The Monastery Of The Caves Complex

Bell Tower:

Entrance To The Monastery Of The Caves, Kiev Ukraine

Has anyone noticed?

Has anyone noticed that companies seem to be just laying people off? Not hiring? Has anyone noticed that only banks and lenders seems to be "bouncing back"? Isn't it time to notice that we don't have anymore manufacturing jobs in the United States?

Maybe we should start asking our elected officials some more difficult questions. Especially why we are building a country in Aghanistan when the pink slips are fluttering around the United States like butterflies with no end in sight?

I hope our children don't participate in the same kind of garbage we're caught up in.

M

A Cat With Many Lives

Our little Burmese, Nikko, is 18 years and five months old. He has had a great life, full of love and affection. But the ravages of age have caught up with him as they will with us all. Cats are prone to kidney failure as they age. Nikko has had some of the symptoms for quite a while now, but he is a tough little fighter and he is still hanging in there. Recently he seemed to begin to really fail so we took him to the vet for an evaluation. The vet offered to perform a lot of painful, stressful and invasive tests, but Dan and I decided that we would not put Nikko or ourselves through that. Instead, we changed his diet to a food for cats with renal failure, and we're giving him a crushed up medication that the vet prescribed. He has rallied and seems to be more than holding his own for now. We realize that eventually he will fail even with these measures and that when he does it will be time to finally say good bye, but for the time being we're enjoying him and he seems to be doing well enough to continue. He has always had a great appetite and he still does. I call him an eating machine!

Janis Ian "At Seventeen"

Inside St.Sophia, Kiev

Marcel Dupré - Poème Héroique, op. 33

A View Of St. Sophia, Kiev, Ukraine

Obama's Failed Strategy

With Obama's approval numbers low and falling, how he expects to hold on to majorities in Congress is a mystery. What went wrong with Obama's presidency? I just heard one good theory on TV: Obama demobilized the progressive base of the Democratic Party that was ready for real reforms in favor of pursuing an "inside the beltway" compromise agenda. It looks like that strategy didn't work out so well.

Federal Judge: DOMA Unconstitutional!

Yesterday a federal judge in Boston declared the Defense OF Marriage Act to be unconstitutional. No doubt Obama will appeal, fierce advocate for gay rights that he is!