1. Stephen Bates, over at the Yellow Doggerel Democrat has an interesting piece on Virginia Tech's building segregated facilities to accommodate their Saudi benefactors.
   
   
2. I called my mother to gloat over my being a majority in the state, while she's a minority. I gloated a few years ago last year when everyone was a minority. She said that since ( Read more... )

Here is where I confess. I watched part of the coverage on TV last night, on purpose. I sought it out. I was sucked in by the NPR descriptions and then realized that I wanted to see what they were talking about. I saw the caisson (I love how the press talks about a caisson as if they always knew what one was and didn't have to look it up) ( Read more... )

This started as a post in PDR's journal, but I stared typing and couldn't stop and realized it was more personal than just a reply in someone else's journal ( Read more... )

Yesterday, I saw a bumper sticker that said "9-11 We Will Never Forget ( Read more... )

I read Cold Mountain over my do nothing NewYears, and I really enjoyed the book. It was heavily researched, and a lot of the elements of the story were passed down to the author by his ancestors. I read it on the recommendation of my mother, and I read her first edition copy of the book in nearly one sitting. It was engrossing and engaging, and I ( Read more... )

The Farnsworth House, one of the most important places in modern architecture, was auctioned today. It was designed by Mies vander Roe in the 50s for a Chicago physician as a get away home. It is almost entirely glass on the outside, and it was designed to blend with the trees around it ( Read more... )

This week, I've heard a lot on the radio about Dr. King's march on Washington in 1963. My mother was there. She was working on radiocarbon dating for the National Geological Survey, and she was still in college, not quite 19 years old. She said that a lot of people didn't go to work that day because they thought there might be looting or rioting ( Read more... )

I was lying in bed, listening to "Weekend Edition" on NPR, when they broke in with the news. This is so depressingly sad. I remember in 1987 there were a few funerals in my neighborhood because the astronauts lived nearby. NASA is so important here. Nearly every year of my childhood, we'd have field trips to mission control. I've been on the ( Read more... )