Things that keep me awake at night...

Am I alone in thinking that there is zero moral equivalency between some donor to the Clinton Foundation getting to sit at the Chinese ambassador's table and what is being perpetrated upon all of us by the Republicans in the name of their NRA donors and lobbyists?

Summer's almost gone...

Not officially, of course.  But tomorrow morning I meet with the chair of our department (Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work) to strategize our upcoming departmental "retreat," which takes place a week from today.  I have to meet since I'm the "coordinator" (they don't give it the respect of "director") of our anthropology program, which includes a BA in Anthropology as well as a Minor in Anthropology.

So, how did I spend my summer?  Not writing blog posts, obviously.  This summer was a staycation for me, with twice-weekly visits to physical therapy to help with my aging back and legs (I turned 71 on July 8).  I tried to get out, on the days I didn't have PT, to walk at least a mile or so, but it was hard because July was a very hot, dry month, with temps in the high 90s almost every day and "feel-like" temps over 100º.  My longest walk was about 4 miles, shortest was usually a 0.7 mile loop in a nearby park.

About that 0.7 mile loop.  I've decided that when I talk about it, instead of saying I walked "a bit less than a mile" I'm going to start saying "I walked a bit more than a kilometer."  Sounds better, right?  A kilometer is about 0.62 miles.  I know this from being a runner and converting the 5K and 10K runs into miles and vice versa.

August 6th, again

So, it's that day of the year again.





On August 6, 1945, about a month after I was born, my country committed what has to be by any logic or reckoning the most egregious single-event war crime of all time. And then, a couple days later, we did it again. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People are still living with the effects of these two atomic bombs being dropped on their cities.


And yet, we continue to behave as though these weapons are rational, and we may even elect a President one of whose midnight twitter-fests could easily result in a nuclear weapon being sent on its way to Russia or North Korea, or somewhere.