lol. [image: 1779184188527-img_2496.jpeg]

Wtg Waxwings are winter visitors but I still have to see them. Your gnomes look right at home

Thanks for posting this WTG. Whitby, Jarrow(Bede etc) are local history to me so very interesting. Speaking the poem I struggle to find the rhyme though. Can you imagine how she felt reading it online in her office, the excitement! I've held older Egyptian writing on papyrus and it's difficult, even strange, imagining the writer and how it survived over 2000 years. Even turning the pages of an illustrated bible from 1400 gives a reflective feeling similar to looking up at the stars. I find our history fascinating, the bloody struggle that was life for the vast majority, and the need for meaning, for god. In the UK Christianity was a cult the Romans initially brought, but the Saxons effectively removed it from the East (& most) of Britain. This poem dates from the beginnings of the celtic form of Christianity that came via Ireland/Scotland with Aiden of Iona, who settled in Lindesfarne (Holy Island) in the early 600's and spread the word southwards, founding notable abbeys at Tyneside Jarrow, Monkwearmouth, Durham, Hartlepool, Whitby, and York. York became the Northern centre that Canterbury was in the South. This was only a few years after Augustine (I think from the Roman Gregorian? form) settled in Canterbury circa 600. There's still a bit of the very old Canterbury church, a wall, to be seen. There's a very old oak stave wall at Greenstead too, from 900AD, oldest wooden building in Europe and a very attractive church. However to see one of the very first, still mostly original, most complete, stone churches extant from this great missionary era, visit Escomb near to Durham. Not much to it but has a great feel. Shows the simple room/building built for worship back then, built 670AD. [image: 1779173925677-screenshot_20260519-075804_duckduckgo.jpg] But I digress

@andyd I'll take a good decade over a good one and a bad one. My medical power of attorney is complicated AF. I'm going to make sure it's know that I want DNR and no life support. I've had an interesting life. I have no plans to spend years suffering if there's no real point. As far loss, lifelong friends, since I was 3, since I was in high school, since I was in college, have become estranged over the decades. There's one I'd like to find but haven't had any luck in years. I have no family except a brother who is a narcissist from hell and has decided for the second time that we will be estranged since there's nothing I have that he can get from me. I have a cousin who doesn't understand me. I'll put that diplomatically. I have an aunt in her '80's whom I think the world of, and she's invited me to Seattle, but in will be a year or more before I'll be moved, settled, healed, and in a new rhythm managing my new responsibilities. The grim reaper cut down almost my entire family without giving me much of a break. Such is life. Well, we all know what our greatest poet said-- 'Better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all.' Strangely, I want to be on my own. It's a new adventure.

Yes it is. We get it here occasionally.

Oops...just saw @axtremus post about the same story... https://wtf.coffee-room.com/topic/3595/the-anti-weaponization-fund

Well, it looks like 90° F every day. We had some rain yesterday, we're supposed to have some today, and again tomorrow. This is good news because the State's draught is exceptionally bad.

The irony reeks.

I saw that @big_al! I'm not a fan of blue green and it's too bad because unheated blue green sapphires are a bargain. I trust this is a rare color for diamonds, but what a vault I could put together of jewels, gemstones, and watches if I had $17 million! Thanks for thinking of me.

Yes.

@AdagioM said: @jon-nyc Have you read The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón? Novel set in Barcelona, 1945. Murder, madness, doomed love… My friend said it was a must-read. I enjoyed it, but maybe not as much as she did. I have not, but thanks for the recommendation. I’ll look into it.

The USPS is an independent entity of the executive, not a part of the "Department of Justice" and its magic ability to interpret the Constitution (or ignore it completely). But these are the times we're living in. It will be great PR for the USPS when someone opens their package and accidently blows their brains out. I want to defend the USPS but it's getting increasingly more difficult to do when they won't defend themselves.

The Japanese are the Japanese. Do I get to spin the wheel and win a free washing machine?

Unfortunately, our road trip this year is through the upper Midwest - heading to Mt. Rushmore. Don’t know when we’ll be heading south again. Let’s us know if you’re coming to Cleveland!

@wtg said: @Big_Al said: I wonder if he was working at the Erdemir plant. I worked with an engineer who was involved with a sinter plant for that company. Here is a snippet from my neighbor Joe Faloon's obit. He died in 2006 at the age of 87, so he was much older than you. Joseph and his wife Virginia both graduated from Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1939. Joseph was an industrial engineer who worked in the steel industry throughout his career, first for U.S. Steel, then Ford Motor Steel, then Kaiser Engineers, managing the creation and expansion of major steel plants, living in Turkey and consulting in Indonesia, Australia, Venezuela and Mexico. You're right, Joe was indeed much older than me. I got my BSEE from Carnegie Tech in 1967. My early career probably paralleled his in many regards. Dravo Engineers and Constructors, my first professional employer, was a competitor of Kaiser Engineers in many markets. Big Al

@jon-nyc said: They’re trying to save pixels so they avoided ‘ancient’. we prefer the terms “Persons of Advanced Temporal Status” or “Chronologically Gifted Individuals” to refer to the Experience-Dense Demographic.