Here’s the Everglades: The ‘Glades have their own austere beauty. I did not see any gators or gigantic snakes during this trip.
Open thread!
by Betty Cracker| 216 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
This post is in: Garden Chats
So far this summer (knock wood), the Boston-area Weird Weather has been unusually clement. We haven’t reached 90F more than a couple times (Boston proper didn’t get there till yesterday, but the official weather station is out on the harbor). Our daylilies have been blossoming at the ‘new normal’ time — it used to be a week or two later — but it’s not usual for the pansies to keep flowering this late into summer.
I think this variety is called Mimosa Umbrella; they’re blooming through a vibrant unkillable climbing mini-rose, Little Barbie.
T-Rex. This single bloom is more than six inches across.
There’s a perfect wonderful little micro-rose, Cinderella, half-hidden in the center here. When I filled the planter, I assumed the pansies would die back in the heat and give Cinderella more room to show off.
Meanwhile, I’ve only gotten a few handfuls of ripe cherry tomatoes, one Cherokee Purple and one (new to me) Bloody Butcher. The suspense is killing me…
by John Cole| 46 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
It was just hot as hell today. I’m starting a “healthy eating” diet thing on Monday with a friend of mine from HS who I still speak with (one of very few), so tonight I was going to have a rib-eye and baked potato and a salad, but it was just so damned hot I ended up having a salad, pita bread with some hummus, and than an apple with almond butter. Just too damned hot to even think about the grill or something heavy like meat and potatoes. Blech.
At any rate, thought I would share a picture of Thurston and Steve wrestling (something they do for hours every day- basically when Rosie is tired of playing with Thurston, Thurston bothers Steve until he plays).
They make an ungodly racket- with Thurston chirping and Steve doing his play meorawarrawr!
Hope it is cooler tomorrow.
by Sarah, Proud and Tall| 61 Comments
This post is in: Music, Open Threads
Hello kiddies… Some music for your evening. This is what I have been listening to this week.
Robert Delong – Don’t wait up for me – New album on its way.
MS MR – Criminals – New album out now….
by Kay| 133 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
By request
by Randinho| 2 Comments
This post is in: Sports
Who will face the US in the semi-final?
CONCACAF Gold Cup Quarter-Final Haiti ve Jamaica Open ThreadPost + Comments (2)
This post is in: Excellent Links, Gun nuts, World's Best Healthcare (If You Can Afford It)
At the intersection of two of America’s biggest problems… Chris Sweeney, in Boston Magazine:
Stephen Pasceri was insistent. The 55-year-old accountant, clad in khakis and a snug sweater that hugged his belly, stood at the reception desk in the gleaming lobby of the Shapiro Cardiovascular Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital on January 20, quietly demanding to see Dr. Michael Davidson. He conceded to the secretary that he didn’t have an appointment, but he had risen early in the sharp winter morning to make the hourlong drive from Millbury, and he wasn’t leaving until he met with the heart surgeon.
Possessed with superb technical skills, Davidson was a rising star, but it was his bedside manner that set him apart. Sometimes doctors don’t like to discuss their failures, but Davidson was known for spending hours talking to patients and their families regardless of whether a surgery ended flawlessly or something went wrong. Pasceri’s mother, Marguerite, had been Davidson’s patient in 2014 and had died recently of heart and lung complications at another hospital. So it wasn’t out of the ordinary when Davidson welcomed Pasceri into exam room 15, knowing full well that the domino effect of this unscheduled visit could delay a dozen other appointments and encroach on the precious evening hours that belonged to Davidson’s three young children and his wife, who was seven months’ pregnant with their fourth child, a girl.
As Davidson closed the door behind them, Pasceri peppered him with questions about a drug called amiodarone, which he was sure had killed his mother. This wasn’t foreign territory for Davidson—he understood the confusion that accompanies losing a loved one, and he wanted to help Pasceri find clarity and peace. Davidson explained that it was a commonly prescribed medication for patients suffering from an irregular heartbeat, and that if they walked upstairs to the cardiac unit, Pasceri would see that one-third of recovering patients were taking it. But Pasceri was persistent: The grieving son’s calm demeanor held steady as he challenged the doctor’s judgment in prescribing the medication. After 15 minutes and little progress, Davidson asked his physician’s assistant to leave the room and check on patients whose appointments were now running late.
For 20 more minutes, the two men continued to talk. No one outside the exam room heard a sound, until all at once two blasts from a .40-caliber pistol tore through the morning calm. Davidson burst from the room, clutching his left hip and back, yelling, “He’s shooting, he’s shooting!” He made it to the end of the hallway before collapsing on the carpet in front of a secure door. After more than eight hours of emergency surgery, Davidson would not survive. The moment shots rang out, a hospital worker in his cubicle pushed a panic button rigged to his desk and within seconds, security guards and Boston police officers on hospital detail swarmed the building. Thanks to a controversial change in procedure at the Brigham months earlier, instead of sounding a vague “Code Grey” warning, a woman’s voice came over the public address system: “A life-threatening situation now exists at Watkins Clinic B—Shapiro 2. All persons should immediately move away from that location if it is safe to do so. If it is not safe to move away, shelter in place immediately.”
Grief is often depicted as a phase of gentle contemplation from which one emerges wiser and comforted. But for a few, grief can be a wellspring of destructive ambition. Still standing in the exam room, Pasceri pushed the barrel of the gun against the roof of his mouth and pulled the trigger. In a final note to his family found on a USB drive after his death, Pasceri wrote that a lawsuit would not have sufficed. To escape the demons of his mother’s death and ease his pain, he needed to murder Davidson…
We can’t have rational discussions about end-of-life decisions, because death panels are such a useful bugaboo. And we can’t restrict gun ownership for disturbed individuals with a history of violence. But, hey, we’re liable to get lots more field experience testing the best active-shooter notification systems for institutions open to the general public!