Not to shed a negative light on our state, but I'm curious if you've heard about all the uproar down here this week? Hope you've been informed that, even though you may not be a college football fan right now, after you're here a couple of years you MUST pledge your allegiance to either Auburn University (war eagle! or the University of Alabama (roll tide!). It's mandatory (no, not really). But seriously, you'll be amazed how college football dominates in this state. The vast majority of folks down here can be passionate fans of their favorite school, enjoy kidding around & joking with their rivals, but yet keep it all in perspective. Unfortunately though, like what happened this week, somebody occasionally forgets its just a game & takes it way over the line. Here is a link that might be useful: Auburn University oaks poisoned

Sorry for my earlier rant...spent the night in the ER with a very sick five year old. For what it is worth the care she received was quick and efficent and much better than when she almost died in an understaffed Canadian hospital outside of montreal last year. SG and most others have politly expressed their view but it is still a thread of us trying to show that what we want should be believed by all and that never works. Greywings i did say if I had tea party friends, which I am glad I do not, my stats would be different but my radical liberal friends,which are abuntant in my area, are also spreading lots of lies and hate they think it is fine because it is directed against the rich mostly but it is still prejudice. The radicals in each party are equally dangerous, hurtful and annoying

I've finished "Scorched" by Jennifer L. Armentrout, a story about a girl with problems and her love/hate relationship with a young man. Her life is rapidly spiraling out of control, he tries to help, she slips away. It is written alternating between 'her' story and 'his' story, both written in the first person. I would have liked it a lot more if he were able to speak without using the f-bomb in every sentence. That is a big turn-off for me, but I didn't have anything else to read handy, so I stuck with it. I think the author was trying to present a message of hope, of sorts, but the language was very off-putting. Then I read "The Secret Hour", by Luanne Rice. She is among my favorite authors, and I enjoyed this one as I do most of hers. It is a story of love, loss, and second chances. A defense lawyer in a very controversial capital murder trial, raising his two children alone, and a woman searching for her sister. It was hard for me to put it down. I started "Lost Roses" by Martha Hall Kelly. I'm not very far into it, so don't have a 'feel' for it yet, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be much slower going than the last couple of books have been. Rusty

Here is an interesting article about the Russian doping, their ”system” that not only cheats but victiimizes some of the youngest, most vulnerable and lithe pre-teen athletic aspirants. The Russian women’s figure skating team has bigger problems than doping Kamila Valieva and Russia’s women’s figure skating team are incredibly dominant. The team is also incredibly controversial. Read in Vox: https://apple.news/ABh0Ob5riS-iMwaBUjdvgoQ Shared from Apple News A portion of article for discussion purposes. the Russian cheating is disgusting, as is the passive response and greed and self promotion of the IOC. ”… Even before this bombshell doping scandal, the Russian quad squad’s excellence has been accompanied by controversy. At the center of it are fears for the long-term health of the team’s prized prodigies — landing difficult jumps can take their toll on small, developing bodies. All eyes have been on the women’s skating team from Russia for one big reason: They’re incredibly dominant. Coach Eteri Tutberidze figured out how to get the highest possible scores, and skating is a numbers game. 🔺Tutberidze’s stars took advantage of the scoring system, which favors risky jumps over safely executed, if less ambitious, tricks. In the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, gold medalist Alina Zagitova stacked all her jumps in the second half of her free skate to cash in on a 10 percent bonus, a rule that’s since been changed and limited to three jumping passes in the second half. Tutberidze’s current crop of students — Valieva, Alexandra Trusova, and Anna Shcherbakova — all are able to hit quads with positive grade of execution scores, which amount to bonus points given when skaters can perform their tricks. They’re among the only women in the world who can hit quads at all, and Valieva and Trusova have jumps that rival those of some of the best male skaters. Thanks to the scoring system, even when Tutberidze’s protégés don’t skate cleanly, they’re racking up points. When they do hit cleanly, it’s a blowout. This year, they’re poised to come in with gold, silver, and bronze. Add past and seemingly current doping controversies to that, and you can understand why this team is under scrutiny. Even before the doping report surfaced, however, there has been controversy surrounding the Russian women skaters, specifically around their practice regimens and physical health. There’s concern that Russian women’s success and their dominant jumps come at the high cost of serious injury and shortened career longevity. Female skaters who can land difficult jumps and quads tend to be very young — sometimes prepubescent — and very small and thin. Puberty affects women’s bodies in ways that are incongruent with skating. Hips, breasts, and more height and weight can make triple and quads that girls used to hit much more difficult to land. As physicists I spoke to explained, there’s a physical advantage to being smaller and thinner when it comes to executing jumps, but there’s also a huge physical toll that jumps take on ankles, legs, and other parts of the human body. Polina Edmunds, a former US Olympic ice skater, says that adults who can do these jumps are incredibly rare. She explains that when you look at the women who have gone through puberty and can still do a triple axel, “you can count that number on one hand.” Edmunds pointed out that in contrast to the ROC team, the US’s skaters tend to be older and don’t possess the same kind of jumping ability. (Mariah Bell, one of the leaders of the US team, is 25.) “For the young skaters, it’s easier because their bodies haven’t gone through those changes yet. And you have a lot of girls who are just out the next season [after puberty] because they grow or they get injured,” she said. In October, Trusova skated and won a competition but had to do so through injury. Shcherbakova may have also been nursing an injury this past year. The 15-year-old Russian junior champion Daria Usacheva appeared to endure a serious injury this past November. The extent to how serious these injuries are is difficult to assess, since injuries are usually kept close to the vest and private. Going back to the previous Olympics, Alina Zagitova, who won gold at 15 years of age in 2018, said in 2019 that quads are too dangerous for her to land and she would need to lose weight to be able to do them. Since then, the now-19-year-old Zagitova has stepped away from competitive skating and won’t be at this year’s Olympics. Evgenia Medvedeva, who placed second after Zagitova in 2018, has also been dealing with a plethora of injuries — a bum back and foot, among other ailments — at the age of 22. The result is girls and young women putting their smaller frames through exponentially tougher jumps — much more difficult than they were just one Olympic Games ago. Tutberidze, who trains all of these skaters, has said in interviews that Zagitova and her peers have trained up to 12 hours per day. Edmunds, who had her skating career cut short because of a bone bruise in her landing foot, told me that injuries are part of skating like they are any sport. There were times when she was given the choice to pull out or skate through injury, and she credits her mom with helping her to make the decision to focus on her long-term health. Since quads have become a ticket to win, she worries about what girls and young women are putting their bodies through to win. 🔺“You kind of have to look at the severity of what’s happening to so many young girls. At the end of the day, it feels to me more like we’re exploiting them for that excitement of landing a quad on television,” Edmunds told me. “And if we’re instead creating a generation of athletes where too many are getting injured and too many are having really severe injuries at such a young age — that’s just so wrong. And I think it needs to be changed on both the ISU level as well as individual Federation levels. But I don’t see that happening.” Allegations of doping on top of an injury-laden sport like figure skating feel especially insidious. Valieva is 15, and her teammates aren’t much older. It brings up questions about their autonomy, and puts a spotlight on the adults responsible for these girls’ and young women’s well-being. Dominance in any sport always comes at a cost — sacrifice and all that stuff about blood, sweat, and tears. But the age of the Russian team, their injuries, and their abilities, combined with Russia’s doping scandals, has made this conversation about women’s figure skating impossible to ignore. As Edmunds points out, however, when gold is on the line, change is unlikely …” ~~~~~~ Also, Christine Brennan has a good opinion piece in ? USA—-?