Category Archives: Scribbles

Austin’s deep freeze

Posted on February 3, 2011 | Comments Off on Austin’s deep freeze

A second night of temps falling into the teens ahead, after having not gotten out of the mid-twenties all day. The elephant ears at the rancho have turned black and fallen on the ground, just like last year. Likewise the plumbago and the turk’s cap.

They’ll all grow back, they always have before. At least we’re not facing this blizzardification happening elsewhere, though the link is in Wisconsin, where they actually have radiators (and probably need them). But there are snow flurries in our forecast for Thursday night into Friday morning. Then, true to form, warming into the fifties on Saturday and Sunday. Come on, spring!

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Posted in Blogosphere, Rancho Roly Poly, Scribbles, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Lincoln & Palin

Posted on January 31, 2011 | Comments Off on Lincoln & Palin

The Day By Day cartoon had a good one the other day. Paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln on why, despite legacy media and career pol opposition, Sarah is still the best bet for the presidency: “I cannot spare this woman; she fights.”

UPDATE:  Meanwhile, just as they did with California governor Ronald Reagan more than thirty years ago, the Left will go to any length to attack her. For instance, the snide producers of the Missoula Children’s Theater.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Scribbles

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Juke

Posted on January 30, 2011 | Comments Off on Juke

GG_web_Murphy_main_1They say the juke joint was a black Mississippi invention. Howsomever that may be, Poor Monkey Lounge in Merigold in the Delta seems to fit the bill.

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Posted in Library, Scribbles

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American honor killings

Posted on January 29, 2011 | Comments Off on American honor killings

Immigrants, as I read American history, have always brought their less-admirable behavior, along with their more positive hopes and dreams, to our shores.Why wouldn’t they? It’s human nature.

What’s  new about the latest Muslim honor killings— the beheading of an estranged wife in New York and the running over of a daughter who wanted to choose her own husband in Arizona—is that most of the legacy media does a quick, very short report and then ignores the troubling details. No hysterical commentary like after the Tucson shootings.

Gotta keep those Musslemen happy, you know, since some are so prone to explosive upset. But without the shame of publicity, it will take much longer for this old world behavior to stop.

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Posted in Scribbles, The War

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Holocaust Remembrance Day

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Posted on January 27, 2011 in Israel, Obituaries, Scribbles

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Hey, it starts in elementary school

Posted on January 27, 2011 | Comments Off on Hey, it starts in elementary school

Mr. Boy, our No. 1 son and in-house fifth grader, hasn’t had any substantial homework in more than two months, which is pretty darn strange. He had a nightly hour’s worth or more in second grade and it has diminished every year since then. It seems to be dependent on the teacher, not the system.

It also seems to match this study that found that college today (never mind elementary school) is pretty much a waste of time and money:

“In a typical semester, a third of students took no courses with more than 40 pages of reading per week. Half didn’t take a single course in which they wrote more than 20 pages over the semester.”

No wonder elementary school is so lackadaisical. It’s a waste of our tax money, unless you consider full employment for teachers and administrators to be the main objective. Which I’m sure they do.

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Scribbles

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Another “historian” bites the dust

Posted on January 26, 2011 | Comments Off on Another “historian” bites the dust

Add Dr. Thomas Lowry’s name to the pantheon of historian shame that includes plagiarist Stephen Ambrose and Vietnam combat-phony Joseph Ellis. Lowry is accused by the National Archives of admitting that he used a fountain pen to vandalize a document written by President Lincoln.

Lowry, whose forgery went undiscovered for fourteen years and even inspired Washington tour guides to repeat it to unknowing tourists, signed a confession to his vandalism, according to the National Archives which has banned his person from their halls henceforth. He is now denying all in the pages of the WaPo. How convenient.

I bring this up partly because Vietnam combat-phonies like Ellis really anger me. They damaged all of us genuine combat veterans for most of our post-war adult lives by “confessing” to dishonorable things. Tarring us with their liar’s brush. Fortunately for the “profession,” Lowry, is only an independent Civil War historian. His doctorate is medical. He’s a psychiatrist. Go figure that out if you can.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Civil War, Library, Scribbles

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