Snarky … Yes Again … Snippets

More snarky snippets.

Filosofa's Word

After a day off from snarking, I find the snark buildup is bubbling, threatening to overflow.  And so … here we go again …

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Remember yesterday when I told you about Representative Louie Gohmert who had contracted the coronavirus and tried to claim he got it from wearing a mask?  Well, I knew Gohmert had been on my radar before, and right after I wrote that, another instance of his apparent insanity hit my inbox.

Last week, Gohmert introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives that calls on the U.S. House to bar all Democrats from the chamber because of the party’s historical ties to slavery and racism unless the party is renamed.  Say WHAT???

Said Gohmert in a Breitbart (go figure) article …

“Efforts by Democrats to destroy all public traces of their own history of supporting slavery, the Confederacy, and segregation in an attempt to shift blame…

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Walking in the Lowther Valley

Walking in the Lowther Valley.

Walking the Old Ways

We could hardly ever tell people just where we’re going on a walk, as we tend to change our minds as we go. We were planning to walk up from Askham through the Lowther Estate and then up to the ring cairn on Knipe Scar. But in the end we put off the cairn and the scar for another day, and had a stravaig that took us up through Bampton Grange, Bampton and Helton.

Bampton Grange (c) John Bainbridge 2020

A rather lovely day of footpaths and lanes, old red telephone boxes, lots of Cranesbill in the hedgerows. A day that began and ended with a shower but stayed mostly dry. A day of ice cream from the super tea room in Bampton.

If you haven’t walked Bampton then you should. So many folk rush through the Lowther valley to get to Haweswater and grand walks up to Nan Bield…

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Watching

Watching the seasons change.

The Silent Eye

For the past few days there has been a young heron beside the road on the five mile drive to my son’s home. It stands, arrow thin, shadow blue and perfectly still, almost invisible, watching the drainage ditch that runs along the edge of the fields.

No-one appears to notice it as they drive by, focussed as they are, quite rightly, on the fast-moving traffic. I notice a lot of things as I drive. The road is familiar, yet changes daily. For the past few days also there has been a fox, now paper-thin with the passing of lorries, yet its coat is still that burnished copper and its tail, apparently undamaged, waves in a semblance of life as the traffic passes. Yesterday a tiny Muntjac deer hopped under the hedge as I drove out of the lane, right in the centre of the village. Today the kites were flying…

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The Truth About Portland

What is really going on in Portland?

Filosofa's Word

Nicholas Kristof’s column yesterday was eye-opening and re-affirms from a highly respected and reliable eyewitness that the biggest part of the violence in Portland, Oregon, is caused by Trump’s goon squad, aka federal troops.  Take a minute to read this, and then imagine it happening in your city, in every major city in the nation …

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In Portland’s So-Called War Zone, It’s the Troops Who Provide the Menace

If President Trump is actually trying to establish order, he is stunningly incompetent.

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

July 25, 2020, 2:40 p.m. ET

PORTLAND, Ore. — To watch Fox News is to learn from Sean Hannity that the “Rose City” of Portland is “like a war zone” that has been, in Tucker Carlson’s words, “destroyed by the mob.”

So I invite Hannity and Carlson to escape their bubbles and visit Portland, stroll along the Willamette River and enjoy a glass of local…

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Macro Monday: do you really need to destroy that wasp’s nest? — Daniel Greenwood

Do we really have to destroy wasp’s nests?

Walking the Old Ways

Macro Monday 27th July 2020 The garden is very dry and the insects are becoming more scarce, but that can help to focus on a species and reach deeper into their ecology and the relationship we have with them. We’ll get to that in good time. I’m writing this on a rainy day so hopefully […]

via Macro Monday: do you really need to destroy that wasp’s nest? — Daniel Greenwood

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How claims that Stonehenge’s Outstanding Universal Value won’t be massively damaged have been totally confounded. — The Heritage Journal

Concerning Stonehenge.

Walking the Old Ways

There’s a suspicion that on Thursday the Government told Parliament the delay was due to the new discoveries to conceal the true technical and financial reasons. Plus, it gave them a tactical advantage: if they did go ahead they could easily show the new features were too far away to be affected, and thus tell […]

via How claims that Stonehenge’s Outstanding Universal Value won’t be massively damaged have been totally confounded. — The Heritage Journal

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doors inside the monastery from Borzesti

Just lovely. —- Suzanne

Snarky Is The New Normal

If Trump is trying to pull people’s attention away from his dreadful mistakes, he’s winning. He and the Republicans who work with him are running amuck.

Filosofa's Word

Try as I might, I cannot seem to keep the snarky at bay these days.  I wake in the morning to an overflow of ‘breaking news’ on my phone, and it’s downhill from there … every story either causes my jaw to drop or an expletive to issue forth before I can stop it.  It amazes me, as I sit here looking out the window, that the grass is still green, the birds are still flying about and stopping to help themselves to the bird seed on my patio, the flowers still bloom, children are out playing and laughing … everything appears to be ‘normal’, just as it was before, just as it has always been.  But it is not … nothing is ‘normal’ in these troubled times.  ‘Twould seem that snarky is my new ‘normal’, so …

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Assault on the 1^st Amendment …

During the protests that have…

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Black Beauties~

Some pictures taken by Cindy Knoke of gorgeous Red-tailed Black Cockatoos in the Yatta Valley in Victoria Australia.

This gorgeous pair of red tailed black cockatoos was photographed at the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary in the Yarra Valley in Victoria Australia during our February trip.

There are five sub-species of red tailed black cockatoos in Australia, with two sub-species under serious threat.

Healesville Sanctuary is dedicated to the recovery of 27 threatened native Australian species.

It’s animal hospital treats over 1500 sick or injured native animals each year, and it has an active breeding program for threatened species.

Although I was able to photograph other black cockatoos in the wild during our February trip, these were the only red tails I was lucky enough to see.

Cheers to you from Australia’s iconic red tailed black cockatoos~

For more on Healesville’s important work see:

https://www.zoo.org.au/healesville/habitats/main-track/australian-wildlife-health-centre/

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-07/five-endangered-species-released-back-into-the-wild-in-12-months/5725428

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Criminal Mischief: Episode #39: Do Series Characters Change?

Information for the writers of criminal short stories and novels.

The Crime Fiction Writer's Blog

Criminal Mischief: Episode #39: Do Series Characters Change?

LISTEN: https://soundcloud.com/authorsontheair/episode-39-do-series-characters-change

PAST SHOWS: http://www.dplylemd.com/criminal-mischief.html

SHOW NOTES:

Do Series Characters Change?

A better question might be: Should series characters change? Go through some upheaval that arcs their life into uncharted waters?

What is a character arc? Where does it come from? How do you create this in your fictional stories? More importantly, do you even need one?

The answer to the first three questions is fairly straight forward. A character arc simply means the change that the character goes through over the course of the story. Something happens in the character’s life that pushes it off balance. It might be a shark feeding off the shores of Amity Island or two robots showing up and babbling about some character named Obi-Wan Kenobi. It might be a group of armed criminals taking over a small hotel on Key Largo, along…

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