Iron Filings - 79
August 1, 2023
Iron Filings - 79
Only Alabama could give us a senator like Tommy Tuberville who believes that white nationalists aren't racists.
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I am no climate change denier, but we do need to make a distinction between climate change and weather. A hot summer is weather – we've had hot summers before. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice shelves and Himalayan glaciers is climate change. Of course sometimes you can have a distinction without a difference.
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Once again from the statisticians – the top baby names of 2023 (in order of popularity): Girls – Luxury, Maeve, Aurelia, Isla, Eloise, Alice, Luna, Aurora, Ophelia, Evangeline. Boys – Royal, Soren, Theodore, Silas, Atticus, Felix, Oliver, Arlo, Aire, Hugo. I think some of the young parents out there are smoking things I've never heard of.
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My nominee for the most often uttered question amongst humanity (in any language): "What is the world coming to?"
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Gayle and I have both read A Man Called Ove (Otto), watched the Swedish version of the movie, and recently watched the English version of the movie starring Tom Hanks. Point your finger at any one of them – they're all stunning.
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Recently we experienced that great American phenomenon of the lost credit card. It begins with head-scratching, then a frantic try to remember all the places that were recently shopped along with phone calls to those places to see where the card might have been left (no luck there). After that, it's tearing through the house and car and flashlighting every possible nook and cranny (no luck there). That was all accompanied by frequent trips to the card's website to see if anyone was out buying refrigerators or diamonds with the card (good luck there). Finally, there is an admission of defeat and another trip to the card's website to report the loss. Surprisingly, that was the easy part. The old card was quickly cancelled and I was even given the new card's numbers so that I could update various accounts even before the new card arrived in the mail. My advice: Don't lose a credit card. [Update: The cancelled card was ultimately found stuck in a crevice in the car.]
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I gave myself an odd experience lately: I decided to read my first novel, An American Outrage. It has been nearly twenty-five years since I wrote it so I was pretty much able to approach it as an ordinary reader. I had forgotten many of the characters along with various of the plot points so it was fun to see how things developed. My conclusion? Damn – it's a good book. That's not only my opinion since it was named Foreword Magazine's Fiction book of the year in 1999. (The recommendations of Foreword Magazine are used by bookstores and libraries to choose what books to buy.)
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Some health issues have led me to hire out the mowing of our lawn. While I would gladly trade mowing again for not having health issues, it is kind of a kick to see someone else taking care of that onerous chore. Really, I've been mowing our lawns for over sixty years so the aesthetic wonder of the task is long gone.
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What started as a tickle in someone's nose reportedly ended in bloodshed [recently] after a loud sneeze startled a meeting of the National Rifle Association and left 138 people dead. "It is with a heavy heart that we tell you more than a hundred lives were lost today when an errant sneeze caused a roomful of NRA members to discharge their weapons …"
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I really love The Onion.
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G.K. Wuori ©2023
Photoillustration by the author