So, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid is being drawn and quartered for remarks made about candidate Barack Obama in the run-up to the 2008 Presidential election. “There but for the grace of God go I”, and probably most everyone else, of any ethnicity, anywhere. As a good friend of mine is wont to say “give me […]
UPDATE January 12, 2010: I have been most intrigued by the assorted interpretations, on all “sides”, about the real meaning of most everything about Avatar. About all I can say is that it serves a useful function in causing thought and (hopefully) conversation. Now, if the assorted “sides” could dialogue with each other about the […]
Wednesday of this week a good friend from the old teacher bargaining days, Paul, met me for coffee at a St. Paul restaurant. He, his wife and I talked about many things, and part of our time was about the raggedness of today’s political conversation in this country, even within “birds of a feather”. Among […]
UPDATE January 8, 2010, by James Nelson: On December 17th, the day I left Copenhagen, a 22 minute film was debuted concerning wide scale revegetation in developing countries. They talk about trees but they primarily use shrubs and deep rooted grasses. The film is entitled “Hope in a Changing Climate“. The case studies are from […]
We haven’t seen the just-released blockbuster “Avatar” as yet. This review has increased my interest in actually seeing the movie. Of course, Avatar is not “real”, as in reality, but sometimes films like these are helpful to think more seriously about the longer term. It apparently is a fantasy encouraging people to really look at […]
UPDATE January 7, 2010: Representative comments follow, plus a followup observation from the writer of the original post. (I have disabled comments due to an avalanche of ‘spam’. My e-mail address is on the “About” page.) Yesterday afternoon an e-mail announced that I was on YouTube. Since I’ve not been on YouTube before (at least […]
It’s New Year’s Day 2010, often a time for reflection, and I guess I am feeling a little “bloggy.” That’s not foggy or hung over, and no, I am not going to start a blog. A couple of things I pondered today: First, I thought of a couple of wonderful large black raspberries I ate […]
New Years Eve we decided to go to a movie at the local theatre. We finally chose “Invictus”, a new Clint Eastwood film about Nelson Mandela and the sport of Rugby and the 1995 World Cup, held in South Africa not long after the fall of Apartheid and Mandela’s release from many years of imprisonment […]
Happy New Year, and new Decade! 2009 ends today. Much of this past year my personal endeavors have been around family history projects. Since late summer, I’ve been tackling an immense task: trying to summarize 400 years of the recorded history of my average and ordinary French-Canadian families experience in North America. (My father was […]
Part I, yesterday’s post, turned out to be a very positive experience. The exam revealed nothing worthy of note – the next appointment in five years. Everything was very efficient and the five medical staff who worked with me were very friendly, from the person who checked me in, to the doctor who did the […]