If everyone with $ was as awesome as Ms. Streep can you imagine how amazing the world we live in would be? She just marketed this film to me by being an awesome human being. 

THIS IS FOR ALL THE JANUARIANS (and later Decemberians) and Capricorns. Climb on, goaty pals, climb on. 

ncpr:

Great Caesar’s goat! That is one nimble Bovidae! (And that is one sentence I’d never thought I’d be able to write for mass consumption. Thank you, Tumblr!)

lickypickystickyfree:

Capricorns are goats.
Goats are climbers.
Against all odds.

this morning a hungry hawk scared the little hearts of all the monk parakeets and finches in our neighborhood and eyeballed my dog like she might make a delicious breakfast. I tried to look menacing but I don’t have talons, so it was hard. As for the hawk, and the many bird feathers that have been turning up in the neighborhood that look like they are from small ground birds, I’m blaming the acorn problem and my leaf bag eating squirrels know all about it. Quoth the NYT, “Now the field mouse population is expected to crash — about 90 percent have died off in similar glut-dearth acorn sequences in the past. And the outlook is not good for the low-nesting birds, which face an increased threat from hawks and owls.”

this picture has nothing to do with hawks and everything to do with cousins. Also, hand me downs. I think those overalls jacob is wearing I also sported. that car in this picture had really sweet upholstery and once we crashed it in a snowstorm on our way to florida. earlier on that trip I marred an antique desk at the home of the royer grandparents with my very deep handwriting and I think my dad freaked out. 

recursivemuffin:

The cousins in 1985.

devil’s hopyard

thegreenurbanist:

thisbigcity:

Americans spend almost $9000 a year on their cars. Is it worth it?

‘What makes a city intelligent? You do.’

Source via good.is

nancymartira:otherpress:A telegram from Dorothy Parker to her editor Pascal Covici (via)

(via doree)

thegreenurbanist:

The price tag for more than 3,000 federally funded bike and pedestrian projects last year amounted to less than half the cost of one highly contested highway project.

“But here’s some troubling news: much of the talk around Washington and state capitals this year is about eliminating or slashing…

(Source: alternet.org)

raredeadly:

David Bowie with a dachshund. 

npr:

The evidence just keeps mounting that ordinary dogs can be trained to use their noses to detect various kinds of cancer with near-perfect accuracy — better than any standard test for the disease.

In the latest study, Japanese researchers report that an eight-year-old black Labrador was 97 percent accurate in nosing out colon cancer when she was asked to choose among watery stool samples doctors collected from 185 patients with and without cancer.

—From “Dogs Earn More Cred For Sniffing Out Cancer”

I love Mr. Rogers. One of my favorite episodes of This American Life is the neighbors episode, where Fred advises Davy Rothbart, of FOUND Magazine, on how to best get along with the people in his neighborhood.

Anyway, lots of my fellow humans have been talking about the horrible actions of the gunman who shot folks in Arizona this past weekend. Lots of attention on Gabrielle Giffords, because she was targeted, but it could be anyone. That she was an elected representative brings attention to the events, and makes it frightening to those in public service, who then pump up the volume. Some people, looking beyond the violence, have stressed the role that mental health care, and in this case, the absence of it, impacted the events that took place. When I was a girl, there was random violence in a MacDonald’s in our state, and for years afterwards whenever I was in a fast food place, I had a low-level anxiety about that possibility. I believe in gun control, because human beings are impulsive, and strange, and flawed. But that’t not what this video is about. This video is about how we can teach young people how to express and handle their feelings. I keep forgetting why Fred Rogers is my hero, and then remembering again. Here’s the key text:

“I feel if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health. I think it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger, much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire. I’m constantly concerned about what our children are seeing. And for 15 years I have tried in this country and Canada to present what I feel is a meaningful expression of care.” (…)

“Could I tell you the words of one of the songs which I feel is very important? This has to do with that good feeling of control, which I believe that children need to know is there. And it starts out, ‘What do you do with the mad that you feel?’ and that first line came straight from a child, (…) ‘when you feel so mad you could bite, when the whole wide world feels oh so wrong, and nothing you do seems very right. What do you do? Do you punch a bag? Do you pound some clay or some dough? Do you round up friends for a game of tag, or see how fast you go? It’s great to be able to STOP, when you’ve planned a thing that’s wrong, and be able to do something else instead, and think this song. I CAN STOP when I want to, I CAN STOP when I wish, can STOP STOP STOP anytime, and what a good feeling to feel like this, and know that the feeling is really mine. Know there is something deep inside, that helps us become what we can, for a girl can be someday a lady, and a boy can be someday a man.‘”