Hi, guys. I hope you all had (and are having) a wonderful holiday weekend with great food, good company, and minimal stress. Mine’s been nice. Quiet with a combo of idle days, a few industrious hours of DIY on the house, and world-class Thanksgiving leftovers. I expect by tomorrow I’ll be back up to full blogging speed. But for now, I’m still idling about. So to ease gradually back into action, here’s a two-parter I posted four years ago. I recalled this when a member of Claire’s Cabal introduced a topic on memorable travel experiences. This piece involves an encounter…
Author: Claire
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. I hope you’ll all be feasting today and enjoying either good company or welcome peace and quiet. I don’t like the forced sociability of the holidays, but I like taking a day for gratitude. I have much to be grateful for, not least the community of individuals around this blog. Today I’m debating between feasting courtesy of a lodge in the next town over, which is putting on a whatever-you-want-to-donate banquet with my Neighbor J as one of the volunteers, or eating lite with goodies already in supply here. Someone at Claire’s Cabal posted linked a simple…
Some progress for gun owners who also use medical cannabis. But it’s still Reefer Madness at NASA, which will investigate SpaceX because Elon Musk smoked a joint. Inspiring words from the city government of Republic, Washington, after passage of the freedom-stealing Initiative 1639. Global warming was not a significant factor in recent California fires. Cuba has withdrawn its employees from Brazil’s More Doctors program, because Brazil’s new president insists they be paid properly and be allowed to have their families with them instead of held hostage back on the island. Ah, the wonders of socialism! Even better — communism (even…
Stories and photos from a remote, off-grid community in Scotland. There is yet another e-coli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce. The FDA recommends tossing any romaine you might have. (I got this word from MJ yesterday evening … five minutes after finishing a big salad made with guess what? I seem to have survived the experience so far.) How a six-year-old survived being lost in the woods while walking 18 miles toward safety. He’s 39 now and revisits his trek with a writer from Outside. FBI data shows that armed citizens are 94% successful in stopping would-be mass shooters. (Via…
An American friend has been in Tijuana and is scheduled to return home after this week. In the last few days we’ve exchanged messages about the Honduran migrants who’ve begun arriving there so dramatically to claim asylum in the U.S. What follows is his three-part report from the scene — or rather, just off the scene. Tijuana is a large city, over 1.5 million people, and what’s happening varies depending on where you are and whom you’re talking with. I’ve changed identifying details for privacy, but not changed anything relating to the caravan. And I bolded a few passages of…
Today is the 40th anniversary of the Jonestown murder-suicides. This horror will always be relevant because it’s such an extreme version of such a normal, acceptable thing — following a charismatic leader straight into hell. It’s also relevant because of the role Jim Jones, a socialist and a power broker, played in changing San Francisco politics in the years just before the move to Guyana. Records have conveniently been “lost” that would fully reveal the corrupting role of Jones and The People’s Temple in making SF the left-wing factionalist place it became. But nobody can “lose” the words and pictures…
I didn’t hear pundits mentioning it on election night, but Florida v*ters approved an amendment to end greyhound racing in their state as of 2020. Dog racing is a dying sport, anyhow. But Florida’s new law may finish it off; there are only a few tracks left in the country and with Florida out of the game, the critical mass to sustain breeding and racing programs may no longer be there. To that, dog lovers mostly say, “Good riddance.” But passage of the law creates a problem: In the next two years, some 15,000 racing greyhounds will need foster and…