Friday, June 26, 2015

Link Log for June 26

Can it be? Do I actually have enough online time left to check Google +? Nooo! I'm using an ACADEMIC computer, at the college nearest the home of the Sickly Snail. (Yes, the computer feels to me as if it's screaming the word "academic" in my face.) It works fine for Google searches and writing site software, but blocks e-mail and, apparently, blocks social sites. I haaate this. I've been doing strictly academic, strictly medical research writing for five hours and could so use a few stupid jokes and pet pictures right now.

Well, let's see what this computer can open...Celebrity Gossip, Cyberspace, Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Music Video, Music Memoir, News of the Weird, Prayer Request, Racism (with rant), Thank a Soldier.

(It opened Google + when I clicked on a link for +Sandy KS . I'd opened five links, commented, and plussed when Grandma Bonnie Peters came in and said, "I'm going home." Her home is the home of the Sickly Snail. We were in Gray, Tennessee. I'd just written an informative pamphlet for the hack writing site, while she'd been cheering up a "poor old lady who's been very ill" who's a little over half her own age. At 2:30 p.m. it was 94 degrees in the shade. GBP, age 80, had been on the road in the sun. I was glowing in the air-conditioned college library. GBP's basement stays close to earth temperature all year. The links here that aren't live are the ones from the Blogspot feed that I wanted to check out but haven't been able to.)

Celebrity Gossip

Taylor Swift fans may want to check out the discussion of TS's not entirely random acts of kindness at themillionhair.tumblr.com. Rose McGowan fans should look for the discussion of why RMcG “got fired,” a few posts further back.

Cyberspace 

How do you keep e-mail from taking over your whole work day?

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/122505793376/how-do-you-avoid-email

Family Stuff 

Comment on the Google + page:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samantha-rodman-phd/how-to-make-your-wife-hap_b_7639582.html

Fun Stuff 

I wanted fun stuff, and +Sandy KS provided some on the first screen of Blogspot feed. Nice going. (Fair warning: her explication of the word "queasy" may cause sensitive readers to feel it, themselves.)

http://challengeyourwriting.blogspot.com/2015/06/abc-emotions-challenge-q.html

Music Video

I can't tell from the blurb on the Blogspot Feed Page whether Madeleine Morgenstern recorded this herself, but she's been the first to share it. Regular readers may remember seeing/hearing our President sing “Sweet Home Chicago,” so, not only do youall know that it's unusual to see a President singing “Amazing Grace” with a church group after a Major Tragedy; you know that, though very much an amateur, President Obama can sing. Worth checking out if you can open theblaze.com.

Music Memoir

Retired U.S. Navy musician Coral Levang's musical memory stories tend to be worth reading. A recent one is at corallevang.wordpress.com under “M Is For Music.”

News of the Weird

Florida city council...apparently feels the heat. Well, it's not that we've been seeing any new records for how hot summer days can get, only for how hot they get in the month of June. The past week has felt like July. But you'd think people in Florida would be used to their weather by now...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/06/26/ready-html-florida-city-council-considers-bill-that-would-tell-residents-how-to-park-in-their-own-driveways/?

Prayer Requests

Regular readers remember that thesmittenedlife.blogspot.com is an irregular blog that started out with a little girl having leukemia, and has gone on, sporadically, from there. It contains just a few too many nice clear color photos (and videos!) for the Sickly Snail to bear, and may contain just a few too many emotional moments for some readers. Those who can stand it may, however, want to read “Praying for Bailey” and join them in prayer.

Racism (rant alert!)

F.t.s. (which all the Real Aunts out there know means “forget the stupidity,” just as "p.m.s." means "putting up with men's stupidity"--what were you thinking?) about the Confederate flag and its “meaning.”

The actual, literal, objective meaning of any flag is: a lot of colorful fabric stuck up on a pole. The emotional, subjective meaning of any flag is: whatever was going through the head of the person who ran it up the pole at the time.

Personally, if I had a flag I'd actually inherited from a Confederate (or foreign) ancestor I probably would fly it on selected special occasions, and what it would mean would be “Look at me, my ancestors preserved this old flag for all these hundreds of years, aren't we special?” But none of them maintained a museum, and they all died too long ago for that. The only flag I've inherited from an ancestor is the U.S. flag under which my grandfather fought in 1918, which also happens to be the one I consider to be the flag of my country.

Now and then I see people flying other flags. State flags. Obsolete flags like the Confederate flag or the Gadsden “Don't tread on me” flag. Foreign flags, including the flags of countries the United States has found it necessary to beat in wars. Cutesy little arts-and-crafts flags celebrating birds and flowers. Kingsport, Tennessee, and Takoma Park, Maryland, and some other towns where I've spent time, have their own flags. Used car dealerships hang out strings of pennants, and if people own forty different flags, want to fly all of them, and don't mind looking like a used car dealership, that is no threads off the end of my flag. Maybe some day if I have lots of time to kill I'll ask them to explain where they got their strings of flags, and why.

Some people who display Confederate flags, like nobody I've ever met, may be advertising that they are haters. Some, like the Duke teenagers in the old “Dukes of Hazzard” show, may be advertising that they are “rebels” during an historical period when that's what teenagers were expected to be. Some may be advertising that they had Confederate ancestors. Some may just think the Confederate flag is a nice symmetrical design, and some have been known to mix it up with the Union Jack for that matter. You're saying you have time to care about this?

I do not anticipate ever having time to care about the surplus flags people fly, though I will say that I personally know a lot of people whose displays include Confederate flags, and none of them is a racist. I don't have a great deal of respect for people who indulge in that sort of cheap stereotypes.

I do care about real racism, though. I'm against it. Like a majority of White people, of all different degrees of sensitivity and sophistication, I'm disgusted by the sheer stupidity of White racism. Also scared by the ill will other kinds of racism direct toward me.

Real racism is what I suspect Norb Leahy is trying to document at his “Conservative Blog,” ntlconsulting.blogspot.com, with a post titled “HUD Decision Is the Last Straw.” We've been following this issue, regular readers will remember. There are idiot, bean-counting, “let's play 'Mother May I' so youall have to ask me before you do anything” types at our Department of Housing & Urban Development who've decided that, in order to preserve their jobs, what these United States need are race-based quotas for housing projects. Which will ensure that riots will continue to happen.

I'm wary of declarations that anything is “The Last Straw,” but in the week after a Major Tragedy with racial overtones, I will say that efforts to perpetuate riots through race-based quotas, in this century, are about as tacky as it's possible to get.

Thank a Soldier 

This web site officially salutes a foreign-born soldier who's fundraising on behalf of a disabled student:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/06/26/the-unique-way-an-army-member-is-helping-a-woman-with-cerebral-palsy-get-a-service-dog/?

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