The other day I was scrolling Twitter and saw a video with many views and heart-eyes emojis after it, some funny guy doing his Karen act. He had the wig, the flat comfortable sandals and as he pulled on a pair of capri pants I realized, Um, wait, that’s me.
I wear capri pants in summer because my short-short days are long past, and I know the minimum inseam on any pair of shorts I might wear outside the house (9 inches). Even if you keep up the struggle, exercise, eat right, there comes a time when your thighs have given up, and you don’t show them to anyone other than close friends and the people you swim with, who are all old like you and have the bods to show for it.
One of the struggles I gave up this year was hair denial. I let the gray come in, and I’m very happy I did, as for once, the timing was perfect; my last haircut was two days before the salon shutdown. I got the last of the blonde highlights snipped off, and so spent the last three months not sweating my roots growing out. With a million new things to worry about in 2020, it was freeing to let that one go.
But now I’m about as Karen-y as Karens get, at least from the outside. Anyone looking at me would sum me up at a glance: Karen. Boomer. Enemy. And so on.
So now it’s the day before the holiday weekend starts, and I’m sitting inside because it is hot as hell outside and will be getting hotter for the foreseeable future. We’ve had a very angry few days here in Detroit. Two women got into a shouting match over a hip-check in the doorway of a Chipotle, and a gun was drawn, a truly insane confrontation. Was it captured on video? Do you even need to ask? And yes, one of the women involved was a Karen, as we understand the term these days: White, middle-aged, hair-trigger temper.
The night before, a cyclist shot a motorist dead on the street in front of the RenCen, probably the closest thing Detroit has to a Magnificent Mile district. It was a road-rage thing, we’re told. The motorist yelled at the cyclists, the cyclists yelled back, he stopped and got out of his vehicle with a knife in hand. One of the cyclists, a woman, was packing (legally) and fired one shot, enough to send him to Elysium. Must have been the surprise of his life.
It so happened I had to do the aggregation — short rewrite/summation, with link — of both of these stories, to Deadline. I posted them to Facebook, because that’s where we get our traffic.
So I’m circling back a few hours later, checking engagement, and start reading the comments. Are comments good for anything anymore? No. It’s all memes and the same catch phrases over and over. The preeners are the worst: Do better and Check your privilege and You spelled ‘racist’ wrong and Fixed it for ya and I guess someone here has work to do. I guess this is a byproduct of people being out of work or working from home where they can check social media all day. And of being angry, and of it being about 900 degrees outside, with cases spiking.
Anyway, I think I’ve had my fill for the day, and for the weekend. I’m taking my Karen-ass self out to walk the dog, if she’s up to a jaunt no longer than around the block. If I meet any black birdwatchers, I will not be calling the police. In fact, I may just leave my phone behind.
Bloggage:
Hank Stuever on the rise of Karens on your screen. Funny:
Now, with the cameras squarely and vigilantly in the hands of those who are sick of being hassled, the “Karens” show depressingly confirms some of our worst suspicions about people in general, wielding a similar power of stereotype. “Karens” triumphantly flips the “Cops” dynamic. The Karens of our world relied too long on the power of racism and intolerance, threatening to call the authorities on anyone who offended or unnerved them. Now Karen is the bad guy, getting the comeuppance she so richly deserves. (Whatcha gonna do, Karen? Whatcha gonna do when Instagram comes for you?)
I had more, but it’s stale by now. News gets stale in 10 minutes these days. Enjoy your holiday, and may the deity of your choice bless America.
Sherri said on July 2, 2020 at 6:03 pm
The Yakima area continues to be a mess.
https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/local/selah-city-attorney-warns-family-they-could-be-prosecuted-for-creating-more-chalk-art/article_e88672e7-e72c-5140-a4b7-ece27ac83925.html
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David C said on July 2, 2020 at 6:30 pm
Lord knows I’ve had nasty drivers bother my while I was cycling. I’ve had coal rolled at me a couple of times (that fad seems to have passed), had bottles and cigarette butts thrown at me, and been yelled at more times than I can count. I’ve never had weapons drawn at me though and I’d damn sure never carry a gun. I could never shoot anybody. What I would do if I was ever confronted by someone with a weapon I have no clue. I try to be as non-confrontational as I can be. If I’m yelled at, I just smile and wave. I figure the confusion factor of friendliness in the face of aggression is the ultimate passive-aggressive strategy. It’s about all I have.
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Deborah said on July 2, 2020 at 6:38 pm
Abiquiu, where we are right now, has a man-made lake, they dammed the Chama river in 1963 and formed the lake destroying some Native American settlements in the process. It’s a major tourist attraction because bodies of water around here are scarce. We’re staying way clear of that this weekend and Bode’s general store where the tourist stop and buy last minute provisions on their way out to the lake. It’s hot, still and dry out here this evening, we really need rain, soon.
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LAMary said on July 2, 2020 at 7:52 pm
We had horrible heat waves in May and a little bit in June, but I can’t complain about the las two weeks. Sixties in the AM, getting up to high seventies, maybe 80 in the afternoon. I had to talk to Instacart customer service today about a curb pick up order that was completely wrong. I’m sitting there in my car in the designated parking spot, I tap on “I’m at the store” on my phone and out comes a guy with a cart. He tells me the thought I had a silver Honda. I tell him no, it’s a VW. I ask him if he’s sure that’s my order. He says yes. I ask him if the name on the bags is correct. He says yes. As he’s leaving I ask again if he’s sure that surname on the bags is my surname. Yup, have a nice day, close the hatch. I get home and of course it’s not my groceries, not my name. I schlep back to Sprouts and call them from the pickup spot. I let the phone ring for five minutes. No answer. So I get in line to go into the store. I dial the store number again because it looks like I’ll be in line for a while. After 42 rings the store manager picks up and tells me I need to talk to Instacart. Luckily, before he hung up on me, I asked him to please hand the phone to the instacart person. I hold on a lot more. A young woman gets on the phone and she tells me that the guy who brought out the groceries was trained to ask me my first name. He didn’t He didn’t ask me anything. He told me he thought I had a Honda which I took as a red flag. Anyway a she asks me to bring the order to the door of the store and I politely asked her to come get it when she brings the correct order to my car. I never went full Karen. I had an edge to my voice, for sure. When got home I had the ubiquitous “How was your order?” email from Instacart and I told them exactly how it was.
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basset said on July 2, 2020 at 8:35 pm
We’re still waiting on a return message from the Lufthansa help line, where the recording promised they would do their best to get back to us within thirty days. Not holding our breath on that.
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beb said on July 2, 2020 at 9:20 pm
The News, like bread, stales quickly.
What are we going to do with all these Karens in a post-Trump world? They are the quintessential Trump-supporter. Empowered racists with no self-awareness. Yes, they deserve everything thing they get but they’re such a fricking pain to life with.
I haven’t worn shorts since I skinned my knee riding a bike when I was six. Some people think I’m crazy for not wearing shorts when it’s so hot but damn if I;ll skin my knee again!
I visit Deadline Detroit from it’s web page. It used to be when you clicked on “Leave a comment” you got a facebook log-in page. I don;t do facebook. Recently I noticed that if I click on the “Leave a Comment” nothing happens. No sign in box or anything. I thought it was strange to disable comments but not remove the comments box.
The “preeners” Nancy mentions sound like the people at bars who insisted on sharing their (mis)information with everyone.
Something to say about the endless fireworks in our area: At least they aren’t setting off M-80. The firworks may be loud but they’re not the house-jolting boom that used to be so common. For that small mercy I give thinks.
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beb said on July 2, 2020 at 9:41 pm
How good are masks? This tweet shows you
https://twitter.com/richdavisphd/status/1276629360212979712
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LAMary said on July 2, 2020 at 10:51 pm
M-80s are the boom of choice here in NELA.
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Mark P said on July 2, 2020 at 11:15 pm
Thirty years ago — no, make that 40 years ago — I might have worn shorts in public. When I was a runner I had legs so shapely that a driver who was stopped at a traffic light and couldn’t see my upper body because of the traffic signal control box, thought I was a woman. He made some kind of sexist remark, and was quite embarrassed when he pulled forward and saw the rest of me. Now I wear shorts to walk the dogs out here in the country where no one notices old man legs, but never to any store.
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LAMary said on July 2, 2020 at 11:27 pm
I don’t think Karens are necessarily middle aged. I’ve seen a few videos of Karens who are probably in their thirties. The famous North Hollywood Trader Joe’s Karen for one. And then there’s this one in Dallas.
https://tinyurl.com/y9p87942
Just watched the North Hollywood Karen again. She’s probably around 40.
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LAMary said on July 2, 2020 at 11:33 pm
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Karen+Haircut+Meme&form=RESTAB&first=1&scenario=ImageBasicHover
Karen hair.
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Heather said on July 3, 2020 at 12:07 am
A couple of friends and I got mockingly called Karens by some Latino kids at a forest preserve about a month ago. We weren’t even doing anything Karen-y, other than being white and middle-aged. Maybe because we were wearing masks? I wanted to tell them that’s not how it works, but whatever, they just wanted to sound cool to each other.
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Connie said on July 3, 2020 at 6:02 am
I started growing in my gray before the pandemic and expected to get it cut short in April. The extra grow in time didn’t help, as she cut the sides shaved short. I have gone from blonde shoulder length to really short gray.
I usually spend my early morning coffee with you guys and my ipad, but the ipad is in the shop,so I am on my laptop in the kitchen. My battery and charging cables stopped speaking to each other unless I wiggled them, so I am getting a new battery. And possibly a new screen if it gets broken in the process.
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David C said on July 3, 2020 at 6:03 am
The gun totin’ St. Louie couple are not just racist assholes, they’re all around assholes.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-insane-neighborhood-drama-behind-the-gun-toting-st-louis-lawyer-couple
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 3, 2020 at 6:55 am
Have to tip my hat to Sheriff Bouchard’s turn of phrase, as he says his counsel to family members about off-kilter encounters: “This is not the moment to plant your flag.”
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Little Bird said on July 3, 2020 at 9:02 am
I’m 45 and I don’t wear shorts. I have a couple pairs, but they are for sleeping or to wear with a bathing suit. I used to have a very large tumor on my thigh, and if I didn’t wear the shorts it was very noticeable. When I would go to public pools or spas people would stare or even leave the tub because they thought it was contagious.
I also have birthmarks. Which people think are bruises. So I don’t wear shorts.
Oddly, now that the tumor is gone and I have a huge honkin’ scar, no one seems to look twice. But I still don’t wear shorts.
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Deborah said on July 3, 2020 at 9:29 am
Also not a shorts wearer. It’s probably been nearly 30 years since I wore shorts in public or even private. I used to have pretty nice legs if I do say so myself, but I have saggy spots now. I wear leggings as pants with no compunction because they cinch in the sagginess. I just don’t feel comfortable in shorts and I don’t wear Capri pants or what I used to call pedal pushers, I don’t find them comfortable either. I think they cut off my legs at an unfortunate spot. I think long pants elongate my legs and make them look longer and leaner. I don’t feel that long pants are hot in warm weather, and I almost always wear long sleeves, sometimes I roll them up to the elbow. Maybe this is why I hate the hot, humid Midwest in the summer.
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Julie Robinson said on July 3, 2020 at 9:51 am
Did anyone else notice the nasty St. Louis couple were both barefoot? Although I’ve never held a gun I’m pretty sure it goes against basic gun safety rules to be barefoot.
Whew! Glad to say I do not have Karen hair. It looks like it has to be straight and teased, with a part, none of which my curly locks can achieve. I’m growing out my gray too, when else am I getting a better time? I don’t like the way it looks, but I’ll be 64 this year and who am I kidding. I wear capri pants too, stumpy legs and all. Heels? Don’t make me laugh.
Anyone watching Hamilton this weekend? We’re going to try this afternoon, if the app isn’t overloaded.
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kayak woman said on July 3, 2020 at 9:57 am
I think the Karen thing is modeled after my former sister-in-law (brother’s widow) Karen. Yes, that’s her name. She was always high maintenance, argumentative with shopkeepers, etc., who didn’t live up to her standards of perfectionism. After my mother died, she turned her anger toward me and for a couple years paid a lawyer to write hostile, threatening letters to me and my daughters. What did we do to make her angry? That was 6-7 years ago and to this day, I do not know. Eventually her own lawyer got tired of her.
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LAMary said on July 3, 2020 at 10:05 am
I’ve been five foot ten since I was 13 or so. Finding pants that hit the right length has always been an issue. Capri pants hit me mid kneecap. Ankle pants look like capris that at about two inches too long. I only want pants that come right down to my feet.
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Jeff Borden said on July 3, 2020 at 10:43 am
I feel sorry for women actually named Karen. Has anyone ever determined why that particular name became the standard for obnoxious white woman behavior? There’s already a backlash to this movement online with some sites saying this, too, is sexist, racist, ageist, etc.
Meanwhile, I’ve read that the dickless douchenozzles in the so-called “boogaloo” movement have taken to wearing Hawaiian shirts as a signifier. This cannot stand, man! I’ve long been a fan of loose-fitting, wildly-colored topical shirts in the summer because they are far more comfortable than any other shirt in muggy weather. I’m pissed they’re now a symbol of white pride in some circle of hell.
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basset said on July 3, 2020 at 10:54 am
I basically rotate three pairs of shorts all summer – Carhartt tan, Carhartt green, and Mountain Khakis khaki, occasionally a pair of nylon gym shorts if I’m going canoeing or wade fishing.
My legs look terrible on a good day no matter what I’m wearing… including a couple of big surgical scars from getting an ACL replacement back when surgeons used to cut you open for that rather than using the scope. The surgeon who did mine was known for giving himself a lot of room to work… I was in line at Target one day when some total stranger came up, pointed to my knee and said “I bet I know who did that!” And he was right.
Just back from the river out behind the house, thought I would put the kayak in and fish a little but when I got there twenty-two boats were waiting to launch. So much for a quiet morning.
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Sherri said on July 3, 2020 at 11:27 am
I wear shorts, capris, leggings, long pants. Nothing saggy about my legs! I get comments on my legs, mostly from other women my age wanting to know what I do that my legs have so much muscle.
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Icarus said on July 3, 2020 at 11:40 am
I think I’ve shared this before.
https://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2020/04/caucasity-karen-becky-susan.html
Also saw somewhere, and this is a paraphrase “if POC had to deal with all the names they’ve been called over the years, White women can handle Karen for a little while.”
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LAMary said on July 3, 2020 at 11:46 am
Jeff Borden, you can say you work at Trader Joe’s. Now some of the employees wear TJs t shirts, but not long ago they all wore Hawaiian shirts.
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Colleen said on July 3, 2020 at 12:49 pm
No shorts in public for me. Thunder thighs. I also have very short legs, so i look silly in Capri pants. But I don’t really care. I may adopt that attitude for shorts too.
Karens. Ugh. There are so many people who are just so….demanding and high maintenance.
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Sherri said on July 3, 2020 at 1:15 pm
We’re still months away from UW bringing students back, but there’s already an outbreak on Greek Row.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/a-covid-19-outbreak-on-uws-greek-row-hints-at-how-hard-it-may-be-to-open-colleges-this-fall/
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Julie Robinson said on July 3, 2020 at 1:36 pm
Hmm, I’m thinking that I was a Karen the other day. It wasn’t anything as bad as LAMary’s grocery order, but mine was fairly screwed up with wrong items, an overcharge, and frozen items thawed out. I had tipped the picker in cash, then discovered all the issues, and had a lot of trouble figuring out where to dispute the overcharge. So by the time I finally found it I was feeling a little steamed and I let them know. After a couple of days they wrote back saying I have a $10.50 credit.
Since few people wear masks here* I prefer doing grocery pickup orders, but they do take at least as long as shopping in person. Since I’m making the order from the comfort of my air conditioned home, that probably makes me a Karen.
*Except for the two stores requiring them, Costco and Menard’s. There has been a little noise about it, but I guess the people who refuse just shop elsewhere.
Also not worn by me: sleeveless tops. No one needs to see my upper arms.
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Deborah said on July 3, 2020 at 1:47 pm
I have Karen hair right now during the quarantine time. I have a side part and my hair is growing out (a lot), I have white hair though and I don’t tease it. My technique to get it a little puffier is to stoop over brush my hair so it’s hanging down, then spray it with medium hold hairspray, then when I stand up my hair sticks up, then I tamp or sleek it down on the top layer. It doesn’t always work that well. I have a hair appt in Chicago, the 22nd, that is if I actually go to Chicago.
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Deborah said on July 3, 2020 at 1:56 pm
Even when I walked 6 or 7 miles everyday, which I did for years, I still didn’t get much muscle gain in my legs. I should probably be doing some weight lifting but not to the degree you do, Sherri. My back could not handle that at all, not to mention my whimpy arms.
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Sherri said on July 3, 2020 at 2:08 pm
You’d be surprised what your back and wimpy arms could handle, because you’d work those, too, and build up strength there, too. My husband plays a lot of squash, and used to complain about his knees hurting. I told him over and over that he needed to mix in some weight training, and he finally listened to me and started working with a trainer. He strengthened his core and his posterior chain and now he plays squash without knee pain.
You don’t have to lift as heavy as I do to get benefits, and it’s never too late to start. I know women in their 70s and 80s lifting weights.
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Scout said on July 3, 2020 at 2:10 pm
I still wear shorts and while my legs are shaped ok, I have tons of ugly spider veins. However, I live in a climate that is so hot everyone wears shorts and lots of people look worse in them than I do. I’m beyond caring at my age.
As for the Karen hair, I call that the soccer mom haircut. Long on the sides and bouffey short layered in back. Every time I try a new stylist they want to do it on me. Just no. I’ve hated that style ever since it hit no matter who wore it, and it would look especially crap on me with my narrow face.
On the subject of Karens, a friend of mine named Karen worries about giving that name for take-out orders now. I advised her to use Kerry. Mine is a different problem; I never use my real name because it never fails to create confusion for the young things who apparently never heard of the name Jeannie. Teeny, Genie, Ginny, they’ll ask? I used to say ‘close enough’ but now I just skip it and say Jenny. Never a problem.
The St Louis gun toting lawyers bought themselves all kinds of unflattering scrutiny with their silly stunt. I wonder how it will affect business.
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LAMary said on July 3, 2020 at 2:10 pm
I don’t think doing pick up for my groceries makes me a Karen. I’m 67 and I have a condition that puts me at risk. If someone else can get my bread and milk and produce, why not. I have sent my son with a list a couple of times but with mixed results. The last time I listened to our mayor’s covid update the testing was showing a positive rate of 1 out of 140. It had doubled since the previous week. If I can skip the supermarket, I will.
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Mark P said on July 3, 2020 at 2:15 pm
Deborah@17 — I would wear long sleeves year round in a climate less hot and humid than Georgia. I absolutely hate the summer here. My friend who has lived in New Mexico for decades wears long sleeves year round. He said you can tell who the tourists are, because they are the ones wearing short sleeves. If you wear short sleeves there, you will burn unless you slather your arms with sunscreen. Same here, so when I go outside to work in the yard, my arms look like I’ve dipped them in sour cream.
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LAMary said on July 3, 2020 at 2:16 pm
Jeannie is passe’. You need name like Kayleigh or Kaydence. I haven’t heard of any new kids named Nevaeh lately. By reading resumes all day at my old job I often figure out approximately when someone was born. Kayleigh, the newest cross wearing professional liar, has a name most often seen on Toddlers and Tiaras.
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Julie Robinson said on July 3, 2020 at 2:18 pm
Grocery pickup just makes you sensible, Mary. I do it because of my mom, who, God willing, will be 88 later this month, and is getting frail.
What made me a Karen was giving my shopper such a low rating. She’s just trying to make a living, and has exposed herself on my behalf. I’m starting to feel really crummy about it.
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4dbirds said on July 3, 2020 at 2:23 pm
I probably look like a Karen or an aging redneck woman since my hair is now below my shoulders and I do nothing with it. I don’t wear shorts either. I am a ginger and I never felt comfortable about my white freckly legs. Also I was stationed in Germany during my 20s and women just did not wear shorts there during the 70s. You were whistled at, glared at, laughed at and sneered at. I do wear skirts above and below the knees. I find a freedom in them now especially on very hot days. My father always said I had great legs, and not in a creepy way and I agree. Other features I hate but not my legs no matter how white they are. But NO shorts.
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LAMary said on July 3, 2020 at 2:36 pm
I’ve only given the shopper a bad rating twice. Once was when the peaches the lemons I ordered had rotten fruit in the package. About half the bag of lemons were moldy and the box of peaches were all way past their prime. My last Costco Instacart guy actually messaged me and said he was not going to include the cherry tomatoes I ordered because they all looked past their prime. I tipped him well. His name was Jesus and in the little chat box on Instacart he told me why he was leaving out the tomatoes and I typed “Thank you, Jesus!”
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David C said on July 3, 2020 at 3:26 pm
Kayleigh didn’t exist as a name until 1985 when the British rock band Marillion had a hit with a song called “Kayleigh”. I mostly like them, but I’ll never forgive them for that.
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Little Bird said on July 3, 2020 at 5:00 pm
I have pictures of Deborah’s hair immediately after her hairspray routine….. and she posted one of them to her own timeline. It’s…. impressive.
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Suzanne said on July 3, 2020 at 6:30 pm
I don’t wear shorts, only capris & jeans, and sometimes a skirt. My ankles swell in the heat and one leg has a huge, ugly, lumpy, varicose vein (thanks childbirth!) I don’t like sleeveless things either because I have flabby upper arms. Besides showing my lumpy legs, shorts usually hit right where my thighs rub together which means the creep up as I walk and I have to keep pulling them down, which looks weird. Capris aren’t terribly attractive, but I don’t care.
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Deborah said on July 3, 2020 at 7:12 pm
Did the name Karen for babies become a thing because of Karen Carpenter, or did it start before she was famous? I know 2 around my age but one spells it Caryn and the other is Scandinavian so it’s pronounced car-in (car as in auto).
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Deborah said on July 3, 2020 at 7:17 pm
My husband’s granddaughter’s name is Neva (nee-vah) she’s 12. She was named after her father’s grandmother Geneva but everyone called her Neva for short.
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Deborah said on July 3, 2020 at 7:25 pm
My least fave part of my body is my neck, I wear turtlenecks a lot, not in hot weather though, sometimes I wear scarves but since the virus I don’t go anywhere that a scarf would be in order. I loved the book by Nora Ephron “I Feel Bad About My Neck”.
The Trump admin and campaign is starting to say “We have to live with it” about the virus. Hard to believe. It’s really “We have to die with it” for the sake of the billionaire assholes. Few other countries have to live with it. We’re the worst.
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Mark P said on July 3, 2020 at 7:59 pm
My hair is longer now than it has been in more than 40 years. When I was in my late 20’s I was bumming at Lake Tahoe and just let it grow. I had a lot more, and it was red back in those days. Red beard, too. Now it’s mainly gray, and the beard is entirely white. If I could get all that hair back and in the same color, I’d just let it grow. As it is, I don’t like the look of it, but I like the looks of a barbershop even less.
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LAMary said on July 3, 2020 at 8:00 pm
Nevaeh was popular about fifteen years ago. It’s Heaven backwards.
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Dave said on July 3, 2020 at 8:51 pm
I wear shorts nearly year around, living in Florida, it seems to come natural. I honestly don’t think about how it looks and it’s usually only in January, when it tends to get cool, that I give them up for jeans or other long pants. My wife wears a lot of capris and shorts.
My hair, too, is longer than it’s been in at least 25 years and probably longer than that. I would go to the barber but the barber I like is in Florida and we’ve been in Virginia for several weeks, staying with our son and his family, helping out with some things. It’s halfway over my ears and I’ve always said that old men with long hair look ridiculous. I’m 70 and I’m sure I’m reaching that stage but why don’t I think I look ridiculous? I probably do. We may not return home until September so it will get longer.
Everyone here wears masks in all the stores that we’ve been to, we were getting groceries delivered in Florida but here, I think it’s still a mandate from the governor to wear masks. If not, all stores that we’ve visited have prominent mask required signs posted.
There were several Karens when I was in school. I think of one of them who I’ve known and still know, a nice lady, every time I see it posted as an insult. I wonder how she feels about her name being used in a derogatory manner.
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Deborah said on July 3, 2020 at 10:28 pm
My husband says the Mt. Rushmore is in Mountain Time like we are in NM so they have a few hours before it’s dark enough for fireworks. There’s a photo On CNN’s website of people sitting not social distanced and no masks in sight in the sun, it looks uncomfortable. We went to Mt. Rushmore once a few years back. As I recall we were the only ones there and it was in the summer.
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Deborah said on July 3, 2020 at 11:47 pm
I’m looking for info online about the Mt Rushmore Rally and can hardly find anything. Looking for numbers of attendees etc. I’m not interested in trumps speech, just want to know about the crowd. Anybody have anything on that? One place said the crowd was supposed to be 7,500 people. Was it?
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Sherri said on July 4, 2020 at 2:27 am
I don’t care about the stupid rally. Hamilton is now streaming, and my daughter cam over today and we all watched it together. They did a magnificent job of filming the show, and such a gift to see the original cast.
And now I can watch it again, and again, and again….
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Dexter Friend said on July 4, 2020 at 3:18 am
I got mad as hell watching the news today when the cops were shown, the cops that murdered Elijah McClain in Aurora, Colorado. Nazi scum, they choked that frail young man and then injected him with a drug. Days later, the man died. These stills showed cops laughing, mocking their victim, mimicking the choke-hold. One cop resigned and two were fired. It surely appeared this was premeditated first degree murder. The man was wearing a ski mask; this was winter and he always wore one as he was also anemic. Cop said “I have a right to stop you because you are suspicious.” The murder was similar to the kid Trayvon Martin: a walk to a store for a soda or a pack of Skittles, then murdered walking home, by cops or a creepy self-appointed neighborhood watch asshole. This is an old story from last winter that was buried. Now it’s simmering under a fire. This story is sticking much longer than 10 minutes.It makes all my friends sick and outraged. It makes me want to puke.
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Deborah said on July 4, 2020 at 4:31 am
I don’t care about the rally either except for how many people attended because that tells me how how much in trouble Trump is in for re-election. I read that they had tickets for 7,500 people but it sounds like maybe half showed up. But I’m not really finding definitive numbers anywhere.
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jerry said on July 4, 2020 at 6:46 am
Here in England masks are compulsory on public transport but nowhere else. I haven’t been on a train since lockdown started and only on a bus twice. For me it’s been shanks’s pony or the car. When shopping in a supermarket on Wednesday there were probably about a dozen of us wearing a mask; none of the staff only customers. And from today pubs can re-open. I’m already expecting the spike.
As for appearance when it is warm enough I wear T-shirt and shorts. If the sight of my seventy five year old limbs causes offence people will just need to avert their eyes. My hair, such as is left, is neatly cut as my wife has been doing it for over ten years.
Wishing all of you over there a good Independence Day,
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Suzanne said on July 4, 2020 at 6:55 am
I spent a glorious couple of hours watching Hamilton yesterday. Cried my way through “It’s Quiet Uptown” as always. The show seems more timely than ever. My husband watched, too, but he’s not much for that kind of thing and fell asleep a couple of times. I think he had trouble figuring out who was who. (“That’s Washington, right? Lafayette? Who?“) I read Chernow’s bio a few years ago and we were able to tour Hamilton’s home uptown as well, which I would love to do again.
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alex said on July 4, 2020 at 8:45 am
Well our plans got torpedoed. We were supposed to go to a lake party, then one of the host’s children became sick and the family is quarantined pending results of a COVID test that hasn’t come back yet.
So instead we’re just tinkering with home repairs and gardening and have no plans whatsoever.
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Deborah said on July 4, 2020 at 8:48 am
Getting to watch Hamilton is almost enough to make me want to get Disney Plus, but I think I’ll pass. This weekend the movie Unfit is available somehow, to stream. It may only be available to people who donated to the production, not sure.
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basset said on July 4, 2020 at 8:55 am
Not interested in Hamilton, or in anything else involving hip-hop in any of its forms.
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Suzanne said on July 4, 2020 at 9:01 am
I am not a hip-hop fan either, basset, but Hamilton isn’t all hip-hop/rap at all. I have really never seen anything comparable. When it hit the scene a number of years ago, I thought it sounded really silly. Rap music about the founding fathers? No. Pass. Then I saw a clip and thought that it wasn’t at all what I envisioned. Then, someone I know who is a classical musician raved about it. So, I listened to the cd and was hooked.
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Maria said on July 4, 2020 at 9:35 am
My husband and I went to see Hamilton in 2019 and took our niece and nephew. We were decidedly reluctant, but it was a Christmas gift for the kids. After the first minute or two we were mesmerized by the music, the performers and the energy of the production. You can see individual songs on YouTube to get a flavor of the music.
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Deborah said on July 4, 2020 at 9:55 am
My husband and I got free tickets to see Hamilton a few days after I’d had spine surgery, so it was a bit uncomfortable to sit that long but it was so mesmerizing I was able to concentrate on the story and the music. It was unforgettably fantastic.
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basset said on July 4, 2020 at 10:47 am
The subject doesn’t make any difference, I just don’t like rap and refuse to listen to it. You all would probably laugh out loud at the terribly unhip stuff I like, but go ahead, I’m used to it.
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Julie Robinson said on July 4, 2020 at 10:56 am
basset, I’m not a hip-hop fan either, but I adore Hamilton and Lin-Manuel’s first show, In the Heights. I loved getting to see it again, since when we saw it live it flew by and I barely remembered it. This is despite walking in knowing the score by heart.
My mom didn’t know Hamilton at all, and is an impatient person, but she sat through the entire show without even a bathroom break. We talked and talked afterwards, and I know she was seeing some things for the first time. We both wept at Quiet Uptown; she too has lost a child.
On over on the right, last year’s headline is A Grim Holiday, how prescient for today. Yet any day that starts with whole wheat french toast topped with fresh strawberry jam and just a splash of maple syrup can’t be all bad, no?
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LAMary said on July 4, 2020 at 11:19 am
I haven’t seen Hamilton and the amount of advertising for it is off putting. I have no interest in getting Disney Plus. The Disney company owns about a third of the movie studios and Marvel, Fox movies, Star Wars, Muppets, Pixar and probably everything else. I’ll probably see Hamilton eventually. Back in my home town of Paterson, NJ Hamilton was a big deal. He was the founder of that city, had it laid out by Pierre L’Enfant, same guy who designed the layout of Washington DC, and created the SUM (the society for useful manufacturing) which tapped the power of Passaic Falls. It’s a national historic site now.
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Icarus said on July 4, 2020 at 11:57 am
Basset, not seeing Hamilton because you don’t like hip-hop is like not going to the pizza parlor because you don’t like anchovies….you can easily skip that part.
We are trying to find a 3 hour block when our kiddos will let us have control of the tv to watch, although I may just have to settle for watching on my iPad Instead.
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basset said on July 4, 2020 at 12:03 pm
I do like anchovies… but if I go to the pizza parlor I don’t have to take a bite of what I don’t like before I can take two bites of what I do. In other words, I’m not gonna sit through the rap part of the show just because I might like the rest. Which is pretty unlikely anyway, never could get interested in musicals.
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nancy said on July 4, 2020 at 12:10 pm
Every time someone mentions “Hamilton” here, basset shows up to announce how much he hates “rap.” Then you all try to persuade him he’s wrong.
I honestly don’t know why you bother.
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LAMary said on July 4, 2020 at 12:19 pm
I was just reminded of another Disney thing. The Villages.
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Dave said on July 4, 2020 at 1:14 pm
I don’t like rap or hip-hop, either, and cringe when I hear it. In fact, I cringe when we go into stores with background music and some of it sounds so awful to me, I know it’s probably the mainstream music being made now but I feel like my parents must have cringing at 60’s rock n’ roll. I would probably watch Hamilton out of curiosity, you can’t avoid it. As for all the Disney World comments, I’ve been there a number of times, mostly because of children/grandchildren, and frequent visits to Florida to visit Grandma during our children’s growing-up years.
As for The Villages, OMG, I’ve never been there but everything I’ve ever read or heard about it makes me think it’s a place I’d hate. OTOH, one street over from me, the resident decided they needed a huge Trump sign in their front window, a sign I give a one fingered salute to when we walk by. I don’t know who lives there, there was a 90 year old lady living there the last I knew, I don’t know if she’s still there. I suspect I’m surrounded by many more Trump supporters, living in this 55-plus community.
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Suzanne said on July 4, 2020 at 1:28 pm
Dave, I give the same salute whenever I see a Trump sign or flag. I pass several on my way to work. I flip them off and give them a rousing verbal lashing, too. Does nothing but makes me feel better.
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Julie Robinson said on July 4, 2020 at 2:08 pm
The Villages are indeed odious, but I don’t think they’re Disney owned, maybe you’re thinking of Celebration? A distant relative was living there a few years ago and we made the drive to visit him. It was every bit as bad as I’d imagined, ticky tacky and full of rich self-satisfied Republicans. He took us to one of the restaurants on-site, no need to ever leave the property, and tooled over on his golf cart.I seem to remember reading there were lots of sexually transmitted diseases there, but I chickened out of asking him.
As much as I love Lin-Manuel Miranda, I’m a little disappointed at his continuing relationship with Disney. How will he ever have the time to write another Broadway show when the easy money is writing songs for Disney movies?
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Heather said on July 4, 2020 at 2:14 pm
There were a lot of tweets about the Mt. Rushmore rally. Why even bother paying attention? It’s just the same thing each time: he says outrageous things, sounds out of it, has a hard time pronouncing words, etc. Lather, rinse, repeat. This big news this time is that he put out an executive order to create a “statue park” honoring great Americans. Because that’s what we should be focusing on right now.
I’m def going to pony up for a month of Disney+ to watch Hamilton. I never got to see it in the theatre.
Oh and I’m probably going to wear shorts until I’m 70! I still occasionally pull out some polka-dot short-shorts I love. I think I can still get away with them for a while yet. I say, whatever works for you–go for it.
I’m making potato salad and a blueberry crisp for a cookout with a couple friends, and bringing skirt steak that one of the other guests is bringing chimichurri sauce for.
I’m in a better mood than I was yesterday. I’ve been going to the beach a couple times a week, just for an hour or so, even though they’re officially closed in Chicago, and I wasn’t the only one. This weekend, however, they stepped it up and no one is allowed on the beach. I get it–it’s probably just for the holiday weekend–but on the other hand, everyone just crowded onto the rocks and grassy areas instead. I’m not sure how that’s any safer, especially since people are still swimming and it’s much deeper and harder to get out of the water there. The beach is the one thing keeping me from going insane, so I was really annoyed. Just a few miles north, Evanston’s beaches are open, so I guess I’ll just go there. Sigh.
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LAMary said on July 4, 2020 at 2:15 pm
You’re right, Julie. Equally odious, but not Disney owned. Disney adjacent. And yes, Lin Manual Miranda dropped many levels in my opinion of him when he joined Disney, or as their many minimum wage employees call it, Mouschwitz.
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Sherri said on July 4, 2020 at 2:28 pm
It doesn’t change my enjoyment of Hamilton that Lin Manuel Miranda chose time cash in and take that sweet Disney money. The man’s written two Tony winning musicals, if he wants to do Moana soundtracks and get paid big bucks, that’s his business.
I knew when I posted about Hamilton that basset would grump about rap. Nobody’s going to take away your curmudgeonly old white guy card if you listen to the soundtrack, but also, no one cares. No one looks down on you because of the music you like, or because you don’t like cities, or because you hunt and own guns, so honestly, if you could lose the chip on your shoulder about it, that would be pleasant.
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Connie said on July 4, 2020 at 4:42 pm
My daughter loaned me her login so I watched Hamilton today. I was familiar with a couple of the songs, and even with the rap accents I got a definite Broadway musical feel from the show. Part way through my husband gave me some speakers to use with my lap top, I may have to go back and listen to the first thirty minutes again.
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St Bitch said on July 4, 2020 at 5:06 pm
If you can’t get a free trial on Disney+, it’s only $6.99 for a month. Then you can cancel.
…simply wallowing in Hamilton…so many entertaining and thought-provoking layers of genius!
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Deborah said on July 4, 2020 at 5:17 pm
I heard a few years back when it opened that people who bought in Celebration were freaked out because the big, expensive houses were so close together compared to other wealthy conclaves. The thing they weren’t prepared to hear form their neighbor’s houses was wife beating. Apparently it was rampant. Since those houses in exclusive neighborhoods are usually much further apart, wife beating went unheard most of the time, so people didn’t know how prevalent it was for that demographic.
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Julie Robinson said on July 4, 2020 at 5:56 pm
It is amazing, isn’t it, St. B? It’s one where the more you know, the more you appreciate.
Of course I don’t blame LMM for cashing in on the Disney gravy train, but I fear he’ll become like Leonard Bernstein, to whom I compare his prodigious talent. Lenny got so popular as a conductor, as a speaker, as a party goer and party thrower, and his composing got lost. I dream of the musical gifts he still had to offer us that we never got to hear. He’s a cautionary tale on early success.
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basset said on July 4, 2020 at 6:08 pm
Why do I bother? Because one day someone might hear me. My point on Hamilton is that it may well be absolutely brilliant, but the context of the performance puts me off so badly that I can’t appreciate what the rest of you all might enjoy about it. Not about my “curmudgeonly old white guy” card at all.
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Sherri said on July 4, 2020 at 7:00 pm
I’m not sure what you think we’re not hearing. Yes, you don’t like rap, we know that. I’m not going to try to convince you that rap is much more interesting than you seem to give it credit for, though that is my experience, even outside of Hamilton.
Hamilton can’t be divorced from its context of rap. If you can’t take a chance on rap, you can’t appreciate Hamilton. But that’s okay. Nobody is bothered by your not liking Hamilton. I have pretty eclectic interests, but even so, there are topics discussed here that don’t interest me. I don’t have to tell everybody how I don’t like Formula 1 racing every time it comes up, I just move on.
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Deborah said on July 4, 2020 at 7:05 pm
Basset, What’s the context of the performance in your mind?
I watched the movie, Unfit. I found out by Googling that it’s on Vimeo and you can buy to watch it for $6, this weekend, otherwise you have to wait until September. It’s pretty good, I guess. I wasn’t impressed with the graphics which I realize is a beside the point critique. The content is all stuff you’ve heard before but collected in this one place seems pretty damning for Trump. I imagine the intended audience is the choir, so not sure how effective it will be to change minds, but it may clarify some things for people who need that clarification. People like George Conway and Anthony Scaramuci play a big part in the movie, so be prepared for that.
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basset said on July 4, 2020 at 8:01 pm
It’s not that big a deal, really. We’re all sitting around a table talking, someone mentions that they saw some show or other, I say I don’t care for it and suddenly I’m a target. No other topic seems to get that kind of reaction. If I said I didn’t like Bakersfield country nobody’d say a word. Or maybe if I said anything at all, because after all I am a “curmudgeonly old white guy” and “no one cares.”
Deborah, the context is that people are rapping or hip-hopping or whatever the correct term is, and I don’t want to hear it. That’s not culturally correct, but I just don’t. Now, everyone, let go of it.
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Deborah said on July 4, 2020 at 10:10 pm
I find the cultural context of fireworks in Santa Fe NM, during the driest part of the year unfathomable. Fireworks in our neighborhood are going off like there’s no tomorrow which makes me crazy.
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jcburns said on July 4, 2020 at 10:53 pm
I’m okay with clever wordplay and spoken rhymes tied to a driving beat.
I’m less OK with songs that turn women or, really anybody into less than a full human deserving of respect. Misogyny and abuse of family members, or random acts of brutal violence celebrated in song, that’s right out.
I don’t think any of that at all happens in Hamilton. We’re going to watch it in a few days.
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LAMary said on July 4, 2020 at 11:28 pm
Same here, Deborah. Huge, window rattling ones. There is no space between the pops and booms. I have never heard it like this before. There have been three brush fires nearby already.
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LAMary said on July 5, 2020 at 12:24 am
jcburns, someone gets shot in Hamilton. It’s not random but it’s fatal. At least I think so. Not sure if the musical ends before the Weehawken part.
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ROGirl said on July 5, 2020 at 5:50 am
I’m not a fan of rap or hip-hop, but I was curious about Hamilton, so I listened to it and grew to appreciate and admire it. That still doesn’t mean I like rap or hip-hop, but Hamilton transcends those genres and holds its own creatively.
That being said, art is nothing if not subjective, but novel modes of artistic expression are usually greeted with scorn and disdain by a lot of people. Every introduction of a new type of music is a perfect example of that.
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Deborah said on July 5, 2020 at 9:01 am
Actually Hamilton made me appreciate rap more than I did before. There’s good rap and bad rap, just as every music genre has its good and bad.
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Suzanne said on July 5, 2020 at 9:32 am
I am in total agreement with your assessment of Hamilton & rap, Deborah.
LAMary@85, several people get shot in Hamilton. There are 3 duels, 2 of which end badly for people with the last name of Hamilton. Until the musical came out, I knew almost nothing about Hamilton. Did not know he came from the Caribbean, did not know his son also died in a duel, & did not know Aaron Burr was Preacher Jonathan Edwards’ grandson for starters.
A few years ago, we were in New York and toured the Morris-Jumel mansion, which was briefly Washington’s HQ in the war. Aaron Burr married the wealthy widow & owner of the home, Eliza Jumel, in that house, which is only about a mile from Hamilton’s uptown home, and when they divorced a few years later, Hamilton’s son was involved in the legal proceedings. (https://www.nj.com/opinion/2019/09/aaron-burr-hamilton-and-the-ingenuity-of-a-19th-century-woman.html)
History is so darn interesting!
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St Bitch said on July 5, 2020 at 10:14 am
A few of my favorite lines from Hamilton
In cabinet meeting # 1, swaggering Thomas Jefferson…(turns out that Lafayette and Jefferson, my two favorite characters from first viewing are played by the same actor – Daveed Diggs – didn’t even realize until the closing credits)…is opposed to Hamilton’s proposal of a federal bank:
“Oh, if the shoe fits wear it! / New York’s in debt, why should Virginia bear it?”
Hamilton’s acid response:
“Your debts are paid cos you don’t pay for labour.”
Hamilton doesn’t get enough votes for his revolutionary bank after the first debate, and Jefferson brags:
“Such a blunder/ Sometimes it makes me wonder/ why I even bring the thunder.”
I added the soundtrack of Hamilton to my walking playlists years ago…it’s rhythms keep me moving at a snappy pace. My pockets just weren’t quite deep enough, though, to indulge in a live performance when it came to Chicago.
Lin-Manuel Miranda has taken the dry stuff of our young democracy and gifted us with a feast…an antidote to Trumpism…patriotic inspiration for outrage-fatigued cynics…immigrant celebration…elevation of our uniquely American art forms from jazz to hip hop, from call-and-response to Broadway musical theatre. He’s like a gonzo playwright – making history by reviving history. If this turns out to be his one great piece of work, like To Kill a Mockingbird was for Harper Lee, it’s enough for me. Unlike Angelica Schuyler and Alexander Hamilton, himself, who “can never be satisfied”, I mos def am.
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LAMary said on July 5, 2020 at 10:18 am
This is about Hamilton’s role in the city of Paterson, NJ. What he started there continued well in the twentieth century. Paterson was known as Silk City because so many mills for weaving silk located there. My grandparents on both sides moved to Paterson to work in the mills. Somewhere I have a charming photo of my maternal grandmother, arm in arm with two friends from the mill where she worked, dressed to go to a church picnic. They were probably in their late teens in the photo. Most of my father’s siblings left school to work in the silk mills, rubbing spots out of silk. So Hamilton’s vision of a town with a waterfall used to power mills not only started the industrial revolution in the US, it sort of started my family.
http://patersongreatfalls.org/sum.html
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Julie Robinson said on July 5, 2020 at 10:48 am
It’s not going to be LMM’s one great work of art because In the Heights is also a great work of art. If you haven’t listened to it, go, now. St. B, our Hamilton tickets were all of my gifts for an entire year. I told my husband I didn’t want anything for Mother’s Day, birthday, or Christmas. We were lucky enough to have friends we could stay with so no hotel either.
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Deborah said on July 5, 2020 at 10:51 am
I mentioned a while back that we’ve been listening to Eudora Welty short stories on CDs when we travel. There’s a story called “First Love” a tale of a deaf boy who is witness to a series of meetings between Aaron Burr and some co-conspirators. It made me do some research about Burr, he was quite a character.
LA Mary, that’s a great story about your family in Patterson. I know we discussed this earlier, but did you ever get a chance to see the Jim Jarmush film “Patterson”, with Adam Driver?
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LAMary said on July 5, 2020 at 11:36 am
Deborah, I haven’t seen the movie, Paterson. However my friends the Van Treuren twins, both actors, were in it. I like to brag about them whenever possible because they are both so talented and such great friends.
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Deborah said on July 5, 2020 at 12:26 pm
This is cool LAMary, your twin friends are in the trailer for the movie Paterson. I watched the trailer on Amazon Prime but you can also watch it on YouTube https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m8pGJBgiiDU
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Deborah said on July 5, 2020 at 12:36 pm
My husband, LB and I got our Covid test results texted to us, all negative thank God. That was an amazing process, simple, no hassles, and we got our results back very quickly.
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St Bitch said on July 5, 2020 at 12:44 pm
I’m not jealous of all y’all who got to see Hamilton live…much.
I see that the film of In the Heights is due to come out June 2021. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to hearing what seems to be a salsa-flavored soundtrack…and watching the movie Paterson…as well as maybe finding Eudora Welty’s First Love. Thanks for the tips!
Your family entertwined with the silk mills is so interesting LAMary!
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LAMary said on July 5, 2020 at 1:18 pm
The lumber yard my father owned was started in Paterson in 1883. My dad bought it in the late forties. It had a carpenter shop, which eventually made only custom cabinets, special bannisters, that sort of thing. Originally they made parts for the looms in Paterson silk mills, specifically the different parts for making jacquards. The number of threads skipped or included in each pass of the shuttles determines the design of the jacquard. When I was a senior in high school I went on a field trip to IBM and the guy who was showing us the computers told us that the binary nature of computer logic was derivative of the ways looms work.
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Deborah said on July 5, 2020 at 2:06 pm
When we were in the south of France last December we went to a wool museum in a neighboring village. It was fascinating to me to learn how the looms work, in very specific detail. I had visited a carpet mill in Northern Ireland back in the 90s when I was working on a carpet design for a project, I got a pretty good tour of the place but I didn’t get a very detailed explanation about how it all worked. Here’s a link to the company that has the museum in France, https://www.brundeviantiran.com/en/museum-brun-de-vian-tiran if you ever get near that area and have time to kill, go, it’s fascinating. And as an exhibit designer I’ll say that the visual design of the museum wasn’t that great, kind of dated. (80s/90s design ideas), but the content was A+. Thinking about this reminds me of how much I want to go back to France, but don’t know when they’ll even let us back into the country. Bummer.
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LAMary said on July 5, 2020 at 2:21 pm
Deborah, right now you couldn’t even go to Paterson, NJ without quarantining yourself for two weeks when you get there.
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St Bitch said on July 5, 2020 at 2:47 pm
Deborah – you’re the one who turned us on to Li Ziqi. Have you seen the vid where she picks cotton, repairs an old loom languishing in storage, and makes a cotton batting mattress something like a futon. It is utterly mesmerizing. If I weren’t so hopeless with links, I’d post it.
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Brian stouder said on July 5, 2020 at 3:17 pm
We tripped down to Indianapolis last year and watched Hamilton; ptesumeably not the Broadway cast – but still – a superb show, indeed. Just returned from our 4th of July with the extended family (in Logansport), which was marvelous. These are strange times, indeed
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Julie Robinson said on July 5, 2020 at 3:23 pm
The In the Heights movie was supposed to be in theaters right now, but they have decided to delay it. They added a DACA theme that wasn’t in the stage show, but is appropriate because the entire show is about immigrants. It will be interesting to see how it plays a year from now.
BTW if you appreciated (and who wouldn’t?) Anthony Ramos, who played Laurens and Hamilton’s son, he plays the lead in the In the Heights movie. In other words, the Lin Manuel Miranda part.
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susan said on July 5, 2020 at 3:25 pm
St. Bitch – This episode? Watching those videos is like meditating. It’s so easy to push away all the shit that’s happening outside the door/mind.
Thank you, Deborah, for linking to that series.
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Brian stouder said on July 5, 2020 at 3:33 pm
….More importantly, somebody upthread said they don’t like Formula One racing???!!? What’s not to love?
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Deborah said on July 5, 2020 at 4:07 pm
Yes, St. B, I’ve seen that one, I probably have seen them all by now. I don’t even care if it’s completely phony, like Susan said, I find them calming, in these troubled times. The way she makes everything seem so daunting and so do-able at the same time.
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St Bitch said on July 5, 2020 at 4:33 pm
Yes, I’ve just watched the princess string that loom again. Sigh. It doesn’t matter to me either how much of what we see is authentic, and how much is produced. Her lethal double-cleaver chopping skills definitely are NOT phony. I’m totally in her thrall.
And yes, Julie, I adore Laurens/“my name is Philip, i am a poet, i wrote this poem just to show it” Hamilton/Anthony Ramos.
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Sherri said on July 5, 2020 at 5:54 pm
LAMary, punch cards very similar to what were later used in computers were used for jacquard looms.
Brian, I’m the F1 heretic. I just find car racing boring. I can see how other people would find it interesting, but it doesn’t grab me.
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Sherri said on July 5, 2020 at 6:00 pm
If you want a little Lin Manuel Miranda and traditional musical theater, check out the surprise he did for his wife at his wedding reception.
https://youtu.be/KgZ4ZTTfKO8
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David C said on July 5, 2020 at 6:03 pm
I haven’t watched F1 in ages. When I stopped it was pretty much follow the leader. The only time anyone passed is when the leader starts to lap the field and in the pits. F1 is also almost into International Olympic Committee territory when it comes to slime baggery.
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Sherri said on July 5, 2020 at 6:10 pm
More LMM and Anthony Ramos, from pre-Hamilton days, in a musical for This American Life.
https://youtu.be/ELBGa6-uOhc
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beb said on July 5, 2020 at 6:39 pm
I thought we were doing pretty well on the 4th fireworks — started around 8 and tapped off after 11. Pretty busy but nothing terrible. Then around midnight I saw this flash outside a window followed by a deafening, heart-stopping boom. Did a house just blow up? Moments later there was another flash – boom, then a pair in quick succession. Then a couple more, then a couple more. I figure about ten on all over a half-hour’s time. Were they M80s? Maybe but they seemed louder. I wonder if someone had gotten hold of some police “flashbang” grenades? I’m sure that can’t be legal. I was so terrified I thought I was going to have a heart attack.
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Mark P said on July 5, 2020 at 7:09 pm
We live on top of a mountain overlooking town. There was a city fireworks display around 9:50, which we could see, but there were big flashes, zooming rockets, and booms all over town for an hour or more before that, and then long afterwards. I didn’t realize you could buy that kind of fireworks for your own personal use. It stretched for several miles, and there was more beyond the trees where we couldn’t see. This morning we couldn’t see town for all the lingering smoke.
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Deborah said on July 5, 2020 at 8:27 pm
I had to read the Santa Fe fire code because our Condo assoc wants to replace all the windows. I didn’t know that air borne fireworks like Roman candles are always illegal in the city, because they’re rampant, year after year. The city certainly doesn’t enforce it or communicate it. LB went out and crossed the parking lot this morning and noticed that debris from shooting that kind of thing was left in the lot. Not the actual rockets but the stands that you shoot them off from. Which means that either someone living in our building was out there shooting those things or someone from the neighborhood decided that our private parking lot was better suited for their viewing pleasure. It reeeaaaalllllyyy bugs me.
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Dexter Friend said on July 5, 2020 at 9:00 pm
I did a term paper on Burr-Hamilton and never gave either one any time after that. But I saw a frame to click on to watch “The making of Hamilton” on HBO. Everybody’s talking about it so I figured maybe the movie would follow, but no, not. So it’s $6 on Vimeo? I just can’t get all these pay-apps, no time to even catch all I want to watch on Prime and Netflix. I did trim down my cable bill by dropping HBO and Showtime as I get HBO on my Firestick anyway. When Ray Donovan” comes back, I’ll pony up somehow to reacquire Showtime.
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basset said on July 5, 2020 at 10:04 pm
No silk in my bloodline, but plenty of cotton from the mills of North and South Carolina. Many of the old mill buildings have been getting condo-fied or otherwise redeveloped; visited one a few summers ago as it was getting gutted for renovation, now it’s fancy apartments but my grandmother worked there many years ago.
She shows up in the 1930 census as a widow with seven kids… walked around the mill village for awhile wondering which house had been theirs but never could quite nail it down.
https://www.apartments.com/the-lofts-at-inman-mill-inman-sc/9hpwnz7/
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LAMary said on July 5, 2020 at 10:18 pm
There are lots of pictures of the silk mills online, from the nineteenth century to post depression. There was a photographer who took lots of photos working for the WPA. There are photos of children working at the looms, like my aunts and uncles did, and there’s a photo of a strike when the mills went to a four loom system. I haven’t found a good explanation of what that is, but there is a photo of a group of the strike leaders, white, black and someone who is likely middle eastern, a woman and some men.
I was watching “Chopped” the other day, and they had diner cooks competing. One woman explained that her diner was an original Silk City dining car. So I had to look that up and indeed there was a company in Paterson that built dining cars for trains and they were converted to diners. The ones that still exist are on the national registry of historic places.
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Deborah said on July 5, 2020 at 10:24 pm
Dexter, I commented that “Unfit” the movie about Trump was $6 on Vimeo, and only this weekend. Hamilton is only available now on Disney Plus, but I may be wrong?
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Dexter Friend said on July 6, 2020 at 3:59 am
OK. I do not need Disney +. I outgrew Disney programming when Eisenhower was prez. Same with comic books. I was a real fan of comic books until I was about 11 years old. How adults still are fascinated by them amazes me.
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ROGirl said on July 6, 2020 at 7:43 am
I’m back at my desk at work. My monthly calendar is still on the March page. Temperature check on the way in, staggered arrival times, alternating days in the office, mask on when not at your desk. There was almost no traffic this morning, which was nice. It all feels really strange. Will we get used to it soon enough?
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Dorothy said on July 6, 2020 at 9:44 am
Dexter hate to break it to you but Ray Donovan is not coming back. The series is done.
I have an actual Karen story that I’ll run you all because I’d like to have opinions about what happened. I’m serious – if y’all think I did a stupid thing I’ll accept your honesty, I promise. Last October or November we (me and the other 3 administrative assistants in my office) were getting ready to attend a meeting across campus for all the admins in the College of Arts and Sciences. We’d been having these monthly update meetings for more than a year, and we all grumbled about them. They were changing the way we did several tasks all at once, and it was overwhelming at times, trying to learn all these new things and keep up with them – do a good job while you’re learning and also still doing your regular work. One of the admins in my dept. is named Karen. On the walk over to the building for the meeting, kidding around she said ‘I hope they (meaning the people who run the meeting) are wearing their bullet proof vests today!” We all laughed.
The next day I emailed a question to someone in the Dean’s office to clarify something she told us at the meeting. I dropped it into the email conversation what Karen had said – and I clearly said that she was kidding around. I didn’t think anyone would take that seriously but of course I emphasized that she was kidding. And that we laughed. Then I got a response to my question, and I casually mentioned the email convo to Karen and the other ladies in my office. Karen went off on me. She became physically LIVID. She got very angry with me, telling me I never should have repeated what she said, and she dressed me down in front of the other ladies, and two student workers.
I was aghast at how strongly and angrily she responded to me. I stammered and apologized and said it never crossed my mind that she’d be upset with me about that, and I’d make sure to tell that person I had emailed that she had to be SURE that Karen was just kidding about the bullet proof vests comment. Karen kept yelling, and finally I raised my voice and said ‘I’ve apologized three or four times, Karen! What else do you want me to do?! Do you want me to bleed for you? Just say it!” and she stomped away to her desk. It was the worst experience I’ve ever had in an office. I just wanted to die. The other admins were nice and said “Dorothy, we know you did not mean any ill intent. Karen over reacted.” But it was ugly for several days. I bought her a gift for an apology and wrote a note and eventually the tension eased. We seem to be okay with each other now, but I am confident she’s still deeply angry with me.
So please be honest with me – I can take it. Did I do something unforgivable? Should I have seen how she was going to react to me sharing that joke with someone in the Dean’s office? FYI I told that person how Karen reacted and how angrily she spoke to me in front of several co-workers. That person said she could not understand why Karen got so mad at me. She understood immediately that it was meant as a joke. EVERY admin assistant has been grumbling about all the new work they were giving, new systems to learn. It was understandable, she said, that we were complaining.
My take on Hamilton: It’s a fictionalized version of history that introduces many people to thinking of new ways to interpret history. (I don’t think anyone thinks that The Sound of Music is an accurate portrayal of what happened to the Von Trapp family). Hamilton is fresh and funny and compelling and mesmerizing and has forever changed the way theatre presents stories. Color blind casting, I hope, will be a factor in all shows to come. If you don’t like musicals to begin with (my brother Jim is one of those!) you’re going to hate it. So trying to convince someone to watch it is kind of silly. I hate NASCAR too – I’d rather watch paint dry – so if someone wanted to convince me to watch it, it would truly be a waste of time. Everyone to their own tastes, said the farmer as he kissed his pig. And now I’m going to watch Hamilton at the 50 minute mark because that’s as far as I’ve seen so far since it started on Disney Plus last week. I saw it twice on stage (one was a gift from my daughter), and seeing the original cast is an amazing treat!
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basset said on July 6, 2020 at 9:57 am
My opinion: repeating the “bullet proof vest” comment was probably not the best move, but Karen did overreact and needs to let go of it.
NASCAR used to be fun to watch back when you could tell the cars apart and it was more about racing than marketing. Haven’t been to a race of any kind in years, but one of the stars of Formula 1 is named Hamilton so maybe I should go to Bahrain or wherever they’re running next and see if I can get a ticket.
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LAMary said on July 6, 2020 at 10:04 am
Not only is one of the F1 racers named Hamilton, he’s black.
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basset said on July 6, 2020 at 10:07 am
Hmmm, looks like we’ve missed Bahrain, Shanghai, and Azerbaijan this year… this weekend is the “Styrian Grand Prix” in Austria, no live audience though.
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LAMary said on July 6, 2020 at 10:42 am
Most of my life has been spent in households where I’m the only female. This is why I know about Lewis Hamilton. I’ve subjected to Indy Cars and F1 for as long as I can remember. I even wonder what’s going on with Michael Schumacher.
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St Bitch said on July 6, 2020 at 11:09 am
Dorothy – you’re giving this aptly named Karen too much power over your psyche. Now you know more about the dynamics of your work environment and are unlikely to repeat what turned out to be an inadvertent blunder. You can practice and fine-tune the office type of social distancing.
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Mark P said on July 6, 2020 at 11:10 am
Dorothy, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned Karen’s comment unless I knew the admin very well, but, come on, she needs to get over it.
But that reminds me of things people say thatn could have gone really badly. Shortly after Sept. 11 several of us were on travel to LA. My boss was notoriously scatter-brained. She also packed her suitcase very, very tightly. When we were at LAX she was randomly selected for a screening. She took her suitcase over to where they were going to open it, and she said, “Be careful. It might explode.” She immediately recognized that what she said was probably not phrased exactly appropriately, but fortunately, the TSA people understood and laughed. It probably helped that she is white and red-headed.
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Icarus said on July 6, 2020 at 11:12 am
Dorothy @ 120: it isn’t unforgivable but I can see why she is upset. She can even be forgiven for the initial emotional outburst but eventually should have gathered her wits about herself and had a calmer talk.
A throw-a-way joke across the Quad is between the people in earshot. Putting it in an email makes it a Record of The Company. Forever.
My Office Nemesis likes to put everything in our Document Management System. I get that you might never know when you need something but it’s a little overkill on his part. He’ll save a note from a co-worker saying she’ll be offline for 1 hour to pick up her daughter? (pre-COVID-19 too)_.
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basset said on July 6, 2020 at 11:59 am
Indeed he is, LAMary, and I knew that.
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basset said on July 6, 2020 at 12:37 pm
No American drivers in F1, that makes it less interesting for me. Had some vague plans to go to the outlaw sprint car race in Terre Haute this weekend, virus put an end to that though.
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LAMary said on July 6, 2020 at 12:41 pm
basset, I thought it somehow tied Lewis Hamilton to the multiracial casting of the musical Hamilton.
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kayak woman said on July 6, 2020 at 12:57 pm
Dorothy, your Karen sounds EXACTLY like my Karen (once sister-in-law, much earlier comment). I wouldn’t sweat it. Life’s too short.
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4dbirds said on July 6, 2020 at 1:12 pm
Dorothy, in all honesty your comment would have bothered me quite a bit as it did Karen. I’ve been in work situations where something is said or emailed and it has been totally misunderstood and management has gotten involved. I wouldn’t have said anything to you, much less have a tantrum, and I’m sure it depends on one’s work environment. Mine can be weird at times so I tend to not share much.
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Dorothy said on July 6, 2020 at 1:46 pm
Thanks for the comments, friends. For the record, the person I emailed is a friend. We’ve had lunch several times. I know her fairly well. She’s about the only person I would have shared that with, so I ‘knew my audience.’ I also used to work in the Dean’s office and I know people over there. Karen is loudly opinionated about lots of things. I used to consult with her if I had a question about something when I was new in the department, but I learned that she could go on and on and ON with an answer and never ever wrap it up unless someone else ventured by and interrupted her. I got good at extricating myself from conversations and learned not to ask her questions unless I was prepared to have a half hour answer. I think we are good now – we had lunch a couple of weeks ago outdoors with another admin from our department. But I’ll always feel as if she carries a grudge against me, she was just that mad that day.
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Joe Kobiela said on July 6, 2020 at 2:42 pm
Dammit, Charlie Daniels died.
Pilot Joe
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David C said on July 6, 2020 at 2:44 pm
Don’t take the bait.
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basset said on July 6, 2020 at 3:05 pm
Maybe so, LAMary @130. Didn’t make the connection myself.
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LAMary said on July 6, 2020 at 3:45 pm
I’m a renaissance woman. I know about F1 and a musical I’ve never seen. I can also bend my thumbs backwards.
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Deborah said on July 6, 2020 at 4:11 pm
I will say that I can’t watch car races on TV but I went to a sprint car race in So California with my husband and his former son in law and his parents (still very good friends) and it was fun, there was stock car racing at the end and that was positively nail biting but fun. I can’t believe I’m actually saying this now, because when the sprint cars were racing they kept flinging up little balls of mud and when we left my clothing was polkadotted with mud stains. It all washed out though.
I’ll just add this to the other comments already made here about your experience with your work colleague, it was a faux pas moment, a small one, and the punishment didn’t fit the crime. The woman let her emotions get away from her and she needs to work on that. You, on the other hand, should try to push it our of your mind, especially after all of the things you said and did to apologize.
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Deborah said on July 6, 2020 at 4:26 pm
I watched the latest Sarah Cooper video called “How to Mask”, I think it’s the best yet. Sorry I don’t have a link.
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susan said on July 6, 2020 at 5:09 pm
How to mask
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Deborah said on July 6, 2020 at 5:16 pm
As you probably can tell, the second paragraph of my comment #138 was directed Dorothy’s way.
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LAMary said on July 6, 2020 at 8:02 pm
A lovely video from The New Yorker
https://tinyurl.com/yccmvene
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LAMary said on July 6, 2020 at 8:14 pm
I tried to delete that duplicate. Alas. It was not to be.
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Connie said on July 6, 2020 at 11:19 pm
Weird Al Yankovich does “The Hamilton Polka.” If you watched you will enjoy it. Didn’t watch or get the words? You can understand the words, and they are the actual words, sort of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNEdEDbhTQw
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 6, 2020 at 11:21 pm
Wait — “The Sound of Music” is not a documentary about the von Trapp family? WHAT?????
Now I’m upset.
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Sherri said on July 7, 2020 at 12:45 am
The Trumpsters slogan should be Make America Second Rate.
ICE is saying that foreign students will have to leave the country if their schools go online.
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Christy said on July 7, 2020 at 3:12 am
I saw that In a headline, Sherri, and I wonder how that’s supposed to work with grad students or others with off campus housing. You can’t very well put all your belongings in storage and bail on the lease, even if distance learning from China or India were a viable option.
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David C said on July 7, 2020 at 6:29 am
A tRump Corona virus coin? Oh, FFS. I guess these were struck when we were at 15 cases and would soon be down to zero. Their entire inventory is quite something to see. I guess in the future it can be studied as a demonstration of the sunk cost fallacy.
https://www.dismecoins.com/collections/silver-coins/products/president-trump-blocking-corona-from-usa-1-oz-silver-coin
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Suzanne said on July 7, 2020 at 6:39 am
Jeff(tmmo) @145- LOL! But I remember being very disappointed when I read Maria vonTrapp’s memoir or biography when I was in high school. She wasn’t beautiful like Julie Andrews, vonTrapp was not this mean task master with his children, I think they were already known for their musical talent when Maria came on the scene, and worst of all, they did not leave Austria in the middle of the night with the Nazis at their heels! If my memory is correct, they simply packed up some things, went on holiday, and never returned.
Not even close to being a documentary!
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Deborah said on July 7, 2020 at 8:34 am
That Trump corona virus coin has got to be a joke. It’s sooooo kitschy it’s unbelievable. The image of Trump bravely holding the shield up to block the virus is ludicrous. What a weird world some people live in. How embarrassing.
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Suzanne said on July 7, 2020 at 8:56 am
Meanwhile in the Hoosier state, the goobers are riled up:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/07/vauhxx-booker-indiana-investigation/
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