The Frogs of Thread City

These Froggies are not just whimsy, they illustrate the tale of our colonial ancestors. It seems that, on one early spring pre-dawn, the settlers awakend to a terrific noise, and fearing that it was an Indian attack, they rushed out in the pitch darkness, and started shooting in the general direction of the noise. When the sun rose, they found themselves in the swamp, and the noise was hundreds of frogs, which had thawed out and were very frisky....and outspoken about it!

Willimantic is not just for frogs, it was the location of large thread mills - hence the name: Thread City.

Calla Lillies from the springtime - man, couldn't we just skip to spring??

View up the stream 

The fishies are lovely, hanging out with the toad lilly 

The littlest pond plants, called cat's tongue, for their furry surface

One of the many boats, coming in to tie up at the lobster shack for lunch.

I had a problem with a post that I was preparing,(see below) so I've left these pics for your enjoyment.

Harleys, at the lobster shack at lunchtime 

The bridge near the center of town - those huge cement blocks are the counterweights to the drawbridge, and the whole thing is lifted with only two 40hp motors!  

...the sign says it all. 

&*$%^%)(*&$# blogging!!!

I came back from a nice, relaxing day out by the shore, and I was just going to finish up an essay that I've been working on, about Unions. I opened up the blogger Dashboard, and looked for the draft, . . . . and guess what??? It wasn't there. I thought I saved it - NO! I know I saved the frikkin' thing! several times!!

Darn, you know you can never write it from memory the same way twice! grumble grumble arrrgh!

Aaaahhh well, back to the drawing board. I guess it's MS Word from now on....

This is a stream on my way to work, lovely!

cross post from Rexroth's Daughter and OldWhiteLady

Bombs Away!
Chris Clarke over at Creek Running North has posted about google bombing Intelligent Design so that the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) comes up when people google search on the words "Intelligent Design." We are happy to contribute to this worthwhile cause by providing these links.

Chris provided the following excellent example of how a google bomb actually works. Every time someone searches on Miserable Failure, the President's biography shows up. How beautiful is that?
Great idea! Count me in....

Rain!

Ahhhh, after a week of opressive heat and humidity, heat lightning every evening, and drought on the ground, we have rain!!!

Vibrant Cone Flower - Echinacea 

The most fragrant lily of all 

Green Dragon On an Ice World 

It's still there! Third Day, knock on wood.

Snow Tortured Tree

Here's a picture I took this last winter. Remember, it could be worse - enjoy the heat while it's still here!

Support Cindy Sheehan

Hell hath no fury as a Mother bereft....

And of all the grassroots movements, the most powerful and the most enduring have stemed from the desire of a mother to eradicate the cause of their child's death.


Shakespeare's Sister has a whole group of articles and information on Cindy's vigil.

My Daughter's wedding: Flowers, Champagne & Tiramisu cake

Gay Marraige - what's all the hoohoo about, anyway?

The United Church of Christ became the first mainline denomination to support same-sex marriage as a civil right this past weekend. The decision is likely to further polarize conservative and liberal congregations, church leaders in Connecticut and elsewhere say.
.............from a couple of weeks ago

My husband's church is part of this churchly alliance, and the decision of the church's General Synod in Atlanta has caused some soul searching in the local congregation. The reactions vary from enthusiastic endorsement, thru hesitant habituation, to displeased divergency. I couldn't relate to all the hoohoo.

To me, it's simple: marraige is the highest expression of the love between two people, and anyone who wants to limit it is acting against that expression of love. The expression of love is the highest virtue of the human race. Hence, to paraphrase our monkey in chief, you're either for people living with Love, or.....

To analyse it further, lets look at it in another context. The human race is fast reproducing ourselves right out of resources. (overpopulation) We should be limiting our reproduction, not enshrining the capacity! We should be giving Kudos to those who for whatever reason, decide not to procreate. The gay community would logically be more prone to be childless than the hetero would...

Here's a controversial idea that is probably not workable, but... Perhaps we should assign each person the right to parent one child. That would be replacement rate minus a few each generation. Slowly we would achieve sustainability. For people who do not want to exercise that right, they could give or sell their right to others who want more than two. They would perhaps be choosy about who they assigned that right to. They might want to stay in communication with the family and "their" child - as an auntie or uncle. We might have more communication between people with different viewpoints, and more tolerance and consideration between people.

Or, how about this one: Marriage is of primary benefit to the children of the marraige. It makes it more probable that those children have more than one adult supporting them(in every way). There is currently no law(that I know of) that prohibits anyone from reproducing. A lesbian couple could both get themselves knocked up any day of the week, and there are a couple of different ways that gay men could and do end up with custody of children. Therefore, if marraige is good for the children concerned, it is our duty as a society to allow them that protection.

Now, perhaps we can look at it from the perspective of our closest mammalian example in terms of hunting methods: the wolf pack. Homo Sapiens hunter gatherer culture is most like a wolf pack, and canine methods of hunting are closest to prehistoric human methods. In a wolf pack, there are only two breeders, the alpha female, and the alpha male. The rest of the pack plays with the babies, provides for the babies, watches over the babies, and disciplines the babies. What was that old saw about "...it takes a village..."

And how about this one: ALL PEOPLE ARE CREATED EQUAL!!! What right does anyone have to deny some of us comfort and happiness for any bogus reason?

...and Finally: The surest way to know that you've got your head stuck waaay up your ass is when for you to be happy someone else has to be miserable.

Basilisk - a sub genre of dragon! 

Real Groaners

Ok here are the latest jokes that my friend sent:


1. A bicycle can't stand alone because it is two-tired.

2. What's the definition of a will? It's a dead giveaway.

3. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

4. A backward poet writes inverse.

5. In democracy it's your vote that counts; In feudalism it's your count that votes.

6. She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but broke it off.

7. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

8. If you don't pay your exorcist you get repossessed.

9. With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.

10. Show me a piano falling down a mineshaft and I'll show you A-flat minor.

11. When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.

12. The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.

13. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

14. You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.

15. Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.

16. He often broke into song because he couldn't find the key.

17. Every calendar's days are numbered.

18. A lot of money is tainted. 'Taint yours and 'taint mine.

19. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

20. He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

21. A plateau is a high form of flattery.

22. The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

23. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

24. When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.

25. Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine.

26. When an actress saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye.

27. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.

28. Santa's helpers are subordinate Clauses.

29. Acupuncture is a jab well done.

30. Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeat.

We Spent a Day at Gillette's Castle

We started out with this luscious Fruit salad, It was such a feast for the eyes that I had to take a snapshot of it......yummm!

Coming in the front gate, the castle sits on a hill above the Connecticut River. It has it's own landing, where the actor who built it kept his yacht. The estate has extensive property, and Gillette loved railroads as well as ships, so he built his own private rail line looping around the place.

I love watergardens, and this one is very pretty, tho' without fish.

~ 

~ 

When you come up the entrance stairs, you enter this grand living room. The massive fieldstone fireplace serves as a backdrop for the docent's introduction. The actor Gillette (nothing to do with razors) defined Sherlock Holmes for the generation before Basil Rathbone and movies, introduced the distinctive hat to the character, and made about 3 mil turn of the century dollars doing it. He, having to pay no income tax (it wasn't invented yet) spent a third of that income building this house.

This house was built in the arts & crafts style, every bit of woodwork was done by hand, and specifically for this house. Gillette is the gentleman on the left (in the photo).