Buffalo in the Streets, Cows With Guns, Cats with Rap Sheets, not necessarily in that order.

RantWoman is in the midst of her annual exercise in college alumni interviews of people applying to RantWoman's alma mater. The exercise always draws RantWoman's mind to the point of running away from home to go to college, to the workings of God because RantWoman would not have figured out...without...and to meditations on "Where are the young people?" Some of them are in college, questioning LOTS of things, maybe interested in Quakers or connected to Quakers by something outside Meeting but not necessarily keen on miles of transit unfriendly travel to the nearest Meeting. Ditto for RantWoman's experience of graduate school, though not, Not NOT current realities near RantWoman's Meeting.

Then there is the dance among leadings of God contemplative Quakers and Sitting in Worship Demands that I Also Get Up and DO SOMETHING quakers. And then there is the part about when people actually show up, for instance when there are young children to be nurtured, what community dynamics might dump a whole bunch of, um, historical challenges onto their parents' shoulders??? See, RantWoman feels awful about a sense of that in more than one situation. RantWoman further feels awful about the adult RantWoman still trying to parent a kid RantWoman, doing it badly, and definitely not creating the environment she would wish.

RantWoman does not think her current Meeting is embracing the either the value of proximity to a major university or various strands of upheaval in the lives of faith communities due to real estate realities, work patterns, and the needs and imperatives of people at different stages of life.

But RantWoman digresses and begs readers' indulgences if it is not entirely obvious where today's meditations / procrastination about fits of needed plain speaking are headed. RantWoman definitely believes in shared discernment. RantWoman has a versatile God who gets things done all kinds of ways.  Read. Hold. If it does not resonate let it go and let the meditations find the people they are supposed to find, and double bonus if the meditations find hearts younger than 60.

The Cat with a Rap Sheet

Kitty with a rap sheet was a beautiful but famously fussy tortoise-shell. Cat with Rap Sheet lived for many years with a college Coeds Cats and Commies co-op housemate of RantWoman's and her wife. RantWoman knew kitty long after she acquired her rap sheet from the State of NE. She was not a pick-me-up cat AT ALL but RantWoman considered it a great honor that Cat with a Rap Sheet would approach RantWoman and deigned to let RantWoman pet her.

Kitty acquired her rap sheet for a "provoked attack" while NE agricultural authorities were trying to induce her to come out from under a porch where she fled after being let out accidentally by her humans. The rest of her life, despite fussiness, she was a wonderful cat.

Sometimes it is fine just to let people think buffalo run wild in the Streets.

One reality of running far away from home to go to college is the incredible need for education about basic geographic and cultural realities unfamiliar to one's college classmates.

Sample question: "Montana? Is that by Iowa.?"

RantWoman, almost audibly rolling her eyes, "Idaho. Different 3-syllable I state."

RantWoman does not remember the exact conversation that made her decide sometimes it is just fine to let people think there are herds of wild buffalo running loose in the streets of the big city. But RantWoman has been thinking about that while trying to clear from her thoughts the earworms from the video below.

PS Brucellosis: a reason cows and buffalo would not hang together in the wild, though RantWoman has no idea what happens for places that raise / domesticate buffalo. Unnecessary detail?

WHO KNEW how much RantWoman was going to need facility about this need for her role as perpetual tour guide for the realities of Planet RantWoman?

As if RantWoman's feed were not full enough with disturbing content: Cows with guns

The following item is:

--A glorious internet side effect of a typo about a fire "in a chicken coup."

--A fabulous repository of terrible events and worse puns

--Decreed by the Service python and the flock of emotional support chickens ALL IN GOOD FUN with no Uzis, etc intended anywhere

--A disturbing enough barometer of mental health--or fussiness about mental health vocabulary--that RantWoman is in danger of getting kidnapped by otherwise pacifist vegans, pummeled into unconsciousness with organic carrots and sent off to climate change methane re-education

--All of the above