Yesterday we had an inch of snow and the temperature didn’t get about 35 (however, this was limited to this area, as it was in the upper 40s at Parkersburg). Today the temperature got up to the low 60s and was sunny.

Hurrah for layers!

We all went out to lunch today, which is a good thing, because my grandmother doesn’t really like to go out that much, but my house is so small, she doesn’t get enough walking around here, even when she walks back and forth through the house. Of course since she’s out at least once a week for doctor appointments, I suppose she’s getting her exercise there.

But back to lunch. We went her new favorite restaurant, Cheddar’s, which she likes because the food is very good and very inexpensive. (Three of us ate lunch and shared a dessert for $25.) But as it is Sunday, it was incredibly busy (And there’s something I don’t get either. How come all these “Christians” who think that homosexuality is EVIL because the bible says so, have no problem ignoring the command to keep the sabbath holy by forcing minimum wage workers to work long shifts on Sunday and be away from their families? There’s a long rant for another time.) so we had to wait half an hour for a table, which I was expecting (having worked food service for years myself. [Are you still with me here? Not to many parenthetical asides for you? Good.]) What was interesting to notice which customers paid attention to others in the waiting area.

By the time I had parked the car, my grandmother was seated on one of the benches and Michael was standing in front of her chatting. After a brief moment, the mother and daughter who were sitting beside her got up so Michael and I could have their seats. I protested, but they left, so we sat. As we waited, I paid attention to who sat and who stood, and who offered their seats to others.

After one white haired couple put their name on the list, they turned around and there were no seats, so they stood in the middle of the lobby, right in front of us and two college students (a young couple). After a minute, when the college students didn’t get up to offer their seats, I got up and offered them my seat (and Michael’s seat).

It just leads me to wonder, what people are thinking (or not) as they wait. When we’ve got (without my grandmother) to restaurants where there is a long wait, I inevitably give up my seat for older customers or pregnant women (especially the ones who like they’re about 10 months pregnant and about to fall over). Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely don’t mind doing this, but as there are other able bodied men and women in the lobby, I wonder why no one else ever offers their seat to someone else? Is this common elsewhere or just here? Or do I spent more time people watching and am just more likely to notice older couples and pregnant women who need to get off their feet?

Which Science Fiction Writer are you?
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The first speaker for WVU’s Festival of Ideas has been posted.

Arianna Huffington will speak this Friday at the Mountainlair at 7:30PM. She spoke here several years ago (you’ll have to search, since I wasn’t using blogging software at that point, so didn’t have permalinks) for the same series, and I thoroughly enjoyed her talk. She’s a very dynamic and vivacious speaker, so if you have the chance, you may want to take the time to hear her talk.

And hopefully we’ll have a better idea who else is speaking soon.

Ralph Nader has now entered the 2008 presidential race

I know that there’s a lot to be angry about these days, and other people are ranting about those important things so I don’t have to. But today’s news got me stark ranting raging pissed off.

And that’s the bullshit about John McCain’s friendship with a woman.

When I initially heard the story, I thought the focus was upon his relationship with a lobbyist, and a possible quid pro quo, while depressing (considering McCain’s stance on such things) was news.

But no, it seems that there was no political impropriety, however, staffers were disturbed that the Senator had a female friend and this was obviously going to make people assume that illicit boinking was going on.

Because of COURSE men and women can’t be friends without sex entering the equation.

Why does this idea stick around today? I thought American society had moved past the idea that women had to be chaperoned when they were around men who were not immediate family members. I thought that the fact that we have gender integrated workplaces allowed us to move beyond the idea that sex is the only reason men and women could possibly want to spend time with each other.

It continues to astound me that in this day and age such ideas are still common–and that it was automatically assumed that the American people would see a male female friendship as a secret sexual relationship.

Sure, there have been jokes about Condi Rice and Bush, but I thought most of those stemmed from the fact that she accidentally referred to Bush as “my husband” which was rather strange.

Do we really believe that their relationship is untoward? Why would we think that McCain’s relationship with a woman was more than friendship?

Every time I hear sly comments about a man and woman and their “friendship” it just makes me wonder what is wrong with the commenter that they are incapable of a male-female friendship.

Why do I get so mad about this? Because some of my best friends happen to be guys. And the idea that someone “assumes” something about that friendship just pisses me off. My guy friends are almost all happily married, and I adore their wives. These are my good friends. I want them to be happy, because I love them like brothers. Why would I want to do something to harm their happiness?

John McCain as a grown-up. Why did his aides think he was incapable of having a friendship with a member of the opposite sex? Why is spending time with a friend suspect only when that friend is a member of the opposite sex?

Is this country really that juvenile?

Janiece’s post got me searching for a group I vaguely remembered hearing about several years ago, the Patriot Guard Riders.

They exist to circle around funerals and other events where Jackasses like the Westboro Baptist Church and any other group that seeks to disrupt a military or other funeral.

As much as it depresses me that groups like these need to exist, I am glad they do exist.

I suddenly realized why most Americans are not upset about the various invasions of privacy set forth by the Bush administration.

If you are willing to have private phone conversations in public, why would you care what else people knew about you?

As if we didn’t already know it… the handful of Republicans in the state are apparently raving lunatics.

Huckabee wins WV Republican convention

I’m really starting to have come concerns about my state.

ADDENDUM the First:
Apparently, Huckebee won only because McCain and Paul supporters chose Huckabee to keep the delegates from going to Romney.

I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or not.

Who do I match up with politically? Some of this was a surprise, most wasn’t.

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When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

— Martin Luther King
“Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence“

Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I Have a Dream”

The Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project

The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month

“It is well that war is so terrible; else we would grow too fond of it”
— Robert E. Lee

“A man’s country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.”
— George William Curtis

It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.
— John Philpot Curran Speech upon the Right of Election (1790)

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Day Web Page

The Origins of Veterans Day from the VFW

The Great War

WWII Memorial

Korean War Memorial

Vietnam War Memorial

Digital Memorial for those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq

Data on Veterans from the US Census Bureau

It’s Banned Book Week.

Go read something subversive.

Here are the most frequently challenged books for 2006:

1. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
2. Gossip Girls series by Cecily Von Ziegesar
3, Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
4. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler
5. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
6. Scary Stories  series by Alvin Schwartz
7. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
8. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
9. Beloved by Toni Morrison
10. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Here are the most challenged books for the first half of this decade:

Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
“The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier
Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
“Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck
“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou
“Fallen Angels” by Walter Dean Myers
“It’s Perfectly Normal” by Robie Harris
Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz
Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey
“Forever” by Judy Blume

Me? I just finished catching up on an excellent comic series, and am now reading some supernatural fiction and trying to figure out what else I want to be reading (aside from everything listed in the sidebar.)

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Average score for this quiz during September: 75.2%
Average score since September 18, 2007: 75.2%

Civil Literacy Report – Civics Quiz

The ones that I missed, either I had narrowed down to two answers, and then guessed wrong, or I had no idea. (I have never taken an economics course in my life.)

Kudos for Elizabeth Edwards!

“I don’t know why someone else’s marriage has anything to do with me,” Elizabeth Edwards said at a news conference before the parade. “I’m completely comfortable with gay marriage.”