WE’RE BACK!

And we’re here to stay!

The Christian Science Monitor notes that democracy is thriving sans U.S. aid or benefit. Obviously these are areas in which the Bush administration haven’t stuck their noses in too deeply.

Consider these developments:

•Fierce fighting that threatened to engulf Lebanon in a new civil war last month was quelled when factions reached a political accord with the help of Qatar - though with the US nowhere in sight.

•Israel and Syria have begun talks aimed at reaching a peace treaty - with Turkey as the go-between.

•Brazil, looking for partners with which to expand its diplomatic reach, suddenly finds China eclipsing the US - particularly in food trade.

Perhaps, come January, democracy will once again thrive here in the good ol’ US of A..

This bird was out walking around my parents’ front yard this morning. QuestionGirl, is this a seagull?

Had one heck of a storm last night. Is it possible the poor thing got blown here from so far away?

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Greetings, from Buck!

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Please forgive the mess. Blue Herald is going though a much-needed WordPress upgrade.

Everything should be back to normal tomorrow (Friday, the 9th).

Thank You!

I drove my Mom to my Uncle’s house yesterday for a visit. In South Florida, there’s only one way across the state…….ALLIGATOR ALLEY. We took the old two lane alligator alley over. I hadn’t been through there since the 70’s. It drives straight through the Everglades. Look to the canals on the side of the road, and there’s gators everywhere sunning themselves. We stopped at a rest area and they had a platform where you could watch them. On the way home last night, we saw a bobcat. No video of him, though.

On a funny note, (which really isn’t funny but you have to laugh or you’ll cry) my Mom has been wanting to visit her brother for some time. She talks about it all the time. I drive 4.5 hours to get there and when we pull in the driveway she says, “Now where are we again?” And my cousin tells me that my Uncle, who is 85, is sneaking around trying to buy a car because he thinks he should still be able to drive. So, if we’re lucky, the two of them won’t hop a bus to a car dealer and drive away.

We could all use a little love right about now. Sing along!

Discovery Channel: I Love the World

This is my nothing to do with politics post of the day, because I LOVE all things water……and air. Shipwrecks fascinate me. Every time I read of one being discovered I go on to fascinate about sailing on the high seas and what it must have been like. They suppose this ship is from around 1400-1500. I’m guessing there was nothing glamorous about it. One of my favorite movies is the Mel Fisher story.

The ship was laden with tons of copper ingots, elephant tusks, gold coins - and cannons to fend off pirates.

But it had nothing to protect it from the fierce weather off a particularly bleak stretch of inhospitable African coast, and it sank 500 years ago.

Now it has been found, stumbled upon by De Beers geologists prospecting for diamonds off Namibia.
“If you’re mining on the coast, sooner or later you’ll find a wreck,” archaeologist Dieter Noli said in an interview Thursday.

Namdeb Diamond Corp., a joint venture of the government of Namibia and De Beers, first reported the April 1 find in a statement Wednesday, and planned a news conference in the Namibian capital next week.

The company had cleared and drained a stretch of seabed, building an earthen wall to keep the water out so geologists could work. Noli said one of the geologists saw a few ingots, but had no idea what they were. Then the team found what looked like cannon barrels.

The geologists stopped the brutal earth-moving work of searching for diamonds and sent photos to Noli, who had done research in the Namibian desert since the mid-1980s and has advised De Beers since 1996 on the archaeological impact of its operations in Namibia.

The find “was what I’d been waiting for, for 20 years,” Noli said. “Understandably, I was pretty excited. I still am.”

Noli’s original specialty was the desert, but because of Namdeb’s offshore explorations, he had been preparing for the possibility of a wreck, even learning to dive.

After the discovery, he brought in Bruno Werz, an expert in the field, to help research the wreck. Noli has studied maritime artifacts with Werz, who was one of his instructors at the University of Cape Town.

Judging from the notables depicted on the hoard of Spanish and Portuguese coins, and the type of cannons and navigational equipment, the ship went down in the late 1400s or early 1500s, around the time Vasco de Gama and Columbus were plying the waters of the New World.

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No this isn’t a post about Dick Cheney. Dark Lord. It’s a beer. My daughter works at a microbrewery in the Chicago area. She called me this morning. She’s all fired up about work tonight. She’s stoked because she knows she’ll walk away with bulging pockets full of cash tonight, tomorrow and Sunday. The Three Floyds Brewing Co. in Munster, Indiana brews a stout, Three Floyds DarkLord Russian Imperial stout, which they sell one day a year, that day being tomorrow. Dark Lord Day. Beer enthusiasts come from all over the country to buy it. Since they are in the area, they will also be drinking at the microbrewery she works at, which will feature 18 different beers on tap over the weekend. I am NOT a beer drinker. Can’t stand the stuff. I had no idea there were such enthusiasts out there. Learn something new every day.

I received an email asking if I could post this job alert. Happy to do it.

Field Organizer for local Working Families Win Project

Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) is the nation’s most experienced independent advocacy organization whose lobbying philosophy is based on democratic action - motivating our grassroots members to lobby their Senators and Representatives as constituent-advocates.

Working Families Win is ADA’s community-based organizing project. The program is based on the belief that for working families across the country, the economy is not working. Good jobs continue to leave our communities and are replaced by lower wage jobs, often without benefits. Daily living costs are skyrocketing, yet wages for most workers are stagnant at best. Many of the workers who are suffering the most from the current economy are not meaningfully engaged in the political process.

Americans for Democratic Action believes that when working people are organized to support real alternatives to today’s economic policies, demand that candidates support these alternatives too, and persuade their neighbors that we have a clear choice, real change will occur.

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