Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

It ain’t over yet, folks.  The counting  continues in California, and the more ballots are counted, the closer it gets. Bernie has flipped 3 counties, and today  got the support of 9 superdelegates, which is also 9 which won’t go to Clinton.  So, looking up, there.

In other news, the dirt around the DNC and Hillary Clinton just continues to fly.  Apparently, Russian hackers, note the plural, have been getting into DNC databases, note the continuous tense.
I am reminded of Iowa.  I suspected at the time that they’d deliberately leaked info to the Sanders campaign so they could have an excuse to deny him legitimate access which, indeed, they tried to do.

Now, here is the part where people will start calling me a conspiracy theorist, but I see it as connecting the dots: here is another item, from the New York Times:

“…while the State Department was involved in securing a uranium mining deal with Russia, investors in the company involved in the deal, Uranium One, gave millions to the Clinton Foundation.

Shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.”  This was in 2010, while Hillary was Secretary of State.

What if giving the Russians access to the DNC’s database was part of the deal?

And, if they’ll sell Democratic Party secrets to the  Russians for half a million dollars,  imaging what they’ll be able to do if she’s president.

O.K., I got into a little bit of trouble on facebook.  Somebody wrote “Why are people blaming the gun?  More people are killed by texting than automatic weapons.  Should we ban texting?  What about fertilizer?  You can make a bomb out of fertilizer.  And airplanes.  Airplanes killed a lot of people  on 9/11.  Why don’t we ban airplanes?”
Instead of just writing “All of those things have legitimate uses.  An AR-15 does not” I prefaced those words with “You are an idiot.  And an asshole.”  Suddenly, I was the bad guy on the thread, for not engaging in a civil discussion.

Yeah, maybe I could worry about my debate skills and diplomacy a bit more.  But, seriously.  We are talking about guns.  We are not talking about texting (which is not terribly dangerous unless you are driving at the time, and I would be all in favor of banning driving.  We have cars now that can do it by themselves, and a lot better than human beings), fertilizer (it takes a bit of know how to make a fertilizer bomb, and sneaking it into a nightclub is also problematic.  Yes, Timothy McVeigh managed to cause quite a bit of damage with one, but I can’t think of anybody else) and airplanes (seriously?  Do you know how many flights there are every day?  At any given moment, there are thousands and thousands of people in the air, eating meals and watching movies and feeling safe as a bug in a rug).
We are talking about guns, which are the weapon of choice for crazy people who want to  walk into a club, or a cinema, or a school, or a church, and kill large numbers of people quickly.

Guns that can do that should be banned.  Anybody who doesn’t think so and can’t muster a better argument than “Some people die while texting, so obviously guns aren’t any worse than that” is kind of an idiot.  And somebody who makes that argument the day after a crazy person uses an AR-15 to murder 49 people is kind of an asshole.

Helena had some cinema tickets she’d got a discount for, but they were of the must use by a given date variety, and that was today.  So, use  it or lose it, have to get your money’s worth, we went to the cinema.

The need to stay kid friendly does limit your options a bit, but I like kid’s movies so that is not a problem at all.  We went to see Alice Through the Looking Glass, the Johnny Depp version.  The Johnny Depp version, so everybody will know what I mean, but Mia Wasikowska was Alice and she was definitely the star, Depp was in fewer than half the scenes, but he and Helena Bonham Carter had the cool make-up, and that was about all this movie had going for it.

We hadn’t seen the one that this is a sequel to, so it rather took me by  surprise how little this had to do with anything in the book.  Alice was in her 20s, and there was a time travel plot (Time was a major character.  I sure don’t remember him from the books) and they had back stories about the Mad Hatter’s childhood issues, and why the Queen of Hearts wants to chop everybody’s head off.  These are not  characters whose backstories I wanted to know.

Basically, they took a children’s fantasy and turned it into an action adventure.

It was nice to go with the kids to a movie on a Sunday afternoon and afterwards we went to McDonald’s, and as much as I was critical of the movie, everybody else enjoyed it, so it was a good day.

But I don’t recommend it.  As far as great films go, this was not one.

I wrote a little poem today which made me feel good.  Actually, I wrote a few little poems today, which is the way I do it any more, I write flippant little poems in the comments section and oversimplify subjects and make humorous commentaries that rhyme about subjects people are taking too seriously and it doesn’t always play well.  So, today there were a couple of those, one slightly longer one on the subject of grammar (dived and shined vs. dove and shone), but only one that made me feel good.

It was a poem about a building I walked by this morning with my daughter, on our way to my son’s football game (they lost, 6-4, but I was surprised it wasn’t by much more, to tell the truth).  It was raining, just a little bit, but quite a warm day for all that.  The building had very lush, but unkempt, gardens in front of it, and a very old, spiky, rusted fence.

“Beautiful garden, ugly fence” I said, and realized I had a poem.  Well, it was several hours, a meal, a nap, and a Discovery Channel program about veterinarians in South Africa before I finished it, but here it is.  You may like it, you may not, but it made me happy.

Notes on a Building I walked Past this Morning

The building has seen better days,
it is neglected, you could say
But there’s a fence around it,
so it is protected, in a way
a line of rusted metal spikes,
and more than just a few
stand like drunken soldiers,
falling over and askew
There is a jungle of flowers,
growing wild and intense
there is quite a beautiful garden,
behind that ugly fence
Each flower gets its share of sun,
and nutrients from the ground
and the raindrops spread their blessings
fairly, evenly around
Each plant takes only what it needs
there’s no pre-judgment there
who’s a flower, who’s a weed?
They do not seem to care
It doesn’t seem like the gardener
has been there for a while
but that just adds to the beauty
that just adds to the style
Although the fence is falling down
and the landlord doesn’t care
Every year, a brilliant crop
of flowers blossoms there
There’s a spirit of renewal
it’s the world’s eternal way
Life on Earth is fine
but civilization’s in decay

All’s well that ends well, as we say in English.  I’m fairly certain, from my limited knowledge of foreign languages, that there are similar expressions in most languages.  There are thousands of languages on Earth, and no one knows more than a handful of them, but it’s a true sentiment in  human experience, and applies to a nomad in the desert as well as to a billionaire wheeler-dealer.  All’s well that  ends well.

I left the flat a little bit early for my back to back children’s lessons in Kbely.  When I was already on the Metro, I realized that I had left my phone and my glasses at home.  I thought about it for a minute.  The phone was not critical, we are too addicted to our phones.  I wasn’t expecting anybody to call, there was no need for me to call anybody.  Glasses were a bit more disturbing.  But, what the hell.  I figured with the big kids group, most of them can read and I can hand off the responsibility, and the younger kids don’t like story time that much any way.  So, something more active for them.
While I was thinking about it, I overshot Florenc by two stations, and had to cross the platform and go back.  It was still O.K., I wasn’t late.

But, as I got to the school, and saw none of my students out front waiting for me, I remembered they’d told me that I only had one class that day, which meant I had an hour to kill in Kbely.  Not a big problem, there’s a lovely park to wander through, and look at the ducks.  Then one of the big students came.  I had forgotten the cancellation, she apparently had not gotten the message.

So, I had a lesson for one student.  I’m sure she was not happy about it, but she’s a very sweet girl and we had a good, intensive one-on-one lesson.  Then the little kids came and they weren’t quite as insane as usual. I found plenty to do with them that didn’t involve reading.

All’s well that ends well.  Good night.