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Attractive nuisance.

Last sum­mer I wrote about going to the 48 Hour Film Chal­lenge awards, held in a loft over­look­ing the Packard-plant ruin, and how the arson­ists trash­ing the place thought­fully put on a fire for us. I think I also men­tioned the truck stick­ing out the window:

truckinwindow

Turns out the truck exit was an ongo­ing project. In Sep­tem­ber, some­one finally got it all the way out. Was it cap­tured on video? Do you even need to ask? The whole pack­age, from the Wall Street Jour­nal, ran last week.

I have mixed feel­ings about this. On the one hand, urban explo­ration — which is the high­fa­lut­ing name for peo­ple who tres­pass in aban­doned build­ings with­out mal­ice; the rest we just call thieves and van­dals — lends a cer­tain energy to the city, and draw more eyes to the beauty of what’s left behind and stand­ing open to the ele­ments. I’m con­sis­tently amazed by the things you can find here, from the guy who turned up Mar­vin Gaye’s check­book and fur-storage bill in the old Motown office build­ing to the darker, more heart­break­ing archae­ol­ogy under­taken by Jim Grif­fioen in the aban­doned schools. There’s an imma­ture part of me that looks at a crew of guys push­ing a truck out a fourth-floor win­dow and says, “There’s some­thing you wouldn’t see in Fort Wayne, ain’a?”

But the adult thinks some­thing else, and finds this the most inter­est­ing line in the story:

Its cur­rent owner, Romel Casab, did not return calls seek­ing comment.

The fact the Packard plant even has an owner aston­ished me; I thought the place had been lost to unpaid taxes eons ago. Casab is a well-known real-estate spec­u­la­tor, and I’m sure he’s hid­den him­self behind lay­ers of cor­po­rate struc­ture, for when­ever the inevitable hap­pens; some­one is going to die in this build­ing if they haven’t already, and given the legal prece­dents on attrac­tive nui­sances, I’d like to know how he’s insulated.

What am I talk­ing about? No one came after Matty Moroun when the home­less guy got frozen into that ware­house hockey rink last year. The insu­la­tion is: No one really cares.

Any­way, I think the anony­mous explorer/vandal in the story said it best: “If you decide you want to push a dump truck out of a win­dow, this is the place to do it.”

So. How’s your week going? My sojourn at Wayne State went well. I’m always struck, when I visit, of the dif­fer­ence between it and other col­lege cam­puses I’ve spent time on. It really is the United Nations of higher ed, so much more diverse in its stu­dent body than, say, the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan, which was hardly White State itself. As usual, there were plenty of girls in Islamic head scarves, dressed oth­er­wise exactly the same as their fel­low stu­dents, except for the long-sleeves-and-pants thing, which doesn’t look out of place in Novem­ber. I don’t know if it’s inten­tional or what, but it under­lines that you can cover up a lot of a woman’s body and still have a girl who can turn heads, a fact that prob­a­bly dri­ves their fathers insane.

After­ward, a Habana wrap at the Rus­sell Street Deli — black beans, roasted corn, toma­toes, onions, pep­pers, lime vinai­grette, a sprin­kling of that light, crumbly cheese. Never has veg­e­tar­i­an­ism tasted so good.

Which brings us to the bloggage:

Speak­ing of Jim at Sweet Juniper, you have never seen kids’ Hal­loween cos­tumes as cute as his kids’, and they’re all handmade.

And now I must hie myself to yon gym. The trainer says he’s going to put us on the ergome­ters, i.e, row­ing machines, i.e. TORTURE IN MECHANICAL FORM, for the remain­der of the month. It would be so, so easy to skip. But I must not.

Posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 10:45 am
in Detroit life.

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55 responses to
“Attractive nuisance.”

  1. moe99 said on November 10th, 2009 at 11:19 am

    Re: Ronald Rea­gan from yesterday’s thread. I did not recall that Pak­istan acquired their nukes under his watch:

    http://​www​.tinyrev​o​lu​tion​.com/​m​t​/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​0​0​3​1​3​9.html

  2. brian stouder said on November 10th, 2009 at 11:43 am

    Moe, you go! While I liked Saint Ronald back in the day, now I see why many did not. His­tory will have fun with him, I think; a sort of latter-day Calvin Coolidge (which he’d take as a com­pli­ment, I think!) who con­fi­dently dri­ves right through all the twisty bits, blithely ignor­ing all the wreck­age in his rear-view mirrors.

    Any­way, speak­ing of pleas­ant col­lege milieus, while Julie works to build and pol­ish her ser­mon this evening (which sounds like a gen­uinely daunt­ing task!), the young folks and I will go see Andrew Sul­li­van speak at IPFW, which should be interesting.

    But here’s a cul­tural note for the north­east Indi­ana crowd here­abouts, that I stum­bled upon last night: on March 15, 2010, Lin­coln biog­ra­pher and scholar Michael Burlingame his-own-self is com­ing to Fort Wayne, and speak­ing at the Allen County Pub­lic Library! I got to yap with him a lit­tle bit at the Lin­coln Col­lo­quium at Spring­field this past Octo­ber, and found him to be a lively and engag­ing fel­low. (I went after him about his exceed­ingly rough treat­ment of Mary Lin­coln, in his mas­sive new Lin­coln biog­ra­phy, and he gamely defended all points)

    So mark your cal­en­dars! Beware the Ides of March — and don’t miss it! Pre­sume­ably it will be a free event at the library, but even if not, I’ll be there for sure

    edit: and speak­ing of an “attrac­tive nui­sance”, there’s this, about Car­rie Prejean:

    http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​3​3​8​2​3​0​7​9​/​n​s​/​t​o​d​a​y​-​t​o​d​a​y​_​p​eople/

    given her video trou­bles, and that her book is titled “Still Stand­ing”, I pre­dict no end of jokes, for her…which come to think of it, might be their mar­ket­ing ploy

  3. Connie said on November 10th, 2009 at 12:09 pm

    Yes, Nancy, lovely Hal­loween cos­tumes, but imag­ine the work that went into them! It reminds that one of my early posts here was to tell Nancy no one hand hems a Hal­loween witch cos­tume, there is fab­ric glue and iron on hem­ming. Save the hand work for things where it counts.

    Back in the early 90s I made match­ing clown suits for hus­band, kid, and dog, they won first place for best group of three or more at our local con­test. Hav­ing an adult size clown out­fit in the base­ment closet has been handy over the years, but it is recently dis­ap­peared when the lendee quit her job (with me) with no notice and absconded on her land­lord. I do not expect to see it again. That makes me sad.

  4. LAMary said on November 10th, 2009 at 12:14 pm

    Before I left the stay at home mom work­force, I made all the cos­tumes. One year the kids were jel­ly­fish. I would put my jel­ly­fish cos­tumes against Jim’s Grif­fin and Pega­sus if I was inter­ested in com­pet­ing, but his cos­tumes are so beau­ti­ful I wouldn’t do that. Another year the kids were a ptero­dactyl and pray­ing man­tis respec­tively. I’ve done fruit bats, zebras, bee­tles, and knights.

  5. nancy said on November 10th, 2009 at 12:16 pm

    And as he points out, they’ll be play­ing in those cos­tumes for as long as they’ll fit. I wouldn’t want to be the one in charge of vac­u­um­ing up all those feath­ers, however.

  6. moe99 said on November 10th, 2009 at 12:18 pm

    Brian, have you seen the lat­est ker­fuf­fle over John Keegan’s recently released book on the Civil War?

    http://​nielsen​hay​den​.com/​m​a​k​i​n​g​l​i​g​h​t​/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​0​1​1​8​3​1​.​h​t​m​l​#​011831

    I was a big fan of Keegan’s until this. James McPherson’s writ­ings brought me back to read­ing about the Civil War.

  7. Jeff Borden said on November 10th, 2009 at 12:23 pm

    Brian,

    Is this a great coun­try or what? Car­rie Pre­jean goes from a beauty pageant con­tes­tant with store bought assets to a polit­i­cal fig­ure sim­ply by stat­ing her big­otry. She’s given prime tele­vi­sion time to expound on said prej­u­dice and to paint her­self as a vic­tim while ped­dling her quickie book to the rubes.

    Boy howdy. That is some wicked career arc.

  8. mark said on November 10th, 2009 at 12:30 pm

    moe– if you for­got that Pak­istan acquired their nukes under Rea­gan, that’s good. Because they didn’t.

    Pak­istan began (or at least pub­licly acknowl­edged) ura­nium enrich­ment activ­i­ties in the early eight­ies, in response to India’s recently achieved nuclear capac­ity. That was a vio­la­tion of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and would have trig­gered a denial of US mil­i­tary and other aid. A democratically-controlled Con­gress voted a waiver to allow the aid, much of which was being fun­nelled to the resis­tance in Afghanistan, to con­tinue. Rea­gan requested the waiver.

    Pak­istan first tested a bomb in 1998, under Clin­ton. They may have had the bomb a few years earlier.

  9. Julie Robinson said on November 10th, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    Still build­ing, Brian, no pol­ish­ing yet. But it will be short and every­one will love it just for that. Our pas­tor usu­ally goes 20 – 25 min­utes. I’m aim­ing for 10 on the prin­ci­ple that no one pays atten­tion after that.

    I made a lot of extrav­a­gant cos­tumes over the years too – the uni­corn stands out in mem­ory. So much work for a few min­utes of wear, but also fun plan­ning together with the kids. We also made many extrav­a­gant birth­day cakes, like the work­ing vol­cano model using canned whipped cream forced through tub­ing. We seemed to have more energy in those years.

  10. LAMary said on November 10th, 2009 at 12:51 pm

    The fruit bat, knight and zebra cos­tumes were used for play, loaned out and worn into the ground over the years. The jel­ly­fish weren’t very mobile, but they did glow in the dark.

  11. brian stouder said on November 10th, 2009 at 12:54 pm

    moe — inter­est­ing link! I hadn’t heard any of that about Kee­gan. I’ve only ever read one of his books, which didn’t excite me.

    But I, like you, always enjoy McPherson’s writ­ing. The last one of his I read was called Tried by War (I think) — about Lin­coln as Com­man­der in Chief. It’s quite good, but also the cover art uti­lizes my favorite photo of Lin­coln — the one in which he’s stand­ing at Anti­etam, fac­ing his gen­eral (McClel­lan), as Mac looks slightly upward to him. The sub­text in the photo (it seems to me) is just strik­ing. The inso­lent gen­eral has his leg thrown for­ward in a some­what saucey fash­ion, and Lin­coln looks just slightly.…bemused. Can you judge a book by its cover? Yes! — sometimes

    Any­way, I got to meet McPher­son a year ago in Gales­burg, and he’s very New Jer­sey (in the best sense!); a very nice fel­low to gab with, and, as you say — he knows his stuff!

    Julie, you’ve a LOT more courage than I’ll ever have! Just the thought of being the sub­ject of dis­cus­sion over all the var­i­ous church-ladies’ Sun­day din­ners would be enough to oppress me

  12. Jean S said on November 10th, 2009 at 12:55 pm

    Amaz­ing cos­tumes. And I under­stand what you mean about the energy, Julie. I’m hop­ing to recap­ture a lit­tle of that with a Christ­mas cookie dec­o­rat­ing bash in a cou­ple of weeks.

    On the Rea­gan front, my hus­band the his­to­rian, who spe­cial­ized in Cold War his­tory at Rut­gers, has a few blis­ter­ing things to say about the man. The fact that he (ye olde hus­band) tends to be mea­sured and infu­ri­at­ingly objec­tive tells me a lot.

  13. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 10th, 2009 at 1:11 pm

    Go for 12, Julie. Let ‘er rip.

    Pak­istan was actively going for nukes in 1978 and a year or two (at min­i­mum) pre­vi­ously, as hilar­i­ously (?) doc­u­mented in “Mush­room” by John Aris­to­tle Phillips, who did his Prince­ton the­sis with Free­man Dyson on basic atom bomb design, while run­ning an on-campus pizza deliv­ery busi­ness (get the title?), and imme­di­ately started get­ting calls from Pakistan.

  14. Danny said on November 10th, 2009 at 1:24 pm

    Mark and Jeff, please dis­con­tinue your revi­sion­ists his­to­ries. You cite too many bor­ing, incon­tro­vert­ible facts. We’d rather just blame con­ser­v­a­tives, sing Kum Bay Ya and get on with it.

  15. Jeff Borden said on November 10th, 2009 at 1:55 pm

    Danny,

    You will never catch me singing Kum­baya, amigo, but the Ramones’ “I Want to be Sedated?” Dude, I am all over that.

    BTW, what is the official/unofficial count of nations own­ing nukes? Wasn’t there a Pak­istani physi­cist who was more or less giv­ing away plans on how to make an A-bomb?

    Years ago I read a book about Russ­ian orgaized crime called “Red Mafia.” The author, who has since died, told the story of how a mem­ber of the Medellin car­tel came very close to pur­chas­ing a Russ­ian sub­ma­rine for a mere $10 mil­lion. This was not a nuclear sub­ma­rine, but one could’ve been had for the right price. The car­tel planned to use the sub to dis­trib­ute drugs. This was dur­ing the years after the fall of the USSR, when its mil­i­tary was going unpaid for months and months and naval offi­cers were more than happy to enter­tain bids for a sub­ma­rine. I’d imag­ine there would be no short­age of folks will­ing to sell a nuke no ques­tions asked for the right price.

  16. Danny said on November 10th, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    My brother got one of those full length Soviet soldier’s coats and mil­i­tary cap dur­ing the begin­ning of the era of Glas­nost … in trade for a pair of blue jeans I think.

  17. moe99 said on November 10th, 2009 at 2:18 pm

    http://​www​.fas​.org/​n​u​k​e​/​g​u​i​d​e​/​p​a​k​i​s​t​a​n​/​n​u​k​e​/​c​h​r​on.htm

    “1988 – Pres­i­dent Rea­gan waives an aid cut­off for Pak­istan due to an export con­trol vio­la­tion; in his for­mal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, he con­firmed that ‘mate­r­ial, equip­ment, or tech­nol­ogy cov­ered by that pro­vi­sion was to be used by Pak­istan in the man­u­fac­ture of a nuclear explo­sive device.’ ”

  18. LAMary said on November 10th, 2009 at 2:25 pm

    Stay healthy, Moe. I need you around here.

  19. John said on November 10th, 2009 at 2:46 pm

    Jeff, I’m guess­ing you are refer­ring to a Kilo. There are sev­eral coun­tries who have bought them.

  20. Danny said on November 10th, 2009 at 2:54 pm

    Moe, accord­ing to your link, Pak­istan built their first reac­tor in the late 60’s acquired cen­trifuge capa­bil­ity in the late 70’s and tested their first devices in the late 90’s. Seems like we had Demo­c­rat admin­is­tra­tions at all of those key times and an 40 year Demo­c­rat major­ity in both houses of con­gress dur­ing almost that whole period. I know that is incon­ve­nient for the sto­ry­line, but there it is.

  21. MichaelG said on November 10th, 2009 at 2:57 pm

    Given the infor­ma­tion that’s sur­faced over the years, any­one who sails or sailed on a Soviet nuculear sub will glow in the dark.

  22. moe99 said on November 10th, 2009 at 2:58 pm

    Not incon­ve­nient at all, Danny. Every­one has some respon­si­bil­ity for this state of affairs. Rea­gan does NOT get a free pass.

  23. coozledad said on November 10th, 2009 at 3:05 pm

    Nixon was a Demo­c­rat? Or using sim­i­lar gram­mat­i­cal con­struc­tion should I say Nixon was Demo­c­rat? I thought Nixon was a Repub­lic.
    Why is it every time some­one pisses on Zom­bie Reagan’s wingtips his acolytes start shit­can­ning the grammar?

  24. crinoidgirl said on November 10th, 2009 at 3:07 pm

    Moe, what Mary said.

  25. Danny said on November 10th, 2009 at 3:22 pm

    Nixon was not pres­i­dent from 1965 to 1968 (nor in the late 90’s). Why is it when some­one pisses on the Earth Shoes of a Demo­c­rat his acolytes start shit­can­ning the space-time continuum?

  26. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 10th, 2009 at 3:25 pm

    “Just put me in a wheel­chair, get me on a plane; hurry hurry before I go insane; I can’t con­trol my fin­gers I can’t con­trol my brain…”

  27. coozledad said on November 10th, 2009 at 3:29 pm

    Because we pos­sess extra­or­di­nary pow­ers. Fear us.

  28. Jeff Borden said on November 10th, 2009 at 3:32 pm

    The Ramones were the most under­rated band in my life­time. I never under­stood why they were not embraced by the album-oriented rock sta­tions. They rocked the hell out of the music in ways AOR favorites like Super­tramp, For­eigner and Jour­ney could only dream about…

    I guess there was no room for 2:30 songs in those days.

    My nephew is now wear­ing a Ramones T-shirt I pur­chased eons ago at a show in Colum­bus. He gets what the band was all about.

  29. Jeff Borden said on November 10th, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    Lots of inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion com­ing out these days about Rev. Moon and the Wash­ing­ton Times, where tur­moil is the order of the day in the exec­u­tive offices. It’s esti­mated Moon has dropped more than $1.7 bil­lion on the Times, which has a daily cir­cu­la­tion smaller than the Syra­cuse, N.Y. daily. Appar­ently, the dear rev­erend is start­ing to cede con­trol to his sons –funny how evan­ge­lism is a fam­ily busi­ness, no?– and they are not quite so thrilled about pour­ing lots of money down the drain.

    Mean­while, I am begin­ning to have my doubts about Rupert Mur­doch as the uber-media genius. He is talk­ing about block­ing Google from any and all of his pub­li­ca­tions because he doesn’t like giv­ing away con­tent. Isn’t this kind of cut­ting off your nose to spite your face?

  30. Danny said on November 10th, 2009 at 3:45 pm

    Mean­while, I am begin­ning to have my doubts about Rupert Mur­doch as the uber-media genius. He is talk­ing about block­ing Google from any and all of his pub­li­ca­tions because he doesn’t like giv­ing away con­tent. Isn’t this kind of cut­ting off your nose to spite your face?

    Yes, Slash­dot (slash​dot​.org) used the meta-tag, “good­luck­with­that,” for Murdoch’s proposal.

  31. nancy said on November 10th, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    Whether or not Mur­doch suc­ceeds, I’d like to hear more from the slash­dot­ting crowd about how one might sup­port a staff like that of the Wall Street Jour­nal oth­er­wise. “Good­luck­with­that” is not an argument.

  32. Jeff Borden said on November 10th, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    I hon­estly don’t under­stand the logic in NOT want­ing traf­fic com­ing to your site. I find Murdoch’s pol­i­tics appalling, but he’s always been an extra­or­di­nar­ily shrewd busi­ness­man with a knack for giv­ing the pub­lic what it wants. I just don’t get this idea from a man who has rarely made a mis­step in the media business.

  33. Danny said on November 10th, 2009 at 3:54 pm

    Here is the link to the dis­cus­sion. A com­ment that caught my eye on fee-based subscription:

    If my local paper [theage​.com​.au] offered a good online sub­scrip­tion I would sign up. What I want to see is:
    * No adverts
    * Access to all archives
    * Good search­ing (like with a google appli­ance)
    * Revi­sion his­tory
    * Access to raw source mate­r­ial
    * Access to com­ment pages on all sto­ries
    In fact, pretty much what I can get from /. right now. All of that should be easy to imple­ment. They just need to open their eyes and look around.

  34. Danny said on November 10th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    Jeff, part of his argu­ment (which he does not clearly make) is that the sum­mary text in the link some­times gives a lot of the content.

    EDIT: Some are guess­ing that this may be a par­tial ploy to get some of Google’s money too. There is the greedy bil­lion­aire angle to this.

  35. nancy said on November 10th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    Not a bad list. Cer­tainly a dif­fer­ent one. He had me up until “access to raw source mate­r­ial.” What, now I have to tran­scribe all my inter­views and post them, too? Sorry, you don’t pay me enough.

  36. Dexter said on November 10th, 2009 at 4:11 pm

    I always was fas­ci­nated by aban­doned struc­tures and set­tings with a past. Some of these I have told you folks about, so I’ll just sort of list them.
    1) My brother and I used to play around in old cars that our neigh­bor col­lected way before old car auc­tions were com­mon. I always told how we played in Dillinger’s car, only to have my uncle recently tell me it was a car Capone had used for a time that was our playpen for a while. Mom had a photo of us play­ing in it, but it long ago dis­ap­peared.
    2) Some GI bud­dies and I climbed up into a win­dow of a can­nery on Can­nery Row in New Mon­terey, Cal­i­for­nia 39 years ago. We got this hor­ri­ble tar all over us, only to see a com­pletely empty build­ing with just a few scraps of uniden­ti­fi­able metal in cor­ners. This was dur­ing my first read­ing of the Stein­beck clas­sic, “Can­nery Row”.
    3) The New Michi­gan Hotel, Michi­gan Avenue and Cer­mak Rd, Chicago. We actu­ally stayed there in 1968 when I was on a base­ball team. We ate in Sam Batt’s Restau­rant on the ground floor and an old gent who remem­bered Capone well told us tales of lore, and how to see bul­let holes in the wall by an old staircase…sure enough, bul­let holes…and I toured Room 530 which was Capone’s main room, actu­ally a suite. One of our team­mates stayed in the room. Unreal. http://​www​.prairieghosts​.com/​l​e​x​i​n​g​t​o​n.html

    4) The sim­ple old wreck of a school where my grand­fa­ther went circa 1889. It stood in DeKalb County on Rd 34, near Rd 1, and we lived nearby. One wall was gone and the black­board was still there, as well as some pieces of bro­ken desks, so tiny…a rusted hulk of an old stove still was there, knocked over.
    I know that if this old build­ing had been restored some­thing would have been lost…I remem­ber the spir­i­tual con­nec­tion I had as I explored that ruin 52 years ago, my mind imag­in­ing the way it was, just as I con­nected to the past with my other explorations.

  37. Jim said on November 10th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    And a decent comics section!

  38. coozledad said on November 10th, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    Dex­ter: I joined some folks attempt­ing to climb into an aban­doned water pump­ing sta­tion by the Tar River when I was in school. The only access was by a mat of vines that grew up the wall by a bro­ken case­ment win­dow. It was too far to get in eas­ily, so I gave up. A cou­ple of the cra­zier ones man­aged to get in.
    There wasn’t much to see there, either, appar­ently. But the ones who were aller­gic to poi­son ivy bloated up pretty badly.

  39. Sue said on November 10th, 2009 at 6:54 pm

    So at work today half of the staff had to attend sen­si­tiv­ity train­ing. The other half has to go next week. It was the worst employee train­ing ses­sion I have ever attended: sim­plis­tic and patron­iz­ing, full of buzz­words, acronyms, tri­an­gle and arrow charts, and of course step goals.
    After work, I had to cleanse my brain with a dif­fer­ent exam­ple of a sen­si­tiv­ity train­ing class. Here it is, folks. Those of you who tend to be a lit­tle, um, sen­si­tive may not want to watch it, as it is equal-opportunity offen­sive.
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​B​a​A​t​J​revW8s

  40. nancy said on November 10th, 2009 at 7:00 pm

    Sue, I went to a sen­si­tiv­ity train­ing with a video that was exactly like the one in that clip. A guy lets the N-word fly in a racially mixed group, they stop the video and ask, “Now, would any­one like to spec­u­late why Clay­ton was so upset? Anyone?”

  41. coozledad said on November 10th, 2009 at 7:31 pm

    I may have told this story here before, but a few months after start­ing a job with a sub­sidiary of the New Jer­sey mob, they worked me into a slot for a show­ing of a sex­ual harass­ment video with a recently trans­ferred, older male employee, and a recent grad­u­ate of one of the local “schools”. In the video, the woman is the one who is mak­ing per­sis­tent sex­ual advances, and harass­ing an under­ling. At the end of the video, shortly before the HR per­son returned to dis­cuss the film with us, the recent grad said “Shee-ut. I’d a hit that stuff right there on the floor. That guy is a pussy!“
    Later, as we walked out of the room, the older employee said “Lit­tle bastard’ll fit right in, here.”

  42. mark said on November 10th, 2009 at 7:48 pm

    Thanks for that link, sue. Great stuff.

  43. alex said on November 10th, 2009 at 8:04 pm

    Yikes, Nance, but that might explain why some of your for­mer co-workers have such low opin­ions of lib­er­als, to judge by what’s being pub­lished by your alma mater these days. In fact, some of the polit­i­cal aggres­sion that appears in print and online there is the very sort of thing that would trig­ger most employ­ers to shit­can the vile offend­ers. I’d say those sen­si­tiv­ity train­ers are too hung up on epi­thets nobody dares to use any­more; they obvi­ously haven’t devel­oped effec­tive strate­gies for address­ing peo­ple who spend their entire work­ing day quot­ing Glenn Beck to achieve the same level of noxiousness.

  44. coozledad said on November 10th, 2009 at 9:29 pm

    Another one from the depart­ment of you can’t make this shit up:
    http://​www​.talk​ing​pointsmemo​.com/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​2​0​0​9​/​1​1​/​r​e​a​l​l​y​_​w​h​a​t​_​c​a​n​_​y​o​u​_​s​a​y​.​p​h​p​?​r​e​f​=fpblg

  45. Jolene said on November 10th, 2009 at 11:03 pm

    Cooz, I saw the story re the assault on the priest on another site, but your link brings the deli­cious link to Jasen’s Bruce’s “mod­el­ing” career. Tee hee.

  46. beb said on November 10th, 2009 at 11:21 pm

    The dis­cus­sion of Rupert Murdock’s plan to close News­corp to Goggle’s index­ing I read sug­gested that what Mur­dock is look­ing for is some­one to offer up mil­lions of dol­lars for the exclu­sive right to index his site, some­one like, say Microsoft’s Bing, or maybe Yahoo.

    I doubt that Mur­dock or any other news agency will ever get blog­gers to pay tp link to their sites. When the New York Times went behind a fire­wall blog­gers sim­ply refused to link to their news sto­ries. Most blog­gers don;t have the money in the first place and don’t think links to news sto­ries amount to theft.

  47. Joe Kobiela said on November 10th, 2009 at 11:29 pm

    We had sen­si­tiv­ity train­ing when I worked at Dana.Found out I really did not need it. Went in and told the class. I hate all of you.
    Pilot Joe

  48. crazycatlady said on November 11th, 2009 at 1:16 am

    Years ago I made a Harry Pot­ter Grif­f­endor Wiz­ard cape for my daugh­ter. She wore it every year! Until she out­grew it. A good cos­tume is a good investment!

  49. Connie said on November 11th, 2009 at 8:22 am

    Today is staff inser­vice day and I will be attend­ing “Cus­tomer Ser­vice in the Mul­ti­cul­tur­ally Diverse Com­mu­nity.” Which in fact is a some­what polite way of pro­vid­ing train­ing to staff who truly need sen­si­tiv­ity training.

  50. coozledad said on November 11th, 2009 at 8:27 am

    Jolene: One of the com­menters at Roy’s, Leeds Man, calls this “incon­ti­nen­tal­ism”. It’s the idea that the more you crap your pants and run around giv­ing head­less chick­ens a bad name, the more patri­otic you are. I’d say this strap­ping young fel­low is a move­ment incontinentalist.

  51. basset said on November 11th, 2009 at 9:22 am

    That truck appears to be an Inter­na­tional… might have been built in the Fort, if not there it would have come from Spring­field, Ohio.

  52. moe99 said on November 11th, 2009 at 11:24 am

    http://​www​.boston​.com/​b​i​g​p​i​c​t​u​r​e​/​2​0​0​9​/​1​1​/​m​a​r​t​i​a​n​_​l​a​n​d​s​c​a​p​e​s.html

    these pho­tos are really amazing.

  53. brian stouder said on November 11th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    moe — those Mar­t­ian pho­tos are indeed arrest­ing. The 4th one looks more micro-biological than macro-planetary! I was going to com­ment on the newer thread, but I don’t want to foul up what has been an alto­gether sub­lime Vet­er­ans’ Day remem­brance over there. If I had suc­cumbed and posted over there, all I would have offered was a com­ment on Lincoln’s speech-writing and deliv­ery skills*, and the fact that he NEVER deliv­ered an impor­tant speech that wasn’t writ­ten out before­hand, and which he would read s-l-o-w-l-y.…but that would be in answer to dun­der­head crit­ics of Pres­i­dent Obama who object to his teleprompters, and today ain’t the day for that.

    Any­way — thanks for shar­ing the link.

    *and I agree with Jolene  — that when Pres­i­dent Obama stops and starts and stops again; you can just see the writer at work. Pres­i­dent Lin­coln would launch into a funny story or anec­dote, if he needed a lit­tle more time to think — or if he didn’t want to give a more spe­cific answer or reply.…and, for what it’s worth, Lincoln’s crit­ics HATED his jokey habits as much (or more!) than Pres­i­dent Obama’s crit­ics hate his extem­po­ra­ne­ous style

  54. brian stouder said on November 11th, 2009 at 5:36 pm

    and just for the record, the Andrew Sul­li­van lec­ture last night was, to use a some­what loaded word, inter­est­ing. The stated pur­pose and sub­ject of the lec­ture was “Friendship” — through the ages. About half way through the talk, in which he dropped in Aris­to­tle (and a few other Greeks) and Shake­speare, he men­tioned Jesus Christ; and from that point to the end of the lec­ture, he remained on JC, mak­ing the point that fun­de­men­tal­ist Chris­tians are fun­de­men­tally wrong in their pro­nounce­ments about fam­ily. As the real­iza­tion dawned on peo­ple that we had arrived at Dr Sullivan’s real sub­ject, more than sev­eral peo­ple around the hall got up and walked out. As for Grant and I — in for a penny, in for a pound; we stayed to the end, and we learned in the Q&A that indeed the death of his best friend — and the oddly wrong-headed reac­tion from some par­tic­u­lar sorts of reli­gious peo­ple is what prompted him to develop this lec­ture in the first place. So, all things con­sid­ered, Julie is that much fur­ther ahead!

  55. Ricardo said on November 11th, 2009 at 11:23 pm

    My last two full years in Detroit included clean­ing up aban­doned prop­erty for HUD. Back then there were 17,000 prop­er­ties in the metro area, mostly in Wayne Co, and mostly in Detroit.

    Every scam in the book hap­pened to these prop­er­ties from crooked con­trac­tors that were sup­posed to rehab them to crooked demo con­trac­tors that folded the build­ing into the base­ment and then bull­dozed over the mess with dirt to make it look like every­thing was removed. (We did hon­est work cut­ting weeds and pick­ing up trash) Houses were set on fire, neigh­bor houses burned, and prop­erty val­ues went to worth­less because of the houses. This cov­ered 1972 to 1974.

    Now, it seems incred­i­ble to me that the same mess still exists as though 35 years never passed. No one can fig­ure out how to clean up the mess other than the arson­ists. ‘Instant urban renewal’ they called it then, hardly one of the Great Soci­ety pro­grams. Is there no one who can fig­ure this out? Does any­one care?

    My per­sonal solu­tion to the lack of appre­ci­a­tion of Detroit’s fine old build­ings, which they would rather let go to ruin rather than pre­serve, was to move to some place where peo­ple care. My Motor City solu­tion is to turn Detroit land into many rancheros, land grants where cat­tle and horses have room to run and orchards and crops can grow, if the soil is not too pol­luted. El Del Rey, Los East Dear­born, El Grande Rivera.

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