Sleeping in Cupbards

History 3 Minutes

(Note: This article is courtesy of Filly!)

The strange reasons medieval people slept in cupboards

22 January 2024

By Zaria Gorvett

These cozy, wardrobe-like pieces of furniture could reportedly sleep up to five people. Why did they fall out of fashion?

At a museum in Wick, in the far north of Scotland, is what looks like a particularly large pine wardrobe. With a pair of full-length double doors at the front, and suitcases stacked above it, it wouldn’t look out of place in a modern bedroom. It’s even assembled like regular flat-pack furniture – with each piece slotting together, so it can be easily moved and rebuilt. But this cupboard is not for storing shirts or jackets; there are no hangers or shelves inside. This is a box bed – and it’s designed to hold sleeping people.  

Otherwise known as a closet bed or close bed, the box bed was surprisingly popular across Europe from the medieval era to the early 20th Century. These heavy pieces of furniture involved exactly what you would expect – a box made of wood that contained a bed. Some were plain and humble, no more than basic wooden containers. Others were elaborately decorated, with carved, panelled or painted sides. Often the cupboards had doors that closed to impound the sleeper within the blackness of their cramped interiors, or a little curtained window. The fanciest had a variety of uses – with bonus drawers and a seat at their base. 

For centuries, drowsy farm-workers, fish-gutters, and even members of the nobility would crawl inside these cozy wooden dens each night, presumably being careful not to bash their elbows as they did so, and shut themselves in.

Box beds were versatile pieces of furniture. Often, they were used almost as miniature bedrooms – spillover places for people to sleep where there otherwise wouldn’t be enough space. In one case from 1890, a family living in the Scottish Highlands was too large for their single-room house – so some members slumbered in a box bed in the barn, among dogs and horses, according to the Wick Society. It was also common to use them for migrant workers in some areas, such as the overflow of herring-gutters who descended on the region of Wick during the fishing season – with up to five or six people required to share a bed.

In fact, sharing a box bed with family members or co-workers was not unusual. In the 1825 melodrama The Factory Lad, workers slept in stacks of box beds, with two or three people in each one. Some had holes for ventilation, but cramming too many people in may have carried a risk of suffocation – one tale from 13th-Century France involves a woman hiding three secret guests inside a bed, who then perish in its stuffy interior.  

Box beds were particularly common in Britain and on the continent in Europe. According to one account from 1840, most cottages in Brittany, France, included these pieces of furniture, which were typically made from oak and piled up to 4ft (1.2m) high with bedding. There might be several to a room, and each one would have a long wooden chest placed at their base. “This is always the seat of honor, and serves also as a step to assist mine hostess in mounting to her exalted couch,” wrote the author Thomas Adolphus Trollope.

But there was a further benefit to these sleeping-coffins: warmth. Without modern heating or insulation, in the winter bedrooms could be literally freezing – so cold that it was standard practice to go to bed wearing a hat, so that only your face was exposed. And it was significantly colder then.

Roger Ekirch, a university distinguished professor of history at Virginia Tech, Virginia, and the author of At Day’s Close: A History of Nighttime, explains that from the 14th to the 19th Century, Europe and portions of North America were experiencing the Little Ice Age. In London, the Thames froze over on eighteen occasions – an event that hasn’t happened since 1963. “Diaries spoke of sap from burning logs in fireplaces freezing as soon as it seeped from the bare ends… inkwells would freeze overnight,” he says.

This not only made bedmates an appealing prospect, but also the sheltered environment of a box bed, where warm air became trapped.

The box bed eventually became associated with poverty and country life, and fell out of fashion. By the mid-20th Century they were rare. However, now similar pieces of furniture are making a quiet comeback. Today it’s possible to buy bed tents, which turn sleeping areas into snug little caves with the added benefit of extra privacy, while wooden sleeping “nooks” that look suspiciously similar to box beds are being sold for aspirational “cottage style” homes.

SOURCE: BBC.COM

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92 thoughts on “Sleeping in Cupbards”

  5. Good Morning All!

    I can see the sun coming up, so that’s good. it’s chilly though–about 40* currently.

    later this afternoon we’ve got to take the Jeep to the garage to get inspected tomorrow morning and do the usual–pick up the mail and grab some bananas at the little market.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Good morning! I love it when you use stuff I’ve found – it gives me great satisfaction to be useful. A little warmer here this morning @ 47, hazy skies. Wheezer was on the chair again. I gotta say….I really just don’t understand all this glitz, glamor and brouhaha over a pope….he’s just one man and fallible, like all men!

      I gotta complain about my yard man, Jason. Geez! The price last year for just mowing was $40. They’ve now upped it to $50 just for mowing (takes about 45 minutes), $60 if she does the weed-eating, so I gave her $50 just for mowing. I wasn’t expecting them yet and hadn’t cleared the additional branches/bark that had fallen. I paid them $100 to clear the flower beds, pick up all the branches in the yard, & replace the screen on the patio last month. This time, I saw her pick up a few branches 3 times while he was mowing. Otherwise, she would have been just sitting and waiting for him to finish mowing. They left but returned about an hour later and she came to the door to say that I had to pay extra $’s for her picking up the branches – I gave her another $7. SMH – kind of ridiculous, IMO.

      I called them back later to clarify things: if I go with the full service @ $60, were they going to charge me extra if I didn’t pick up any branches first? No…..so now I’ve agreed to go with the $60 service just so I don’t have to deal with this BS. They must think I’m rich or something! Ha! That’s a joke!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Morning Filly!
        it’s a Catholic thing. We believe if God speaks, he speaks thru him–but only if the Pope declares he is speaking infallibly. (happened less than a handful of times throughout history) and he carries the traditions and duties of the church as divined from the first Pope. anyway…it’s a Catholic thing.
        sounds like your yard guy is getting pricey. But to be fair, my uncle (Mom’s brother) charged my mom $40 a week for cutting her grass (and running over and ruining her spouting every year) and my cousin (also next door) charged her $20 a week for the weed whacking.
        AND my brother has a lawn mower in mom’s shed but he hates to mow grass so she has to pay family to do it.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I’ll say again: your brother is a putz!!! LOL – to a certain extent, I understand about Jason since mowing and such is their only source of income as far as I know. Still, considering that it is JUST mowing, yeah, it’s a bit much for me. But my only other option is the guy who sprays for weeds, who charges $100 and insists on weekly mowing, or buying another riding mower myself. And they are dependable and trustworthy so…..it’s worth it for now.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. we offered to mow and weed whack when we visit her for the weekends–saving her $60 a month. my brother says the mower needs work but he can’t do it. sigh. then bring YOUR mower over and do it!
            so yeah PUTZ!

            Liked by 1 person

  7. Eric Daugherty

    @EricLDaugh

    🤣 LOL. Randy Fine just got elected to Congress from Florida and I love the way he goes off on Democrats. “These congressmen could’ve spent the last year and a half going to Israel to try and bring back Americans who were held hostage. Instead, they go to El Salvador to meet with an illegal immigration gang member who beat his wife. I don’t know what’s wrong with these people, but they need their heads examined.” –

    @VoteRandyFine

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Just The News: “A federal jury on Tuesday found that the New York Times did not commit libel against former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in an op-ed that it published in 2017, which she claimed was defamatory. The jury found that The Times did not publish the falsity with “actual malice,” the legal standard for liability in libel cases against public officials and figures.

    Palin and the outlet returned to court last week for a second trial in the case, which stems from an op-ed that inaccurately linked her to a mass shooting six years earlier in which then-Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was critically wounded.

    The piece attempted to connect a map Palin’s political action committee released, which showcased crosshairs over Democratic congressional electoral districts, to the 2011 assassination attempt, even though there was no evidence that the gunman ever saw the map. In the first trial, Palin’s legal team argued that the Times published an article on the same day of Giffords’ shooting making clear that there was no connection between the PAC and the shooting. The legal theory was that before publishing the opinion piece six years later, The Times failed to check their own records. The Times claimed it was simply a mistake.

    The former Times editor apologizes

    The New York Times corrected the opinion piece the day after it ran, and admitted that it was inaccurate. James Bennet, the former editor responsible for the inaccuracy in the piece, has also apologized to Palin for the piece.

    The verdict came after two hours of jury deliberation, and marked the second time that a jury had sided with the outlet. A jury first ruled against Palin in 2022. But an appeals court later reinstated the case after trial Judge Jed Rakoff erred in certain evidentiary rulings.

    The former Republican vice presidential nominee has not commented on whether she intends to appeal the latest verdict, but told reporters after the jury announced its decision that she was going to “go home to a beautiful family” and “get on with life.”

    “The decision reaffirms an important tenet of American law: publishers are not liable for honest mistakes,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for the New York Times, said in a statement.”

    Liked by 1 person

  12. “Australia: Our Indispensable Ally in the Fight for Freedom — THE MAY 3RD ELECTION IS A FORK IN THE ROAD”

    Michael T. Flynn LTG USA (RET), Apr 23, 2025

    ENTIRE ARTICLE: “Australia is not just an ally; it’s a cornerstone of our security and a fierce defender of liberty in a region teetering on the edge of tyranny. As our eyes and ears in the Indo-Pacific, Australia stands as a rampart against the creeping influence of authoritarian regimes, particularly the CCP. With an election looming on May 3rd, the stakes for Australia and the free world couldn’t be higher. Bad leadership and foreign influence threaten to erode this vital partnership. We risk losing our footing in a world where freedom is under siege.

    Today, their strategic position in the Indo-Pacific makes them indispensable. They monitor the South China Sea, where the CCP’s aggressive expansionism threatens global trade routes and sovereignty.

    They patrol the Pacific Islands, countering Beijing’s attempts to buy influence with predatory loans and infrastructure deals. Through the AUKUS pact, Australia is stepping up to deter aggression with cutting-edge nuclear-powered submarines, a game-changer for regional stability.

    Foreign influence, particularly from the CCP, has infiltrated Australia’s institutions, economy, and political discourse. Reports of Chinese money flowing into universities, real estate, and political campaigns are no secret. The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) has sounded the alarm on foreign interference, warning that it’s at unprecedented levels.

    Meanwhile, weak leadership risks compounding the problem. If Australia’s next government lacks the spine to confront these threats or cozies up to Beijing for short-term economic gains, the consequences will ripple far beyond their shores.

    The May 3rd election is a fork in the road. Australians will decide whether to elect leaders who will safeguard their sovereignty and strengthen ties with the United States and other free nations or those who will waver in the face of pressure. The choice isn’t just about Australia’s future—it’s about ours. If Australia falls under the sway of foreign influence or drifts away from the West, we lose a critical partner in countering the CCP’s global ambitions. Our ability to project power in the Indo-Pacific, secure supply chains, and maintain a free and open region will take a devastating hit.

    This isn’t fearmongering; it’s reality. Look at the data. China is Australia’s largest trading partner, accounting for nearly 30% of its exports. That economic leverage gives Beijing a dangerous foothold. Add to that the CCP’s Belt and Road initiatives and strategic port leases in places like Darwin, and you see a pattern of encroachment. Australia’s been fighting back—banning Huawei from its 5G networks, passing strict foreign interference laws, and calling out cyberattacks—but it’s a constant battle.

    The next government must double down, not retreat.

    Your nation has always been a beacon of courage and resilience. Now, the battlefield is different, but the fight is the same. On May 3rd, choose leaders who will protect your sovereignty, reject foreign influence, and keep Australia a proud member of the free world. The United States stands with you, but we need you to stand firm.

    The Indo-Pacific is the frontline in the global struggle between freedom and tyranny.”

    Liked by 1 person

  13. thoughts?

    Clarion

    April 23, 2025 9:45 am

    Yesterday I was trying to find some evidence that the Kristi Noem purse-snatching even happened.

    All I could find was a story by CNN, with “sources” and Secretary Noem’s own account, filtered through police and DHS “sources”.

    Why don’t the official sources have names?

    The first question when something like this happens would be, was there a camera?

    We were told right away that there was a camera. The obvious next question would be, “where is the footage from the robbery?”

    It was not addressed in updates to the story, the updates just gave more detail as to what was in the purse, such as the brand name of the wallet.

    If I wasn’t already suspicious about this (I was), seeing no mention of any release of a photo, and no comment yet from the restaurant, my doubts increased.

    Just a little while ago, I got on the computer to see whether I was just being foolish. Certainly there would be a picture of the man by now, so the public could help identify him, right?

    I found this. Obviously others have been asking where are the pictures too. Maybe they’re on Pam Bondi’s desk.

    Kristi Noem purse theft suspect was caught on camera – but you won’t see him yet

    Sources say investigators have looked at surveillance footage from inside and outside Capital Burger, including from nearby traffic cameras
    The U.S. Secret Service released a photo to law enforcement agencies of the man suspected of stealing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s purse from a D.C. restaurant on Easter.

    But they aren’t releasing the image to the public.

    https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/kristi-noem-purse-theft-suspect-was-caught-on-camera-but-you-wont-see-him-yet/3897138/

    What the heck? Why is what the thief looks like a big secret? What’s with all the anonymous “sources”?

    I have looked at reports that say the Secret Service is trying to track down the thief, but when I watch the video there isn’t anything from the Secret Service. just reporters saying what they’ve been told from “sources”.

    Does anyone else have anything more concrete?

    Like

  14. They showed a part of an interview with Elon on Fox this morning, verifying this plan.

    Daily Caller News Foundation

    “Elon Musk announced Tuesday that he plans to significantly scale back his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

    Speaking during Tesla’s earnings call, Musk said his involvement with DOGE would drop “significantly” beginning in May, calling the bulk of the reform effort “mostly done,” Axios reported. Musk said, however, that he will remain loosely involved through the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term to ensure the cuts stick.

    “I’ll have to continue doing it for I think the remainder of the president’s term just to make sure the waste and fraud that we stopped does not come roaring back, which it will do if it has the chance,” Musk said, according to Axios. “I think I’ll continue to spend a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the president would like me to do so and as long as it would be useful.”

    Musk’s dual role as Tesla CEO and federal efficiency czar has drawn increasing scrutiny, with some investors voicing concern that his political entanglements are hurting the brand. On the call, Musk said that Tesla had taken “a few bumps in the road” due to his alliance with Trump, but added the company remains on track.

    “I encourage people to look beyond the bumps and potholes of the road immediately ahead of us,” Musk said. “Lift your gaze to the bright shining citadel on the hill — I don’t know, some Reagan-esque imagery — and that’s where we’re headed.”

    Protests targeting Musk and Tesla escalated in March, with some charging stations vandalized and set ablaze. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said that three suspects will be prosecuted for using Molotov cocktails to destroy Tesla property, adding they will “face the full force of the law.”

    After Trump took office in January, his administration directed Musk and DOGE to review federal spending and pinpoint areas where taxpayer dollars could be saved. In February, criticism from Democrats intensified after Musk said on X that he and  Trump had agreed to overhaul the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

    Musk said the agency was squandering billions in taxpayer funds. He also said that some USAID-backed initiatives pushed a far-left agenda abroad and risked indirectly supporting extremist groups and controversial foreign institutions.

    Musk and DOGE did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.”

    Liked by 1 person

  15. “Trump’s Next Target In Dismantling The Censorship Complex Is CISA — The legislative branch must codify the administration’s policies to ensure a speech policing apparatus does return under a future president.”

    The Federalist, By: Ben Weingarten, April 23, 2025

    Chris Krebs

    ENTIRE ARTICLE: “In personnel and policy, the Trump administration has demonstrated a dogged devotion to dismantling and destroying the federal government-led censorship-industrial complex. One recent illustration is the State Department’s announcement that it has eliminated the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which censored The Federalist.

    One week prior, the White House revealed another vital effort to disarm the speech police — targeting an arguably more pernicious actor than the GEC. In an April 9 memorandum, the president called on relevant officials to revoke any active security clearance held by former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) chief Chris Krebs and to consider suspending security clearances of those at his cybersecurity firm, SentinelOne.

    Corporate media pounced on this development as part of a running feud between a president seeking vengeance and his virtuous insubordinate ex-subordinate, but there was far more significance to the memo.

    President Donald Trump’s sanctions came in response to the former CISA director’s having “weaponized and abused his government authority” via his involvement in the censorship-industrial complex. Now he will be held to account by losing his access to America’s secrets.

    But the president’s memo went still further. After detailing Krebs’ alleged malfeasance, Trump also tasked the attorney general and secretary of homeland security with investigating not only the ex-director for his activities as then-CISA chief, but CISA itself — going back six years and with a focus on “any instances where CISA’s conduct appears to have been contrary to the purposes and policies identified in Executive Order 14149,” which prohibits the federal government from engaging in censorship efforts.

    At the conclusion of that probe, the agency heads are to submit a report to the president “with recommendations for appropriate remedial or preventative actions to be taken to fulfill the purposes and policies of Executive Order 14149.”

    What makes this effort so significant? As the plaintiffs in the landmark Murthy v. Missouri case found, CISA was the “nerve center” of fed-led speech policing. In congressional testimony in part building on discovery in that case, I detailed how CISA had coordinated fed-led censorship efforts with Big Tech, flagged offending content for suppression, and helped cultivate consortia of private-sector entities to serve as force-multiplying cutouts for laundering government censorship efforts.

    Krebs’ Role in Censorship

    Krebs was integral to these efforts. As the presidential memo details, he was involved in “the censorship of disfavored speech implicating the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic” and helping suppress conservative viewpoints “under… guise of combatting supposed disinformation,” including through pressuring social media platforms to do so. He also assisted domestic political interference through his sub-agencies’ “blind[ing of] the American public to the controversy surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop” and downplaying or “promot[ing] the censorship of election information” around “risks associated with certain voting practices” and “election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines.”

    Perhaps most notoriously, under Krebs, CISA helped stand up the outsourced surveillance and censorship vehicle, the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), with a quartet of outside actors including the Stanford Internet Observatory — then-led by Alex Stamos, former chief security officer for Facebook. After Krebs’ ouster from CISA, Stamos would launch a consultancy with Krebs that would then be bought by SentinelOne.

    The EIP, as I reported for RealClearInvestigations, targeted among others The Federalist’s Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway for silencing due to content she shared concerning the 2020 election. It did so as part of a broader effort to pressure — alongside government — social media companies to expand their terms of service to suppress wide swaths of protected political speech skeptical of orthodoxy on election processes and outcomes; mass-surveil social media for offending content; and flag such content to social media companies for suppression. Those efforts resulted in the silencing of Americans in the heat of an election.

    The president issued Executive Order 14149 prohibiting the federal government from engaging in such efforts. But it also calls for an investigation like that which the president has demanded of CISA, to discover “misconduct by the federal government related to censorship of protected speech.”

    Already, the Trump administration has laid off more than 100 CISA staffers including those tasked with liaising with local and state election officials. It is reportedly planning to remove civil service protections from the vast majority of remaining employees, while threatening to remove one-third of them. And it has cut CISA funding to entities involved in 2020 censorship-related efforts. The revocation of Krebs’ security clearance may well impose an economic cost on him. He has stepped away from his firm and vowed to fight the president.

    An Accounting of the Censorship Regime

    But a fulsome investigation may reveal more about the size, scope, and nature of the sub-agency’s efforts — including those it sought to obscure during the latter years of the Biden administration after its work in “mis-, dis-, and mal-information” began to receive scrutiny. Only with full transparency can we get to the accountability and deterrence the White House is seeking to ensure our First Amendment rights are not violated again going forward.

    To date, no one has faced justice for imposing arguably the greatest censorship regime in U.S. history upon the American people.

    The Trump administration in exposing that regime, curtailing its efforts, and pursuing policies to ensure it remains de-fanged — doing what it can where it must to defend free speech.

    The Supreme Court allowed a partly CISA-driven “whole-of-society” censorship dragnet to persist by failing to rule on the merits of the case against it in Murthy. Ultimately, the legislative branch must codify the administration’s policies to ensure the speech policing apparatus does not once again spring into action under a future president.”

    https://thefederalist.com/2025/04/23/trumps-next-target-in-dismantling-the-censorship-complex-is-cisa/

    Liked by 1 person

  16. EXCERPT: “Corporate media love a good crime — especially when that crime aids their mission to advance their political agenda. When it comes to harms that counteract their preferred narratives, such as the abuse and exploitation that wrack the abortion and fertility industries, however, press outlets are indefensibly silent.

    The media’s deliberate ignorance of certain victims dates back decades, such as when infamous Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell was arrested, tried, and eventually convicted for murdering born-alive babies in 2013. At the time, reporters at national publications refused to answer for their silence. It wasn’t until The Federalist’s own Mollie Hemingway began publicly pressuring the media over their Gosnell blackout that they reluctantly participated in coverage or eagerly attempted to explain why they weren’t interested in “local crime.”

    Yet despite the enduring list of wrongs abortion and fertility facilities alike have committed against vulnerable women and children, the corporate media’s information void has continued. Thanks to the recently published 10-episode podcast “Conceiving Crime,” launched by Live Action and hosted by pro-life advocate Sami Parker, however, these victims’ stories aren’t completely untold.

    Parker wouldn’t necessarily label herself a true crime “fan.” She has consumed her fair share of “Crime Junkie” episodes and seen “all the serial killer documentaries” though. Absent from those, both of which take up a significant amount of space in the true crime genre, are the stories like “The Baby Farm,” “Not The Daughter I Wanted,” and “The Forgotten Patient.”

    “Pre-born babies, exploited children, vulnerable women, embryos — they all deserve justice too,” Parker said. “And the crimes within these industries are all totally hidden behind power, behind money, and cultural taboos.”

    “Conceiving Crime” is the product of an explicitly pro-life organization, but Parker says it’s not exclusively an activist tool. According to her, the episodes exist to “ask listeners to wrestle with the deeper questions.”…..”

    https://thefederalist.com/2025/04/23/conceiving-crime-podcast-tells-horrors-of-abortion-fertility-industries-that-corporate-media-wont/

    Liked by 1 person

  17. “Democrats Begin Chugging Artificial Food Dyes To Protest RFK”

    Politics · Apr 22, 2025 · BabylonBee.com

    Image for article: Democrats Begin Chugging Artificial Food Dyes To Protest RFK

    U.S. — On the heels of news that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be banning synthetic colors in the manufacturing of foods, Democrats across the country began chugging artificial food dyes as a bold act of protest.

    The civil disobedience served to underscore the displeasure of citizens on the Left for what they described as oppressive fascism that would deprive them of their right to develop severe hormonal, autoimmune, and reproductive side effects, as well as put themselves at increased risk for various cancers.

    “You have no right to take away our Red 40!” shouted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as she drank a concentrated form of the dangerous artificial food dye straight from a jug. “If it’s good enough for Doritos and Lucky Charms, then it’s good enough for me. Poisoning our population is part of the fabric of America, and we will not stand idly by and let RFK save us from a laundry list of health issues. Pass me another jug!”

    Other prominent Democrats voiced strong support for the processed food industry, believing in Americans’ right to choose. “Who is RFK to tell us what we can put into our bodies?” asked an angry Elizabeth Warren after bathing in a vat of Yellow 5. “My food, my choice! Inject it straight into my veins. Like my tribal ancestors, I will fight to the bitter end to preserve my freedom, and the freedom of all Americans, to ingest harmful chemicals on a daily basis.”

    At publishing time, Democrats had rallied their voters behind the idea that the adverse side effects of artificial food dyes served a vital role in reducing the population.

    Liked by 1 person

  22. “Wild fires in the Pine Barrens section of New Jersey in Ocean County spread to over 8,500 acres yesterday. The fires closed a huge stretch of the Garden State Parkway and forced evacuations of some residents. They’re going through a drought up there as we are here in No. Central Florida.”

    Liked by 1 person

  25. Daily Caller News Foundation

    “Democratic Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, announced his retirement after 44 years in Congress on Wednesday.

    Durbin, 80, was up for reelection in 2026 and was widely expected to not seek a sixth term in the Senate. He is the fourth Senate Democrat to announce their retirement in 2025. Durbin is the longest-serving Senate whip in American history, occupying the No. 2 position for Senate Democrats for two decades.

    He explained his decision to not seek reelection as knowing it was time to pass the torch. “I have to be honest about this. There are good people in the wings, good people on the bench ready to serve, and they can fight this fight just as effectively as I can,” Durbin told the New York Times. “There comes a point where you have to face reality that this is the time to leave for me.”

    Durbin’s retirement is likely to set off a contested Democratic primary to succeed him in the Senate.”

    Liked by 1 person

    1. OH WOW!!!!!!!!!!!

      that greenhouse is GORGEOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      not practical here though…too many trees to fall on it…bears to crash into it. and i would be soooo jealous if you got one! LOLOLOL

      Liked by 1 person

  32. OhNoYouDoNot

    April 23, 2025 3:20 pm

    🚨 BREAKING: Florida is on the verge of the creation of “DONALD J. TRUMP BOULEVARD” down in Palm Beach – the road leading into Mar-a-Lago.

    A bill just passed through the state Senate UNANIMOUSLY that would rename Southern Boulevard between Kirk Road and S. Ocean Boulevard.

    🔥🔥

    It will head to Governor Ron DeSantis for signature if the House approves.

    The amendment making the change was filed by @JayCollinsFL today.

    🚨 BREAKING: Florida is on the verge of the creation of “DONALD J. TRUMP BOULEVARD” down in Palm Beach – the road leading into Mar-a-Lago.

    A bill just passed through the state Senate UNANIMOUSLY that would rename Southern Boulevard between Kirk Road and S. Ocean Boulevard.

    🔥🔥… pic.twitter.com/rOahUgj8AY

    — Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) April 23, 2025

    Liked by 1 person

  33. “The World Economic Forum appears to be on the brink of collapse – Thanks in large part to Donald Trump and the failure of the WEF’s progressive advocacy”

    Jordan Schachtel, Apr 23, 2025

    ENTIRE ARTICLE: “The hits keep coming for one of the most infamous global organizations of our time. The World Economic Forum (WEF), once the most prestigious international networking (and progressive political advocacy) group in the world, is facing a crisis that threatens to take down the whole organizational entity.

    Klaus Schwab, the founder and 50-plus-year uncontested head honcho of the WEF, resigned from the organization without warning on Sunday. This caught onlookers by surprise and led to a plethora of intrigue about what exactly is happening at the outfit that hosts the annual high-profile confab in Davos, Switzerland.

    Well, now we know what’s been causing a ruckus behind the scenes. The World Economic Forum launched an investigation against Schwab after whistleblowers came forward with a plethora of serious allegations against both Mr. Schwab and his wife, Hilda, who had long been intimately involved with the organization.

    The Wall Street Journal has the scoop:

    World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab is under investigation by the organization he created after a new whistleblower letter alleged financial and ethical misconduct by the longtime leader and his wife.

    The anonymous letter was sent last week to the Forum’s board and raised concerns about the Forum’s governance and workplace culture, including allegations that the Schwab family mixed their personal affairs with the Forum’s resources without proper oversight, according to the letter and people familiar with the matter.

    It included allegations that Klaus Schwab asked junior employees to withdraw thousands of dollars from ATMs on his behalf and used Forum funds to pay for private, in-room massages at hotels. It also alleged that his wife Hilde, a former Forum employee, scheduled “token” Forum-funded meetings in order to justify luxury holiday travel at the organization’s expense.

    A whistleblower also alleged that the Schwab family used WEF funds to buy a luxury mansion — pulling tens of millions of dollars out of the organization’s accounts — and maintained it exclusively for private use.

    The report adds that Schwab has denied the accusations, yet the WEF board refused to allow him to address the board on Sunday, the day he resigned. “Following my recent announcement, and as I enter my 88th year, I have decided to step down from the position of Chair and as a member of the Board of Trustees, with immediate effect,” Schwab said in a statement released Monday.

    In the meantime, the WEF board has appointed Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the former CEO of Nestlé, as the interim chairman as they search for a permanent successor to Schwab.

    The WEF peaked at the height of the coronavirus hysteria era, when Schwab’s creation cemented itself as the narrative and ideas shop of the global progressive elite class. At Schwab’s annual Davos conference, global narratives like “The Great Reset” and “the energy transition” were spawned and advanced through the collaboration of the WEF and its partner entities.

    However, with the second term of President Donald Trump underway, there is no more global consensus for the climate hoax and other authoritarian Trojan horse narratives that were used to roll up power and impose anti-human policies upon the West and beyond.

    Davos was once a must-attend for tier one executives and global leaders. However, the 2025 conference failed to make much of a splash whatsoever, and many of the world’s power brokers were absent from Davos for the first time in several years.

    With the emergency resignation and an investigation into Schwab, the WEF is seeking to fast reinvent itself (and resecure its funding mechanisms) without its founder and ideological lynchpin. Klaus Schwab is virtually interchangeable with the World Economic Forum. Separating Schwab from the organization he founded and led for over 50 years will prove to be a herculean task, if it’s even possible to accomplish such a feat.”

    Liked by 1 person

  34. Red State, By Katie Jerkovich | 3:46 PM on April 23, 2025

    ENTIRE ARTICLE: “President Donald Trump’s latest plans to install not one but two giant flag poles on the White House complex are guaranteed to melt those on the left.

    During an impromptu press briefing on Wednesday outside the White House, Trump spoke to reporters about his plans to dig holes for flag poles that will hold a giant American flag.

    “We’re putting up a beautiful, almost 100-foot-tall, American flag [poles] on this side and another one on the other side,” Trump said as he pointed to the spaces on the North and South Lawn he surveyed with a crew for the placement of the poles.

    “Two flags, top of the line,” he added. “And they’ve needed flag poles for 200 years. It was something that I’ve often said, ‘you know, they don’t have a flag pole.”

    “So, we are putting one right where you saw us,” Trump continued. “And we are putting another one on the other side on top of the mounds. It’s gonna be two beautiful poles.”

    The president pointed out that the installations on the White House grounds would be “paid for by Trump” before he revealed that the new poles will arrive in about a week. The comments came after images surfaced online earlier in the day of Trump walking around the grounds with his arms spread wide while picking out the locations of the poles.

    “.@POTUS surveys the North Lawn of the White House to find a suitable location to build a “beautiful flag pole for the American flag,” the official Rapid Response account of the Trump 47 White House read.

    Dan Scavino added, “President Trump on the North Lawn of the @WhiteHouse looking for the perfect spot to put a 100 ft tall American Flag pole—he will determine a second spot on the South Lawn as well, at his personal expense…”

    Another social media user noted what a difference a year makes, comparing when former President Joe Biden flew the transgender flag at the White House.

    “President Trump is adding MASSIVE American flags to the White House,” the post read. “Biden added a MASSIVE trans flag to the White House—notice how the pride flag is in the center rather than the beautiful American flag. President Trump loves his country. The previous administration hates our country.”

    Given how the left feels about American flags and how nervous the symbol of red, white, and blue makes them, it is safe to assume they are going to throw a fit about this latest move by Trump. And who can forget the meltdown those on the left had during President Trump’s first term over First Lady Melania Trump’s re-do of the White House Rose Garden to make it more accessible, as previously reported.

    At the time we were inundated with hot-takes like a headline from The New York Times, “Marie Antoinette Would Be Proud.” 

    It was reposted by fashion magazine’s Jennifer Wright, who wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “I’d say that overhauling your garden during a time of national unrest is a real Marie Antoinette move, but to my knowledge Marie Antoinette did not make the garden worse.”

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Liked by 1 person

  39. Gail Combs(@gailcombs)Online
    Wolf
    April 23, 2025 15:55

    US Senate Judiciary Committee:

    Grassley Challenges Senate Democrats’ Promotion of Unchecked Judicial Power, Vows to Take Legislative Action“The practice of sweeping nationwide injunctions, broad restraining orders, and judicial policymaking must end.”

    Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today challenged Democrats’ continued refusal to acknowledge the judicial branch’s constitutional limits.

    In response to Ranking Member Dick Durbin’s (D-Ill.) request for unanimous consent on a resolution demanding the executive branch comply with all federal court rulings, Grassley offered amendments to reflect the limits of judicial power. Grassley’s amendments affirmed that the executive branch must comply with all lawful federal court rulings. Durbin objected to the commonsense amendments.

    Grassley further spoke on the recent uptick in sweeping and potentially lawless orders issued by individual district judges and reaffirmed the Senate Judiciary Committee’s intent to take action.

    “The President of the United States shouldn’t have to ask permission from more than 600 different district judges to manage the executive branch he was elected to lead… The practice of sweeping nationwide injunctions, broad restraining orders and judicial policymaking must end. It’s unconstitutional, it’s anti-democratic and it’s imprudent. If the Supreme Court won’t stop it, Congress must,” Grassley said.

    View Grassley’s amendments HERE and HERE.

    Dick Durbin needs to leave NOW!

    Liked by 1 person

  40. “‘Waste That S—t’: In Interview With Free Beacon, Fetterman Tells Trump To Dump Iran Talks and Destroy Tehran’s Nuclear Facilities — ‘You’re never going to be able to negotiate with that kind of regime,’ Dem senator says”

    Free Beacon, Jon Levine, April 23, 2025

    Sen. John Fetterman (Getty Images)

    EXCERPT: “Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) says the Trump administration should drop nuclear negotiations with Iran and finish off the country’s nuclear facilities with a military strike.

    “Waste that s—t,” the Pennsylvania Democrat told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview on Wednesday. “You’re never going to be able to negotiate with that kind of regime that has been destabilizing the region for decades already, and now we have an incredible window, I believe, to do that, to strike and destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

    Fetterman dismissed the foreign policy experts who warn that striking Iran would lead to the outbreak of a regional war. “And remember, all of these so-called experts were all wrong,” he said. “You know, they’ve been saying for years and years Hezbollah was the ultimate badass that kept Israel in check, and we can’t move on anything beyond that.”

    As it turned out, Fetterman said, the Iranian proxy group “couldn’t fight for s—t. And Hamas, literally, are just a bunch of tunnel rats with junkie rockets in the back of a Toyota truck. And now the Houthis have been effectively neutered as well. So what’s left? You have Iran, and they have a nuclear facility, and it’s clearly only for weapons.”

    Fetterman’s remarks come as the Trump administration barrels forward with negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program that have so far been defined by mixed messages. Going into the talks, the administration said any deal would require Tehran to dismantle its nuclear program. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff later suggested a deal could allow Iran to enrich uranium up to a certain level. Then he walked back that walk-back, saying Iran must agree to “stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment” to ink a deal.

    A deal that allows Iran to enrich uranium would resemble former president Barack Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which President Donald Trump pulled out of during his first term, describing the deal as “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”

    The punishing sanctions imposed by the first Trump administration brought Iran to the brink of bankruptcy, and Trump announced a return to his “maximum pressure” campaign when he returned to office this year. The Iranian regime tried to have Trump assassinated before the 2024 presidential election…..”

    https://freebeacon.com/national-security/waste-that-s-t-in-interview-with-free-beacon-fetterman-tells-trump-to-dump-iran-talks-and-destroy-tehrans-nuclear-facilities/

    Liked by 1 person

  41. Clarion
    April 23, 2025 3:53 pm

    “Climate Activists” who were vandalizing the interior of Trump Tower in NYC have now been ARRESTED by Secret Service

    GOOD!

    These clowns should face FEDERAL charges now! They’ll actually face some time!

    🚨 #BREAKING: “Climate Activists” who were vandalizing the interior of Trump Tower in NYC have now been ARRESTED by Secret Service

    GOOD!

    These clowns should face FEDERAL charges now! They’ll actually face some time! pic.twitter.com/LNs6H38dO1

    — Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) April 23, 2025

    Like

  42. Ourey, CO

    NF: I have one of these Zero Gravity chairs! Soooo comfortable! Years ago, when my Mom could still come up and visit, she wanted to sleep outside so I took 2 cushions from the loveseat and made up a bed for her on the chair! She said it was some of the most comfortable sleep she’d had for a while! I napped on it occasionally, too!

    Liked by 1 person

  44. Shiprock, New Mexico

    Alpe Di Siusi, Italy – some pretty incredible shrooms!!!

    Alpe Di Siusi, Italy

    Altea, Spain

    Altea, Spain

    Dolomites Unesco World Heritage Site

    Dolomites Unesco World Heritage Site

    Liked by 1 person

  48. I am adding a short daily prayer to the board. I would invite each of you, if you wish, to also add one or maybe two of your own liking. I do not want to stifle anyone but please limit yourself to one or two religious postings. here’s one I found that I liked.

    Like

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