The Nature of Things

"This week in birds" is taking the day off to celebrate the blogger's husband's birthday. We'll be back as usual next weekend. In the meantime, I hope you have an opportunity to be outdoors enjoying the birds and the environment and that you will remember to take whatever action is in your power to protect them both.

My husband and I went to perform our civic duty yesterday by voting early in our state's primary. As I was presenting my identification to the registrar on duty, I had a thought.  The state of Texas, in its infinite wisdom, has decreed that all persons coming to vote must present a picture ID to thwart the rampant voter fraud which they have convinced themselves has been occurring here. They've convinced themselves because it gives them the opportunity to do what they want to do anyway. Which is, frankly, to discourage "those people" from voting.  Anyway, it occurred to me as I presented my voter's registration card and my Texas driver's license that the voter's registration card is now superfluous. The state refuses to accept it as proof of anything and yet they continue to print and mail them to us.  How many millions of dollars could the state save by simply stopping that practice? I mean, if the cards are worthless as proof, why spend millions of our t...

It's been an interesting week, and by interesting I mean mostly inexplicable. It may be only explicable by accepting the founding principle of my husband's oft-stated philosophy; namely, "People are stupid." *~*~*~* I was frankly surprised by Houston's rejection of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) in Tuesday's election. I thought Houston was better and smarter than that. In fact, the Houston that I know IS better and smarter than that. Unfortunately, those people did not get out and vote, and that continues to be a problem for liberals/progressives in off-year elections: They just don't vote in the same numbers and with the same enthusiasm that they do in presidential election years. And when we don't vote, we lose. That seems to have been the case also in Kentucky, a state that has benefited more than just about any other from the Affordable Care Act. Hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians who never had health insurance now have it because of ...

Random thoughts on a Thursday afternoon : A few days ago, another privileged young male who thought that the women of the world owed him subservience and sex on demand made the decision to take out on a bunch of innocent people his frustration over the fact that the women of the world didn't agree with him. He killed six outright and grievously injured several others. Sadly, it's an oft-recurring phenomenon in our gun-happy society. In response to this atrocity, as has become the norm when such things happen, a hashtag account was started on Twitter - #YesAllWomen . The purpose of the account was to give women a place to vent about being sexually harassed and demeaned, discriminated against, raped, and all the other everyday injustices that women in this society experience because of their gender. The response was overwhelming. Very soon, the utterly predictable backlash from the misogynistic multitudes began. There were responses on Twitter and elsewhere deriding these women...