SmokeSound

Having stumbled upon what seemed a comparison to a gale-force President--that is to say, "pouting like a pufferfish"--which fish is also called a blowfish (this is becoming too true to be a mere coincidence), I am wondering if Darwin was wrong, and that perhaps there is a Master Craftsman somewhere up in the sky who knew all of this would eventually become obvious because Master Craftsmen leave nothing to chance and necessity. A pufferfish.  A blowfish.  Blowing himself (sic) up to look large and unappetizing.  Sucking in water, actually.  A poisonous creature. Pufferfish do not speak in whole sentences, as they are linguistically limited to 140 characters, so when they belch sometimes the meaning is not clear, except when they assume the role of sportscasters lamenting the lack of violence in the sport, when 140 characters is more than adequate. I feel better just knowing that this all may be part of an eternal plan, first devised about . . . oh . . . five ...

From Wikipedia There might be something wrong. What do you think? Houston, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and a significant part of Texas are in shreds because of hurricanes-- to say nothing of nuclear North Korea-- and Donald Trump is raging about football and basketball players. He calls those football players who kneel or raise their fists during the playing of the National Anthem, "sons-of-bitches", for protesting the racism that is the shame of our nation, and pouts like a puffer fish because basketball players would rather not come to the White House so he can meet them. Why doesn't he go to Puerto Rico, and maybe fly over Dominica, too? I miss having a presidential President; one with empathy and a whole vocabulary.

linkedin.com Populism purports to be a concern for ordinary people.  When politicians say that that they are populists, they may only mean that they are appealing to ordinary people; not that they are ordinary people. When politicians from the right wing of our political spectrum say they are populists, they are generally talking about Nationalism (for instance, "America first!) Nativism (people born here; not recent immigrants) Protectionism (keeping the jobs here) Opposition to immigration (not how their family got here, but how people are doing so now) Globalization (the influence of other nations as a result of global participation in commerce, etc.). Again, when politicians say they are populists, they may not mean that they are populists, but that they have jumped on the bandwagon.   Donald Trump is no populist.  He is about as far from ordinary people, and the concerns of ordinary people, as it is possible to be.  But it is becoming obviou...

 I love the name of the water reclamation facility a bit upriver from where we live, in northwest Tucson: Sweetwater Wetlands . It is, of course, a place just downpipe from a sewage treatment plant, where lots of nasty little things are reclaimed by plants and animals, and where the water can be percolated down into the ground, again. The best times of the year to visit the Sweetwater Swamp is during the periods of migration, and the best time of day is early morning.  I went yesterday afternoon, because I do not believe that doing things the easy way builds character, and I do so want to be a character. I saw almost no birds except for ducks.  And I know there are lots of turtles in the water, but some of the ponds were so blanketed with green algae that even the lower half of the ducks was impossible to see. No matter!  It was quiet, except for the gossiping ducks, and the crunch of shoes on the new gravel.  More even than the delight of wate...

pinterest.com I did not actually grow up on a small Caterpillar bulldozer, because I did not ever actually grow up. While Dad had been born in Norway, almost-but-not-quite in a small fishing dory, he, as a young man, did not immediately look for a job in fishing.  Like many other immigrants who crossed the whole continent before settling down, he found work in the logging industry.  Western Washington State was  a logging industry. I believe it was while he had become a drag-line operator and mechanic that he bought a small, gasoline-powered Caterpillar that had been accidentally dropped while loading it onto something.  It had a lot of worn-out and broken parts.  Somebody hauled the inert remains to the farmyard where we lived, and Dad took it apart--completely apart--and replaced most of its broken parts. I recall, as one of the adventures of my boyhood, helping to hook Sally, our massive Percheron horse, to the stripped-down carcass of the eng...

The Reverend Robert Jeffress--very large church in Dallas--is giving the Unreverent Donald Trump advice about how to throw about 800,000 young people out of the country, back to Mexico where their parents came from. The Rev. Mr. Jeffress does admit that Christian compassion is important, but that there are other factors at play here.  I dare say.   First, and this may surprise you--in light of the Louisiana Purchase, and the purchase of Alaska, and the Gadsten Purchase, to say nothing of wars with just about everybody who would not take money--God is the one who established nations and their borders.  And "God is not necessarily an open borders guy". Mr. Jeffress did not say so, but I suspect that God might also be a Southern Baptist kind of guy.  Maybe in Dallas. It is difficult to know where to begin.  God is a guy; a real man's kind of guy, the kind of guy you can call a guy; maybe even a role model for football coaches and roll-up-your-sleeves, take...

Our TV is on: pinterest The Minnesota Lynx are playing the Washington Mystics. The score isn't important. It is real basketball. When I began teaching in college, already middle aged, with four children, the girls in Iowa high schools played . . . oh, I don't know what it was. I think there were six players on a team. They were allowed to dribble the ball.  Once. Then they had to pass it. There were three offensive players at one end of the court, and three defensive players at the other. The stats showed that there were some really high-scoring forwards, and defensive players with no points. There was a flap at the local high school because one of the female students wore blue jeans to school.  She said it was winter, and she was cold:  Nope! Girls wear skirts, and boys wear whatever they wanted to wear, unless-- never tested, so far as I know-- they chose to wear skirts. When I moved from Berkeley, California to Fremont--25 or 30 mi...

P l a y b a l l ! "Couldn't have done better, myself!"

ushistory.org About twenty-five years ago, I used my sabbatical year to spend a year in Lillehammer, Norway, where I taught at a Norwegian college:  Nansenskole.   Mari worked part-time at a firm that provided a computer system for Norwegian universities, and Daniel discovered what a sudden and total immersion into a Norwegian public school meant. It was a wonderful year.  Lillehammer was the center for the Winter Olympics, the following year, and we explored as many venues as we could.  Daniel skied the slalom and downhill courses, Daniel and I went down the bobsled run twice, and all of us tried the ice skating venues, and were spectators at the hockey and ski-jumping venues. One day, while stumbling my way, almost blindly, through the tax reporting system--none of my vocabulary included either words or concepts having to do with the tax system:  I barely managed my way through my lectures at the college-- a governmental official told me...

politicalpistachio.blogspot.com Our Alt-Right wing political friends are determined to throw 800,000 young people of Hispanic origin out of the only country they really know:  us.  The USA.  They were brought here as children by their parents who came illegally to find work. And before we go one wall further, building a wall will not stop illegal immigration.  I have been told, on good authority, that it is possible to enter this country from Canada, or by boat, or airplane, or just by looking good and having good-looking papers.  Tunnels under the wall, and ladders over it are just occasional diversions.  The wall is not an effective barrier to immigration:  it is an expensive monument to fear. By Presidential directive, Barack Obama directed that these young people should be allowed to remain here to go to school, for instance.  But our Alt-Right enthusiasts say that those young people have to go! 800,000 is a lot of people.  But...

Hatch, New Mexico, named after an "Indian fighter"--Edward Hatch--might have been an even better place to raise Apaches than to raise chiles but, today, chiles it is.  The world authority on chile peppers, BBC News, says that Hatch is the home of "the world's best chili pepper". When Mari saw a notice of this year's Hatch Chile Festival, we decided to hitch up the team to our Casita and be in Hatch.  As a small, often repeated bonus, the road to Hatch from Tucson goes right through Texas Canyon, with the Dragoon Mountains to the north, and more Dragoon Mountains to the south.  As a bonus, Texas Canyon is not located in Texas, but in Arizona, which is much closer to Tucson. We have driven through Hatch for years, ever since discovering, on our second trip from the Upper Midwest to Tucson, that "the Hatch cutoff" eliminated a much longer, L-shaped drive from Hatch to Deming by going down to Las Cruces.  Las Cruces is a good place, unless it is n...