Some people.

When Alan was features editor in Fort Wayne, he had an intern one summer with a shall-we-say-foundational problem. She had no real instinct for a story.

One in particular sticks in my memory. A new freeway bypass was being constructed at the time, and of course it included many overpasses. When those are built, the ‘dozers pile up a lot of earth, leaving holes in the ground that become stormwater retention ponds. You’ve driven past approximately a million of these in your lifetime. In this case, one of the property owners whose land abutted this project had a dream, and worked out a deal with the highway department to make the retention pond near him just a little bit bigger, big enough to be the minimum size required to accommodate that dream: To host sanctioned water-skiing competitions. In that very pond.

I believe he had landed his first event, nothing Cypress Gardens-level, but still: A sanctioned water-skiing competition! In a freeway retention pond, the boats tracing extremely tight triangular patterns, with the traffic screaming by! Now there’s a story.

The intern could not be convinced. “It’s just a guy with a pond in his back yard,” she argued. “So he’s going to run a boat around on it. Big deal.”

I don’t think Alan won that one, and didn’t try to — any story written by any reporter who couldn’t see the humor and absurdity in that situation would be stillborn. But I thought about her when I read the comments on a short aggregation/rewrite I did for Deadline, of a charming story written for the Freep by my ottering friend Bill. He freelances a regular feature called Free Press Flashback, which is pretty self-explanatory. Sunday’s was on the time the city police department rolled out the red carpet for a Hollywood movie production, and the ensuing film, “Detroit 9000,” turned out to be a piece of crap:

A Black congressman from Detroit announces his run for Michigan governor in the ballroom of the Book Cadillac Hotel. After he collects $400,000 for his campaign in money and jewels from Black supporters, a group of masked robbers cleverly steals the loot.

That bold caper is the opening scene in “Detroit 9000,” the low-budget tire squealer that made big headlines in 1973. Hyped as the first locally filmed feature movie, it ended up embarrassing city officials and local celebrities who had fallen hard for Hollywood’s promise to splash the glories of Detroit across the silver screen.

After allowing filmmakers to use police assets from headquarters to horses, Mayor Roman Gribbs blasted the production team as “a garbage organization that produced a garbage movie.”

The police commissioner got a bit part, for which he will win no acting awards. Local celebrities got similar roles and walk-ons. And were rewarded with a film whose marketing line called their city “the murder capital of the world” — “where honkies are the minority race.”

It’s a funny story. Here are a few of the Facebook reactions:

So why bring it up?

Ya I know all about it. Do we really need to re live every one of these moments?? Certainly things are different now?

So.. Michigan is doomed, if all our media sources keep bringing up past filth and horrors. We’ve got to get past these garbage racist viewpoints. It’s too decisive and all it does is make this place slow and miserable.

Sigh. It must be terrible to go through life without a sense of humor. Like not being able to smell. Although I have to say, I’ve known reporters like that. Give them the job of writing about “Detroit 9000,” and they’d spend six paragraphs noting that a $400,000 fundraiser, in 1973, would be the equivalent of $2.6 million today, and that’s totally unrealistic for a single state-level function, plus it would be against the law to accept jewelry in lieu of cash.

I’m reading “The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison, because some state senator concerned about Dirty Books is hooked up with some people who want it out of school libraries. It’s a Morrison novel I had not yet read, so I thought I might see what the fuss is about. The problem is a scene depicting the incestuous rape of an 11-year-old. It made me recall my high-school English teacher assigning Maya Angelou’s memoir “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” in which the 8-year-old Maya is also raped. My teacher was a very prim and proper old-school sort, but she did not shrink from the horror of those passages, and we had a very serious classroom discussion about them.

Perhaps this is why I grew up to be a Democrat. I was forced to read dirty books.

“The Bluest Eye” is a masterpiece, step one on Morrison’s path to the Nobel Prize. I pity the idiots who see it solely as obscenity. I wonder what they read for recreation, if they read at all. I guess the Left Behind novels had to sell to someone.

Hope all had a good weekend, with lots of recreational reading.

One of the things I read, not for recreation, was the New York Times’ Haiti project:

(F)or generations after independence, Haitians were forced to pay the descendants of their former slave masters, including the Empress of Brazil; the son-in-law of the Russian Emperor Nicholas I; Germany’s last imperial chancellor; and Gaston de Galliffet, the French general known as the “butcher of the Commune” for crushing an insurrection in Paris in 1871.

The burdens continued well into the 20th century. The wealth Ms. Present’s ancestors coaxed from the ground brought wild profits for a French bank that helped finance the Eiffel Tower, Crédit Industriel et Commercial, and its investors. They controlled Haiti’s treasury from Paris for decades, and the bank eventually became part of one of Europe’s largest financial conglomerates.

…How is it possible, many ask, that Haiti shares an island with the Dominican Republic, with its underground subway system, health care coverage, public schools, teeming resorts and impressive stretches of economic growth?

Corruption is the usual explanation, and not without reason: Haiti’s leaders have historically ransacked the country for their own gain, legislators have spoken openly on the radio about accepting bribes and oligarchs sit atop lucrative monopolies, paying few taxes. Transparency International ranks it among the most corrupt nations in the world.

But another story is rarely taught or acknowledged: The first people in the modern world to free themselves from slavery and create their own nation were forced to pay for their freedom yet again — in cash.

I knew nothing of this history, and I found the whole package fascinating. I checked Twitter for the reaction and found it to be, shall we say, derisive:

OK, fine. Sorry I brought it up. Man, people are so damn touchy.

I guess that’s all. Do yourself a favor and read a dirty book today.

Posted at 5:02 pm in Media, Same ol' same ol' |
 

44 responses to “Some people.”

  1. David C said on May 22, 2022 at 6:16 pm

    People lose their damn minds when the words “They’re going to shoot a movie here.” are spoken. A couple of years after high school, it was announced that they were going to shoot a movie in about a Christian businessman from Grand Rapids. The working title was “The Pilgrim”. Everyone who was anyone was falling over each other to get in it. Their first clue should have been it was directed and written local boy who made good Paul Schrader. So it wasn’t going to be a good, wholesome Zondervan Film. So the exteriors were shot and the swells got their walk bys. The film came out and it was “Hardcore”. So Grand Rapids was embarrassed for a whole different reason than Detroit was by “Detroit 9000”. Being an old, lefty, agnostic, Grand Rapudlian I rather enjoy its embarrassment.

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  2. Suzanne said on May 22, 2022 at 7:03 pm

    I am pretty sure I know where that retention pond/waterski competition site is, along I-469 near exit 25. From the looks of things, I think they are out of business but I can’t be sure. I don’t go anywhere anymore except to the Doctor or the hospital.

    I have never read any Toni Morrison and it’s like time I remedied that but first I need a palate cleanser after finishing Dopesick. Depressing.

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  3. Jeff Borden said on May 22, 2022 at 7:41 pm

    The first mayor Daley hated Hollywood and denied the use of Chicago locations in the wake of the release of “Medium Cool,” which was shot during the 1968 DNC riots and incorporated the chaos into the narrative. But when our first female mayor, Jane Byrne, was approached about allowing “The Blues Brothers” to film here in 1979, she happily acquiesced. And the floodgates opened up. There’s a substantial film infrastructure in place here –I believe Atlanta has a similar element– so we’re used to film crews on the streets.

    That said, a Page One story I wrote at Crain’s Chicago Business in 1992 was the growing anger and frustration of Lincoln Park residents as three different movies were being filmed in their ‘hood. Each production had a good dozen semi-trailers parked on the street, eliminating three or four parking spots per trailer. Seeing a young Alec Baldwin and Meg Ryan on the street (“Prelude to a Kiss” was one of the flicks) wasn’t worth the loss of street parking and congestion.

    As an afficiando of blaxploitation films –when I was a night police reporter at the Columbus Dispatch I spent many an afternoon at the RKO Palace watching cool black heroes kill dorky white gangsters– may I suggest “Detroit 9000” is not a terrible film. Alex Rocco (Moe Green in “The Godfather”) and Vonetta McGee were very cool, but the plot is creaky and the dialogue is, mmmm, pretty awful. Still, the glimpses of Detroit in 1972 are fun to see.

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  4. Julie Robinson said on May 22, 2022 at 9:08 pm

    The story about Haiti was new to me also, but thus it ever is with colonizers, right?

    This country searches for formula, Cuba searches for milk: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/cuba-economy-milk-shortage/

    Suzanne, Toni Morrison will not be a palate cleanser but more depressing stuff. I recommend Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris, which I read earlier this year, loved, and saw a preview for what appears to be a charming movie version of said book.

    Speaking of movies, raise your hand if you saw Downton Abbey and you were the youngest person in the theater.

    People in my hometown were very excited when a movie based on G Gordon Liddy’s book Will was going to be filmed partly at a historic mansion in town. The premiere was then held at another historic movie theater. Oh what a thrill! Movie stars! Our famous building on film!

    I had read the book and wondered…sure enough, the historic mansion was used for the scene of little Gordon as a boy, torturing animals. That was one quiet movie theater.

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  5. Jim said on May 22, 2022 at 9:46 pm

    Today’s Doonesbury on CRT (and probably dirty books books in school): https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/comics/strips/?name=doonesbury&itid=sf_entertainment-comics

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  6. Gretchen said on May 22, 2022 at 10:22 pm

    The complaint about the NYT article seems to be that they extensively interviewed historians and used resources and documents they recommended and then didn’t credit them.

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  7. Mark P said on May 22, 2022 at 11:43 pm

    I wonder if the book banners have heard anything about the internet. You know, the greatest free pornography delivery system ever invented in the history of the world. If not, they could ask their children about it.

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  8. Jeff Gill said on May 22, 2022 at 11:47 pm

    Gah. An editor who invited me to go check out a highway retention pond water sky venue, instead of a Board of Zoning and Building Appeals meeting? C’mon, intern. You’re getting a gift here.

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  9. Dexter Friend said on May 23, 2022 at 3:05 am

    Maya Angelou was the first woman cable car operator in San Francisco; I had just finished “Why the Caged Bird Sings” the day before I Greyhound’d to The City and rode my first cable car down to Aquatic Park and the turntable. I thought of the young woman at the stick when I boarded that crowded car. The book is sad and gripping but also hopeful. That same day I remember buying a thin book of poems by Janis Ian, of whom I had never heard of then. Those poems moved me.

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  10. JodiP said on May 23, 2022 at 9:08 am

    I am reading Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land and enjoying it. It travels across time, and has lots of Greek history woven into it. It’s super creative and imaginative with fine character development.

    Another palate cleanser: Mrs. Queen Takes the Train https://www.williamkuhn.com/mrs_queen_takes_the_train_115641.htm

    I also read a book he wrote about the Ponsonbys who served Queen Victoria. His website lists several other books that look interesting.

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  11. Dorothy said on May 23, 2022 at 9:23 am

    Jodi I’m reading that book now, too. I’m 2/3 of the way through it. I purposely did not cast on a new knitting project because I didn’t want anything else to take away my attention to the book. That being said, I found a quilt design on Instagram last week that blew me away, and I’m half way through making one as a wedding gift for my niece. And when that one is done, I’m making the pattern again in a different size for my daughter and her partner. The pattern is a couple years old, but in my IG feed someone used a hashtag (#modernquilt) that I follow so I guess that’s why I saw it. The pattern is called Aftershock (#aftershockquilt) in case anyone wants to see what it looks like. Usually I can figure out how to make a quilt that is rather simplistic. This one was worth spending $$ on because someone else did all the math and it was going to save me lots of time.

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  12. Heather said on May 23, 2022 at 10:36 am

    I remember editing a story for the Reader that was kinda boring, frankly. While I was emailing with the writer, he mentioned something amazing he’d learned while talking with the subject that would have made a terrific angle or at least an interesting detail. This might have been after it ran, sigh.

    Fell off my bike Saturday after my tire got caught in a furrow in the road, right into a deep puddle–yuck. It was more embarrassing than anything, but some people did stop to help me out, which was heartwarming and helped me feel a little bit better about humanity. I have a bunch of bruises and some muscle aches, but no other injuries. Other than that it was a nice weekend of warm-weather stuff (craft fair, drinks al fresco), even though the weather wasn’t quite up to my spring standards.

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  13. tajalli said on May 23, 2022 at 11:20 am

    Read Cloud Cuckoo Land a couple months ago and was so delighted I picked up Doerr’s earlier All the Light We Cannot See, said title referring to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, of which only a tiny blip is visible to the human eye.

    Just this morning I was marveling at how someone can create such profoundly detailed and engaging characters as well as interwoven plots – jumping back and forth through a large timeline – while remaining cohesive. Looking forward to reading more of his stuff.

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  14. Julie Robinson said on May 23, 2022 at 12:02 pm

    And also a character, not to give away any spoilers. Loved it too. Cloud Cuckoo Land has been downloaded among 50 or so others. Must stop reading book reviews.

    We’ve been the in the middle of a whirl of gaiety, to quote Laura Ingalls Wilder. Lots of family in town for the graduation, people coming and going and needing rides and suddenly here for a meal. It’ll continue all week; not sure how much more gaiety I can handle. Anyway, I gracefully managed to avoid the graduation itself by reminding everyone I skipped my own college graduation. Also gracefully avoided car racing on the living room TV by asking if nephew would maybe like to watch from the TV on the lanai while in the pool? He was in hog heaven, and I patted myself on the back.

    Heal up, Heather. Our daughter did the same thing last night.

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  15. nancy said on May 23, 2022 at 12:16 pm

    To David’s comment about “Hardcore,” a story I’ve probably told before:

    Years and years ago, I was at a columnists’ conference, and there was a guy from Grand Rapids there. He claimed Schrader put an insult to GR in *every* one of his movies to that date, almost like Easter eggs you had to look for. (No, I don’t know how it would have worked with “Mishima,” sorry.) I recently watched “Hardcore” again for the first time since it was released. It isn’t nearly as good as I thought it was in 1979, but the scenes of Dutch Reformed religiosity and Grand Rapids life were fascinating.

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  16. Scout said on May 23, 2022 at 12:39 pm

    I just finished Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus and I have been telling everyone I know who reads, about it. In short, it’s Temperence Brennan (Bones) meets first wave feminism. Equal parts delightful and infuriating.

    Apparently the whiny diaper load is now openly calling for civil war on his social media platform. Maybe this really will be the end of the *United* States. Maybe we let the MAGA nuts secede and find out they can’t do much without blue liberal states subsidizing their lunacy.

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  17. ROGirl said on May 23, 2022 at 12:49 pm

    Before the 2020 election I was expecting a secession move if he lost and didn’t want to admit that he had become a twice impeached former president.

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  18. Icarus said on May 23, 2022 at 1:37 pm

    Scout, if you want to see some crazy wrapped up in derangement, take a gander over here:

    https://www.facebook.com/RELeeCamp1640/

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  19. David C said on May 23, 2022 at 1:49 pm

    It’s been a long time since I saw “Hardcore” too. I remember in the exteriors they showed a church but I don’t know if he got an actual CRC. If they didn’t allow it I’m sure he could have filmed Fountain Street Church. It’s a UU church without being a UU church. They used to say they only time Duncan Littlefair, their pastor in those days, said Jesus Christ was when he slipped and fell on the ice but from the outside, it looks like any other church excepting Butler Building megachruches.

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  20. LAMary said on May 23, 2022 at 4:08 pm

    A few of my cousins went to Calvin and one of the teaches at Western Michigan now. I don’t know how those cousins kept the insanely strict religion my grandmother practiced. It was not unlike conservative Judaism but with a different sabbath.
    I’ve had commercials filmed in the house next door to mine which was a pain in the ass for parking and there are film crews in the neighborhood pretty often. You see the signs on utility poles: CREW PARKING with an arrow pointing to some lot and you see the actors’ trailers. I know I’ve said it before but my sons’ high school has been in lots of movies, commercials, videos. John Marshall High School. Look it up. You’ll recognize it.

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  21. basset said on May 23, 2022 at 4:26 pm

    And, related to Icarus’ post, “Confederate mechanized cavalry”:

    http://www.csascvmc.org/

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  22. Jeff Borden said on May 23, 2022 at 5:19 pm

    If we’re playing the crazy game, what about Kandiss Taylor, who is on the QOP ballot for governor in the Georgia primary. She is all about taking down Lucifer and turning the government into a church. Her campaign slogan is really cartchy: Jesus, Guns, Babies.

    https://www.thewrap.com/kandiss-taylor-jesus-guns-babies-bus-jokes/

    We are doomed.

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  23. Mark P said on May 23, 2022 at 5:40 pm

    I would be all in favor of letting the Trumpist states secede, but unfortunately the states don’t divide up very well. Let Georgia go, but what about everyone who voted for Biden, Warnock and Ossoff? If Colorado stayed blue, I would move, but not everyone wants to leave Georgia. Maybe we can work out a deal where the red states buy out blue residents, and vice versa.

    Or we could just have a civil war and let the survivors work it out. The Trumpists think they are the only ones with guns, but they are just the stupid ones with guns.

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  24. jcburns said on May 23, 2022 at 5:48 pm

    As Nancy and I discussed offblog, part of Kandiss Taylor’s plan to “take down Lucifer” involves her commitment to tear down the Georgia Guidestones.

    Everyone I’ve talked to (for decades) in Georgia are very proud of the Guidestones. They’re, like, you know, life lessons! Like commandments, sorta!

    And by the way, they’re private property on private property.

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  25. David C said on May 23, 2022 at 5:50 pm

    I’m pretty sure things are going to get better in this country. The only trouble is I might be dead by then. For the most part, young people aren’t as shitty as people my age are. They’ll take over eventually, right?

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  26. LAMary said on May 23, 2022 at 6:25 pm

    Hmmm. Not so sure about the young people. I’ve got a nephew or two who are real jerks. Big Trump fans, lots of guns, toss the N word around a lot. My sons and the people they hang with are definitely ok, but one of my brothers and his sons and grandchildren are depressing. His daughter is ok. She moved away from the rest of the clan.

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  27. Jeff Borden said on May 23, 2022 at 6:44 pm

    David C.,

    I’m with you, brother, but two things bother me.

    First, the totally corrupt Supreme Court is now larded with hardcore rightwingers who will keep their foot on the throats of progress for many decades to come. Justice Handmaiden, the youngest of the jurists, just turned 50. She is pretty much the equal of Strip Search Sammy Alito in her faith-based a.k.a. conservative Catholic view of the world.

    Second, the generation that ushered a third-rate reality TV performer with five children by three women, a sexual predator and a real estate flop with more bankruptcies to his credit than Carter has liver pills into the White House is the same generation that marched for civil rights, protested the Vietnam war and supported women in their efforts to pass the ERA. Who knows what the life experiences of the generations behind us rotten fucking baby boomers will be like when they get deeper into adulthood?

    Honestly, I am no longer secure in the belief our country will survive tRumpism. There are more of us than there are of them –Dem senators represent 40 million more Americans than QOP senators– but the QOP controls the levers of power in 33 states and they set the rules.

    I’m a pessimist by nature and training. I truly hope I’m wrong.

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  28. Deborah said on May 23, 2022 at 9:24 pm

    So things got a little out of hand on our trip back to Santa Fe. You guessed it, both my husband and I finally tested positive for Covid. For me it was day 9 after having mild symptoms and for my husband it was day 5. His symptoms are worse than mine were, but that’s not unusual when we both come down with something he always has it to a greater degree than I do. I just had a runny nose and a bit of a scratchy throat for a couple of days, and then coughing, he had more of a sore throat and his coughing was worse. Even after both of us tested negative, me 3 times, him once, lo and then behold we both tested positive. Weird. I can’t believe I walked up and down very steep hills in San Francisco while I had Covid, I’m assuming I had it all along. It’s very confusing to read all the stuff on the CDC website of how long to quarantine etc. We’re sure now that when LB had her supposed bad cold, she had Covid then too. Her symptoms were the same and she tested negative multiple times.

    The good news is we always wore our masks when we were inside stores and gas stations etc, except for the 3 evenings while we were eating in San Francisco when we had souffles at Cafe Jacqueline. and for that I feel really bad, hopefully the people around us were fully vaccinated, being a blue city in a blue state I’m wanting to believe that. Basically I wanted to believe the earlier tests because, well we were on vacation.

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  29. LAMary said on May 23, 2022 at 9:40 pm

    My son tested positive multiple times before returning home from touring. Then he came home and we all got sick. The rapid tests are not very reliable I suspect.

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  30. Julie Robinson said on May 23, 2022 at 9:46 pm

    Deborah, I never tested positive either. I’m hearing from more and more people like us, and probably you, who had all their shots and avoided it for 2+ years, but finally got it anyway. A story I read today suggested modifying tests so that people would be using a swab of their throats, as apparently the virus builds there first. False negatives=more spreaders.

    I’m pretty sure our kids were exposed at their regular Monday night choir rehearsal, because they both got sick about 48 hours later, on Wednesday night. By the time I got up that Thursday they had both tested positive. Even though we all started wearing the NC95 masks, disinfecting, and staying in separate rooms of the house, by Saturday we all had it.

    Our son was supposed to be in a concert that weekend made up of a smaller group from the larger choir, and that got postponed, as well as rehearsals the next week for the large group. Singing is a great way to spread the virus.

    So even though the rest of us had been staying home as much as possible and masking when we did go out, our vigilance was for nothing.

    And now Monkey Pox? Dear Lord have mercy.

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  31. Sherri said on May 23, 2022 at 11:31 pm

    Alito, Kavanaugh, Barret, Thomas, Roberts, and Gorsuch all think it’s just fine to execute an innocent man. So much for their deep Catholic faith.

    I would disagree with but at least have some respect for them if they opposed both abortion and the death penalty, but this isn’t about faith, it’s about power.

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  32. Mark P said on May 24, 2022 at 12:46 am

    I think we all know which way the trump-McConnell justices would have voted on Dredd Scott.

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  33. Dexter Friend said on May 24, 2022 at 3:59 am

    Morning Joe Scarborough ran a segment about how the repugg crazies are driving the “true conservatives” towards the dems for the mid-terms. 12 hours later Lester Holt on Big NBC ran a story about how the dems are surely going down the shitter in November, just like in 2010. So who knows?

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  34. Icarus said on May 24, 2022 at 9:59 am

    We were going to meet a friend and her twin boys in St Louis this weekend but one of the boys tested positive for COVID, even though Masked and Vax’ed. Technically he’d be clear by Thursday but it just seems too risky; by then the other boy might have it and we could get it.

    When booking the hotel Nightingale gave in to the impulse to save money and didn’t pay the $50 for refundable. Lesson Learned. The hotel does have a hardship request form and they are apparently letting us reschedule, so hopefully Columbus Day it is!

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  35. alex said on May 24, 2022 at 11:56 am

    SeeIN seeIN seeIN!

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  36. Suzanne said on May 24, 2022 at 3:51 pm

    I have been seeing this story all over the place, Alex, but didn’t realize it made the WP. Yeah, what the pastor did isn’t adultery, it was rape. He’s 20+ years older than her.

    My son’s reaction was trying to imagine being a visitor that Sunday. “Thanks, but I think I will try another church…” [quietly slips out the back door]

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  37. Little Bird said on May 24, 2022 at 3:53 pm

    It’s finally raining here in Santa Fe and over some of the big fires! I hope it helps get those fires under control. It’s been scary watching the smoke plumes day after day after day.

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  38. Jeff Borden said on May 24, 2022 at 4:54 pm

    Another mass shooting. This time at a Texas elementary school. Two dead and 14 wounded including kids.

    Pro life my fucking ass.

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  39. Jeff Borden said on May 24, 2022 at 5:07 pm

    Texas update: 14 students and one teacher murdered by a high school student.

    Updates coming every few minutes.

    Texas is hosting the NRA convention in a few days. The Orange King will be speaking. Doubt this latest massacre will get a mention.

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  40. Jim said on May 24, 2022 at 5:18 pm

    We are planning a visit to New Zealand next summer, in part for a vacation and in part to consider a move. Gun violence in the US is the reason. For me, 70 years of this shit is enough.

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  41. Icarus said on May 24, 2022 at 5:27 pm

    Maybe if we rebrand “Active Shooters” as “Live Abortions” Conservatives will do something about it.

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  42. Deborah said on May 24, 2022 at 5:29 pm

    If it was possible at our age to start over in a different country I would seriously consider it. All the thoughts and prayers obviously aren’t going to make a bit of difference. Seriously, now that the shooter’s name is out there, and it’s a hispanic name, the rightwing is going to have a fit. Never mind that guns are the problem, not ethnicity. Here we go again.

    We actually have a fire going in the fireplace in Santa Fe right now, it’s going to get down to the mid 30s tonight and it’s snowing in the mountains which is excellent since that’s where the fires are.

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  43. David C said on May 24, 2022 at 5:49 pm

    I feel the same way Deborah. For better or worse, we’re lifers. We’d go to Canada but getting into Canada as a retiree isn’t easy. I was offered a job in Canada in 2009 but Stephen Harper was PM, Obama was President, the Dems had 60 seats in the Senate, and a big majority in the House. Things were looking pretty good here. I knew the Rs were batshit crazy but I thought they’d been pretty well neutered. More fool me.

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  44. Jeff Borden said on May 24, 2022 at 7:38 pm

    We’re in the same boat. I’m 71. My wife will be 77 next month. It’s just too late in life.

    Best advice to young people is learn another language and explore options. Things will be markedly worse when (if) the cocksuckers do well in the midterms. Gonna be tough on anyone not a straight white male christian.

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