Honey mentioned yesterday that we went through the entire 4th of July weekend without seeing James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy. She didn’t even see it listed.
That’s like going through December without seeing Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life! It just shouldn’t ever go out of style.
So – Honey, this is for you…
Egrets spend so much time around farms that they could almost be considered domesticated. It is common to see them with – and on the backs of – cattle. Pull a plow through a field, or a brush-hog through a pasture, and Egrets will show up in droves to feast on whatever critters the farmer uncovers.
Here at the Boggy Thicket, Egrets even follow me when I mow the lawn on my riding mower. When I mowed yesterday, two showed up within the first five minutes and stayed with me almost an hour until I took a break.
The birds looked identical – they are Cattle Egrets, one of the four species common to the USA – snowy white with just a dash of peachy beige.
Although they looked the same, their feeding approach was totally different. One liked to hunt in the unmowed grass for bugs and frogs that were scurrying to escape the mower, while the other preferred the area I had just mowed and the easy pickings of critters killed or injured by the mower blades. Both of them seemed sure that I was mowing strictly for their benefit, and while they would occasionally run or fly to get out of my way, they never went more than about twenty-five feet.
Yesterday, the world’s sweetest miniature dachshund, our dog Tinker, turned nine years old.
It also happened to be the 238th birthday of the United States.
If you divide 238 by 9, you get 26.44, which is the new American record for a 10,000 meter run, set by Galan Rupp on May 30 of this year.
If you Google 26.44, you’ll also see a self portrait (number 26.44) by a Canadian blogger named Andrea Wrobel.
She calls it Metropolitan Unicorn.
If instead of dividing, you multiply 238 by 9 you get 2142. Look for that on line, and you’ll get lots of hits – all for Battlefield 2142, which must be a pretty popular video game.
The whole point of this exercise is that numbers do mean something, but this time they don’t mean much.
I experienced what could only be described as an epiphany last night.
While I slept, I received perfect insight into a problem that has troubled me for years. Suddenly, I understood with absolute clarity why otherwise decent people – intelligent, hard-working folks with good will toward their fellow man – form into factions that despise each other. Why they join groups – political, religious or whatever - that will never get along and view each other as evil.
My understanding was complete, but like a soap bubble’s perfect sphere, it only existed so long as it remained whole. When I tried to put it on paper, the whole thing fell apart.
Several of my left-leaning friends on Facebook have posted links to this article from Forbes which seems to say that Hobby Lobby profits from the very things they objected to providing in their suit against Obamacare. All of their posts screamed HYPOCRICY!
I can see why they feel that way, but here’s my take on it:
I pay a professional to administer my retirement account. That account includes several mutual funds.
The big selling points of mutual funds are safety through diversification and professional management so you don’t have to constantly monitor individual stocks and market trends.
So - the funds have managers, and my account has another manager. Although I do get literature from the various funds I have little or no input into what they do.
Do I know what companies are included in those funds? Do I know what each of those individual companies do, make, sell?
No, I do not.
Could one or more of the companies in my portfolio be involved in something I wouldn’t normally condone?
It’s possible – even likely.
So, before you jump on the HYPOCRICY bandwagon, I have a question…..
What’s in YOUR wallet?
The Supreme Court has ruled, 5 to 4, in the Hobby Lobby case, but the fight seems to be intensifying.
The problem, as I see it, is that nobody – not even the Justices on the Court – can agree upon what the real issue is.
One side calls it a Women’s Rights issue, while the other sees it as the Constitutional protection of Freedom of Religion.
In the majority ruling, the 1st Amendment took precedence when the Court ruled that the Southern Baptist owners of Hobby Lobby and the Mennonite owners of Conestoga Wood Specialties could not be forced to pay for contraception for their employees as mandated by Obamacare.
Like dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned, this decision could open the door to a flood of other cases. There are those (and presumably business owners) whose religion prohibits things like blood transfusions and vaccines – will this case set a precedent that will allow them to refuse to purchase health insurance altogether? It could get interesting.
Was yesterday’s decision the right decision?
I think it was.
