Kudos to these athletes for joint forces and speaking out against gun violence.
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Amsterdam Sights
Those of you who know me well, know that I have a theory about white folks and cold weather.
It's this - when you look outside and see white folks in coats, that means black folks (OK, maybe just me) should grab three.
Today when I ventured outside, and saw folks bundled up tight, I ignored my theory, thinking it was a fluke. It really was a mostly mild, overcast day, or so I thought.
The streets are narrow and the buildings tall, so I was shielded from the weather as I trekked to the bus stop, about a ten-minute walk from my hotel.
As I typically do on these solo journeys, I hopped on a tour bus to get an overview of the city. We were near Anne Franke's House (the Jewish teen who chronicled her life in hiding during World War II in The Diary of Ann Frank), so I decided to get off and visit the museum. The line was crazy long, and to my surprise, it was crazy cold, so I quickly scratched those plans and sought a cafe for a cup of joe to warm up.
Oh my goodness, I couldn't believe how cold it was, with a fierce biting wind!
So this, my friends, provides even more proof that my theory is, in fact, a valid one.
Below are some of the sights of this vibrant city.
My plan is to get up early, bundle up, and beat the lines at the Ann Frank Museum tomorrow.
Wish me luck.
It's this - when you look outside and see white folks in coats, that means black folks (OK, maybe just me) should grab three.
Today when I ventured outside, and saw folks bundled up tight, I ignored my theory, thinking it was a fluke. It really was a mostly mild, overcast day, or so I thought.
The streets are narrow and the buildings tall, so I was shielded from the weather as I trekked to the bus stop, about a ten-minute walk from my hotel.
As I typically do on these solo journeys, I hopped on a tour bus to get an overview of the city. We were near Anne Franke's House (the Jewish teen who chronicled her life in hiding during World War II in The Diary of Ann Frank), so I decided to get off and visit the museum. The line was crazy long, and to my surprise, it was crazy cold, so I quickly scratched those plans and sought a cafe for a cup of joe to warm up.
Oh my goodness, I couldn't believe how cold it was, with a fierce biting wind!
So this, my friends, provides even more proof that my theory is, in fact, a valid one.
Below are some of the sights of this vibrant city.
 |
| This house with the red lights in the windows, literally means it a "red light district" place of business. Prostitution is legal here. There was a woman in a very tiny bikini standing in one of the windows. She backed away when she saw me taking pictures. One of the windows had the name "Esther," the name of the woman showcased there, I assume. |
 |
| This city has embraced bicyclists like no other I've seen. There are thousands of bikes everywhere. There are bike shops and bike rentals on every block it seems. The bike lanes run parallel to the sidewalks, separated from the automobile traffic. Here everyone has their own lane. It's a pretty awesome sight to see. |
 |
| There are canals and bridges all around. There are boat tours, but even with covered boats, I'm thinking that would be too cold for me. |
 |
| This flag is the official flag of Amsterdam, the capital city of the Netherlands. |
 |
| This is a view of the many houseboats that line the canals. |
 |
| Here's another view of houseboats. |
 |
| Although this picture isn't great, I was tickled to see these toddlers riding along in their covered motorized wagon. |
 |
| A street view |
 |
| Life along the canals. |
My plan is to get up early, bundle up, and beat the lines at the Ann Frank Museum tomorrow.
Wish me luck.
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Greetings From Amsterdam!
This is the view from my hotel window.
It's a beautiful, very picturesque city. It was overcast, so most of the pictures I took today were too dark to publish, but I plan to hit the streets early tomorrow, with the hope of a sunny day.
More soon.
Senior Computer Skills
Young folks. Laugh. In the blink of an eye, you'll be the seniors that kids are making fun of.
Forwarded from Forrest -
Forwarded from Forrest -
Senior Computer Skills...
Tech support: What kind of computer do you have?
Customer: A white one...
Tech support: Click on the 'my computer' icon on to the left of the screen.
Customer: Your left or my left?
************************
Customer: Hi, good afternoon, this is Martha, I can't print. Every time I try, it says 'can’t find printer’.
I've even lifted the printer and placed it in front of the monitor,but the computer still says he can't find it..
*************************
Customer: My keyboard is not working anymore.
Tech support: Are you sure it's plugged into the computer?
Customer: No. I can't get behind the computer.
Tech support: Pick up your keyboard and walk 10 paces back.
Customer: OK
Tech support: Did the keyboard come with you?
Customer: Yes
Tech support: That means the keyboard is not plugged in.
*************************
Customer: I can't get on the Internet.
Tech support: Are you sure you used the right password?
Customer: Yes, I'm sure. I saw my colleague do it.
Tech support: Can you tell me what the password was?
Customer: Five dots.
*************************
Tech support: What anti-virus program do you use?
Customer: Netscape.
Tech support: That's not an anti-virus program.
Customer: Oh, sorry... Internet Explorer..
*************************
Customer: I have a huge problem.A friend has placed a screen saver on my computer,but every time I move the mouse, it disappears.
*************************
Tech support: How may I help you?
Customer: I'm writing my first email.
Tech support: OK, and what seems to be the problem?
Customer: Well, I have the letter 'a' in the address, but how do I get the little circle around it?
*************************
This one and the next are our personal favorites!
A woman customer called the Canon help desk with a problem with her printer.
Tech support: Are you running it under windows?
Customer: 'No, my desk is next to the door, but that is a good point.
The man sitting in the cubicle next to me is under a window, and his printer is working fine.'
************************
And last but not least!
Tech support: 'Okay Bob, let's press the control and escape keys at the same time.
That brings up a task list in the middle of the screen. Now type the letter 'P' to bring up the Program Manager.'
Customer: I don't have a P.
Tech support: On your keyboard, Bob.
Customer: What do you mean?
Tech support: 'P'.....on your keyboard, Bob.
Customer: I'M NOT GOING TO DO THAT
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Living in Chaos
First, apologies for being awol. Between finishing up with the first half of school and dealing with some health issues, I've done very little beyond the absolute necessities. Thankfully, all is well health-wise and we started our two week winter break yesterday.
A few days ago, I picked up David Gregory's book How's Your Faith and found a common thread - being raised in a household with an alcoholic parent. Of course, that's where the commonalities end, as he was a child of privilege, and I was definitely not.
What was intriguing to me was how dealing with an alcoholic parent impacts, not just your childhood, but every aspect of your life. Reading his story illustrated this wasn't an isolated occurrence for me, but others dealt/are dealing with this, too.
At 59 years old, some memories of my childhood stand out crystal clear.
Like -
Mom hiding money and half-filled liquor bottles around the house, trying to convince my father he had drank it all, and there was no money left for any more. Actually I think this strategy backfired more often than not, as he would just go back to the liquor store and buy more on credit. When he got paid, his liquor bill was the first bill paid, with Mom having to make do with what was left.
Like -
The vivid stench of rancid liquor that seeped from every pore of his body. That was coupled with having the job of helping Mom to clean the vomit that he regularly upchucked while she wrangled him to go to bed to sleep it off.
Like -
During my middle and high school days when he went five years without a drink, and then when he arrived home late stumbling in from the detached garage, I knew in an instant that our reprieve from his drunken days of chaos was over.
Like -
When I was home for a break from college, and needed a ride to the bus station to get back to school, he was so drunk, my mother refused to ride the twenty miles to the bus station to see me off because it would have meant riding back with Daddy, who was flat out pissy drunk. You see, she never learned to drive. I drove the car to the station, but he would have to have driven it back home. She knew she would be helpless and completely at his mercy on that drive home. So she didn't go. Of course, I didn't blame her. Once Daddy and I arrived at the station, I went inside to wait on the bus. Somehow he managed to stagger into the building, and when he did his pants fell to his ankles. The embarrassment. The shame. The indignity . . . was palpable. How he made it home alive and without killing someone else on the road was purely by the mercy of God.
These experiences are but a few that have shaped my life and my views of people who drink. Of course, most folks don't allow themselves to fall into the "pissy drunk" category, but the assumption (wrong though it may be), is that's where they're headed until proven otherwise.
That's why it was so incredibly painful when I discovered that Ben and Frankie drank. Not because I thought they'd end up like my Dad, but because the possibility was too real in my eyes. This is a topic I've covered many times with them, and it's not my intention to rehash old wounds, but simply to illustrate how all of our experiences - good or bad - go into shaping the people we become.
I share this not to make you feel bad if you're a drinker. But hopefully, it's just a reminder that the things that happen when you're under the influence can/do have lasting effects.
A few days ago, I picked up David Gregory's book How's Your Faith and found a common thread - being raised in a household with an alcoholic parent. Of course, that's where the commonalities end, as he was a child of privilege, and I was definitely not.
What was intriguing to me was how dealing with an alcoholic parent impacts, not just your childhood, but every aspect of your life. Reading his story illustrated this wasn't an isolated occurrence for me, but others dealt/are dealing with this, too.
At 59 years old, some memories of my childhood stand out crystal clear.
Like -
Mom hiding money and half-filled liquor bottles around the house, trying to convince my father he had drank it all, and there was no money left for any more. Actually I think this strategy backfired more often than not, as he would just go back to the liquor store and buy more on credit. When he got paid, his liquor bill was the first bill paid, with Mom having to make do with what was left.
Like -
The vivid stench of rancid liquor that seeped from every pore of his body. That was coupled with having the job of helping Mom to clean the vomit that he regularly upchucked while she wrangled him to go to bed to sleep it off.
Like -
During my middle and high school days when he went five years without a drink, and then when he arrived home late stumbling in from the detached garage, I knew in an instant that our reprieve from his drunken days of chaos was over.
Like -
When I was home for a break from college, and needed a ride to the bus station to get back to school, he was so drunk, my mother refused to ride the twenty miles to the bus station to see me off because it would have meant riding back with Daddy, who was flat out pissy drunk. You see, she never learned to drive. I drove the car to the station, but he would have to have driven it back home. She knew she would be helpless and completely at his mercy on that drive home. So she didn't go. Of course, I didn't blame her. Once Daddy and I arrived at the station, I went inside to wait on the bus. Somehow he managed to stagger into the building, and when he did his pants fell to his ankles. The embarrassment. The shame. The indignity . . . was palpable. How he made it home alive and without killing someone else on the road was purely by the mercy of God.
These experiences are but a few that have shaped my life and my views of people who drink. Of course, most folks don't allow themselves to fall into the "pissy drunk" category, but the assumption (wrong though it may be), is that's where they're headed until proven otherwise.
That's why it was so incredibly painful when I discovered that Ben and Frankie drank. Not because I thought they'd end up like my Dad, but because the possibility was too real in my eyes. This is a topic I've covered many times with them, and it's not my intention to rehash old wounds, but simply to illustrate how all of our experiences - good or bad - go into shaping the people we become.
I share this not to make you feel bad if you're a drinker. But hopefully, it's just a reminder that the things that happen when you're under the influence can/do have lasting effects.
Young, Gifted & Black
From The Atlantic -
'What It Means to Be Young, Talented, and Black'
Sophia Nahli Allison defines her photography essay, Marching Together, by what it’s not. “This is not a story about an underfunded program or urban youth succeeding in band as a way to escape violence,” she said. Her images of Hillside High School’s award-wining marching band captures the students’ determination and ambition, while simultaneouslycounteracting the stereotypically negative representation of black teens. They want to go to college. They want to win. This, she said, “is a visual exploration of what it means to be young, talented, and black.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/12/marching-together/419955/?utm_source=atl-daily-newsletter
http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/12/marching-together/419955/?utm_source=atl-daily-newsletter
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Three Generations of Blacks in Russia
From The Root -
Black in the USSR: 3 Generations of a Russian Family
Escaping the oppression of a racist America, a black scientist named Oliver Golden took Soviet citizenship in the 1930s and began a legacy for his family that endures in Russia today.
BY: STEVEN J. NIVEN
In 1932, the poet Langston Hughes spent Christmas in the “dusty, coloured, cotton-growing South” of Uzbekistan, then one of the Soviet Union’s Asian republics. Hugheshad been in Moscow, working on a film critical of American race relations, but the project was abandoned, in part because the Soviets were then seeking official diplomatic recognition and improved economic ties with the United States. After an exhausting 2,000-mile journey on frozen, ramshackle Russian trains, he arrived on Christmas Eve in Yangiyul, near Tashkent, “in the middle of a mudcake oasis frosted with snow,” and visited “a neat, white painted cottage,” where “it was jolly and warm.”
His hosts were Oliver Golden, a black Mississippian, and Bertha Bialek, the white New York-born daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants, who had prepared a traditional American meal capped off with pumpkin pie to celebrate the season—washed down, of course, with copious amounts of local cognac and vodka. Most of his fellow guests were black men and women. As he looked out his window on Christmas morning, Hughes saw some tall, brown-skinned Uzbeks on horseback, padding across the snowy fields, and was reminded of images he had seen in Sunday school when he was a boy in Kansas: “In their robes, these Uzbeks looked just like Bible characters, and I imagined in their stable a manger and a child.”
http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2015/12/black_in_the_ussr_3_generations_of_an_african_american_family_in_the_soviet.2.html
http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2015/12/black_in_the_ussr_3_generations_of_an_african_american_family_in_the_soviet.2.html
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
A Priceless Comeback
From Now I Know -
Crease and Desist
Major sporting events don’t want objects flying around the stands or onto the field. That sounds like a pretty good rule, as you don’t want fans or players to get hurt — that’d be bad for everyone involved. To avoid problems, even items which are generally harmless are often banned; the New York Yankees, for example, explicitly state that beach balls are prohibited. But generally speaking, such specificity isn’t required. The general rule makes enough sense and is easily enough enforced — usually. Unfortunately for one fan of the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, the team did not enforce the rule to his liking. So in 1974, he — an attorney — wrote the letter below, demanding action by threatening a lawsuit.
The letter, by attorney Dale O. Cox, spells out the grievance. Cox, a season ticket holder, was upset that other fans were flying paper airplanes “generally made out of the game program,” and tossing them around. Cox was concerned about “the risk of serious eye injury and perhaps an ear injury” that such paper projectiles could cause, so he asked the team to stop such behavior. And then there’s the legal threat: “I will hold you responsible for any injury sustained by any person in my party attending one of your sporting events.” Fighting words, in legal-speak.
The Browns’ general counsel, James Bailey, replied to Mr. Cox — that’s what would generally happen in a matter like this, and in this case, he did so by a letter dated just a few days later. But the letter didn’t inform the aggrieved Mr. Cox of the team’s decision to crack down on paper airplanes. It didn’t have any legalese in it, explaining the team’s view of the law. In fact, it didn’t say much of anything. Yet, it may be the best legal reply ever written. You can see it below.
A few years later, the Cleveland Scene, an alt-weekly, discovered the above letters (without explanation as to how), and the letter became a cultural meme of sorts. (It recently made its way into an episode of NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!, as a trivia question.) As absurd as Mr. Bailey’s response seems, it’s real. In early 2011, a reporter from the Cleveland Plain Dealer tracked down Bailey and Cox, both of whom recalled the response fondly. Cox even admitted to using a similar reply tactic “a couple times [himself] since.”
http://nowiknow.com/crease-and-desist/
Sunday, December 6, 2015
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Wine Scanner
It you're like me, totally ignorant of wine, this app is for you.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vivino-wine-scanner/id414461255?mt=8
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vivino-wine-scanner/id414461255?mt=8
"Sriracha" Love
This is a sensational hot sauce that has reached epic proportions in the universal love it has received.
I tried it for the first time a couple of days ago, and I concur. I'm not a hot sauce person, but this stuff is good.
The trailer below is for a documentary on Sriracha that definitely peeked my interest in wanting to give this a try. I'm glad I did. The full movie (34 minutes) is linked below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXOAx58LBDo
I tried it for the first time a couple of days ago, and I concur. I'm not a hot sauce person, but this stuff is good.
The trailer below is for a documentary on Sriracha that definitely peeked my interest in wanting to give this a try. I'm glad I did. The full movie (34 minutes) is linked below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXOAx58LBDo
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
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