Babs weighs in (again)

One of my “favorite” politicos, the inimitable Barbara Bush (Sr.) had this to say recently when asked about Romney and Mormonism:

"I mean it was in 1897 that bigamy was outlawed in that church. You know we have a lot of Christian wild people too, and a lot of Jewish wild people and a lot of Muslim wild people. The Mormon religion takes care of its own, they don't have people on welfare.”

Heaven save us from them people on welfare!

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Rebuilding Bucky’s dome home

Back in 1959 Buckminster Fuller came to Carbondale to begin teaching at Southern Illinois University. He and his wife Anne Hewlett Fuller built a small house on a corner lot near campus, a dome. They surrounded it with an ingenious redwood fence that allowed for privacy and air passage at the same time.

The years haven’t been kind to Bucky’s home. At one point it was even rented out as student housing, with a shabby new kitchen and an “upgraded” bathroom. All the angles and joins in the 2 X 4 superstructure were subject to leaks, and rot set in. The skylights fell through the roof. It was a mess.

A foundation was established to raise money and volunteers to restore the dome and one of their first interventions was to construct a protective dome around the original building. This afternoon I spent an hour there helping to shovel away ground up roots, from a tree that had uprooted the once-splendid redwood fence and was cut down last week.

Though I had seen the dome from the outside many times, this was the first time I got to go inside. What appears tiny from without is actually quite a spacious and liveable interior. Even in its current decrepit condition, it felt like a spiritual place. You could almost feel the history these rooms have seen. Bringing it back to life feels like a worthy cause. I’ll enjoy volunteering on this project over the next couple of years.

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The 30% lie

In most of the polls about our Commander in Cheep, a recurring number of reported Bu$hco supporters baffles me. I keep asking myself, “how could even 30% of Americans support this idiot?”, followed by “What would have to happen to erode that number?”

I read an article about Chimpy’s vacation on the ABC News site this morning. I always like to read the comments following any article almost as much as the article itself. As I read through the comments on this one, I was struck by the fact that almost all of them were critical of Chimpy. In fact, when I counted, there was one positive comment, out of 46 total. That’s something like 2.1% approval—and this on a very mainstream site. I feel better about the discernment of my fellow Americans now.

30% indeed.

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