So what I'm hearing is that you are in the market for more foster kittens ...

2026: John Scalzi publishes “Planet of the Apiaries,” hailed by critics as a humorous sci-fi dystopian masterpiece.

2050: Scalzi’s novel (except for the humorous bits) is now studied for its prescient insight into the collapse of human society.

I had the same thought.

Reckon … trifle … these are synonymous, right? /s

I assumed it meant that the rocket made it to heaven, and hit an angel playing the harp.

*DANNY Smith. Shoot, I knew I should have read through that one more time before publishing it.

The other song is the haunting "Coal Mine in Kentucky." One of the writers/performers is the daughter of Dave Smith, who is featured in _Coal's Deadly Dust._

"If you can turn a light on, thank a miner. If you don't have to think about your next breath, thank God."

The first of these is Philip Bowen's _Vampire in Appalachia_: "While the rich keep getting richer, and the sick keep getting sicker, there's a vampire in Appalachia, and we're running out of blood."

Making these stories more widely known results in pressure on the government agencies and private companies, who (too often, it seems) would rather bury the problem than solve it.

It also is a great chance for me to share two great songs related to this awful story ...

That discussion (coming up on Thursday night) is one of my favorite class sessions, because it's a great illustration for my students—who typically have not thought too much about such things—of the important role independent media organizations play in telling these stories.

And I thought about that birthday girl. Wherever that now 20ish-year-old young lady is now, I hope she and her parents are still singing that song.

And I hope she has better birthdays ahead.

This past week, the NCAA convention returned to Nashville. On Wednesday night, I attended the NCAA Woman of the Year celebration, and at the end of the ceremony, they played ... Rachel Platten's "Fight Song."

In the back-story I wrote in my head about this family, I imagined that these parents had made a very deliberate choice to have their daughter sing THAT song—a Clinton campaign theme song—on the day after Trump's first inauguration, while a half-million women and men marched in Washington.

It became apparent that they were on a sort of "scavenger hunt," with a list of challenges to complete. I then saw a man and woman nearby, chaperoning from a discrete distance; I assumed they were the parents who had organized this as part of their daughter's birthday party.

I sat and listened to them, smiling in appreciation for their performance (while also puzzled about what brought it on).

When they finished, they stepped off the stage, and consulted a piece of paper, which led them to ask a stranger if they had a pencil they would be willing to part with.

After arranging themselves around a tablet so they could see the lyrics, they began to sing:

"Like a small boat on the ocean
sending big waves into motion;
Like how a single word
can make a heart open;
I might only have one match,
but I can make an explosion ..."