Will Operation June Cleaver Be Deployed in 2020

Fabulous read. Great pictures.

Envisioning The American Dream

Get ready to set your clocks back, kids.

No, it’s not daylight savings time yet, but it’s about to get darker a lot earlier than many of us hoped for.

A woman whose religious beliefs require her to absolute obedience to a husband lest she is “shamed, shunned or humiliated” is poised to occupy the same seat as Ruth Bader Ginsburg that tireless champion of gender equality.

Trump’s nomination of right-wing conservative Amy Barrett threatens a systemic unraveling of decades hard-won and hard-fought-for fights that have given American women some semblance of autonomy and control in their lives.

This transition feels impossible but it’s not.

Women have had their autonomy and freedom pulled out from them before. After WWII a massive campaign went into effect to get the independent working women of America back to the home, hearth, and hubby and the mid-century mythologizing of the happy housewife and her…

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Humour: A New Weapon In The Arsenal

It may be the only weapon we have.

Filosofa's Word

I came across this piece by Nicholas Kristof yesterday and thought it quite fitting!  Rather like a spoiled toddler, Trump thrives on attention, even negative attention, but the one thing he cannot stand is to be made fun of, to be mocked.  And let’s face it … there is much to mock from his inability to string together a coherent sentence to that creature residing atop his head!

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To Beat Trump, Mock Him

The lesson from pro-democracy fighters abroad: Humor deflates authoritarian rulers.

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

Can critics of President Trump learn something from pro-democracy movements in other countries?

Most Americans don’t have much experience confronting authoritarian rulers, but people around the globe are veterans of such struggles. And the most important lesson arguably is “laughtivism”: the power of mockery.

Denouncing dictators has its place, but sly wit sometimes deflates them more effectively. Shaking one’s fist at a…

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Saturday Caturday

Last weekend was so chilly that I brought all the plants in from the back porch. This weekend it’s quite summery again so this afternoon, I sat out on the back porch in the sunshine, sans plants, but with Radar & Bobby. I don’t know where Jack was. Probably sleeping on the couch.

Radar & Bobby inspecting the area where the plants used to be

Just hanging out

all photographs © polly macdavid

Pastors That Embody The Gospel and Don’t Use it as a Weapon: Thoughts from My Friend Fr. Kenneth Tanner

The Inglorius Padre Steve's World

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

This is the latest Facebook post of my friend Father Kenneth Tanner,  Pastor and Priest at Holy Redeemer Church in Rochester Hills, Michigan. Before this he was on Staff and wrote for “Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity.” His blog is located at https://medium.com/@kennethtanner 

As for me after doing some work around the house, I went out to watch Maddy playing in her little wading pool and slipped, causing me to do the splits, land hard on my right knee, and further aggravate my right hip. I have my bilateral knee injections on Monday and will have to bring up this, and the number of times I have had my knee or ankle go out, and my increasing number of falls. Since I had my VA evaluation Tuesday I have to send them an update. I think I will go back to using a cane…

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Going West: Where Ancient Sites Collide

What a beautiful place!

France & Vincent

Wreathed in mist and roses, the Mother greets those who visit the sacred spring of St Non. The little shrine to the Virgin was erected in 1951 when the Passionist Fathers restored and rededicated the spring, as if to leave those who walk the cliff-top path in no doubt of the deity from whom the healing waters flow. Me, I was having grave doubts about such a claim of allegiance.

The legend tells that St Non gave birth to her son, St David, in the field beside the spring. St Non was the daughter of a noble house who had been ravaged and left with child. The healing waters of the spring began to flow when the babe was born, bathed in light, while a thunderstorm of biblical proportions raged around the mother and child, protecting them from harm. I have to wonder what a pregnant noble lady was doing…

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Elemental Sonnet Notes

Jezzie G

Structure: Quatrain, sestet and quatrain
Meter: Decasyllabic or pentameter
Rhyme Schema: abab ccddcc fgfg

Example:

Song of Nature by Jez Farmer

The song of nature’s birth is all around,
Through all of time its music calls to us,
It’s sung in the stars and the earthly ground
A song of love that none can e’er succuss.
In our prayers and ritual of sacred praise,
We call the Sun upon the Earth to gaze
From green hilled valleys to the ocean’s shore
Upon all the living things his love does pour
And through the clearing of the dawn’s first haze
Come the arcane echoes of ancient ways
In whispered words of an elemental prayer
The voices change but the song is the same
They call upon fire, water, earth and air
To join with spirit in the Pagan flame

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My Politics is My Art

Great read! & take a look at the Lilith article, it’s a great read, too!

Envisioning The American Dream

As I’ve been watching the memorial service for RBG with tears for our loss and tears of where we are, there are also feelings of pride. As a woman, a feminist, and a Jew.  It is meaningful to me in a great bit of synchronicity that today I am honored that a piece on me is running in Lilith Magazine, the grande dame of Jewish Feminist Publications.

I hope you will enjoy getting to know a bit more about me.

Collage Artist Sally Edelstein: “My Politics is My Art.”

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Going West: Pentre Ifan

This is SO cool.

France & Vincent

It is a magical place. You are in no doubt of that as you walk along the path to the site. Hoary stones nestle in the hedgerow. Bluebells, those delicate woodland flowers that bloom only in spring, are blooming on the hillside at midsummer, scattered through the grass as if giving warning that here, time holds no sway and to step into the enclosure is to step out of this world’s realm and into another.

Your first sight of Pentre Ifan takes your breath away. I saw it first many years ago, on a day that invited no other visitors… we had the place to ourselves for hours and time to get a feel for this sacred space. And, although many things here may be debated and pondered upon by minds scientific or spiritually inclined, there is no doubt about the sanctity of the site.

It is the gigantic head…

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Sunday Sonnet

in memory of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, rest in power forevermore

from The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology, edited by Edward Hirsch & Eavan Boland. This poem can be found on page 175.

References

Hirsch, Edward & Eavan Boland, editors. The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology. NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Shut the front door – common ground can be found

I have never heard this expression before but it’s a good one.

musingsofanoldfart

I am not sure when it happened, but “shut the front door”became a funny euphemism for a more colorful saying. I have witnessed it being offered up as an excited way to say the person cannot believe what has just been uttered. I will leave you to your own devices to substitute the more colorful metaphor.

So, with this in mind, please feel free to utter “shut the front door” on these truthful events or comments:

– Novak Djokovic, the top-seeded men’s tennis player in this year’s U.S. Open, was disqualified after accidentally hitting a line judge with a ball during his match. On occasion, tennis players are prone to slam a ball with their racquet when they hit a bad shot. Djokovic hits the ball harder than almost anyone on the planet. The good news is the judge is alright and Djokovic was concerned and contrite after he…

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