Saturday Summary

[Computer is in the shop so I'm using my daughter's. Shorter than usual bit because I couldn't read all the things I usually do.]

One day the paper was chock full of bad news about big corporations: No surprise that BP has been covering up its blunders for years. Then there's Glaxo-SmithKlein pharmaceuticals that knew for some years that Avandia, the diabetes drug, kicked up the normally high risk for heart attacks. And the Catholic church's cover up and slow response to sexual abuse by priests seems to bother them less than the possibility of allowing women into the clergy. Some days it just gets piled on like the heat and humidity of these summer days.

The Lacross team or the Iroquois Nation got stuck in the airport and did not make it to the world lacross games because they were traveling on passports, legally issued, of the Iroquois Nation, not the USA. They weren't allowed out because there was a strong possibility they would not be allowed back in. These are NATIVE Americans ... of course the States doesn't have a sterling record in the treatment of their people.

Starlings which number about 200,000 birds, mostly in the Eastern US are not native. 100 starlings were introduced to Central Park at the time of the construction of the Shakespeare Garden, near the Delacourt Theatre where free Shakespeare in the Park is presented. The garden contains only flowers and herbs and trees that are mentioned by Shakespeare. Someone wanted to have the birds the Bard talked about also.

And speaking of flying creatures, a certain species of firefly in the Smokey Mountains has worked out synchronicity of light shows -- the males band together by the thousands and blink in unison to attract females who might not notice a long individual somewhere in the woods sending his signals. This doesn't happen with other groups of fireflies as far as is known.

But we humans love sparkle too. Singer Kathy Perry has dressed in some odd outfits but for a recent red carpet even, she was demure and tasteful in a pink chiffon dress -- that is until she flicked a switch hidden in the bodice and set to blinking some 3200 LED lights sewn in strips just beneath the chiffon.

Stay cool, all. Remember the snows of winter.