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It’s spring. I haven’t seen as nice a one in Gainesville for three years. It’s cool and has been since March first. Here we are, hitting the last week in April and low clouds keep the sun off as flowers reach for the sky. Birds take baths for fun as bees hum like a humming bird’s wings.
Lately, for years, it’s been way too hot in April to call it spring. The blazing temperatures have started early and blasted through the land until October. But this isn’t the norm, not if you consider the past forty years. This year has felt right. The winter hit hard for ten days or so and now March and April have refused to spring forth too quickly.
Have you ever noticed how some people come into your life like season’s change your window view? Some personalities bluster their way into your life as a March 1st wind but then drift off, they move, change or seem so different from what you thought. Soon, they are quietly gone, never to be seen again, as if they were a lamb you never knew but watched trot over a hillside you won’t traverse. Other’s secretly appear without notice, but bloom in months or years right under your nose into your everyday experience and you can’t remember when they weren’t there.
Of course, there are those who insist on being every season of person—you call it a stormy relationship, one you can’t contain but wish to keep. They give both smiles and trimming to your everyday self. You know, the self you think of being the same as when you were half as old. Some seasons of life pass so unnoticed, don’t they? The old whisper to the young, “Take your time and appreciate what you have.” Thing is, when you’re a young burning pit of passion and energy, it’s hard to find a moment to sit back and take a picture of your life. And, it’s even harder to picture life being any different. 
A dog’s love can be like this. It’s learn this, fetch that, let’s go or sit and then in a few short 12 years or so they are gone.* 
(Don’t miss the link below if you love dogs….)
The season’s passing give us our best sense of time. Sundials came to Babylon about 6 thousand years ago and then the ,”Midday,” concept was made popular by the early Egyptians. Pluto invented the first water based alarm clock, but I’ve no idea what this means. Okay, I’ll take a guess. A sand hour-glass balanced a pot of water above your sleeping head until the sand ran out and the pot dumped a pile of cold water on your face?
I’ve always hated alarm clocks.
It’s during these early months of spring and fall when Florida truly becomes a peninsula weather wise. The air inversions over the ocean sends a smooth wind across the sands, the thick jungles and built-up cities of Florida. It’s a bit like Hawaii in Florida during the two seasons—those living in Hawaii are so lucky, right? But, maybe, every place can be magical.
It’s hard for me to imagine a more peaceful place than a late afternoon up at Lake Bonaparte.
Florida Palms made me laugh when I first hit town some 48 years ago. You don’t find these up North. Tall, skinny, they don’t provide much shade but once you hear the wind blow through their rustling fronds you understand.
There’s a life to this part of Northern Florida, where there are still many more trees than people, and maybe many more lakes, streams and brooks than roads. Here, the bear, coyote, brown, red and grey fox trot. Deer move by mostly at night, even the wild boar plunder the brush—the panther lives. Like us, those animals and the eagles, hawks, birds of every kind, all living things are all touched by the seasons.
We live in an ocean of time.**
Thing is, it’s possible now that all the animals and even the earth are touched more by us than by the seasons. It’s odd to think that the entirety of life is counting on us. They’re counting on mankind making sense like the seasons have for millenniums, that we will come and pass to leave the future open.
Let’s leave it open…
( Thanks to Bonaparte’s web site for picture.)
A seasoned person is one well schooled by life. We have great thinkers, great leaders, inventors of all kinds, but are we seasoned? Have we been?
I hope the sand in our hour-glass doesn’t run out too late to wake us up.
Franque23
We have to dream big.
*https://franque23.wordpress.com/2014/04/20/toby-toes-youre-a-good-dog/
** My wife of 38 years, though I’ve known her for 45, but who’s counting;-) Bye.
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I got up so late this morning I almost missed my nap!
Yesterday, Friday, I drove across town after work with my cone-head wearing dog* to get pool supplies, drove home and got the pool cleaned and mulched the garden for the second time this spring,
This is how I mulch the garden-I drive around and pick up other people’s yard rakings, haul it back in my car and dump it on my garden. This works well as long as I off-set the acidity of the leaves with lime.
Then, I fertilized 17 citrus trees and replaced a cracked mower blade and mowed until 7:30 PM. It was a great start to what would have been a productive wkend until today, Saturday.
I ‘arose’ feeling so unlike the tea roses in our yard…
Today, I’ve a bad case of stuck-in-a-chairitush as I wonder if I should move to the couch.
Nah, the couch is like two rooms away and they say it might rain Tuesday so why bother to move now? Plus, there’s a 60% chance of raindrops today; that means going outside would risk getting hit by one. I might as well stay in butt-put mode.
Actually, here’s the deal. In my world, if it rained on Saturday all workers would get Monday off. Being off wkends is a hard-fought for union negotiated right! All the other work days of the week are just a bunch of made up crap—and there are soooo many!?!?!
So yeah, our wkend’s deserve payback from the week days if it rains on Saturday. But what about rainy Sundays? Of course, to keep in line with our Judeo-Christian values rainy Sundays means workers should get two days off that following week. Why? Obviously, any rain sent on a Sunday came from God and who’s gonna mess with Him? If God makes it rain on Sunday then he’s all in with us getting the two days off. Period.
But I have questions. Does God like to play golf?
And I have answers. The real reason for not paying my newspaper subscription is so I don’t have to go get it off the lawn right now. First off, this would entail me getting out of my chair, that’s iffy. Plus, the wind is out there; wind and sun, but I just know there’s also a raindrop or two out there somewhere and it might hit my head.
Go ahead laugh, but only bald people know about raindrops hitting heads. “Hats!” You say? “Bats wearing hats!” I say. It’s your turn.
But, being bald has advantages, too.
Dad’s WWII hat might help?
BTW, Kerry, a wonderful person to work around, hmm, I mean not to work around as avoid but, with, anyway, she had a dog named, Mookie, who retrieved the newspaper each day from the lawn! See-that’s good genes, but have you ever weighed your jeans?
I’m talking about the real kind of blue-jeans, not those thin stretchy things people wear over undies no one can tell you have on. No, this is about the good ol’ regular kind of jeans real cowboys wear–they’re freakin’ heavy!! So, no, I’m not wearing jeans today, just shorts and paisley patterned undies.
That should about do it though there is one more little thing. It’s great they have food service deliveries to the house door now, but who’s gonna feed me the food?
This day is gonna be full of work.
Franque23
*
Shadow has a cone-head today, but that’s another glob.
Eating ribs tomorrow means there’s no point in dieting today! Why create a hole now only to fill it later?
Really, I may have been a bit literal in my younger days—like yesterday back—cause I thought I was what I ate. I’d sit at the dinner table as a kid and feel my legs and arms fill up first as I ate; it was super important to leave my hands empty for dessert.
BTW—I own typo’s, and as a wirter ( whoops…see dyslexic, too ) I can’t spell, either. So, I invent ways to remember things like how to spell desert or should it be dessert. No, just learning that dessert you eat has two S’s won’t work. This works: desserts are sweets (See=2 S’s in sweets.) There, it only took me 68 years to figure this one out and I’ve about, oh, a zillion more word spellings ot nail down. Oooops… there’s another typo I make a living offering. Ot=to.
I took a class on Excel yesterday and realized I don’t misspell words, I just write in Excel type formulas …ot=to; ti’s=it’s; htey=they; these are just a few formulas I type by. Then there’s that nagging form=from. Of course, there’s a way to pick one’s often misspelled words and set your computer to auto-adjust those to the correct spelling. But form=from or vice versa would be a never-ending (typing) nightmare, right?
Thank you for asking what keeps writers up at night or daydreaming during the day.(Okay, this part is made up. Please someone ask me a question—I don’t care how random…)
Sixth grade graduation shot. I’m in the back row, the sixth boy from the right. I started writing stories in fourth grade. My teacher accused me of not being the author of my first submission, (maybe I wasn’t?) The story was about a man wrongfully accused of murdering a woman but who, none-the-less, was hung for the crime. I went into great detail about the wood box the falsely accused man stood on before being hung. My mom had to write a letter saying she knew I wrote the piece. Thing is, the process for me was like being told what to write by a voice I heard in my head, a voice that didn’t seem like or sound like me speaking at the time.
Did you know there’s a huge debate going on about adverbs—you know those LY endings along with long, hard, quick type words. Stephen King hates them while Mark Twain rowed the same boat ‘Yinly’….but the Yang side of the debate is loaded with good writers, Bigly.
Point of view is subjective but simple for me. I’m always right and you’re wrong should we disagree but none of this is really about the Point of View writers work on.
POV is a whole different animal.
The question is, should the story be written in First person, even if that of a dead person, Third person Omniscient or limited, Second Person so rarely used or does it all flip-flop by chapter? And how about using the unreliable narrator technique? Writers may write one passage or book in different points of view to see which works best and, if it all sucks, then just throw out the work but not before they hammer out a past and present version, too, just to see.
How long does writing take?
This varies by writer, times and situations. I’ve finished four full length novels now and see the approximate time frame for me between starting a book and then having it on Kindle pages is about 2 years per book. I always start writing by staring off into space while typing away. I might type out one paragraph, or a page or a long story that ends up being several chapters before reviewing the work to correct obvious errors in spelling, grammar, etc. Then I re-read the work for syntax, a better expression or word to use. Quick or slow; good or bad: writing takes time.
Here’s a good example, and remember I’ve written this glob about once per week (more than 500 times) over the past nine years, plus four books are finished with another done but not corrected and two others started, so I do write. Why I write is due to some sort of brain damage but forget that—. Recently, I wrote a one page prologue that I may or may not use. My wife likes it and my first writer said, “very good.’ Still, I don’t know. Thing is, I spent about five hours getting that one page done and I feel certain I’ll work more on the wording if I read it over again. That’s the key, a writer is never really done with anything they write; a book just ends when the final editor is done and the book is put on Kindle, or in some format, or published hard copy.
So the very long answer to how much time writing takes has to be one word: forever.
Sunflowers growing from seeds dropped by birds at our bird feeder reach for the sky. It feels like forever.
To me, writing fiction is like living in a perpetual dream-like state that runs as a background to life 24/7 until the story is written. Then, in time, that story fades as a memory. Any disruption while writing, even an act of kindness, can knock a writer’s angle to the story out of whack and it might take hours or sometimes days to get back on track, if ever!
My money’s on the dark place writers must go when they write. It’s called the soul. Whether they slip, slide, run, jump or dive head first, all writers have to get to the core issue of what they write if they hope to pull something good out of it. It’s a dark place full of fire; a tiring breath of fresh air. That’s where the stories take place.
I’m not ribbing you.
Cheers,
Franque23
(Writing time here was 46 minutes. Endless corrections and pictures about another hour.)
Check this out to understand…
Ross didn’t start out this way, a hero now on international news. No, he started as a baby, then grew to be kind of lunatic 4-year-old who insisted on going to airports to watch planes land and take off. Basically, the kid was sick. Closets were recommended; no food for a week came up when that snot nosed kid wouldn’t leave his dad my Cousin, Jed Franquemont, alone. “Take me to the airport ,dad!”
There were long discussions about the kids fascination for flight. If you can believe it, this little guy wished to be a pilot before most kids figure out how to dress themselves.
Nuts, it’s called. All of a sudden, this kid is taking pictures from a U-2 Plane?!?!?!
Anyway, Ross probably survived thru the Grace of God, what do I know, he was just some punk of a kid running around making plane noises during family reunions up at Lake Bonaparte as I remember. I’ve got a feeling we launched him off the dock up at the lake more than once to see if he could really fly. Nope: the kid was a flat liner.
Hey flat earth people….it’s possible the Earth isn’t flat after all!
Then, one day I get a call from my cousin Jed who tells me the kid we worried about since the day he was born is a pilot in the Air Force. Ha!whahahaha. So I cashed in all my bonds, whatever, figuring we were about to lose a war somewhere soon. That didn’t happen and we all started to wonder?
Next I knew this kid who wanted to fly before he could zip his own was flying Generals around Europe!?!?! I figured this had to be some sort of pedal push flight machine we never used as kids. Then I learned the truth.
How was Ross making all this look so real? Sell, Sell. Sell I said to Wall Street!
I need to go back a bit and mention that this kid was never known to drink much*, but , as it came out later, his friends in europe, and the entourage of followers who drafted his wings were huge, bigly drinkers. The result quickly became a shortage of name brand beers coming out of Europe . This forced those brewers and others to develop many off-shoot beers and labels to try to circumvent the slaughter of the known labels his followers were causing…Now, it’s all history. The world has One zillion labels of beer on the shelves, and all of this is due to Ross Franquemont and his followers.
Next, kinda like a meteorite landing on your head, this single ,”I wanna be a pilot, Dad,” nuisance of a son became a U-2 pilot. What?!?!? I said, “Sell everything and buy land in Russia.”
Rain drops keep fallin’ on my head….Nay, don’t think so.
Now before the women of the world start hoping to join the 70 thousand mile high club with Ross they need to know that this is Jessica Franquemont, Ross’ wife.
Thing is she’s beautiful, smart, articulate, kind and deadly. So kind , in fact, that she says anyone can have Ross as long as they’re six feet under and well decomposed. Momma bear raises her three little ones with a tight fist and eagle eye! Just forget it: code to live by.
I’m certain Jessica has a good aim…
Yep, this is Ross Franquemont with his wife.. 
A great guy, true husband and father of three…he makes all of us proud. “Sorry dear, I’ll be 70 thousand miles high in the air tonight so don’t hold dinner.”
Ross Franquemont: a true Hero.
NO, Ross didn’t sink a forty-foot jumper to win the NCAA basketball championship; he didn’t heave a hail Mary pass to win the football championship. All Ross has done for the past 18 years and counting is help keep America and the World safe.
When I look up, “Hero,” in the dictionary, Ross Franquemont is in the definition.
Cheers
Franque23
*Maybe
Ross- it was that Franque23 guy who wrote all of this, not me.. Cheers, Unc.
It’s happening today all over America and it happened in Gainesville, Florida, too. Crowds of people got out to say enough is enough! We want to ban large magazines, assault type weapons used most often in mass shooting, demand background checks for all gun purchases at any venue of sale-retail, guns shows and online sales.
We want the mass shooting to stop; thoughts and prayers are not enough!
The message once was, Peace. Today it’s, Stop Killing Us!
Bands played throughout the first 3 hour session of speeches and I couldn’t help but think of two guys that had a lot to do with my awakening—if not the World’s—to the idea of peace.
Waaay young John Lennon and George Harrison…
By 1:30 the number pushed well over one thousand and all the time the messages that belong to this movement were heard loud and clear.
The crowd grew and the chanting became louder.
Then it was time to march but first we gathered all the students together in the center to applaud their work on this issue.
I think it’s of historical significance to note that the Nam war protests were led by students mostly college age. It was the young that led the way then as our younger students are leading the way now.* Politicians who scoff at the age of those leading this gun reform movement have failed to pay attention to history. This group right here, the ones attacking the NRA led agendas in our country, are going to win. The politicians who put their chips down on the NRA are done, over-finished.
So how big was the Gainesville crowd…well, the line stretched nearly 1/2 mile long, and many deep. Old folks, father’s, mother’s, adults of every age, families, people pushing babies, skipping children, a huge amount of school age people and people pushing wheelchairs made the numbers bigly.
The chants continued:
March for Life!
Say No to NRA! Vote them out!
It was great to see friends there…**
The line of marching people felt endless, and my heart hopes so.
As some of the speakers today knew one, two or all of the dead from the Parkland shooting personally, some signs also had a personal touch.
No, today didn’t feel like ,’another,’ event. The words, the feelings expressed, the messages and energy collectively gathered today represent a nation-wide movement that will continue. This time America’s guns laws and the meaning of the Right to Bear Arms will change. It’s the Nam protest day’s force all over again and these younger folks will not let go.
But what messages today let’s me know the time’s are a changin’?
We are in this together. And we will vote. Politicians who have so far refused to heed the call to disarm our society are already scurrying for a way to hide or re-invent their position.
A huge movement is coming around to think the NRA as it stands today is a real threat to American society.
Sending thoughts and prayers to the parents and loved ones over the death of their loved ones won’t work again, never again. All the so-called kids here today had this on their minds,
and they won’t forget.
Today we had an elegant speaking 11-year-old ask our Representatives one question? “Do you think we are stupid?”
Some Representatives do, and some have belittled the age of these protestors…. Trust me, the time is coming to end the office of those who do.
Power to the People no matter their age is alive and well-
Cheers 
Franque23
*Thanks to dale for this connection and for all of the pictures…
** Thanks to Joey and Debbie for their pictures as well.
Wait! What were you thinking? Oh, guttered brained chatter makes the most noise, right?
No, not this kind of a…
I know this is a loaded statement few bring up often but now that it’s out in the open we should talk. No matter how you look at it’s hard to look away. Some will find this easy to handle, others, not so much.
We have a movement in hand.
This ,’dick-thing,’ may be the point of Japan’s annual celebration, but it’s not the point of this post.
Okay, the picture pointed the way. Once a work associate who is married to a fellow named, Richard, threw us all into laughing fits when she exclaimed, “I do love my, Dick!”
Anyway–Dick’s is the Hunting Outfit chain who dropped selling AR-15’s today to help motivate our Representatives to do the right thing when it comes to gun legislation so they deserves our business.
How did America get to where we are? The madness at the top-our Congress seems not interested in following the will of the majority but only the will of their donors. Heck, the President even refuses to recognize the will of Congress who overwhelmingly voted to apply more sanctions on Russia for interfering with our 2016 election, but Trump won’t do it!
People also ask why the Republicans have taken so many local and state elections in the past.
Well, that’s complicated but gerrymandering is one main reason the Republicans have done so well at the polls during the last twelve years
See? This is a voting district in Texas–someone needs a ruler, right? But even with this Republican shaped district a long-standing Republican Representative from it is not going to run again!
Democrats fell asleep at the wheel while in power and the Republicans went to work drawing up voting districts that could challenge any Dali piece of art. Plus, the core of America feels more conservative than Liberal,(it’s not.) but not crazy like Trump and his agenda!
Many say Liberal’s are too Liberal; that they don’t represent most Americans. But remember this: Trump and his agenda lost the popular vote to Hillary by almost 3 million people!
I have no idea what makes people in large cities and near the coast lines lean liberal rather than conservative …odd. The heartland is so beautiful, serene, so I get those living there not wanting too much change. Thing is, right now the Republicans in power are too crazy for office and may well be in Russia’s pocket. Polls show this is the opinion of the majority of people in America today, right now.
It’s about 100% sad what the NRA has done with the second amendment in terms of interpretation….the assault weapon problem here in America is huge and may well flip the Congress blue. So far 9 out of 11 special elections have come up blue, and some were in places where a deep tradition of voting Republican stood. 37 seats have flipped blue since 2016 in local and National elections.
Am I in love with everything Liberal ? Maybe not, but I do love these kids for speaking out about guns, and the women for organizing against a moron of a President who embraces throwback environmental ideas….and those sex comments….?
The tide may be turning blue; We’ll see….
And now, tonight we can add Wal-Mart’s name to the list of good guys! They are pulling all assault rifles off their store shelves, even children’s toys that resemble those guns, and raising the age to 21 for purchases.
We all should wonder: is today’s press conference where President Trump seemed to back opponents of the NRA a symptom of what’s to come? Has Trump seen the voter’s will play out enough in recent elections that he thinks he has to at least straddle the gun issue and not side with the NRA? We’ll see…but there’s this:
I lived through the Nam protests and movement against Nixon. This is feeling the same and for one uttermost important reason—we were right about the Nam war then and these kids are right about America needing to adopt much tighter gun laws now.
The side of right will win, we just never know exactly when. So here’s to Dick’s everywhere, to all the companies who have already changed their relationship with the NRA and now to Wal-mart. This is called a movement. It’s time to reach out and grab the moment.
We need to keep it up! ( oh gosh….)
Franque23
These women, and children, that’s who!
So here’s my point. The children today who are working to not be shot dead in schools since this is a bad end to education are about to pick up the women movement and their vote. Once this happens the NRA and stupid blind politicians who can’t see the tsunami coming are going to be swept overboard, away and gone forever.
Yes, it’s true, once women get ‘on board’ with any movement that movement is bound to succeed even though it might take 100 years! Any married man can tell you: women don’t give up.
Case it point: the women’s suffrage movement took activists nearly 100 years to win the right to vote, but they never gave up. It all started as long ago as 1820 and the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on August 1920.
Most men, all along, thought it ridiculous that women should have the right to vote.
Did you know that The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, extends the Constitution’s protection to all citizens—and defines “citizens” as “male”; the 15th, ratified in 1870, guarantees black men the right to vote-but not women. It’s mind-boggling, right?
It was a keen switch of logic that Susan B. Anthony pounced on to insist women should have equal rights not because they were equal to Men, but because they were different! This defeated the idea that women were not equal to men so they shouldn’t vote. Really a beautiful move by Susan.
Women can show us the way…
this shot is close to my home in Micanopy…We always called this the , River Sticks,’ which is odd because from studying Latin that river leads to Hell, The name by the state is some sort of canal. Me=River Sticks.
By the way, I have worked primarily with women for the last 24 years* of my professional life in Libraries. I have seen first hand the magic of women, their force, and unending capacity to care. But mind you, as a retail shop(s) owner in the 1980 and 1990’s, the power of the pocket-book was never lost to me…Ladies were a huge market for goods, more so than men.
One of us is not the others?
World War I finally proved the worth of women to their worse half. Finally, on August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. And on November 2 of that year, more than 8 million women across the United States voted in elections for the first time.
About the first thing women did with the power to vote was to enforce prohibition. 1920 started off with women winning the vote to end/stop most men ( age 15 ) from drinking an average of seven gallons of pure alcohol per year. Whew, that’d be hard to keep up!
Anyway, what’s important to note is that it was also women who brought prohibition to an end. Pauline Sabin was the one to argue that prohibition was forcing men to drink out of the home, wrecking family time and in 1933 prohibition ended…
And what about the , ‘Tree Huggers?’ Yep, women were involved….sadly. Long ago, a group of men and women in Europe chained themselves to trees to stop deforestation in their area. Loggers, cut all of them in half while cutting the trees. But, do you see the guts of women?
This is the naked truth: we kill ourselves when we kill trees, our environment, our wildlife.
If you’d like to read a great book about a strong mother written by an appreciative son, read,
Rick Bragg’s…All over but the Shoutin’..there’s a great story here.
Did you know that more women have voted in National elections than men since 1964!?!?
So here’s my point once again, so late in this post. The children today who are working to not be shot dead in schools since this is a bad end to education are about to pick up the women and their vote. Once this happens the NRA and stupid blind politicians who can’t see the tsunami coming are going to be swept overboard, away and gone forever.
Forgive me if I repeat the obvious. Throwback men are doomed. If I can do anything to facilitate this process , I will. The NRA is over in this country and I’m glad to write it. We have been held hostage by the NRA worse than by any so-called ‘evil’ society from the middle East.
“More than 1.5 million US citizens have died as a result of guns in the last 49 years, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. … The Las Vegas shooting has once against renewed the debate over gun control in the US, where the right to bear arms is constitutionally protected and the …” **
This is not talking about the dead from World Wars of any kind.
Just make one of these 1.5 million deaths your child…how does that feel? I’m not shooting smoke, ‘up your butt,’ as the saying goes in bars. No, I’m trying to clear the air here…to make the deaths real, and to let you know the truth.
If you were a high School student with your entire life now realized ahead of you, would you like to be shot dead in school? Just asking.
Franque23 hates guns and killing of wild animals, of all things.
*I’ve been lucky enough to be married to one woman for over 37 years…
I’m asking you man-to-man: how in the world can we find enough man-power to eradicate all those man-made sexist expressions we’ve used all our lives!
I was looking at the man in the moon last night thinking, “Man, this is gonna be tough!” But a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do; it’s time to be a man about it. It’s time to man-up to the task. …
But first, I have questions…
Luna was the ancient goddess of the moon in Roman mythology…..what face do we see?
This one? This is Luna, but where’d Luna go?
Okay, I do like imaging the Man in the Moon as I do, but then again….
The Greeks had the moon crowded with perhaps better options like, Selene, Moon Goddess of dew.
Sure it’s nice to have a man smiling down at me during late night walks, but Luna may provide more protection…
Or she might provide a bit more warmth to the cold night air.
But, no, today Western Civilization sees the Man-in-the-Moon, and to be fair many traditions site the Man as being in the moon for various reasons—he’s caught stealing sticks so he ran to the moon, Dante’s inferno places him in hell up there(?). African folklore and others have reason why some kid or man was banished to the moon. And yes, even the Roman’s have a guy up there as well but was/is he with Luna?
It does seem inevitable that if a man and women were struggling to claim the moon that the ‘superior’ strength of the stick-stealing, caught thief-of-a-man would win the day, er, night over a Goddess of Love-right? This, by yesterday’s logic BTW. So much to stamp out; so much to change.
While walking ‘man’s best friend’ through the dark I knew I’d have to take it like a man. After all, I’ve been called a renaissance man by some—never mind the ‘leg-man,’ ‘G-man,’ ‘con-man,’ comments—so I know I have to be a man about this. It’s a man’s world and things are changing.
Talk about a man’s job….
It won’t be easy crawling crawl out of our ‘man-hole’ of linguistic choices. But we have to man handle the list so our words reflect not so much a gender in need but the work that needs to be done. Go on, give it your best shot. I’ll man the desk while you’re at it.
It’s time to start! You know what they say: Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise!
I guess women can sleep in. Hmmm, but I like to sleep in?!?!
I’m just gonna stop whining like a girl and be a new man about this…
We have choices to make.
Franque23
Heads up! Please copy and paste this to your friends and associates.
Mike Byerly* has written an informative letter alerting all those who live within Alachua County that regulations protecting our air and water quality are once again under attack. Developers are seeking to reduce Alachua County’s air and water standards.
The meting is scheduled for Jan. 23 at 5 PM. Obviously, a Tuesday meeting held at 5 PM in the county’s Administration building makes it difficult for those who work 9 to 6 or 8 to 5 PM to attend. I suggest those who wish to let their voices be heard or their presence seen at this meeting request an early leave from work on Jan. 23 so they might attend this 5 PM meeting.
One more thing–why not request that any further meetings that address any changes to our county’s air, water or land use be scheduled on weekend days or no earlier than 6:30 PM on week days so voters can attend?
Here’s Mike Bylery’s letter:
“If you have only enough time or motivation to attend one government meeting in 2018 in defense of our environment, make it Jan. 23rd, 5 PM, at the County Administration building. The stakes are high, and turnout could make the difference.
Alachua County is a “charter county.” That means we have a charter, sort of like a constitution, that is the ultimate law on certain matters, and it can only be changed by popular vote. Back in 2000, Alachua County voters overwhelming approved an amendment to its charter that authorized the County to establish countywide minimum protections for water and air. Then, for 18 years, nothing happened. Finally, after several years of analysis and an exhaustive outreach campaign with stakeholder groups, the County is poised to adopt two important new water quality regulations that would substantially reduce the harmful impacts of future development. But this effort may die on the vine.
First up, and the subject of the January meeting, is simply a proposal to extend the County’s current wetland protections to the entire County. Currently, they only apply in the unincorporated County. The County’s standards are significantly stronger than the default state standards in use by most of the County’s municipalities, which allow developers to simply pay to destroy wetlands. Consequently, a number of large landholders have annexed into adjacent municipalities in recent years in an attempt to evade the County’s wetland protections. Plum Creek/Weyerhaeuser is the most glaring example, with large annexations into Hawthorne and to the north of Gainesville.
Second, later this spring, the County will consider whether to adopt new standards for future growth that would reduce the pollutants in storm water runoff that foul our streams, springs, and drinking water supplies. I’ll provide more information on this as the date for action approaches.
Characteristically, the meetings so far have been during the day and largely unpublicized, so the only feedback that County Commissioners and staff have received has been from paid representatives of the folks opposed to any new law: developers and the smaller municipalities. The County Commission needs to learn whether the public at large cares. Also characteristically, the threat is not so much that the County Commission will do nothing, but that they’ll accept so many “fine print” compromises that the final law is completely neutered, in ways that only the professionals can understand.
The time has come to translate talk into action. The Commission is divided on whether to act. Please attend, and bring a friend.”
Good job Mike Byerly! Now it’s up to the people of Alachua County to respond by showing up at this Jan 23rd meeting, 5 PM in the downtown Administration building…See you there!
Franque23
Gerald Franquemont.
*Who is Mike Byerly?
http://www.gainesville.com/opinion/20160729/mike-byerly-standing-up-for-sustainability
Yep– the loyal Republicans who have clamored for decades about States Rights verses a strong central Government of rampant legislation now approve the concealed weapon permit from one state to another no matter how any state’s populace has voted on the issue. Wow…
How’s about all the taxes ‘righties’ have clamored against for sooo long but now their guys in Congress are all ‘feel good’ about double taxation! Yes, that’s right…er it’s wrong, but whatever,…Thing is if you limit the deductions of ANY state paid states or local taxes than people’s earnings that paid those taxes will once again be taxed as income–a second time, get it? So Republicans now promote double taxation! Let’s all stand up and cheer…right? Or, should we all take a knee?
We all need to take a walk in my ancestor’s garden and talk things over….
Trump’s team of slurred meaning slips up to the idea that Trump’s Mar A Lago estate in Palm County is the so-called, “Southern White House.” But that’s “Not true,” say every sense of reality. Trump owns this semi-palace and he has Doubled the fees paid by public users since his election!!! Gee–wait, what? Is Trump profiting from his Office?!??! Er, duh!
“Hello! Hello! Trump’s privately profiting off his office–that’s illegal…”
A zillion meme’s and posted notes have expressed despair at the over-all doings of this current administration-cutting the knees out from under the needy, undermining our healthcare system and stashing billions of tax cuts for the rich into his next run for office. And then we have this administration increasing taxes on anyone not extremely wealthy via a misnomer-ed ‘tax cut’ that will really be a tax increase as years pass for anyone not in the top 1% of tax payers.
But I felt this reader, (okay-my wife) said a few things very well in this….
“It is a dilemma. I know that I generally do tend to think that people who don’t see things my way are wrong. But there is so much history to prove that the GOP solutions have never worked, and have been destructive, and have led to the economic disparity and shrinking of the middle class, I find it so hard to respect people who don’t look at the history,or science, or have some agenda that I find offensive. Especially where bigotry and exclusion come into play. I prefer the motto “Humanity matters”. It is hard to disagree and still maintain some semblance of a relationship. But that leads to further polarization. Arguing doesn’t work, because minds are fixed. There is a belief that Trump will turn the economy around for everyone by bringing business back.If so, I hate the cost, and have a secret hope that businesses have learned the lessons of lawsuits when their lack of regulation led to illness and death. Everyone should re-visit Erin Brockovich. Things were not working for too many, especially in the rust belt, and there is a division between the needs of urban and rural voters. Maybe the world will move ahead in energy and conservation of resources without the GOP and US government. But I sure hate that about 30% of my income goes to taxes that ultimately do not provide me with a better quality of life, but a worse one,”
My way-smart wife….
Well, like it or not, the entire American work force is about to be , “Trickled down” upon…get towels.
The environmental blood bath featured by this administration is a wretched thing to behold. Somewhere, somehow, this group of right-winged Christians in Washington have forgotten it’s our charge to care and nurture this God-given Earth…
Ireland’s earth
It’s been a great ninth year for this glob post; readers from sixty-four countries read this glob last year, a bit down from sixty-seven countries the previous year and I have to wonder: did a few countries get blown up or something? Hope not, but our ex-security head gives us a 3 in 10 chance of having a nuclear blow-out with North Korea. Who likes those odds? Not me.
Those are the odds?
I like Peace; love. How about you?
We are too perfectly normal.
Much more to come this year. I’ve an entire side of my family you don’t know much about and it’s a wonderful, American story. Plus, I’ve loads of pictures from 2017 yet to post on gardening fun and family cheer! See you soon….
We can do this thing. We can get our country together again, strong, back on track and be World Leaders once again.
Cheers for 2018.
Franque23
