Back with the Catholics

My polling place was upgraded, I guess.

Instead of the Baptist church a couple of blocks south of my home, with the bumpy tables and the crumbling sidewalk, I go now to the fancy Catholic one to the north, with its big, smooth parking lot (shared with Hallmark), flat sidewalks and sharp pencils. And now I have white judges. I only recognized one man from my old spot; maybe the others just finally got too old. I miss the guy who used to monitor the ballot and give me my "I voted" sticker, though.

Of course, I didn't know you could park in Hallmark's land (this sign does not help those who park before they see it, and this is that weird stretch of Gillham where there's a hill and several intuitive merges) and so I walked around the block before it was all said and done.

Lost solidarity

Everything I was thinking about how this show is going, but expressed in classic Square Peg style.

Name my finches

They are a couple. They're Java Sparrows. I don't know this pair's particular heritage, but I will presume they are legal and not a result of bird traders' trying to help rid an island of a rice-eating "nuisance."

They came to me via a friend, who is in the Beak n' Wings bird club, which helps rescue pets others can't keep.

Free birds!

The male is in front, looking disapproving, and the female is stretching up to see how to escape the scary silver thing pointed at them (the camera), while showing off her bad feather week.

She really needs some attention to those pin feathers coming in on her head, but I never see them co-groom; they just peck at each other.

Sometimes, he sings.

There is a bird expo Saturday, too, up at the KCI Expo Center, so watch for more "help me with my addiction" pleas.

My goal is to stick to buying tree-perches, food and toys and no new conure or budgie.

Chucked from a church

Practice voting

If you live in Kansas City, you're probably "all set" to vote in a week on city council and mayoral candidates, to advance two of them in each district/office to another election in March.

Today and for 13 more days you and everyone else in Missouri can vote on which dorky license plate we'll have if we live here in 2009.

There does not seem to be a one-driver, one-vote rule enforced. Feel free to battle my preference with your own.

I think #3 - "Reflection" - looks too 1980s Florida, #2 is a good attempt at "river," but the font is bad and the sun-ball is stupid. Also it's called "Ribbon," not river, so that's dumb.

The motto at the bottom on both of these is blocky and ugly like it is now.

In the FAQs, you will learn that putting the motto on the plate is state law. Wow, they really know how to use legislation for important things.

Choice #1 is blue-ish like the current one, too, which I prefer to bland, blank white. It's also "educational," with the shape of the state and that bird no one ever sees.

The FAQs will also tell you that indeed, it's true that inmates make our plates (another state law) and that they are aluminum. What they don't cover is how many miles of roadway might be repaired with the money from cashing in all that scrap metal.

Why do I have to turn my old plate in? Can't I make a buck off recycling it? And what are all those license plate artists supposed to do?

I miss the maroon-on-white style from 1979 that made it look like you just might be from Arizona, if you didn't look too closely for the little cactus in the middle. In fact, a park ranger in Texas once got into an argument with me and a friend of mine about where we were from based on that similarity. Like lots of law enforcement, he was looking so hard to "catch" us in a lie of some kind.

When he stopped being angry, he turned paternal on us girls and said to be sure not to photograph the "mules" or anyone who randomly was going through the desert.

"You don't want to make the drug runners angry," he said.

Throw Beads at Me

You'll have to take my word for it; Blogger has rules like prisoners' mail. I'm married and employed and all that, too, and Kansas City is conservative and wouldn't understand.

Another reason: my Photoshop won't open.

My old work-Mac has desktop-lock - my attempts to change system preferences are not being heeded. It's stuck on green with a blue square in the middle. Click, nothing. Click, nothing. I hate it when buttons are faux-active.

Snow alley

I Heart My Cat

Even if her eyes make her look like a junkie.

Bird Vengeance

While some of my friends are happy to shoot winter songbirds with nothing more than a camera, apparently some old ladies can't leave well enough alone.

Thanks to Bird Chick for bringing attention to a recent Newsweek article about how it's okay, apparently, to shoot birds illegally.

The same rule applies to humans, you know; you only have to claim (and prove) self-defense. Or, you determine that the assailant is a "terrorist."

Since the cardinal is dead, he won't be called in for questioning.

He was sure scary, bashing into the windows all the time, waking everyone up. I guess since she lives in a solar house, the killer feels "balanced" about ending the life of a bird. Never mind the fact that the bird was mentally tortured by the house first. Eco-granny said she was tortured, too. Couldn't sleep! The one with the bigger weapons always wins.

NOzone

I do not have much to contribute about the much-publicized ChemCentral explosions and fire yesterday, smoldering into today, except that you might want to check up on their usual environmental scorecard.

The smoke seemed to move up high and then to the south and west, and somehow, I never smelled it.

It was bad to breathe it in, just as breathing burning mineral spirits would be on any given day, but the EPA gave us the "all clear" for being outdoors. The school district evacuated a bunch of elementary schools; three are still closed today - one is just up the street.

I'm sure I'm safe because I'm older than an elementary school student.

My photos also have little to contribute to the masses of them already online, but my perspective is my perspective. Yesterday, that perspective was Kessler Park.

This is Carlos, who was giggly and wearing only two button-up shirts. No hat, coat, gloves. He asked if I spoke Spanish. A lot of people ask me that, and I always say the same thing, feeling shy and awkward: "I know some, but you know some English, too."

The other day a high school girl asked me the same thing. She wanted to rely on a friend who knows both languages well, but in the middle of our conversation, when trying to answer my question about what store her parents had at the Super Flea, she was impressed that I knew "zapatería" without assistance.

It's no big deal. I wish we all didn't feel so dang shy.

The only two humans to talk to me on the hill yesterday afteroon were guys, of course. One tall black one and one short Carlos. Flirtation, apparently, knows no boundaries. (I didn't initiate the conversations. I ended them by being the first one to move - away). The pretense they both took was that it seems weird for a solitary female without a camera crew to be catastrophe-gazing. "Did you get out of school early today?" the first asked. We chatted a little about "the fire," he took a call, etc.

Carlos said I looked younger than I said I was. Asked if I was married. Did we have kids. He also said, in reference to the smoke pouring out of the factory in the bottoms below us, "The Earth is tired."

A Pathological Liar

A man I have a hard time forgiving for the grief his personality inflicted on my family for about a decade also receives credit for introducing the PC into my life. He had a great LP collection from the 60s, too, and thus indirectly introduced me to Bob Dylan as well. We used to watch NBA together in the late 90s.

He also is the one who opened the sliding porch door and allowed my white budgie to escape. His humorous slant on the event, which may have been an accident but for which I did not receive an apology was, "Your slave is free!"

(Annie flew to the top of a huge tulip tree and was never seen again; an afternoon thunderstorm may have contributed; granted, the bird was not fond of me or captivity, but I loved her all the same. You can tell because I named her Annie, for "animosity.")

Anyway, this pathological liar and interesting case study also was the one who brought my attention to the fact that the Beatles received the royal Member of the British Empire award in 1965. Subsequently, some have turned down the MBE, he said, because their snobbery could not stand the thought that "great" can mean merely widely popular. The honour had been debased.

I can find no evidence that this is true in particular, although apparently, a lot of people have declined such honors for various other reasons.

There is no risk that I shall ever be nominated for something with the word "Nobel" in it, but in theory, I might decline the prize for peace if Rush Limbaugh were to receive it.

The man who let my budgie out was also an avid listener of the Rush Limbaugh Show.

(The two men share traits such as: they both sucked at college and neither of them went into service during the Vietnam War.)

I agree that promoting the reduction of pollution-causing behavior through a film is not peace-oriented, which is one of the arguments Limbaugh makes against Al Gore's receiving the prize earlier. I can see some connection, though, since my country blatantly ignored the Kyoto Accord.

That was not very peaceful, Greatest Nation that consumes the most energy.

That brazenness embarrasses me, along with funny assertions like this one from the Hoover Institution:

Global Warming, "if it were to take place" would be "generally beneficial" because:

"One of the most feared consequences of global warming is a rise in sea level that could flood low-lying areas and damage the economy of coastal nations. But actual evidence suggests just the opposite: a modest warming will reduce somewhat the steady rise of sea level, which has been ongoing since the end of the last Ice Age—and will continue no matter what we do as long as the millennia-old melting of Antarctic ice continues."

(I mean, tee hee, right? Hotter temps would slow down sea level increases - because of… evaporation and increased humidity?)

Even if Gore's crusade is not deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, why should a hypocritical, megalomaniac with drug issues get a prize for peace-promotion?

It is beyond my current comprehension. Is it because he has the most popular show?

Here is a clip from the transcript, likely as copyrighted as everything else we quote and link to as bloggers, that talks about the nomination:

"The Landmark Legal Foundation tapped the talker, calling him the foremost advocate for freedom and democracy in the world. Landmark, by the way, is the leading conservative public interest law firm in the US, and Limbaugh serves on it’s [sic] board of advisors."

(Limbaugh says the connection is irrelevant, since he is not paid. A-hem, I'm on a board - most are volunteer-based, you know - and it definitely colors my views. The world of adults seems to operate on the principle that one's own indeed will promote, nominate and support you.)

I think that this man, Thich Quang Do, is more deserving, since he actually did something to promote peace.

Limbaugh just promotes divisiveness. Not very peaceful, Mister Millionaire.

Yup, information is power and powerful, and all sides are valid and deserve expression. Democracy/the Bill of Rights protects that, but opinions that are as predictably Rightwing and pro-Republican as mine are predictably Leftist and tepidly pro-Democrat, are not worthy of any kind of medal having to do with peace.

Vote NO Nobel for Rush!

Vote NO Nobel for C. Girl!

We'll have to wait until mid-December to find out if the Nobel team listens.

(It's funny that they say the nominees are not revealed for 50 years. This, of course, means that anyone may say they were nominated, especially if they could fairly count on dying in the next five decades. How old is Rush, anyway?)

That was Monday

This is Friday. As we all know. In this time zone. Of sentence fragments. And under-productive, over-caffeinated grammatical troubles.

By the way, since we've all cleared up the "stupidest" grammar problem of the month (a month being a series of 28 to 31 days, regardless ((not irregardless)) of calendar divisions), help me understand why it's better to say "toward" and not "towards."

If thou art bored. Of course.

Four Legs and Furry

You Are: 40% Dog, 60% Cat

You and cats have a lot in common. You're both smart and in charge - with a good amount of attitude. However, you do have a very playful side that occasionally comes out!

Are You More Cat or Dog?

Cheer Up!

Scientists come up with 20 ways life on Earth could stop.

Diphenhydramine HCI

Three things:

1. I find it disturbing (or perhaps just shocking as all new, unexpected, unsought-for knowledge is) that you can buy meds on Amazon.com.

2. I find it disturbing that it was not easy to find information about this drug in particular.

3. I find it odd that most of the "hits" I could find referred to this as merely "the active ingredient in Benadryl."

(Note that "insomnia" is not checked off as a symptom that the pink pill will tackle. The sleeping-labeled pills are blue. They are the same size, small. It only grows if you have to add Tylenol. Why is Tylenol so big?)

So, they sell this as a sleep aid, and that's why I have it around.

So, does this mean that if you have allergies that you are more prone to being awake, or does this mean that if you take Benadryl for your allergies and expect to drive, go to work, function, etc. that you are falling for a bad pharmaceutical joke?

A page selling something called Sonador says that this concoction can also be used to treat "certain forms of parkinsonism, motion sickness and certain allergic conjuntivities."

It reduces the time to fall a sleep [sic] and gives more depth to your sleep. Sure, that explains why when I take it I wake up four times a night. I guess falling back to sleep seems easier, but this stuff's definitely a dehyrant.

Is it because ". . .side effects from diphenhydramine are not common," that they don't list them on my OTC sleeping potion? Are my symptoms of these severe enough or not going away enough that I should tell my doctor: dry mouth, nose and throat, drowsiness, upset stomach, chest congestion, headache?

I have headaches all the time, regardless. My sinuses are dry as scabs. These things are normal for winter, for people who can't drink enough water because it is tiresome and time-consuming.

PS - How long is "not go away" for drowsiness? Twelve hours?

Tomato Trifecta

Gosh, one sure sees funny things on the ground in Northeast.

This is the 100-block of South Elmwood Avenue.

My best guess, as none of the jars are busted or seem to have been opened, is that someone dropped their groceries in the snow, the jars sank, and the tomato-lover never looked back.

I can't imagine being so cold and cranky that I couldn't dig up my name-brand salsa and such, so what was this person going through?

No, I did not pick them up (ie: steal or clean litter). Another one of those small, urban moral dilemmas.

Cafe v. Harvey

While the Harvey House food court/diner dealy in the southeastern nook of Union Station is much-celebrated and usually crowded at lunch time, around 9:30 in the morning, there are hardly any people there, and personally, I'll miss the sun-blasted singular coffee shop that apparently can't compete.

I love that the post office is at Union Station, as it's always nice to come into a grand space for a mundane task, but it's pretty much you and the dust motes during the week. And bad news like "you can't get coffee at Java Time anymore." No chairs for you!

Happy Birthday, Virginia Woolf

Can you tell I have one of those "authors' birthdays" calendars from Half-Price Books sitting in front of me much of the time? This is the first week I looked at that fine print, though. Coincidence.

1882 was the year for Mrs. Woolf, a Modernist and so little like Mrs. Wharton. What a difference 20 years makes. She was brilliant but also what we would call bi-polar today, and she ended up dying by her own hand (a river's, really, but it was intentional). One wonders what a difference Paxil/Lithium/Prozac, etc. would have made.

W. Somerset Maugham was born today, too, in 1874, but I know nothing of him or his works. How this is possible with one of those "English degrees" is beyond me.

I'm just grateful I live in a time when I do have that room of my own. Time, however, is till a missing piece.

Happy Birthday, Edith Wharton

She was born in 1862. Perhaps you know of my addiction to her works. She was a rich woman who was not afraid to venture into the world of literature when such a thing was frowned upon by members of her society. She got to spend her formative years in Europe, where her New York family retreated after the Civil War had deflated the U.S. dollar.

Ah, to be corsetted and sipping tea at 4 each afternoon, told not to associate with "people who write," spend summers in Newport and "seasons" everywhere, to later have the chance to be in Europe often again, motoring around with a best friend such as Henry James.

You can read about what she wrote yourself, but I'll just point out that she was named a Chevalier of the (French) Legion of Honor in 1916 for all her work with World War I refugees in hospitals and hostels (the latter of which she founded).

I am particularly inspired by the way she could take her artistic connections and operate workrooms for unemployed French women, hold concerts for out-of-work musicians, and edit a fund raising collection "The Book of the Homeless" to put her money and privilege where her mouth was.

No mere "chronicler of society" was she, though I relish the lovely details of the lifestyles she provides access to, over 100 years later, the drawing rooms and domestic conversations that were behind those "robber barons" you may have been reminded about, if you watched Sen. Webb's response to President Bush's seventh State of the Union address.

After that generation's Great War, she remained in her beloved France until she died, returning only once, in 1923, to receive an honorary doctorate from Yale University.

I have a bit of a crush/role model thing going, as you can see.

(Chers Famille et mes Amis, oui, c'est vrai, we have inklings abroad. And if you can locate a cheap one, please send me a copy of "The Decoration of Houses," which she co-authored as her first book with an architect named Codman and which I somehow - I don't know - had chucked out with other "college books I no longer care about.")

And, even though she wrecked my GPA with her cursed "pass/fail" experiment, thank you again to Dr. Catherine Parke for veering off the published course content as well, from Woolf and Stein to Wharton and Cather.

Vaporize me!

When I was a kid, a "vaporizor" was the thing you got to have in your room if you were sick. Steam is fun.

Apparently, there's one for alcohol, too. It turns liquor into pure misty alcohol that you can inhale (at the rate of a shot per hour). It goes straight to your brain, doesn't fill you up and may bypass hangovers as well.

I'm inclined to believe the claim that talk-of-ban leads to increased sales - the first thing I thought when I read that Missouri is looking to follow the lead of Illinois, etc. to make sure no one can buy this kind of vaporizer machine, was

Hey, I need one of those!

I wonder if vaporizer stock is in any legislator's portfolio. The president of Spirit Partners said that within a few days of a proposed Kentucky ban, he sold 200 machines. At $300 to $3,000 a pop, that's no mean profit.

I wonder what else you can use them for? This seems to be behind the scenes, as well. What if you put an egg in it, for example? What about lighter fluid?

Now that I've seen them, they seem kind of dorky-phallic and I'd be embarassed to have one around, even if it was il/legal.

I hate bans, you know. Especially since the U.K. doesn't fear them as much as our Big Brothers do over here.

Okay, brain damage is nothing to sneer at. . .but alcohol already is known to do that. So, next time I'm in England, I just might try it out. Then go to an O2 bar and compensate with yet another silly trendy device.

Missouri Sen. Luann Ridgeway (R-Smithville) is the one sponsoring a bill that would ban the possession or use of alcohol vaporizers.

She called the devices "potentially deadly" to teenagers. . . .

Over the past two years, Nolte's bills proposing a statewide ban have failed to gain traction.

Maybe it's because they're all on the AWOL payroll, or, they're thinking what I can't help conjure, which is just because teenagers have bad judgment doesn't mean I can't use mine.

Hopeful thing

Humans operate at a lower tempurature than avians. Both are bipeds, according to Pangloss, though one distinctly featherless.

The virus now circulating in birds does not attach easily to cells inside human noses or throats.

Cause for minor celebration?

Sunny-cat sunny

The best kind of day, especially if you can spend it indoors behind south-facing windows.

For those of you who had to go outdoors today, for work or food or because you have no place else to go, rescued cats everywhere are expressing their empathy.

Temporary tundra

I had to go to a park to take photos today. It's sunny again, after all, and nothing is falling (from the sky).

It would be funny to say that I was looking at this:
and that then I was looking at this:
but it didn't happen that way.

The ice du jour is unique to my experience for its durability and meanness. Never before have I almost broken into tears while trying to scrape my car.

Falling was fine, as I'm not over 40 or brittle as frozen grass. I was expecting it to happen. I was standing still. I am wearing boots. It didn't matter. I landed flat on my back. My hat popped off, so I'm expecting some kind of pain tomorrow to emerge. Maybe I won't be able to move at all. It already hurts, of course.

My hands are all invisibly bruised from bashing car ice, too.

Wonderful World of Woodland Avenue

Now that the 27th Street Bridge over the Paseo is open again and I have a car with a functioning catalytic converter, I am once again enjoying the option of occasionally taking the very hilly Woodland Avenue between 27th Street and Independence Avenue.

These photos are from the last couple of weeks along a stretch of Woodland where a few people decorate and barricade their homes. For the most part, though, it includes empty lots where trash gets dumped.

This is some trash around 26th and Woodland.
This is a view east on 25th from Woodland. Notice the sidewalks and how they seem to call out to litter. [The scene also reminds me of some of the best Missouri hiking days I ever had (with people I love).]
This is a smashed up car full of trash that was on the 2500-block of Woodland up until today. Notice the homes in the background, which were "rennovated" during 2005.
This is a house on the next block; this trailer of yellow bags may become illegal dumping someday, but has been in situ since at least mid-December. I wonder if the truck runs.
This is a view west down 24th (I think). The bus is coming. The house on the south is abandoned.
This is the "newer" trash pile on the east side of the street, on the same block. It's as if someone was evicted from a house that hasn't been there for decades. On a related note, the stairs to these ghost homes are still visible. The Urban Coeur developers tore the ones out on Cherry to built new housing. For some reason, that makes me sad. I didn't even know about this development of theirs. They seem to be following me.
Proceeding on, when you get to 22nd Street, you can look west and see the Vine Street Lofts, looming out of the urban grassland. Downtown is peeking out behind and keeping its distance.
On the southwest corner, there is a house on that was occupied back in 2004. It's been boarded up for most of 2005, but now, the plywood is off the front door and maybe the resident is back? The light on the outside is on, anyway.
Looking to the east and north shows Lincoln College Preparatory High School up on the hill.
Then, after 18th & Vine's eastern edge, Parade Park homes, Parade Park, Truman Road with Weld Wheels, there's 12th Street and public housing on both sides.
Across 12th, things get a little denser and commerical. There's Woodland Elementary School* at Ninth (which the School District is looking at closing), then Century Towers* (apartments and city offices in the former osteopathic hospital), a 7-Eleven and the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences*. After Della Lamb Community Services*, Woodland ends by touching yet another public housing development (Riverview Gardens) and Maple and Kessler/Cliff Drive parks*.

*(Not shown; aren't you tired of photos?)

For some reason, someday far into the future, when (if) this area is "blessed" by the urban renewal fairy and full of new in-fill housing, marketed for its proximity to downtown and Highway 71, I'll miss all the empty spaces and the bleak, isolated drive that reminds me of of some kind of "end times" scenario.

It's not the best land, though, and the extreme hills have already made it a "less desirable" part of the city - at least until there's some kind of Katrina-esque flood that fills up the city's valleys.

I guess Woodland is merely a blatant reminder of itself and the conditions that foster such things.

One day when I was wandering in my car, along 25th Street (approximately) headed downhill and west during a pouring rainstorm towards Woodland, during a time in my life when my eyesight was compromised by my vanity, thrift and laziness against getting a new prescription (the glasses finally disintegrated, long after the last contact was lost), a man in a wheelchair, not an old man, much thinner than I and let's say kind of attractive like Snoop, perhaps not even physically threatening, was mostly sliding down the wretched hill, going who the hell knows where at 8 in the morning in a spring storm on the East Side where hills are high and sewers are apt to be clogged.

This person quite unexpectedly encountered, in a place I seek solitude, didn't indicate any communication in my direction; I didn't do much but maybe catch his eye. One of my thoughts was that my car was full of crap, and I have had grievances about transporting babies illegally (state law; carseats) and trying to accomodate large and/or disabled people into my crappy "I am so clearly child- and friend-less" car in the past - and - I have learned a thing or two about picking up strangers.

So far, nothing terrible has happened.

I once saw a woman in court, a grandmother and none too slim (perhaps at 50- or 60-something that comforting age was her charm, her saving grace - heck, I fell for it) be the subject of a "prostitute gets 10 years" story; the woman was one I had had in my car, on Troost from 18th to 27th Street, and she was up there in court, beyond the rail and being called a career prostitute via a prosecutor's PowerPoint presentation.

One never knows.

She asked me about the music I was playing (back when the tape-deck worked); it was Ani DiFranco; when I asked her what she was up to, where she was going, she only said, "Oh, here and there."

A man once tried to wave me down in the 27th-Street dusk of a summer afternoon, at Prospect. As if a younger woman is going to see Jesus in that situation and help a capable and less-threatening-to-other-demographics person with some kind of mechanical battery thing women don't "do." I must be evil.

Admittedly, I have accepted help from strangers who are male. A number have been neutrally helpful at that stupid QuikTrip air pump, for example. You may know of my nemesis issues with nails and screws and also with males who want something.

I tend to be found in isolated places and sometimes, more often than my parents must have invisioned my being, with people who have records, are high, are pitiably senile or disillusioned, foreign, possibly evil and decidedly "different." A man who won't talk to me anymore about his own humanity once taught me "different is okay," and another priest once made me understand the differering philosophies of the world and hence opened the doorway to the Eastern "liberal" proto-Christ "it's all in your head" trip, where, apparently I've stayed.

Quiz: Name one bad thing about working until 9 p.m.

(Hint: You stay up until 2 a.m.)

Still, what I didn't do still bothers me.

Merry X-mas

[Pre-script: I'm of "generation x," the outer cusp.]

We have a new crockpot now, despite it being "no gift" Christmas. That's from my husband's parents. My mom sent $X00, and my dad gave us shovels, a mitre box, some knives and oil lamps, things gleaned from estate sales that tend to crowd the apartment-set despite their actual usefulness; that was the other week, over Thanksgiving.

Siblings seem to have broken the tradition, as it were. It's a mutual and chosen decision. We don't buy each other things; though, if my brother had children, I would buy for them, most likely. Generally, we accept that we are all broke and that if we wish to purchase something we think we can afford, we'll choose it ourselves. Sorry to those who feel otherwise, generations are different.

Tonight, the ever-boyfriend of my sister-in-law, a computer technician who works from home and at client sites, actually came inside, had a sandwich and stuck around a while. His perpetual excuse is that his own earlier family life was bad and that he can't endure spending time with any current one.

Wouldn't we all be legitimate if using that excuse? The point is to keep trying. . .

He left before the presents part, with excuses about having to work.

He talked about some vacant lot he suggested I investigate, somewhere, as far as I could gather, near 31st and Troost. Feel free, anyone, to look it up. Something about the Port Authority.

He asked us, however, as a point of "haven't seen you in a while; how long have you been married (implied)", when we were set to have babies.

Right, "soooo, when are you having kids?" That kind of thing.

I consider that a naive, if not rude, question.

(I mean, does anyone ever take into consideration that some people really want children and really try and really feel inadequate and horribly blue because nothing works?)

Additionally, I don't go around preaching to my child-bearing friends that I think they have made poor decisions, do I?

So, in the spirit of the holidays, I said, "well, we've only been married three and a half years," with a squinty smile, along with, "I'm not forty yet," to which my husband's older (barren) sister replied in a serious tone that, no, i wouldn't want to wait until then - while my husband chimed in with "never," amid laughter.

Yes, and his mother said, "well, we're hoping for an accident."

Good gracious. Baby Jesus surely does inspire what the priest said tonight, amid lots of child chatter and terrible singing.

[Catholics, they just don't shout as if they're proud of their faith.]

They ran out of consecrated hosts, though my husband and I were not among the partaking or even the desirous-of-partaking. We didn't know until the priest closed Mass with first an apology. No matter. Still, what's with all the procreation? Why should I, in particular, be obliged?

To all of you, I hope your family situation is good these two days especially, or during any especially charged time, whenever that may be. The priest tonight made a show at honoring other faiths while veering during the homily into a political complaint about no one wanting nativity scenes on public property. He suggested, however, that Ramadan was coming soon. Good gracious (can I repeat that?).

My mother celebrated with her family tonight. I'm not sure how early I should call her in the morning. Neither I nor my brother were with her. It's what you do when you re-couple (and you live in different cities) - you trade off the major holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, sometimes Mother's and Father's days. It's odd that certain calendar-marked days carry additional emotional weight.

Speaking of weight, my inlaws' bathroom scale has me at 130 today. It's no surprise, as I've been eating chili and cheese and tons of carbs. Next week, I'll likely eat nothing, by comparison. Blame it on the holiday cookies everywhere. Normally, I don't buy them, and there is a clear reason. If they are there, just like cash in one's wallet, they/it will be consumed quickly. In sight-in mind.

I talked with my dad the other day. Probably Saturday. I did very little on that day. It was not one bearing any particularly good memories. Today was better, as I accomplished more. I did several loads of laundry, in machines that are sub-standard and four flights of stairs away.

I also went to church (see above), which made me cry because of my grandmother - there's that part in the "Lord, hear our prayers" section where they go on about "call our dearly departed to your table," or something.

And, I sat through a presents-presenting, which, for some reason, perhaps because our decision was clearly stated a year ago and that there was nothing to be done, was without guilt.

It may have been because I am relatively good at erasing all emotional ties to a situation, but I prefer to believe that it's because I'm healthy, ha ha, and that I am not going to let myself be upset about someone's wish to give.

Yesterday, a college friend and his wife called to ask to come by to give us a present. They do so every year, despite our lack of reciprocation. My other two couple friends of college days also brought gifts. It should be noted that both were consumables, nothing over $13, wine, candy they had made, etc. Perhaps we are the scrooge couple, but perhaps not. They know our stance, and yet they are generous and kind.

We make good food for them occasionally, though our television is the smallest and "Lost" night not the best, image-wise. We did a projection once. My friends are very resourceful. I try to be generous all the time, in general. I don't think I am, in reality. I think what happens is that I pay my way. I do offer to help, though. I take people to and from the airport, make offers for others that are refused. I used to loan friends good chunks of money. I once was not only not in debt but ahead of the game. I couldn't understand how a friend of mine repeatedly bounced checks. I mean, we both know math, right?

Now, however, I understand. It's probably a large part of why we don't want to produce children. I can't even buy the stuff I want to buy, and that's with me pretending to be "unmaterialistic!"

We also do not "believe" in the inevitable and continual progress of mankind toward the ideal of everyone having what they need and not excessively craving what they don't (and that by which consuming actually creates not only "jobs" but elements of what destroys us). Kids today are born into a distaster-on-tap, and the fate of those Americans who don't worry about that is disgusting blind consumerism. No, thanks, this is the composite of my reason, and also why I continue to rely on otherwise hated pharmaceuticals to suppress reproduction. No one wants mistakes.

Ah, yes, quite gloomy for Christmas night. Santa Claus, if he has enough time during gift delivery, might see me when I'm not sleeping. He's totally not coming here tonight.

We always say that we would take children that arrived due to circumstance, but view that more as a 10-year-old or so, some cousin, nephew or random adopted kid such as Brad and Angelina have done. And they're not even married! Tee hee. So, see, we're all just too dang practical about the whole thing.

And I'm okay with that. I have nothing about which to complain!

Ho, ho, ho.

Yesterday's fog

I miss it. Today's cold, normal for "first day of winter," feels gloomy. Christmas Cheer should abate short-day blahs with twinkling tree lights; however, this is the Christmas of Nonengage.

I don't envy the people, most of them married and accomodating two families' wishes to celebrate together, rushing around from event to event. I have nothing to wrap, and it feels good. I know that there's a certain warmth that comes from giving, but I am too un-Zen to be able to do it without being muddled in the negative elements of gift-deadline, gift-perfectness, gift-budget.

Hard to believe that the holiday commercials will so soon be over. . .giving way to clearance sales and inventory reductions. I spent some money today on us, with money from mom, a one-way gift - everything was on clearance, qualifies as bedding. Beds are important, no?

Sunday, we'll be at a Mass, for the second time this calendar year. The Catholic Christmas of 2004 was a disappointment, so I'm hoping for a more-inspring homily, if I have to be involved in listening to it. Ah, the gift of subjugation. And spending time.

Why do I like this?

And why do I like very little overall?

I keep forgetting that Monday is Christmas, but remember, I spent $900 this month on my car. I know you can get a new car for about that much, "new" being relative and probably all the one I'm driving is worth.

I keep pretending it's a balance, a compromise and even a win that I'm not dishing up $500 a month in a loan payment for a truly new one.

What's 191,000 miles between friends?

The "screw-you, tire" total for the year is now $45 as well. Who keeps dropping screws everywhere?

The fire engines and ambulances have "sweeper" chains that swing around down under the tires to create an all-weather traction situation when it's snowing or icy, I learned from the captain at Station 23, so I'm thinking I need to develop some kind of magnet device to thwart the nails, screws and scrap metal continually in my path.

I hate security lights

Read me

Well, at least now we can trash-talk "cultural" New York, which came in at a lame 42 - and while being the answer to life, the universe and everything, represents a tumble from 2005's rank at 32.5).

However, Kansas City itself fell two spots, from 14 to 17 in the Central Connecticut State University's Most Literate Cities list, putting even more distance be us and St. Louis, which ranked at 12 and was only 15 last year.

It's a data analysis of six "indicators" of literacy in U.S. cities of 250,000 people or more: newspaper circulation, the number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and (introduced last year) Internet resources.

Here are the top 10:

1. Seattle, Washington
2. Minneapolis, Minnesota
3.5. Atlanta, Georgia (tied)
3.5. Washington, D.C. (tied)
5. St. Paul, Minnesota
6. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
7. Cincinnati, Ohio
8. Denver, Colorado
9. San Francisco, California
10. Portland, Oregon

The study's author, CCSU's president Dr. John W. Miller, says that it's not important to focus on how your city's rank may be changing, but "what communities do to promote the kinds of literacy practices that the data track."

One southern city, four western ones, three midwestern and two New England.

And no New York.

Boston is #11.

And Minnesota, well, who knew?

Everyone loves dolphins

I don't keep up with the Guiness Book of World Records, but most of you probably already know that Bao Xishun of Mongolia is the tallest man alive today (about 7'9"). I wonder how much he was paid to stick his long arm down the throats of suicidal dolphins to remove plastic shards they somehow had swallowed from their tank.

Given that the aquarium officials said the dolphins had "lost their appetite and were suffering from depression," I wonder if they were upset that humans could be so annoying as to lock them in water-cages where they'd get bored enough to eat shards of plastic.

I've seen my "domesticated" animals swallow any number of unhealthy things, from lead-based paint, to plants that cause peculiar blockages of the intestine (eew). Nothing compares so far to my friend's late blue healer, though, which had a disease that compelled it to eat lampshades, leashes and loads of prescription medication.

Is there a difference in watching humans ingest alcohol, cigarettes, sugar and other drugs? Poor, domesticated humans.

3800 E. Ninth St.

Maison du jour, stately, sitting patiently, since no one minds such a thing around here. Well, Lykins Neighborhood does, but . . . .

In the past two years, the porch supports and that trim paint up top were added, and another garage thing to the east, where a tire shop was, was demolished. It's still a haunted-looking wreck and owned by an LLC that formed in March 2005.

I guess someone is still "working on financing" the repairs?

Strings on me

I got up today at 5 a.m. to drive to Lawrence, Kan. to get my friend to take her to KCI so she could go to Costa Rica/Guatemala for a few weeks. I still do poorly on darkened highways and equally as badly when the winter sun of 7:30 a.m. is blocking all directional and exit signs from view.

We made it, though - and then I made it to work by 8:30.

That's the usual starting time during the week.

Hello, Saturday, I see that you are sunny and nice and that you contain numerous possibilities.

Such things don't matter much to someone who routinely has to go to things that don't begin until 7 p.m., or who spends the dark hours each Monday morning typing up copy until it's light enough to travel to work.

When's the last time I had a weekend, much less a "vacation?" (Six and three years, respectively.)

Do I envy educators, who, like my friend, or like college students, "get to" have a month off at holidays, a week off at spring, and then more weeks between summer school sessions? Everyone who teaches says that it's hard to be a teacher, and that educators need the extra time to catch up on themselves, after giving out so much energy to students, lesson plans, students, parents, conflicts, students, administrational whoo-ha, and incidents such as whatever happened at Westport High School on Thursday (assault times four, student-to-teacher, punches).

I know it is extremely trying to be "on" all the time for students - even good ones or adult ones (I've been a teacher of both such groups and had to run, screaming, into the night) - but, what about all the other jobs that require such sparkling social skills, organizational stamina and mental gymnastics?

Not to mention, a pay-scale that offers very little upward mobility.

Restaurant servers, retailites, office drudges, etc.

They put up with a lot of dolor, a lot of fake smiling, a lot of pushing and back-biting and customers and crap, without a lot of hope or real prospect of changing where they'll be or are at.

No one, likewise, laments what constitute a news-person's weekly life, it seems, the long hours, the outdoor elements, the "it's happening, so, of course, you'll be there, right?" or the tedious sitting-aroundness at "meetings," "hearings" and "sessions," the research, documentation and the sifting through lies that come long before any creative act.

Do we presume that the "adventure" and the "privilege" (of being there - where it's at, right when it's really happening) make up for having to run around like a fool?

Shoot, I don't recall this information being proffered at any of the places I took my education:

According to the Harvard study, 52 percent of the nation's top income earners — those in the top 6 percent of earners and often making six-figure salaries — work more than 70 hours a week. And 48 percent say they are working 16 hours a week more than they did just five years ago.

"Extreme jobs" are defined as ones that take up more than 60 hours a week and fit "various parameters regarding work flow, travel, responsibilities away from the office and outside commitments."

(They also are such that promotion, law-partnership, high-profile existence and money, lots of money, are rewarding elements, a-hem.)

I suppose my job is sub-extreme. Extremely unbalanced?

The article did list media as a potential extreme-job field. I believe they were thinking of "New York" or perhaps television.

Should I have been an attorney, then?

Such professional madness seems destructive to that other American beloved institution (aside from the "do well, make the economy good, succeed! one), the family. You can't very well say, as a father, that you are helping your kids much when your wife is the only parent they see. Sure, money is great, it buys surrogate parents like the soccer coach, gymnastics instructor, video games, and whatever else (research it for me, parents) kids of six-figure-earning families do with their time outside of school.

Personally, I don't think my job would be conducive to parenting either. And I'd like to see anyone determine, based on news product, which weeks this year did take up more than 50 hours of my life's 168-per allotment.

But I digress.

What I began here to say, besides that I love puppets (but not Puppets), is that my drive in "the car with the stereo" allowed me to mess around with memories as old as 11 years. That's what music does, and Plato would say it's a prime reason that art is bad, that it stirs up messy emotions. However, I have never pretended that I don't indulge in messy, stupid things.

Ergo, I give you the chopped-copyrighted lyrics to a more-hitting-home version of that popular psychology mandate to "follow your bliss":

Exerpt from Ani DiFranco's "Joyful Girl," 1996:

i do it for the joy it brings
because i'm a joyful girl
because the world owes me nothing
and we owe each other the world
...
everything i do is judged
and they mostly get it wrong
but oh well
...
i wonder if everything i do
i do instead
of something i want to do more
the question fills my head

I'm aware that you can't hear what I hear, but if you know me, you know what I mean.

(It's been quite implied in these long, boring-you paragraphs:
unlike Pinocchio, I did not sin myself into a donkey, nor have I figured out how to cut these ties.)

The cold finger

of winter
is pointed at you.

Mission (un)Accomplished

There's one thing I'm not going to do, I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.

(he said in a speech setting the stage for high-stakes meetings with the Iraqi prime minister later this week.)

"We can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren.

(source)

Tues tribute 18th Street

Scathe spot

Thursday evening, we took in the worst City Lights downtown lighting event I've been to.

I guess you can't make up for there being snow on the ground (last year, I think) or the blinky light buttons (that they handed out the first year), but seriously, the lights were much fewer than they used to be, with buildings that I know were lit before now dark and with the music-synchronization-blinky part of the event very short.

Corporate sponsors were not pasted along Bartle Hall's east-facing wall, either, which is probably the main sign/explanation that I'm looking for. I didn't go "early enough" for the speeches-part, so perhaps I missed something other than the fact that the Salvation Army was putting this one on. Maybe that was it. You know, Labor Party-types from the earlier part of last century used to call them the "Starvation Army." Good thing they give out free turkey dinners now. . . .

After the lights, even though it smacks of trendiness and things that make me go "ugh," we went to JP's Wine Bar and Coffee House to celebrate my friend's birthday. I hadn't been there since my own birthday. (It was my idea.)

Thursday also was the debut of the 2006 Beaujolais wine, so the place was packed. We lucky five somehow got a booth and then spent $80.

I happen to like that kind of wine, by the way, so I can't be accused of trendiness. It's smooth, basic and lacks the usual crappy table wine bitterness.

I prefer JPs in the light of summer evenings, I found, with hardly no one else around so I can pretend my living room is pretty and there are people in my employ who like to bring me cheese and wine in proper glasses. Next summer, I'm looking forward to using their new outdoor cafe space.

Leaving, though, being the downlooker that I am, I noticed this lovely bit of fine craftsmanship on a utility pole outside. Note white sock without blood.


I'm just saying, if I really wanted to or if I had been really drunk, I could have found an injury. I like how whoever it was folded the metal binder back for safekeeping.

La gata

Our cat doesn't care what language we speak to her; the response is the same, the usual "cat thing," of turning her head in the other direction, "surely, you're not talking to me."

Modern medicine, which I rail against when it has to come to my body, seems to have worked a needed "miracle" on this fur beast of ours.

Within 12 hours of our shoving a soggy gel cap of anti-fungal powder down Katrina's throat (she howled, she bit me with one of her seven teeth), as well giving the first dose of the much-easier-to-administer liquid antibiotics, the cat is actuall alive.

She rolls over coquettishly, she asks for attention, she meows, she even plays and finally grooms. Now, she's set to become a nuisance, the regular kind of cat that I was afraid of having around. Gone seems to be the sleeping lump. I guess she was in a bunch of pain.

Speaking of Katrina, it seems that all of us should be hoarding antibiotics ourselves. The five seconds of the only episode of Jericho I caught already taught me that. That and we are not well-armed. The director of the Kansas City Health Department, Dr. Rex Archer (what a name, eh?), reported to the Neighborhood Committee on Wednesday (City Council) that more people were hoarding.

He introduced a new hire, who is in charge of educating the public about pandemic things such as bird flu. In the course of that, which was mostly mumbled, much like nearly everything else that was "said" during the meeting, he alluded to how people are "getting the message" about preparedness. The federal and state governments won't be able to help you, that's the nature of pandemic, resources stretched too thin, no one available on the other line, etc.

No one I know is stocked up, except for the 50- and 60-somethings (hello again, boomers) who have more freezer space than they know what to do with. They also know how to can things and have shelves. Apartment people such as we can hardly find space to store a week's-worth of eatables, much less nutrition for any kind of long haul.

Lazy Americans

I want to laugh at Missouri Rep. Ed Emery, of Lamar, Mo. (R), who admits to inserting this language into the final report of the House Special Committee on Immigration Reform:

“The lack of a traditional work ethic, combined with the effects of 30 years of abortion and expanding liberal social welfare policies have produced a shortage of workers and a lack of incentive for those who can work. . . . Today’s growing affinity for government dependency has created a class of potential employees who are not eager to work.”

For one, where does one look to find the root of why a "traditional" work ethic is no longer widespread enough to be called traditional?

Umm, what culture spawned people my age? Boomers, right? I doubt that my parents, aunts/uncles and their friends would consider themselves liberal or having deliberately destroyed my generation's work ethic. Chime in, 50-60-somethings, with your view, please.

Personally, my work ethic is average, I think. I struggle to find someone who has an affinity for government dependency. (And, how long can a person be thusly dependent anyway? We limit "welfare," you know,* except for SSI disability, right?)

Ok, though, here's what makes me ill, the implication that American citizens are aborting the kids who would otherwise fill the ranks of our shrinking domestic working class.

Not enough of us (or does Emery mean "them?") are having kids who want to be good, stay in school and graduate from substandard, unaccredited institutions (just enough to be qualified) to work as hotel housekeepers, roofers, yard workers and line cooks.

On the other hand, those of us who do have enough money already to get our kids in suburban or private schools, or those who are simply great parents and very involved in their kids' education so that they turn out ambitious and with critical thinking skills, well, we're not doing that just so they can only flip burgers, dig holes, scrub toilets and hammer nails in the sun.

I know people who have done these jobs, of course; I and most of my friends have all worked in the wondrous fast-food industry at one time or another. The only reason someone stays long in a place like that is because they have to - they are not skilled enough to do anything else or they have a criminal record or they are working their way through school still or are in need of a second job, etc.

Count me in as not doing my part to contribute to the working population, at any rate.

Not enough "American babies" being born as worker bees? Sounds to me like Emery is hinting that the populace is getting too smart and/or cranky to submit to being mere drones their entire lifetimes. I know, I know, work and you will advance, work hard and you can be anything, even an elected official, even a superstar like Denzel or Oprah.

What about the fact that American employers like cheap labor, period? $5.50/hour gets you $10,920 a year (before any taxes), and, well, that does tend to stretch farther if you're spending it chiefly south of the border while living in some urban crumbhole with 12 other guys up north. Although, I hear that Tyson pays about $9/hour for ripping up chickens with your hands.

You could raise a whole family of replacement workers on that!

*"The time limit is one of the major differences between the old AFDC system and the TANF system. Federal block grant monies cannot be used to provide benefits to families beyond a 60-month limit, although states are free to use their resources to provide benefits beyond the 60-month limit (Michigan and Vermont have no time limit). Missouri maintains the federal limit of 60 months. Missouri was one of the last states to implement the time limit. There are no extensions allowed in Missouri."
(from Welfare Reform in Missouri, MSCDC Economic Report Series No. 9803; June 1998, by Peter Eaton of the Center for Economic Information, University of Missouri-Kansas City)

Why we don't have kids

Took Katrina to vet for one-month follow-up and booster shots. Infection not healing sufficiently, duh, as "fungus" has generally abated from ears but is invading nose an brows, threatens eyes, includes patch on back knee.

Finally, the oral medication, which I would have administered first-off, being a being of intuition. Now we'll try anti-fungal plus an antibiotic for good measure. One was free. The other was $25. The Advanage for no-fleas (I am the only one being bitten at this point, so I really should be wearing flea collars on my ankles and wrists, I suppose) is also $25. The shots were $45. Add it up. Cat is becoming as much as a plane ticket.

Cat doesn't do much, except when at vet and hearing yelping dogs, then she's squirmy. I left her back at home, pouting, so she can't be all broken.

"If this doesn't work," vet said, "there is a possibility she's allergic to her own skin. It's an auto-immune condition, takes a few tests to diagnose, but let's not worry about that yet."

Yes, let's not. You know that episode of "King of the Hill" in which Hank agrees to take care of a soldier's pet while he's on duty in Iraq? My vet isn't even one of those high-end ones with a fancy office and bunches of advanced expensive equipment. I can just hear how much more blood tests would cost.

I didn't set a budget before we started. We only said, "I'm not spending thousands of dollars on a cat/dog like ___ did."

Auto-immunity is difficult to diagnose in humans, much less some random feline. I hear that cats, unlike dogs and humans, can survive just fine indefinitely on cortizone, which manages the symptoms of the self-infectionness.

They say people are like their pets/vice-versa. This cat doesn't just sit still 23.9 hours a day but is actually alseep for most of that time. The balance is given over to "getting comfortable" or, when not horizonal, to walking to and from litter box and/or food/water.

She did manage to gain .15 pounds since we took her in.

Skin issues, sleeps all day, purrs when you touch her, likes laps. She's quite fine with us, even though the receptionist/assistant at the vet said "what a boring cat."

She fits our lifestyle; I don't like overtly needy things, things that want to play and need active attention. Anti-fungal sprays, gel-caps, eye-droppers down the throat, scab clean-up, and hundreds of "disposable income" dollars on medical care, these things I can handle.

Gratuitous cuteness

This wee beastie is a token morsel for Mr. Daisy, and also the reason why on Friday night I slept well (I was at a friend's house in Columbia, where there are no pets, and no helicopters and no sirens).

A modest proposal

I'm not talking, as Mr. Swift did, of eating children in an ironic twist about (twist and shout) how starved were the Irish under British (English) oppression.

I don't know how bad it was there and then.

Just this:

We need a police scanner at the place at which I "work," for apparently, 30 minutes before I got too bored and too vegetable hungry and left mi oficina, some kids with guns were a block away from me getting ready for a standoff that is still going on six hours later.

And folks (braver than I, I suppose) ask me why I don't live in Northeast.

Sorry I can't give you either links or my photos; KCTV 5 is doing it on T.V. and not the Internet(s), and, as I said, I am not anywhere near there.

Oblivious and/or "lucky."

C'est moi.

Try and find "standoff at James Elementary School."

I heard the city was installing "Safe School" signs near there tomorrow afternoon.

If my paper publishes that, you'll know I was being ironic and/or hopeful.

Wait, I change my mind: we all really should eat our children.

Why

I don't see why someone would "suddenly" feel like they are going in the wrong direction and need to flee in such a way as Rumsfeld. It's not like half-plus of America (and others in other countries) haven't been complaining about his crummy management and role in ruining America's moral high ground ever since they started the Iraq invasion. Seems like he's worried about being grilled by the "new" Congress.

Sacrificial lamb to help Republicans do better in '08.

Only days ago, Mr. Bush had voiced confidence in Mr. Rumsfeld, as he had consistently done since the start of his presidency, in declaring that Mr. Rumsfeld was “here to stay.”

But Tuesday’s elections produced a furious reaction from the American public over a military campaign that has cost the lives of nearly 3,000 members of the armed forces and that many people of all political stripes have described as poorly managed.

It's all so transparent.

Shooting for America

Tonight, I'm going to go see Joe Miller, and I even bought another book just so my friend would go with me. We're going to argue over which school/library to donate it to, but saying "argue" is an exaggeration.

Today is the day for exaggeration. And anticipation. Maybe hope.

My friend was a bit hesitant to come out tonight to something that starts at 7 p.m. — right when the polls in Missouri and Kansas close — because she admits to being a return-watcher junkie. We figured out that she can listen to the radio on her way home to Lawrence, Kansas, then be back in front of the television (which she literally uses probably once a month, maybe just four times a year, when there's an election) for the tickers.

They say the balance of Congress is in the balance.

I don't see Montana going Democrat, but who knows. Here at "home," I'm stuck with being a swinging state, divided nearly in half between a former prosecutor/auditor Claire McCaskill and an incumbent Republican who sends me lots of press releases about highway money and veterans' money and even about designating our Negro Leagues Baseball Museum as "national."

According to my government, Republicans have held the majority in the House of Representatives since 1994. Ah, 12 years.

The Republicans also controlled the Senate from 1994 until 2000 (when everyone was "mad" at Bill Clinton and wanted to make the last six years of his eight-year administration difficult). He blames the lack of Osama bin Laden-getting on them, you know ….

Of course, in 2000, GOP Bush came to power (and Republicans kept their House majority). At the time, both parties held 50 Senate seats, but, of course, that means that the VP's in-case-of-tie votes would sway the GOP way, "yielding the Republicans unified control of the federal government."

It seems more recent than "pre-9-11," but it was June 2001 when Republican Senator James Jeffords quit his party and gave the Democrats a teeny majority in the Senate, which they blew somehow in 2002.

In 2004, Republicans got four more Senate seats, and they had a net gain of three in the House (partially due to a Democrat's death on New Year's Day 2005).

As it stands, I hate that things are so bi-partisan at all, that you can "predict" votes based solely on whether someone is a Democrat or Republican, whether they are "for" or "against" the president and his/her party.

But, like my friend, I do get all goofy-patriotic on election days, which in places like Africa and Mexico lead to violence and deaths.

The artwork featured here is a piece currently on display at the Belger Art Center, titled simply "Bullet Flag" and made of 23,000 9mm and .22 caliber spent cartridges. It's by someone simply "Moses," who still owns this piece (48"x72"), and about whom I can find no information.

My polling place

Traffic seemed steady from 8 to 10 a.m., which is the only block I can account for. This is a church. The sidewalk is in need of some serious PIAC money. The car, I think it belongs to one of my election judges, but parking it that way sure makes the treacherous stupid sidewalk even more so.

I'm "able bodied," by most accounts, and not wearing high heels, but even I almost twisted my ankle getting to the door. Yes, I'm exaggerating, but it's the only thing I can do with my seethingness should I encounter a friend later today or this week who gives me some lame-ass excuse why they didn't or "couldn't" vote today.

Don't walk

Halloween backlog

I feel like a bureaucrat who has been called on what's not filed. Yesterday, I watched a Jackson County legislator tell someone from the finance department that "there is a break down in your office," that the goal of getting contracts, etc. online a day after they're signed by the county executive "is not happening."

Well, what is happening?

It's Halloween, so in a few hours I'll be "amusing" myself with costume-gawking, trying to get photos of kids running at light speed to the free-candy houses. I do this every year, six years in a row, and all I can say is that I'm sure I'll feel slightly more positively about the whole thing once I get there, but really, I am not interested in repeating all the pleasantry conversations that will inevitably happen between me and the volunteers, the same adults everywhere, every year.

I am under the influence of hormones that make women homi-sui-mega-cidal, so, exactly - I would rather be sitting in a witch costume on a chair on a porch with a bowl of sugar in my lap, pretending to be fake until unsuspecting kids come up and try to take a piece.

It's Halloween, so I took the down-time Tuesday to go get my cervix looked at by my doctor, who moves the office every year, it seems, due, I presume, to the fact that you can't be a solo practitioner anymore. Then I had them take blood, since no one knows my cholesterol and I spent yesterday reminding myself not to eat.

It's Halloween, so tomorrow is All Saints Day and Thursday is All Souls Day, and since my grandmother died October 19, and since she performed quite a family miracle by getting the lot of us all to attend a full Catholic Mass (at which, for the first time in decades, I actually didn't find myself hating The Church), I actually have someone to pray for.

Don't make me think about it. . .it still makes me cry.

PMS, remember?

I remember a lot of little things about her, and they're mixed up in a long ("long;" my life is only 32 years so far) personal history of growing up, of going to spend the night there at the age of nearly three, the night my brother was born, of going to Lake Londell and watching Grandma "not swim," of always knowing that there was a great supply of snacks in that kitchen closet, that Grandpa always dried the dishes right as she was washing them, that she sang "Tiny Bubbles" from a lawn chair the afternoon we kids at some family gathering learned that the air conditioner was a great automated bubble-maker, that she had nightmares about clothes-pin reindeer after we made a bunch of ornaments at the kitchen table.

She taught me about clean. She probably taught all of us about clean. I think I was surprised to learn that her sister came to do the cleaning, but nothing at Grandma's was ever dirty for long. In fact, if our husbands wanted to blame on her influence all our psychotic nagging about every dirt speck and every non-span-clean, unstraightened thing we encounter (since we will always in our hearts fall short of her supreme-clean ideal and thus secretly hate ourselves for not being able to maintain the creed of spotless and therefore express it through nagging), then they might go ahead and do that.

However, Grandpa is a clean person, too, and I think we all assumed that we could mold every male that way if we just tried hard enough.

I know there's more to it than that.

Together, they have taught us how to stay married 57 years. What remains to be seen and what can be heart-rending if I dwell on it, is how one adapts once that long partnership ends.

It is especially hard to think of someone as gone when you already picture them in your head as away. My whole family is away, across a highway I hate, and since high school, college, Japan, Kansas City, I haven't been the most frequent of visitors. My adult life with my relatives is relatively abreviated. The connection is there, but it almost surprises me.

Family is someone you already love and then get used to learning how to do it for real, by being there through time, through experience, through doing. It largely happens over holdiays, crowded, noisy events that are flanked by obligations and squeezed in between jobs and other families. In my heart of hearts, no matter how much I've complained or asked to be left alone, I think the real me is someone out there in some village or some past-America that hardly was, where my family all lived within walking distance and we walked the distance casually, frequently and were made whole by it.

And all this from a woman who doesn't have kids and never visits her in-laws who do live in town.

Blurry

. . .finally went to optometrist.

Got new script and am waiting for glasses.
Got new contacts (free ones for now) and have already lost one due to waiting too late to take them out.
They become part of your body, and then they disappear.

Not a good sign, when real ones cost $20 a piece.
It's okay, one eye is better than none.

PS - graffiti on 39th near Penn.
PPS - the camera is auto-focus;
no setting for "moving car,"
so this image is not my eyes' fault.
PPPS - spent $500.

Oak red

Three Creeks near Columbia, Mo.

Where we were over Saturday night.

As usual, camping "sleep" was interrupted by early morning rain. It happens invariably. Also, the sun just doesn't stay out long enough in the fall. Dark. It doesn't get up early enough in the morning. Dark. I'm tired of getting up in the dark.

Not death-worthy

Blood tests revealed no terminal illnesses like feline leukemia or feline immunodeficiency virus, so now we have a cat.

Kitty tally is at $173.

Vet said she was a she, about six years old and has had (obviously) a hard life.

It's kind of scary all the things that can go wrong with a mammal like this. Birds seem so much easier.

I quote myself at the last four bird expos, "We can't have a conure because they are $100 and there's no room for another cage."

Now, of course, the apartment will become an experiment in door management. Who will fold first - the budgie who wants to stay free, the woman who wants natural weather and circulation, the man whose studio is where the litterbox is going. . .?

Oh, the freedom

As seen from the Liberty lofts, still under construction, looking north at the tracks that run behind Union Station.

The view is free for now, as it was a week ago during a tour through the Urban Living Center, but if you would like to move your furniture into this dusty shell once the dust has settled, plan on spending $129,000 for 662 square feet of a place that was the last American destination for recruits off to wars during the 1950s through 1980s.

The primo units, which both are "two storys" (one of these is a half-floor, of course, with a second bathroom), are $369,000 for 1,454 sq. ft. and $489,000 for 1,942 sq. ft.

There are 25 units; the one that's $219,000 and 972 sq. ft. and lacks the "Hollywood bath" (meaning that all you get is a cheesy pre-fab tub/shower unit and no tile) is already sold.

Marketing information details "why" The Liberty was chosen to name this building's residential rebirth from its dull Armed Services Building past:

well, it's by Liberty Memorial, sure. We get that, even though most of what you can see from the windows is the giant IRS complex to the south.

The other two reasons, both sentence fragments, are stretching it a bit, I think:

Second, out of respect for its most recent previous use.

And Finally, because The Liberty allows homeowners a lifestyle of "personal liberty."

Ah, yes, the freedom to spend way more than something is worth "just because" you think it's a good deal and/or are just jazzed about Kansas City's loft and condo and luxury downtown "boom."

The folks along with me (who was doing this as a favor and for the wine and snacks) did not seem as skeptical as I; my favorite was a blonde 30-something woman (heck, maybe 20-something) who was so pleased with herself to tell her companion (perhaps mother) that she had picked up one of the "decorator's cards" from a piece of furniture in one of the lofts (tour included Metropolitan Condos on Eighth, 700 Broadway, The Coffee Lofts, Riverbend Lofts and Old Orchard at Fifth and Grand, too), "because I really like how they have done it and I want to have them do my place, too."

I don't know if she was talking about a loft in her future or some home she already occupied, but it made me laugh inside, mean as I am in front of others' spontaneous and private comments, that she was so "impressed" by a few sticks of mod-looking furniture and a non-white-walls paint job.

It made me ill, too, that at one of the locations, if one did not choose, for example, to pay the extra $1,000 for a kitchen upgrade (mind you, on a place that has already been occupied once at least), then you'd be stuck with cabinets that are so cheap that they have featured in a number of apartment renovations I've seen, the kind where you are only going to ask for $500 a month in rent, plus an electric "stove" and refrigerator from the 1980s.

Steve Glorioso

He must know the Mulvihills of The Barbershop Gallery or he was planning some kind of PR coup in advance of the November election.

Anyway, the "Ten" show, during its short run this week, was well-attended; there were even some sales. Waiting to see what's left for my walls.

Frozen the 13th

Been too "busy" to work here. I hate how ideas fester in one like constipation. Wait too long and there is nothing useful left. It's stale, stupid, over with.

Today, I'm at the workplace, shivering and feeling indignant. Never mind all the people who are outdoors today, whose jobs mean they have to be pouring concrete, fixing power lines, etc. Plenty work in unheated warehouses and shops, too. And the non-working ones, well, they're there. Cold as always. I would be drinking hard liquor right now if I didn't have false hope that the person might actually repair the heater for this cracker-box place before the end of the day.

Besides frozen fingers that falter into too many typographical errors, the fact that my computer is slow is starting to take its toll on my productivity. I am going to start using a timer to clock all the minutes spent waiting for programs to open, files to save and other general "you can't click or do anything right now because I am 'thinking'" computer down-time moments.

Today's issue is that attachments from e-mail are being stupid, telling me things like "already in use by another user" (preposterous and impossible) and "file error."

Shutting down and restarting takes seven minutes.

Tomorrow should have been a perfectly nice day, except I have a board meeting and there is that cat issue to deal with.

First Friday Full

There are a lot of things to do this weekend, including fun at Mattie Rhodes art gallery with Día de Los Muertos, and I guess you'd have to be "not a reader" not to have noticed this show already, but I'm plugging it anyway because Chuong's photos kick ass.

Another reason

Things like bridges, streets and buildings shouldn't be named after people, especially while they are still living and capable of being evil.

It's really obvious that Steve Penn is making a fool of himself with his premature and fawning quest to locate some ediface or landmark to bear the name of our current mayor.

However, if you donate millions of dollars to build something, should others in the future be allowed to remove your legacy?

Well, in this case, the man in question didn't get up the cash himself, but was honored for doing things like expanding student health at the University of Missouri.

Tom Brady got his name on the student food and book area Brady Commons, but apparently he was also strict about enforcing anti-sodomy laws of the 1950s by making suspected gay students see the shrink or quit school and leave.

Now that the school has a shiny new center, some people think that Brady's name should go, in light of the fact that he was anti-homosexual and today, umm, well, yeah, sure, we're not.

Maybe they should just call it the "Brady was a Gay and Guggenheim Fellow Commons."

"Potential"

and pretty bricks for sale at 3943 Troost.

Oink

Fire prevention month wasn't enough.

The governor got his own hog on yesterday after signing a declaration making October Missouri Pork Month.

Kathy Chinn raises hogs out in Clarence, Mo. for us to eat and is chair"man" of the Missouri Pork Association.

Do you believe her when she says:

"Pork consumption continues to escalate, and pork is now the number one consumed protein in the world."?

It's the number-one smelliest protein in the world. . . .

Surely the chicken, egg and soybean people will be taking up arms to battle back with their own "meaty" months?