Category: This and That

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Penguin Escapes Killer Whales by Jumping into Sightseeing Boat (yahoo.com)

This is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen…. don’t miss the Orcas singing under water 🙂

I like to use the big bottle of clear liquid hand soap to refill the little bottles. It took two drops of the blue food coloring. I didn’t shake it up, the bottle was partly full and I just dropped in the coloring and then poured in the rest to fill the bottle. It did its own decorating…. I have a red one, too, but the picture isn’t as pretty because of the background; besides, I couldn’t make the red photo transfer.

It doesn’t take much to entertain me. 🙂

I promised a couple of my blogging pals to publish some some photos that I digitalized from old 35mm slides . The photographers were my Cousin “Pat” Lehman, who was a high school band director in Columbus, Ohio for lots of years before he retired and his wife, Lila, who was my Dad’s first cousin. I inherited a collection of things—including lots of photos they took in their travels back in the 1970s. When I grabbed this box of slides I thought they were part of my own collection … however, they are good shots of a trip to Spain, and since I had them handy here they are. (Pat and Lila would be thrilled to know that their photos are being enjoyed by bloggers!)

The Digital Film/Slide Converter (with rapid feeder) that I bought about five years ago from “The Sharper Image” catalogue. They have an updated model that looks to be the same as mine except it doesn’t have the “stack loader.” The stack loader is problematic anyway, I use it, but the old, old slides stick in the slider thing and have to handled manually…not that that is a criticism. This is a nifty gadget! Here’s a link. The price of the thing is still very reasonable I see.

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My lost second installment of my adventures in Vaccination appeared overnight. I was all indignant and up on my high horse about having had my golden prose lost in a nightmare of new editing system. I don’t like the New Editor Block System. But, having made that statement I must add some reservations. Maybe I’ll like it better when it becomes more familiar to me

Here’s what happened. I tried to create a new post, but the face of it did not show up on the screen as I wanted it to. Yes, I’m an old Luddite, and proud of it…every time I get even remotely comfortable with the latest Word Press Editor—they change it. This has been the case ever since I’ve been blogging here…10 years! Once—and so help me this is true as rain—a procedure for posting a picture changed in the middle of a sentence. Really. I, of course, get all uppity and upset about it, and grouse and complain, and sometimes cry when I hit PUBLISH and…well, it doesn’t.

Like yesterday, I wrote this really lengthy blog post detailing my experiences getting my Covid19 Vaccination. In case anyone read it, here’s the thing: I was impressed with the smooth and orderly procedure followed by our County Health department, which conducted a massive clinic at which thousands of clients received their vaccinations. It was very well done. I can only attest to my personal experience during two separate four-hour events, three weeks apart, at our Lorain County Community College.

When I returned to the blog after posting, to my horror there was only part of the post. The other part, a long and wordy account, had disappeared. I located it under the Revisions page, with the “missing” portion of the post present but riddled with strike-throughs. When my efforts to restore, backtrack, remove the strike-lines failed to have any effect at all, I tried everything I could think of to recover my post. In truth, the post wasn’t all that vital to most readers, so I thought I’d just forget about it—gripe about it to fellow bloggers, and maybe chat with WordPress about it.

But to my amazement when I signed on this morning, there was the missing text. I have no idea where it went, or where whence it returned. I do know that the fiasco probably was due to some fiddling I did with the “Block Editor.”

(Thanks WordPress Spirits for whatever happened.)

At about six years old, I joined a few dozen of my peers in a long line that snaked its way around our classroom, heading to the front of the room where some adults were hulking over some little kid, doing something to the kid’s arm.

What are they doing?

Giving shots… we are all getting a shot.

I don’t recall the whys and wherefores of the procedure, but suspect it had something to do with Smallpox. I still have the scar on my left arm, if anyone is curious. That particular “shot” has protected me for 70+ years against untold disease.

I stood in a long line when getting my inoculations against diseases I might have been exposed to during my approaching voyage across the ocean to Germany. I still have the yellow card listing those shots, for malaria and all sorts of other horrors remaining in Europe in the 1950s, just a decade after the World War II.

We had a two-year-old that shared the line for the polio vaccines—both the Sabin and Salk, one was an actual inoculation the other serum on a sugar cube. I had knowledge of the ravages of Polio; my sister had it at 4 years old; my stepfather had had it at 7 years old., before the vaccinations existed.

When I worked for the newspaper for nearly 20 years, both as a full-time reporter and later as part-time writer, the Flu Shots were mandatory. No discussion…just be there. Everybody who worked there was given the shot, administered by the County Board of Health.

There are always people who object to vaccinations, for various reasons. Anti-vaxxers are heard from regularly whenever “new” vaccines are required.

Which begs the question—why in blazes is their allowed to be such controversy about vaccinating children against diseases that were all but eliminated decades ago? Smallpox? Diptheria? Polio?” In the 21st Century? There are always people who object to vaccinations, for various reasons. Anti-vaxxers are heard from regularly whenever “new” vaccines are required. My opinion on the subject is that everyone has the right to object, but their rights end when their rights conflict with my rights NOT to become infected with a preventable disease.