Here are the topics for this delayed blog: a buddy bench; large flying animals; still secrets; reading non-fiction; your local library; NATO - the other view point.

Loneliness at school. Being the new kid in a new school can be lonely. So one student in Germany decided to install a "buddy bench." If you plunked yourself there, you were signalling you wanted to play with the others. The idea caught on and buddy benches are now found in the US.

Flying to safety . Poaching has become such a large problem in southern Africa that endangered species are being airlifted to safety. Eighteen elephants to three American zoos, even rhinos to Australia.

Still not available. George Will's column (4/16) takes note of several reports (or parts thereof) which are not yet in the public record. President Obama's upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia triggered Will's first comment: the still classified 28 pages of both  the  congressional inquiry and the later official 9/11Commission report (largely "known" from unofficial sources) which would undoubtedly fully expose the involvement of some prominent Saudis (royals, too?) in funding, planning, carrying out the 9-11 attack. Will also lists the CIA's unwillingness to declassify/explain its role in the long-ago 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco.
     With links to stories of the past, Will also notes that past presidents have all be involved in admitting that there were well- and ill-kept secrets, more than enough references to fuel conspiracy theorists.

Thomas Francis Meagher.  The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero (Timothy Egan, 2015) Fascinating look at the harsh treatment of the Irish by their English overlords. Most everyone knows how the Irish fled to America as the potato blight afflicted their main food source, but the personal trials and tribulations of the Young Irish Revolutionaries is not popularly known. Nor, how the British exported untold tons of food from Ireland to the world -- even as the poor Irish starved by the hundreds of thousands. Nor, how Australia and Tasmania were used as dumping grounds for poor Irish convicted in most cases of just trying to stay alive.

Where do you read? "A library where everybody knows your name." In his op-ed piece, Steve Baker argues that in these times of shrinking local budgets, communities should focus on making the local library a part of an entire community "place," part of a larger complex that draws in the community for a variety of reasons: community center, recreation facility, senior center, swimming pool, athletic fields, etc. "No one drives 20 miles to borrow a book."

NATO and US spending. Who's supporting whom? More often than not, Donald Trump and President Obama seem to agree that the major NATO nations are not doing all that they can/should to keep the alliance functioning smoothly. There is a 2% of GDP goal for military spending. Professor Andrew Moravcsik (Princeton) thinks there's more to the story, that European nations are spending significantly in other important ways, more so than the US acknowledges.

 Thanks for reading.  Have a good week.