I know you're being facetious, but if you let these gauche contrarians really get to you,

that would be your only mistake. Barking dogs, that's all they are. Raised in a barn, the lot of them.

It IS important - it illustrates the utility and respect of relating to a person on their own terms.

Just because something might not matter to you hardly diminishes it. Too many people shout to the rooftops about the necessity of inclusion and diversity, but God forbid a person should innocently illustrate the matter in their own life! Then it's bring out the fire hoses and accuse them of every perfidy under the sun! Hey, you didn't automatically brag on MY culture unbidden, so it must be discriminatory because I'm the center of the universe and anything that fails to offer homage to ME with every breath must be derogatory on the face of it.

You guys started this fight, and when you get your shorts snapped for it, oh my stars and garters!

And what, pray tell, was so evil about the original question? NOTHING!

Revisit post #33 and #48, then try #112. I'm tired of repeating myself. This was a tempest in a teapot that never should've happened.

First see post #33, then concentrate on #48.

I swear half the respondents to this thread must've awakened this morning wondering what kind of needless strife they could stir up today. Were you all raised in a barn? If that's your culture, you can keep it. Your animus is showing.

I'm really disappointed in a lot of you, so eager to stir the pot.

BB related a sweet story and some people can't just leave it at that. If I say to one person, "You're beautiful," am I then necessarily calling everyone else ugly? Of course not! Every time a person says something nice about their own culture, is it obligatory to recite a worldwide list of other cultures as well just to dodge brickbats from people with nothing better to do?

If any of you provoked negative comments toward yourselves by such disgraceful behavior, you'll get no sympathy from me. Shame on you! Petty, petty, petty. When it comes to hypersensitivity and divisiveness, you've got no room to throw shoes.

Different strokes!

I'm probably the laziest person on earth, but my damned ego pushes me into more than I can handle sometimes. All my teas are at least 5-yrs by now, so I don't expect much more attrition. If they ever settle in anywhere, they're generally good to go after that. Still, knockout roses are the best choice for most people.

We should get snow tomorrow; it will be 13 degrees tonight. Glad I finally got the yard put to bed for the winter today. Well, there's one more minor task left but it could wait for spring if necessary. I like to prune now because in the spring I'm too busy for it. Until Brigid came along, I used to take clear contractor bags and slip them over the big clay pots like cozies. But Brigid would never let anything that enticing survive, so this year I stapled long boards to 3' wide strips of green tarp; hope she leaves that alone. Ha ha - who am I kidding? At least the rose beds are fenced off so she can't romp through them or scatter the leaves or dig for moles or all the other ways she has fun. When one of the original maple trees someone planted way too close to the house dropped a huge limb that almost landed on the house, I had to have it cut down; but I had a few feet of stump left to use as a platform for my big school bell. Since she's still nowhere grown, Brigid has started to tear the bark off - it makes wonderful toys - and now she's clawing and chewing around the base like a little beaver.

In the vegetable and fruit department I try to grow things that are too pricey for me in the store, such as bell peppers and tomatoes. So economy drives me to a great extent. Since the price of a 2-lb jar of peanut butter shot up over $11, I've decided to grow the original African giant groundnuts next year. I give about half a teaspoon of PB to each dog with their breakfast, and I have to have some too. So it adds up over the month. If I can grow it myself, so much the better. All organic, too. I want to make rose petal jelly someday.

Jeff said 'generally' and that's true, regardless of the charming picture above.

Red Neck obviously does not HAVE to be ignorant and racist - but a lifetime's observation suggests that it generally IS. I might add that xenophobia plays a large part in the problem people.

That said, I really do like that picture. I wouldn't love folk music and blue grass the way I do if I considered all rural whites beneath me in any way. I can also feel deep respect for natural intelligence in a decent if unlettered person. They're not necessarily ignorant.

But the fact remains that a large number of whites rich and poor, especially in the South and MidWest, whether rural or urban are xenophobic as geese and that aggravates a host of accessory ills. Those are the people to whom I refer when I speak of being marooned as a retiree in RedNeckLand. If I thought they were not to be found elsewhere, the GOP would quickly disabuse me of any such notion. It's been very educational over a long life (so far) to have lived in so many different locales. I will continue to use the term Red Neck and/or RedNeckLand where applicable w/o a single twinge of embarrassment. I don't consider it a classist slur either because while I might have grown up in more fortunate circumstances than some, I've never based my friendships or admiration on socio-economic terms at all. There are quite a few people in the world from all walks of life whom I consider my betters.

Unfortunately this might have to suffice as my vote because when I click on the vote button, the form never loads for me. That might be due to quite a few gremlins, some inhabiting this old computer I use.

I truly regret when someone has to go through what your friend's family and friends suffered.

It's not right at all. The guy with the cards at the hospital sounds like an ambulance chaser.

For what it's worth, because I know it won't happen, here's what I'd like: a cremation followed by a New Orleans jazz funeral procession followed by a real old fashioned Irish wake. The cremation they can't stop, but the other two are just fantasies I can't make happen. Something else I'd like to do but can't would be to have my ashes scattered from a plane all over town as a sort of parting gesture.

What's happening? I think you're putting too much stock in AP, dear.

I'll never forget, either, the classic father's lighthearted lament over growing children

who no longer need him so much. But all parents have to go through that, and it's a matter of justifiable pride.