Yesterday Cuebel and I learned that our ex, with whom we were in threesome for 13 years, recently died. The details are not clear, but it appears she drank herself to death in one way or another. After Carol and I left -- unwilling to continue our enabling and perhaps even afraid for our own safety -- we never saw her again (her insistence, not ( Read more... )

This from the publisher of the Burnt Orange Report ( Read more... )

In the summer when I was eleven I encountered the neighbor. It happened while I was spending the summer at my grandparents’ neat little house on the shabby fringe of a small West Texas town. On the third morning after my parents’ white Rambler station wagon pulled away on the dirt road, I looked outside and saw a donkey. In the daisies. Well, ( Read more... )

I am often surprised to encounter frank and active hostility toward cyberspace communication. I speak here not of those individuals who merely express a preference for in-person interaction, but of those who fall into the category I might call "ROCKs" (Radical Opponents of Cyberspace Kinship). ROCKs are those who express "distrust" of the medium ( Read more... )

If the government could require a woman to carry an unwanted fetus to term, could it not as easily require her to abort a wanted fetus?

A flock of chickens pecking efficiently and ranging joyfully over the grass.

On Saturday night, Cuebel agreed to help a friend on Sunday afternoon (after participating in the service Sunday morning). Since I was already scheduled to be in Cincinnati all day, that presented a child-care complication. Chinchita, bless her loving little heart, solved the problem by volunteering to get up ridiculously early, ride with me to ( Read more... )

Theladycancook recently posted a great blog entry regarding disturbing death rituals (such as open caskets, taking the opportunity to castigate non-Christians, etc.). Coincidentally, dubheach shared some information from her class on Sociology of Death (have I mentioned that I am consumed with jealousy that she gets to take such a course? never ( Read more... )

Over the holidays, my daughter and I watched several fairly recent movies. One of them bothered me enough that I still can't seem to shake my feminist annoyance. First we watched "Ant Bully," premised on a boy's shrinking, then trying to fit in with an ant colony, learning to cooperate, and so on. I actually enjoyed that one, but I couldn't help ( Read more... )

Having the help of my daughter when it is time to vaccinate the goats.

Enough blue in the sky to make a dutchman a pair of britches.