BOAT RIDE TO STAFFA AND TRESNISH ISLES

From the island of Mull, the mad three went by ferry to Ulva, where we took a boat ride to the Isle of Staffa and around Tresnish Isles. Below are a few of my pictures from the trip. As usual, click on the pictures to see the larger view.

 

The "Hoy Lass", our boat to the islands.

 

The sign in the loo, which I could not resist documenting for its cleverness and humor in strongly making its points.

 

Cormorants and one sea gull on a rock.

 

The fin of a basking shark.

 

Gorgeous scenery along the way.

 

The view from on high on the Isle of Staffa.



Fingal's Cave from Cathy's Facebook pictures. I did not make the descent to the cave, because the way looked tricky for an old lady. Cathy and MadChauffeur went and said it was wonderful. Now I wish I had gone.

If you are a Facebook friend of Cathy, you can see several sets of great pictures from our travels posted there.

 

A rock pool near Staffa, which I found enchanting.



The wake of the boat as we made our way back to Ulva.

All arrangements for the excursion were made by MadChauffeur. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy being IN CHARGE throughout the entire time he traveled with Cathy and me.

ARE TEA PARTIERS GRASS-ROOTS? I THINK NOT!

The must-read item for today is Frank Rich's column in the New York Times. Rich tells the fairly well-kept secret of just who incites, organizes, and funds the Tea Partiers.

ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier.

Vive la révolution!

There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the “death panel” warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers are.

You've surely heard of Rupert Murdoch, but have you heard of the Koch brothers? I had not until I returned from Scotland a few days ago and read Jane Mayer's excellent and revealing profile of the two in The New Yorker, to which Rich links in his piece. To think that the Tea Partiers are saps enough to think that billionaires many times over have their interests at heart.

If you read Mayer's article, you learn that the Koch businesses are some of the worst polluters, and, of course, they spend millions lobbying against such regulatory agencies as the EPA.

Rich says:

When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools — in other words, any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes. He hasn’t changed. As Mayer details, Koch-supported lobbyists, foundations and political operatives are at the center of climate-science denial — a cause that forestalls threats to Koch Industries’ vast fossil fuel business.

That's the Koch agenda. Tea Partiers, for heaven's sake, wake up! The Kochs and their ilk are playing you for fools.

JESUS AND MO

From Jesus and Mo.

OUR LADY OF THE DRIVEWAY - I REMEMBER KATRINA

Thanks to Athenae at First Draft for the photo and the title. She took this picture when she was in New Orleans at the end of March, when a group of us led by FD bloggers, Athenae and Scout Prime, gathered to gut a house, view the destruction, and squeeze in a little fun.

The statue of the Virgin Mary stood in a driveway with the head broken off, lying on the ground, but a kind person put the head back in place. The photo and the title struck me with such force when I first saw it that I have never forgotten it. The image of the statue of Mary in the driveway - "Mary, full of grace" as Athenae calls her - was the symbol of my destroyed and broken home town, my abandoned city, my beloved New Orleans - always full of grace to me.

Our Lady Of The Driveway

O Mary of the Driveway,
Broken like your city,
Your head lies on the ground.
A sorry sight, a sign,
A sign of devastation
Wrought by wind and water,
Angry blow and raging flow.

A passer-by, one of tender heart,
Sees and stops and mourns your head
Lying there apart,
And gently, gently takes it
And replaces it.
There. Our Lady's whole again.
Or so it seems. Or is it so?

(June Butler - 5-13-07)

I posted the picture, the commentary, and the poem first on May 13, 2007 and then again on the anniversary of Katrina in the years that followed. Until I change my mind, I will post the picture and the poem every year on the anniversary of Katrina and THE FEDERAL FLOOD, which, in New Orleans, was not a natural disaster but an ENGINEERING DISASTER. I remember the 1500 people who died in New Orleans and all those who loved them. I remember the 275,000 who lost their homes. I remember those who survived, but suffered through horrendous conditions in the days after Katrina. I remember those who have not returned to their home towns, and who want to, but can't find affordable housing. I remember those in Louisiana and Mississippi still struggling to recover and rebuild their homes and their lives.

Katrina - August 29, 2005

UPDATE ON LITTLE JAMES

Little James came through his eight hour heart surgery but is now on a ventilator as he can't breathe on his own. The word is that he will stay on it another two days and then they will try to wean him off.

Thank you all for your concern and good thoughts and prayers.

I will update you when I know more.

Blessings,
Ellie

Details on James here.

FOR CAMINANTE - ISLE OF SKYE

From the comments:

Caminante said...
Take a picture of the Isle of Skye as my mother's family is from there. Pretty picture.

Not one, not two, but three pictures, Caminante. I hope you think they're pretty.

 

 

 

A MAGICAL MOMENT

 

A beauty, yes? While we were on the Isle of Skye, Cathy stopped our car to photograph sheep in the field. It seems that my friend can't get enough of photographing sheep. Sharing the field with the sheep was the beautiful horse pictured above. When we approached the fence, she (I believe) came to us.

 

That's Cathy's arm and hand in the picture above. Beauty (my name for her) seemed eager for our touch. We both patted and stroked her, and she seemed to revel in the affection.

 

Beauty was eating the grass over on my side of the fence, and I pulled the grass and began to feed her. Very gently, she took the grass from me with her velvety lips and ate. Well, I suppose it doesn't take much for me to find magic, because surely having Beauty eat from my hand was a magical moment on the Isle of Skye.

The top and bottom pictures are Cathy's, and the middle photo is mine.

POPE BENEDICT AND FRIEND

Lapin strikes again.

UPDATE LAGNIAPPE:



Pope Benedict's brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger

UPDATE 2:

From Colm Tóibín in the London Review of Books:

When I listed the reasons homosexuals might be attracted to the Church and might want to become priests, I did not mention the most obvious one: you get to wear funny bright clothes; you get to dress up all the time in what are essentially women’s clothes. As part of the training to be an altar boy I had to learn, and still remember, what a priest puts on to say Mass: the amice, the alb, the girdle, the stole, the maniple and the chasuble. Watching them robing themselves was like watching Mary Queen of Scots getting ready for her execution.

Priests prance around in elaborately fashioned costumes. Bishops and cardinals have even more colourful vestments. This ‘overt behaviour’ on their part has to be examined carefully. Since it is part of the rule of the Church, part of the norm, it has to be emphasised that many of them do not dress up as a matter of choice. Indeed, the vestments in all their glory might make some of them wince. But others seem to enjoy it. Among those who seem to enjoy it is Ratzinger. Quattrocchi draws our attention to the amount of care, since his election, Ratzinger has taken with his accessories, wearing designer sunglasses, for example, or gold cufflinks, and different sorts of funny hats and a pair of red shoes from Prada that would take the eyes out of you. He has also been having fun with his robes. On Ash Wednesday 2006, for example, he wore a robe of ‘Valentino red’ – called after the fashion designer – with ‘showy gold embroidery’ and soon afterwards changed into a blue associated with another fashion designer, Renato Balestra. In March 2007, for a visit to the juvenile prison at Casal del Marno, he wore an extraordinary tea-rose-coloured costume.

Thanks to Ann V. for the link.

SINCE GRANDPÈRE IS THE CHIEF COOK...

...I bought the sign for him in a shop in Scotland.

Yes, I know that the wallpaper is dreadfully outdated, as is the rest of the kitchen. I'm just not ready to bear with the turmoil that having the kitchen redone would involve. Sorry.

DEAD BIRD ISLAND - TERREBONNE PARISH, LOUISIANA

Aug. 19, 2010 - On a journey to take soil samples from the BP Spill we came across an island full of dead birds in various stages of decay. For more information or to support our ongoing efforts please visit http://www.lmrk.org/

From the website of the Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper:

In "Julia," the Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper Boston Whaler and a local fishing vessel we made our way south from Pointe Au Chien across Lake Chien and Lake Felicity to Modoto Island. What we encountered there stunned us all. The ground was littered with dead birds. So many dead birds that we aren't sure how many were out there, many dozens of dead birds just in the small area which we surveyed on the island. The dead appeared to included mostly seagulls and terns though some were badly decayed and identification was difficult. It was clear to me by the various states of decay, from scattered bones to a tern that couldn't have been dead for more than a day and everything in between, that this is an ongoing situation.

We also saw a juvenile gull that was in distress. It could hardly walk and was very unsteady when it took a step it also had very little energy. By the time we finished our sampling and were ready to leave the island the bird had died. I asked Kurt if he had seen anything like the dead birds and he said that he had been visiting this island his entire life and he has never seen dead birds in the numbers we were seeing. It is clear to me that these birds are somehow being poisoned by the BP event.

I'm hearing that oil can no longer be found in the Gulf of Mexico and on the Gulf Coast. Note the date of the video. It seems the birds are better than humans at finding the oil which threatens their lives.

Terrebonne Parish lies south of Thibodaux, where I live.




Thanks to Pat B. for the link to the video.