Politics As Usual

"Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt." - Patrick Henry
“ . . .it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears . . . let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." - Thomas Jefferson
“ . . . democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” - James Madison

Whew

Thank God, my mom’s kidneys are working again! We had quite a scare here. . .
Diabetes is awful! Her kidney disease can be thrown into full-blown kidney failure by nearly any illness, which is what happened. We’ve been holding our breath, hoping that the medically-induced kidney function would continue without the meds.
It seems to be working. HUGE sigh of relief . . .

Irony

The very strengths that people take most for granted in us sometimes end up being precisely what the same people most resent in us.

Happy Independence Day

I was lucky enough to visit Concord, Massachusetts on July 4th! This is the Minute Man statue, marking the location of the "shot heard 'round the world."

The Berkshires

We stayed a couple days in the Berkshires of western MA on the way to Boston. This is a beautiful area with tons of hiking opportunities. There are lots of die hard hikers here, too, since the Appalachian Trail runs through this range.
I'd like to come back in the autumn for a hiking trip!

Niagara Falls

Here's the iconic Maid of the Mist, chugging along her precarious route.
We're headed to Boston via Ontario and had lunch at the Falls. Nice.

Did you know . . .

You know how Facebook recommends friends for you? I thought that was because they were a friend of a friend, or they had clicked “Like” for the same item as me, or they joined the same group as me.
I recently had a gentlemen turn up on my recommendations list. He isn’t a friend of a friend and we haven’t liked or joined any similar pages. The connection was that he had responded to my Craigslist ad for an apartment for rent. I used the same Yahoo email account for both Craigslist and Facebook. Apparently, he used the same email account for both programs, too. Facebook recognized that we had communicated and connected us.
The problem is that my Yahoo account doesn’t identify me by name; Facebook does. He may not know what the connection is. Even if I’m showing as one of his recommended friends, he didn’t have my name before. He likely has it now, though. Facebook has removed my anonymity. That’s worrisome.
I’ve been considering deleting my Facebook profile because I’m tired of attending to it. I’m still undecided, because I really have reconnected with a lot of lost acquaintances through it. This, though, really gives me pause for consideration . . .