Learning to Breathe

Tuesday marked the official end of my sabbatical. While I will miss my large blocks of time, I feel as though I have more of a handle on my research and will be able to continue said work as I ease back into teaching. My class met at 11am and I am lucky (read: not-so-much) to teach in a lecture hall that has not been rennovated since the building was built in 1965. Same old wood seats, poor ventilation, poor lighting, etc. I got to welcome my students into the Sangren Hall sauna, since it was pushing 80 degrees Fahrenheit. We did well, all 95+ students, one Teaching Assistant, and I. Oh, and I invited one of my colleagues from Communications to come in and observe and I decided to videotape my first class session to show others. Yep, all on my first day back from sabbatical. Not to blow my own horn or anything, but my colleague was delighted to have the chance to see what goes on in someone else's large section course and several students had waited for me to come back from sabbatical to take my class. I know, it sounds like butt-kissing, but frankly the woman they hired in my place last year was atrocious.

Taking a page from hhw's playbook, I decided to take a four course sequence for a certificate in Student Affairs and Higher Education. I start tomorrow night in a course on the Foundations of Student Affairs. The professor is a friend of mine, so we're looking forward to harrassing each other. I've already started the readings and it's quite cool so far.

And in a vaguely related note, I made a contact with a senior scholar who does large scale school evaluations (he's done work on charter schools, for example). THere's a chance I might join him and a few other colleagues to do some research. That would be an excellent opportunity to get some more experience with a research project.

I promise to do more of a reflective piece on the sabbatical experience, but I did want to update folks who may be wondering how the transition is going...

So I finally managed to get my butt to a women's group ride this morning and it was fantastic! The weather is just gorgeous today and the roads didn't have much chip&seal. The red clover is still out and the scenery on this route is off the hook. Even the few hills on this route were fun (mostly...don't get me wrong). For me, my advantage is downhill because I carry some solid mass, so I can kick my lighter friend's on those. They get me back on climbs.But my lack of training this summer caught up with me around the 20 mile mark (we road 25 today) and my legs nearly bonked. It was a fantastic ride...glad to be back in the saddle.

It started a in Atlanta, I think. I don't remember when beach volleyball was introduced as an Olympic sport, but why, oh why, does it have to completely take over the coverage of the games?!?!?!?! There are over twenty sports represented in the games, and all NBC seems to want to show on TV is this stupid sport (my apologies to any beach volleyball players out there - I'm just super mad). The Canadian channels at least show a greater vareity of sports and players. NBC likes to show just the Americans and just beach volleyball. I'm sick of it.

Four years ago, I watched the games on Telemundo...I don't speak Spanish, but their coverage was better than NBC. I watched women's soccer - an entire match! You never get to see that on NBC.

I'd like to see judo, fencing, rowing, canoeing and keyaking. But no, I've got four sand covered knuckleheads (men and women) jumping up and down swatting at a ball...

I love the Olympics. I've been watching since I was little. I remember the 1972 Olympics coverage on ABC with the late Jim McKay. Comparatively, the coverage today is insipid and disappointing. So much for progress...

Okay, she's really a cantor. Shalombaby84 has been calling around to find a jewish clergyperson who would consider performing a wedding ceremony for a) an interfaith couple who are b) lesbians. Guess which is a bigger issue? If you guessed (a), you are right. For one of the first times in my life, I'm being treated like everyone else, which actually delights me! Seriously, I've never been so happy being told "no" in my life. Of course, I grew up the product of a "mixed marriage" (meaning one parent was Catholic, the other Protestant). Apparently, many rabbis won't marry an interfaith couple on principle. I get that and I'm good with it.

So we were given the name of this cantor who also happens to be a practicing chiropractor, acupuncturist, and a Buddhist Jew. There is a whole realm of Jews who have taken to fusing their Judaism with some meditation stuff. They call themselves JuBu's. Anyway, our cantor sounds pretty cool - I kinda needed some Eastern influence. Of course, my friend Eric wrote this to me (he's a big flamer himself, hence the language): "A JuBu cantor/acupuncturist... jesusmaryandjoseph (or "oye, shlomy"), could you be more of a dyke?!" This made me laugh and laugh this afternoon.

I was so engrossed in this novel that it took me about three days to read it. That's fast, since I'm an inherently slow reader (I never read things twice, usually). And I usually am not a fiction fan. So this was something akin to my response to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (which scared the hell out of me), Marion Zimmer Bradley's THe Mists of Avalon (don't ever see the TV version of it - it sucks big time), and Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. I ate these books up and each of them spawned it's own strand of research. So this week, I've been reading the Old Testament/Torah portions which discuss Jacob, Joseph, Dinah, etc. Diamant did a very nice job in her extrapolation of the story that Genesis refers to as THe Rape of Dinah. Diamant weaves in some feminist critique of mainstream interpretation to craft a story that draws the reader into how some theistic traditions survived while others were set aside. Suffice it to say that menstrual blood is so scary to patriarchal theism that there was no way a female deity could make it as the only deity, nor could she share the spotlight with a male deity. Hmph. Keep in mind that my particular reading is clouded. I wanted to be an alterboy as a child, but I didn't have the equipment to pull it off. I wanted to participate directly in my religious experience, but was often set aside because of my gender. Nowadays, I could be an alter server, or in many Protestant traditions, a minister. I could even be a rabbi if I wanted. But I've gotten to the point where I don't really trust monotheism. I struggle with monotheism because I feel like things started going to hell in a handbasket (or the underworld in a handbasket, whatever your preference) once people started to say "My God is the only god." My pagan/Gaiaist friends out there would probably agree. Once we lost touch with the many spirits, stewardship of the earth went right out the perverbial window. While Diamant is a strong writer, I feel that MZB did a more magical job of weaving her particular narrative. And perhaps it's the actual narrative itself, too, that helps the reader find that "magic." I felt dusty reading The Red Tent, which is a good sign. Oh, and a number of my friends have read it and liked it. I'm getting to it eleven years after it's release, so as usual, I"m late to the party. But hey, I got here, didn't I!? Diamant,A. (1997). The Red Tent.

Verizon, the cellular company known for the tagline "Can you hear me know" recently aired a television commercial featuring two menacing pit bull type dogs on chains in a junkyard while a young white man approaches a cell phone just out of reach of the dogs' chains.  He grabs the "Dare" phone just as the dogs reach the end of their chains. 

Many who know me know that I am committed to disabusing people of the notion that pit bulls are mean.  My dogs and I have spent the last decade trying to show people what amazing animals pit bulls can be.  The news of the company's poor judgment has made the rounds of the various on-line pibble communities today and I want to let others know there is a petition to get Verizon to consider the damage such a dispicable image can create.  The ASPCA is sponsoring the petition.  Please sign if you feel so moved.  Make THEM hear YOU now...

to wardo68!  Happy birthday, you introverted ham, you!  

This post is in response to alikander's post "Pulling a fast one."  Nothing like a little coercion to get things going...;)

In Finland, they hang wash out instead of using dryers.  I think hhw prefers to hang her laundry out as well.  "Would you like to hang your wash next to mine" is an Irish marriage proposal.  So my first question to all of you who have done this is, how did you decide whether you wanted to hang it next that of  your significant other?  How long did it take for you to get to that point? 

I ask because on the morning of my birthday, shalombaby84 presented me with a beautiful claddagh with a diamond at the center of the heart and asked me if I would like to hang my wash next to hers.  I said yes.   I was so nervous that I felt completely nauseated.  I honestly  don't know how people do this calmly.  Thankfully, the proposal itself was something I could say yes to - right now, I can only legally get married in California (which would involve Ron and Eric, of course) and it would not be recognized by my backwater of the Great Lakes state of residence.  There is a possibility that Massachusetts will join California, but that's to be decided.  I did not realize until today that marriage affords over one thousand rights to couples. 

For the record, we haven't gotten any further than this...we still have to work out all sorts of details, including two homes, three pieces of property, five cats, two dogs, and oh, yeah, jobs....we'll be keeping you posted...and asking for any advice you might have to offer...

This was the response I got when I shared the triumph of Dara Torres' finish in the 100freestyle finals.  The 41 year old mother of one posted a 53.78 two days ago and tonight, she whomped the 50free with a 24.58 finish.  Of course, everyone is all flipped out about how a 40-something  is able to swim like this, some are even arguing that she's doping.   But that's some cynical ESPN reporter.   Can't we accept that this woman is apparently a complete freak about her training and nutrition.   And she spends about half the time in the pool as her competitors do.  For me, Dara Torres is the same age as some of my own teammates on the high school swim team, and I couldn't be more proud.  I'm choosing to believe in this because I don't find it that impossible.

I am considering referring to myself as a "professional liberal artist."  It fits better than "professor," since I rarely find anything to profess.  Mostly, I think of myself as sharing some things.  And to think, this all began twenty-five years ago this coming August...

My favorite example of the impact of my undergraduate education is how one odd course in music appreciation changed the course of my relationship with music.  Certainly, this didn't happen right away, but over time I became more interested in music that is off the beaten path.  When I was in Estonia and Finland, my intent was to buy some folk cds.  I walked out of a little shop in Tallin with a cd called "Forgotten Peoples" by  the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir.  It showcases arrangements made by Veljo Tormis of Karelian, Livonian, Vepsian, Votian, Izhorian, and Ingermanland Finnish folk music.  These are Baltic people I had never heard of previously and I purposely sought out this work because I find it interesting and because it gives me a chance to learn something, even if I don't understand any of these languages (some of which are endangered or are extinct...I'll have to look that up).  It's beauty in the world, nonetheless.  And that's why studying the liberal arts is a good thing. 

Oh, and if you get a chance to see EPCC, buy the damn ticket - you won't be sorry.  

Well, after being nudged twice by independent sources, I guess I'll update my blog...
I returned from Finland in a jetlagged yet happy stupor. I got to stay at the Scandic Gateway hotel the night before I came home.  Totally space-aged rooms.  I had to get to the check in at 4am for a 6:15 flight.  That got me to Schiphol in time to sit at the gate for an 8:40 gate time for a 10:30 departure.  I couldn't figure out why the long boarding time until I looked to see that I was going through another security check.  I was asked why my passport and the boarding pass had different names and when I gave my answer, I was promptly asked if was married.  Then I got a pat down after I went through the metal detector.  It was more difficult getting back into the country than it was to leave it.  The Statue of Liberty would be sitting with her face in her hands if she could.  We no longer want anyone, let alone the tired, the poor, etc.  That is unless they're willing to give us their index finger prints and a digital picture. 

After settling back in, by the middle of the month I was helping my dojo host Aikido Camp this year.  We practiced from Thursday night through Sunday morning.  Saturday morning, we perform a ritual called Misogi Barai, which involves sitting seiza (sitting on your feet) for half an hour.  During this, we chant and ring bells, trying to drive out the bad energy to make room the for good.  It's a powerful, powerful exercise.  Sweat was running down my back by halfway through.  Very intense.  This, on top of an already physically intense experience.  But we get to train with seventh degree black belts and friends from California, Texas, Utah, Tokyo, and Israel.  It's a good time and always a learning experience not to be missed. 

Post-camp recovery (my ankles were swollen for a few days) led straight into working on a paper that was due at the end of the month.  Keep your fingers crossed that the revisions will be acceptable to the editors.  I have another revision to do on a paper that was rejected outright.  Three times. But my co-author and I believe we're just a little too cutting edge, so we're cracking at it again.   One of the things I've realized this year is how much I actually like the writing part of my life as an academic.  Having the space to just have ideas and go write them down, or to go to the library and gaze at the books in the section you've marked. 

In the last few days here in the MItten, we've had some wicked weather.  Lightening struck an older tree a couple of blocks away and it is laying across the road.   It was a wild and wooly storm, but it was also really beautiful.

It has been quite a whirlwind trip here to beautiful, sunny Finland...and by sun, I mean the thing in the sky that only goes completely down for about 4 hours here, with birds up and about at 4am. And my hosts assure me that the weather is not usual - I even have a weather report from the newspaper to prove it. I have a tan now...go figure. Who goes to Finland to tan?

I have seen the city (Helsinki, Åbö/Turku) and now am staying in the countryside at a beautiful little house on a lake near at town called Ekenäs. Trees abound. We are not far from an archipelago. This is heaven, as far as I am concerned...

Which brings me to the following observation. My sabbatical has included trips to Davis, CA (yeah Ron & Eric!!!!) where we went north to Humboldt county (happy California cows); Portland, OR (yeah hhw!!!!!) where we took a hike to see five volanoes at once; Salida, CO (yeah birdnut&D, wardo68&karenfodder, and hhw!!!!) where we walked in the snow before Christmas and saw the stars; and now here, Solberg, Finland. All of these trips have included being among beautiful tall evergreen trees, and some trips have included being near the water. Of course, my feng shui consultant (don't you dare laugh at me...) would tell me that's exactly what my little wood ox day master needs, and probably more regularly than every seven freaking years. At this point, I'd have to agree. I feel so much better for being near the trees and the water.

I will compose a longer, more detailed description of this trip, but for now, I'm quite composed myself.

With apologies to Neil Young, the title of this post includes the Finnish word for hello (pronounced "Hey") as well as the Swedish word for hello (also pronounced "hey").  Finland is officially bilingual, yet many people speak also English.  Thus, I send another shout out to my linguistics peeps from one of the very few places where a Finno-Ugric language is spoken.  God and/or Goddess help you if you try to attempt this language (try ten cases and conjugating the word for "no"?), though my colleagues tell me that it's all very phonetic...phonetic for whom, I might ask?  Try a word like jääkiekko, which is the word for ice hockey...you actually pronounce the two ks, believe it or not. Seriously, you try it - I dare you...I'm typing on a Finnish keyboard, mind you, otherwise this would all be more difficult.  

Okay, enough of that...let me get to the real reason I'm interrupting my otherwise incommunicado work-holiday (I had a three hour meeting this morning!) to report that about three hours ago, I walked right past the president of Finland, Tarja Halonen...yes, three feet away or so!!!!  I was walking up the curb from a crosswalk that was perpendicular to the route she and her folks (which included her husband,  some military dude and two secret service dudes) were taking to get to a government building.  Much like my usual self, I only noticed when I past the guy with the curly wire in his ear, after which I went to the middle of the square where there were a few people gawking.  So I said to this woman, pointing to the guy on the steps in the suit "Is that your prime minister?" and she said "That's the president of Finland, the woman with the red hair there...and her husband."  I nearly fell over.  I live in a county which has an embassy in Finland that is so barracaded that you can't even get to the building without going through several gates and fences and police officers, while the president of FInland is strolling along the square THREE FEET  from knuckleheads like me!  Can you even imagine in the U.S. such a thing?  You can't get within three hundred feet of Il Presidente (otherwise known as The Cowpoke), let alone three feet!  Ah, the problem of fear when your country has managed to bully the snot out of everyone else in the world...it always comes back to bite one in the ass, I say. 

It would seem that this little country, which has been invaded by both Sweden and Russia, and has been diviied up several times after various wars, is afraid of nothing.  Hmmmmm...

Meanwhile, shalombaby84 was kind enough to send me along with a cute little container of sunscreen, which I neglected to put on...so I'll be coming home from Finland with a tan, believe it or not.  It's been very sunny here.

More to come on my specific adventures, including some about the meetings I've had.   I leave you with the question, why did I have to travel thousands of miles to find other researchers who speak my language (which is not, in fact, Finnish, btw)?
Happy trails..."

For those in the know, it's the country for the outdoorsperson - "... hunting, fishing, or camping...or just watching TV."  I leave on Friday evening and will arrive on Saturday.  I'm my usual combination of nervous and excited - I'm not the most relaxed traveler.  shalombaby84 refers to me as a watch dog because I stay on alert during travel.  The nice part is that I have a former colleague who I'll be visiting, so I won't be completely alone.  I'll meet up with her on Monday and hope to meet with some researchers whose work is really similar to mine on Tuesday. 

Tonight, however, I will participate in the Ride of Silence - a slow ride of about 12 miles or so to help alert drivers to the fact that they need to share the road with cyclists.  A local cyclist, Jun Kojima, was killed in late April by an 18 year old on a cell phone - tonight's ride will be dedicated to him.  I didn't know him, but he was part of the local cycling community.  I hope these kinds of events begin to raise awareness of the two-wheelers out there, since there will be more and more of us in the future. 

Of course, there's no "ahem" in the girlie version...it's more like "relax and breathe out."  See a theme?

Thanks to wardo68 for the title and the positive example of taking charge of one's health.  In general, things for me are ticking along just fine...the Slammogram was normal and all the vitals look perdy good...that is, except for the 15 pounds I've gained in the last nine months or so (and unfortunately, I'm not carrying a child, which would be a fine reason to gain weight).  Nice.  You've heard of the "freshman fifteen"?  Well, I'm calling this the "sabbatical fifteen" and frankly, it's gotta go.   Fortunately, my doctor is not a nag about weight, and his immediate reaction was to say "Let's check the thyroid again.  That sounds like we need to change your thyroid meds."  No, he's not giving me an excuse, I do in fact have a thyroid that decided to go on sabbatical about six or seven years ago and I've been treating it since then.  Of course, I can't have a "typical" thyroid thing - I'm a non-converter, which means I not only take levothyroxin, but I have to take something else on top of that to get the T3 levels I'm supposed to have.  Again, niiiiice. 

Also, another lovely sign of age is the dull pain at the insertion point of my right thumb (I'm right hand dominant).  I'd already talked this over with my father, but it's gotten worse in the last year, so today I confirmed that it is "overuse arthitis."   I've been prescribed Glucosomine supplementation - as my doctor says "Dogs don't lie."   So if it's good enough for the pooches, it's good enough for me. 

This isn't a huge surprise.  Both of my parents have/had osteoarthritis.  I inherited my father's hands and feet, which is why I could corroborate the arthritis because he has the same thing in the same thumb.  But I may also have inherited an aortic aneurysm, too (my dad's is being monitored and my grandfather had surgery).  So I'll probably get screened for that in a few years too.  And here I thought I was only looking forward to a colonoscopy!  Yeah!  [read: heavy sarcasm]  The good news on the aneurysm front is that I have NEVER smoked (a HUGE risk factor that both my dad and grandfather have/had....). 

Now for a moment of prevention...like wardo68, I'm going to be downing flax oil and green tea (not together - geez, that'd be revolting!), because apparently, these are breast cancer preventatives.  Tumeric is in this category as well.  So I will do some more research on this and get back with you.  I think I might start with this site that karenfodder sent to me a month ago.

So next is some fasting blood work, which I will get in before I head off to Finland next Friday...

Today was a most excellent day...the perfect temperature, the perfect humidity, everything.  In trying to regain some semblance of conditioning, I've begun getting out for walks, bike rides, etc., and today's 45minute walk (with Nordic poles) was spectacular.  Just around the neighborhood, but the flowers were out and the trees smelled good.  When I got back to my yard, my lilac tree was in bloom and smelled wonderful (it still does).  Just fabulous.  Thanks to birdnut for the kicks and the oomph.  I hope to be running (well, jogging...) soon. 

Even more fabulous was Sunday evening's mountain bike ride in nearby Ft. Custer Recreation Area.  I went with pbills and the FDG's.  It was unbelievable riding.  The conditions were perfect, not too many people out with us, and we had a great time.  Lots of good hills.  I only managed to clip out two or three times - once when I nearly hit a tree and the other times were up a nasty hill that we repeated.  It was an incredible ride for the first of the year. 

I gakked this from alikander.  Bold are the ones read, underlined are the ones read for school, italicized are the ones started but not finished.  Some of these I've seen the movies of (i.e., The Name of the Rose).  There seems to be lots of Vonnegut here, which is cool.  This gives me some ideas for this summer, but please don't expect me to touch Dostoyevsky - that's just not going to happen in this particular lifetime.  Like Guns, Germs and Steel is one I've wanted to read.  And Freakonomics looked good, too. 

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

So last weekend, I was in DC with shalombaby84 for Passover with her sister's family and her folks.  SB's sister, Nad, has a partner and a teenage son, and they have an exchange student from China this year.  Her folks are octagenarians who were driving back home to Jersey from Flahridah.  This was the first meeting with the family, so there was the typical stresses.  Since SB likes baseball, I figured I would look for some tickets, but the Nationals were playing away that weekend, which meant one thing...we'd have to drive up to Bahllamore to see the Os! 

Now, something most people aren't aware of about me is that I've been an Orioles fan since I was ten years old.  Growing up in Connecticut means never having your own professional team for which to root.  Well, except for hockey, where we briefly had the Hartford Whalers, but that's not baseball.  Most folks go to the Yankees, as my grandmother and cousin, or the Bo-Sox, as wardo68 and karenfodder have done.  In order to avoid this conflict altogether, I went South to the Orioles.  Their mascot was cute and I would be out of the fray.  However, as a child I never went to a professional game.  I was twenty-two or twenty-three before I saw a live game (Toronto Blue Jays, thanks to my cousin's husband).  Needless to say, when I found the O's playing the Yankees over Pesach weekend, I was thrilled.  Something that's been thirty-two years in the offing...

I got tickets for SB, me, the boys, and SB's mom, who is a Yankees fan and had never been to a live game before.  She's eighty-three, so suppose I should stop complaining about my late experiences.  SB drove us all up to Camden Yards, being the only non-only child in the car.  We had good seats in the upper deck on the third base line.   We got all the great crap food for a ball game and the Os beat the Yankees 8-2!  We had a great time and sang along with old Beatles songs all the way home in the car.   So when the MLB folks try to sell you the line about making memories, you can be a little less cynical. 

Lillian Bernadette. She was listed as a "pit mix" at Animal Control when I adopted her. A recent DNA test showed that she has at least 15% of the following breeds in her ancestry: Australian Cattle Dog, Bassett Hound, French Bulldog, Bull Terrier, and American Staffordshire Terrier. Bassett explains the extremely goofy front feet.   Single-minded, smart, and occasionally sassy, she's a joy.  She carries a little red backpack on our walks and enjoys all kinds of fruit.  Nobody loves obedience training more than Lillian.

Unfortunately, because she looks enough like a pit bull, that's how she is identified in her records.  That's probably how she'd be identified if she were picked up on the street were she to be a stray.  This also makes Lillian the face of BSL, and other discriminatory practices like higher insurance rates for "dangerous breeds," typically defined as pits, rottweillers, etc.    Don't think for a minute the "one-drop" theory has gone out of fashion.  It's just gone canine.

Okay, folks, it's finally been warm enough for a few days for my little purple crocuses to open up!  On our walk tonight, the dogs and I saw white and yellow croci, too.  The daffodils are still working on their gig, but things are looking more springy around here.