A LOVESalem foreign correspondent sends: "I just bought me a rat . . . "

Image by United Nations Photo via Flickr

Her message was headlined: "The most awesome charity thing ever."

I just bought me a rat . . .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8549681.stm

Another beauty - from Going Around in Circles is a Good Thing

The "10 most beautiful" pictures of objects in our solar system

Important Ebert blog post: A glimpse at Salem's future

Image by lassi.kurkijarvi via Flickr

From Roger Ebert's blog (where there are much cooler storm pix):

. . . As Thomas Friedman phrased it so elegantly in The New York Times, our free lunch is over. The United States caroused like a drunken sailor in the postwar years. If you were doing well, that could mean two cars in every garage. A bedroom for every family member, and an office or den, and a living room, plus maybe a family room, plus a dining room or "area," and a finished basement and a deck and a kitchen full of appliances. Yes, America has poor people -- way, way too many. But the household I just described, which in 1950 would have been a rich family's mansion, became a reality for a many middle-class families, and you know it.

Not long ago I revisited my own childhood home and found it to be, gee, a lot smaller than I remembered. Chris Jones in Esquire, who paid a visit to my home town, described 410 E. Washington as "little." It didn't seem little then. And if we never paid to have a concrete driveway poured, my dad said gravel made for better traction in the snow. Anyway, I'm not thinking about how we lived. I'm thinking of how we're all not going to live. You know about the economy and the housing crisis. Now I read an additional four million suburban families are facing not only foreclosure but in many cases actual homelessness. Not in their worst nightmares did these people imagine such a future.

The best part:

As it now stands, if it's any more watered down, Obamacare will be homeopathic. It incorporates so many compromises with the Republicans that anyone voting against it isn't opposing the language -- they're just opposing Obama. We can't afford that. The American voters are pretty smart, and they're figuring that out.

For more warnings, try this sobering look at our condition.

amazing -- Going Around in Circles is a Good Thing

Calendar: 3/12-14: Friends of the Library Book Sale

FOR MORE INFO, CONTACT: Sonja Somerville ssomerville@cityofsalem.net

Phone: (503) 588-6083
Friends of the Library Spring Book Sale coming up March 12-14

Great deals are easy to find at the Friends of the Library Spring Book Sale, coming up soon, March 12-14. Book lovers can load arms and bags with low-cost reading and all the proceeds go to support special programs and projects at Salem Public Library.

Sponsored by the Friends of the Library and operated entirely by volunteers, the Spring Book Sale will be open from

• 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Friday, March 12 and Saturday, March 13.
• The best bargains of all are available from 1-4:30 p.m. Sunday, March 14, when shoppers can fill a bag to take away for just $3.
  

The sale takes place in Anderson Rooms A&B at Salem Public Library, 585 Liberty St. SE

Spring sale offerings include thousands of excellent books sorted by genre and topic to make it easy for readers to find what they're looking for. Categories include mystery, biography/autobiography, travel, cooking, fantasy, Westerns, hobbies and crafts, romance, large print, and more.

Prices are, as always, excellent, with paperbacks and children's books for 50 cents each; hardbacks for $1. A long list of AV items is available, including CDs, tapes, records, videos, posters and more, all for 25 cents each. Romance paperbacks are also 25 cents each.

Twice annually, the Friends host a major sale, offering thousands of books sorted by genre. Items available are a combination of books donated by library supporters for this purpose and items that have been withdrawn from the library shelves. All incoming books are sorted for quality and type to ensure quality offerings at the sales. Used books and other items are also sold year-round by the Friends of the Salem Public Library in the Friends Book Store, located on the main level of the Central Library, 585 Liberty St. SE.

More information about the sale, the book store and the Friends organization is available at 503-362-1755 or online at www.splfriends.org.

WORD: An apt description of our "health care" "system"

. . .

We are left, finally, with a so-called health care system so cruel and unjust that the Devil himself in consultation with the most demonic lobbyists, and perhaps a little input from historical politicians such as Caligula, Ivan the Terrible, Heinrich Himmler, and Pol Pot could not construct a worse way of deploying the fruits of modern science. It has gotten to the point for most of us where we dread a visit to the doctor more for the bureaucratic consequences than the health issues themselves. Your gall bladder may have to come out, but it's much harder to face the booby-trap clause in your health insurance that will result in you getting stuck with a $123,000 bill for surgery and attendant procedures (including the $500 tylenols). Three months later, of course, the re-po man is towing your car and the mortgage "servicer" has foreclosed on your house, and your life (even without that pesky gall bladder) has become a permanent camping trip next to a drainage ditch. . . .

Important: Corporadoes trying to steal your ownership rights in the stuff you buy

Yikes. Anyone who has an opportunity to boycott AutoCAD should grab it with both hands.

Something actually worth worrying about while you forget about dark-skinned photographers

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Salem is right in the cross-hairs on this -- the bursting of the commercial real-estate bubble that is going to make our residential real-estate bubble collapse seem like a day in the park.

Racist nonsense from the home of the formerly brave

Salem's water supply -- obviously this photographer should be waterboarded. Image by Jason McHuff via Flickr

Or, why the FBI is too busy to pay attention to a call from the Christmas (Would-Be) Bomber's own Dad to warn us that he was up to no good.

The FBI said Saturday that agents are trying to learn the identities of nine men who were photographed taking pictures photographs of Detroit Dam on Feb. 14.

FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele said the Portland office received photographs that were taken by a worker at the dam.

The worker thought that men photographing the dam appeared suspicious, and the worker's photographs of the men were turned over to local authorities before they were handed over to the FBI, according to a story originally published in the Albany Democrat-Herald.

The Democrat-Herald described the men as being of "Middle Eastern" descent.

Here's a news flash the Democrat-Herald and the Stateman-Journal might want to consider:

Taking photos of dams, power lines, airports, schools, bridges, tall buildings, courthouses, tall buildings, sewer plants, or government buildings is NOT ILLEGAL! Even if you "look" Middle Eastern!

In fact, in America, if it's visible from a public place where you have a right to be
YOU CAN TAKE ALL THE PICTURES YOU WANT.

And you don't have to give your camera to some rent-a-cop or delete them because a cop tells you to. Newspapers, in fact, back when they were more than mouthpieces for government officials, often used to rely on this important idea to fight back against the occasional small-time fascist who snagged a government job and liked to pretend that doing so gave him the power to tell the rest of us what to do, never mind that annoying "constitution" thing.

UPDATE: Where photophobia + the usual hysterias lead:

Father stopped from taking picture of his son, 4, on children's train ride 'in case he was a paedophile

To all Salemites with children or grandchildren

Read and heed. Or be damned by your progeny.