Friday--Happy May Day

I am so looking forward to the coming weekend and week generally.  They say three days may feature good chances of rain but I don't mind rain.  Sufficient rain simply means I don't have to water the gardens.  We saw a little squirrel in our patio yesterday.  He was able to squeeze through the small space between the cement and the bottom of the fence.  The birds scatter the seed all over and he helped them clean it up.  The robin has been visiting regularly so I hope he will over the summer when I will have bugs I would rather not have.  If the overnight temps over the next week are warm enough I will move my tomato seedlings--the bigger ones--into the little greenhouse.

Jack Miles at HuffingtonPost has a good critique of American education policy and how it affects (negatively) our foreign policy.  There is an old saying that applies here:  when your only tool is a hammer all your problems look like nails.  Right now we have a very limited tool kit.  But I would amend Zakaria and Miles a bit.  The failing goes well beyond the era of STEM.  A tidbit from 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution swept Iran has remained with me:  only (maybe) half a dozen of our diplomatic staff in Iran actually spoke Farsi.  What is Farsi you ask?  Just the national language.  Only a couple of U.S. universities had programs for studying that language.  Think that just might have helped create that diplomatic disaster?

Interesting notion!!  A great way to heal the urban/rural divide.

Now, let's see this thing get into court and if the case can be proven.  As a famous saying goes: any fool can take a case to court--it takes a real man (or woman in this case) to get their verdict.