Oh No! A Solar Eclipse!
So… we’re going to have a Solar Eclipse on April 8. What a bunch of ridiculous conspiracy theories and misinformation springing up ahead of this event. The above meme and similar ones are popping up on social media, accompanied by every kind of alarmist drivel people can dream up. Does nobody read past the headlines, or try to confirm the truth of a matter? I just asked a dumb question. People don’t. Yes, authorities are advising residents who are in the path of the eclipse to be prepared. But if alarmists would bother to find out why- it has ZERO to do with the eclipse itself. The eclipse is a…
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The Trump-Colombia Crisis
Vintage Films – A Study in Race Relations
Countering the MAGA East Wing Argument
Ulysses S. Grant vs. Catholics
People love to share clever quotes by public or historical figures on social media, and while the sentiment may be nice, 9 times out of 10, I’m unable to confirm that the person in question ever actually said that. Sometimes they did say it, but often, it’s taken out of context. I’ve been seeing this Grant meme going around lately, and it’s an example of a quote that may be taken out of context. Yes, he said it, but…. The quote was lifted from a speech Grant gave at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Army of the Tennessee in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 29, 1875. Before this speech,…
Medical Conspiracy Theories
One of the favorite targets of conspiracy theorists and science deniers is the field of medicine. So reject medicine and go back to the way it was before real science became involved. Enjoy bloodletting, foul concoctions being administered via enema, high death rates during birth (for mothers and babies), no washing of hands or instruments between patients. Compound fractures were too complicated to set, so your arm or leg was removed with a meat saw and no anesthetic. During recovery, there was a very high chance of dying from the ensuing infection. Diseases and medical conditions that are easily treated now were death sentences. I could keep going, but it…
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The Star of Bethlehem – What Was It?
Barefoot Boy
Christian Nationalism in NAZI Germany
Vintage Films – A Study in Race Relations
Anyone who’s around me for very long knows how much I love old TV shows (40s to early 60s), and old movies (from silent films into the early 60s). But my interest isn’t entirely for the sake of drama and entertainment; I find them a fascinating look into society and culture as it was in former generations. I always notice the parts assigned to people of color. Most are portrayed as not very bright. Most black people are in a subservient role and usually don’t speak unless spoken to. Hispanics are often portrayed as poor farmers or as outlaws. Asians tend to have stupid expressions on their faces. Native Americans…
The School From Hell
TRIGGER WARNING! This will be a difficult read for some people. Before I get to the main body of this post, I need to give some backstory. You’ll understand why in a few minutes. I was country, but not a backward hick. When my mother first left home and got out in the world, she realized she was a backward country hick. She was determined her children wouldn’t suffer this fate. So we traveled! We had little money, but we’d take our food, sleep in the car, visit tourist spots, and attend all kinds of events; anything with free or cheap admission. And we visited extended relatives who were scattered…
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The Trump-Canadian War
Conspiracies, Science Denials & Hoaxes – Intro
Right vs Left and Short Memories
Barefoot Boy
Things were different in the 1960’s. I remember feeling so sorry for one boy. Maybe nowadays, teachers would look into the situation, but back then, as long as there were no obviously visible signs of abuse, they would look the other way. He came to school every day in the same clothes, with no shoes, even in the winter. Yes, it was in south Texas, but it did get really cold part of the winter, with frost on the ground, sometimes windy with sleet or freezing rain falling. Not good on bare feet. On those cold days, he wore a thin, threadbare windbreaker. It couldn’t have helped much with the…
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Mrs. C’s Cat
Shrunken Heads for Inflated Egos
Houston, We Have a Fashion
That Time I Gave a Bully What For
This happened while we lived in Sugar Land. I was about 12 years old. First, I have to explain that I never played with the girls. All they wanted to do was play with dolls, or play jacks or jumprope or hopscotch. None of them were interested in climbing trees, or wading in the creek to catch frogs and crawdads. So I was one of the boys. Not just the boys in the neighborhood. Some of my male cousins, who were a few years older than me, lived close, so I was around them and their male friends a lot. The boys taught me everything from how to change oil…
Sugar Land
When my mother married Charles, my stepfather, he had grown up on a farm, and when he got old enough to work, he was a cowhand, had seldom been much further than from where he was born and raised, and didn’t know anything other than farm life. He and my mother were married only a couple years when she told him they had to get away from his parents, because they were controlling every aspect of our lives. My mother almost never put her foot down, but in that, she did. She was leaving and he could come with her or not. So we moved from north Texas to south…
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Keystone Cops DC Style: The 1st Hundred Days
Hurricane Helene Hoaxes
Yankee Doodle
Buffalo Bill vs. Native Americans
A while back, I read An Autobiography Of Buffalo Bill* Near the end was this: “I am and always have been a friend of the Indian. I have always sympathized with him in his struggle to hold the country that was his by right of birth”. I had to stop reading for a minute and calm my mind. After the almost 200 pages I just read? When he repeatedly referred to dead Indians as the only good kind? Then I read the next line. “But I have always held that in such a country as America, the march of civilization was inevitable, and that sooner or later the men who…
Herodotus the Chauvinist
The famous Greek historian Herodotus was the 5th century BC version of a foreign correspondent. He traveled extensively, interviewed hundreds of people in many different fields, and wrote about them. In the world Herodotus lived in, women were hardly given a second thought. In all the countries he visited, women stayed home, kept house and raised children. They never went anywhere alone. When in public, they interacted only with male relatives and other women. They stayed in the background. They had almost no legal rights. So much for Greek democracy; that only applied to men. Then Herodotus visited Egypt. He was scandalized. Egyptian women had all the same legal rights…
Mrs. C’s Cat
I once had two neighbors, Mrs. C and Mrs. H. They lived across the street from each other and were best friends. They were always at each others’ house and often went shopping together. Mrs. C had a beloved cat she raised from a kitten. It was her constant companion and had made it well into it’s teens. One day the cat died. Mrs. C understandably was grief stricken. A couple days after the cat died, I was talking with Mrs. H. She was griping that Mrs. C. wouldn’t come out of her house to go shopping. Mrs. H said, “I don’t know why she won’t stop crying. It was…
Mrs. Henderson
I was a troubled child. Besides my dysfunctional home life, I was intellectually several grades ahead of my peers. I didn’t know how to interact with people and I didn’t fit in socially. From the beginning of my school life, I had regular counseling sessions. Every time I started going to a new school, it wouldn’t be more than a few weeks when I would be told that I would be seeing someone. Large schools would have counselors on the staff, and small schools would have visiting psychologists. Either way, it was so normal to my school life, that I never questioned it or thought it odd. I did get…
A Rustling of Thoughts
