As I mentioned a couple days ago, today begins a week of vacation for yours truly, the first full week off since last Christmas, and yes, it’s nobody’s fault but mine. You can procrastinate on claiming your days off, the same way you can in filing expense reports and the like.
All I know right now, though, is I NEED A LITTLE BREAK. Yesterday I was toiling in one form or another for about 14 hours. Not heavy lifting, of course, and yes, there was a 20-minute power nap in there, but still. My mind needs a break from the news, from the grind, from all of it.
We’re going up north for a week. Alan will fish, I will read.
And there’ll be at least one more week off before the year-end holiday break. I mean, use it or lose it.
So now we wait for the next catastrophe. One of my Facebook network is posting intermittent short posts from Sint Maarten, the Dutch side of St. Martin, which took a direct hit from Irma and is awaiting José. It’s grim there. I know dozens of people in Florida, and I’m thinking all my good thoughts for them. And of course we don’t know what our president will think of next. All I know is I’ll have a poor cell signal for a while.
I hope to put fresh posts in from time to time, probably picture posts you can comment on, as I don’t even know our rental’s wifi status. I hear the weather will be fine for at least some of the time. The woods and river are pretty up there. No hurricanes, anyway.
Have a great week, all. I plan to.
beb said on September 8, 2017 at 5:37 pm
Have a good time up north. Read some good books. Stay off line for the good of your soul. The world will go on. Sleep, get lots of sleep.
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beb said on September 8, 2017 at 5:47 pm
Amazon is shopping for a second headquarters. There is a long list of demands for the location. No word on what kind of tax cuts or subsidies they’re looking for. Dan Gilbert of Quicken Loans wants it in Detroit. I’m not sure I want it here. Foxcomm recently signed a deal with the state of Wisconsin for a huge factory. Analysis of likely employment and wages suggests it will take Wisconsin 40 years to break even on the subsidies. Often companies will up and move after 20 years. Wisconsin will be on the hook for a lot of money. The state could have spent all that money on infrastructure improvements and been better off. Michigan doesn’t need to go into hock like that.
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Deborah said on September 8, 2017 at 6:03 pm
Have a great, relaxing time up north.
They’re having a bit of a skirmish in Santa Fe at the plaza, maybe it’s over by now, there’s an annual fiesta in the plaza where they celebrate the Spanish presence here in history. They have a reenactment every year as part of the fiesta where the annual dramatization of Spaniard Don Diego de Vargas’ reconquest of Santa Fe in the late 1600s, after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 drove them out. They returned peacefully, at least that’s what they claim in the reenactment, I haven’t researched it enough to know the facts. Native Americans have been protesting the reenactment the last couple of years. Last year there was a scare, because the actors ride in on horses during the event and a protestor used a bullhorn to shout messages and that spooked the horses to the extent that they were afraid of major injuries. This year they decided to not allow horses or bullhorns. I’m not sure what happened this year but there is some buzz about it.
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coozledad said on September 8, 2017 at 6:06 pm
Fuck that Marshall Tucker shit. They’re just more proof there’s no god, or at best an evil one. Look for the new Carol Burnetts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im89TrNo9Qw
I could see getting psyched for Kate as Saturday night programming.
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David C. said on September 8, 2017 at 7:01 pm
Beb our roads here in WI are going to shit, especially in the north west. The lege can’t seem to find money for that. But come with likely vapor jobs and the treasury is open. Once lil’ Scotty is safely in his third term, we’ll hear the words we all expect. “Never mind”.
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Suzanne said on September 8, 2017 at 9:41 pm
No proof or verification, but heard someone on the radio today say that Foxconn has a record of having plans to open factories in the states but never doing so.
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Jill said on September 8, 2017 at 9:41 pm
Just catching up with yesterday’s post. Have a wonderful vacation, Nancy. A week of quiet reading sounds perfect to me.
Dorothy, I am sorry for your loss but glad for your mother’s long life and storybook departure. I think it’s what most of us would like.
Deborah, re: Hurricane Donna. It was almost exactly 57 years ago, in 1960. I know because my grandparents lived on a boat with a home port of Bahia Mar in Ft. Lauderdale. This past weekend I learned that on the way to the hospital in Chicago for my birth, my dad had the radio on in the car and hurricane reports were being broadcast. He quickly turned off the radio and thanks to being in labor, my mother hadn’t noticed the reports. She didn’t know her parents had gone out into the ocean to ride out the hurricane until she tried to call them to tell them they were grandparents and had to go through ship-to-shore radio to get the message to them.
My parents live on the southeast coast of Florida but fortunately happen to be in Michigan right now.
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Deborah said on September 8, 2017 at 10:08 pm
Hmmm, interesting Jill. I remember the name Donna, but it must have been a different hurricane that I described, because it was after my mother had died because she would have otherwise have been with us at home when my dad had to work during the storm. I’ll have to look up which hurricane it was.
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Connie said on September 8, 2017 at 10:09 pm
We have just finished a chilly rainy week up north and are now ensconced in a hotel for tomorrow’s niece’s wedding. Hope you have better weather. I spent much of it reading under the porch overhang.
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Deborah said on September 8, 2017 at 10:19 pm
Funny how memory works. It must have been hurricane Betsy, that happened Sept 8, 1965. I looked it up, my mother died in Oct of 1964 and Betsy was the next major hurricane that hit southern FL, after she died. I remember going outside during the eye of one of them, and I do think that was Donna, but I was younger. I’ll have to do more research.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 8, 2017 at 10:32 pm
Jill’s grandfather is Travis McGee. That is way cool, ma’am.
Deborah, tell me they still burn Zozobra, don’t they? Aiieeee.
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Deborah said on September 9, 2017 at 3:46 am
Yes, Jeff tmmo, Zozobra was last weekend or the weekend before, I can’t remember. Here’s what Zozobra is for those who don’t know https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zozobra
I’ve never been to it yet, one of these years I will I suppose. Don’t know why, it’s just not on my radar. Santa Fe has lots of fiestas, mostly in the summer months. In the winter they have the annual walk on Canyon Rd on Christmas Eve, where they have bonfires and those paper sacks with candles in them everywhere, I think they’re called luminarias (or that’s what the bonfires are called?) All during the year there are various feast days and dances in the surrounding pueblos. There’s a lot going on here, it’s pretty fascinating.
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Deborah said on September 9, 2017 at 3:58 am
I had to look up who Travis McGee was. Funny. I never read any of those books. McGee was a fictional character in 21 novels, “had his trademark lodgings on his 52-foot (16 m) houseboat, the Busted Flush, named for the poker hand that started the run of luck in which he won her. She is docked at Slip F-18, Bahia Mar marina, Fort Lauderdale, Florida” – from Wikipedia.
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Deborah said on September 9, 2017 at 3:59 am
I n S o m N i a….
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Joe Kobiela said on September 9, 2017 at 7:01 am
Have Pastie, you betcha.
Pilot Joe
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 9, 2017 at 8:07 am
I see Joe is flying right over me in a couple of hours.
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/GAJ821
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alex said on September 9, 2017 at 11:16 am
Pilot Joe flies right over me all the time. I’m just a few miles south of his airport.
We had a bizarre experience this morning in our otherwise quiet little neck of the woods. We own two adjacent houses and live in one of them. The tenant who rents the other house was out in her driveway when a newish Jeep pulls in at an angle. Guy gets out and asks her for a cigarette. She told him she doesn’t smoke. His eyes were bloodshot and he was behaving strangely, trying to engage her further. My partner, who just happened to be over there working on the house, came around the corner and the guy jumped back into his vehicle, floored it in reverse and smashed into the posts on both ends of the driveway with both ends of his vehicle before speeding off. They didn’t get his license plate, unfortunately.
Not sure if it’s worth contacting the authorities, but from what I was told he looked like he was out of his mind and up to no good. I was sitting here with my laptop oblivious to the whole episode, which lasted only seconds.
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Jeff Borden said on September 9, 2017 at 11:32 am
The scariest thing about the Foxcomm deal is the Wisconsin legislature is willing to hand over almost total control to the company, which will be allowed to redirect streams and creeks, avoid state environmental (such as they are) oversights, etc. It’s not unlike the extortion Disney pulled when it moved into Florida. Ugly, ugly, ugly.
It pisses me off that a company as wealthy as Amazon plays one site off the other to extract subsidies, etc. it really doesn’t need. I’m sure Chicago will go after it hammer and tong. Our roads may be crumbling and our schools may suck, but there is always some sugar to spread around for big companies.
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susan said on September 9, 2017 at 12:06 pm
I wish…
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Deborah said on September 9, 2017 at 12:30 pm
Susan, that was one of the funniest videos I have ever seen.
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Sherri said on September 9, 2017 at 12:32 pm
I spent the last two days in the leadership program I mentioned I got into. I’m still unpacking a lot, because it was two full days, 8-5, and a lot of new people, 42 in my class, from a variety of backgrounds. The class was put together very thoughtfully and intentionally, with a view to diversity of race, gender, age, location across the Eastside, for-profit vs non-profit vs government vs community volunteers like me, different backgrounds and experiences. So it was amazing getting to know some of these people, and I’m looking forward to learning more about more of them.
Yesterday, I sat with an Iranian woman who came to the US as a refugee at the age of 8 after the revolution. She came to Atlanta, and told the story of being warned, literally before she had even stepped foot on American soil, to be careful around black people, that they would steal things from her. She didn’t even know what they meant by black people.
Another woman, who came to the US from Africa and attended college here, talked about how in one of her college classes, the professor had the class do a “privilege walk.” In this exercise, everybody starts at the same point, and people take a step forward in response to various prompts, many having to do with material wealth. She was left way behind her classmates, and she said that made her very angry at the professor, not because she felt less privileged but because privilege had been defined in such a narrow, US-centric way. She talked about the ways she felt privileged in her own culture, and how dismissive of that culture this exercise was.
A good reminder: it is not the obligation nor purpose of the marginalized to teach the dominant their biases. Too often, once people work past their initial defensive reaction on being called out on their unconscious bias, the next reaction is, teach me. No, they don’t have time to teach you, there are too many of you, and they are like you, busy doing the things that matter most to them. Educate yourself. My new Iranian friend educated herself by volunteering at the MLK center as a teenager, and said her life was utterly changed by reading Frederick Douglass’s autobiography.
Those are just two of the people I met and enjoyed getting to know. I’m excited about spending the next two years working with this group.
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alex said on September 9, 2017 at 1:05 pm
Well, I’m glad we decided to contact the authorities. A sheriff’s deputy showed up and told us the guy who pulled into the driveway this morning is on the lam and has committed a string of carjackings. The Jeep he was driving was taken moments before he appeared on our street and was reportedly running on fumes, and he was doubtless hoping to commandeer another vehicle or force himself into the house for a hiding place when he pulled into our tenant’s driveway.
He crashed the Dodge Neon in the below story before he stole the Jeep:
http://wane.com/2017/09/09/suspect-on-the-loose-after-saturday-morning-pursuit/
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Deborah said on September 9, 2017 at 1:17 pm
Wow Alex, sounds like a near miss for your neighbor, good thing your partner was there.
I read about a new term on FB this morning that I hadn’t heard before, someone used the term “virtue signaling”. Then I read this, which explained it a bit https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/magazine/virtue-signaling-isnt-the-problem-not-believing-one-another-is.html
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susan said on September 9, 2017 at 1:18 pm
Deborah, Vicente is one of Donald’s biggest trolls, and he is so-o-o-oooo good at it, as per this video. He just has to be getting under Dolt 45’s orange skin.
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susan said on September 9, 2017 at 1:19 pm
Yikes, Alex! What timing, thus avoiding something nasty.
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beb said on September 9, 2017 at 2:15 pm
the blogger Atrois linked to this article about Amazon’s search for a second headquarters…
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2017/09/your_city_will_lose_the_contest_for_amazon_s_new_hq.html
The author makes the obvious point that there is no city that meets all their demands. Of course anyone shopping for anew house knows that there’s never a ‘perfect’ house, only houses that come close enough. The big deal-breaker to the whole idea is that Amazon is looking for a deal like Foxcomm got in Wisconsin, where they are all but paid to move there. This kind of predatory pricing is something that the Federal government needs to ban because it undermines the stability of the country.
Nonetheless, I found myself looking over the list and seeing what parts Detroit could check off. According to the article above Detroit is out of the running because of high taxes, no mass transit and regional hostilities (ie, racism against Detroit). But the area I thought most amenable to Amazon was outside the City of Detroit. The land around the intersection of I-94 and I-275 is still mostly farmland. Acquisition would not be a problem. At the same time it would be close to freeways, a major airport, and still about 35 miles from the center of Detroit. additionally it would be surrounded by the University of Michigan, Michigan State and Wayne State University as well as lesser universities such as Oakland University and Eastern Michigan University. As the land is unincorporated taxes would only be paid to Wayne County. There is a vast amount of residential property in that region and land to build even more. As for Mass Transit, who says the car isn’t a form of mass transit? The Detroit region has a well developed system of highways for moving people about. And once a destination need were apparent buses could be routed to service Amazon. Of course much the same could be said for Indianapolis which is not on the short list of potential locations, or Cincinnati, Columbus, Oh. etc. A bigger issue against a Michigan location, and one not mentioned in the article is that Michigan is still a union state. While the legislature may have passed a right-to-work (for less) bill there will be a strong drive to unionize. So I suspect when Amazon makes their pick it will be in a low-wage area like Indiana, Tennessee or Alabama.
Of course any liberal-minded citizen would hope that instead of Amazon building a second headquarters they ought to be hauled into Anti-monopoly court and broken into a hundred smaller operations.
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Deborah said on September 9, 2017 at 3:17 pm
Not surprised that Chicago would be a contender, but IL will be a negative for Amazon, unless they can get a decent governor for once. I would be shocked if St. Louis were chosen, while it has improved in the last decade, it also has the drawback that it’s in MO. Every architecture firm in the country (and the world) must be licking their chops to go after that project.
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beb said on September 9, 2017 at 3:24 pm
Auburn Hill which is metro Detroit but well North of Detroit has the recently abandoned Palace of Auburn Hills, a hockey rink/concert hall. It could be rehabbed into 3-5 stories of office space, already has a massive parking lot, sits on a highway and has lots of room to residential housing.
Another interesting rehab would be the old Train Station. It’s huge, sits on an large open field and would add considerable to the city. It’s downside is that it *IS* in Detroit and the owner of the Ambassador Bridge may want the land to expand the bridge…
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Connie said on September 9, 2017 at 3:24 pm
Sherri, my hair stylist’s mother immigrated from Iran at the age of five. The west Detroit Suburbs has a large population of Chaldeans, Catholic immigrants from Iran.
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Heather said on September 9, 2017 at 9:57 pm
Jeez, Alex! That’s scary. Glad nothing worse happened.
Nancy, that’s rough that you haven’t taken a full week off in that long. I would have had a breakdown by now. Enjoy it–you deserve it. My job is not great but I do get almost 30 days of PTO at this point, which is going to be hard to give up when I find a new one.
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Deborah said on September 9, 2017 at 10:12 pm
In my last job before I retired I had 21 days of PTO annually but I took way more than that. I kinda knew I was going over but I didn’t really pay attention and they didn’t alert me. When I retired they forgave me my overage and didn’t deduct it. I was very appreciative. But I also knew that I deserved to keep it because of the discrepancy in pay of females and males. I didn’t feel the least bit guilty.
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Dexter said on September 10, 2017 at 3:25 am
My friends in Cape Coral got out and are resting in Statesville, NC at a cheap freeway exit motel…they got the old man out of his place in Lakeland on the way out. Cape Coral has sort of become the Irma Ground Zero. Fort Myers may just be totally fucked.
For fun, the Cleveland Tribe is on a 17 game win streak. That is rare.
Alex…the full moon was days ago but godDAMN! the weirdos were out. In my neighborhood here in Bryan this young guy who’s out of prison again had his druggie-drunk friends to his mom’s apartment and hell was raised until 5:45 AM…car doors slammed all night, no-baffle motorcycles revving up, glass a-bustin’— cussin’ and hollerin’ …then Saturday other neighbors had a beer bash, loud as hell, but really? Does a parent have a legal right to call his small children “fuckin’ little bastards” and “you motherfuckers!” ? I was in my yard dog-walking and obviously I cuss and swear but I cannot stand to see any kid dressed down like that.
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Deborah said on September 10, 2017 at 10:52 am
This morning I’m taking my last trip to Abiquiu for the summer. I’m also taking along our Santa Fe landlady, she’s been wanting to see the cabin since she’s seen pictures. We think she’s in the early stages of dementia, she’s only about 70 but her memory is really shot lately. She lives alone and recently got a little dog to help her feel less lonely. We have her over for dinner and call her from time to time. So this is my good deed for the day plus checking on everything in and around the cabin one last time before I go back to Chicago for a month. LB and her friends will keep an eye on the cabin when I’m gone. Leaving tomorrow, not looking forward to a day of travel. Ugh.
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Sherri said on September 10, 2017 at 11:01 am
Still unpacking my first two days of Leadership Eastside:
-One of our facilitators was Pat Hughes, on Gracious Space. Here’s a TEDx talk she gave on Gracious Space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImQWIiLAUnA
-There is no such thing as a dysfunctional system. Every system is perfectly aligned to achieve the results it currently produces. Whenever you see anything, it is because someone in the system benefits from it.
-One of the most seductive ways your organization rewards you for doing exactly what it wants is to call you a “leader”.
-Our leadership curriculum is based on The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, by Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky. They define adaptive leadership as the “practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive.”
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Suzanne said on September 10, 2017 at 11:07 am
“There is no such thing as a dysfunctional system. Every system is perfectly aligned to achieve the results it currently produces. Whenever you see anything, it is because someone in the system benefits from it.”
This is great! I never thought of it this way before but what a useful way to look at things. Thank you for sharing this.
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Jakash said on September 10, 2017 at 12:52 pm
Dexter,
I saw the Tribe break their all-time win record Thursday night at The GRate, or whatever the Hell they call Comiskey these days. That was win #15. I was kinda hoping they’d lose the next one! ; ) Lookin’ pretty good for a return to the World Series, not that I’ll be attending that…
It said on TV last night that resale tickets for the Georgia visit to Notre Dame (their first foray north of the Mason-Dixon line since 1965, and the first regular-season match-up between the two teams) were going for $1100. I guess they got their money’s worth, (I imagine Prospero would have enjoyed it), but I wouldn’t pay that for a sporting event even if I had a money-back guarantee that *my* team would win. Of course, the game is just part of the spectacle of a big-time college football weekend. Downtown Chicago is teeming with Georgians in their red and black garb. Coincidentally, the Atlanta Falcons are playing the Bears today, so another celebration is probably in store for the visitors…
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Deborah said on September 10, 2017 at 6:20 pm
When our Santa Fe landlady and I got back in town after our trip out to Abiquiu today we decided that we just had to have some roasted corn from the fiesta still going on in the plaza. This is one of my favorite foods in NM, you can get it at the many plaza festivals. They are always remarkably big perfect ears with a little bit of a scorch near the top which makes them even tastier. They dip them in butter and offer stuff to sprinkle on, like salt, Parmesan, red chili powder etc. Love it and somehow I almost missed getting to have some before I go back to Chicago because I was in Abiquiu when most of the other plaza festivals were happening. You can see many photos of me on my FB enjoying the delicious roasted corn. This year I was too busy eating to pose for a photo.
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Deborah said on September 10, 2017 at 6:21 pm
On my FB feed, duh.
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Deborah said on September 10, 2017 at 6:22 pm
No, wrong again, my FB timeline. I need a nap but too busy doing laundry and packing.
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alex said on September 10, 2017 at 6:36 pm
They busted the crazy carjacker guy, but I don’t have any local news links yet. The story appeared on the local evening news. Apparently they nabbed him in the next county.
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Deborah said on September 10, 2017 at 6:52 pm
Sherri, loved that Ted talk link about Gracoius Space. As a designer I especially appreciated what she said about setting, it’s important where the “place” is, if it’s inviting, appropriate lighting, is it comfortable (furniture), does the place have windows to outside etc. Many people leave this important aspect out or don’t care about it. It matters, along with all the rest of the points.
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Deborah said on September 10, 2017 at 9:42 pm
Julie, thinking of you and yours listening about what’s happening in Orlando right now, winds, rain and tornadoes. Yikes.
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basset said on September 10, 2017 at 10:07 pm
Georgia fans… here in Nashville there’s a big city park close to Vanderbilt’s football stadium, lots of tailgating there by fans of visiting teams. (Vanderbilt fans tend to show up late and leave early, the stadium is the smallest in the SEC, even smaller than IU’s, and it’s rarely full unless the visiting team brings a lot of fans.)
Anyway, an outdoor store across the street from the park was offering fly-fishing lessons so I thought I’d try it – this was before I realized fly-fishing wasn’t for me, for various reasons involving social anxiety and a lack of patience and manual dexterity. So about a dozen of us set out from the shop, walking in a group behind our teacher with fly rods in hand. The Georgia fans were pretty friendly, asked us what we were doing and the teacher told them we were “going fishing for grass trout,” that was his standard line and they seemed to enjoy it.
On the way back either they were drunker or we were less talkative, maybe both, but when someone sitting by a grill and a camper asked me where we were going with them fishin’ poles I told her we were gonna fish for cats in the alleys, little meatballs for bait, you oughta see how hard they fight and it’s great on a light rod. She swallowed it whole, hook, line, sinker, rod, reel, boat and baithouse:
“That’s AWFUL!”
“Lots of fun, though! You oughta try it!”
Somewhere in Rising Fawn or Social Circle or another place in Georgia they probably still tell the story of how mean we are up in Nashville.
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brian stouder said on September 11, 2017 at 8:43 am
Basset – when she tells this story to her peeps (or especially, mom or dad) – imagine the dropped-chins/uproarious laughter she’ll get…!
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Julie Robinson said on September 11, 2017 at 9:24 am
My kids and sister are fine but lost power and it was a miserable night. No major damage to the house, and the pool screen is still standing. Last week before all this began the contractor took down the lanai, leaving one side of the screen open, and I was fully convinced it was coming down.
Our daughter’s church still has power and she will be opening it as a community center once the curfew is lifted. Lots of clean up to do.
It’s been a nerve-wracking few days and I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep. I’m feeling thankful.
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Sherri said on September 11, 2017 at 9:59 am
I’m glad your family is safe, Julie.
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Connie said on September 11, 2017 at 10:02 am
When we headed north a week ago every thing was green. By the time we headed home yesterday color was beginning to change around the edge. I think it must be Fall.
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Bitter Scribe said on September 11, 2017 at 10:05 am
Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times has a hilarious column about Amazon being courted by Chicago. It’s in the form of an open letter to Jeff Bezos. Excerpt:
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Sherri said on September 11, 2017 at 12:18 pm
In light of the Equifax breach, this is the most useful advice I’ve seen: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-reports/
I think it’s pointless to go to Equifax and try to determine if your info was grabbed. Assume that none of the credit reporting agencies can keep your data secure, or is even all that motivated to do so. Credit monitoring is a rip-off. Freezes are annoying, and probably easy to hack around socially, because the CRAs hate them. Government regulation isn’t going to save us soon enough. So forcing the issue into a bin the CRAs have to care about seems the best strategy.
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BRIAN STOUDER said on September 11, 2017 at 2:58 pm
Well, give this guy credit – his front-page headline story got me to pay $1 in cash, for a paper copy of the news-Sentinel.
http://www.news-sentinel.com/opinion/the_last_word_if_mad_anthony_goes_what_will_we_call_this_city_20170909
Of course, he’s full of baloney – but we gave him his inning, anyway.
His conclusion is like a naked model jumping out of a cake; incoherent – but ‘made ya look!’
We know Wayne’s troops won the battle and then destroyed the Native American villages and crops before retreating. That and the general’s only recorded words from the battlefield being “Bayonet the devils” puts Wayne, in some eyes, in the company of Adolph Hitler.
Wayne had been a lauded commander in helping win the Revolutionary War. It was Washington who commissioned him to lead the campaign against the British-backed Native Americans. So will Washington statues will be in jeopardy, too?
(gotta love the gratuitous ‘Hitler’ bomb he dropped at the end)
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Dorothy said on September 11, 2017 at 3:32 pm
alex I’m so glad your partner and neighbor did not get drawn into anything dangerous with that guy! It made me think of something that happened at my house years ago. We lived on an acre in Eighty Four, PA. Had neighbors, but no one’s house was close enough to see faces if someone was in a driveway. I was peeling potatoes with a paring knife, and my son was outside on the front porch. He came inside and said “Mum some guy is asking if I know a neighbor but I don’t know who he’s talking about.” I came out immediately, and still had the knife and potato in my hand. He was halfway up the walkway to our porch when I came out, and he stopped, said who he was looking for, and stayed put. I said I had never heard of that person and perhaps he should double check his notes – I thought he was on the wrong street. He backed up and thanked me and went back to his car, and I never saw him again. Fast forward to 24 hours later – the kids and I were sitting down to dinner (hubby was still at work) and on the news they mentioned a woman in Eighty Four PA who, the day before at supper time, was assaulted and tied up and robbed in her house. She owned a dog kennel where people boarded their dogs. I immediately picked up the phone and called the State Police to tell them about the guy. They asked me to bring my son to their office the next day, and we (separately, so as not to influence each other’s description) talked to a sketch artist. As far as I know they never caught the guy. But how scary was that?! I often think how absent mindedly I brought that knife outside with me, and I wonder what would have happened if I had not. It might NOT have been the same guy but it sure was a weird coincidence.
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Jakash said on September 11, 2017 at 4:06 pm
So, Brian, you don’t think folks would go for Blue Jacket, Indiana? Especially with fall busting out all over, it sounds cozy! ; ) Also, it seems we could do worse than calling Mitch McConnell “Chief Little Turtle…”
I gotta say, I could look at a thousand stock photos of people, and if I wanted to pick one to scream “Midwestern newspaper editor,” I don’t think I could do better than that gentleman. He’d also be a fine choice for The Onion’s “American Voices” feature. ; )
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BRIAN STOUDER said on September 11, 2017 at 4:36 pm
Jackash – here’s a palate cleanser, about an admirable local journalist, who has reached retirement:
http://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/20170910/frank-gray-retires–and-well-all-miss-him
an excerpt –
As former editor in chief Craig Klugman wrote when nominating Frank for a company-based award: “Frank grumbles, mumbles and sometimes swears. He complains about news sources, news stories and news editors. He does this while wandering around the newsroom looking for people to bitch to. I’ve heard him complain about teamwork, for crying out loud.”
Klugman went on to say that despite his gruff exterior, Frank was adaptable, dependable and hardworking. When it came to performance, Frank was a stellar employee who would take on any story assigned to him … or meet with anyone who showed up in the lobby wanting to speak with a reporter.
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Deborah said on September 11, 2017 at 5:37 pm
I’m at the airport in Albuquerque, at the last minute I had to take the awful shuttle here instead of the nice train. There was a fatality on the tracks this morning, a young Native American man committed suicide by train on the tracks near the Santa Domingo pueblo south of Santa Fe. Poor soul, what a horrible way to go. I have a couple hours to wait for my flight which is delayed wouldn’t you know.
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Sherri said on September 11, 2017 at 5:39 pm
This is specifically about advocating for a transit project, but the lessons apply generally: https://ggwash.org/view/64627/purple-line-lessons
Especially this:
It’s almost always a waste of time to try to convince the active opponents of a controversial project like the Purple Line. They are not deluded; they have reasons for their opposition, even if their real motives aren’t the same arguments offered in public. Debating on their terms lets them define the issues.
We think if we just provide the right information, we can convince people, and it’s almost never true.
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alex said on September 11, 2017 at 6:33 pm
Laughed my ass off at the Steinberg column.
Brian, you’ll note that dumb-ass Kerry Hubartt thinks his shit doesn’t stink enough to entrust it to a copy editor (hence Adolph not Adolf, let alone the inanities that went unchecked by anyone with at least half a brain in addition to a second pair of eyes). To hear the right-wingers tell it, any statue not furthering radical leftist ideology is about to get toppled by the antifada.
And as Sherri at #55 notes, it’s pointless to argue with such disingenuous schmucks.
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alex said on September 11, 2017 at 6:40 pm
And finally a news link to the creepy guy who stopped by asking for a cigarette on Saturday:
http://www.fortwaynesnbc.com/story/36336433/man-facing-slew-of-charges-after-chase-car-thefts-over-the-weekend
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Colleen said on September 15, 2017 at 4:09 pm
“he was driving too aggressive”. Whaaa? I expect better from people who are ostensibly professional communicators.
We decamped from the Tampa area to Mississippi. With three cats. 13 hour drive, because of traffic. Turned on CNN the day after Irma hit, where Anderson Cooper was broadcasting across the river from where I work. His coverage was pretty much “huh. nothing to see here. carry on”. We were glad there was nothing to see in Tampa (except gas shortages), waited a couple of days, and headed home. We had to pitch the food in the fridge, but otherwise, it’s all good. Given what could have been, I’ll take it. I have a friend who STILL doesn’t have electricity or water. I can’t imagine. I guess I gave up tornadoes and blizzards for hurricanes. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another….
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