coat of paint, maybe replaced a leaky toilet, and then rented them for modest sums to poor or working class tenants.  Her real estate pretensions never rose above these modest investments, and frankly, considering the low rents she charged, I don't know whether she broke even on them.

Her tenants had a tendency to get arrested, or lose their jobs, or get drunk and rip the toilets from the wall, but she was a pushover.  The excuse she gave me for one tenant was that he had five children. 

Once, she had to evict a tenant.  This involved hiring a marshal, so the tenants must have tried her patience a lot.  My brother was called in to get the place back in shape, and he told me it was pretty bad.  He said it smelled like the monkey house in a zoo, among other things which I have forgotten.

But that was not the end of that tenant.  He stopped by her office a few weeks later and apologized, and she let him have the house back.  (Oh, yes, and she lent him ten bucks.)

Eventually, she turned over her entire real estate empire to Virginia, her long-suffering secretary.  Virginia was occupied by real estate transactions for years, almost to the exclusion of her real job, which was as a legal secretary,  Once in  a while in her spare moments she would type a legal document or file something, but most of her time was spent trying to collect rents or tearing her hair out.  She finally sold whatever of it she could, and got the rest torn down.

The short and simple annals of my checking account

I used to balance my checking account regularly, until I had surgery in 1992 and missed a month.  The following month, when I attempted to straighten out the various zigs and zags of my financial history, I got a headache and decided to wait until the next month and do a giant balancing act.

You know what happened next.  It got away from me entirely and I started making furtive visits to the ATM machine to see whether I still had any money.  As I am a pretty prudent spender, I usually did.  Then the bank started charging me a dollar for each peek at my account, and I stopped looking at it.  Or the bank statement.

I actually had another checking account at another bank, to which I deposited little windfalls--reimbursement of my expense account, rebate checks and little surprise sums like birthday checks from my mother.  When this mounted up enough, I would spend it on vacation.  I looked at this bank statement, as there was virtually no activity so it was easy to figure out.  Until they lost over a thousand dollars of my money.  I was able to straighten this out at great length and with much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

So now I can look at my account online.   I don't have to talk to anybody, either on the phone or in person, and frankly, the fewer persons I talk to, especially if they are in call centers in India, the better.  I still don't reconcile my checking account--what is there to reconcile?  It's all in there.  I deposit checks and keep receipts, but mostly my pension check is deposited directly into my account, which is the closest I've ever come to understanding the concept of grace.

Biden didn't get the memo

...about college education:

After leading the world in college graduates for decades, the United States has slipped to ninth, and a new initiative Vice President Joe Biden announced earlier this week aims to help reverse the trend.

However, according to Instapundit:

“In fact, setting aside the technical professions (medicine, engineering, etc.) the cost of a bachelor’s degree is exploding just as its value in the marketplace is declining.”

So now we need more of what we have too much of already.  Let's spend federal money on it!

Stuff nobody eats any more

Nobody eats these things any more:
 Jello in a mold with cream cheese, fruit, and nuts;
Beef Wellington
Meat loaf with tomato sauce poured over it;
salmon patties;
scalloped potatoes;
celery stalks with cream cheese/peanut butter stuffed in it;
Ambrosia salad;
pickled beets;
creamed corn.

I could think of a lot of other things; these are just off the top of my head.  That Jello mold thing, that was considered quite the piece de resistance.  I never saw anyone eating it, though.  But the presentation was dramatic--it looked like a sculpture.  And what happened to garnishing food with a sprig of parsley?  Or lamb chops with little paper handles?  Or lamb chops at all, come to think of it?

All anyone seems to eat nowadays in breast of chicken, along with some form of broccoli, and arugela. 




















;

Flowers, Longwood Conservatory, March 20, 2011

Longwood Gardens, trees budding

Happy birthday to me!

I had a very nice birthday today, thank you very much.  I went to Longwood Gardens with my camera.  No Spring flowers are actually up, except for a crocus or two, but the conservatory made up for it.  I will be posting some pictures later.

The place was mobbed.  I wonder how many more will attend when there are actually, you know,  flowers!  Leaves on the trees!  Anyway, it was a nice day to be out, not warm but not too windy, and I was glad I went there instead of the dreary gym with its incessant loud rap music and guys whose necks are bigger than their heads groaning as they drop heavy weights.   I didn't want to be there, so I didn't go!  Tomorrow I will.

I got some nice cards and phone calls from all the relevant relatives.  I also got a phone call from an old friend who moved to Florida recently.  It was good to be in touch with her.  I bought a box of malted milk balls and ate it all; truthfully, I felt a little sick but I persisted.  If you can't stuff your face on your birthday, when can you?

Best of all, I got several happy birthday wishes on Facebook, including one from my 17-year-old niece.  And a friend dropped by with sunflowers!

The left vs the military

The lefties--pacifists about everything--don't believe anything is worth flghting for.  No tyrant---Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Attila the Hun--is vile enough to oppose with military force.

I honor Obama for taking action in Libya, and for following a successful course in Iraq, and trying to win in Afghanistan, all against the wishes of his insufferable adherents.

Down with the bad guys!  Take a leaf from Teddy Roosevelt's playbook.

In honor of St Patrick's Day--an Irish poem

A poem about Pangur Ban

I and Pangur Ban, my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will;
He, too, plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry thing to see
At our task how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
Into the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den.
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine, and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade ;
I get wisdom day and night,
Turning Darkness into light.'

Translation by Robin Flowers (we think)

I am indebted to vulpeslibris for the translation.

Seen at the Good Will Store

 

 

Does anyone know what these are?

Mary Poppins 1.0

I am sorting my books, because some of them must go. This is tough for me because I love my books almost as much as I love my children and it causes me pain to part with them. But it is me or them. I was looking through some old books recently and came across my childhood copy of Mary Poppins, a books I loved so much that both the boards were gone.

This was my favorite book as a child. The movie, to my mind, vulgarized the story, or stories, as each chapter was a self-contained story. While Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews were charming and talented, they were much too sweet and lovable to be faithful to the original story. Mary Poppins was tart and put up with no nonsense from her charges, from whom she expected, and received, complete obedience.

I loved the foreignness of the book. The fact that the children had crumpets for tea, the fact that they had a meal called "tea" at all, were exotic and delightful. They celebrated Guy Fawkes Day, under a cold November sky, with fireworks and bonfires, and a policeman with a helmet--all of which were exciting as Timbuktoo to an American child.

Other things I loved: the children slept in the Night Nursery, all five of them, as did Mary Poppins. Like a school dormitory or a hospital ward, except that it was so British, with a fire blazing cozily in the fireplace and the aforementioned crumpets--or possibly scones, for tea, and the warm room reflected in the window above the night sky, and the bossy but reassuring Mary Poppins in charge.

Mary Poppins did not smile often, was not sugary, and the idea of her breaking out in song was unthinkable. She was much more inclined to look down her nose and sniff disapprovingly. She looked like "a Dutch doll," was vain, and loved to catch a glimpse of herself in a shop window, wearing her best hat or carrying her new umbrella and looking very smart indeed.

It was suggested in the film that the plot involved Mr Banks, the father of the children, learning that he needed to have more involvement with his offspring. Stuff and nonsense--as Mary Poppins would have said. The parents were background figures, unreal as scarecrows. The children lived in a special, self-contained world, where quotidian people and creatures, and even inanimate objects, were invested in a glow of magic.

Obviously Mrs. McCullough was misinformed

Dear Beloved,

It is by the grace of God that I received Christ,having known the truth; I
had no choice than to do what is lawful and just in the sight of God
foreternal life and in the sight of man for witness of God & His Mercies
and glory upon my life.

I am Rita McCulloch,the wife of Mr.Thomas McCulloch,both of us, are
citizens of Canada.My husband worked with the Chevron/Texaco in Russia for
twenty years and own an oil company before his untimely death in the year
2003.

We were married for ten years without a child. My Husband died after a
brief illness that lasted for only four days. Before his death we both got
born-again as dedicated Christians. Since his death I decided not to
re-marry or get a child outside my matrimonial home which the Bible is
strongly against. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of
£8.5 Million GBP (Eight Million Five Hundred Thousand Great Britain Pound
Sterling) with a Bank in UK.

Presently, this money is still with the Bank and the management just wrote
me as the beneficiary that our account has been DORMANT and if I, as the
beneficiary of the funds, do not re-activate the account; the funds will
be CONFISCATED or I rather issue a letter of authorization to somebody to
receive it on my behalf(note that you need to activate this account) as I
can not come over. Presently,I'm in a hospital in Russia where I have been
undergoing treatment for esophageal cancer.

I want a person that is God-fearing who will use this money to fund
churches,Mosques,Orphanages,Non-Governmental Organisation(NGO) and widows
propagating the word of God and to ensure that the house of God is
maintained. The Bible made us to understand that blessed is the hand that
giveth.I took this decision because I don't have any child that will
inherit this money and my husband's relatives are not Christians and I
don't want my husband's hard earned money to be misused by unbelievers. I
don't want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly manner.
Hence the reason for taking this bold decision. I am not afraid of death
since I know where I am going to.

I know that I am going to be in the bossom of the Lord. Exodus 14 VS 14:
says that the Lord will fight my case and I shall hold my peace. I don't
need any telephone communication in this regard because of my soundless
voice and presence of my husband's relatives around me always. I don't
want them to know about this development.

I await your quick response to this mail as this is my last wish to see
this funds transferred before my Death.

Please my beloved for further communication on how we are going to
conclude this, reach me on my private mail: ritamcc@live.com

Remain Blessed

Your Sister in Christ,
Mrs. Rita McCulloch.

I'm not her sister in Christ. Good try, no cigar.

Good old Nagyvarad welcomes the invading Nazis

This is the town my father's father came from, welcoming the German troops in 1940. Goodness, they were excited! Throwing flowers and cheering, leaning out of windows.

I am glad that my grandparents made it safely out of there. Perhaps Helen Thomas thinks it would be a convenient residence for me.

Is childhood obesity a problem?

 

Me at 130 lbs



Should kids be stigmatized for being fat?

My own experience reveals a different emphasis. Kids--and adults too--are stigmatized for not being rail-thin. A person, generally a female person, is expected not to have an excess ounce on her frame, or she is unacceptable.

Here's my life story: I was a skinny kid and a picky eater until I was 11. Then I started to put on weight, including a small pot belly, I was as ashamed of this as if it were a serious deformity. During high school (5'3", 120 lbs), I felt gross.

In my first year of college, I gained the freshman ten, meaning that I weighed 130 lbs. I went on a diet and lost 12 lbs, which made me tremendously happy. I've been exercising and trying to lost weight ever since. However, instead of losing, I have gained a pound a year for 40 years. The only reversal of this trend came when I had surgery a few times. Each surgery resulted in the loss of 15 lbs--then I resumed my annual weight gain.

So this is the story of my life. I have been exercising and dieting since I was 16 and am in good health and overweight. My mother, on the other hand, with the same build as me, did not exercise or diet and gained weight every year until she died at 78, except for periods when she was ill, which made her temporarily lose weight.

I feel bitter about always worrying about my weight, when objectively I was not really fat. A woman who is 5'3" and weighs 130 lbs in not fat. She's just not skinny. I would be ecstatic to weigh 130 lbs again, or even 140.

My point is that society makes a fuss over not being thin, as well as being obese. Models and movie stars are gaunt, or else. The beautiful Jennifer Lopez is constantly chided for being fat! Marilyn Monroe would never make it nowadays. People who are not thin are unacceptable in this society. And the more thinness is stressed, the more obesity and anorexia we see in young women.

What's wrong with this picture?

Julian Assange, Jew hater

and prospective Nobel laureate.

Inflation explained

<

The hospital

My father, who is quite elderly, went to the hospital to have a procedure.  He had  not been making sense for a while, and kept falling asleep and falling off chairs, so they decided he needed a pacemaker.  He was okay with it.  But they made him wait all day, fasting, as they do in New Jersey, and he refused to go to the operating room.  By this time, he believed he was in a hotel, and a damn poor one at that, and asked my stepmother to give him $10 to take a taxi home.

So it was arranged that he would have the procedure under general anesthesia the next day.  His wife signed the permission and they pumped him full of valium and God knows what else.  The pacemaker was inserted. 

When the anesthesia wore off, he  demanded to be discharged but they would not release him until he had been rational for 24 hours.  This made him even crazier.  He does not do well with hospitals.  The last time he had had general anesthesia he had a bad reaction and  was convinced that the man in the next bed was a Mafioso bent on killing him, despite reassurance to the contrary.

Well, they finally released him.  But meanwhile the phone lines between Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts and California were burning up, and the e-mails were flying.  I was chosen by popular acclaim to go to NJ and discover what the hell is going on, as  the nearest relative geographically.  So I am putting my investigative shoes on and off I go.

Old picture

I restored my system, and now I can transfer a photo. This is of l-r: a friend of mine, my mother, and me.

Please help out Princess Pelagie

Good evening!

How are you today,I hope fine? I am a female student from University of Burkina-Faso, Ouagadougou. I am 22 yrs old. I will love to have a long-term relationship with you and to know more about you. I would like to build up a solid foundation with you in time coming if you can be able to help me in this transaction. Well, my father died earlier 1 year ago and left I and my junior brother behind. He was a king, which our town citizens titled him over sixteen years before his death.I was a princess to him and I am the only person who can take care of his wealth now because my junior brother is still young and my late mother is also late two years ago before the death of my Late father.

He left the sum of (Twelve Million Five Hundred Thousand united state dollars ($12.5mUSD) in a Bank. This money was annually paid into my late fathers account from Gold Exploring companies operating in our locality for the compensation of youth and community development in our jurisdiction. I don't know how and what I will do to invest this money somewhere in abroad, so that my father's kindred will not take over what belongs to my father and our family, which they were planning to do without my present because I am a female as stated by our culture in the town.Now, I urgently need your humble assistance to move this money from the Bank of Africa to your bank account after which i come over to meet with you. and I strongly believe that by the grace of God, you will help me invest this money wisely.

I am ready to pay 40% of the total amount to you if you help us in this transaction and another 10% interest of Annual After Income to you, for handling this transaction for us, which you will strongly have absolute control over. Please if you are interested to help me, then get back to me urgent so that I will give you more details including my picturs.

Yours sincerely,
Princess Pelagie Yussuf.

This is my home address,From Burkina Faso in West Africa.Home Address: Rue 54 ave. LOUDIN.

I'm sure she's on the up-and-up--she left her address, didn't she?  Perhaps my readers could make some suggestions as to how she could invest her late father's millions.  Wouldn't you like a long-term relationship with a 22-year-old female?

Lower education--designed to produce bots?

According to Glenn Reynolds:

When our public education system was created in the 19th century, its goal, quite explicitly, was to produce obedient and orderly factory workers to fill the new jobs being created by the industrial revolution. Those jobs are mostly gone, now, and the needs of the 21st century are not the needs of the 19th.

Not true.

My mother, born in 1901, came to this country in 1906.  Her family settled in a mean hovel  located in a slum in Columbus, OH.  This non-English speaker got a good basic education in the fundamentals: she learned the names and capitol cities of all the states, memorized the times tables, learned what the parts of speech were and how to diagram a sentence, was told about American history and how the government worked on every level.  This was in a grammar school which served mainly poor black and Jewish children.   In high school, she learned geometry, trigonometry, Latin, and German, and was taught a great deal of English and American literature.  She graduated from high school at the age of 14, by the way.

Who needs all this education:  a docile, obedient factory hand, or the free citizen of a republic?

Of course, standards were lowered considerably by the time I went to school, but that's not relevant here except to note that she had learned more as a high school graduate than I did as a college graduate.  And her self-esteem seemed not to be adversely affected.  She went on to college and law school and practiced law for 50 years, having graduated from law school too young to be allowed to take the bar exam.

Fewer teens are having sex

or more teens are having less sex.

I don't understand why this is so for boys, having never been one. But for girls, perhaps the sight of high school youths sloping home from school decked out in baggy jeans and hoodies, with the hood concealing most of their faces, looking for all the world like burglars, is not an inspiring one. Perhaps, given what's on offer, the young ladies would rather do their homework or go shopping.

Link courtesy of instapundit.

Really useful advice

about your feet.

If you're a woman.

Notice to Amazon.com

Your drop-down menu is a nuisance. It completely covers the "Add this" and "Go to Checkout" buttons. If you are attempting to make it impossible to buy anything, you are succeeding beyond your wildest dreams.

Weird New Jersey government practices

I was just reading about Governor Scott Walker's budget plans, and it brought me back to the good old days when I coped with a library budget in dear old New Jersey. 

In the alternative universe that is New Jersey, the fiscal year starts on January 1 for most municipalities.  However, the town budget for that year has to be submitted to the State Department of Approving Municipal Budgets--that's not what it's called, but it's what it is--by March 30.  So you are already one quarter into your budget before it's even submitted.  The the Department goes over this budget at its leisure and sends it back, approved or disapproved, by April 30 on a very good year.  Most years it's more like May 30, and I have been present when it was approved on July 4, which means you really don't have much time left to make spending cuts, even if you don't have enough money to operate the way you did the past year. In the library, this usually involves cutting the materials budget, because what else can you cut?  You can also cut or eliminate the hours of part-time staffers, but they don't make anything anyway.  So management fires minimum wage-earning pages and has the books put away by a Senior Reference Librarian who makes $80,000 a year.

Ours was a civil service library.  In practice, that means anyone with a permanent appointment has a job for life.  There are also arcane rules, no doubt created by Franz Kafka,  for laying off people.  They go something like this:  first, everyone working in that job classification has to be informed that layoffs are contemplated 60 days, or 90 days, I forget which, before the layoffs will take place.  Then staffers are laid off in order of seniority, with 60 or 90 days notice.  By the time this has happened, 180 days have passed, which is half a year.  There are plenty more rules where these come from, but you get the idea.

Then they cut the hours.  The library, which used to be open 9 a m to 9 p m except for weekends, but had Saturday and Sunday hours as well, is closed Monday, opens at 12:30 Tuesday and closes at 5:15; has abbreviated hours Wednesday-Friday, closes at noon on Saturday and opens from 1-2 on Sunday, or whatever will cause maximum inconvenience to the public.  They stop buying multiple copies of bestsellers, in the belief that the peasants who pay taxes don't deserve to read that junk anyway.  Let them go to Barnes & Noble!

You can't blame unions for this stuff, either.  I know it's popular to dump on teachers unions,  but teachers actually teach children.  What do the administrators, Board secretaries, assistant Board secretaries, principals, assistant principals, and junior assistant principals do?  How about the County Boards of Education, who never see anyone under the age of 30--what do they do?  They have offices, employees, telephones, janitors, etc, but why are they there?

School budgets are generally submitted to the voters and often voted down.  Then the school board appeals to the State Department of Approving School Budgets, and sometimes wins and sometimes loses.  Whether they win or lose, the municipality has to pay their own lawyers and the education board lawyers, etc.  A good time is had by all, and a politically connected attorney never has to wonder where his next meal  is coming from.

If a town is lucky they have a volunteer fire department, but the police make up for any savings in public safety.  There are like 5,000 towns in New Jersey and they all have their own police departments, with arcane working rules, tough unions,  and Rottweilers for lawyers.

I just hope the State stays in business until I die, so I can continue to collect my pension.

The Queen's speech

I am so far behind in movie-viewing  that I just rented The Queen, last year's Academy Award winner, while everybody else is talking about the latest royal hooha.   Here's my take on it:  I'm with Queen Liz.  All those citizens standing around boohooing, placing flowers around the various palaces, and carrying candles are taking it too far. Where do these people get off, acting like they had just lost their best friend, their mother and dad, and the family dog?  They didn't know Diana, and chances are they wouldn't have liked her if they did, nor she them.

They're lucky I'm not queen--I would have sent the guards out to clear out the lot of them, and let the crowns fall where they may.  What ever happened to the stiff upper lip?  

The thing I most hold against Elizabeth is her giving birth to that royal ninny, Prince Chuck, whose greatest aspiration was to be a tampon.   But right after that is the speech she gave to the multitudes about Diana, a revolting mix of cheap sentiment and platitudes.  Clearly she loathed Diana and delivered the speech grudgingly.  If Tony Blair forced her to deliver the speech, then he is a humbug.

A musical note

Last Friday I attended a concert featuring a local composer I had never heard of--but that's no surprise, I could count all the living composers I've heard of without taking my socks off. The composer in question was called Libby Larson. She was given an award and made a speech announcing that there are fairies in the bottom of the garden. Well, not exactly--she merely asserted that her first language is music and other airy nonsense. So I didn't think I would like her work.

However, it wasn't bad, featuring snatches of jazz and ragtime; but somehow, it didn't cohere. The puzzle pieces did not seem to me to fit together. I am really trying to learn to like living composers. I like John Adams--does he count?

After the intermission the orchestra played a work by Dvorak. My first thought was: Libby Larson 0-Dvorak 1. The audience had a rip-roaring good time with Dvorak. I wonder--do they play the new composer first, hoping the audience will come back after the intermission to hear the good stuff?

Just asking.