Future Poltergeist

One of the purest joys that I get from parenting is teaching things to my kids.  Relia especially right now, because she's at that age where she wants to know everything and can actually understand a great deal.  The other morning she asked me about New Jersey.  I explained to her that when Europeans moved there, they were reminded of the island of Jersey .  We then looked around for other 'New' states and cities (New York, New Orleans, etc.). She surprised me by saying that Minnesota doesn't have any of the 'new' cities.  I told her that we have New London and New Ulm, but her point was well taken.  Somehow she got the idea that Minnesota is far enough inland that it wasn't part of that tradition where regions were renamed for the European counterparts. I was a proud papa.

Over on my Great Books blog, I've branched off a bit and have been blogging my way through a book called 'The 100 Best Poems of All Time'.  They're collected here .  Every week (or so) I blog my way through one of them in an attempt to broaden my understanding of poetry.  Anyway, I thought that since this blog is not very busy anymore, my few remaining readers might be interested in having me share them over here too.  Drop a comment and let me. 

DF is convinced that he will someday (soon) be a baby again. He'll go back in Mommy's tummy and 'go to work' with here and all that. I told him that I wasn't sure that would happen. He asked why and I said that it had never happened to me. He . . . didn't want to talk about it anymore.

Interesting pics of an albino humpback whale that lives near Australia.  No idea how it feels about revenge though.

This is the twelfth anniversary of one of the worst days in our country's history.  Of course, I don't need to tell you that.  Everyone reading this blog is old enough to know what happened and I doubt there is a mental adult in the country that doesn't know what happened. Everyone remembers where they were on that day.  All of us have stories about where we were when we found out and what we did next.  That doesn't make it unique.  Just about everyone of the right age remembers where they were when the Challenger blew up or when JFK was shot.  Big events make a big emotional impact.  They're easier to remember. I was thinking about this today and I was struck by how September 11th stands out, maybe especially for my generation.  With the rise of social media and the relative ease of reconnecting on the internet in the middle 00's, I reestablished ties with most of the important people of my high school years.  With many of them, we talked ...

Some random Olympics stuff: On Saturday, the IOC announced that Tokyo would host the 2020 Olympics.  This will be their second as they also hosted the 1964 summer games.  I have little doubt that they'll do a wonderful job.   In two years, they will announce the host of the 2022 winter games.  You can see the list of cities that are preparing bids here .   The list of potential bids is heavily European, which isn't surprising.  In 2022 it will have been 10 years since a European city hosted.  (Yes, Sochi is 'European' but it's far on the fringe of Europe.) The US will bid for, and almost certainly win, the 2024 summer games.  We haven't hosted since the 2002 winter games in Salt Lake City and that twenty plus year gap is a big one.  A huge amount of funding and commercial support comes from the US so it is only fair that we get to host every so often. Not everyone is happy with the idea of a US city hosting the Olympics, in large pa...

While in the car today, a song from Moulin Rouge came up on my iPod.  Relia asked if it was from a movie and then insisted she wanted to see it.  I told her she would have to wait until she was older.  Until she was a teenager.  Relia: Next year I'll be seven.  (pause)  Technically, that's a teenager.  Good grief, they grow up fast.