THE PLATTERS - 'ONLY YOU'

♫'Ah-only yoouuuu'....♫

Oooh, this video brings back memories of romantic slow dancing back in the 1950s. Nice. Slow dancing and hugging and kissing were as good as it got back in my convent school teen years. Those were the days!

Note: All the people in the nightclub are white. Only black entertainers allowed in.

RULES FOR HALLOWEEN FOR SENIORS

 

You know you are too old to Trick or Treat when:

10. You keep knocking on your own front door.

9. You remove your false teeth to change your appearance.

8. You ask for soft high fiber candy only.

7. When someone drops a candy bar in your bag, you lose your balance and fall over.

6. People say: 'Great Boris Karloff Mask,' And you're not wearing a mask.

5. When the door opens you yell, 'Trick or...' And you can't remember the rest.

4. By the end of the night, you have a bag full of restraining orders.

3. You have to carefully choose a costume that doesn't dislodge your hairpiece.

2. You're the only Power Ranger in the neighborhood with a walker.

And the number one reason Seniors should not go Trick Or Treating...
*
*
*
1. You keep having to go home to pee.

No matter, have a HAPPY HALLOWEEN anyway.

 

Thanks to Ann.

STORY OF THE DAY - UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

I try to use unconditional love in small
amounts, she said, so people really
appreciate it. The rest of the time I just
try not to yell.

From StoryPeople.

MORE ON THE PROTEST AT ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL IN LONDON

Fraser Dyer, who volunteered as a chaplain at St Paul's Cathedral announced his resignation. He blogs at Kiwianglo's blog.

Since the summer I’ve been a chaplain at St Paul’s Cathedral, one of many London clergy who give half a day a month to being the priest available to the cathedral’s visitors, and to leading prayers on the hour. It is has been immensely enjoyable and interesting to do. Arising from my relationship with the cathedral I’ve been closely following the events arising from the Occupy London protest which pitched camp in the cathedral precinct a fortnight ago. There seemed to be a great deal that was positive and constructive about the dialogue between the protestors and the cathedral. I was therefore very disappointed to learn of today’s announcement that St Paul’s is taking legal action to have the protestors removed. Consequently I have decided to stand down from the pastoral team, and explained my reasons to Michael Colclough, Canon Pastor of St Paul’s Cathedral, in an email earlier today (below).

Read the rest of the post, which includes the email which Fr Dyer sent to the Canon Pastor.

Sam Norton, who blogs at Elizaphanian has an excellent post on St Paul's Cathedral and the protest:

I've been pondering this whilst following the events outside St Paul's. There has been much criticism of the Occupy movement for not having 'clear goals' (on which see this great cartoon. That is immediately to try and force the rebellion to conform to the dominant discourse, to be co-opted into the patterns that pose no threat to the establishment. Specific claims will, I do not doubt, follow in due course. For now, however, it is enough for there to be the protest, the rebellion - the saying 'No' to manifest injustice, arrogance, ignorance and greed.

Read it all, and click the links when you get over there.

You may think I'm overdoing the posts on St Paul's, but the situation there is about more than protestors and tents around the famous London cathedral. The leadership at the cathedral was forced to make a choice. Unfortunately, in my opinion, they came down on the wrong side. I hope other churches take lessons from them on what not to do.

BISHOP ALAN WILSON ON THE PROTESTS AT ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL

An excellent interview. Back to Jesus, where all of us who call ourselves Christians should surely be.

Alan Wilson is Bishop of Buckingham in England and blogs at (Surprise!) Bishop Alan's Blog.

STORY OF THE DAY MOONLIGHT

I like this place best by moonlight, she
told me. During the day, it just looks like
dirt.

From StoryPeople.

Oh yes.

PACO AND THE PUMPKIN

 

Whoops! Paco wanted out of the pumpkin just as we wanted a picture.

 

Still not quite what we want, but cute.

 

Now we're getting close...the eery eye.

 

Boo!!!

Paco lives with my daughter and her three sons.

OCCUPY WALL STREET - THE NO-SPIN ZONE

From Dahlia Lithwick at Slate:

I confess to being driven insane this past month by the spectacle of television pundits professing to be baffled by the meaning of Occupy Wall Street. Good grief. Isn’t the ability to read still a job requirement for a career in journalism? And as last week’s inane “What Do They Want?” meme morphs into this week’s craven “They Want Your Stuff” meme, I feel it’s time to explain something: Occupy Wall Street may not have laid out all of its demands in a perfectly cogent one-sentence bumper sticker for you, Mr. Pundit, but it knows precisely what it doesn’t want. It doesn’t want you.

What the movement clearly doesn’t want is to have to explain itself through corporate television. To which I answer, Hallelujah. You can’t talk down to a movement that won’t talk back to you.
....

Occupy Wall Street is not a movement without a message. It’s a movement that has wisely shunned the one-note, pre-chewed, simple-minded messaging required for cable television as it now exists. It’s a movement that feels no need to explain anything to the powers that be, although it is deftly changing the way we explain ourselves to one another.

The media and a good many other folks want simple explanations from the protestors for why they are there, sound bites for those with short attention spans...sort of like a political campaign that stays on message. Of course, the protestors at OWC have the sound bites on their signs. But wait! The signs are often amateur jobs, obviously not paid for by the Koch brothers and their ilk, and they don't all say the same thing. Oooh, it's so confusing. People there have lost their jobs; others have lost their homes to the banks and mortgage companies; young people coming out of school or university can't find jobs. The homeless are present. The miseries are many. And to confuse the situation even further, there are those who are fairly well off themselves but wish to join in solidarity with the dispossessed, because, as Archbishop Óscar Romero, the martyr and advocate for the poor in San Salvador, said, “Let those who have a voice, speak out for the voiceless.” And who knows? They/we could be next.

Hey, occupiers: You’re the new news. And even better, by refusing to explain yourselves, you’re actually changing what’s reported as news. Because it takes a tremendous mental effort to refuse to see that the rich are getting richer in America while the rest of us are struggling. Maybe the days of explaining the patently obvious to the transparently compromised are finally behind us.

By refusing to take a ragtag, complicated, and leaderless movement seriously, the mainstream media has succeeded only in ensuring its own irrelevance.

The media pundits look sillier and sillier - as if they didn't look silly enough already.

See the splendid cartoon titled 'The Silent Majority'.

THE PRICE OF OIL

Still Life in Oil

Fort Jackson, Louisiana (USA). June 20, 2010. Volunteers of the Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research and the International Bird Rescue Research Center run the facility in Fort Jackson, Louisiana , where they clean birds covered in oil from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead. The BP leased oil platform that exploded on April 20 and sank after burning. Photo by © Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace.

Click on the pictures for the larger view.

The picture above and the pictures below are from the The Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2011 exhibit at the Natural History Museum in London.

After months of anticipation, the winners of Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2011 have been announced and the exhibition is now open at the Natural History Museum.

The photos of all of the winners are outstanding. Browse the gallery at the link above. Any of you who are in or near London while the exhibit is on display through March 11, 2012, would do well to pay a visit. Book your tickets online.

The exhibition will tour nationally and internationally after its launch in London.

PLEASE DO NOT COPY THE IMAGES TO ANY OTHER FORUM WITHOUT EXPLICIT PERMISSION FROM THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM IN LONDON.

Since I live in south Louisiana, about 40 miles away from the Gulf of Mexico as the crow flies, my particular interest was in the photos by Daniel Beltra, who is from Spain, of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, 2010, and the aftermath. The photos are stunning, some of them quite beautiful, but they tell the story of a tragedy in which 11 men were killed, others injured, and a great deal of death and destruction dealt to the wildlife and plant life that inhabit the Gulf and coastal areas. The picture of the oiled pelicans is heart-breaking.

The photos are copyrighted by the photographer and are used here with permission. The pictures and captions, which are arranged by date starting with the earliest, with the exception of the photo at the head of the post, speak for themselves.

Louisiana (USA). May 6th, 2010. Aerial view of the oil leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead, the BP leased oil platform exploded April 20 and sank after burning. Leaking an estimate of more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil per day from the broken pipeline to the sea. Eleven workers are missing, presumed dead. Photo by Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace

On April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon exploded, killing 11 crewmen and injuring 17. The platform sank 50 miles off shore, 1 mile deep, and weighed 58,000 tons. Oil from the wellhead rises up to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico near a different offshore platform, May 18, 2010. Photo © Daniel Beltra for Greenpeace

June 17, 2010. Louisiana (USA)Boats burning oil on the surface near BP's Deepwater Horizon spill source. ©Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace

June 17, 2010. Louisiana (USA)Oil covers the surface of the Gulf of Mexico on the vicinity of BP's Deepwater Horizon spill source. ©Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace

Louisiana (USA). June 24, 2010. Flight to the Deepwater Horizon site, the BP leased oil platform exploded on April 20 and sank after burning. In the picture, the wake of a vessel leaves a trail through the surface oil.Photo by © Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace.

Thanks to my friend Cathy for calling the photos of the winners to my attention.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

From Randomly Funny $tuff on Facebook.