Friday.  Coooool today.  Temperature is in the mid 50s.  But should warm up and we should have nice sun.  Don't have much planned for work in the gardens.  Everything is perking along nicely.  I found three ripe strawberries yesterday.  We ate them as a treat as soon as I brought them in.  Most of the plants are blooming profusely so we should get many more.  Yum!!

For a while now, whenever we listened to or read a story about the increasing rates of allergies and asthma, we commented that perhaps the emphasis our culture places on extreme cleanliness--antiseptic cleanliness--might be the cause.  Over the last couple of years I have seen news reports of scientific studies that seem to back up that notion.  Here is the latest.

As most of you know, I am a medical minimalist.  I see a doctor when I have a problem and I choose the treatment that solves the problem with the fewest side effects.  I have refused medications that address don't address the problem or that I have found to be ineffective for me.  Evidently some doctors are now questioning our current medical system which seems to be set up to find something, anything, to treat.

I wasn't at all surprised by this story.  It seems a logical development of the science.  But just because it is logical doesn't mean it is at all comfortable or desirable.

Moon of Alabama has an interesting post that paralleled my own thoughts listening to the TV news last night about the 70th Anniversary of D-Day observances and the delicate dance around Russia's Vladimir Putin.  The tone of the stories seemed to be both a bit miffed at his attendance at the ceremonies.  I just commented "What the hell??  Doesn't anyone remember the the Soviet Union fought that war and at the time of D-Day was our ally??"  Evidently not.  But then we have all been taught history only from our own country's perspective.  Much of what Moon of Alabama described was new to me and I have read more history than most.  But most of that history was written from an American point of view.  It reminds me somewhat of a controversy over a TV series from way, way back called The Desert Rats.  The original Desert Rats were a British unit involved in the battles for Tobruk.  The 1953 move maintained that but in the translation to American TV all the characters became American.  The British were just a bit miffed.

So some of our junk has now received geological classifications.