I have wonderful memories of Senior Net. People from all over the U.S., almost the whole world.  It was so interesting and exciting, and I hadn't been in on all that wondrous stuff for very long, when it went away.  Was glad to see S&F take its place, but was appalled at how few members came back, or bothered to post.  I click on most of the topics, just to see if anything is going on. 

About the Gardening thing.  A dear friend of mine gifted me with a plant to put in my front "flower bed".  (That's almost funny, because it only has Mondo grass and some Moses in the Bulrushes).  Anyway, the plant she gave me (she also planted it for me) is a Dipladenia.  Gorgeous, glossy,dark green foliage, blossoms that kind of look like a morning glory.  She had never seen one before, and I certainly hadn't. It took off growing and blooming, has now almost tripled its size, can't keep up with the number of buds then blossoms, and it puts off long, slender, vine-like shoots, which desperately need a trellis.  I am trying to figure out how I would put one up without blocking sightlines and my Ring doorbell.  I would post a picture, but even after all these years, I don't know how to do that.  Anyway, if any of you "horticulturally inclined" know of this plant, feel free to post a picture for the enjoyment of everyone else here.  My friend even bought another of these for me; different color blooms (a sexy dark red, and I named it "Carmen".  The pink one I call "Dippy" after its full name!

Mary Page...as they say " a missed opportunity " that you never got to a meet-up with Norm...yes so many lovely past and pleasant members i am left with fond memories of...

Tome, they are a beautiful plant. I had one up until last year..

For those wanting to see this plant check here.

https://tinyurl.com/thud3abk

I'm  with the comments about the various forums.  I enjoy this one because the interests are so varied and the conversation can change if someone posts something different from the thread.

 If you click on the word "Forum" at the top of the page and scroll clear down to the bottom, you can see statistics about how many are currently "on" plus how many and who has posted recently.

The statistics when I clicked just before I began typing were:

Online:  72 guests (not registered; can read but not post, i.e. "the public"), 16 Users, 2 hidden

14 users had been active in the past 60 minutes.  According to the list of who had posted in which forum, 9 had posted.

Amy, you best me to the info, but I found an entire page of possibilities for Dipladendia;

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Dipladenia.&t=newext&atb=v277-2&ia=web

Patricia, the plant is beautiful with it dark shiny leaves and they are loaded with flowers. I didn't realize that they also came in yellow and white....may look for those when I go into the city.

Unfortuntly, the plant or its seeds are illegal in Alaska. Some years ago, after suffering some alien infestations, the state instituted a strict program of destroying the invaders and outlawing any plant or seed importation. You may only purchase plants and seeds grown or propagated within the state.

Regarding the exchange a few days ago on climate change and what it means to our world, specifically islands.

"Kwigillingok, a community on the Bering Sea coast of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, is used to some flooding during high tides. But in recent years, that flooding has grown more severe, reaching a new threshold last week.

The flooding began Friday morning, as the high tide began rising.

"This is the worst one we've seen yet," said Gary Evon, the environmental coordinator for the Native Village of Kwigillingok.

Aerial photographs published on Facebook show a majority of the community submerged in water. One photo shows someone rafting around the village using a shovel as a paddle.

The town's buildings are raised up on pilings, so Evon said that water did not enter any structures. But 6 inches of water covered the ground beneath. Much of the community's boardwalk was underwater last Thursday, but Evon said that residents have enough walkways to get around the village. On Friday, Evon said that the village was being flooded again with the next high tide.

A little flooding is nothing new in Kwigillingok, but what is new is the increased severity of tidal flooding in recent years. Evon said that it's due to a changing environment.

"With warming climate, melting permafrost and land subsidence," Evon said.

Global temperatures are rising at an accelerating rate. Temperatures in the Arctic are rising three times as fast as the rest of the world, according to a study by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme. The permafrost below Kwigillingok is thawing, causing the land to sink. The lowered elevation makes the land more susceptible to flooding during storms and high tides, and the flooding causes the permafrost to melt even more.

Evon said that the community plans to move a few homes most threatened by erosion and unstable ground, but with the severity of recent floods, Evon said that Kwigillingok is looking at bigger solutions.

"The whole community is starting to think seriously about relocating to higher grounds," Evon said.

Moving an entire community is as colossal an effort as it sounds like. The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium has estimated that the cost to relocate Kwigillingok would exceed $100 million.

Courtesy of Alaska Public Media

A social situation that I think is very amusing!  In the last couple of weeks, masks have become optional in California.   All grocery stores, Costco, etc. have signs posted to that effect.   Of course I expected to see the general public gleefully casting their masks to the four winds!   But no!   So far, I have yet to see an unmasked person in a public place.   I just went to the big  local super market, and not a  bare face in the entire store.   Everyone in their masks, staring straight ahead. (Including me.)   I think maybe people now feel comfortable, being anonymous?   No eye contact and no smiling. 

My parents had a couple of lovely Dipladenias, in their yard - also known as  Mandevilla, which is the name they used.  The had them planted together with other tropicals.  The pink color is the same pink as the original Hibiscus, and looked really good together. 

Callie - Like you, I enjoy the large variety of subjects here in,  Bait and Tackle.  I didn't start posting here until after Norm, was gone, and Mary Ann took over in his place.

Botheration, I just lost a long post I was almost done with. Shoot!

One of the questions I asked was whether or no it was not indigenous, that plant. I have seen so much damage done to our local wetlands and woodlands by non-native plants that I am completely converted to believing we should not import trouble.  No expert, I; but have listened to lectures and hey, I'm convinced.  Now Patricia has mentioned that problem.

https://homesteadgardens.com/

Callie, I agree with you about loving the fact that we sound and feel as though we are all sitting around in a sewing circle yakking our heads off in fifty topics to the hour.  Remember sewing circles?  Grandma had sewing circles and quilting bees at our house all winter long.  Spring was for planting. Summer for hoeing and beginning to "put up."  Put up meant to can or put in jars to farmwives, not the nasty connotation it has today.  I found myself telling someone on the phone recently that we could meet in a certain place and hook up and then go on to our destination; and thinking to myself afterward that I simply have to find a new expression for "hook up!  Dang!  And do you remember a best seller book titled "Our Hearts Were Young & Gay" by Cornelia Otis Skinner?  And does it bother you to read novels written these days about people, places and things back in the days when we were young and the authors are using today's expressions and meanings for words?  It makes me grit my teeth and want to scream! If they cannot get us as we really were, let them write of their own times and leave people to read the books written in the past to get a taste of what that past was like. It truly astonishes me to see on the printed page 4-letter words coming out of the mouths of women back in a time when they never, ever used them, even just to themselves. Some of them, the words that is, we never even knew existed! I actually belonged to a sewing circle that met once a week when I was a fairly new bride. I think they kind of sort of fell out as a social thing when television came in. But it is with intense nostalgia that I recall heading off for school of a wintery Wednesday morning and seeing local farmers pull up to our house and let their wives off.  They came early and left in the afternoon so as to get home by dark. Scampered up the porch steps and scurried inside with the covered dishes they'd brought. We did not know the word casserole back then. Covered dishes were the thing, and I would run all the way home from school at lunchtime rather than eat my deviled ham sandwich and apple at my desk. We had no lunchroom. Everyone paper bagged it; but we Were allowed to talk while eating. Considering the food we kept in our desks all morning, it's a wonder we didn't die of ptomaine. But on the days the farmer's wives came, I ran home.  Well, you would've too!  The food was to DIE for! And I always wanted to stay home to listen to the fascinating chatter that went on. Grandma never let me. Deprived kid, me!

I was lucky
to spend a couple of days
with Papa John and his
daughter Martha,  who I am still
friends with on Facebook.

They were both gracious, caring hosts
who made me feel very special.

I have been on Senior Net etc since
1996. A long long time and have talked
to and met a number of very special
people. Many whom I visited when I
went on my road trip across the USA. 

These groups have been great ...

I was just a couple of days away
from spending  a few days with Norm
and Dot,  when I suffered a stroke
in Austin TX and ended  up in a
hospital in Baton Rouge ... where
my around the country trip ended
and my children came to rescue  me.

And I plan on sticking around here
in the future although I don't now
participate  as often as I once
did.   

I love you all !
Sandy

Sandy, that was one of two times I really envied you, that trip with your two dogs. Altho, I thought it was more than one trip?

Then later when you were redoing your apartment and filling it with your own artwork. I remember you posted photos, and I wanted to do that as well!

Amy, I'm not sure  the Dipladenia comes in yellow, pink, red and white is all I've read about.  The Mandevilla may have yellow plants.

I didn't have any dogs.   Bobby had the dogs.   
And she was on the road longer than me.   
But I had a van.    And I was too
scared to leave the van a lone for too long. 
Afraid that someone would steal it.

That is the problem with my
traveling a lone.   The fear of some stealing
my transportation. 

But it was still worth it... 

Sandy   

Tonight on the national news for the very first time since that building collapsed I heard Climate Change mentioned as a possible problem.  Also, I heard of the inspection reports in 2018 and the fact that spending all of that money might have been a problem. So Greed may Have raised its ugly head.  They are still just speculating; nothing will be proved for a very long time. It will become embroiled in many legal desputes and the courts, etc.
In a long article in today's afternoon edition of our newspaper, they told more details of the cost of the repairs, and they report that the condo association HAD the report and made a plan to have the work done and assessed the owners and the owners had begun to pay up what they were assessed.  One stated they had JUST paid their $95,000.00 share and then gone to New York on business, and thus were not in the building to be crushed to death.  Some people were assessed over $100,000.00.  It was to be a very expensive project, but they DID know about it.
As is true of any news event in any place in any time, rumors whiz around. It will take some time for the true facts to be set out in proper order for us all to digest, but I tend to trust these condo owners and the association staff telling it how it really was and the journalists double and triple checking their sources before writing it down in the newspaper.

I also read one man's assessment of the threat to the other high rises on Miami Beach.  It seems that property owners were forced to go up high in the air, as opposed to building beach houses on this property, because everyone and his brother wanted to be on THIS beach. So dollar for dollar, yadda, yadda, you get the picture.  High rise after high rise after high rise.  Just relentless rows of them.  They have the salt water on one side, and the Everglades on the other. Water, water everywhere. Now those waters are rising ceaselessly. The outlook is bleak. What is the advice of the day?
"Go North, Young Man!"

I read somewhere that the building had been slowly sinking and that there were some cracks in it.

RAMMEL - Lots of different theories floating around as to why?  The building was inspected recently, and the owners were warned the it was unstable.  I see thousands of lawsuit's ahead!  Also - apparently there are sinkholes appearing in different parts of Florida.  I guess the ground just opens up and swallows whatever was there?  Sounds like my worst nightmare!     

Mary Page - I agree with you . . . "The outlook is bleak".

Sink holes have been a problem in Florida for a long time. The underlying geology of the land, the depletion of fresh water aquifers, and climate change all have a role in Florida's water problems. Florida and other states along the East and West coast have been battling salt-water encroachment into underground fresh water systems with various ASR (Aquifer Storage and Recovery) sites and programs. One of the problems of using underground water is that if it isn't replenished, the ground will likely sink, or if in a coastal area salt water will encroach into formerly fresh water areas. Ground sinkage is also a problem in the West and Southwest where fresh water is being used faster than the aquifers can be replenished. You also see it when oil is pumped out without replacing it. If you are interested in the subject of clean water, fresh water sources and ASR, the EPA (look up Clean Water Act) and the USGS are good sources. There are other sources of info as well. Check out what your state is doing about clean water, ground subsidence, and water contamination from various sources.

This just in: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/fbi-pennsylvania-resident-encouraged-attack-on-a-journalist-during-u-s-capitol-riot/ar-AALycGr?ocid=winp1taskbar I used to live just outside of Mechanicsburg, narrowly missing going to the Mechanicsburg High School. It looks like 49 people from PA have been arrested for actions during the Capitol Riot. I am inclined to call it an insurrection after reading that people were actually advocating hanging members of the Congress. Idiots!

Oh yes! I watched my TV almost all that long, incredible day, and it was unbelievable what was filmed. They were chanting: "Hang Pence! Kill Pelosi!" I know that building. Once upon a long time ago, my grandfather was a page there. When I was 17, I had a beau who was a page there. One day, he and a buddy of his took a friend of mine and me all over the building: up in the dome and down in the hide aways.
 
The Capitol police hid the VP and the Congress from armed thugs tramping through the seat of our national government calling out for their deaths.  I saw it.  I heard it.  The films exist. They will be shown again.

Pages are teenagers chosen by the Congress to work as messengers.  I doubt they are needed as much now, now that everyone has Smart phones; but back in the day, they were in constant motion.  They sat on the floor in front of the desks and were called over to the Members with hand motions.  They literally ran to fulfill their assigned tasks. You can probably Google them if you are unfamiliar with the concept.  It was considered a great honor to have your child chosen to serve in this way, and the ranks were quickly filled.

MarsGal, fracking is one of the known causes of idiocy! They actually pump out the groundwater in their search for more and more oil.

On an entirely different note, seeing your post on the upcoming issues with W11 would be better seen here as people rarely go to the computer assistance sites.

https://www.seniorsandfriends.org/index.php?msg=199858

MaryPage, people will listen to these demagogues. The newest spin is that it was not a riot or an insurrection but merely "rambunctious tourists."

Well, say what they may, the American press was there that day, and so was the Foreign press, and they all filmed and filmed and filmed. They were also physically attacked and many of them injured. Believe me, we will all see all of those films again. In addition, it is true that the whole world saw what took place in the seat of Government of these United States that day that is celebrated on the Christian calendar as Epiphany.  The day the three kings or wise men arrived at the manger in Bethlehem.  When they were little things, my son and his best friend argued as to the physical truth about that star.  Little boys about five years old, they went into amazing detail as to whether the star started out in the East with the kings and led them to the Christ Child or whether the star stood sentinel over the manger from the Birth and the kings went in search of what was beneath it.  I was thrilled eavesdropping on those little philosophers.

MaryPage, I'm thrilled that someone was teaching them to think rather than simply accept what they're hearing on any subject! I just read this from an article about why people disbelieve or dismiss science. However, it applies across the board.

"Everyone's busy, and it would be exhausting to be vigilant deep thinkers all the time. You see an article online with a clickbait headline such as "Eat Chocolate and Live Longer" and you share it, because you assume it is true, want it to be, or think it is ridiculous.

Action #2: Instead of sharing that article on how GMOs are unhealthy, learn to slow down and monitor the quick, intuitive responses that psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls System 1 thinking. Instead turn on the rational, analytical mind of System 2 and ask yourself, how do I know this is true? Is it plausible? Why do I think it is true? Then do some fact-checking. Learn to not immediately accept information you already believe, which is called confirmation bias."

Well, however you or anyone wishes to interpret January 6th last, the indelible facts on the ground are that many other nations around this globe have the films their press photographers sent them, and most have played them for their citizens, and most of those are dismayed beyond what they had believed they could endure, as all had placed the U.S.A. on a high pedestal of strength and power, and here was film showing us to be just another Banana Republic with our elected officials under attack and in hiding, and our Capitol Police force overrun and in a defensive line that was being forced back and back and ever back.  Until, hours later, the National Guard finally showed up.  Disgraceful the face of weakness my country displayed to this world on that day.

Chip and his little buddy are 57 now, Chip being my youngest.  And yes, they have both Always thought independently. But I never in my Life have heard 5 year-olds argue a point like that one, and I dearly wished then, and still do to this day, that the Church priests and pastors could have heard them. I tell you true, I had NEVER thought of the point they raised with one another.  I have no idea how they had put their minds to it or how they arrived at their separate convictions as to how it had worked.  As far as it coming up in their luncheon conversation that day, well, it was close to Christmas.

I think that young children process
information as their family or
peers do.   They are influenced by
the people that they deal closely
with.   

Regarding my Great Grand Daughter, Fe.

Her Dad comes home every night after
work and spends his evenings with
Fe.   

He has been teaching her how
to build,  by planning ahead. 
Writing down the plans,  and determining
what is necessary for  the projects. 

Hence she is learning what I consider
to be very advanced thinking for a 4-5
year old.   

And they do this night after
night building things or planting
gardens etc.   

Plan ahead,  make lists,
collect WHAT IS NEEDED FOR THE PROJECT.
and prepare to build,  using the plans. 

And this has been going on for months,  thru
all of the Covid isolation.   Because of this,
even before attending school,  she has learned
how to think ahead and in spite of the
covid isolation,  her mind is being
challenged .   

She will be entering school
with out any "preschool" but
her Dad and Mother have been
teaching her how to think logically. 

I think that she is  a very lucky little girl.
Her mother had her volunteer and he Dad is
showing her how to Think ahead.

Which shows to me that there are many
ways children learn good habits.  Especially when there is an adult there to help them, and show
them the wy. 

Have a good day,  Everyone!

Sandy

I agree that it is imperative to stretch a child's mind. In the US education system, they are taught to use set formulas to resolve issues. In Asian and East Indian school systems, they are not taught that a formula is a be-all and end-all. Or religion or politics is inserted.

For example, a friend of mine's grandchildren are growing up in Kyoto, Japan. They're seven and nine years of age, and they are first offered a problem and must think how to solve it. For example, they might have one mitten but two people who need to use it on a snowy way home. Or there are six children and one fish. They are taught reasoning out an issue as much as suggested solutions and never taught that there is only one answer.

If I were beginning a family again, I would hope that reasoning out an issue relative to their age would be foremost. I didn't have the easiest upbringing, but one part I will thank my parents for was discussing issues around the dinner table, my parents apologizing if they were wrong (Which even today is rare), reading encouraged, and always being asked to support my opinion with facts, not just having it accepted.

I believe reading everything you can get your hands n is of priceless benefit. I spent most of my free time reading as a child.  When I ran out of books in our home, and could not get to a library, I would go up and down the street asking neighbors to loan me books.  My dad owned a many-book encyclopedia of World War I. I read every one of those books; I was desperate. It was a terrible war, and most of the soldiers on both sides were sitting ducks because of the way that war was fought.  No matter how much you read and forget, the simple human truths stay with you forever. History books are great for causing the reader to make a lot of decisions about what NOT to do in Life.  They make you profit by the mistakes of others.

I was the youngest  and only girl with two older brothers.  One seven years older and one 13 years older... 

So I was practically an only child. 
Except I would fight with my brother
who was seven years older.   we verbally fought
ever time that we were in the same room
with one another.   

Now that we are both old and the only
two left,  we do talk and speak nicely
to one another.   But he and I still to this day have never sat down and had a meal and conversation.   We stay in touch now and I
enjoy his company.

But I grew up with my nose in a book,  and
both of my  parents read every day. 

Better to read then talk to one another..
Those were the good old days. ( LOL)
Today is so different then years ago.    I
like it better.

I am back! Did you miss me? lol
Too many posts to read since my last being here. Same for mails: I deleted I believe over 12 thousands unopened. Mainly PSP lessons.

I am still weak, but doing better.

Have a great day everyone. How much I missed you!

BUBBLE . . . Yes, we missed you!   I'm happy to see you back with us again!      I know you're feeling much better and hope you continue to recuperate, until you're back to normal once again.   Looking forward to seeing some of your pictures posted in the "Photos" folder.