At the moment, JK Rowling is feeling very hard done by due to the backlash against her transphobia. Those who support her, and support a transphobic agenda, are particularly butthurt that they are being called bigots. Tough. That is exactly what they are. The very definition of a bigot is: a person who is obstinately… Read more Bigotry without Bigots
New discoveries are regularly made about the human body, and a lot of those discoveries center on how important the microbiota – the bacteria, fungi, viruses and other tiny organisms – that live in our guts are for our health and wellbeing. The ability of those little guys to flourish and procreate is the key… Read more Of Mind and Microbiota
Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, was born on 19 September 1778, the eldest son of Henry Brougham and Eleanora Syme Brougham, a famous and influential lawyer in Edinburgh. Young Henry grew up in a Georgian townhouse at no. 21 St Andrew Square, and followed in his father’s legal footsteps. Brougham graduated from… Read more Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
My lovely, sweet –natured, bleeding-heart daughter Blossom recently announced to a table of her birthday guests that she was “genocidal”. While her friends stared at her, aghast, I calmly asked, “What do you think that word means, Blossom?” She smiled and chirped, “That you are a fan of creepy movies and stories about murder and… Read more That word doesn’t mean what you think it means …
Sorry I haven’t been blogging lately. You would think that I could at least blog about history is I had no facinating Welsh anecdotes to pass along; history happens every day right? And this IS a history blog, right? Well, technically it’s a history blog … but let’s be honest. I’m going to talk about… Read more Whut is werds?
There is no Utopia and now we have discovered the dark underbelly of Welsh life – how they assign schools. Good Lord is it frustrating. Okay, in the USA you are guaranteed a place in the school of your district. If you move into that district on August 20th and school starts on the 21st,… Read more The Fly in the Ointment
Sorry I’ve not blogged recently. Internet has been spotty and we won’t be at full capacity until next Tuesday. However, we are in Wales … and we are loving it! The people here are lush, they are. Getting here was less than fun, tho. It became a farce of shite-we-weren’t-expecting-and-things-we-expected-not-happening. Not as bad as Mark… Read more Wales, We Are In You!
In many ways I’ve been dreading Blossom’s adolescence. Not only does her Asperger’s mean that the normal strum and drang of the adolescent brain become even more erratically dramatic, it also means that trouble with her peers is nearly inevitable. I hate that. Autism in females presents both differently from males, and in several different… Read more Worries for Blossom
Sometimes people ask me why I am so weirdly persnickety about my eldest daughter’s food intake. Why can’t I just let the poor kid have a piece of birthday cake? It’s one thing to cut back on sugar, but why don’t I lighten up on my Sherman-through-Georgia attitude toward wheat and artificial food colors? Why… Read more Asperger’s, Microbiota, and Food
My eldest daughter, Bubbles, will be entering the 5th grade this August and we have been reading up on social interaction and Asperger’s syndrome in preparation for preteen ‘drama’, conflict, or bullying. It has led me to some fascinating information. People with Asperger’s syndrome are typically very direct. We don’t do (or even know how… Read more Conflict Aversion, Assertion, Aggression and Asperger’s