Priscilla's Zine & Bookstore: July 21 Link Log

Surprise, I'm back...finished moving furniture in time to be ordered to go to the cafe in time for a short Link Log. Categories: Animals, Armed Senior Fights Crime, Christian, Fashion, Health, Nature, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Writing, Zazzle.

Animals

Wendy Welch goes west, meets buffalo. (They used to roam as far east as Big Stone Gap, and aren't you glad they don't any more?)

https://wendywelchbigstonegap.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/hail-the-mighty-buffalo-hunters/

Hummingbird poem, and photo:

http://my-minnesota.blogspot.com/2016/07/heatwaves-and-ruby-throated.html?spref=tw

Armed Senior Fights Crime

For those who need the warning, The Blaze has cookies, sometimes annoying ads, often obnoxious comments...and a great news blog line-up.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/07/21/texan-in-his-70s-fatally-shoots-alleged-intruder/?

Christian

Sermon for the week:

http://faithandvictory.com/sermons/rahab-the-rescuer/

Fashion

Towel charms, just in case your towel looks like someone else's towel that's spread out beside the same section of the beach? Makes more sense to me than half the things sold in beach resort towns.What about chances to hit a target and win an object valued at one-tenth the cost of a chance, which your friend or child will transfer directly to the local landfill?

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/438164/karen-pence-towel-charm-business-feminist-blogs

Health

A weekend of advanced studies with nutrition-oriented doctors and nutritionists, headlining John and Craig McDougall, Dean Ornish, and more...with vegan meals, in a luxurious spa hotel in California...for just $715 plus airfare? Apparently yes. It's only the weekend, not ten days or two weeks, and activities are aimed at students rather than sick patients.

http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=5e58f59d97611f910916b6276&id=d291be3210&e=4d57a9fdfb

Nature

This web site is a little too flashy and visual for my computer, but youall may want to read a book called Blind Descent (a Christian adventure story) by Brian Dickinson:

http://briandickinson.net/

Philosophy

What Are People For has been boiled down to a Found Poem.

http://www.dailygood.org/story/1324/wendell-berry-what-are-people-for-wendell-berry/

If you like those thoughts, there's a new edition of the book with, to my eyes, a prettier cover:

Politics (Election 2016)

"Self-funding" Candidate Trump is doing just what killed Ted Cruz's campaign. So far today I've reported three e-mail accounts with the Trump offspring's names on them as spam. Notice is hereby provided to the entire Trump family, including the students and/or foreign-born underpaid help who manage their social media accounts for them, that anybody who imagines a penniless widow is going to fund the campaign of a Bankruptcy Billionnaire, with a record of nasty behavior toward widows at that, needs help. Consult a psychiatrist now.

Is Trump really a serious candidate? He's convinced many of us--still apparently including Scott Adams--but I'm wondering, again. This e-mail campaign is guaranteed to make swing voters think, "At least Hillary Clinton's not cluttering up my e-mail, raising my blood pressure, asking me for money!"

Here's the classiest response I can imagine...mostly video content, but enough text to make this pleasant election news.

http://www.ktvz.com/news/politics/sen-rand-paul-skips-rnc-to-perform-free-surgeries/40813602

Dave Barry can, of course, reliably find a funny side of it...

http://www.miamiherald.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/dave-barry/article90163837.html

http://www.miamiherald.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/dave-barry/article90278682.html#emlnl=Dave_Barry_Newsletter

http://www.miamiherald.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/dave-barry/article90510892.html

Dan Lewis offers fun facts about Cleveland:

http://nowiknow.com/water-world/

For those who really want to watch an election-related documentary movie, here are showtimes for Bristol and Johnson City:

http://www.movietickets.com/movie/mid/232636/SearchZip/24251/ShowDate/1/SearchRadius/40/tstate/0#.V5EkYtTyvs0

Psychology

Oh poor Lindsay Holmes, trying to believe that humans are "inherently good." We're not. We are a predator species, by nature; we can easily be corrupted from predators into poisoners. But the Powerful Goodness that Christians believe created us, and wants to help us act as if we were good, has hard-wired us with some natural, built-in rewards for good behavior.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/happy-facts-for-sadness_us_5788d366e4b03fc3ee505b37?

So claim your rewards, Gentle Readers. Be kind--it's good for your health! I have no way of knowing whether any substantial number of Black youth or police officers read this blog, but...I think articles like this one may be inadvertently contributing to the problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/21/charles-kinsey-black-people-safety-police?CMP=twt_gu

Seriously. We read these reports, and if the victim was Black (in some areas) or Mexican or Dakota or some other group that have more than their fair share of the poverty, crime, and vice in the area, people who share that identity automatically think "Because s/he was like me." Then they vent accordingly. And let's face it, the majority of suspects and actual offenders are young, poor men who belong to the lower-status minority group in their part of the world. (A lot of them also did poorly in school, and also eat too much junkfood. A lot of them are also six feet tall, or taller. Correlation is not the same as causation, but these correlations are relevant.)

So what happens when the guys who fit the profile hear all this buzz, even if it's meant to be a buzz of solidarity, about how unfaaair it is that they're profiled? They feel more tense, more suspicious, more hostile; they're more likely to do things--whether it's kicking a hole in a wall, or speaking to a traffic cop in a surly manner--that feed a vicious cycle of hostilities.

Yougov was taking a survey about this earlier today. How important is it to an older, legally White woman if Black young men fit the profile of, oh, say, about 70% of the suspects described to the police by people reporting crimes in, say, Bladensburg, Maryland? More important than you might think, because we are talking about some young relatives of mine, here. (In the past the category of "Black young men" also included my stepson the Missing Person; if still living, he's middle-aged by now.) But that doesn't mean this web site recommends charging out into a battle that may not actually even exist, and making one. "Rage" is making a color war. This web site recommends staying cool. If you drive while Black, or whatever other ethnic type may be applicable, or while employed by the police, show the world how nice, kind, and gentle you can be. Use the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense for all it's worth. Be an Anger Buster. Because #BlackLivesMatter, and so do #BlueLivesMatter, and there's no point sacrificing any more lives to unnecessary heat-fuelled hypertensive rage.

This is supposed to be a Link Log, with Amazon book and music links not memories, but something my husband used to say belongs here: in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, at least, the police forces need good Black men. (E-friends say this has not changed.) So if you are a law-abiding young Black man, why not be the change. Join the force!

(Last night I was thinking of a Twit to whom I'm not going to link here...she knows who she is. She's the policeman's wife who spends a lot of time Twittering, sharing some really good funny lines and then getting into flamewars with other Twits. Yesterday somebody posted a threat to "come to her house." I don't get into the flamewars with this Twit, I enjoy her funny posts and scroll past the angry ones and figure a lot of people seem to enjoy a flamewar, but it needs saying somewhere--friend, you could inadvertently be doing your husband real harm. Don't. Please.)

Writing

Blocked business bloggers are welcome to follow me here from this post. Two things I'd like to leave in the mind of the business blogger who's wondering whether a blog adds anything to the business' web site: (1) For a business "blog," the kind that basically consists of "How to use our product, when to buy our product, how recent news stories relate to our product," monthly updates are sometimes considered standard and recycling ideas from year to year is commonplace. (2) I've learned a lot by recycling old blog posts from business blogs as new guest posts; if the business is one to which I can relate at all, I enjoy it...so much that I'm satisfied with $10-15 per typical, short, guest post.

http://maximizesocialbusiness.com/know-quit-blogging-23482/

(Guest posts wouldn't work for a professional writer's daily blog, where readers expect the writing voice of The Brilliant Writer. They work very well for a professional non-writer's blog about things like web site formatting, heat pump maintenance, new model cars, etc., where readers are more interested in good free advice about the product than in the personal voice of a writer...Hirewriters' "product" is guest posts on topics like those, and they pay the people who actually write these posts less than half what they charge the people who pay for them. E-mail me to cut out the middleman!)

Zazzle

Real Marylanders eat these things. I am not and have never been a Marylander. I do appreciate the Eastern Shore, though, so this is a nostalgic image.