Povey Prattle

Self willed, uncontrollable but controlling, demanding and un-appreciative. It's the cats who use their ancient and cunning powers to create and control tropical storms and hurricanes, simply to let we mere mortals know who is in charge. The storms are as unpredictable and uncontrollable as are their feline manipulators. It started as tropical storm Dorian.  Now it's been "up-graded" to Hurricane Dorian.   But where it it make land?   Who knows?  Not even the meteorologists! Oh for goodness sake, let's hope that it by-passes Puerto Rico and the small Islands, whose residents have suffered enough hurricane damage  (and in the case of the American territory Puerto Rico, via the cruel tongue of the American President Donald Trump). The storm is expected to go up the east coast of Florida or Georgia. We on Florida's west coast watch,wonder and wait.  We remember that Sarasota was supposed to be in the path of Hurricane Irma...

Guns made in my home City of Bristol, U.K. Not women and men, but Bucks and Wenches (with a Picinniny) You pay your money and you take your choice.  Small Negro Girl or Potatoes Ox team, Fox Hounds, or Negro Slaves. Commodities one and all. When the Boston authorities decided to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law Rewards for the apprehension of the runaway enslaved The "Dow" index of 1857

At various places in the United States the 400th anniversary of the importation of a new commodity to the shores of Virginia is being noted. "The 400th anniversary of slavery" they say.  I hate and despise that generic word "slavery". Rather it should be called "the importation of human beings as a commodity"   -  women, men, girls, boys:  ripped from their villages, homes, religions, history and culture; shackled and chained; beaten and whipped; shoved into the cargo holds; taken westward across the ocean to be sold in the market place (if they survived the passage). To call it "slavery", or "the slave trade"  makes the whole enterprise seem bland.  It was the enslavement   of mothers and fathers, of their beloved girl and boy children. It was the destruction of a peoples' history, language, culture, tradition and religion. The commodity on sale  (not in the American South, but in Chicago, Illinois). ------------------...

Those of you who have super memories will recall that I took a trip to Inverness FL as long ago as (gasp) last Tuesday 20th August. My dog, Prince Zion of Sarasota, spent the day at the Bayside Pet Resort in Manatee County, (at the back end of SRQ Airport, just over the County line). It's a great place.   I left one of my Tee Shirts with Zion in the hope that he would be "comforted" with my smell. Not a bit!  He shredded it to pieces This is what I'll do if you leave me alone, if only for nine hours. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Then his canine remorse set in.  He used Auntie Ashley's Canine Concierge Company to order a replacement Tee Shirt from "Three Dog Bakery" at the University Town Centre Abomination. Sadly Zion got my size wrong , so I went to the store this morning, and replaced the "extra large" Tee Shirt which Auntie Ashley bought at Zion's instruction with a "...