Category Archives: Cross-Generational Issues

Big Anti-Abortion Squabble Dogs Campaign in Ohio

AP News: Anti-abortion groups are at odds on strategies ahead of Ohio vote. It could be a preview for 2024

Protect? Women? Ohio? Anti-abortion logo.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Abortion opponents in Ohio are at odds not only over how to frame their opposition to a reproductive rights initiative on the states November ballot but also over their longerterm goals on how severely they would restrict the procedure.

Continue reading Big Anti-Abortion Squabble Dogs Campaign in Ohio

The Fall Floral Festival is Afoot In The Yard

Lyon Park in autumn is no match for Flaming Vermont. But In The Yard, we’ve still got lots  of seasonal Carolina color. Pause for a moment and breathe it in . . . .

First Up — This is Old Fashioned Weigela, which has been blooming off and on since spring. On it is one our resident bumblebees, who are a disturbing lot to watch: slow, befuddled, forlorn and feeble. This one didn’t seem to know which end of the blossom had the hidden nectar they were seeking. Is it just their time, or are they like Russian army conscripts, exhausted by years in the darker gulags, just waiting to be fed to the drones?

This solitary bloom of a Butterfly Bush is coming off a summer scarred by multiple droughts, in this case a near-total desert of butterflies. Didn’t used to be that way.

Japonica is the yellow-and green leafed centerpiece here, one of the first entries in our new free-form space. It was a threefer: with both green & yellow leaves, and a color combo that stayed year-round with little care. They’re Japanese originally I think. And they seem to get along fine with our China Rose close by, also a sturdy & prolific survivor.

Brown-eyed Susans have just come out and are keeping low in a corner.

The Zinnias are also past their peak, but are holding on for a big finish.

The other Japonica bush, largely yellow, stands with our wildlife habitat sign, which is our main token of respectability.

One more: another pitiful bumblebee is still searching for the the business end of this Weigela bloom. Some bee experts say many species in the US are declining and under threat.

Freedom Schools Are Back! (Starting In Florida)

[NOTE: Freedom schools were a key element of 1960s civil rights activism in the deep South. Their important legacy is no longer only history, but is now being revived and reinvented, starting in Florida, as resistance to resurgent racism in education. What a great idea.]

Washington Post

After Florida restricts Black history, churches step up to teach it


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By Brittany Shammas
 — September 24, 2023

Lynching memorial (detail)), Montgomery Alabama, Equal Justice Initiative (EJI).

MIAMI — They filed into the pews one after the other on a sweltering Wednesday night, clutching Bibles and notepads, ready to learn at church what they no longer trusted would be taught at school.


“BLACK HISTORY MATTERS” proclaimed television screens facing the several dozen men and women settling in at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. An institution in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Liberty City,

Continue reading Freedom Schools Are Back! (Starting In Florida)

A Long Read to Ponder: Biden in Vietnam & at the UN: Who Could Have Imagined?

An image from Vietnamese TV news, during Biden’s visit.

NOTE: Friends, this material just blows my mind.

Yes, that’s an outdated 1960s expression, but it fits here: this material is about the Vietnam War. And for me (plus, I figure, most of the remaining survivors of that era of national agony), having our minds blown was a thing.

Maybe initially it was fun, or mind-expanding. But for me, and for many, it happened too often back then, and it didn’t always mean by taking drugs. I didn’t do much of that, but had mind-blown fatigue anyway. Continue reading A Long Read to Ponder: Biden in Vietnam & at the UN: Who Could Have Imagined?

Thursday Grand Slam ‘Toons

Elsewhere on The Hill . . .

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And — Why Don’t We Do It in The — Seats??

Last but not least: All the Cool Scribes want this shirt . . .

Oh wait — All Joking Aside, Don’t Forget! Stay Strong, UAW!!