Link Log for April 6

Categories: Animals, Books, Christian, Crafts, Diseases & Conditions, Easter/Passover/Holy Week, Fashion, Food, Funny, Language, Pac-Man, Phenology, Politics, Writing.

Animals 

Five fun facts about polydactyl cats (like Heather)...

http://www.catster.com/lifestyle/polydactyl-cats-facts

I want this book...I don't know why Amazon insists on bothering to create a separate Wish List for me to add it to. I know some of Berton's books were printed in the United States and can't think of any valid reason why this one should be banned in the States. Something I need to know?

http://www.amazon.ca/Cats-Have-Known-Loved-Publisher/dp/B00SQAPJ2K/

Animals as things we have to walk around...

http://challengeyourwriting.blogspot.com/2015/04/walk-around-what.html

Animals walking around...in Alaska.

http://laylalawlor.livejournal.com/245017.html

Sea lions, ordinarily peaceful fish-eating mammals, can get dangerous when too many of them have been living on apparently peaceful terms with too many humans for too long:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/06/fisherman-posing-with-his-catch-for-a-picture-is-dragged-under-water-by-aggressive-sea-lion/?

Duck...not an American species...with duckling:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/104296559060154469022/albums/6133556978432409057/6133556974254229794?sqi=105248841768188069608&sqsi=dc6b8116-a230-46c9-aba2-0e6dc64a9f65&pid=6133556974254229794&oid=104296559060154469022

Children who neglect animals...My brother and I bonded with a pony, and always took her the fruit and vegetable scraps we were allowed to give her as treats, right away. We also bonded with our bantams, let them out in the afternoons, led them back in and sang and rehearsed our stupid pet act with them at sundown, without being told.

We also had a parakeet. Somehow that parakeet never became a real pet, never seemed to communicate with us. And we'd look at his food dish, but the empty husks of millet he left in the dish look an awful lot like the fresh millet we put in. And during his third winter in our home, even our parents had a rough time with flu...and one day when we were up one of us said "That parakeet's awfully quiet," and checked, and sure enough he'd starved to death in a cage with a couple of cups of empty husks.

That wouldn't have happened with the pony. Nor with the bantams. So in addition to the things +Lyn Lomasi suggests here, if your child neglects your hamster, you might want to consider choosing a more interesting pet.

http://www.heartandmindpawrescue.com/rescue-blog/help-my-child-is-neglecting-the-hamster

If anything should happen to you, what would happen to your pet(s)? Most of the real-world friends who've been referenced here by "nature names" are people with whom I've had some sort of emergency animal care and adoption pact.

http://www.dogpawsitivetidbits.com/2015/04/if-i-should-die-before-my-dog-book.html

Abused and neglected horses...

http://jaquo.com/important-moment-wild-horse-history/

(And here's the book referenced in my Google+ comment:

http://www.amazon.com/Mustang-Wild-Spirit-Marguerite-Henry/dp/B000YA7D0G/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428363944&sr=1-1&keywords=Henry+book+mustang)

Books 

Coloring books for adults (and teenagers)? Why not? If you don't make gorgeous, colorful, symmetrical doodles all by yourself, buy some and color them in.

http://booktrib.com/2015/04/adult-coloring-books-are-the-new-craze/

Christian 

Some commenters read this article as anti-Catholic. I don't. I read it as anti-monastic, perhaps failing to recognize that some Christians are called to be more contemplative than active, but accurate. If I had to quarrel with John Nantz about something in this article, I'd ask him where he got the idea that people would imagine Paul as a monastic character. The Bible shows him to have been about as un-monastic as a Christian can be. (Thanks to +Allen West Republic for sharing...and yes, this Townhall page behaved quite well, at least in Chrome. Has the site finally heard my pleas for less annoying ads?)

http://townhall.com/columnists/johnnantz/2015/04/06/a-slumbering-christianity-the-liberals-best-friend-n1981183/page/full

Crafts 

Traditional embroidery stitch adapted to crocheting:

http://www.allcraftconnection.org/

The things one can order online...include personalized Mothers Day gift tags with daisies:

http://www.zazzle.com/personalized_mothers_day_gift_tags_with_daisy-256707790159331819

Y'know, you could call money spent to help +Ruth Cox move a donation...it is meant to help keep an old lady and her dog together and out of shelters, after all...

https://fundrazr.com/stories/d9KP70/gp/61I2Q0

...or you could just buy a bunch of these extremely cool original, non-Hallmark cards that put a marvellous spin on the idea of "feeling emotionally bankrupt."

http://ruthcoxpoetryprose.blogspot.com/2015/04/feeling-emotionally-bankrupt-or-bloated.html

Diseases & Conditions 

"Autism Speaks"? Not for the afflicted children, themselves...

http://themillionhair.tumblr.com/post/115672855794/autism-speaks-gets-even-worse

To me the term "high-functioning autistic" does seem useful, though, as noted, it does not have anything to do with HSP or introvert traits. Although child psychologists did originally use "autistic" to describe activities that were self-contained, self-defined, not shared with anyone else, I'm going to pull demographic rank and say that, when the majority of English-speaking people learned the word "autism," it meant a pattern of massive brain damage that normally made it impossible for a child to communicate. So, "high-functioning autistic" would describe someone like Temple Grandin or Donna Williams who has that kind of brain damage but has been able to learn to use some sort of language to some extent. It would also be predictably, though inaccurately, used as a catchall label to describe any child who appears to have brain damage, probably some other, milder kind...

http://themillionhair.tumblr.com/post/115660551654/2ndhalfoflife-nomorepuzzleprofits-we-need-to

Easter, Passover, Holy Week 

An emotional Easter story...

http://challengeyourwriting.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-z-emotion-challenge-emotions.html

Cartoon by +L. L. Reynolds :

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/+LLReynolds/albums/6133699786354161713/6133699791650617058?pid=6133699791650617058&oid=100464596219726743506

Happy Easter story from +Coral Levang :

http://personapaper.com/article/28695-there-will-be-chocolate-bunnies-this-year

Fashion 

In some countries, I'm told, it's socially acceptable for a woman to wear one dress or suit every day until it wears out. And of course there are some very socially acceptable schools (and workplaces) even in the U.S. where it's expected that girls and women will rotate among three or more copies of the same suit; it's called a uniform. I think most American women would feel that dressing this way was boring, though. (Well, I would.) But also, there would be women who'd insist on wearing different things to the building where they put on their uniforms. And this would go back to twentieth-century U.S. culture: If a man appears to be wearing the same clothes he wore yesterday, he doesn't care what he looks like, which was not always perceived as all bad. If a woman appears to be wearing the same clothes she wore yesterday, she unexpectedly spent the night at someone else's home.

I used to enjoy messing with people's minds, especially in the area of the good-girl-bad-girl stereotypes, and one thing I did as a Bright Young Thing was to buy two copies of the same outfit (I have two copies each of one suit, two dresses, and two T-shirts), but in different sizes--one for a "fitted" look and one for a "relaxed" look. I sort of enjoyed wearing them to one-day-a-week jobs and seeing whether people would comment on my apparent weight gain or loss...psych!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emily-peck/can-women-get-away-with-w_b_7000398.html

Food 

From a blog I just started following...if you can trust your supplier of oatmeal, this recipe would even be gluten-free.

http://joyfulcountrylife.com/2015/04/06/apple-crisp/

Funny

+Theresa Wiza posted the funniest thing I've seen online today:

blogspot.com/2015/04/when-other-people-think-youre-crazy.html

Language 

Dittoed and underlined...

http://themillionhair.tumblr.com/post/115668052064/heal-teavibes-sunfl0werpetal

Note that people who want to make this status distinction between foreign accents need to live in places where they meet only a few specific groups of foreigners. In Washington we hear everything, and it's not always easy to tell whether someone's accent is European, Asian, African, or one of those strange mixes that form when the person has lived in several different countries. Nevertheless. Fellow Americans, even when someone's accent is really heavy, difficult to understand, painful to listen to...don't youall think, "Yikes, this must be the way I sound when I speak whatever it is that I fondly imagine to be French"? I know I do. (Duh...those who do speak French fluently can always substitute whatever language you learned third, fourth, or later and will always speak with a heavy accent.)

Pac-Man 

Retro-cute:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/+GoogleMaps/albums/6134239014655275601/6134239014218233186?pid=6134239014218233186&oid=111401917971052287374

Phenology 

Redbuds are already in bloom, just a couple hundred miles south of here. They can't be far away...

http://personapaper.com/article/28672-spring-has-sprung

What's blooming in and around Gate City...will probably change during the course of the day. As of this morning the trees on the lower hills were starting to show green; the mountains are still winter-gray. Flowers: crocus (almost gone by now), daffodils, dandelions, vincas, Bidens, shepherds-purse, some ornamental Prunus trees but not the fruit-bearing trees in the orchard, maples of course, ground-ivy, violets.

Weather: just the way I like it. Cool nights, occasional dips below freezing, to control insects and humidity. Warm days. Lots of sunshine. Not much need for heating or cooling--during the daytime, at least. Ideal weather for spring cleaning and gardening, which is what I did all week.

Daffodils are popping up even in Canada by now.

http://poetrybysusanzutautas.blogspot.com/2015/04/exuberant.html

Politics 

Musician/activist/writer Lloyd Marcus adds cartooning to his skills list.

http://www.lloydmarcus.com/2015/04/i-obama-supplicant/

Dave Urbanski finds another cool family being hassled by control freaks...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/06/completely-awesome-cardboard-fort-is-the-hit-of-the-neighborhood-but-after-city-code-enforcement-found-out-all-the-fun-will-soon-come-to-an-end/?

Rick Santorum gets it right:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/05/rick-santorum-should-the-govt-force-a-gay-print-shop-owner-to-make-god-hates-fs-signs-for-westboro-baptist-church/?

Quo Vadis, anyone? (How many people in cyberspace have actually read Quo Vadis?)

http://ntlconsulting.blogspot.com/2015/04/nero-burns-rome.html

Writing 

Plots for "young adult novels" nobody seems to be using these days...

http://themillionhair.tumblr.com/post/115646016164/micdotcom-veryrealisticya-exposes-whats

+Lyn Lomasi shares a strange, seemingly extravagant writing technique that did work for me, back in 2009. I had more or less moved into a friend's house in Kingsport, had moved in the computer on which I write (which has no modem), and set it up facing the friend's computer (which had no word processing software) so I could retype drafts stored on my computer and publish them into cyberspace on hers.

http://www.articlewriterforhire.com/blog/does-using-multiple-computers-speed-writing-productivity-how