The Nature of Things

Mississippi is the poorest state in the country. Thus, it seems fair in the scheme of things that the state receives the most money from the federal government in return for the taxes that it pays. For every one dollar sent to Washington, Mississippi receives $2.73 in benefits back to the state. Here's the chart from Talking Points Memo that shows the ratio that each state receives. As you may have heard, Mississippi is in the middle of an election campaign to decide who will represent it in the Senate. For the past 42 years, one of those people has been Thad Cochran, a Republican. But this year, he was challenged in the primary by a tea partier named Chris McDaniel and McDaniel got more votes than he did. Neither of them got enough to win outright and so there is a runoff coming up, and, frankly, it looks from here as if Cochran is on his way out . The fact that he has been responsible for ensuring much of the largesse that Mississippi has received over the years does not seem a ...

Maya's Notebook by Isabel Allende My rating: 3 of 5 stars We meet Maya Nidal when she is nineteen years old. She is a drug and alcohol addict, with rainbow-colored hair and a nose ring, on the road to self-destruction. We learn that for the first fifteen years of her life, Maya lived an idyllic existence. Not that there weren't problems. One being parental abandonment. When Maya was only weeks old, her Danish mother delivered her to her in-laws, Maya's grandparents, and left the country never to return. She relinquished all parental rights. Meanwhile, Maya's father was an airline pilot, constantly in the air. He was the definition of an absentee parent. But her grandparents, her Nini and her beloved Popo, were very much present. They raised her in a wonderful home in Berkeley, where she was surrounded by love and opportunity to fulfill her potential. Her Popo was the steadfast anchor and the moral center of her life. As a child, she begged him to promise her that he wo...

Four years ago, in another election year, as in this year, I found myself thoroughly disgusted with what passed for the conventional wisdom of the day. I posted this entry in July 2010. It was a long, hot summer that got even hotter as the weeks went by. I expect nothing less than that this year as well, but the conventional wisdom of the beltway media still seems off the mark to me. *~*~*~* Everywhere I turn these days, from radio, newspapers, television, to online news sources, (and not necessarily in that order) all the pundits are telling me that this election year is going to be a debacle for Democrats and they might even lose control of both the House and the Senate, and it's all because the electorate has gone off President Obama. They just don't like him anymore.  And on what do they base these opinions? Well, there are some polls that are not all that clear if you really look at them, but mostly what they base it on, from my perspective, is their conversations with eac...

Four years ago, in July 2010, the literary world celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird and I posted an appreciation of the much-loved book. Here it is once again. *~*~*~* There's been a lot of hullaballoo about the fiftieth anniversay of  To Kill a Mockingbird , Harper Lee's masterwork and only work. Libraries around the country, including our own  Houston Public Library , are celebrating the anniversary with special events. And well they should, for  Mockingbird  is certainly a significant book in the literary history of this country. It may not be a great book by strictly objective literary standards, but it is great in its message of humaneness and humanity and in its moral weight. Lee's story of the summer when Jem broke his arm and all the things that led up to that moment in a small town in Alabama is a simple enough tale of children beginning to learn what the world is all about and losing their innocence, but it is a...

Here is a poem that I featured on Poetry Sunday not quite a year ago - in July of last year. I found it particularly meaningful then. In the light of current news, it may be even more meaningful today. So, while I am on the road, here it is again. I hope you find it meaningful, also. *~*~*~* On July 9, the local  Houston Chronicle  featured a story about a local poet, Fady Joudah. Joudah is a Palestinian-American, a physician, husband and father, and all of these roles inform his poetry. He has a new volume of poetry,  Alight , out this year. I admit I had not heard of Joudah before, but I was touched by some of the examples of his poetry that were included in the story and, in particular, this one: Mimesis by Fady Joudah My daughter             wouldn't hurt a spider That has nested Between her bicycle handles For two weeks She waited Until it left of its own accord If you tear down the web I said It will simply know This isn't a place to ca...

The Purple Gallinule is a favorite target bird of mine when I go birding around the wetlands in Southeast Texas in the summer. Here's the post I wrote about chasing it back in the summer of 2010. ( Note : Since this post appeared, the ABA has changed the name of the Common Moorhen to Common Gallinule.) *~*~*~* The  Purple Gallinule  is one of the most colorful members of a rather uncolorful family, the rails. Specifically, they are part of the order Gruiformes , family  Rallidae . It is a family with many extended relatives, including some rather famous ones like the Whooping Crane. Purple Gallinules have some much closer and more common relatives in the American Coot and the appropriately-named Common Moorhen. The gallinules share body-type and many lifestyle habits with these two birds. Common Moorhen. Note the very red bill with its white tip. The American Coot, on the other hand, features a white bill with a white frontal shield on the forehead. Both of these birds ar...

While I am on the road, here is another blast from the past - my post from 2009 about romance novels. Let's just say it is in honor of my mother who loved them! *~*~*~* My mother was a lover of romance novels, perhaps because there was so little romance in her own life. In her later years, when she finally had the time to do so, she devoured these stories of female characters constantly in trouble and usually rescued by some strong male figure. I think they gave her a lot of pleasure and entertainment. I, of course, disdained them. Romance novels, in my view, were for the unenlightened. Educated women and feminists most certainly did not read them. I thought that all romance heroines were weak and I wanted no part of that. The novels, I believed, were thinly disguised porn for women. Not that there is anything wrong with that. In view of a recent  thoughtful essay on the subject  in the  Daily Kos , of all places, I may have to revise my view of the genre. The essay was w...