Hello?

As is always the case when someone makes something for the wide world at large to use there will be tweaks, updates and foolishness to follow the initial release. Most of the time when it comes to Blogger the updates and tweaks are rather helpful. I truly like the new platform for creating posts, I can not even remember the old way. I only know that this version is wonderfully simple. That said, I have to say, I don't care for the fact that I can not see the new followers.

With friend connect, whenever one of you lovely people began to follow, I could find your avatar picture. Now I only see the counts go up and down next to the +follow button. I don't get told who you are any more. So it has been a very long time since I have been able to introduce you all to each other. I dislike this aspect tremendously.

So, we are back up to 41 followers. And I would like to wish you all a warm welcome and encourage you to post comments. It is helpful to know when the train derails or the tangents get a bit wonky. And it would be nice to get to know some of you who find yourselves here regularly. But mostly, I miss being able to say hello and trace you to your own blogs to see what you all are up to in your corner of the world.

It is windy in my particular corner, I expect there will be black ice tomorrow on the drive to work. I came home early from work because we just haven't got the hours available. I watched two wonderful movies. One a Pierce Brosnan piece called Some Kind of Beautiful, as moving as A Long Way Down but with less bitter sweet. The other with Geoffrey Rush called The Best Offer. The later bludgeoned my heart as Donald Sutherland's character was true to his type casting. For once I wish the man would be a nice man. He seems incapable of being cast as anything but a predator.

In the grander picture of things, Michigan chugs along its murky political path, a Congress at odds with its duty to serve the public and its desire to serve the public on a platter drenched in gravy at the altar of its own needy ego and self interest. While the soul crushing morass that was Black Friday has passed and we are moving steadily to the inevitable Holiday Fray the country has seen its 351 mass shooting. In 2015, as the memes state, it has been 0 days since our last mass shooting.

Mass here means more than one victim. It can be as little as 3 and as many as can be taken out with an automatic weapon in the 65 second burst. Yesterday it was in San Bernadino. The day before Atlanta. Bullies are winning. Peacemakers are being silenced by a vocal opposition clamoring for revenge. And I am ready to leave facebook again. Between politics and relgious posturing and no real commitment from anyone in my friends list to do more than wish the Peace of the Season on the world I am afraid that our own Christian Religious will weaponize the Gospel. And why not? They are obsessed with proving themselves Right. That they are always the victim of oppression, suppression, repression and "systemic erosion of faith" while forgetting that what they are supposed to decry are the words of the Sermon on the Mount.

I do not think I have ever been more frustrated with people in my life. Why can't people mind their own business? Why does someone always have to be right? And why can't people see when they are being manipulated?

Why must I always be dragged out of the bubble in which I like to cocoon myself?

Why can't we share what we love and ignore what we do not?
*sigh* because pintrest is not real life anymore than movies are.

Please tell me how things are in your corner of the world and that they are much better than things here in the states right now.