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Post by millring on Apr 17, 2024 13:04:25 GMT -5
I meant that in the sense of justifying our existence in a world that doesn't use mail enough anymore to justify paying for one of the largest institutions in existence. Mail in ballots puts the USPS back on the relevance map.
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USPS
Apr 17, 2024 4:07:16 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by millring on Apr 17, 2024 4:07:16 GMT -5
Fairly comprehensive but seriously in need of a translator. 1. The USPS believes it is entitled to $100B from the federal government. 2. Amazon already considers itself a "partner" with USPS. The feeling is not mutual. 3. At a time of terrible uncertainty, the USPS intends to go forward with an untested electric fleet that won't work for rural delivery OR parcel delivery -- parcel delivery being the future for the USPS. 4. Watch the ballot delivery angle to be a big part of the story going forward. www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/04/15/biden-usps-amazon-aid/
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Post by millring on Apr 16, 2024 16:15:34 GMT -5
Most folks seem to agree that rosewood brings out the most of the lower range. That not being one of the choices, I'd try to figure out which of the choices most emphasizes the low end like rosewood does. My guess might lean towards the walnut for density.
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Post by millring on Apr 16, 2024 14:22:21 GMT -5
As usual, the recording quality is bad, but here's my take on Moon River. What. . I want you to click on the link just to hear some asshole playing Moon River? youtu.be/5-1RQBiYzoA?si=M3k1KTu1LiJaIsNvI volunteered for some overtime that ended in a 14 hour day yesterday, but today balances things out. I was done before 2:30.
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Post by millring on Apr 15, 2024 8:10:06 GMT -5
I don't understand the suggestion that concern about the climate is "woke." I suspect that I have put more effort into understanding the science and the evidence surrounding climate change than most people here. I'm very concerned. That concern has little or nothing to do with my view of any other issues. It's a product of the evidence. I don't have the view I have because I was swept up in trendy groupthink. I continue to be puzzled about how "wokeness," which I understand to mean awareness of and sensitivity to injustice, has become a sneered epithet. Indifference to injustice is no virtue. Sarcastic put-downs of people we disagree with don't get us anywhere. I'm not sneering. It's their word and they're proud of it. Am I not allowed to use it?
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Post by millring on Apr 15, 2024 5:22:25 GMT -5
That was just exciting enough to be enjoyable. I watched Scheffler retake the lead before I went off to dinner with friends. I had to google up the final.
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Post by millring on Apr 15, 2024 5:20:12 GMT -5
Imma go out on a limb here and suggest that perhaps there is no such thing as a blue corn moon. That's probably why the wolf is howling. He knows.
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NPR
Apr 15, 2024 5:17:49 GMT -5
Post by millring on Apr 15, 2024 5:17:49 GMT -5
You don't think your counterpart at FOX News has been doing exactly that? Well... If a reporter at the Star Tribune reports that Trump's constant and persistent claims of massive voter fraud with hoards of dead people voting for Biden have been discredited as they lack factual support, he is relying on the substantive findings of our judicial system, the election reviews of every Secretary of State of every state in the Union, and the findings of every investigation that has been ordered by state legislative authorities. If a reporter from Fox reports that Trump's constant and persistent claims of massive voter with hoards of dead people voting for Biden have been discredited and lack merit, he or she is assigned to cleaning the bathrooms for a month with no coffee breaks. Reporters at Fox learn quickly. And report differently, at least whenever and wherever Trump of the Long Reach is concerned. "Give Trump a pass and tread lightly, boys. Switch the topic to big, hairy transgenders raised by fat lesbians being allowed to play girl sports against little girls as quickly as possible. That's the ticket to success and bonuses!" None of those issues appear in Uri Berliner's article.
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Post by millring on Apr 15, 2024 5:10:58 GMT -5
I guess Ireland is the place you wanna be if you love music. When posted my "grant" thing on facebook, I was told that I need to read this account that proves Americans don't support music but Ireland does. Anyway, it's a winsome account.
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Post by millring on Apr 15, 2024 5:01:55 GMT -5
But the point I am making is the very real possibility that the numbers presented in the image (how much various countries support the arts) is:
1. Provided by the NEA which has a vested interest in scolding America for its niggardly ways so that we straighten up, fly right, and fund the NEA with more millions than we currently do, and...
2. misleading because (as Russell is arguing in order to rebut me but accidentally swerving into making my point about the NEA's numbers):
A) Public grants (as provided by the NEA) are not the only grants artists vie for, but they appear to be the metric by which the NEA is scolding us.
B) How much a country supports the arts isn't indicated by those numbers that the NEA provided. How much Americans support the arts is measured by the number of self-supporting artist we have relative to the rest of those countries. If by THAT measure you prove that we are yet again inferior (as we are with health care and climate awareness and gender sensitivity ... as we appear to be by every other woke measure under the sun) then perhaps we are due the scolding.
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Post by millring on Apr 15, 2024 4:45:12 GMT -5
But then, it's their money, not yours or mine. You don't think it's tax deductible?
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Post by millring on Apr 14, 2024 19:47:34 GMT -5
Dar noticed the cardinal. I noticed a mockingbird.
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Post by millring on Apr 14, 2024 15:43:11 GMT -5
I appreciate your desire to dwell in Cicely. Interesting characters, slow pace, beautiful surroundings, well-established personalities and simple concerns. I was looking for a version of it yesterday. My wife and I visited Dallas, Oregon, population 17,488. It is in the foothills of Oregon's Coast Range mountains. I know it is a bit further from our kids and grandson than she would prefer, but it is nearly impossible to be less than an hour's drive from them and be outside suburbia. I am tired of the traffic and the f-ing leaf blowers. We split a delicious hamburger, tots, and a bowl of loaded potato soup at this place: www.washingtonststeakhouse.com/I was impressed and will be watching for houses in the area. The guy I started pottery with -- Doug Hively -- moved from Winona Lake, Indiana to Dallas Oregon. When he did, that started my pottery. Doug was my college pottery instructor and later my first job as a potter, making production work for him. He's the one I mentioned working side by side with, listening to reel to reel tapes of Smothers Brothers. He wanted to move westward. He was born and raised around here and couldn't wait to exit. He asked if I'd come along as a partner. I wasn't ready for such a risky commitment so I stayed behind and built my first pottery. Doug worked a pottery in Dallas for a decade or so and then, weary of never making a real go of it (Doug's a wonderful guy and willing to work his butt off and REALLY into the technical aspects of pottery....but, alas, very little aesthetic vision. I love Doug, but I always saw that weakness holding him back.). As to small towns I've idealized, I found Henderson on a drivethrough. It's become one of my favorite drives in this big country -- taking the cross-country, blue highway drive across Minnesota and Iowa. The long way home. Yesterday I followed the storm home (caught up with it just outside Chicago) and it gave me a light show to beat all. All the way across the prairie the sun dappled the fields with shafts of light through the breaking clouds. If Ireland is green then Minnesota in summer must be Ireland. There's a beautiful passage not too far south of the Twin Cities where the highway dips down into the Minnesota River valley and enters a little town called Henderson (pop. 874). When life gets hard enough that I need to go somewhere pleasant in my mind, it will probably be to Henderson on a summer morning when the fog is still covering the low ground around the city park by the river, while the 150 year old brick main street rises above. Henderson's Andy Taylor will have a Minnesota accent, but the same slow, deliberate style. The humor won't make me laugh. It will make me smile. And that for a very long time.
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Post by millring on Apr 14, 2024 13:52:03 GMT -5
Fore
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Post by millring on Apr 14, 2024 11:48:10 GMT -5
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Post by millring on Apr 14, 2024 10:29:30 GMT -5
If I ever rebuild my pottery, I'm going to set back up in Cicely, Alaska. I'll rent a storefront from Maggie along the main drag across the street and just a little catty-corner from The Brick. I'll have my radio ever tuned to KBHR 570 and I'll sometimes catch myself looking up to see Chris in the window across the street when he says something that makes me smile. Or think. I know the market will be really small. It's not population enough to sustain me by pottery sales. And Maggie's plane might make shipping the occasional mug possible, but larger pieces or a sustainable Etsy account would be pretty much out of the question. But that'd be alright. I'd teach whoever wanted to learn to throw and handle and glaze and fire. I'd barter for most everything else. And Ed and Holling would regularly bring me clay they find along river banks on fishing expeditions. I'd show them how I'd go about processing the stuff and they'd be waiting at the door on the mornings of kiln openings, anxious to see what we wrought together. Chris and I would regularly debate the relative virtues of function vs art, meaning vs. reality, and whether it is possible to have joy in the absence of pain. We probably won't do so in the presence of Marilyn, though. Such dreams don't suffer the blows of silence very well. To my surprise, Joel is among the first to want lessons. Mostly, he likes someone to talk basketball with with our hands busy at side by side wheels. So the conversation and cultural touchstone draws him...but the simple joy of creating pottery holds him. Yeah, I was surprised too. Dar and Ruth Ann hit it off from the get-go. No surprise there. Dar was SO tickled to find a no-BS kindred spirit. Living with me, she needs it. Hmmm. I just noticed that my narrative somehow slipped from future tense to present. How did that happen?
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Post by millring on Apr 14, 2024 10:03:47 GMT -5
I'd be willing to bet my last cent (figuratively. Dar would kill me if I lost IceSha on a bet) that Penland is anything BUT an exception in that regard. I would bet that DEI is the principle factor in all academic arts grants today. At ALL universities.
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Post by millring on Apr 14, 2024 9:32:54 GMT -5
I can never pass this place without gawking at it from all the angles by which I pass it. I first approach it to my left and I can see it from 1/2 a mile away. Then I whiz by it (it's vacant and I long ago gave up stuffing the mailbox with standard advertisements). Next I turn right at the crossroads 1/8 mile north of it -- 800S -- which happens to terminate in a turnaround box that has me heading back past it from the vantage point you see in the photo. From there I turn around a mile further down the road on 800S and view the house across a 40 acre hay field from behind. I've always said that if Andrew Wyeth ever visited Northern Indiana -- Kosciusko County -- this is the one house he'd paint. This, of course, because I can't see this house and not have an echo of the Kuerner House in my mind's eye. This is a closeup of the front entryway to that house.
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Post by millring on Apr 14, 2024 9:20:35 GMT -5
I'm not sure what the academic world has to do with public funding, though. The podcast I mentioned was talking about theirs (Penland School of Craft) and others grant money and how it was being awarded -- not on the basis of merit or need, but on the goals of DEI. They weren't lamenting this development. They were celebrating it.
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Post by millring on Apr 14, 2024 9:15:57 GMT -5
I think my excitement over bird sightings is relative to how rare the bird is in my area. Still, I always get a thrill when a heron lifts out of the creek right in front of me, spreading its great prehistoric wings in an audible rush. But if you want to see a great blue you can come to my county and I can show you one any day of the week. They are far from rare in this land of creeks, rivers, and lakes.
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