Every so often I have to stop and marvel at the world around me. We predict the future, and the future acts otherwise. Man plans, God laughs. And so on.
I recall a line from a novel, something about how a man should always be willing to get up in the morning, just to see what is going to happen. Fear an unbroken line of days ending at the grave, filled with the same ol’ same ol’? Don’t. It’ll be different. Might be worse, could be better. You just never know.
Which is, I swear, the mindset I try to bring to news that vaccine-preventable diseases are making a comeback, a story you read often these days. How strange to think that a war once considered over could flare up years later. (Sort of like post-polio syndrome, come to think about it.) How horrible to think that the anti-vaxxers will very likely not endanger their own children so much as yours. Check out this magical thinking:
Even so, parents like Ellison, 39, don’t buy it, and he points out that he comes to the issue with some expertise: He has a master’s degree in organic chemistry and used to work in the pharmaceutical industry designing medicines. His children — 6 months old, 8 and 12 — were all born at home. Aside from one visit to an emergency room for a bruised finger, none of them has ever been to a doctor, and they’re all healthy, he says, except for the occasional sore throat or common cold.
“The doctors all have the same script for vaccines,” Ellison says.
He is working to build and support his children’s natural immune system using three healthy meals a day, exercise and sunshine. He says if his kids get sick he would rather rely on emergency care than vaccines.
“It’s much more soothing to trust emergency medicine than a vaccine, which for me is like playing Russian roulette,” he says.
I can see why this guy no longer works for “the pharmaceutical industry.” I wonder what his exit interview was like.
Of course, my kid has been stuck so often she was a virtual pincushion, up to and including the three-shot series for HPV. This is the one I hear about most often now, among parents of teenagers.
“I just don’t feel right about it,” is the usual line. Of course, vaccinating your child against a sexually transmitted disease does feel a little squicky, but if you’re capable of the least amount of distance, you should be able to think it through. But instead, that emotion gets braided up with a certain sort of self-congratulation about being an on-the-job supermom, and then this article, or one of the million versions of it, lands on her Facebook page, and her friends (all of whom use images of their children as profile pictures) chime in with congratulations and seconds: “It’s just not right for our family now,” as though the family, their favorite sacred phrase, should get to weigh in on a teenage girl’s health, today and far into a still unknown future.
I always want to add my voice to the chorus: “Of course your daughter won’t have sex before or outside of marriage, because that’s what you taught her, and children always follow their parents’ advice, in all things. But what about the young man she will marry? How can you be sure he, too, has remained chaste, and will up to the night of his wedding, and forever after? Are you that sure?”
But I don’t. The Reaper is coming for us all, and if cervical cancer doesn’t get you, something else will. And someone will probably blame a vaccine.
How was everyone’s weekend? Mine was very fine, although busy. It’s late Sunday afternoon as I write this, and I’ve already made Alice Waters’ Meyer lemon cake and will shortly whip up a spinach and goat cheese soufflé to go with some grilled salmon, a fine way to finish off two sunny days of not-work. My taxes are filed and a pair of jeans that was tight last month fits a lot better today. Things could be worse. Tomorrow, they very well might be. But I’m enjoying the mild temperatures and all the rest of it today.
Bloggage?
I drove through a corner of Mercer County, Ohio, about a million times when I was living in Fort Wayne and returning to the parental home place in Columbus. So I devoured this typically excellent Monica Hesse WashPost feature on the difficulty one hiring manager has filling jobs at an egg-processing plant he runs in Fort Recovery, Ohio (pop. 1,500 or so). Personally? I wouldn’t live in Fort Recovery for $55,000 a year, but I’m sure there are some people out there who would, although the story suggests there aren’t as many as you’d think. And the ones who are willing don’t always please the guy in charge of hiring. A very readable piece on multiple themes.
Neil Steinberg is that rare writer who gets a better column out of the outrage over an earlier column than the column itself. (Didn’t make sense. Sorry.)
Don’t miss Peter Matthiessen’s NYT obit. Great stuff.
And now it’s nearly time for “Game of Throooones.” So I have to go. A good week to all.
LAMary said on April 7, 2014 at 12:46 am
The household marmalade making project, which this week became the strawberry preserves project, produced a dozen jars of meyer lemon marmalade, a half dozen blood orange and meyer lemon combo and a half dozen straight blood orange. The second batch of meyer lemon is spectacular. I’ve also made a meyer lemon cake with olive oil. It was s simple one layer nine inch cake which we ate with blackberries and a spoonful of Greek yogurt.
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Dave said on April 7, 2014 at 12:57 am
Back in the eighties, when we lived in Lima, a job I was working would frequently go to lunch in Fort Recovery, at a delicious old bar/restaurant which was named, I believe, the Meindering House, and which I was told before I retired, that it is now closed. Fort Recovery is surrounded by chicken and turkey producers, huge barns full of them, and I truly don’t know what the man interviewing folks for the job was expecting but I know that I wouldn’t want to live there. There’s nowhere near there I would want to live, either, and I wondered where he was really staying because there’s certainly no Holiday Inn Express in Fort Recovery.
I’ve known two people from Fort Recovery and neither of them stayed past high school.
I also found it interesting that the egg processing company is being started by a private equity group, which I would think might scare folks off. One has to wonder what sort of research the company did as far as an available workforce before they elected to build there. Was their decision based solely on the availability of eggs?
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MichaelG said on April 7, 2014 at 3:10 am
Fifty five grand? That’s an interesting salary point. It comes out to somewhere around $26 an hour. Some people make more and some people make less. It used to be a nice comfortable number but now not so much and less so with each person who is added to the family. Depending on where one lives, housing and other fixed costs will eat up a large chunk of it. $26 an hour. There is talk of raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour. It has to be tough to raise a family on $26 an hour let alone $10 which is unimaginable. $10 is less than $21,000 a year.
I don’t know where I’m going with this other than to say that recently I’ve been forced to confront my mortality. This has caused me to suddenly understand and become grateful for the generous salary that I have been earning for just myself (I was making double that 55 grand which seems a wondrous amount to me) and for the generous and wonderful health insurance I have and for my nice retirement. I had kind of taken all of this for granted and now I see how lucky I’ve been. For it certainly hasn’t been the result of brilliant planning.
I live here in the ghetto and I see daily how poor people live and it never really came home to me until I got sick and had access to all the health care in the world. Then I’ve begun to realize how, while I live here, I don’t share the worries and privations of my neighbors. I’ve learned which food bank has which kind of food on Wednesday and which place has something else on Friday and which place has flu shots and where they are passing out school materials for kids on the other day and many other basic survival things that are the every day routine of life here in Oak Park.
What I’ve also learned after living here for six years is that while a few kids have hope, most people around here are just enduring, just living from day to day. $10 an hour would be nice. $26 is beyond the horizon. Twice that? The lottery. I have been so lucky and now feel so humble. The whole thing made me weep with gratitude and guilt the other day. When I get better I will begin to do what I can to help working with a friend who is a community activist.
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Deborah said on April 7, 2014 at 6:53 am
Nice comment, Michael G.
Not much happened here on the weekend, same ol’ same ol’. Light snow, very light, a little cooler and windier than it has been lately. I’m looking forward to being in Chicago for the month of May.
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Alan Stamm said on April 7, 2014 at 7:28 am
Thanks for pointing me to Neil Steinberg’s post, Nancy. (Your line makes perfect sense, actually. Just needs a slow read, or two.)
Among his shiniest gems, for anyone who needs a nudge to click:
* “I wanted to say, ‘You know, I was attending secret transvestite dances in Chicago while you were learning the alphabet, honey, so cut me some slack.’ ”
* Pride is the last possession of those with nothing, and the more abject a person’s situation, the more they insist on elevating themselves.
* It also reminded me of the importance of walking away and waiting for the storm to pass.
Insightful stuff.
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David C. said on April 7, 2014 at 7:33 am
I think in the internet age, peoples bullshit detectors have gone faulty. When you can look and see any side you choose to believe supported, sometimes by someone with seemingly ironclad credentials, it’s not too surprising that some choose the illogical side. My own wife is starting to do it and it’s driving me nuts. She’s big into paleo diets now. So far, she’s letting eat how I damn well please because I was able to persuade her that paleo-Americans damn well did eat potatoes. Yesterday, she told me I’m losing a lot of hair lately and that’s because of eating too many carbs. Look it up, she said. I did and half said too many carbs cause hair loss and half said too few. But if you look for high carbs cause hair loss, you’re going to find it and be validated. So it’s really easy for the anti-vaxxers to find validation too. I think any sense of community has gone out of us and we’ve been feed the notion that we and out precious little snowflakes are so unique and good and true that we can’t take a chance of ruining that by taking vaccines that were made by our evil corporate overlords, who are mostly evil, but I still take their medicines when I need to, and I still buy big ag food, and I drive a car that uses gasoline made by big oil. Life’s complicated and I’m trying to get through it the best I can. I hope my BS detector continues to works strong and true.
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Suzanne said on April 7, 2014 at 8:10 am
I’ve run into a few anti-vaccine people and what always surprises me is that, for the most part, they are well educated people who should know how to research the issue, but seem inclined instead to listen to the likes of Jenny McCarthy or whichever celebrity is discussing it this week. But then, as I get older, nothing people do ever really surprises me.
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Basset said on April 7, 2014 at 8:22 am
Weekend? Mrs. B. and I are so mundane and boring that we took a vacation trip to Cincinnati. Princess Diana museum show, IKEA, Findlay Market, roaming around taking pictures of old buildings, wasn’t bad actually. Imagine, though, a big room with maybe thirty mannikins behind glass wearing her outfits and a little audio player in your hand with commentary on Each. And. Every. Damn. One. Takes awhile to get through that; it’s toward the end of the tour and right before the video of her funeral procession and various death-related relics, with boxes of tissues set out for the more than a few women who would walk in and go to weeping.
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Dorothy said on April 7, 2014 at 8:32 am
Your words will stay with me today, MichaelG. A couple of weeks ago I can’t recall what we were talking about but I remember getting up to walk from the family room into the kitchen and saying out loud “We really are very, very blessed. We have everything.” Maybe it was a story on the news or something that really resonated with me. But we’ve been going over finances lately and being 8 years away from retirement, it’s really sobering to think and plan for how to pay for things once we don’t have salaries to count on. I’ve wanted to go on a vacation to see “blue water” for as long as I can remember, and we’ve never done it. This year I think we’re finally going to the Caribbean in October for our 35th anniversary, and I’m nearly giddy with excitement to plan it. I’ve lost some friends recently to illness and one to suicide, and I think that is driving us to make sure we take some trips to see things we want to see before we are no longer drawing breath.
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alex said on April 7, 2014 at 8:52 am
When you can look and see any side you choose to believe supported, sometimes by someone with seemingly ironclad credentials, it’s not too surprising that some choose the illogical side.
People generally gravitate toward those who tell them what they want to hear instead of what they need to know. Some are better at assessing the motives of charlatans than others, but those who don’t understand their own internal motivations (or are fearful of examining them) are the easiest marks. This is why advertising is so successful. And revival tent religion. This is why there are people who will wire their life savings to another country on the promise of receiving a prize that’s worth more. If pride is the last possession of the person who has nothing (to borrow from Neil Steinberg), the promise of receiving something for nothing is likely to carry a whole lot more weight.
Fox News is successful because it plays to the prejudices of a certain class of people and having their prejudices validated overrides whatever common sense they may have. I was just arguing with an otherwise intelligent woman (or so I used to think) regarding Obamacare. She said “I can’t believe that Goddamn Obamacare. My husband had a vasectomy and I had my tubes tied yet we would still have to pay for coverage for birth control if we were to sign up.” As if insurance were an a la carte proposition. I told her that she and her husband are also paying for cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, hemorrhoids and a long list of other conditions that may or may not apply to them, but it’s all beside the point. She wasn’t having it, and now that I’ve rattled her house of cards she probably won’t be speaking to me again any time soon.
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Julie Robinson said on April 7, 2014 at 9:25 am
MichaelG, good on you for responding to your illness with gratitude rather than bitterness, and may you be around to practice it for many more years.
Our son does Paleo, and I know the science is still out on it, but it worries me because of our family history of heart disease, diabetes, gout, and other dreadful diseases. He won’t listen to anyone with an alternate point of view. When I suggested he talk to my sister, who has a master’s in nutrition and has worked for WIC for 25 years, he rejected her expertise by saying she probably believes all the lies of the FDA.
How do you fight that with reason and logic?
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jcburns said on April 7, 2014 at 9:32 am
The article says Fort Recovery, OH offers “a wooden statue of Red-Haired Nance, the town folk hero”.
That’s of course how we like to think of you, Nance.
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Peter said on April 7, 2014 at 9:59 am
Dorothy, you reminded me of a fictitious survey a client sent me years ago – “How Minnesotan Are You?” The first question was “What is your family income?, and the three answers were – none of your business, – we manage to get by, and – we’ve been blessed.”
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mark said on April 7, 2014 at 10:01 am
Not the “wooden” part, though, Nancy.
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Basset said on April 7, 2014 at 10:13 am
When I worked in an egg-breaking plant in Odon, Indiana in the summer of 1974 the pay was a dollar-sixty an hour, works out to $15,829 a year now… and it was just vile. We cracked the eggs, separated them, ran the liquid into metal cans in various forms (plain yolks, yolks with salt, whites with sugar, whole eggs, etc.), stacked them on pallets, froze them, and out the door they went.
That was messy enough, but the one nobody wanted to deal with was “rots” – we’d buy gallon tubs of rotten eggs by the semi truck load, strain out the solids in a big rotating screen tube, and sell them to pet food manufacturers. I used to clean out the rot machine with a shovel and a steam hose at the end of the shift, go home in the middle of the night, hose down in the yard and hang my overalls on the fence before I could go inside to shower.
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Bitter Scribe said on April 7, 2014 at 10:13 am
Strange experience this weekend at the local symphony: The guest conductor was a gentleman from Venezuela. In the middle of the concert, this guy turns around and starts ranting about what a miserable SOB Nicholas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, is.
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Jeff Borden said on April 7, 2014 at 10:21 am
I greatly enjoyed MichaelG’s comments. Most of us could probably do a lot more to help others if we took the time. While we write a lot of checks to various charitable organizations at our house, we don’t actually get out there and interact and encourage and actually touch those who might need it. Your comments are a ringing reminder that not far from us –in any city, suburb or rural area– are people who are hurting and need a helping hand.
As a night cop reporter in Columbus, I rode along with vice squad detectives on the occasional highly-publicized “prostitution sweeps,” made-for-media efforts designed more for the TV cameras than us print folks. Those caught up in the web were the saddest and most beaten down women (and men dressed as women) I’d ever seen, but these were the street hustlers who lived hand to mouth. The cops always said there was another class of workers who tended to congregate at the downtown Sheraton, which was usually the epicenter for conventions and business meetings. But they, too, handed over most of their take to their “handlers.”
In principle, I suppose, decriminalized sex for money shouldn’t bother me. But despite the occasional Mistress Matisse who wrote to Steinberg and other very high end workers, it still looks like a horrible way of life.
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Judybusy said on April 7, 2014 at 10:37 am
In our current economy, there is also the problem of the cost of housing outstripping people’s ability to pay for it. There was a related story on Minnesota Public radio about the shortage of housing in Duluth, where the economy is doing relatively well, but many of the young professionals there are having difficulty finding housing at all. Deveopers aren’t too keen to move in, because building in Duluth usually means tearing something down instead of building on an empty lot, and they can’t make the profit they think they need. It’s a great small city, actually, with a bit of culture, and access to the great northern outdoors.
I keep meaning to ask my sister if she’s thought about the HPV vaccine for her three girls. I’m thinking it’s too late for the 20-year-old, but certainly not for the 17 and 16 year olds. The younger two are beginning to look at schools and my partner and I have been pitching in with advice, thankfully welcomed.
We had a lovely weekend visit from the 16-year-old. We visited a friend’s chocolate shop, and the co-owner spent about an hour talking about how it all gets made (slow day in the shop) and we visited a state park full of potholes made by glaciers. There was still quite a bit of snow from Thursday’s 10″ dumping, but we got to see quite a few, surrounding by sheer cliffs and the St. Croix river. That night, we went to a flamenco performance which overall was pretty cool, but which had a lot of over-wrought potitical commentary woven into it. (It’s a local company known for pushing the boundaries of flamenco.)
Sunday, the niece mostly rested–her schedule is insane between track and rehearsal for a musical at school. We had lots of good conversation about schools, her future, etc. We also looked up the Alhambra, which figured in the flamenco performance. She had some interesting things to talk about during the ride back home: she hunts, wears cowboy boots and proudly considers herself a “hick” but also loves to dress up. She expressed frustration that people wonder about her, and can’t find a tidy box to put her in. “Why do I have to be just one thing?!” Good lass, embrace all that you are. I was pleased she is so thoughtful.
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Icarus said on April 7, 2014 at 11:15 am
on the “difficulty one hiring manager has filling jobs at an egg-processing plant”
seems to me he whittled down the best eggs and some of them found better opportunities. wouldn’t it make sense in the light of new data, to maybe revisit some of the people he passed on, like the 50 year old former army guy? This hiring Manager may know resumes and have a batting average that will get him into Cooperstown but it might be time to revise that internal algorithm.
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nancy said on April 7, 2014 at 11:38 am
The problem with the paleo people (in my opinion) is that they’re half right, and the rest is bullshit, with the bullshit rapidly pushing the facts out. In general, anything I read about paleo is likely to go like this :
1) OK, they have a point about sugar. And probably white flour. We really eat too much of that stuff.
2) This is basically a low-carb diet, which is undeniably effective at helping people lose weight and increase their energy.
3) Organ meats? Um, no.
4) No beans? No rice? No grains of any sort? I have one foot out the door.
5) No tomatoes? No FRUIT? These people are insane. See ya.
I think it’s key that most of the people pushing paleo these days are young men in their 20s and 30s. Hey, eat no sugar, work out all the time and — this is the most important part — BE YOUNG, and sure, you’re going to feel good.
The bullshit wing of the movement are the ones who claim you can cure your arthritis by eating coconut oil right out of the jar, etc.
Ultimately, I always come back to my true north: Moderation in all things, portion control and exercise. It works for me.
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Heather said on April 7, 2014 at 11:42 am
I think prostitution would be fine if we lived in a genuinely equal society. I agree with Jeff Borden. I don’t think most people selling their bodies are doing so because they really, really wanted to pursue that line of work. The higher-end ones probably had more choices than your average working girl. You can’t take sexism, racism, and poverty out of the equation. That said, I have a problem with the johns who create the market, not the sex workers themselves.
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brian stouder said on April 7, 2014 at 11:50 am
…and I’m heartily tired of the smirking references to the “world’s oldest profession” – when, if anything, it’s the world’s oldest oppression
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Deborah said on April 7, 2014 at 11:59 am
MichaelG’s comments about having more than other people and appreciating that made me think of this article about a guy who had way, way more than most people and that wasn’t enough until he learned to control his wealth addiction: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/for-the-love-of-money.html?_r=1
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Deborah said on April 7, 2014 at 12:01 pm
That first sentence in my comment at #23 didn’t come out right. But I don’t know how to repair it?
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Sherri said on April 7, 2014 at 12:22 pm
I’m in basset-land right now, to attend the Women’s Final Four and visit family, but I wanted to drop in with a link to this article I read about private equity and the parasite economy: http://www.ericgarland.co/2014/03/29/parasite-economy/.
Among his suggestions are boycotting companies owned by private equity. That’s a boycott I like…
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Jenine said on April 7, 2014 at 12:31 pm
@Bassett, going to the Princess DI exhibit sounds eye glazing to me. You must have done it for love.
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MichaelG said on April 7, 2014 at 12:41 pm
I was pawing through some old papers the other day and found my old army shot record. There were a dozen or so vaccines. They really shot us up before sending us overseas. We would walk a gauntlet. They had guys with needles and those air powered things along a hall and we would walk down the middle getting shot after shot in each arm. That would really drive those anti-vaccine nuts crazy!
I think I mentioned this once before. One morning at about 0530 I was driving to work along Broadway. Sitting at a light I saw a car pull up to a hooker standing on a corner. She talked with the driver for a sec and then climbed into the car and they drove away. It hit me then how brave or foolhardy or desperate that woman had to be to climb into a strange car on a deserted corner at zero dark thirty. She had to have been terrified. No, I don’t think street hooking is a number one career choice.
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Julie Robinson said on April 7, 2014 at 12:48 pm
Matt eats fruits and veggies, lots of veggies, no organ meats, and I think it’s great he’s staying away from almost all processed food, but…bacon, bacon, bacon.
And, back to the guy who doesn’t vaccinate, there is a lot to be said for three squares, fresh air & exercise helping create healthy young bodies. We did that with our kids too, of course–what parent doesn’t? We also made sure they got plenty of sleep, and they were almost never sick. But when they were, we took them to the doc, got meds, and gave them all the advantages that thousands of years of medical science have developed. Because: we love them.
Judybusy, you’re a great auntie!
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Basset said on April 7, 2014 at 1:42 pm
Jenine@26… well, yeah, suppose so. I did get to stop at Cabela’s on the way home though.
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Charlotte said on April 7, 2014 at 1:52 pm
Oh don’t get me started on the HPV vaccine! My stepmother has been fighting HPV-related cancers for 15 years now, and anyone who gets stroppy with me about those vaccines, well I give them every gory detail. Then ask them if they’d really subject their daughters to that if it’s preventable. (And then their eyes glaze over and they go into that fugue state where they believe *their* daughter will never have sex, much less with someone carrying a disease.) We’re also seeing whooping cough and measles outbreaks here — used to be it was just the CUT folks, and well, they’re a cult. But now it’s people who should know better.
And the special diet people are also annoying, but I suppose people long to believe in perfectability — that if they just do A then Everything Will Be All Right. Me, I’m with Nancy — real food, moderation, exercise.
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Joe Kobiela said on April 7, 2014 at 2:12 pm
Quiz time,
Picked up parts in Indy and took off at 11pm, stopped for fuel and reached my destination around 6am today. Short nap then a hour long run, where am I?
Hints:
Lot of famous people have partied here thru the years.
Next town is 90 miles south.
Lots of chickens and cats, some of the cats have a unique feature.
I think our friend Alax would like it here.
Any guesses?
Pilot Joe
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Basset said on April 7, 2014 at 2:15 pm
Key west with the six-toed cats, next town being in Cuba?
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Andrea said on April 7, 2014 at 2:23 pm
Joe, I think you are in the Florida Keys?
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Sue said on April 7, 2014 at 2:52 pm
Last October, I saw the exhibit called ‘Katharine Hepburn, Dressed for Stage & Screen’ at a museum in Appleton WI. Most of the items were right there, not behind glass, with signs placed nearby asking people not to touch. A couple of security guards here and there and that was it. I didn’t see anyone break the rule, although I just itched to reach out. A wonderful exhibit, including stuff like information on how different colors and fabrics ‘translated’ to the screen and how that affected costume choices.
By the way, she was TINY.
I imagine if they tried that ‘please don’t touch’ method with Diana’s stuff the place would look like WalMart on Thanksgiving night (or whatever they’re doing now) by the end of the first day.
I actually like historic textile/fabric exhibits. Quilts, clothing, everyday use and famous folks’ stuff, it all interests me. But I imagine the hushed reverence of a Diana exhibit would get to me.
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brian stouder said on April 7, 2014 at 3:57 pm
Sue – if you’re ever in Springfield, Illinois, and visit the Lincoln Presidential Museum there, you’ll see lots of cool stuff (there was a signed, hand-written Gettysburg Address there – one of only 5 in existence) – including the single most evocative Lincoln thing I’ve seen:
one of his stove-pipe hats.
The thing that stopped me in my tracks and caused me to stare and muse? The brim was worn out in the one spot where he always took hold of it, so as to tip it as he walked down the street and greeted various friends/clients/colleagues/constituents.
The hat also stored papers and notes and so on; it had a 19th century proto-I-Phone story to tell, and was indeed arresting.
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Bob (not Greene) said on April 7, 2014 at 4:35 pm
Brian,
There are some questions about that hat, apparently. http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/18316611-418/appraisal-fails-to-authentic-lincolns-stovepipe-hat.html
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Sue said on April 7, 2014 at 4:50 pm
I’m from Illinois, Brian, so I’ve been there. I believe every resident of the state is required to make the pilgrimage at least once in a lifetime. Only partly kidding.
There’s a museum in Chicago that has some interesting Lincoln items. I’ve been there too but it’s been such a long time I can’t remember where it is or even the name.
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brian stouder said on April 7, 2014 at 5:00 pm
Bob NG…Arrrggghh!!
But, an interesting article nonetheless.
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David C. said on April 7, 2014 at 5:05 pm
The thing with paleo is paleo where. America, Africa, Asia, Europe all had different diets and within the continents there were different diets. Scandinavians didn’t and don’t eat like those by the Mediterranean. So it is all bullshit. Just Atkins with a livelier back story.
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coozledad said on April 7, 2014 at 5:33 pm
One thing you won’t see is a full on primate diet: saplings, fruits, small live mammals and birds, termites, ants, grubs, the occasional mashed skull of a neighbor or relative, much of it acquired directly from rainforest canopy.
The tree climbing would make it a hard enough sell, and that’s before you factor in the fleas and ticks you eat off your social group’s asses during ritual groomings.
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Dexter said on April 7, 2014 at 6:12 pm
Well, my diet isn’t a conscientious regime, and even though I am trying to eliminate most of the refined sugar from my diet because of what my dentist found in my teeth , (I needed some deep fillings) , I just got back from my medical doctor’s office from a medicine re-up and a total physical exam complete with the full package of lab tests, and I’ll be damned…not a thing wrong with me that a couple handfuls of statins and other pills won’t control. So here I am, and even though the US Army tried years ago, they didn’t ruin me with all those goddam injections as MichaelG outlined. A while back I told the story here about the plague vaccine. That was torture for me, horrible reaction, including delirium, sweats, malaise, aches, HORROR-SHOW. Every other vaccine I am an advocate for, and I applaud them.
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coozledad said on April 7, 2014 at 6:15 pm
This crapsack sounds like he was born to teach driver’s ed, but in the south, that’s good enough for Congress.
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2014/04/tea-party-defender-of-traditional.html
I wonder if he’d sawed one off while he was tongue checking his staffer’s uvula*. Too bad he isn’t married to that hog castrating dumbass from Iowa.
*He’s from Louisiana. Big Baby roleplay is hot shit among Republicans there.
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Suzanne said on April 7, 2014 at 8:19 pm
And the antics of Mark Souder live on!
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Deborah said on April 7, 2014 at 10:30 pm
What is it with those guys and their hypocrisy?
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brian stouder said on April 7, 2014 at 10:36 pm
Cooz – too funny!
And today’s lesson from Fort Wayne: When you pack your gym bag before heading for the Y, grab your deodorant, comb, shorts, socks, tee-shirt, and loaded gun…because, y’never know, y’might need to shoot some sonofabitch….errr…or maybe you’ll just take one on the chin
http://wane.com/news/crime/police-respond-to-reported-shooting-at-ymca/
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) Police said a man nicked himself with his own firearm in a locker room at the Renaissance Pointe YMCA on Monday. Police responded to the YMCA at 2323 Bowser Avenue in Fort Wayne before 11 a.m. after the shooting was reported. The YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne released a statement on the incident Monday afternoon. According to the release, the handgun was in the man’s gym bag when it accidentally discharged and grazed him on the chin. 911 was called and YMCA staff immediately helped the man.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 7, 2014 at 10:41 pm
MichaelG, bless you for your first comment.
Curse you for the reminder of the Quantico hallway with a line of injectors on the left and the right! Push ups hurt for a week after that walk.
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