I’ve been reading “The Artist’s Way,” a gift from a friend. Subtitle: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, and I’m not sure it’s going well, given that I got it three days ago and I haven’t written a novel yet. But I am working on the exercises the author, Julia Cameron, recommends, particularly the morning pages, i.e. three stream-of-consciousness pages written as close to rising as you can do it. So far, it’s…interesting. I’m remembering more of my dreams, if nothing else. I won’t share; they’re very, very, extremely Psych 101, which would suggest I’m a pretty shallow person, but oh well.
How on earth do you spark creativity, anyway? The morning writing helps, but what I mainly remember about times when I was having a burst was this: It comes out of nowhere, and when it does, it’s spectacular. But elusive. Maybe this will help.
The midweek passes, and spring remains in the wings, although I did take a short bike ride yesterday, and it was glorious, even though I stopped every mile or so to do an errand. Just nice to get out and move a little, outdoors, without my knees hurting.
Not much to report, but there’s this: Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has been getting a lot of positive press recently. I’m not her No. 1 fan, but I respect what she’s been able to do, which is a lot. Of course, like so many politicians, she is lucky in her enemies. Like this lunatic:
MLive sat down with new Michigan Republican Party chair Kristina Karamo for nearly two hours March 17 for a sweeping interview that encompassed everything from her conspiratorial beliefs to plans for the party she will lead to the 2024 election.
Karamo was warm, engaging, forthright and unabashed in conversation. Her outspokenness about her convictions is central to how she earned the admiration of her hardline conservative followers. Karamo has a degree in Christian apologetics from Biola University, a private, Christian school in southern California. The theology involves the verbal defense of her faith, and the techniques of that debate style come through in conversation.
…Karamo entered the political spotlight by alleging she saw widespread fraud in Detroit during the 2020 election and remained there by championing the ensuing conspiracy theories. With a promise to root out “systemic election corruption” in Michigan, she lost her bid to become secretary of state last November by more than 615,000 votes, 14 percentage points, to Democratic incumbent Jocelyn Benson.
She has never conceded the election.
She goes on to say that everyone who voted for Proposal 3, the reproductive-freedom constitutional amendment that makes Michigan an oasis for women’s rights in the Midwest, are “participants in murder.” So you can see, it’s easy for people to succeed against opposition like this.
Sooner or later, the state GOP will wise up. Let it be a while, however.
Sherri said on March 29, 2023 at 11:14 pm
I read The Artist’s Way around 25 years ago, but never got into the habit of morning pages. My husband and I were having a similar discussion yesterday about how do you teach someone to be curious. He gets frustrated with some people who work for him, because they’ll do what they’re told but never think beyond that. That’s kind of a problem with what his team is working in, which is improving performance. To do a good job of improving performance, you need to measure things, look at the results, and say, huh, wonder what’s going on there? Or, why is this one fast and that one slow, when they should be the same? And measure more things to find out. But too many people just measure and report, and wait to be told what to do next. It’s not that they don’t care, or aren’t ambitious, they just don’t think that way.
I think curiosity and creativity both require downtime, time to just let your mind play. One of the problems of modern life is that we’ve really made it difficult to be bored, because we walk around with these supercomputers in our hands, so we seldom have time that we have to daydream to entertain ourselves.
Maybe those hours in church growing up when I had to look attentive but my mind was free to wander were good for something after all…
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Brandon said on March 30, 2023 at 1:47 am
What might happen with a ban on TikTok?
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ROGirl said on March 30, 2023 at 5:02 am
Sherri, I’m dealing with the same thing at work, realizing that you can’t teach people to be curious. I’ve tried to guide someone to think beyond a task he’s been given to work on, to try to understand and position it within the big picture. Unfortunately, some people don’t seem to be able to deal with a situation that goes beyond being handed a finite task to complete.
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David C said on March 30, 2023 at 5:59 am
I see the same thing. Some designers I work with are very good at doing exactly what they’re told and not one bit more. They’re still useful to the company. There’s a lot of production type work that needs to be done. So you leave that to them and give the more adventurous ones more time to do what they do best.
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Dorothy said on March 30, 2023 at 7:20 am
I don’t think I’m a world class thinker, but I do try to make sure my devices are out of reach for a chunk of the day. If I’m reading I leave my phone on the dining room table. In the sewing studio, I’m handling fabric, pins, scissors, rulers so there’s no way to hold a phone at the same time. And I NEVER take my phone with me when I take Nestle for a walk. I see people do it a lot and I always think “can’t you give your brain a rest and just concentrate on the dog and the fresh air?!”
Wait – I can’t say I never take my phone when I walk Nes. When I walk to the bus stop to pick up Olivia, my phone is in my pocket. If the bus would be late or not show up, I’d need the phone to check in with her parents in case they got a notification about the bus status. Also I use the MyQ app to shut the garage door when I walk away from the house; of course I need it to re-open the garage door when the three of us return.
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Suzanne said on March 30, 2023 at 7:31 am
Creativity in the workplace is tricky from my experience. Far to often any suggestions I make were either shot down by higher-ups or I was told to investigate ways to make it happen without being given any tools like extra time or money or any authorization to order anything. An example is that the filing system where I currently work is a mess. The cabinet where paper files are kept is inadequate for the job and is falling apart, but when I have mentioned it, I am told to look for other options but everything I suggest, I am told, is too expensive even if it isn’t pricey. I have tried scanning and uploading into a shared drive, but the people who need the files claim they can’t get into that drive, which I believe is really, they simply don’t want to. They have to contact the IT people for access problems but just don’t want to bother.
So, I continue with a crappy office set up…
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ROGirl said on March 30, 2023 at 8:14 am
Trying to get processes changed in the workplace is a challenge. You have to pick your battles.
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FDChief said on March 30, 2023 at 9:07 am
Another aspect of “curiosity” is that there are a wilderness of possibilities for many ideas, and many of them 1) have already been pursued before you and 2) have been shown to be dead ends (or are for some uses).
So it helps to really know the history of the thing you’re curious about. That way you can bypass all those cul-de-sacs to explore avenues that really are novel and (possibly) revelatory.
But methodical research and primary source-tracking isn’t taught until college-level grades, if that. So the fundamental skills of “how do I track down who’s worked on and thought about this” aren’t readily available to most of us. Some people come by them innately…but for those who don’t? That’s a big ask.
And don’t get me started on how the lack of the simplest analytical skills has enabled the public liars, fabulists, and conspiracy theorists.
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JodiP said on March 30, 2023 at 9:24 am
Dorothy, that is so interesting you don’t take your phone with you. I listen to podcasts or books–I love learning about all sorts of things and enjoy fiction as well. However, if I need to think deeply about something, I can’t even listen to music. I have also used it to dictate memos for work while walking. The movement frees up my brain.
Ah creativity at work. In human services, there are a lot of statutory requirements, but social workers have to be very creative to be effective. But there are so many roadblocks to actually being able to help people. Universal healthcare, universal basic income and investing in deeply affordable housing would solve so many issues, and save a lot of time we spend helping residents maintain benefits. Being poor is a lot of work! If we didn’t need to spend energy on that, we’d be able to work more on higher quality of life things, like emotional support, helping people find meaning in their lives, etc etc.
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ROGirl said on March 30, 2023 at 9:25 am
If you have a quality system there are processes in place to document problem-solving initiatives, in the form of corrective actions. They require root cause analysis and proof of effectiveness. If you’re just winging it, you probably won’t get very far, and memories are faulty.
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Deborah said on March 30, 2023 at 9:49 am
I keep my phone close by when I’m reading books, to look up word definitions or pronunciations, or translating a foreign phrase etc. I’m often amazed that I went so many years reading without having that resource before.
If I’m trying to work on a design project I can’t listen to music too. In the office sometimes people wanted to play their music aloud and we had to institute a headphones rule. I wasn’t the only one who had concentration issues when music was playing. On the other hand if I’m doing physical work I can listen to anything.
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Heather said on March 30, 2023 at 11:46 am
Creativity definitely requires downtime. It was hard to explain to my bosses at my old job why I needed to get out of the office and take a walk. But applying that creativity takes discipline.
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Julie Robinson said on March 30, 2023 at 11:58 am
Deborah, what you do is the equivalent of reading with a dictionary by your side, which I used to do. When I came across an unknown word I’d write it out, along with its definition, in the back of a notebook. I loved dictionaries and owned many, including the compact Oxford English Dictionary. That’s the one with four shrunken page on each page, two volumes in a hard case with a drawer containing a magnifying glass at the top. I felt like I’d really arrived when I bought it. Do I own it now? Nope, but I did find another dictionary aficionado who was thrilled to receive it.
Does anyone here follow the writer and artist Suleika Jaouad? She has battled cancer since college, undergone two stem cell transplants, and is on a maintenance dose of chemo seemingly forever. None of this has stopped her from creating, and she wrote the amazing book Between Two Kingdoms, that of health and sickness.
Suleika writes about creativity and offers prompts once a week via email and instagram. She’s starting an every day journaling project on April 1, for anyone who’d like to experience that. BTW she’s married to Jon Batiste, the incredible musician who was the bandleader for Stephen Colbert until last year. They had known each other as teens at Interlochen music camp and started a romance after she was already ill. What a power couple.
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Sherri said on March 30, 2023 at 12:46 pm
Sometimes, curiosity is about asking, “and then what?” Something DeSantis neglected to do when he decided to use The Mouse as a political punching bag. The Mouse doesn’t play around.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-ne-disney-desantis-charles-royal-clause-loophole-board-20230330-2ucrvv22hfhcvbrn446us6xmuu-story.html
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ROGirl said on March 30, 2023 at 1:18 pm
The law of unintended consequences will bite you in the butt if you aren’t careful.
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alex said on March 30, 2023 at 1:23 pm
I read “The Artist’s Way” many years ago. And I did “morning pages,” but soon tired of it because the author insisted that it must be done in longhand and I found that keyboarding first thing in the morning got my creative juices flowing just fine. But I’ve been out of practice for decades now.
I recommend “Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain,” which exercises your brain in the same way Sherri describes above:
Maybe those hours in church growing up when I had to look attentive but my mind was free to wander were good for something after all…
It seems like I did some of my best work when I was supposed to be working. Artwork, that is. Through high school and college I doodled in the margins of all of my notebooks and still save them to this day in a big plastic tote in the closet. I was only paying half a mind to any of the lectures I ever attended, and I was a middling student in most subjects. But I sure could draw.
In my first job as a publishing house proofreader, I would take breaks constantly to doodle on index cards and passed them around for laughs. Many of these were caricatures of the bosses and co-workers in that place and I was channeling their peculiar personalities and my irritations with them.
It was a great release. I fell out of practice though when my jobs became more challenging and engaging, but my frustrations with bosses and colleagues remain pretty much the same. Hey, if they’re living rent-free in my head after hours, perhaps I should at least be having some fun at their expense and start drawing again.
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FDChief said on March 30, 2023 at 1:32 pm
One piece of advice I received early in my college days has always stayed with me: “It’s the things that you believe that aren’t true that will come back to hurt you the most.”
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Icarus said on March 30, 2023 at 1:37 pm
so apparently Paris (and perhaps much of France) is on fire because of Pension Reform. More importantly, I didn’t see anything about this on the typical newsfeeds here. My wife is on TikTok and told me about it.
No wonder they want to ban TikTok here.
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LAMary said on March 30, 2023 at 1:48 pm
CNN, NPR and AP all reported the fires in Paris. I’d trust any of those sources more than Tik Tok.
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Julie Robinson said on March 30, 2023 at 2:07 pm
We’ve all been chuckling over how Disney outsmarted DeSantis, especially the little dig about the descendants of King Charles. Here’s a non-paywalled story from WaPo: https://wapo.st/3nArn8x
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Sherri said on March 30, 2023 at 2:14 pm
French people are setting things on fire because Macron wants to move the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Here, states are starting to loosen restrictions on child labor.
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David C said on March 30, 2023 at 3:56 pm
The states that allow school principals to beat the shit out of kids will soon pass laws allowing bosses to beat the shit out of underage employees. It’ll be as close as they can get, so far, to the care free days of slavery that they crave.
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Suzanne said on March 30, 2023 at 4:46 pm
I have the Suleika Jaouad book on my “to read” list but haven’t been able to bring myself to read it. It’s too close to home, my emotions too raw. She had the same kind of leukemia as I do. I have another bone marrow biopsy coming up and am trying not to freak out about what it will show. Hopefully, nothing.
I had no idea Jaouad is John Batitse’s wife!
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David C said on March 30, 2023 at 5:44 pm
I thought you might find this interesting, Deborah. Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell is interviewed about the architecture of Saudi megaprojects.
https://www.techwontsave.us/episode/161_what_drives_architects_to_design_saudi_megaprojects_w_kate_wagner
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Dave said on March 30, 2023 at 5:56 pm
Trump indicted.
Florida is being damaged by the governor and the super majority legislature, no holds barred, and one can only hope that something like the Disney case makes people pay attention that he should, in no way, ever advance beyond that. Such a state, two clowns for U. S. senators and a governor who has imposed his will on the entire state with the support of the supermajority legislature.
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Sherri said on March 30, 2023 at 6:13 pm
Back when I used to live in Pittsburgh, the city council was not composed of the best. It was a strong mayor system, and so council didn’t have a lot of power, and some real clowns got elected. Some of those clowns were also crooks, and my husband and I used to joke that a good campaign slogan would be “Never been indicted!”
These days, I think being indicted is a feature if you’re running for the GOP nomination. One reason I don’t think DeSantis has what it takes to win the nomination is that I don’t think he can pull off the kayfabe act necessary to rile up the base.
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Julie Robinson said on March 30, 2023 at 10:26 pm
Suzanne, I can understand your reluctance, but I found the book very encouraging. Fingers crossed for your next biopsy.
Since I’ve have my share of physical and medical challenges, reading about those in similar adversity has given me new helping techniques and insight. Right now I’m listening to Frank Bruni’s book about losing the vision in one eye, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found.
Quietly rejoicing about Trump and fearing what his supporters might do.
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Deborah said on March 30, 2023 at 11:20 pm
We have been engaged in our Guggenheim experience this evening and tonight so didn’t hear anything at all about the indictment until LB texted me just as we got back. Tomorrow should be interesting. We walked right past the entry to Trump Tower earlier this afternoon and nothing was going on, we were clueless then, although there were cop cars nearby but I figure there always are.
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Heather said on March 30, 2023 at 11:35 pm
I am actually headed to Paris to visit a friend of mine for a few days after a week in Mallorca next month. I’m a little worried about transportation as apparently protesters are blocking access to airports, plus all the strikes, etc. She says they protests are pretty big but doesn’t seem worried. I’ve been to Paris before so it’s not like I need to see the big sights–just more concerned about the practicalities. I guess we’ll see how it goes!
But I can’t stop thinking about how irritated Americans at O’Hare were when protesters flooded the place after the Trump admin blocked the entrance of refugees from some Middle Eastern countries. And those protests (the big ones) lasted maybe a week at most.
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Dexter Friend said on March 31, 2023 at 4:24 am
I wrote a few stand-up type lines about my EMG test I had done yesterday, regarding all the electric shocks and needles one experiences. One was about how I just had my batteries charged in the examination room.
And a very smart friend texted me typing “why didn’t you tell us you had a Pacemaker implant?”
Oh boy…here we go again. Some people can’t read a joke.
Really, it was a very interesting test, it took 2 hours and I had receptors taped all over my extremities plus needles stuck all over me with sometimes kinda heavy jolts shot into the nerves looking for rapid return time, all graphics on a screen.
I failed miserably with a DX of carpal tunnel so bad surgery is not indicated as the nerves are shot. Live with it, said the doc.
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Mark P said on March 31, 2023 at 9:17 am
I’m not unhappy about Trump’s indictment in NY, I was just hoping that a felony indictment in Georgia would come first. It’s as clear as possible from the Georgia Secretary of State’s phone recording that Trump was soliciting election fraud, the only question is whether it’s a felony or a misdemeanor. Felony means prison time, and I fantasize about Trump in a Georgia prison. He can come back from a misdemeanor conviction, but it would be harder to put a positive spin on a year in state prison.
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FDChief said on March 31, 2023 at 11:01 am
Two things about Tubby finally running into the long arm of the law:
1) the Stormy payoff might possibly be the LEAST illegal thing he’s ever done, because…
2) Everyone who is familiar with the joker from his real estate days in NYC knows he’s crooked as a dog’s leg and mobbed-up. He’s just a sleazy little development hustler and always has been.
That means nothing to the GQP/his cult. They didn’t care before and they don’t care now. He’s their crook, and his cons are their cons.
No, the real question I’d ask is “will this change the REST of the country, particularly the mainstream media”. So far they’ve treated Tubby like any other Republican, meaning when he lies they report the lie rather than simply noting “he lied again” and when he crimes they report it as just a thing rather than a crime.
IF – and that’s not a given – this gives the press the chance to actually report that this crooked shitbird is likely to be elected president? Maybe suddenly the idiot “center” will wake up and turn out against him.
I’m not betting that way.
But at least this is an opportunity…
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Jeff Borden said on March 31, 2023 at 11:38 am
Mark P.,
This is the first indictment. There will be others. Honestly, this is the weakest case and there are real issues –including filing it as a felony rather than a misdemeanor– that worry me. But the train keeps a-rolling in Georgia and at the DOJ.
He’s in very deep shit.
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David C said on March 31, 2023 at 12:45 pm
We won’t know until Tuesday, I think, what the charges are. He’s been criming in plain sight for so long who knows what they’ve dug up. I hope it’s really good but nobody outside of Bragg’s office really knows. I have a feeling this will break the dam though and indictments will now flow like water.
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Sherri said on March 31, 2023 at 5:05 pm
Adam Davidson makes the point that one of the interesting things about the Stormy Daniels payoff is that Trump had a whole system for payoffs. In other words, this wasn’t a one-off, not that anyone ever thought it was, but what else could be there?
I suspect this might open the floodgates. And I suspect that there are a lot of Republican politicians who hope so, too, and also hope that his cultists go away and they can regain control of the party. I think they’re foolish to believe they can put that genie back in a bottle, but people who see themselves as future presidents aren’t great at accepting reality.
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Deborah said on March 31, 2023 at 5:13 pm
So far there still doesn’t seem to be a thing happening in Manhattan, no protests that we could see. We weren’t anywhere near Trump Tower though. We walked the Highline and went to the New Whitney down at the end of it. We walked back up through Greenwich Village on up to Washington Square where we sat for a bit then back to our hotel on 54th. A 6 1/2 mile walk altogether. No disturbances seen.
I was so afraid the indictment would happen while we’re here and so far it’s a big nothing burger. Maybe it will get ugly next week when the arraignment happens, but we’ll be long gone by then.
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David C said on March 31, 2023 at 5:21 pm
The common clay wingnuts are scared shitless of the big city so NYC is probably the safest place in the whole country. If they have a mind to burn something down they’ll have to burn down Bugtussle and say either the liberals made them do it or that antifa did it as a false flag.
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Suzanne said on March 31, 2023 at 5:40 pm
To FDChief’s question of whether this “will this change the REST of the country, particularly the mainstream media” the answer is no. 60 Minutes is promoting their interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene like this: “Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, nicknamed MTG, isn’t afraid to share her opinions, no matter how intense and in-your-face they are. She sits down with Lesley Stahl this Sunday on 60 Minutes.”
Greene, you see, isn’t a seditionist who is trying to destroy the government but just a sassy southern opinionated lady.
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FDChief said on March 31, 2023 at 7:30 pm
Yeah, I saw that, Suzanne. Apparently “intense” is how you say “ignorant” at 30 Rock, and “in-your-face” is how you say “ill-informed”. Sigh.
Nothing says “I don’t get the whole “fascist” problem you keep talking about” like booking Empty G, the poster girl for angry and stupid QANutism.
We’re doomed.
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Mark P said on March 31, 2023 at 9:34 pm
60 Minutes — fearless journalism, as long as it doesn’t mean telling the scary truth.
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alex said on April 1, 2023 at 12:24 am
Lesley Stahl had an exclusive with Trump/Pence, back when the Trump/Pence sign still had the T boofing the P.
This was during the Republican convention of 2016. Our local blowhard GOP party chair was on the local news putting it on too, too thick about how Trump was, down deep, such a sweet person with an enormous heart and astounding humility that betrayed his gruff exterior. Beneficent and altruistic and a whole litany of smarmy superlatives coming out of a hack who looked like he knew he was reaching a new all-time low in debasing himself.
Then Trump and Pence go on with Lesley Stahl. Pence launches into the same spiel we just heard from local party chair. Trump points at his own forehead and interrupts Pence and says “Brains! Brains [you fool]!” every time Pence uses the word “heart.” It was hysterically funny but for the fact that this sicko was seriously the Republican nominee for president.
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Brandon said on April 1, 2023 at 3:19 am
The transcript of that 60 Minutes interview.
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Dave said on April 1, 2023 at 5:58 pm
Nothing to do with the current subject but everything to do with one of the most regular posters and one of his favorite things, as found in today’s Columbus Dispatch website but may be tucked behind a paywall:
https://www.dispatch.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2023/04/01/traveling-by-foot-shows-how-much-of-newark-earthworks-still-there/70042803007/
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Sherri said on April 1, 2023 at 6:16 pm
Fellow white people (and especially those of the male persuasion), should you find yourself in a discussion in a group of diverse people, and someone calls you out on your privilege, it is never helpful to say “I don’t like to feel dismissed just because I’m a white person (man).” No matter how bluntly you were called out. No matter how much your little fee-fees were hurt.
You can think it. You can go home later and throw a tantrum. But I guarantee it will not advance the discussion, will not help the relationship, will not do anything but make you look like an asshole, to say it out loud. Just shit up and listen for a change.
(Sorry, just had to run a meeting where a bunch of white men got bent out of shape because they didn’t want to see their power and how they were trying to use it.)
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Deborah said on April 1, 2023 at 8:11 pm
Thunderstorm in Manhattan now, after a warm day.
Still no Trump commotion today. Apparently people here loathe Trump.
We leave tomorrow.
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basset said on April 2, 2023 at 6:19 am
Sherri, how did this privilege manifest itself, and how was the situation resolved?
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Sherri said on April 2, 2023 at 12:43 pm
I can’t go into details, but basically I’ve got a minority of white men who effectively want a veto on anything they don’t like. They’re okay with women and POC running things, as long as they don’t do anything that’s different from what these white men would do, but when they do, the white men get unhappy, and want a committee to fix things, or board approval, or whatever. Someone else pointed out that this was racist micromanaging, and they threw a tantrum.
Resolved? Not really yet, except that they’re only a minority and so they lost the vote they wanted. The real resolution is that we got term limits put in a couple of years ago, so these guys will be gone soon. It’s not so much that they’re white men, they’re white men who’ve been used to running things for too long, and really think they still should be.
Not all white men, obviously, not even all white men in this situation.
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Julie Robinson said on April 2, 2023 at 2:01 pm
Sounds like the Three Rivers Festival board in Fort Wayne, which has churned through director after director in the last ten years. Fired the best one for no discernible reason. Now they’ve lost their two biggest financial sponsors, just three months before the festival. A member of our family had to be present for those meetings because of their job and would come home month after month pulling hair out in exasperation. I read that a couple of board members resigned, but I’ve no idea if they were the ones that needed to go, or from frustration.
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alex said on April 2, 2023 at 2:47 pm
Julie, I just saw a news item where donor Bill Bean, a notorious right-wing fuddy-duddy, says he withdrew from sponsorship of the festival in 2021 because of his objection to drag queens. And this was even before Tucker Carlson made a thing out of drag queens. The festival had added a drag show in an effort to be inclusive and it was a big draw. Bean is now holding this up as an example of people politicizing the festival and cramming a liberal agenda down people’s throats.
Politics is infecting just about everything these days. The real problem at the Philharmonic? The board president, who’s also the owner of a steel mill, is stridently anti-union and defeating the musicians’ union was more important to him than the fact that he was costing ticket holders an entire season of music and destroying the organization’s good will in the community. He finally capitulated when it became clear to him which side had popular support and which didn’t.
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Julie Robinson said on April 2, 2023 at 4:30 pm
The Phil has been a mess for years, top-heavy with too many pricey administrators, but hey, let’s keep the musicians in poverty. The changes they were asking would have left the musicians at their beck and call and unable to schedule other jobs, lessons, or even any kind of coordination with partners and kids. It was gratifying to see the community throw its support to the musicians, but there was a lot of poison put out there.
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Suzanne said on April 2, 2023 at 4:50 pm
We were Philharmonic season ticket holders for years but have not renewed. I know several of the musicians and how they were treated was horrible. It’s a good orchestra but even though they settled, this is going to damage them.
I haven’t been to the 3 Rivers Festival in years. It always seemed to draw a creepy crowd and there was so little I was interested in seeing or participating in. The food is over priced and it’s crowded and hot.
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Jeff Borden said on April 2, 2023 at 6:02 pm
Just finished watching LSU outplay Iowa in the women’s basketball title game and I keep thinking back to Title IX’s passage in 1972. Watching these astonishing athletes throughout the women’s tournament has been a delight.
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Sherri said on April 2, 2023 at 6:18 pm
The title game wasn’t as good as hoped, but the women’s tournament as a whole has been amazing this year. That game on Friday between Iowa and South Carolina was incredible, and I was there in person for Caitlin Clark’s triple double vs Louisville, along with what felt like the entire state of Iowa.
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Julie Robinson said on April 2, 2023 at 7:36 pm
In 1972 I was starting my junior year of high school. Previously we girls got the gym on Mondays after school for GAA, the Girls Athletic Association, and even that was grudgingly given. Now we could play real games, against other schools! I was lucky enough to play two years of basketball, where my height and my poor eyesight turned me into a defensive specialist.
The other sports, field hockey in the fall and track in the spring, were at the same time as marching band and the spring musical, so I guess I was a one sport wonder, lol.
My daughter started playing in fifth grade and today’s generation as toddlers. We weren’t allowed in the weight room, now our own Sherri competes in lifting. It truly amazes me.
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Jeff Gill said on April 2, 2023 at 7:36 pm
Just watched Stahl interview MTG on “60 Minutes,” and I’d say it was clear the Congresswoman does not believe in anything, other than her right to fundraise. A vast resonant emptiness.
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alex said on April 2, 2023 at 7:44 pm
Well, I watched Lesley Stahl and MTG. That’s 15 minutes of my life I won’t get back.
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Mark P said on April 2, 2023 at 9:16 pm
I really don’t know what to think of MTG. She’s “my” representative, but she would be far more at home pushing a grocery cart with all her belongings in it, and grabbing people by the lapel to spout random insanities. It makes no sense that she is a US representative. Except, given who we just had as president, it makes all the sense in the world, because we are living in an alternate reality. There is no way this is the real world.
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Deborah said on April 3, 2023 at 8:51 am
Our trip to Manhattan was, meh. I was so looking forward to it but it turned out to be just ok, nothing memorable. Walking the streets, which I normally love to do, was dirty and it seemed every building had dripping scaffolding in front of it. Central Park was lovely with flowering trees and bushes, much further into spring than Chicago, which doesn’t yet have any signs of spring that I can see yet. It was cold and windy in NY and I didn’t take my winter coat.
NY has the world beat on art museums to visit but you can only do that so long. Some of the newer ones are looking worn already. The Vessel is still closed because of leapers.
My sister-in-law was thrilled about the write up the Gego exhibit at the Guggenheim got https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/arts/design/gego-guggenheim-review.html the two pieces from her collection didn’t show up in the photos, however. After the exhibit opening my sister-in-law had a dinner at the Metropolitan Club for all of the family. The MC was very down at the heels and the food was mediocre. My husband and his brother had to buy ties before that event as neither had thought to bring one.
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Icarus said on April 3, 2023 at 9:41 am
I really don’t know what to think of MTG. She’s “my” representative,
My understanding is there was a time when politicians worked for their constituents, even the ones who didn’t vote for them, in hopes of winning them over.
Those days are gone, especially where MTG and the rest of the GQP are concerned.
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FDChief said on April 3, 2023 at 11:01 am
Read a brief piece talking about how Empty G damn near lost re-election largely because of her disinterest in constituent service, so this term she’s introduced a bill that her (“conservative”, natch) ranching supporters want – removing wolves from the ESA.
Apparently in her presentation of the bill in committee she opened conventionally then quickly veered into anti-abortion nuttery (fetus = endangered species!) thus proving that you can take the girl out of wingnuttery but not the wingnuttery out of the girl…
I know I keep saying this, but it’s not her. If this sort of lunatic nonsense didn’t keep getting her elected she’d be nothing more than a street corner ranter. It does, so unfortunately the rest of us have to deal with her fatheaded ass.
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Jenine said on April 3, 2023 at 11:21 am
I went to the WNIT basketball championship game and watched the Kansas Jayhawks bring it home. Lots of fun! I was happy the women got to have Allen Fieldhouse in full roar for them.
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Deborah said on April 3, 2023 at 11:26 am
Empty G that’s a good one. But I thought she won her re-election soundly? Boebert didn’t, she barely won in Colorado.
Is spring showing up yet where you folks live?
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Mark P said on April 3, 2023 at 11:44 am
I don’t know why MTG would be interested in taking wolves off the endangered species list, other than just trying to hurt animals. There are no wolves in her district in NW Georgia. Constituent services? We don’t need no stinking constituent services. She closed her office where I live, in a county with a population of about 100,000.
Spring has been here for a while. The dogwoods are nearly done blooming and our bulbs seem to be growing about two inches a day. The maples have dropped thousands of seeds. Our zoyzia is already green. I have a feeling that summer won’t wait till June this year.
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Sherri said on April 3, 2023 at 11:47 am
Yes, there are signs of spring here! The cherry trees are blooming. You can see videos of the cherry trees on the UW campus here: https://www.washington.edu/video/campus-webcams/
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Julie Robinson said on April 3, 2023 at 12:02 pm
Wolves or none in her district, it appeals to the whole huntin’ Second Amendment crowd.
Spring? Ovah. Close to 90° everyday for the last ten.
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Joe Kobiela said on April 3, 2023 at 2:36 pm
Julie@65,
You live in Orlando correct? I flew a charter into execution Friday and overnighted till Sunday, we stayed at the Hampton inn south of downtown by a big hospital, I took a run Saturday morning around the neighborhood and I must say it was very nice older homes on brick streets around a couple of lakes, very well kept older homes, pleasantly surprised.
Pilot Joe
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Sherri said on April 3, 2023 at 2:43 pm
Evidently Iowa fans are a little upset that Angel Reese did some trash talking to Caitlin Clark after the championship game. They’ve got no room to talk. I saw Caitlin Clark play two games in Seattle, and while she’s an amazing player, there’s plenty of attitude and trash-talking and playing to the crowd in her game. Also whining about every single foul. A lot. She gets just as physical as the teams guarding her, she’s no precious little nice Iowa girl. She’s a baller.
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Julie Robinson said on April 3, 2023 at 4:04 pm
There was more than a little racism in the criticism of Angel Reese. I believe the word ghetto was used.
Joe, we drive through that neighborhood on the way to our doctors, and I know those brick streets well. A little massage for the kidneys, my husband always says. Old Orlando is very different from the theme park area. We’re also in old Orlando.
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susan said on April 3, 2023 at 4:34 pm
This is one of Randy’s best—“Grumpy Trumpy Felon from Jamaica in Queens!”
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JodiP said on April 3, 2023 at 5:02 pm
Spring is a distant dream here in Minneapolis. We got 6″ of awful wet heavy snow on Friday. Lots of downed trees and many people without power.
It’s really late this year–usually I have a few bulbs poking up, and even chives, but most of my garden is still under snow. We haven’t seen 60 since sometime in November.
But–I started some seeds this weekend under lights indoors so I’ll be ready to plant in late May!
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David C said on April 3, 2023 at 5:29 pm
It tried to get up to 60° but only made 59°. We got 12″ of snow a week ago Saturday and it’s almost all gone. I managed to get in one last snowshoeing session so I didn’t mind too much.
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Suzanne said on April 3, 2023 at 6:18 pm
I imagine that the 60 Minutes leadership and Leslie Stahl thought interviewing MTG would be good for ratings and they likely thought it would appall people to hear some of her wingnuttery. What they don’t get, and never will, is that out here in the hinterlands, people won’t see her statements as at all odd. People out here in the hinterlands take it as the gospel truth. It’s mainstream thinking.
Airing her lies simply makes her seem more mainstream, will prove to Trumpians & QAnon believers see that even the MSM can’t deny her greatness.
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Jeff Borden said on April 3, 2023 at 6:24 pm
I was disappointed a prestige news program like “60 Minutes” would book a flat-out anti-semitic moron who endorses sedition and violence, but thought it unfair to criticize before watching. I thought Lesley Stahl let MTG get away with far too much. . .sighing “wow” when a whackadoodle accuses an entire political party of being pedophiles isn’t my idea of hard-hitting journalism. BTW, my favorite snarky political site, Wonkette, reported today the ratings for “60 Minutes” were starkly lower than normal and that the MTG segment, in particular, was viewed by a small audience.
The circus hits Manhattan tomorrow. Ordinarily, I’d feel sorry for the cops who have to deal with the MAGAts, but I suspect few will show up. The true believers are never going to set foot in a liberal Gomorrah like NYC.
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Deborah said on April 3, 2023 at 8:25 pm
The Randy Rainbow link is fantastic.
I watched the Empty G (thanks FDChief) interview today on You Tube. Stahl pushed back a little but not nearly enough.
I did some errands today, walking as usual, and Chicago is finally starting to show some signs of spring, sprouts are coming up, barely. Tomorrow thunderstorms are predicted. I was not expecting to see Manhattan so much further along than Chicago, but because of their proximity to the Atlantic the climate is temperate, I guess.
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Jeff Borden said on April 3, 2023 at 9:15 pm
Deborah,
There is no season more cruel than a Midwestern spring. Usually spring is gray cool, windy, wet.
The occasional sunny, warm day is generally a tease.
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FDChief said on April 3, 2023 at 10:05 pm
Hmmm. Lemme take a look; between the rancher constituents and the narrow re-election that sounds more like the OTHER whackaloon GOP bee-yotch (i.e. Boebert).
Wouldn’t put it past Empty G to pull a doofy stunt like that, mind. She’s nuttier than a pantry full of fruitcakes.
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Dexter Friend said on April 4, 2023 at 2:46 am
I would guess the TV ratings were very low for the NCAA BB game last night. Any fan of the game sorta knew this was going to happen…a 5th seed has never come close to a title and it never had a chance last night as UConn thoroughly thrashed SDSU. UConn was not a “sexy” team this season, dismissed early, unranked pre-season, dismissed again in January as a loser…only to catch fire in March. Indiana U did this in 1981 with Isiah Thomas, as they lost 7 games but got hot in March to win the title. Jim Nantz is now done with basketball telecasting…is he still with golf on TV?
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Suzanne said on April 4, 2023 at 8:25 am
I was on campus at IU in ‘81 and what fun that was! I rarely went to the games but still enjoyed the ride, especially hitting the streets after the big game was won. I remember they weren’t that great early in the season and even during the tourney, they started every game slow, looking sluggish and out of sorts. Then they picked up steam and won every game. Several years ago, I saw a documentary about IU basketball, Knight, and the championship team that claimed the team turned the corner after one of the assistant coaches finally impressed upon Knight that Isiah Thomas was not his typical player, that he would not be able to break him down & rebuild him like he wanted, that he just needed to turn him loose and let him play his own way. Knight, surprisingly, did so and we all know the result!
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basset said on April 4, 2023 at 11:35 pm
Forty-two years ago at right about this minute, Mrs. B and I had left our wedding reception and driven her Pinto to the Holiday Inn in downtown Kalamazoo, only to find that our room had no towels. You’d think hotel people would know better. They corrected the situation pretty quickly, though.
Headed for Jackson, Mississippi the next day for a job interview. Took it, and spent two years wondering just where in the hell we were and what was going on.
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