Animals
Adoptable polydactyl cat in Louisiana:
Downsizing
I'm NOT in favor of "downsizing" in the sense of giving up our homes and "retiring" into tacky little flats as we grow older. I'm in favor of keeping the house and passing it down to the next generation. A society organized along biblical lines does not support the idea of anyone's making real estate sales a career. A society organized with due concern for health and sanitation does not support the idea of blocks of flats.
But, does this ever call for downsizing our junk collections in order to free space for the next generation?
Also, what about the storage space that needs to be cleared out for restoration, or abandoned, because it's too damp and moldy to preserve things stored in it?
(I'm still trying to clear things out of the barn where my parents stashed them for years, before the barn actually falls down. Lots of stuff has been reintegrated back into the house. Some things I've sold, and some things I may sell. This is in no way to be interpreted as indicating that I plan to sell the house. I plan, eventually, to replace the barn. It was an inspirational structure in its day, but it wasn't built to last, and hasn't lasted.)
Anyway here's a nice, cheerful description of how one blogger cleaned out a damp basement.
Memes
This is the picture that was meant to be highlighted in yesterday's post. Joe Jackson gave it a whole post all by itself. I took one look and knew...of all the sunflowers in Kansas, that one is Grandma Bonnie's. Google traces it to somebody called Clifford Romero on Linked In. My finding it at theviewfromladylake.blogspot.com seems proper and appropriate, because Lady Lake was where Mildred Wolfe retired to and GBP was Mildred Wolfe's niece.
I put it in today as a test. Yesterday somebody was holding Blogspot's photo capabilities hostage. Google promises to minimize cookies, which is one reason to choose Blogspot over Wordpress or Live Journal, but then tries to get people to opt to allow more cookies on our computers. (Readers' computers are presumably the targets of a separate cookie campaign.)
Well, I'll tell the world: I never have trusted the Internet to keep private information private. I just don't tell a computer anything that I would really object to putting in the newspaper. So I don't care how much data Google compiles about the sites I visit, the only possible exception being the e-mail addresses of the few real-world friends who have e-mail. But, clunky as Windows 10 has always been with the never-ending "updates" and the cookie conflicts, would anyone ever choose to enable even one more cookie, even one more app, even one more "update" than the wretched computer already has to struggle through? If you would, not I.
Bloggers tend to be people who know our rights and our alternatives. I looked at the not-so-helpful article about how to recover your blog's audiovisual capabilities by enabling more cookies, and I said to myself, sez I, "1. Reinstall Disqus and post the links and pictures as comments. 2. Post the animal articles on Live Journal and put links to those LJ posts here. 3...4....5..." and toward the end, "Demand that Congress enact a bill addressing this kind of thing, along with the appalling way Google limits search results pretty much to commercially sponsored content and the allegedly unfiltered search engines all merely search Google, and the THEFT OUTRIGHT of paid use of privately owned property created by the 'updates,' and the risk not only to US, Canadian, and Mexican citizens but to our countries, which is to say our continent, when web sites are allowed to store sensitive information like individuals' phone numbers or Social Security numbers: we need an absolute ban on any computer storing any sequence of nine or ten digits linked to an account.."
Evidently a lot of other people had the same reaction, because the picture came up promptly today. Thank you, fellow bloggers.
Phenology
In Magaly Guerrero's post, linked below, is a photo of a passionflower. This funny-looking flower was so named because, in some places, it blooms around the time of Easter. Hah. Here, in Virginia, it blooms in June if it blooms at all. I saw two of those flowers along Route 58 last week. In New York City, with warming, in the last week of June.
This is a "different" year for flowers. I'm not sure why. Some of my flowers didn't do well. My late summer, early autumn flowers aren't going to do well, I'm afraid, because some years I have flowers and some years I have kittens; this is a year of kittens. They charge and tackle the flowers, watch the stalks lean over, poke interestedly at the upturned roots...
Mother's Rose of Sharon or Northern Hibiscus, though, has re-grown after being cut down to the ground a few years ago, and is blooming as it's never bloomed before. Every time I step outside I see another white blossom, and some of them are big, too, almost the size of the "real" tropical hibiscus in Florida. Probably because the moths and their larvae gave up. They'll come back, of course. Lots of Northern Hibiscus in the area.
Poems
According to Messy Mimi this is the day of the Festival of Terrible Poetry. I don't receive a great deal of that, though those who spend a month celebrating a Deadly Sin can be depended on to collect it in June. (This web site has endorsed a lot of things done by people who identify as LGBTQIA, but this web site does not endorse a month of "I am special because I'm a victim because I'm obsessed with a sexual act or relationship that nobody wants to hear about, and it hurts my feelings that nobody wants to hear about it, so forget about hatecrimes against women or poverty in Pine Ridge and listen to me babbling about my sexual kink!" This web site does not regard that as poetry, nor do we celebrate it; but if you count it as poetry it is undeniably terrible.)
I'd rather celebrate good poetry, like the first mini-poem in Magaly Guerrero's blog post, which seems germane to the yucky presidential debate and other news items...
The pun as poetic form:
Politics (Election 2024)
If you missed THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE, here's the link:
Some comments:
1. When Trump says that "we" did this and that for the economy, he's not being modest, or senile, or referring to any internal parasites. The economy is primarily the responsibility of the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, who is neither elected by the people nor appointed by anyone who was elected, and serves for twelve years. And the appalling thing about Biden's mismanagement of the economy is that Biden had the same chairman of the Federal Reserve to work with.
Jerome Powell, according to some the most really powerful man in the United States.
2. Doesn't it feel incongruous when a high tenor voice comes out of a barrel-shaped man? Biden looks like someone who ought to be a tenor. Trump looks like someone who ought to be a bass. Yes, I know that's a frivolous comment. You might as well laugh as cry. (See Poems, above.)
3. Trump talks about how much better off the nation was on the morning of 1.6.24. Bad move: he should've called out the CENSORSHIP that made the riot possible.
4. Biden replies with outright lies. There is DOCUMENTATION that Trump did what he could do to stop the riot. CENSORSHIP prevented that. CENSORS should go to jail! "The fact is that there was no effort on his part to stop the..." Liar, liar, pants on fire...
5. Trump fails to call Biden out on the outright lies, then talks about quid pro quo and making Biden a convicted felon... Why does Trump not use a point that's his to use with good effect? Because he's not planning to take a firm stand on censorship? Shame!
6. Trump said, twice, "I did nothing wrong." Great. Answering one outright lie with another. Trump's been accused of a lot of frivolous charges motivated by political, er um, cheating, but everybody does things that are wrong...errors and failures, if not active evildoing.
7. Only in the second part of the debate, Trump finally does mention "what I said on Twitter" in a question about the Censorship Riot. Meh. He's not playing his strengths, anyway.
8. After they've taken a break and come back to make final statement, Biden sounds more tired but his eyes are oddly dark and dilated. What's he on?
9. Trump calls Biden a whiner and then starts whining. Loser strategy! Where's the statement of positive purpose? Grow up, Trump...the election's being thrown at you, if you don't FUMBLE AGAIN.
10. Instead of talking about "space age" medical care both candidates should have talked responsibly about the mess the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations have made of the medical care system. A candidate I could support would be talking about moving back toward a system where most people can pay cash for the treatments they need, where the system emphasizes a personal health care plan that each individual is responsible for making and following, where a large-scale medical insurance industry is not necessary because there's an actual safety net instead of a monstrous bloated boondoggle.
11. Despite its incongruous pitch, Trump has the closest thing to a presidential-sounding voice of the three candidates. But it's time to put the sane one on the stand. All three of them are old-looking, tired-sounding White men. All three have been credibly accused of abuse of women in the past. All three can be more credibly abused of corruption and money-grubbing in the present. Whether any of the three can survive four years in the White House is anybody's guess. It's a sorry excuse for an election. And Kennedy, who needs a "life insurance" running mate most badly, prematurely offered the position to a supporter who (1) is too young to speak for Glyphosate Awareness, and ought to be considered too young to be sent to Washington at all, (2) is a Loony Leftie, and (3) although certainly qualified as "life insurance" from a right-wing perspective is exactly the opposite from the perspective of the party more likely to be violent and unhinged. And. Still. Even so. Kennedy is still the sanest and most coherent of the three. Ochone!
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