"Passion" is dumb

The English language once had a word expressing romantic or apopleptic fervor, a word that even sounded like a sibilant storm, opening with a plosive, ending with softness. It denoted special extremity.

Now we have this.

My brother and I discussed the bewildering primacy of the term "passion" back when we attended the second JRW conference, many long years ago. Agents reacting to first pages, or discussing what they were looking for in queries and stories, bandied it about almost more than any other word. I began to wish it were possible to mute words on the entire internet, early in my first experience of querying.

Even when I was young (again, this was many moons ago), the word actually embarrassed me. Maybe because it still did have some power - and implications - back then. But I've never in my life said or thought or felt I was "passionately" in love with a person, and as proud as I am of my career and invested as I am in my work, "passion" is not and I actually hope never will be a word I apply to doing it. That would be ridiculous.

So The Atlantic's takedown of the absurdities we attach to job listing and hunting resonates with my cranky old heart - passionless as it may be.

Like that job, and like so many things, I spent a decent span of my twenties and thirties under the impression that I was supposed to feel apologetic. I didn't have a sexy job for which I held a white-hot torch; I hadn't even gone through specific education geared toward it. My teen years: I was a kid. I didn't know what I wanted to do or "become" and, as much as it was clear I was supposed to, I honestly didn't care enough to develop any fake passions for business or law or even the arts. Majoring in theater where I did cured me of interest in going into THAT - though it probably laid some groundwork for me as an author.

Students in the 80s who seemed into business degrees bewildered me for directing their lives at, basically, just making money - not even making actual things, or having any impact on anything. Graduate school seemed like a lot of work, so a lot of what are referred to as "The Professions" (as if nothing else is) didn't draw me for a second. School for creativity seemed oxymoronic, and yet was the only way I could comprehend to become any sort of artist, and so if there ever had been a visual or musical or other sort of artist inside me (there wasn't), I'd have killed it myself, striving for it.

I never developed a groove that had anything to do with making my living.

Beloved Ex, now. He was a different story. He wanted very much to find a way to make a living that energized him mentally, emotionally. It didn't help our brief marriage, unfortunately, because by the time a truly stunning opportunity came for him - it meant rooting ourselves in Ohio, and I freaked out hard core, and ... yeah, I didn't want to sabotage his opportunity, but I did, AND I didn't want to stay in Ohio. And I didn't. Lots of birds killed with that boulder, and that boulder ... welp, it was passion, in its way.

For me, life's always been lived outside of any office. I make friends, sure. I have experienced strong loyalties and many emotions, in a hundred offices from here all the way back to Ohio. But, at the end of the day, I would never have gone into any of them if they weren't paying me.

Passion's for poorly written poems. It's been no way for me to get things done.

Doesn't make me any less excellent at what I do for a paycheck. Doesn't mean I do not care. I'm not a customer service ninja (which sounds like a bad idea, honestly, what with the kill-y parts of ninja-dom - though, really, the Orientalist stereotyping of "ninja", "sensei", and "guru" is a problem, and also, why are so many of the terms noted like this?), I don't lose sleep at night dreaming naughty dreams of vendor management or the passionate joys of meeting preparation. You want an obsessive or any other kind of job-extremist, I'm not your candidate - and, honestly? I think MOST PEOPLE aren't.

MOST JOBS, let's be candid, are just jobs. They're not sexy, they're not hot lovers, they're not things that get our motors revving. If we're fortunate, and have the right kind of approach, the best most of us can expect from employment is the opportunity to work a good puzzle. Figure out how best to do a thing, then do it, and feel like a rockstar for widgeting, or networking, or calming down some numbers that get uppity.

"Job" is not a word stormy with sibilance. It doesn't start plosive, but with a chop. It ends utilitarian, not reassuringly with a nice, soft N. It's short and ordinary and gets its work done efficiently, nondescriptly.

And it's one of the great words in most of our lives, when we're lucky enough to get one that doesn't beat us down but does provide security. Maybe it gives more than merely that. Great!

But work is work.

They don't call it rapture, for good reason.

Collection

Fella babies, today we start off with the direct line from representation to racism. (The click beyond.)

Marketing ten thousand steps for fifty years. Man, what a triumph - but not of healthcare information.

It's been my policy to view actual moving/sound footage of Trump as little as possible, so I rarely end up seeing Melania either. However, during his recent visit to the U.K., I caught a little of their welcome to Charles and Camilla ... and was car-wreck fascinated. Go to about :45 and watch her attempts to maintain a smile. It's eerie.




And then there's the light FIST she makes as she turns to enter the house. Yikes.

Welp, and if like me looking at those two (not meaning Charles and Camilla, but hey, YMMV) makes you feel dirty ... maybe it's a good thing. On the relationship of microbial bacteria and depression - not what you might think! (Or: hooray for pets!)

And here we have the final nail in the coffin as to my old argument with my bro: I am NOT a(n) historian.

Collection

"(T)he falling cost of renewable power changed the calculus" of energy sources. A pretty compelling statement about nuclear power, from the guy who headed the NRC for years. Okay, then.

Sarmatian mortuary objects came up, for me, as I was researching The Ax and the Vase many years ago, and I've remained intrigued at this culture. Recently, a burial was found - looks like a VIP ... worth the click if only to take a look at the absolutely exquisite horse's head ornament found in the grave. Clovis' father, Childeric, had a horse burial (as well as a bee burial)

Swear to Maud, K.D., I just bought a wrap dress. (To be fair, I am nobody's idea of a romantic heroine.) On writing quibbles, rage-inducingly bad ideas, and other fun, from K.D. James. (Also, yes, the date of this post gives some idea of how long it's been since I was doing my regular blog rounds. Apologies to those I have neglected.)

Of more recent vintage, hooray, a new post from The Arrant Pedant! It doesn't even matter what it is, just go, read, enjoy. He's OSUM. (Okay, what it is is a linguist's view from a uniquely spelled name. Now go read!)

Now. Here's the thing about history: it's not a game, not even a dynamic with winners and losers, good and evil. It's deep and complex, it's diverse and layered. It's MESSY. There isn't anyone alive who doesn't simplify it with their slightest allusion to it ... but not all of us get punished for that. But lately? Any punishment in a storm, and the political era we're enduring is one long shit-storm. We need to be careful about punishing people with, or about their invocation of, history. Click on, for a well-organized, concise history of the origins of the modern country of Israel.

Finally, can the literal dress of a racist, patriarchal past be reclaimed from its worst implications? Yes, fella babies: for the first time in a long time, it's a fashion link at last. And don't forget the click beyond, an interview about the Little House books, and the Wilder women.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Plenty of folks are willing to treat fetuses as precious citizens, but seem to regard the bodies that nurture them as embarrassing slums.

If you don’t understand how female bodies work, you might end up believing some really harmful things about women.

Rest in, across, and exploring all the heavens, Jerrie Cobb

“Yes, I wish I were on the moon with my fellow pilots, exploring another celestial body,” she wrote in a 1997 autobiography, “Jerrie Cobb, Solo Pilot.” “How I would love to see our beautiful blue planet Earth floating in the blackness of space. And see the stars and galaxies in their true brilliance, without the filter of our atmosphere. But I’m happy flying here in Amazonas, serving my brethren. Contenta, Señor, contenta. (I am happy, Lord, happy).”

... wait for it ...

... because, for my writing friends, this is a REALLY good column about writing.

It's also good for the advice-column that it actually is.

Layers. Mmmmm.

Archpeeology

I'd apologize for the headline on this post, but hey - y'all know I am already obsessed with the archaeology of poo, so this one should be no surprise. Just thank me for not linking the headline punning about this discovery almost "whizzing" by ...

Anyway, so at last, at last, poo has met its match, so to speak. Article. Article. Article. Abstract, for the truly dedicated. Wheeeee!

Yeah, no pun intended. ("... or was it ... ?")


Edited to add: but wait, there's more. Not merely the salts indicating where urine was once deposited, but the stuff itself. Yes, I mean the story about the horse.

Bewildered, Bewildering

I was five when the impeachment hearings against Richard M. Nixon commenced. By the time I was fifteen, he had gained a foothold in discourse, seemingly revivified, and I did not understand it. We had spent what felt to me like endless years "watching Watergate". I thought it was an unbelievably bad TV show, and longed for Hogan's Heroes or *anything* to take its place, but understood that in fact it was taking everything else's place because it was a really big deal, bigger than Walter Cronkite's half hour, bigger than syndication or prime time or even Masterpiece Theater. Being bigger than Alistair Cooke - that's big stuff, in the Major household of 1973.

So the fact that he was wandering the Earth aeons later, when I was fifteen, was bewildering. He got a library, and I thought "but he had to resign - wasn't that 'in disgrace'?" and began to resist the rehabilitation of public crooks.

I resist it still, in the belief that Ms. Nielsen does not deserve the sinecure some outlet or think tank or company may well give her. This is the monster who presided over the jailing of children.

Which, itself, seems to have mellowed, like Nixon, in the public imagination already. It's been less than a year, but GOP outrage faded instantly, and the rest of us are pissing in the wind, fewer and fewer reminding the world that this was appalling for a week or so last May. From that Fetid Sepulchre in the White House, to McConnell, to her, and all across the board, this atrocity has been papered over with Trump's inevitable distraction stories, and the revulsion felt round the world, ignored, is left curdling in fewer stomachs every night. This is repulsive.

There are days it feels like nothing can dent this administration, never mind derail it.

There are days it seems hopeless, knowing the conversation will always be Tweet-dominated, directed away and away and away from the countless crimes and sins and infractions and moral repugnancies of this administration.

It is possible to take the narrative out of the short-fingered hands, though. It is long past necessary. But here we all still sit, in the thrall of a compromised so-called leader, whose government is ever-less staffed by those actually vetted and confirmed by due process, who leaves the government under-staffed for years at a time now, whose use of threats and tyranny, and reckless, dangerous cries of treason (contravening his Oath of Office, never mind the Constitution itself) really don't even teeter anymore on a "brink" of authoritarianism. We are, THERE, folks. It's already happened. The DoJ, headed by a crony who enthused for 19 pages for impunity for Trump, has been hobbled.

Imagine a world in which Ken Starr's investigation ended with a 4-page memo from Janet Reno, explaining how she was not going to hand over his report.

Imagine, ever, Michelle Obama living in a golden tower in NYC, away from Washington, totting up millions in security costs for American taxpayers, and expecting to get away with it. Or President Obama taking golf trips costing us in excess of $96 MILLION DOLLARS, and expecting to get away with it ... never mind the time such travel takes away from the business and work of government.

Given that "But her emails" survives as a complaint against Hillary Clinton  over two YEARS after her electoral defeat - imagine if she had taken office, but refused to use secured devices. Trump has never acquiesced to using a properly encrypted, protected device. Outrageous. But only for a woman. Only for a dem.

The Trumps, all of them, make security questions surrounding the Clintons look unbelievably puny.

Still he is in office. Using his almost-certainly-compromised-iPhone to control discourse.


I would be willing to die, resisting authoritarianism.

Every day of my life, it comes up at some point: I do not believe that could never come to pass.

Collection

WOW, this is a fascinating piece of legal history and a wide-ranging look at civil forfeiture. When journalism goes this deep into stories, I can't tear myself away. And the story is a moment of "bipartisan" cooperation (yes, theoretically the SCOTUS is not supposed to be party-based, but we all know perfectly well that's hogwash). An excellent read because it's great writing, engaging storytelling, relevant and hopeful history.

T-Rex at the American Museum of Natural History. NEATO-SPEDITO! Don't even pretend you don't want to see this.

I grew up with the affectionate use of "am" in my house. White and Southern and old as I am, this wasn't correlated to Black American speech, though we were familiar with the stereotypes. The "am" was just linguistic overlap, though its tone of juvenilization/baby-talk usage has a distinctive paternalism, viewed alongside the hideously racist exaggerations of blackface speech. In our family, it was our intimacy: dad would ask us or our friends, "How am ya?", but it was certainly not a greeting he used with colleagues. I'm fascinated to see the roots that am between us. I'm also reminded of the long-held belief that Appalachian American speech preserved Elizabethan English for centuries - the truth of which is delightfully more complex than "yes, it did" or "no, it didn't." The lineage of Black American English is more complex than its reception has generally allowed. It's hard not to want to protest, "but my dad wasn't racist" ... even as it's impossible not to see the Colonial heritage of a language long-shared only because of slavery.

Once again, Diane's fascination with the archaeology of poo ... oh man - "comes to the fore"? "raises its head"? I'm not sure how to put this that isn't lame scatalogical humor. Anyway: NEATO, it's excremental science again! This time, on the moon. <Resists the Schrödinger's poo joke> Go! Learn the wonders of human contamination in space ... or the secrets of seeding (cue echo-boom voice effect) LIFE ITSELF.

Faith, now. That's a different thing.

Most human conceptions of divinity are doomed attempts to grasp at the ineffable. It's ineffable. Not mythology.

Sturm und Traum

This morning, it was one of those utterly implausible, plausible, detailed dreams. I was shot in a mass shooting - four times. My right flank, side (right in the imaginary tattoo - though I do have one on my left), shoulder, and right below my eye. As happens in dreams, I was initially terrified of death, but my dream kept going. Something about getting to my house (the one I grew up in, but now mortgagetually "mine"; that address seems to have appeared more, through the past year, hmm), getting to my mom, protecting someone else, and failing, failing, failing, failing to get ME to a hospital. At some point I was driving myself, again through the old neighborhood, not apparently to get care.

In the dream, the medical upshot of my injuries was unclear apart from bruises rising up from each bloodless bullet hole. One wound, indeed, couldn't be seen for the bruising and the tattoo. Even in the dream, I dismissed the caliber as a small one, since I could keep moving. For what seemed like hours.

The thing is, the real impact of the dream was that first moment: that fear of death. The shock.

The stunning truth of it.

I'm not special. ANY of us is subject to dying this way, in the United States. Land that I love. Sigh.



2019 has not been the worst year, for me, in recent memory. Yes, we still endure under the increasingly authoritarian and demented regime of the puppet Drumpf. Yes, there is much still to do. But even with that, much is happening, too. HR8 passed last week, and in a time of inured sensibilities, Cohen's testimony was scathing. (His redemption narrative, I could personally live without, but perhaps the benedictions he has received are not positivities best dismissed.)

And but personally, so far this calendar year is kicking 2018's ass.

The time I have taken off (quite a bit, so early in the year) has been for VACATION, not illness and death and mourning. So far.

I have spent time with far-flung friends, and family-by-adoption, people I love, and a new puppy I don't have to train. Mom's doing better, and my house has not fallen down around my ears. Yet.

Three four-day weekends in, I have celebrated a birthday, a bar mitzvah, and a long-distance visit.

2019 ... well, to quote something I said about 2009: it's been better than it had a right to be.


Breathing is good.


Now if I can just avoid being shot.

Collection

I am a fifty-one year old woman, and this very blog reflects that experience. Take a look at the history of the vanity tag; it tells a story.

A reduced sense of visibility does not necessarily constrain experience. Associated with greater empathy and compassion, invisibility directs us toward a more humanitarian view of the larger world. This diminished status can, in fact, sustain and inform—rather than limit—our lives. Going unrecognized can, paradoxically, help us recognize our place in the larger scheme of things.

Yep. This is, more and more, informative of my spirituality.

My personal favorite Hawai'ian deity is Kamapua'a, but this guy actually does hang on one of my walls. (My print is definitely worth less than $5k.) Another interesting tale of repatriation and also a story about provenance.

Sigh. When you check your stats, and all the Russian and UAE bots seem to be swarming to the post you wrote about your best friend, who just died. The post you wrote in 2015, when that wasn't even conceivable.

Ahww, man. Guilty ...

In this moment of political division, Garry sees a spiritual test. The temptation to discard others has always been strong, and in some ways it is stronger than ever. But this is an old problem, maybe the oldest, he says. The Bible is all about overcoming the temptation to discard, to dismiss, to unfriend. If it were always easy to love your neighbor as you love yourself, it wouldn’t be a commandment. “We trust anger. We believe anger gets things done,”

Virginia

Ralph Northam didn't get my vote in the primaries, because I found his past appreciation for Dominion Virginia Power's finances problematic, but I voted for him for Governor. In January of 2017, when he appeared and marched with us at the Women's March, I was impressed, and more on board with him than before. He is a former Republican, and the voices deriding him as a present Republican, given that party's increasing lockstep behind the racist-in-chief, are perhaps hard to hear, but not 100% off base.

He has to go. Why he refuses to is bewildering in a painful way.

I don't want to bog down in a long post about all this, because frankly, the personal impact of Virginia politics right now is a fresh bruise. It's painful to live here these days.

When, in 2008, Virginia went presidentially blue for the first time, I didn't quite believe it. When we went Obama for the second time, I began to feel used to it. To tentatively own that I finally didn't live in a backward, reactionary state. And then we did it again, in 2016. There was still Dave Brat to contend with (I signed the petition to get Abigail Spanberger on the ballot at that march mentioned above), but I finally felt like Virginia was breaking away from the all too recent past of White Flight and reactionary thinking I had grown up surrounded by.

In 1982, when I entered high school, it was the Reagan years. Helped by a punk rocker in the house, who was having none of it, and the fact that I was the child of a scientist and the taunts on the schoolyard, "YOUR DADDY CAN'T BELIEVE IN GOD, HE'S A SCIENTIST!" I came to a different sort of politics than have been common here for most of my life. (My daddy, as he told me all his life to take away the sting those kids gave me, was a scientist precisely because he had such awe in the workings of a universe he believed to have been brought to us BY that God those kids underestimated so cruelly. Not an Intelligent Design guy by any means, dad's enthrallment in workings of all sorts was a major part of his faith in anything; and he did have religious faith.)

So I was extremely aware, in 1982 at the age of 14, and have been ever since, of the fact that my preppie high school was the product of White Flight, and the entitlement I saw all around me was not earned. I didn't know the phrase white privilege, but it was instantly recognizable once it appeared.

(W)e lay claim to a wisdom that people just a few years ago lacked, and accuse the recent past of deep ignorance.

I've been loath to actually look at old yearbooks this past week or so. Sure, the only thing that HAS brought me to look at them in about thirty years was the death of my best friend of 38 years, but even then my glances were pretty cursory. But now, the *apathy* of memory, thanks to a life of much greater richness after my K-12 years, has become an *agony*. From having no interest in looking back at the snobs I went to school with, I now have real fear of looking back at the well to do white kids I went to school with. Heck, the school itself.

I went to school with kids who absolutely would have donned blackface, as quickly as the Key Club (so enthusiastically) donned cheerleader outfits at every opportunity. Crappiest drag show ever. There were guys who drank, plenty who probably went on to become frat guys who sexually assaulted drunk girls, entitled asses who think they're nice guys and entitled asses who care not one bit about being good, decent, or anything else tolerable to the human race at large. They weren't my crowd (obviously), they weren't the whole of the student body, but they were crowd enough and then some.

Think I hated my school because it was so preppy? I hated my school because it embarrassed me. It embarrassed me then, and no less so now. They went with naming the place for a Massive Resistance spearhead instead of Edgar Allen Poe; this exposes the taste level - and "judgment" - of decision-makers in our community at that time.

So there doesn't even need to be blackface in my yearbook. The very name of the school said aplenty, and without a doubt some of us knew and despised what that name said. He himself was deplorable then, and I deplored him most especially on the occasion my best friend (a model student often trotted out to meet important people) was obliged to shake his hand, and I was introduced too, looking every bit as unimpressed as I was unimpressive to principal and politician alike, I'm sure.


The link above ...

The link above. I offer it without much comment, and not even necessarily endorsement, though it would be soothing for someone like me right now. There *is* a spectrum of ugliness, but for me as a privileged, relatively well-to-do white woman Of a Certain Age ... growing up where I did ... it is beyond my scope to say "this is right."

Oh, how I wish it could be knowably right, though. That would ease my liberal guilt.



Based on what I clipped for the quote highlighted, the real resonance for me is this: the sentiment accords powerfully with my general rantings about The Dirty, Stupid Past. By this, I'd love to absolve myself of all my own privileged complicity. There are stories I have debated recounting in public for years now - and, when I think about how I have aired out the most sensitive things on this blog, it's extremely plain that some of what I have held back owes to the same privilege Northam and Herring have had. So I should open that up, unpack that.

But that first link ... I'll lean OUT for a moment, lean back, not go all in. Not make anything about myself which absolutely is not. Not come up with any judgments.


I'm as fraught as the history of my state, these days. And ashamed as I was during the Reagan years, going to Beautiful Suburban White Flight High. So very ashamed, and frustrated.



Edited to add ...
Then I remembered our production of West Side Story, which I do think was in 1984. Teen after teen in brownface. Ugh.


THE CLICK BEYOND - good coverage of multiple aspects of this morass, for your analysis.

Was I ... ?

My gods, was I writing as recently as November? Surely I was a liar, surely I picked up the manuscript and put it down again as quickly as I enthused about writing. Impossible to invoke any sense-memory of writing, happening so close in time as November.



Happy new year. So I'm late: I still do wish anyone left reading here, or who accidentally stumbles in, a good 2019.

This blog has been Crickets-ville for a long time now. This isn't so much because life is so terrible as it is just *life*. Since some point in December (when someone I love very much went back on anti-depressants), things have been going well. Work is good, the house is not falling down, I am regularly paying bills. I even got together with friends recently. Progress.

Of course, I have also already attended the funeral of someone I loved (more than she could possibly have realized) this year. Family gathered, warmed, dissipated. Ebb and flow.

Life.

It's got a lot of death in it.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have a lot of creation in it of late, and the tragic part of that is I don't even stop to care.

Is it possible I was writing less than three months ago ... ?



Is it possible I will write again?

Collection

#TFW a "Housewife" begins to discuss any treatment she has discovered for any possible ailment, real or imagined or self-inflicted ... (No, this isn't as clickbait sketchy as some of those "gawk at vintage advertising stories you see on Teh Intarwebs.)

Brain scans on rappers ... discovered that during freestyle rapping, brain activity increased in the brain areas that engage motivation, language, mood, and action.

This piece is a wistful one for me, as a writer who knows what I CANNOT do; I do not have the chops. But man would I love to read this story from the perspective of the kids whose world this already was.

NSFW ... since about 1600 (science-ing the what out of what?). Ahhh, I love it when The Arrant Pedant gives us glorious etymology. Enjoy!

Collection

Another chapter in the "wait, but slavery ended, isn't racism over?"/"No. No, it is not." American saga...

In her research, she traces the decline of the supermarket in communities of color—specifically black communities—to the late-1960s, when unrest broke out in several major cities following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. As white flight to the suburbs accelerated, urban supermarkets closed, citing security and financial reasons.

It is an evergreen astonishment that their partisans take the GOP seriously (I typed partistans there, and perhaps could have just left that as is) - even as they absolutely refuse to take the implications of the GOP's policies seriously at all. "Gingrich confessed he’d forced the closing of the federal government partly because Bill Clinton had relegated him to a rear cabin" ... "Gingrich acknowledged that his pique at the seeming slight had prompted him to send Clinton a tougher spending bill. 'It’s petty,' he said, 'but I think it’s human.'"

... and that, little children, is how the Republicans piqued ALL of America's way to Hell. Thanks again, Ron - and thanks so much now, Don.

"The War of Two Peters"
Y'all. My decorum is tested.
Plus: I LOVE ANCIENT SWORDS.

Collection

It happens all the time in casual speech—saying carpe diem rings deeper and graver than “use time wisely.

I know I link The History Blog a lot, but here is a post resurrecting one of the old interests at my own blog, which I haven't touched on in a long time: jewelry design. Take a look at the simply stunning geometrical engraving on this remarkably preserved bulla. Exquisite.

Tom Williams' blog has a great discussion about authorial exposure, participation, and the many varieties of advice authors can find online, on his 12/14 post - this is one of those times I will say, "READ the comments!" (FWIW, I actually do get more engagement on my personal posts, but I think the past few years of caregiving and death have led me to tap into some thoughts and themes that resonate - and, given a lack of actually getting this blog OUT there, those posts are the ones that bring people to pipe up.)

Per usual for this year, I am running short on content but don't want to leave this post in Drafts any longer, so please enjoy these photos of December snow, decorations, and The Poobahs. My spirits of the season ...

SNOWCAKE!

Penelope side-eye is the BEST side-eye

Add caption

Call Me Mueller

Guess who’s got the White House’s
Teeth all chatterin’ about
Flynn and Cohen and their doin’s,
Individual 1 and the im-puh-lications
Gentlemen sweatin’
It’s time across the board, with no doubt
Donny’s like WOW!
Punchin’ like he is drunk,
Fingers all pointin’ him straight to hell.
Could be criminal.
Makes sense for a snitch to take him down POW.
Rocked the House
What is that sound?
Watch me drop, drop, drop him to the ground.
Wait for the four, drop to the floor,
Add up evidence to get the score.
I been the WITCH, yes I gave no drama,
Stealthy, intelligent Special Counsel.
Not the Clintons or the Obamas,
It’s that sexist racist, now gonna CALL ME MUELLER.
Shady politics, I gave no drama,
Stealthy intelligent Special Counsel.
Not the Clintons or the Obamas,
It’s that sexist racist who’s gonna call ...
    Me …
    MUELLER …

Collection

The older I get, the more interplanetary sciences strike chords with my faith. On the ancient waters we - and our planets - are made of.

Best. Advent. Caledar. Ever. Will you check back? I will! Stunning, stunning, stunning.

I have been a bit full of woe (when I've troubled to blog at all) this year, so how about an observation of what seems to be an uptick of heartening news in terms of our material history?

It feels like there are more stories of repatriation of artifacts - not just one behemoth, say, like The British Museum, investigating shady deals or sending cultural art and items home, but a wider movement. Take a look at just a few recent pages of The History Blog, and see how often looted and alien-"discovered" pieces are returning to their contexts. Or national treasures kept at home. These stories, along with rescues and restorations, are good for the soul and sometimes kind of fun.

Merry Christmas to all ... not everything is falling apart!

Edited to add this ... sometimes, we do have to let certain pieces of the past go. And that's okay too.






And, yes. The eagle-eared might catch A Certain Connection which is interesting, if only on a personal level.