Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
Lexiphanic
Lexiphanic (lek-si-FAN-ik) Using pretentious words and language. After Lexiphanes, a bombastic speaker, in the satire of the same name by Lucian (2nd century CE). From Greek lexis (speech, diction, word) + phainein (to show).
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The Crying of Water by Arthur Symons
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Variation on the word Sleep by Margaret Atwood
Good Bones by Maggie Smith
Word origins (as a writer you should be aware of this sort of thing)
Intrepid comes from the Latin word intrepidus, itself formed by the combination of the prefix in-, meaning “not,” and the adjective trepidus, meaning “alarmed.”
Umbriferous (uhm-BRIF-uh-ruhs) Casting a shadow. From Latin umbra (shade,
shadow) + ferre (to bear). Some related words are umbrella, adumbrate, and
somber.
Abracadabra. A poem by Mia Kang
for Erich and Patricia
List of things to
banish
Can include words,
people, theoretical apparatuses
Can take the form of a
grocery list, a scientific experiment, or a manifesto
Can read like a
personal ad of unwanting
Can summon aid to help
with banishing
Can be uncertain of
what will remain
Can have no positive
mission statement
Can be written in a
language other than language
Can circulate amongst
FRIENDS ONLY
Can evade being
imagined, written, embodied, archived
Can go like this
Can make itself
irrelevant
Can include buildings,
brushstrokes, and other abominations
Can mean my way of life
is unlivable
Can mean my life is as
yet unlived
Can mean I must become
a menace to my enemies
Can undo futurity
forever in favor of *******
Can remake futurity
into someone who doesn’t recognize herself
Can punctuate the
present like a cup of coffee or a Monday
Can be dreamed up and
shot down and elongated
Can tell us something
Can include forms and
fantasies, even the ones getting us by
Can instigate an
interregnum
Can be unfinished
Can include hope
hopefully
Can be blank
But don’t kid yourself
It isn’t
And it can’t include
History
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The Great Black Heron
The Great Black Heron
Denise
Levertov - 1923-1997
Since
I stroll in the woods more often
than
on this frequented path, it's usually
trees
I observe; but among fellow humans
what
I like best is to see an old woman
fishing
alone at the end of a jetty,
hours
on end, plainly content.
The
Russians mushroom-hunting after a rain
trail
after themselves a world of red sarafans,
nightingales,
samovars, stoves to sleep on
(though
without doubt those are not
what
they can remember). Vietnamese families
fishing
or simply sitting as close as they can
to
the water, make me recall that lake in Hanoi
in
the amber light, our first, jet-lagged evening,
peace
in the war we had come to witness.
This
woman engaged in her pleasure evokes
an
entire culture, tenacious field-flower
growing
itself among the rows of cotton
in
red-earth country, under the feet
of
mules and masters. I see her
a
barefoot child by a muddy river
learning
her skill with the pole. What battles
has
she survived, what labors?
She's
gathered up all the time in the world
—nothing
else—and waits for scanty trophies,
complete
in herself as a heron.
An attack on those least able to defend themselves
Biden and Xavier Becerra
I can’t come to grips with the fact that we actually need to protect
orphans and foster kids from lunatics who want to change the children’s sex.
If these were kids from stable homes with at least one parent in place,
this would never be an issue. But it is an issue. So much so that Rep. Jim
Banks, has unveiled a bill to protect the adoption rights of parents who want
to raise kids based on biological sex.
Remarkably the bill protects the kids from the loons in the child welfare
agencies…who are charged with housing and protecting these children from
loons…. preventing them from denying prospective adopters who say they will
raise kids in a manner consistent with the minor’s biological sex.
The increasingly bizarre US Department of Health and Human Services
announced a rule aimed at ensuring minors are placed in homes accepting of
their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Okay, sounds harmless enough but in the fine print…. weasels love fine
print…..the rule "would require that child welfare agencies ensure that
each child in their care who identifies as LGBTQI+ receive a safe and
appropriate placement and services that help them thrive. The proposed rule
would protect LGBTQI+ youth by placing them in environments free of hostility,
mistreatment, or abuse based on the child’s LGBTQI+ status. And the proposed
rule would require that caregivers for LGBTQI+ children are properly and fully
trained to provide for the needs of the child related to the child’s
self-identified sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender
expression"
Kids in these circumstances are traumatized, they will more than likely
fail in this life at everything they do and they will die relatively
young.
Those are the undisputable facts, the last thing they need is this crap.
Banks’ bill would prevent child welfare agencies and related groups that
receive federal funding from getting those funds if they refuse prospective
parents who insist against the child’s stated LGBTQ status.
That includes prospective parents who say they will refuse a child’s
desire for medical, surgical, pharmacological, and psychological treatment if
it is inconsistent with their biological sex.
In the matter of foster kids, foster carers and agencies will have to use a transgender
child’s “identified pronouns, chosen name, and allow the child to dress in an
age-appropriate manner that the child believes reflects their self-identified
gender identity and expression”.
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra thinks that messing with these
traumatized and directionless children even more is a positive thing. “This is
going to change the complexion of how we view foster care treatment for our
foster kids, but more importantly, how we look at the people who we rely on to
care for foster kids.”
Try to sell Gay to his rich kids and see what happens to
you.
The people who are fighting this rule are the many
faith-based providers of foster care, but you see, that’s why the whack jobs
at Health and Human Services wrote the rule in the first place.
When the government goons who wrote this rule put it in
print they knew it violated the US Constitution and discriminated unfairly
against Christians who hold traditional orthodox beliefs on marriage, the
family, and sexual morality by forcing them from the sector.
Really what this is about is two things, one is to force
fostering parents and related religious agencies to override their
consciences and the other is to push the Catholic Church…which raised me
within the Connecticut foster care system…out of the fostering and adoptions
services they offer. Without faith-based organizations and foster homes,
the foster care system, which survivors only through miracles, would
collapse, plain and simple because the rule would severely limit the number of
available foster homes. What that will do is force the federal and state
agencies to pour even more money into a foster system that doesn’t work.
Let me simplify that…in the end, the ones who will get hurt
are kids from dirt-poor backgrounds who have no way to defend themselves, but,
you see, that’s the brilliance of the government plan.
Island
Island
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Intuition
As I
approach seven decades, I have become much more aware that aging is many
things, an accumulation of changes that happened in quick succession causing
some parts of me to grow while other parts of me decline.
I’ve
become more cognizant of the important matters in my life, which, more and
more, are always things, while, willfully, I am less aware of the
insignificant, which, more and more, are people.
You have
no doubt heard the expression “Age is just a number” is a dumber way of saying
that our sense of spirit, my eternal being, has gotten better and seems to get
better with every passing day.
I think
this change is due largely to my growing and ever-expanding reliance on my
intuition. Unlike the use of my legs or the ability to lift heavy things, my
intuition has gotten better with age, and the more I rely on it, the more
reliable it has become. I feel wiser for using it and I wonder if the use
of our intuition is a natural part of aging. When we are young, for
men anyway, we can rely on our quickness and our strength, as we age, at least
in my case, fast no longer defines me, in fact, I avoid fast things now, they
tire me out. As I said, my terrific strength, built by decades of
manual labor that I hated is far, far less than it
was. Nowadays, before lifting anything seemingly heavy, I have to
ask myself “Is it worth a heart attack?” a real possibility in my
case. Of course, we have to be careful in our use of intuition because as we
age, cognition and emotion impact the decision processes. It's simply a part of
life.
The
older we get our deliberative processes, the ability to critically examine an
issue lessens. That is balanced out by our stability and emotional
processing increases. The bottom line is it all balances out. By relying more
on our stability of emotions and less on our declining deliberative faculties,
the quality of their decisions is significantly improved. As Camus wrote, “To grow old is to move
from passion to compassion.”
December 7, Pearle Harbor Day
“They shall not
grow old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years
condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.”
Laurence Binyon
I haven't read it but I intend too.....right up my alley
A true story of glamour and tragedy
Review:
“American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the ‘It’ Girl, and
the Crime of the Century” by Paula Uruburu
DEC
6, 2023
This
book, published in 2008, isn’t new but neither is the story of love, loss,
betrayal and passion. Evelyn Nesbit’s connection to the Adirondack region is
through her stay at Chateaugay Lake in 1915, while hiding from hordes of
reporters during her husband’s second murder trial in New York City.
In
1900, when Florence Evelyn was 15 years old, she moved from Pittsburgh to New
York City with her mother (confusingly named, Evelyn Florence) and brother.
Painters, sculptors and photographers had already re-created her likeness so
often that her face was everywhere: magazines, advertisements, newspapers and
even in church stained-glass windows. In NYC, the trend continued. She was
slightly built, a “waif” who stood barely 5 feet tall, due mostly to
malnourishment her entire childhood. Her father died when she was 11 years old,
leaving a financial mess for her ill-equipped mother to untangle. Once her
neglectful mother realized her daughter’s beauty was a valuable currency,
Florence Evelyn became the family breadwinner until her mother remarried and
cut off all communications with her daughter.
Although
Florence Evelyn read every book she could find and dreamed of fulfilling her
father’s dream that she attend Vassar College, instead of attending high
school, Florence Evelyn worked in a department store during the day and posed
for painters and sculptors in the evenings. Her younger brother worked in the
same store while their mother dreamed of becoming a clothing designer. She
often left the children with family members for months at a time while she
searched for work with no results, and the family continued to live in poverty.
Even after moving to New York City for Florence Evelyn’s career, they fared
little better. She continued to work during the day, posing for artists. In the
evenings, she played the role of a Spanish maiden in the musical Florodoro, and
then she partied into the mornings. She was 16, with inconsistent parental
supervision. During this time, she changed her name to Eve Nesbit.
Men
began to notice the girl’s beauty. She became an obsession for countless, much
older, men. On a nightly basis, her dressing room was filled with flowers, love
letters and gifts from admirers she didn’t know or even care to know. Until
Stanford White, millionaire architect, made his entrance, Eve was uninterested
in the men who sought her attention. White was 46 years old, married and a
father. White kept up his carefully cultivated public persona as a patron of
the arts, but he privately preyed on young girls like Eve. She wasn’t the
first, nor the last. This is only the beginning of Eve’s story.
Even
if you don’t know the tragic story of Evelyn Nesbit, you can probably guess
some of what this young, vulnerable girl endured. But there is much more to the
fascinating story in Paula Uruburu’s book. I recommend reading the tale of the
“It” girl at the turn of the century. American Eve is a little bit like a
reality television show mixed with a melodramatic telenovella and a Bollywood
movie, but sadly true.
Style matters.........
Kudos to the Sun Central for reporting on this story. Foster kids have enough challenges with the incompetence of Embrace Families making it worse.
Central Florida foster care agency failed to pay bills,
caused kids to sleep in offices, suit says
By ANNIE MARTIN | anmartin@orlandosentinel.com | Orlando
Sentinel
December 3, 2023 at 7:00 a.m.
Embrace Families, the lead agency for foster care in Central
Florida, is being sued by a contractor that says the nonprofit owes it more
than $1.3 million for services it provided, including for children who had to
sleep in the contractor’s offices because space was not available in foster
homes.
An unexpectedly high number of children needing care have
“overwhelmed” the foster care system during the past couple of years, prompting
a crisis, according to the complaint filed last month in Orange County Circuit
Court by Children’s Home Society of Florida.
The nonprofit is alleging that Embrace Families, which
administers foster care and related services for roughly 3,000 children in
Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties, did not reimburse it for expenses,
including transportation to school and medical appointments, as well as
mentoring services, for children sleeping in Children’s Home Society offices.
Embrace Families has said in recent weeks it is in dire financial straits and
may have to abandon its foster care role.
A spokeswoman for Children’s Home Society, which serves
at-risk and foster children across the state, declined to comment on the
matter.
Maureen Brockman, a spokeswoman for Embrace Families, wrote
that the complaint concerns expenses beyond the organization’s original $32
million contract with Children’s Home Society, which ended last year. The two
nonprofits are in mediation and working to resolve the dispute, she added.
Embrace Families is in a “financial emergency” and board
members wrote last month in a letter to the state that they expect to run out
of money in the coming months. Though Embrace Families gave the required six
months notice to end the organization’s contract with the Department of
Children and Families, board members also warned the state they anticipate they
will deplete the nonprofit’s funding “much earlier than that date.”
Embrace Families is one of more than a dozen organizations
across the state that manage these services through contracts with DCF. A
spokesperson for the department told the Sentinel the department has expressed
concerns for over a year that the organization was mismanaging its finances,
placing children in unlicensed settings and providing too little support to its
contractors.
But Embrace Families has blamed rising expenses and
insufficient support from the state for its financial woes.
Board chair Angela Folger wrote in an email to the Sentinel
that the area is home to 12% of the state’s children, yet Embrace Family
receives only 7% of the funding provided to the organizations that manage
foster care across the state.
Gerry Glynn, the organization’s interim chief operating
officer, noted that disparity this week in his comments to the Orange County
Legislative Delegation, which met on Wednesday in Orlando. The group includes
state House and Senate members whose districts are located partially or
entirely in Orange County.
He also said the Legislature had agreed to fund a request
from the Embrace Families for nearly $13 million to cover deficits, but that
DCF has not released all of the money to the organization. As a result, Glynn
said, board members decided to end the state contract.
“Despite consistent efforts to collaborate, it became clear
that we were not making progress with the department,” Glynn said.
But a bill filed less than a week after board members wrote
to the state could help Central Florida in the future, he said. The
legislation, filed by Sen. Ileana Garcia, R-Miami, is intended to promote
“prevention, family preservation, and permanency” and provides financial
incentives to lead agencies in the foster care system that achieve those goals.
Embrace Families leaders have said they are penalized unfairly for keeping more
children with their families, which diminishes the funding they receive from the
state.
Glynn encouraged local lawmakers to support the bill, saying
that he thinks it could result in a funding increase of as much as 20% for
whichever organization steps in as the area’s lead agency.
“We think the children and families in Central Florida
deserve a more equitable funding formula and we would encourage you all to
continue to support that push for equitable funding,” Glynn said.
