Rocks in Her Head

Fio must have been a rock in a previous life because she LOVES rocks. She's always loved them, ever since she was a child in Ohio and sat on the huge glacier rock on the edge of the backyard. When her family moved to Texas, she explored the driveway for pretty pebbles, which her mother did not appreciate. In college, she delineated a boundary between her side of the desk and her roommate's side of the desk with rocks she and her boyfriend had gathered while out driving in the country. When she and Husband moved to Georgetown, she gathered stones from their long, long country driveway--pretty stones, sparkling stones, weird stones, flint--all of which are stored on the back porch in plastic boxes. Now, of course, she's in her glory building a rock retainer around the drveway, and when that's finished, there's the brick curb around the lawn that needs to be reinforced with rocks.

There is something wrong wth Fiorella, but you knew that all along.

Jeanell Buida Bolton

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Jeanell Buida Bolton
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Fio has always loved rocks, as you can see in this picture of her perched on a glacial rock on the edge of her back yard in Ohio.(It's a glacial rock, if you're interested.) Then, when her family moved to Texas, she explored the driveway for pretty pebbles, which her mother did not appreciate. In college, she delineated a boundary between her side of the desk and her roommate's side of the desk with rocks she and her boyfriend had gathered while out driving in the country. Wh...
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Sense vs. Santorum

Ah, the political season--Fiorella's favorite fodder.

According to columnist George Will, Rick Santorum perceives himself as appealing to "the approximately seventy percent of Americans who don't have a college degree and are competing with the unskilled workers who are coming into this country," which is why Santorum proposes cutting legal immigration by twenty-five percent.

First of all, is Santorum is so stinkin' rich that he thinks seventy percent of Americans are competing to cleans sewers?

Second, how obtuse, simplistic, and out of touch can you get?  A college degree is no longer--if it ever was--a sine qua non to financial success.  In fact, with the way college loans are oppressing current-day graduates, the degree-holders may NEVER get out of debt.

Third, how insulting can you get?  Anyone who's wise in the ways of computers, even if he/she hasn't graduated from high school, can make a mint. Then there are all sorts of occupations--writing, the trades, entrepreneurship, the arts--that can at least pay the bills, and sometimes a lot more.  And Fiorella doubts that any of these people so employed feel threatened by "unskilled workers."

Fourth, Santorum's solution to this non-problem--cutting legal immigration by twenty-five percent--is laughable.  Why does he think legal immigrants are all aiming at low-level jobs? Those jobs are going to illegal immigrants, who are grateful for every opportunity they can get and  work hard to earn their places in the land of opportunity.

More power to them.  They're a lot brighter than Rick Santorun.



I




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In Memoriam

Happy birthday to my father, who sang "Little Brown Jug" to me as he drove me to Sunday School when Mother was in the hospital giving birth to my brother, who taught me how to swing a golf club,  who financed my daughter's college education.  Dad had a generous heart and a noble spirit.
And I hope he is with me still.

Good-bye, Luann

It's official with Fio.  Luann, move aside.  You are no longer a To Die For comic strip.  Fiorella has switched her allegiance to Edge City.

Maybe it was the change from high school to college that did Luann in.  Somehow the strip doesn't seem as clever or relevant anymore.  And Fio totally disliked Bernice's party scene.  Parties are a subsidiary to college, not the main event.

Fio also misses Luann's old cast--her high school teacher, the guidance counselor, Ox, Dawn.  And whatever happened to that funny little Elvis Presley guy?  Glad to see Tony, Brad, and Shannon still around, but they can't carry the whole show.

Luann, you're just not working for Fiorella anymore.

Liars, Case #2

AW started out as the director of a student-help program at the small rural college where Fiorella was stationed.  On the side he taught philosophy.  His field was ontology--ironically, the study of reality.

A was an arresting figure--tall, athletically slim, probably in  his fifties, white hair and beard.  His voice was soft, but his presence was commanding.  Fio enjoyed his friendship--he hobnobbed with the administrators and passed on lots of juicy gossip--but there were a few things about him that bothered her.   Her stomach sank when she checked his website and saw that his master's had come from the University of South Africa and his doctorate from the University of Wales.  Even though A explained he had been an investment broker at the time and traveled a lot, she knew something wasn't right.

There were other clues.  He didn't seem to understand that one received a "doctor of philosophy" in a specific field, like linguistics or--or philosophy.  And he told people that he and Fio had known each other from when they had both taught at Austin Community College, which wasn't true. Besides, why was his ex-wife so mad at him? And why did he say he'd attend Fio's housewarming, then not show?  Ditto for the retirement party she threw for a colleague? After all, Fio had told A that Husband had majored in philosophy at one time. Wouldn't he have enjoyed discussing Kant and Kierkegaard with him? And how did A have the time to teach distance -learning classes for a prestigious New England college in addition to everything else he was doing?  And how could a person who had supposedly written a doctoral dissertation compose such a piss-poor blurb for his latest POD oeuvre?

Then A applied for the position of department chair and his credentials were checked.  No master's, no doctorate.  He was walked off campus by the college police.

Later Fio learned that previous to his academic career, A had received a cease and desist order from the state of Michigan for irregularities in his brokerage business.