For some reason I can’t quite explain, I’m a member of a Facebook group for Grosse Pointe moms. Here’s a post from today:
We want to have our daughter baptized but my husband and I aren’t currently members at a local church. Anyone know of a church in the area that will baptize her without a waiting period (seems the ones I’ve contacted require us to become members for six months before they will baptize her)? Don’t want to wait that long because she’ll be too big then to fit into the gown I was baptized in.
I held my tongue, but on this issue I’ve been rather influenced by my brushes with the orthodox Catholics in my circle, as well as our own Jeff the mild-mannered, and am tempted to say, where do you get off, lady? Churches aren’t public utilities, and if you don’t believe enough to even join a church, why bother to baptize your child at all? It’s not just about baptismal gowns, and if it is, again, why even bother?
Religion. Go figure.
I don’t know about you, but the talker of the day, for me, was this fantastic story out of Texas, where they want to claim the state’s share of Fort Knox’ gold and repatriate it to the Lone Star state, for…well, let them explain it:
On Friday, Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation that will create a state-run gold depository in the Lone Star State – one that will attempt to rival those operated by the U.S. government inside Fort Knox and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s vault in lower Manhattan. “The Texas Bullion Depository,” Abbott said in a statement, “will become the first state-level facility of its kind in the nation, increasing the security and stability of our gold reserves and keeping taxpayer funds from leaving Texas to pay for fees to store gold in facilities outside our state.” Soon, Abbott’s office said, the state “will repatriate $1 billion of gold bullion from the Federal Reserve in New York to Texas.” In other words, when it comes preparing for the currency collapse and financial armeggedon, Abbott’s office really seems to think Texas is a whole ‘nother country.
Someone in this readership must live in Texas. I ask you: WHAT THE EFFIN’ EFF? This country is insane. I can’t wait to read the histories of our era, when I’m old.
While we’re on the subject, here’s quite the read from New York magazine. Remember during the last election, when the Mississippi tea party tried to bring down Sen. Thad Cochran, deemed too RINO for the state that ranks 50th in most measures of excellence? They thought if they captured a photo or video of his tragically afflicted wife, in a nursing home for a decade with early-onset dementia, they’d have his scalp, since Cochran had a ladylove on the side. Things didn’t work out for them, and someone took his own life. I’ll say it again: Our country has gone mad.
On a lighter topic, then. Our own Jeff Borden, if he hadn’t been a journalist, would have made a great radio program director. He once told me his idea for a killer rock station: Great music and all-female DJs, none of whom — this was key — would ever show their faces in public. He said, “I don’t care if they weight 300 pounds and have the face of a bulldog. If they had a great, sexy voice they could work for me. But no one ever sees them. Ever.” The idea, obviously, was to create a community where the sound was awesome and the visuals were entirely up to the listener.
So, a local DJ died this week. He was gone way before I ever came here. I never heard him. But from his obit, he had the right idea. There’s a sound check embedded in the story. What a voice.
So we slide down the downslope of the week. More work to do. Do yours.
Dexter said on June 18, 2015 at 2:46 am
I think Wolfman Jack never showed his face when he was bombing the USA with his tremendous rock and roll show from Mexico on that 250,000 watt radio blowtorch, just across the river from Del Rio, Texas. After “American Graffiti”, he began appearing everywhere, movies, TV, live shows. So Jeff, your 300 pound gravelly-voiced DeeJays might get the itch for fame and *poof*, your idea evaporates.
By now you know of the murderous tragedy in Charleston. 9 folks shot to death by a white man, around 21 years old, who ran out and was not apprehended. The TV kept showing a Calhoun Street sign, and I am familiar with that street as my wife’s sister lives just 15 minutes north of there in a little town and we have made over 20 trips there since 1980. Murdering people as they pray, now that’s just sickening, worst since Connecticut. This was instantly labeled a hate crime.
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David C. said on June 18, 2015 at 6:25 am
Anyone want to lay odds on how long it will take Texas to kick the poors harder in order to buy more gold. Cause it’s gold!! (Sorry two down, three to go) I still can’t sort out why people go so nuts over that pretty, but mostly useless metal.
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coozledad said on June 18, 2015 at 7:39 am
Texas is nuts for gold because it’s a grifter state, and gold is the greatest grift outside of oil futures.
What I want to know is when will Lindsey Graham and his fellow pukes begin to refer to the Charleston slayings as a terrorist act? When will we commit our full military resources to eradicating the scourge of white separatist terror cells?
Perhaps random white South Carolina citizens should be waterboarded or be fed up their asses just to show we take this seriously, and are willing to employ Republican sponsored measures on their own voting demographic.
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alex said on June 18, 2015 at 7:47 am
You’d think there’d be all sorts of churches desperate to get their hands on a baby’s soul before it outgrows a baptismal gown. That Grosse Pointe mom sounds like the sort whose Holy Bible is Martha Stewart Living.
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beb said on June 18, 2015 at 8:16 am
Coolzedad said it first, but killing nine people while in church goes beyond a “hate crime”, this is terrorism pure and simple. And to find this terrorist is going to require some white dude to decide that #blacklivesmatter and turn in the dude. Which this being South Carolina is not very likely.
Up to the 30s gold was the basis of all money. Sure there was paper money but each dollar bill was back by a certain amount of gold or silver. But there wasn’t enough gold in the world for the size of the economy so the nations were forced to switch to “fiat” money where a dollar is worth whatever the government says a dollar is worth. With central banks keeping tight reins on how money money is circulating it has worked rather well. But some people still believe that the only real money is gold and so the obsession with collecting and hoarding gold. They keep thinking that someday fiat money will collapse and then they’ll be sitting pretty with all their gold.
Gold is not, however, an otherwise useless metal. It is the best conductor of electricity which is why your premium cables are gold plated. Also is tarnish resistant so spacecraft electronics are often covered in gold foil for protection.
I was going to mention the blowback from The Donald’s use of Neil Young’s “Keep on Rocking in the Free World” the theme music for his candidacy announcement. Trump becomes another in a long list of Republicans who have been told to not use someone’s music in their campaign. There were even a couple of articles on Salon.com listing both the candidates who were C&D’d and a list of musicians who would probably not object to crazed conservatives using their music (Ted Nugent, et all). But today does not seem like a day for levity.
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Ann said on June 18, 2015 at 8:38 am
On the South Carolina shooting (state motto–“at least we’re not as crazy as Texas”), the police chief just said that the suspect attended the meeting at the church for about an hour before the shooting began. Talk about cold-blooded.
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Wim said on June 18, 2015 at 9:18 am
Note that word in the statement from Abbot’s office: repatriate. This is far more than goldbuggery. This is secession.
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Julie Robinson said on June 18, 2015 at 9:59 am
Murderous tragedy indeed, Dexter. When will America wake up about guns?
Speaking of waking up, a new poll shows the majority of Hoosiers want Mike Pence out as governor: http://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/indiana/Poll-finds-majority-of-Hoosiers-want-Pence-out-of-office-7240421. The poll was commissioned by a Republican who managed former governor Mitch Daniels’ election campaign and then moved on to head Angie’s List. He has resigned to go back into politics, and I’m wondering if he’s planning a run himself.
It’s too bad jefftmmo is offline because no doubt he has lots of baptism stories. In our daughter’s short time as a pastor she’s already had a mom who wanted her to take all the Christian language out of the ceremony. She was mainly getting it done because grandpa is a church goer, and though she herself isn’t, she wanted to cover all the bases. I suspect Gross Pointe mom is more concerned with family portraiture than her child’s spiritual life, and maybe having a bang-up party.
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Dorothy said on June 18, 2015 at 10:18 am
Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI agent, was commenting this morning on the Today show about the Charleston church shooting. He said that sadly, in this day and age, there are some individuals who look at churches as “target rich environments” in order to carry out their sick ideas. That phrase really gave me pause. Yeesh.
The Grosse Point mom should do her own baptism, just like Archie Bunker did for his grandson Joey. I think all she’s really after is the photo op of the baby wearing the gown she wore. I’d love to read what the comments say in reaction to her request. I can only imagine what they are saying.
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Dorothy said on June 18, 2015 at 10:20 am
(I hope my Archie Bunker comment came across as sarcasm.)
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coozledad said on June 18, 2015 at 10:28 am
Too bad this’ll knock the Rachel Dolezal story out of the news, and just as the wingnuts were beginning to figure out how to push it through their puke funnel.
It just isn’t fair, is it?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dylann-roof-charleston-church-shooter
This is a federal case now. Take it completely out of South Carolina’s hands.
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Julie Robinson said on June 18, 2015 at 10:56 am
According to Reuters, an uncle has identified the shooter as Dylann Roof, and believes that Dylann’s father gave him a gun for his 21st birthday.
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Judybusy said on June 18, 2015 at 11:01 am
Yes, Dorothy, about places of worship being targets. A Jewish friend of mine posted that they worry about this at their synagogue, too. One of her friends replied: “I worry a lot as well about the same thing, especially during the High Holidays when I make mental notes of where the exits are and where the cops are that we’ve paid to protect us.” I plan to make a donation for funeral expenses when I get home today.
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nancy said on June 18, 2015 at 11:06 am
Of course dad gave him a gun, along with that stupid name, with the creative spelling and “Storm” in the middle.
BTW, I had no idea how prescient today’s headline would be when I went to bed last night, unaware of this event.
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Dave said on June 18, 2015 at 11:15 am
We’re not going to see gun control in our collective lifetimes. The insanity will continue. It might slow down some, as the aging NRA membership dies off but when a 21 year old shoots up a church, and the NRA is sure to say, if those people had been armed, they could have shot him (and maybe each other).
I mistakenly tuned into WOWO the other day to hear the (formerly) fat local host say he was carrying now, with his occupation, he and his wife felt the need for personal protection. I can’t voice how silly I thought this sounded but geesh.
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Sue said on June 18, 2015 at 11:29 am
“Of course dad gave him a gun, along with that stupid name, with the creative spelling and “Storm” in the middle.”
‘Storm’ might be his mom’s maiden name, which I think is an old and common practice for male middle names in the south.
But I’ll bet he pronounces it ‘Sturm’.
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Jolene said on June 18, 2015 at 11:39 am
As you may have heard, he’s been arrested.
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nancy said on June 18, 2015 at 11:44 am
Didn’t think of that, Sue. I retract my scorn. I thought the use of mother’s maiden names was confined to using them as girls’ first names. (I worked under a southern woman named Scott for a while.)
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Sue said on June 18, 2015 at 11:51 am
I may be wrong. The way it was explained to me is that it’s an “identifier”, so other people know whose people you come from, and it goes back to before the civil war.
Maybe someone here has more insight?
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Deborah said on June 18, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Did anyone else notice the odd hairdo? Adam Lanza and the other kid who shot up all the people in the movie theater in CO (can’t remember his name, thank goodness) also had weird hair.
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alex said on June 18, 2015 at 12:14 pm
Nah, Deborah, that’s a “‘Room with a View’ do” (circa 1985, when the movie came out) and fashion thirty years behind the times is to be expected in South Carolina.
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Jolene said on June 18, 2015 at 12:17 pm
Using a mother’s maiden name as a middle name is done everywhere. I don’t think it’s particularly Southern. Contemporary couples sometimes do.it as a feminist gesture–a way to connect the kids to the mother’s family even though they have the father’s last name.
In any case, we don’t know yet that Storm was a family name. Maybe his parents were white supremacists too and named him after Stormfront. In his Facebook photo, he is wearing a vest bearing the flags of apartheid-era Rhodesia and South Africa.
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nancy said on June 18, 2015 at 12:25 pm
I keep seeing a mugshot of him in an orange jumpsuit that predates the arrest. What was he arrested for that time? Does anybody know?
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Julie Robinson said on June 18, 2015 at 12:27 pm
Drugs, but it didn’t say which drugs, and if it was for possession or dealing. And a month later Daddy buys him a gun.
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MarkH said on June 18, 2015 at 12:37 pm
Jolene @22 is correct. My middle name is my mother’s maiden name. And I’m from Pittsburgh. I, too, was struck by the eerie similarity in appearance between this suspect and Adam Lanza.
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coozledad said on June 18, 2015 at 12:37 pm
Good job, Republican puke funnel trash. This is what your racialist hype did.
You people are beneath contempt.
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s–qPvXpNHx–/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_320/1302689814630831463.png
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Jolene said on June 18, 2015 at 12:39 pm
Here’s an article about him from The Daily Beast.
Says he had two previous arrests, one for trespassing and one for possession of a controlled substance.
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Jolene said on June 18, 2015 at 12:51 pm
From C-SPAN, President Obama’s statement about the shooting. I’m glad he brought up both the gun issue and the racial issue rather than just expressing sorrow.
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beb said on June 18, 2015 at 12:54 pm
I confess I am surprised by how quickly he was apprehended, but vastly pleased that he was.
His haircut reminds me of the bowl-cuts in “Dumb and Dumber.”
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Jolene said on June 18, 2015 at 12:59 pm
The mayor of Charleston, according to former South Carolinian and current WaPo columnist Gene Robinson, is beloved across racial lines. He has been in office for forty years. This morning, he has also expressed long-held anti-gun views.
Also, in the press conference held a little while ago, he announced the formation of a fund for funerals and other family support. It’s called The Mother Emmanuel Hope Fund. He gave a mailing address and the name of a local bank, but I’m sure contributions sent to the fund via City Hall or directly to the church would work. If I hear the address again, I’ll post it. Perhaps, in the next couple of days, they’ll set up something electronic.
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Jolene said on June 18, 2015 at 1:01 pm
Both he and his car were captured on surveillance video, beb, and local people recognized him.
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Sherri said on June 18, 2015 at 1:24 pm
When will the shooting be enough? What will it take to cut down on the number of guns in this country?
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coozledad said on June 18, 2015 at 1:24 pm
Apparently Nicki Haley is all over the TV blubbering her ass off. But the old hump kitty hasn’t taken the Confederate flag down:
http://jezebel.com/is-south-carolina-just-gonna-fly-that-confederate-flag-1712235994
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Sue said on June 18, 2015 at 1:48 pm
So he responds to his belief that ‘they’ are taking ‘his’ women by killing a bunch of church ladies.
Because an AME church on a Thursday night is the very best spot to find the greatest number of white-women-raping black men to take out.
He is brave, that one. A true example of the supremacy of the white male.
Oh, and a domestic terrorist too.
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coozledad said on June 18, 2015 at 1:53 pm
I like how the right is spinning this as an attack on “the Christian religion.”
Nicki Haley, Lindsey Graham, The Confederate flag and guns are the real victims here.
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Dorothy said on June 18, 2015 at 2:07 pm
My brother and his (now ex-) wife gave their three kids their mother’s maiden name as their middle name, and we’re from Pittsburgh, too. But before that happened I didn’t know anyone with middle names like that. And a co-worker I had at Kenyon gave her son the name “Storm” and I remember being kind of weirded out by that as a choice as a first name. Then again, people use just about anything for names these days. She had four daughters before him so maybe they thought Storm was a strong, forceful kinda name for a kid with four older sisters.
Adam Lanza – THAT’S who this Dylann guy reminded me of. I’m very happy they arrested him already. I was convinced he’d go somewhere and kill himself.
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Suzanne said on June 18, 2015 at 2:13 pm
I wondered, too, why this isn’t being called terrorism. I read about it in a couple of online new sites (NYTimes, WaPo, local news sites) and was not surprised at the “if everyone in that church had been packing heat, this wouldn’t have happened.” I don’t do the shooting thing, but I understand that the element of surprise would so throw you off guard, and these things happen so fast, most people wouldn’t be able to do much. Chris Kyle is a great example-expert marksman & armed, but was not expecting to be in the crosshairs & didn’t have time to react. Killers don’t call & make an appointment.
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coozledad said on June 18, 2015 at 3:03 pm
if everyone in that church had been packing heat, this wouldn’t have happened
If that creep had gone into that church and got himself shot every wingnut in the country would be out on the street baying for black blood. They’d be screaming “Al Sharpton, Al Sharpton!” at the top of their frothy lungs, and there’d be cries for martial law. This country is racist to its bones. Blacks are forbidden access to any kind of justice, particularly of the frontier variety.
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Dexter said on June 18, 2015 at 3:06 pm
Sue, nance: My uncle’s middle name is Knox, my grandma’s maiden name, and they were among the first settlers in NE Indiana way back when, and never were south at all.
It must have been a time-period thing, not geographical, eh?
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jcburns said on June 18, 2015 at 3:31 pm
My Dad, a non-southerner, has his Mom’s maiden name as his middle name. Not really sure why.
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Kirk said on June 18, 2015 at 3:39 pm
My nephew’s first name is his maternal grandparents’ last name. Thankfully, it’s Scott.
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Basset said on June 18, 2015 at 3:54 pm
Basset jr, born here in Nashville to Midwestern parents, has Mrs B’s maiden name for his middle name. Didn’t know it was a Southern thing till you all mentioned it.
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Sue said on June 18, 2015 at 4:47 pm
I originally got that middle name explanation about 30 years ago from a friend in S.C. People know family names going back generations and use last names like place names to locate where people ‘belong’ on a family tree. All these years I assumed it was a southern thing. Maybe it’s not happening as much anymore, I don’t know. I’ll have to ask my friend.
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Jolene said on June 18, 2015 at 4:51 pm
I don’t think using the mother’s maiden name as a middle name is either a regional custom or time-dependent. People all over the country have done it, as the small set of examples we’ve generated indicate, and people did it a long time ago and are still doing it. I have, for instance, at least three sets of friends who’ve done it with kids who are now in their twenties and thirties. One family lived in Massachusetts, one in Arizona, and one in Illinois. It’s just a way of keeping a family name alive.
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beb said on June 18, 2015 at 4:51 pm
I wonder whether the father will be prosecuted for giving his son a gun? From the distance of my armchair it would appear that he and every one in the family knew the boy was being moody and racist. That seems like a contra-indication for gun ownership. It’s like the mother of the New York school shooter who thought giving her troubled son a gun was a good idea.
Will this cause states to reconsider open carry laws for schools and churches? Magic Eight ball says LOL.
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Suzanne said on June 18, 2015 at 4:53 pm
Ugh! My kingdom for an edit button. My comment above should have read “was not surprised at the “if everyone in that church had been packing heat, this wouldn’t have happened” comments.
The baptism mom doesn’t surprise me. In my church, every year there is at least one kid being confirmed who rarely darkens the doors of the church, but their parents insist on them being confirmed because, you know, it’s so important.
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coozledad said on June 18, 2015 at 5:08 pm
suzanne: I know. Those things follow like clockwork. I think wingnuts are consoled by the predictability of their own responses. It makes you wonder if a pillbug comes when it rolls into a ball.
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Sherri said on June 18, 2015 at 5:14 pm
My Southern family often used the father’s first name as the son’s middle name, though I know others who used the mother’s maiden name. I was given my mother’s maiden name as my middle name, and my brother was given our father’s first name as his middle name. My brother’s first name was a shortened form of our great grandmother’s maiden name, though (he’s Steven, she was a Stevens.)
It’s really screwed up that the US flag and the SC flag are at half mast, but the Confederate flag is not only still flying, but at full mast. Don’t talk to me about heritage. I have ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, but that flag doesn’t honor them. It honors a heritage of relentlessly persecuting a group of people, and it should be repudiated.
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Jolene said on June 18, 2015 at 5:15 pm
A NYT article that provides a sense of the meaning of the church to its members and its larger role in history, as well as a sense of the loss of an important leader with the death of Rev. Pinckney, who was only 41 years old and had two children.
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Deborah said on June 18, 2015 at 6:03 pm
My husband has his mother’s maiden name as his middle name and it’s Harders, imagine being a boy growing up with that as your middle name. He grew up in central Illinois and his mother is from the Southern Michigan area, her father was a furniture designer and he worked in the areas where the wood furniture manufacturing happened in Michigan.
My mother’s maiden name was Heine, which anglicized is pronounced high-nee, as in butt. I’m so glad I wasn’t given my mother’s maiden name as my middle name. However, in my generation it was mostly boys who got their mother’s maiden name as middle names, but now I have many young friends who give both boys and girls the mother’s maiden name as middle name.
Do we know any more about the SC shooter’s upbringing, his socio-econonmic group etc? I thought it was interesting that both Adam Lanza and the James Holmes were raised in upper middle class families. I’ve been working on the playground project installation details and I haven’t spent much time getting updates on the situation.
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Jolene said on June 18, 2015 at 6:06 pm
Here’s an article about another one of the victims. You librarians lost a colleague.
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alex said on June 18, 2015 at 6:09 pm
White trash from what I just read on TPM, Deborah. When the press called the shooter’s mother’s cell phone, a woman answered that they wouldn’t be giving any interviews “ever.” When reporters knocked on the door of the modest rural home, a man presumed to be the shooter’s father told them to get off his land.
Apparently the shooter has a friend who told the press he’d known about Dylan Storm Roof’s plan for about six months.
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Jolene said on June 18, 2015 at 6:10 pm
Deborah, here’s an article about the shooter. No upper middle class background here. Sounds like a backwoods loser, the sort who was never going to amount to anything so made himself famous in the most horrible way.
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coozledad said on June 18, 2015 at 6:11 pm
Deborah: Heinrich Heine has one of the best lines in German.
Es gibt zwei Sorten Ratten:
Die hungrigen und satten.
Die satten bleiben vergnügt zu Haus,
Die hungrigen aber wandern aus.
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Deborah said on June 18, 2015 at 6:22 pm
My family is well aware of the German poet Heinrich Heine, in fact my grandfather’s name was Heinrich Heine, no relation that we know of, but you better believe we wish there was a relationship. Everyone called my grandfather Henry to sound more American, he came over from Germany when he was 2.
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alex said on June 18, 2015 at 6:27 pm
Here it is. It was his roommate who knew about the plot. Imagine sitting on that.
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David C. said on June 18, 2015 at 6:33 pm
beb @ 5 said: Gold is not, however, an otherwise useless metal. It is the best conductor of electricity which is why your premium cables are gold plated. Also is tarnish resistant so spacecraft electronics are often covered in gold foil for protection.
This is partially correct. Spacecraft are covered in a gold foil/aluminum foil/kapton blanket for heat management. Gold reflects UV better than aluminum, but actually very little was used due to its weight. Gold plating on cables is one of the biggest scams perpetrated on the public ever. Mil-spec and NASA-spec connectors have tin plated pins and sockets. Gold can’t be soldered, so gold pins and sockets have to be crimped which makes for an unreliable connection. It does however allow Monster Cable to sell a $5 cable for $100. Add $0.50 worth of gold plate, just enough to make them nice and shiny and the kid at Best Buy sells them by the gross and the difference in resistance it too small to be measured. So, I will take back my otherwise useless comment and replace it with mostly useless and certainly not useful enough to hoard so much of the damned stuff.
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Deborah said on June 18, 2015 at 6:37 pm
Thanks for bringing me up to speed on the SC shooting situation. I listened online to Obama’s remarks, which were absolutely perfect for the occasion. This has got to send a message about guns in this country. Please, it just has to. I also noticed in the video that Biden standing next to him looked devastated. I have not seen Biden look that bad in the all the time that he’s been in the media. I really feel bad for that guy, surviving the death of his son recently, his first wife and a baby daughter too, I can’t imagine that.
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