A former colleague messaged me on Facebook the other day, asking for my address. He’d been cleaning out some papers and had some stuff to send me. Stuff like this:
And stuff like this (not my handwriting, and I don’t know whose, but I have a suspicion):
And stuff like this:
Newspaper people keep amusing files. So does everybody short of actuaries, but ours are best. Were best, anyway.
Once, after I left Ohio, the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo sent a young giraffe to the Columbus Zoo. Giraffes are delicate and don’t travel well, and this one was let out of its crate, made a single galloping lap around its new yard and dropped dead. Evidently I sent a postcard:
I was big on postcards for a while. I still have boxes of them. I should get rid of a few. Send me your mailing address at nancy (at) nancynall.com and I’ll send you one. Puns not included. I don’t know how I got so pun-ny in this one, because I’m generally not a pun person. I have no memory of being a pun person. But I guess that’s why we save stuff like this.
Also included, but not reproduced here: Several notes I wrote on the half-sheets that were on every desk, which we used to, duh, send notes to one another, typed on our IBM Selectrics. There’s also an evening-news roundup, which the night staff was required to watch and summarize for the morning crew. I tried to make mine funny, because what’s the point of such boring duty if you can’t be funny. It begins:
good morning, carolyn. it’s (i mean it is) 6:35 p.m. and this is the news.
I never used capital letters back then. The “it is” stuff refers to a high-ranking editor who, furious that his people couldn’t tell the difference between its and it’s, banned the contraction from the newspaper. Which led to some awkwardness in copy and headlines: Happy New Year! It is party time! And so on.
The most interesting part, to me, is that in my on-paper notes, I used perfect manuscript editing marks. I bet you can’t find a journalist under 50 who even knows what they are.
Anyway, thanks to Robin for, at the end of my career, taking me back to its beginning. Life is all about bookends for me, lately. This was a good one.
And I think this will be the last entry before we leave, unless something huge happens. I’ll be posting photos, etc., on my social channels (@nderringer on Insta, @nnall on Twitter). And there’s always a chance I can make something work on our Airbnb wifi and my ailing iPad Mini. But no promises. This is a vacation, after all.
Bon voyage to us, happy first-of-the-fall to you all.
roy edroso said on September 14, 2022 at 6:04 pm
It is, in fact, party time!
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jcburns said on September 14, 2022 at 8:59 pm
I have plenty of Nancy cards, thanks!
Safe travels to y’all.
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Sue M said on September 14, 2022 at 10:07 pm
Bon voyage! Fair winds and following seas.
(just turned 64 and still send postcards)
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Dexter Friend said on September 15, 2022 at 1:04 am
Glad you are not dealing with Amtrak at all, as if you ever did much train travel anyway. My brother and sister-in-law just got their Amtrak trip to San Francisco from Chicago cancelled because of the looming strike. RR employees want a 24% pay increase compounded to reach that number by 2024, and 3 to 5 sick days per month instead of the current one day. The company has offered 14.1%. Five paid sick days a month is a lot, fer crissakes, but then railroad work is hard and tedious.
So safe travels and bring us all back coffee mugs and tee shirts. 🙂
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Dorothy said on September 15, 2022 at 8:15 am
Postcards are a love of mine, too. I bought a bunch in Ireland and Scotland three years ago. I bought some at the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum and home about 10 years ago. And in my modern quilt guild, we’re exchanging fabric postcards at the meeting next month. Supposedly you can mail these, but getting a stamp to adhere might be tricky and complicate their arrival. So most people put the fabric postcard into a slightly larger envelope and mail them the regular way.
Have a wonderful trip and you know we’ll all be waiting to hear/see/know about all your fun. And the not-so-fun but I’m betting that will be minimal.
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Jeff Borden said on September 15, 2022 at 9:57 am
Safe travels. It’s always good to get away from ‘Murica once in awhile. We’ll grapple with the pressing issues of our times –drag queen story hours, CRT, banning books, etc.– while you and Alan are abroad.
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basset said on September 15, 2022 at 9:58 am
Have a great trip, eat well, enjoy.
Dorothy, did you get the link I sent you offline? Not sure I had the right address.
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Deborah said on September 15, 2022 at 10:19 am
Have a wonderful trip, hope the weather is fine.
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Suzanne said on September 15, 2022 at 10:59 am
Enjoy every minute of your trip!
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LAMary said on September 15, 2022 at 12:10 pm
I send Pantone postcards.
Have a great trip. Eat some great food. The last time I was in Spain Franco wasn’t dead yet. Close, but not quite. It’s a lot nicer there now, I’m sure.
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Bruce Fields said on September 15, 2022 at 12:20 pm
“RR employees want a 24% pay increase compounded to reach that number by 2024, and 3 to 5 sick days per month instead of the current one day. The company has offered 14.1%.”
To be clear: the negotiations were between (multiple) freight companies and their employees. Amtrak was involved because they use the freight companies’ tracks.
At least, that’s my understanding.
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LAMary said on September 15, 2022 at 3:53 pm
I’m calling it a tie. Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis are seeing who is most terrible person. De Santis sent two planeloads of Venezuelan immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. Abbott sent two busloads to Kamala Harris’s residence. Ho ho. Own those libs, guys. Use some humans to get some votes.
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Sherri said on September 15, 2022 at 5:13 pm
I think it’s pretty clear that DeSantis and Abbott (and their supporters) don’t consider those immigrants to be humans. Perhaps if they were fetuses they’d be worthy of their care and consideration.
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Dorothy said on September 15, 2022 at 5:31 pm
Yes I did get the link, basset. I opened the email, read it, and have not had time to see it yet. Hope to do so soon!
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Bitter Scribe said on September 15, 2022 at 6:52 pm
I’m sorry but those people had to be morons. “It’s-Its” is one of the easiest concepts to learn ever. When I was struggling to teach English as a second language to a Polish immigrant, I gave him a lesson where I explained the difference, then had him do a quiz where he had to choose the right one in a bunch of sentences. He nailed it perfectly.
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basset said on September 15, 2022 at 7:59 pm
Let me know what you think m, Dorothy… thanks. (Not to be rude and leave everybody else out here, it’s a link to a TV piece about the Singer sewing machine company making army pistols before WW2.)
Meanwhile, Mrs. B and I got our new Covid boosters today, requiring the addition of second vax cards because our first ones were full.
And we went last night to a showing of excerpts from the new Ken Burns Holocaust films. Powerful.
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David C said on September 15, 2022 at 8:35 pm
I don’t think being a moron enters into it for most people. People are busy. People are distracted. People are tired. People are people who are trying to manage their way around ridiculous English spelling. That’s why they have, or used to have, editors. Nobody gets it right all the time, every time for any of thousands of reasons. If you’re editing and your attitude is that the writer got it wrong because they’re stupid you should probably get another job or a big life insurance policy. Anyone like that will likely drop dead from stress at a young age.
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brian stouder said on September 15, 2022 at 10:22 pm
Here’s wishing our proprietress and her husband a pleasant trip, marvelous sights and tastes and experiences, and a comfortable return….whereupon we demand a marvelous, succinct, and cleverly discrete recapitulation in these spaces!
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alex said on September 15, 2022 at 11:13 pm
Perhaps if they were fetuses they’d be worthy of their care and consideration.
Nah. The forced birth movement is all about making fetuses somebody else’s problem too.
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Dorothy said on September 16, 2022 at 5:37 am
That was really cool, basset. I loved that when people would present those guns to try and sell them, and if they said it had ‘Singer’ on it to identify it, that proved they were fakes. Very interesting!
We got our next boosters on Tuesday and I felt like a slug all day Wednesday. No energy, and my arm hurt a bunch. But it was tolerable. I felt much more like myself yesterday. We, too, had full vaccination cards so they put a sticker on the back with the latest info. If we get anymore boosters, a new card will be in order.
Next week we’re driving to Troy NY (near Albany) for a family wedding. Anyone have any recommendations for a good restaurant? On Thursday evening those of us who are not involved in the ceremony itself will be eating out and having a good rec is always preferred. Our first night we’re staying in Niagara Falls. It’s been about 23 years since I was there and Mike only saw it when he was a little kid. I’m pretty sure nothing much has changed there but we’re gonna go by and take a look anyway. That stop will break up the long drive. When we come back home we’re stopping in Latrobe to see friends and have dinner with them. Should be a pretty satisfying trip. I love being retired but I’m kind of tired of not having anywhere to go. (My car has been in the body shop for 3 weeks now so that hasn’t helped lately.)
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David C said on September 16, 2022 at 5:51 am
It’s a case study of one but it seems like the omicron booster works. I got mine on the first day they were available 2-3 weeks ago. My wife wasn’t feeling well that day so they told her she should probably wait. She got Covid earlier this week. We have a small house so we can’t really go off to our separate wings. We wouldn’t want to anyway. I’m sleeping in the guest room and that’s the only change we’ve made. That the only change we’ve made. I test every day and I’m still negative. We’ll see if that holds but so far, it looks good.
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Deborah said on September 16, 2022 at 9:16 am
I didn’t get Wordle at all today. Damn.
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basset said on September 16, 2022 at 10:16 am
Thanks, Dorothy. After Singer turned the contract down, the production line was handed off to Remington Rand typewriters and they made some huge number of em.
Can’t get interested in Wordle, the NYT mini crossword has become a daily thing for me though.
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Jenine said on September 16, 2022 at 10:53 am
@Deborah, today’s Wordle word is technically English but is not a word I’ve ever spoken or written. Boo.
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Suzanne said on September 16, 2022 at 11:04 am
Ugh. Today’s Wordle. I had all but the middle letter with 3 guesses to go and kept guessing wrong. I had heard the correct word but it never crossed my mind.
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LAMary said on September 16, 2022 at 11:37 am
The strange search of Sheila Kuehil’s home (she’s an LA county supervisor) was organized by our sleazy corrupt county sheriff. The county DA had nothing to do with it. Sheila has been very critical of the current Sheriff and he’s running for re-election.
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Sherri said on September 16, 2022 at 12:13 pm
So, let’s review the DeSantis stunt. Beforehand, he bragged to a bunch of donors that he had a pot of money to send a bunch of immigrants to blue cities. Then, a couple of charted planes appear in Texas, and someone tells a bunch of people seeking asylum that there are homes and jobs for them in Massachusetts. DeSantis also has a videographer on the plane, so he can get a good campaign commercial out of this. He flies them to Martha’s Vineyard, after a stop in Florida and South Carolina for who knows what, where, despite no knowledge that the refugees are coming, the community springs into action to welcome them, because, you know, unlike DeSantis and other Republicans, they treat them as human beings.
And DeSantis is the guy pundits were trying to claim was a better version of Trump?
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Julie Robinson said on September 16, 2022 at 12:33 pm
As a citizen of Florida, I’m angry that my tax dollars are being spent this way. I would like to him to work on the mess that is homeowners’ insurance, the mess that is sky-high rentals, the mess that is low wages, the mess that is lack of public transportation, the mess that is teachers leaving because of lack of trust in their professional abilities, the mess that is corruption of ghost candidates, the mess that is Florida Power & Light having a private bar next to the Capitol Building in Tallahassee, the mess that is lack of abortion access, the mess that is the child welfare system, the mess that is the anti-WOKE act and removal of transgener supportive surgeries, the mess that is 500 other things with higher priorities.
He is an awful, awful man.
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LAMary said on September 16, 2022 at 12:36 pm
It’s not even clear that the “migrants” DeSantis kidnapped and shipped to MA entered the US illegally.The cynical, cruel use of people for a campaign stunt is disgusting.
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ROGirl said on September 16, 2022 at 12:43 pm
As I’ve heard a lot recently, the cruelty is the point.
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David C said on September 16, 2022 at 1:54 pm
I do wish people would stop saying things like lets empty the murderers out of our prisons and send them to Florida and Texas. I know they’re not serious at least I hope they’re not. The way the Wingnut Wurlitzer works it gets turned into “Oh yeah, well the left is planning on sending murderers to Florida and Texas”. It’s plenty to talk about how awful DeSantis and Abbott are. Musings on revenge aren’t helpful.
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brian stouder said on September 16, 2022 at 2:56 pm
David C, indeed. If we look at this with any sort of seriousness, and/or humanity, and/or (insert all-encompassing religious reference here), what the Florida governor’s action represents is a flatly irresponsible crime against humanity. Treating human beings this way directly and flatly rejects the Statue of Liberty, and all of America’s founding ideals, and perpetuates all the evils that America likes to think we’ve overcome. (I suppose that’s the eternal truth here; we’re NEVER done declaring independence, or defending life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is a universal aspiration, and not a private club)
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Colleen said on September 16, 2022 at 2:58 pm
I agree with everything Julie said. DeSantis is a horrid man. He tricked those people. Now I’m seeing reports that they were given false addresses under the pretext of helping them into the system, when in reality it was a ploy to get them nabbed for being in the country illegally. Which none of them were. They were seeking asylum from a communist government, which is legal. We already know he set up the voter fraud people.
I am so sick of rich white men breaking laws with impunity and facing no consequences. The fact that the gubernatorial race is so close is disheartening. This guy shouldn’t be in the running for anything, let alone governor.
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Deborah said on September 16, 2022 at 5:33 pm
Wow, the kidnapping of the immigrants who were flown to Martha’s Vineyard is even worse than I thought. I don’t know if this link will work but watch this video https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1570803548501446661
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Sherri said on September 16, 2022 at 6:50 pm
Like Trump, DeSantis’s only appeal is that he hates all the right people. That’s the animating force in the GOP today.
Everything I’ve read says that DeSantis has no personal charm at all, that he’s terrible at working a room of donors. But he’s figured out that cruelty plays well with the base.
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Dexter Friend said on September 17, 2022 at 2:56 am
Dorothy, I had a friend 20 years ago who worked in Troy in a downtown government office. Every week she’d gather the pool money for the big jackpot lotto games and buy them from a street lotto kiosk . One week the pot got up to about $370 million. My friend stood behind a lady she saw there frequently, buying tickets too. This time, the other lady bought the winning ticket and was the sole winner, one person ahead in line of my friend. Instead of being jealous, she was glad for that winning lady. My friend passed 15 years ago, she had stories. She’d Amtrak it to Yankee Stadium a few times a year and in her youth she’d sneak away to The Apollo in Harlem for the shows. She was a real live wire.
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David C said on September 17, 2022 at 6:19 am
Alan must be so happy he’s retired, going to Spain, and doesn’t have to cover the Detroit Auto Show, er the North America International Auto Show. It sounds like a read dud.
https://jalopnik.com/2022-naias-detroit-auto-show-depressing-ghost-town-1849545366
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Peter said on September 17, 2022 at 9:18 am
Deborah @ 24 – Boy, I thought I was made that parer stopped my World streak at 121 – defector.com had an entry about it and talk about venting….
I did pick up a good tip, since the reason every time I lose in Worldle is that I’m missing one letter and I run out of tries – paCer, paGer, paYer, paPer, etc…. someone said when you’re short one letter and there’s plenty of choices, type in a word that’s mostly consonants to eliminate possibilities, then return to the word missing one letter.
Sherri @ 27 – Yes, DeSantis is better than Trump – in that he’s more evil
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Peter said on September 17, 2022 at 9:27 am
A lot of times, I don’t see the forest for the trees, and a recent item in Raw Story about the stolen White House documents talked about an angle I never thought of before.
There’s plenty of articles out there about Trump taking the documents because he just likes collecting things and showing them off, and there’s plenty of examples to make that point. There’s plenty of articles out there about Trump taking the documents because he was going to sell them for $$$, and that would be no surprise.
This article went on about Trump’s history of picking up incriminating evidence on individuals, and then blackmailing them into doing what he wants. There were examples of journalists who accepted free tickets or hotel rooms to events at the Taj Mahal, and then when they wrote something bad about Trump, he would leak that they begged him for comps and they were by nature compromised. The article noted that Christine Whitman’s son got drunk at a party in a Trump hotel; when Trump wanted her to shelve a project that would help his casino competitors, he brought up how printing the story of her son would be damaging.
It made me think, especially when one of the items taken from Mar-A-Lago was “information on the President of France”….
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Dave said on September 17, 2022 at 11:19 am
I do Wordle every day and somehow, I got parer, even though I didn’t even think of it as a real word. I remember my mother saying paring knife on a regular basis and I took a shot at it after paper didn’t work.
We got the booster shot (Pfizer) a week ago Thursday, the second day they were available at our closest CVS. They told us they’d had a steady stream but we were able to make an appointment online within three hours of the time we looked for a shot locally. We both had sore arms for a couple of days but had no other bad reactions, count us fortunate.
I don’t know what would have happened had Desantis’s opponent, Andrew Gillum had been elected because he had a host of issues all his own and I would have preferred his primary opponent, Gwen Graham, who was a much better candidate. Julia has written everything that’s wrong with Florida and it’s not going to change anytime soon, the Repugnant ones have held a majority there for over twenty years now and with places like The Villages, that probably won’t change. However, here we are, living back in Indiana, with our own despicable politicians and policies and living in a district with a congresswoman I don’t like, Victoria Spratz. I see a lot of huge signs in fields, VICTORIA.
Ugh.
Safe travels, it’s going to be a great trip.
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Jeff Borden said on September 17, 2022 at 11:35 am
While the MAGA cult chortles and chuckles at how Abbott and DeathSantis are “owning the libs,” what we witnessed at Martha’s Vineyard was the very best of our nation. The migrants arrived unannounced, yet the community quickly rallied to get them food, shelter, toys and clothing. High school Spanish students turned up to help with translations. The migrants wept with joy at how well they were treated. I’m an atheist, but to me, that was the very essence of being a christian.
Meanwhile, it turns out Texass and Floriduh are emulating the racists of the White Citizens societies prevalent in the South during the Jim Crow days. Seeking to embarrass Northern liberals, these pricks would recruit black people with the same kind of promises made to the Venezuelan migrants –jobs, housing, hope– and then bus them to Yankee cities in an effort to create chaos and mayhem. It was just as cruel then as it is now.
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Deborah said on September 17, 2022 at 12:17 pm
Peter, agreed, the words that kill me in Wordle are the ones where just one letter can be changed and make a bunch of different words, I usually run out of guesses. I never heard of someone using a paring knife being called a parer. That was a stretch. There was another questionable word a couple of weeks ago, I forget what that word was.
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Sherri said on September 17, 2022 at 7:14 pm
Remember the praying coach in Bremerton? The one the Supreme Court said the school district had to reinstate even though he had never been fired? Well, the school district has been trying to reinstate him, but he’s busy on the conservative celebrity circuit.
So, this coach goes out to the middle of the field to pray after the school district asked him to stop, and they put him on paid leave. Football coaches in high school work on one year contracts, and he never even applied for the job for the following season. So, he was fired, he wasn’t hired for a job he didn’t apply for. But he sues the school district, and the Supreme Court made up a set of facts and required the school district to “reinstate” him. So they sent him paperwork doing so, and have heard nothing from him since. Football season is two games in, but he’s busy palling around with Mike Pence and Donald Trump.
Where or where are the conservatives of good will that we’re supposed to be engaging with?
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Julie Robinson said on September 18, 2022 at 11:42 am
Local coverage of the DeSantis stunt: it cost $13,000 apiece to transport the immigrants. Just imagine if that had gone towards giving them a fresh start.
Also, the legislature has designated $12 million from federal Covid money the state received for DeSantis to use, and he says he’ll keep it up until he’s spent it all. I don’t understand what Bible he is reading from.
On a happier note, if you ever get the chance to see the play Noises Off, run to the theatre. It’s a play within a play, showing all the backstage drama and is pee your pants funny. It was also made into a movie starring Carol Burnett, and will make you forget all your troubles. It was a great diversion.
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David C said on September 18, 2022 at 12:28 pm
GOP Jesus understands the Republican’s Bible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ2L-R8NgrA
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Dorothy said on September 18, 2022 at 1:47 pm
Julie I’ve seen Noises Off twice. The first time my daughter and I went. At the end of the first act we ducked out to use the bathroom. When we got back we were stunned to see the set had been transformed! So we stayed in our seats after Act II and delighted in seeing how it was turned around yet again. Such a fun memory!
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Julie Robinson said on September 18, 2022 at 3:52 pm
David, shared.
Dorothy, they pulled the curtain after the first act but left it open after the second, and it was very entertaining to watch the revolve and rebuild. In fact, I thought it was worth a round of applause, so I led one.
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beb said on September 18, 2022 at 7:03 pm
I think I saw “Noises Off” as a movie but speaking of interesting set changes, my wife and I saw “Kinky Boots” a few years back. I was fascinated by things changed from one thing to another by rotating it or moving one piece next to another. It really teaches you how clever set design can be.
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Julie Robinson said on September 18, 2022 at 7:13 pm
Kinky Boots has a great set design, too, with its moving parts. It’s very slick. Noises Off has a two story set with two sets of stairs. In Act I you see the front as the actors rehearse, then Act II shows what’s happening backstage during the run of the show. Act III is from the front again, at the end of the run.
I haven’t see the movie in years, but I remember it as faithful to the show and hilarious. It’s so old it has Christopher Reeve and John Ritter in it.
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jcburns said on September 20, 2022 at 2:17 pm
Well, Julie, Dorothy, and Beb, clearly references to “Kinky Boots” and “Noises Off” have caused the commenting crowd to give up and depart for, I dunno, Spain or somewhere.
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Sherri said on September 20, 2022 at 3:08 pm
Okay, I’ll ask a provocative question to see if anyone is awake. Why shouldn’t we have open borders? Especially in the age of globalization, where capital knows no borders, why shouldn’t people be able to seek opportunity wherever, regardless of where they were born?
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tajalli said on September 20, 2022 at 4:14 pm
A huge argument against border walls, at least, is that many animal habitats traverse political borders. Restriction of animal migration is detrimental to ecosystem health.
As for globalization of economy, severely restrict capitalist/corporate and criminal depredations and support truly sustainable, autonomous economies for the smaller or poorer nations so that much of the pressure to emigrate is removed.
People not using the immigration process are often fleeing violence – they wouldn’t survive the +15yrs needed to arrange immigration. Christy Lefteri’s The Beekeeper of Aleppo illustrates the pressures governing illegal immigration.
Ruthanna Emrys’ A Half-Built Garden employs a model of networked consensus-based governance by watershed could function for problem solving.
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Suzanne said on September 20, 2022 at 4:48 pm
Anyone else watching the Ken Burns documentary the US and the Holocaust? It’s eye opening. I knew some of what they discuss but not all. The anti-immigration crowd has always been among us, loud and mean.
It is worth watching.
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Deborah said on September 20, 2022 at 4:51 pm
Back to “Noises Off”, I watched the movie yesterday because I was curious. It was actually kind of good. I had never seen the play, it would be hard to be an actor in the play, it seems to me, because the timing is so important. Michael Caine is in it for heaven sake.
If things keep going in this country with the threats of violence escalating a lot of us may be fleeing too.
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alex said on September 20, 2022 at 4:59 pm
I’ll bite, Sherri.
For the same reason we don’t leave our homes unsecured.
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Sherri said on September 20, 2022 at 5:47 pm
But you bought your home, Alex. It was just luck that you happened to be born within this particular arbitrary border. What makes that border yours to secure?
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Icarus said on September 20, 2022 at 6:40 pm
Why shouldn’t we have open borders?
unintended consequences. Borders are a human construct and as such, are either flawed or work exactly as designed. Keep the haves and the have-nots separated.
And so with open borders, the rich will find a way to exploit the poor as always.
and I found this article, which I’m working through.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-case-for-open-borders
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alex said on September 20, 2022 at 6:57 pm
If we didn’t have a system in place for admitting entry, we’d be overrun in no time flat and we’d be living in utter chaos. It may not be my border to secure, but it will become my obligation as a citizen to accommodate the masses who yearn to live here. That’s not to say that I don’t think there’s plenty of room for more people and that our country wouldn’t thrive if we opened up immigration, but it’s something that needs to be well planned and not “arbitrary.”
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Scout said on September 20, 2022 at 7:18 pm
I am pro-immigrant all the way. However, I believe there do need to be systems in place to know who is coming in and why. What we need is effective and fair immigration reform that actually assists people seeking entry rather than putting up so many obstacles that it’s considered easier to try to do work arounds for some. Dems have been trying to pass bills on this issue for decades and the GQP blocks everything because ‘thah borrrrrderrrr’ is red meat for their Cletus base.
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Sherri said on September 20, 2022 at 7:31 pm
The overrun by immigration thing already happened; it’s what my ancestors did to the Native Americans. I’m not sure that gives me any moral right to police a border. It was really only as immigrants became less white that we started to restrict immigration (well, not counting the forced immigration of enslaved black people.)
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LAMary said on September 20, 2022 at 9:30 pm
Not many years ago Texas got lots of housing built by underpaid, undocumented laborers. I would bet good money that the parking lots of Home Depots in Texas have undocumented workers looking for brush clearing, roofing, ditch digging jobs. As a resident of a border state I know it goes on here and until I see Anglos hanging out looking for work in those parking lots I’m not going to get worked up about Amurricin jobs being stolen. There’s something very wrong with how we simultaneously exploit and block migrants from coming into this country.
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alex said on September 20, 2022 at 10:14 pm
Sherri, this nation was built on inequities. So are you saying that we have blood on our hands if we have benefited from having been born here as opposed to say somewhere in the Third World? That morally we are compelled to give up what we have and go live as paupers? I’m not sure what’s the point of this exercise.
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Dexter Friend said on September 21, 2022 at 2:29 am
That fucking goddam American Embassy in Baghdad, still staffed, by the way, was built by Filipino slave labor organized by Kuwaiti companies. Oh, we have always been rotten. https://original.antiwar.com/david-phinney/2006/10/26/slave-labor-at-us-embassy-in-baghdad/
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Sherri said on September 21, 2022 at 11:44 am
The point of the exercise is to question assumptions. The baseline assumption is that of course, we must protect our borders and control who comes in. I’m not accusing anyone of having blood on their hands, but rather asking why we, with our unearned status as “haves”, should prevent “have nots” from joining us?
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Bob (not Greene) said on September 21, 2022 at 12:03 pm
Sherri, I’d use your North American example as the reason why closed borders exist — because the world is populated by vicious assholes who, seeing an open border, will simply swing by and say, “It’s mine now, what are you going to do about it?” Also, see Russia.
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Deborah said on September 21, 2022 at 12:50 pm
Since Nancy is in Spain now, here’s an interesting diagram comparing the density of Barcelona to the sprawl of Atlanta https://twitter.com/the_transit_guy/status/1572263057958621185 Density is good for the planet.
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Icarus said on September 21, 2022 at 4:38 pm
Good questions Sherri. With respect to the US of A, I would say American Exceptionalism. We’ve pissed off so many people and countries that we have to have secure borders just to prevent all the retaliation we likely deserve.
The answer probably applies to other modern day Empires as well.
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Sherri said on September 21, 2022 at 10:07 pm
Thanks for the discussion. My position is about where LAMary is: there’s something very wrong about how we simultaneously exploit and block migrants.
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Julie Robinson said on September 22, 2022 at 10:26 am
Sherri, Florida is one of the worst for blocking/exploiting immigrants. Big surprise, right? For example, even the Farm Bureau admits that 50-70% of agriculture workers are without papers. The real numbers are much higher.
So Florida says it will enforce E-Verify, the federal system for checking a worker’s status. Only big ag really can’t function that way, so large donations are made to the appropriate politicians, and hey presto, the law is modified. Now only government positions must go through the E-Verify process; all other positions are exempt.
The pols get the best of both worlds: they can bitch about “illegals” and still get their campaign contributions. Who loses? The poor, the undocumented, those who came because their countries are run by narco-terrorists.
It’s the worst.
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Deborah said on September 22, 2022 at 2:40 pm
We got our 3rd booster and flu shot this morning. I’m feeling fine, I’ve never had any problem so far, only a sore arm after the first vaccine but not that bad. Glad to have that done.
There are lots of undocumented folks in NM too. There’s a certain intersection in Santa Fe where men (it’s always only men) looking for work hang out and people drive up and hire them to do various chores in and around their houses. I suppose contractors pick up some workers that way for construction jobs here and there and restaurants are always looking for help. It’s well known, nobody seems very concerned about it. It appears to be somewhat coordinated, there seems to be a “boss” who decides who can get whatever work is being sought. This intersection is less than a half mile from our condo and we drive by it all the time, it’s close to the plaza which is the center of town. It’s safe and non-threatening, it always seems to be to me anyway.
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LAMary said on September 22, 2022 at 4:29 pm
No is bothered by the workers at Home Depot either. We have a mandatory annual brush clearing requirement here and I usually hire a couple of guys from that parking lot to do my yard. I have a double lot with quite a few trees and these guys show up with tools, a pick up truck, and stuff to bundle the branches. I give them enough money to cover the dumping fee and pay them fairly. I provide ice water during the day and a case of Modelo when they leave. They do a great job and work fast and I have never seen an Anglo hanging out at the parking lot looking for work.
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Deborah said on September 22, 2022 at 7:39 pm
It’s about to be Chicagohenge, when the sun lines up with the west to east streets of the city grid on the equinox, I’ve got my phone ready to photograph it on Delaware the west/east street that our building unit abuts. I’m not on Facebook anymore so I have nowhere to post it. I have tons of photos of it previously so I don’t know why it matters to me but it does. Every year I try to capture it. This year it seems like it’s going to slightly off so we’ll see.
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Mark P said on September 23, 2022 at 9:15 am
A friend who has lived near Albuquerque for decades says that Mexicans come to the US to work. Often they work to get a nice sum of money, and then go home, maybe never to return. He has smuggled Mexicans across the border, only north to south. Here in Georgia, my late uncle, not the most liberal person in town, said someone in his gun shop (yes) mentioned seeing some “Mexicans”‘walking across the parking lot. Another guy said that if you saw them in daylight, they weren’t Mexicans, because Mexicans would be working during the day.
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Deborah said on September 23, 2022 at 1:36 pm
I’m not feeling well today and I’m pretty sure it’s because of my booster and flu shot yesterday. I’m thinking I probably shouldn’t have done them both at the same time. I never had much of a reaction to the covid vaccine before and have never had a reaction from a flu shot. Today is our wedding anniversary so I hope I’m feeling better soon.
The Hispanic guys we know in NM are the hardest working people around. We’ve hired guys to do things for our cabin in Abiquiu and our condo in Santa Fe and they were the hardest workers we’ve ever had. Except there was one guy who was our handyman at the condo building for a while who wasn’t that great. I don’t know if all of those guys we’ve used were documented or not and frankly I don’t care if they were not. We paid them fairly, and they were worth every penny. Same in Chicago when we had our condo renovated, the workers were all Hispanic or eastern European immigrants and they were great. We didn’t hire them, our contractor did and they were all very loyal to him, so we know he paid them well. I don’t like it when contractors or other businesses hire immigrants because they think they can pay them less. That’s evil, obviously.
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Julie Robinson said on September 23, 2022 at 5:10 pm
Deborah, my mom felt ill for days and says she won’t get both shots on the same day in the future. The rest of us were fine, except for my very sore arms the first night. It just seems everyone reacts very differently.
I’ve been thinking about the men hanging out at Home Depot and wondering how they feel about it. Are they desperate for any work at all, do they like shooting the breeze with buddies as they wait, how hot and dehydrated they get, on and on. I’m listening to Cicely Tyson’s autobiography and she talks about going to meet her mother outside a department store. Her mom had a regular job as a maid, but when they needed more money she picked up extra shifts that way. As Cicely observed the large group of Black women waiting, she also observed the behavior of the white women who were looking at cleaniness and speech, and she suddenly realized how much it looked like a slave market. She refused to go into the store, feeling the clothes her mother would buy were going to be tainted.
Anyway, we almost escaped this year, but it looks like the tropical depression forming right now will become a huuricane and that it’s heading our direction. This was new information this morning, and when we went to Costco whooey, craziness! The gas line was 20 minutes long, the line for water from the back of the store to the front, they were already out of several things on our list. Fun times!
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David C said on September 23, 2022 at 6:00 pm
I got both my booster and flu shot in the same go. I wish I had taken the pharmacist’s advice and got one in each arm instead of both in one. My arm was really sore for a couple of days. I did feel a little dragged out for about a day but not too bad. Mary tested negative for Covid today. She first tested positive eleven days ago. She still coughs a bit and she feels pretty down in the dumps but I bet knowing she’s negative now will lift her spirits.
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Julie Robinson said on September 23, 2022 at 6:26 pm
David, a couple of us needed a full month before we got all our energy back. I’m not sure if knowing that would make her feel better or worse, but there it is.
Storm has been named. Ian.
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David C said on September 23, 2022 at 8:45 pm
I wonder if knowing is better too, Julie. Mary doesn’t usually snap back from illness very quickly. With any luck, the hope from the negative test will be good medicine.
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LAMary said on September 23, 2022 at 10:10 pm
The guys at my local Home Depot seem to know each other somewhat. One time I needed someone to haul away a lot of junk and one the parking lot guys referred me to another guy who had a big truck. He even walked me over to the guy with the truck and explained in Spanish what I needed.
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Deborah said on September 25, 2022 at 9:52 am
This is an absolutely astonishing piece of history about the abortion law that Arizona has reinstated, Heather Cox Richardson explains it in her current substack Letters From an American https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-24-2022
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alex said on September 25, 2022 at 10:16 am
I spent Y2K New Year’s Eve in Miami Beach, which happened to be at the height of the Elian Gonzales saga.
Elian, if you’ll recall, was a child who had escaped on a raft from Cuba with a group of adults, some of whom perished in transit, including his mother. After being rescued at sea, he was taken in by relatives in Florida. Elian’s father, who was still in Cuba, fought in the American courts for his son’s return and prevailed against the Florida relatives, who argued that Elian would be better off being raised in the U.S. The Florida Cuban community was outraged at the court decision. Things turned into a national spectacle much like Bob Greene’s Baby Richard story when it came time to repatriate young Elian. It was a performative tug-of-war with memorable images captured of a child being taken at gunpoint by feds in military gear.
I remember my hosts on that visit telling me that the authorities in Florida would typically beat back Cubans in small watercraft to prevent them from coming ashore. Elian made it only because the Coast Guard rescued him from drowning.
That was news to me. Until then I’d been led to believe that anyone escaping Cuba was granted automatic asylum.
So evidently using human beings as pawns in political showdowns has sort of a long tradition in Florida.
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David C said on September 25, 2022 at 11:29 am
The whole Elian Gonzalez thing was only JEB!’s second worst pander. The absolute worst was Terri Schiavo. I wish that SOB could rot in hell for that one.
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LAMary said on September 25, 2022 at 12:59 pm
I was thinking of the Elian Gonzalez thing too, and I was also under the impression that Cubans who made it to Florida were welcomed. So much bullshit. When the Marielista boat thing happened a lot of Cubans made it to NYC and they were in fact welcomed. Lots of them got jobs in the garment district pushing racks on seventh avenue. I had a couple of those guys as neighbors. Good guys. One used to sit on his fire escape and play the guitar.
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nancy said on September 26, 2022 at 5:35 am
Hey, popping in from Barcelona to clear up the Cuba thing: Google “wetfoot dryfoot Cuba” to get a sense of our nutty policy, at least at the time: If you were intercepted en route, in a boat, which is to say “wetfoot,” they could send you back. If you made landfall, i.e. “dryfoot,” you could stay. When I was doing my journalism fellowship, one of the other participants had a Cuban boyfriend. He was going to come over here and they were going to get married, but in his asylum interview he admitted that he was a member of the communist party, and they immediately denied him. Of course, without his party card, he could not have had the job that he did. She later married a former Coast Guard commander whose job was to interdict Cuban refugees in the water. He told me about their training, and how they were allowed to shoot out the engines of the fast boats transporting migrants, but they couldn’t shoot human beings. He said they practiced for this duty by firing.50 caliber rounds at a target while their training officers sprayed them with firehoses. There was a famous live news break around that time of some Cubans who were out of the boat, but standing in knee-deep water off one of the Florida Keys. They were trying to run onto the beach, and the cops were trying to hold them back.
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nancy said on September 26, 2022 at 5:38 am
Apologies: I don’t have a keyboard here, and I am using talk to text, so excuse typos and unclear passages.
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alex said on September 26, 2022 at 10:31 am
Yay Barthelona!
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Julie Robinson said on September 26, 2022 at 10:32 am
IIRC wet foot/dry foot was ended during the Obama administration. What that means on the beaches of Miami, I’m not sure.
I’m a little distracted by Ian. Ian’s trending west, Ian’s trending east, Ian’s going to be category 4, Ian will be category 1 by the time it possibly gets here, Ian will emulsify Tampa (where I have friends), Ian will bring winds of 110 mph and rain between 7-15″ even if we’re on the edge.
We still had all our hurricane food but stocked up some more, recharged all the batteries, tried to cover all the bases. Bring up the boats from the lake, move in outdoor furniture, get pee pads for the dog. Then our next door neighbor had a 50 foot tree taken down on Friday and every bit of it is still sitting in her yard. Supposedly the guy will be taking care of it, right? Right??? RIGHT?????
The cone of uncertainty refers to more than just the computer models.
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ROGirl said on September 26, 2022 at 11:14 am
I got my 2nd covid booster yesterday, delayed it because I got a shingles vaccine earlier this year that did a number on me. I also did a flu vaccine, to get it all over with at once. I was really fatigued yesterday and my arm is pretty sore, but I’m feeling better today. Shanah tovah, y’all. Autocorrect tried to change it to Shanahan today!
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Deborah said on September 26, 2022 at 12:17 pm
I had never heard that wet foot, dry foot term. What I remember from when I was a kid, people acted like they were happy to have Cuban refugees coming to Miami because they were fleeing communism but they didn’t want Cubans living in their neighborhoods. The Cuban kids that I went to school with all spoke english beautifully. They came from families where their dads had been professionals, doctors and attorneys etc, but they had to work in hotels and restaurants because their degrees weren’t accepted in the US. Also the girls all had to be chaperoned when they went on dates. One of my friends here in Chicago was born in Cuba, his family moved to Miami and then quickly moved to Puerto Rico because they felt so discriminated against in Florida. His parents didn’t want the children to have to feel that they were “less than”. Another friend moved from Miami after her family left Cuba, to a small town in Georgia where her father could get a job as a Dr as he had been in Cuba.
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Sherri said on September 26, 2022 at 2:25 pm
Italy elects an fascist prime minister, and Republican politicians praise her election. Can we stop pretending they’re not fascist now?
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Julie Robinson said on September 26, 2022 at 4:44 pm
We have all been stressed over hurricane prep, but today I hit the wall. My mom had an appointment for a toenail trim, but her podiatrist had moved to a different practice, where after a 2 hour 20 minute wait, we were informed he doesn’t do that anymore. They had her down for hammer toes. Does “getting her toenails trimmed” sound like “hammer toes” to you?
After 45 minutes they came out to get her for an Xray. I said she didn’t need an Xray when she was only there to get her toenails trimmed. After another 45 minutes they took her to a room, asked what she was there for, and gave us a strange look when we said getting her toenails trimmed. But she continued with her intake, finally left, and after another 10 minutes a different person came in to give us the bad news. I am so damn furious and I let them know it. What a total waste of time. They got it wrong three times but just continued to let us wait.
The last time I tried to help her I nicked her skin, and she also had a bad experience at a salon. So I’ve got a social media blast out asking where people around here take their elders. It really shouldn’t be such a difficult thing!
And of course the Republicans are fascists.
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basset said on September 26, 2022 at 4:57 pm
Mrs. B and I have just returned from the “Illinois Basset Bash and Waddle,” a gathering of hounds and their humans put on by a basset rescue organization in Dwight, a small town southwest of Chicago. “Waddle” refers to the bassets’ participation in the local harvest festival parade, right up front and a whole bunch of em… took up about a block and a half of the route, including the basset king & queen’s float and a “pooped pooch“ wagon picking up stragglers at the rear.
Didn’t know old Route 66 had run through there, got to see that too.
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Deborah said on September 26, 2022 at 7:00 pm
Basset, have been through Dwight, IL on our way from/to Chicago and St.Louis. It’s one of those places on interstate 55 that they tell to watch out for speeding tickets. We may have gotten stopped there once.
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basset said on September 26, 2022 at 7:17 pm
Seems like a nice enough little town, didn’t get pulled over but there were a couple of Blues Brothers police cars in the parade… hadn’t seen one of those before, Mayberry patrol cars are more common around here.
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alex said on September 26, 2022 at 9:36 pm
Former Congressman Mark Souder of Indiana, a favorite subject here at NN.C over the years, has gone on to his great reward, met his maker, crossed the rainbow bridge, arrived at the pearly gates, what have you.
Best line in all of the local media eulogizing:
Allen County Republican Party Chairman Steve Shine said Monday that Souder was the most intellectually respected conservative in the House during his time in office.
Considering that the decedent was never considered a bright light by anyone with half a brain but an anti-intellectual who raged against academia, and that the one paying the compliment is one of the phoniest glad-handers in local politics, it’s quite a nothing burger yet the perfect epitaph. It’s so… Republican, so provincially so.
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Sherri said on September 26, 2022 at 11:37 pm
Both of my parents have Covid, but fortunately they seem to be doing okay, with mild cases. Neither of them can take Paxlovid, because they’re both on heart arrhythmia drugs, but they started feeling symptoms and tested positive Saturday and are feeling better today. I’m glad they got vaccinated (though they hadn’t gotten the new booster yet.)
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Suzanne said on September 27, 2022 at 8:07 am
Perfect summation of Sounder and the GOP, Alex. What I remember of Sounder was his insistence that term limits were needed and that he would only serve X number of terms, but once he was in Congress, he kept running for re-election because, by gosh and by golly, there was a lot to learn about House rules and stuff and a Rep needed to stay and build up clout or he couldn’t get anything done!
And then there was his insistence that God always brings good out of bad and although he got caught in flagrante delicto with someone not his beloved wife, and with whom he made abstinence videos, it was all good because those abstinence videos got tons of views on YouTube after his “incident” so, see? God always has a plan. I remember reading that in the paper and truly laughing out loud in my kitchen.
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Julie Robinson said on September 27, 2022 at 10:00 am
Souder claimed redistricting meant he was now running in a new district, therefore he wasn’t breaking his promise. What a sly little manipulator he was.
Souder’s big legislative “accomplishment” was to ban student aid to anyone with a drug conviction. Even a tiny amount of marijuana would get you stricken for life. So much for Christian forgiveness and second chances.
Sherri, I’m sorry to hear about your parents. With all respect to Biden, it’s not over.
The hurricane maps get worse by the moment. At least we’re far enough inland to not worry about storm surges. We’ll almost certainly lose power for several days.
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Little Bird said on September 27, 2022 at 1:28 pm
My high school best friend used to go to Gulf Shores, where her parents had a timeshare, and she told me of people on the beach welcoming boatloads of refugees with bottled water and food and such. At one point she had pictures of it.
One of my other friends is currently living in Key West and is experiencing her first hurricane. I’m very worried for her. She really doesn’t have any idea of what to expect. She was informed yesterday that even though there’s a hurricane she is absolutely expected to come in to work. The beach is directly across the road from the clinic where she works. And king ride is starting. Gonna be very soggy where she is for a few days.
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Julie Robinson said on September 27, 2022 at 6:04 pm
LB, fingers crossed for your friend and for ours in Tampa and Pine Island. They are already getting wind and rain, and the eye looks to travel directly over Orlando on Thursday, yippee.
In the middle of all our crazy preparations, something truly wonderful happened today. Mom takes Repatha, which needs to be refrigerated, and wouldn’t you know we picked up a 90 day supply just last week. I researched it a little online and we were just going to make that a priority in the cooler, but decided to call the pharmacy to see if they knew anything more.
Bless his heart (in the good way!), he said they had received an order of flu shots in a special cooler this morning, and if we stopped by we could pick it up. The walls are three inches thick styrofoam, with a well built in the middle for the meds, and seven ice packs that fit around it in each direction.
The world is full of crap people, and also lovely, caring people like that pharmacist.
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alex said on September 27, 2022 at 6:45 pm
Aren’t those great Julie? We get insulin through mail order in styrofoam coolers with ice packs and they’re fab for recreational use as well. I think our deep freeze has more ice packs in it than it does food.
Today, though, had to pick up Toujeo insulin from Walgreen’s and paid $158 despite having met my deductible long ago. God knows what it’s gonna be when the new calendar year starts. Biden’s supposedly working on an insulin price cap for non-Medicare consumers but it can’t get here soon enough.
This was my second trip to that Walgreen’s trying to get the prescription. They’re understaffed and have ridiculous hours, 9-6 MF and closed Sat and Sun. When I was there last week they told me they didn’t have it, could I come back another day? So I did. Then the fucking dweeb at the drive-up told me they changed my dosage so they’d have to re-order. I corrected him. Yes, they changed my dosage. So instead of dialing it to 30mg I’m supposed to dial it to 20mg. Then he told me I was holding up the line behind me and could I come back later. It was just a few minutes to closing time at 6. I told him I was parking and coming in. They got it ready promptly.
I was going to CVS but my insurance suddenly decided that CVS is out-of-network and Walgreen’s is in. And my experience with Walgreen’s so far is that they just fucking suck.
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Julie Robinson said on September 27, 2022 at 8:23 pm
Around here they do, in every way possible.
Our neighborhood ice cream shop just announced a BOGO to clear out stock before they probably lose power. We were happy to help them out.
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Dexter Friend said on September 28, 2022 at 1:09 am
We got a Walgreens here about 18 years ago and I never bought meds there but at times they had cheap milk and eggs. One day I went to the egg cooler and checked, about 10 of 12 eggs were cracked and smashed. Then it came to be that the entire shipment was ruined like that. Some truck driver must have had a sudden stop. I buy all my canned food and bread and milk and just about everything at Dollar General. Go online, make an account, and on Saturdays you get $5 off every $25 rung up. Last Saturday I saved $25.
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Julie Robinson said on September 28, 2022 at 6:01 pm
Still hunkering down with the wind about 45 mph and rain blowing around us. The current thinking is category 1 by tomorrow afternoon when it hits here. We still have power and internet.
Tampa friends are fine. Pine Island friends are in a shelter and don’t know about their place yet. The video from that area is bad.
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annie said on September 28, 2022 at 6:46 pm
glad you’re ok and probably will be fine, Julie. I don’t “know” anyone else who lives in Florida and I have been thinking about you.
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LAMary said on September 28, 2022 at 7:14 pm
In solidarity with its FLA appliance brothers and sisters my refrigerator stopped working today. The freezer went first it seems, then the fridge. New one on the way on Saturday morning but I am not happy about losing all the frozen food. The fridge stuff I can cram into a cooler with a bag of ice but the freezer stuff, like frozen salmon filets, chicken thighs…all gone. Reminds me of growing up in hurricane country and losing power for days. We ate as much of the stuff in the fridge as we could before it went bad.
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LAMary said on September 28, 2022 at 8:18 pm
…and it’s another 98 degree day here.
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alex said on September 28, 2022 at 10:35 pm
I just heard about some Fort Myers friends who should have evacuated but didn’t. When the water got up to counter height in their house they went up into the attic. That was about 4:30 PM and that’s the last anybody’s heard from them.
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Julie Robinson said on September 28, 2022 at 10:45 pm
Yikes. Do they have pets? That’s what often keeps people from leaving. It would be exceptionally hard for us, with four of the little lovelies. Fortunately we don’t have to go unless a hole is torn in our house. Our yard and immediate meighbors have done due diligence, so large debris would have to carried from farther away.
So sorry, Mary. We thought about buying a second cooler but even the humble Coleman has gotten quite pricey.
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Dexter Friend said on September 29, 2022 at 1:48 am
My fridge conked out a few years ago and a friend told me to check out a store in Defiance that only sells scratch and dent.
I bought one with a tiny scratch that is hidden anyway as it is against a wall. It was about a third the cost of a perfect new one in a cardboard cocoon.
My washer quit too and I went to Lowe’s and got a replacement that had been installed in a home but the woman of the house hated it so those folks traded it back in for a fancier washer. It was still brand new and I got a helluva discount, and the manager asked if I was a military veteran , then knocked another large percentage off the list price. The thing cost practically nothing.
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Dave said on September 29, 2022 at 6:52 am
We watched the storm closely, concerned about my brother-in-law and our old friends and neighbors in Tampa Bay but the projections of it blasting our old area in Pinellas County were wrong. Now, we’ll wait to hear from Julie, it looks as though it went straight for Orlando. A cousin lives in Lake Mary and waiting for news from her, too.
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Julie Robinson said on September 29, 2022 at 7:07 am
Dave, the eye went south of here and we still have power, though with all the wind and rain we could go out too. Rough night, am going back to bed.
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alex said on September 29, 2022 at 7:14 am
The flooding seems to have topped out at about four feet in Fort Myers, says the news, but I’ve heard nothing else regarding my friends.
Evidently they gave up when they couldn’t find a hotel room anywhere, and they turned down an offer from some people in a high-rise further inland who weren’t intimately close to them and they didn’t want to impose.
Hope they’re okay.
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LAMary said on September 29, 2022 at 8:57 am
I’ve got a great grand nephew and a great great grandnephew in Wesley Chapel. No word from that bunch yet. The grand nephew is a captain for Maersk and he crosses the Pacific so I have no idea where he is right now. His wife if pretty resourceful so I bet she took proactive measures.
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Dorothy said on September 29, 2022 at 9:39 am
Alex that’s so worriesome about your friends. Please let us know when you make contact with them.
My brother and s-i-l in Palm Harbor are okay. Or at least I think they are. I texted him this morning and he hasn’t replied. On Facebook yesterday afternoon he said they lost power, but 3 hours later it came back on. They’re not far from Tampa. My niece in Venice lost power at 7:30 AM yesterday. Have not heard anything about them but assume they’re all right. Her brother and his family live in Tampa and I only see whatever they post on Facebook, unless I text his dad (my brother). They have three little boys under 7. I’m glad to hear about you and your family, Julie! Now Ian is headed north and my daughter and sister Janet in Virginia probably will be inundated with heavy rain.
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Dave said on September 29, 2022 at 10:02 am
Dorothy, Palm Harbor is where we lived, we’ve heard from our old neighbors who lived on either side of us and they’re fine, so I suspect your brother is ok, too. We lived in Highland Lakes, a large 55 plus community that’s full of large trees. We had two of them and were always concerned about them whenever the wind picked up.
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Julie Robinson said on September 29, 2022 at 1:18 pm
Okay, I’ve had a little more sleep, and we still have power. We are damage free, just need to rake up leaves and debris from the yard. Our little lake is higher than I’ve seen, no where near the house. Daughter’s church doesn’t have power but they didn’t see any damage. It does have roof issues so we’ll see if there are leaks.
Orlando has extensive flooding and people who’ve had to evacuate. We got about 12″ of rain and it’s still windy. All is fine.
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Deborah said on September 29, 2022 at 1:59 pm
Good to hear you’re all ok Julie.
LB’s good friend who moved to Key West in the summer, high tailed it out of Florida as fast as she could. She had put in her 2 week notice at her clinic but she just up and left a couple of days ago, it seemed pointless to hang around when it’s so messed up. We tried to warn her how unpleasant it can be there, hot and humid plus hurricanes. The cost of living there turned out to be outrageous and she had moved there from Beverly Hills where she was able to find a reasonably priced place to live. Her next stop is going to be semi-coastal Oregon after she spends some time with family in St. Louis. I think she will like it there. I loved passing through Oregon on our road trip in the spring.
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Julie Robinson said on September 29, 2022 at 7:14 pm
Well, I spoke too soon. We have a tall tree with three large branches broken, but still up in the tree. We will need a tree service and possibly a crane to get to them.
Still, it’s nothing compared with what some people are going through.
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Dexter Friend said on September 30, 2022 at 12:39 am
My friend from Cape Coral is in her second home near her home Reservation near Binghampton, NY. Her husband is a long-time Fort Myers cop and he flew back to Florida yesterday. No word yet on their home status, except she found out from someone their lanai is gone. Talking talkers are saying it’s a 500 year storm. I doubt it’ll be that, since Gulf waters are about 87 degrees F now.
My sister-in-law lives in an apartment in Charleston; she has weathered many hurricanes, Hugo being the worst. Here cometh Ian as a now-Cat1 .
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Deborah said on September 30, 2022 at 2:00 pm
My mother-in-law referred to a room in her condo unit as a lanai when she lived in Sarasota, that was the first time I had heard that word. When I was a kid everyone I knew referred to that kind of room as a Florida Room. They were usually rooms that had been converted from a carport or a garage. They usually had jalousie windows which I don’t think even exist anymore because they’re so inefficient and easy to break into, and forget being able to withstand a hurricane. So I don’t know why they were so popular when hurricanes were prolific. That’s probably why you don’t see them much anymore.
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Julie Robinson said on September 30, 2022 at 4:40 pm
Before our nephew moved to Hawaii I hadn’t heard the word lanai, but he used it to describe his screen-enclosed porch. Now we have one of ours, which also covers the pool.
I still see jalousie windows in older homes down here but they are horrible for both hot weather and cold. Maybe they were really cheap to build.
Now our garage electrical circuit isn’t working, which is bad because of the frig. We’ve got it rigged with an extension cord. We need lots of electrical work done but have been unable to procure an electrician. That isn’t going to get easier, but again, it’s a first world problem.
Holey moley, our daughter just got all her shots for her trip to Kenya, and they cost $800. She’s been so excited about going as part of a world climate conference since her travel expenses will be covered. She wants to go on safari while she’s there, because when will she get to go back, and boy this free trip is getting pricey.
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alex said on September 30, 2022 at 6:05 pm
Just heard from a co-worker who was out today. She just tested positive for COVID even though she had the latest booster a few weeks ago and is probably still the most conscientious person of anyone I know when it comes to masking and using hand sanitizer. People in the office give her hell about the fact that she’s still masking.
I need to go get my next booster and a flu shot too. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve had it and didn’t know it because for the last few months it seems like I’ve had the worst case of brain fog ever.
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Deborah said on September 30, 2022 at 8:06 pm
I definitely had brain fog when I had Covid the second time, but not the first. I’m afraid if I get Covid again I will be beyond the beyond. It was scary when I couldn’t read a paragraph without having to reread it over and over again to comprehend. I’m concerned now about getting it again before our trip to France, leaving next Saturday.
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LAMary said on October 1, 2022 at 11:46 am
Completely off topic: I’m waiting for Amazon to deliver my new fridge and I’m watching the delivery truck tracking thing on the Amazon website. At the bottom of the screen there are some cookbooks that Amazon has chosen for me including the Kevin Malone (the big guy on The Office) chili cookbook and the Steve and Kathy Doocy (one of the guys on Fox and Friends) Simply Happy cookbook. There’s also a French cake cookbook by Alexsandra Crapanzano. This woman wouldn’t have lasted long in my high school.
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David C said on October 2, 2022 at 8:19 am
Rod Dreher found out about sports bras today. It’ll surprise you that he doesn’t approve. It’s a sign of late Rome, you know. They’re all Mary wears so we must be late Romans. In this case, read the comments. It’s pretty damned funny.
https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1576338644985864192
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Suzanne said on October 2, 2022 at 9:38 am
David C, what did Dreher say? I clicked on the link, but for some reason, I can’t see it.
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David C said on October 2, 2022 at 9:51 am
Rod sez: “It’s not quite a binder, but it works like one. You can now buy off the rack at Target an undergarment that flattens your breasts so you can present as male. That’s how far the revolution has gone, Mom and Dad. We live in Babylon, we live in late Rome, we live in Weimar.”
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alex said on October 2, 2022 at 10:54 am
Wait ’til he discovers jock straps and their emasculating effects.
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Suzanne said on October 2, 2022 at 11:12 am
Wait until he discovers that there is a product called a “minimized bra”. He will flip out completely!
https://www.thecut.com/article/best-minimizer-bras.html
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LAMary said on October 2, 2022 at 11:42 am
When I was in high school and friend and I rode our bikes to a fabric outlet to get prom dress material. Riding back we took a route that involved riding over some train tracks. Do that, braless (this was 1971) on a bike. You’ll get a sports bra.
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nancy said on October 2, 2022 at 11:44 am
FWIW, I think that is a breast binder, not a sports bra. (Google the brand; it’s LGBT-aimed.) The proper question is: So what? LGBT kids need clothes, too.
On edit: Also, as someone who buys sports bras, there’s not a lot of difference between the two.
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Sherri said on October 2, 2022 at 3:06 pm
This is a good article about the race in the WA-03 Congressional race, in southeast Washington. Jamie Herrera-Butler currently represents the district, but she finished third in the top two primary; she was one of the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.
So now the race is between a MAGA and a mostly unknown Dem. Better Dem candidates have failed to unseat Butler, but I don’t know what will happen in this race.
https://crosscut.com/politics/2022/09/kent-perez-brawl-over-two-different-americas-wa-congressional-race
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tajalli said on October 2, 2022 at 3:22 pm
Now some closet voyeur wants to legislate the content of our underwear drawers. But what a great advertisement for Target. He was, however, probably too stupid to grab the opportunity to be paid.
More likely, he’s pissed that these kinda make it harder to do a really good slap/grab as a woman runner goes by and also dampens all that bobbling action so appealing to the fantasies of sleazebags like himself.
Some nice push back
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0qfCa4TezY
Lyrics for the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0oBfbIpRtk
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alex said on October 2, 2022 at 9:39 pm
First time I’ve ever seen a realtor.com listing featuring people in period costume modeling in a period house, in this case tacky ’70s glam.
Surprised they aren’t doing lines.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/3333-Garland-Ave_Fort-Wayne_IN_46805_M30449-65415
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Dexter Friend said on October 3, 2022 at 2:30 am
I felt most un-woke last summer when I discovered Premier League male players wearing sports bras. I had never been aware of this …is it relatively new?
The answer is these bras are holders for health monitoring equipment.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalworld.com%2Fsport%2Ffootball%2Fwhy-do-footballers-wear-bras-3291733&psig=AOvVaw14k84RdCtLr4In1GRkttmp&ust=1664864848012000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCLCgo4m3w_oCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAG
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Dexter Friend said on October 3, 2022 at 2:43 am
If you are at least 65 you’ll remember her.
Sasheen Littlefeather has succumbed to breast cancer, age 75.
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Julie Robinson said on October 3, 2022 at 10:45 am
Alex, those are the trippiest real estate photos I’ve seen, but everybody seems to be having a really good time. The house itself is a hot mess.
Dexter, I remember Ms. Littlefeather and her Oscar appearance well. Earlier this the Academy Awards apologized for their treatment of her, and our niece attended one of the events. It coincided with taking a kid to orientation at UCLA, and she was thrilled to go because they share Yacqui heritage. Her grandparents were Mexican immigrants, grandmother Yacqui, and she’s reclaiming that heritage after it being ignored during most of her life. The ceremony was deeply meaningful to her.
Anyway, our latest fun is the Orlando sewer system being overwhelmed by Ian wuth sewer backups all over town. Not here, thankfully, but just across the lake. The city is asking for everyone to limit water use for showers, dishwashing, laundry, etc. So we’re doing the yellow mellow thing, no laundry or dishes, no irrigation, etc. I washed this morning like it’s the 1800’s, with a small basin of water.
I hadn’t been aware of sewer issues here, but of course Fort Wayne has been battling them for decades. Hundreds of millions are being spent on a sewer separation project right now. Orlando needs it too. Ugh.
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Bruce Fields said on October 3, 2022 at 10:45 am
Everybody’s better off when people are allowed to move to wherever they’re happier and most productive.
Migrants get higher wages and a way out from dangerous situations. Natives get their labor and their business.
It’s a win-win situation.
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Dorothy said on October 3, 2022 at 11:34 am
Alex have you heard anything at all about your friends in Ft. Myers?
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Deborah said on October 3, 2022 at 11:51 am
The whole DeSantis stunt of sending those poor people to Martha’s Vineyard is being investigated and more info is coming out about who Perla is etc. Meanwhile the homeowners insurance situation in Florida is a mess.
I finally went to the Nick Cave exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art, yesterday was the last day. I quite liked it, especially the costumes he designed.
I kind of like that house Alex linked to. I wouldn’t go that far in propping the place with 70s stuff, but some of the furniture was cool.
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Julie Robinson said on October 3, 2022 at 12:07 pm
Apparently Fort Myers damage is like Orlando, very patchy. I’d forgotten that D has a cousin who lives there. Fortunately she is inland and okay.
My friend from Pine Island reported on Saturday that authorities have proclaimed the entire island uninhabitable. They’ve been told their house is okay, at least from the outside, but they can’t go back and they don’t know when they might be able to go back. It sounds like they may never going back. She said they are emotionally exhausted, and I can relate.
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susan said on October 3, 2022 at 12:21 pm
Why do people move to Florida, knowing about: hurricanes, tornados, excessive heat & humidity, rising seas, high water tables, invasive species (including humans), horrible horrible politics. What a shit-show. It’s been a shit-show since wypipo poured in.
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alex said on October 3, 2022 at 1:05 pm
Still waiting to hear what’s going on with my friends in Fort Myers. If there were anything more serious than just losing their home, I’m sure I’d have heard about it by now through others who will be giving me an update soon.
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Dave said on October 3, 2022 at 1:09 pm
We moved to Florida because all of our children had moved out of state, none of them were living close to us, and we saw no reason to stay in the home where they had mostly grown up. Also, my mother-in-law had passed away and the real estate market was down so my wife and her brother elected to keep her home until the market came back up. Instead, we ended up buying out my brother-in-law’s half and we moved to Florida, we thought why not. We were familiar with the area, as my in-laws had moved there in 1978 and we’d been there numerous times.
The downsides of living in Florida became apparent to us, between the outrageous costs of insurance for house and car, the brutally hot summers that last for about eight months out of the year (so it seemed to us), the constant congestion of Pinellas County, the most densely built-up county in Florida, and primarily, the fact that two of our three children did what we and they never thought they’d do, they moved back to Indiana. After six years, we thought living close to family was far more important than enjoying nice winters and putting up with summer heat. So, the real estate market got crazy, we sold the home for far more than we would have ever thought possible, bought a home outright in Indiana, and came back. Besides, Tampa Bay surely won’t be missing out on having a hurricane event forever and who would want any part of that. I can hate the politics here as much as the politics in Florida, too.
Dorothy, I’m guessing your brother in Palm Harbor weathered the rain and wind ok, our old neighbors said it was all they had. Does he, by chance, live in Highland Lakes? It’s a large community.
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Julie Robinson said on October 3, 2022 at 2:49 pm
Why does anyone move? Both our kids moved here for work. Plus I have winter depression, or should I say had because I didn’t experience it this last year.
Weather and politics are a wash. Politics are awful in both Indiana and Florida. Yes it’s ungodly hot in the summer but I can swim everyday. I spent most winters in Indiana staying inside, hating the cold and fearing the ice.
To me it’s a wash. I’ll take the occasional hurricane.
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ROGirl said on October 3, 2022 at 2:55 pm
All that and flying cockroaches, too.
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Dorothy said on October 3, 2022 at 5:14 pm
Yes Dave, they came through just fine. As did my niece in Venice and my nephew in Tampa. I think the primary issue was power outage – no serious damage to their homes. My brother and his wife live in Patty Ann Acres.
I’m doing my training tomorrow morning for being a poll worker. Specifically the guy who called me asked if I’d be willing to be a paper ballot inspector. I said “You put me where you need someone the most. I can learn quickly. I’m a retired secretary and the department could not survive without me (and of course now that means the woman who replaced me).” I will be working on Election Day this year and I’m kinda keyed up about that! I’m hoping to make some friends.
Waaay back in 1992 when we moved from Turtle Creek to Eighty Four, PA, I had to take my son to a doctor’s appointment. On the way there he asked me “Are you going to make a new friend at the doctor’s office, Mum?” I said “What?!” He said ‘You always take a quilt to work on and someone always asks you about quilting and before you know it you’ve made a new friend!” That was the perspective of a 7 year old. But the boy was not wrong. Maybe I didn’t make a friend exactly but I almost always found something to talk about with strangers. Now my daughter does it. When she does she always reports “Oh hey I did a Dorothy today….” And then she proceeds to tell me about a conversation with a stranger that has a fun outcome.
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Deborah said on October 3, 2022 at 8:38 pm
We moved to Miami when I was very young because my dad had been stationed in the Caribbean during WW2 when he was in the navy. That’s a whole nother story about why the US Navy was in the Caribbean that I didn’t have any idea about until I was in my 50s because my Dad never talked about it. Anyway, my Dad fell in love with the tropics after having lived his life up to that point in Iowa. He loved the heat and humidity, loved the plants and the smell of the ocean air. I did not take to that nor did my sister. We both ended up in the midwest and then later I have found a place to call (partial) home in the desert SW. Who knew?
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Sherri said on October 4, 2022 at 12:42 am
Florida never appealed to me; too flat. I didn’t care for the winters in Pittsburgh, so even though I like many things about Pittsburgh, I had no real desire to stay there after we were done with grad school. I would have probably lived in California indefinitely had Microsoft not moved us up here, and now I’m probably here indefinitely. Originally we thought we might move back to California at some point, but most of our closest friends from those days have actually ended up in the PNW, too, and moving back now after 19 years would be like starting over in many ways.
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Dexter Friend said on October 4, 2022 at 1:27 am
Sherri, my California dreaming started as soon as I learned about Yosemite when I was a small boy. After high school, several of my boyhood pals went there and worked construction and in ice house factories and at pumping gasoline; this was before self-service. After my two summers playing baseball all over the south, my next stop was going to be a trip to California to find a job. One friend landed a job at LAX in customer relations and avoided the gas pumps. Of course when I did get to California I was in Army green at Monterey-Fort Ord. I swore I’d return soon as a civilian because I loved that area. When I did return from VN , I flew down to San Jose to look for work. I only had funds to stay a few days so I looked long and hard, but the 1971 recession had sealed the employment office doors. I remember the old Ford plant at Milpitas had a barricade in front of the door to keep us riff-raff out. That place ended up as a shopping mall, fer crissakes.
Oh, I’ve been back several times on vacations but never really seemed to be able to make it as a gainfully employed hired hand there.
I spent countless hours on Carmel beach, saw many baseball games in Oakland and San Francisco, traipsed around Big Sur, and took drives over to old Yosemite and swam in the Merced River. At least I had my little look-see into the Golden.
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Dexter Friend said on October 4, 2022 at 1:38 am
My chatty friend from Cape Coral has been mostly silent so far, staying in their house in New York. I thought she’d report something from her Fort Myers cop-husband, who is down there in the thick of it. I suppose he’s just keeping her calm and not telling much, yet.
My daughter in Port St. Lucie is fine; they only had broken fronds in their yard.
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Dave said on October 4, 2022 at 8:25 am
Dorothy, we used to pass Patty Ann Acres all the time on Belcher Road, a much preferred county road to avoid driving on U. S. 19. Palm Harbor has many conveniences for groceries, a decent library, restaurants, including several family-run breakfast and lunch places, all sorts of medical facilities, we’ve nothing bad to say about Palm Harbor.
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Deborah said on October 4, 2022 at 9:57 am
Well damn the next J6 hearing will be Oct 13, when I’ll be in France. It will be the first one I miss. Believe me I’d rather be in France.
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Icarus said on October 4, 2022 at 10:12 am
Got Booster #3 yesterday along with the flu shot. Went to bed and oscillated between shivers and being too hot. I forgot to take ibuprofen so I was tripping all night along with a bad headache. Woke up every hour on the hour from some strange lucid dreams.
I’m tired this morning but feeling better especially now that the ibuprofen has kicked in.
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Julie Robinson said on October 4, 2022 at 11:01 am
Icarus, there’s been some discussion about whether taking ibuprofen the same day as the shot can lessen its efficacy, so it’s probably better that you waited until today.
Even though I just worked the primary in August, I have to go to more training; the election board makes you go for every election. I guess I don’t blame them since there are so many people crying foul. They don’t want to leave any room for doubt. It’ll be interesting to learn what Dorothy will be doing. I do the poll book, so I’m the check-in person, except that’s it’s on a tablet now instead of flipping through pages and pages of names.
The water use restriction has been lifted and I have eight days of stanky clothes to get clean. Yay me.
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brian stouder said on October 4, 2022 at 12:25 pm
When I was a kiddo, my mom (and therefore, me too!) always watched Walter Cronkite, and whenever he reported on the passing of this or that famous or notable person, she’d (sincerely) exclaim ‘Ohhhhhh’…….. and this moment, I involuntarily did the same: Rest In Peace, Loretta Lynn!
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Little Bird said on October 4, 2022 at 2:28 pm
I forgot to do this the last time I got a booster, but a lidocaine patch before the shot actually helps.
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carolyn said on October 4, 2022 at 3:28 pm
good afternoon, nancy.
i am certain i have at least one of your lyrical half-sheets in my files all these years later.
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Deborah said on October 4, 2022 at 4:12 pm
It looks like I’m going to have a lot more time on my hands if Elon Musk really does buy Twitter. I’ll be out of there in a hot minute if he makes the changes everyone is predicting particularly letting Trump back on. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted, I never posted, very occasionally replied and mostly just read other people’s comments. Maybe something better will come along some day.
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Dave said on October 4, 2022 at 5:06 pm
Brian Stouder, I thought I might have been behind you today when I got behind a car with an Indiana license plate that is ED VEDR. I knew it wasn’t you when I spotted the county tag and it wasn’t 02.
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Dorothy said on October 4, 2022 at 5:17 pm
Man, Julie. The information they squeezed into two hours of training! I’m amazed and feeling a little overwhelmed about how much I have to learn. First of all, I’m going to be a paper ballot judge. They moved quickly thru the training. I was the only brand new person. The other 3 people there had much more experience than me. And they said before every election everyone is required to go back for training again because there is always something new to learn. The manual used to have certain topics on specific pages – but now some of it has changed and that means the trainer Denise had to double check herself when she’d call out which page to turn to. It seemed like it jumped around a lot. But I followed pretty well and asked questions anytime something was making me wonder about something.
The guy who booked my appointment said it would be 90 minutes – he was WAY off. I was there a little over two hours. And I’m going back on Friday Nov. 4 for “PMP” which means Practice Makes Perfect. That’s to refresh what you learned today just a few days before the election. I’m a pretty sharp person and pick up on things quickly. My main fear is going to be making a big mistake. I just will have to go slow (which is not my style) and double and triple check all the tasks I have to do. I’m glad I’m a morning person cuz we have to be there at 5:30 AM. And we have to go at 6:00 the night before to get set up. There will be lots of support staff there to help, I’m sure, so that takes away a lot of my anxiety. And I have to admit while Denise was flying through all of the information, in the back of my mind I was thinking “Maybe that will be me someday!!”
Denise and her husband manage a mobile home park in Fort Myers Beach, FL so her mind was semi-elsewhere but you would not have known it – she was sharp as a tack. And Walt, the other trainer, actually works at a polling location that happens to be my granddaughter’s school. He had good things to say about my polling place where I’ll be working – a husband/wife team that has been there ‘forever’ so I’m sure they’ll be great support for me, a newbie.
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Julie Robinson said on October 4, 2022 at 7:30 pm
Dorothy, I had a four hour session and my refresher this time will be two. Paper ballot judge doesn’t seem to fit with any of our positions. But the hours are about the same. I laid around the whole next day!
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diane said on October 4, 2022 at 10:19 pm
I am also going to be an election judge. In Colorado we have mail in ballots for everyone (but you can go to a polling place if you really want to) and early voting.
I was in the “counting room” the last cycle, basically sitting with a Republican judge and receiving bundles of envelopes, opening them and counting and recording how many ballots there were and taking them over in bundles to the staff manning the counting machine. I found it difficult sitting there trying to make small talk with Republicans even if the they were presenting as reasonable people.
This year for the primary I got moved to signature verification for the primary and will be doing that again. I like it much better.
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Jerrie in MidMd said on October 4, 2022 at 10:36 pm
Dorothy, we in MD must have another name for paper ballot judge. What will you be doing? I’m already looking forward to hearing about your experience. You will definitely make friends and have some great stories.
If you’re a returning election judge in our county, you have to complete refresher training online from the State Board of Elections instead of an in-person class. We had an online component in addition to the class before the primary, and I heard through the grapevine that it was the reason so many judges dropped out at the last minute.
I’ll be working early voting again and I got the 5 days I said I was available. I’ll be a morning person by the time Election Day rolls around.
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Dexter Friend said on October 5, 2022 at 3:09 am
Icarus, 36 hours post-flu shot I experienced my first headache in maybe 30 years and it was a bad one. I just fought through it as lying down made it worse.
I then postponed my last booster until I felt back to normal.
Later today I am going to lunch with my friend and his wife who are driving up from Columbus to ride the Pokagon-Angola bicycle trail. Since the Bug hit, I have only eaten in a restaurant twice. I guess it’s time to join civilization.
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Deborah said on October 5, 2022 at 6:02 am
You guys who work on elections are inspiring. Nancy you’ve posted about doing it and so many of the commenters here seem quite involved too. My niece whom I’ve recently reconnected with has been doing it for years. I received something recently, I can’t remember if it was an email or snail mail, seeking people to help at our local polling place. I was tempted to respond but I was afraid it would conflict with our France trip and I chickened out. I’m going to do it eventually. I feel it’s calling me.
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Dorothy said on October 5, 2022 at 8:22 am
To be honest they did not explain very well why someone would want to do a paper ballot. They did tell us toward the end of the training that a former Secretary of State of Ohio was vehemently anti-electronic voting. So she always insisted on doing her vote on paper. Maybe there are others like her that want to do that. My responsibilities will be giving the voter a yellow envelope, and there are fields they must fill in. Most of them are required fields. The only one that is not is if they want to list their previous address. I think also this would be a way for voters who recently moved to vote if they are not on the most updated list yet. We need to look up their address using the paper list of addresses, then we mark down the Ballot Style (form) we are giving them, the consecutive numbers of the ballot forms we give them (this year it’s two pages), we make an X at the top of each of the forms, then mark on our log if they are a provisional voter, a curbside voter or a 17 year old voter (we were assured we will have no 17 year old voters). Then we make hash marks on another form to keep a headcount of each person we interact with/give the envelope to. Then you pass on that verified information to the other paper ballot judge and he/she will verify the address on an electronic tablet, and then the voter will be directed to a little table where they will fill in their ballot. If someone is disabled in anyway we have helpers for that. In one or two instances we can make an X on the signature line if the person is legally blind and dictates their information to us. They think of everything. Even if someone comes in and they’re in the wrong polling location, we are allowed to have them fill out a ballot but they are told THREE times (when they first walk in, then twice at my table) that their vote WILL NOT COUNT. This is a relatively new rule but I guess some people are so dumb they insist on doing that instead of politely being redirected to their correct polling location.
There are many other intricate steps about setting up, locking up ballots in the lock box before we go home Monday night, then setting up on Tuesday morning, putting security tags on the green bags that the paper ballots will go in, how to wrap the bags with zip ties correctly – that kind of stuff.
I badly wanted to ask what we are to do with belligerent people but I figure that might be fun to deal with “in the moment.” Think fast on our feet. OR some long-time poll worker who has experience in that will glide over and intercept the bonehead and maybe the police officer on duty will also step in. I’m not really worried. I figure they’ve seen it all and I’m just along as a witness and trainee!
Folks, what do you say – can we get over 200 comments on this thread before Nancy gets back and regales us with all her Spanish travel stories?!
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brian stouder said on October 5, 2022 at 10:53 am
Dave – superb! My lovely wife would never agree to an Eddie plate, indeed…but the minivan she mostly drives has a Sirius(?) radio, which has a Pearl Jam channel – which features an endless supply of live recordings of PJ on tour at practically every major venue on the planet
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Deborah said on October 5, 2022 at 11:55 am
JC and Mark P, is Walker actually going to win in Georgia? I can’t imagine that the moderate Rs, if there are any would actually vote for him.
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jcburns said on October 5, 2022 at 3:00 pm
What Republicans are doing in interviews in Georgia is putting the race in terms of winning the house and, yah, pay no attention to Walker’s horrible behavior, that’s just the Democrats putting that out.
And of course, that’s so messed up. But I think the word is getting out how messed up Walker has been as a father, spouse, and…well, pretty much everything.
And Senator Warnock is widely loved and, more importantly, respected. So happy to vote for him.
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alex said on October 5, 2022 at 7:20 pm
Julie, I think the paper ballot thing ended in Florida with the hanging chads back in 2000.
In Georgia, voting for Herschel Walker is voting for hypocrisy, which seems to be perfectly fine by most Republicans. If it comes out that he’s paid for a hundred abortions and has a hundred more bastards it won’t sway MAGA World one tiny bit. Let’s hope they don’t find out he’s committed incest too or they’ll really dig their heels in.
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LAMary said on October 5, 2022 at 8:38 pm
There was a comment on Facebook about Gavin Newsom running for president “hair gel and all” followed by “Trump 2024!” Aside from the fact Newsom says he has no interest in running for prez, I’m struck by the idea that someone can vote for Trump with his radioactive yellow hair style can ridicule Gavin Newsom’s hair.
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Julie Robinson said on October 5, 2022 at 10:09 pm
Alex, we have paper ballots, but they are fill in the bubble style that go through a scantron machine. No more punching out holes with a stylus.
During the primary we had a very dour faced observer for maybe three hours. Observers have to sit in a designated chair and are not allowed to move around or speak to any voters or volunteers, except the poll clerk. (The poll clerk is The Boss.)
Anyway, when the observer left he told our poll clerk, who is our daughter, that our poll was so well run it inspired him to volunteer for the general election. From a skeptic to active participant; gotta love it.
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basset said on October 5, 2022 at 11:29 pm
Here in Nashville, dunno about the rest of Tennessee, we have touch screens which generate a long piece of paper with your selections printed on it, which one then carries to another machine and feeds it in to be tallied.
I’ve checked voters in during the last three or four local elections, closest I came to a problem was some patriot stalking in and slapping down his concealed-carry permit as ID, then standing there glaring and nonverbally challenging me to try holding him up for any reason, any reason at all. The permit is legal proof, so I just smiled and moved him along to the next station… hell, I have one myself for all the good it does.
I’m honestly concerned, though, that this next time around we’re going to have armed idiots appointing themselves protectors of liberty and hanging around some polling places, maybe outside at port arms and watching the voters as they come and go.
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David C said on October 6, 2022 at 5:41 am
I suspect that any reasonable, honest person who witnessed the election process from the inside would come to the same conclusion as the observer at your daughter’s polling station. Only an attention seeking hack like that nutty woman in Detroit would say otherwise. It’s only in a vacuum that’s filled with Fox News lies that people can say our elections are stolen.
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Suzanne said on October 6, 2022 at 9:24 am
My parents were poll workers for years, mainly because my dad wanted to do it and my mom always did whatever he said. My mom has said many times that it would be nearly impossible to cheat. I have been voting absentee the past couple of years. Our county uses electronic machines that give you no printout other than a small receipt that you voted, so you have no way of knowing if your vote was registered correctly. I voted by mail when it was allowed during the pandemic and I have kept doing so and now that I am ill, I don’t even have to stretch the truth to bypass Indiana’s select few reasons for legitimate voting by mail.
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Dorothy said on October 6, 2022 at 9:50 am
Suzanne I’m going to chime in and tell you that I definitely heard them mention, among the 3,451 other details they gave us at training this Tuesday, that it IS possible to check make sure your vote was registered as you voted. I looked through my training manual just now to see if I could find any reference to that, but I did not. Perhaps Googling that question might lead you to a website that tells you how to verify that your vote was tallied. But also – isn’t there a final screen at the end that shows you how you voted before you click on SUBMIT?
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Julie Robinson said on October 6, 2022 at 11:00 am
Dorothy, we used to vote on those same machines as Suzanne, and while there is a final screen, once you hit submit it’s gone into the electronic ether, just a bunch of 0’s and 1’s. At the end of the day they hit a button and a tiny little receipt prints out with the results. To do a recount, they hit the button and print it out again. There is no paper backup system.
The good people at the Allen County election board insist there’s no way to tamper with the machines, especially since they’re too old(!) to have intenet connectivity. Counting the votes is very fast, since they only have to add up the little receipts from the precincts. But I would be more comfortable with paper. I think they were discussing a different system before we left town, but I haven’t seen anything in the paltry news I still see.
When I say little receipt, I mean gas station sized thermal printout.
On a different note, water is still rising in some areas of Florida as it moves downstream. This morning’s paper told of an area that got a little in homes during the hurricae and a whole lot yesterday. The stories are just heartbreaking.
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Suzanne said on October 6, 2022 at 1:00 pm
Yes, that’s the voting machine I was talking about Julie. You get the little tiny receipt that says you voted. That’s it. I didn’t realize other machines spit out a printout of who you voted for until I mentioned it to a sister-in-law who lives in a different county. I love voting by mail. I can sit & look up all the small office people and decide who to vote for. Last election, I didn’t know any of the school board members but a quick search showed me that a couple of them were QAnon nutcases.
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Peter said on October 6, 2022 at 2:45 pm
Dorothy, congratulations on being an election judge. It’s 24 years and counting for me.
In Chicago you can do paper or machine, and people still prefer paper. There’s only one machine per precinct, and if you have a disability you move to the front of that line, and people really want to vote and get out, so they go for the paper ballot. I’ve had more than one election where nobody used the machine.
I like that the new machines print out a paper ballot that you feed into the scanner – that way there’s one count for the precinct, and there’s a paper trail. Of course, if the machine prints out a paper ballot that you bring to a scanner, you can cut out the middleman and mark a ballot by yourself.
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jim said on October 6, 2022 at 5:11 pm
The odious Dana Loesch on Herschel:
“What I’m about to say is in no means a contradiction or a compromise of a principle. And please keep in mind that I am concerned about one thing, and one thing only at this point. I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate,” Loesch said.
“If The Daily Beast’s story is true, you’re telling me Walker used his money to reportedly pay some skank for an abortion, and Warnock wants to use all of our moneys to pay an all bunch of skanks for abortion,” Loesch said, using a derogatory term for people, especially women, of perceived low or sleazy character.
“I don’t know if he did it or not,” the radio host concluded. “I don’t even care.”
Newsweek reached out to Loesch for comment.
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Sherri said on October 6, 2022 at 6:14 pm
Herschel Walker is the most cynical manifestation yet of the GOP urge for power. No one thinks that Herschel Walker will make a good Senator, or even a capable Senator. He’s a warm body with past fame that they can prop up when they need to show a person.
He’s also likely suffering from CTE, appears to be a pathological liar, has not acknowledged his children and neglected the ones he has, and has abused the women in his life. And, of course, paid for at least one abortion. Sounds a lot like his former boss, Trump.
But the good white evangelicals of Georgia will convince themselves that their values compel them to vote for Herschel rather than the Reverend Warnock, and tell themselves it’s because of abortion. It ain’t. It’s because Herschel doesn’t make ‘em uncomfortable, he knows his place, and he’s not trying to change it.
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Deborah said on October 7, 2022 at 1:26 pm
I’m voting early in person in Chicago, right after we get back from France. My husband is voting by mail, or at least he ordered a ballot to be sent. He got a notice that the ballot will arrive next week while we’re in France, so he’ll probably take his ballot along with me when I go vote, but the good news is that I can use his ballot to google all of the names that I don’t know before I go to the polls. I suppose I can look up a sample ballot somewhere online too. I usually try to see who the league of women voters endorse. I’ve voted both ways during different elections in Chicago, hand marked or machine, but I don’t remember being offered a choice. I recall that I have been directed to a stall then they either handed me a ballot to mark or just directed me to a machine. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t offered a choice, I just don’t remember it if they did. If I did it by machine, a scroll of paper came out that showed all my choices, I could confirm and then take the paper somewhere where it was inserted into another machine. I guess if I am given a choice, I will choose the machine because I always worry that the markers they give out can leak or bleed and my ballot could be disregarded as a result. I don’t worry about the machines being rigged because there’s a paper back-up, at least in Chicago.
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Deborah said on October 7, 2022 at 8:43 pm
LB and I joke that Home Depot is our home away from home because during a project we’re working on in the condo yard we’re known to make 2 or 3 trips a day to buy stuff we didn’t know we’d need. No more, I just read that Home Depot is giving $1.75 million to the Hershal Walker campaign, never again will we go there. I knew they were right wingers and I tried to avoid going there and contributing to their profits but sometimes they seemed the only place in Santa Fe to find what we needed for a project, so I felt guilty but bit the bullet. No more. From now on if we can’t find it locally we don’t need it. Last straw.
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Deborah said on October 8, 2022 at 8:28 am
Dexter, I read that people were shot at a football game in Toledo. I thought you would have commented on it here.
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jim said on October 8, 2022 at 11:05 am
Deborah: Home Depot says no we didn’t-it was our founder: https://www.axios.com/2022/10/08/home-depot-herschel-walker-georgia-donation
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susan said on October 8, 2022 at 12:20 pm
Yah, but Jim, as Nathalie Jacoby (who is quoted in the bit as a Home Despot boycotter) noted: Jacoby said in a message to Axios she wondered how many shares of Home Depot stock Marcus [the co-founder and gone for 20 years] owns and that “they still have not responded to me.” If Bernie Marcus is a major share-holder, he still has a lot of say in what HD does.
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jcburns said on October 8, 2022 at 12:29 pm
Bernie Marcus, unfortunately, has a lot of say in what happens around Atlanta because (I would say) of all that Home Depot money gained in the 1980s-1990s. He made sure we had a big ol aquarium downtown!
He and his wife do a lot of charity giving (is an aquarium a charity?) but then there’s this Herschel Walker thing. Yikes.
He’s also given big money to Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Trump in 2020. Double yikes.
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susan said on October 8, 2022 at 1:00 pm
This is when I stopped going to Home Despot.
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Deborah said on October 8, 2022 at 2:22 pm
Over the years I swore I’d never go back to Home Depot because of their support of creepy politicians but then I’d go crawling back when I couldn’t find what I was looking for anywhere else. This time I’m going to try and stick with it.
Waiting for our ride to pick us up to take us to O’Hare, we have about 2 hours to wait until then and then 2 hours after we get to O’Hare with masks on for our flight to France. Then there’s the long flight with masks too. Not crazy about it but it’s what must be done. I’ve completely rethought what I’m wearing on the plane about 6 times now, and I’ve completely repacked a couple of times too. Anxiety.
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Dorothy said on October 8, 2022 at 5:36 pm
https://www.newsweek.com/home-depot-clears-rumors-donations-herschel-walkers-campaign-1750033
I read this earlier today. Always a good idea to do some research when you hear stuff like this. With gas prices so high we go to Home Depot for the convenience. The closest Lowes is about 12 miles away, and Menard’s is even further. I honestly feel like there are so many ways to support candidates without getting pissed off at companies because of who they decide to support. At some point you’re cutting your nose to spite your face and I won’t do that.
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Little Bird said on October 8, 2022 at 7:13 pm
Luckily Santa Fe has a Lowe’s only a little bit further away. But we also have a True Value, Ace, and a locally owned and not a franchise place. We do have options.
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Julie Robinson said on October 8, 2022 at 7:55 pm
We have an Ace right in the neighborhood so we like to support them and it’s convenient, but they’re small and don’t carry building materials so the big boxes are still a reality. I think Ace is part of a co-op with each store individually owned. Someone correct me on that if need be.
My epoll book refresher training was this afternoon and I am fired up and ready. All those ads would be over too.
The University of Florida spent eight months searching for their next President. They started with a “historically diverse” field of 700, and diligently whittled it down to one person, a white, heterosexual, male, Republican; Ben Sasse. Sure am glad they tried so hard for diversity!
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Deborah said on October 8, 2022 at 9:09 pm
Aggravating, after going through TSA we had 2 hours to wait for our flight. Then 5 minutes before boarding time it was delayed 2 hours. Then it was the new boarding time and it’s delayed another hour. I just hope the whole damn flight doesn’t get canceled. Meanwhile our time in Paris is getting shorter. Flying these days is fucked.
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Brandon said on October 9, 2022 at 3:04 am
Nobody seems to be talking about the conflict in Ukraine, especially the explosion of the Crimean bridge.
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Dexter Friend said on October 9, 2022 at 3:13 am
Deborah: In the third quarter of a football game between Whitmer and Central Catholic high schools, at least 15 shots rang out right outside the stadium. This induced an immediate panic as people fled as fast as they could. The game ended right there of course. Three people were shot. This never ends. Now the Toledo Blade has paywalled their stories, so no link.
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Dorothy said on October 9, 2022 at 8:52 am
Deborah we have an acquaintance Joe B. (a lawyer in Pittsburgh) who left for Scotland last Wednesday, I think. His first connection was Miami; when he got there British Airways had cancelled the next part of his flight (they partnered with American – he posted lots on Instagram about it so I’m not sure I’m getting the name of the other airlines right). He was stuck in Miami for about 36 hours and finally rebooked a flight to London, then from there to Edinburgh. And of course his luggage is lost. They told him they’d get it to him in Edinburgh, but within 12 hours of arriving in Edinburgh he was a due to leave on tour bus schedule going due north. He’s having a great time – found a shop in a small town where he spent 60 pounds and got several new outfits. No underwear so I’ve been wondering if he’s going commando! He got a razor and toothbrush the day before he got the clothing. That kind of mess would send me over the edge but he’s handling it with aplomb. He’s posted dozens of pictures of the scenery and I check his IG feed regularly to make sure I haven’t missed anything.
Nancy is posting on IG, too, much less frequently than our friend Joe B. But it’s been nice to see what she’s doing, too.
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alex said on October 9, 2022 at 10:29 am
Julie, you are correct about Ace.
Do-It-Best, headquartered in Fort Wayne, is also a buying cooperative for independent retailers, as is True Value, headquartered in Chicago, where I spent several years as a copywriter in the advertising department.
True Value also owns several brands such as Taylor Rental, Grand Rental Station and Home & Garden Showplace and also manufactures paint sold under several illustrious brands, so even though its hardware store star has been fading its numerous other enterprises have kept it chugging along.
That said, we’re constantly patronizing Home Depot, Lowe’s and Menard’s, and usually driving from one to another because it almost never fails that the first store we visit doesn’t have what we want.
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Julie Robinson said on October 9, 2022 at 10:20 pm
Whoa, what’s this about the Fort Wayne mayor spending the night in jail after getting himself picked up for drunk driving? https://www.wpta21.com/2022/10/09/i-accept-full-responsibility-mayor-henry-issues-statement-owi-arrest/
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alex said on October 9, 2022 at 10:33 pm
Yep, he got popped. Hope the Republicans won’t resort to hammering away at him about it during the mayoral race since they don’t really have much of anything to attack him with otherwise.
If all goes as expected, his most formidable GOP foe will get clobbered in the primary by a far-right ideological wack job who’ll go on to lose the general election by a landslide. Just like the last four elections.
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Jeff Gill said on October 9, 2022 at 11:22 pm
This takes a great deal of scrolling. Just saying!
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Brandon said on October 9, 2022 at 11:29 pm
This takes a great deal of scrolling. Just saying!
A new post should be coming soon.
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Suzanne said on October 10, 2022 at 7:08 am
Because Indiana can’t go a week without being in the news for something embarrassing
https://www.rawstory.com/todd-rokita-kanye-west-anti-semitism/
Rokita is the worst.
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ROGirl said on October 10, 2022 at 7:37 am
Happy Birthday to everyone who celebrated a recent one or will be turning a year older soon. Mine was on Saturday and 66 doesn’t feel any different than 65 did, so far.
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Suzanne said on October 10, 2022 at 8:18 am
Tried to post this earlier, but it went to moderation. I must have spelled my email wrong again.
Indiana’s AG defends Kanye West’s anti-Semitic statement as “independent thinking”.
Can work camps called “alternative housing” be far behind?
https://www.rawstory.com/todd-rokita-kanye-west-anti-semitism/
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jcburns said on October 10, 2022 at 12:36 pm
Jeff Gill and Brandon and anyone else curious…the names on white in blue off to the right are LINKS, so they scroll down for you very quickly, and the last part, where it says “and you” is a link to the “Leave a reply, join the conversation” area where you can add a new comment, there at the bottom of the massive scroll of comments.
As a shortcut (but you’d have to remember), adding #respond to the end of the URL for this page will get you to the “Leave a reply, join the conversation” area as well.
For example:
http://nancynall.com/2022/09/14/we-had-ourselves-a-time/#respond
But if you want to get “mostly to the end,” just click on a commenter’s name in the white type on blue off to the right way down on the list and there you are. And to get back to the top-ish, click on someone at the top of the list, like “roy edroso” on this post.
We web workers behind the scenes are trying to make it easy(easier?)
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Scout said on October 10, 2022 at 1:18 pm
JC, the side bar in blue doesn’t scroll on my screen, not sure if everyone else is having that issue. The last post visible is #96, so I have to click on that and then scroll scroll scroll to catch up where I left off. This doesn’t happen often, though, only when Nancy is travelling and not posting new content, so it’s not a biggie for me.
ROGirl – Happy Birthday! I turned the big 65 on the 1st. My family made a big deal out of it and chipped together to get me an apple watch so I can count my steps and get rewards through my Medicare advantage plan. It will have paid for itself in 3 years… 😉
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Dave said on October 10, 2022 at 1:59 pm
That blue bar has never scrolled down for me but hitting command and the down button on my keyboard takes me directly to the bottom. I can’t begin to get to the history to see what remarks I may have made in the past, I sometimes enjoy doing that but doing that often surprises me when I see how much time has passed.
Is this an all-time leader in the remarks column?
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jcburns said on October 10, 2022 at 2:31 pm
Yeah, you are correct. The blue bar doesn’t scroll. Seemed to work better that way. (Seemed to…)
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Scout said on October 10, 2022 at 2:34 pm
Yikes, Deborah, Nancy and all other nn.c community traveling:
ABC NEWS: Airports in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York exposed to cyber-attacks originating from Russia.
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Deborah said on October 10, 2022 at 2:40 pm
I will be 72 tomorrow in Paris. I turned 50 in Paris also, 22 years ago. Weather here is perfect, walking, walking, walking, 9.3 miles today, my favorite thing of all to do here. That and we had a picnic of wine, cheese and bread with oranges for dessert, a picnic in Luxembourg garden.
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jcburns said on October 10, 2022 at 3:16 pm
This whole “cyber-attacks at airports” thing? I read the articles and it sounds like what got attacked were the websites for the airports. Which, to my mind, are the LEAST important things, totally unconnected with airlines or schedules (although some display schedules, but who uses those?) They’re kind of the business card for the airport. And they sure as heck are not hosted on the same systems as something important actually AT the airport.
But I guess it gives us headlines…?
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Dorothy said on October 10, 2022 at 3:18 pm
Happy birthday a wee bit late, RO Girl! And thanks for the tip, Scout, about the Apple Watch, steps and Medicare. I haven’t signed up yet but when I do that will be good motivation to get my ass moving – a reward with Medicare!
I stumbled on the stairs today going down to my sewing studio. Completely missed the bottom step and thought I was on the floor. I crumpled, and scraped my left forearm, really crunched my knees and twisted my back. I’ve been achy all day and the ibuprofen only helped a little bit. I’m putting my feet up the rest of the afternoon and taking more ibuprofen. I am so mad at myself for falling. Feels like some kind of beginning of the end for future falls – God I sure hope not.
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Julie Robinson said on October 10, 2022 at 3:19 pm
Happy Birthday to ROGirl, Scout, and Deborah! October must be the month when the perfect people were born. Why yes, that includes moi on the 29th.
No blue box if you’re on a phone. Then you do have to scroll.
Edited to add, Dorothy, yikes! Please be careful! As we age falls become a leading contributor to death. I’m seeing it too often at church and worrying about the shaky 90 year old in this house. I bullied her into seeing a physical therapist starting tomorrow for just this reason.
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basset said on October 10, 2022 at 5:03 pm
Yesterday was John Lennon’s birthday, also Mama Basset’s birthday and death day. i have mentioned that several times previously, not this year for some reason.
Had one eye lasered this morning, other is due next week… preventative in case glaucoma becomes an issue, something about narrow angles.
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David C said on October 10, 2022 at 6:06 pm
I had the same procedure for narrow angles, Basset. It was so strange feeling the pulsing in my eye during the procedure and realizing it was being done by nothing but the energy from light. Every eye exam, the doctor takes a picture of my irises to show me that the hole isn’t plugged. I also have to be dilated but they need to use a slow acting solution so I’m sitting there for 45 minutes waiting for it to work. Better than going blind though.
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Jeff Gill said on October 10, 2022 at 8:29 pm
JC, no complaint intended of the web page! It’s surely a record breaker. I didn’t think of the #respond option though: thank you.
It looks on Twitter & Insta that the Proprietor is having a fine ol’ time. Good food (if she skipped the Five Guys) and grand city scenes.
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