Miscellaneous Monday

 

Tributes to Dolly Parton grew under the mural in west Asheville NC following her death Aug. 25, 2026.

Actually the world is suffering from just one Donald.

Fond memories of driving up the Blue Ridge Parkway in NC to the Orchard at Altapass for home-made apple pie a la mode!

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Just a few of Jess Craven's "Extra! Extra!" good news:

A judge struck down Texas’s ban on drag shows, telling people offended by them “just don’t go.” Bravo!

Under Mayor Mamdani, NYC is expanding its free doula program and will reach thousands more expectant mothers.

Meta will pay up to $17.1 billion in a landmark settlement over social media addiction claims.

For nearly a month, the key force standing in the way of Trump’s border wall project in southeast Arizona has been a person (not always the same one) sitting in a 200-year-old tree. So far, they’re succeeding.

After months of public comment about data sharing and oversight, Asheville, NC’s City Council voted 5–2 in a packed, heated meeting to cancel the city’s contract with Flock Safety.

Arkansas Medicaid is now covering doula care, complying with a new law meant to improve maternal health.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library confirmed it would continue her legacy and send free books to millions of children around the world.

In Kansas, “bearded, burly” trans men are entering women’s restrooms to show the “absurdity” of bathroom bans.

After Olivia Rodrigo announced Friday that Daisy Chain Fields had raised $10 million for women-focused nonprofits, Melinda French Gates doubled that number, totaling the donation to $20 million.

A federal judge upheld Oregon’s plastic pollution and recycling program, the first court ruling on the legality of state laws designed to hold producers responsible for the cost of dealing with their waste.

Mapquest has joined the resistance.

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Go see the Aug 30 publication which ends with a video by teenager, Charlotte, in Valencia giving her opinion of Flock cameras to her local council. It's amazing!

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This is important to know...as well as saying Olorunnipa's name is kind of nice to do! From: Heather Cox Richardson Aug 30 "On Thursday, August 27, Tolouse Olorunnipa reported on the attempts of Republican lawmakers to restrict the ability of naturalized and dual citizens to run for office. In several states, Republican lawmakers have introduced measures to cut those Americans out of candidacy for elected positions, while in Congress, at least five Republicans have called for prohibiting them from federal judgeships, Cabinet posts, ambassadorships, and congressional seats. The push has come in the wake of the rise of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani and other naturalized U.S. citizens whose policy positions those like South Carolina representative Nancy Mace consider un-American. These policies are, of course, the ones voters elected people like Mamdani to put into place. In her comments to Olorunnipa, Mace said: “This isn’t personal. It’s about what standard we want for the people entrusted with enormous power over the American people.” Her word choice was revealing. Our elected officials are entrusted with the enormous power of the American people, not over them." ---------------------------- Climate change anyone? In case you haven't looked at many of the details: "A horrific flash flood in the Himalayas has left more than 500 dead and thousands missing in Nepal and China – and it appears to have begun with collapsing ice. A huge chunk of glacier on the north face of Langtang Lirung sheared off and slid down the mountain, triggering a gigantic landslide of rock and ice that ultimately registered as a 5.2 magnitude earthquake when it reached the valley floor.    “When a glacier of that scale collapses, it generates a lot of water, and then there’s a cascading sequence of events… where the water and the sediment combine and bulks up and creates the flood," explained Andrew Mackintosh, a glaciologist at Monash University.    The resulting flood wave traveled down a nearby river valley, washing away a border crossing between Nepal and China, wiping out bridges, sweeping away homes and people, and caking the landscape with mud.   We know that climate change made this event more likely. Himalayan glaciers and, indeed, all over the world — are rapidly retreating. As Ashim Sattar, an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar who studies Himalayan glaciers, said: "there’s a very straight link between climate change and these types of disasters." And once again, those who contribute least to the climate crisis (per person carbon emissions in Nepal are 20 times less than those of a typical American or Canadian) are most affected." From Katharine Hayhoe -------------------- When I was a student at the University of Florida (Gainesville) in the 1980s, I lived in student housing with my youngest son. Upstairs were a couple and their little baby from Nepal. He was studying forestry and she knew almost no English. They were the most gentle loving people I knew, and I remember taking them to the Atlantic beach so she could see the ocean for the first time. I think of how they left America to return to Nepal where he was going to help plant trees and manage forests, and their son is now in his 40s (as is my son!) ------------------ And I can't postpone my ire over the murder of the beautiful cherry trees:

Launch of SpaceX hauling a new batch of Starlink v2-mini satellites for their second-generation high-speed low earth orbit internet satellite constellation.  Seen on 8.25.26 5.33 am Blue Ridge Parkway Bedford Cnty VA

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Sharing with Monday Murals

The Medial Woman, plus academic migration to Canada

 

Her Sacred Wild

e are now in the time

of the Medial Woman*.

She comes in my dreams

beckoning me come

walk between the worlds.

Beckoning me keep my

promise made before

coming to this world.

To live strongly.

To live wildly.

To live deeply.

She lives in the light.

She lives in the dark.

An Edgewalker

hovering in the liminal

places of our psyche,

she both sees and hears

what is between the worlds.

No longer constrained

by society’s expectations

of what a woman is,

the Medial Woman is

free to move as she is called.

Feral and Wild and

standing always in her

sovereign knowing of

Divine Female Power,

the Medial Woman Calls.

Are you Listening?

_____________________________________

The Medial Woman by Arlene Bailey, ©2020

Between the Worlds by Arlene Bailey ©2020

*The term medial woman was coined by

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Posted on FaceBook Aug 28, 2020

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The Thinker and Seated Woman are iconic Neolithic figurines from the Hamangia Culture in present-day Romania, dating to around 5000 BCE. Terracotta.

These look amazingly modern. Slab work formed the arms, with tools cutting the edges so cleanly.

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The following was published in August 2022. What happened to that anger?

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More Canadian information to consider: (Thanks to newsletter "Five Minute Daily") 

The Brain Drain Is Now Flowing North

What it is: Canadian universities have quietly begun landing dozens of senior American researchers this year, using new federal funding, faster visa processing, and lower institutional overhead to poach talent that once considered Canada a step down. Recruits span climate science, biomedical research, epidemiology, and engineering, and the migration accelerated after Washington paused funding for large chunks of the federal science budget in the spring.

The detail: A reported look at the migration mapped researchers who had already accepted or were in advanced negotiations with Canadian institutions, with the University of Toronto, McGill, and UBC leading the recruitment drive. Ottawa is offering guaranteed multi-year research grants that outstrip anything the National Institutes of Health has offered for a comparable role since 2023, along with subsidized housing and relocation packages for entire lab teams.

Why it matters: The US built its postwar scientific dominance on the idea that the best researchers came here because there was nowhere else to go. Losing even a small percentage of senior faculty to a neighbor with a shared language and an open border undercuts that assumption, and the losses tend to compound because graduate students and postdocs follow their advisers across the border within a year or two.

What to watch: Whether Congress restores research funding in the fall budget cycle or lets the drift continue into a second year, and whether Canadian universities can absorb the influx without capacity-related friction. Any Ottawa announcement of a formal recruitment program, rather than the current ad-hoc effort, would mark the moment the drift becomes a policy of its own with a longer half-life than any single Trump-era budget cut.

Back to cat appreciation

 

Basking in the Sun (2026) by Ukrainian-born artist Lena Rivo

Now that the days are growing shorter, many of my friends are preparing for Halloween (Samhain for Pagans)

Muffin was born on my birthday, on the front porch in St. Augustine FL, to a feral mom. She was  a darling friend for 18 years.

Panther, my last cat

I think this is Alice

Our family has several grey tabbies. I just found out they're called Butterfly Tabbies if they have the familiar "M" over their eyebrows.

Pretty sue this is Shiva. I will get to be a cat sitter for my grand-cat when my son and his wife go camping for a weekend soon.

Not Shiva!

The Purry Night

by Paul Marcotte Longmont CO 8.21.26

Sharing with Saturday's Critters.

I'm not a Canadian, just a friend of many Canadians!

Tall mountains

 The following photos were posted by Marie Enriquez of Mt. Blue Sky, which has the highest road that goes on a "Fourteener" - one of the mountains in  Colorado that is 14,000 feet or more high.

Colorado is home to 58 named peaks that rise above 14,000 feet in elevation, known as the fourteeners or 14ers. Climbing these impressive summits is one of the most popular outdoor activities in the state

It used to be called Mt. Evans. I didn't live here when the name was changed, but I visited it in 2005 when the old name still was there, as well as some remaining glaciers.

It was still called Mt. Evans when I visited in 2005.

The glaciers have all melted which fed these lakes.

The mountain was previously named for the second governor of the Territory of Colorado, John Evans. However, due to Evans's involvement in the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, there were years of discussion over renaming Mount Evans. On September 15, 2023, the United States Board on Geographic Names officially changed the mountain's name to Mount Blue Sky.

Wikipedia

Sharing with Sepia Saturday and Skywatch Friday

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First visit with new pulmonologist - very encouraging. He gave me lots of hope. He recommended pulmonary rehab (which I've done before and found really beneficial) as well as physical therapy to help me feel more confident walking. I hope these will enable me to be able to walk around my neighborhood soon. Plus he said to give it 6 months to get used to living more than a mile high.