I’ve discovered another hole in my education:  Camel racing. So, I thought I’d share my new info with those of you attending:

The dromedary is the camel used in camel racing. In fact, the dromedary’s name comes from the Greek verb dramein, which means “to run.” Many camels are specially raised for racing. They train on treadmills and in swimming pools.  If that isn’t a sight, there’s always ostrich racing. Camel racing is serious business abroad in Kenya, Sudan, Egypt, India, and Australia—but particularly in the Arab countries of the Middle East.  

CRUELTY TO CHILDREN  –  Beyond the fact that all races involving animals carry a certain element of cruelty, camel racing has a particularly notorious legacy of recruiting young boys, in some cases children abducted and trafficked from destitute villages in South Asia, to be jockeys.  Children are often favored as jockeys because of their light weight, and in order to maximize the camels’ speed they often will fast for days at a time prior to each race.^[5] It has been reported that thousands of children (some reported as young as 2 years old) are trafficked usually from countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Pakistan, and Sudan for use as jockeys in Arab States of the Persian Gulf.^[6] In 2005, aid workers estimated a range of 5,000 – 40,000 child camel jockeys in the Persian Gulf region.^[7][8]

(She is 81, like he is this year)

A poem by Bonnie Prince titled  High Flight for Joe Biden

Dear Joe. my dear old Joe,

You may think you are eternal

flying with angels above the clouds,

cock-sure, infallible, beyond gravity,

while hoping you appear in control,

divine, just short of godliness,

but, like all of us,

like me, also in my 81st year,

you are dying,

sloping down, descending now,

no longer resplendent, no longer godly,

no longer ascendant.

You are moving like all of us, elliptical,

oblique, moving in an ellipse,

an eclipse, circling the airport,

down toward commoners’ ground,

locked, like all of us,

in the epicycles of being 81,

looking in the self-confirming mirror,

vision warped by the gravity,

the trajectory

of hubris.

Dear Joe, I love you, but

I want you, now,

more than ever,

to see yourself caught

in the continuum of time and space,

that web that even eternal Einstein

could not exit.

Dear Joe, we both are hoping

for damage control,

praying for one last replay

of a fireworks display

to enlighten the world,

and one last chance to tell

the earthlings that the promise

of our being on the planet

mattered, that  our presence

in the world mattered,

and we were loved

for the lives that we lived,

and we made a difference.

You and I, Joe, each of us at 81,

we share the same trajectory.

Yet the gravity of anatomy, of biology,

is aiming downward now, dead serious.

Joe, we both are gravely mortal,

floating between cloud and soul.

Joe, we both are hang-gliding

on the wing of the lobe of our mind,

trying to find balance,

a stance, on the planet,

our wings are feeling gravity

taking us down now, gliding

to a lower level

seeking equity; seeking equilibrium.

Joe, I know how you feel,

but we both are 81 now.

We both are high-flying drones,

guided by satellite or instrument,

by North Star or lodestone,

by magnetic or electronic field,

by intuition, or vision, or AI,

but always inescapable  anatomy,

metabolically

in the biology of finality.

We are deep in mortality mode,

without a court appeal

without a safety net.

Our  landing gear are deployed,

hoping for a gentle touch,

a soft touch-down at the moment

of contact when our tires

jerk on the runway,

and we glide, seatbelts fastened

to a stop on the tarmac and taxi

down to the finale, grateful, at least

we did not crash

glad to slide,

on a slow play of earth and sky,

at the end of our Earth time,

our time for the final display,

the hubris of our lives, arrayed

against the promise

of our birth,

as told by our parents

our glide path.

Hey dear Joe,

we both are running

out of time.

Dear Joe, it’s quite likely

that we are all

in decline, but maybe

your taste for the ultimate Presidency

will buoy you up

and you can still

go viral after all!

And the last spark of light

that is uniquely our self,

the frail glint-mark

of sparked flint

that we finally make

upon the endless canvas

of the cosmos

will be inter-stellar.

Bonnie Prince    July, 2024

J.D. Vance’s Mysterious Change of Heart –  Keith Wilson reminds us of the mysterious change of heart of  Trump’s vp choice.  What could possibly have motivated it? :

• “I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy.  I never liked him.”
• “My God, what an idiot.”
• “Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”
• “I think there’s a chance, if I feel like Trump has a really good chance of winning, that I might have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton.”
• “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler. How’s that for discouraging?”
• “But I think that I’m going to vote third party because I can’t stomach Trump. I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.”
• “Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.”
• “Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us.”

As though it was not sufficient to take Woke away, and support charter schools and halt affirmative action funds–many of which have been continuing from the past (as at O.U.)–and snip at universities’  freedom of speech and lower teachers’ standards and threaten to wipe out the national Board of Education  (see Trump’s plans) and move toward putting chaplains in some public schools [see Florida] but a number of colleges are closing, nationwide.  Higher education was experiencing financial challenges  even before the pandemic, from dwindling enrollment to rising tuition to doubts about the value of a degree. Colleges are losing room and board revenue and associated fees, and even facing lawsuits from angry families demanding tuition refunds. The core product — teaching and learning — has come under attack for dubious quality  (and more recently for attacks on student’s and   professors’s freedom of speech).  –See at least Ohio’s manipulative actions.  Higher education is indeed in crisis, 

________________

ANNOUNCEMENT:  I am seven years older than Biden.  Personally, I can’t understand why he wants the job.  I don’t, thank you very much.

Botanical research has revealed that plants are capable of reacting to a broad range of stimuli, including chemicals, gravity, light, moisture, infections, temperature, oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations, parasite infestation, disease, physical disruption, sound, and touch.  But what about thoughts?  Maybe if thoughts are turned into sound?  Wouldn’t it be great if under SOUND was a dictionary!  Then I could really talk to my plants, which bloom in a sunny corner of my bedroom.   (At that point, imagining creeps in, that bottomless state where grand icebergs nestle among majestic clouds.)

Two plants in my bedroom appear determined to survive me:

TO MY TWO

I see you morning and night–often

twice during the night, my dear popinjays.

(Popinjays sounds affectionate, but

apparently that word selection

is in error.)  You head for the light,

which is right, in all situations.

No tantrums; no runny nose–rather

an exemplary example of

evolution’s creation, doing

your  best while counting  upon the less

dependable me that I see in

the mirror of my  focus-impaired

human brain.  I reckon we should have

called it quits before igniting our

planet. You would be outside in the

fresh air and I would be just a dream.

But by whom?  As they said at my old

school: Who, What, When, Where, and How?

But please–don’t let me interrupt

your blooming. 

Nan

• 
• My silence on weapons of mass destruction is only because  I am so frightened.
• _________________
• More than 1,300 people have died during the hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage, in Saudi Arabia’s heat. The temperature there recently passed 120 degrees.
• _________________

  • If I were moderating the upcoming presidential debate, I would make climate a major part of the questioning—that and the future of democracy. Both are, in fact, intertwined because, in each case, the Republican candidate for president and large swaths of the party he has molded to his will all deny basic, undeniable truths. 

    Climate and democracy are the most significant threats we face because if we don’t fearlessly tackle them, we will cease to have the means to address all else that ails us. The repercussions will echo for generations to come. 

  • Thanks to Jill Dennison for the referral to…lost it.
• __________________
• LGBTQ+ veterans who were discharged from the military due to their sexuality got a win this week when a judge denied the Department of Defense’s motion to dismiss the case.The lawsuit represents gay and bi veterans who were discharged because of rules like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell that barred them from serving in the military. The federal complaint, which was filed last year, said that 35,081 veterans were discharged or otherwise separated from the military “because of real or perceived homosexuality, homosexual conduct, sexual perversion or any other related reason” from 1980 to 2011.
• ___________________
• MAJOR FLOODS IN THREE MIDWEST STATES–Hey, I live in the midwest!  Enough’s enough.
• ___________________

LIFE IN SMALL TOWNS TODAY:  No traffick crush.  You meet folks you know at the farmer’s market, the Scottish dance class, and my daughter’s doctor’s brother used to live in my basement when he was a student.