The defiant ones.

I’ve been thinking lately, about sparky malcontents. That is to say, not just the people who complain, but do something about it.

I’m thinking specifically of the workplace, mainly because a sparky malcontent makes work more interesting, at least when they confine their spark to mischief and not gunfire.

The guy who deleted the president’s Twitter account is sort of the perfect example. On his way out the door, he clicked Delete and then Are You Sure? and whatever else next step a Twitter admin needs to take, thus depriving the world of Donald Trump’s favorite social-media profile for 11 minutes and making his unnamed self momentarily famous. This is perfect because it sent a definite message to management, and for that matter the whole world, but didn’t do any real harm.

The woman who flipped off the presidential motorcade is another. No harm done – the president was probably looking at his phone – but again, big message sent. No middle fingers were hurt in the making of this colorful gesture. (If she hadn’t confirmed it later, it’s entirely possible she was just another cyclist being muscled by a lot of drivers in SUVs and reacting accordingly.)

There was a guy who was fired from a newspaper I heard about. He worked in Sports. Back then, most newspaper sports pages published a page of two of what’s called agate, that being typographer’s lingo for very small type, where the paper posted things like box scores, standings, that sot of thing. Example here. Five-point type. When I was proofing sports copy, my boss admitted a scan was about the best I could do, at least with the current staffing levels.

This sparky malcontent, on his way out the door, got his hands on the agate page before it was typeset and seeded it with obscenities, and I mean deeply seeded, with f-bombs and suchlike embedded in names. Derek Jerkoff, that sort of thing. The presses stood a long while past start time before editors were satisfied they’d caught them all.

We may be entering a new age of the malcontent. One more makes a trend!

I know we have a few IU grads in the commentariat, and I wanted to pass this along, because it’s so dispiriting: Students are asking the school to “remove” the glorious Thomas Hart Benton murals in one of its lecture halls, because they depict, in one portion, a KKK cross-burning. That Benton insisted on including the seamier details of American life, as opposed to simple pastorals, is apparently lost on these 20-year-old art critics. I hate to hear this. They simply aren’t getting it.

But oh well. As I’m writing this, yet another woman has come forward to detail Roy Moore’s unique courting technique. Let’s discuss.

Posted at 5:53 pm in Current events |
 

68 responses to “The defiant ones.”

  1. A. Riley said on November 13, 2017 at 6:17 pm

    Mark Twain tells a story about another sparky malcontent typesetter working on a side job. A preacher had brought in his copy for a tract, a real fire & brimstone booklet that would set the territory on its ear, and he wanted it in time for the revival he was leading, real soon.

    The typesetter worked as fast as he could to get it set up and to make it fit into a signature — but it was a little too long. He couldn’t get hold of the preacher to cut his text a bit, and the deadline was looming, so he landed on a bright idea: He’d abbreviate the name of the Savior, as the French do — instead of Jesus Christ, he’d put J.-C. So he went through the type and did that, every instance, and it fit beautifully. So he ran off a galley for the preacher to inspect.

    Well, the preacher did not like that bright idea, not one bit, and he chewed out that poor typesetter, up one side and down the other. Never never *never* abbreviate the name of Our Lord, he thundered, and you better fix that right now at no charge, young man, and I’ll be back in the morning to pick up the finished job. And he slammed the door on the way out. Grr.

    The poor typesetter worked through the night to fix it — but he fixed it real good. He spelled out the name of Our Lord in full throughout the booklet, set it up, printed off a thousand copies, folded and stacked them neatly for pickup, and then he left town. Jesus H. Christ.

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  2. Bob (Not Greene) said on November 13, 2017 at 6:38 pm

    Re: Roy Moore, what I think we’re going to have confirmed — because I can’t believe it can turn out any other way — is that the ol’ judge was a veritable Jerry Sandusky. Prolific. There’s never one, or four, or five. It’s a dozen girls, or 20 or more. And we may never know the absolute worst.

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  3. basset said on November 13, 2017 at 6:43 pm

    Woodburn 100… had an intro to poli sci class in there way back when, and another in film study. we used to sneak wine into the Friday evening showings.
    and it’s Indiana University, dammit, not the University Of.

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  4. Julie Robinson said on November 13, 2017 at 6:53 pm

    Just coming here to yell the same thing, bassett. Why does this happen so often? Why does the name appear two different ways in one article? Argh–tearing my hair out!

    I had plenty of classes in Woodburn but none in that classroom, and was unaware of the murals there. I saw the ones in the Auditorium frequently, since I had a gig as a volunteer usher there (what a deal–show up half an hour early, help people find their seats, then grab an open one and see the show free). I’ll just say they aren’t really to my taste.

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  5. FDChief said on November 13, 2017 at 7:09 pm

    Ol’ Roy wuz jest follering the Traditional Courtin’ rules; iff’n you can catch ’em you can keep ’em.

    What was it was the definition of a hillbilly virgin? Something like “a girl what can run faster’n her cousins”?

    Heritage not hate, y’all…

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  6. Deborah said on November 13, 2017 at 8:05 pm

    The election needs to go forward and the Democrat needs to win. You got that DNC?

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  7. alex said on November 13, 2017 at 8:25 pm

    I had classes in Woodburn and used to go to the Friday night shows in the auditorium — I think that’s where I first got to see Cabaret — but can’t say I remember the murals especially. What I do remember is that this kerfuffle is nothing new and the political correctness police have been agitating against the murals for about the last 20 years, maybe more.

    Benton wasn’t glorifying the klan and so arguing against the murals has always struck me as the same kind of stupid as arguing against Huckleberry Finn or To Kill A Mockingbird in American lit class.

    I recall several malcontent students from my college years who tried to disrupt classes because the subject matter was offensive to them no matter the context. I remember a white kid who had adopted the Muslim religion who used to whine about Christian/Western bias in everything from literature to history to philosophy. Too bad “cultural appropriation” wasn’t a bugaboo yet or someone could have told him to shut the fuck up and quit rebelling against his Catholic upbringing. Then there was a right-wing woman who delighted in calling herself a card-carrying NRA member — in the 1980s! — who used to throw tantrums in Sociology 101 about her tax dollars supporting a state school that was indoctrinating people into communism. And in my Chaucer class, there was an angry feminist who was prone to occasional outbursts and tears because the sexism inherent in all of Chaucer’s tales wasn’t the focus of the lectures.

    I remember one English prof who had great fun at the expense of a woman who objected to having to read Jonathon Swift’s work after being informed that Swift was an atheist. “You’re here to be educated,” he told her, “not indulged in your superstitions and prejudices. If you don’t like literature, you can always go to vocational school and get a blue-collar degree in something that won’t challenge your belief system.”

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  8. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 13, 2017 at 8:31 pm

    A. Riley — that was, in fact, the forbearer of my particular tradition, one Alexander Campbell, and young Master Clemens never forgot it. From his autobiography . . .

    Samuel Clemens, when writing his autobiography in later years, recalled an event during his youth when working as an apprentice in a printing shop in Hannibal. He said, “Once the celebrated founder of the, at that time, new and wide-spread sect called Campbellites arrived in our village from Kentucky, and it made a prodigious excitement.” He went on to explain that the preaching of the “illustrious Alexander Campbell” could not be contained in any one building because most people would be turned away. So he had to preach in the town square in the open air. Clemens said that it “was the first time in my life that I had realized what a mighty population this planet contains when you get them all together.” The people decided to have the sermon printed into a pamphlet, so they raised $16 to have it done. Clemens said it was the most money they had ever seen “in one bunch” in their office. As each page had to be set out letter by letter, it was noticed at the proofing that two words had been left out, and resetting the document would take the better part of their Saturday afternoon, a time that they had planned to spend fishing and swimming. To make room for the words it was determined that in the place of “Jesus Christ,” the letters “J.C.,” would be substituted. When Campbell proofed the document, it was not long before he presented himself to the printer, Wales R. McCormick. He sternly rebuked him saying, “So long as you live, don’t you ever diminish the Savior’s name again. Put it ALL in.” So, the booklet was reprinted. Taking the preacher exactly at his word, the mischievous Wales McCormick, determined to get the last laugh, replaced the letters “J.C.” with the very slang wording, “Jesus H. Christ.” (see a fuller description in “Autobiography of Mark Twain,” edited by Charles Neider, 1906, pgs. 90,91).

    http://www.therestorationmovement.com/_states/missouri/hannibal.htm

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  9. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 13, 2017 at 8:37 pm

    And not that the two are necessarily incompatible, but Swift was an Anglican cleric. If he was an atheist, he kept it to himself. He was a novelist, and any writer of extended fiction knows that there is at least one godlike figure in every world, even if you just call them the Author.

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  10. Suzanne said on November 13, 2017 at 8:53 pm

    Even Indiana’s Todd Young has come out against Moore
    https://twitter.com/sentoddyoung/status/930193931026956289

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  11. Dexter said on November 14, 2017 at 12:37 am

    Campbell reminds me of the late Maya Angelou’s grandmother, who became unglued and loud as she admonished anyone who used “by the way” in casual conversation. Grandma said it was a horrible blasphemy, as it meant “by the way of Jesus Christ”. Picky, picky.

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  12. Gretchen said on November 14, 2017 at 12:49 am

    New reporting says that Moore was banned from the local mall during the 1970’s because he wouldn’t leave the teenage girls alone: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/banned-at-the-mall

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  13. adrianne said on November 14, 2017 at 6:38 am

    So is this the Republicans’ Waterloo: A Senate candidate who repeatedly molested young girls? Finally, is this what it takes to get these creeps out of office? Yeesh.

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  14. David C. said on November 14, 2017 at 6:41 am

    Volvo has pulled their ads from Shit fer brains Sean’s show. Will we now see YouTubes of wingnuts smashing their Volvos? Oh, nevermind.

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  15. Icarus said on November 14, 2017 at 6:49 am

    When Jared was discovered to be a pedophile, Subway cut ties with him. The sandwich shop that was accused of putting formaldehyde In their subs has better judgement than the GOP

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  16. alex said on November 14, 2017 at 7:24 am

    And the stories just keep piling on…

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  17. coozledad said on November 14, 2017 at 8:39 am

    So is this the Republicans’ Waterloo: A Senate candidate who repeatedly molested young girls? Finally, is this what it takes to get these creeps out of office?

    Nope. They have no belief system. They have no moral center. The biggest tell is when they embraced torture as a legal expedient while claiming to be champions of the Constitution. They’ve always preached sedition, and now they’re wholly owned by the Russians. If you don’t think they’ll work their asses off to protect Roy Moore or ensure one of his fellow pervs is elected, you’ve forgotten Denny Hastert was speaker of the House. They’re the enemy in every sense. A foaming sickness that needs to be washed out of this country.

    I was just recalling how many preachers, church elders. music ministers, etc. got nailed for feeling up children just in the years when I was in a high school choir and heard people talking about it. These aren’t isolated incidents: it’s a whole class of people who are part of the enforcement arm of local social codes. They only got caught when they slipped up and stuck themselves in some wealthy person’s child. Their “morality” wills this. This is the Republican base. The core of the boil.

    If they hadn’t racially gerrymandered several key states most of them would be slumped against the wall where they’d been courtmartialed and shot.

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  18. coozledad said on November 14, 2017 at 9:10 am

    https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/930428923871154176

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  19. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 14, 2017 at 9:46 am

    And yet — maybe you all have seen this already, but I was sick Saturday night. It would be funnier if it weren’t so . . . well, you know.

    https://youtu.be/CBUxNeXgC70

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  20. Deborah said on November 14, 2017 at 9:54 am

    I’ve been wondering what McConnell’s angle is in all of this. Is he just between a rock and a hard place? I mean he’s encouraging the loss of a seat in the Senate, never mind that it’s the right thing to do, when has that ever motivated him? Is he just trying to get rid of the batshit Bannon wing of the party? Which seems like a good idea to me, but what do I know. Puzzling.

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  21. Jolene said on November 14, 2017 at 10:03 am

    The link Alex published refers to one story re Moore in The New Yorker and one in the local press reporting similar facts. I thought the local story was especially important *because* it’s local, with lots of named sources.

    Also, the comments on that story are surprisingly rational given some of the clueless defenses of Moore we’ve been hearing.

    Here’s the link directly to the local story.

    https://articles.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/11/gadsden_residents_say_moores_b.amp

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  22. Julie Robinson said on November 14, 2017 at 10:06 am

    Jefftmmo, my millennial son thinks Dems are just as bad as Repubs; that they have sold out to corporate America, which he also rejects. He held his nose and voted for Hillary only because he lives in the swing state of Florida. When the new leadership of the party turned out to be the old leadership, he was done. He’s actively involved with the Democratic Socialists now and hosted a viewing of Matewan on Sunday. I don’t think he’ll be back.

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  23. Jolene said on November 14, 2017 at 10:14 am

    Deborah, McConnell never wanted Moore in the Senate to begin with because he’s a crackpot who has already said that he’ll oppose “the establishment agenda.” He (McConnell) supported another candidate in the primary.

    It’d be difficult to defend a candidate with Moore’s history under any circumstances and is not worth the cost for a person like Moore.

    Of course, the opportunity to deliver some comeuppance to Bannon sweetens the deal. Also, McConnell likely (and, unfortunately, probably correctly) thinks there will be other opportunities to pick up more seats in 2018. The Ds are defending 25 Senate seats in 2018, 10 of them in states won by Trump.

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  24. Deborah said on November 14, 2017 at 10:31 am

    So I guess we should encourage Bannon to run his crackpots, to keep those Dem seats in the Senate.

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  25. Jolene said on November 14, 2017 at 11:04 am

    One piece of evidence to counter the idea that young people are deserting the Dems is the Virginia election results. Their numbers (i.e., their proportion of the electorate) did not decline substantially from the 2016 presidential race–a common occurrence–and they voted massively for Ralph Northam, the Democrat. He won 18-29-year-old voters by 39%, as opposed to Clinton’s 18% in 2016.

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/08/politics/virginia-exit-poll-findings/index.html

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  26. susan said on November 14, 2017 at 12:00 pm

    coozledad @18 – The first comment is all that’s necessary:
    Mo Brooks must resign or send his granddaughter to intern for Roy Moore.

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  27. 4dbirds said on November 14, 2017 at 12:33 pm

    My retired army officer brother and his wife who live in Alabama will vote for Roy Moore. There is no doubt in my mind. They will excuse the behavior or think it is a conspiracy against a good man. I don’t get it but I know they will never vote for a democrat.

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  28. coozledad said on November 14, 2017 at 12:58 pm

    Youngs have already drifted away from the Bernie camp. The intelligent ones finally figured out he’s grifting their balls off. Virginia is just the start.
    The Republicans are going to have to make a bloodier play for the totalitarianism they want. Based on the ones I’ve seen, none of them have the guts for it. Half of them are opiate addicted trash, another third are on the golf course trying to pull their khakis out of their cracks, and the other third are looking at going to jail for childfucking.

    I look forward to confronting that gutless, waddling trash in the street.

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  29. Suzanne said on November 14, 2017 at 1:10 pm

    I’ve been sort of following Sessions testimony today via Twitter. Seems the poor guy can’t remember much of anything. For those who marveled at Hillary Clinton’s “I can’t recall” defense back in the day, Sessions is making her look like an amateur. How can he function in his job when he seems to have no memory of any conversation he ever had with just about anybody?

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  30. coozledad said on November 14, 2017 at 1:40 pm

    Sessions is the kind of transparent liar that gives male Republicans a chubby. That’s what they regard as courage. “Lyin’ fer Jesus” is the concept, but now that Jesus *is* Trump and Roy Moore in a kind of creepbag dyophysitism, the faith has curdled into an antinomian fetal posture. Its not even “lying” to them so much as uttering the name of their shitty god.

    Wiping Trump’s ass seems to be another path to God, and Mark Halperin has vanished and ascended to the right hand.

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  31. Brandon said on November 14, 2017 at 2:05 pm

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyophysitism

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  32. jcburns said on November 14, 2017 at 2:08 pm

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Against_Nature

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  33. Deborah said on November 14, 2017 at 2:15 pm

    Antinomian and dyophisitism are terms that I remember from my days in theology classes at the Lutheran college I went to. Of course I have to look them up to be reminded what they mean.

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  34. coozledad said on November 14, 2017 at 2:48 pm

    It’s time we just start serving warrants on dipshits who collect guns, and treat them the way marijuana offenders were treated in the war on drugs. Open societies can’t function this way.
    https://twitter.com/ABC/status/930518360571424774

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  35. Suzanne said on November 14, 2017 at 3:54 pm

    Yep, another gunman on a rampage, but he’s white, and his name is Kevin, so move along. Nothing to see except that our gun rights are still intact.

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  36. Deborah said on November 14, 2017 at 4:42 pm

    Meanwhile the craven Republicans want to pay for a corporate tax cut by taking away healthcare from 13,000,000 people.

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  37. coozledad said on November 14, 2017 at 4:56 pm

    “Pro-life” is not, nor has it ever been about pro-child. It is merely a cover for fanatical racist terrorists. It’s a tissue of lies constructed by Jerry Falwell and the Republican party.
    https://twitter.com/CraryAP/status/930506025597317120

    When you hear someone mouthing that shit, you know they’re weak in the head.

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  38. Deborah said on November 14, 2017 at 5:19 pm

    This is a fascinating 60 part Twitter thread by Seth Abaramson about the Sessions stint today. I watched part of it on my computer live earlier but couldn’t stand having to see the faces of the elf himself and his wife behind him (why was she even there?). I hope all of these points were noticed by Mueller. https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/930459964447100933

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  39. susan said on November 14, 2017 at 6:33 pm

    OMdog. Do we ever need fresh young blood in politics. The Veep Club. Biden. Smarmy smiley-ass cipher.

    Please progressive young people. Get on it!

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  40. Sherri said on November 14, 2017 at 7:20 pm

    Kamala Harris. Kristin Gillibrand. And before anybody starts questioning Kamala Harris’ progressive credentials because of things she did as California AG, I have some bones to pick with you about Joe Biden and the crime bill that Hillary got so much flak over in the campaign. Bernie, too, for that matter.

    No, Harris isn’t perfect, but we don’t seem to require perfection in old white men.

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  41. Sherri said on November 14, 2017 at 7:33 pm

    More good local news from last Tuesday’s election: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/port-of-seattle-commissioner-john-creighton-voted-out-after-11-years-despite-big-fundraising-advantage/

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  42. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 15, 2017 at 12:05 am

    Is that why I’m never hearing about Kamala Harris? I’ve wondered every time I hear Pelosi and Warren talking or talked about why Harris and Gillibrand are being kept in the cooler. Klobuchar seems to be getting some airtime.

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  43. Jolene said on November 15, 2017 at 12:41 am

    Now that it’s nearly winter, it’s time for breadmaking. Not that I actually make bread, but it’s a nice idea. I want this focaccia—and a few more of the varieties in this collection.

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  44. alex said on November 15, 2017 at 8:13 am

    Joe Biden hails from Delaware, headquarters state of all of the big credit card companies who own his ass. They locate there because the laws allow banks to do things they can’t do anywhere else or they’d have gone offshore. His progressive creds are offset by his ties to other interests as is the case with most politicians, and I cannot imagine that Kamala Harris has any skeletons in her closet scarier than his. In fact, it’s probably her lack of Wall Street connections that keeps her from being taken seriously as a candidate for bigger things.

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  45. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 15, 2017 at 8:44 am

    Just out of random curiosity: so as y’all know, I’m from Licking County & Cooze is in Person County. I don’t even care about states, I’m just curious how many other oddly named counties we have represented — what’s your county?

    (Mine’s named after salt licks in pioneer days, his is for a Revolutionary general; if you know what your name’s for, throw it in!)

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  46. Deborah said on November 15, 2017 at 9:00 am

    Not a funny name but maybe an interesting fact, I lived in St. Louis for 23 years before moving to Chicago. While there I didn’t live in any county at all as the city of St. Louis is separate from St. Louis county.

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  47. Peter said on November 15, 2017 at 9:21 am

    Jo Daviess (pronounced Joe Day-veez) county in NW Illinois – named after a Kentucky District Attorney whose last name is actually spelled Davis.

    Fun fact – there are fewer people living in the county now than when U.S. Grant left the county seat of Galena to join the civil war in the 1860’s.

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  48. Connie said on November 15, 2017 at 9:29 am

    And my eternal question: Does your state have a Pulaski County? Indiana has a Pulaski County. Michigan only has a Pulaski township.

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  49. Judybusy said on November 15, 2017 at 10:09 am

    Dipping in quickly to share my county: Hennepin County was created in 1852 by the Minnesota Territorial Legislature. Father Louis Hennepin’s name was chosen because he originally named St. Anthony Falls and recorded some of the earliest accounts of the area for the Western world. The county has been my employer for 12 years. This piques my interest in Father Hennepin. He was taught, of course, as a good guy when I went to school, but, as with most historical white males, I would bet there is some nastiness there.

    Catch ya’ll later. Wish me luck next week as my 3 sibs and I clean out mom’s trailer home. Sooo fun to hang with my little brother who because he thinks some forms of incest are OK (an uncle and niece meet for the first time as adults, fall in love!) that my marriage is A-OK. I think I shared that before, but now I have to spend 3 days with him. Everyone else is staying in the trailer home. I rented an Air BNB about 20″ away so I have some sane time. Mom, BTW is doing fine. Fell, broken hip, brief rehab stay, now with my sis, assisted living apartment already secured, but not available till mid-December.

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  50. Julie Robinson said on November 15, 2017 at 10:46 am

    judybusy, you’re wise to stay elsewhere. Four in a trailer sounds like too much even if all is copacetic. I just hope there won’t be squabbles about who gets what.

    I’m still wading through my sister’s estate and will be for many months. Yesterday we learned that she had never gotten the title for her car after she paid it off some five or six years ago, so that’s one more hiccup in getting it sold. We’d like to do that as soon as possible because her insurer insists the estate pay an additional premium for letting it sit and not be driven. Something lame about not having a driver to rate. I highly unrecommend GEICO; they’ve been hell to work with.

    On top of that my mom is really struggling, and yesterday I had to take her to the doctor for some out of control blood pressure. The doc referred her to grief counseling, which is definitely needed, but she I think she also needs antidepressants at least for awhile. We go back next month and I’m going to push for it.

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  51. Sherri said on November 15, 2017 at 10:51 am

    I’m in King county. Originally, the Oregon Territorial Legislature named Pierce county (Tacoma) and King county (Seattle) after President Franklin Pierce and his VP William King, former Senator from Alabama, in an attempt to build support for statehood.

    A while back, the King County Council voted to change this, so that King county would be named after Martin Luther King, Jr, instead, and then in 2005, the state legislature also did this, which made money available to change all the imagery associated with the name change.

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  52. Minnie said on November 15, 2017 at 11:10 am

    Three of the five states I’ve lived in had a Pulaski County. One exceptional state does have a town named after another Polish military man with a role in the American Revolution, Kosciusko. A county in the other exceptional state is named for an ancestor of military and political note. I regret to say that he was an Indian fighter, thereby, pitting himself against other ancestors. As was Deborah’s case while living in St. Louis, I don’t live in a county now but in one of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s independent cities.

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  53. Dorothy said on November 15, 2017 at 11:11 am

    My cousins moved from Allegheny County (Pittsburgh PA) to Beaver County (PA) in 1968. There’s a joke in there somewhere. (We were driving to Virginia a few years ago and saw signs in southern Ohio for Big Beaver something or other. Hoo boy!) I used to be Jeff’s county neighbor when I lived in Knox County, OH (it should have been ROCKS county – damn but we had a lot of rocks on our 3 acres of property there!). Currently we reside in Greene County, OH. For three years we lived in Greenville County, South Carolina (Simpsonville). I’ve lived in eight homes since I was born – not counting the apartment we lived in while waiting for our house in SC to sell when moving to Mount Vernon OH in 2007.

    I’m guessing we’ll never hear any explanation about this: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-shooting-wrong-tweet_us_5a0bedf9e4b0bc648a0ebb0a

    We were in Savannah GA in February this year and saw Pulaski Square! http://www.savannah.com/pulaski-square/

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  54. Jakash said on November 15, 2017 at 11:12 am

    Since, IIRC, you grew up here, Jeff, I don’t need to tell you about Cook County, but I just looked at Wikipedia, anyway. The second-most populous in the U. S. after L. A. County, its “population is larger than that of 28 states.” “Named after Daniel Cook, one of the earliest and youngest statesmen in Illinois history. He served as the second U.S. Representative from Illinois and the state’s first Attorney General.”

    In my experience, it’s often referred to in disgruntled blog comments as “Crook County,” but I think “Cooked County” should be in the running, these days…

    Isn’t it interesting that your brother posits “an uncle and niece meet for the fist time as adults, fall in love!” rather than an older aunt and a young nephew, Judybusy? Why, no, that’s not surprising at all…

    Julie, I had an unsavory experience with Geico years ago and have steered clear ever since. Since then the ubiquitous ads would have done the job of alienating me by themselves. For years, they’ve flown a freaking small plane with a lousy muffler in circles around Wrigley Field just dragging a big banner with the name. If that’s not the stupidest, most environmentally clueless form of advertising ever, I don’t know what might be. I’m sure loads of drunken, bleary-eyed bleacher creatures look up and immediately think “Wow, why have I never thought of them” and become lifelong Geico minions from the seats… I was disappointed in Mr. Buffett when I found out that it’s one of his companies, not that he’s been looking for my advice. ; )

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  55. Sherri said on November 15, 2017 at 11:13 am

    The DC press corps sticks to the familiar. You would have never guessed that Bernie would be anything other than a fringe candidate from the DC press and punditry, and while he never was going to win, that was because of his failings as a candidate rather than any lack of prior exposure.

    In 2005, who was hearing much about Obama?

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  56. Dave said on November 15, 2017 at 11:27 am

    I’m now living in Pinellas County, which comes from Spanish words Punta Pinta, meaning “point of pines”. This, from the Pinellas County website. It’s the second smallest county in Florida in terms of square miles but the most densely populated.

    It’s surely the most oddly named county I’ve lived in. I have lived in both Allen County, Ohio, and Allen County, Indiana, among other places and lived in Huron County, named for an Indian tribe, for a couple of years. I grew up within a mile of the Licking County line, in Fairfield County, but that’s not an odd name.

    There is no Pulaski County in Ohio or Florida, Connie.

    An uncle and a niece? I’m guessing that’s not the only disgusting belief your brother has, judybusy.

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  57. Heather said on November 15, 2017 at 11:38 am

    I work in DuPage county, named after the DuPage river, which was supposedly named after a fur trader named Du Page who lived along said waterway. Wikipedia notes that correct pronunciation is supposed to be “Du Pahzhe” but hey, this is the Midwest. DuPayj it is.

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  58. Connie said on November 15, 2017 at 11:45 am

    Here in Michigan we have Pere Marquette as our version of Father Hennepin. Both early Jesuit explorers in the northwest.

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  59. jcburns said on November 15, 2017 at 11:57 am

    And here, courtesy of my college roommate from Delaware, is an interesting trivia bit: they don’t have towns or townships, they have “hundreds.” They were then, roughly districts of 100 families each. And oh yeah, counties? Delaware has three. (Here in Georgia: 159. And as we all know, the precisely optimal number of counties a state should have is 88, one for each key on a piano keyboard.)

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  60. coozledad said on November 15, 2017 at 12:02 pm

    http://strangefruitandspanishmoss.blogspot.com/2014/07/july-7-1920-ed-roach.html

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  61. adrianne said on November 15, 2017 at 12:06 pm

    Sherri, if the pure Democrats insist on a purity test for their candidates, the line will be awfully short. Me, I like Kamala Harris. Although my dream ticket for the Dems is Cory Booker as president, Kirsten Gillibrand as Veep. Yes, it’s very Northeast, but so what?

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  62. Deborah said on November 15, 2017 at 12:10 pm

    Our place in Abiquiu is in Rio Arriba county. Rio of course meaning river, arriba is an “interjection. Used as an exclamation of pleasure, approval, or elation.” You may remember Speedy Gonzales saying “Arriba, andale, andale”, which maybe means “go on, up, up” but there are various translations. I don’t know if there is actually a river in the area with that name, the Rio Grande and the Chama river run through it, probably many more that I don’t know the names of. The Chama is visible from our place and it’s a stunning path of gold in the fall when the cottonwoods on either side of the river are turning. Also, as I’ve said here before, Rio Arriba is the poorest county in NM, and it has the highest rate of opioid addiction, has for generations.

    The apartment in Santa Fe, is in the boringly named Santa Fe County.

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  63. alex said on November 15, 2017 at 12:10 pm

    Indiana also has a Daviess county (named after the same Colonel Jo as the one in Illinois, evidently). Also a Kosciusko County.

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  64. Peter said on November 15, 2017 at 12:15 pm

    Illinois does have a Pulaski County; it’s located almost at the bottom of the state.

    My favorite county name is Minnesota’s Koochiching, home to International Falls. The county got an occasional shoutout in Rocky and Bullwinkle, as the county seat was Frostbite Falls.

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  65. Dorothy said on November 15, 2017 at 12:47 pm

    My comment @ 53 is awaiting moderation because I used two links…??

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  66. Jakash said on November 15, 2017 at 12:52 pm

    2 links and the same comment # as mine is a double jinx, Dorothy! ; )

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  67. basset said on November 15, 2017 at 12:59 pm

    I’m from Martin County, IN, right next to Daviess… pretty normal names there but I went to high school in Loogootee, can’t be too many of those around.

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  68. Dorothy said on November 15, 2017 at 2:40 pm

    Thanks jakash! I’m not getting paranoid or anything – just wondering why!

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