From a politically conservative and wonderful friend of mine. I was raised in what I’ve always called a southern military conservative household. All four of my grandparents, and therefore my parents, are from Kentucky. My father was military. His father was military. I married military. I was baptized, raised, and married in the United… Read more Guest Post On Marriage Equality
I have a good friend in great distress. Her sister’s ex-husband and his new wife, whom I shall call Nimrod and Bandersnatch, have decided to fat-shame and torment my friend’s niece because they think she is ‘out of shape’. The little girl is only ten years old. Although she is not overweight or obese in… Read more Fat Shaming Preteen Girls Harms Them For Life
Amy Licence and I invite proposals for papers to be included in a multidisciplinary edited volume entitled Envisioning the Tudor Woman: Historical and Modern Representations of Women from the Tudor Era. Please submit a proposal before July 1 2015; the final deadline for complete essays will be December 1, 2015. Papers must be between 4000… Read more Submissions for Envisioning the Tudor Woman
My eldest daughter, Bubbles, will be entering the 5th grade this August and we have been reading up on social interaction and Asperger’s syndrome in preparation for preteen ‘drama’, conflict, or bullying. It has led me to some fascinating information. People with Asperger’s syndrome are typically very direct. We don’t do (or even know how… Read more Conflict Aversion, Assertion, Aggression and Asperger’s
Jesus wept. As I am sure most of you know, a 21 year old white man named Dylann Storm Roof attended a prayer service at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina and after an hour he started shooting members of the historically black church, killing nine of them. A survivor reported… Read more On Hate Crimes and Denial of Racism
*SPOILERS for Game of Thrones* Today is Henry Fitzroy’s birthday, and if he were alive he’d be 496 years young. Sadly, the king’s baseborn child with Bessie Blount passed away at the tender age of 17. Fitzroy was actually being eyed as a potential heir to the throne, illegitimate or not. Henry had recently declared… Read more Happy Birthday to Henry Fitzroy
A lady by the name of Della Curry was recently fired from her job kitchen manager at an Aurora, Colorado, elementary school. Why? She was giving hungry kids food instead of pitching it into the trash when the kids didn’t have the money to pay for it: “I was let go for not charging for… Read more Della Curry–A Good Human Being
*NB – this was supposed to go out yesterday but Fun With Kids happened instead* On the last week in May of 1553 Lady Jane Grey married Lord Guilford Dudley, the fourth son of the duke of Northumberland (John Dudley), at the urging of the increasingly ill King Edward VI. Contrary to myth, there is… Read more Lady Jane Grey Marries
Five biker gangs made up of mostly white dudes had a brawl yesterday in Waco, TX. Nine men were killed and at least 18 were injured in the affray. This was not a little rumpus. These were armed criminals shooting and stabbing each other in broad daylight next door to innocent families. Moreover, the gang… Read more White on White Violence is a “Melee”
Well, I’ll be darned like a sock. Astrologers are at least partially right; a new scientific study published today in the peer-reviewed journal Comprehensive Psychology shows it turns out people actually ARE influenced by the day of their birth. The article, “Astrology as a culturally transmitted heuristic scheme for understanding seasonality effects: a response to… Read more The Science Behind Astrology?