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Stella's Place 
Good morning, Stella and Stellars…have a blessed and wonderful Wednesday!
10 of the most beautiful and charming castles in Scotland
https://www.10best.com/interests/galleries-venues/10-of-the-most-beautiful-and-charming-castles-in-scotland/
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My sister married a Scotch Canadian and they traveled back to Scotland years ago to see the family castle. It is mostly rubble, but she said it was still exciting to see it.
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Good morning, aus! Some wonderful ruins in Scotland…
Bothwell Castle, South Lanarkshire…
Howburn Farm: Excavating Scotlandβs first people (going back 14,000 years)
June 25, 2010 (3 mins read)
At Howburn Farm in South Lanarkshire, a scattering of flints, discovered by the Biggar Archaeology Group, turned out to be evidence of the earliest human habitation in Scotland.
https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/features/howburn-farm-excavating-scotlands-first-people.htm
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Hi there Lucille! I feature this castle later this week.
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Hi, Stella! Looking forward to reading about it.
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Mornin’ y’all!
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Mornin’ Wee!
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Mornin’!
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The statues can be divided into Buda and Pest as the two towns were called before combining.
Crazy the factoids you remember from research you did 40-50 years ago but can’t remember where you left your keys (which I found the other morning still in my front door lock where they had been overnight!!!).
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Don’t feel too bad. I have done that and figured it was old age. However, the nice young lady in her early twenties across the hall has done the same thing. So, it isn’t age. π
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My nephew tells me the same thing. So there’s hope that dementia isn’t settling in…LOL!
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Thank you Stella, for showing the sunny side of Scotland!
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Mornin’ All. I is 12*, that means it is over 0*. LOL. Clear blue skies. and lots of sunshine. Don’t know if we will get more snow, but I think it is likely. But the streets seem pretty clear right now. I might even try to get to church on Sunday if it doesn’t snow between now and then,
Hope you are all well and warm. I know Czarina and my friend in Florida are. π
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Due to be 87* again today, and humid.
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Homeless Man Remembers Stranger Who Helped Him π’β€οΈ
Posted 3/7/23 by Peter Bond (lives in NYC)
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That was so touching.
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This is a good read! Now we know the truth about those PBS leftist geniuses.
A former Bill Moyers staffer explains the technical magic used to make incoherent academic leftists sound profound
Most recently, Ivy Exile exposed how the technical staff on Bill Moyerβs show had to put in more effort with every passing year to make academics sound intelligent. What was once a given during the 1970s, was now possible only with intense editing:
Uncut conversations were eye-opening; it was astonishing how often our esteemed guests hemmed and hawed and got basic facts embarrassingly wrong. And how many came off batshit crazy: one, later an anchor on MSNBC, speculated that Captain Sullyβs Miracle on the Hudsonβvisible from our west side officesβhad been God blessing the Obamas.
Drafting the Moyers Blog and promotional listings, Iβd sit in with producers and video editors to consult on coalescing broadcasts. They were like wizards, casting away awkwardness and errors to sculpt artful vignettes of the most compelling bits of conversations that often stretched well over an hour or more.
So many of the most rousing clips came from when guests were at their most factually inaccurate, and editors deftly dipped in and out to pull and seamlessly reassemble the very best parts. It was wondrous alchemy, and a privilege to work with super-talented creatives, but the reality of our academic pundits remained the same.
[. . .]
In the real world, says Ivy Elite, leftist intellectual discourse was broken:
By no means were Bill Moyers and team operating with any less than the highest of ethics or best of intentionsβfrom their perspective, we were clarifying what our distinguished guests were truly saying. The problem was that the intellectual scene our show channeled was dwindling, but my colleagues so badly wanted things to be better that it was all too easy to paper over the accelerating collapse of discourse.
(Incidentally, Ivy Exile makes it clear that he has nothing but respect for Moyers himself.)
What we are seeing on television with carefully curated talking heads giving seemingly intelligent voice to radical ideas is an ideological Potemkin village. The leftists no longer bother building wood and nails illusions to hide the homelessness, drug addiction, filth, and crime that have become normative in Democrat-run cities. Instead, they figured out that the best way to disguise their policies is to polish up their words, creating an intellectual fantasyβand, as Ivy Exile notes, the fantasy works:
Viewers, or at least those motivated enough to weigh in, frequently testified that their social-democratic faith had been wavering until theyβd seen whichever inspiring interview affirming what theyβd always believed.
Here’s the link, if you want to read the rest of the story!
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/03/a_former_bill_moyers_staffer_explains_the_technical_magic_used_to_make_incoherent_academic_leftists_sound_profound.html
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The staffer is totally unaware how dishonorable all this is. If Moyers approved it, then he is essentially creating roses out of a steaming pile, when the pile is actually news, too. We need to know who is coherent and precise and who is not.
The decision that some folks get presented in a near-perfect light and others are left to ramble is certainly based on politics. Makes a person wonder if this is daily practice by all left-leaning media.
We know the lame stream media edited out parts when President Trump was making a statement or speech, and then pretended they released the whole message. They are very adept at turning a positive into a negative. THAT is dishonest, no doubt about it. And so is the reverse.
Lying liars live to lie.
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I think the staffer is aware of how dishonorable it is. That is why he/she is writing about it. I guess you can like someone you worked with (like Moyers) even though they do underhanded things sometimes. He must have some redeeming qualities (at least I hope so.)
ADD: I’m sure Moyers justifies this kind of thing because it is for “the greater good”. I have heard some leftists justify otherwise unacceptable behavior in this way – like action that was used to see that Trump wasn’t reelected.
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How can anyone deny that Bidenhandler is in the process of willingly destroying America?
MARCH 07, 2023
As if the Mexican border crisis were not sufficiently compromising national security, the Biden administration invited officials from a communist country that appears on the governmentβs list of state terrorism sponsors to tour sensitive U.S. maritime security facilities. The bizarre secret jaunt was scheduled last week to grant a delegation from Cubaβs Border Guard and Ministry of Foreign Affairs access to the nationβs Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington D.C. as well as port facilities in Wilmington, North Carolina.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/dhs-invites-communist-state-sponsor/
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Iditarod Update: Day 3 is complete.
In total days and total miles, the race is only about 1/3 of the way done; but when mushers begin stopping for their 24, it tends to feel like the halfway point. That is what they are doing now, and the race will mostly take a pause for the next day or so.
The question of where to take the 24 is always an item of much discussion among mushers. In addition to consideration of how the dogs are eating and running, other factors play in. The 24 must be taken at a checkpoint. The checkpoints are almost always beehives of activity and noise, unless you are so far out in front, or so far behind the field, that you are the only team there. Most mushers want to blow through the checkpoint, only stopping long enough to pick up their supply bag (flown out before the race began) and straw, and camping somewhere down the trail. It is quieter that way and dogs get better rest. But that means giving up the amenities that checkpoints offer: hot water for cooking dog food, usually a heated cabin or tent for mushers to get some sleep in, often some hot home-cooked food, a team of vets to consult about any dog concerns, a place to drop a dog (to be flown back to Anchorage and cared for until the musher returns) who isn’t doing well for whatever reason.
The 5 checkpoints most commonly chosen are Nikolai, McGrath, Takotna, Ophir, or Iditarod. The first is very early and the last is very late. Takotna and Ophir are generally the most popular, unless the dogs show signs of needing the long break earlier.
Takotna is a small Native village, population about 50, which actually has both a store and a restaurant (unusual in a village so small). The women of the village are famous in Iditarod lore for baking enough pies to feed every musher as much as he or she would like. Also for making sack lunches which they stand on the trail and hand out to each musher as the team leaves. It is quite popular as a place to 24.
Ophir and Iditarod are both ghost towns which don’t exist except for the checkpoint tents erected by race volunteers and taken down when the last team passes through. During the Gold Rush Days of the late 1800s, both were thriving, bustling communities. No one lives year ’round in either place now.
The front end of the race, the 5 or so leading teams, has so far consisted of Brent Sass, last year’s champion; Jessie Holmes; Ryan Reddington; and Aaron Peck. Sass and Holmes have stopped to take their 24 in Ophir, and 17 more teams are either in Takotna or headed there.
Somewhat out of the blue, the guy who was at the very tail end of the race at one point yesterday, Wade Marrs, has now taken the lead by passing through Ophir and going on to Iditarod. It is an 80 mile run, one of the longest legs of the entire race, and not generally attempted with a tired team that has not had a good long rest yet. It has been done before, but I don’t remember that it ever turned out well. We’ll see if Marrs can pull it off.
Another wild card is Nic Petit (peh-TEE). He took his 24 very early, at Nikolai, because the daytime weather was just too hot for the dogs. The Interior has been having highs of 60*, which is very hot for March in Alaska. His is the first team to finish the 24, and he is now blazing a path down the trail. I’m sure his strategy is to pass up the front end before their mandatory rests are over and put distance between himself and the teams following. Though he has never won the race, Nic is aways a threat. I can’t wait to see how this move plays out.
Catching up with my 4 faves, Pete is in 8th position and has about 6 hours to go to finish his 24 in Takotna. The Iditarod Insider had a short video interview with him there and he is pleased with how his race is going so far. His dogs are doing well, and he is one of only 2 mushers who still has all 14 that he started with on the gangline.
Official blog writer for Iditarod, Terrie Hanke, had this to say about Pete in today’s post:
Insider Analyst and Iditarod veteran Bruce Lee has commented a couple of times on how good Kaiserβs team looks. Kaiser won the race the last time it followed the Southern Route in 2019. This is Kaiserβs 14th race. He scratched in 2021 on the Gold Trail Loop, has seven top ten finishes including five in the top five. In 2019 he was the first musher to Kaltag to receive the Fish First Award and the first to White Mountain to receive the Achieve More Award. Kaiser was born in and still resides in Bethel, Alaska. He says, βOur family has always had dogs and Iβve been mushing since I was a kid.β He has watched and participated in the Kusko 300 and credits that race as his inspiration to try long distance mushing. Kaiser has won the Kusko seven times.
Our girl Jessie Royer is holding down 16th position with 12 dogs and is parked in Takotna until about 4 am tomorrow morning. I haven’t found any video clips of her yet.
Bridgett Watkins is in 21st position with 13 dogs. She will remain in Takotna until about noon tomorrow.
And Mike Williams Jr is now the Red Lantern, the term given to the last team. He should have left his 24 in Nikolai about 5 minutes ago. His speed from the previous checkpoint was over 8 mph, which is good. That suggests that his team is performing well. If he stopped because of the heat, as Nic did, then he should have some fast times through the next few checkpoints, running through the night and timing stops for the heat of the day. My fingers are crossed.
Well, race fans, if you made it to the end of this post you are hardy! As you can tell, mushing is one of my great loves, and I can talk dogs till the cows come home (how’s that for mixed metaphors?). Thanks for hanging in there. More to come…
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Oh, goodness–60 degrees is not good. I’m certainly no musher, but it’s perhaps similar to the temps a human can work hard in without having to be peeling clothes off and then putting back on… in an open-ended way. All of the teams are subject to the same thing, of course, but it has to give the mushers added concern.
I’m enjoying reading your blog, Tundra. You won’t see your stats going up and down much (due to my presence) because after I opened it a day or so ago, I am just leaving it sitting in my task tray thingy so I can pull it up and continue reading from whatever point I stopped at earlier. Enjoyable reading and so very informative, just like these daily reports.
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Thanks so much for your kind words, Sharon. I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog. I loved writing it.
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