In Which I Perform Another Unique Ceremony

St. Mary's, Cusop, Herefordhire (Cewydd Sant) on the Welsh Border. Surrounded by Yews.

My daughter did well keeping my lilacs alive while we were gone for the hot month of July. And our yard has nearly recovered from my one-year-old grandson turning off the automatic sprinklers.

I was out today shoring up a few of the lilacs that needed a watering base around them. Miss Canada, thriving so well this Spring, is not situated well to pick up the watering. And the new Firmaments and Pres. Poincaré planted in early summer could use the help.

After I was done, I thought about the yew needles from the Holy Yew at Cusop that I had finally found in my trip memorabilia. So I carefully got a few out and put one or two needles into the ground at the base of each lilac bush. In years to come as I sit under my lilacs, a small piece of the sacred yew will have become part of those plants.

The oak leaf is from another sacred site.
A Celtic Church and well in Cornwall.

It can't hurt.

An Atypical Election

To my Republican and other Anti-Obama friends:

I have heard your dire predictions that President Obama would destroy the world or at least the United States. Yet here we are nearly eight years in and it hasn't happened. I heard the same thing from many of you about President Bill Clinton. And it didn't happen. And now we hear it from you about Hillary. I don't think it's going to happen with her either.

Now, Hillary Clinton would not be my first choice for President. But she is the best option we have at the present. I know Gary Johnson, I've met him and once had a conversation with him over dinner. He's an OK guy, but I wouldn't want him for President. I'm not real excited about his history of drug use and the really nice family he had that he seems not to have any more. Jill Stein seems to be even more freaky.

A Little Pin Badge Vanity

Pierced to the heart with desire for something tangible to remember our latest trip to Britain, I started collecting pin badges. I'm a little late to the game as one of my Welsh Professors has a whole room dedicated to collectible pins. He even has "his guy in Shanghai" who can produce custom pins in bulk. Pin collecting is also big at Disneyland (my Disney collection is very meager). And it was a big thing around here back in '02 for the SLC Winter Olympics (and I even have one of those!).

Preserve the Public Lands!

My hat is off to Field & Stream web edition, and hopefully, the print edition as well for the excellent article on the latest movement to turn over America's public lands to the states and eventually private interests.

Ken Ivory and the Malheur occupiers get special mention as part of the problem, not the solutions. And there's this great quote from the late Western Historian (and Utahn), Bernard DeVoto, who also got it:

“the ultimate objective is to liquidate all public ownership of grazing and forest land in the United States…the plan is to get rid of public lands altogether, turning them over to the states, which can be coerced as the federal government cannot be, and eventually into private ownership.”

If They Shot Everybody for Violating E-Mail Protocols . . . .

Whether government or corporate workplace, if you are honest enough to admit it, yeah, everybody violates email rules and policies.

not Tim Curry

not a Congressman from Utah

A certain Congressman from Utah who bears a striking resemblance to the actor, Tim Curry, has obtrained the FBI files determined to further investigate and prosecute Hillary Clinton for her email abuses while at the State Department. Never mind that past, Republican Secretaries of State have also used private email accounts. And never mind that pretty much everyone fails to follow "best practices" in email protocols.

Trump and Cats: Caption Contest

This is too good to pass up. (h/t to HJ) I posted this on Facebook and immediately had a wonderful caption. I will cut and paste that here and then add one of my own. And I invite one and all to enter the contest by posting a comment below. Or, if you post on my FB page, I'll cut and paste it in here. (prize, if any, yet to be determined*).

Book Report: Border Country, by Raymond Williams

Williams has appeared in the blog before (here and here) which is one reason why I picked up this book in Cardiff. And I'm pleased to find that it's still in print and even available in the US at Amazon Prime.

Telling you it is about a University professor who returns home after his father has a heart attack as we flash back to his growing-up years does not do it justice. The book is a deep psychological and social analysis of relationships in a family and the extended family of a small, Welsh village near the border with England and the edge of the modern world.