Zelle donor “KB” on 15 Aug… thanks. I don’t have an email for you, so I can’t write a thank you note.
Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links. US HERE – WHY? This helps to pay for health insurance, utilities, groceries, and now also my late mother’s place. At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.
Too long enough. You would think this was an easy choice. But, for those making the choice, I guess it wasn’t… for some reason.
Marko Rupnik’s mosaics on the facade of the Basilica will be covered up for the visit of Pope Leo XIV next month and “will remain so after his visit” confirms the Bishop of Tarbes-et-Lourdes. https://t.co/0GPEVPre8L
— Catholic Sat (@CatholicSat) August 20, 2026
This… just another day.
— veronica stewart (@hohumvon) August 20, 2026
If only…
The ultimate educational flex in 2035 will be a teenager who can read Cicero in Latin, quote Shakespeare from memory, explain why Athens lost the Peloponnesian War, solve calculus by hand, and speak intelligently for ten minutes without looking at a screen. pic.twitter.com/EecCH508mL
— Classic Learning Test (@CLT_Exam) August 19, 2026
White to move and mate in 4. Easy.
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.
When you change your behavior when your father or mother visits then you know you are not living your normal daily life as a Catholic.
If there is a need to cover up an “artwork” (using that word in the most liberal way) when “il Papa” comes to town..
But I don’t think they are covering it up for “il Papa” but instead to hide it from press coverage – as they know it’s scandalous.
For what it’s worth, the pioneer woman likely benefited from the “nesting energy” that many women get before active labor. My wife has done things in preparing the home for being postpartum with a new baby that I didn’t think possible (or sometimes advisable) at that stage! Also worth noting that the woman pictured (and from whose diary the post presumably quotes) was apparently one of the first six women over the Rocky Mountains in the 1800s–so one might suspect that she was unusually hardy and resourceful even for her own time.
@NickD Your comment reminds be that there is an ante-bellum, multi-year, multi-volume diary written by a young woman beginning when she was quite young and ending sometime after her family moved from New England to the Mid-West. It apparently provides historians with a lot of information about the daily life of rural Americans during this period. It is believed the diary stopped because at some point she became too busy (after she married?) to have time to write in it. (From census records it is known she lived many years after the diary stops.)
This also reminds me of the second (and last ) time I donated blood. I felt faint afterwards probably more from anxiety than the loss of a pint of blood. My wife, a nurse, was sitting with our two children talking to a man who had served in the Vietnam War. One day he was watch a long line of Vietnamese refugees walking from one place to another. At some point a woman sat down, delivered a child, picked up the child and put it to her breast and then as quickly as you can say “Bob’s your uncle” got up and began walking again.
I think that we modern westerners do not understand how little free time people had in olden days (because of all the household work, done mostly by women, and farm work, done by everyone. As a result, if they got adequate nutrition they were in better shape than most of us these days. I am currently reading Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset. She describes 14th century Norwegian women, even title character, (unless they got sick during pregnancy) basically working all the time, as well as worrying, like the pioneer woman, that each birth of a new baby could mean the death of the mother. In spite of this, women in the 19th century had longer life expectancies then men, even during periods when the mortality of men was not artificially increased by deaths in combat.
1. Qg8+ Kh6
2. Qh8+ Kg5
3. Qh4+ Kf5
4. Qf4#
White to move and mate in 4
1. Qg8+ Kh6 forced
2. Qh8+ Kg5 forced
3. Qh4+ Kf5 forced
4. Qf4#
@ProfessorCover,
Your comment reminded me of a story told to us when my wife happened to be seen by an OB/GYN of Sri Lankan extraction. He told of us women working the tea plantations who, when the time came for a child to be born, would step to the side briefly, give birth, wrap up the baby next to their bodies, and carry on picking leaves. Really something, that…
@ProfessorCover
Another popular example of this is just the Laurel Ingalls Wilder books. They’d show up at a new homestead, Pa would go down to the river, chop down multiple trees, get them back to the site, and start building a log cabin all in one day. How many of us modern men can do all that with little more than an ax and a mule? Men back then had muscles of absolute iron. Even the best of us moderns are weak sauce compared to them.
ProfessorCover, you’re describing Caroline Cowles Richards’ diaries. Read them for free online at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33756/33756-h/33756-h.htm
WCV, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books are a lot more interesting to me as an adult. I commend you to the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “Prairie Fires” by Caroline Fraser for more on those trees.
“If only”…they go to Hillsdale College!
(I’m biased. I had 3 graduate from there.)
Reading Cicero in Latin is a big ask. Graduate students have trouble with Cicero.
I’d be happy with students having a passing knowledge of Shakespeare.
But I’d sooner expect to see a teenager to rebuild a car from frame to interior than read Cicero in Latin.