I had to create an entire post to have even the slightest chance of having someone at the New York Times read what I had intended to add to the Comments on their report about Russian bots contributing to the shaming of a feminist participating in The Women's March of 2017. So, I'll paste in some relevant paragraphs from their report and my commentary here: 9-19-22 Quotes from NYT on Russian bots dividing feminists following 2017 Women’s March placed in italics. My comment then follows:…

Welcome to Saint Patrick’s Day!  May your shamrock not fall in your green beer, and if it does, drink it!  Even if this day isn’t what we might have thought it was, it is our excuse to wear green and party, even if none of this makes historical sense.  I don’t want to ruin it for you, for in these dismal political times we need excuses to party, but even so, the legends of the day need some deconstructing.  Saint Patrick wasn’t Irish; perhaps he…

Well, it's been a busy year so far. We're hunkered down, avoiding the Covid, keyed up, toying with racist fascism, and dimly worried, denying how hot we could get. Yet the stay-at-home days and months have mellowed us to homier routines. Some say we're already into the early days of the Age of Aquarius. Hope so. I'm proud of the Democrats, especially those in Georgia, for helping barely rescue us from a madman conman who thinks he can act like a privileged, uncontrolled king. I'm…

2020 – The Year that Wasn’t Easy An Appreciative Lament I started out the year feeling kinda spiffy. Then I fell on my face Until I fell on my face Then I cut the very tip of my main guitar finger off. (Ever try to open and apply a band-aid when one hand is already bloody? You can’t. Passive-aggressive sadists have designed it so it can’t be used.) Which had barely healed when I smashed the tip of my second-most main guitar finger, which infected…

My December, 2020 involvement in On-line Forums (Cleantechnica and KOS, mostly) If interested, read these Reflections I contributed to on-line forums in December of 2020. Byrd on KOS in Response to Winter Rabbit’s Wounded Knee – 130-year Anniversary: Winter Rabbit jarringly reminds us – what we were told was glory was, in fact, gory.   I stumbled upon the now-peaceful fields of Wounded Knee a year back.  At the curio shop, a convivial mix of natives and western whites mingled.  I picked up a copy of…