GIRL OUT STANDING IN HER FIELD!

Many years ago I saw a Hallmark Graduation card that really made me laugh:  On the front there was a cartoon of a young man standing in a cornfield – and the greeting over the cartoon said, “TO A YOUNG MAN OUTSTANDING IN HIS FIELD.”  Inside, of course, was a traditional greeting to a new grad – and a place to stick a bill or a check. 

So this morning, when it looked like our front lawn was not going to get mowed this week either (today is day 14 of no cutting and the grass is getting greener and higher and thicker….) and I couldn’t resist using the old Hallmark card for my own rendition.  So here I am, standing in my front yard….actually, “Outstanding in my field!”  (Just to reassure you, I DO have feet.) 

Apparently our management company doesn’t care how things look in the north 40.  For some reason they are seeing that all the lawns in front of their main offices are mowed and tidied up for the weekends, but alas, it appears not to be a “trickle-down” situation at building 38C.  The sad part is that now, all the dog-walkers are bringing their dogs to our front lawn; they apparently rationalize that if they can’t see any dog poop, they don’t have to clean up after their pups. 

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The LA Times has a “Correction” box in each day’s paper, which is where we’ll often find funny boo-boos that we may have missed.  One of this week’s corrections said, “An article described the scientists who discovered a new family of spiders as etymologists.  They are entomologists.  Etymologists study words and their meanings; entomologists study insects.”   I think the writer of the original spider article needs to study his words a bit more, don’t you?

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And just to be sure they are good at catching things, they said that at the Democratic Convention speaker Julian Castro wore a purple tie.  Fie on that colorblind reporter.  We are told this morning that his tie was blue; his twin brother, Joaquin, wore purple.  Now how important is that, pray tell?

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It seems Russia’s president, Putin, has taken to soaring in a glider alongside the Russian cranes, who are on their migratory path to India.  It is reported that Russian bloggers are having a field day; seems there is speculation that perhaps he would wear a beak mask along with his white overalls so the birds would think he is their parent.  Others say the message to voters is that maybe the prez has “lost it!”  I guess it’s good to know that no matter what a president does, it is fair game for spoofing.  Kind hearted spoofing is the best kind; we here seem to have forgotten this kind, unfortunately.

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Jer and I were at a meeting of our local “Friends of the Library” volunteer group yesterday and it was announced that shortly it would be required that any person who volunteers to serve the county in any capacity (specifically for us that meant belonging to the Friends group and selling used books once a month as a fund-raiser to help fill the void left by all the county cut-backs) would have to be fingerprinted by a particular outfit contracted by the county to do it AND pay a $42 fee for that privilege.  There are to be no exceptions.  Even if in your volunteering you do not interact with children or the public, you still must be fingerprinted.  Apparently there is more to it than just fingerprinting; certain information must be given, but that wasn’t specified.   I was aghast and appalled. Jerry and I spend 1-1/2 hours monthly in a meeting of the Friends of the Library, and 2 hours a month working the book sale, the extent of our volunteering.  I don’t consider myself an “against-er” but I sure as heck am against this.  What I am specifically against is making me pay to volunteer.  No way, Jose!  I have a “thing” about jumping to conclusions too fast, so just to be sure I heard correctly, I have an e-mail in to our district’s supervisor for confirmation --- and clarification and explanation!.  You know, inquiring minds want to know!

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And finally, a railroad car loaded with new cars jumped the track yesterday on a bridge over our local well-traveled divided highway, Van Buren Boulevard.  Cars were stopped EVERYWHERE!  I was the first car at a stoplight on a cross-street about a mile south of this bridge, and cars were backing southward down Van Buren toward this intersection, where they hoped they could back onto Bellegrave, the street where I was waiting at a red light, and then make a Y-turn and go the other direction.  In the meantime cars going north on Van Buren sailed right on past them as if they weren’t even aware of the mass of cars stopped ahead.  (The drivers were probably all texting!)  I was watching a possible catastrophe right in front of my eyes, and if I hadn’t laid on the horn quite loudly a couple of times, the catastrophe would have been the back end of a car plunging backwards into my waiting car!  I was sure glad when the light changed and I could get out of there. 

Jerry later learned that this also had happened about 10 years ago too, only that time the railroad actually had some of the cars it was carrying plunge off the bridge and onto the highway below. All this is in an area now heavily functioning as a distribution point for material coming into the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, with more of these huge distribution centers waiting in line to be built.  The area we live in used to be the old Mira Loma Quartermaster’s Depot.  It was acquired in March 1942 by the federal government and used for warehousing military supplies, first by the Army until 1955 and subsequently by the Air Force.  The area was also used for housing troops and some training activities. Approximately 60 percent of the site was disposed in September 1966, with the remainder disposed in June 1986.  Now all of this is being used for distribution of civilian trappings.  As we drive down the road, there are acres and acres and more acres of cars waiting to be put on trucks and shipped off to every part of the US.   

But when there is an accident, there is one holy mess, let me tell you.

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Two confessions:  One, I found the Junior High School yearbooks right where they were supposed to be.  They are much smaller than the High School yearbooks and were simply hiding from my sight.  Let that be a lesson to us!  I think the lesson is to look before you leap, or something like that!

And the second confession is if I knew HTML I could take out these pesky lines below.  Alas...... here they be!