A burning bush ?

I get locked out of the house and make an unscheduled trip to the hospital to retrieve the only set of available keys. The visit was good for both me and her. Divine intervention or coincidence (just kidding).

Hope no one was disappointed that this had nothing to do with effigies of the president.....

Human Gallery

I'll volunteer for most anything, they serve as my avenues for de-compression. It helps me escape mundane reality by doing something I would not normally do and the more mindless the better. Occasionally, it's for a good cause, well, it's never for a bad cause, just how good the cause is varies and depends on your outlook on life.

Sometimes, my volunteering is linked to a hobby. This Saturday, I joined 21 other photographers (amateur and pro) from the Boston Photography Center and became a living breathing gallery wall as part of a project to raise awareness of photographs taken of Boston and to highlight the lack of sufficient number of photo galleries in the city. Part of the hope is that the city will take heed and utilize photos taken by local professionals to adorn subways and other public space. A large number of locals and tourists offered critique (see photo) and words of praise. One interesting gent came right up to my face and informed me that George Washington (in front of whose statue I was coincidentally standing) was known in his native Virginia as "Indian Killer" because of his propensity to let loose his shot gun on local Native Americans (nothing like snippets of American History from the lunatic fringe to enrich your appreciation of the adopted land). Some asked what we were protesting - I usually replied "Tulips" (click here to see the photo I was exhibiting, note that I did not shoot this picture).

A more graphic description of this event can be found here.

I was wrong, so what's new ...

My hyperactive, cloud-trodding imagination went down the wrong path -- Are we really ready to reach out and gather more into our fold, or do we wish to partition, marginalize, build walls, create multiple states/countries where previously there was one. What happened to my 36 planets - the galaxy that future generations would hitchhike through someday.. Soon we will be the only planet, the rest will constitute the axis of poseurs, as we embark on our crusade of regime, sorry, status change. Einstein, expressing his belief in Spinoza's god, said that HE ".. does not play dice with the cosmos". Little did he realize that the privilege of playing dice lies with the International Astronomical Union. Fare thee well, Pluto !

:-)

See new below from AP, hot off the wire, 30 minutes ago..
"Leading astronomers approved historic new planet guidelines Thursday downsizing Earth's neighborhood from nine principal heavenly bodies to eight by demoting distant Pluto. After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930."

You know when I was your age....

.....gasoline was only a penny a gallon. In fact, some stations actually paid you to fill up.

Here's what I'll tell my grandchildren in my old age

"You know, when I was your age, there were only nine planets. 2003 UB13 (Xena) was voted as the tenth planet by a narrow margin in 2006.

It was touch and go for a while. Initially, the USA and France disagreed on mineral discovery-rights and tourism revenue-sharing policies. The then US president, George W. Bush, wanted to add a condition to the vote that his road map for peace take the interstellar highway to Pluto (which was at risk of being demoted to a demi-planet) and create a settlement for the Palestinians so that they could stop that s__t on Planet Earth. The US House of Representatives wanted to make sure that aliens from Xena did not get any short cuts to US citizenship. The European Union wanted to ensure that the solar system had adequate absorption capacity. And on and on..

However, the Russian Space Minister launched a passionate soliloquy and asked that Xena's icy surface be not mistaken for aloofness and that it be considered at least a dwarf planet right away. . This opened the flood gates, and we soon added 2006 UB40 (Buffy), 2020 DMZ (Run) and even revived and named to planethood an older discovery -- 2000 XPSP2 (Windows). Soon, I lost track of the names of the thirty six planets that we have now.

What did you ask. Oh, who were Palestinians? It's a long story..Do you remember the Six Flags Over Dead Sea you visited last summer. Well, .....