So, here in Michigan, this happened:
Lansing — The Michigan Department of Education has generated a GOP backlash and complaints of “social engineering” by recommending that public schools adopt transgender-friendly policies but refrain from unilaterally telling parents if students identify with a gender they didn’t have at birth.
A House appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday stripped from a budget bill all travel and per-diem funding for the Democrat-dominated State Board of Education, a move the Republican chairman called “a message” to members who will consider the draft recommendation on May 10.
The amendment, approved in a party-line vote, came one day after House Speaker Kevin Cotter, R-Mount Pleasant, blasted the Education Department’s draft guidance memorandum as “a poorly written and poorly thought-out proposal that takes away the rights of parents and upsets the privacy and safety of Michigan’s children.”
Of course, hardly anyone knew about this until the Daily Caller did their usual subtle aggregation, virality happened, and then things got to a full boil.
Honestly, I don’t blame parents for being upset. In the LGBT movement, there needs to be a lot more education before the general public, which is finally pretty-much OK with the LGB part, figures out the T part, and gets comfortable with it. Believe me, there are plenty of nice parents who are perfectly cool with gay uncles and aunts and close family friends, who are not going to be cool with transgender locker rooms for middle schoolers.
I asked a gay friend of mine the other day, what does transgenderism have to do with gay people? If Caitlyn Jenner is a woman, has always been a woman, was born in the wrong body but is now free to be the full expression of womanhood, including dating men, then what does that have to do with homosexuality? He replied:
It is a divisive issue in the LGBT community for the reasons you suspect. There are plenty in the community, myself included, who struggle to understand what it means to see yourself as different from your physical gender. I think added to this is the fact that transgender folks have been so stigmatized and suffered so much mental anguish that they commonly struggle to be functional in daily life.
I honestly don’t know how true that is. Surely there are well-adjusted trans people in the world. And I know the locker-room assault thing is total bullshit, as are even the less-alarmist fears about trans women showering, dongs out, next to cis women. (If ever there was a group condemned forever to the middle-school experience of having a body, it’s them.) But understanding this isn’t going to happen overnight, and I wish someone would acknowledge that.
Meanwhile, on bathrooms: I bet most trans people just use the one they feel most comfortable in already. Like this man, who apparently was born a woman. Like same-sex marriage, this issue will eventually work itself out. I just wish we didn’t walk into these buzzsaws time after time. Change strategy.
In other cranky news at this hour, Jian Ghomeshi was acquitted Thursday. You probably don’t know who he is, but his CBC show, Q, runs in Detroit, and I was a listener. A year or so ago, he was fired, after it came out that he was …pretty much a creep, sexually speaking. He was fond of S&M and rough sex, and didn’t always clear it with his partners first. A few testified that casual encounters turned into smacking or choking, but the judge chose to discount them. He had a good lawyer:
The Crown’s witnesses were firm in their testimony and appeared ready for Henein’s notoriously aggressive mode of cross-examination. But when Henein began to lay out emails, letters, and photo evidence that she said contradicted their testimony, the women and Crown prosecutors seemed equally thrown.
She startled the first witness with an email the woman sent to Ghomeshi containing a photo of her in a bikini. The email, sent months after Ghomeshi allegedly punched her and yanked her hair, appeared to contradict the woman’s testimony that after Ghomeshi assaulted her, she was too traumatized to even hear his voice.
The second witness to testify was Lucy DeCouture, an actor who claimed Ghomeshi choked and slapped her. Henein confronted DeCoutere – who waived the publication ban on naming witnesses – with a photo showing the two of them “cuddling” in a park the day after the alleged assault. In a moment of high drama, Henein asked DeCoutere to read a handwritten letter she wrote to Ghomeshi following their encounter. The letter read: “I love your hands.”
Consistency. It’s what the world needs now. Or better witnesses.
I will be glad to put this week in the books and hope for better next week. Happy Easter, everyone.
Brandon said on March 25, 2016 at 1:33 am
Happy Easter to you and fellow commenters!
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Suzanne said on March 25, 2016 at 7:39 am
Happy Easter! Lots of company coming on Sunday so I better get cleaning & cooking. My Lenten penance, I guess.
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basset said on March 25, 2016 at 8:09 am
No company, no family, and we’re not churchgoers but we did buy a ham last night.
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Icarus said on March 25, 2016 at 8:54 am
Second time this morning I read something about the Ghomeshi verdict
“If you were put on a witness stand today for something that happened to you in 2003 – something that for a long time you had no intention of disclosing or maybe even remembering – how accurate would your testimony be? If you had to tell the same story several times over an 18 month period, can you be sure that it would remain perfectly consistent the entire time? How would you fare when faced with a cross-examiner who has access to old emails that you long ago deleted? How well would you do when confronted with a highly trained professional whose only job is to make you look bad?
I keep seeing people calling the witnesses in the Ghomeshi case “liars;” people crowing that they deserve whatever is coming to them, that this is what you get when you commit perjury. No. This is what you get when the justice system expects victims to have perfect recall of traumatic events that happened more than a decade ago.”
http://bellejar.ca/2016/03/24/ghomeshi-memory-and-trauma/
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Icarus said on March 25, 2016 at 8:55 am
oh and Happy Judas Day to all!
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brian stouder said on March 25, 2016 at 9:04 am
Well, Carville and Matalin were quite good last night. Pam and I learned that they were married the same year we were, and they’re the same number of years apart (he’s 9 years older than her), although they’re 20 years older than us.
Anyway – they addressed all the current political stuff you would expect them to, and talked turkey – since they’ve been there/done that in real life, which was refreshing
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nancy said on March 25, 2016 at 9:05 am
I would respectfully disagree in this case, Icarus. If a guy chokes and slaps you during sex or foreplay without your consent (or even knowing it was coming), the reasonable person who isn’t into that kind of thing doesn’t go back for more. I know sexual psychology can be very complicated and contradictory, but I also grow tired of theorizing about how this sort of thing is so destabilizing that women are like zombies afterward, etc. It infantilizes women. One woman said she sent him a picture of herself in a bikini afterward to “lure him out,” so she could “ask him why he did that to her.” Please.
At the very least, it speaks of very poor witness preparation. And now he’s free to do it again.
I’ve had girlfriends whose partners tried this shit, mid-act. They were pretty damn clear about a) putting a stop to it; and b) ending the relationship if it didn’t stop. Maybe things are different in Canada.
(And this is one reason I’m a big fan of Dan Savage-type sexual negotiation. You can and should do whatever you like in bed if your partner is into it, with safe words and whatever else you like. But you have to be able to talk about it before and after.)
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alex said on March 25, 2016 at 9:12 am
Hosting Easter dinner for the benefit of my partner’s enormous Catholic family, and we’ve got our work cut out for us. It’s also the big unveiling of our newly remodeled house and our new carpeting is being installed at this very minute. So in addition to getting ready to entertain, we also have to move furniture back into the house, put doors back on their hinges, etc.
The carpet was to have been put in a week ago but at the last minute we were told that there was some sort of manufacturing defect and we had to re-order. Plus, the carpet that I’d chosen was out of stock so we needed to choose a different color if we wanted it installed before Easter.
Effing nightmare. I’m at work while my partner’s at home with the carpet installers. They just informed him that the new baseboard we put down will cause them extra work and cost us extra. I put the new baseboard down before the installation on the advice of the guy who gave the estimate. Fuckers.
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Heather said on March 25, 2016 at 9:22 am
At the very least Ghomeshi is a creep of the highest order. I’ve read in several outlets that predatory activities were so well known in Canadian media circles that women knew to steer clear of him and in many cases were outright told to do so–especially young women. It can have professional consequences if an entire area of your national media is off-limits based on one guy.
Also several of his female interviewees have been outspoken about feeling uncomfortable around him–and in many cases these were women who had several layers of protection, i.e., publicists and whatnot. Imagine if you were a coworker or an intern.
http://jezebel.com/zoe-kazan-jian-ghomeshi-told-me-i-had-just-the-right-a-1766935038?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
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brian stouder said on March 25, 2016 at 9:30 am
Putting doors on hinges: Pam is very good at that.
It is more of an art than a science, I think
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Sue said on March 25, 2016 at 10:16 am
Icarus, this is for you. Anyone else, if you find over-the-top religious humor offensive, don’t click.
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2008/03/21/cake/
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Deborah said on March 25, 2016 at 10:23 am
Sue, I think because that kind of humor is so taboo, is what makes it so hysterically funny.
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Sue said on March 25, 2016 at 10:33 am
Deborah, J&M books often make it into Easter baskets at my house. So I’m doubly bad and destined for Hell. In my defense though, we don’t go waving them around or posting strips on the fridge or any of that. I understand that what I find so funny (and believe it or not, also endearing in a way) is very offensive to many people.
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Icarus said on March 25, 2016 at 10:35 am
Sue that is hilarious. Thanks for another rabbit hole to spend my time at. 😉
Nancy, I think there is something about the point the blogger was bringing up, though perhaps it doesn’t hold much water in this specific case. Often it seems as if our judicial system isn’t about truth and justice, but simply who has a better lawyer.
PS I admit i hadn’t completely read your clip before pasting my own!
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john (not mccain) said on March 25, 2016 at 10:54 am
Transwomen are quite justifiably afraid of getting beaten to death when men find out they are transwomen. Forcing them to use the men’s room means forcing them to acknowledge they are trans and thus increasing the risk to their safety. Allowing them to use the women’s room eliminates that risk. Do women generally pay enough attention to strangers in women’s rooms to discern that they are trans? Maybe I’m the strange one because I pay only enough attention to who else is in the men’s room to avoid running into them.
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Bitter Scribe said on March 25, 2016 at 11:06 am
I’m ambivalent about transsexualism for exactly the reasons Nancy describes, but I keep coming back to the fact that its most vocal opponents are almost invariably swine. The Michigan Republicans cut off the state board of ed’s travel allowance to “send a message”? Here’s the message: “We’re a bunch of petty, spiteful assholes.”
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basset said on March 25, 2016 at 11:19 am
How about a link which, just for a change today, doesn’t involve anger, prejudice, or frustration?
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2016/03/23/behind-the-bucktooth-buicks-monstrous-1950-only-grille/?refer=news
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brian stouder said on March 25, 2016 at 11:42 am
Basset – that’s a stupendous link, and a great palate cleanser!
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alex said on March 25, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Sounds like there was some anger and frustration about getting replacement parts for that Buick. And prejudice against that model year from buyers.
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adrianne said on March 25, 2016 at 12:01 pm
Gian Jomeishi sounds like a creep of the first order, but proving such a case in court is a lot tougher.
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brian stouder said on March 25, 2016 at 12:13 pm
Well, and hurtful for folks wif buck teeth, too!
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brian stouder said on March 25, 2016 at 12:29 pm
make that ‘buck teef’ (or ‘buck teefus’)
If I was forming a rock band, it would be known as the Buck-teeth Buicks
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David C. said on March 25, 2016 at 2:43 pm
How often is an otherwise good looking car ruined by an unfortunate grille? Pretty often it seems to me. A couple years ago Mazda redesigned their cars and their new corporate grille looked like a shit-eating grin. Ford has done something similar going away from the horizontal bar grilles they had been using and going to something that looks like the mouth on a slack-jawed yokel. But, nobody has ever pointed out to me that I have particularly good taste when it comes to anything, so what do I know other than I know what I like.
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brian stouder said on March 25, 2016 at 3:01 pm
Prettiest car I ever had: toss-up
Can’t decide between a chocolate brown two-door w/black vinyl top 1971 Cutlass –
or a burnt-orange/gold two-door w/black vinyl top 1972 Cutlass….
but it was one of those
The ’71 had a 350 cubic inch engine, and it was a great car. A friend had it for a year or two, and sold it to me; I had it about 6 weeks, and totaled it on Calhoun street where the McDonalds used to be (near Southgate)
The ’72 I had for a year or two; it had a 455 cubic inch engine, but it wasn’t quite the car the ’71 was….’course, I didn’t have the ’71 long enough for it to break my heart
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nancy said on March 25, 2016 at 3:03 pm
Grilles are very important in auto design — it’s a car’s face, after all. Designers call the current Ford grille a little “angry,” according to the stuff I’ve read. It has something to do with the slimmer, LED headlights looking a little like squinty eyes. Slack-jawed yokel is pretty funny, though.
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LAMary said on March 25, 2016 at 3:08 pm
Prettiest car I ever had was a 1971 Karmann Ghia. I bought it used about 1987, so it needed work to run well, but it did look pretty. I guy made a left turn into me about six months after I bought it and totaled the poor thing.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 25, 2016 at 3:56 pm
“I’m not getting up until Sunday.”
Hey, it made me laugh.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 25, 2016 at 3:59 pm
Fair’s fair, though:
http://radiofreebabylon.com/RFB%20Images/CoffeeWithJesus/coffeewithjesus297.jpg
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Dexter said on March 25, 2016 at 4:06 pm
Lucy Decoutere is a favorite of mine, for many years now. She plays “Lucy” on Trailer Park Boys, star Ricky’s (Robb Wells) sometimes lover and mother of their child on the show. All my TPB blogging buddies are champing at the bit until Monday when S10 appears on Netflix. 🙂
At dawn’s crack, off to Columbus. My granddaughter has every new toy on the market so when I get there she should be back from the egg hunt and we’ll all go to a store for a “toy day” so she can pick out an Easter gift she doesn’t already have. I hope she is done with her “Frozen” kick but I doubt it. 🙂
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MichaelG said on March 25, 2016 at 4:49 pm
Designers have forgotten how to do automobile front ends. They are so caught up in the Hot Wheels idiom, so caught in trying to make cars look badassed and aggressive that they are designing shit. Here’s one:
https://www.google.com/search?q=lexus&biw=1280&bih=679&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiR5Pjf2tzLAhUHw2MKHTI2AgcQ_AUIBygC
Looks exactly like an electric razor.
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Dian Kim said on March 25, 2016 at 5:58 pm
Brian Stouder @ 6:
I’m glad you mentioned seeing them. I found out they were in the Fort on last night’s late news. I used to find them enlightening and enjoyable when they were on TV regularly years ago.
I’m curious: Did they have anything to say about Trump??
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Deborah said on March 25, 2016 at 7:24 pm
Sue, that J&M site was a day-wrecker for me, not only did I go back and read all the previous ones, but I read a bunch of the comments too.
My prettiest car was a 1990 Miata, the first year they came out. Someone had ordered it with some special coating on the bottom half of the sides and it came slightly yellowed, it was a white car. I got a super deal on it because the guy who ordered it didn’t want it because of the “flaw”. I loved that car. I had it for 10 years, then when my husband’s daughter finished her master’s at USC I gave it to her with the stipulation that I wanted it back when she could afford to buy her own car. Of course she went right out and totaled it. I had gotten another Miata in 2000, a black one but the design had been changed a bit, an extra curve was added on the sides and I didn’t have the same attachment to it. I sold it in 2003 when we moved to Chicago. I have noticed that the Miatas I see now don’t have that extra curve anymore, they seem to have gone back to the original design. I got over my obsession for little convertibles after having 3 MGs and 2 Miatas in my life. I aged out of it, I guess.
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Basset said on March 25, 2016 at 8:40 pm
MichaelG, THIS looks like an electric razor:
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2016/03/16/the-sceptre-the-cruiser-and-brooks-stevenss-radical-plan-to-save-studebaker/
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brian stouder said on March 25, 2016 at 10:39 pm
Dian – indeed; Ms Matalin seemed particularly put-off by the Donald (although I’d argue with her on her resultant championing of Cruz), and Mr Carville was positively giddy about the D’s prospects versus the Donald….and that the Donald has the thing within his grasp.
They seemed to agree that either the Donald wins the nomination and then the party takes a coast-to-coast drubbing (including in congress), or else the convention dumps Trump and then the party takes a coast-to-coast drubbing.
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MichaelG said on March 25, 2016 at 11:09 pm
Naah, Basset. It looks like the clippers the barber runs up the back of your neck.
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basset said on March 26, 2016 at 8:07 am
The Studebaker Nape, coming soon to a dealer near you…
hard to believe that the last Studebakers came off the production line fifty years ago this month.
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basset said on March 26, 2016 at 8:14 am
That’s the most commonly accepted date, anyway – there’s some indication production may have hobbled along in Israel for a few more months:
http://www.rokemneedlearts.com/carsindepth/wordpressblog/?p=3630
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Deborah said on March 26, 2016 at 10:32 am
My husband’s daughter’s father-in-law collects Studebakers. I don’t know how many he has, but he’s been doing it for a long, long time. He’s not a wealthy man, well, at least not from his life’s work, he drove earthmovers at construction sites. He’s also not well educated but he can tell you everything about Raymond Loewy, the Designer of the Studebaker and many other things. A few years ago he and his wife were in a bit of a pickle financially and he was looking into selling a few of his cars, he was very reluctant to sell and I don’t know if he ever did it. Having those cars and following others who collect them has given him a lot of joy.
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basset said on March 26, 2016 at 11:17 am
Raymond Loewy did a lot of designs we all recognize, in and out of the auto business, or at least his studio did and he got credit for them.
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2013/nov/05/raymond-loewy-timeless-designs-in-pictures
The Stude I’d like to have is the E- or R-series pickup, perfect for cruising down country roads at a relaxed pace…
http://www.murphyautomuseum.org/1955-Studebaker-E-pickup.html
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Deborah said on March 26, 2016 at 12:17 pm
I googled Loewy recently and was surprised to see that he also designed cookware for LeCreuset, I saw a skillet and a Dutch oven. The Dutch oven had the lines of a car not surprisingly. Besides cars I knew about his telephone and the furniture but hadn’t seen the cookware before.
Since we’re buying furniture for our new place in Chicago I’ve been looking at the works of my favorite designers. Eileen Gray is one of those. I’ve had an Eileen Gray table for years, it’s where I sit when I put on my makeup. In the new place we’ve torn out the walls of the bedroom so it’ll all be one big room and everything in the bedroom will be exposed. So I got a new chair to go with the Gray table, it’s also designed by Eileen Gray called the Rochebruen chair (spelling?). She was an associate of Le Corbusier and he took credit for most of her work. There’s a movie out about that called “The Price of Desire”, which I haven’t seen yet. Sorry about the design lecture.
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MichaelG said on March 26, 2016 at 2:51 pm
There’s an automotive site that I like called “Curbside Classics”.
http://www.curbsideclassic.com/
Go back over the last two weeks and there is a half dozen or so excellent articles on Studebaker and Loewy. Great site.
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MichaelG said on March 26, 2016 at 2:51 pm
Is a half dozen? Are a half dozen?
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basset said on March 26, 2016 at 3:42 pm
on that site: a VW Vanagon with a Porsche engine that’ll cruise at 100? Not with me driving, it won’t.
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MichaelG said on March 26, 2016 at 4:01 pm
Missed that one, Basset. I agree. I’ll watch the video.
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Deborah said on March 26, 2016 at 4:08 pm
I was totally wrong about the spelling of my Eileen Gray chair, it’s Roquebrune, French not German. Gray was Irish but she lived in France.
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Sherri said on March 26, 2016 at 4:23 pm
I caucused this morning, at one of the local elementary schools along with about 7 or 8 other precincts. The turnout was pretty good, but not as high as it was in 2008, when we were overflowing the gym and some precincts had to set up outside because there wasn’t enough room inside. As I expected, Sanders won this area, 23 delegates to 9 for Clinton, because this area is full of white, educated, upper middle class liberals. It went even stronger for Obama 8 years ago.
I was among the speakers in my precinct for Hillary, and mentioned that I thought electing a woman matters. I was the secretary for our precinct, so I had a lot of paperwork to fill out after the caucus adjourned. While I was waiting to get started on it, a Bernie supporter (a man, but not a young one, older than me), made a point of seeking me out and telling me that while he agreed that electing a woman as President was important, Hillary wasn’t the right woman. I replied that there was always some reason that this woman wasn’t the right one. He said he liked Elizabeth Warren, but she was too young. Elizabeth Warren is 2 years younger than Hillary. (He wasn’t the only person who mentioned Warren as being young; it’s as if her whole career prior to entering politics didn’t exist.) Mansplaining; ain’t it great!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2wBpYT6Zlo
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Jolene said on March 26, 2016 at 5:00 pm
” . . . and there is a half dozen or so excellent articles . . .”
Is a half dozen? Are a half dozen?
It’s are. The noun is the plural “articles”. “Half dozen” is just a modifier, a part of the noun phrase.
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Mark P. said on March 26, 2016 at 5:12 pm
The late ’50’s Studebaker Hawk was one of the most beautiful cars of all time. I think I would hate to drive one, because I doubt that the driving experience would be anywhere near as sublime as the car’s appearance.
I had a ’71 VW Vanagon, which I occasionally wish I still had, until I remember trying to stay warm in the winter. Or feeling raindrops when they hit the front sheetmetal. But it was a great car for traveling around the West with my dog back in 1979 or so.
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Deborah said on March 26, 2016 at 9:28 pm
I just had a disconcerting experience, I had a lovely day in Chicago, a sunny day, cool but not too cold. We walked around our part of the city doing errands, shopping etc. This morning we went over to our new place across the street to see how much progress the workers made on the renovation. It was one of the sunniest days we’ve had since we closed on the unit so it was fun to see it in that light. Then this evening we went to our neighborhood bistro for a bite to eat, I saw someone there I used to work with, so it was pleasant to stop and chat for a few minutes. After that we decided to stop in over at our new place to watch the sun go down before going home because we had such a lovely day we didn’t want it to end. We spent about a half hour there and as we were leaving our neighbor across the hall was unloading groceries into his unit so we stopped to greet him. My husband had met him before and in fact they worked together many moons ago. My husband introduced me to him, I held out my hand to shake, he shook hands very briefly and literally almost threw my hand away from his and proceeded to complain to us that our renovation was ruining his life, that we didn’t tell him how much demolition we were doing etc etc. Which was totally bogus because a notice went out to all of the neighbors on the floor and upstairs and down before we started. We even offered to help pay for any extra cleaning he would need to have done in his unit. He came over a few weeks ago when my husband was there and they talked about our plans. I could not believe what an asshole he was tonight. And this guy will be our neighbor! He and his partner had a very prestigious interior design firm in Chicago for many years, he’s mostly retired and his partner is very elderly and in a home now, so maybe the guy was just having a bad day, but wow did he completely ruin mine. We profusely apologized about the noise and the dust and slowly backed away towards the elevator. Of course this guy completely gutted and renovated his unit when he moved in. I’ve seen photos of his unit online, he did way more to his place than we’re doing to ours. I’m obviously still reeling from the encounter.
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basset said on March 26, 2016 at 10:33 pm
MarkP, the ’53 Studebaker Starlight Coupe was the genesis of the Hawk and much more attractive – a nice clean new design but Studebaker didn’t have much money for updates and by the late 50s they had tarted it up with fins, an extra grille, so forth and it just didn’t look right. Probably the ugliest version was the ’58 “Packardbaker,” essentially the same body branded as a Packard after the two companies merged. With shorter front and rear caps, the same basic body survived as the Lark and I forget what the later name for it was, clear through to the end in ’66.
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MarkH said on March 27, 2016 at 2:48 am
basset — Might you have meant the Starliner coupe, as a ’53? That looks more the precursor to the Hawk, as the Starlight was the classy bulletnose coupe.
I just confirmed you are correct: March, ’66 saw the last Study roll off the line at the Hamilton, Ontario plant. According to wikipedia, it was a Cruiser. My grandfather always had Studebakers, three that I remember, the last being a tan ’62 Lark, three on the tree.
Here’s link to an interesting Jalopnik article on Lowey and his Studebaker and other interesting automotive designs. Only Lowey would have the nerve (or gaul) to think he could improve on timeless designs like the Jag E-Type or the BMW 507. But, that he did with, uh, mixed results. Judge for yourself.
http://jalopnik.com/the-essential-cars-of-raymond-loewy-todays-google-dood-1458903867
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basset said on March 27, 2016 at 8:36 am
Starliner, that’s right… brain fade on my part. My parents had ’49 and ’51 Studes and a ’59 Lark, the only one of the three I remember.
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Mark P said on March 27, 2016 at 9:00 am
Right. The earlier version is the one I was thinking of. But you have to admit even the later ones looked better than the old pointy nose Studebaker.
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basset said on March 27, 2016 at 9:33 am
didn’t have that appealing weirdness, though. Remember the old “Wander Indiana” tourism commercials?
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Charlotte said on March 27, 2016 at 11:14 am
Sad news from Livingston — Jim Harrison has died. Keeled over in his Arizona studio, pen in hand apparently. Heart attack. He wasn’t going to be one to go in a hospital bed, so that’s a relief I think for everyone. He could be stupendously difficult, but also fascinating, and I’m deeply grateful that I got to spend a few afternoons and evenings around his table, drinking wine and listening to him carry on.
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Deborah said on March 27, 2016 at 12:01 pm
Charlotte, didn’t his wife die just a few months ago? How old was he? I guess I could look that up on Google. If you gotta go, that’s the way to do it, pen in hand.
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MichaelG said on March 27, 2016 at 12:06 pm
Mark P, here’s a nice article on the Canadian Stude plant from the site I referenced above.
http://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/the-canadian-studebaker-plant-the-last-studebaker-ever-rolled-off-the-lines-here-plus-studebaker-curbside-classics/
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MichaelG said on March 27, 2016 at 12:07 pm
Deborah, I once knew a guy whose hoped for way to die was to be shot out of bed by a jealous husband at the age of one hundred one.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 27, 2016 at 2:39 pm
Charlotte rightly noted this passing first, but here’s Jim Harrison’s NYT obit: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/arts/jim-harrison-free-spirited-writer-dies-at-78.html
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beb said on March 27, 2016 at 2:57 pm
From Mike The Mad Biologist and posted under “fucking morons”
http://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/03/26/the-science-against-selfies/
civilian injuries caused by bison is on the rise because people keep trying to take selfies with the very large, wild animals.
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brian stouder said on March 27, 2016 at 9:31 pm
Deborah – sounds like the guy is simply jealous of your husband’s interesting, vibrant, and improving life and lifestyle. I think I’d print a page or two from his internet site, and have them in your purse…so that if he confronts you again you can coolly pull them out and tell him to go fly a kite
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brian stouder said on March 27, 2016 at 9:32 pm
…make that “YOU and your husband’s interesting, vibrant, and improving life and lifestyle.”
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basset said on March 27, 2016 at 10:21 pm
Or just say what my IU roommate used to yell out the car window… “You’re old and you’re gonna die soon, what do you think about THAAAAT?”
Seriously, though, he may have indeed been having a bad day, and if he repeats that behavior it’s a sign of, I dunno, something. Be nice, take the high road, if he keeps it up remind him of his own renovation and if he doesn’t come around go have a big Mexican dinner and the next morning leave a steaming coil on his welcome mat.
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