Well. You get what you vote for.

But lookee here. Their House of Delegates just went up against the know-nothings that run most of the state, and voted down a bill that would have made it easy to exempt your kids from most vaccinations.

Maybe the delegates took a gander at New Mexico, where kids are suffering, and in some cases dying, of measles. Do they know that NM is officially one of the dumbest states in the country? Would they rather not get on board that train?

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And meanwhile: Take a bow, Texas!

RIP Baby’s — but at least they got to shoot people with lots of guns before they had to close.

‘While over 800 IDF soldiers have fallen in battle, a minister in the Israeli government is dancing to the tunes of ‘We Will Die and Not Enlist’ and ‘We Do Not Believe in the Rule of the Heretics.’ This is not a mistake – it is policy. Goldknopf and Netanyahu’s government openly promote the draft-dodging scheme while reservists collapse under their fifth and sixth rounds of deployment.”‘

Sickening but not surprising. Israel has allowed – subsidized! – vile fanatics in its midst, and for the life of me I don’t know how they can possibly overcome them.

UD and her buddy Ellen were doing one of those get there just when it opens and get all the art to yourselves things when, in one of the atria, we happened on a wedding.

A spectacular creekside house built by “world-renowned translators of the works of Søren Kierkegaard” is asking $850,000, which probably means you’ll pay less than that. You can hear the creek from the house.

[It’s] constructed with native limestone, is on 2 acres, and has more than 4,323 square feet. Natural light pours through large windows on the main floor, which has an open floor plan and a walk-out deck. The lower level has stone floors and opens onto a patio.

There are three full kitchens, five fireplaces (a mixture of decorative, wood-burning and gas), a sauna and a hot tub. It contains at least four full bedrooms, along with other versatile rooms.

Northfield (site of St Olaf College) isn’t that far from St Paul/Minneapolis, so urban life is also available…

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Zillow, OTOH, currently lists petite chez UD for over a million, which tells you all you need to know about location, location, location.

In the wake of New Mexico’s latest bloodbath, the governor notes that the “legislature will adjourn today without having a passed a single bill to address juvenile crime or ban assault weapons. Their inaction is appalling and unacceptable.”

The mayor of Las Cruces NM gets points for honesty, as one of those obviously mass murder generating events generates mass murder in her crime-ridden city. Collect a crowd of very young idiots at some idiotic illegal event involving cars and alcohol, and watch the bullets fly.

The violent crime rate [in NM] was twice the national average in 2023, according to the Council of State Governments Justice Center… By August of 2024, violent crime in [Las Cruces] was up 46 percent compared to the same period in 2023.

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Sure you want the skinny on America’s dumbest, grungiest, state? Go here if you dare.

… spreads mulch in UD‘s backyard. It’s a fundraising thing. UD graduated from WJ.

How do you get a decade-long suspension?
Michigan State is not inclined to say.
What did you do to get that long a sanction?
A murder or two?  Fraternity rape?  Gun play?

Maybe you hazed your freshmen til you killed them.
Made them drink gin until they passed away.
Maybe you bashed their heads in til concussion.
With hazing there's just so very many ways!

Like the therapist/rapist, this one involves sexual crimes; but here there seems to have been a concerted effort to hide the fact that a principal stands charged with multiple rapes of a minor — one of the students in her school!

Not a peep out of anyone in the system for years; but then a reporter found

… a thin manila folder in the basement of the New Castle County Courthouse.

[Inside was] a 19-count felony indictment that charges Tasha Purnell — OIiver’s former name — with multiple rape and other sex crimes from 2010 through 2014 against a girl who was a minor.

Like pick up the phone and call the school?

But if you’d done that, you’d have missed your chance to hire a rapist of children as a School District therapist for K-5 students.

Swasticar tanking in Germany.

Quebec is considering expanding Bill 21, which already keeps public sector employees from wearing religious clothing/objects while on the job. Not only teachers, for instance, but also students, would, in this proposed expansion, not be permitted to wear hijabs.

Of course the Muslim community spokesman in my headline reveals the problem: Secular legislation is wildly popular in secular Quebec. Banning religious garb is indeed a surefire way to bolster your poll numbers. So the question at issue is whose “fundamental rights”? UD, for instance, considers it a fundamental right of secular countries, states, and provinces to protect their secularity in certain restricted realms (government schools being one of them). Further, she fully admits that her support for restricted secular laws has to do not only with respect for the strongly expressed will of people in some localities that the secular nature of their sense of themselves as a culture be enshrined in law, but also with her belief that schoolgirls too young to have any say in the matter should not be draped head to toe. This obviously repressive form of fundamentalist religious expression offends her liberal sensibilities; it degrades the promise of equality at the heart of democratic regimes. I don’t think parents have a fundamental right to wrap their eight year old daughters in head and body sheeting before they can go outside.

Altogether odd and beautiful weather this spring, back and forth from sunny and warm and calm to gray and cool and windy. I’ve tossed Magical Flames and Firestart onto the grate, and on top I’ve piled old woody grapevines that sheared off a tree in one of the windstorms. Mr UD got the black statues when he worked for the UN in East Timor. The tan camels we brought back from India, and to the right is a Corbu-themed quilt that students of Jerzy Soltan made for him.

UD reflects, looking at this fire and also at people/dogs walking on Rokeby Avenue, that though she’s done quite a lot of traveling (as you know if you read this blog), she likes best to be at her peaceful home, whose last owner was Munro Leaf. Ferdinand the Bull’s spirit remains here, decades after the death of the man who conjured him.