Sprinter.

I wish I could tell you the headline for this piece is about a new exercise habit, but no. We’ve been imprisoned for most of the weekend by the weather, which can’t even be called the typical late-winter Michigan sucker punch, as we’re nearly a month into spring AND THIS SHIT IS RIDICULOUS. If you live east of the Mississippi, chances are you are, too — the storm runs from Florida to the upper Midwest, and depending on your latitude, you can enjoy tornadoes, drenching rain, freezing rain, piles of snow, gusty winds, all of it.

We avoided the snow, but northern Michigan was buried. RainrainrainrainRAIN here all day Saturday, freezing rain overnight, then more RainrainrainrainRAIN all day Sunday. I should have gone to the Schvitz, but I baked bread and did laundry and read Laura Lippman’s newest via the Kindle app. The world’s critics speak as one: It’s very good. And I agree.

In between there was a wedding:

The groom is on Alan’s staff, so I was the plus-one, although I’ve met the couple earlier. The bride is a flight attendant, and was the first to tell me about the emotional support turkey she flew with. I post the photo because I’m so impressed by their wedding photographer, even though I suspect she may have been inspired by this earlier execution:

A post shared by Beyoncé (@beyonce) on

But choosing the Detroit Public Library, and its magnificent murals, as a setting was pretty great. It bookended how the weekend started, with a screening of “Beauty and Ruin” at the DIA, part of the Freep Film Festival. It was very good, not perfect, but far from terrible, a documentary about the battle over the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts during the city’s bankruptcy.

In between reading a new mystery, dolling myself up for the wedding, kneading bread and scowling at my flooded street, of course I tried to keep up with the news from Washington. I read the Adam Davidson piece in the New Yorker that someone posted, and I wish I could agree with it, but let’s face it — too many false alarms. He concludes:

Of course Trump is raging and furious and terrified. Prosecutors are now looking at his core. Cohen was the key intermediary between the Trump family and its partners around the world; he was chief consigliere and dealmaker throughout its period of expansion into global partnerships with sketchy oligarchs. He wasn’t a slick politico who showed up for a few months. He knows everything, he recorded much of it, and now prosecutors will know it, too. It seems inevitable that much will be made public. We don’t know when. We don’t know the precise path the next few months will take. There will be resistance and denial and counterattacks. But it seems likely that, when we look back on this week, we will see it as a turning point. We are now in the end stages of the Trump Presidency.

We’ll see.

Onward to the week, eh?

Posted at 5:43 pm in Current events, Same ol' same ol' |
 

54 responses to “Sprinter.”

  1. beb said on April 15, 2018 at 5:54 pm

    I didn’t know the Detroit Public Library had such impressive murals. Maybe it’s time to go down there and see.

    The rain has really become a downer. One weather map shows the rain as a column of moving air the width of Ohio moving straight north from the Gulf of Mexico. Yo.

    I guess a Philadelpia Starbucks has a rule against existing while black. Oakland county also, but we knew that.

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  2. alex said on April 15, 2018 at 6:31 pm

    What a weekend. Took Friday afternoon off to aerate and seed my front lawn and get ready for a birthday party, a splendid affair outdoors in shorts and sandals. Spent today in the office making up for Friday while rain poured and chilly winds howled and my grass seed probably got washed into places where it’s not wanted.

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  3. basset said on April 15, 2018 at 7:03 pm

    The Detroit photos are better lit and better composed.

    Saw Herman’s Hermits last night in a restored Art Deco theater outside Nashville. Good show, had a most enjoyable time, and I do not give the slightest shit how unhip and out of touch anyone might think that makes me.

    One of his guitarists played a Teisco hollow body all night – apparently the cheap Japanese guitars of my youth are now vintage instruments and collectable.

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  4. ROGirl said on April 15, 2018 at 7:43 pm

    My power has been out all day because of the freezing rain, lighting candles for the night, no news of when it will be restored. Been wearing my Eddie Bauer down coat and two pairs of socks.

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  5. susang said on April 15, 2018 at 7:52 pm

    I love Solange’s wedding.

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  6. alex said on April 15, 2018 at 7:56 pm

    Watching the three Indiana Repug senatorial candidates trying to out-Trump each other and calling each other liars and pulling stuff out of their asses. I find them all extremely unsympathetic, not to mention offensive to my sensibilities and insulting to my intelligence. They fucking pre-empted 60 Minutes for this goddamned worthless shitshow. Moderators can’t keep them on point.

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  7. Julie Robinson said on April 15, 2018 at 8:13 pm

    Just watching their commercials on mute is enough to make my blood pressure go sky high, so I skipped the debate. My lifelong Republican mother is so disgusted by them she doesn’t want to vote in the primary.

    60 Minutes was over on 15.2, and they did an expose on Allegiant, an airline I fly half a dozen times a year. Yeeouch. Still safer than driving across town.

    It’s hard not to be depressed by this weather. Only seeing pictures of other people’s snow makes me feel (marginally) better.

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  8. alex said on April 15, 2018 at 8:13 pm

    Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that Martha Stewart’s show on PBS is being taped lately in extremely soft focus with her lips and eyes looking puffy and her voice sounding like Lauren Bacall with bronchitis?

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  9. Suzanne said on April 15, 2018 at 8:14 pm

    Gee, Alex, I am sorry (not sorry) I missed it. They all strike me as men (read white supremicists) with limited intellectual abilities. But they are prolife, Christian, and conservative and in Indiana, that the bar. Doesn’t matter if you can’t pick Indiana out on a map or other useful skills.

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  10. Dexter said on April 16, 2018 at 1:35 am

    I approve of the photographs and especially the setting and the staggering of the party members.
    When Carla Lee was in the local nursing home re-habbing, I was wheeling in her laundered clothes and in the lobby were an extended family…maybe 5 generations, commandeering the entire area for photos. The asshole photog made a big deal as I was walking in the hallway heading to the room, as I was in his frame. He held his camera at his side and stared me down angrily. Then when I left, a couple hours later, more people showed up and he was again upset I walked towards the exit , pulling his pouty act again. I figured a tribe elder was about to croak and the family was called in, and someone called in a photographer for family photo album stock.

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  11. Dexter said on April 16, 2018 at 1:39 am

    Joe told us to be wary of Allegiant Airlines, twice. I mentioned my daughter’s family uses that airline out of Rickenbacker-Columbus several times year. I think 60 Minutes did a seg on that airline last night. I think it may have been damning. I gotta track it down as I forgot about it until now.

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  12. Dexter said on April 16, 2018 at 2:20 am

    OK…got to shout now…fasten your seatbelts: DO NOT EVER FLY ALLEGIANT! https://www.cbsnews.com/news/flyer-beware-60-minutes-allegiant-air-investigation/

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  13. alex said on April 16, 2018 at 6:50 am

    The Comey interview… during which they hyped his upcoming appearances on GMA and The View, hinting at tantalizing new revelations to be dropped all week. Whatevs.

    I don’t accept his assertions that there were never any political calculations in anything he did, and find it risible when he says that he wanted to protect Hillary’s inevitable presidency from the perception of illegitimacy that would surely have set in. He comes across like a Catholic schoolboy caught with condoms trying to reframe it as a valiant effort to take contraceptives out of circulation by hoarding them.

    I think he was partisan to the extent that it was plausibly deniable, but then his scruples kicked in. When it comes to having to testify eventually, I wonder how much his value as a witness will be damaged by having sold his stories to the media.

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  14. FDChief said on April 16, 2018 at 7:00 am

    The wedding photos are fairly brilliant.

    No, we’re NOT in the “endgame” of Trump’s tenure. The only way to 86 Kaiser Kleinschvantz is for the GOP to do it, and they won’t. He’s giving them what they want, helping them push the U.S. towards the New Gilded Age, so as long as he is helping with that they will do nothing.

    Frankly, if you thought that Trump was EVER anything but dirty you were kidding yourself. A NY/NJ real estate shyster with casino connections? How the hell can that be ANYthing but “mobbed up”? The tax returns were a dead giveaway; there’s got to be some pretty filthy stuff in there, probably relating to sleazy deals and money laundering for foreign backers. The guy’s been a shady dealer since he emerged back in the Eighties; those of us that remember him from the “Spy” magazine era remember that more than anything.

    If you REALLY want to get depressed, here’s a rundown of the bigger picture surrounding last weekend’s “Operation Desert Stormy” and how utterly and thoroughly we and the people of the greater Middle East are completely hosed:

    http://milpubblog.blogspot.com/2018/04/if-united-states-had-sane-syria.html

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  15. Deborah said on April 16, 2018 at 8:00 am

    That wedding photo is spectacular.

    I read the New Yorker piece and was disappointed, it didn’t prove its point. Missed the Comey interview.

    Lousy weather in Chicago, I’ve been cooped up for days and days, being sick too. I’m binge watching Shameless on Netflix, up to the end of season 3 so far. I only got out Saturday night for dinner and the symphony and that was pretty good, John Malcovich narrated the Copeland piece, Lincoln’s Portrait.

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  16. Dave said on April 16, 2018 at 8:02 am

    Although we flew Allegiant numerous times between Fort Wayne and Clearwater-St. Pete, we’ve not flown on it in over seven years. We never had any scares but my wife did have one significant delay in Fort Wayne one evening of about six hours.

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  17. Suzanne said on April 16, 2018 at 9:15 am

    We flew Allegiant once to Arizona. It was ok, but we didn’t like that there is one flight a day. If that flight is long delayed or canceled, there is no other flight to use. And the website is headache inducing.

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  18. Sherri said on April 16, 2018 at 9:39 am

    I think the interesting part of the New Yorker article is not whether Davidson has accurately predicated whether we’ve entered the end game, but that I think he has predicted the form of the end game. I think it will be the agglomeration of the criminal activities of the Trump org that will be the downfall, not the malfeasance of the campaign.

    But with that, I’m not going to think about him anymore today, because it’s my birthday!

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  19. Suzanne said on April 16, 2018 at 9:59 am

    My concern is that hard evidence of Trump’s business empire being as honest as Vito Corleone’s olive oil business will be met with a big yawn by far too many good patriotic citizens.

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  20. Julie Robinson said on April 16, 2018 at 10:14 am

    Happy Birthday, Sherri! How will you celebrate?

    Suzanne, once a day? More like 2-3 flights/week. I’m not going to stop flying Allegiant; where else can I get on a plane in Fort Wayne and be in Orlando two hours later? I’m pretty sure driving to Indy or Chicago to catch Southwest or another airline carries more risk. And if it’s my time, it’s my time.

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  21. Dorothy said on April 16, 2018 at 10:20 am

    The wedding picture is very cool and hip, but I sure hope they took some where the wedding party was smiling – I’d hate to think they had no pictures of them looking happy when they sit down to look at them full of nostalgia and longing in a few years.

    We saw Rodney Crowell perform on Friday night and it was very enjoyable. Only him, another guitarist (Australian who now lives in Nashville, Jedd Hughes) and a violinst/fiddler (Aemon McLaughlin). Low key but lovely. Last time we saw Rodney was 13 years ago in South Carolina and he really rocked out with his tunes. That was a more rambunctious show. But last year after he released a new album he got sick and had to cancel his tour and rest, rest rest for about 5 months. He’s much better now, and he’s still a good story teller and musician.

    I don’t know what to think about how Comey’s book and interviews are going to impact the presidency. My husband keeps thinking that Trump is getting into such an uproar over it that he’s going to have a stroke. I said we can’t be that lucky. But if wishes were fishes, we’d all have a helluva fry wouldn’t we?

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  22. Judybusy said on April 16, 2018 at 11:14 am

    Thanks to the snow, I was able to eat unlimited amounts of homemade chocolate chip cookes as I shoveled a lot! Our house is also very clean, and we binged on the new Bosch season.

    Alex, totally agree with you on Comey’s guttering of Clinton.

    To soothe my mind, I read/looked at the book Spineless, which contains incredible photography of very small ocean dwellers by Susan Middleton. And now we see she’s pulished quite a few books of photography.

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  23. Sherri said on April 16, 2018 at 11:15 am

    Julie, my husband and I celebrated last Friday at Purple Cafe in Bellevue, one of my favorites: http://www.purplecafe.com/purple-bellevue/

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  24. Deborah said on April 16, 2018 at 11:53 am

    Sherri, happy birthday! Next time we visit my husband’s brother we’ll have to check out that restaurant in Bellevue.

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  25. brian stouder said on April 16, 2018 at 12:48 pm

    Happy birthday, Sherri!

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  26. Jenine said on April 16, 2018 at 12:52 pm

    @Sherri: happy happy! April is a great birthday month.
    @Judybusy: thanks for the photography book recommendation, that does sound soothing.

    I can thoroughly recommend this recipe Curried Veggie Galette

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  27. Scout said on April 16, 2018 at 1:35 pm

    Happy Birthday, Sherri!

    I read the New Yorker piece with hope and a grain of salt. We’re living in a Twilight Zone with this whole ongoing nonsensical farce. It seems there are no adults in charge and congressional GOPpers are acting like archetypal Marvel/DC villains.

    Comey’s weasel words seeking to minimize his part in crippling Clinton and enabling the tRump Greatest Shitshow on Earth disturb me. A true mea culpa would have given his assessments of tRump’s multitudinous shortcomings so much more weight. Pick a side, muthaforker.

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  28. Scout said on April 16, 2018 at 1:41 pm

    Hey, I just saw on the Bookface that it is Jeff Borden’s birthday today too. Happy Birthday, Jeff B!

    This made me smile a little: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gop-donor-trump-tax-cuts-fund-democrats

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  29. FDChief said on April 16, 2018 at 1:50 pm

    Good discussion here (http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2018/04/why-were-not-at-end-stage-of-trump.html) of why Trump’s fanbase doesn’t care that he’s mobbed up.

    “… Trump’s like a Mafia boss? File that under “Duh.” … The fact is, he’s a billionaire real estate developer in New York City. You think he never had to deal with actual Mafia bosses? Why do you think he’s the way he is now? Sorry, when America hears Comey whine that Trump is like a Mafia boss, they go, “No shit, Sherlock. That’s why we like him.” … He may be a Mafia boss, but he’s our Mafia boss.”

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  30. Suzanne said on April 16, 2018 at 3:08 pm

    Trump is now walking back the Russia sanctions that Nikki Haley recently announced and, according to Twitter, one of Michael Cohen’s previously undisclosed clients is Sean Hannity.

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  31. alex said on April 16, 2018 at 3:22 pm

    Happy birfdeez!

    Yes, Suzanne, it’s twoo! It’s twoo!

    https://thinkprogress.org/michael-cohen-secret-third-client-is-sean-hannity-3a2699d87656/

    And whose silence did Hannity buy? Such schadenfun!

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  32. nancy said on April 16, 2018 at 3:41 pm

    I nominate “schadenfun” for the next edition of Webster’s. It’s much more accurate than the original.

    The fact Hannity knew all this while reporting on Cohen and all the associated stuff is so far from even the most basic journo-ethics I can’t even. People, I CAN’T EVEN.

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  33. Suzanne said on April 16, 2018 at 4:17 pm

    Right now, Twitter is blowing up. And apparently Mr Hannity first said he got free legal advice from Cohen but now says, well, maybe he gave him $10 or so a couple of times.
    [Note to self: when panic lying, try to make the lies at least semi-believable]

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  34. Heather said on April 16, 2018 at 4:45 pm

    Bet you anything Fox and Hannity will argue he’s an entertainer, not a journalist.

    Anyway, not sure how I can be expected to get any work done with all the schadenfun on Twitter!

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  35. Diane said on April 16, 2018 at 4:55 pm

    Happy Birthday Sherri!

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  36. Sherri said on April 16, 2018 at 4:59 pm

    The other fun neologism I saw was “consiglierror”, referring to Cohen.

    Thanks for all the birthday wishes, everyone! 56 and feeling good.

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  37. Deggjr said on April 16, 2018 at 5:01 pm

    The parallel between Cohen’s Trump materials and Hillary’s emails is so close. As Ed Burmila frequently writes: “Sometimes life is so beautiful I can hardly stand it.”

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  38. David C. said on April 16, 2018 at 6:07 pm

    Haven’t you heard, Nancy. Sean isn’t a journalist he’s a talk host. Forgive me, for I am about to sin.

    https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/791132954298818561?lang=en

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  39. Deborah said on April 16, 2018 at 7:34 pm

    I don’t pay attention for a few hours and the internet explodes. What happened?

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  40. Scout said on April 16, 2018 at 7:55 pm

    Just a normal day in Trumpland, Deborah. I’m betting James Comey is kissing his lucky rabbit’s foot for the Cohen/Hannity shitstorm today.

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  41. Joe Kobiela said on April 16, 2018 at 8:30 pm

    I watched the 60 minutes report on Alligant air, to me the most upsetting part was the firing of the captain that ordered a evacuation after a declared emergency, personally I wouldn’t want to fly for a company that doesn’t back its employees when it comes to safety, let alone fly on their planes.
    If your interested Go to FlightAware.com and put in gaj839 where it says search for flight and you can follow me this week, starting in Charlotte N.C Tuesday.
    Pilot Joe

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  42. Joe Kobiela said on April 16, 2018 at 8:54 pm

    Damn it, Harry the Hat,aka Harry Anderson died today, played the judge on night court, 65yrs young, loved him on Cheers.
    Pilot Joe

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  43. MarkH said on April 16, 2018 at 9:25 pm

    Worse yet, Joe – Gunny is gone.

    R. Lee Ermey died yesterday from pneumonia, 74.

    God’s got his NAME! He’s got his ASS!!

    Hoo-rah.

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  44. Dexter said on April 17, 2018 at 1:26 am

    R. Lee Ermey was doppelganger to my Basic Combat Training drill sergeant at Fort Knox, in the movie “The Boys in Company C.” I have been a fan ever since. I even watched his cable show where he blew stuff up with many types of weapons. 74, yeah…and another one bites it.

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  45. Deborah said on April 17, 2018 at 10:16 am

    What’s wrong with Twitter this morning? Every time I click on someone that I bookmarked, it tells me Twitter is taking too long and to try again, but it never opens on any of them?

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  46. Jakash said on April 17, 2018 at 10:47 am

    https://www.cnet.com/news/twitter-is-down-for-some-users/

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  47. Suzanne said on April 17, 2018 at 10:50 am

    I just noticed a Twitter problem, too. Maybe Trump was sending so many angry Tweets this morning that it shut down due to anger overload.

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  48. Jakash said on April 17, 2018 at 10:58 am

    Given our Maximum Leader’s extended run of bad news lately, perhaps “Wining” would also be a good mash-up name for the hybrid season we’re experiencing. So much wining. Tired of wining. It offers the bonus of looking like it’s not spelled right, calling to mind a certain loser’s tweets…

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  49. Suzanne said on April 17, 2018 at 11:01 am

    “And another one gone, and another one gone
    Another one bites the dust”
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/04/17/7-term-republican-rep-charlie-dent-who-had-announced-he-wasnt-running-in-the-fall-says-hell-resign-next-month

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  50. ROGirl said on April 17, 2018 at 12:07 pm

    I’m just hoping my power will come back on today, it’s been out since Sunday. It was a total cluster on the roads this morning, too. More snow, I passed 4 accidents on the expressway.

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  51. Deborah said on April 17, 2018 at 6:31 pm

    Holy cow, ROGIrl, yikes being without power since Sunday must suck.

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  52. ROGirl said on April 17, 2018 at 7:40 pm

    The power was back on when I got home after work, I think most areas have been restored. Now it’s back to the shit show of stupid people in the news.

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  53. Sherri said on April 18, 2018 at 9:54 am

    For Brutus is an honorable man; so are they all, all honorable men.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/comey-mccabe-fbi-clinton/558200/

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  54. Lynn Walsh said on April 18, 2018 at 1:56 pm

    I MUST hear a great deal more about the Emotional Support Turkey. So far I’ve been asked to write letters for the dog, but never a turkey. You’re like Dominic Dunne, people tell you the most fascinating things.

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