Good Morning and Merry Solstice to you all.  We woke to snow this morning and high winds.  No surprise.  More often now-a-days I get headachy when we get high winds and I woke with the beginnings of one.  I don't think we got much snow but when we get daylight here (we're still more than an hour before dawn) I will check out the patio and clear what needs clearing.  We did our weekly shopping Wednesday taking into account both the weather reports and the coming holidays.  That is our usual pattern.  We try to avoid going out when nasty weather is due or when we can expect large crowds.

I guess this was inevitable--the confluence of two insanities.  A school district outside Chicago also cancelled classes for "non-specific" threats.  We wondered what that meant.

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Hello on this Saturday before Christmas.  Well we all survived the Mayan Apocalypse.  Why the end of the 13th b'ak'tun of the Mayan long count calendar should be any more significant than the end of the 12th month of the 2012th year of our Christian calendar I really don't know.  I have been tired of that hype for the last year.

The s(news) carried the NRA press conference yesterday and this morning.  I did not watch it myself but the parts that made the broadcast aren't a surprise: the protests and the proposal for at least one armed police officer to be posted at each school in the land.  As I said, I am not surprised but I am both disgusted and suspicious.  The notion that the answer to too many guns is more guns makes as much sense as proposing that the answer to flooding is more water.  This is definitely not out-of-the-box thinking.  That is the disgusting part.  What makes me suspicious is how far down the road to an armed camp society some of us seem willing to go.  I also have to ask where the money will come from.  Cities all over the country are cutting police and firefighters because of budget shortfalls.  One city councilman in California (sorry, forgot which city) told the residents he represents to 'lock the door and load the guns.'  So which Peter are they going to rob to pay for Paul's security?  Margaret and Helen have a few very good comments on the issue.

We have a number of glass cooking pans and have used them for years without incident but this story is worrying.  I remember the Consumer Reports investigation mentioned in the story.  We have used our Corning and Pyrex cookware for more than a decade so I don't think we have much to worry about but we will think twice about any new additions.

And then there was this story which made me feel my age.  I remember when In-A-Gadda-Da- Vida came out.  I still have my vinyl record of it.