Just ten more days until Talk Like A Pirate Day!

In perparation, you may:
Find your pirate name (my pirate name is here and also here)
Read this thread at Making Light
(more…)

Work retail or any other customer service-oriented job. You’ll become a cynical bastard too.

Benedum Lectures:
• Thursday, Sept. 16 – Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Studies, Duke University, “Sacrificing the Sacrifices of War,” 8 p.m., G24 Eiesland Hall
• Thursday, Sept. 23 – Brzezinski, counselor for the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy in the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, “U.S. National Security in the New Era,” 8 p.m., Lyell B. Clay Concert Theater, Creative Arts Center
• Thursday, Oct. 7 –Hentoff, journalist for The Village Voice and author, “If We Lose the Constitution, What Have We Won?” 8 p.m., G24 Eiesland Hall

Celebration of Brown v. BOE
• Sept. 21 – “The Image of African American Youth 50 Years After Brown v. Board of Education,” Asa Hilliard, 7 p.m., Health Sciences Center auditorium
• Sept. 30 – “Every Family Has Stories,” Elizabeth Howard, Westover Elementary School
• Oct. 18 – “Desegregation of Schools in West Virginia as a Result of Brown v. Board of Education” panel discussion, 7 p.m., Mountainlair Gluck Theater
• Nov. 10 – “What Mama Taught Me: The Seven Core Values of Life,” Tony Brown, 7 p.m., Mountainlair Ballrooms
• Feb. 24, 2005 – “Segregation and Integration of High School Sports in West Virginia” presentation and poster session, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., and keynote speech by David Wiggins, 7 p.m., Ballrooms
• March 10, 2005 – “Black Hands in the Biscuits Not in the Classrooms: Unveiling Hope in a Struggle for Brown’s Promise,” Sherick Hughes, 6 p.m., Erickson Alumni Center
• March 11, 2005 – Personal testimonials of individuals who experienced school segregation and integration, 11 a.m., Erickson Alumni Center

Had a busy labor day weekend here. Finally finished putting the fence across the rest of the yard. And we put a small portion in a corner of the back yard, where someone drove into our yard this summer (we know this because we found tire tracks and a beer bottle the next morning). That pole was put in with LOTS of cement. At least this should keep my plants safe.

Michael’s mother and her new husband came for a biref visit Saturday–just in time to enjoy all the football game traffic. We went to the Stonewall Jackson Heritage Arts & Crafts Festival with my parents on Sunday. As a craft fair it’s got nothing on Ripley, but it’s a lot closer than Ripley. I got a pair of earrings, and some very delicious chocolate ice cream.

Monday we planted some new plants–a Coral Beauty Cotoneaster (Cotoneaster dammeri ‘Coral Beauty’), a Japanese holly (Ilex crenata ‘Compacta’), three Blue Pacific Juniper plants (Juniperus conferta ‘Blue Pacific;), a new clematis, and a bunch of bulbs to plant when it gets cold. (Remind me in November how excited I am about those bulbs when it’s time to go and plant them.) I also have a new heather (Calluna vulgaris Rubrum), hopefully this one will do a little better than the first, which is surviving, but not thriving. So with the transplanting and such, I think I’m ready for fall. I’ve also found plant shelves for all the plants I need to bring in, which is another important things. Still, the house will be pretty full some first frost.

I also finally put up a new picture on my main page. I apologize in advance for anyone with a modem–it’s a relatively large picture and comes up slowly. The good thing is that at least the rest of the page loads up around it, so you don’t have to wait for the links. Oh, the picture is of a flower on one of my lavender plants.

And to top it off, I logged into USAA to see if Michael had a paycheck deposited last week, and while I was there I noticed a bunch of strange charges on our credit card. Apparently the number had been stolen. Luckily the fantastic people at USAA cleared it up immediately, but the situaiton was a bit disconcerting since the only purchases on that card were: monthly cell phone bill, monthly ISP bill, WVU tuition, and domain name reregistration. We don’t use the card for anything else, which leads me to believe that one of those four places had their credit card files compromised. My guess would be the domain registration business, but it’s hard to say. If it’s one of the others, it would be more disturbing since the cell phone bill and ISP bill are automatic monthly charges.

We talked to my grandmother, cousin Pat is doing okay. No one seems to know when she’ll start her chemotherapy, but she was supposed to be up and walking around at the hospital Sunday.

Also, I got a message from a good friend–his mother is dying–the doctors said she has about two weeks left. She’s been sick for years, but that doesn’t mean things will be easy for them. I hope that the entire process will be as easy and as comfortable as possible for them.

With all that, plus some other stuff I’m just not going to write about, I’m still feeling blue–like I want to turn off all the lights and listen to the Cowboy Junkies.

But this too, shall pass.

What is Labor Day?
Labor Day is a celebration of the advances made by Labor Unions in the United States. For those who don’t know or understand precisely what Labor Unions have achieved in the US, I suggest some of the following links.

The Triangle Factor Fire

Near closing time on Saturday afternoon, March 25, 1911, a fire broke out on the top floors of the Asch Building in the Triangle Waist Company. Within minutes, the quiet spring afternoon erupted into madness, a terrifying moment in time, disrupting forever the lives of young workers. By the time the fire was over, 146 of the 500 employees had died. The survivors were left to live and relive those agonizing moments. The victims and their families, the people passing by who witnessed the desperate leaps from ninth floor windows, and the City of New York would never be the same.

Child Labor in the United States, a photographic exhibit.

West Virginia Mine Wars

Miners worked in company mines with company tools and equipment, which they were required to lease. The rent for company housing and cost of items from the company store were deducted from their pay. The stores themselves charged over-inflated prices, since there was no alternative for purchasing goods. To ensure that miners spent their wages at the store, coal companies developed their own monetary system. Miners were paid by scrip, in the form of tokens, currency, or credit, which could be used only at the company store. Therefore, even when wages were increased, coal companies simply increased prices at the company store to balance what they lost in pay.

But before you think that poor treatment of workers in the US is a thing of the past…

I highly recommend Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser spoke at WVU in 2003.)

I also recommend you look at farm labor in the US.

So enjoy your picnic, but take a few minutes to remember why we have the day off, and give a thought to all the people who do not get the day off.

When I’m worried and I can’t sleep
I count my blessings instead of sheep
And I fall asleep counting my blessings
When my bankroll is getting small
I think of when I had none at all
And I fall asleep counting my blessings

Count Your Blessings

I’m trying anyway.

My heart has been breaking this week, as I’ve read the news, and seen the pictures, from the school hostage crisis in Russia.

I will never be able to understand such horror.

Nor do I want to.

ADDENDUM the First:
As always, you should read Jeanne.

This tale.

Although the version I first read is slightly different.

Cousin Pat came through her surgery fine. They’ll be doing chemotherapy (again) when she recovers. My grandmother also told me that the doctor said that all the cancers were related, which surprised me, since I would have expected the colon cancer to arise independently rather than stemming from the melanoma.

You must take the A train
To go to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem

If you miss the A train
You’ll find you missed the quickest way to Harlem

Hurry, get on, now it’s coming
Listen to those rails a-humming

All aboard, get on the A train
Soon you will be on Sugar Hill in Harlem
—Billy Strayhorn

I’ve complained extensively about Bush and his treatment of the military and veterans. I’m distrubed and horrified, both by what has been going on, and by the fact that no one else seems to care.

Well, here’s someone else who s not happy.

And I thought I was mad.
We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore

Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy—the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

And I really dislike Prarie Home Companion…

(via Better than salt money)

For $19.99 a month and as little as 7 cents a minute, customers can go to the company’s Web site, log in and then type the number that they want to call and the number that they want to appear on the caller ID screen of the recipient’s phone.

For an additional fee, they can also specify names that can appear along with their telephone numbers.

That’s it. I’m getting rid of caller ID and saving a substantial amount on my phone bill.

The doctors decided that they needed to do a stress test before performing the surgery, so Cousin Pat’s surgery has been postponed until today.