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Yea but,

The plumbing is terrible and we have no Wi-Fi reception.

Randow thoughts

Once again, proof I am getting old

I had to have my 13 year old explain to me that these people were trying to take a selfie 

and not shunning Hillary.

Houses of the Holy

Another random thought from Lucy Van Pelt

Another page from the ACME catalog

From the desk of Charles Brown

Today's Zen Koan

Turn back

You've gone too far on the interweb

Liar liar

In their opening statement on Monday, September 19, 2016,  federal prosecutors alleged that New Jersey governor Chris Christie was aware of the scheme now known as Bridgegate, whereby state officials closed lanes on the George Washington Bridge - the busiest bridge in the world, to punish the mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing the governor.

Today's moment of levity

Another page from the ACME catalog

I'm just saying

Yesterday, Ian Bremner, took this photo, of what purportedly is the Loch Ness monster.

Ian Bremner works in a Whiskey Warehouse.

So tell me about your childhood

Animal Psychiatrist

Hey, it's Joe

I need to look into the rest of this book series

I'd like to read the rest of this book

... New York's children aren't young anymore.

The Names
By Billy Collins

 Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.

In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name –
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.

Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.|
I say the syllables as I turn a corner –
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O’Connor.

When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.

Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.

In the evening — weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds –
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.

Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

Another page from the ACME catalog

Superman did not understand Saint Teresa of Ávila at all.

Welcome Back

There are appx. 293 days until the next summer vacation (about 180 days of school)

Hey Kids, Breaking news

Secret photos, just released, of your teachers celebrating their last day of vacation -

Ripped from today's headlines

No politician should be allowed to speak to us during the summer.

"The man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day," explained Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Mr. Gompers also stated: "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day. . . is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation."



And yet, despite Mr. Gompers's assertions, Labor Day is not a Seinfeldian holiday about nothing. It is, according to Department of Labor, "dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country."

Workers being whom, exactly?



Whenever someone talks about Labor with an audible capital L, I picture a bunch of sweaty, grease-stained steelworkers, or guys in blue overalls and goggles with soldering irons. Their contribution is the oft-cited "sweat of their brows." Union regulations being what they are, though, they seem to be pretty well compensated for that sweat.

The term "Workers" has to include more than steelworkers and welders—otherwise we could just call it "Steelworkers and Welders Day." After all, a worker is just "one who works." I'm a worker (yes sporadically I consider myself a worker). Almost everyone I know is or was a worker.

The difference seems to be unions. If you belong to a union, you're a Worker or a Laborer (I'm not sure if they have different unions). If you don't belong to a union, you're a lousy lazy-ass—an exploiting bourgeois bastard.

Think what this means: All of the Kardashians, The Property Brothers, Ann Coulter, and yes, even Donald Trump are Workers. Your friends who work awful hours at lousy jobs in wretched offices — they're bourgeois scum.

But let's take a step back and see how we got a Labor Day holiday.

Grover Cleveland was a very unpopular man back in 1896. He was one of the fattest Presidents in US history, (Chris Christie is a contender, if he runs in 2020.) No one really likes a fat man - weighing over 300lbs, his nieces and nephews called him Uncle Jumbo to his face; only William Howard Taft was fatter, weighing in at a ginormous 335lbs, but I digress...)



Two years earlier, Cleveland had broken up the Pullman Car strike using United States Marshals and some 2,000 United States Army troops, on the premise that the strike interfered with the delivery of U.S. Mail. During the course of the strike, 13 strikers were killed and 57 were wounded. It didn't win him any friends with the fledgling labor movement in America.



In order to throw a bone to Labor, Cleveland supported a holiday honoring workers on the first Monday in September, hoping it would help Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. May 1st was initially proposed but was then rejected because government leaders believed that commemorating Labor Day on May 1 could become an opportunity to commemorate the Chicago Haymarket riots which had occurred in early May of 1886.



Cleveland was proven wrong and the Democratic party suffered their worse defeat ever.

So remember the cynical origins of the holiday while you are BBQ'ing this afternoon.



And so it goes.

This explains so much

Another page from the ACME catalog

School starts in a week in NYC

Words to live by