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Showing posts from December, 2016
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Some Perspective to Help You Through 2017 Does the thought of what the new year will bring got you down, Bunky? Feeling like the country is heading in the w rong direction?   That it could, in fact, be the end of America?  Well buck up, I solved your solstice sorrows and I have the cure for this malady too! We've seen this movie before - Please read on to see how other years started and then answer the simple question at the end. (All info from various sources, Wikipedia.) Jan 1918 - the first wave of the great flu pandemic was winding down in the US, finally dying out completely in April. Estimates say that between 50 and 100 million people were killed world-wide, more than the Black Death plague. In the U.S. about 28% of the population became infected; 500,000 to 675,000 killed over 12 months - that would be over 29 MILLION dead today.   On top of this WWI was still going strong. We lived through it. Jan 1932 - the country was mired in the depths of the G
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                                11 th Annual Solstice Story - "12 Days of Solstice" This is truly a difficult time of the year for many people. (Okay, mostly for me.) You have to admit that even with global warming, now through, oh say, early May, there isn’t much to live for.                                                                         A TV commercial’s view of winter                                                                 The calendar has brought us back to the heinous point in time that is the approach of the winter solstice. That time of the year when we teeter on the edge of madness between the never-ending cold and darkness . . . and the glimmer of hope that we will make it to the first warm breezes of spring.  Oh yeah, and there is also the dismal election we just survived (barely) and, depending on their proclivities, half the people that voted are celebrating and half (well a little more than half) are debating moving out of
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What I Learned from   Downton Abbey  and  Poldark Huh, Looks like a Pederson Family Reunion Okay, I think I’m starting to get it. Mrs Dear Leader and I have watched the entire “Downton Abbey” series three times and now we're through “Poldark” for the first time and I think I’ve learned something: English people really speak funny. Okay, just kidding. No, seriously here's what I've learned: Change is a bitch - and also inevitable. On a positive note, we always get through it.  If you haven’t watched Downton you would, of course, be one of the three people in America who haven’t and if so I’ll catch you up. Simply stated, it’s a series that follows the family of an English peer (Earl Grantham to be exact) from the years 1912-1926 and they live in an English manor called - duh - Downton Abbey. It has an “Upstairs/Downstairs” feel since the servants are as important to the story as the family.  (That's doing it a disservice, it is a really great series