It’s going on 8 p.m. as I write this, and the hearings are still going strong in Washington. Nunes is still a barking twit. It seems important to tell you this.
And I’m sorry, but even if you believe all the dire stories about a tuned-out public and the needle not moving at all, blah blah blah, I can’t really believe this isn’t making a difference. I mean, even laying aside my personal beliefs in this case, I see one Trumper after another tripping over his own feet. Surely this isn’t playing well in the suburbs. Surely this is making a difference with people who have two or more brain cells to rub together. I have to have more faith in my countrymen, because otherwise I will have to sell everything I own and wander the world for the rest of my life, never returning to this brain-damaged country.
Wednesdays seem to come earlier in the week than ever, which may be a function of the quickening pace of the end of the year, or just my own approaching end of the road. When you’re 12, a week lasts five years. Then you have kids and they grow up in 20 minutes.
What’s going on in your world this week? Returning to the above mega-topic, i.e., the Disgrace of This Administration, I see DUI Steph stepped in it again, claiming the outgoing Obama staffers seeded the White House with nastygrams and “Obama books.” A stupid lie that was more or less immediately debunked.
To give the girl credit, though: She’s probably never seen a book in her life, and just assumed that the ones left behind must have been “Obama books,” whatever that is.
Meanwhile, I got a message from a distant acquaintance, informing me that the “classical school” movement has set up shop in my old Indiana neighborhood, and one of its administrators, also an editor for the Federalist, is living on my very own ex-street. Here’s one of her recent columns, Stop Turning Your Yard Into a Hellscape for Halloween:
Within a few blocks of my house are yards full of severed heads, decomposing corpses, positively demonic-looking witches, goblins, and ghouls, and moldy skeletons coming out of the ground (some even shake!).
One entire nearby neighborhood decorated all of its streetlights with hanging severed heads that have blood running out of the eyes. Some people have fog machines and motion detectors that emit noises from Hell every time a mom walks by with her preschooler and baby, or kids of all ages go past on their way to school.
What is wrong with these people?
This upsets her children, she writes: “Only fools make light of evil. Hell isn’t a joke.” OK, fine. I wonder what her position might be on my personal pet peeve from when I had a young child: The anti-abortion protesters who would show up on “procedure day” at the local clinic in Fort Wayne, which happened to be across the street from the library. We spent a lot of time at the library in those days, and I believe procedure day was also Storytime Day, so I had to carry a 3- or 4-year-old past their poster-size blowups of fetal body parts. After the first time, I learned how to park to avoid most of it, but sometimes it was unavoidable. My guess is, that would be A Difficult Truth We Must Not Shrink From, or some such.
Well, if I know my old neighborhood — and I may not, anymore — she’s an anomaly.
OK, time to hit the showers and get ready for the day. Gordon Sondland, up next.
Deborah said on November 20, 2019 at 9:09 am
So Sonland isn’t taking the fifth, this of course is a bombshell. It will be interesting to see what Nunes and Jordan are going to say now. Probably that Trump did it but it’s not impeachable, which is of course ridiculous. And so it begins.
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Suzanne said on November 20, 2019 at 9:11 am
So I see that the author of that Federalist piece is also a member of Redeemer Lutheran in Fort Wayne. That church is homeschooling central, or as someone I know who attends there calls it, “unschooling”. Now they’ve started their own “classical school” which I think is really a term for homeschoolers who decided to home school together. It’s almost like a private club church, at least from what I can tell; they mostly live in the same neighborhood, intermarry, spend holidays together, homeschool their kids together. Very cult like.
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Deborah said on November 20, 2019 at 9:30 am
Nunes is such an ass. The Republicans have nothing.
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Nancy F said on November 20, 2019 at 9:33 am
Interesting piece by Masha Gessen, published November 14 in NewYorker.com, about the two irreconcilable realities of the impeachment hearings:
“To upset the equilibrium, the Democrats would have to devise a strategy that would penetrate the Republicans’ reality bubble. That is likely impossible. But, if it’s possible at all, it probably requires an approach that is less like a narrow prosecution and more like an attack on all fronts: on the President’s self-dealing; the profits he has extracted, using the office of the Presidency, from his hotels and resorts; the profits and roles in the Administration of the President’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner; the family’s relationship with Saudi Arabia; the malfeasance of issuing and revoking security clearances; the accusations of sexual assault; the cheating of charities; the still-unseen tax returns; and much, much more.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-two-irreconcilable-realities-of-the-impeachment-hearings
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Deborah said on November 20, 2019 at 9:34 am
Sonland will have to resign now. Yes?
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Ann said on November 20, 2019 at 9:41 am
“To give the girl credit, though: She’s probably never seen a book in her life, and just assumed that the ones left behind must have been “Obama books,” whatever that is.”
Just dropping in to say this completely cracked me up.
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Jeff Borden said on November 20, 2019 at 9:54 am
Gordon Sondland threw Rudy Ghouliani under the bus. Then he threw him under a garbage truck. And then the A train. He’s a wrecking ball this morning.
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Dorothy said on November 20, 2019 at 11:03 am
I’m home sick for the second day in a row and if this Sondland testimony isn’t just the best damned medicine the doctor could’ve ordered, I don’t know what else might be. It is bugging me though, that Sondland seems to have a smirk most of the time as if he thinks he’s going to come out of this smelling like roses. I am relieved to hear what he’s saying but also wondering what the Senate is going to do with this testimony when it’s time for them to vote about impeachment. The Trumpian fever that has infected so many Americans might just not be surmountable. Right this second they are taking their first break and I can hardly wait to hear what the R side of the room has to say to him.
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Suzanne said on November 20, 2019 at 11:05 am
Sondland is Jewish and the son of people who fled Nazi Germany. I’m sure the cries of “dual loyalty” will arise at any moment. He may have to join Lt Col Vindman in a safe house.
It also proves Rick Wilson’s assertion that Everything Trump Touches Dies.
Nonetheless, I am enjoying the moment.
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Sherri said on November 20, 2019 at 11:12 am
Sondland owns a bunch of hotels in Seattle and Portland, and is of the Republican donor class, not the political class. In other words, he never has to satisfy Republican voters about anything, but he does have to consider the business implications of being a staunch trump supporter in Seattle.
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Jeff Borden said on November 20, 2019 at 11:27 am
tRump is always bad for business:
https://skift.com/2019/10/16/provenance-hotels-faces-backlash-over-founders-role-in-trump-ukraine-deal/
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Scout said on November 20, 2019 at 11:57 am
BOOM
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/boom-14
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Julie Robinson said on November 20, 2019 at 2:28 pm
My sympathies and hugs go to everyone at the end of the last thread, who have lost a loved one or are in the middle of the long goodbye. LAMary ROGirl, and Dexter, in particular are facing devastating losses. I’m so sorry.
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beb said on November 20, 2019 at 2:31 pm
In his address to the Federalist Society William Barr gave a detailed description of the enemy, which for him was anyone who was not a conservative. I don’t have a link to it. He described Democrats as being a religious cult determined to destroy all norms and standards and one that would lie, cheat and steal to get their way. That seems a perfect description of Barr, the Federalist Society and Movement Conservatism in general. So for them condemning Halloween as a celebration of Satan is is good while parading around gorey picture of aborted fetuses is OK. People who cry “xthink of the children” rare;y ever think of the children.
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Suzanne said on November 20, 2019 at 2:51 pm
A friend of mine just posted something on Facebook about what a tragedy it is that the Democrats are dividing the nation, blah, blah, blah. Nothing about what Trump has done wrong. They refuse to believe what is right in front of their faces.
The right is always projecting, accusing others of what they are guilty. Which fits with Barr’s speech because it’s obvious, the right are the ones who are “a religious cult determined to destroy all norms and standards and one that would lie, cheat and steal to get their way.”
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nancy said on November 20, 2019 at 2:57 pm
Suzanne, I’ve known a lot of homeschoolers, who come at it from all camps. Some are lefties who don’t want their children exposed to what they consider bullshit education dogma. Far more are right-wingers who object to “government schools.” Many are sprinkled along the ground between, who want their kids to learn lots of different things, at their own pace, learning independence and intellectual curiosity along the way. With only a few exceptions, all abandoned it by middle/high school, because by that time kids want to be with their tribe, and unless you have a big family or live way out in the wilderness, that’s just easier in a traditional school.
Also, you have to get pretty creative by the time you get into higher-level math or languages or whatever. Unless you actually know all that stuff yourself, which most people don’t.
Classical school people are a little different, if I understand the movement. They’re really, REALLY into the whole Foundation of Western Civilization thing, and think it’s important that their kids learn Latin and Greek and so on. I think Rod Dreher was bragging on his blog that his kid started college at LSU and was “the only kid in his classics class who had read Herodotus.” (Whoop-de-do.)
My feeling about school is pretty simple: If you’re going to live in the world, you have to LIVE IN THE WORLD. I tried to shield Kate from inappropriate stuff, but at some point, you can’t catch it all and if you give your kid a phone, you have to explain that porn is a thing, it’s out there, but you don’t have to accept or tolerate it.
The world changes every day, for better and worse. You can’t duplicate your own experience no matter how hard you try. Some, not all, of the homeschoolers I knew were very much motivated by fear. (Like Rod Dreher.) I get it, but I disagree.
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Suzanne said on November 20, 2019 at 5:05 pm
I have a friend who homeschooled and did a great job: one kid’s an attorney, one a veterinarian, one works at a university in some administrative capacity, one is a librarian. She didn’t homeschool from fear, though, and I think, as you mentioned Nancy, that is key. She homeschooled because it gave her kids time to explore music & theater & art & fencing & she had them take classes when she hit a subject that was beyond her knowledge.
The homeschoolers I know now are mostly into the fear factor; keep those kids away from the world because they are so scared of it. But it’s out there, like it or not, and I wanted my kids to learn to navigate it with me coaching them, not hiding them.
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Jeff Borden said on November 20, 2019 at 5:24 pm
Tara Westover’s “Educated” gives a pretty good look at homeschooling in a survivalist Mormon family in the mountains of Idaho. It isn’t pretty.
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Deborah said on November 20, 2019 at 5:31 pm
I watched Sondland this morning from the beginning and then I had a haircut appt so had to leave around 10:30, I got back from running errands much later in the afternoon and was surprised that Sondland was still on the teevee. It’s going to go into prime time again, which must drive the Republicans wild. I’ll be glued to the tube all night. I wonder if Trump will stroke out. He’s getting it from all sides as he should.
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Deborah said on November 20, 2019 at 5:37 pm
My husband’s daughter homeschooled her daughter until the daughter was 9, then she started public school and was woefully way behind the other kids, she had to be held back from her age group. This is a really long story that I’ll get into at some other time.
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Scout said on November 20, 2019 at 5:38 pm
There’s another Dem debate tonight, which seems to have been lost in the impeachment shuffle. I thought this was an interesting summary.
https://organizeandwin.com/debate-preview-buttigiegs-moment-or-pete-ing-too-soon/?fbclid=IwAR1EV57XCx9Ps8RNSVY2MO_Ntxz8LpwqC9c74BSXKcX8l1VkB-law5h-808
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David C. said on November 20, 2019 at 6:18 pm
The answer to the gory Halloween and the gory forced birthers is “that’s different”. It’s their all-purpose.
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Brandon said on November 20, 2019 at 6:44 pm
I think Rod Dreher was bragging on his blog that his kid started college at LSU and was “the only kid in his classics class who had read Herodotus.”
“[H]e’s been amazed by how well classical Christian education prepared him for university studies. In a history survey course, they were studying Greco-Roman history, and he was the only one in his class who had already read Herodotus.”
“The Joy of Sequitur.”
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alex said on November 20, 2019 at 6:50 pm
I could probably have skipped my public school education and been none the worse for it. My parents were all about learning all the time, and my brother and his wife are the same with their family. The extramural reading, travel and museumgoing of my childhood was more stimulating than anything I ever learned in school.
And how did I know nothing of this high-profile nutter Joy Pullmann stinking up our town? Guess I just don’t get out enough anymore.
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bb in DE said on November 20, 2019 at 7:08 pm
I’ve spent some time thinking about the whole home school thing, and I find myself falling firmly in the not-a-fan camp.
First, home schooling (done right) strikes me as so much work for a parent, and aren’t there better ways to spend that energy? If you don’t trust the dogma of public school subjects–hey! Teachable moment. Lend a hand with your kid’s homework and try to teach them critical thinking skills as you help them learn the subject itself. Want greater interaction with the local school’s direction? Join the PTA, or try to get on the school board, and see if other parents agree with your ideas of a better way. If they agree, you may be on to something. If they don’t, maybe the problem is your better way.
Also, whenever I encounter a home schooled 10- or 12-y-o, they tend to have zero social skills–just no clue how to interact with a person not blood-related. It’s certainly not the kid’s fault, but it is a thing. Why would a parent want to do that to their kid? Some very useful social skills are taught for free at the local school. Want li’l Johnny to know how to deal with jerks? Help him figure out how to navigate around/ successfully interact with the class bully. Want li’l Susie to learn how to strive for big-picture goals–and maybe overcome unexpected disappointment? Encourage her to try out for sports, or a lead in the spring play.
If all you want is to ensure your kid doesn’t get lucky before the age of 21, just turn them into a bookworm. (Ha! English major humor. Stop me; I got a million of ’em.) But fer godsake, don’t sequester your kid away from other kids and expect them to have a useful understanding of how to deal with the wider world. It’ll only make you feel better. Your kid will not be improved by growing up in a space devoid of other kids.
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Brian stouder said on November 20, 2019 at 8:54 pm
The one thing our Trump-supplied national case of DT’s has correct – as per the title of Woodward’s Trump book – is the power of ‘Fear’. When our babies grew older, and school loomed…that was Scarey! And those voucher-mill schools simply surf those fearful waves. As was said up above, the solution (which worked for Pam and I) was getting involved with our (public) schools and teachers and administrators, and asking questions, and listening. The fear evaporated pretty quickly, and I love-love-love our public schools, period.
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alex said on November 20, 2019 at 9:48 pm
No wonder Joy Pullmann thinks tacky Halloween decorations are a “Hellscape” giving her little poots PTSD. Fear is everything these days and people eat it up like chocolate. My parents (in their 90s) can’t have civil conversations with their lifelong colleagues who are addicted to Fox and the coming race war, socialism and all that crap, who think government is their enemy and is coming to get them like a boogeyman.
I credit my relative sanity with the fact that I don’t do Hollywood movies or CSI-type television or organized religion, all of which require suspension of disbelief for the spine-tingling, hair-raising pleasure that comes with it. It’s seductive and it can also warp you to the point that you can believe the shit coming out of Donald Trump’s blowhole over objective reality. I may be missing out on some fun but I know how that shit fucks with me. Just like I know that I’ve been a blackout drunk and I don’t dare own a gun.
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LAMary said on November 20, 2019 at 10:12 pm
Thank you for your good thoughts. My brother died today. He was given a lot of morphine and extubated. His son told me that he was snoring very loudly and that made me smile. I told my nephew that my brother was a notorious snorer. He could be heard snoring on the second floor by people in the basement. He’s had a CPAP for years, so my nephew barely recalls the snoring. I told my nephew I was very happy his dad did his signature snore on the way out.
I feel relieved that this is mostly over. The local Democrats in my brother’s town posted something very nice about him, citing his humor, his generosity with his time when it came to coaching kids, and his fishing stories. When someone from the opposing party says it was an honor to sit next to someone for 16 years, that’s quite a tribute.
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Gretchen said on November 21, 2019 at 1:10 am
When I read that about the offices having piles of Obama books, that told me that she thinks all books are bought in bulk by the crate to prop up the sales of your friends. She honestly doesn’t know that people buy books one at a time, read them and take them home in case they want to read them again.
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Dexter Friend said on November 21, 2019 at 1:56 am
Taps…so sorry LA Mary.
When I saw “Ambassador” I didn’t think immediately of Sondland , but Matty Maroun, thinking he may have expired. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/03/22/ambassador-bridge-owner-manuel-matty-moroun/433641002/
I watched the show from 9:00 AM all day with short breaks to walk the dog and run a few errands. Tonight I think it was Klobuchar who said in her administration no one would buy ambassadorships. It was pleasant to watch a great debate after all the tension in Washington today, man…Sondland just let it rip, or, as The Big Lebowski says “…the goddam plane has crashed into the mountain!” Gabbard pissed me off with her bullshit about Mayor Pete and I took to Facebook to rant…later Steve Schmidt, msnbc’s critical Republican , said Gabbard was just awful, horrible, etc. I never watch Fox News but someone said she used to be a regular, trashing Obama brutally and criticizing the Democratic Party relentlessly. I got all bent out of shape and now I want her to go back to Hawaii and stay there. Mayor Pete just keeps on hitting home runs; he clearly won the debate, if there is a winner in these things, but Biden was near-perfect until he misspoke about Carol Moseley Braun, calling her the only Black US Senator ever…as Kamala Harris stood on-stage. A big gaffe. Mayor Pete is slick, making sure he doesn’t say anything about the perceived homophobia of South Carolina voters. Now, in S.C. , Pete is at 0% with Blacks and Joe has 44%. Personally, I truly believe Pete has conquered anti-gay sentiment across many walks of life, but even among the converted former anti-gays, there’s the fearsome electability factor. We do want Trump out, but do we need a “left-leaning centrist” (Klobuchar) , which, by the way, is a misnomer. Klobuchar is dead-center or maybe even a right-leaning Senator. Oh well, the reason the debate was enjoyable was that it did not get mired in a 90 minute ditch of health coverage and Medicare. That’s a hot button topic, but tonight the debaters covered a lot of ground. Oh…I got a couple of Bernie bumper stickers in the mail from HQ. A little note enclosed thanking me for my compliments on Facebook. Those people are sharp, found me in my little corner of the nets. Ha. 🙂
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Connie said on November 21, 2019 at 5:52 am
My close friend was a home schooler, and it started because her oldest son was a total nerd that was already being bullied in preschool and sunday school. Her next two kids went to public school for high school, initially because her second son wanted to play all the sports.
She participated in a multi county home school group, the purpose of which was to provide educational stuff that couldn’t be done at home. The group used the facility of a community college one day a week. Their program included phys ed stuff with swimming lessons, musical instruments, foreign languages and more.
In my career I have built five libraries and been involved in designing several that didn’t get built.
In that designing process we ask the community what they want. The big home school group wanted their own private library space just for them, with private collections, programs and story time. Guys when you reject school you are giving up the school library.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 21, 2019 at 7:15 am
You can, of course, read Herodotus on your own while going to a public school. Just sayin’.
I preached a sermon once to a congregation crowded as usual with teachers, retired teachers, and spouses and children of teachers, and said mischievously that I believed, in fact, that all families should home school. I really do believe that.
And then I added, and note here just as sincerely, that supplementing home schooling with public education is a great idea. But just because you’re sending your kid to school doesn’t mean you’ve fulfilled your job as a parent to educate your kids. I will say that my teaching parishioners in large numbers said they loved that take.
I’m on my way to a high school and middle school as I am most Thursday mornings, and at least once I’m likely to pull this factoid out: from birth to age 18, what percentage of a child’s time is spent in school? Go ahead, think it over, come up with a guess.
The fascinating thing to me again and again is that even principals will say 30, 40, and most (I’m talking educators) 50%. The parents are worse, usually coughing up quickly 50 to 75%. I’ll smile, shake my head, and let them try again, and no one ever goes below 25% or so on their own.
The correct answer is 9%. People always look baffled, then teachers start to smile, parents irritated. And they’ll say “oh, you’re counting sleeping and weekends.” The trap closes.
Yes, so if a child is up until 3 am and gets up at 6:30 to catch a 6:40 bus which they often miss, and when they do get to school are groggy and punchy and irritable, that influences their ability to be educated? 9% is important for all of us to keep in mind. That is the total amount of time a child spends in the direct influence of the school and staff. 91% of their time, you have to help out with. Even if I allow for 8 hours of sleep a night and factor that out entirely, it still rises to less than 20%, leaving over 80% in the household’s care. If you say I can only count school days and awake time in those five days a week, the school has at most a third . . . two-thirds is yours, mom and dad. But I’m holding onto my 9% from birth to age 18: the rest of their education is in your hands.
Every family should home school. And supplement it with a public education.
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nancy said on November 21, 2019 at 7:30 am
May I see the hands of all parents who read to their children in large part because it involved sitting in a comfy chair with a warm kid on your lap rather than crawling around on the floor with Legos, and also because in your infinite selfishness you like reading better than Legos? :::raises hand:::
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Deborah said on November 21, 2019 at 8:04 am
I tried to watch the debate last night but kept falling asleep.
I thought I commented on this yesterday but I may not have hit the send button. Did any of you see Rep. Sean Maloney’s questioning of Sondland yesterday? It was ruthless and effective.
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Suzanne said on November 21, 2019 at 9:02 am
Hand raised on reading over Legos. At one point, I am sure I could have recited Hop on Pop from memory.
But the nature vs nurture rages with my kids. Both share the same genetic material, one male, one female and both read to frequently. Daughter is an avid reader (she highly recommends Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill) and the son reads occasionally, I think because he feels like it’s a good thing to do, even though he doesn’t enjoy it that much.
Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the lap sitting book reading time I shared with both.
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Andrea said on November 21, 2019 at 9:11 am
Raises hand… reading aloud to the kids was a regular pleasure for all of us. Plus I was a huge convert to the benefits of reading aloud by The Read Aloud Handbook. https://www.amazon.com/Read-Aloud-Handbook-Seventh-Jim-Trelease/dp/014312160X
Two of my children are readers and I believe will continue to be, although both of them read much less than they did as children. My son picked up the habit again when he lived in China for 5 months — we sent him with a pre-loaded kindle and he has continued with it after returning home. Our older daughter still reads physical books too. But the youngest only liked audio books or being read aloud to, and never willingly reads a book. I tried to suggest reading a book during the most recent CPS strike and was met with scorn and derision. Why would anyone want to spend any time in that way?
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basset said on November 21, 2019 at 9:21 am
“Clifford the Big Red Dog” here… learned to read really well and really early myself, mainly due to Mama B and many flash cards when I was a toddler. Everyone’s a big reader at our house, lots of books cluttering up the place but we don’t mind that.
Bought our first new car in fourteen years yday, Subaru Outback… and it’s really weird, lots of prox stuff and touch screens. spent two and a half hours at the dealer yesterday, most of it signing papers and the rest getting instruction on how to use the many menus. Not so sure I like this, if I want to put it in four-wheel lock it takes two screens… and we had to be shown how to open the doors and turn the heat on.
We usually buy lease returns with a couple years on em, with a Subie the low-mile used ones are within a few thousand of the new and the 2020 had some safety features we wanted.
Still have the last car we bought new, 05 Camry that’s coming up on 300,000 and still in daily use.
Kids and school and nine percent… raise your hand if you’ve ever heard a parent say “I don’t read to my kids, that’s the school’s job!” That last came from some redneck in Bloomington who also said that his three-year-old was perfectly safe standing up on the pickup seat because “he knows to hold on.”
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 21, 2019 at 9:45 am
Full disclosure: I never read Herodotus aloud to my son as he grew up. And I doubt he’s read it himself. His self-proclaimed approach to history is to say when such questions come up: “let me text my dad.” But I have faith that the seeds were planted, and at some unexpected moment he might choose to read a book for pleasure . . . or not. At least he knows something about Darwin and Dickens, neither of which he picked up in school, and has viewed personal manuscripts of both, even if that wouldn’t have been his leisure time choice on vacation.
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LAMary said on November 21, 2019 at 10:01 am
Lots of reading to the kids here. Go Dog Go, Mama Cat’s Year, lots of Maurice Sendak including the Nutshell Library stories. We also played with Legos and Brio Trains and many wooden blocks. The Brio Trains were my favorite. Both sons went to public school for the same reason Nancy mentions. I wanted them to get the good bad and ugly and it was mostly very good in elementary school. A little less in middle school and mixed results in high school. Both sons came out ok. One graduating from college and one selling merch and traveling the world with rockers. Both sons are pretty good at dealing with a wide variety of people, situations and languages. I don’t think home schooling would have provided that.
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diane said on November 21, 2019 at 10:01 am
Connie @31
OMG, I don’t how you could survive building five libraries. We just did (literally just did, as in the grand opening was this week) an addition and significant renovation of the existing space and I’m not even the Director but was heavily involved and I am still reeling. I could not do this 4 more times!!
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Heather said on November 21, 2019 at 10:15 am
I stumbled across this thread this morning and got momentarily depressed:
https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1197268889387896838
But on the other hand, I think all these guys (assuming most of them are men) have their heads in the sand. Like Nancy said, I think they underestimate the ability of people to understand facts and see through the gaslighting. The question is if we’ll be able to do anything about it. I’m not feeling too confident about the security of the 2020 election.
The best moment for me yesterday was watching Sonderland’s smirk get wiped off his face by Rep. Sean “Big Irish Cop Energy” Maloney:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAai5ZK9BbQ
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Julie Robinson said on November 21, 2019 at 10:31 am
When our daughter arrived, I remembered that good language development meant a child needed to hear some huge number of words every day. But I quickly ran out of things to say, so I started reading to her, like on day five. People made fun of me, but as the daughter of a librarian, I had PLENTY of books, and I noticed she responded to rhymes with extra movement.
And so it went through both kids, and they are still readers. Our son drives a lot for his job and uses the time for audiobooks. I myself just passed the 100 book mark for the year.
We had Legos but they didn’t get played with much. Our much loved Brio train set recently went to a couple of preschools.
STOP! Don’t hop on Pop!
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ROGirl said on November 21, 2019 at 11:04 am
I loved the Nutshell Library when I was little, didn’t have my own set, but someone had I knew had it. Back when Borders existed, I bought a set.
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Sherri said on November 21, 2019 at 11:34 am
I was in the reading to *and* Legos camp. And Brio trains.
I’ve seen the gamut of homeschoolers, from the ones retreating from the world to the ones doing it to meet the needs of their particular child. It can work, but it does require work. I wonder how prepared Dreher’s kid was for college math and science. It’s nice that he’d read Herodotus (in the original, though?), but what about calculus?
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Scout said on November 21, 2019 at 12:36 pm
As a voracious reader and childhood bookworm myself, I read to my kids and hoped they would also be big readers, as I believe reading comprehension is essential to succeeding in most subjects and in life in general. Alas, growing up, neither one read for pleasure very much. But as adults they both now read as much as I do.
Fiona Hill is doing her part today to corroborate the testimony of all the previous witnesses. So far there has not been ONE single witness that has a different story. It’s like the R’s have no awareness of how terrible they look defending the indefensible. Not that they are really defending anything as much as whining and bitching about “the process” and trying to pretend they don’t know how these things work. I guess the fox news zombies eat that garbage right up, though.
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Deborah said on November 21, 2019 at 12:42 pm
LB turned out to be a voracious reader. I read to her a lot, it was her favorite thing, she would’ve sat listening for hours and hours if I’d had the time. She taught herself to read at 3, I remember when I realized she could actually read, she was sitting on the couch looking at the funny papers moving her lips to the words she could figure out. I put flash cards on things in her room when she was still a baby, I’d point to the “window” and then point out the letters on the card and say it slowly etc. I didn’t really test her to see if she could recognize the word in a different setting, I thought that would be too pushy. I like to read so much, I assumed that she would like it too, and she does.
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Suzanne said on November 21, 2019 at 12:48 pm
Good old airhead Jim Banks is taking a survey on impeachment! I urge you all to take the one question survey
https://iqconnect.lmhostediq.com/iqextranet//EsurveyForm.aspx?__cid=IN03JB&__sid=100026&__crop=11934.6671166.5194666.46250
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Jakash said on November 21, 2019 at 12:50 pm
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
— Soren Kierkegaard
https://twitter.com/gmbutts/status/1197156699611811842
Well, if Make America Foolish Again were the motto, I’d think that things were moving apace.
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Julie Robinson said on November 21, 2019 at 1:37 pm
Thank you, Suzanne, I was very happy to vote on that one.
I’m currently reading Fahrenheit 451; it’s probably been 35 years since the last time. I’m about halfway through and it’s slow because it gives me so much to think about. I’ll share more when I finish, but I’m being struck again by its prescience and timeliness.
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Suzanne said on November 21, 2019 at 1:55 pm
I voted in Banks’ survey more than once. It seems to allow it.
I read Fahrenheit 451 for the first time a few years ago (how I missed it in school, I’m not sure. Didn’t read Herodotus either) and was surprised that it wasn’t anything like I expected. Predictive? Yes.
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alex said on November 21, 2019 at 3:20 pm
Not that Banks is really interested in anything anyone has to say. He can’t even go off script when he’s being heckled by his own constituents. Fuckin’ phony baloney Trump cocksucker.
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Joe Kobiela said on November 21, 2019 at 4:45 pm
In this investigation I don’t think I have seen any facts showing pro quo, seems Sonderland kept saying it was his perception of this his understanding of that but couldn’t come up with any facts that would hold up in court. If I said it’s my perception that Alex is a flaming liberal asshole but I couldn’t provide actual fact that he is, a lawyer would throw that testimony out. So how are you going to prove the allegations against the President if it’s just someone’s perception of a incident?
My oldest daughter has been busy putting the library here in Auburn back together after the fire of almost 2.5 years ago it’s been a big struggle and I doubt she would want to do it again but it’s also been a amazing experience that would look good on a resume if she every decided to change jobs. When it’s done and open I would encourage anyone in the area to stop in and have a look.
Sorry about your brother Mary
Pilot Joe
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nancy said on November 21, 2019 at 5:09 pm
Now you’re just being stupid, Joe.
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Icarus said on November 21, 2019 at 5:33 pm
Pilot Joe @ 52
So then if everything that you are hearing and seeing in this investigation…if we had the same thing going on but just change one variable, Obama instead of Trump, would you, as a patriotic American, say
‘I don’t think I have seen any facts showing pro quo, seems Sonderland kept saying it was his perception of this his understanding of that but couldn’t come up with any facts that would hold up in court.’
Or would you stay silent?
Remember, in this hypothetical EVERYTHING is exactly the same except the POTUS.
We’ll hang up and wait for our answer.
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David C. said on November 21, 2019 at 6:35 pm
Sounds like someone who needs to dust off his resume to send to Liberty University or Hillsdale College. It seems like if you can’t be allowed to grade your student’s papers without them being blinded you should probably be shown the door.
https://provost.indiana.edu/statements/index.html
Professor Eric Rasmusen has, for many years, used his private social media accounts to disseminate his racist, sexist, and homophobic views. When I label his views in this way, let me note that the labels are not a close call, nor do his posts require careful parsing to reach these conclusions. He has posted, among many other things, the following pernicious and false stereotypes:
That he believes that women do not belong in the workplace, particularly not in academia, and that he believes most women would prefer to have a boss than be one; he has used slurs in his posts about women;
That gay men should not be permitted in academia either, because he believes they are promiscuous and unable to avoid abusing students;
That he believes that black students are generally unqualified for attendance at elite institutions, and are generally inferior academically to white students.
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Jakash said on November 21, 2019 at 6:42 pm
I think Nancy pretty well covered it @53, but there’s a hungry troll out there, people!
Uh, P.J., do the names Michael Cohen, George Papadopoulous, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn or Roger Stone ring any bells for you? If Trump were “Mister Trump” instead of, ahem, “President Trump,” he’d have already been indicted and convicted, like they were, by “facts that would hold up in court” with regard to the Russia investigation. Not only “would hold up” but *have* held up, over and over.
As for this investigation, here’s a source you might trust — Fox News.
“The Donald Trump mega-donor who was awarded with an ambassadorship stepped into the impeachment spotlight Wednesday and said the president basically did what Democrats are accusing him of doing.
Gordon Sondland, who had already changed his testimony once, delivered a torrent of words, but none more important than these: “Was there a quid pro quo?…The answer is yes.”
https://www.foxnews.com/media/sondland-declares-quid-pro-quo-pundits-call-testimony-damaging-to-trump
Of course, you’re more inclined to believe the guilty guy who lies 10 times a day than a host of witnesses. Don’t know why you are, but that strategy usually doesn’t work out very well in court.
Good for your daughter, by the way. None of my business, but I wonder if she shares your skepticism about this whole impeachment thing being a matter of perception.
tl;dr — look at #53 again.
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Joe Kobiela said on November 21, 2019 at 7:11 pm
David,
Is that the same Hillsdale that was the first to admit woman and minorities and excepts no government funding?
Pilot Joe
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Deborah said on November 21, 2019 at 7:11 pm
I got so caught up in Fiona Hill this afternoon I completely forgot I had a dentist appointment. Damn. But holy moly Dr.Hill is amazing.
I was wondering when Joe would wade in and he does on cue when the Republicans have no leg to stand on particularly as it applies to Sondland, Then top that with Dr. Hill and it’s endgame.
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Heather said on November 21, 2019 at 7:21 pm
It’s the Hillsdale where the president resigned after it came out he was fucking his daughter-in-law.
I mean, how many people literally have to say there WAS a quid pro quo in plain words before you have to believe it. But sure, keep ignoring the smart people lining up (in the face of threats from the president and others–Vindland had to get 24-hour security for him and his family) to tell you facts about places they were and the things they heard and the topics they have spent years studying and the places they have spent years working in, in favor of a bunch of yammering baboons desperately covering their eyes and ears.
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David C. said on November 21, 2019 at 7:59 pm
Nice try, Joe. That was Oberlin College on both counts.
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alex said on November 21, 2019 at 9:26 pm
The Eric Rasmussen case proves that academic institutions have lost sight of the true meaning of intellectual freedom. It was never about protecting hate speech as if it were a perfectly legitimate commodity in the marketplace of ideas. It was about protecting intellectualism from anti-intellectuals like Rasmussen.
IU’s position is about as chickenshit as Mitch McConnell’s.
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Joe Kobiela said on November 21, 2019 at 9:30 pm
It was the first American college to prohibit in its charter any discrimination based on race, religion, or sex, and became an early force for the abolition of slavery. It was also the second college in the nation to grant four-year liberal arts degrees to women.
Hillsdale College › about › history
Pilot Joe
History – Hillsdale College
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alex said on November 21, 2019 at 9:52 pm
Amazing what a difference 150 years makes. Hillsdale has gone from progressive to regressive, just like the Republicans.
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Heather said on November 21, 2019 at 10:50 pm
Yeah, surprising they don’t feature their hypocrisy on their About page.
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Dexter Friend said on November 22, 2019 at 2:22 am
I wish I could have gone to Antioch in Yellow Springs, a national phenomenon years ago but last I heard had been reduced to a couple storefront rooms in the town. I read about the school many times as newspapers loved doing features on the place in the 60s and 70s. Now Antioch is famous for Young’s Jersey Dairy’s famous wonderful ice cream. It’s right off OH68 a few minutes straight east of Wright-Patterson AFB and I bet Dorothy knows all about it. Here’s the Wikipedia primer:
And I went to a 2-room rural school, 4 grades in each room with one teacher for 4 grades in each room. The format would not fly today , but my cousin went on to high school with her class of about 200 kids and she was valedictorian. And…the next three in line all attended our little grade school. Top 4 out of 200. How the hell does that happen? My dad heard from my cousin’s parents the school board and local parents in that school system were thoroughly pissed off at how those country bumpkins swept the awards.
My brother was salutatorian of his high school class of 110. It wasn’t close to home schooling, but my classes in elementary school only had about a dozen kids.
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Connie said on November 22, 2019 at 6:32 am
Diane@40: The first three library buildings were all at the same time very early in my career, one big, two tiny. Then ten years until the fourth, and fifteen more until the fifth, which was 2017. And the easiest due to the world’s greatest construction manager.
For the last two buildings my husband reminded me I swore I’d never do it again. You get over it.
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David C. said on November 22, 2019 at 6:32 am
Hillsdale College says Hillsdale College was the first.
https://collegestats.org/2013/01/the-first-10-u-s-colleges-to-go-co-ed/
Oberlin is a true pathbreaker in American education. This liberal arts college in Ohio was the first school to accept not only women as well as men, in 1837, but black students as well as white, in 1835. It was founded by two Presbyterian ministers, Philo P. Stewart and John J. Shipherd, who once described his school’s iconoclastic nature this way: “Oberlin is peculiar in that which is good.” Oberlin’s prominence in the abolition movement, with students and faculty involved in both the Underground Railroad and John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, reminds us of the religious roots of 19th-century progressivism, which will be a recurring theme on this list.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 22, 2019 at 7:13 am
I think the debate has to do with the practice, versus officially stating in their charter that they’re co-educational. Oberlin undoubtedly admitted women along with men first; Hillsdale formally went on record as officially making it policy by charter first. Bethany College in West Virginia used to say (it’s part of my denomination’s founding narrative) that they were second after Oberlin to admit women, but it was to a subsidiary within the college that was really a college prep/high school program. They didn’t admit women to the bachelor’s degree program until 1877, while our Hiram College did put co-educational policies into their charter from their start in 1850.
The question of firsts is always interesting to dig into; I’ve gotten half a dozen columns over the years out of “first church in Licking County” which has a number of claimants depending on your criteria.
My wife’s leaving tomorrow for Finland with a group of Denison students; apparently there’s no Turkey in Turku where she’s spending the week. Anyone here know anything about Turku, capital of Finland?
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Deborah said on November 22, 2019 at 8:44 am
Jeff tmmo, I’ve been to Turku, back in 2006. We were driving back to Helsinki after being at an architecture symposium in Jyvaskyla. We stopped in Turku to see a church designed by a famous modern architect, I don’t remember his name (it wasn’t Aalto). We had a last minute, bad meal at a restaurant, the service was lousy there but we were hungry. I loved Finland, especially Helsinki. Helsinki is the capital isn’t it?
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Deborah said on November 22, 2019 at 8:46 am
Actually it was 2008 or 2009 not 2006. And Helsinki is indeed the capital of Finland.
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Deborah said on November 22, 2019 at 9:50 am
This is good https://www.adl.org/news/article/sacha-baron-cohens-keynote-address-at-adls-2019-never-is-now-summit-on-anti-semitism
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Sherri said on November 22, 2019 at 11:12 am
As the old saying goes, it ain’t what you don’t know that’s the problem, it’s what you know that isn’t so.
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Dorothy said on November 22, 2019 at 11:12 am
Yes Dexter we’ve been to Yellow Springs many times. Every September there is a wool festival (they sell yarn etc.) called A Wool Gathering. On July 4 we took our granddaughter up to see goats, cows, sheep etc. I had two earrings repaired at a small store on the main drag for a ridiculously low amount of money. In August/September there is a gorgeous field of sunflowers nearby where lots of people go to take photographs. We bought a Christmas tree at Young’s our first year here. Theit ice cream is the bomb.
We were big readers with our kids when they were little. I used to worry that our son would not read as voraciously as his sister used to, but now he reads a lot. Our daughter doesn’t read for enjoyment much anymore because she reads for a living (copy editor at the Post). She was a valedictorian at her school – went to Penn State’s Honors college. Son was in the Scholars Program at Ohio State. They did okay for having gone to public schools for 12 years.
A night or two ago my son texted that this week Olivia has been asking them to read two Rosemary Wells books to her. I immediately texted back “Noisy Nora?!” “Yep!” he said. Then I typed very fast “Quiet said her father, hush said her mum, ‘Nora’ said her sister, ‘why are you so dumb?!'” One of favorite books of all times! I still have the copy I read to the kids. O has her own massive library and she’s not even 3 yet. She knows all the letters and I can’t wait for the day she is actually reading herself. We have a video of her sort of reading Jimmy Fallon’s book ‘Dada’. She does the animal names and sounds and then ‘reads’ the end very slowly in her funny little voice. I think I’ve watched it 451 times so far.
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Brian stouder said on November 22, 2019 at 12:25 pm
Here’s a non-sequitur, which I didn’t know: Do ya’ know who died on this day in 1963? Yeah yeah yeah – aside from the guy in the motorcade in Dallas… On that very same day, we lost CS Lewis, and Aldous Huxley. I suppose that in 2019, with modern media capabilities, we’d get the breaking news from Dallas, with Lewis and Huxley on the crawl (at least)
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Deborah said on November 22, 2019 at 12:36 pm
This is hysterical https://twitter.com/benmekler/status/1196187081648869382
Thank God we’re flying business class to France. Uncle J and his entourage usually fly first class, we thought that was excessive for us. Last time we went with them they flew first class but we flew coach, this time we thought we might upgrade a bit.
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Julie Robinson said on November 22, 2019 at 12:38 pm
Dorothy, that’s too precious for words. I’m a wee bit jealous, since grandbabies are looking increasingly unlikely.
Brian, as we were discussing Fahrenheit 451 last night, I was reminded that I should reread Brave New World also. I’m really plodding along, though. I can’t absorb too much of it on any given day. It’s too grim, too much like our world today.
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nancy said on November 22, 2019 at 1:04 pm
Before the topic is retired, let me just say that while Hillsdale may have been an early admitter of women, touting an institution like that because of its 19th century roots is like saying, “Well, the Republicans were the ones who freed the slaves,” etc. Things change.
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basset said on November 22, 2019 at 1:15 pm
Well, the holiday spirit is upon me once again like, as Hunter Thompson used to say in other contexts, a “million pound shithammer.” Saw one too many happy family reuniting for the holiday commercials last night, don’t remember what they were selling but it was like turning on a switch.
The new Subaru is providing some distraction with extended interludes of frustration. Just about everything on it is no touch, menu driven, or both, and I am right this minute updating my phone to the newest iOS so I can load the two apps which are required for full operation of the car. No CD player, either.
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Dorothy said on November 22, 2019 at 2:00 pm
basset our daughter bought a new Crosstrek (Subaru) in the spring and she really loves it. CD players are a thing of the past I’m afraid. Everything is digital these days which I just have to accept. I got a new desktop computer at work last year, as did two other secretaries, and they no longer come with a CD drive. Well, not the models IT chose for us. That’s a bummer because I liked to bring in Christmas CDs to listen to. I’d have to buy a stand alone CD reader to do that now.
Julie are you on Instagram? I’d love for you to see some pictures of Olivia and heaven knows I have a bunch there.
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Julie Robinson said on November 22, 2019 at 3:34 pm
Dorothy, I’m not on Instagram or Twitter, but you can find me on Facebook as Julie Pigott Robinson. Do you have music on your phone or a tablet? That’s how I made it through work.
For me, CD players in cars are preferable to playing music from a phone. The CD starts and stops with the car, instead of needing the extra step of pausing your phone. I get through a lot of books on CD driving around town.
One more day in Orlando, sigh.
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Peter said on November 22, 2019 at 5:09 pm
Deborah, would that church be St. Henry’s Chapel that was done in the early 2000’s? It’s got the big pine ribs….
I don’t know if I can say anything positive about last week in Trumponia. Growing up in Chicago in the ’60’s and witnessing the Daley Machine, there’s a lot of similarity here, in that you have a few progressive and the one or two Republicans who try to hold City Hall accountable but it gets to be a farce.
Simply put, I think sometimes you have to stand for what you believe in, even though you know it turns into a show trial. What if Nancy had said hell, there’s no way Moscow Mitch is going to do a fair trial, so why even bother? Where would we be then?
I’ll go back to my cave now. Have a nice weekend one and all.
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alex said on November 22, 2019 at 5:27 pm
The realignment of the political parties may be lost on the historically illiterate, but they certainly seem to take great joy in talking smack about Dems and blacks while excusing their effrontery with “we freed the slaves.”
There were more schools than just those in the list linked above that were co-ed and racially integrated, but some simply didn’t survive. John Jay Shipherd of Oberlin opened the LaGrange Collegiate Institute in the town of Ontario, LaGrange County, Indiana. It was a sister school of Oberlin and shared its board of directors, but lasted only from about 1837-1878.
In Jay County, Indiana, was a school known as Liber College that opened in the 1850s and Harriet Beecher Stowe was among its biggest stockholders. When it became known that the school’s charter called for it to be an integrated institution, several of the school’s original backers pulled out and opened a competing school, the Farmer’s Academy. Liber survived into the 1870s.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 22, 2019 at 5:44 pm
Yep, Helsinki the capital of Finland today; Turku *was* the capital until 1812, and so it still has the big castle and the cathedral, which fooled me looking over my wife’s shoulder at pictures. She just gets a week there, but I look forward to hearing about it. I’m doing a wedding on Friday, after running to Indy to do a modest Thanksgiving dinner with her dad, who lives alone, so my son and I are going there to eat (and clean) and then back to Ohio.
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Deborah said on November 22, 2019 at 5:48 pm
Peter, Yeah, it’s amazing how undependable ones memory can be. We did have a meal in Turku but the church we saw was in Tempere by this architect who was from Turku https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reima_and_Raili_Pietilä. What I remember most strongly about Turku was the rushing river that ran through it and that restaurant was on the riverfront that’s why we chose to eat there.
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Deborah said on November 22, 2019 at 8:35 pm
Jeff tmmo you might be interested in this https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/boy-scouts-mortgage-vast-new-mexico-ranch-as-collateral/article_dac8f176-8fc8-5703-ba3a-92131aa4d966.html there’s a paywall but you might be able to see the article you get a few free reads a month.
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LAMary said on November 22, 2019 at 9:19 pm
ROGirl, a friend of mine had Nutshell Library too and I didn’t. I loved Pierre. When I had kids I had to find that little set of books. Being the youngest by a lot I had lots of books from four older siblings. Some had such charming illustrations from the late thirties and early forties. I remember a story about spools of thread in a drawer, all the colors rendered in watercolor and pen and ink. The spools had little faces and the strong, white thread for sewing on buttons felt cheated because he had no color. I wish I had that book now.
One last thing about my brother: the town where he lived is flying flags at half staff in his honor. I don’t know how I feel about that. I don’t think he would have approved.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 22, 2019 at 10:46 pm
Deborah: not surprised, but deeply saddened. For all sorts of reasons.
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Dexter Friend said on November 23, 2019 at 2:25 am
I can’t be so naive that I should continue to believe all republicans are and always have been rich, management types, extreme capitalists, right wing journos, small-minded bigots and straight-up racist homophobic pigs, or piggies, as George Harrison said many years ago. I watch msnbc all the time and I see Steve Schmidt, a former repug political advisor, and Nicole Wallace, a former White House staff member for Bush43, and many other former repugs who now condemn Trump in many ways we all know about, but especially this bribery case of late. Eugene Robinson of The Post says this republican party is a sinking ship, totally unlike any other repug administration, and if Trump wins the 2020, he will kill the party right off, and I believe it. He is going to be impeached, probably before Christmas and the holiday break, and if by miracle the US Senate throws him out of office…can the motherfucker still run for President in 2020? It’s a weird thought…moot it seems, from the consensus now.
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David C. said on November 23, 2019 at 7:43 am
The thing with the Never Trumpers is that, after the collapse, if everyone claps and JEB! claws his way to the top of whatever pile is left, they’ll be right up on his tire swing. So we wouldn’t get Russia please help, but 90% of the batshittery going on with the current occupant would still happen. Judges, tax cuts for the wealthy, attacks on health care, attacks on the rights of anyone who isn’t a straight white man, it would all keep up under a JEB! administration. I’ll take them as allies right now, but I’ll be forever wary.
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Sherri said on November 23, 2019 at 11:46 am
Just remember that Mitch McConnell blocked Obama’s court appointments, including a SCOTUS appointment, so he could hand the court over to a Republican President, breaking all norms and traditions. Trump is just the vulgar face of what’s been going on in the Republican Party for years.
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Dave said on November 23, 2019 at 12:23 pm
Our 2019 Outback has a CD player but I haven’t even tried it to see if it works. Perhaps I should. Also, the 2019 still has buttons but as someone said for the heat controls, as well as the heated seats.
Someone I slightly know, who is a retired schoolteacher, posted on his Facebook that if any of his Facebook friends didn’t support this president, they should unfriend him now. So, I did, without comment.
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Julie Robinson said on November 23, 2019 at 12:55 pm
Facebook just reminded me that today was Moe’s birthday. Imagine what she’d have to say about our country right now.
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jcburns said on November 23, 2019 at 1:42 pm
Looking forward to when Alan pulls a big ol’ Tesla CyberTruck into your driveway for a few days. For his work, of course.
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Deborah said on November 23, 2019 at 2:13 pm
I know I’m 12, but this made me laugh https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1198284580693909504
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Deborah said on November 23, 2019 at 2:16 pm
Well, I screwed up the link, it was supposed to be just the photo of the behived Trump with his brats.
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Deborah said on November 23, 2019 at 3:31 pm
Tonight is the lights festival in Chicago that involves a parade down Michigan Ave from Oak St to Wacker. It’s also another opera night for us, this time Don Giovanni. So we have to leave our place at 4 so we can get across Michigan to be able to walk to the opera. We’re going to eat dinner at a restaurant near the Lyric to kill time before the opera starts. The parade starts at 5:30, it’s usually well attended, lots of families as you’d expect, but it’s usually held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, if memory serves. It is quite spectacular to see all of the lights that line Michigan Ave during the holiday season and beyond, they come on progressively during the parade and they stay lit up every night until the end of February. The most amazing holiday lights I’ve ever seen in a city though were in London.
The opera we went to last Saturday, Dead Man Walking we didn’t think was very good, even though it had gotten good reviews, it just wasn’t hitting it for us.
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Dorothy said on November 23, 2019 at 4:58 pm
A rainy gloomy day here in Ohio but I’m getting lots done in the house. I need to put away the electronic equipment and go get the cod ready to go in the oven, and then chop up the cauliflower to get that ready.
I have an odd question for the room: for those of you with iPhones, since the latest OS update, do you get extremely weird spell check interpretations? Much stranger than I used to get. I touch one or two letters and suddenly the phone puts in spaces, and adds dumbass combinations of letters that make no discernible word whatsoever. I’m just wondering if anyone has noticed that.
Julie I found you on Facebook easily, but for your settings you must have it blocked that people cannot ‘friend you’ — perhaps you have to do the friending…? The ‘button’ on your home page is grayed out so I can’t add you as a friend. I sent you a message in Messenger, though, so if you can locate that it’ll show you my last name.
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Deborah said on November 24, 2019 at 8:41 am
The opera was fantastic last night, hard to go wrong with Mozart.
I made a spectacular fall at the opera, I was trying to avoid a woman who stepped out in front of me outside the hall after I made a last minute trip to the restroom and I tripped on a bunch of walkers lined up on the marble floor, sending them clattering noisily about while I was sprawled on the floor. They don’t let people bring their walkers into the hall and since a lot of old people go to the opera there are a lot of them. I was extremely embarrassed, plenty of people came over to help me up and asked if I was ok, I was fine, couldn’t get to my seat fast enough. But my hip hurts this morning. Nothing serious since we walked briskly home afterwards last night with no problems.
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Dorothy said on November 25, 2019 at 7:18 am
Happy birthday today, Nancy.
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