If I've learned one thing in my life, it's this - given the chance to be a jerkoff, most people will jump on it as soon as they possibly can...
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Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention said Friday the nation's largest Protestant denomination is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. They also said the investigation, which will examine reported clergy sex abuse, is "not something to fear."
The Rev. Mike Keahbone, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee, voiced his thoughts on social media Friday as news reports about the DOJ's investigation began circulating. "The DOJ investigation of the SBC is not something to fear," said Keahbone, who was recently named to the church's new Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force.
Federal investigators are looking at the denomination and several of its affiliated agencies, the Southern Baptist Convention confirmed Friday. "Individually and collectively each SBC entity is resolved to fully and completely cooperate with the investigation," leaders said in a statement.
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This is Michaelangelo's 'Pieta'. I first saw this as a kid when it was at the New York World's Fair back in the '60's, and then saw it again a few years ago during a visit to the Vatican. I obviously didn't appreciate it's splendor when I was a kid, but I swear I almost cried when I saw it again as an old guy. The most overwhelming thing about it - at least to me - is that someone was able to look at a block of marble , see this inside that block, and have the knowledge and skills to release it from within. That's a level of skill and talent that really is incomprehensible to me.
PS: While we were there at the Vatican that day, the Pope was doing some kind of 'message out the window' or some shit, and the place was jammed with some crazy number of people, including more nuns than you ever knew existed.
And, yes - I did go in to one of the souvenir shops lining the outskirts of St. Peter's Square and, yes, I did buy a 'Popener', because you cannot go through life without having owned at least one...
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The Villages - where I live, of course - is a mammoth retirement community that was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the nation two years ago, is no stranger to folklore. The central Florida senior haven has fielded rumors about swingers and public sex for decades.
But perhaps no myth is more ubiquitous — or more enduring — than the idea of rampant rates of sexually transmitted diseases. Sexually transmitted infections are on the rise nationally in the wake of the pandemic. But is the world’s largest retirement community — about 80 miles northeast of Tampa — really a hotbed for these diseases? Where did this pervasive legend start? And will it ever go away?
Some say a disgruntled nurse hurled it as an insult. Others believe it began with a joke on a radio station. But most trace it to a 2006 television news story “Doctors in Retirement Community Seeing Increase in STDs.” “While statistics aren’t yet reflecting the trend, one physician at the Women’s Center of The Villages said, even in her years working in Miami, she has never seen so many cases.” The Women’s Center of The Villages is no longer open. And the doctor was never named.
The myth snowballed from there. It appeared over the years everywhere from the New York Post to the Daily Mail. Often, the stories seized on signs that The Villagers were engaging in casual sex or dating, wielding them as evidence of heavy transmission within the retirement community.
Sometimes, they cited data about the state’s rising rates of sexually transmitted infections among seniors as proof that the same held true in The Villages. In 2009, the New York Post called The Villages “ground zero for geriatrics who are seriously getting it on.”
“As a result, the place that likes to bill itself as ‘America’s Friendliest Hometown’ has seen a huge increase in sexually transmitted diseases,” according to a 2013 Slate article referencing the tabloid’s coverage. It cited two links that are no longer active, including the 2006 story.
“It had legs,” said Andrew Blechman, author of “Leisureville: Adventures in a World Without Children,” a 2009 book on life in The Villages that is referenced in almost all coverage of this issue. “It’s irresistible — no one wants to think about their parents having sex, but they love news articles about old people having sex. ‘STDs. Old People. Highest rates.’ It’s an easy headline. It’ll never go away.”
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The front 'porch' area looked almost exactly like this, and we'd sit out there at night after dinner and drink wine and shoot the shit for hours, just like others had probably done for decades, if not centuries, before us.
What a cool friggin' place that was...
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Paris at night from the International Space Station
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A restaurant owner, with only liquor left after his refrigerators failed, advertises an open bar during the NYC blackout of '77
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Traditional cheese has become the latest casualty of France’s summer
drought, as production of the salers variety in the central Auvergne region
was halted due to a lack of grass for cows.
Salers is an unpasteurised cow’s cheese that has been made for centuries in central France. It carries France’s appellation d’origine protégée (AOP) stamp of approval, meaning it is unique to the small area where it is produced. But one of the rules of its production is that the local cows must be fed on at least 75% grass from pasture if their milk is to be used.
This summer’s scorching temperatures have led most of the 76 farmers whose milk goes to the production of salers to despair that their once green pastures are parched and yellow from drought.
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Saw Pieta then as well. '65 I think.
ReplyDeleteCheck out "Living in a Foreign Language". Can't remember the actor, from LA Law maybe but they had a cottage in Umbria and the talk of food and 'hanging' as you describe was tantalizing.