I received a letter from the Charlotte North Carolina’s Writers Club congratulating me for being the youngest entrant to their short story writing contest. I didn’t win, but I got a letter. My story was possibly a page long, but it involved two rivalling forces–one entirely good and the other entirely bad, and they had equal power. As it turned out, despite their equal power the good force won simply because it was good. How little did I know about life…
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Define “Generous” Please …
Published July 11, 2018 by Nan MykelSo excellent and right on! Thanks for caring.
My jaw literally (well, okay, figuratively) dropped to the floor this morning when I saw this headline:
HHS Secretary: Separating Immigrant Families Is ‘One of the Great Acts of American Generosity’
Say what???
The separation of children from their parents at the southern border can be defined by only two words: a fiasco, and chaos. ‘Generosity’ is definitely the antithesis of what this nation has done to those families seeking a safe haven. A federal judge ordered all children under the age of five to be reunited with their parents by July 10th — yesterday. However, some 84 of the 101 or 102 children under five remain separated from their families in detention centers, aka concentration camps. How is this ‘generous’?
“We have nothing to hide about how we operate these facilities.” That was Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Tuesday…
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Charles P. Pierce: Who Will Be Held Accountable for the Toddlers Lost by the Trump Administration?
Published July 10, 2018 by Nan MykelShame, shame, shame.
Charles P. Pierce, a regular blogger at Esquire, describes the Trump administration’s blatant indifference to a judge’s order to produce the hundreds of toddlers that were taken away from their parents, then “lost” in the system.
He says, someone should go to jail for this. I agree.
Try this sometime. You’re in court and the judge gives you a deadline to do something by Day X. Then, when Day X arrives, tell the judge that you’ve only been able to do four percent of what the judge demanded that you do. See where you’re eating dinner that night.
What are the odds that anyone will pay other than the children and their parents? Zip.
Breakdown Howls – Verses
Published July 10, 2018 by Nan MykelBREAKDOWN HOWLS
Grab a piece of reality and
take it with you when you journey
to the other side!
Word salad is a symptom.
How can that be? Early English
sounds daft to me.
STOP!
Just stop it!
I need a respite.
Nit-picky poems, mine
always stop short of fearful
herculean struggles.
Everyone really does
hate a bully. When will
they remember that?
Prostitutes are now sex workers.
Slaves are enslaved people.
When will a versifier become a poet?
Some things last like
Days of Our Lives.
Others hit the tombstone circuit.
Evolution has set us up
to think with faulty data.
Defense mechanisms betray us.
I caught sight of me
in an alternate universe during the night.
She was me but younger and
so much wiser! She said
to tell you Hello. nan
Spiders That Fly, Oh My!
Published July 8, 2018 by Nan MykelSpiders have no wings, but they can take to the air nonetheless. They’ll climb to an exposed point, raise their abdomens to the sky, extrude strands of silk, and float away. This behavior is called ballooning. It might carry spiders away from predators and competitors, or toward new lands with abundant resources. But whatever the reason for it, it’s clearly an effective means of travel. Spiders have been found two-and-a-half miles up in the air, and 1,000 miles out to sea.
Visit 3 Quarks Daily BY From Ed Yong in The Atlantic
U.S. Discourages Breast Feeding?
Published July 8, 2018 by Nan MykelWell,I did see the story about a breast-feeding baby being yanked from its mother’s breast into detention, but I didn’t realize we would put corporate profits ahead of breast feeding.
From NYT By Andrew Jacobs July 8, 2018
A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly….Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.
American officials sought to water down the resolution….When that failed, they turned to threats….Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs. The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.
Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.
….In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them.
Horses Remember…
Published July 8, 2018 by Nan Mykel
Horses prefer to look at negative and threatening sights with their left eye, and positive social stimuli with their right eye. In the study, when they saw a model they had seen frowning earlier, they spent more time looking with their left eye. They also exhibited more stress-related behaviours, like scratching and floor sniffing. In contrast, when they saw a model they had seen smiling earlier, they spent more time looking with their right eye.
Many other animals have shown an ability to remember human faces, including sheep and fish. Wild crows will hold a grudge for years against people who have treated them badly, and even teach other crows to mob their enemies.
However, the horses seem to form an opinion about people based only on their expression in a photograph. “That’s something we haven’t really seen in animals before,” says Proops.
“The horse family has the most expressive faces after the primates, so logically they pay attention to faces and expressions,” says Frans de Waal at Emory University in Atlanta. “Horses surrounded by people have ample opportunity to learn what our expressions mean.”
Journal reference: Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.03.035
Immigrant U.S. Soldiers Being Discharged
Published July 7, 2018 by Nan MykelAccording to the Associated Press, the Army has begun discharging immigrant soldiers and recruits who enlisted through a special program that would put them on a path to citizenship.
The AP was unable to find out how many immigrants have been discharged, but immigration attorneys said more than 40 have either been discharged or left with an uncertain enlistment status. “Some of the service members say they were not told why they were being discharged,” the AP reported. “Others who pressed for answers said the Army informed them they’d been labeled as security risks because they have relatives abroad or because the Defense Department had not completed background checks on them.”
(Excerpt from Salon by LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
JULY 7, 2018 )
I coulda told them that!
Published July 5, 2018 by Nan Mykel
Dogs understand your facial expressions and know what you’re feeling, study says
NICOLE KARLIS on Salon
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Hilarious re-blog–Go to her site for more!
Published July 2, 2018 by Nan Mykel
NANMYKEL.COM 