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The Joys of Rural Living: Water Filter Edition
I am so disgustingly pleased with myself that, were it any later than 10:30 a.m., I’d be pouring myself a drink and chilling out in the hot tub. (Oh dear. The little man who lives on my shoulder and repeatedly whispers into my ear–usually at very inopportune moments such as this–“Remember, thou art mortal,” has just pointed out to me that I don’t actually have a hot tub. Note to self: I need to get cracking on that very good idea I had (and mentioned at least glancingly in a post some years ago, I think), that I ought to be able to do something with the barn manure, an old stock tank, and the overflow from one of the rain-barrels, to remedy that problem).
Speaking of which, I read the other day that, in these restrictive days of lockdown, rich people who normally wouldn’t be caught dead chillin’ with Nous Deplorables in Tractor Supply or Rural King are buying stock tanks up in droves as accent pieces and ersatz “pools” for their patios and backyards. LOL. Levi had this figured out about a decade ago:
what happened and responded, the woman probably would have died.
President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team has made it clear that climate change will be a top policy priority for his incoming administration. In crafting its policies, the Biden administration may heavily rely upon a blueprint already created by former Obama administration officials and environmental experts. Known as the 
So I had to drop off a CD with some X-rays at a colleague’s medical office. The nurse wouldn’t let me in the door until I put my face in front of an iPad with a temperature sensor on it. I did so, she looked at the screen, and she said, “92.3 – that’s fine. Come on back.” So I come on back, while thinking, “No one with a temp of 92.3 could have coronavirus, because they’d have rigor mortis.”
I have, since my eldest child was a newborn, always taken my kids grocery shopping with me. I have, in the past 10 years, received a vast array of reactions to taking my kids grocery shopping with me. For context, I have five children and they range in age from (almost) 10 years old down to two years old.
Some years ago my Dad and I were on the fourth or fifth hole of a cheap golf course in rural Tennessee. We finished putting, walked off the green, put our putters back in the bag, and when we went to get back in our cart, there was a fat, old beagle sitting on the seat, right in the middle. Looking like he belonged there. We shrugged our shoulders, got in the cart on each side of him, and continued on to the next hole.
About 110 years ago, the plastics era (as we understand that term) began with a material called 
Citizen Soldier is an excellent documentary, from soldiers’ perspectives, made freshly relevant by the infuriating revelations that top Department of Defense officials were blatantly violating their oaths of office and actively lying to the civilian elected leadership, President Trump and the Congress, about troops these excrement heaps in suits were keeping in harm’s way. President Eisenhower was entirely right to warn of the deeply corrupting congruence of profit and career in the name of our national security. To understand on whom the Department of Defense are really imposing costs, watch 
The Germans were the first nation to airborne troops in combat, using them decisively in 1939 and 1940. The British were not far behind, developing their own airborne forces in 1940. They initially used their airborne troops as raiders.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D–WV) recently Tweeted, “Defund the police? Defund, my butt. I’m a proud West Virginia Democrat. We are the party of working men and women. We want to protect Americans’ jobs & healthcare. We do not have some crazy socialist agenda, and we do not believe in defunding the police.”
