Twisty, Curvy Roads

For as long as I can remember, I have loved to explore new places.  Every curve in the road compels me onward. Each hill dazzles me with the promise of treasures that I am certain will be just over the next rise.  And mountains..., Oh! My soul quakes at the very thought of the wonderful secrets that they hide. Little wonder that my Casita has become such an important fixture in my life. Even when I am not on the road, I prefer to sleep in my Casita instead of my house. That may seem strange to most folks. My house is chained to a single locale.  No matter how much I like the neighborhood, it is still the same neighborhood night after night, month after month, year after year.  My Casita is not chained to any specific place.  It is home in the mountains of Colorado and New Mexico; at a wonderful hidden lake in Alabama, or even at a hidden little beach on the California coast. That means that when I close my eyes, I can be anywhere my imagination wan...

One of the few good professors that I met at the University of Alabama, was a Dr. Wheeler. (he was actually a visiting professor from Rutgers who was teaching during the summer term at UofA). He once said that the real purpose of education was to “extend adolescence and keep people out of the job market”. He also said that the secondary purpose of education is to “fund the teacher’s lifestyle”! Obviously, he was stretching slightly to make a point. Historically, what he said is certainly true! Granddaddy and Grandmother Westmoreland both finished the 8th grade and then went to work in the cotton mills. In the early 20th century that was very common. Children competed with grown men and women for jobs. A part of the government’s solution was to pass compulsory education and child labour laws. Of course, there was a social justification of preventing unjust treatment of children, but there was also a hidden agenda of removing competition in the job market. For centuries, adolescence...

Borders are important and good rules are essential for a polite and civil society. A reply from a friend: "Just to clear on where I stand. Unsure of what is really happening in these detainment centers. I completely understand that there are some people trying to escape desperate situations. We have shitty immigration laws. Trump is right. We need to get all this stuff figured out in a big hurry. No one should be separated from anyone they love." My response: In general, I agree that no one should be separated from those they love. But "Love" is a big little word and what each of us understands it means can vary considerably. We have to look at the actions and, if we are going to err, I believe that it should be on the side of protecting the children. To me, that means when faced with a situation where no one is immediately certain, it is better to separate the child from the adult than to risk leaving the child with an adult who will ultimately harm...

Note: This was a Facebook post partially in response to a post of a friend who seemed to be lamenting how our Nation is handling children who accompany adults who are engaged in illegally crossing our southern border. Jim Ivy I swore to myself that I would avoid making posts that involve politics. The knee-jerk reactions to the misleading media coverage and utterly unconscionable actions of politicians have led me to reconsider my oath. Below I share my own view of what is going on along our Southern border. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ______, you have a big heart. Sometimes parents harm their children by following their heart without regard to what is best for the child. When you hear the words "child" and "family", you associate them with yourself and your experience of child and family. That is inevitable, but not necessarily good. These "families" have put their children into a situation that is basically abusive. They have exposed these childre...

Definitive Proof That Coat Hangers Party Hearty! =========== I used to think that coat hangers were nothing more than inanimate objects useful for keeping my clothes neatly off of the closet floor. Clearly, I was mistaken! Even the most casual glance into my closet reveals that, behind that closed closet door, those "innocent" coat hangers have been engaging in behavior that makes Emperor Caligula's orgies appear tamer than your local Methodist Sunday School class. Although I can't claim that I have ever caught any coat hangers in the act of "doing it", the convoluted tangle of coat hangers left behind is positive proof that they have engaged in some sort of highly reproductive group sex! When I was a kid, this was actually a good thing. I never found that operating a lemonade stand was particularly profitable, but it was a simple matter to gather the excess coat hangers from the closets in our home and sell them to the local dry cleaner for a cent or...

Here is a step-by-step outline that shows how to integrate a non-supported website with Lion Desk using Zapiers email parser. This will allow you to create a single "ZAP" that will automatically assign new leads to the correct Lion Desk source and auto-pilot even if you have multiple leadpage websites. For this to work, the emails from the separate websites must look the same. i.e., have the same information in the same place in each email from each website. And the email must contain a field that passes the correct "source index" for each of your Lion Desk sources. 1. In Lion Desk, create the source and the auto-pilot that you want for that lead source. This process is well covered in the Lion Desk documentation and will not be covered in this tutorial.  IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU CREATE THE SOURCE AND AUTO-PILOT BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE! Once you have created the source and auto-pilot, write down the souce name and the source index.  You will need this la...