"It wasn’t until he examined the frogs under a microscope that he discovered that the spines on their upper lips were covered in poison glands."

"'It took me a long time to realize that the pain had a relationship with the intense and careless collection of these animals hitting the palm of my hands,' he said. When the frog head-butted him, it envenomed him too."

"When I was 5, we went to visit my great-grandfather’s grave in Brooklyn during the spring Qingming festival, when Taoists honor their dead with ancestral grave sweeping."

"In keeping with custom, we burned incense and joss-paper ingots so my bok-gung could have ghost money to spend in heaven."

But because no one ever explained what the worship meant — indeed, what death was — what defined the experience for me was not the story of what we were doing and why we were doing it. It was fear....

"NYPD cops fed up with vagrants making life miserable in the city are taking matters into their own hands..."

"... by snapping photos of quality-of-life scofflaws and posting them online."

The Sergeants Benevolent Association is spearheading the effort, emailing a letter to members Monday urging them and their families and friends to take pictures to document the decline of the city.

“As you travel about the city of New York, please utilize your smartphones to photograph the homeless lying in our streets, aggressive panhandlers, people urinating in public or engaging in open-air drug activity, and quality-of-life offenses of every type,” says the letter from SBA President Ed Mullins, a major critic of Mayor Bill de Blasio.

"Here in this corner of the Iberian Peninsula, the business of selling abandoned villages has even become something of a policy tool."

"One mayor is trying to give away an abandoned village in his district for free, so long as 'buyers' promise to restore it and add back value – ideally drawing young people while they do so."

If Galicia cannot turn back its demographic trends, says Xoaquin Fernandez Leiceaga, a former lawmaker and professor of economics at the University of Santiago de Compostela, parts of it could quickly turn into wildland. “Already villages of Galicia are being overrun by weeds and bushes,” he says.

But there is more at stake than policy and economy: identity. In an interview on the coast, far from the rural interior, Mr. Fernandez Leiceaga says that nearly all Gallegos have a piece of land handed down from their parents – himself included – and that Gallegos idealize their rural heritage. “We still have a rural mindset,” he says. Yet, “it is a world that is disappearing, with nothing to substitute it.”

"EPA Says It Released 3 Million Gallons Of Contaminated Water Into River."

"Scientists say it's the largest untreated mine drainage in the state, and problematic concentrations of zinc, copper, cadmium, iron, lead, manganese and aluminum are choking off the Upper Animas River's ecosystem."

I respond to comments to yesterday's evening's post "I walked down to State Street to get a cup of coffee and ran into a gay pride parade."

Chuck said: "Professor Althouse, having lived briefly in your lovely neighborhood myself, I happen to know that for you to 'walk down to State Street for a cup of coffee,' you'd have had to bypass three or four other pretty wonderful coffee shops. Are you being coy about why you walked at least two miles, the better part of an hour, to the scene of the Gay Pride Parade at the very moment it was starting?"

I like to go for walks, and I usually motivate myself by setting a destination and a reward, like ice cream at the Union Terrace or coffee at Colectivo on Monroe Street. There's a new Colectivo on State Street, and I decided to go there again and make it a longer walk. On the way I stopped at the Chazen Museum...



... and I arrived on State Street just as the paraders were amassing in the staging area. I walked up a couple blocks, positioned myself on a corner and waited a mere 5 minutes before the parade began. Got my planned coffee about 20 minutes later.

Humperdink said: "Yep, throw your sexuality in my face (and others) again and again and again. That'll win us over."

Their sexuality is firmly entrenched on the other side of your face, in your head. No sexuality was thrown in anyone's face. In fact, the parade was completely unsexy. There were people in matching T-shirts indicating membership in some good-doing group. There were hockey players. The dressed-up folks looked rather bored. Some tamely danced. The liveliest float was the one for the Methodist church — not included in the edit — with a little band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In." There were a couple vote-for-me politicians at the front of the parade, right after the lead-off motorcyclists. Near the back of the parade — what symbolism! — was a "black lives matter" group and a Latino group. Seriously, it was the polar opposite of in-your-face sexuality.

David said: "Overwhelmingly white, as usual in Smugsville...."

It's Madison. And my iPhone ran out of space before the "black lives matter" group arrived.

Curious George said: "Hey was that justice fora day JoAnne 'I won' Kloppenberg at :05? I think it was. Same 'Deer in the headlight' stare. I'm guessing she got lost and decided to follow the shiny things."

That was, indeed, JoAnne Kloppenburg. She's running for Supreme Court Justice again. I don't know why politicians are put at the front of a parade like this. It bugged me, especially since the "black lives matter" political cause was relegated to the back.

JZ said: "Gay seems like the wrong word to me...."

That has got to be the tritest observation on the subject. Maybe if you'd said that 40 years ago, it would be fresh.

lgv said: "Why are they proud. They say they were born that way. It's like being proud of being left handed. One can be proud of their accomplishments, but I'm not sure that being proud of something you cannot control, like genetics, is illogical. Anyone's pride is not worthy of a parade to advertise it, either."

I didn't see the word "pride" anywhere or hear anyone proclaiming pride. I used the term "gay pride" because it's traditional, originating, I assume, in a desire to cancel the shame that had been culturally imposed. Now that the culture has changed, the word is perhaps a relic that could be discarded, but it's not yet the case that everyone who finds himself to be gay is free of shame, and there's something to be said for tradition.

Renee said: "Honestly, it wasn't that bad. No corporate sponsors. Just people who come in support ina peaceful manner."

Maybe you were distracted by the cute Pomeranian, but the man on the other end of the leash was holding one end of a sign that read: "American Family Insurance/Proud Sponsor."

walter said: "[T]hey clearly need to get the word out if Ann encountered it through happenstance. So why not join the parade, Ann?"

I'm not good at keeping track of Madison events. I just stumble into them sometimes. People who care about events check Facebook and Isthmus and whatever. I prefer places on normal days. I can't imagine actually being one of the paraders... in any parade. 

Dawn walk thoughts.

1. It looked like this...



... as the sun rose over Milio's sandwich shop.

2. For perhaps the first time in nearly 12 years, I woke up, read the internet (part of it anyway) and instead of feeling like blogging anything, went out for a walk.

3. I hate the news right now. Everyone seems to think the thing to talk about is Donald Trump, which strikes me as profoundly stupid. I watched 5-and-a-half Sunday morning talk shows yesterday, and I heard the same thing over and over. Trump has lost some unregainable portion of the women. He can never get them back, but he could never have won anyway, and really what he is is America's expression of anger. We're an angry, angry America, and this lout is, apparently, an embodiment of our collective id.

4. That's id, not ID. You need an ID to vote, but bring your id.

The id (Latin for "it") is the unorganized part of the personality structure that contains a human's basic, instinctual drives. Id is the only component of personality that is present from birth. It is the source of our bodily needs, wants, desires, and impulses, particularly our sexual and aggressive drives. The id contains the libido, which is the primary source of instinctual force that is unresponsive to the demands of reality. The id acts according to the "pleasure principle"—the psychic force that motivates the tendency to seek immediate gratification of any impulse—defined as seeking to avoid pain or unpleasure (not 'displeasure') aroused by increases in instinctual tension. According to Freud the id is unconscious by definition:

"It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality... We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations. ... It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle."

5.  "I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing" is the epitaph the writer Guy De Maupassant wrote for himself. He looked like this when he was 7:



6. I think young people take all those selfies to say I am young and beautiful and I'm here. That's fine. Older people look askance at selfies because that's no longer what they have to say. On my travels — mostly mere walks — I take pictures of the sunrise over Milio's or the flowers by the sidewalk and these aren't so different from the young person's selfies. I am old, life is beautiful, and I'm here. 

I walked down to State Street to get a cup of coffee and ran into a gay pride parade.

Today, in Madison, Wisconsin:

"Whenever women touch anything they clearly make it better than we do as guys."

Said John Kasich, ridiculously, this morning on Jake Tapper's CNN show ("State of the Union").

He was blabbing and avoiding the question asked.

The question — I am not kidding — was whether Donald Trump was talking about Megyn Kelly's period when he said "blood coming out of her wherever." Ironically, in trying to avoid having to talk about female genitalia, Kasich had us — I don't know about you — thinking about male genitalia.

Whenever women touch anything they clearly make it better than we do as guys.

Well, that's how the conversation went at Meadhouse, but even if you don't go there — and aren't you an upstanding citizen if you don't? — the line is absurd. He's running for President. Is he pushing for Hillary Clinton? She's a woman. By his lights, we ought to want her hands on the levers of power.

Yes, there's also Carly Fiorina. By the way, she was on Tapper's show too, and she was also asked the question whether Trump was talking about Megyn Kelly's period. Fiorina's answer was great, talking about her own experience with men who've criticized her with references to her period, but I'm going to wait for the transcript to give you the full quote.

ADDED: Here's the transcript. Fiorina first gave a very short answer: The comments were "completely inappropriate and offensive." Tapper pushed her with: "But do you think that Trump's remarks were sexist? Do you think he was specifically referring to Megyn Kelly -- I can't believe I'm even saying this -- having her period?" At that point, she said:

You know, look -- you know, look, I can -- I started out as a secretary. And, as I made my way up in the business world, a male-dominated business world, I have had lots of men imply that I was unfit for decision-making because maybe I was having my period. So I will say it, OK? When I started this campaign, I was asked on a national television show whether a woman's hormones prevented her from serving in the Oval Office. My response was, can we think of a single instance in which a man's hormones might have clouded his judgment?

Tapper said "I can." Fiorina continued:

The truth -- yes, me, too, maybe in the Oval Office.... The point is, women understood that comment. And, yes, it is offensive.

The morning was overcast, no sun in sight, and people were drawn to the sun of the flowers.

Yesterday, at Pope Farm Conservatory:

"The Most Embarrassing '90s Beauty Trends."

I'm only linking to this so I can say that the trick is to notice what you are doing now that's embarrassing. Everyone can laugh at what was done 10, 20, or 30 years ago. But you should know that someone in the future is laughing at you and ask why.

"Once a marker of a business with suspicious tax practices, the phrase 'cash only' has come to signify hipster entrepreneurialism at places like Stumptown Coffee at the Ace Hotel in Midtown Manhattan or the Emerson Bar in Brooklyn."

"... Many of the new alternative currencies have the look and feel of the regular legal tender accepted at such places. Most include anticounterfeiting measures like holograms and serial numbers. But they are more eye-catching. At the Effra Social, a Brixton pub, Ewan Graham, 31, an architect, was impressed upon examining one of the district’s special pound notes for the first time. 'I’d be more inclined to save money if it all looked like that,' he said. The back of the note displayed a Karl Marx quote about capital and its 'occult ability to add value to itself.' The £10 note, meanwhile, pictured David Bowie, a Brixton native (stardust, or other powdery substance, not included). It’s easy to imagine such notes being fetishized as audiophiles do vinyl...."

And it's easy to imagine suspicious tax practices... even by "hipsters"!

The article — in the NYT — is "Do You Have Change for a Bowie? The Advent of Artisanal Cash."

Donald Trump, Scott Walker, and the notion of gutting a woman.

I was surprised to see:

Donald Trump and his allies have escalated a feud with Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly, with top deputy Michael Cohen retweeting a tweet from an account named “surfersfortrump” that said, “#boycottmegynkelly @realDonaldTrump we can gut her.”

Those of us who have been following Scott Walker are very familiar with his frequent citation of one of the threats he received during the Wisconsin protests, directed at his wife Tonette, saying he wanted to "gut her like a deer."

"I enjoy Trump’s hyperbolic, un-P.C. flights because there are too few operatic characters in the world."

"I think of him as a Toon. He’s just drawn that way. And his Frank Sinatra lingo about women aside, he always treated me courteously and professionally."

Me = Maureen Dowd.

Back in 1999, when he was flirting with a presidential run, I asked the ladies’ man how he would do with the women’s vote.

“I might do badly,” he said with a smile. “They know me better than anybody else. Women are much tougher and more calculating than men. I relate better to women.”

"Let others feel bad about their chicken wings — and their bottoms, their necks and their multitude of creases and wrinkles."

"I’m too old for this. I spent years, starting before I was a teenager, feeling insecure about my looks," writes Dominique Browning in a NYT op-ed titled "I’m Too Old for This."

I'm not sure how old Browning is. There's just the line "Only when you hit 60 can you begin to say, with great aplomb: 'I’m too old for this'" that indicates she's over 60. I'm over 60, and I'm kind of thinking I'm too old for this kind of women's-magazine writing about how much or little attention women should pay to how they look. So why am I blogging about this? Only because I forgot what body part "chicken wings" is supposed to refer to, and I just wanted to share that absurd experience with you. I tried Googling, and in between the recipes and the hopeless entry in Urban Dictionary — "Why is it that 99% of the people who submit definitions to this site think we're interested in their made up 'sexual' words or terms?" — I gave up.

ADDED: The first commenter, Carol, informs me that "chicken wings" refers to women's upper arms. With that additional info, I was able to Google and find "Amazing Arm Workouts for Women (See Ya, Chicken Wings)." That's in Cosmopolitan, a magazine I used to read every month back in the 1970s, when I had a job that required me to all the women's magazines every month. I got more than I could ever want of women's-magazine writing back that, fortunately in a context where I was not only paid to do it, but where I got to hang out all day with 2 other young women who were up for whatever jokes and other critique this reading material inspired.

Black Lives Matter protesters shut down a Bernie Sanders speech in Seattle.

He'd just buttered up Seattle by calling it "one of the most progressive cities in the United States of America," when 2 ladies "walked onstage and grabbed the microphone":

“If you do not listen … your event will be shut down,” one of the protesters told organizers, who offered to let them speak after Sanders. After a back and forth with the screaming protesters, organizers relented and said the demonstrators could go first.

Some in the largely white audience booed and chanted for protesters to let the senator talk. A few yelled for police to make arrests.

Marissa Johnson, one of the protesters, shot back, “I was going to tell Bernie how racist this city is, filled with its progressives, but you did it for me,” accusing the audience of “white supremacist liberalism.” She cited Seattle’s own police problems, including an ongoing Justice Department consent decree over use of force.

The activists demanded 4½ minutes of silence in memory of Brown, to symbolize the 4½ hours his body lay on a Ferguson street. While rally organizers raised their hands in support, some in the crowd yelled profanities.

After the few minutes of silence...

Silence + profanities ≠ silence.

... the protesters said they wanted to confront Sanders for failing to address their concerns when he was similarly interrupted at a town hall for liberal activists in Phoenix last month. Johnson beckoned Sanders to stand closer as she spoke — he refused.

Bernie Sanders didn't want to stand too close to Marissa Johnson, which she just might consider evidence of how racist he is... like all those other white progressives who think so well of themselves. And so Bernie couldn't get close to the microphone, and Bernie gave up trying and left — in a white Jeep — to go to the Comet Tavern where people had paid $200 to $1,000 to hear Bernie proclaim that "When we stand together, when black and white stand together, when gay and straight stand together, when women and men stand together... when we stand together, there is nothing, nothing, that we cannot accomplish."

When we stand together? When do we do that? It's safe to say that "when we stand together, there is nothing, nothing, that we cannot accomplish," because we never do stand together. Sanders wouldn't stand with Marissa Johnson when she beckoned him to stand with her, and that's just a minute particle of our overall refusal to stand together.

But in this hypothetical nation that Sanders envisions, the one in which we do all stand together, there'd be a hell of a lot of things we wouldn't be able to accomplish.