In Wyoming. News Actually Happens Here!

In a completely surprising turn of events, it does seem that people lived in Rock Springs even a long time ago.  More we don't know, due to vagueness.

Authorities say human remains found in the sand dunes near Rock Springs have been identified as prehistoric.

 Prehistoric covers a lot of time.  Also, it could be argued that all this really proves is that someone died here a long time ago.

Caturday Post: When you are Old and Grey

This is Miriah.  She is almost 19, and lives with my parents because she is much too old for me to take her with me.  

She is full of sleep now, but I don't like photographing her that way.  She is not cute and sleepy and cuddly; she is mean and deadly, with a witheringly judgmental glare. In her youth, she could find and kill a chipmunk in under 5 minutes, and even now there are cautionary notices on her veterinary file. When she leaves this world, she will reign over the hell of happy woodland creatures.  In the meantime, she still investigates as I go through my clothes and pack.

 She also steals anything she decides she likes.  A dear friend gave me a little plastic panda.  The head pops off, so I was going to mount it on a stick with some fake blood and make a tasteless desk toy, but Miriah wanted it.  This old cat playing with the severed head of a panda brings me great joy.

In Which Another One Bites the Dust

The New York City opera is closing.  This is just sad.  Also, now I will probably never be able to see the operatic saga of Anna Nicole Smith, which sounds fantastic.  It's not like we can just stick opera in a museum somewhere and go look at it at our leisure.

In happier news, there is a dinosaur on the international space station.

Also, as one of my darling readers informed me, Terminator 2 is being re imagined as a Shakespeare compilation.

But I am still not going to be able to watch Anna Nicole operatically.

In Which I Fear my Fellow Citizens and Quote David Bowie

I have moved to Wyoming, a clear indication that I have lost control of my life.  That's not important right now. But on the way to Wyoming, while on one of several planes,  I was waiting in a line for the lavatory, because planes have such things, at which time I was chatting with a nice gentleman who was complaining about having to wait in line for a plane lavatory.  I did that annoying thing where I explain how much worse things could be and start telling stories about Peace Corps Tanzania, where we would be on a bus, and the lavatory would be when the bus pulls over maybe once every 4 hours and people run out and use the bushes.  And by people. I mean men, who get out of the bus first, and then the bus often isn't stopped long enough for the women to get off, much less find a place farther away than the men have to go, and deal with the logistics of excreting while female.  So women tend to just get dehydrated on long, unairconditioned bus rides.  Healthy!

Anyway, once I got off my returned volunteer soapbox of how much worse I've had it than you (such the fun soapbox) the nice gentleman responded by telling me that I must have a heart of gold (not really) and no fear (also not really) and that East Africa has this terrible problem called Kony who is next on "our" (the US' in general?  Or is he DOD?  Less savory acronymed people?) hit list and he's going to be killed soon.

Umm.  I said I thought it was illegal for the U.S. to engage in assassination activities (which technically, it is, not that anyone seems to care.  Well, sort of, it's a matter of executive orders rather than law.)   He told me it was only illegal to kill legitimate political leaders, which I'm reasonably sure is not how the executive orders are phrased, but I didn't have an internet connection to check at the time, and I'd rather not argue based on my fuzzy recollections of official documents.  Also, I was a little disturbed and managed to get out of the conversation by entering the lavatory.

However, among other considerations, for example human rights and due process of law and respect for the sovereignty of other nations, killing big name evil types isn't really a sustainable approach to making the world a better place.  Also, Kony?  Not really a thing right now.  Al-Shabaab is much more of a problem if we want to talk about how folk are dying violently in East Africa.

All other things aside, that the reaction to hearing about another part of the world is "there's someone there that should die and 'we' are going to arrange it" is a little creepy. In the immortal words of David Bowie, I'm afraid of Americans.

Caturday Post: To the Tiger at the Zoo

Madeleine may have simply said poo poo, but I felt sorry for the tiger. The tiger couldn't get the toy out of the tree!

Judgy sibling tiger is judgy.

Fortunately, there is another toy. 

 Unfortunately, it got lost in the water.

 Judgy sibling is still judgy.

Poor toylesss tiger! 

My Mountains

These are the mountains that I grew up with:

These are the Appalachians.  Their kami are good kami.¹

These are the White Mountains, mere plateaus next to the Rocky Mountains farther west, but still big enough to loom over the valley:

Their kami are fierce kami.

Winter came this morning:

but melted away by afternoon.

---

1 kami is usually translated as "god," but can mean anything from improbably anthropomorphic superbeings to the vaguest of genius loci.

Celebrate Banned Book Week!

Being somewhat behind the times, I am reading Gargantua and Pantagruel, which I don't think has been banned since the 16th century.  Nonetheless, controlling-type folk are still busy trying to decide for us that some things we simply mustn't read.   We should foil these folk.

Visit bannedbooksweek.org for more information and lists of banned and challenged titles.

What are you reading that someone objects to?