42 responses to “Solid.”

1. 

   Dexter Friend said on June 7, 2021 at 1:41 am

   A few days ago I posted on Facebook a horrific photograph from an NYC olden days blog of the wreckage on two floors the airplane caused that hit the Empire State Building . I can see how it could cause nightmares and weird thoughts. Like in that 2020 movie “Wander”.
   I wonder how my body would handle alcohol had I not quit. My older brother drank himself into the great grey area of Wernicke-Korsakoff dementia and my younger brother is 65 and drinks like a fish every day, probably 20 beers, everyday, maybe more. Still, great memories of organizing carloads of young people for trips across Indiana to Chicago baseball games where beers were 60 cents and we would get completely fucking hammered and then drive back home. I was always a driver, and always drunk. Never had any trouble at all. Luck, fate, whatevah…my friends always said I had to drive because I drove better drunk than sober. Helifino.

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2. 

   beb said on June 7, 2021 at 1:53 am

   I have a version of that dream every day when I wake up and start reading my blogs. It just wears me down.

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3. 

   Suzanne said on June 7, 2021 at 6:03 am

   I ran across that Snyder dream piece yesterday. It hit home. As I commented on the last blog post, I get frustrated with warning people of the apocalyptic religious part of the far right puzzle. I tell people that the Pompeo and Pence types want a war in the Middle East with Israel vs anybody because they believe it will bring back Jesus. Trump moving the US embassy to Jerusalem cemented for them that Trump is God’s man and Trump in power is all part of God’s plan.
   I feel like Snyder, standing in the lobby trying to warn people and no one will listen.

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4. 

   Jeff Borden said on June 7, 2021 at 9:19 am

   I was listening to the CBS all-news radio station while shaving for work on 9/11when they broke in with a story of an airplane hitting the World Trade Center. My first thought flashed to the famous event when a B-25 crashed into the Empire State Building. Only when they began simulcasting the NYC station and a condo owner said he’d watched an accelerating commercial airliner crash directly into the WTC from his balcony did it dawn on me that this was probably an attack. What a terrible day.

   If you believe history accelerates over time, you may accept the USA has begun its inevitable decline. The Roman Empire lasted 1,000 years or so. The British ruled for about 400 years. We’re not even going to make it to 300 years. And it won’t be barbarian hordes overrunning the borders or the loss of a major war that brings us down. It will be us. . .we the people right here in the so-called land of the free and the home of the brave. We shirked our responsibilities. Soon, maybe even next year, the bill is coming due.

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5. 

   Dorothy said on June 7, 2021 at 10:58 am

   I just said Clarence Williams III’s name out loud on Friday. I decided about two months ago to watch old episodes of the CBS show “Mom”. I’m now on the last season, and the episode I watched on Friday had to do with Bonnie’s therapist who was seeing his own therapist, played by Tyne Daly. I said to my hubs “Wasn’t she married to Clarence Williams III?” Hubs wasn’t sure. So now when I read that he’d died this weekend, I had to look it up. And remembered before I even started researching it that Tyne was wed to Georg Stanford Brown. I had such a crush on Michael Cole. He is most definitely not as cute as he used to be.

   Mom is such an interesting show. It was much funnier in the beginning – I laughed out loud many times. I’m not a big fan of Anna Faris. Anna is okay, but Allison Janney was truly the standout in that show. I’m surprised Ms. Faris didn’t bow out sooner. But the storylines about alcoholism and the characters’ lives were really well done. Much of it was silly and repetitive, but it made me cry often enough that it left a deep impression on me. I’m guessing it was very helpful to recovering alcoholics. I sure hope so, anyway. I don’t know why I never watched it until this year – I sort of heard good things about it but there are only so many hours in the day, you know?

   I watch Rachel Maddow regularly and I’m really alarmed at what’s happening to voting laws in our country. I like to think it’s all going to right itself eventually, but that’s a Pollyanna attitude if there ever was one.

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6. 

   LAMary said on June 7, 2021 at 11:12 am

   Although I was probably part of the target audience I never watched Mod Squad. Maybe I was just a little too old for it because the new TV season promotions for it looked lame to me. Remember new TV season promotions? Remember summer reruns? Get off my lawn.

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7. 

   Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 7, 2021 at 12:19 pm

   JeffB, I’m pessimistically optimistic, or vice versa. Things will work out, but likely in the worst possible way. The Roman Republic really only operated expansionistically from about 315 BC to 44/27 BC (either Julius’s dictatorship, or his adopted son Octavian’s assumption of empire as Augustus); the Roman Empire itself has phases — 27 BC to 330 AD when Constantine moved to Byzantium and split the empire in two, the east falling in 395 & 410 and splintering to bits after, and the western Byzantine Empire has a run from 330 to the late 600s, with a florescence from c.750 to 1204, and a final endgame from the late 1200s to 1453.

   The British Enpire you could date from the East India Company in 1600 or William and Mary in 1688, but it ends effectively at Dunkirk, 1940. Much to be proud of in resisting Hitler through the next two years of Blitz, but the empire is essentially over, even if the Commonwealth endured much as Clovis and Charlemagne continued some of the Roman ethos, but not really their empire.

   My point being: an expansionist nation-state rarely makes it as such past 200 years, 400 if you argue your criteria carefully, but it rarely stands up to close scrutiny. Overreach and supplies and cultural shifts just make a Pax Romana, even with crucifixion and decimation and legionary standards to back it up, unsustainable. The Huns always win in the end, but then rush to become the new Romans. The barbarians are always at the gates, but once they get inside, they turn and try to bar the way for the next gothic threat.

   (And of course the Thousand Year Reich didn’t make it to twelve…)

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8. 

   ROGirl said on June 7, 2021 at 12:21 pm

   The fact that they were cops was the showstopper for me.

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9. 

   Deborah said on June 7, 2021 at 12:58 pm

   Democracy in Greece didn’t last very long https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy

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10. 

    Deborah said on June 7, 2021 at 1:04 pm

    I’m starting my last week of sun spot elimination on my face. It has been an ordeal, but it’s actually getting a bit better. My upper lip particularly seems to have gone through all the phases and is getting much less painful. Everything I’ve read about it, that’s normal, so that’s good. Stay out of the sun folks, wear hats and sunscreen. I have learned my lesson.

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11. 

    Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 7, 2021 at 1:14 pm

    And while Athenian aspirations were never all that grand, it was after they extended Magna Graecia to southern Italy that it began to fall apart; call it 600s to 300s BC? (When did Syracuse fall?) The Trojan War was all pre-democracy, such as it was, but it seems to have ended the Mycenaean Grecian empire after a couple hundred years, around 1100 BCE as I recall.

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12. 

    Sherri said on June 7, 2021 at 4:37 pm

    I’m curious as to what your view of what things will all work out looks like, Jeff(tmmo), especially in light of things you’ve also said after leaving the church you were pastoring.

    I don’t see a full-on civil war, but I do expect more violence and more violent repeats of what we saw on 1/6.

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13. 

    Sherri said on June 7, 2021 at 5:28 pm

    A piece of personal news: as of this past Saturday, I’m now the president of the board of the ACLU of Washington, as the previous board president faces her confirmation hearing for Federal district judge this week!

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14. 

    Mark P said on June 7, 2021 at 5:47 pm

    Sherri! Woo-hoo!

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15. 

    susan said on June 7, 2021 at 5:58 pm

    That’s just terrific, Sherri! How neat to “know” someone on the ACLU-WA board. Though technically not a card-carrying member, I’ve been supporting ACLU-WA Foundation for years.

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16. 

    Jeff Borden said on June 7, 2021 at 6:42 pm

    Jeff TMMO,

    Your knowledge of history certainly surpasses mine and your points ring true.

    Yet I ponder this huge, powerful and wealthy nation and its absolute inability to get anything done any more. Anyone who walks, bikes, sails, drives or flies knows American infrastructure is crumbling. It’s a sick joke compared to Western Europe or the wealthier nations in Asia and South America. The people support infrastructure spending by a wide margin. But it ain’t gonna happen. Why? Because a couple dozen old white men in Congress don’t want it to happen. Seven million more people voted for Biden’s vision than for the Orange Lump, but they don’t matter. Our government has become kabuki theater. All show. No go. How long will the production go on?

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17. 

    Julie Robinson said on June 7, 2021 at 6:49 pm

    Sherri, that’s two pieces of good news! Congratulations to you personally, and a good appointment for the judiciary.

    Just coming here to say once again that possessions are of the devil. My mom’s crap is an albatross around our necks. At this point we’re worried that there won’t be enough space on the neck. Throw away your crap.

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18. 

    Scout said on June 7, 2021 at 6:59 pm

    What Jeff Borden @ 16 said. It’s looking more dire by the day. Do we ever get any good news? Any signs that democracy will survive? I’m back to doom scrolling on Twitter again.

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19. 

    Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 7, 2021 at 8:15 pm

    My pessimistic optimism (or optimistic pessimism) is that, in sum, we are due for a fragmenting of some sort, but it’s likely to be less dramatic than an apocalypse though just as hard to avoid, like a rock fall on the Pacific Coast Highway. I’m less expectant of the Jesusland/United States of Canada than stuff like a slow rumble of rockfall with ideas along the lines of a Greater Idaho, or East Coast realignments with sea level rise & population movement. Great Britain’s leaving the Eurozone is going to be a bigger mess than Boris lets on, and once Scotland separates from Westminster, I think we’ll see more rearrangements both on the Continent and across the Channel. In the same way, I don’t see a Confederate/Yankee division of the country so much as a reshuffle of regional alignments, just as we had after 1964 with the Dixiecrats moving into the GOP camp. My own assumption is that today’s Republican Party is right where the Whigs were in 1852. They’re a shattered wreck, but the Captain of the Minnow & Thurston Howell III don’t believe it, and are still trying to get the ship ready to sail again.

    Somewhere between the Know-Nothings and the Free Soil Party there rose a coalition, but it took eight years to actually muster some serious national mojo. The problem on the other side is that while I think Franklin Pierce was a better president than he’s given credit for, he may be a good comparison case for Joe Biden. The question ahead for the Democratic Party is whether they can find their own Abraham Lincoln, or if they’ll end up settling for a James Buchanan. But it wouldn’t surprise me if we have two very different parties by the time I stop voting everywhere but in Chicago.

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20. 

    Suzanne said on June 7, 2021 at 9:52 pm

    I wish I could be as optimistic as you, Jeff, but I can’t. I live among Trumpsters. I have lived in this rural red state area for 30+ years but only in the last year or so have I seriously considered that any of my neighbors would kill me at the behest of a political leader. I do now. I know how they think & know how they see the world.
    Years ago I read “Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust” by Immaculee Ilibagiza in which she recounts how the people who murdered her family members were people they had known for years and had good relationships with. It didn’t matter. I don’t for a minute believe it can’t happen here.

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21. 

    alex said on June 8, 2021 at 7:57 am

    Congrats Sherri!

    Suzanne, I’ve spent a fair portion of my life amongst the same intransigently ignorant population and it curdles the blood to realize that they’re heavily armed like never before in addition to being increasingly unhinged in their belief systems and militant in their attitudes. But I’m trying to remain optimistic that this wave of populism will fizzle out, especially if the economy perks up and restores some measure of contentment. I take it as a positive sign that the Chamber of Commerce has ditched the GOP and that corporate America is willing to use its clout in states like Georgia over voting rights the same way it did in Indiana over gay rights when Pence was governor. Much as we may lament that Big Business has more influence than voters, it may be a blessing in disguise, in that Big Business will protect its own interests against social upheaval and anarchy and rein in the purse strings when appropriate. The decline and fall of other nations may be illustrative to a point, but none were governed by a consumer capitalist corporatocracy.

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22. 

    diane said on June 8, 2021 at 7:57 am

    Congratulations Sherri! And thank you, that is important work.

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23. 

    Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 8, 2021 at 8:22 am

    I live in a 5,000 person 50/50% bubble considered the liberal enclave in a 70% Trump county, where “Back the Blue” is indeed an article of faith, and discussing the nuances of “Defund the Police” is simply not possible outside of a relatively small cohort. What got me effectively run out of my last church wasn’t even that I was advocating so-called liberal causes from the pulpit, and in fact I was irritating some of our denomination’s progressive leaders by making a case against putting out regional position papers for “Black Lives Matter” and calling policing a “relic of the slave era” and “a tool of white supremacy.” I think that kind of simplistic narrative on the left is just painting the church into a partisan corner that has its own downside.

    But I was (and am) refusing to argue for separating our congregation from the larger region (think diocese or synod for some of you), and simply defending why others would want to make anti-racism a core mission element of their church. The irony here is that, in our local church, I probably had more direct involvement with law enforcement than anyone other than the one family with a son on the Newark PD; I’m an officer of the court with a badge, even, and am a narrow-gauge law enforcement officer myself, albeit unarmed. But flip side: I AM defund the police in action, really. I’m a mediator, I represent the concept of restorative justice directly into the heart of our county legal system, and with my school-based work I’m the non-armed, no tactical gear, social work-ish type trained responder when a parent has called 911 too many times over unruly kids. People doing what I do are a big part of what defund the police is about; working directly with the local police chiefs and patrol officers is also what I do all the time, counseling and doing their family funerals and occasionally riding along.

    Yet the Trump Train admits of no nuance. My one satisfaction these days is watching the Southern Baptists have their own implosion over no nuance, no compromise, and a relentless insistence on saluting issues over actual action. Russell Moore and Beth Moore (not related other than both SBCers) are clearly both theologically way more conservative than I am, but due to not saluting the bronze statue with feet of clay, they have been driven out of their home tradition. I think we’re going to keep seeing these sorts of black hole internal collapses, but like USA Gymnastics or Catholic dioceses after bankruptcy, the question is what comes out of the wreckage. Ditto the parties, which I think both are very fragile right now and cruising for their own respective implosions and realignments.

    Will the true believers come after us with their AR-15 variants, sear pins filed down into an illegal full auto? So far, we see it happening retail, not wholesale. That’s the question for me out of January 6th. We saw how disorganized they were. Frankly, with the numbers they had, a truly coordinated attack could have gotten ahold of Pence and the electoral boxes. They’re mooks and mutts and they failed to do much more than vandalize. Will a newly coherent movement come out of it, or will they all go back home as the psychologically fragile neurotics they are and just keep shooting up workplaces retail, never getting their act together wholesale? Grimly, I hope so. The Trump movement is so incredibly invested in people with Borderline Personality Disorder and of course the pathologically narcissistic it’s hard to see them going anywhere. The Rump GOP that’s trying not to lose them as a voting bloc, the modern Atwaterites who don’t want to turn away the Dixiecrats yet again, are playing with white phosphorus.

    All the Democrats have to do is hold together a coalition of pragmatic city employees and union leaders with idealists and ideologues. It’s not easy but they have the easier job. It does mean navigating a generational transition which we’ve done before, and if they do it well, their reward will be having a large enough coalition they’ll probably split into two just because that’s historically what happens. Trump support won’t vanish, but it is plugged into a small town & rural power source that’s a generator running out of gas, that’s already coughing as it gets to the bottom of the tank. Keep an eye on McAllen, Texas, though. 85% Hispanic, and I spent two weeks there last year, and it looks and feels like it’s 85% Hispanic . . . and the GOP won the mayor’s race. Anomaly? Maybe. Or there’s an angle to Trump support we’re all missing.

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24. 

    diane said on June 8, 2021 at 8:50 am

    Jeff (tmmo), I rather think one officer dead and 140 injured is significantly rather than slightly more than vandalism. Your point is correct but I am surprised at your dismissiveness of the injury and death. They achieved true harm as an unruly mob, what would the same numbers as an organized force been able to do is a scarier, but I think more accurate way to put it.

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25. 

    Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 8, 2021 at 9:34 am

    Dismissive? I’m arguing they were one decent field leadership conference away from overthrowing a core governmental process of our democratic system. The fact that they couldn’t pull that off is of interest, given that this seems to have been the goal of most of the mob, whatever their original actionable intent was. But yes, “only” in the sense that physically accosting if not killing the vice president and absconding with the electoral college ballot boxes would have been so much more damaging to democracy than what they did do.

    And a general reply to a question asked of me to one side privately: the juvenile court staff has made a specific, intentional decision to stay non-armed. Most of the attendance officers who work through another county office carry when out in the field, but we choose not to. Our LEO associates have repeatedly suggested we all get certified and have sidearms; what we do is take the Crisis Intervention Team training alongside them, but we don’t go out armed with more than our ID lanyards and only display badges when called for by situations. The first time one of us gets shot at on a porch, I suspect this debate will start up again; it’s been a department wide debate twice in 15 years. One diversion officer left after two years recently because he thinks we all should carry in the field, but couldn’t convince enough of us to change the internal policy. If we go there, I guess it will be my turn to resign.

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26. 

    Icarus said on June 8, 2021 at 10:47 am

    Howdy all. Visiting in-laws in the south. Nothing like having a conversation with you FIL about moving down here while he posts racist and politically charged BS on Facebook.

    So far my bingo card has:

    “ they’re the good kind of black people”
    “We’ll take the route that avoids the ghetto”

    And

    “Trump is an idiot but Hilary would have been worse”

    I’m sure there were some I missed

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27. 

    Sherri said on June 8, 2021 at 11:20 am

    Jeff(tmmo), that’s the discussion I’m having with people who want to talk about defund the police or back the blue: let’s talk about when and why we send armed uniformed officers out, and ask if it’s the right response?

    I’m advising a city council candidate who has been working on police reform for some time, understands it deeply beyond just slogans, and has actionable plans for how to move to the paradigm shift we need in policing. What do we need armed uniformed officers to do, and are we deploying them appropriately? Are the benefits worth the costs in some situations? (School resource officers, where the benefits are marginal and murky at best, and the costs are clear and high, for example.)

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28. 

    Scout said on June 8, 2021 at 12:43 pm

    Jeff (tmmo) – you never fail to impress me with your intelligent compassion and working knowledge of the hurdles faced while still offering some measure of hope that good people outnumber the not so kind.

    My hope that as long as the military leadership and intelligence communities stay above the worst of the partisan fray and are committed to the rule of law we will be protected from the more fascist tendencies of the trumpland yahoos. What is the most disheartening to me is how there seems to be no appetite in the Garland DOJ for accountability and how there seems to be no real national plan for stopping voter disenfranchisement and gerrymandering.

    Sherri, as the others have said, you also do such important work, and I thank you. It is comforting to know there are people like you and Jeff who never give up.

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29. 

    Jeff Borden said on June 8, 2021 at 1:06 pm

    Scout,

    There’s a comprehensive plan to address all your voting concerns including the establishment of independent panels to oversee political districts and make it easier, not harder, to exercise the right to vote. The GOP has denounced the effort, HR1, as a partisan plan to steal away power from the states (but of course) and not a single Republican Senator is willing to throw a vote in its favor. In a divided Senate, that should mean the Dems could move forward to a 50-50 vote with Vice-President Harris breaking the tie, but Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is siding with the Republicans, saying he truly believes a fair voting bill can be found GOPers will back. So, to a more quiet extent, is Sen. Krysten Sinema of Arizona, most recently seen palling around with Texas oaf John Cornyn while calling for “bipartisanship.”

    Manchin’s naivete is sooooo charming. What a guy. . .standing for principles while dealing with a political party that no longer has any. Moscow Mitch and Leningrad Lindsey love the guy. So does tRump.

    And you know what’s funny? Since tRump took that godforsaken, impoverished state by almost 70 points, it’s highly likely Manchin will get creamed when he’s up for reelection the next time. But he will point to his pride in standing for his principles. The millions of Black and Hispanic and Asian and urban and liberal voters who are hampered in their ability to vote will be, as they say down there, shit outta luck.

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30. 

    diane said on June 8, 2021 at 2:08 pm

    Jeff (tmmo), to me saying that they “failed to do much more than vandalize” is a description that is dismissive of the death of one officer and the injuries to 140 others. Obviously YMMV. I do not dispute that had they been organized and well led it would have been unimaginably worse.

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31. 

    Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 8, 2021 at 2:10 pm

    I work 30+ weeks a year with SROs, and I’m truly conflicted. A good SRO is a huge plus for a campus; there are in truth VERY few good SROs. It’s a unique skill set. The tac gear and badge give them a weight for many students that actually makes a good one more effective as a counselor than many counselors, but they also completely shut down a non-trivial number of young people (and parents). Just replacing SROs with an equivalent number of school counselors or LISWs isn’t quite what I’m thinking, but sometimes yeah.

    But a bad SRO . . . oh, there’s few worse situations. I got one fired once, may be the best year’s work I’ve ever done. But more than a few are simply lame & ineffective, while wearing the uniform, a real lose/lose. Somehow I think that’s a worse impact on a kid than a lame & ineffective teacher. And FWIW, I haven’t met a lame & ineffective principal/asst. prin. in years. The position weeds out the punitive & the lackadaisical in a big hurry: pressure from all directions, all the time. There are better ones, but these days few teachers who just want out of the classroom end up in the big office (where you never see them, btw).

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32. 

    Dave said on June 8, 2021 at 2:43 pm

    Julie Robinson, what is it your mother thinks she is going to do with all of her crap? My father was much like that with a lot of things and somehow, my poor dad thought he was going to beat the odds and live forever, I think, so he was going to need that stuff. I know you must be despairing, thinking about moving it and putting it somewhere when there’s no room for it or spending money for a storage space for something you place no value in.

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33. 

    Sherri said on June 8, 2021 at 2:44 pm

    There are no standards regarding training for SROs, so nothing policy-wise pushing for good SROs. And even the best-trained, most well-intentioned SROs are starting from a position that their mere presence can be traumatizing to kids of color. The presence of an SRO tends to criminalize behavior that would otherwise be handled with other discipline, and this burden falls disproportionately on kids of color and special needs kids.

    The benefits? Much harder to see.

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34. 

    susan said on June 8, 2021 at 3:23 pm

    Buzzword translate, please: What is an SRO?

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35. 

    Sherri said on June 8, 2021 at 4:02 pm

    School Resource Officer. An armed uniformed sworn police officer who is assigned to a school or schools, usually middle or high school. Typically the position is funded by the school district, or a combination of the district and the municipality, but the officer is a member of the police force, not an employee of the district.

    SROs are not cheap, either; police officers typically are paid better than teachers.

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36. 

    Deborah said on June 8, 2021 at 4:06 pm

    Julie, you’ve got way more patience than I have. I would have put my foot down ages ago about keeping your mother’s “crap”. I would tell her it’s too expensive to move, too time consuming to pack and no room to put it where you’re going. Period. End of story. But that’s just me, I guess. You do a heck of a lot for your mom as it is, with her healthcare and all. I realize she’s elderly and probably confused and disoriented and doesn’t need extra stress, but neither do you. Moving out of state can be just as stressful as the death of a spouse. I know, I’ve done it 4 times.

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37. 

    Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 8, 2021 at 4:07 pm

    Sorry! School Resource Officer, i.e. a uniformed sheriff’s deputy (in my neck of the woods) who is assigned to a particular school, usually the high school, with 8 to 3 responsibility to the district. Some like it better than being on patrol; some hate it but get assigned there for a . . . variety of reasons. And as Sherri noted, it has the same evidence-based training and proof of effectiveness that the DARE program had (Drug Abuse Resistance Education, i.e. SROs for drugs in schools). I will say that a good SRO builds relationships and can be a truly non-violent intervention if that’s the orientation of the officer; school boards and principals usually ask for an SRO just because of an outburst of fights and/or drugs found on campus. There are grants that help pay for them, so it becomes an extra set of hands for the main office without a payroll expense on the school side, and room for another officer with outside revenue for the department.

    Also, LEO = law enforcement officer; AOD = alcohol and other drugs. There’s more . . . the intersection of law enforcement and education can be an acronym morass.

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38. 

    Deborah said on June 8, 2021 at 4:07 pm

    Sherri, that is very cool, congrats.

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39. 

    LAMary said on June 8, 2021 at 4:24 pm

    Jeff, try the intersection of medicine and government. The assignment I finished a week or so ago was a wonderland of acronyms.

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40. 

    Dexter Friend said on June 8, 2021 at 6:47 pm

    SRO means Single Room Occupancy hotel room also…the kind Reagan was allegedly forcing mental patients into when he cut funding for mental health care at an accelerated rate. (It’s true the cutting started with JFK around 1962, but Reagan really sped up the process which kicked so many people to the streets, as there were not nearly enough SRO rooms to accommodate the hoards of newly homeless.)
    People have varied opinions on what happened; this I know. Many supported Reagan and still do in retrospect. Some social scientists (and experts like JMMO) probably look at what happened from a different slant. I know I was sickened to see so many homeless sifting through Lincoln Park garbage cans in Chicago, by the zoo, in 1981. People were bundled up in winter clothes and it was 85F, and were starving. I loathed Ronald Reagan.

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41. 

    Julie Robinson said on June 8, 2021 at 7:08 pm

    Thanks for your thoughts, Dave and Deborah; we have had conversations as to whether or not we’re enabling Mom. We always come back to looking for compassion for an untreated mental illness.

    If she wants to spend her own money paying storage unit fees, well, it’s her money. She’s been extremely generous to us and is covering over half the cost of the addition. Most of what’s in the unit now is going away, to make room for all the new crap from her apartment.

    At 88, she’s lost the rest of her family except for a sister fighting breast cancer and a couple of distant cousins. She cared for me when I was little, now I care for her. I dropped everything several times to to help out my sister. D spends a lot of time assisting his brothers and sisters. D helps me, I help him, we help our kids, and they help us. For me, family takes care of family, bio or friends and neighbors. I’m not sure how else the world would go around.

    Icarus, you have my sympathies. Feel free to use whatever coping mechanisms you have at hand.

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42. 

    LAMary said on June 8, 2021 at 7:33 pm

    I’m the only one in my family who speaks to everyone. A couple of nephews are not on my besties list and one brother and sister in law have me biting myh tongue when I do talk to them but I talk to them. The issues with all those relatives are racism and the ripping off of the rest of the family after my father’s death. Another brother finally sued that brother who really deserved to be sued but it didn’t do much for family relations. The son of my brother who died last year is suing that same brother now. That brother is really a piece of work. I still call him occasionally, though. I don’t mention him ripping me off, which he did. He got us all.

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