Loosely Speaking

By Ciel - About Me - E-mail this page - Add to My Favorites - Add to Blog List - See other blogs in Everything Else

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Comes a day, you realize, you no longer need to worry about dying young...

I think many of us in the Blogit Community are in that category, or soon will be. When I was young, I didn't think about being old. I didn't want to know about it much, and I grew up without the richness of example that some families have. It is only now, and here that I am learning some very important things. That an aging body still carries a lively mind, inspiration and creativity. That passion does not pass away when we reach a certain age, though it may lean on nostalgia heavily. That love... Sign in to see full entry.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Defense of Marriage

The question of who can marry whom is another of those volatile questions in these times, where religion attempts to define and dictate reality for everyone. It smacks of an unseparate Church and State, I say, and of ignorance, even willful ignorance. A good look around this world we all share, at all the great variety of culture and human systems, demonstrates how many different 'right ways' there are to do things, to define them and live with them. "One Man + One Woman" is only one formula for... Sign in to see full entry.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Faster, shinier, newer...! vs tea and biscuits

Many of us here are of an age where constant change, constant upgrade, improvement and new looks is all that desireable. Maybe it isn't age, so much as attitude. I, for one, would like my email system to remain constant, as long as it works perfectly well. I am glad for my browser to behave in familiar ways. I don't want a phone that does much more than handle phone calls. I don't need to electronicize my map reading, I don't need to have constant and continual electronic entertainment. I would... Sign in to see full entry.

Friday, April 5, 2013

Why do people want pet tigers?

Or foxes, or wolves, or other wild animals? I read an article about domesticated foxes, and how they are, in fact, not merely tamed wild foxes. People want pet foxes that will like them and cuddle with them and be glad of them. A tame wild animal will tolerate your presence, acknowledge you as among the things it does not attack, and perhaps living with one for years, it may never attack you. You may form a kind of bond with a tamed animal. But it won't like you, not the way domesticated pets... Sign in to see full entry.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

The Tylenol Tampering Case

I didn't hear this first as a news story, but as gossip. My younger daughter, when she was in middle-school in Tumwater, Washington, had a teacher that no one much liked, though that is beside the point. One afternoon, that teacher complained of a headache: she went home and took some tylenol. She wasn't in school the next day, and pretty soon, word had gotten around, she'd been poisoned. Not to death, but she was pretty ill, and her husband, before too long, was arrested for attempted murder,... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Water Weight and Weight Loss

A little discussion between Wiley and Naut inspired these thoughts. If I fail to take the little daily pill that keeps my body from hoarding water, I weigh in 5 lbs heavier than when I take it as I should. Weight-loss is the weight apart from that, that stays off over time. I am currently 60lbs lighter than when I started to lose weight, and the basic routine has been to eat for health, not for weight-loss. A diagnosis of diabetes, of course, is additional inspiration. On the other hand, 5 lbs... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

"I'm sorry, I'm new here..."

I heard it again today: I was at a PeiWei restaurant, where I am unfamiliar with the menu. I asked about two things on the menu and the only person there behind the counter, could not give me a coherent answer about either one... saying, "Sorry, I'm new here." She felt terribly awkward, from the looks of things, when I didn't just accept that. Fine. You're new. I'm also new here, and I want to give you some money for some food. Why can you not tell me about the food? I don't blame her, or the... Sign in to see full entry.

Monday, January 21, 2013

here's a thought...

What if people... if I, if you, if we all could seperate our most cherished causes and passions from our pride in this nation of ours? Have your cause, have your opinion, your pride in who you are... But let me have mine, and I will let you have yours... and we will let them over there, have their's... And we will not hurt one another, for our differences. There has never been a more civilized concept in the world: That all in the civic community may have, and believe, and be, and speak... with... Sign in to see full entry.

LINCOLN and Obama

And the Inauguration Day party--despite the hissing and spitting from those who really seem to believe there was a viable choice in either of the past two elections--goes on... Congratulations, President Obama--and now, get busy with the business that you can get done because the threat of losing the next election doesn't hang over you. I went to the movies last night to see LINCOLN. I wasn't sure what to expect, being one who avoids trailers and spoilers as much as possible. Some move-makers... Sign in to see full entry.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

One of the most moving and saddest of Christmas songs

is the Coventry Carol, the story of the Slaughter of the Innocents, which most of us learned in one Bible school or another. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYFDO02Y2aI This is the Kingston Trio's version, my favorite. In fact, this event probably never happened. As horrific as such a thing would be, and as bruited about as it would have been, not a single historian of the period speaks of it. Josephus, the best known scholar/historian of the time, and himself a Jew, never mentions such an event.... Sign in to see full entry.

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