Local Posts Seattle, WA (zoom)

"My teachers and my parents and the TV shows of my youth kept telling us kids that the way to deal with bullies was to confront them, they’re actually, deep down, nothing but cowards. My family moved north from Georgia to Milwaukee when I was 13, a radical transition from semi-rural living to urban discomfort. My junior high school had the usual mix of cliques with one exception, the hoods, guyz who dressed up as gangsters to celebrate Valentine’s Day, the Massacre. Nice bunch, kept switchblade knives on themselves and guns in their lockers. Welcome to the city, Farm Boy!"  More at The Skeeter Daddle Diaries ➜  

"I read in the news the other day that the average kid text messages 200 times per day.  You might be skeptical of that number … unless you’ve sat in a room with some of these nimble fingerers.  They will ignore an incoming meteor before they put down their I-phone or whatever device their parents have empowered them with.  Hell, I even see the folks now just as addicted, drifting off from our conversation to check an incoming text message." More at The Skeeter Daddle Diaries ➜  

Hugo Simberg (1873 - 1917) was a Finnish symbolist painter and graphic artist. He studied under Gallen-Kallela for three periods between 1895 and 1897. In 1896, Simberg went to London, and the following year to Paris and Italy. During these years he exhibited several works at the Finnish Artists' autumn exhibitions, including Autumn, Frost, The Devil Playing and Aunt Alexandra, which were well received. His success led to his being made a member of the Finnish Art Association and to his appointment to teach at the Drawing School of the Viipuri Friends of Art. He is the author of part of the murals and stained-glass windows of the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Tampere. The Wounded Angel is one of the most recognizable of Simberg's works, it has become a trademark of Nordic symbolism and was voted Finland's "national painting" in 2006.

On a soaked fence-post a little blue-backed bird,
Opening her sweet throat, has stirred
A million music-ripples in the air
That curl and circle everywhere.
They break not shallow at my ear,
But quiver far within. Warm days are near!

Max Forrester Eastman (1883 – 1969) was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet and a prominent political activist. Moving to New York City for graduate school, Eastman became involved with radical circles in Greenwich Village. He initially supported socialism but became highly critical first of Stalinism and then of communism and socialism in general, becoming an advocate of free market economics. He was also a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes. In later life, he published more frequently in National Review and other conservative journals, but he always remained independent in his thinking. For instance, he publicly opposed United States involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s, earlier than most. Wikipedia

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"...The Washington Legislature is asserting that legislators have a previously unknown personal privilege to withhold from public disclosure the documents they use in their work for the people. No such “legislative privilege” applies to legislative records. Read more