Thursday, December 22, 2011

Holiday cheer

funky Christmas treeOr, at least an end-of-year batch of cheerful and/or fascinating links to tide you through quiet afternoons of eggnog recovery. Hooray!!

Fascinating
Cheerful/hilarious!

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Quote of the day


a single candle lightedThe only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.
- Ted Hughes
(via whiskey river)

Monday, December 19, 2011

Taking the long view

Really good piece over at Hullabaloo about what liberals should be trying to accomplish not only in terms of near-term domestic policies but in terms of the future evolution of the truly global economy and its level of justice toward all. It's a little on the long and chewy side, but really important. It's hard for me to imagine the political mechanisms for this level of global organization of the "90%," even if they feel some psychological kinship already, but lack of imagination is no excuse -- we need to find a way to give labor some kind of voice/leverage before it's already plutocrats all the way down.

Go, read it already. Things to mull.

(via a Medley tweet)

Friday, December 09, 2011

Widespread frustration

Am finding this a very frustrating time to be a well-informed citizen of the world -- rabid politics is dooming us to extended recession, America seems to be near-single-handedly preventing the world from addressing global warming before it's too late, and our government is reacting violently to expressions of free speech and public demonstrations. I'm short of time, but I hate to let my "grumpy" file get any thicker before Christmas, so here's a big frustration dump from the last month or two, without much additional comment:

Thursday, December 08, 2011

Ouch

This bit at Animals Talking in All-Caps is right on, with an amusing finish to take the edge off of what would otherwise be a head-banging frustration frenzy of agreement. Wow.

(And can I just say, how does that guy keep the creativity coming at this impressive level day after day? It just blows my socks off.)


Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Tuesday kid-blogging

Been a while, I guess! Here are some of the Many Faces of Speck from recent months:

Speck gives a little smile while hanging from her chin-up bar
A playful grin during her midsummer obsession with hanging bars.

Speck with red curls and serious expression, in haircut apron
Speck during her second haircut, admiring the effects of (ahem) combing!

Speck in zebra warpaint for Halloween
Zebra warpaint for Halloween, very dramatic!