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If these critters ever learn to read, we'll be defenseless!
But the bait (doughnuts) worked this time, and all is well.
UPDATE:
After more than 1,000 National Park Service employees were fired in
February 2025 as part of the Trump administration's insistence on
cutting federal expenditures, the residents of the parks realized
that they needed to pitch in to take up the slack. One bear was ambling down a road. (Click the picture for video.) Apparently somebody had cut a corner too close and knocked over an orange traffic cone, which was now lying on its side. Obviously, the bear thought, this isn't right. So she walked up to the base of the cone and put down a paw to make sure the object wouldn't slide toward her. Then she leaned down, grasped the cone with her teeth, and pulled it toward herself. With the traffic safety device now restored to uprightness, all was well, and the bear resumed her stroll.
MAY
17, 2025
I've long known about ANTIbiotics, which are used to kill harmful bacteria.
And
now we have two more biotics. PREbiotics
are fiber supplements that further encourage the probiotics.
And if pre exists, does that imply that post
exists as well? Yes, it does! POSTbiotics
are substances produced by probiotics acting upon prebiotics.
The Cleveland Clinic says that some of them, like the butyric acid
found in rancid butter, can be made into products or treatments
that would have a healing effect on people. Would
have a healing effect, not do have a healing effect? Hmm. At least these 3-in-1 supplements contain no otropics, whatever those are. I'm sorry, I misspaced. It appears that some products do contain nootropics. Allegedly they reverse your biological age (from 7 2 to 2 7 ?) by boosting mental clarity and balancing energy levels, whatever that means. Sounds like the science is still fermenting.
Fifty years ago this month, I graduated from Richwood High School. Our Class of 1965 broke the mold. The authorities, despairing that any better class would ever come along, retired the schools name. By that fall it had become North Union High School.
MAY
9, 2025
Ten days later, western Pennsylvania has mostly recovered. We don't often experience hurricane-strength gales around here, but unusually heavy storms of wind and rain swept through my region after 5:00 pm on Tuesday, April 29. AccuWeather called it a derecho. A gust of 71.3 miles per hour was the third strongest ever recorded at Pittsburgh International Airport. More than half a million homes were affected by power outages, including my home, I guess. My electricity went off, but only for a short time: less than ten seconds.
On Wednesday, the day after the storm, Pittsburgh's mayor declared an emergency. Fifty public schools were closed and 120 city roads were inaccessible. I was able to navigate the suburbs with little trouble except for the fact that some traffic signals were dark. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Adrianna E. Ramírez wrote, every intersection where the lack of electricity prevented the stoplights from working, I found myself grateful as we took turns, signaling carefully and moving with caution, respectful of one another.... The best stories are the ones of how we made it back to one another long after the storm. Weeklong repairs, according to West Penn Power spokesman Todd Meyers, were a tremendous effort involving thousands of line workers from more than 18 states. On the morning of May 6, West Penn reported that their last storm-related customer outage was restored, but around 4,400 Duquesne Light customers were beginning their seventh day without electricity. On roadsides and in the woods, we may still be seeing branches and other remains of downed trees for months.
MAY
7, 2025
Local media are always in search of news, including stories about things that haven't happened yet. The media rejoiced a year ago when Pittsburgh was selected as the future site for the 2026 National Football League Draft.
Another topic that has been popping up with tiresome regularity is Real ID. You see, the United States, unlike most nations, does not have a national photo ID card. According to Wikipedia, All legislative attempts to create a national identity card have failed due to tenacious opposition from liberal and conservative politicians alike, who regard the national identity card as the mark of a totalitarian society. Halt! Show us your papers! Therefore, we have to get by with alternatives. For weeks, local newscasts have been repeatedly urging us to obtain Real ID cards. If you've somehow missed the explanation, these are ordinary driver's licenses with little gold stars in the corner, indicating that the identity information thereon has been verified from documents like birth certificates and W-2s and utility bills.
Reacting to September 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked airplanes, Real IDs were supposed to be required nationwide in order to board flights on domestic airlines or to enter nuclear power plants and certain federal buildings. The original deadline for that requirement was 17 years ago. Now today, on May 7, 2025, the requirement has finally arrived. Often, a woman has difficulty obtaining a Real ID because the name on her birth certificate is no longer the name that she's using. She needs to present either a marriage certificate or a court order for a name change. A marriage license merely grants government permission to wed a few days later, so that's not good enough. Many folks discover that fact only after waiting in a long line at the PennDOT driver license center. However, most people can postpone that visit to the license center. The much-hyped cutoff date is a TSA deadline, not a PennDOT deadline. And it's not even a hard deadline. Yesterday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told a Congressional panel that those who still lack an identification that complies with the Real ID law may be diverted to a different line, have an extra step. That may require an extra hour or so, according to TSA officials. But people will be allowed to fly. We will make sure it's as seamless as possible and that travelers will get to stay on their intended itinerary. She did say the agency is still committed to enforcing the law but did not say whether that enforcement will eventually become more stringent. The passing of the deadline today merely affects TSA procedures for boarding a plane. It does not mean that Real ID cards will no longer be available from PennDOT. Only a minority of folks are frequent fliers, and if you know you aren't going to fly anywhere until, say, Thanksgiving, you can wait to get your card until, say, Labor Day. All of this means that repeated urging to get Real means nothing to me.
I've never changed my name. So I've been ignoring the warnings in the media. Presumably after today, they'll halt!
MAY
5, 2025
Some
folks cry at emotional scenes in movies. I don't,
usually. What does bring tears to my eyes? Watching the amazing Alysa Liu skating to the 2025 world championship, with her immigrant father (right) cheering her on. Also, hearing a performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp minor, which reminded me of the time when as an eighth-grader I performed a simplified version on the upright piano in the school cafeteria. Also, seeing other successes depicted in documentaries or re-enactments. I learned about Southland Ice Company director Jodie Thompson in an episode of the History Channel series The Food that Built America. In 1927 Dallas, he allowed one of his ice house managers to sell not only blocks of ice (harvested the previous winter) but also a few food products. Now appreciative customers could skip an extra trip to the grocery store. However, some grocers didn't like the competition and stopped buying Southland's ice, which at any rate would become less necessary as mechanical refrigeration was developed. Thompson responded by keeping his stores open for an unprecedented 16 hours a day, from 7:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night. From seven till eleven, get it?
MAY
2, 2025
As a fifth-grader, I usually got my hair cut in my home town of Richwood, Ohio. But one week, for some reason, my mother took me to a barbershop in Raymond, 14 miles away. It would have been Saturday afternoon, October 7, 1957.
After my haircut, the barber gave me a 3 Musketeers candy bar for being a good boy. I liked the whipped nougat, and I remembered the experience. I don't recall being in Raymond for any other purpose, although there is a Methodist church on Main Street. The next month, I wrote a brief account of an earlier car trip with my mother. This rural part of Ohio has many scattered towns including Richwood, and I tend to confuse two other R villages, Raymond and Radnor. The former is nine miles west of Pharisburg, and the latter is five miles south of Prospect.
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