Culture
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Thank You
To those who have given their lives, or had their lives taken from them (as Andy Rooney said on 60 Minutes), in defense of our country, in defense of our liberties. Thank you is so little, yet it is all I can think of to say. Thank you also, for the sacrifice of their families, who never again will hear that beloved voice, feel that cherished hug, see that beloved face, of their husband, wife, son, daughter, father, or mother. Aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, grandchild, friend. The relationships broken apart by war are endless. The reality of war profane. I hate it. I think we all hate it. None more…
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Three Cups of Tea
A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. ~ Margaret Mead In 1993 Greg Mortenson was the exhausted survivor of a failed attempt to ascend K2, an American climbing bum wandering emaciated and lost through Pakistan’s Karakoram Himalaya. After he was taken in and nursed back to health by the people of an impoverished Pakistani village, Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school. From that rash, earnest promise grew one of the most incredible humanitarian campaigns of our time — Greg Mortenson’s one-man mission to counteract extremism by building schools, especially for girls, throughout the breeding…
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The Ultimate Urban Legend?
(picture found here) From Wikipedia: An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or, more accurately, a contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of apocryphal stories believed by their tellers to be true. As with all folklore and mythology, the designation suggests nothing about the story’s factuality or falsehood, but merely that it is in non-institutional circulation, exhibits variation over time, and carries some significance that motivates the community in preserving and propagating it. For a hundred and fifty years, hearing the words, “Donner Party” has meant one thing. Cannibalism. I’m not sure when people learn about the Donner Party in other parts of the country, but if…
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Friday Randomness
Diving right on in here… I am sick to death of TVs every-damn-where. (If you’re not supposed to split infinitives, you’re probably REALLY not supposed to split a word in half, but I don’t care. Sue me.) I hate going to restaurants where they have a TV set up, and it’s happening at more and more places. Some decent places even. Not that Carls Jr is what I would call a decent place, but really? TV? And California Pizza Kitchen, and so many other places. There was a nice pasta place down the street, and they put in a big TV, and then it closed. Wonder if the TV did…
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March Forth!
Today is National Grammar Day! To celebrate, I’m freely cribbing a list of grammar myths from Grammar Girl, for your enjoyment. Full credit to Grammar Girl, though I might add a few comments here and there… Grammar Girl’s Top 10 Language Myths: 10. A run-on sentence is a really long sentence. Wrong! They can actually be quite short. In a run-on sentence, independent clauses are squished together without the help of punctuation or a conjunction. If you write I am happy I am glad* as one sentence without a semicolon, colon, or dash between the two independent clauses, it’s a run-on sentence even though it only has six words. 9.…
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Healthy Choices
I recently read a book that I thought might be good for the parents of any teen. Especially girls, but boys as well. It was recommended to me by a friend, who was particularly impressed by the section on how dieting does NOT work, and that especially in teens who are still growing, it usually leads to the body ‘resetting’ at a higher weight. So teens who diet are likely to end up weighing more than they might have otherwise. Any teen thinking about going on a diet might think twice if given this information. This books appears to be mostly common sense, but completely against what the consumer culture…
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Strange Fruit
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs[/youtube] Strange Fruit Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant South, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh! Here is fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop. I had never heard this song before, nor did I know the story behind it. I was listening…
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Jon Hamm as….SERGIO!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MADdGkWtbCw[/youtube] If you thought you loved him as Don Draper in Mad Men, wait until you see him as Sergio the Sexy Sax Player! Wait…I love Don more. Wait…Don’s an ass. I forgot.
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(Not) Lost Generation
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA[/youtube] I got this in the email the other day. I liked it. See if you do, too.
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Friday Randomness
Thanks everyone for your kind birthday wishes. I had a lovely birthday, and a lovely time off from work. One of Maya’s Christmas gifts was tickets to go see Wicked, which was a lot of fun. I’m not a huge fan of the musical as a play, but this one was really fun and interesting and kept your attention the whole way through. Excellent gift, Ted! Btw, Ted wrote a great review of the show for Popdose, and he included a couple of YouTube clips that are pretty great. Along the theme of gifts that are not things, we also received tickets for dinner on the Napa Valley Wine Train,…
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On the First Day of Christmas…
(image found here) A Facebook friend posted this morning, “Happy First Day of Christmas”, which confused me, because I thought Christmas Day was the first day of Christmas, with Epiphany being the 12th day, and the day that the magi came bringing gifts to the baby Jesus. But what do I know, I’m an atheist. Thanks to the internet, all I had to do was search for ‘1st day of Christmas’, and I found this very informative page, which both agreed with what my Facebook friend said, and what I had said as well. In other words, different traditions and churches celebrate it on different dates. I don’t know about…
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Friday Randomness, Now on Tuesday!
(photo found at SF Gate, here) Does anyone else still get a newspaper delivered to your house, as opposed to looking for your news online? We are suckers and pay quite a bit to support this dying industry. Sometimes I wonder why, and other times, I’m glad. Today I was glad, as I saw the picture above, which I might have missed if I had been looking online. The story is that the San Francisco Ice Co. donated 10 tons of ice to the San Francisco Zoo, which the zoo had blown into snow for the Polar Bears, who look like they’re LOVING it, don’t they? Doesn’t the bear in…
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Teaching Your Children to Read
When Maya was 3 or 4, LeapFrog came out with their LeapPad line of products, and I really wanted one for Maya. I remember thinking that the kids that had this toy might have some advantage, might learn to read more quickly than she would, might learn to love reading more than she did. But they were expensive. So I was hoping one of her grandparents might get her one. At that time, my mom used to come down for a month in November. She would spend a week with me, a week with her friend Kate, and two weeks with my Grandma and Great Aunt. During her week with…
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Don’t Analyze, Act!
I’ve heard a few things about Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, “Bright Sided“, though I haven’t read it. But the idea has intrigued me, because it’s the idea that our world of positive thinking is too much, and it’s somewhat dangerous. She says that when someone gets cancer, and is told that positive thinking can heal them, they’re lying in a very cruel and dangerous way to those people. And really, they’re blaming that person for not being positive enough. If they don’t get better, it’s then their fault, for not keeping up that sunny disposition all of the time. This reminds me of those who say some variation of, “God never…
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Boomtown Rats ~ I Don’t Like Mondays
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdA-2oXzk10[/youtube] For those of us old enough (or young enough) to remember Live Aid, it was indeed an amazing phenomenon. We missed a lot of it in California, being 8 hours behind England, and 3 hours behind Philadelphia, and it being announced not too long before the concerts were held. But wow, the work that went into that…without email, without cell phones, all of that. And a lot of it didn’t make it to MTV at the time. Originally, Geldof didn’t want the concert to be re-broadcast, saying that it would have more power in our memories than in being replayed over and over again. Not like today, where it…