We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Many women will view Barrett as a regular suburban mom just like them. This is where Barrett’s biography is deadly to Democratic attack lines: small-town, middle America, Catholic, teacher, mother of seven, with two kids adopted from Haiti after a devasting hurricane and one kid with Down’s Syndrome. Demonizing any part of her biography inherently demonizes thousands of other women sharing that same trait or who will find nothing but goodness in Barrett’s biography.
Yom Kippur, the most important Jewish holiday, begins tonight with fasting until tomorrow night. It is often referred to as the Day Of Atonement. It might better be referred to as the last chance for atonement before the new year begins. The prior Hebrew month of Elul is about considering our transgressions, especially toward others, and making amends. Indeed, every day would be a better start on the future by correcting our bad behaviors and confessing and asking forgiveness from those we may have harmed in any way. That is why this holiday is also referred to as Day Of Return, returning to the guidance of G-d in living the proper ways.
I just returned from ten days hiking in Utah's national parks. Glorious. Photos later. One of my thoughts was about sheep.When under the shepherd's care, they are protected from wolves. When wandering away, the sheep are less safe and wolves have an easier time of it. G-d is our shepherd and we are safer and have better lives when remaining under or returning to G-d's care.
Almost everybody's favorite opera buffa. Rossini wrote it in three weeks. Over 200 years old, and going strong because it is so much fun and so silly, with irresistable tunes.
Forget politics -this is joyful. Good actors too. Ain't Italian beautful? To me, Sienese Italian is the most musical and expressive tongue in the world.
Last year, students at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, one of the nation’s most prestigious public schools, marked a map hanging in a hallway with their families’ far-flung places of origin: from Seoul to Beijing to Hyderabad. Twenty years ago, 70 percent of TJ students were white; today, 79 percent are minority, most from Asian immigrant families.
TJ is a testament to American meritocracy’s melting pot—but last week, Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Scott Brabrand announced a plan to reduce the number of Asian students at this selective high school. In a four-hour online “work session” alongside the district’s all-Democratic school board, Brabrand laid out an initiative to eliminate TJ’s race-blind, merit-based admissions test and replace it with a “merit lottery” open to all eighth-graders with a minimum GPA of 3.5 in order to increase “equity of opportunity.”
In other words, people in the know knew it was BS, but used it anyway.
Trump-Russia was not just a routine political lie or hoax. It could be termed a coup-attempt. Scott explains: Coup Plotters Emerge.
I am just not paranoid enough to have believed all of this until now. This is one for the history books. As he says, Watergate was a peanut compared to this.
I wonder whether any of our readers ever believed Trump-Russia collusion.
My Brown Turkey Fig shrub has been highly productive this year, and has grown about 6', but I think none of the fruit will ripen before the first frost.
They usually ripen in August, and it's been a hot summer too. Too late now for these fruits to ripen.
In New England, these plants tend to die back to the roots in winter. However, they revive and grow like weeds.
Word is out on the street: the study of literature is dying; English is breathing its last; no more Beowulf, no more Virginia Woolf either. Or not much of it. There are reasons to listen to the auguries. Most of the teaching in English departments now is done by adjuncts. The number of majors is tumbling. The profession’s on fire, and the deans, provosts, and presidents don’t hear the cries or smell the smoke...
Stonington Borough (pop 929) is as boaty and salty a tiny village as can be found on the East Coast. It is also quaint as heck, almost to a fault. It's a popular summer getaway, right down the road from Westerly and Watch Hill, RI. Also, it has a sizeable retirement population because there is so much to do around there.
Its rock coast has only a postage stamp-sized beach. There is one very pleasant inn, and a yacht club.
The functional ability of older people is nowadays better when it is compared to that of people at the same age three decades ago. This was observed in a study conducted at the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. The study compared the physical and cognitive performance of people nowadays between the ages of 75 and 80 with that of the same-aged people in the 1990s.
While I feel guilt for my own bad actions or omissions, the kinds of things that are under my direct control, I do not feel guilt that my own life has been a comparatively fortunate one, probably more fortunate than that of the majority of mankind. On the contrary, I feel gratitude, or perhaps, more accurately, I should say gladness. I feel sorrow for the unfortunate, but not guilt toward them since I am not responsible for their sorrows. True, I did nothing to deserve having the opportunities that I have had, but I did nothing not to deserve them, either. I took the world as I found it and for me to feel guilty about my comparative good fortune would be a sign not of moral sensitivity or virtue, but of moral grandiosity. Moral grandiosity has probably done more harm in the world than indifference, inasmuch as it recognizes no limits to its power to bring about a supposedly better world.
I wish to note that in the last 40 years alone the UK has had seven official epidemics/pandemics; AIDS, Swine flu, CJD, SARS, MERS, Bird flu as well as annual, seasonal flu. All were very worrying but schools remained open and the NHS treated everybody and most of the population were unaffected. The country would rarely have been open if it had been shut down every time.
I have explained how a hopelessly-performing diagnostic test has been, and continues to be used, not for diagnosis of disease but, it seems, solely to create fear.
" Yom Kippur is the only holiday I know that, 
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