{"id":554,"date":"2010-05-24T21:26:54","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T02:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinomara.com\/blog\/?p=554"},"modified":"2010-05-24T21:26:54","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T02:26:54","slug":"a-little-positivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/?p=554","title":{"rendered":"A little positivity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many of my friends keep asking me about how the oil disaster in the Gulf is doing, and I tend to respond that I can&#8217;t even think about it.  I keep the Times-Picayune&#8217;s headlines in my feed reader, and it seems like literally every third news item is about the tragedy.  If you really want to know what&#8217;s going on it&#8217;s all <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.nola.com\/news\/gulf-oil-spill\/\">here on NOLA.com&#8217;s page about the oil<\/A>.  I felt that <A HREF=\"http:\/\/b.rox.com\/2010\/05\/24\/dark-cloud-of-oil\/\">Editor B&#8217;s comments on the whole thing<\/A> summed up my feelings pretty well.<\/p>\n<p>Since the oil is so depressing I am concentrating on other good things instead.  For instance, last year the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.ca.uky.edu\/entomology\/entfacts\/ef003.asp\">Buck Moth caterpillars<\/A> (horrid stinging beasts) were out in what felt like record numbers, but because of an exceptionally cold winter this year they&#8217;re not nearly so bad.  Likewise I think that our winter helped slow down the mosquitos this year, <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.nola.com\/news\/t-p\/metro\/index.ssf?\/base\/news-35\/127226342322160.xml&#038;coll=1\">a sentiment shared by others<\/A>, and also the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Formosan_subterranean_termite\">Formosan termites<\/a> aren&#8217;t swarming badly yet &#8211; no thick clouds of buzzing bugs obscuring every streetlight in sight.<\/p>\n<p>But the best news I&#8217;ve had yet today is that this building:<\/p>\n<p><CENTER><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/kevinomara\/4447906223\/\" title=\"Lindy Boggs Medical Center por Brother O'Mara, en Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4054\/4447906223_f9111c73c3_m.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"116\" alt=\"Lindy Boggs Medical Center\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/CENTER><\/p>\n<p>the deserted Lindy Boggs medical center that has stood empty and falling apart since the storm has <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.nola.com\/news\/index.ssf\/2010\/05\/catholic_non-profit_buys_lindy.html\">been purchased and plans are in place to turn it into a nursing home and hospital<\/A>.  It&#8217;s great to see that such a useful building is being put back into operation instead of being bulldozed to make way for a shopping mall.<\/p>\n<p>Since I can&#8217;t reach out and touch all the higher-ups at BP (and by &#8220;touch&#8221; you know I mean &#8220;strangle until no sign of life is left&#8221;) I have to take the good news where I can find it, and this is pretty good news indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many of my friends keep asking me about how the oil disaster in the Gulf is doing, and I tend to respond that I can&#8217;t even think about it. I keep the Times-Picayune&#8217;s headlines in my feed reader, and it seems like literally every third news item is about the tragedy. If you really want [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-orleans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}