A productive weekend, all things considered. Nothing like all-weekend clouds and rain to get your errands run. Grocery, dry cleaner, drugstore and — because the weather was at least warmish on Saturday — a bicycle run to handle those chores that never seem to get done, like a stop at the vacuum store to get bags. I got two packages of three, which means I won’t have to do this one again for quite some time, nor make small talk about my Kenmore vacuum, and the declining quality of the old Sears brands.
I also started a new novel — about which I’ll have more to say, once I finish it, but it was written by an infrequent member of our commenting community — and did some yoga on the bedroom floor. Got up covered with dog hair, so I vacuumed, but with the upstairs vacuum, which doesn’t use bags (a Dyson, bought secondhand, and a steal).
Why not take the upstairs vacuum downstairs, you might ask? Because I like the downstairs vacuum, too, and it’s kinda heavy, so a pain to lug up and down the stairs. When a friend offered to sell me her recently restored super-lightweight Dyson for a very good price, well, no-brainer. My upstairs rugs are cleaner than ever, but I still have a dog that sheds.
I live in a community where people have second-floor laundry rooms, master suites with wet bars and fireplaces, spare bedrooms converted into closets with dress forms to rehearse outfit combinations and all sorts of luxury foofrahs. I refuse to feel guilty for having two vacuums.
(Jeff Borden has a bedroom-turned-closet, said the tattletale. He calls it “Imelda’s Room,” and I totally approve. They don’t have kids, and when you can see everything you own, clothing-wise, you get more wear out of it.)
In a while I will finish this blog and paint my toenails, and my weekend chore list will be over. I just got a call from a pollster, testing my attitude toward the 2020 U.S. Senate race here, as well as the presidency. I portrayed myself as an independent of moderate political attitudes who wants Joe Biden to reconsider how he wants tp spend the latter years of his eighth decade.
(Now Wendy, sleeping next to me, is having a dream. Her hackles are raised, and she is wagging her tail furiously. This must be some kinda dream. Maybe a pollster called her subconscious.)
So on to bloggage, so I can get back to my book:
I’m not a fan of online video, but in 60 seconds, you can learn everything you need to know about Marianne Williamson. And then never think about her again.
Starts strong, finishes weak, but if you like snark: The Man Who Was Upset, an essay about oh-god-of-course-you-know-who:
The thing about impressiveness, however, is that it resides entirely in the eye of the beholder—and in Trump’s case, he typically invokes it in a crass gambit to annex and manipulate the inner workings of that beholder’s eye and generate maximum ego-gratification for himself. As with most things Trump-related, the form that this ascriptive impressiveness takes can be mapped with laughable ease over whatever failing he is most keen to conceal at that moment. When his marriage was falling apart on the front pages of New York City tabloids, Trump called the editor of the New York Post to vouch, on behalf of his then-girlfriend Marla Maples, that “Marla says with me it’s the best sex she’s ever had.” During his years in the cultural wilderness, Trump reportedly made it a stipulation for film productions that wished to shoot in the properties that he owned that there be a scene in which Trump himself appeared. “Martin Brest had to write something in Scent of a Woman,” Matt Damon told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. “And the whole crew was in on it. You have to waste an hour of your day with a bullshit shot. Donald Trump walks in and Al Pacino’s like, ‘Hello, Mr. Trump!’—you had to call him by name—and then he exits.”
In 1991, as his divorce and a series of pyrotechnically misconceived business ventures ushered in the beginning of his long tour through our popular culture as an overleveraged punch line, Trump went ahead and just spelled his super-hero aspirations out. The story Trump told the New York Daily News was this: While driving to a Paula Abdul concert in New Jersey with Maples and another couple, Trump had seen “a big man with a big bat” committing a “brutal-looking” mugging. In Trump’s telling, he ordered his limo driver to stop and got out of the vehicle. “The guy with the bat looked at me, and I said, ‘Look, you’ve gotta stop this. Put down the bat,’“ Trump told the Daily News. “I guess he recognized me because he said, ‘Mr. Trump, I didn’t do anything wrong.’ I said, ‘How could you not do anything wrong when you’re whacking a guy with a bat?’ Then he ran away.”
How does a 25-year-old hairstylist clear a quarter-mil a year? This way. I respect the guy; I certainly wouldn’t pay $2,000 for hair extensions, but someone will, and he’s found enough to make it work for him. But this line blew me away:
He studied at Paul Mitchell The School in Sterling Heights on Van Dyke Avenue, near 18 Mile Road. It was about $22,000 total in 2011 for a 10-month program, he said.
That’s cosmetology school, mind you. He started out making $30,000 a year, and I’ll bet almost all of his classmates never go all that much higher. Talk about highway robbery.
Happy week ahead, all. Off to paint my nails.
Andrea said on June 16, 2019 at 5:07 pm
Sounds like a nice weekend. It was cloudy and rainy here too — unseasonably cool as I write in a (very old, moth eaten) purple cashmere cardigan, but the yards and gardens around here are lush, lush, lush.
I am going through my usual Sunday routine of working 4-6 hours so I can be “ready” for work on Monday and catch up on some of the hundreds of emails I get every week. This is total BS but I am not sure I have an effective way out of it. My only strategy is to take a mini-sabbatical, which is set for the 2nd half of the summer. My hope is that the whole org will wean itself off of me and I off of it, if only for a little while, so that we can re-set the whole arrangement. Will let you know how it turns out.
Hope the novel is a good one — I am taking suggestions for leisure reading for late July and August. Maybe it will even be warm by then and I can read at the beach.
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Bitter Scribe said on June 16, 2019 at 5:48 pm
It’s been a long time since I saw that movie, but…wasn’t Pacino’s character a blind man?
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David C. said on June 16, 2019 at 5:54 pm
The weather here is really starting to get to me. We’ve only had one, maybe two, days in the 80s. It rains all the damned time on weekends and most of the week. We get one or two sunny days during the week and on those days I don’t get to enjoy the weather. I get to mow the damned lawn which is beautifully green in a damp and gloomy way like you might imagine Ireland looks like. I wan’t some sunshine, damn it. I paid all winter for it and it’s owed to me.
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Deborah said on June 16, 2019 at 6:19 pm
I’m sitting outside in Santa Fe right now, it’s cloudy, hoping it will rain. After a great snowy winter and wet spring they’re predicting a late and poor monsoon season in NM this summer, darn it, hope they’re wrong.
Yesterday I drove down to Albuquerque for the umpteen millionth time to pick up my husband at the airport. This time we stayed in Albuquerque for the night at our favorite place, Los Poblanos, because this morning we went to a concert in Albuquerque by our Abiquiu neighbor who’s a violist. It seemed silly to drive back to Santa Fe last night and then turn around and go back down to Albuquerque early this morning.
Los Poblanos has peacocks that walk around wherever they want. If you’ve ever heard peacocks scream, they sound like humans involved in a hideous trauma. It entered my dreams and my husband said I screamed “help” three times last night. I was having a creepy nightmare. Plus the bed was way too soft and hot.
This morning we had a delicious breakfast in their restaurant, my favorite part of going there. After the concert we had lunch with our friend and his wife and the percussionist along with his husband, it was fun except that I don’t have to eat for a week it seems. It’s rare that I eat both breakfast and lunch and big ones at that.
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Linda said on June 16, 2019 at 7:44 pm
Re: pricey proprietary schools. Not unusual, and lucrative. What’s more, they lobby heavily to keep it that way, both on the national and state level: https://hechingerreport.org/how-cosmetology-schools-mire-students-in-debt/
Now, they also have a sympathizer ear in the Trump administration. No surprise.
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alex said on June 16, 2019 at 9:21 pm
Bitter Scribe, not only was Pacino’s character blind in that movie, he took a Lamborghini on a test drive in Manhattan that recalled the chase scenes in Bullitt and the French Connection.
What sucky weather this weekend, although at least the skies parted for a friend’s birthday party last night and dinner for Dad’s Day tonight. I made him stroganoff and he loved it.
We got lotsa indoor cleaning done but still need to finish our exterior repainting, a project we began more than a month ago and almost had completed but for this fucking weather.
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Alan Stamm said on June 16, 2019 at 9:23 pm
Yow — 2,100 hours to get licensed to do hair and nails in Iowa?! “An Iowa cosmetologist who has a heart attack can have her life saved by a medic with one-sixteenth her training.”
Eye-opening link, Linda. Thanks for posting it.
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Dexter Friend said on June 16, 2019 at 9:25 pm
Our spare upstairs bedroom is storage now. Unlike most, after reading where old concert tee shirts command great return when you find the correct vintage clothing store, I don’t part with old tees. I have two stacks about 6 feet tall and I wear them in rotation. A couple I have retired, my fave is my Mr. Natural Keep on Truckin’ from 1971. As you may imagine, I have them from Cape Cod to San Diego, from the Florida Suncoast to Isle of Palms, SC, from many baseball parks to the Phoenix Suns arena. I just can’t toss them. Some I bought at vintage stores myself…a favorite is one from the Lima, Ohio Locomotive Works.
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Julie Robinson said on June 16, 2019 at 9:26 pm
Rained here most of the weekend until right before we went to a movie. I was so happy to see the sun I might have called it off, but we were meeting people who had already bought the tickets. It turned out to be wonderful–go figure–Rocketman. I went in with zero expectations and was blown away. It tells the story of Elton John’s life through his music, and felt like I was seeing a musical. He spares no one, especially not himself, and it gets pretty emotional, but is really well done.
Anyway, the sun was still out when we got home and we went for a walk then.
22K for haircutter school? You’ve got to be kidding me.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 16, 2019 at 9:51 pm
A high point of my week is watching Prime Minister’s Questions (from Wednesday) on C-SPAN Sunday night at 9 pm or so. If we had this tradition in the US . . . o tempora! o mores!
Say what you will about Theresa May, but she isn’t phoning in her lame duck period: she’s counterpunching Jeremy Corbyn like a prize fighter.
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LAMary said on June 16, 2019 at 10:04 pm
Paying 22k for cosmetology school isn’t as bad as paying that much to be a medical assistant or some other low level medical position. There’s a chance you’ll make enough to eventually pay off that loan as a hairdresser. No way you can pay that back at a few dollars over minimum wage which is what medical assistants, x ray techs, CNAs, home health aides, dental assistants etc. make. All these schools that train people for those jobs advertise on daytime TV along with the injury attorneys and title loan companies. I’ve advised so many people to go to community college for those courses but those places with the jazzy ads that seem to be targeting minorities are getting a lot of business.
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Sherri said on June 16, 2019 at 11:47 pm
What LAMary said. Low level medical jobs pay shit wages, which is ridiculous when you consider how much they’re needed.
Back when I used to practice karate, my dojo was always promoting their “instructor academy”, which cost something like $15K for the opportunity to learn Tony Robbins sales techniques and earn less than minimum wage plus commission.
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candlepick said on June 17, 2019 at 2:52 am
An unlikely memoir that’s really stayed with me (and would seem to be firmly in the pleasure zone of many who comment here): Sounds Like Titanic by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman. The less you read about it beforehand, the more you’ll enjoy its surprises.
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Deborah said on June 17, 2019 at 4:29 am
I’m reading State of Wonder by Ann Patchett right now. I got the book in one of those cute little free library boxes by a park near us in Santa Fe. I had never read anything by Patchett before. I understand she has a bookstore in Nashville, wondering if you’ve ever been to it, basset?
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Suzanne said on June 17, 2019 at 8:15 am
Ann Patchett does have a bookstore called Parnassus Books
https://www.parnassusbooks.net/
I have read several Patchett book: Bel Canto, State of Wonder, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage (memoir type essays). She writes very well, but both Bel Canto & State of Wonder had parts that for me didn’t ring true, as though she got to a certain point in the plot and didn’t know where to go, so just put something there that really didn’t fit & wasn’t believable. The essay/memoirs had some chapters that were amazing and several that gave me the impression that Ann is the absolute center of Ann’s universe & everyone else is simply bit players in her story.
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kayak woman said on June 17, 2019 at 9:45 am
I have five vacuum cleaners. They all get used.
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Jeff Borden said on June 17, 2019 at 10:13 am
I had to run our furnace this morning. On June 17. It was 52 degrees.
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Deborah said on June 17, 2019 at 10:21 am
I commented about this earlier, we now have Miele vacuums in both Santa Fe and Chicago. I love them. I bought a hand held battery powered vacuum for Abiquiu and boy was that a waste of money. So I just sweep there and have a heavy duty swiffer type mop for the concrete floor. I bring the rugs back to Santa Fe to vacuum after shaking them outside. It’s dusty as all get out on the windy Mesa, the wind is more ferocious now than it has been before. Climate change.
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basset said on June 17, 2019 at 10:24 am
I’ve been to Parnassus Books quite a few times, never been able to connect with her novels but the store is really nice. Has dogs, too.
I’m waiting on “The Beatle Who Vanished” to show up from Amazon right now… about a guy who was the Fabs’ substitute drummer for a few days in 1964 while Ringo was out sick and later dropped out of sight.
They had a few more over the years: https://daytrippin.com/2017/11/03/finding-the-fourth-beatle-john-paul-george-and-their-18-drummers/
Tomorrow is Paul McCartney’s birthday, he’ll be 77.
And I know I shouldn’t mention Amazon after a local bookstore, but it beats going to the store twice, once to order and once to pick up.
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Heather said on June 17, 2019 at 10:26 am
Yep, I turned on my gas fireplace last night. This weather is really maddening, and depressing. Thank God I at least got to experience some summer temps in LA last weekend, where they had a mini-heatwave too. And I thought it was crazy for us to have our family reunion in Georgia in July, but it’s sounding like maybe the only guarantee for some really hot weather, which I like.
Saw Hannah Gadsby at the Chicago Theatre last night. I went because I really liked her Netflix special, Nanette. This show was a little more uneven but still great. I guess she is autistic, which I didn’t realize, and the way she explained how she has to navigate the world was really touching.
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Icarus said on June 17, 2019 at 10:57 am
so my ponder of the day is to buy something from Amazon for $200 knowing I can easily return it, or pay $75 for the same item at a low budget website but cannot return, once opened.
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Deborah said on June 17, 2019 at 12:54 pm
Heather, I loved the Hannah Gadsby Netflix show. Im familiar with how people on the autism spectrum have to navigate the world since LB is on it too. People who are nuerotypical have a hard time relating to it which makes it even more difficult for people on spectrum.
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Julie Robinson said on June 17, 2019 at 1:07 pm
Patchett’s Bel Canto is one of my favorite books, for its story of creating a family under dire circumstances. I’ve been less engaged with her other writing. And I found Sounds Like Titanic bizarre. What were the motives of The Composer? I spluttered to myself constantly while reading.
We had several for-profit colleges here advertising for medical assistant jobs but I believe they’ve all closed now after all the usual problems. Of course, the student loans live on.
A former roommate of our daughter’s was attending Phoenix University, which has great ads about how you can take your classes anytime, no matter what your work schedule. That’s probably what sucked her in since she was a medical receptionist with rotating and unpredictable work hours. She wanted to move up to a higher level in the field, but her family was first-generation in the country and she was the first to graduate high school, so they didn’t have any guidance for her.
Math was a real struggle, and there was zero support from Phoenix. When she failed the class she had to take it again, and pay for it again. Sarah tutored her through it but I wonder if she ever graduated. Just another part of the great scamming of America. Someone else I know got her “Masters in Psychology” through Phoenix, and last I heard was still working at Walmart.
Speaking of scams, I’m surprised Brian Stouder hasn’t already posted this one: http://journalgazette.net/opinion/20190616/voucher-accountability-charade.
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brian stouder said on June 17, 2019 at 1:20 pm
Julie – a tremendous piece, indeed.
The question is – what motivates such misguided public policy?
And truly, I’ve come to believe it is actual hostility to genuinely public education, for any number of (proto-Trumpian) reasons
(since indeed, they don’t appropriate dollars specifically for vouchers; they simply swipe them from public education’s allotment)
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Julie Robinson said on June 17, 2019 at 1:26 pm
The school’s two co-founders earned 500K between the two of them for 300 students. Neither has a teacher’s license, much less administrator’s. Why are they not in jail?
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Dexter Friend said on June 17, 2019 at 4:03 pm
JeffB: I remember 1998, June 8, sitting in the sun at what was then Jacobs Field in Cleveland, watching the Cubs-Tribe from corporate box seats that our Cleveland-based HR director obtained, roasting like a pig on a spit…high humidity and 98F, and Chicago was so hot old people were dying inside their dwellings, especially those with un-openable windows. Fast forward 21 years, you at 52F and we here in NW Ohio at 53F. Three nights here in June our furnace was blasting for a few hours. Today, daytime high of 71F, and then the switch is flipped…80F tomorrow and from then on, warm to hot. What’s weird, the upstairs window AC has only been turned on 3 days and/or nights. Less than 2 weeks from July, 3 days of AC. My heritage shows farmers going way-back on Dad’s side, but he was a salesman and the farming ceased with my uncle , who recently passed and the old farm is going to auction in a year or whatever. I did work on farms as a kid, lived in rented farmhouses actually, for years, and I never had sympathies for bitching, whining farmers who seemed to be on the verge of “the poorhouse” and bankruptcy, and seemed to be Humpty-Dumpties ready to crash to the ground, then they’d go to town and come back with a shiny new big-ass pickup truck and a later Maw would go trade for a new Chrysler Imperial, and we’d see a new combine come wheat harvest. Anyway, it makes me sad to see the local corn and soybeans crops finished before they could start. This weather is all fucked up, to coin a phrase.
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Deborah said on June 17, 2019 at 5:34 pm
I’m in Abiquiu again, where it’s currently storming. It rained right before we got here, so yay! Mid-June is technically the beginning of the monsoon season but it usually doesn’t seem to start until July. It’s 69° and the low will be 50° which is heaven to me. My weather app shows no rain for the next 10 days though, darn.
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LAMary said on June 17, 2019 at 5:57 pm
Last week Trump spouted some garbage about how first it was called global warming, then climate change, now the new term is extreme weather. I think “the weather is all fucked up” is the next official designation. Can’t wait to hear the commander in chief share that one.
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Dexter Friend said on June 18, 2019 at 3:29 am
Sports: The Michigan Wolverines are hardly ever in the top echelon of D-1 baseball but they are 2-0 at the College World Series in Omaha and have captured my attention, as I did forego the pro games to watch the Wolverines beat FSU last night. They are really good for once.
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alex said on June 18, 2019 at 7:43 am
The school’s two co-founders earned 500K between the two of them for 300 students. Neither has a teacher’s license, much less administrator’s. Why are they not in jail?
Agreed. Especially having been told by an attorney friend how they “earned” it. The state pays about $7K per child. In order to get people to send their children there, they pay parents a kickback of a thousand dollars per kid out of the voucher money, and they prey on the kind of impoverished parents who are happy to have the money and are indifferent to their children’s education. The school otherwise has no books and no supplies and the teachers are essentially babysitters and paid accordingly. With 300 pupils, they’re clearing $2.1 million a year with almost no overhead.
It’s a fucking scandal and it’s too bad Fort Wayne doesn’t have investigative journalists anymore with the chops to expose it.
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Julie Robinson said on June 18, 2019 at 8:53 am
*head explodes*
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Mark P said on June 18, 2019 at 10:57 am
Brian @24 — There is no question that certain elements of the right wing, if not all elements, are hostile to public education. I occasionally listened for a few minutes at a time (all I could stand) to Neil Boortz, a self-styled libertarian radio talk show host, now retired. He often referred to “government schools”, with “government” pronounced with comical disdain. Of course, he was rich, so his kids didn’t have to go to government schools. He flew his private plane to his Florida home, but I never heard him complain about government airports or government air traffic control. I always thought his last name was appropriate, if you dropped the last two letters.
LAMary @28 — Donald Trump said at first they called it global warming and now they say it’s climate change. Global warming is an observed fact. The global, average temperature is increasing; it’s been measured. Climate change is the result of global warming. It’s a subtle distinction, but not one that would be lost on someone other than Donald Trump or a poorly-educated stupid person but I repeat myself.
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LAMary said on June 18, 2019 at 11:35 am
MarkP, Trump delivered the statement about what he considered proof that the scientific community was revising the climate change story and downgrading it to “weather.” Trump’s smug condescending tone to the reporter he was talking to was beyond annoying.
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beb said on June 18, 2019 at 2:39 pm
Trump apparently kicked off his re-election campaign by saying he going to deport millions of people. This came as a surprise to ICE and CBP. Also, after kicking Iran too the curb because he didn’t like Obama nuclear treaty Trump is now complaining that Iran plans to start up their nuclear program. And Jon Stewart reunited with Steven Colbert to blast Mitch McConnell indifference to the medical needs of the 9/11 first responders. I guess Stewart forgot that indifference to the needs of others *is& the Republican health care plan.
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JodiP said on June 18, 2019 at 2:47 pm
beb, what came as a surprise is the announcement. I read the article in the WaPo, and there is certainly a plan to do mass arrests. ICE just doesn’t like the advance notice, which gives people who are targeted time to prepare. They are targeting families, and some are with kids born here, so they could possibly be left behind. This is one issue I feel so frustratingly helpless about because congress certainly won’t step in to do anything.
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Dexter Friend said on June 18, 2019 at 4:45 pm
Shanahan has left his temporary office and another man I have never heard of stepped into his shoes…in this administration of constant change the only “rocks” in the White House are extreme Israel puppets of Netanyahu, Jared and Ivanka. USA allies are siding with Iran after Trump has insulted almost all of them. Pompeo says Trump does not want war but Bolton sure as hell does, and he seems to call a lot of the shots, even urging Trump to bomb Venezuela for crissakes; Trump has forgotten Venezuela of course, and his bumbling with off-the-cuff tweets would have us in a war with Iran already, but perhaps Iran’s leadership knows we have a fucking idiot in charge. By the way, the average joes in Iran are sick of their leaders, too, wanting these crippling sanctions to end and a normal daily life to reassume.
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David C. said on June 18, 2019 at 6:36 pm
Unless tRump actually manages to turn this into a banana republic (which I don’t discount) he’s going to be in a hell of a mess when this is over with. Any Presidential candidate who advocates “Turn the page” is a hard no for me. Handing our foreign policy to MBS, MBZ, and Neanyahu, for cash considerations in the cases of the first two and and because he needs to suck up the fundigelical’s rapture fantasies for the last, will leave us screwed over for at least twenty years or until the Republican Party is eliminated from the face of the Earth.
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Sherri said on June 18, 2019 at 8:12 pm
I was meeting today with a young woman who is running for city council in Redmond. There’s a candidate forum next week, put on by a neighborhood association and held in the church the organizer of the forum belongs to. I had to prepare this young Muslim woman in hijab that when she walks into that church, she will see this: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0NdZMeH1WmBVPxnf5xED87Qbw
She’s running against an incumbent 70 something white guy who actually told her to her face that he would be a better voice for her than she would.
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basset said on June 18, 2019 at 10:40 pm
Well, of course he would, the whole Saturday morning coffee club down at the golf course says so.
House update… put in an offer on some new construction, builder/seller wouldn’t do it unless we waived the appraisal contingency at closing, the hell with that. With that deal he could build the place out of pallet wood and cardboard with no recourse for us, we’d be locked in. So we keep on…
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Dexter Friend said on June 19, 2019 at 3:14 am
Our daughter Vanessa , who is recovering from breast cancer surgery last September, and her husband decided to move to a preferred school district as private school for our granddaughter is so expensive. They got their house up to code, installing now flooring, painting the interior, replacing some balky plumbing…and then the cancer was detected and they cancelled the deal at the realtor’s advice…too much to deal with until Vanessa was OK. So they haven’t even put the house up for sale yet but were able to jump on a deal south of Grove City and close the contract. She told me that with this 3.8% finance deal now in place, three homes they considered and liked went like popcorn, all three gone in 2 days time. So they found another one and hammered the deal. I was a little surprised last year when they told me they were moving as it was Vanessa’s spec-house—-she made changes to suit her on the blueprints before the first nail was hammered. The school thing sealed the deal. Now they just must sell their house and move. They will have no trouble selling, as their house is beautiful.
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Suzanne said on June 19, 2019 at 8:23 am
I wish more people understood this:
https://cstroop.com/2017/02/24/christianaltfacts-or-how-the-christian-right-broke-america/
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basset said on June 19, 2019 at 9:26 am
The builder on this one offered to add a garage, looks to us like he then decided it was too much trouble and wanted to make the deal difficult for us. He’ll probably build the same house on spec, no garage, and sell it in no time.
We usually watch BBC news in the early evening, last night they led with a live shot from the Trump rally and we couldn’t stand it so we flipped to Andy Griffith… make America Gomer again!
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Connie said on June 19, 2019 at 10:42 am
Both Bassett and Dexter have mentioned how hard it is to buy houses in certain locations. That is definitely true here in the Lakes District Detroit suburbs. Anything under $500,000 will have multiple offers immediately. Anything under $300,000 will have multiple offers for up to 10% over the asking price. It is all just as nuts as Bassett has been describing in Nashville.
As you know I work in a public library. This week is always the absolutely best library week of the entire year. Summer Reading has kicked off and the library is totally full of happy kids signing up and getting prizes.
We’ve had the big raffle prizes in our display case for several weeks, and the Fortnite related prizes have caught the attention of all the little boys. Their mothers are having to drag them past the display case to get to the rest of the library.
And two weeks before a really long weekend in Cadillac. I need some serious sunshine time.
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Sherri said on June 19, 2019 at 12:08 pm
There’s nothing available under $700K where I live.
Every time Biden opens his mouth lately, he shows why I will not vote for him, period. In good times, he’d merely be a mediocre president, too wedded to the status quo, but we need a transformational president now. I know we’re not going to get one, but I’m still not voting for Biden.
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Scout said on June 19, 2019 at 12:46 pm
Sherri, I too will not vote for Biden. In the primary. But if he is the nominee, well, you know. And if it’s truly going to be between two old white guys, I’m rooting for Joe over goddamn Bernie. But it’s still early and the debates may shake out some surprises.
This real estate bubble is looking like the one 11 years ago, and I’m already reading ominous forecasts for another economy crash next summer. tRump really is a savant; he managed in less than 4 years to do what it took Shrub almost 8. I’m hoping to retire in 5 years so hopefully sanity and an upswing are taking place by then. The only good thing about a crash is that all the racist dipshits who are hiding behind the whole ‘but the economy is great’ rationale will have lost their only sane sounding talking point.
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basset said on June 19, 2019 at 1:31 pm
As if sanity, or the illusion of it, made a difference.
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Connie said on June 19, 2019 at 2:00 pm
So my baby brother, who works for Adobe, sent his resume to a couple of the Democratic candidates. He has turned down a head of IT job with Buttigiege because they just couldn’t come up with the money. He wants to beat Trump, but couldn’t quite figure out doing it with a decrease in pay.
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Connie said on June 19, 2019 at 2:05 pm
I’m quite sure I didn’t spell that name right, but you know who I mean. Brother lived South Bend for many years.
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beb said on June 19, 2019 at 2:24 pm
I share Sherri’s concerns about Joe Biden. When he starts reminiscing about the racists he were friends with in the Senate and all his non-racist Republicans friends from back then I have to wonder which party does he actually belong to. He sounds more like a Republican every day.
Trump in the meantime sounds more and more like The AntiChrist from what I’ve about his Orlando campaign rally.
Even if there’s no chance of a conviction in the Senate I think it;s think time to hold Impeachment hearings. Democrats need to take control of the narrative and push Trumps criminality into the news.
In local news, I was finally able to weed-whack the back yard which had gotten knee-high in growth because the frequent rains kept me for working on it.
Krispy Kreme has found a way to add more sugar into their doughnuts — creme filled round doughnuts. We will be getting an allotment today — for research purposes, of course. [drool].
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Mark P said on June 19, 2019 at 4:24 pm
Speaking as an old, white man, I don’t want another old, white man as president, Biden or Sanders. I would love to see a younger progressive man or woman. I know very few politicians truly hold the good of the country and it people over personal ambition, but I wish Biden and Sanders had decided not to run for president. I wish they decided to work their asses off to defeat Trump. But if it comes down to Biden or Trump, I think there is no choice but to vote for Biden, especially in Georgia, where it’s just barely possible that the state could turn blue. Pale blue, maybe?
beb — When I was young, many, many years ago, a friend and I would go to Krispy Kreme and buy a dozen filled donuts, then eat them all that night. That included chocolate-covered, cream-filled. I once asked for that at a K-K somewhere up in the northeast and they acted like I was crazy.
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Deborah said on June 19, 2019 at 5:58 pm
I’m not the least bit crazy about Biden or Sanders either but by golly if either of them miraculously gets the nomination I will vote for whichever does. I don’t get how either of them would get the nom, but look who we have as the president now so obviously there are a bunch of people out there with terrible judgement.
Suzanne, I read your link earlier today about the fact that religious fundamentalists have broken this country. I read your link and I read his (her?) link to the original article that was referred to. I still don’t understand how the fundamentalists were able to amass so much power. Yes, it took decades and they had lots of mediums (Churches, TV, bookstores etc) but they were unbelievably able to harness that all to their advantage which is amazing (in a bad, bad way). I guess human nature is mostly vile and we all need to recognize that.
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Dexter Friend said on June 19, 2019 at 6:09 pm
Beto was quick out of the starter’s blocks, then got mired for no really good reason; it’s a mystery to me how he is getting 0% in polls. Bernie Sanders says everything I would have him say if I was a speechwriter for him. I don’t care how old he is, he’s #uno for me…now then, here’s Mayor Pete, doing nothing but climbing in the polls and also saying all the right things. Of course, Sen Warren also would be a good one to beat Trump, and has said nothing to discourage me from voting for her. Anybody that can beat Trump is OK with me.
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David C. said on June 19, 2019 at 6:40 pm
I do hear a lot of advertisements for equity out refinancing to pay off bills, take a vacation, fund improvements. It sounds eerily familiar.
Did anyone hear the latest episode of the “Why is this happening with Chris Hayes” podcast? He interviewed a historian who wrote about the Andrew Johnson impeachment. tRump seems like an echo of Johnson.
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alex said on June 19, 2019 at 7:16 pm
The Dems have played it too timidly for years, letting the GOP define them and put them on the defensive, and wishy-washy phonies like Joe Biden are what we get instead of progressive leaders who are unafraid to turn it back around on the Republicans. Ronald Reagan proved that you can afford to kiss off people who aren’t going to vote for you anyway, and you can redefine the opposition negatively to great effect. The Dems need someone with his poise and oratorical gifts, and I think Mayor Pete has it over Reagan in spades in those regards and is a man of substance to boot. I think the country’s ready for him.
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Deborah said on June 19, 2019 at 10:19 pm
I just keep thinking about how impressed I was with Obama, when he was running as a state senator, then a US senator, the speech he gave at the Democratic Convention, then his campaign for pres. All of it, I was in a swoon over him as a candidate for anything. I don’t feel that way about anybody running for president so far. Maybe I will eventually, but I’m not there yet. I have my preferences but I’m not yet wildly moved like I was then.
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Deborah said on June 20, 2019 at 8:12 am
A couple of days ago LB got one of the two visits from her Medicaid caseworker that she gets every year. This time the caseworker encouraged her to come up with a plan for what LB would do in case of a natural disaster, since she lives alone some of the time. So we’ve been doing some research about what Santa Fe offers for emergency preparedness. It’s interesting that the caseworker would bring that up with climate change upon us, and other not-natural disasters like random shooters etc. Do you guys out there have such plans? I’ve never really thought much about it before.
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Suzanne said on June 20, 2019 at 8:58 am
I’ve been “reading” (free audio book through Audible) the Mueller Report. I am increasingly sure that we are at the end, that we are now a banana republic, and that there is nothing we can do and those who could stop it, if they cared enough, won’t. There may have not been a conspiracy with Russia but Trump people were in close contact with Russian operatives throughout the campaign; and by Trump people I mean campaign managers, advisors, etc. people in the Trump inner circle. Kushner is so compromised that compromised is way too benign a word.
In other words, at this point, the corruption is so endemic, I think hope is a thing of the past and it would take a miracle to solve the problem. And I am not even through vol. 1 of the report.
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Scout said on June 20, 2019 at 12:40 pm
Deborah @55. I feel the same way. The only person in politics who comes close to moving me the way Obama did is AOC. I can see her as a future presidential candidate. Of the people running I think Warren has the best workable ideas, Harris has the best charisma and will kick ass in debates, Pete is smart and likeable and Beto has so much heart. They are my top four, although I really think Beto should be running against Cornyn for Senate.
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Dorothy said on June 20, 2019 at 1:11 pm
Dexter do you mind if I ask where your daughter’s house is? My son lives in Grove City and we’ve been getting real estate listings via email from his realtor for a couple of years now. Only twice have we seen houses that we were interested in, and both times the house went under agreement before we could even walk in and look around.
Two weeks ago, though, my husband started a new job in Cincinnati and now we are adjusting our house search. We’ll have to live further away from GC than we had planned. Of course being close to them (and their daughter) was the motivation. But Mike wants to work at least three more years. I’m planning to retire if we move in the next year or so. Lebanon seems like a good place to live, but houses are going very fast there, too. I’m starting to think about driving around to see a house I like, knock on the door and make an offer and just hope they were considering listing the house! Mike wants acreage because of his beekeeping hobby. I’m not wild about the idea but I guess I will go along with it. I have told him that if he dies first, I’ll be listing the house as soon as I can because I don’t want to have to worry about having acreage, even if it is just 2-5 acres. I’m ready for low maintenance living now at my age.
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Suzanne said on June 20, 2019 at 5:33 pm
More about how the religious right got us where we are today
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/03/27/pastors-not-politicians-turned-dixie-republican/#7e3405ed695f
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David C. said on June 20, 2019 at 6:22 pm
We don’t have a disaster plan. We do have a generator that we bought 25 years ago when we lost power for four days after a derecho. It hasn’t really been used since. I fire it up once a year and run it for a while to make sure it still works. That’s not much of a plan. We have city water and I have a camping filter that takes about 15 minutes of pumping to get a half gallon of filtered water. If it gets much worse than that, I’ll have to leave it all to the doomsday preppers. If it’s a choice of surviving with them or donating my molecules back to the universe, I’ll donate.
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alex said on June 20, 2019 at 6:43 pm
Suzanne, my takeaway from both of those articles is how much these people have mainstreamed their bullshit and cowed liberals into humoring them instead of pushing back. #ChristianAltFacts indeed. “Liberal media” is a figment of the conservative imagination as much as Chemtrails. To a conservative, any medium is “liberal” that cannot be controlled by conservatives for use as their own mouthpiece. And it’s true that journalists skew liberal in their personal lives. So what? It’s a profession that attracts the intellectually curious versus those who are closed-minded and need to protect their fragile world view from facts.
It’s time for pushback and I hope that Democrats are going to stop trying to appease these assholes who won’t vote for them anyway and start calling them out for what they are.
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