Author: Allegra

Born when atmospheric carbon was 316 PPM. Settled on MST country since 1997. Parent, grandparent.

Occupy Wall St extended quote

Alan Grayson: Now let me tell you what they’re talking about. They’re complaining about the fact that Wall Street wrecked the economy three years ago and nobody’s held responsible for that. Not a single person has been indicted or convicted for destroying twenty percent of our national net worth accumulated over the course of two centuries. They’re upset about the fact that Wall Street have iron control over the economic policies of this country, and that one party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the other party caters to them as well. That’s the real truth of the matter, as you said before. And…

PJ O’Rourke: Get the man a bongo drum, they’ve found their spokesman!

Alan Grayson: If I…

PJ O’Rourke: Get your shoes off, get a bongo drum, forget where to go to the bathroom, and it’s yours.

Alan Grayson: If I am the spokesman for all the people who think we should not have 24 million people in this country who can’t find a full time job, that we should not have 50 million people who can’t see a doctor when they’re sick, that we shouldn’t have 47 million people of this country who need government help in order to feed themselves, and we shouldn’t have 15 million families who owe more on their mortgage than the value of their home, okay, I’ll be that spokesman.

I always thought that PJ O’Rourke was a very amiable fascist.

Porker face or poker face

Never in my life have I had pork trigger a migraine as fast as it did last night.  It took two hours for the flashies to go away.  It was going to resolve in to a headache so I just went to bed.  I thank Tom and Peggy and their descendents and daughter in law for their LOVELY meal.  Ben made me a mint julep.  It was wonderful, but it perhaps also contributed to the migraine, I am not supposed to drink spirits.  Happy Turkey day everyone.

It was a perfect storm.  I didn’t sleep more than three hours, I had a homily, I didn’t eat a proper breakfast, I sat in the sun for an hour.  I had a meetup with someone, and then I had a large dinner with some pork in it.  Et voila, migraine.

Feel okay now though.

 

Noted feminist bell hooks on love

I always say that love is a combination of six things: Care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust. And it’s like baking a cake. You may have all five ingredients and miss one and so your cake isn’t going to happen. I think the majority of people in the United States have a lot of care in our lives, but we don’t always have a lot of love. I think it’s important to make that distinction, because you can care about somebody Monday through Friday and abuse them on Saturday. But in the practice of love, abuse is antithetical. You cannot love anyone and dominate them, hurt them, because once you’re doing that you’ve moved yourself out of love.

Got lost in the hymnal again

Looked up Edward Everett Hale (NOT HORTON- thanks mOm), once chaplain to the US Senate and a noted theologian, writer and speaker (Unitarian, ‘fcourse).

Throughout his lifetime Edward Hale made a number of statements that reveal his wise and stately character and now serve to mark his distinguished literary career.  Here are some quotes, lifted from Wikipedia

  • ‘Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?’ No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.
  • I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. <—- this is not the quote in the hymnal, interestingly enough.
  • If you have accomplished all that you have planned for yourself, you have not planned enough.
  • In the name of Hippocrates, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.
  • Make it your habit not to be critical about small things.
  • Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds of trouble – the ones they’ve had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.
  • The making of friends who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man’s success in life.
  • To look forward and not back, To look out and not in, and To lend a hand.
  • War – hard apprenticeship of freedom.
  • Wise anger is like fire from a flint: there is great ado to get it out; and when it does come, it is out again immediately