Well then..

   A trip to the periodontist this morning was instructive. Who would of thought that they swelling in my gums was caused by blood pressure medication? Well...that's the diagnosis! So the periodontist is in conversation with my primary care physician. The question? are there are other medications she's comfortable prescribing?  It's Friday, so...

   Just wanted you both to know I'm alive and well. 

Takk for alt,

Al

PS This addition to yesterday's post, from Heather Cox-Ricahrdson

"But Noem is not likely to disappear from the news. Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker recorded a video saying: “Hey, Kristi Noem, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Here’s your legacy: corruption and chaos. Parents and children tear-gassed. Moms and nurses, U.S. citizens getting shot in the face. Now that you’re gone, don’t think you get to just walk away. I guarantee you, you will still be held accountable.”'

"Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) was more direct: '“Turns out lawlessness is not a winning strategy,”' he posted. '“See you at Nuremberg 2.0.”'

Barnyard Barbie Farewell!

      Barnyard Barbie, aka Kristi Noem, is out, "don't let the barndoor hit your backside as you leave!" South Dakota has a lot going for it but wisdom in politics is not its asset. Very embarrassing that Barbie was elected governor. She has much to live down but the blindness not to recognize it. Sounds like she won't be returning to South Dakota soon which is a relief to dog owners.

   On that cheerful note I'll say..

Takk for alt,

Al

Book!

    What would we do in this tragic time in our nation's life, if we didn't have books?  Beginning with her first Christmas, and ever since, I've give L a book. This year's choice was a winner! It came recommended in a review in the Minneapolis paper. After she read it she allowed me to read it, and it's a delight.

   The book in question is Buckeye by Patrick Ryan, copyrighted 2025. Ann Patchett writes on the jacket, Buckeye is "Full of love and war and the perilous intimacies of smalltown life. Buckeye is funny and tender realistic and strange."  One charcter even enlists in the Marines and his parents reaction reminds me of mine when I enlisted. The characters are very well developed and also very engaging.

   'The toxicity of secrets to relationships' is the theme I'd give the book. Part of its charm is the long breath of time covered thus tracking lives as they weather the storms through which people live. It is filled with deep reflections on the nature of relationships and life in general. One of the characters in early old age thinks, "This is why old people seem distant distracted. he thought. We aren't living in the past; the past is living in us. And it's talking. We get old to be able to recalibrate everything we thought was going to be important. We get old just to hear it. It says, the days, the days, the days." P. 446  

   Read it, you'll be glad you did!

Takk for alt,

Al

Dentist Again!

      Today the dentist did a small filling, either on, or below, a crown. This gave me the opportunity to ask some questions. Last time, while she sat beside me designing the crown on a computer screen, she was talking about her experience teaching dentistry at the University. Fascinated by that conversation, and her showing me what she was doing on the screen, I didn't think about how the crown was being fabricated. L wondered if it was done with a 3-D printer.

    No, it wasn't done with a printer. It is chiseled out of a solid block of material. Many more questions could have been asked about that process but they will have to wait for a later time.

    With her permission I was allowed to ask a personal question. Her first name is Krishna, which is the name of a male, Hindu god. I asked, "Is it unusual for a girl to be named for a male god?"  She said, "No." Then she explained that in the south of India, from which she comes, it is common. She said there were several girls in her neighborhood named Krishna. She went on to explain that in the north of India it is boys who are named Krishna, but had no idea the origins of those practices. 

   "Thanks," I said, "But in my eyes you're a goddess!"

Takk for alt,

Al  

The Pope's Wisdom!

 Vatican City — March 1, 2026

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Pope Leo XIV issued a "forceful appeal" to end increasing violence in the Middle East as the United States, Israel and Iran continue to exchange missile strikes and threats of escalations, warning of the risk of a "tragedy of enormous proportions."

The American-born pope called on all countries involved in the conflict to "assume the moral responsibility of stopping the spiral of violence before it becomes an irreparable abyss," after praying the Angelus in St. Peter's Square March 1.

Leo's comments came the day after surprise U.S.-Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, prompting Tehran to launch missiles at Israel and nearby Gulf Arab nations that host U.S. military bases. On Sunday, a major Israeli strike rocked Tehran, and an Iranian missile killed at least four people in central Israel hours later. 

"Stability and peace is not built with reciprocal threats nor with weapons that sow destruction, pain and death," the pope said, "but only through a reasonable, authentic, responsible dialogue."

Leo called for diplomacy to "regain its role and promote the good of peoples who yearn for peaceful coexistence based on justice."

"And let us continue to pray for peace," he said. 

President Donald Trump said the strikes were launched "to ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon" and dismantle their missile capabilities. He called on Iranians to "take over your government" following widespread protests in the country calling for regime change.

The latest escalation follows U.S. strikes last June that targeted three nuclear-enrichment sites in Iran and debilitated Iranian air defense systems.

"Let diplomacy silence the weapons," Leo said following those strikes. "Let nations chart their future with works of peace, not with violence and bloody conflicts!"

Ahead of those strikes, Bishop Abdallah Elias Zaidan, head of the U.S. bishops' conference's Committee on International Justice and Peace, called on the United States and the broader international community "to renew a multilateral diplomatic engagement for the attainment of a durable peace between Israel and Iran."

During his post-Angelus remarks the pope also called for dialogue in light of the "worrying news" of clashes between India and Pakistan, issuing a call for an "urgent return to dialogue."

"Let us pray together that harmony may prevail in all conflicts throughout the world," he said. "Only peace, a gift from God, can heal the wounds between peoples."

Takk for alt,

Al

When the news is bad....

    When the news is bad, there's sports. For me that means basketball primarily and predominantly women's. Today was a feast, and to keep my blood pressure in check, I didn't even watch the Gopher Women beat Illinois. They are ranked 22 in the nation. Replay is coming. This afternoon I switched between at least six games and a bit of golf and one's playing on the TV now.  Last night I watched the new women's professional basketball league, Unrivaled. Paige Bueckers, who played for Hopkins, a Minneapolis suburb in high school, and UConn in college, was playing. This is a thee on three league so it's heavy on offense. On Paige's team were 6'.4" Cameron Brink and 6'.6" Dominique Malonga, from France. They won easily as Paige had a great night.

    The regular season is over for the Big Ten Conference. The women ended with a record of 22 and 7, and 13 and 5, in the conference The Big Ten Tournament is next and the Gophers will get a good seed, #4, based on their record. They will also be invited to play in the NCAA tournament, for the first time in years. They have an excellent coach in Dawn Plitzuweit, who once coached at the University Of South Dakota. She's a good recruiter but the core of the current team was recruited by Lindsey Whalen when she was the coach, many of the key players are from Minnesota.

Takk for alt,

Al

Coach Plitzuweit

MKV keeps sending me good things!

    This is the latest good forward from MKV.

"There’s a Japanese word with no English equivalent: Omoiyari. It means something like a deep, reflexive consideration for others that permeates at all levels of the culture. That the Japanese would have such a word is not surprising, given that they are probably the most culturally cohesive society in the developed world. But what is interesting is why.  Japan is mountainous. Very little flat land. So their staple crop became rice, which needs far less acreage than wheat. But it demands something wheat doesn’t: the entire village. You can’t grow rice alone. One paddy at a time, everyone works together, negotiating who floods which field and when. So it seems that the reason Japanese have such great manners isn’t so much because of their virtue, but because of environmental necessity. Thomas Talhelm proved this in a 2014 Science study. What he found was that within the same country, China, with the same government, same ethnic group, and same language family, rice-growing regions produced measurably more collectivist people than wheat-growing regions. In the 1950s, the Chinese government assigned people to two state farms just 56 kilometers apart. One grew rice, and one grew wheat. They had the same policies and the same latitude. Within a generation, the rice farmers were significantly more group-oriented.  Or take the Scandinavians. Their ancestors spent centuries in Viking longhouses with fifty people and their livestock, one structure, and brutal winters. There wasn’t much room for personal drama or squeamishness about privacy. A thousand years later, Scandinavians are still laconic, moderate, and remarkably relaxed about nudity. The longhouse is gone but the culture it created isn’t. In the Nineteenth Century, adjusted for inflation, for the price of half a Volkswagen Passat, you could head West and grab yourself a price of land and have everything you needed to set up your own farm and be exporting grain within 18 months. The only deal was, on the farm you were on your own. Hence why American individualism and gun ownership are so highly valued in the US today. Environment shapes reality, which shapes language and culture, which shapes behavior. It’s all connected. One could reasonably deduce that the reason those of us in the Anglosphere don’t have our own word for Omoiyari is because our environment never demanded one. Language is not only a product of culture, but its creator. Korean Air had one of the worst safety records in aviation. The problem wasn’t mechanical. Korean has six speech levels encoding hierarchy, and junior officers couldn’t directly challenge captains during emergencies. The fix was to require all cockpit communication in English. Not because English is better. Because it didn’t carry the hierarchical weight. Their safety record since has been spotless. They didn’t change the people. They changed the language." Gapingvoid Culture Design Group Takk for alt, Al