After Hours

First piece of business — an urgent reminder! It's about time for our next photo contest winners to be unveiled! But since I'm on a business retreat when you read this, you have one more week to get in your favorite (1) general photos, (2) pet photos, or (3) people photos! We'll announce winners mid-September, so send them to me as a jpeg, e-mailed, along with names for the photos (please send four different photos per submission), and the type of camera used.

Also, since I'm in "after hours, let's relax and play" contest mood today, how about we do another one for the wordsmiths in the group? Full Story 

The situation was, in military lingo, FUBAR. A mother held a half-comatose young toddler: "Look how hot he is," she sobbed. Her desperation was mirrored in a breaking voice, imploring glances. "He's not waking up very easy. I'm not ... this is not about low income, it's not about rich people or poor people. It's about people."

She begged us to care. About people. And those people caught on television videotape collapsing and dying around her, those people were U.S. citizens — victims of Hurricane Katrina, victims of a failed levee system, and victims of the timidity of the American government's response to it. Full Story 

Here's a couple tips that could save you thousands of dollars on consultants — and yes, of course I have an agenda here, which is to make a point about where to invest those dollars after I save them for you. Full Story 

"When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple with a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves and satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.

"I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired, and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells, and run my stick along the public railings — and make up for the sobriety of my youth. I shall go out in my slippers in the rain... and pick the flowers in other people's gardens... and learn to spit."

The old woman's promise appeals to me. I've enjoyed purposefully wearing mismatched earrings on many occasions (though always of the same metal or color). When people notice, they are usually too polite to mention it (but I can see it in their eyes), and so I pretend not to notice that they noticed, and this game amuses me. It is a small, secret eccentricity, a harmless diversion or rebellion from a buttoned up, orderly public life. Full Story