My antique rose bush (inherited from one-of-three bushes planted by my grandfather's first wife) is still putting out new shoots. We've had multiple below-freezing nights, and it still has green leaves. I feel like the planet is out-of-whack. #Gardening #Roses

Car inspection today. What should have been a $150 bill turned into $1250 due to brake work. Parts are expensive because, #Tariffs. How do people cope with no savings? I'm lucky because I inherited small $$ last month that covered it. (Thanks, Mom.)

I finished Louise Penny's *The Grey Wolf*. Very exciting, with a just-in-time-to-stop-a-domestic-terror-event ending... only to find it's a two-part cliff-hanger! Wut? Can't afford the hardback. Hope the Library has it. #Booksky #Cliffhangers

I'm craving a Nutcracker Ballet, but the only one locally is on Christmas Eve. So Ima just sharing my Coldstream Guard...

Schrodinger's Dog putting in an appearance...

We shouldn’t have to debate who “deserves” food, healthcare and housing. We should be angry that these things aren’t guaranteed to everyone. We should be outraged that the wealthy & corporations continue to profit off the misery and suffering of others.

A classic from the Marketoonist, 2014, which seems ever more apt...

This is a fabulous story about a Philadelphia trans icon "Harlow" who is speaking out now to remind people that trans people have always been here, and shouldn't have to live in the shadows. Gifted. share.inquirer.com/hiCRF6

#Booksky I'm reading Louise Penny's *The Grey Wolf.* I love her prose so much. She puts readers inside her characters heads. Wonderful turns of phrase.

Sunday, December 7, Pearl Harbor Day. My Dad was 11. He remembered listening on the radio as news reports came in. Remembering all those who died that day.

My fifth-grader great niece has chickens, which are now laying eggs. She wants chicken things for Christmas. 😄 Not sure what that even means. But, LOL. 🐓

Spent the morning with my sister and one of her daughters. Breakfast, a large local craft show. Then, they wanted to do an evening event tonight. Does anyone else have problems with too much Christmas all at once? I needed a break... Sitting feet up with cocoa and a tacky holiday movie.

LOL. 🎄

I was today years old when I learned "misogny" was coined in 1656. "Misogynoir" has been around, too, but wasn't so named until 2010.

Ok, with this year being what it has, we all deserved and needed this today. Do yourself a favor and watch it. You deserve it.

The fact that four hostile drones tried to hit Zelenskyy’s plane & it’s barely a blip in the news cycle should terrify everyone. We’ve been dragged so deep into the chaos era that an attempted strike on a world leader doesn’t even break through. When this becomes normal, the world is in real danger.

It's good—very good, and very important—that district courts keep issuing these 100-page rulings upholding the law. It must be incredibly dispiriting to see them overturned in a two-page, lawless, unsigned order, but please, keep them coming. They expose SCOTUS' corruption like nothing else.

Took my Archie cat to the vet for a booster shot. In and out in 3 minutes, home within the hour. But he's been clingy since then. Like, if I'm extra nice to Mom, she'll never take me to the Bad Place again... #CatsOfBluesky

"We just can't stop demonstrating our insane levels of incompetence," said an unnamed DOJ spokesperson. /s 🙄 www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...

I really, REALLY hate these people...

For all the word nerds...

Great art ripples ever outward... #RIPTomStoppard

#Booksky Just checked and realized I've read the most books this year than in any year since I started tracking my reading. Over 100, with a month to go, and three in progress. Hoping for a book gift card for Christmas... Who else tracks their books?

A miserable gray, damp November day here in Southeastern PA. Hunkered down with my cat, snacks and books. Nearly finished #HowToKillAWitch by two podcasters who successfully got the Scottish premier to apologize for the many Scots women murdered as witches under Scots law. #BookSky #History

📽️ For the first time, I watched #Scrooged today. Loved the cast of comedians (Bobcat!) and Murray's Scrooge-esque TV producer. But wow--on cable with the crazed "BUY NOW" Xmas ads, the script seemed ever more apt, and more disturbing. (Never realized Mitchum was their Paley-ish CEO...)

And this is why so many people do not trust the police. 🖕

JFC

To recap: •Universal healthcare would save 68,000 lives & $450B annually •Every $1 spent on SNAP results in $1.80 boost to local economies & small businesses •The child tax credit decreased child poverty to a historic low of 5.2%, abolishing it increased it by 45% 1/2

Whut...?

#ThingsAreTerrible but apparently, it is not that awful to buy a side dish or dessert for the Thanksgiving pot-luck. Gifted. share.inquirer.com/xuV61P

OMFG

My big takeaway of #AmericanRevolution is that we were founded on division, greed for land, and the elite trying to ride the whirlwind of an idea that was embraced by "the rabble" in a way the landowners and rich merchants hadn't foreseen.

📽️ #Film Stumbled on an odd mid-century western, "Red Sun," starring Charles Bronson, Alain Delon, Ursula Andress, and... Toshiro Mifune, as a Samurai pledged to recover a sword intended as a diplomatic gift to the U.S. President. It's tagged as a #SpaghettiWestern;

#AmericanRevolution Seeing the level of violence that occurred in South Carolina in the final years of the war, I am not that amazed that this is not more taught in high school history classes. We really learn a tidied up version of the fighting, don't we?

#AmericanRevolution "...that out of this multitude of rabble would arise a people who could defy kings." On the victory and surrender at Yorktown.

Watching the leopards (including the female one) eat each other's faces is very schadenfruedisch.

Lawyers: Can Maxwell plead the 5th after having previously testified without invoking it? How does this work?

Cast your mind back a few presidents and remind yourself how INSANE this question is.

#AmericanRevolution Valley Forge is 30 minutes from where I grew up. PA kept it like a pristine park. The Feds took over and let it go back to wild, shrubby growth, but added a nice visitor's center. One of my ancestors deeded a plot to bury some of the dead from Washington's army.

#AmericanRevolution When Armies "lived off the land," they pillaged and stole from whichever local people happened to live in the vicinity. In a very hard winter, British and Patriot armies raided and thieved, knowing they were likely never going to have to pay for what they took.

This. I shopped today, and picked up a few items not on my short cooking list. $100, gone in a swipe of the card. How are people managing who already had too little? (Mailed a check to the local #FoodBank today, too.)

Picked up Christmas stamps at the #USPS today. Love these Winter Woodland Animal stamps. Art director Antonio Alcalá designed the stamps with Katie Kirk, who illustrated.

#AmericanRevolution Re the Battle of Brandywine, anyone planning a visit to the battleground park, please be aware that it is nowhere near where the actual fighting occurred (development had already absorbed much of the field before they tried preservation.)

OK. Now I know new things about the 1777 Battle of Saratoga. I also marvel at how we went from casualties of 1,000 per battle, to basically becoming capable of wiping out a city's worth of men in 2 hours in 1863. #AmericanRevolution

Made my first pot of chili for my winter freezer. Maybe soup next... Time to dig through the recipe box.

#AmericanRevolution I never heard of the Battle of Oriskany in Canada, in which Mohawk w/ the Royalists and Oneida w/ the Patriots fought and died with their white allies.

In the PA county where I grew up, poll books were distributed to precincts without including independent and third-party voters, forcing 12,000 provisional ballots to be filed. Poll worker errors meant many ballots were not counted. GOP tried to ensure it stayed that way. share.inquirer.com/Etm4Du

#Deported. To a war zone . Most don't even speak the language. Some were accepted. What happened to the rest? #Ukraine #TheCrueltyIsThePoint