Tuesday 10th March

Was looking forward to a pleasant day having crocheting lessons with a group at the Senior Centre.  The instructor - who I have had before - e-mailed to tell me about it, said it was a potluck (ie you take a contribution for lunch) so I knocked up a fruit jelly last night, made a sweet corn salad this morning, then busied myself organising crochet hooks, yarn and what I wanted to make.    I hadn't enrolled, thought it would be alright if I just turned up and paid.   Big Mistake.   If I'd enrolled I would probably have been notified that it was cancelled because no one enrolled.  No one else turned up either.  

 

So the fruit jelly and sweet corn salad are sitting in the church fridge, for tomorrow's meal. 

This is Chaos, the cat from next door before it went AWOL.  I actually took it some time ago and I printed off a copy today at a photo lab and gave it to Donna, so she could take it round the vets' surgeries in town to ask if they had seen it.  I think it will make her feel better if she can feel she is doing something to look for it, but I deep down hope  that Chaos has found a nice home somewhere where it is the centre of attention.    I thought too, that seeing it sitting on my porch of its own free will, she might let go of the notion that it has been kidnapped by one of those gangs from Oklahoma City!

She invited me in to look at the plants she has been propagating for her garden, and I saw she had another dog, so there are three now.   She has had it for a couple of months, which I think is about the time Chaos decided to leave home.   I don't know much about animals but I didn't think cats liked dogs, so is hardly going to want to live with three.

The dog is very small, I can't spell it, but it is the size of an overgrown rat.   She said it belonged to an old man she was looking after, and was only going to have it for a couple of weeks while he was in hospital, but then he was taken into a nursing home.

Norman, Oklahoma is in the news, or more precisely the University is.

I think a Fraternity House is like a Hall of Residence, and there was a video going viral - isn't everything videoed and going viral these days - of a group of students on a bus chanting a song with very ugly, racist words.  The students identified in the video were promptly expelled, but they are so hung up on their "free speech"  here that thousands turned out to protest.  They should have laws like we do prohibiting the inciting of racial hatred, that would put paid to their free speech and racial chants, they would all be in police custody tonight.   And quite rightly, I can't be doing with their free speech.

Also in the news.........................Chinese women are coming to California in their thousands, wearing voluminous dresses to hide the fact that they are pregnant, then giving birth, whereupon the child has an American birth certificate, and citizenship, and ultimately the parents will as well.   It is called "birth tourism" and the police are cracking down on it.

Here the police are raiding a facility where these Chinese people stay, ostensibly on holiday, but actually where they are all busy giving birth.    What puzzles me is the fact that I thought Chinese people were very patriotic, and proud of their culture, I don't know why they want to be American.