Niko's Posse Poses for the Camera

 

There isn't too much to say about my day today. I worked on campus, and it was very quiet. Here is a photo of Niko and the gang on my desk.

As Travalon said, "Niko's posse."

I've been thinking about the two parties when it comes to abortion: one wants to outlaw it, and one does not but then makes things easier for expectant mothers, so that abortions go way down when that party is in power. Now imagine it was not abortion but murder of women. I think, as a woman, I would hope that it would be illegal for anyone to murder me, but I'd prefer a situation where my murder was prevented. It's cold comfort to have your death declared illegal after you have already been killed. I am in favor of real world results, and a party that creates a situation where women feel their only option is an abortion is worse than a party that allows abortion but creates a situation where women feel they do have other options. Also, I have deep concerns that women suffering pregnancy-related medical emergencies won't be treated because it could be viewed as an abortion, or that women who have a miscarriage and are already traumatized could end up in prison or even on Death Row because they lost a baby they really wanted. Talk about adding insult to injury! Or more like injury to injury. Interestingly, when male lawmakers have brought up punishing women for having abortions, and women lawmakers have said then let's also punish anyone (usually the man) who forces the woman to have the abortion, the men don't like that addendum. They have no problem with the idea of putting women in prison for having abortions, but perish the thought of the man getting in trouble! Makes you wonder how many of them have mistresses they might accidentally knock up, and they wouldn't care if she ended up in prison, but they sure don't want to go there themselves even if the abortion was their idea. Lots of hypocrites in public office. 

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Irish Radio Celebrity

 

An Irish buddy tagged a bunch of us in a social media post to let us know that our late, great Irish teacher was going to be eulogized on Irish radio! I tuned in this afternoon, and while I didn't catch everything, my Irish must be kind of okay because I understood the guy when he said our teacher liked to play Scrabble in Irish, but she would make these little words worth six points. And then she would take him to a coffee shop and they would talk for hours. He even gave a shout-out to one of the musicians in town. How cool if he had given me a shout-out - it would be like fifteen minutes of fame, but only in Ireland, and only to people who actually speak Irish. I used to think it would be kind of cool to be famous in another country, so that I could walk down the street here, and take the bus, and just live my life, but boy if I were in Montenegro, they'd be all over me! Or I'd think that I'd like to be, not famous, but just renowned in certain circles. I'd go to a Linguistics conference, and people would say, "That's Famous Hat! She wrote the definitive paper on how Etruscan is related to Basque!" But the older I get, the less fame of any sort holds any appeal whatsoever for me.

Today I worked from home, and right at the end of my workday I noticed out the kitchen window (which faces south) that there was a pink glow to the west. Most of our windows face east, so I couldn't see what was going on, but I snuck out of work with ten minutes to go and went down to our dock. There was a woman who isn't in our condo association who was starting to go out onto the dock to see the stunning sunset in progress, but she saw me and stopped. I don't know why I didn't say, "Come with me to get a better view." What would it have hurt? Anyway, I got some photos with increasing zoom.

People are bemoaning the falling birthrate, but to me the issue is obvious: a group of billionaires has set things up so that all the money goes to them. Sixty years ago people could afford to raise families, but not now, and so lots of people are reluctantly choosing not to have children. Suddenly the billionaires realize they will need workers and customers, so they are trying to get people to reproduce, not by making economic conditions more favorable for them, but by trying to make it illegal to not have children. I'm no fan of abortion, but they keep saying they don't want to stop there, soon it will be birth control and sterilization that they outlaw. The odd thing is that there are lots of people trying to come into this country, and they could replenish the stock of workers and customers for the billionaires, but apparently the billionaires are racists too, so they only want white people in this country. They are also trying to convince us (like on the TV station whose name is 666 in numerology) that we would be best off with an autocratic leader. Did you ever hear that Russian asset they used to have whose name meant "tire out"? He was always singing the praises of Putin, and don't we want someone just like Putin? I sure don't, but man, about half the country says they will vote for someone who says straight out that, if elected, he will make himself Dictator for Life. For some reason the billionaires want this, but I wonder if they'll really like it once it happens? It's true that the oligarchs in Russia are doing well under Putin, but I've heard they don't love his war with Ukraine. If you elect a loose cannon, you're going to get cannonballs shot at you. Or, as the famous tweet says: "'I didn't think the leopards would eat MY face!' cried the woman who voted for the Face-Eating Leopards Party." You get what you vote for.

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My Password Is the Last Eight Digits of Pi

 

The title of this blogpost is from a T-shirt I caught a glimpse of today on State Street, and the person moved too fast for me to be sure, but I think that's what it said. If so, it is brilliant.

Yesterday I was at work when Roe vs. Wade was overturned, and now I see one of the justices also wants to overturn the right to contraception. It has really disturbed me how many people I know of who have daughters getting their bodies surgically altered at a young age so they are no longer female, but honestly now I think they may be onto something. I have always wanted to have children myself and thought they would regret it when they were older and couldn't have them, but I would rather have no children than be forced to have children I didn't want. They looked at the way the Christian Taliban is taking over this country, and they said, "Nope!" and I totally get it. It does seem like in the not-too-distant future women might be forced to have as many children as they possibly can, and who knows what else they are going to do to us? Now I am personally very disgusted by abortion, but I am even more disgusted by the idea that men might soon be able to force women to bear their children, and I can understand why young teenagers are staring down the barrel of this possible future and deciding to cut off childbearing as a possibility.

Then I met Tiffy downtown, and it was really hot so we decided to go to the public library. There is a room called the Bubbler where you can make art, but she wasn't interested in arts and crafts. We ended up getting a Choose Your Own Adventure book and reading it in a little private room in the children's area, and that was crazy entertaining. The subject was trying to find people who had disappeared in the Amazon, and we got eaten by piranhas, stabbed by a deranged pilot, and achieved enlightenment, among other possible endings, some so lame that they were like, "And the next day you will set off with the search party. The End." 

Travalon met us when he got off of work, and we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant on State Street, then he kindly drove us out to the outdoor theater so we could watch Hamlet for at least the third time, while he went fishing and to a bar called the Bat Cave in Gotham, which is a tiny town actually pronounced "Goh-tham," not "Gah-tham." He took some photos, but Boethius my computer is having one of those days and refuses to post them to the blog, so maybe look for them tomorrow if he's in a better mood. Travalon also discovered a cool bar in Spring Green where they play jazz records.

This morning it was very rainy, and we slept quite late, then we met Tiffy downtown for coffee. I was concerned about violence downtown if there were protests, not from the leftist protesters but from people who don't agree with them and have been emboldened to use violence against them by recent court decisions, and this isn't an idle fear - a man in Iowa ran over some pro-abortion protesters with a pickup truck today. However, Tiffy said nothing was going on downtown, so we hung out down there: going to the Farmer's Market, shopping on State Street, and eating lunch at the place we usually go to for Sunday brunch. It was drizzly all day long, and a thunderstorm was predicted right around the time we were supposed to go on our Betty Lou Cruise this evening, but at some point the weather forecast changed to just overcast. The cruise did happen, and everyone else beat us and a couple from Clinton, Iowa on board, but shockingly nobody else wanted to sit on the bow, so the five of us got to sit out there. I have been on so many Lake Mendota cruises that I just naturally started giving a tour talk to the Iowans, which they seemed to enjoy. The sun started to come out at what I call the "golden hour," not long before sunset, but Tiffy pointed out that today it was more of a "peach hour" because of the cloud cover. It may not have been a bright, sunny day, but it was a fine evening for a cruise, and we saw a kingfisher hovering over the water, something we think was a loon, and a blue heron flying overhead, as well as ducks and geese with babies. The Union Terrace was packed despite the cooler weather. Travalon took some photos, and if Boethius is more cooperative tomorrow, look for them here.

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Spring Sunset

 

It was kind of cold and windy earlier today, but it got nicer later, and right after work I went out for a walk. I ran into our neighbor who used to be the condo board president, walking her little dog and talking to another woman walking a little dog. This woman lives in the condo complex on the other side of the road, and my neighbor said, "Let's sit in my driveway and have drinks." We drank Prairie Fume wine and ate popcorn and Chex Mix while we chatted and petted the dogs. It was so pleasant. After the other two left, I went down to the dock and saw two other neighbors getting into their canoe. I asked if they were going toward the marsh or the lake, and they said, "The marsh." Then after dinner, Travalon and I went to the dock, and we saw those same neighbors coming back. They described some ducks they had seen in the marsh, and I said, "Sounds like scaups." Later I got an email from the wife: "You were right." She looked them up online, and they were indeed scaups.

Here are some photos from the dock at sunset this evening. First, the cranes hiding in the marsh grass, as they always do.

These are the six coots always hanging around our dock lately. I hope they have babies - baby coots have bright red feathers, and that would truly be something to see.

Right in front of us, the sky was on fire...

...while off to the left it was a pastel dream with cotton candy clouds.

This mallard drake is swimming off into the sunset. I love the pink water!

Tonight during Night Prayer, the Dairyman's Daughter said some pro-abortion people are planning to protest at Catholic Masses this weekend. I hope this isn't true, but if it is, we brought this on ourselves. So many prominent American Catholics are very opposed to abortion, but totally in favor of greedy policies that enrich the already wealthy and leave the poor to starve. Murder by omission is just as serious as murder by commission - just ask the rich guy who ignored the beggar Lazarus at his door. And so many of these so-called Catholics are opposed to Pope Francis because he reminds them of the Church's teachings that they don't like. If you are pondering who is truer to Church teachings, the Vicar of Christ chosen by the Holy Spirit, or you yourself, and the answer is not the former, then you are by definition a Protestant. The problem is, non-Catholics think EWTN and the National Catholic Register and even worse things on the internet are what actual Catholics believe, so no wonder they are confused and hate us all. I mean, I kind of hate those people too, although I am trying not to. That's the lesson I need to learn in this life: everyone is made in the image and likeness of God, even those who are perverting His teachings. If a person thought those were real Catholics, I can see why she would think the Church's teachings on abortion are just to suppress women and not to defend the weak from the strong, since those people absolutely are defending the strong from the weak in every other case. Their track record is atrocious. If any nonreligious person is reading this, I'm here to tell you that those people are no more Catholic than you are. I don't care what they call themselves, especially if it's loud and on TV. You are not a Catholic if you do not follow ALL the Church's teachings. And to think these people used to sneer about "cafeteria Catholics"! They are the worst pickers and choosers of all.

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Some Answers

 

I have some answers for questions recently posed here on Famous Hat the Blog. First of all, Williamson Street is named after some guy Hugh Williamson who signed the Constitution. I didn't even know that was a thing; I've heard of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, but not the signers of the Constitution. Willy Street is one of the original streets in town, and Travalon thought it was named after Ivan "Ivy" Williamson, who was a Badger football coach in the 50's, and then the athletic director until 1969, so I figured it must have had a name before that and then they renamed it after him. It took a lot of research, but I finally found that the street was always called Williamson, after this Hugh Williamson. I had never heard of him before this.

The second answer I have is about the brown cormorants. They are not another species; they are just immature cormorants. There were three of them hanging out on what used to be One Tree Island, so maybe they are nest mates. Or maybe young cormorants hang out in groups, since a lot of other birds do. When I told a guy at the Crane Foundation about how the whooping crane at Theresa Marsh was hanging out with a bunch of sandhill cranes, he said cranes that are too young to breed tend to hang out in groups like that. He said they aren't old enough to breed until they are five. I'm amazed there are any cranes, if that is the case, since they have such high mortality rates in their first year of life, but there just seem to be more and more of them in our neighborhood. I keep waiting for the day we see an actual whooping crane or two strolling along in our 'hood. That would be something to see! The guy at the Crane Foundation said there are only about eighty wild whooping cranes in our state, so it's kind of amazing that we have seen so many.

I am tired of people saying "The Board says..." when it's not what I say. Maybe the problem is that I am on too many boards, but just yesterday the president of the Union sent an email to the members saying the Board would like to see everyone at a pro-abortion rally at the Capitol Square on Saturday. You would think before signing on to something that is so controversial, he would have asked us all if we were okay with our names being put on it. Then today we had our annual condo association meeting, and Monday evening the board met, and we agreed owners could bring motions that owners could vote on, but 67% of owners would have to vote for it to pass. Of course tonight the person we figured was going to bring something up did, and I thought we were going to vote on it, but the president said, "The board discussed this, and we're not going to have a vote on it." Say what?? That's her rule, not "the Board's." I didn't agree to that. I mean, it sounds kind of dictatorish and stuff. I guess I just hate having other people put words in my mouth. I need the room to put my own foot in there.

Famous Hat

Election Musings

 

That game last night was just what I needed! The Packers were dominant the whole time, except at the very end when they were up 34-3 with five minutes left, and they put in their bench warmers and let the 49ers have some mercy points. And it even got done by 10:30, so I could get to bed at a reasonable time. Of course, the Night Prayer crowd are going to wonder about me, because Wednesday night I couldn't stay up that late after two and half hours of sleep the night before, and then last night - sorry, Packers are on! - and of course tonight I'll be talking to Tiffy. Though I am starting to wonder if they would be a hostile crowd right now.

I'm speaking, of course, of the election. It seems like there are two worldviews in this country: half of us see a decent, caring man who would try to be a president for everyone versus a sociopath would-be dictator who would punish anyone who didn't vote for him, with rabid, racist followers who consider him the Savior and want to institute Christian Sharia law; and  the other half of us see a deeply Christian president who will save this country from its sins versus a feeble, senile old man who will be controlled by the Far Left and throw all religious people into concentration camps. (Or so I assume, since this is very far from my worldview.) I don't know how we reconcile the competing storylines of an incumbent who is the only hope for our country versus the incumbent who will be so empowered by a second electoral win that he will immediately seize complete control. I would just hope that whoever gets the most votes is declared the winner, and the loser will concede graciously. This election was observed by international observers, so it seems like there would be very little room for a lot of fraud. Also, if the Democrats were really going to steal the Presidential election, wouldn't they also win the Senate, which is in some ways a far greater prize? It fascinates me how these people who think Democrats are pure evil and in control of everything also think they are totally stupid and incompetent. Then again, these are the same people who have to either holler, "Stop counting the votes!" or "Keep counting the votes!" depending on which state they are in, because of course it's totally corrupt to count absentee ballots unless your guy is behind, because then maybe he could catch up. There's no consistency except "If we're not winning, someone is cheating!" And if voting absentee is so wrong, then they should throw out a vote in Florida for Donald Trump, cast via absentee ballot by... Donald Trump.

And don't even get me started on abortion. The number of abortions go way down under Democratic presidents and go way up under Republican ones, so if people cared about saving lives, they know which way they should vote. The whole judge thing is so cynical, because these judges are never going to overturn Roe v. Wade - the Republicans would hate that, because they would lose a whole bunch of single-issue voters. That was a cover for installing a bunch of pro-business, anti-labor, anti-environmental judges who will rule in favor of the rich and powerful against the rest of us.

On a completely different note, here are some more rosaries. I got these in LaCrosse, mostly at an antiques store, but the light blue one second from the left is from the Guadalupe Shrine.

And this is a wooly bear we saw at Horicon Marsh. As you can see, it predicts an average winter, since it has a normal ratio of brown to black. I've been told this is an old wives' tale, but I'll be darned if there weren't all-brown wooly bears before unseasonably warm winters, and an all-black one before a bitterly cold one.

Today I also made a video of a woodpecker in our neighborhood. I haven't uploaded it from my phone yet, but Blogspot should let me post it, since it's short. Eventually I'll do something with the much better woodpecker footage that Travalon shot so that you all can see it.

Famous Hat

MyFace Fights

Perhaps I am a more combative person than I’d realized, because I seem to be getting into it with people on MyFace. Once Hardingfele posted something kind of antireligious, so I posted a comment about why her post was offensive to us believers, and then another friend of hers who was a rabid atheist (but who has apparently since become a Catholic) really got into it with me. Then my Dear Brother always posts anti-Packer things, and when I post a comment objecting, his fanatical Vikings follower buddy gets into it with me. This last time Dear Brother posted a list saying, “Can I get an amen for these?” and one of the things on the list was keeping abortion legal. I wouldn’t normally bother objecting to a pro-abortion post on MyFace, but I did think it was offensive to use religious terminology to push a baby-killing agenda. Of course some friend of his immediately got into it with me, which makes me wonder if the common denominator in this problem is MyFace or me. Do I just like to argue? I am generally not interested in stirring up drama, but boy when someone posts something offensive, I just can’t seem to stop myself from pointing out why it is offensive. And which is stranger, that these other people want to argue so badly, or that the original posters (Dear Brother and Hardingfele) seem puzzled that there even is a point of view other than the one they originally posted? Because they both seemed surprised that I would find the original posts objectionable. Or are they doing it on purpose to get lots of comments on their posts? I sometimes wonder with those two…

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Medical Reform

There has been a lot of talk about medical reform lately. I work with physicians, and they are constantly getting calls about it. We can probably all agree that the current system leaves a lot to be desired. For example, did you know that the most common surgical procedure in this country has a mortality rate of at least 50%? That's right, more than half of all people involved in an abortion die, half being the babies, and the others being the mothers who sometimes die.

I think anyone who ponders such facts will agree that our current medical system needs reform!

Famous Hat

Killing People Who Kill People

I have never been in favor of the death penalty, even for those who commit the most heinous crimes. Now this braintrust in Kansas goes and shoots an abortionist to death in the man's own church. Thanks a lot, buddy. Here are all the reasons this makes no logical sense:

1. You have just punched the entire pro-life movement right in the face. We are trying to change hearts and minds peacefully, like Dr. King and Gandhi, not by terrorizing people a la Chairman Mao or Stalin. And we WERE making slow, steady progress...

2. Now you have just made us look like a bunch of hypocrites. All the pro-abortion people can go, "Pro-life? Yeah, right!"

3. I agree that the abortion doctor was a mass murderer, but now you have stolen any chance he had for repentance. Only God is allowed to judge a man like that; other humans do not have that right.

4. While it does seem odd to me that a man who commits late-term abortions, tearing apart infants old enough to survive outside the womb, would be a devout Lutheran, did you REALLY have to shoot him in his church?? Once again, you managed to make the entire pro-life movement look both insane and hypocritical.

5. Certainly I agree this man had to be stopped from killing, and the law was not helping, but when laws are immoral we should protest using CIVIL disobedience. Being arrested for blocking access to his clinic, that would have been noble and honorable. Shooting the man dead is not only a mortal sin but a very bad public relations move. Though you may possibly have saved a few babies doing this, the damage you have done to the pro-life movement is enormous and will ultimately result in the deaths of far more unborn children.

NARAL and Planned Parenthood must love you. You have done more in a moment to discredit our movement than they could do in decades of lies and propaganda. Please - don't do us any more favors!

Famous Hat

Don't Passover This Post!

First of all, for all my Jewish readers (Hardingfele), Happy Passover! (Of course, she's the one who sent me this picture!) If the kitties had a seder, and they did not wear yarmulkes, Dayenu!


And now back to our regularly scheduled religious themes, which tend to be more Catholic on this blog. Today's Lenten reflection is on alms again, this time on the idea that when we give, it is more important to focus on what the receivers really need rather than on what we want them to have or what is convenient for us to give. For example, my family was always receiving odd cans and boxes of "food" from the food pantry that we had no intention of eating, so we just gave them back during food drives. Here is a more extreme example: imagine you are a woman in a Third World country, and you have had three children die before the age of two. Then some pale people from a wealthy country come to help you. What would you like them to help you with? That your next child survives to adulthood, of course. What do they really offer? In many cases, how to prevent pregnancy or, if that doesn't work, how to terminate pregnancy. Are you interested in limiting the number of children you have when you have no reason to expect more than one in five to reach adulthood? Would you see this as kindness on the part of the pale, rich people, or would you see it as bullying on their part? You would probably assume they want to minimize the number of poor, dark people in the world. If we REALLY want to help others, we should find out what they want help with rather than assuming or, worse, imposing our views on them. We should help their children survive before telling them they should not have so many!

So now that I have addressed Favorite Topic #1 (Abortion Is Evil), I will address Favorite Topic #2 (My Pets Are Cute). Last night I discovered that one of my little darlings had pulled my tradescantia (commonly known by the un-PC name of "wandering Jew") partway off the shelf and consumed most of it. I am not sure who the culprit was; Charlie is not athletic enough to have gotten to this plant, and Cashmere generally eschews fresh produce. My guess is it was Cashmere, but neither rabbit seems to have suffered any ill effects, and the plant got quite a trim but should be just fine, so no harm, no foul. Still, I am going to have to revisit my supposedly rabbit-proof Plant World setup... After all, many of my plants are allegedly quite toxic, although I once watched Charlie eat a poinsettia leaf before I could get to him to stop him, and he's still alive and hopping. Maybe I have Dread Pirate Roberts rabbits who have built up immunities to iocane and all sorts of nasty substances!

And now, a very un-Lenten answer to that burning age-old question: can you scan chocolate? At the behest of my officemate, I scanned the four types of chocolate we currently have available in our office. I did not, however, subsequently eat them, so I cannot say if post-scanned chocolate can be safely consumed.

Famous Hat