Whatever one believes about the morality of sex and having children out of wedlock, the vast majority of people living in poverty in America are living in single-parent households. Children of unmarried single parents are many times more likely to drop out of school, suffer child abuse, commit suicide, and become hard core drug addicts than children of married parents. Today, almost 81% of children living with an unmarried single mother will live in poverty for the majority of their childhood as opposed to only 12% who live with married parents.

by Charly Mann

I can think of about two dozen really great things about life. One is playing with a dog. Besides being great companions dogs are unusually loyal, loving, and good-natured. One always comes away more relaxed after a dog comes over to say hello and ask for a pet. They rarely complain, point out our failings, or threaten to abandon us.

 
Article and original art by Kathryn Mann

"I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else."
Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles. Her mother was mentally unstable and placed her in a foster home and eventually an orphanage. Marilyn never knew who her father was.

She began modeling in 1944, and within a year was one of the most photographed women in America. She signed a movie contract in 1946, but did not begin to play leading roles until 1952. Her first big movie was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in 1953.

Marilyn was dependent on prescribed drugs for most of her adult life, and was notorious for being late and not knowing her lines when she made movies. Nevertheless her genius is seen in her two best films, Some Like It Hot in 1958 and The Misfits in 1961. As Some Like It Hot director Billy Wilder said, "Anyone can remember lines, but it takes a real artist to come on the set and not know her lines and yet give the performance she did."

Marilyn had several unhappy marriages that all ended in divorce. She died alone, probably from an accidental overdose of prescribed barbiturates, on August 5, 1962. 

My daughter until recently had three cats that she adopted, either as strays that turned up at her house or from the local animal shelter. A little more than a month ago two more cats showed up separately looking for a home. Unfortunately, her oldest cat bullied the smallest, sweetest, and most intelligent of these two, and it became obvious that the two could not live under the same roof. Fortunately, she was able to find a great home for this little girl. The two photographs above are my daughter and me with this cat during her last hour before she was adopted.

As a tribute to our foster cat I am offering a little bit of endearing feline information.

Cats were first domesticated in Egypt more than 4,000 years ago. The Egyptian Goddess Bastet (also known as Bast) is a cat. She is known as the protector of one’s home, children, and other cats. Statues of her were often found at the entrance of Egyptian homes. There were temples for Bastet throughout ancient Egypt. In them lived many cats that were well fed and treated to a lavish lifestyle. When the cats in these temples died they were mummified.

Cats were also dearly loved and respected pets of Egyptians. When a pet cat died everyone in the family would go into mourning and shave their eyebrows as a sign of grief. If you killed a cat, either on purpose or by accident, you could be sentenced to death.

In the battle for the town of Pelusium between the Persians and the Egyptians the Persians brought thousands of cats onto the battlefield. Rather than harm the cats the Egyptians surrendered the city to the Persians.

The Christian philosopher, Nicolai Berdyaev, was greatly influenced by Saint Francis of Assisi’s love of animals, but had a special love for cats. When his cat Muri died he said, “I experienced Muri’s suffering before his death, through him I felt myself united to the whole of creation awaiting deliverance. I very rarely weep, but when Muri died, I wept bitterly. And the death of such a charming one of God’s creatures was for me the experience of death in general. I demand for myself eternal life with Muri.”

by Charly Mann

Armadillos have very poor eyesight, and instead use their keen sense of smell and ears to find food and keep away from predators. Their eyesight is so bad that if you quietly move up to an armadillo it probably will not detect you

Armadillos dig burrows, which they sleep in about for about 16 hours every day. They look for food in the late evening and early morning using their strong legs and front claws to dig for ants, termites, and beetles. They use their long sticky tongues to extract these insects from their tunnels. They are closely related to anteaters.

The name armadillo comes from the Spanish word that meaning “little armored one.” This is because of the bony plates that cover almost their entire bodies. They are the only mammal that is covered in a shell.

Armadillos can remain under water for up to six minutes. Because of their heavy shell, an armadillo must double in size by inflating itself with air to stay afloat in water.

The only armadillo species in the United States is the nine-banded armadillo. It always gives birth to four identical offspring, which come from the same egg. When threatened or frightened they often jump three to four feet straight up in the air. Most dead armadillos found on highways have died because they have jumped into the undercarriage of a car or truck.

Armadillos have been around for fifty million years.

This armadillo was recently looking for ants in my backyard. The yard is less than 3,000 sq feet, yet attracts beavers, snakes, squirrels, skunks, possums, an array of stray cats which we usually adopt, an occasional dog, as well as many varieties of butterflies and birds.

by Charly Mann

Our planet is about 4.7 billion years old, and the first forms of life did not appear on it for at least one billion years. They were extremely small single-cell organisms. It took more than 2.5 billion additional years before multi-cellular life such as plankton, algae, and bacteria originated. It was fairly recently, just 530 million years ago, that complex life forms suddenly appeared. This is a real mystery to scientists because there is no evolutionary fossil record showing how simple life could have so rapidly developed into complex creatures. The popular evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins says, "It's as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history.”  Advocates of intelligent design contend that this supports their belief that the theory of evolution is seriously flawed. Even more amazing, before this rapid appearance of complex life, the fossil record actually shows that 98% of life that had existed was already extinct when we got to this new era called the Cambrian period, or what I would call “the big bang of advanced life on earth." Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution, had predicted that paleontologists would find a slow but increasingly complex record of life leading up to this time. Instead, after more than 150 years of research and excavations, this is clearly not what happened.   Contrary to evolutionary theory, simple cell life did not become increasingly more complex and create a rich diversity of life between 3.7 and 500 million years ago. Most of it died out, and what remained did not get more complex.  Mysteriously, and without scientific explanation, between about 570 and 550 million years ago, the ancestor of almost every animal that is alive today originated.

This is a local free range praire Buffalo from a herd of about 3,200

By Charly Mann

This is a picture of a bumblebee with its distant cousin, a honeybee, flying next to it. The bumblebee is much more docile than the always-in-a-hurry honeybee. Bumblebees move slowly as they pollinate flowers, fruits and vegetables.

Bumblebees, like honeybees, live in colonies with a single large egg-laying queen. A bumblebee colony only survives during warm months, and dies off when it cools. Only the queen survives by hibernating and then starting a new colony in the spring.

Bumblebees produce very little honey compared to honey bees, usually just enough for feeding their newborn. Unlike honeybees, which are aggressive and swarm, it is extremely rare for a bumblebee to sting a human. One has to threaten a bumblebee by waving one’s arms close by to make them attack. However unlike a honeybee, which will die after it uses its stinger, bumblebees will survive.

Unlike most insects, bumblebees can control their body temperature. In cold weather they use their flight muscles to warm themselves, which allows them to continue pollinating when it is cold. This makes them a valuable asset to our agriculture production. They are often used as pollinators in large greenhouses to pollinate strawberries and tomatoes.

With their qualities of cleanliness, discretion, affection, patience, dignity, and courage, how many of us, I ask you, would be capable of becoming cats?

Mery Fernand

Most Americans don’t accept even the major truths of their religion or government. While 92 percent of Americans say they believe in God, and 82 percent call themselves Christians, only 72% of Americans accept the central tenant of that faith that Jesus is God or the Son of God. And only 62% of Americans believe in hell and the devil. More significantly, the fundamental tenant of most Christian denominations is that only by becoming a Christian will one be able to be saved and go to heaven, yet 70% of American Christians and 57% of evangelicals believe that other religions can lead one to eternal life.

As for trust in the United States government, only one in ten Americans accept the government's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy. More than a third of Americans believe the U.S. government either helped conduct the 9/11 terrorist attacks or knew about it in advance. They believe this is because the government wanted an excuse to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Finally, more than a third of Americans believe in UFO’s, and only slightly fewer believe in astrology.

By Charly Mann

Dragonfly eyes contain about 30,000 separate lenses and can distinguish colors.  The eyes make up a large part of the dragonfly’s head and are positioned so that it has a full 360-degree field of vision. They cannot distinguish detail very well, and see things in a mosaic pattern.

Dragonflies have a pair of slender wings made up of intricate net-like veins. They are active during the daytime hunting for food and mating. They can fly in all directions including backwards. They can also hover like a helicopter. Dragonflies can fly as fast as most birds with top speeds of 53 miles per hour.

Dragonflies typically eat our least favorite insect the mosquito, as well as small flies and bees.

Dragonflies are actually water creatures. Their eggs hatch in lakes, streams, and other wetlands. Female dragonflies lay up to 100,000 at a time. They hatch in about two weeks into fairly unattractive creatures call nymphs. Most of their life is spent as a nymph, up to three years, as opposed to four months as a dragonfly. The nymphs actually live under the water and have gills for breathing. They feed on the larvae of mosquitoes and tadpoles.

When a nymph finally matures it come out of the water at night and attaches to the stem of a plant where it sheds its skin, which is called molting. Molting takes about two hours. As the skin splits open, the head, body, legs, and wings of the dragonfly appear. When the sun rises in the morning the new dragonfly is ready to fly and hunt.

Dragonflies do not sting or bite people. There are more than 5,000 species of dragonflies in the world. They have been around since the time of dinosaurs, more than 300 million years ago. In those days dragonflies were considerably larger than they are today, with wingspans of more than two feet. 

The eye of a dragonfly has 30,000 separate lenses.

by Charly Mann

Kiki's Delivery Service is an enchanting movie and a masterpiece of animation art by Hayao Miyazaki. It is the story of a very generous, kind, and affectionate thirteen year old girl named Kiki who must learn independence and responsibility by living a year on her own in a city where she has never been and knows no one. Kiki happens to be a witch, but witches in this world are very good people. The only special talent she has is being semi-capable of flying with a broomstick. The story is set in a beautiful seaside city in Europe around 1935.

Kiki's Delivery Service may easily be the best animated film ever made, surpassing even Disney's classic Pinocchio. In fact, the animation art rivals the story and characters for your attention. Every scene is incredibly detailed, and most of the city views are breathtaking.

Young and old can learn much from this movie; especially that kindness and determination will always triumph no matter how high the odds. It is also a great tale of inspiration and coming of age that any young person can learn from. We see a young girl with no money, friends, or place to stay establish a successful business, find a new home, and become loved by, and friends with, an array of incredible people of all ages.

The Kiki photographs are from my daughter's collection of hand drawn animation cells from this movie.

by Charly Mann

George Washington was one of the greatest people who ever lived. He accomplished more than any man in history through his amazing character, which combined wisdom, honesty, courage, perseverance, strength and love of his fellow man.

Washington was born in obscurity and of modest means. He was educated at home by his father and brother. His first job was as a surveyor. He learned about real estate and agriculture as a young man, and worked hard to succeed in these businesses. By the time he was elected President his real estate holdings and farming enterprises made him the wealthiest man in the United States.

Washington also took off more than twelve years from his businesses to act as general and statesman for his emerging country. He not only commanded, but also created the American Army. He defined our political system, by not accepting the position of king when the United States won its independence from Britain. He chaired the Constitutional Convention, which created the United States government. He was unanimously elected President, and was the only person to be elected to this office who did not belong to a political party. He also ensured that the Presidency would not resemble a monarchy by leaving office after eight years.

Washington was admired by almost everyone in his time. He was the one man who could inspire volunteers to serve in a small, poorly equipped army, against a much larger professional British army. Against all odds, great defeats, and betrayals, he led his citizen army to victory and created the world’s longest lasting democracy.

Washington managed those under him with tolerance and honor. He accepted that people had strengths and weaknesses, and was a master at getting the most from their strength while coping with their weaknesses. He treated everyone equally with courtesy and dignity and expected everyone to do the same. The two most brilliant men in America, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, were bitter rivals in their vision of what they wanted the United States to become, but they so admired Washington that they worked together to form a nation and were both important members of his cabinet.

George Washington’s legacy is not only the creation of the United States, but the beginning of a democratic movement that continues to spread around the globe. Two hundred years ago the United States was the only democratic county in the world. Today more than 2/3 of the 193 countries in the world are democracies.

Longhorn Cattle can be traced back 500 years to the first cattle brought from Spain to America. They were very popular as livestock in the 19th century, but had almost vanished by the early 20th century because of new breeding and ranching techniques.

Longhorns are virtually self-sufficient. They are resistant to most diseases and parasites that affect other cattle. They can feed on virtually any ground cover, and thrive on even marginal grazing land. They have a high fertility rate, and also have far fewer problems giving birth than other cattle. They are also easy to handle and have gentle personalities.

The male Summer Tanager is red and the female is yellow. These birds are in decline because of the clearing of their forested habitat, and because the Brown-headed Cowbird lay their eggs in their nests. When their young hatch the Tanager’s feed the Cowbird babies at the expense of their own.

"It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom."

Aristotle

A rooster will attack anything that he thinks will harm his hens.

Chickens can live for up to 20 years, and a hen can lay eggs her entire life, though she lays fewer and fewer eggs as she ages. A hen can lay eggs without a rooster, though the eggs will be infertile. Hens lay about one egg every other day in their prime.

The chicken is the closest living relative of the Tyrannosaurus rex.

Long, long ago, when the Earth was new, God looked down on his creation and was very happy. The world was beautiful and the people were happy.

But as time passed, the people began to age and die and this brought sorrow to the world, and so God began to think that there was something missing. And so one day he decided to create something new.

God came to the Earth and began to gather the colors of his creation into a sack. From the sky he took some blue; from the trees he took some green; from the Sun he took some yellow; from the sunset he took red, orange and purple; from the little children he took the white of their smiles and the brown of their eyes. All these colors he gathered into his sack.

Then as an afterthought he took the songs from the birds and put them in the sack as well. And he shook the sack to mix all these things well. Then he came to the people to give them his new creation.

And so it was that the people gathered around God to see this new creation. Then God opened the sack and released thousands of butterflies into the air. And the people were pleased, and the children danced and sang with the butterflies dancing and singing around them. And happiness returned to the world.

But not all of creation was happy. The birds came to God to ask him why he had taken their song. "Great God," the birds' spokesman said, "our song was what set us apart from all of creation. It is not right that you should take this from us for the butterflies”. God pondered his words and decided that he was right.

God put forth his hand once more and retrieved the songs of the birds from the butterflies. So butterflies are the most beautiful creatures God has created, yet they are silent.

This is our retelling of a Native American folktale

The percentage of Hispanics in the United States will more than double over the next forty years, from 14% of the population today to 29% in 2050. During the same period, the proportion of whites will decrease by 30%, from 67% to 47%. The percentage of black Americans will stay constant at 13%.

There are now 45.5 million Hispanics in the United States up from 35.7 million in 2000. Contrary to conventional thinking most of the recent and future increase does not come from immigration (illegal or legal), but from the high birth rates of American Hispanic families. The average Hispanic woman has 2.8 children in her lifetime, exceeding the 2.1 birthrate necessary for an ethnic group to maintain a stable population. White women only have 1.8 children on average, and black women 2.4. More significantly, because the Hispanic population is much younger on average than their White and Black counterparts, Hispanics add 8.4 births to their population In the United States for every Hispanic that dies. Whites add only 1.6 new babies for each white who dies, while blacks add 2.4 births per death.

The Dumbest Generation, by Emory Professor Mark Bauerlein, asserts that the technology which has been embraced by today’s youth, including cellphones, videogames, and the MySpace and YouTube websites, is creating the most ignorant and culturally lacking generation in American history.

This millennial generation seems to excel at multi-tasking, but has great difficulty learning. They know how to quickly retrieve information from the Internet, yet lack basic knowledge about the world and history. They also have great difficulty in communicating their thoughts verbally.

The book is filled with alarming statistics that support his thesis. Among the facts presented: 52% of high school seniors thought the United States fought on the side of Japan, Germany, or Italy in World War II; 62% could not find Iraq on a map; merely 2% rank as advanced in science proficiency, while 46% are below even basic proficiency; finally, only 24% are able to write an organized and coherent composition.

Everyone is unhappy with the high price of gasoline. Some think the oil companies should be punished for it with an additional tax on their profits.

Interestingly, oil companies make about 4 cents on each dollar you pay for gas at the pump. If you pay $4.00 for a gallon of gas, the profit they earn on that gallon would be 16 cents. On the other hand, 15 cents in every dollar of gas goes to taxes levied by Congress. This means the government would get 60 cents from the $4.00 you paid for a gallon of gas, more than four times as much as the oil companies.

Most economists blame the laws of supply and demand for most of the increase in oil and gas prices. Worldwide demand for oil has risen sharply in the last few years as the world’s two largest countries, China and India, have become more prosperous. Roads in those countries which until recently were filled with people on bicycles are now congested with people in cars.

Also a cartel of the oil rich nations called OPEC (of which the United States is not a member) controls 80% of the oil in the world, and they benefit the most by the high price of oil.

The United States does have the ability to produce more oil and gas in non-park Federal lands, in its coastal waters, in Alaska, and in some of its Western States. There is enough natural gas in these areas to meet the U.S. needs, without imports, for more than one hundred years. There is also an estimated 112 billion barrels of oil in these reserves. This is about the same amount we will likely have to import over the next thirty years. (We currenly import about 10 million barrels of oil a day.)

Many geologists think we have more oil than this in our oil shale reserves. They say we have an estimated 1.5 trillion barrels of oil in oil shale. That is five times more than all the reserves of the world’s current top oil producing nation, Saudi Arabia. All we need to do is develop an environmentally safe and economical means for converting this oil shale to oil. Since the government is now giving corn farmers more than 9.5 billion dollars in subsidies, maybe it should target the same amount to oil shale extraction so we can be independent of foreign oil.

Americans return almost 20% of the electronic goods they buy each year, according to Accenture Ltd. MP3 players, wireless phones, GPS devices, and wireless networking gear are the leading items returned.

68% of the products are returned because the customer cannot figure out how to use the them.

27% are returned because the customer felt bad about the purchase. This includes deciding product was too expensive or other family member did not like it.

5% are returned because the product is defective.

With gasoline prices at an all-time high, no one wants an SUV anymore. Dealers report more than a 27% decline in SUV sales in just the last nine months, even with generous financing and rebates on these gas guzzlers. If you want to sell an SUV that is even a couple of years old you are unlikely to get even 47% of what you paid for it. Many new and used car dealers are no longer even taking them in trade.

by Charly Mann

During the last 3000 years humans have lived in civilized societies that have included the custom of marriage. Until about 1920 a woman’s chances of dying in childbirth was about 1 in 8. Also prior to this time the average age of marriage around the world was 13, and the average age a mother would give birth to her first child was 14. As long as a mother continued to survive childbirth she usually had between five and eight children in her lifetime. It was also unusual for even half of one’s children to survive to adolesence. So the thought of sex was not a very pleasant one for a woman, since not only did she know it could easily lead to her death, but also to the early death of the child she might give birth to.

Almost 10% of Americans suffer from either chronic minor depression, bipolar disorder, or major depressive disorder according to a study conducted by Harvard Medical School and the World Health Organization. The study also showed that a little more than 18% of U.S. citizens suffer from mood and anxiety disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and panic disorder. 

On the other hand only 3.1% of Japanese, 3.6% of Germans, 4.8% of Mexicans, 6.9% of the Dutch, 8.5% of the French, and less than 1% of Nigerians, who are among the poorest people in the world, suffer from depression.

Snakebites kill 50,000 people in India each year according to the World Health Organization. Most are killed by the cobra. For a cobra bite to be deadly, it must turn its head to squeeze out the poison in its fangs. Experts say one should shake off a cobra as soon as it bites before it can inject a full dose of its deadly venom.

The economic downtown has made Las Vegas a bargain for vacationers. Hotel rooms on the Strip are expected to cost 23% less than they did a year ago. The Circus Circus and Excalibur have deals as low as $40 a night. The Luxor has a package for $69 a night that includes an additional $60 in credit for meals, gambling and other services. The New York, New York hotel-casino is advertising specials of $89 per night. Some of the best deals can be found at www.visitlasvegas.com.

In the last five years more than 200,000 Americans (about 40,000 a year) were killed in traffic accidents. They are the leading cause of death for people under the age of 25. In the same span of time, a few more than 4,000 Americans were killed in the war in Iraq.

We do not argue for or against the United States involvement in Iraq, but certainly one argument against it is that 4,000 American deaths is too high a price to pay for trying stabilize that country. On the other hand, there does not seem to be an uproar that almost fifty times as many Americans died in car crashes during the same period.

In a recent conversation between Susan Jacoby, the author The Age of American Unreason, and Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason Magazine, she related an incident that occurred soon after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  She was walking from her job at the New York City Public Library to her apartment in lower Manhattan. Along the way, she stopped in a bar to have a drink, and overheard a conversation between two well-dressed mid-thirties investment banker types. One said to the other that what had just happened must have been like Pearl Harbor. The other asked what Pearl Harbor was, and his friend responded it was when Vietnam bombed one of our harbors and led to the War in Vietnam.

Virtually every major social problem is caused by the failure of marriage. The Hudson Institute has recently noted that 87 percent of people serving time in U.S. prisons either have not had contact with their father in years or do not know who their father is. William Galston, domestic advisor to President Clinton as well as Al Gore and Walter Mondale, notes, “You need only do three things in this country to avoid poverty - finish high school, marry before having a child, and marry after the age of 20. Only 8 percent of the families who do this are poor; 79 percent of those who fail to do this are poor. “

This is the Painted Bunting. A rare bird that has been in steady decline since 1965.

In the next twenty years our highways will be 60% more congested than they are today. This means the average driver will spend four weeks (160 hours) stuck in traffic each year.

Between 1973 and 1995 U.S. worker productivity grew at 1.35% per year. At this rate, the average standard of living would double in 52 years. In 1995 there was a tremendous rise of information technology in business, and productivity doubled from 1996 to 2006 to 2.7% per year. If this trend continues our living standard will double again by 2032.