Last night was Bloom Night here in Tucson. Once a year, the Peniocereus greggi, also known as the Desert cereus, blooms. You never get much warning about this event since even experts can only tell the day of when they are likely to bloom. Friday morning word went out that it was bloom night.
The cereus blooms one night per year so this really is Bloom Night singular (although there are always a few stragglers most of them bloom one night and one night only. They live all over Tucson but there are none in my condo complex so I went to Tohono Chul park and their bloom night event. I got there later after our Friday night improv show and it was still pretty busy but, based on all the cars parked down the road, not as bad as it was earlier in the night!
So here are a couple of shots of the Queen of the Night.
The guy who shot the video said, "You're tweaking," and, "Your pupils look like pin points." Don't even get near those people (meth heads), but I'm not sure this lady isn't just crazy. Does it matter anymore?
Good morning and welcome back! It's been a long time since I've rock and rolled.... My apologies for my hiatus from Four for Fridays. This year's spring migration had gotten too crazy and left me exhausted. Kinda hard to come with questions after a long day of work, birding, writing rare bird reports and going through hundreds of pictures. Anyways, here are your questions...
"We’re not wild about outsourcing, but
we recognize it as a fact of life in the 21st century American economy.
Work formerly done for American companies by Americans is now being
done overseas.
"We didn’t think outsourcing would take the form of
foreigners brought into America to do the work at the American
companies. But that’s what has been happening at DisneyWorld in Orlando,
Fla.
"What definitely shouldn’t have happened is Disney exploiting a loophole in immigration law to bring in the foreign workers.
"A
visa program known as H-1B provides a limited number of temporary visas
— a total of 85,000 a year — for foreigners with computer, engineering
or other advanced skills to fill jobs in American companies when
American workers are not available.
"A lack of available workers was not the case at The Magic Kingdom.
"The
New York Times reported Wednesday that about 250 Disney
technology-operations workers were laid off last year and many were
replaced by immigrants hired by an outsourcing company based in India.
"Before leaving, some of the laid-off workers had to train immigrants on H-1B visas to do their jobs.
"'I
just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and
take over our jobs exactly,' one former worker, an American in his 40s
who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30, told the
Times. 'It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your
job. I still can’t grasp it.'
"We’re also finding it difficult to grasp. And questioning the legality of Disney having done so.
"U.S.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., on Thursday asked the Department of Homeland
Security to investigate the temporary visa program. In a letter to
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Nelson asked him to examine 'potential misuses' of a visa program known as H-1B.
"'This program was created to help fill jobs when there were labor shortages, not to take jobs away from anyone,' Nelson wrote.
"In
2014, the power utility Southern California Edison initiated layoffs of
540 workers, replacing them with immigrants brought in by a different
India-based outsourcing company. Sens. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, and
Richard Durbin, D-Ill., are among those asking the Labor Department to
investigate those layoffs.
"The intention of H-1B is to fill
skilled-worker gaps that already exist, not to help companies increase
profits after they’ve deliberately created a skilled-worker gap."
Hello, my friends and lovers!How are you?Well, we finally got some heat.In typical Wisconsin weather, spring lasts for
two or three days and then the firebomb is dropped on us.“It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.”Actually, it’s both.But, as I noted just a few months ago, I’m
not going to complain about the heat because of how darn cold it gets in
winter.I’ll take 80 or 90 degrees or
more rather than the below zero death trap winter days and nights.I haven’t turned on the air conditioning yet,
but I’ve used its fan.I also sleep with
a fan blowing on me almost every night, summer or winter.
I remember a place I lived in before I met Junior’s
father.It was steam heated and I had an
apartment directly above the boiler room.On the coldest winter days, I would have both of my radiators turned off
while the ceiling fan blew.Opening
windows was the best way to deal with it, but my landlord at the time warned me
he would fine me if he saw my windows open.Meanwhile, apartments in the far corners of the building had all their
radiators on and they were still cold.I
considered living in my underwear (or less) at home during the winter, but the
apartment was right next to the parking lot.I didn’t want to put on a show.
I’m not sure where in the process the proposed raise for Mister
City Administrator Tom Freidel is, but I liked what our Mr. Toad had to
say.Don’t give him a raise.Let him walk, if he dares.Where else is he gong to find a job that pays
so well, with so many perks?And if he
does walk, that would be a perfect time to reconsider the need for the
position. We didn’t need one until
Mister then-Mayor Becker decided that being a pedophile was a full time
job.So he hired Mr. Ben Hughes to do
his job for him.Mr. Hughes promptly
resigned after Mr. Becker’s arrest.So
why does Mr. Mayor Dickert need a city administrator?So Mr. Mayor can fly to Paris
with his friends and have a good time.There
are a lot of similarities between Racine and Paris, such as, uh, such as . . . its
light during the day and dark at night.
I can hardly wait for Machinery Row to save us from
ourselves.I asked Señor Zanza and
Junior if they’d like to live down by the river.Junior asked, “Will it smell like fish?” Señor
Zanza just snorted.So I guess not.I don’t think I’d like it, either.There’s something to be said for green space
around your home.We don’t have much of
a yard; it’s an old city lot, like most of the homes around here.I like having a picnic table and grill.We can do that.We can even have a small party on our lawn,
or hold the overspill from a larger indoor party at home.Please, no peeing on the neighbor’s shrubs.And watch out for the garden.And no tormenting the neighbor’s dog, Flash.
Here’s a song in the vein of today’s blog:
I’ll always be on your side, Irregular or not.I love my regulars and irregulars, Irregular
or not.Thank you for reading my blog
this week.Be on my side.
Enjoy the warming trend, my dears.May the heat help heal us all from winter’s
indignities.Get out there and enjoy it,
because you know your time is limited.Before you know it, you’ll be shoveling snow again. I love you all.Fruitjzka!
"One time in high school I remember there was a snippet of a
math problem left up in the corner of the chalk board for several
months. I always wondered if it would ever be erased. However I
doubt that a teacher at Emerson High School in Oklahoma in the early
Twentieth Century knew that their lesson on the chalkboard one day would
be viewed by people 98 years later.
"That seems to be the case after construction crews remodeling the
high school discovered the old chalkboards in the walls behind current
chalkboards in classrooms on the second floor. The fully intact lessons
which include music, history, math problems and a calendar counting down
the days until Christmas have been dated to 1917. The high school
itself was originally built in 1911. Luckily nobody immediately erased
the chalkboards.
"A teacher at the school, Sherry Read told ABC News; 'It's been
neat just to touch history,' Read said. 'To see this being preserved
just makes my heart filled with joy. Knowing that this was behind my
wall all this time is pretty fascinating.'
"It is weird that the chalkboards lasted generations, since a lot of
times it was the student’s job to wash the board. Franklin and Ethel
really screwed up their duties; no Figgy pudding for them, and they
won’t be able to listen to the stories on the radio tonight! The school
is looking for a way to preserve the 100 year old chalk board lessons.
Hopefully nobody sneezes around them until they do."
"Even though almost 600 people liked our story about hosting the forum,
about 25 people came. I wish more people would have come, but I was
truly grateful for those who did come. And I wish you would have heard
the things the kids in the audience told us they needed… which was
acceptance. "But
the dialogue was great. I couldn’t have asked for better. Still, I wish
you could have been there to hear what we heard about the sensitive
nature of bullies not really wanting to be bullies at all, one girl in
the audience talked about girls in her class being bullied because they
liked girls, about a parent’s frustration over how her girls were
bullied online, and the difficulty parents face when their children are
victims. "So Heather Asiyanbi, who co-owns the news website with me, and I
decided that we’re going to keep doing these kinds of forums. Why?
Because we want to keep this dialogue going about how to discuss the
issue of bullying in a school district where kids struggle with the
complexities of poverty, mental illness, and the fragile reality of not
always feeling good enough." Read more: http://racinecountyeye.com/what-if-bullies-did-this-instead/
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