The big empty.

I started a new volunteering gig on Tuesday afternoons, and the road home takes me through some perfectly astonishing parts of the east side. I don’t ever want to lose those outsider’s eyes, no matter how long I stay. I wish I’d stopped to take some pictures, but the light was fading, and the longer I live here, the less I want to be the slumming suburbanite snapping pix for her stupid blog. Trust me, though, you never come across a single house sitting on an otherwise empty block often enough to fail to be amazed by it. Parts of the city look like rural Mississippi, complete with chickens and goats, or else feral pit bulls and god-knows-what. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone was feeding a baby dragon back in there.

I wonder what the occupant of this house thinks, for example:

littlehouse

I have a feeling I know: I won. Once upon a time that house was surrounded by others. Then abandonment came, then crack, arson, the aforementioned god-knows-what. Nowadays night falls, and it’s nice and quiet, except maybe for the animal sounds (barking, dragon roars), distant gunshots and the freeway off in the distance. If you survived the crack and the fires, it would feel like victory.

So with the theme of abandonment established, let’s go straight to the bloggage from faraway Chernobyl. This story isn’t really new — you can find photo galleries of the abandoned amusement park at Pripyat, Ukraine everywhere — but the wildlife angle is newer, and the GIFs within the story are amazing. The animals are coming home to Chernobyl, to the still-glowing but rapidly reasserting primeval forest, which now belongs to the wolves and boars and “rare European lynx — predatory cats the size of a Great Dane with tufted ears and glimmering gold eyes.” They don’t miss us at all:

“It shows I think that how much damage we do,” said fellow co-author Jim Smith, an environmental science professor at the University of Portsmouth. “It’s kind of obvious but our everyday activities associated with being in a place are what damages the environment.”

“Not that radiation isn’t bad,” he added, “but what people do when they’re there is so much worse.”

Yes, Sheriff Know-Nothing, let’s all take a vow to never speak the same of the Oregon killer out loud. After all, we wouldn’t want to learn anything about him, would we?

Finally, an obit of a Detroit original, Grace Lee Boggs, who died Monday but left the legacy of 10 lesser souls. We forget what it meant to be a Dee-troit leftist at one time; it meant something special, and noble:

For years they also identified closely with Black Power advocates across the country. Malcolm X stayed with them on visits to Detroit. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was said to have monitored their activities. When arson fires and rioting erupted in the city in 1967, Ms. Boggs described the violence as a rebellion against rising unemployment and police brutality.

“What we tried to do is explain that a rebellion is righteous, because it’s the protest of a people against injustice,” she told Mr. Moyers. But the violence, she said, also became “a turning point in my life, because until that time I had not made a distinction between a rebellion and revolution.”

Ms. Boggs eventually adopted Dr. King’s nonviolent strategies and in Detroit, which remained her base for the rest of her life, fostered Dr. King’s vision of “beloved communities,” striving for racial and economic justice through nonconfrontational methods. As Detroit’s economy and population declined sharply over the years, Ms. Boggs became a prominent symbol of resistance to the spreading blight.

She founded food cooperatives and community groups to support the elderly, organize unemployed workers and fight utility shut-offs. She devised tactics to combat crime, including protests outside known crack houses, and in columns for a local weekly newspaper, The Michigan Citizen, she promoted civic reforms.

With that, we carry ourselves over the hump of Wednesday. Hope yours is great.

Posted at 12:15 am in Current events, Detroit life |
 

49 responses to “The big empty.”

  1. Dexter said on October 7, 2015 at 1:14 am

    The area in the picture reminds me of the empty land in Chicago between The Dan Ryan Expy. and Lake Shore Drive where the Robert Taylor Homes stood since the 70s until razed totally, eight years ago. My YouTube friend “Artist Mac” chronicled the demolition and the current prairie-like fields…he posted “Come see for yourself, don’t be scared, there’s nobody there…ever.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSslIMBSUxg

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  2. Dexter said on October 7, 2015 at 1:35 am

    alex…I just read yesterday’s comments…sorry to have missed you. We were in Cleveland for my wife’s post-surgery doctor visit at Cleveland Clinic. Christ, I’m tired of driving…Columbus and return Sunday, Toledo Monday, back home and then to Cleveland and back Tuesday…and my “new” 1996 Chrysler minivan keeps cruisin’ with the new cars on the freeways. We had to scoot yesterday to Cleveland to avoid being late and sustained 80 mph freeway-flyin’ didn’t hurt that old van’s motor at all. Coming home we took ‘er easy.

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  3. alex said on October 7, 2015 at 6:58 am

    Well, Dex, if you haven’t checked out Father John’s it’s an awesome experience. A little on the pricey side but a foodie’s delight.

    My partner warmed up the 150-year-old organ in the sanctuary and found that it plays decently enough for the wedding that’s taking place there Saturday, although the keyboard wasn’t made for a construction worker with big fingers so he’ll have to play it carefully.

    Good bloggage today all around. And some of the officials in Roseburg, it strikes me, sound like worse sociopaths than Harper-Mercer.

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  4. Suzanne said on October 7, 2015 at 7:05 am

    I read the article about the Oregon gunman yesterday. The Newtown shooter’s mom, Chris Kyle, and this guy’s mom all thought it was a good idea to take a troubled person to a gun range…for what? Bonding? Relaxation? I cannot wrap my brain around this no matter how hard I try. And Newtown mom & Oregon mom thought it a good idea to keep an Arsenal in the house. I try to understand, but I can’t.

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  5. coozledad said on October 7, 2015 at 8:35 am

    If the shooter had been a Muslim, or a “Muzzie” as the Republicans were already starting to shriek on the night of the shooting, Sheriff Harlin would have been waving the head around on TV within minutes. The Republicans would have then proceeded to rip the country apart, and demand silent compliance while they undertook an ethnic cleansing. The press would have enabled them, and crafted a new narrative to put a Bush in the White House.

    It’s always just that close to happening, and it’s a result of letting the South lead the country, instead of loosely incorporating it as a subordinate protectorate, and a source for cheap manual labor.

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  6. coozledad said on October 7, 2015 at 8:41 am

    My fiction writing teacher from ECU fathered a kid who done wrote a 900 page novel.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/books/review-city-on-fire-garth-risk-hallbergs-novel-of-new-york-in-the-bad-old-days.html

    Bill was a riot. He died of cancer in 2014.

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  7. susan said on October 7, 2015 at 8:45 am

    POV (Point of View) on pbs, has a documentary on Grace Lee Boggs, which you can watch on-line. Shamefully, I had never heard of her, and I don’t know why. I bet she would have made me cry, too, if I had been in a conversation with her.

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  8. beb said on October 7, 2015 at 8:53 am

    Suzanne, the guy behind the nomoremisterniceblog made much the same observation last week, before we learned that the Oregon shooter’s mom was a gun nut. He wondered if gun enthusiasts ever consider whether there are people who should not be allowed near guns because they’re mentally unbalanced. Apparently no one does.

    The Washington Post’s fact checker has apparently decided President Obama was stretching the truth when he spoke about the Oregon mass murders.
    http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/10/05/washington-post-fact-checker-moves-the-goalpost/205966
    The fact checker apparently didn’t think gun-related suicides should count towards all-gun-related deaths. What a wanker.

    The Oregon sheriff who doesn’t want to say the gunman’s name appears to be a Sandy Hook truther. Wonderful. The safety of our nation rests in the hands of people who are bat-shit crazy…

    The Free Press had an article about squatters last week that got me to thinking. Not that, technically, the squatters under discussion weren’t really squatters because they had been asked to live in the house after the owners decided to bail on Detroit. That makes them more house-sitters than squatters. But it reminded me of a new neighbor across the street from us. He just suddenly moved into a house that had been empty and open to the weather for many years. He did some improvements to the house, installed a steel gate on the front door securing the house. But everything else about him is suspect. There’s never any lights on in the house. He cuts his lawn with a weed whacker and you never see him for days at a time. A squatters, maybe, but he’s clearly not selling drugs (no traffic) and he’s keeping the house secured from scrappers, so even if he is a squatters, to me he’s a plus for the neighborhood. Especially since so many houses on our block a3e beginning to be boarded up or plain abandoned. I would be happy to see people move into those houses, even if they were being paid to live there. former Mayor Bings idea of relocating people living on isolated blocks to denser communities makes sense and I would volunteer our block to take in some of those isolated people, fill in the empty houses. It’s a good block, filled with brick homes. It’s worth saving.

    And finally, I learned how VW was able to cheat on those emissions tests. We were told that the on board computer could detect when the car was being tested, but we were never told how it did that. I assumed there would be some complicated series of starts and stops, speeds, etc. that the computer had to identify. Trns out it was a lot simplier than that. Since the car was front-wheel drive they simply drive the front wheels on a dynometer to simulate road conditions but left the rear wheels on the floor. All the computer had to do was check whether the rear wheels were turning. If “no” then it was a test. Wow! That was easier than expected.

    As the cheating worth it? A testing firm placed all four wheels on dynometers and did side by side comparisons. At highway speeds using pollution controls made a 2% hit on power and economy, hardly noticeable. But during acceleration from a standstill, there was a loss of 15 horsepower using pollution controls, or roughly 11% of the engine’s power at the one time when people most expect power from their car. So, yeah, there was good incentive to cheat.

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  9. brian stouder said on October 7, 2015 at 11:41 am

    So last night I was watching my usual non-fiction evening tv (the qualities of Chris Hayes are largely lost on me, but Rachel’s show – even when there’s a guest host – is my cable-news parallel to Madam Telling Tales, connecting me to What’s Important Today), and the Joe Biden talk was ubiquitous. It took me all the way to October to realize that his kabuki dance really is a brilliant campaign strategy. It costs very little, because of the catnip effect it has on ‘free media’, and it lends an air of….no – it gushes gravitas and seriousness onto Joe, even as the Republican party runs what really looks like a circus side-show of silly grifters and seriously deranged geeks.

    Joe Biden is running a late 19th/early 20th century style, ‘front porch’ presidential campaign, and he’s doing it brilliantly.

    I begin to think our next president will be JB (not Jeb!)

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  10. Judybusy said on October 7, 2015 at 12:05 pm

    This information was so shocking to me: how many mass shootings would you say we’ve had this year? =”It’s 274 days, 294 shootings.”

    And there were these wise words from Ben Carson:”but I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away.” I just thought, how incredibly callous these words are to the survivors and victims’ families.

    And yes, guns and suicide. In my county, we work a lot with families on means restriction and getting guns out of the home is a priority.

    And Mr. Harper-Mercer? My guess is that he had more than Autism Spectrum Disorder going on. I also called bullsh*t on how brilliantly he was doing in school. The guy rarely left the apartment, apparently. And going from finance to film making is hardly a star trajectory.

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  11. Judybusy said on October 7, 2015 at 12:06 pm

    Here’s the link w/o HTML: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/01/2015-274-days-294-mass-shootings-hundreds-dead/

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  12. beb said on October 7, 2015 at 12:57 pm

    Piyush “Bobby” Jindal has called on the father of Harper-Mercer to apologize for calling for gun control. It’s a toss-up with Piyush or Ben is the bigger asshole.

    As a kid there be a time during the summer when the family virtually lived on corn on the cob. Picked in our garden, hucked, blanched and on the table in under an hour. Now that was fresh corn. And in the fall we’d have acorn squash, Halves, seeds scrapped out and a couple strips of bacon and pats of butter. Delicious. What what’s you favorite fall meal?

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  13. Sherri said on October 7, 2015 at 2:37 pm

    If you missed my late night contribution to the last thread, brian, Politico is claiming that Biden himself was the source of Maureen Dowd’s story of the dying Beau pleading with his father to run: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/joe-biden-beau-2016-214459

    Has anybody stopped to ask themselves what a Biden Presidency would be about? Sure, he’s a great guy to have a beer with, but what exactly matters to him? Why does he want to be President?

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  14. coozledad said on October 7, 2015 at 2:52 pm

    More than anything else, this stinks of the lapse of a quid pro quo between the Republicans on the Benghazi committee and the New York Times. Given how far the NYT went along with the ratfucking this summer, it’s probable money changed hands.

    Here’s the stage of the game where an independent prosecutor should be appointed.
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/nyt-shut-down-benghazi-committee

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  15. del said on October 7, 2015 at 3:38 pm

    Many unstable people are on the edge of committing crazy gun crimes like the Oregon killer. Another shooting’s imminent. And the notoriety such killers receive after-the-fact does not go unnoticed by lonely, isolated and unloved misfits on the brink. That’s why the attention paid to them is problematic. Peter Gabriel got to the heart of it in a song about Lee Harvey Oswald, Family Snapshot, with a lyric sung from Oswald’s point of view towards JFK, “I want to be SOMEBODY. You were like that too.”

    I get why law enforcement folks want to downplay the identity of the Oregon shooter. They’re trying to tamp down would be copycat killers who will kill for notoriety.

    Still, I too often read the articles about the killers. They’re fascinating, but their lives are predictably the same. They’re troubled isolated loners from broken homes, shades of mental illness, with mounting problems.

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  16. brian stouder said on October 7, 2015 at 3:48 pm

    del, I’d leave aside Peter Gabriel, and go straight to Eddie Vedder (in Jeremy)

    At home
    Drawing pictures
    Of mountain tops
    With him on top
    Lemon yellow sun
    Arms raised in a ‘V’

    And the dead lay in pools of maroon below

    Daddy didn’t give attention
    Oh, to the fact that mommy didn’t care
    King Jeremy The Wicked
    Ruled his world

    Jeremy spoke in class today

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  17. LAMary said on October 7, 2015 at 4:09 pm

    I had two conference calls today. Both of them consisted entirely of someone reading a power point report to us. For the most part, it was the same power point. The second call left out a few pages. This is the only big company I’ve worked for. Is making people dial in for an hour to have a power point presentation read to them a common thing? It is around here and I have no idea why.

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  18. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 7, 2015 at 4:11 pm

    It’s becoming common in my line of work, and it’s not a good thing.

    On the other hand…

    20 THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED SINCE THE CHICAGO CUBS LAST WON THE WORLD SERIES:

    1. Radio was invented; Cub fans got to hear their team lose.
    2. TV was invented; Cub fans got to see their team lose.
    3. Baseball added 14 teams; Cub fans got to see AND hear their team lose to more teams.
    4. George Burns celebrated his 10th, 20th, 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th,70th, 80th, 90th and 100th birthdays.
    5. Halley’s Comet passed Earth… twice.
    6. Harry Caray was born… and died. Incredible, but true.
    7. The NBA, NHL and NFL were formed, and Chicago teams won championships in each league.
    8. Man landed on the moon, as have several home runs given up by Cubs pitchers.
    9. Sixteen US presidents were elected.
    10. There were 11 amendments added to the Constitution.
    11. Prohibition was created, and repealed.
    12. The Titanic was built, set sail, sank, was discovered, and became the subject of major motion pictures… the latter giving Cub fans hope that something that finishes on the bottom can come out on top.
    13. Wrigley Field was built and becomes the oldest park in the National League.
    14. Flag poles were erected on Wrigley Field roof to hold all of the team’s future World Series pennants. Those flag poles have since rusted and been taken down.
    15. A combination of more than 40 summer & winter Olympics have been held.
    16. Thirteen baseball players have won the Triple Crown; several thanked Cubs pitchers.
    17. Bell bottoms came in style, went out of style, and came back in style.
    18. The Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Florida Marlins have ALL won the World Series.
    19. The Cubs played over 15,000 regular-season games; they lost the majority of them.
    20. Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Oklahoma, and New Mexico were added to the Union.

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  19. brian stouder said on October 7, 2015 at 4:16 pm

    We’re going to go see this fellow’s lecture tonight, which should be interesting

    http://www.omnibuslectures.org/lectures/current/eric-olson.html

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  20. del said on October 7, 2015 at 4:31 pm

    Yeah, Brian, that’s song’s even more on point. And that video, whew. I think Pearl Jam is pretty defensive about it now, despite its artistic merits. It’s compelling, but not in a good way to all who would watch it.

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  21. Jolene said on October 7, 2015 at 4:34 pm

    Will be interested to hear about the talk, Brian. The title is a bit inscrutable.

    Meanwhile, look what People magazine is doing. Taking a controversial position on a policy issue is a big step for a publication whose bread and butter is celebrity gossip. Will be interested to see what kind of response it evokes.

    And, by the way, yesterday, I received an email from Virginia senator Tim Kaine, which indicated that he is trying to stir up some action on guns in the Senate. He’s exactly the right person to do it–a moderate Dem, an affable person, and someone who is known (at least in Virginia) as a moral leader reaching back to his early years as a Catholic missionary in Central America.

    Perhaps Nancy is right in thinking this time may be different.

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  22. coozledad said on October 7, 2015 at 4:36 pm

    So much for that “competent surgeon’ bullshit. Just another megalomaniac with a jones for a big house and a German car.
    http://gawker.com/report-ben-carson-once-left-a-sponge-in-a-patients-bra-1735224497

    One day Americans might stop worshiping physicians, cops and soldiers. But so many opportunities for grift will be lost.

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  23. Sherri said on October 7, 2015 at 4:39 pm

    Jeff(tmmo), WP Kinsella wrote a short story called “The Last Pennant Before Armageddon”, about a prophecy that the world will end if the Cubs make it to the World Series, much less win one. Not that I’m superstitious or anything, but I’ll be rooting for the Pirates this evening.

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  24. Sue said on October 7, 2015 at 4:58 pm

    The Cubs can win or they can lose. After what they did to Bartman – and I don’t care if they apologized later, the damage was done – they have no place in my heart.
    But Hillary Clinton should still be forced to say whether she’s a Cubs fan or a Yankees fan. Maybe a committee should be formed to investigate.

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  25. ROGirl said on October 7, 2015 at 5:00 pm

    The Cubs should have played the Tigers in the 1984 World Series.

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  26. Deborah said on October 7, 2015 at 5:05 pm

    I guess I’ll root for the Cubs not that I’ll be watching or anything. I assume someone will comment here either way after the game.

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  27. Sue said on October 7, 2015 at 5:14 pm

    ROGirl, I remember screaming at the TV when that one went down the toilet. Scared my toddler. I also remember Mike Royko’s ‘fern bar’ attacks throughout the series, ending, sadly, not with a bang but a whimper:
    http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1984/10/09/page/3/article/choosing-sob-a-series-favorite

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  28. brian stouder said on October 7, 2015 at 5:27 pm

    In the early ’80’s, there was a baseball strike and a “split season” – and the Cincinnati Reds finished second in the first half, and second in the second half, and despite having the best record in baseball, didn’t make the playoffs, let alone the World Series.

    This was the beginning of the end of my days as a baseball fan

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  29. Heather said on October 7, 2015 at 5:27 pm

    LAMary, my company had a big mandatory meeting today (which they are going to do quarterly) going over all sorts of corporate things and numbers, blah blah . . . which have little bearing on my work as a copywriter at one of the many companies the corporation owns. It started at 8:30 AM, which meant I would have to get up at 5 AM to come in and be bored for an hour. Also, they refuse to stream them, which means we all have to jam into our not-huge conference room and many people have to stand for an hour. It’s claustrophobic, to say the least. I “forgot” about it, and some people have told me they’ve been scolded for not coming in. One, I don’t appreciate being treated like I’m in high school, and two, if it’s so important, then don’t make us stand shoulder to shoulder in a small room for an hour. Rent some hotel space or something. Grrr.

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  30. alex said on October 7, 2015 at 5:42 pm

    Glad I’m not living in Wrigleyville this time around. The body surfing and folks climbing lamp posts last time was some scary shit.

    Different Eric Olson I see, Brian. Not the local TV personality with a milk mustache when in makeup.

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  31. brian stouder said on October 7, 2015 at 5:45 pm

    Alex – I thought the same thing, when I first saw the guy’s name. But, he’s a genuine bad-ass, so we shall see…

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  32. Dexter said on October 7, 2015 at 7:48 pm

    Ben Carson learned how to dodge live ammo attacks , I assume,when he was a kid throwing rocks at cars and running away and scrambling up tall fences with the po-po in hot pursuit. When I heard him telling all about the rock throwing in great detail a few days ago, I was startled, but my fucking jaw dropped when he started rambling about how he wouldn’t have let any gunman shoot him, he’d figure out a way to live, by gawd! I guess this guy thinks he’s above the law and also some sort of superman who has come to us to save us…maybe he can spell out in greater detail just how to duck autofire from super weapons of mass killing fame. I swear, we have had some real doozies, but Ben Carson, now on Trump’s tail and climbing in the polls, takes the goddam cake.

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  33. Dorothy said on October 7, 2015 at 9:32 pm

    My stomach is churning far too much for me to watch this game. I love my Pirates but I have a bad feeling about this game. And I had the feeling far before the Cubs were out in front 4-0 like they are now.

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  34. brian stouder said on October 7, 2015 at 9:41 pm

    So, the four-star Admiral was a very interesting talker, and he gave a very (very) wide-ranging lecture…you could almost call it unfocused, but that would be a little rude, yes?

    I’ll give him four stars for not becoming political, although I was braced a time or two.

    He mostly went on about the interconnectivity of the world, and the threats we face – and he rolled out the NASA composite image of the earth at night, and you can see the lit areas, and the dark areas – and he went on about how our military has been built with an eye toward potential threats in the lit areas, whereas nowadays our major threats emanate from the dark areas.

    Actually, he was very big on charts and graphic representations of this and that (LA Mary – I thought of you, as it was very power-pointy), including literally indecipherable images showing different colors of connecting lines with different shapes, representing whether the connection was commercial or criminal, and whether it was this commodity or that, with dozens of alternatives…. completely indecipherable, really

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  35. alex said on October 7, 2015 at 10:09 pm

    Sounds like it’d have been a better evening spent with a has-been middle-market TV talking head with a milk mustache.

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  36. brian stouder said on October 7, 2015 at 10:19 pm

    Actually, yes!

    But if we were going to put old local TV personalities onto the lecture circuit, I wouldn’t mind seeing Anne Calone or Bob Speaks or Ken Kurtz (Uncle Google lead me here – http://vintagetoledotv.squarespace.com/indiana-chicago/single-gallery/4547988 and I guess I never noticed he looked a bit like Don Knotts!)…if they’re still alive

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  37. Deborah said on October 7, 2015 at 10:25 pm

    RIP Billy joe Royal. “I Knew You When” takes me back.

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  38. brian stouder said on October 7, 2015 at 10:25 pm

    here’s another Google-treasure, regarding Anne Calone

    http://fortwayneindiana.blogspot.com/2007/06/ann-colone-dead-at-77.html

    I remember her very well – and I recall that my mom’s bridge-club friends all agreed that she was (stage whisper) ‘a lesbian’….which made her all the more interesting and mysterious, to me

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  39. brian stouder said on October 7, 2015 at 10:36 pm

    OK – one more nugget from Uncle Google

    http://wukyimjustsayin.blogspot.com/

    I think this is the same Ken Kurtz…!

    I recall – must have been 40 years ago – when ol’ Ken was doing the news, and threw up, on the air! For about 20 seconds, there was alive shot of an empty chair…and then Bob Speaks quickly plopped into the chair, and cleared his throat, and pressed forward!

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  40. Jill said on October 7, 2015 at 10:51 pm

    LAMary, that’s a pet peeve of mine. I’m not in a big corporation but I’m in groups where it’s not uncommon to be read Power Point presentations. I get out of those groups ASAP.
    Another problem is people unskilled in PP presentations. They fill the slides with words. It’s spectacularly ineffective.

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  41. Deborah said on October 7, 2015 at 11:40 pm

    OK really ignorant about this, does the Cubs win tonight mean they’ll be playing in the World Series or are there more games to go before that possibility?

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  42. A. Riley said on October 8, 2015 at 12:16 am

    More games. Starting Friday we play in the first round of the playoffs (against the hated Cardinals), and then there’s another round of playoffs, and then there’s the World Series.

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  43. Dexter said on October 8, 2015 at 1:00 am

    Ann Colone was the straw that stirred the drink… the best. Cliff Milnor’s local gossip column in The News-Sentinel, nance’s ‘Telling Tales’, and Hilliard Gates, Bill Foster, Dick DeFay at Channel 33, Ken Kurtz at Channel 15, Bob Sievers and Jack Underwood at WOWO, Len Davis at WGL radio…these were the giants of the media who became unforgettable to my generation who lived in and near Fort Wayne.
    My brother somehow got in to be in the studio audience when Ann Colone interviewed The Rolling Stones on the day of their Memorial Coliseum show in 1964. Did you know The Stones were and are really tiny little guys?

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  44. Dorothy said on October 8, 2015 at 11:22 am

    What do you mean by “really tiny little guys” Dexter? I just asked Uncle Google and he tells me Mick is 5’10” and Keith is 5’9″. I don’t consider that very tiny. But they’re not all that tall either. I’d call them average rather than tiny. Now if you’re talking body fat, that’s a whole ‘nother story. Mick looks like he subsists on cigarettes, coffee and gum. Maybe an occasional pretzel.

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  45. Dexter said on October 8, 2015 at 12:17 pm

    Mick is a Coca-Cola guy. You ever see Ronnie Wood? He can’t weight more than a buck and a quarter. Charlie is about 5’4″ tops. Mick is 5’10”? That’s not so…I listen to rock ad roll commentary quite a bit, and the consensus is that he’s a stretch to hit 5’5″. http://www.celebheights.com/s/Mick-Jagger-978.html

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  46. Dorothy said on October 8, 2015 at 1:20 pm

    Hmmm that is interesting. I wonder why Google said he was 5’10”? Remember his girlfriend (L’Wren Scott) who committed suicide in the last few months? She was 6’3″!! A side by side of them could probably tell us his height – at least an approximation. And former squeeze Jerry Hall is 6′.

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  47. Dorothy said on October 8, 2015 at 2:02 pm

    Dex scroll down this page until you find the picture of Mick and Ms. Scott. He’s in tennis shoes and she’s in flats. I doubt a person 5’5″ could look like this next to a woman who was 6’3″. Google her name and then click on Images – I found some of her with Sarah Jessica Parker that are amazing, the difference in their height.

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  48. Dorothy said on October 8, 2015 at 9:58 pm

    Guess it would have helped if I’d put the link with my comment. And now I can’t find that page. Well suffice to say I’m confident he’s not 5’5″.

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  49. Dorothy said on October 8, 2015 at 10:02 pm

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2361976/Mick-Jagger-hits-town-ahead-70th-birthday-girlfriend-LWren-Scott.html

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