For the years I lived in Fort Wayne, the abortion clinic was across the street from the library. They only did procedures one day a week, and every week, the anti faction would come down and picket them, in a variety of ways.
Operation Rescue had their moment, when some dipshit preacher was leading the flock. I watched a woman come thisclose to having her hand crushed by a police horse at one of their demonstrations. Later, they settled for the usual posters and “counseling” as women approached the clinic. Thursday was procedure day, and I often had Kate with me when I visited for story time or just another couple of hours whiled away with her. She liked the puzzles and the board books and other amenities of the library, including the big globe.
I disliked leaving with her in the car seat, while these people waved bloody pictures at passing motorists. I always pointed to something of interest on the other side of the street until we were past.
Seriously, is anyone’s mind changed by these tactics? It’s intellectual trench warfare at best, cruel harassment at worst.
Recently this woman, a state senator from the other side of the state, piped up:
Tuesday, when the proposed (later-term abortion) ban finally came to a vote, LaSata’s impatience with all those godless medical experts finally got the better of her.
“Of course it should be hard!” the senator from St. Joseph exclaimed. “And the procedure should be painful! And you should allow God to take over!! And you should deliver that baby!”
…LaSata told colleagues she had delivered a stillborn baby after her own D&E procedure went awry. LaSata cited her traumatic experience as evidence “of God looking out for me,” and suggested that all women carrying medically unviable fetuses would be better off delivering their babies.
A real mind-changer, that one. I still put the over/under on POTUS’ financed abortions at five, and I’ll take the over. We know he enjoys unprotected sex with women he associates with sex — porn actors, Playmates — and there is zero doubt in my mind that he’s paid for more than a few, necessitated by his own behavior.
Of course, the abortion bills all were rammed through last week, and now we’ve moved on to a new outrage, so it all seems so, so far away. Ben Carson’s Oreo thing, another White House tantrum, whatever else happens by noon tomorrow. I notice that when Carson needed to explain not knowing what an REO is, he went on Fox Business. As insane as Fox Original Recipe is, Fox Business is 10 times crazier. Oh, and if you were wondering? He was having trouble hearing.
I see.
We’re approaching payoff on our house — down to a moderately priced Cadillac — and if all goes well (a huge if) we should be slide into retirement with that off our plates. Thank God, as the world migrates to the world’s cities. (And our cities in the Midwest? We have WATER.) This was an interesting piece on what’s become of San Francisco:
For decades, this coruscating city of hills, bordered by water on three sides, was a beloved haven for reinvention, a refuge for immigrants, bohemians, artists and outcasts. It was the great American romantic city, the Paris of the West.
No longer. In a time of scarce consensus, everyone agrees that something has rotted in San Francisco.
Conservatives have long loathed it as the axis of liberal politics and political correctness, but now progressives are carping, too. They mourn it for what has been lost, a city that long welcomed everyone and has been altered by an earthquake of wealth. It is a place that people disparage constantly, especially residents.
Real estate is the nation’s costliest. Listings read like typos, a median $1.6 million for a single-family home and $3,700 monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment.
Kate applied for a job in San Francisco, which she didn’t get. The top of the salary range was $65,000. “I’ll be so rich,” she said. Um, no. You’ll be commuting an hour on the BART, or living in an apartment with three other people.
This piece was interesting, too, although I think the headline was bullshit: America’s Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals. California may be a case apart, but this is undeniably true:
There are many threads in the story of America’s increasingly unlivable cities. One continuing tragedy is the decimation of local media and the rise of nationalized politics in its place. In America the “local” problems plaguing cities are systematically sidelined by the structure of the national media and government, in which the presidency, the Senate and the Supreme Court are all constitutionally tilted in favor of places where no one lives. (There are more than twice as many people in my midsize suburban county, Santa Clara, as there are in the entire state of North Dakota, with its two United States senators.)
That’s why, aside from Elizabeth Warren — who has a plan for housing, as she has a plan for everything — Democrats on the 2020 presidential trail rarely mention their ideas for housing affordability, an issue eating American cities alive. I watched Joe Biden’s campaign kick off the other day; the only house he mentioned was the White House.
Anyway, stuff to think about as we head into a holiday weekend. Hope to be back before it commences.
Andrea said on May 22, 2019 at 9:35 pm
Hmmm. I live in Chicago proper, have since 1989. Birthed and raised three kids here. Used our public schools and public transportation. Until the 3rd one was six months old, we got by with just one car, and honestly, it was the older two’s extracurricular activities that forced our hand with the 2nd car. Now, with Uber and Lyft, maybe we would not have ever gotten the 2nd car. We can walk to the train station, the post office, the arts center, the local brewpub, the grocery store, the dry cleaners, the pharmacy, several parks, and the school. The church, too, if we attended. I know and love my neighbors, who are just as likely to invite me over for a beer on the porch as they are to wave hello and good bye when I am pulling out of the driveway. I can get to the beach and the theater, and bike to the farmer’s market in the summer. Seems like a pretty livable city to me. My mortgage is $1,534/month, not including taxes and insurance, which brings it up to a whopping $2,075/month for a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath house on a 150×100 ft lot. But what do I know? I just live here, after all.
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alex said on May 22, 2019 at 10:28 pm
Andrea, I lived in East Lakeview until 2004. On LSD. And I sold at the height of the housing bubble and my current expenses are cheaper than those were and cheaper than yours. Of course I’m living in the ‘burbs of a butthole city that doesn’t compare to Chicago in any respect save for its devotion to machine politics, only ours are Republican.
But I’ve learned to live with the tradeoffs, and even if the culture here is lacking, the amenities aren’t, and in this stage of life I can visit Chicago if I need liberal affirmation, just like I did before I moved there in the ’80s when it was cheap and skeevy and a mecca for people wanting something more than the life I’m willing to settle for now.
And, hey, Chicago’s still a good value for the money compared to San Francisco or Washington, D.C. or a fair number of other places that would be more fun to live.
But I’m settled in and got my own little piece of heaven that beats the hell out of the little corner of sky where I used to reside, fun as it was.
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alex said on May 22, 2019 at 10:35 pm
And I forgot to mention that I remember the anti-abortionists Nancy was talking about outside the library in Fort Wayne. They’d have their signs, “Choose Life,” “Protect Life,” so on. I used to love driving by and screaming “Fucking get a life” before I decided to leave this dump to get on with my own.
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brian stouder said on May 22, 2019 at 10:45 pm
See, this is the magic of nn.com
Our 401k is top-of-mind, as today the plan administrator conducted an informative program over-view, and indeed, I’m pretty happy with where Pam and I are (we’ve been in the plan for as long as I can recall, and our account has grown nicely).
And indeed, our house is approaching pay-off, which will be very nice. (the vehicle I drive is paid-off, and my plan is to drive it ’til the wheels fall off)
Our fine young son collected his diploma from IU Ft Wayne, and is gainfully employed in his field, and our oldest daughter is home enjoying the summer off from IU Bloomington, and our youngest daughter is on the cusp of finishing at her middle school (where she has progressed from 1st grade through 8th – making the looming transition to high school all the more huge!) – and life seems almost too good! If this were a movie, heaven only knows what cataclysmic and technically unforeseeable plot-shift would come over the horizon.
on edit: indeed, Alex. I’ve seen the crazies pop up at the clinic near Jefferson Pointe in more recent days. To hell with them, if I have any say in the matter
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Dexter Friend said on May 22, 2019 at 10:58 pm
I look at SF dot com most days to see the rapidly rising rents and real estate pricing in The City. It’s amazing. The residents hate the Yahoo! and Google buses that clog the streets heading to Menlo Park, Palo Alto and environs.Did you see the average salary listings and the whopping end-figure? That was the nearly $4,800 cash average Joe has for disposable income every month, after the rent and food and everything else, $1,200 a week loose cash in the pocket. I can’t recall average salary listings, but yeah, someone starting at $65K would have to live out in the garlic fields, ride a bus to the BART terminus in Fremont and hope for no power outages if they wanted to work in San Francisco. But hey…lots of people do it. I have a facebook contact who lives out in Livermore and makes it in every day, to San Francisco .
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basset said on May 22, 2019 at 11:26 pm
Mrs. B and I have both retired, her two years ago and me last September, and we’ve just about given up on the retirement house… the market here is so hot that houses usually have multiple offers by the time they make it to Realtracs, let alone Zillow. So we’re looking at building one, checking out a potential lot tomorrow.
Has Kate applied for anything in Nashville? Seems like it’d be a good fit, we have Uber and little scooters and downtown housing and all that modern stuff.
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Andrea said on May 22, 2019 at 11:27 pm
@Alex, no insult intended to your current city. I was just ruminating on the fact that not all large urban areas are really “unlivable” as the article claims. Since Chicago is tenuously holding on to its third-largest status, thought it might be worth contrasting it to the coastal cities the author is discussing. And sure, there are plenty of places in Chicago where the cost of living is pretty high — your old stomping ground is probably one of them. But we have managed to live comfortably on a fairly modest income (I run a nonprofit) in a large city without being priced out of reality and still enjoying the benefits of urban living. FWIW, we live on the south side in Morgan Park.
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Dexter Friend said on May 23, 2019 at 2:21 am
Here’s some numbers for the recent graduates who have the urge to take a job offer in the Cal Bay Area. They state that a $300K salary still will have ya pinching pennies.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/middle-class-budget-San-Francisco-300-000-13741570.php
The son of my daughter’s old high school science teacher from here in town is a major league baseball pitcher, having time in with Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Redlegs and San Diego twice, where he currently is. His salary in $570K, which sounds huge. Not such hot stuff in California, but I suppose he gets by OK.
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alex said on May 23, 2019 at 6:43 am
Andrea, no insult taken. And I agree that the article has a flawed premise. California has been prohibitively expensive for a long time and has only gotten more so, while Chicago is still relatively affordable. Although, if I were a young college grad today saddled with a large student debt, I’d probably be looking at smaller cities, because you have to go where the jobs are but also strike a balance between the cost of living and the cost of your loans.
When I went to Chicago I was debt-free, but back then East Lakeview was a gritty, ungentrified neighborhood and I bought in at the right time. Wish I’d been as gutsy as a friend who bought a six-flat on Southport, which was a very scary street at the time. I played it safe and got a small condo in an old hi-rise on the lake. My return on investment, though considerable, was nothing compared to his, and I remember him thinking when he bought that building that he’d made a huge mistake. If only I had it to do over again.
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Heather said on May 23, 2019 at 8:32 am
But if you didn’t buy a while ago, Chicago’s rents and housing are pretty expensive now. I bought my condo near the top of the market in 2005, but thank god I did: I pay about $1100 a month for a two-bedroom, assessments included. Meanwhile a friend told me last night she pays $2300 in rent. Granted that’s in a super-hot neighborhood, but the average for a two-bedroom seems like it’s about $1700-1800. I’d love to have a house, but on a single income it’d be a stretch, if not impossible. Houses in my neighborhood, which is slowly gentrifying but still pretty mixed for now, go for $500k minimum.
I love Chicago for all the reasons you mention, Andrea, and it’s still more affordable than other cities, but if I were moving here today as a younger person, it would be much harder. Can’t help think that’s part of the reason our population keeps slipping. That, and the gun violence.
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Suzanne said on May 23, 2019 at 9:14 am
Very enlightening!
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-05-21/american-hustle
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JodiP said on May 23, 2019 at 9:31 am
Minneapolis is also great if you are white and middle class. I always try to remember to think about liveability issues with an eye on racial inequities. As the climate changes, I suspect we’ll see more people moving here.
I was very lucky, bought my house in ’95 for just under 80K. It would go for close to 300K now. If we hadn’t done a lot of work 5 years ago by pulling out equity via a re-fi, we would have paid it off in 2017. I think we have about 12 years left. However, we have no regrets–we still marvel at our finished basement, siding and windows, and backyard patio and garden. Our monthly payments are about $1300 including taxes and insurance. I hope to retire in 8 years, and will talk with the financial planner if we should pay off the balance at that time.
I think I’ve shared this before. My grandmother showed me some awful, very explicit anti-abortion brochure when I was around 13. I recoiled, and believe it was the seed of my strong pro-choice stance.
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Bruce Fields said on May 23, 2019 at 9:41 am
“But if you didn’t buy a while ago, Chicago’s rents and housing are pretty expensive now.”
Yeah, that’s a good article with a confusing headline. Cities are perfectly livable, in the sense that they’re great places to live with lots of opportunity.
The problem is that we don’t let people live there. We literally make it illegal to house more than a certain number of people in a given area, even when doing so would decrease per-person infrastructure costs and environmental impact.
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Jeff Borden said on May 23, 2019 at 10:02 am
I celebrate 30 years of living in Chicago in July. My wife joined me after our marriage in November. My experiences are similar to Andrea’s, I guess, though our path was much easier and less expensive for being childless. After three years in a two-bedroom apartment in the epicenter of Boys Town in Lakeview, we bought a small frame house in Lincoln Square for roughly seven times what my folks spent on their house 30 miles south of Cleveland, Ohio. My sister pointed out that when my parents returned after visiting us for the first time, my dad lamented that we had paid an extravagant amount of money for a very shabby structure. But we were buying a neighborhood, not a house. Diligent double mortgage payments, refinancing monies reinvested in the house and, yes, some inheritance money helped us eliminate our mortgage six years ago. Like Andrea, we have everything we need within walking distance…except for a decent hardware store. We love our life here.
Flash forward: The neighbor to my immediate north –who never put a dime into his frame house in 26 years– just sold it for $435,00 to a developer. It’s a teardown,of course. By the time the house is leveled and carted away, the builder will have spent a half-million for a lot that is 25-feet by 125-feet. He plans to build a 4,400-square-foot McMansion on that tiny plot. They’ll drive a steel plate between my lot and his to prevent the collapse of my 115-year-old brick foundation. Otherwise, our house would fall into the mega-giant basement they will excavate. My guess is the house will list at $1.3 to $1.5 million.
There are deals to be had in Chicago, but not in desirable neighborhoods. I guess it will fall to millennials to carve out some new ‘hoods for gentrification as others become prohibitively expensive. But my old bragging line from 1989 –that Chicago was among the last of the affordable great cities– is no longer true in a lot of areas.
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Sherri said on May 23, 2019 at 10:08 am
I was chatting with one of our King County Commissioners the other evening after a local Dem meeting, and we were sharing frustrations over people who consider themselves Good Progressive Democrats who are also NIMBY as hell. Build an office building, people don’t complain. Build housing, especially multi family housing, and the fights begin. Too much traffic! The schools are overcrowded! The view! It’s out of scale and character for the neighborhood! Not enough parking!
I always want to ask people, okay, when should we have stopped changing the city? When should we have stopped allowing new people to move in? No, they’re not opposed to change, just this change is problematic. No, new people are good, but we need to build all the infrastructure first.
If our cities that are experiencing economic boom are becoming unlivable, it’s because the current residents have chosen that path, by hoarding space and equity. Too much of the space is consumed by single family homeowners, who resist any upzoning near them, driving up the equity in their own homes which is not then fully captured in property tax assessments thanks to limits on increases, prop 13 being the most extreme.
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Julie Robinson said on May 23, 2019 at 10:28 am
We paid off our Fort Wayne home several years ago and lived blissfully mortgage free until we decided to buy our retirement home in Orlando. The idea was that our kids would rent it until we moved there, but housing has since gone sky-high and we’re looking at building on for extra space. I’m glad we bought when we did because we couldn’t afford to now. The 1100 sf rental our daughter moved from was bought for 250K as a tear down, and by the time a house was built the price was 675K. Truly cray.
And speaking of truly cray, I watched more than a few of those confrontations outside the abortion clinic, when all I was trying to do was find a parking space for the library. Now there’s a shiny new high-rise in that spot, with offices, fancy condos, and an overpriced steak place.
The Planned Parenthood office on W. Jefferson is no more; they closed up shop after the employees were doxied. They didn’t even perform abortions there, only provided healthcare to women without health insurance. Thanks, pro-lifers.
Andrea, I grew up outside Chicago and know what a wonderful city it is. It’s just that whole winter thing. Cannot get past that, which is why we’re Orlando bound in a couple of years.
Alex, I’m curious, what kind of culture do you think Fort Wayne lacks? I find our arts scene vibrant and growing. We have a great orchestra and several smaller classical performance groups, a handful of theatre companies, both ballet and modern dance troupes, and three different art museums/galleries. I could go to two or three events every weekend if I had the time.
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Mark P said on May 23, 2019 at 11:16 am
If you’re tired of high house prices, move to Rome, Ga. (Or, on second thought, don’t. I agree with the Hollywood crowd — stay away from this benighted place!) Anyway, Rome was bypassed by the interstate highway from Chattanooga to Atlanta by about 20 miles, so it has been stagnant for years. There are some “high” priced homes, but they are a pittance compared to Atlanta. Or Denver. My friends who moved to Denver from Atlanta about 20 years ago bought a very small, very modest two-bedroom for around $135,000. Their neighbors are selling for north of $300K now. But it’s in town (Littleton), close to everything, with walking trails and a county rec center very close. I’d love to move out, but even if we got more than our nice, new house on 5 mountain-top acres assesses for, we couldn’t buy much more than a garden shed in the Denver area.
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Deborah said on May 23, 2019 at 11:26 am
We moved to Chicago from St. Louis in 2003. People don’t realize what a bargain the Mies buildings are on Lake Shore Drive, if you like small. They’re not new high-rises, they don’t have amenities. They do have doormen (they’re all men). The Mies building we’re in now is a co-op and it’s better maintained than the Mies condo building we moved from across the street.
Real estate in Santa Fe is crazy expensive for what you get. Granted our rent is less than half what we paid for LB’s apartment in Chicago, it’s a modest, nothing special 2 bedroom unit. We’ve made a lot of improvements inside and out which a lot of people don’t understand because we don’t own. Our landlady would love to sell it to us but she wants nearly what we paid for our place in Chicago and it’s not worth it, at all, it’s in a 5 unit condo building that isn’t maintained very well, and one of the owners of one of the units is batshit crazy, the unit has been empty the whole time we’ve been here except for a couple of months when she let her brother stay there (he was even more batshit than she is). The interior of that unit is totally wrecked now, the brother tore it up even worse than it already was. The owner almost lost the place last year for back taxes, but she managed to scrape the money together to pay her taxes at the very last minute. Most people who want to live in Santa Fe go for places in the foot hills to the mountains with fantastic views, we’re in the city because of proximity to everything that LB needs to walk to. The city of Santa Fe isn’t urban, it feels more like a suburb, our apartment is in a historic district, the houses are what I would call ramshackle but it works here, they’re quaint. If you build or renovate you have to keep strict regulations on style (adobe looking). If you stand on your tip toes you can see the tops of the mountains from our front window, but we’re not here for the view.
It’s hard to find places to rent in Santa Fe, most people who own rental property have older tenants who only stay for a couple of months during the tourist season, the places are fully furnished, the rest of the time they’re Air BnB or VRBO places. The many people who work in all of the hotels and restaurants have a very hard time finding affordable places to live, a problem in a lot of towns like Santa Fe.
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Sherri said on May 23, 2019 at 12:06 pm
Did you hear? Elizabeth Warren worked as a lawyer, charging clients as much as $675/hour, while she was also teaching law! Why, I bet she had her own email server, too!!
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alex said on May 23, 2019 at 12:16 pm
Julie, my complaint about culture isn’t with regard to museums and such, which are exceptional for a town this size. (Although I do miss being able to go see improv troupes doing their thing or having vastly more choices of things to see.) I’m talking about the utterly anti-cosmopolitan culture of this place otherwise, the suffocating white uneducated conservative toxic-masculine miasma that permeates every aspect of life here. I miss Chicago’s diversity and also the large concentrations of educated people. That’s all.
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Icarus said on May 23, 2019 at 12:43 pm
I wanted to chime in earlier but I’ve had a busy morning. Whenever I read about how rent is high and housing is scarce in San Fran or Seattle (or other big cities), I wonder if it is really saturated or if it a case of only scarce in the desirable neighborhoods.
In Chicago, you face the same problem if you are trying to live in Lincoln Park, Gold Coast, Lakeview and even Lincoln Square (among others). Rent is very reasonable in Belmont-Cragin or Hermosa but if you are a lily white transplant from Michigan or the suburbs, you aren’t gonna live there for reasons. Heck, you probably think the city ends at Western and wouldn’t be caught dead in Schorsch Village.
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Julie Robinson said on May 23, 2019 at 1:08 pm
Alex, are you around people in their 20’s and 30’s much? There are still plenty of suffocating white uneducated conservatives but I have great hope when I interact with millennials. Sure, a few of them are also suffocating white uneducated conservatives. Most are creative, caring, and working for change.
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LAMary said on May 23, 2019 at 1:21 pm
When I first went off to college in Philadelphia I realized I needed to go to Planned Parenthood to get some contraceptives. I had to work my way through a small crowd of people with poster sized photos of what was labeled “human hamburger.” I still went into Planned Parenthood and I doubt anyone who had a reason to go there was stopped by those people but it left an impression on me. Not the one intended, though.
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alex said on May 23, 2019 at 1:32 pm
As a matter of fact, Julie, some of my besties in the office are millennials. Wish there were more of them.
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Sherri said on May 23, 2019 at 4:18 pm
Icarus, it is beyond saturated in San Francisco, and pretty much saturated in Seattle. Tacoma used to have undesirable neighborhoods, but those are starting to disappear in response to the Seattle area pressures.
There’s not a single ZIP code in San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Napa, or Marin counties where the median teacher salary is enough to pay the median mortgage.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/04/30/where-can-a-teacher-afford-to-live-in-the-bay-area/
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David C. said on May 23, 2019 at 5:58 pm
I wish we could have stayed in our previous house. We would have it nearly paid off by now. But I was working at a place I hated on day one run by insane West Michigan Hollanders. I set up their whole goddamned CAD system for them. One they had for two years, but couldn’t figure out how to use. As soon as they had that done, they started to treat me like shit. One time, one of the owners berated me for a half hour because he couldn’t read one of my drawings because, get this, the text was too large. This was at the bottom of the Bush II economic meltdown. So I found a better job in Wisconsin and lost most of my equity when I sold the house. I considered myself lucky because a lot of people just mailed in the keys and trashed their credit rating. So I could keep my sanity or my equity. I think I made the right decision, but even with planning to retire at 70, the house won’t be paid off. We’ll probably sell it and move to a slightly down on its heels small town, so at most we’ll have a small mortgage that we can handle.
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Deborah said on May 23, 2019 at 8:39 pm
Very high winds in Santa Fe today. The flowers we planted in our window boxes yesterday got pretty ripped up, damn it. Hopefully the plants aren’t ruined for new growth.
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David C. said on May 23, 2019 at 9:37 pm
Good god. tRump rolled out the stable genius line again in today’s whine fest. If I was Nancy I’d say tRump was so scared of her that he wet his pants. Then watch him call a presser denying that he wet his pants. I can’t listen to the motherfucker, but I’d listen to him stamping his little feet and screaming “No pants wetting”.
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basset said on May 23, 2019 at 9:45 pm
David C, what happened when you quit – was it in person or did you just clear out your space and take off? I can imagine how they must have reacted.
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David C. said on May 24, 2019 at 5:56 am
Basset. I gave two weeks notice and they actually treated me pretty decently the final two weeks. I don’t know if they thought I might change my mind or what. They must have in some what have known they screwed up. I left almost twelve years ago and some of the designs I did are still featured on their website.
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Suzanne said on May 24, 2019 at 6:30 am
Teresa May is out in Britain
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/24/theresa-may-steps-down-resigns-tory-leader-conservative-brexit
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Connie said on May 24, 2019 at 8:23 am
Dear David C, I was born and raised a West Michigan Hollander and I am not insane.
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Connie said on May 24, 2019 at 9:03 am
In the midst of all the abortion discussion I have been pondering my own personal experience and thought I would share it with you.
32 years ago I walked into the hospital, seven and a half months pregnant, knowing I was about to give birth to a baby that had already died. My labor was induced and I gave birth to a four pound baby boy who is buried next to my mother in my home town cemetery. It is all a very dark period in my life.
Today I would be considered to be having a late term abortion of a non viable fetus. Where did this come from? I can’t imagine how much worse my already difficult experience would have been if those words had been used about it at that time.
My co-worker’s 38 year old son died unexpectedly a few months ago, and in some ways seeing her deal with that brought a lot of this back to me.
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JodiP said on May 24, 2019 at 9:42 am
Connie, what a terribly sad experience for you. And of course it makes sense that another person’s loss of a child would bring all that back. My heart goes out to you.
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Julie Robinson said on May 24, 2019 at 9:53 am
Oh Connie, I’m so sorry. It really hits home for me because my son turned 32 earlier this month, and at one point in the pregnancy the doctor couldn’t find a heartbeat. I was sent home, told to come back on Monday, and not to worry. Not to worry?!?!?!
Your experience echoes that of others I’ve read; the difference being that now they often have to travel long distances and pay exorbitant fees. There is such a lack of compassion.
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Bitter Scribe said on May 24, 2019 at 10:17 am
That NYT piece was provocative. I covered zoning issues for a long time, and NIMBYism in the form of prejudice against multi-unit housing is everywhere. And yes, it probably does drive up prices. The problem is that it also drives up property values, which is all the I’ve-got-mine crowd cares about (while railing against the higher taxes that come with the property values).
I now live in a condo, and one of my neighbors was distressed to get the cold shoulder from the owner of the house behind our building. This guy is still pissed, 25 years after the fact, that they built condos next to his home.
Incidentally, this same neighbor was also distressed to learn that the condo building next to ours allows—gasp—renters! Everyone looks down on everyone else, I guess.
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Deborah said on May 24, 2019 at 10:19 am
Connie, wow what a horrible experience you had, and thanks for telling it here. It brings the situation in various states today to light, or I should say to dark. Sad.
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Suzanne said on May 24, 2019 at 12:30 pm
So sorry for all you went through, Connie. I cannot even imagine.
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Andrea said on May 24, 2019 at 1:10 pm
@Connie, thank you for sharing and sending you virtual hugs. I am sorry you and your family had that trauma and the grief of losing a child. My sister had multiple miscarriages and then a son who died in utero at about 5.5 months. She had to do the same thing. After that experience she had an IUD put in — said she could not go through anything like that again. I am afraid to ask her where she stands on the abortion issue.
….
Putting in some separation here for a change of topic. I though this graphic was interesting and related to the discussion here about livable cities.
https://www.axios.com/map-rich-poor-areas-america-e57d1173-ba75-4c20-976a-bdc958f0cd05.html
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LAMary said on May 24, 2019 at 1:40 pm
Connie, thanks for sharing your story. I have a good friend who went through a similar experience and it was so hard for her.
And another quick topic change. On the Trump bet I’m staying with my original figure of 8.
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David C. said on May 24, 2019 at 5:36 pm
Connie @ 32. I certainly didn’t mean to imply all are, but Calvinism and predestination are heavy drugs especially when combined with the West Michigan small business owner mentality.
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Deborah said on May 24, 2019 at 5:44 pm
LA Mary does that mean you’re betting that Trump will serve 8 years? What does the 8 mean? I certainly hope that doesn’t happen, I’m not sure I would survive.
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Dave said on May 24, 2019 at 6:01 pm
I think 8 means LA Mary is betting the Orange One has paid for a minimum of 8 abortions. As for 8 years, I too fear that may happen. I can’t see how anyone can vote for him myself but there are many who will. I see one of my old supervisors posting things on Facebook that nearly made me respond by warning him that someone had hacked into his Facebook page but I tend to stay out of such discussions on Facebook, you’re not going to convince anyone how wrong you believe them to be on Facebook.
Andrea, the poor area in Florida that stands out to me is the Panhandle area represented by Matt Gaetz in Congress, a complete jerk. Why is it always so?
Connie, my sympathies, it has to be difficult. Our old next door neighbors in Fort Wayne had twins except one was delivered stillborn, a very difficult time for them. The other was healthy and is now an adult.
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Sherri said on May 24, 2019 at 6:59 pm
As I was saying just yesterday about Tacoma: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/tacomas-housing-market-is-now-the-hottest-in-u-s-and-seattle-knows-why/
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Deborah said on May 24, 2019 at 7:06 pm
I’m in Abiquiu, gonna try submitting this comment again. Regarding abortions Trump has paid for: that’s assuming he would pay for them because he feels responsible, based on his avoidance of paying vendors who worked for him, my guess is that he threatened his pregnant girlfriends with legal ramifications if they came forward publically so he avoided paying for some even if they were done. Not sure how many he caused that he actually paid for, not out of a sense of morality but out of scamming and grift.
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LAMary said on May 24, 2019 at 8:19 pm
I was referring to abortions Trump has paid for. Of course there was no sense of morality or responsibility. He was paying to get rid of evidence and to keep the woman quiet.
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Julie Robinson said on May 24, 2019 at 9:02 pm
Someone give me a prize, please. I just went an entire day with the hateful uncle from Iowa and did not engage with him about politics or religion a single time. I am feeling very pleased with myself but OH I AM TIRED.
Of course I wouldn’t give him a minute were it not for the love of my mom and her sister. Only because of that does he not get to hear how I really feel about him.
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Deborah said on May 24, 2019 at 10:35 pm
What I was trying to say is that I bet Trump didn’t pay for as many abortions as he caused. Not because he thinks/thought abortion is morally wrong but because he will try everything to grift his way out of paying for anything.
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Dexter Friend said on May 25, 2019 at 2:21 am
Welcome to the Show Me State. Back to coat hangers and sleazy barred disgraced former doctors and med-school rejects. Fucking fucktards. My state of residence is in the mix too. Ohio is back in the coat hanger business, has been for a while. 45 years ago my best friend’s wife had a coat hanger abortion in a shaky illegal office in Indianapolis. She got infected and was sick as hell for a long time. She had to take a drug cocktail for weeks but was healthy after that. My friend always refused the optional overtime but for a few months he worked all he could get to keep up with all the bills from the drugstore for all those antibiotics and whatever else was going on. By contrast, my ex’s little brother impregnated his girlfriend , they were both high school sophomores and 15 years old. The parents of both kids got together and worked it out: a nonstop drive to the closest New York State abortion clinic…maybe it was done in doctor’s offices or hospitals, I never knew. The results were perfect. The kids learned to channel their desires and use contraceptives…no more incidents. Which story is more reasonable, which path was right? Is there any doubt at all? Nope.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 25, 2019 at 8:16 am
Julie, consider yourself the recipient of a “Fra-gee-lay” marked crate!
That sounds like what most Sundays in the narthex after church feels like.
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Sherri said on May 25, 2019 at 1:09 pm
A little bit different take on San Francisco: https://hmmdaily.com/2019/05/22/in-a-constantly-changing-san-francisco-change-is-constant/
The piece Nancy links to mentions that the Sierra Club left for Oakland three years ago because of rising rents. The Sierra Club in California has been part of the problem, absolutely opposed to building density. They’ve been the NIMBYest of the NIMBYs.
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Fred said on May 25, 2019 at 2:26 pm
In response to Icarus@21:
See this article referencing a recent analysis of the causes of high housing prices in cities and why the conventional wisdom regarding solutions is mostly wrong:
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/05/housing-supply-home-prices-economic-inequality-cities/588997/
In Seattle, limited upzoning has been approved and some on the city council are trying to abolish single-family zoning, despite the fact that the existing zoned capacity is sufficient for the projected population increases over the next decade or more. Increased density has been strongly gentrifying and will continue to be as the lowest priced housing is targeted for replacement by much more expensive housing. Increased density has come at the price of the city’s tree canopy. It isn’t NIMBYism to disagree with the transformation of one’s city into San Francisco II.
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beb said on May 25, 2019 at 2:36 pm
Sherri@19 –It was outrageous that the WaPo make how much Warren charged for her work part of the headline, knowing how many people only read the headlines. For people whose income is $50,000/year ($25/hour) Warren pay seems outrageous. Only deep in the article do we learn that her billings were par for the times.
Which reminds me that Facebook seems to have a problem taking down that doctored video of Nancy Pelosi. YouTube has been able to handle it quickly but Facebook… I’m beginning to think that Facebook’s problem isn’t it’s horrible personal data policies but that it’s a partisan political operator favoring white supremacists.
Anti-abortionists like to talk about late-term abortions because it’s easier to inflame people when the aborted fetus looks human.
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Sherri said on May 25, 2019 at 2:43 pm
The mayor is just trying to be fair to everyone, right…
https://www.valdostadailytimes.com/news/local_news/update-city-escorts-out-civil-rights-leader/article_424b759e-7a10-54db-985c-485dd746d226.html
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Dexter Friend said on May 25, 2019 at 4:33 pm
Well, beb, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen that in print or heard a damn thing about it. What sites, what commenters share this view? Is this just a random thought you had? ” I’m beginning to think that Facebook’s problem isn’t it’s horrible personal data policies but that it’s a partisan political operator favoring white supremacists.”
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beb said on May 25, 2019 at 7:58 pm
Dexter, my comments about Facebook stemmed from Facebook’s habit of hiring right-wing partisan companies as their fact-checkers and their foot-dragging on taking down the doctored Pelosi video. It seemed too convenient and too supportive of Republicans. There are other things that float around in the background, like how they find alt-right sites and posts do not violate their terms of service. Facebook seems to constantly lean over in favor of the right instead of remaining strictly non-political. There were articles today and last night about how Fox News was pushing the doctored video despite knowing that it was fake news. Facebook and Fox News seem to have begun colluding on what constitutes the news.
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beb said on May 25, 2019 at 8:50 pm
And Gin and Tacos has this about Facebook
http://www.ginandtacos.com/2019/05/16/missing-the-point/
again pointing to how easy they go on white supremacists.
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beb said on May 26, 2019 at 11:34 am
And this:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kate-kretz-maga-hats-nazis-hate-speech_n_5ce9d070e4b00356fc228d0a
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Joe Kobiela said on May 26, 2019 at 4:28 pm
Great race at Indianapolis today very competitive, best wishes to Simon Pagenaud. RIP Bart Starr another childhood hero gone.
Prayers to all who sacrificed so we can live in such a great country, its what this holiday is really all about.
Pilot Joe
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Sherri said on May 26, 2019 at 6:14 pm
Example number eleventy gazillion of why we need higher taxes and more regulations.
Elon Musk, not satisfied to run a car company badly, wants to bring Internet to every corner of the world. He wants to do this with satellites in low earth orbit. Fortunately for him, he has his own space company, so he’s put up 60 satellites, with plans for something like 11000 more.
Less fortunately for the rest of us, these satellites will be naked-eye visible in the night sky. Now, if you want to put up a cell tower, you have to get a permit, and there are all sorts of regulations you have to follow (though the current administration just watered them down.) But throw up some space trash in the night sky so you can sell bandwidth? No problem! Who wants to look at boring stars anyway!
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Deborah said on May 26, 2019 at 10:28 pm
The only known family member that I know of who died in combat was my Uncle James, my dad’s younger brother who died during WW2 when the Japanese invaded the Pacific island where he was stationed. It was apparently a horrendous battle and he and his fellow soldiers didn’t have a chance. I never knew the guy because he died before I was born but I heard many stories about him.
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David C. said on May 27, 2019 at 6:55 am
The way Elon Musk over promises and under delivers, it wouldn’t surprise me if his internet service follows the lead of his boring tunnels, which will not whisk you from the city center to the airport on a puff of air as promised. It will allow you to drive your specially equipped Tesla at 60 mph after you’ve taken an elevator down to it. SpaceX has had a nice run, but from what I’m reading IRSO, the Indian space agency, is about to eat his lunch with lower cost and higher reliability. The same thing that will happen to Tesla once companies that know how to build cars and don’t build their cars outside because the automated assembly plant Musk put inside doesn’t work right. Too bad for Elon and all the fanboys who hooked their egos to his, but it makes Jalopnik even more fun to read.
https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-says-hyperloop-tunnel-is-now-just-a-normal-1835024474
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