Bits & Bytes from Everywhere

Alex was ill yesterday and I haven’t felt much better than my cat. My little fella was eating, vomiting, going outside, sleeping, eating, vomiting, going outside, sleeping, etc. through out the day. When he was sleeping, he wanted me to be near him. So I pulled a chair up to my desk and placed my leather coat on it. Alex climbed up and nested there as I sat beside him.

After I ran out of new job listings (I submitted another three resumes), I surfed the net. Below are some of the newsworthy/important items I encountered:

The Poet in Me

Andi’s comment to my yesterday’s post, I Was Once a Poet, in which I reproduced from memory two poems I had written when I was in the 4^th grade (Stephen Foster Elementary School in Louisville) asked: Is there something about the 4th grade? That's when I started writing poetry.

I really don’t know about the 4^th grade, but my career as a ten-year-old poet was driven by my teacher, Mrs. Cohn. She had read a book in which a teacher had published poems written by her elementary school class. She “encouraged” us to write poetry—constantly. We received not only encouragement, but a lot of positive strokes each time we presented her with a new poem. I even developed the habit of keeping paper and pencil by my bed so I could jot down the poems that usually came to me in my sleep.

I do not know if Mrs. Cohn ever really published her book of out poetry. At the end of school, she did present each of us with a mimeographed booklet containing our poems. I think I had quite a few in it.

The British Post Office Closing Flap

It seems the British government wants to save money by closing small village posts offices. Evidently the issue has been around much longer than I have been aware of it. Even if you don’t care one way or another about Brit post offices, I invite you to watch this neat and entertaining animated video, Don’t Close the Post Office.

Mental Health Awareness

Brony has a blog dedicated, in part, to “create awareness of what it is like to have a mental illness.” I found the site via ~*SilverNeurotic*~. Since October 6^th, Brony has been soliciting 100 comments to celebrate her 100^th blog post and to raise consciousness regarding mental illness. As of my visit yesterday, she had 82 comments. Sooooo, let’s all visit her at her blog, Parenting with a Mental Illness (yes, the preceding is the link to click) and get her 100 comments before the year ends.

Somalia: On the Brink of Civil (Holy) War

We may have thought that the anarchy in Somalis was over (remember the film, Blackhawk Down?) with the 2004 formation of a national government. The Council of Islamic Courts, with its alleged links to Al Qaeda wants a jihad:

Islamic leaders in Mogadishu… distributed sermons about holy war to be read at its mosques

"The sermon concerns the holy war on Ethiopian (Christian) troops inside Somalia," Islamic official Sheik Hussein Abdullahi Barre said. Written in Arabic, it states, "infidels want to put out the light of Allah by trying to force us to follow their way, democracy... Oh God give pride to Muslims and humiliate the enemies of your religion.''

Sri Lanka: Cricket and Civil War

While Sri Lanka’s cricket team leads New Zealand by 363-runs, civilians are continuing to flee the Liberation Tigers as the Marxists escalate the returned civil war. Meanwhile, the Japanese government, in response to an appeal from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), has made a Cabinet decision to provide assistance in kind for 10,000 newly displaced persons in Sri Lanka.

India: Cricket and Terrorism

Led by fast bowler Shantakumaran Sreesanth and batsman Zaheer Khan, India scorched South Africa in cricket even while the government called upon Pakistan to stop supporting terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.

Iraq: Bush Rejects Major Options as Former Defense Secretary Warns of "Quagmire”

Former Defense Secretary William Perry, a member of the Iraq Study Group, said yesterday that Iraq could turn into a "quagmire" if the Bush administration fails to change strategy. At the same time, President Bush rejected the most dramatic options proposed by the Iraq Study Group.