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Tony

 Becky and Brian had a party at their house today for Tony in celebration of his dropping out of high school.   (Yes, that’s Rags the Cat included in the photo.) Tony has just finished his sophomore year.  He’ll never get the high school graduation and prom experience, and the last day at school was pretty quiet just saying goodbye to a few people, so Becky wanted to make sure the occasion was marked with a celebration.  A big get-together; lots of friends and family. It’s more of a dropping up than a dropping out, because he’s headed off to Bard College at Simon’s Rock in August.  http://simons-rock.edu/ Early-entry college sounds like a good place for him.  It sounds especially good to Tony; it was his idea in the first place.  He’s ready to move on to college level courses. So even though we’re not there in Colorado to help him celebrate, we’re there in spirit (and by phone and text).  We’re very proud of Tony and wish him the best.  Not only is he smart, he’s a great kid and we love him very much.  Go gettum Tony!  
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I was just thinking….

 ….about representative democracy. What a terrible system of government.  With all our checks and balances, our elected representatives spend way too much time checking and balancing each other.  Where did “doing the most good” go in this equation?  The primary job of our elected representatives seems to be getting elected.  And who do they have to appeal to to get elected?  300 million people that don’t really know anything about running a government!  How crazy is that? And Capitalism sucks.  Look at the unconscionable economic divide just in our own country.  Sure, sports superstars are great, but our profit-driven system provides $100,000,000 contracts for them and other people can’t find work and go hungry.  How smart is that?  And globally?  It’s worse.  Is this a stable situation?   And Growth economics, the force that drives the world economy.  It’s totally crazy.  Nothing gets to grow forever; there are always trade-offs.  At some point the trade-offs outweigh the gain, but growth economics doesn’t measure, or even recognize that.  We just pretend we can grow our way out of anything.  We can fool ourselves with growth-only in the short term, but that can’t be a good long-term strategy. Exponential Population growth.  Can the planet support a million people?  Sure.  Can it support a billion? I guess.  Can it support a trillion?  I doubt it.  A trillion trillion?  I don’t think so.  World population 7 billion and still rising exponentially.  That can’t be a good long-term strategy for the planet. The U.S. spends more on its military than the next top ten countries combined, and yet we debate whether we’re spending enough.  What?  If we have to spend that much on our own security, could it be that something else is maybe just a little out of balance? The War on Drugs.  Why do all those criminals want to smuggle drugs into our country?  IT’S BECAUSE WE WANT TO BUY THEM!  Instead of acknowledging that we have a problem and dealing with it on our end, we blame it on the people providing what we demand, and in our denial, unnecessarily create an entire illegal violent industry.  We still have the drug problem at home, but now we not only have to deal with that, we have to fight a war on the people supplying what we won’t stop buying! I’m surprised somebody smart hasn’t figured this all out yet. 
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It never looks empty

 The park is full all winter long.  People start leaving in the spring.  It doesn’t matter how many people leave, though, it never looks empty.  Not until Lowell and Mary leave. Now.  It looks empty! 
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Judy who loves her husband

 Sounds like a Native American name. I think Annie needs a Native American name too. Princess Yellow-eye perhaps?  Pollen.  Apparently Princess Yellow-eye loves flowers so much she has to wallow in them. Henry doesn’t need a Native American name. He just eats the leaves.  
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Judy who loves her husband

 We dug through some old stuff and unearthed a present Judy got from her bowling buddies in 1998; a collectible quilt. They had nicknamed her “Judy who loves her husband” when they realized that when they were all talking about their spouses, Judy never said anything bad about me.      We thought that was a charming surprise and are delighted to have that quilt laid out on the foot of our bed.