The ornery ramblings and occasional fiction of a former political science professor turned author
This is the last day of 2021. I am happy to see it in the rearview mirror, just as I was with 2020. On our walk today, I was talking with my husband about the last year. It did have its ups and downs. The biggest up being that we have moved to Texas. Met my own goal of moving before the end of the year. Barely. But we did it.
Continue reading “Friday Thoughts: Leaving 2021”
I am getting very tired of reading that the “pandemic” caused businesses to close or prices to rise or suicides to increase or cancer deaths to increase or whatever other problem social or medical is on the rise. The pandemic didn’t cause those things. The response to the Wuflu caused those things to occur.
Continue reading “I Am So Done”
Second to last MOTE prompt for 2021…week 51. Wow. It’s been another, well, let’s say interesting, year. And once again the prompts helped keep me going. I have (finally) created a weekly schedule that should help me keep on track with all my writing – prompts, blog posts, and more importantly books and short stories. I am determined to make 2022 a productive year (and not the pessimistic redux of 2020-too).
Continue reading “Turtle Doves and Trebuchets”
Today is Christmas Eve and we’re in a new home for the first time in eighteen years. Not that we spent every Christmas there, not by a long shot. But this is the first time in eighteen years that our home base has changed. We got most of the boxes unpacked and as soon as things were looking settled, I pulled out the Christmas box and started in on the holiday decorating. And discovered I don’t have nearly enough stuff for this house!
Continue reading “A New Home for Christmas”
I’m trying to get things straightened out in my writing schedule. I did get this week’s prompt response for More Odds Than Ends done. I have got to get my schedule squared away. I’m all caddywhompus right now. So my prompt came from Leigh Kimmel: “The angels have landed.” I was thinking about Jack and Monica from Cursebreaker and this little scene popped into my head.
Continue reading “Landed Angels”
Oh, look – it’s another stupid article purporting to be journalism. That means I’m gonna do another fisking (fisking is fun!) This time, we’re going to be looking at the significant difference between the terms anti-vax and anti-mandate. These are two (obviously) completely different terms, yet these propagandists masquerading as objective journalists would have us believe that they mean the same thing. This time the less-than-gifted “reporter” is Kelly Weill at the Daily Beast (yeah, yeah, I know, but let’s give it a go anyway).
Continue reading “A-Fisking We Will Go!”
We are settling in here in Texas and I am constantly struck by how different and yet similar our life here is, compared to our life in Philadelphia. The most obvious thing is the weather. I grew up in San Diego, so I’m familiar with warm winters. But it’s been twenty years since I lived in southern California. And, those twenty years have been filled with snow, freezing rain, sleet, ice storms, and just plain damn cold weather every winter.
Continue reading “Striking Differences”
The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating. – Mohandas K. Gandhi I once read an account of bullying in rural America in the early 20th century. The narrator said, “If a victim did not stand up to them, there was no limit to how far the bullies would go.” He described them tying another child to the train tracks as a train approached (on the parallel track). There was no appeasing the bullies. Each capitulation only whetted their appetite for new and crueler humiliations.
Source: A Path Will Rise to Meet Us
Read the whole thing. This is important. You cannot wait for others to resist the absolute power grab, you must stand and resist it.
Olivia jumped up and down in anticipation. Grampa was making s’mores! And not just any s’mores, but the ones with his special toasted fractal marshmallows! Those were the best marshmallows. She hovered as close to the fire pit as she dared. Very light snow was drifting down, she could see the Christmas tree through the windows, and Grampa had put colored lights all around the back patio. Olivia felt like she was at the North Pole.
Continue reading “Christmas S’mores!”
The left really has no idea what exactly is meant by grassroots activism and action. I was reading an opinion piece this morning from the Boston Herald’s Joe Battenfield titled “Biden tormented by Republican guerilla action and ‘I did it’ stickers.” It’s a short piece, but it’s highly illustrative of the monstrously large blind spot the left has for anybody who opposes their policies, and the definition of grassroots action.
Continue reading “Real Grassroots Action”