caroljane

In my view the stronger municipal and especially state powers, influence and dare I say graft, weaken any federal initiatives to raise the standard of American basic education across the country.

Carol: I understand your perception... However, your public school educational system that is supported by invasive and repressive taxation is producing barely literate graduates who cannot function in the real business world, should we continue this expensive failure? A... Well, certainly not if it is so in the |US. I don't think it is happening here and as you know I strongly support public education.

You are determined to see government as a business, which it is not and has not ever been in any sovereign nation. User-pay and cost-benefit are not the measures of a nation and its concern for the education of the next generation presupposes that the whole and future of a nation, are greater than the sum of its individuals. I know you will never see it that way, but that is the way I cannot help but see it.

Utterly right. I would add that though insisting on a strict social structure, Judaism has always encouraged intellectual individuality and indeed could not have prevented it, can you imagine Einstein or Rand being other than Jewish, or indeed \Mordecai Richler one of whose fictional uncles shook his head over him as "just another goddamned Jewish atheist\' Carol You know I will always shove in the Canadian angle when I can

Yes there were a lot of close cousins. Unfortunately, I am outliving most of them. A plus and minus to longevity... My two closest male cousins and I were basically brothers forever. Only one is left. A... Such sadness. The joy of lifelong love is inevitably paid for by the end of one life. But the love remains.

"I kissed the pretty brown-eyed cow Who gives us milk and cheese I'm lying in my bedroom now\ with hoof-in-mouth disease"

Btw Adam, are you close to any of your cousins now? Is there a My Cousin Vinny in the mix? Though through your work I guess you are fairly Vinnyish yourself.

Fascinating. My parents were remarkable. As I have explained before, whenever I would ask what a word meant, my father. or, my mother would say. "That's a good question, let's go look it up." We would then go to the unabridged dictionary that was in the dining room on a wooden device that my father built. It kept the dictionary open so you would simply go to the first letter and explore our language. Their methodology was so not threatening and so explorative that I never realized that my upbringing was so different from my contemporaries. I was blessed and never realized that I was to have great parents. A... I know the feeling. I am not surprised that you and I have such an easy companionship in spite of the absolute differences of gender and nationality and ideology. We are first and maybe foremost, beings created by love and luck and circumstance.

There is a funny story about Jane and her oldest sister Beverly. One time Beverly was visiting Jane out of town and they were at dinner, when a couple of gentleman at a nearby table introduced themselves and joined them, asking them polite questions etc. "We're sisters," Jane told them (Jane and Beverly do not resemble each other in the slightest). Oh! said the guy, I should have "realized -- what order do you belong to? He thought they were nuns. As Beverly said later, "It must have been the sensible shoes that tipped them off."

Your mother had a nursing home! My closest cousin, more like a sister, was a gerontology specialist RN and ran a nursing home till her retirement. On retirement she and her husband took a road trip across the US in an open convertible, then visited their married sons in Vancouver and Japan, then went to Spain to walk the pilgrimage to St James of Compostela (they are devout Catholics) it was a fabulous experience and they made friends from all over Europe. Jane wants to go back visit them but her husband Donnie says nothing will get him away from home and his golf and curling again. Though retired Jane works as much as ever, filling in nursing and assessing nursing homes across Canada, besides the social pleasures of her four children, nine siblings and eleven siblings-in-law, never mind all us cousins. When she comes to Ontario I go to her hotel and we have a Cousins Gone Wild spa weekend, swimming, watching movies, drinking wine. laughing and yakking. I always wanted a sister or brother and could not have had a better one than she is.

You will get to enjoy the dictionary Cathy! If I was bored as a child I used to open it at random and read it...there was a lot of startling medical information in there!

Rand coming into contact with actual live inftants????!!!!!! No way! I am sure she could conceive if she in to, but in her heart she was Barren. Ba'al Chatzaf Yes, and she seemed to equate physical barrenness with mental productivity in an almost mystical way, for herself at least. Her vehemence insisted that having children blighted the prcoessional hopes of young people forever - how she could reconcile this with careers of "lady novelists she must have been aware of I don't know. Frances Trollope eg, or her son Anthony, a young husband and father who attained a fine civil service career to support his family while producing brilliant novels in what spare time he had?

If you had an inoperable tumor and you wanted to reverse it, where would you draw the line with a substance that promotes tumors? I have been eating cheese for 76 of my 77 years. No tumors yet. A day without cheese is a day without wonderfulness. Ba'al Chatzaf Amen. A slice of cheese, a sip of wine and thou, beside me in the wilderness....worth the odd benign polyp I would say.

Cathy, I never thought you were asking for sympathy, you are just looking for answers to the essential puzzle of your own life as we all do -- and you are missing so many pieces through no fault of your own., It would be impossible not to feel sympathy about that. You mentioned having "nobody to remember with you" and that strikes such a chord with me. When you outlive your loved ones that is the essential loneliness. Every day I think of something I mean to ask my mother about the past.. like, what would they have named me if I had been a boy.. silly family trivia (I fear it would have been Stillman my grandfather however, and I would be known as Silly Stillie to this day). And though it is a mean spirited sort of comfort, there are so many different kinds of sad confusing childhoods, -- look at poor little rich Paris Jackson surrounded by greedy weirdos. At least you survived your trauma and defied it by building your own loving family. No charge, I am a socialist albeit a selfish one.

You shouldn't have had to explain that. It's asinine to think concept formation came from language instead of the other way around. Why asinine? The first stage of language is naming things, which flows from object identification and permanence. Little kids of 18 months can do it and they have very few concepts in hand. Infants of 6 months show behavioral signs that they have object permanence. All of this comes way before concepts. Ba'al Chatzaf Absolutely. My one-year-old grandson is not talking yet but when an object is mentioned he will look around for it and go grab it if he can.He also seems to have an idea of number. If anybody has even one more piece of carrot or chicken or whatever on their plate than he does, he will get agitated and fuss until the balance is righted in his favour. If \Rand had forced herself to observe the actual progress of a baby's developing cognition I think she would have had to revise her theories.

Adam, you know it is no use to tell someone how to feel. You, like me, grew up secure, loved and indulged and maybe like me thoughtlessly assumed that was the normal condition of childhood for everybody.. as we age i.t is natural to remember more and ponder more on our early lives., and what Cathy and |Ginny have to remember is so dark and sad..Cathy and Ginny, my heart aches for you.

I will bet it goes all the way to 7. But as to the winner I can't choose, finals are so uniquely unpredictable. I will say Bruins on a dice roll. At least my poor Leafs will have the comfort of having done better against them than anybody else!

DittoI third that. Happy happy joy joy, dear Michael.

O come let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of Kings..... and of proud Pittsburgh broken in the dust.. Original Six final, yay!

A born goaltender! Alas for geography

Oh for godsake. You are talking to and are yourself, a digestive system which is millions of years and is fairly self protective. We lived for countless millennia on grubs and worms and dirt and any live fleshy creatures we could get hold of. I myself have eaten a live caterpillar, not that it was especially tasty, but it never did me any harm.

I'm glad that I did not click on the link as I usually don't. The only disgusting thing I know about you is that you live in Canda and do not seem to appreciate it.

lol but I don't think Obama cares what Adam eats unless it were his own words re the CinC, which he is not likely to do. Carol/Ginny: I do not think ms. ginny has the Dom concepts down pat, e.g.,: Hmm, I would love to explain the consequences of that statement in a D/s relationship. Sounds like topping from the bottom...lol. A... Pineapple upside-down cake anybody? Aunt Marlene's recipe, and she always seemed so prim!

Ginny: Apparently, you do not. Safe, sane and consensual. If there is no consent, it is assault. Therefore, one would conclude that you are not a submissive which is perfectly understandable. A... especially on this forum,, Mother Foundress notwithstanding! Carol Respectably Uppity in public

Oh Mr Gaede, Mr Gaede., . Such unjust and discreditable feelings are not raised in you through any defect in your own character, but from the folly, nay the positive evil, of those who ought to guide for the best, but through avarice and blind ambition have set out everything to bring the worst. In thrusting a northeastern game upon the southwest, the loathsome fleabrains of the NHL have, not amongst the least of their crimes, rendered irrational, partial and unsteady a man whose qualities ought otherwise to render him reasonable, liberal and respectable. Carol Yeah, still on the Austen. Halfway through Northanger Abbey again. Isabella Thorpe is a real nascent Mrs Elton isn't she?