worst storm yet

What was suppose to be a small chance for a brief storm has proven to be our worst storm yet this cycle. Naturally, I am now kicking myself for letting the cats outside, but there was no way to see this this afternoon, so clear and sunny, positively summery. Now, boom! Ash is in, but no sign of Coco and Sammy, who must have been caught out on their midnight wanderings. As for my sleep, it was not like that was happening anyway.

...

(0135)

Sammy comes crying loudly to the door, rather soaked for a cat. But still no sign of Coco. The rain seems to have settled, at least for the moment, but it is still very thundery.

...

(0445)

There's Coco! I didn't expect to see her, so I didn't close the door to the big room, and Coco is so skittish and slow about coming in, and before I know it, Sammy races out the open sliding-door into the stormy weather. That's a first! Oh, the stress.

I venture out front to grab Sammy, but he knows what I am up to, and before I even get close, he does something that is absolutely freakish to me. He scrams so quick, it is like he makes the twenty yards to the neighbor's tree in a couple of bounds, and he scales the tree so fast and deftly, I feel like I am watching Spider-Man.

At least I find some relief in getting a better idea how these cats are able to survive on these dog-crowded streets.

1789 Washington's Administration

As per the concern about setting the tone and establishing precedents for the running of the new federal government.

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The new vice president, John Adams, adopted an especially princely style that outraged republicans, and he was even mocked by Washington for his “ostentatious imitation and mimicry of royalty.”... In May, when a Senate committee took up the explosive issue of titles, Adams suggested that Washington be addressed as “His Highness, the President of the United States of America and Protector of their Liberties.” Adams provided fodder for contemporary wags and was promptly dubbed “His Rotundity” or the “Duke of Braintree.” Adams wanted only to inspire respect for the new government, but his concern for decorum bred a belief in suspicious minds that he sought a hereditary monarch, with himself as king and son John Quincy groomed as his dauphin. In a slap at the Senate, the House of Representatives decided that the chief executive was to be referred to simply as “George Washington, President of the United States,” and the Senate then concurred.

-- Ron Chernow, “Alexander Hamilton”

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Jay Leno

Wow, I see Jay is not bothering to touch up his hair with a little color anymore. Well, he is retiring. Such TV shows really are a young man's game. Hell, it's a young man's world. The old folks need to sit back and read the obituaries and think about the old days when one was young and about what life has done with them.

[ONTD

Muslims and the Language of Fucking

An interesting note on Muslims and sex education.

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Safa Tamish, a sex educator who works with Palestinians in Israel, told me that when she runs workshops, participants will use min orali (Hebrew for “oral sex”) and orgazma instead of the respective Arabic terms, jins fammii and nashwa jinsiyya. Even more-basic terminology is problematic; until attending these courses, some participants are unaware that there are, indeed, Arabic words for female genitalia, having been taught to consider such subjects shameful beyond discussion.

This is a far cry from the golden age of Arabic writing on sex. One medieval book, The Language of Fucking, mentions more than 1,000 verbs for having sex.

-- Shereen El Feki

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Sylvia

Admittedly some people live more than others. The excitement curve of a telephone operator, white-haired, lumpy as a pallid pudding with knots of blue arthritic veins for raisins, would no doubt be shallow - a slow undulation with a monotonous mechanical basis, heightened by a slight bump for a movie or dinner with the “girls.”

But the life of a Willa Cather, a Lillian Helman, a Virginia Woolf --- would it not be a series of rapid ascents and probing descents into shades and meanings - into more people, ideas and conceptions? Would it not be in color, rather than black-and-white, or more gray? I think it would. And thus, I not being them, could try to be more like them: to listen, observe, and feel, and try to live most fully.

-- Sylvia Plath, The Journals, the college years

Funny weather

It really does look and feel a little like winter on this May 2nd afternoon, and the temperature is expected to dip into the forties tonight. Can you imagine? Funny weather, but I wouldn't mind more of this.

times are a little strange

Pop comes in from his rounds, commenting on the cold. I tell him that it is suppose to dip into the forties tonight. He shakes his head and takes it as hard news. I say, "Shouldn't you be glad? No air-conditioner." He chuckles and nods, "That is the silver lining."

Silver lining? It's all good to me. But Pop likes the heat better. It is Mother and I who shared a fondness for colder weather. Not South Dakota cold, of course. But this kind of cold is ideal: sleeping weather for her, reading weather for me.

Though, it is true that I am going to miss taking my walk tomorrow morning, but that's no big thing. The warm weather will be on us soon enough. I suppose. I don't think our weather can be that strange, that we will see Winter into June or anything like that, but maybe one should reserve some doubt. The times are a little strange. It makes people think of the End Days.

Of Self-Exile from the Internet

An interesting report from a man who cut himself off from the Internet for a year and lived to tell about it.

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Reese Witherspoon

We have the video of Reese Witherspoon's arrest. Isn't she darling?

[ONTD]

Daily Fun

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