An acquaintance back in Fort Wayne has taken to sending me Tim Goeglein columns, which are appearing with increasing frequency in the Journal Gazette, the surviving daily newspaper. The latest one was the usual cliché-strewn mess, a reminiscence about his childhood piano teacher who gave him his love of music and once played the most beautiful piece he’d ever heard or ever will hear, etc. (It’s not paywalled, unless you’ve reached your three-article limit for the month, so hey — enjoy.) I read it twice, then drafted a letter to the editor, which I let marinate through the day. I don’t think I’m going to send it, but in the interest of not letting 250 words go to waste, I’ll paste it here:
I haven’t lived in Fort Wayne for nearly 20 years, but given the role I played in the loss of his White House job, I’ve since taken a particular interest in Timothy Goeglein’s writing, appearing occasionally in the JG’s opinion section. As a writer myself, and as one who wants everyone to be a better one, sometimes this is painful; I’ve rarely seen such floridly composed word salads, to use a phrase Tim might employ. I won’t call them “hate reads” — I’m trying to be a better person in my dotage — but my fingers often twitch toward an imaginary blue pencil to strip the lard, the filigree, and especially the adverbs out of his rhapsodical tributes to whatever misty water-colored memory is striking him today.
I’m also an editor, and know that self-editing is difficult. So can’t anyone at the Journal Gazette take a little hot air out of these balloons, perhaps by paring Tim’s “tall and willowy, thin as a rail” piano teacher down to just “willowy,” as that word literally means tall and thin?
To Tim, I offer my services as a writing coach. My email’s easy to find. Give me one paragraph, 100 words tops, on…something you dislike. Make it tight. No adverbs. We’ll start there. You know what they say about a journey of a thousand miles, but as a gesture of goodwill, I’ll take it with you.
The offer stands, if he happens to read this. I doubt the JG would have run it, and ultimately, I suspect Tim thinks he’s really a pretty great writer. You can’t solve a problem until you admit you have one, right?
If you live around here, you know how insane the weather has been this week. Yesterday it was nudging 70 degrees. Today the wind is howling and the temperature is plummeting. It’s 28 as I write this; it was 56 when I worked out at 6 this morning. Do you guys have the wind map bookmarked? You should; it’s a lovely presentation of how the breeze moves across the continental U.S., and on a day like today, especially so.
So, the Michigan primary came out pretty much as expected. The big story today is the declare-uncommitted vote against Biden, which is being spun as danger-Will-Robinson to the president, and perhaps it is, but I doubt it. I heard, before the voting began, that the uncommitted movement was hoping to get 10,000, an absurdly low number. Dearborn is a city of roughly 100,000, more than half of them Arab immigrants or native-born Americans. And it’s only one of several municipalities with significant Arab populations expected to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Then fold in the young voters of all ethnicities who are appalled by the Gaza war, and you come up with something closer to the actual count last night: 101,436.
Others have pointed out that it’s disingenuous to assume all these voters are Democrats to begin with. Arab Americans around here are socially conservative, and recent culture wars have driven many of them back into the arms of the GOP, which is where they were before the Gulf War(s). There is a significant Dem presence there, but it’s not a solid wall. My hope is that these people decide, in November, that a no-choice vote at the top of the November ticket is one for Trump, and as bad as things are in Gaza now, they will be 10 times worse with Bibi’s buddy back in the White House.
As always, we will see. And P.S. Nikki Haley stole 3x that many votes from you-know-who.
OK, gotta suit up for lifeguarding swimming lessons. I hope the natatorium heat adjusted to the plummeting temperature.
David C said on February 28, 2024 at 5:28 pm
I love a map that isn’t color coded. My poor color blind eyes don’t detect all the colors needed. It’s pretty nice when there’s painting being contemplated and I can just shrug and say “Whatever you want” though.
212 chars
ROGirl said on February 28, 2024 at 5:53 pm
The weather has been wild over the past 24 hours. I had to run the AC on my way home from work yesterday, and today I saw snow swirling around at one point. Last night an enormous blast of thunder woke me out of a sound sleep sometime after midnight. Someone at work who lives nearby said he heard it too.
305 chars
brian stouder said on February 28, 2024 at 6:01 pm
This was a tremendous post! I ended up with a big smile, as the thought of the effect of ‘plummeting temperatures at the nat’ overtook me!
142 chars
alex said on February 28, 2024 at 6:42 pm
Tim’s sentences were much tighter when he was a plagiarist.
If I were one of his former teachers, I’d be mortified at the possibility he remembered me and might slime me with one of his treacly-gooey tributes.
Too bad William F’Buckley (cue Ernestine on Laugh-In) isn’t still around so we could ask him whether it’s true he and Tim were yachting buddies in Nantucket, mother-fuck-it.
386 chars
jim said on February 28, 2024 at 7:08 pm
I’m giving Alex the comment win regardless of what anyone else writes.
70 chars
Deborah said on February 28, 2024 at 8:28 pm
Good post Nancy.
At the risk of writing something herewith that doesn’t meet any proper writing rules, here are my Tokyo observations so far: We got out yesterday to see some of the city. It’s interesting. Not exactly what I was expecting, so far it seems like a very wealthy city. Lots of contemporary architecture. Taxi drivers are very polite and don’t drive like bats out of hell. The rapid transit is impossible to figure out but very clean. Cleanliness is a big deal here. I’m not crazy about some of the food, fish and salad for breakfast aren’t appealing to me. They do have these fantastic super fluffy pancakes but not for breakfast, they are delicious. We went out for sushi last night with my husband’s former students and there was so much food I almost threw up. I like sushi but mostly just the tuna kind, last night I had among many other things, sea urchin which I found to taste horrible with icky texture. The guy preparing the sushi was right in front of me and I felt it would be impolite not to eat it all. I always think of Japanese food to be minimal but the guy kept serving it piece after piece one at a time. You have to shove the whole piece in your mouth at once because there’s no way to cut it with chop sticks and it’s considered inappropriate to eat it another way. At any rate I will definitely be eating more of those fluffy, fluffy pancakes on this trip.
More touring today and unfortunately more sushi tonight with the former students, hopefully this time it will be diners choice and not servers choice.
1565 chars
Deborah said on February 28, 2024 at 8:43 pm
Nothing to do with Tokyo, I wonder what the evangelicals think of this https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/28/humpback-whales-sex-photographed-homosexual-behavior
175 chars
Dorothy said on February 28, 2024 at 9:01 pm
We got a tornado siren at 5:40 or so this morning and hightailed it to the basement. It was supposed to be just until 6:15. Then the power went out and stayed out for 135 minutes or so, give or take. Some homes in Hilliard were damaged but thank goodness, no injuries.
Some of you know already (Facebook or IG) that my sister died this past weekend. I missed a call from the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s office while I was outside with the dog, picking up my mail. As soon as I saw and heard the transcription of the voice mail, I knew my sister was dead. The phone call confirmed it.
She was a sad, toxic person. She wasn’t always that way. I won’t get into any details because it’s really no one’s business. It’s hard enough for my family to know her faults and history. But a slice of my heart says no one deserves to have a life like she had. She’d become a hoarder. The pictures the building manager sent me were horrifying. She lived in subsidized housing. She was disabled. I’m confident she was psychologically damaged as well. My siblings and I had no more happy feelings about her. And now just trying to do what she asked for her cremation and Mass is a struggle. I’ve barely had time to mourn the loss of my first sibling (there are eight more….!) because of all the phone calls and texts and emails. It’s exhausting. And all of this coming on the heels of a lovely trip to Raleigh for QuiltCon.
I came home with a bad cough and headache and aches. (It ain’t Covid). I will get through this. I’m trying to limit my crankiness but it’s not easy. Please have some good thoughts for me and my departed sister, Lou.
1669 chars
alex said on February 28, 2024 at 9:03 pm
Did the undersea videographers have the sound turned on?
Evangelicals are impervious to science, but if they hear the “Schlapp, Schlapp, Schlapp” it might clue them in about what they’re seeing.
195 chars
alex said on February 28, 2024 at 9:08 pm
Dorothy, I’m so sorry.
22 chars
brian stouder said on February 28, 2024 at 9:53 pm
Dorothy, I’m sure all the NNC regulars (including me!) join Alex in genuinely wishing your family and you strength going forward.
131 chars
MarkH said on February 28, 2024 at 10:18 pm
Dorothy – It is indeed heartbreaking to read of your sister. Condolences and as Jeff G. would say, Peace and Grace to you and your family.
138 chars
LAMary said on February 28, 2024 at 11:20 pm
I’ve lost two siblings, very different from each other. One was sick most of his life, the other had a massive stroke. Neither was easy to deal with but for different reasons. One more sibling is in very bad health right now and I’m braced for impact when I receive that phone call.
282 chars
Julie Robinson said on February 28, 2024 at 11:49 pm
Geez, Timmy. Karl Hass hosted Adventures in Good Music, not Adventures in Great Music. Still using those same rigorous research skills, as well as extensive use of the dictionary and thesaurus to stretch a three paragraph story to the length of a column. He leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Anyway, we’re in NYC and just saw Sweeney Todd for the second time. (You have to go back when they recast the leads, doncha know.) Also lots of powerful art at the Whitney.
Just getting here was an adventure in itself, and I thought our flight was going to be on the news with fights and passengers being carried off by security, but thankfully cooler heads finally prevailed. A family of five was on the wrong flight and refused to get off the plane. The gate had been changed but they must have missed the announcement–language issues–and somehow the scanner let them through.
Next, some passengers had to change their seats to accommodate a pair of unaccompanied kids. Lots of bitching about having paid for the seat and wheedling for a free flight voucher; c’mon, really? They only needed one more to move and we could finally close the doors, only she refused to leave her seat and would only flash her phone with a grainy picture of a paper ticket. She finally called her daughter to interpret and handed over the phone, but they saw the ticket was in someone else’s name. She was pretty elderly, had no English, and must have been terrified. They seemed to tell her that if she moved they would let her stay on the flight.
Whew! Then a person in my row needed the bathroom, and as I was getting up to let him back in, we hit some BIG turbulence, and I was flat on my back in the aisle. I watched my glasses sail off in a big arc as the plane plummeted, and all I could think of was negotiating five days without them. As people rushed forward to help, I asked them to look for them; did I mention the cabin was darkened? I was sure someone would step on them.
Miracle of miracles, the glasses were found and a nice young man helped me up. They have a couple small scratches and I’m a little sore, and thank goodness for Aleve.
2145 chars
MarkH said on February 29, 2024 at 2:00 am
Nancy, when you led off your post here with recent Tim Goeglein adventures were you aware that today, Feb. 29th, is the 16th anniversary of Nancy’s Great Goeglein Bust? Sure you were. Recommended reading all the way through, comments included, Copycat, 2008. Names I haven’t seen in a long time and a lot of names I can’t remember ever seeing here in the last 18 years I’ve been observing. You made quite the impact.
416 chars
Deborah said on February 29, 2024 at 3:42 am
So sorry Dorothy, it makes it all much harder when it’s a conflicted relationship.
The good news here in Tokyo about our dinner tonight with the former students is that it’s not traditional sushi again but it’s French cuisine.
Today we went to a different part of the city that was less wealthy and more densely populated, more like what I was expecting, we had a late light lunch and no breakfast earlier so that we don’t overdo the food intake like we did last night.
I was ready to take the plunge into buying baggy pants rather than wearing skinny jeans here but I can’t find any that I like the fit of because sizes are so different here. Americans are so much larger.
693 chars
FDChief said on February 29, 2024 at 6:54 am
I’m a bit surprised that someone who writes for a living can’t write worth a lick, but bad writing in general? It’s all over Hell.
I have vivid kid memories of my father slashing red pen all over reports he’d bring home and hissing at the quality of the prose. Then I grew into an engineering geologist with staff writing reports for me and had deja vu; the writing (when it wasn’t full of subliterate mispellings and grammatical errors) was word salad.
I had a junior engineer whose field reports read like Victorian novels where the authors were paid by the word. I recall at one point tossing his latest epic back to him with the advice: “I don’t want to know how you felt about this proof-roll. I don’t want to know how the truck felt. Or how the soil felt. This isn’t fucking Creative Writing. Describe what you saw in simple declarative terms and resubmit this mess.”
It took him four more tries.
931 chars
ROGirl said on February 29, 2024 at 9:17 am
I’ve worked with engineers for a long time and can attest to their lack of written communication skills.
104 chars
Jeff Gill said on February 29, 2024 at 9:20 am
Dorothy, the difficult relationships are the hardest griefs, always: my very best to you and your siblings. Yesterday would have been my father-in-law’s 95th, and two months later his passing is still a challenge for us to process . . . but bless him, at least not in terms of mounds of stuff.
Nancy, ain’t nobody editing nothing in print these days, but you knew that. And it’s sad.
386 chars
Julie Robinson said on February 29, 2024 at 9:43 am
Dorothy, I commented on FB that your sister sounded like mine, but the details all match up. Mine hadn’t turned against us, but she had become a problem. I’m so sorry. What helped me was to remember her earlier in life.
219 chars
Dorothy said on February 29, 2024 at 10:12 am
Thanks to all of you for the kind words. Julie you’re exactly right. I’ve decided I need to be the one to write the eulogy and I just finished my first draft. And I thought the same thing. Acknowledge her faults, but also make sure people understand she wasn’t always like this. I wrote down my favorite Lou/Dorothy story and I think everyone knows it already, but her friends won’t know it. Nor nieces and nephews. I’ll end it with people smiling, or that’s my hope, anyway.
anyone who is in Pittsburgh able to recommend a place to have a meal after the Mass that has room to accommodate who knows how many people? And doesn’t cost $100 a plate?! I haven’t started making calls yet but I know it’ll cost. It’s the not knowing how many to expect that is confounding me.
772 chars
nancy said on February 29, 2024 at 10:15 am
Echoing what everybody already said, Dorothy. And no, I didn’t realize we were at the anniversary of the Goeglein explosion. Weird!
131 chars
basset said on February 29, 2024 at 11:14 am
I’m still doing a little writing in retirement, after this thread there’s no way y’all are gonna see any of my stuff, though.
131 chars
4dbirds said on February 29, 2024 at 11:37 am
Dorothy, I am so sorry for your loss.
37 chars
alex said on February 29, 2024 at 11:52 am
L’Affaire Goeglein happened in a leap year on 02/29 so it’s a rare treat when we get to see the original post and how it unfolded in real time. And how breathtakingly foolish he was to pass off the essays of others practically verbatim as his own.
It brought us an enlarged circle of friends who enjoyed the camaraderie and witty banter, not to mention growing concern for the future of our democracy. Reflecting on that particular post, it reminds me how so many of us were already experiencing hypervigilance and frayed nerves about creeping neo-fascism. Sixteen years later and we’ve become habituated to living under the threat of an impending authoritarian takeover and a Republican party that no longer bothers to conceal its intent but instead boasts about it.
I have a feeling that today, were such a fraud exposed, the offender wouldn’t apologize for his misdeeds or get fired for them. He would double down on asserting his moral rectitude while attacking “wokeism” and “fake media” and “the radical left.”
1020 chars
Jeff Borden said on February 29, 2024 at 12:01 pm
Condolences to you, Dorothy. I can’t imagine the death of a sibling…yet. My sister was diagnosed about 18 months ago with ALS, so it’s likely what you’re facing will present itself within the next few years. My research says most people live three to five years after an ALS diagnosis. It’s a truly horrible disease.
Re: the letter to Fort Wayne. Writing angry letters helps me blow off steam, but I’ve rarely mailed one. There are probably three or four addressed to John Roberts in my documents file, a couple to various lizards in the House and one to the president of Fox News. I never bothered to send them because I knew the subjects would never see them, but it still felt good.
Mitch McConnell will ride off into the sunset soon, secure in the knowledge he helped undercut decades of work by those fighting for women’s rights by packing the courts –including our insufferable SCOTUS– with mega-right-wing assholes. Thanks, Mitch. Go choke on some fried chicken.
And speaking of SCOTUS, didn’t you just always figure they’d ride to the rescue of the orange cancer? Now, will they commit the ultimate atrocity and elevate this vulgar sack of ugly into royalty? Will they agree he alone is above the law because he is tRump? What a mess.
1256 chars
Suzanne said on February 29, 2024 at 12:09 pm
My sympathy to you & your family. Families are such a mixed blessing. They can be wonderful or not so much or a mix of both and we don’t get to choose what we get.
I didn’t read the Goeglein piece. It took up nearly the whole dang page in the paper! I loved Haas’s Adventures in Good Music so Timmy getting the name wrong tells me he is lazy. A quick internet search would have given him the right name. There is even a Friends of Karl Haas’ Adventures in Good Music Facebook group for heaven’s sake! He is trying to punch way above his pay grade and not succeeding.
583 chars
Scout said on February 29, 2024 at 2:38 pm
I’m sorry for your loss, Dorothy. It sounds as though it happened years ago, but now there is finality.
I’m feeling all twitchy between the SCOTUS nonsense, the never ending government funding debacle and the media’s need for a horse race which leads them to report that absolutely everything is a huge problem for Biden. We knew this year was going to be excruciating, but jeezuz.
Happy Goeglein Day to all of you who help keep me sane through these crazy times.
471 chars
LAMary said on February 29, 2024 at 2:44 pm
I’m just going to say it. Tim looks like a total douchebag. His writing is douchey as well.
91 chars
Peter said on February 29, 2024 at 5:10 pm
Dorothy, I am very sorry for your loss.
39 chars
Deborah said on February 29, 2024 at 8:44 pm
For those interested our meal last night with the former students living now in Tokyo was excellent, we went to a restaurant that was a fusion of French and Japanese. There were 12 courses, each just a few bites but at the end I was stuffed. There was a wine pairing of 8 different wines during the event, we opted for half glasses of each wine or we would definitely have all been under the table by the end. The name of the place is Abyss, very small, few tables, our group of 5 had our own little room that had glass doors separating us from the other tables. It was very pleasant.
One of the students is having a gallery opening one woman show tomorrow night, which is one of the reasons we’re here in Tokyo.
This afternoon my husband is giving a lecture about the architect Mies Van der Rohe at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, which is another reason we’re here. As some of you know we live in a Mies designed building in Chicago and my husband taught architecture in the Mies designed Crown Hall at IIT, Illinois Institute of Technology. I believe Peter a commenter here graduated from IIT, but before my husband taught there.
Last summer a bunch of Japanese architecture students came to Chicago and while there visited some of the units in our building and other residential Mies buildings, ours was one of the units they visited which was how my husband got connected with the professor of the touring class, Kazuyo Sejima of the Japanese architecture firm Sanaa and she invited him to speak.
1518 chars
basset said on February 29, 2024 at 10:44 pm
We are so sorry for your loss, Dorothy.
39 chars
Jeff Gill said on March 1, 2024 at 7:29 am
Speaking of hacks writing columns, I have a new venue here in Licking County, where I get to associate with both college students & Connie Schultz (& sometimes she lets her husband come along and hang out, too). My first piece up which I’m actually quite pleased with.
https://www.thereportingproject.org/wandering-licking-county-records-show-hidden-african-figures-in-plain-sight/
392 chars
LAMary said on March 1, 2024 at 8:37 am
FD Chief, George Saunders was a Colorado School of Mines grad, a geophysical engineering major and he wrote Lincoln in the Bardo. Okay, he went to grad school for writing. Some boss probably told him to knock off the fancy writing so he decided to change direction completely. I knew a few CSM guys, one was a boyfriend for three years, but I never saw any flowery writing. Lots of rocks and assorted tools but no fiction. That boyfriend, btw now has masters degrees in geological and hydrological engineering.
510 chars
ROGirl said on March 1, 2024 at 8:40 am
Good lord, that article was interminable, and execrably bad. I stopped trying to read it and had to scroll to the end so I wouldn’t waste any more precious minutes of my time.
And I am sorry for your loss as well, Dorothy.
225 chars
alex said on March 1, 2024 at 9:18 am
Thanks for sharing, Jeff.
It looks like the Reverend who recorded the 18th-century happenings assumed that the wealth and power of the Shawnee community matriarch derived from her deceased husband, in addition to the assumption that the Black people in their community were enslaved.
If the Shawnee societal structure was anything like that of the Zunis, it was matriarchal. Women owned the homes and property and made children with whomever they chose for the job. Men functioned like worker bees doing the hunting and gathering and protecting of the colony.
I’ve read that the Eastern Woodland natives had a much better grasp of genetics than the colonials and they sought to interbreed with Blacks and Whites to expand their gene pool and develop immunity to disease.
782 chars
Jeff Gill said on March 1, 2024 at 9:52 am
Yep, Alex, well analysed. I am fortunate to have made friends with two of the current Shawnee chiefs (there are four federally-recognized Shawnee nations), and they agree that it’s likely the “squaa” (the term in the 1773 account which we edited in the print story) was actually a matriarchal chief in her own right, with Dan’l Elleot more the trader & appendage to her status, but Rev. Jones wouldn’t have seen that — noting his use of “pretended wife” marking his privileging of formal Christian marriage as normative. Both chiefs also felt that she would not have owned slaves, and that “esteemed” meant what I suggest it did, but were reluctant to say that as an absolute, because they note ruefully that on the pre-Revolutionary frontier there were some Shawnee who enslaved people and sold them. So I tried to tap dance cautiously around all of that.
It was the established presence of African American persons in this area, well before any Euro-American settlers, which struck me . . . especially as I had to read this passage a few dozen times over a couple of decades before *I* saw them, right there all the time.
1131 chars
FDChief said on March 1, 2024 at 10:04 am
LAMary re: Saunders – geology has a long literary tradition, going back to the Victorian founders of the modern science, people like Lyell and Hutton. The requirement to write clearly and concisely was the expectation I met when I took my baccalaureate in the late Seventies. I assumed that everyone in my profession had similar expectations.
That’s why I was so struck by the opposite; how much really poor writing I ran across, both from geological and engineering professionals. It was shocking to me because I just assumed that most everyone in the biz was more like Saunders or Hutton than some fifth-grade D student trying to fill word count requirements with nonsense…
In international news I see my old heroes the IDF are doing their best to replace the “plucky little Israel” meme of the Six-Day War with the image of heavily armed Israelis gunning down women and kiddies. As bin Laden chuckles in Hell and quotes Napoleon to his demons, never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.
What a ghastly nightmare.
1047 chars
Icarus said on March 1, 2024 at 10:14 am
slightly off topic but in the spirit of I let marinate through the day. I don’t think I’m going to send it,
Periodically I get contacted by Call Center Recruiters. They are pushy, aggressive and English is not their first language. Depending on what level of contact info they have, they will Inbox me on LinkedIn, email me, text me and call me all within a span of 1 minute.
Today I was tempted to write back to one who called me to tell me he sent me an email I need to respond to: “Please don’t call me 1 minute after emailing me. It is annoying and I have other priorities and will get to your email when I can”.
But it would be lost on him because he is under pressure from his Overlord to produce quickly. Furthermore they have been trained to expect the candidate to be so grateful they are offering them a job that I will bend over backwards to accommodate their timeline.
908 chars
LAMary said on March 1, 2024 at 11:58 am
Those call center recruiters are mostly calling from India, some from the Philippines. They route the calls through US area codes
129 chars
Jenine said on March 1, 2024 at 12:10 pm
@Jeff G, I really enjoyed reading the article. I think you threaded the needle and offered new information. Glad you have a writing gig you’re excited about
156 chars
LAMary said on March 1, 2024 at 1:25 pm
There is nothing plucky about Netanyahu.
40 chars
Deborah said on March 1, 2024 at 2:46 pm
George Saunders is a favorite of mine, I especially liked his story collection, “The Tenth of December”.
My husband’s lecture went well, there was another speaker too, but my husband’s talk was much more poetic. I was proud. The art museum turned out to be in a preserved art deco house where an emperor’s son had lived pre-WW2.
Afterwards we went to have, guess what… sushi again, with the group that organized the lecture. But this time I learned my lesson and asked for no rice. Sashimi is much less filling, after all of the courses sushi can be quite filling. And yes there was sea urchin again but it tasted much better and much less slimy.
It’s very early Saturday morning here, we go to the gallery opening of one of the former students, before that we go to the architectural office of Sanaa to have a look around. In the architectural world this is a big deal.
Sunday is the Tokyo marathon near our hotel which has complicated street closings which will make getting around challenging. Monday we leave for Kyoto.
1050 chars
alex said on March 1, 2024 at 5:43 pm
Is FentanOL the new NUKE-yuh-ler?
I swear, I’ve had it up to here with local political ads raging about FentanOL coming through BIDEN’s OPEN BORDERs and KILLING OUR KIDs. Not to mention all of the other claptrap about WOKEism, the radical left, etc.
This is one of those years where I don’t have any Democrats to vote for in the primary and it’s making me reconsider my pledge not to ever vote for a Republican again because I might be able to at least help save us from the gubernatorial or congressional candidates who are the most fucking batshit crazy.
Deborah, I envy you. I love sashimi these days (white rice does terrible things to my blood sugar) and I’m sure what you’re getting is fresher than anything served in the restaurants around here. And sea urchin has always been one of my favorites. You must have gotten a bad one the other night. And now I’ve got the munchies for Japanese.
908 chars
Jeff Gill said on March 2, 2024 at 8:52 am
If you want to be encouraged, I was asked to be judge last night for Denison University’s sixth “Podcastathon” for the Journalism Department — which is not much older than that. Packed a lecture hall with the teams and runners-up, the president showed up for the opening at any case, and we had seven final entries plus a “community” entry (no credit, just done for the pleasure of the work). I had some hard work, but awarded a first place and two honorable mentions . . . they were ALL good work. The Ohio NPR reporter and I made the students all look very thoughtful when we observed that running from 6 to 8 minutes they would all need to cut their pieces by at least half to get on air.
The storytelling, social awareness, and insights in the eight segments were quite encouraging for all of us olds. Most of the entries were seniors whom we’re unleashing on the marketplace this spring, and may they all find venues!
926 chars
LAMary said on March 2, 2024 at 10:49 am
I heard this the other day. I’m sure you can figure out who said it.
“Everybody I speak to says how horrible it is,” he said during an event at the border on Thursday. “Nobody [can] explain to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don’t speak languages — we have languages coming into our country, we have nobody that even speaks those languages. They are truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them.”
460 chars
tajalli said on March 2, 2024 at 1:20 pm
“languages coming into our country”
Yes, like the Pratchett’s trunk with all the legs except they’re dictionaries! Lots of legs. With pages.
145 chars
Jeff Gill said on March 2, 2024 at 2:41 pm
Spanish speakers: 574 million as first or second language
Chinese speakers: 1.35 billion speak one of the dialects of it as a first language
Creole speakers: 10-11 million as first language
Portuguese speakers: 230 million native speakers, some 250 million total as first or second language
299 chars
Deborah said on March 2, 2024 at 3:40 pm
Speaking of languages:
We had another pleasant get together with my husband’s former students and this time with their friends too. After the art opening we went with them to a Thai restaurant. All of the young people at our table were architects, a very international group from these countries:
Moldova
Taiwan
Indonesia
Sweden
Italy
China
Korea
India
Australia
And us from the US of course. The gallery manager was from Florida.
Weirdly no one was Japanese. The Japanese are very open to immigrants because their population is declining.
It was a fun evening.
I forgot to mention that at that lecture my husband gave Friday about Mies Van der Rohe, Rahm Emanuel was expected to show up but didn’t. He’s the current US ambassador to Japan.
But the former ambassador of Brazil for Japan was there and he’s the nicest guy, a big Mies fan who just happened to be back in Tokyo that day for some reason.
One more day in Tokyo and then we go to Kyoto on Monday.
974 chars
FDChief said on March 2, 2024 at 4:31 pm
Netanyahu? No.
But I was ten in 1967 and army-mad. The news film of the IDF fighting what looked like a heroic defense was what stuck in my mind for decades. I’ll bet a lot of my late-Boomer contemporaries felt the same way; Israel was the little guy surrounded by big enemies who survived by toughness, nerve, and craft.
It took years of watching my former heroes turn into prison guards and conquistadors in the Territories to break that habit of thought. Part of me still grieves.
But it’s clear that whatever idealism was originally part of the Zionist movement has been burned out by decades of war and occupation.
Having enemies doesn’t excuse you becoming monsters.
691 chars
FDChief said on March 2, 2024 at 4:35 pm
Have Japanese attitudes changed that much? I know a lot of people are worried about aging and depopulation, but last time I read any deep dive into it most Japanese were still pretty unhappy with the idea of importing non-Japanese people. The homogeneous character of the majority culture was more important than rejuvenating the population.
I could see that decades of slow decline might change that, though.
412 chars
Jeff Borden said on March 2, 2024 at 5:04 pm
FDChief,
While not as dire as Japan, you could say the good ol’ USA is facing a similar situation and damned in MORE immigration isn’t the answer. In 2000, the average American was 30. In 2020, the average was 38. It will likely be in the low ’40s by 2030. Americans are simply not reproducing at a replacement level any more. And no wonder. For all the rhetoric about how much we love children and treasure “life,” the nation doesn’t make it easy on parents. We need a lot more tax breaks for parents, easy to access and reasonably priced medical care for mothers and children, increased maternal and paternal leaves after birth, guaranteed pre-K and other preschool programs. That said, most European nations offer a lot of those things and birth rates are still below replacement level. So, until we go back to the days of the Irish Catholic households with six or eight or even 10 children, maybe we ought to welcome the newcomers. We need them.
952 chars
David C said on March 2, 2024 at 5:36 pm
The dairy industry in Wisconsin would collapse if not for undocumented workers. Farmers admit this. Yet they’re still going to vote for TFG. Like everyone who favors fascists, they think they’ll the be exempted from stupid, arbitrary edicts from dear leader. They won’t be the ones falling out of windows. It’ll be someone else. Someone who probably deserved it. They won’t believe it could affect them until the see the floors of the building fly by in reverse order at 32ft/^2.
479 chars
LAMary said on March 2, 2024 at 7:20 pm
Agriculture, hotels, restaurants, food processing: all dependent on immigrant labor. Construction too. Good luck if t-rump has his way.
135 chars
alex said on March 2, 2024 at 7:30 pm
My friend in Chicago who’s become an Althouse acolyte tried to engage me a while back in talk about how the U.S. isn’t repopulating and how this somehow has dire consequences. I only paid him half a mind because it seemed such a silly thing to worry about, especially when we won’t be here to see it.
Today went out and splurged on a new Trek bicycle. By the time the sales associate got done with me I’d practically accessorized it like a drag queen with shit that cost half as much again as the bike itself. But I need it for my exercise regimen. I have an old (we’re talking ’70s) Schwinn racing bike with skinny tires and I can’t keep my balance on it and I suspect that I may be having some vestibular issues, so I got a bike with fat tires and a more upright seating position and so far find it comfortable and easy to use.
I haven’t ridden in maybe 40 years and never had all the head gear and other accouterments. I sat on some ass-o-gram machine that showed what kind of a new saddle I needed to cushion my tushy, and I’m not sure what they did with the cursed dildo of a seat the bike came with. I nixed the cell phone holder because the frame-mounted overnight bag they sold me should be sufficient to hold that and all the other doodads.
Thinking about upgrading to tubeless tires once I pay off the credit card bill for today’s mad spree, which didn’t include a pump or fix-a-flat stuff which when needed will be the occasion to go tubeless.
I made it clear with them I’m not training for the Tour de France. I’m trying to get my heart rate up and my blood sugar down and I’ll be pedaling my deconditioned ass around my neighborhood and some nearby trails.
1678 chars
Deborah said on March 2, 2024 at 7:41 pm
I should correct my statement about Japan and immigration: it’s the Japanese government that’s more open to immigration not the average Japanese citizen. All of the young people we met last night at the dinner said that living in Japan on a daily basis as immigrants was difficult but they were easily able to get their equivalent to green cards to work in Japan, most of them had worked a bit in the US after graduating from IIT in Chicago but had a hard time getting green cards to stay for awhile.
In fact the art by the young woman former student at the opening was essentially about the difficulty of being a foreigner living in Japan. She grew up in Australia but her father is Japanese and she always felt Japanese as a kid, she was shocked when she moved to Tokyo that she would feel so much like an outsider even though she had visited relatives in Japan as a kid many times.
We thought the Japanese people we had encountered so far in Tokyo have been very gracious and patient with us when we try and communicate with them. But we might find it to be a different story when we get to Kyoto. Hopefully Google translate will help get us through our time there.
1178 chars
Deborah said on March 2, 2024 at 7:44 pm
Seems like we haven’t heard from Dexter in a while? Or maybe it’s because I’m in a completely different time zone I haven’t seen it.
140 chars
David C said on March 2, 2024 at 7:52 pm
Tubeless tires are a pain in the ass to fit, Alex. You have to stick the goop in and the beads are really tight. You can always have the bike shop do it for you though. But they’re really worth it. I’ve never had much of a problem with punctures so that’s not an advantage for me. The real advantage is I can run lower tire pressure and get a more comfortable ride and keep my damaged spine happy. On my road bike I can run 85 psi with a tubeless instead of 110 psi. On my gravel bike I can run 50 psi instead of 65. You’ll be glad you did.
540 chars
annie said on March 2, 2024 at 8:04 pm
when we were in Japan 4 years ago, we asked our tour guide about immigration and she said, the Japanese people didn’t want too many foreigners because they would “spoil the culture.”
182 chars
Deborah said on March 3, 2024 at 2:33 am
After figuring out how to venture out from our hotel during the Tokyo marathon we had more good food today, buckwheat soba noodles with shrimp and vegetable tempura. Much better than any I’ve had in the US. Really the only clinker meal we’ve had was that first sushi experience other than that it’s been excellent. We’re winding down resting up for our trip to Kyoto tomorrow where we have to figure out the bullet train. It’s only a 2 hour trip and we’ve been instructed how to purchase bento boxes at the station to have on the train.
Tokyo has been fun but I’m looking forward to seeing the gardens and temples in Kyoto.
640 chars
Julie Robinson said on March 3, 2024 at 9:51 am
There’s much I’m still processing about our NYC trip, but one overwhelming impression is that the city couldn’t run without immigrants. Our Lyft and taxi drivers were 100% team immigrant.
187 chars
Mark P said on March 3, 2024 at 10:19 am
Even if Trump were elected and the House and Senate went Republican, I don’t think they will pass any kind of immigration reform. For Trump, it’s all just the noise he spews that his animal cunning sees as riling up the rubes.
230 chars
David C said on March 3, 2024 at 10:27 am
His promise to deport millions on his first day is so laughably impossible you wouldn’t think anyone would buy into it but that’s MAGA for you. Sorry if your roof is half shingled on January 20.
194 chars
Dave said on March 3, 2024 at 1:23 pm
Alex, the political TV ads on Indianapolis TV are non-stop and mostly reprehensible, from Braun’s bragging of his endorsement by the Orange Blob to Banks and his conservative values, not to mention Doden’s mentioning of his preacher grandfather and the invasion from the border and revitalizing small-town Indiana. They’re awful and you can’t avoid them if you watch broadcast TV. Banks has no opposition and will probably be the next senator. Gag me with a spoon.
467 chars
Jeff Borden said on March 3, 2024 at 4:11 pm
More unintended consequences after Strip Search Sammy Alito and the Supremes overturned Roe. Planned Parenthood is starting to offer vasectomies and a surprisingly large number of younger men are seeking them out. I have several friends who had vasectomies after the birth of a second child, but they were close to 40-years-old.
PP will offer vasectomies in Fort Wayne and Georgetown, Indiana. There are plans to open them in Kentucky, too.
Will the Extreme Court move on vasectomies next?
496 chars
brian stouder said on March 3, 2024 at 4:39 pm
What Dave said! We conducted a change-of-base (to a beautiful rural setting near Logansport) and our local tv is now Indianapolis….. and the ads that Dave refers to initially made me laugh, and now prompt a quick press of the ‘mute’ button
245 chars
LAMary said on March 3, 2024 at 7:00 pm
I see Dexter on facebook all the time.
38 chars
Sherri said on March 3, 2024 at 8:39 pm
Trump said at a rally he would withhold federal fund from schools that had vaccine requirements. There’s video of him saying it. Yet, nothing in the media about it.
But the NYTimes has another Biden’s too old article.
225 chars
Jeff Gill said on March 3, 2024 at 10:07 pm
Matt Yglesias on Xwitter notes “As is often the case, Trump benefits from the perception that he’s a huge liar so a lot of people have developed mutually inconsistent theories of what Trump “really” will do…”
It’s an interesting insight: Trump starts with everyone, fans & foes, agreeing he’s a big ol’ lying liar. Then the question is what each perspective does with that baseline.
391 chars
Sherri said on March 4, 2024 at 12:46 am
Trump says whatever he needs to say to get the reaction he wants in the moment. So, if he’s talking one on one with a reporter, he’ll say one thing, but if he’s at a rally, he say something completely different, in order to get that adulation he craves.
So yes, he’s a big fat lying liar, and nothing he says is the truth. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t make a reasonable model of what he will and won’t do. Will he withhold federal funds from schools that require vaccines? Maybe not, but his administration will definitely weaken support for vaccines, because the people who love him hate vaccines. He may say that he’s in favor of a “moderate” 16 week ban on abortion, but again, the people who love him wanted abortion banned, and he’s not going to go against that. Will he deport 18 million immigrants on day 1? Again, the people who love him hate immigrants, and so he’ll make immigrants’ lives miserable. People will get deported, in the cruelest, most chaotic way imaginable, because that will make him look tough to the people who love him.
And the people who don’t love him? Too bad for them. If he’s not actively taking revenge on them, they’re lucky.
He wants to be president to avoid prosecution, make money, extract revenge, and get adulation. That’s how to determine what he will do.
1349 chars
Deborah said on March 4, 2024 at 3:03 am
Planned Parenthood offered vasectomies back in the 70s when I lived in Dallas. My ex got one, he was a lousy parent so that was a good thing. Glad to hear they’re still doing that and expanding it. Women are only fertile for about 24 hours a month from their teens until their 40s/50s and men are fertile all day, every day forever. So it makes so much more sense for men to stop their fertility with a vasectomy, it’s easy, relatively painless and a lot less expensive than a tubal ligation for a woman. Vasectomies are reversible too, if minds and/or circumstances change later. Plus women using things like birth control pills have lots of side effects etc. The unfortunate thing is that this information isn’t as well known as it should be.
We’re at the Ryokan in Kyoto, very traditional and in a beautiful setting, happy to be here.
Getting here was a nightmare at first. We left our hotel in Tokyo 2 1/2 hours early and I’m so glad we did. Finding our way in the train station took well over an hour to figure out, I was just about in tears I was so stressed. We finally figured it out thank god. The bullet train was amazing. We passed Mt. Fuji on the way to Kyoto, and I got some great photos of it. That raised my spirits, and boy did I need that.
We’re taking it easy after all of the anxiety, our room has a private dining room so we don’t have to go anywhere, thankfully. The meal is decided for us, so who knows.
1449 chars
Jeff Gill said on March 4, 2024 at 9:22 am
All-you-can-eat sea urchin buffet!
34 chars
ROGirl said on March 4, 2024 at 12:32 pm
In a unanimous decision, the fat orange turd gets to stay on the ballot
71 chars
Deborah said on March 4, 2024 at 12:49 pm
Not surprised that SCOTUS decided the way they did.
Ha ha Jeff G. The meal turned out to be delicious, but too much food, 9 courses, each one very few bites but overall quite filling.
We had a much appreciated hot soak in a deep, deep tub that you step down into. You shower first. Very relaxing.
It’s nearly 3am Tuesday, jet lag still has us in its clutches. Later today we go to the first shrine and garden on our list, with rain expected all day unfortunately.
474 chars
Icarus said on March 4, 2024 at 1:48 pm
In a unanimous decision, the fat orange turd gets to stay on the ballot
That means even the liberal-leaning judges agreed. And, I cannot believe I’m writing this, it’s a good thing. Keeping him off the ballot was just giving him free ammunition.
That we have a mechanism to keep someone off the ballot is a good thing. That we have never (or seldom, I really don’t know) had to use it before is also a good thing. But if we used it this time, it would be weaponized in the future to keep people who should be on the ballot off the ballot.
Heck, it probably will be used at a future point to keep a BiPOC, or LGBTQ person off a ballot somewhere.
The only positive of Trump’s presidency is that ordinary citizens are now more aware of all the subtleties of government checks and balances, election processes, Emoluments Clauses, etc.
855 chars
tajalli said on March 4, 2024 at 2:22 pm
Deborah, your trip sounds wonderful. Googled ryokan kyoto and found this site showing quite a range of amenities. Just considering them from afar is relaxing. Loving the vicarious enjoyment of your trip.
https://www.insidekyoto.com/kyoto-ryokan
250 chars
Jakash said on March 4, 2024 at 3:09 pm
Sorry, but I don’t share the glass-half-full optimism of your comment, Icarus. “… more aware of all the subtleties of government checks and balances, election processes, Emoluments Clauses, etc.” Evidently, the subtleties are such that a flat-out criminal and fraud cannot be corralled by said checks and balances, as was amply demonstrated when running for president and being president were blatantly used for personal monetary enrichment by the orange charlatan and his family. Even before he was elected, checks and balances did nothing to prevent a Supreme Court seat from being stolen.
This guy refused to accept the results of the election and STILL refuses to do so. He thought that getting Congressional toadies to refuse to certify the last election was an acceptable course of action. The Supreme Court unanimously has decided that that’s evidently hunky-dory and what the glorified “framers” had in mind, and that the simple consequence of not being allowed to run again, because he lost and has refused to admit it, is not a price he should have to pay for his thumbing his nose at two centuries of the peaceful transfer of power. They’re doing their best to pave the way for him to use the power of the presidency however he cares to. Which would not be a good thing.
“if we used it this time, it would be weaponized in the future to keep people who should be on the ballot off the ballot.” To me, that’s like saying that criminals should not be punished, because then innocent people may be punished inappropriately via the same laws. It’s a recipe for allowing scoundrels to get away with whatever they want.
It’s unbelievable to me that those justices have watched the Biggest Loser shred every norm he cares to for 9 years and they still don’t understand that his ascendance and the devotion of his cult represent a serious danger to this democracy and that the situation the country is in does not call for business as usual.
1970 chars
Heather said on March 4, 2024 at 8:20 pm
Congrats on the bike, Alex! I ride my bike to do all my errands and for fun too of course. These days I drive my car maybe once every 10 days. When it dies or is no longer worth maintaining, I’ll probably just get an ebike and rely on rentals and ride/car shares for everything else. I don’t see the point in spending $20K+ for something that’s going to sit on the street for 95 percent of the time.
My main bike is from college, so it’s about 35 years old, but it’s really held up well. I’m very pro-cycling, but more in the European sense in that I don’t think there’s a need to buy a lot of special clothes and so on unless you’re going to get really into racing. I actually started an Instagram account to show what I wear– it’s called I Biked in This in case anyone is interested.
789 chars
tajalli said on March 4, 2024 at 9:58 pm
My Trek is from 1988 and is now mounted on a trainer to bike indoors. Always good audiobook weather in my living room.
Heather, I couldn’t find I biked in this or ibikedinthis, but I’ve never tried a search before on IG. Do you have a URL?
245 chars
Deborah said on March 4, 2024 at 10:13 pm
This is the Ryokan where we’re staying http://www.yoshida-sanso.com you can read the history in the dropdown menu. My husband is particularly impressed that it was built originally without a single nail.
I had read a while ago that Kyoto was originally selected to be the city to have the bomb dropped on it but was saved from that because someone in charge of selecting the bombing site had visited Kyoto much earlier with his wife and thought it was too beautiful to be bombed so they eventually chose Hiroshima instead. So there is a lot of history here.
Tokyo was very extensively firebombed as we know and not many of the prewar buildings exist. On Sunday we went to an area that still had some historic houses etc.
It feels a bit odd to be in a country that was once our mortal enemy, I felt this way the first time I was in Germany too.
855 chars
alex said on March 5, 2024 at 12:12 am
Deborah, the Ryokan looks like a fabulous experience. No nails? So was it put together with wooden dowels or dovetails or something? It’s heavenly. I can see why FLW was so inspired by Japanese architecture. Western architecture always seems to be about stimulating the senses in a way that evokes excitement while Japanese architecture evokes calm. I love it all but have always found myself more drawn to the latter.
Heather, I had to cut the sales associate off when it came to the bike apparel schpiel. I’ve got plenty of shitty old clothing that won’t break my heart if it gets torn up and it’s more flattering on my physique than Spandex will ever be at my age. From what I’ve observed on the trails, there’s no shortage of older people trying to be biker fashion plates, but few who wear it well. Ain’t my style, fer sure.
833 chars
Deborah said on March 5, 2024 at 2:14 am
Alex, I never realized before how much mid century design was influenced from the Japanese. Especially the furniture, the details are so similar. FLW, Mies and Corbusier architecture lifted heavily. When you see Mies’s Barcelona Pavilion and so much more it is apparent, even our building in Chicago.
The wood in the ryokan was joined by notching, if you look at the window attachments to the walls you can clearly see it, the craftsmanship is phenomenal.
460 chars
Deborah said on March 5, 2024 at 2:51 am
On this cold and rainy day we went to the Imperial palace grounds which are stunning. We had to get a couple of plastic rain pouches to wear over our jackets, we already had umbrellas.
There were about a dozen little elderly Chinese ladies in our tour group who were both adorable and obnoxious, they were almost more fun to watch than observing the incredible palace grounds. They were having a great time laughing and carrying on while cluelessly smashing their umbrellas into everyone.
The meticulous care of the gardens were something I had not seen before, there were gardeners on their hands and knees tending the smallest details in the cold rain. It was impressive, I just hope they get paid enough.
Once again the people here are bending over backwards to communicate with us, more speak English than I had expected. It’s so embarrassing to be so unable to speak their language.
900 chars
Jeff Gill said on March 5, 2024 at 7:57 am
“Nobody can explain to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don’t speak languages —- we have languages coming into our country — we have nobody that even speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them.”
289 chars
Mark P said on March 5, 2024 at 10:01 am
I have mixed feelings about the Colorado decision. There’s no question that the insurrectionist states would try to use A14 against Biden, but the Extremes’ decision means essentially that A14 can never be used. And the amendment absolutely does not require an enabling law. That’s just bullshit. What the Extremes were really afraid of was having to say out loud whether they thought Trump was actually engaging in insurrection. The best outcome would be for Trump to be thoroughly thrashed in the election, but that may not happen, especially if enough dumbasses are too good to soil their hands by voting for Biden, and stay away from the polls or vote for a third party.
The cracks in this country’s foundations are really spreading. I’m not sure they can be patched. We sorely need a deus ex machina.
819 chars
susan said on March 5, 2024 at 10:31 am
Deborah- Speaking of Japanese architecture, did you see that this year’s Pritzker prize went to Japan’s Riken Yamamoto? I like his ideas about fire stations.
216 chars
Suzanne said on March 5, 2024 at 10:50 am
Mark P, I think it’s too late. I think the American Experiment is over and is in failure mode. I think some people are waking up, but it’s too little, too late. History shows that once an authoritarian captures the courts, there is no going back. SCOTUS is firmly in the extremist’s hands, bought & paid for, so the rule of law no longer applies. If Trump loses the election but shows up with a mob to take power anyway, who will stop him? As we have seen, there is no one. This isn’t politics, but a religious war, and those who think they speak for God will stop at nothing because of their firm belief that God is on their side and will not let them fail. If they die in the process, they will be in heavenly glory as martyrs.
741 chars
Deborah said on March 5, 2024 at 12:45 pm
Susan, thanks for the heads up about the Pritzker, I’ve been so wrapped up in this trip I wasn’t aware it has been awarded.
Sejima one of the Pritzker jurors is the woman who invited my husband to speak at that event in Tokyo last week. And the ambassador from Brazil who was at the lecture mentioned something about being an advisor to the jury.
In fact Yamamoto himself, this year’s winner may have been at the lecture as well and rode in the van with us to the sushi place we went to afterwards. His accent was strong when that gentleman introduced himself so I couldn’t understand a lot of what he said.
The world of architecture is a small community. The Pritzker prize is being awarded to lesser known architects who are into community not just to “starchitects” who design the glitz and glam. I think that is laudable.
It’s 2:30am Wednesday here, my husband just woke up and I told him about the prize and he confirmed that Yamamoto was at the lecture and road in the van in front of us. What an amazing coincidence.
1042 chars
FDChief said on March 5, 2024 at 12:56 pm
Yeah, the “republic, if you can keep it” game was pretty much over when the “conservative” minority realized that they could kill the hostages and their opponents wouldn’t. So the Republicans are good with any and everything up to and including armed treason, and the Democrats are afraid that if they even go hard after the traitors that the Republicans will break the whole system.
Which is correct…but which is naive in that it ignores that the system is already broken. The Right understands that we’re already in a Cold Civil War. That the rest of the public continues to pretend that’s not true ensures that they and we will lose it.
658 chars
Sherri said on March 5, 2024 at 2:39 pm
I’ve become obsessed lately about World War Two lately, and am currently reading Pacific Crucible, about the beginning of the war in the Pacific. I know lots of parallels have been drawn between the rise of fascism in Germany and our current situation, but I’m also stuck by parallels with Japan. Japan had begun to move to a parliamentary democracy, but ultranationalist factions rejected it, and increasingly violently fought against it, with no real repercussions.
When you don’t stop violent ultranationalists, they just up the ante.
547 chars
Heather said on March 5, 2024 at 3:23 pm
tajalli @79, just add “/ibikedinthis” after the instagram URL. I don’t want to post the whole link because I think that will send this post to moderation.
Had to wait a couple hours to check it since Meta had a big outage that affected IG, Facebook, etc. this morning.
272 chars
LAMary said on March 5, 2024 at 3:48 pm
Awwww, Kristen Sinema dropped out of the race.
46 chars