As Liminal Owl wrote when she sent this to me, no hookers, just blow.
As someone who woke up sobbing in the night, I can attest to at least the first part of this quote that was made famous by Robert Kennedy when Martin Luther King died.
“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart
until, in our own despair, against our will,
comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”― Aeschylus
Still hoping for the wisdom.
In the meantime, this is about all I’ve got.
When Barney lifts his leg, does he think he’s flying? Or is he imagining that he’s flying?
Discuss!
Okay, one more thing. A picture of dust mop Henry from when he was a baby. trying to get Tucker to play with him.
This was from before Henry’s curly grown-up hair came in.
Mostly open thread. By which I mean anything personal or respite-y of any sort is welcome, but politics is not.
Raoul Paste
Hug that dog.
eclare
That cockatoo is so happy! Also, Henry!
WaterGirl
@Raoul Paste: I wonder if Barney the cockatoo likes to be hugged. Not sure a hug could compete with the blow drying.
WaterGirl
@eclare: I should have dressed Henry as Albert Einstein that year.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
That would have been perfect! I’m sorry you had a rough night.
Another Scott
Looks like the birdie is taking an air bath to me. Yes, he does look very happy.
Thanks!
Best wishes,
Scott.
HinTN
One cat in this household is peacefully snoozing on her favorite bed. The other cat is chilling on the front porch because that’s where he loves to be. The people are getting ready to go enjoy a AA baseball game in Chattanooga. Go Lookouts!!
ETA: Northern Lights for today’s photo. Thanks for that.
Kristine
Baby Henry is just like grown-up Henry. Too adorable for words.
I loved when Barney spread his wings and balanced on one leg. Like, “I’M FLYING!”
Still thinking about last night, which was relatively cool temp-wise. I sat out on the deck and listened to the wood thrushes and watched the fireflies. A little later, first bat sightings. Waited for the first star—it always turns out to be Arcturus—made a wish, then went back inside.
Heat’s back today and for most of the week, but hoping for some lake cooling here.
WaterGirl
@eclare: Thank you
I miss Henry’s baby hair, it was so soft! HIs grown-up hair is curly and not as soft. He’s still adorable, of course. Tucker’s ears were like velvet, and so were Bailey’s. I miss that.
WaterGirl
@HinTN: I would put the Northern Lights photos up every day if I could!
edit: but then I would miss the water pics. :-)
WaterGirl
@Kristine:
Yes, so endearing!
Raoul Paste
@WaterGirl: Ms Paste would have a cow if I were blow drying a dusty cockatoo in the kitchen
RaflW
I hope this is respite-y: Two friends who are retired women clergy attended the funerals yesterday at the Basilica in Minneapolis. They stayed in the sanctuary late because they needed to use a no-stairs exit and were asked to hold back.
Well. Joe Biden was lingering and making his rounds, and he went over to them to talk! He is such a mensch.
My friends FB post is public, so here’s a clipping:
TheOtherHank
I got see Lake Street Dive perform last night at the Santa Barbara Bowl. It was great. No pics (well, 1, but it didn’t really turn out) or videos since I was enjoying the show and didn’t want to watch it through my phone screen.
trollhattan
@RaflW:
Wow, what an encounter.
Hope Biden gets his due in the history books. He accomplished so much in a time of chaos.
Josie
@Raoul Paste:
Many years ago, I had cockatiels in the breakfast room-kitchen area in a large cage. My late husband was so desperate to get rid of the cockatiel dust that he built me a large aviary outside next to our covered porch. I proceeded to add more birds, and a hobby was born. Dust can be beneficial.
eclare
@RaflW:
Thank you for sharing that.
WaterGirl
@Josie: Silver lining!
Do all birds get dusty, or just cockatiels?
prostratedragon
Little Henry!
@RaflW: That is very respite-y, and thanks.
WaterGirl
@RaflW: Joe Biden is suck a good man. Let’s hope the winners don’t get to write the history this time.
eclare
I’m having spaghetti for lunch, and my dog’s eyes are laser focused on me, hoping that I’ll share. To paraphrase, if sharing spaghetti with my dog is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
zhena gogolia
@RaflW: Wow. Thank you for that story.
Thor Heyerdahl
It is up to us to be as relentless in the decades to come to paint the goodness of Joe, Obama, Bill (warts and all), and Jimmy. The corporate press is not going to do anything other than continue Republican deification post 1980.
Kristine
@RaflW: Thank you for posting this.
Like others have said, I hope that man gets the credit from history that he didn’t receive at the time.
Josie
@WaterGirl: I think most birds are a little dusty, but cockatoos and cockatiels are the worst.
ETA: If Henry belonged to me, his feet would never touch the floor. I would just want to hog him constantly.
Kayla Rudbek
Bluesky/Knitsky is turning out to be a fun feed to follow (I wind up seeing all sorts of pretty patterns and checking Ravelry to find them) and people there are vocal with feedback and support (more so than Facebook). So far, they are unanimous on my latest knitting decision/poll for a two-color shawl that I’ll be making in blue and tan yarns (I was dithering about whether the blue or the tan should be the main color, the hive mind of the feed is unanimous on blue). Pattern is here: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/paradise-point-coastal-cove-shawl.
BeautifulPlumage
My neighbors celebrated their daughter’s quinceanera yesterday with a fun party at the community center. I don’t speak or understand Spanish so I missed a lot of what was being said but it was very joyful.
Love the video and it sure looks like Barney is flying 😸 Also, the little hops/wing flaps/ woohoos.
frosty
Dust mop Henry! Perfect description!
ETA Another topic. There is a gray cat in the neighborhood, no collar, no tags, who has been chilling out napping on our patio occasionally. It’s not feral, used to people, seems to want to be petted. Ms F started down the slippery slope yesterday and fed him.
Neither of us wants a cat and an animal companion is not going fit in, given all the traveling we’re doing. I guess we’ll just watch it when it’s here. I hope it has a home it goes to.
RevRick
I led a meeting of our church’s Green Team after worship this morning. Our mission: to engage, educate, and empower our church members about environmental issues. One of our team, who had submitted a prayer request deploring the BBB’s devastating impact on the poor, confessed that she has cried a lot about how the cuts will destroy our effort to address climate change. I added that I will probably come out ahead from the tax cuts, but it feels like being handed thirty pieces of silver to betray the poor and future generations.
We talked about conducting a Zoom book study of Rev. Dr. Brooks Berndt’s book, Cathedral on Fire in August, a litter cleanup in the early Fall in coordination with the city of Allentown, weekly blurbs about the environment, a nature walk in the Spring, and promoting the annual UCC Earth Summit in April.
During worship we celebrated the baptism of the daughter of an Hispanic lesbian couple.
eclare
@frosty:
Take the kitty to the vet to see if it’s chipped. It only takes a minute.
WaterGirl
@Josie: My kitty Mr. Bear is my best hugger, not Henry. Or I might just do that!
CaseyL
It’s summer in Seattle, and things are heating up on my deck garden. So I need to water my various container plants more often. I have so many plants that I found a giant container in the surplus pile at work (it can’t be surplused as it was used for experiments, and can’t be sufficiently disinfected – so its fate would have been landfill) and brought it home. Holds gods know how many gallons: enough that when I carry it around, it’s a lot like doing those kettle bell exercises at a gym.
Anywho! Got tired of using the Giant Canister, and finally got one of those coiled garden hoses that fits over the kitchen sink faucet. I was very excited to finally be able to gently shower everyone, rather than pouring huge glugs of water on them…
…except the faucet attachment on the hose doesn’t fit my sink faucet. I tried any number of combinations – with and without faucet filter, with and without the special attachment on the hose, with and without filters and washers, turning clockwise and counterclockwise – and nothing works. Maybe my sink faucet is some sort of exotic variety that requires an adapter? But it should not be exotic at all. I don’t buy exotic expensive designer plumbing items, nor do I buy ultra cheapo bits that don’t fit anything and call apart in 6 months. I’ve had this faucet for decades.
Anyway: back to lugging the “kettle bell” canister…
jackmac
I had great ambitions for yard work today — mowing, tree removal, bush branch cuttings and flower care.
Instead I feel like launching a Cole-like rant since temps are 90 degrees with 67 percent humidity and it’s not even noon here in Chicago’s far distant suburbs. Thunderstorms coming later.
So I got a limited amount of mowing in, cut a couple trees, walked the dog and then surrendered.
So it’s back inside the nice, cool house and I’m going to catch Ironheart, the new Marvel series
Professor Bigfoot
There’s a little thin dog running around our neighborhood over the last day; poor guy shows up on our cameras multiple times in the night. We each tried to get him to come to us, but he was just too scared.
You can look at him and see he’s hungry, tired, and terrified. And he has no collar.
I haven’t seen him in the last couple of hours, so y’all say a prayer for him.
mrmoshpotato
@HinTN: I see they’re playing the Pensacola Blue Wahoos.
“Wahoo!” – John Hammond, Jurassic Park
WaterGirl
@jackmac: It’s just too fucking hot. And for way too many days. My limited patience with the heat ran out days ago.
Nukular Biskits
@Raoul Paste:
Then you’d have another fur-/feather-baby, albeit a big one.
MagdaInBlack
@RevRick: It was your last sentence that made me smile the most. ❤️
RevRick
@MagdaInBlack: I thought it might.
trollhattan
@Nukular Biskits:
In case anybody is not acquainted with Bruce the Cow, consider the rest of your day taken up.
https://youtu.be/ajwxm4z_P3Q?si=NNcu5CZ5uG2fd9s3
Nukular Biskits
@RevRick:
Admittedly I’m teetering on the ragged edge of the No True Scotsman fallacy here, but it’s a shame all those who claim to be Christians don’t act as if they truly believe as do you.
v/r
MagdaInBlack
@trollhattan: Dear lord! Why?! And oh yeah, I remember cow slobber. Yum……
Nukular Biskits
@trollhattan: LOL!
Steve LaBonne
My day was made by the fantastic Pride service at church this morning, including a glitter blessing, powerful readings, and a barn-burner of a sermon by our wonderful minister. A much-needed refreshment of the spirit.
Scout211
Mr. Scout’s birthday is today so we are celebrating by doing the same thing we do every day. LOL. We are really too old to celebrate, other than being thankful that we made it through another year. But man those numbers seem awfully high these days. How did that happen?
WaterGirl, thank you for the respite thread and the cute pic of Henry. Such a sweet guy! And I’m sorry you had a rough night.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
Henry is truly adorable, and I say this as a cat lady
No One of Consequence
@TheOtherHank:
jelly. They still got it without the trumpet player?
-NOoC
stinger
@RaflW:
Now I’m crying. Thank you for sharing this.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: I’m gonna take up the rest of my day with baseball – and hopefully storm watching.
no body no name
If you like female protagonist, female villain, criminal capers, horror movies, gore porn, great actors (you’ll recognize some), vampires, classical music, ballet, and want a good time Abigail is streaming free on Prime.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27489557/
10/10 if you like all or any most of the above or just want a good time. The trailer spoils it so I’m not spoiling anything with this. The spoiling is most of the sell. A crew kidnaps a little girl at a ballet practice to ransom her off only to find out her father is some sort of Kaiser Soze figure. Only, plot twist, the girl is Dracula’s daughter who’s a souped up vampire in her own rights. What happens is hilarious and fairly obvious.
Kristine
@jackmac:
Got my mowing done yesterday since it was the only day with highs in the 70s for the next week. I have lots more to do, but given the outlook I may need to start working in the early morning to beat the heat.
WTFGhost
@WaterGirl: Hey! Nobody called the Republican Party winners, and, hopefully, no one ever will.
They really think they can energize people to be as nasty and cruel as they are. I think they’re going to fail.
When history is written, no one is going to see what the Republican Party did as powerful, or meaningful. They’ll study it, the way people study Nazi Germany – to see how to prevent such crap from raining down on their own nations.
Kristine
@no body no name: Oh, Matthew Goode is the Dad. I liked him in Department Q…and A Discovery of Witches.
prostratedragon
WTFGhost
@Nukular Biskits: Seriously, there’s nothing wrong with liking Christians who show real love for others, but thinking those who don’t are “show Christians.” Now, if you’re a Christian, you do need to understand the reason for the “no true Scotman” so you recognize you can’t say, e.g., Falwell isn’t a “real” Christian.
If you’re totally not Christian, you should still be aware of the fallacy, but, it’s okay to judge soi disant Christians for whether they meet your expectations for a good Christian. You’re not really a part of the “is ‘Westboro Baptist’ (“God Hates Fags”) Christian?” fight.
Me, my thoughts on a church are: do they try to help the needy, the hungry, and the sick and imprisoned? Any large-enough Christian church would want to do those things, because those are exactly what Jesus told us ordinary folks to try to do.
Yet I understand, if I were to say to anyone but another Christian of my approximate beliefs, that Westboro Baptist isn’t Christian, they could swear I was indulging the “no true Scotsman” fallacy, and I couldn’t do more than tell them they’re stupid for thinking I didn’t account for that.
no body no name
@Kristine:
Yep! It’s a fun romp. There is nothing exploitive or anything here either. It’s just a kidnapping that goes off the rails quickly and she hits it out of the park and then showers of gore and hilarity ensues.
Betty
@RaflW: I love picturing her beaming her love to Joe. Such a good human being. And he does genuinely love people.
Nukular Biskits
@WTFGhost:
“show Christians”. Good phrase. I typically use “Christian” (with the quotes) or Christianist to set apart those who claim “sincerely-held religious convictions” but who can’t seem to speak or act IAW the principles spelled out in the New Testament.
We’re all hypocrites to some extent or another, depending on the situation, but I’m focusing solely on the (primarily) conservative Christian evangelicals who use their supposed beliefs as cudgels to bludgeon (figuratively) the rest of us.
Miki
@TheOtherHank: Ooooh! Lucky you!
Speaking of Lake Street Dive, Somebody Feed Phil dropped the latest season on Netflix (Lake Street Dive does the theme song.).
Matt McIrvin
@WTFGhost:
There’s a part of me that thinks most people really are that nasty. It’s the part that’s extrapolating from being bullied by a posse of bored teenagers 45 years ago. But those teenagers, I’m convinced, were that way because their parents specifically raised them to be, and those parents and their kids were broadly of the clique now controlling the US government.
Matt McIrvin
@TheOtherHank: Ooh, I saw them in Boston a while back. I think it was at the MGM?
Favorite moment may have been when they covered “I Want You Back.”
WTFGhost
Well, people can be that nasty, and, when social rules break down (e.g., if one kid spits on the unpopular kid at the pool), that triggers a primate response, that shows it’s okay to spit on the kid at the pool. I would have sworn every kid there spat on me, but, most of them didn’t, and I’m sure some of them were upset at the display, and told their parents (who couldn’t do anything but explain, only bad kids do that).
That kind of thing is displayed at the end of “Do The Right Thing”, where Mookie (played by Spike Lee, IIRC) smashes a window, to direct rage at *objects*, not a person. Why? Because he realized, in that moment, someone was going to want to smack Sol upside the head. Not to hurt him, just to ask “Why did you *DO* that?” but it would have broken the dam, and soon, Sol would end up dead.
So he redirected that rage to something that would be paid for by insurance, and not in blood.
One of the teenagers who attacked you was likely a bad kid, and probably all were willing to follow peer pressure, so, when they attacked you, they were awful, but, again, one or two of them might have asked their parents, or some peers, and gotten told “that was horrible – those are bad kids who did that!”
Trump wants that “bad kid” to be leading his ICE cops. He wants them to learn to hurt and kill people, thinking it’s just what one needs to do. Get people to kill people just a few times, and have them believe it’s for a greater good, and congrats, you’ve got some Nazi-style SS who can kill with little-to-no remorse, at least for a while.
We need to keep showing off that bad, hateful, kid, so the ICE cop recoil from it, if they’re decent, and embrace it if they’re hateful. There are a lot more grownups who hate being hateful than there are teens or children.
People don’t like active hate. When they saw cops with night sticks, dogs, and water cannons, used on Black people who wanted to vote, people rejected hate, even though many of them supported that hate until they saw it.
Yes, some do – that’s how lynchings occurred. But most people recoil from hate against humans, and I hope and pray we’re all human enough to be seen as targets of unjust hate.
Miki
@Matt McIrvin: Loving this one right now.