How powerful is Television? (From Slate Magazine) “ Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of three.” I’m not an expert on autism, but recently I took a refresher psychology class at The College of Southern Idaho. When we arrived at the chapter on dreams, something reminded me of the textbook from my previous psyche class, three decades ago. Back then, a statement claimed that 95 percent of us Americans dream in black and white. That study was from the early 60's, an era when we watched over 90 percent of TV shows through black and white sets. The textbook from my recent CSI class, posited precisely the opposite: that 95 percent of us now dream in living color! What was there to explain for this grand shift? Is there a correlation between the tones of Americans dreams and the types of TV’s they own? This made me wonder: Is television hi
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Barefoot from Africa by Catharina © O n a recent cold snowy morning, I was visiting a friend who reminded me that as dazzling as the hypnotic snow is, it’s customary to brush the snow from our cars. Moving slowly and not accustomed to the cold; being from a continent of sunshine with no winters, I find snow enchanting. I was even amused when I saw that the bottle of water kept in my car was frozen.
Funny, in my country there is always a lack of freezers. You have to search for ingenious ways to keep things cool; here you are searching for ways to keep things warm. Odd...funny, inside out and upside down, from where I come. -That is, barefoot from Africa .
As I was trodding around my freezing little blue car, which was the color of my skin after five minutes out of the warmth of his shack; trying to look intelligent and knowing what I am doing in this cold; I noticed the soft inner feather of a bird's wing stuck in the ice of my car's windshield. I calle
Pink Rabbits and Flying Dreams
Last night, I had a fanciful dream that I was back at my old Virginia house. I haven’t lived there for decades, but recently went on Google Maps and flew around the woodsy neighborhood a bit. Something, I’ve admired about my father, is that whenever he bought a house, it was always adjacent to some woods, giving us young rapscallions a healthy place to run around to release our energy.
In the dream, I awoke on Saturday daybreak and went outside, barefoot in my pajamas to collect a Washington Post from our snowy driveway. In reality, we lived on a sleepy dead end, but in the dream, cars could now connect into the forest. In fact, it was a bustling thoroughfare now; some elaborate racecars were speeding into the woods, as one or two old jalopies were pulling out and returning to civilization. Even though it was snowy, I was excited to be back, and thought I would take an encompassing walk around the backyard, while waiting for th
Monday September 14, 2009 - A Day To Remember On the evening of September 13 th Doro received a phone call from Darcy Harcourt, a veterinarian technician, who joined Silent Voices a couple of months ago from the Twin Falls area. Darcy exposed a cruelty case going on in Jerome. Five abandoned starving horses, six caged starving dogs, and one goat whose collar tore into her flesh. Aside from two old bales of hay on the premises, no other food or water were present. Doro met Darcy at the blinking light on Hwy. 75 in the early morning. Arriving at the abandoned site, they took pictures and videos of the caged animals and the horrid unsanitary conditions these animals were enduring. Apparently after being in Hawaii for a week, the young couple who owned these animals, decided they were going to stay in Hawaii for six months longer. So they apparently contracted someone to feed the animals but never followed up. They also had two other horses shipped to Hawaii, one was
The illuminating crown of thorns
Not long after this letter ran, I dreamt that I was in the basement of my old newspaper haunt, briefly hanging out with some former colleagues. Suddenly several of us had inkling to rush out to the back ‘smoking’ lot, where we found an enormous pin oak illuminated by a brilliant golden light, coming from within the tree. The oak had about sixty branches shooting out to the sides, rou ghl y in an equilateral circle. Thirty of these were large branches, too large to encompass with your arms. These were intertwined with thirty smaller branches. Another strange thing about this tree is that somebody had recently lopped the trunk off from its base, which caused the branches to fall out in their great circle. This was also causing the tree to levitate three feet off the ground, as the branches held together like a large crown of thorns.
Well the newspaper couldn’t have a levitating crown of thorns like that, just blocking their loading d
Idling thoughts Someone approached me recently with a concern of cars idling in Ketchum. Her distress was this: “Hi there, came across your email on the SVO blog. I am not a blogger, but did join the site. Am new to Wood River Valley. since you seem big into blogging, has anyone blogged about how bizarre and disturbing it is that so many people leave their cars running at the curb while they go about their business in Ketchum. I wrote a LTE in the Express about this... but wonder if it can / ought to be blogged about. Thoughts? And on that subject, why do so many people drive in Ketchum? It’s so unnecessary! - KT” I replied, “Welcome to the valley. I think that’s an interesting subject you bring up, and could work well for a SVO discussion.” A few random thoughts: In recent years, local authorities have posted several dozen no-idling signs in well-thought out places around the valley. Hailey has a lot of these, as do most schools. I wonder though, how local law enforcement works with t
Participants in the Idaho Conversation League writing workshops will be pleased to hear that Tony Evans has won two more Idaho Press Club, Excellence in Journalism awards: A First Place for the informative and refreshing outdoor feature “Out on the ice”: http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2 005123796 And a third-place for “Home Building 101” in the Education reporting category. http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2 005123776 Way to go Tony!
Fiery Hypnologic Anthem I was floating on a red white and blue noctilucent cloud that I had surfed on some years before. I didn’t realize that this cloud could ever be there again. I had seen it before too, in a cartoon, where Ben Franklin trounced Jimi Hendrix in a tight game of air hockey. This got me thinking about Whiskey Jacques air hockey game and the infernal fire it must have endured next to pool table ball teardrops and melting graffiti. What did the clean-up workers talk about as they excavated this mess? I hope the demolition boys utilized their imagination, while multitasking Neil Young’s Romantic jukebox song, Under the Wrecking Ball: “Wear something pretty and white, and meet me under the wrecking ball tonight” But first, I’ll have to cash in some sauce-cash at the ATM, as long as it doesn’t cut my finger again, bleeding through wads of sacred infernal Federal Reserve bills. This reminds me, surfing freely on noctilucent clouds without a wallet or belt always seemed easie
You come for me often; and sometimes you are welcomed. Sometimes I embrace you like a dear old friend. Sometimes we go for walks together through a forested park. Holding hands like lovers on the verge of a life together. Sometimes we just stay in, and share the night together.
There are other times, old friend, when you are not welcome on my doorstep. Sometimes, you need to just leave well enough alone and go your own way. Go back to the dark cave from which you came and wallow in your own misery.
Those are the brighter days for me. Those are the days the clouds clear to blue skies; the sun somehow seems warmer on my skin and the days that the mountains seem so much stronger and wise thrusting themselves from the earth. The days I shout to you; I am not alone dear loneliness. I am not alone!
The days you are away, I become stronger and more alive. Though, I do miss you, and will welcome your embrace again soon. But I also realize that too much time together w
Facebooked by TONY EVANS My teenage niece has Facebook friends in her hometown to whom she has never spoken a live word. For some mysterious reason, she would never even acknowledge these people if she were to see them at the grocery store. Did she inherit my unfortunate lack of social skills, or has the popularity contest of life taken on a whole new dimension? I suppose flesh and bones interactions these days might break the spell of who everyone is trying to be in cyberspace. My own friend-scape is an organic and evolving thing, based on common interests, shifting loyalties and a great deal of happenstance. There is no real rhyme or reason to how we all know one another, but lately I have been wondering what my life would be like if I had been more socially adept and focused all these years. Maybe I would be famous, or rich. Awkwardness didn't play very well in college where the most popular guys in the room always spoke the loudest, usually about sports. It took forever to fin
http://www.geocities.com/nastymcquickly/articles/standard.html
World-shaking Shakespearian Synchronicities Over the last moon, I’ve spent considerable time reflecting back on clocks and this Synchronicity post . Recently, a friend pointed out that I would have a ‘magic birthday’ coming up relatively soon, and this would be 12-12-12 , when I would turn 53. While thinking about this, for some reason, I felt compelled to look back at some William Shakespeare. Throughout most of school, I felt as if his work was high over my head, although perhaps I didn’t invest my time wise, trying to understand the great bard. While reading countless intriguing references to Shakespeare since school, I felt like I was missing something and should at least shortcut through Wikipedia to gain a rudimentary Shakespearian appreciation. One of the first fitting things I discovered is that “Am I a weakish speller?" is a perfect anagram for William Shakespeare. The second thing that caught my attention was that Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616 , his 53 rd birthday
Tolkien interview from 1967 http://www.nytimes.com/1967/01/15/books/tolkien-interview.html
http://www.magicvalley.com/articles/2009/01/18/opinion/centerpiece/153131.txt
http://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/story/636286.html Reader's Opinion from Saturday's Idaho Statesman : A new day is dawning for salmon and steelhead in the Pacific Northwest. In the span of two weeks last November, the complex chessboard that comprises salmon recovery in Idaho began to look more optimistic for the first time in eight years. The November elections, pending court verdicts and the recent settlement to remove four lethal dams on the Klamath River in California and Oregon, paint a brighter future for species that have been teetering on the brink of extinction for decades. However, focusing solely on studies like the one touted in a Reader View published in the Dec. 12 Idaho Statesman is misleading. While the study cited is an important piece of the puzzle, it is only a fragment of a complex issue. Common sense, to use author Terry Flores' words, suggests that residents of the Pacific Northwest might begin looking forward to a more free-flowing, optimistic er
http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005124381 Recycled stories like in the above link, often remind me of this article from the Misanthrope's Corner - facetious examination of the politically correct recycling movement: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_8_51/ai_54391027/print