General Winter Attacks

Not a good day to have my hooded snorkel coat at the cleaners.

On the other hand, a very good day to have a down vest under my waxed canvas duster, a down hat on my head, and warm gloves on my hands.

And thank God the wind was not as brutal as when I came home last night.

And now -- I just got the call -- the ceiling is starting to fall in the kitchen. The old guy upstairs died a month ago and they are fixing his place up, dislodging plaster weakened by all the flooding he caused in his senility. (He was not well loved. When his wife was taken to the nursing home he claimed to have broken her back, and the consensus in the building was that if he didn't it wasn't because he didn't try.)

Many things have to be moved and put into storage we can't afford just to give workmen access.

The super has agreed to put plastic under the kitchen ceiling to catch the plaster until it can be repaired, and I have already put in for a personal day Friday for other purposes.

The Red and the Gray

"But why did the Cherokees and their brethren, the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Chickasaws determine to make common cause with the Confederate South against the Northern Union? To know their reasons is very instructive as to the issues underlying that tragic war."

It is also instructive as to the passion of the victorious Union to exterminate the native peoples remaining on their soil.

Click on the above for Leonard Scruggs' fascinating account of the 1861 Declaration by the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Impelled them to Unite Their Fortunes With Those of the Confederate States of America.

Experience the Glory

Make yourself part of the great onward march of culture; relive the grandeur of ages past; feel a connectedness with the best of the untold generations before you, and those to come: Experience the glory of...

Security Concerns

Services like LiveJournal and Tribe are poised to be the next big thing on the Web in 2004, but their security and privacy practices are more like 1997, writes Annalee Newitz.

In The Register.

And you thought I got everything from Lew!

Some Things Never Change

"The faculty at Bard College, a liberal arts school at Annandale, NY, includes a scholar who glories in the title Alger Hiss Professor of Social Studies..."

I applied to Bard and got in, but after a brief visit, attended Earlham unseen.

Today they are much the same, though Bard may be a bit more tolerant of ideological eccentricity.