July 2011
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That's the description, by her lawyer, of a woman in a nearby town who runs a tax preparation and loan business and is pleading guilty to "a systematic scheme" to cheat the government by filing "thousands of bogus tax returns over several years." According to her plea agreement, she and some of her employees cheated…
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Thanks to Jeff Woodward for sending me this poignant story about a bottle of Jim Beam. I should arrange to leave something of this sort for my grandchildren to find. I wrote something similar back in 2005.
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Weekend Music Don't listen if you don't feel up to a tearjerker. There is no particular significance to my posting this; I just happen to have listened to the album (1000 Kisses) on my commute this week, and was again knocked over by the best songs on it, which is most of them, all but…
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For some reason I really love this picture, possibly even more in black and white. (Here's the original.)
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…at least a little, even as I think "Wow, that was really stupid." And I've never been cheated that way.
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The last space shuttle landed safely this morning, and various headlines have announced that this is the end of the shuttle era. I think it may be more than that: the end of an age of which my generation saw the beginning. The term "space age," which for a long time meant whatever is newest…
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Taken a couple of weekends ago. I was too busy trying to get a decent picture to see if or how he (she?) swallowed that fish, but I suppose it happened. I'm thinking of getting an external monitor to use with my laptop at home–maybe ask for it for my birthday or Christmas. I do…
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Sunday Night Journal — July 17, 2011 I know Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory by reputation, but have never read it. When it was published in the 1970s, it was immediately considered an important book, and seems to have retained that status ever since, as I run across references to it from…
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This keeps showing up on the Google News page, and I keep wondering: why would anyone want to do this? Welcome to Google News Badges Collect private badges for your favorite topics. The more you read, the more your badges level up: you can reach Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and finally Ultimate. Keep your badges…
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Is it possible that the name of the goalkeeper of the US women's soccer team is really Hope Solo? It's not a made-up name describing her job? I don't think many novelists would be so audacious with a character's name. Well, in any case, I wish them well. Unfortunately I probably won't have time to…
Light On Dark Water 