Cryptoquote Spoiler – 05/22/18

“I celebrate you as you remember the power of grace and pride, and I challenge you to choose freedom over fear.”   —   Janelle Monae

(I think this girl has it all!  She’s beautiful, intelligent, and very talented.  She’s fierce!  And, she’s so friggin’ cute and petite!  And, I actually knew of her before my daughter did!  Just like I did with Mayer Hawthorne, although she tries to fight me on this.  Our government, and the corporate media, love to play up the illusion of “security”.  There really is no such thing, folks.  Especially as an absolute.  They play the fear card constantly, and try to convince us that we have to be willing to surrender our privacy, and freedom, in order to be “safe” and “secure”.  It is B.S., friends!  So, take Janelle’s advice, and choose freedom over fear.  Be well and do good, friends.)   —   YUR

Image courtesy of Google

Jumble Spoiler – 05/22/18

Visual Description:  Appreciative of their gifts.

SMOTP  =  STOMP,  IRREV  =  RIVER,  UDONEF  =  FONDUE,  PUNTEA  =  PEANUT   —   Giving us:  SOMERNDEEUT

Clue/Question:  When they figured out how to get syrup from maples, it was – – –

Answer:  “TREE–MENDOUS“

(Wow!  A super Tuesday Jumble pun!  I can’t say stinky, because I love the smell of maple syrup, and other maple products.  Even maple flavored beer!  All of today’s clue words are familiar old friends again.  One of the jumbles, “smotp” has been used before.  The other three seem to be new.  Both “udonef” and “puntea” were challenging for me.  I even had to back into “peanut”!  And, it still took me a while, knowing I needed the E,U and T.  In that order, no less!  Very often, I attribute these troublesome jumbles to my negative biases, like with “poetry” and “casino”.  But, I love peanuts!  I was just eating some last night.  I guess I just gotta give it up for Hoyt’s great jumbling skills!

The answer letter layout was another super jumble.  By itself, it gave nothing away.  The quotation marks and the hyphen, along with the avoidance of the word TREE in the cartoon’s dialog, were what clued me into the answer.

The cartoon is a fine depiction of people who clearly have a deep appreciation for the natural world.  I remember arguing, with a very conservative, dear friend of mine, about the virtues of the native people of the Americas.  He still liked to think of them as savages, and not necessarily peaceful, because tribes did war against each other from time to time.  I countered that all people were territorial, to an extent, and it wasn’t much different from European countries warring with each other.  I just love the way they respected their environment, and everything in it.  When they would kill an animal it would be only for food, and not for “sport”.  And, they would go to great lengths to use as much of the carcass as humanly possible.  They didn’t view the world as something they should lord over.  They didn’t have that arrogant air of entitlement.  They saw that they were an equal partner in nature, and they recognized that they had a responsibility to not despoil it.  They were surprisingly far sighted.  But, I digress.  The abundance of trees in Jeff’s cartoon was also a clue to today’s answer.  Did you catch the shadow of a deer lurking to the left?  Be well and do good, friends.)   —   YUR

Images courtesy of Google