If you were in Madison, Wisconsin, on Saturday, you could have stopped by the UW-Madison Geology Museum to see the oldest known piece of Earth—a zircon crystal estimated to be 4.4 billion (!) years old. Check out the Rock Concert web site for more info. The crystal is heading back to Australia, where it was discovered in 1984, to be displayed in a museum there.
The weather has been beautiful this weekend again, with temperatures in the 70s and 80s. I spent most of the weekend outside working in the yard. Fun activities like cleaning the fence, seeding bare spots in the lawn, and filling in some holes and depressions with topsoil. Oh, the joys of owning a home….
On Saturday, we stopped by the Deck and Fence Store (the folks who installed our vinyl fence), to take a look at decks. Our sales rep there is going to stop by on Tuesday and work with us on a layout. Once we find out what this will cost, we’ll make a decision on whether to go for it this year.
In a March 30 Op-Ed piece in the New York Times (also in St. Louis Post-Dispatch), John Danforth (Episcopal minister, former US ambassador to the United Nations, and a former Republican senator from Missouri), voices his concerns about the Republican Party and its transformation into, as he writes, “the political arm of conservative Christians.”
Danforth is a man for whom I have the utmost respect, and his commentary points out the changes in the GOP which make it unattractive to independents such as myself. At one time, the Republican focus on a strong defense and free trade led me to regularly vote for Republican candidates for office. It has been years, however, since I voted for a Republican. Why? Danforth summarizes it well:
“But in recent times, we Republicans have allowed this shared agenda to become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives. As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit; I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today, it seems to be the other way around.”
Where are the moderate Republicans? If only there was a real candidate like Arnold Vinick, Alan Alda’s character on The West Wing.
Hats off to Illinois Governor Ron Blagojevich! According to an AP story at CNN.com, Blagojevich approved an emergency rule that requires pharmacists to fill birth control prescriptions. If the pharmacist has a moral objection to filling the prescription, there must be another pharmacist available who will fill the prescription.
“Our regulation says that if a woman goes to a pharmacy with a prescription for birth control, the pharmacy or the pharmacist is not allowed to discriminate or to choose who he sells it to,” Blagojevich said. “No delays. No hassles. No lectures.”
