Ash Wednesday, 2026

    No doubt that you both realized that today is Ash Wednesday. Grace University Lutheran, to which I belong, offered worship services today at 12:00 and 7:00. Parking on the University campus is a bit of an issue at noon weekdays. It's also a bit of a drive from the OFH. With the first snowfall in weeks occurring I availed myself of a benefit of life here. The protestant chaplain, a young Lutheran pastor; E.L.C.A., offered a Ash Wednesday Service, in house. So, I attended, happily. The Catholic Service followed.

   Tom and Anita came for lunch and our weekly cribbage game.

    Economists looking at demographics recognize that industrialized nations will increasingly need immigrant labor and that countries will soon compete for immigrants. Meanwhile orange man continues to drive immigrants from America which is both inhumane and short sighted economically. .Heather Cox-Richardson today offers these quotes from the WSJ.

"'Now, the Wall Street Journal reported in a February 6 editorial, employers “are struggling to find workers they can employ legally.”'

'The newspaper continued: “There’s little evidence that undocumented migrants are taking jobs from Americans. The reality is that employers can’t find enough Americans willing to work in the fields or hang drywall, even at attractive wages. Farm hands in Florida who work year-round earn roughly $47,000, which is more than what some young college graduates earn.” “The lesson for President Trump is that businesses can’t grow if government takes away their workers,” the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board concluded'

  WSJ also offered this news about the effects of Make America Great Again.

"Peter Grant of the Wall Street Journal reported today that banks that have loaned money to finance the purchase of commercial real estate are requiring borrowers to pay back tens of billions of dollars as the delinquency rate for such loans has climbed to a high not seen since just after the 2008 financial crisis. About $100 billion in commercial real estate loans that have been packaged into securities will come due this year and probably won’t repay when they should. More than half of the loans are likely headed for foreclosure or liquidation".

Takk for alt,

Al

Dental Follies!

     Today was my semi-annual dental check-up and tooth cleaning, If you're wondering, I survived. That's the good news. The bad news is that there are problems with two crowns. One can be repaired but the other needs replacing. If I don't have anything worse than that I'm grateful!

   The dentist office is in the Crossing Building, which is where my condo was. I'll get two more trips to my old neighborhood.

  Off to a birthday party!

Takk for alt,

Al

"Proof is in the pudding!"

         One of the bennies of life in the OFH is cable TV. It's a decent package offering myriad channels I never us. It does give me access to many basketball games which I enjoy. My basketball team de jour is the University of Minnesota Women's team. They played a game yesterday which was broadcast on BTN, which is a channel I can access, consequently I could have watched the game live, but I didn't. Why not?

    One of the realizations of my life in dotage is that I don't enjoy anxiety. A second awareness is that I over invest in my chosen athletic team. Subscription to BTN+ allows me to replay games at my leisure. In yesterday's game the Gopher women had a poor first quarter being outscored by ten points. Were I watching live that weak start would have aroused anxiety, which I don't need. Knowing that they won, when I watched the replay today, it was, "not to worry, they'll prevail". Then, too, on replay I can either review a play or fast forward as desired.

   Minnesota defeated Wisconsin 83-60, winning their 8th game is a row.

 "The phrase "the proof is in the pudding" originates from a 14th-century British proverb, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating," which means the quality of something can only be determined by testing or experiencing it directly. Historically, "pudding" referred to savory meat-filled sausages, not desserts, which were difficult to judge until eaten."  Internet

Takk for alt,

Al

Terraced rice fields in the Philippine Islands, the picture taken on the road to Baguio in 1962. 

A Mild Complaint!

     As a fan of women's basketball I have a mild complaint. There are a few games to watch during the week. Sunday comes and the women's games are stacked up from morning until late night. At one point this afternoon I was tracking four games simultaneously. Why not spread them out? The answer of course is sexism. Men's ball games are on every night of the week, with most women's games on Sunday. For much of the season they have to compete with NFL football, which we all know is morally bankrupt!

   OKAY, I've said and of course it will not change anything but I feel better.

Takk for alt,

Al

It's time for a random photo. These are Okinawan Homes behind a vegetable garden, the tallest plants are banana "trees". 1962 

In Case You Missed It

 From Heather Cox-Richardson...

"At midnight tonight, most of the agencies and services in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will run out of funding, as popular fury over the violence and lawlessness of federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Border Patrol made Senate Democrats refuse to agree to fund DHS without reforms. And yet, because the Republicans lavished money on ICE and Border Patrol in their July 2025 budget reconciliation bill—the one they call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—those agencies will continue to operate. The 260,000 federal employees affected by the partial shutdown will come from other agencies in DHS, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), and the Coast Guard.

A measure to fund DHS passed the House by a majority vote, but in the Senate, the filibuster allows the Democrats, who are in the minority, to make demands before the measure can pass. On February 4, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) sent Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) a letter outlining demands Democrats want incorporated into a measure to appropriate more funds for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Those demands are pretty straightforward. The Democrats want federal agents to enter private homes only with a judicial warrant (as was policy until the administration produced a secret memo saying that DHS officials themselves could sign off on raids, a decision that runs afoul of legal interpretations of the Fourth Amendment). They want agents to stop wearing masks and to have their names, agencies, and unique ID numbers visible on their uniforms, as law enforcement officers do. They want an end to racial profiling—that is, agents detaining individuals on the basis of their skin color, place of employment, or language—and to raids of so-called sensitive sites: medical facilities, schools, childcare facilities, churches, polling places, and courts.

They want agents to be required to have a reasonable policy for use of force and to be removed during an investigation if they violate it. They want federal agents to coordinate with local and state governments and for those governments to have jurisdiction over federal agents who break the law. They want DHS detention facilities to have the same standards as any detention facility and for detainees to have access to their lawyers. They want states to be able to sue if those conditions are not met, and they want Congress members to have unscheduled access to the centers to oversee them.

They want body cameras to be used for accountability but prohibited for gathering and storing information about protesters. And they want federal agents to have standardized uniforms like those of regular law enforcement, not paramilitaries."

Takk for alt,

Al

 

Then, too, there's this, also from Cox-Richardson

"In his testimony, Lyons maintained that ICE is indeed prioritizing the removal of undocumented immigrants with records of violent crime, enabling Republicans to claim that Democrats who want to rein ICE in are deliberately endangering public safety. Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News reported this week that documents from DHS itself show that fewer than 14% of the nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested in Trump’s first year had either convictions or charges for violent crimes, with fewer than 2% either charged with or convicted of homicide or sexual assault."

Barn Yard barbie not only shoots dogs...

"Last night, in a deep expose of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her advisor Corey Lewandowski, Wall Street Journal reporters Michelle Hackman, Josh Dawsey, and Tarini Parti described a department in chaos. Noem and Lewandowski—who the authors say are having an affair and essentially run the department together—are using DHS for their own aggrandizement with an eye to elevating Noem to the presidency. The reporters detailed the focus on image, the decimation of ICE by firing or demoting 80% of the career field leadership that was in place when they arrived, the apparent steering of contracts to allies, and Noem and Lewandowski's excessive demands, including “a luxury 737 MAX jet, with a private cabin in back, for their travel around the country.” DHS is currently leasing the $70 million plane but is in the process of buying it."

VA Medical Center is Near

       Had an appointment to see my primary care physician at the VA today. There were three items on my agenda. 1. Move my annual primary care appointment from May to February; 2. Order socks; 3. Move a prescription to the VA. Mission accomplished.

       In May I'm usually at The Little House and in February at the OFH. The VA gives me free socks. Prescriptions are cheaper at the VA, most are $8.00. The VA doctor can now access my health records from my civilian provider. When I saw her a couple of weeks ago she ordered lab test so today the VA doctor was able to access the results. 

      My VA experience almost all positive and like this doctor.

Takk for alt,

Al

PS After he listened to my heart I asked him what he heard. He said "You'll live."

While driving a Studebaker!

 

'The detainees at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, the largest detention center in the U.S. for children and families, describe nightmarish conditions: moldy food, contaminated drinking water and limited medical care. In a letter sent to ProPublica, one child says the only medical advice they get from the doctors is to drink more water. “The worst thing is that it seems the water is what makes people sick here,” he wrote. At least two cases of measles, a highly contagious and often deadly disease, have been detected in the facility, leading officials to lock down the jail. But for many parents, keeping their kids in Dilley is preferable to the alternative: staying in detention — and possibly being deported — without them." Huffington Post Takk for alt, Al