Poor Margie.

Day three without alcohol, and I slept well last night and had the best workout I’ve had in a while. Starting to remember why I do this every year.

There’s a fair number of doom-and-gloomers on Twitter at the moment, ringing the fear bell, saying omicron will devastate American workforces in coming weeks, and it’s best if you stock up on everything now and have a plan for when you’re down to existing on ketchup soup and a seven-year-old can of white asparagus spears, which is all that’s left in your pantry. Case numbers certainly are mind-bogglingly high, but hospitalization is fairly stable. I’m not inclined to panic just yet. Although I headed out to the grocery at a very bad time yesterday (5 p.m.) and found it had been stripped like the last visitors were a swarm of locusts. I’m blaming that on the holiday weekend, however. Lots of company, much of it staying longer thanks to airport snafus.

Meanwhile, Margie Greene lost her Twitter permanently, leading some of American’s leading conservative intellectuals to lose their shit:

Once again, I must say it: The comedown of this guy, from Thoughtful GOP Leader to I’ll-Say-Anything-to-Get-Elected Troll, is breathtaking. And he still won’t get elected.

Just a quick blog offering today, the NYT obit for Sandra Jaffe, who along with her husband established Preservation Hall in New Orleans, and in many ways saved traditional jazz in the process. Another of the many, many contributions of Jews to jazz.

Random France picture? Sure. Since it’s scarf season, a stop at the Hermes store:

Au revoir!

Posted at 8:48 am in Current events |
 

47 responses to “Poor Margie.”

  1. kv450 said on January 3, 2022 at 8:57 am

    Is that from the Hermès store or Dr. Deborah Birx’s scarf drawer?

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  2. Suzanne said on January 3, 2022 at 9:01 am

    After your trip to France, and the ensuing discussion of scarf wearing, I have been wearing scarves much more often. I have a ton of them but don’t wear them all that often. I am still trying to find new ways to tie them, but usually go back the same old one or two ways to tie. I always fear stepping to far out of the box, not knowing if I will look fashionable or laughably ridiculous.

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  3. Julie Robinson said on January 3, 2022 at 9:27 am

    How much would the entire top row set me back? We wants it, precious.

    My family was amazed by how small Preservation Hall is, and despite the story, no AC when they were there. Still, what a badass woman.

    MTG still has her official Congressional Twitter account, so I guess we’ll see if she has learned moderation. Hahaha.

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  4. Heather said on January 3, 2022 at 9:59 am

    I have one Hermes scarf that I bought from the actual store, though online. I don’t wear it all that often, especially now that I work from home, but I treasure it. Still have the distinctive orange box it came in, too. Another of my favorite scarves, really more of a shawl, is a woolen one I got at a market in Provence, a good memory.

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  5. JodiP said on January 3, 2022 at 10:07 am

    Greetings everyone! I got a nice laugh out of kv450’s comment.

    I have also decided to moderate my alcohol intake–not totally dry, but to just weekends.I’d been wanting to do this for a while, but something just clicked 2 weeks ago. I’ve been please at how easy it was because I really love wine.

    Last night counted as the weekend and we had two other couples over for a belated NY celebration. I made French 75s, we had an amazing cheese plate followed by a fisherman’s pie and cheesecake made with brie and many eggs topped with a mango coulis.I had bought an orange wine (https://winefolly.com/deep-dive/orange-wine/)–having tried an amazing one about a month ago. It was horrible and many jokes ensued about how it looked like a bad urine sample (many present work in healthcare) we dumped it and drank better stuff.

    I am worried about the coming weeks and what it means for healthcare and other essential services.

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  6. beb said on January 3, 2022 at 10:16 am

    Looking at all those scaves my first thought was “do you have one in just blue?” Actually they all look wonderful.

    It took Twitter long enough to finally ban Marjorie Taylor Greene. There are so many other crazy nutjobs out there that deserve banning.

    And I read this morning that the governor of Texas that maybe the great state of Upyourass needs more testing supplies and calls on the President to send them. Since I am at heart a rotten person, I would reply that Texas will get those testing supplies just as soon as they institute mask mandates.

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  7. nancy said on January 3, 2022 at 11:07 am

    I’m embarrassed to reveal how many Hermes scarves I own. OK, not really: Eight. Plus three Alexander McQueens. But I WEAR THEM. (And I didn’t buy any in France!) And I figure I’ll pass them down to Kate and/or my best girlfriends when the time comes. They are the reason the rest of my wardrobe is mainly jeans and neutrals, but I can add a scarf and look Dressed. I only wish I didn’t sweat so much from my head and neck, because they basically don’t get worn between mid-May and Labor Day.

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  8. Julie Robinson said on January 3, 2022 at 11:24 am

    Before we moved I pared down my scarves, and indeed, I haven’t worn one yet. Today just might be my chance, with a high in the mid 60’s.

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  9. susan said on January 3, 2022 at 2:21 pm

    Are those scarves made of silk?

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  10. Dorothy said on January 3, 2022 at 2:23 pm

    I must lack the scarf appreciation gene because I just can’t even dream about owning, let alone wearing, any of them. I’m as backwards as one could be when it comes to being fashionable. If I got dressed up more and went to places where people would look at me and think “Boy, doesn’t she look nice wearing that scarf?!” then I would make more of an effort. I think it’s because I like clothing that has busy-ness in it – prints rather than solids – so wearing a busy scarf with an equally busy blouse or dress would make people’s eyes twitch.

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  11. Scout said on January 3, 2022 at 2:30 pm

    I love scarves, and wear them all the time. I got a few from sidewalk vendors in Paris and Rome, and the rest I acquired from various thrift stores. I’ll let you know if I ever find a designer one at Savers! LOL.

    Poor Marj Three Toes, indeed. Let’s hope 2022 also brings indictments to her and all the rest of the GQP seditionists. I just read that Vanky and Jr have been subpoenaed by the NY AG. Fingers crossed the whole family starts throwing each under a fleet of busses.

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  12. Jeff Borden said on January 3, 2022 at 3:19 pm

    Like Scout, I’m anxious to see the hammer fall on the tRump traitor tots…especially Princess Nepotism.

    Dumdum Jr. has always been an arrogant asshole who enjoys killing exotic animals. He’s a dick as his abandoning of his marriage and five kids to frolic with a Fox bimbo.

    Princess Nepotism, in contrast, has largely escaped the vitriol her brother receives and it’s not fair. She’s a tRump. She’s just as malignant, repulsive and immoral as the rest of that diseased clan. She richly deserves the same comeuppance as the rest of them.

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  13. Deborah said on January 3, 2022 at 3:45 pm

    I too am a scarf lover, but for some reason I haven’t been wearing them much lately, oh wait, the reason is because I never go anywhere anymore.

    There’s a Hermès store near me in Chicago, I’ve been in it once and was astounded how expensive everything was. And I’m willing to pay a lot for something I like that I know I’ll get good wear out of, but nothing floated my boat enough to pop that much for. I like to buy scarves when I travel abroad, souvenirs that I can wear.

    We’re starting to have conversations about another trip to France, in October. Hopefully Covid will cooperate.

    My cream puffs were delicious last night, if I do say so myself. Five of us ate twenty of them before the night was over, none left over.

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  14. Jeff Gill said on January 3, 2022 at 7:07 pm

    Anyone else here watch “Yellowstone”? Just curious. My guilty pleasure. And this is not a January I’m going to be not drinking.

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  15. Sherri said on January 3, 2022 at 7:56 pm

    I’ve been doing dry January, and February, and all the other months since March 10, 2002. One day at a time.

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  16. Dorothy said on January 3, 2022 at 7:57 pm

    We watch it, Jeff. Have since the beginning. We actually watched last night’s episode in real time since we’d each had a nap in the afternoon.

    Anyone else a fan of The Morning Show on Apple TV? I just started watching it this weekend. It debuted two years ago. It’s not at all what I expected. And it’s really good. I think I’ve seen the first six episodes.

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  17. Deborah said on January 3, 2022 at 9:37 pm

    I’ve been obsessed about the movie The Lost Daughter since We watched it the other night, so I decided to order the book by Elena Ferrante that the movie was based on. It turns out that is a pseudonym, no one really knows who the author is and it may even be a man. She/he has written a number of novels, is Italian and uses the same translator for all of them. There was speculation that the translator is really the author, or her husband who is also a writer. The reason the author wants to be anonymous is that *she* says the work should stand up for itself and not have to be explained etc. in the meantime I’ve been reading Yeats and Auden to try to figure some things out about the story. I think the author must be a woman given the subjects of her novels, if it is a man he sure knows how to get in my head. I’m going to watch the movie again when I get back from Abiquiu on Wednesday.

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  18. tajalli said on January 3, 2022 at 10:25 pm

    Started off the new year just right with The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen complete with calliope-style music to enhance the reeling unreality with the all-is-well-in-the-end or oh-well-in-the-end of Monty Python.

    Ordered Yellowstone Season One from the library – get all kinds of great suggestions – thanks you guys!

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  19. Dexter Friend said on January 4, 2022 at 2:02 am

    I watched the first few seasons of “Yellowstone” until it felt like I was watching a daytime soapie, which I never watched. I have just about all the premium streaming services except Paramount +, which is now how one watches “Yellowstone”. A year or 2 ago when the ranch boss, lover of the smartass daughter of Costner, dug up his mother’s corpse to take the wedding ring she was buried with…that was the shark-jump for me. I watch the good movies too quickly, as soon as they roll out. This leaves me with searching for more good stuff the other 6 days of the week, and as many of you surely have discovered, there are a ton of really awful and stupid movies streaming. But I plough on, mining for that golden nugget.
    One bad little thing about winter is that I imbibe more coffee, and waste too much time on bathroom breaks as a result. Oh, I found a professional who is coming today to begin ridding my garage and house of squirrels. He said the basic price is between the initial $129 on up to $799, maybe even more. I gotta get those damn rodents out for good. And my cluttered garage must be cleaned out this weekend so the electrician can come in 2 weeks and work his magic and declare my wiring no longer a fire hazard. I was just bragging a few months ago how I was so happy to be debt-free…right. I just have to shift a few meager funds around and I’ll come out OK without having to plunge into credit card hell again. It took me many years to pay those damn cards off. I feel like I’d rather run away than use those cards as a loan service again, but I’ll still be OK this time, anyway.
    Sherri, 10,598. This used to mean more to me than it does now. My sponsor with 49 years sober says counting days and obtaining yearly chips/coins/tokens is a waste. To me, getting my yearly AA coin is a very special thing. I used to announce at every meeting my day-count. Then people told me to knock it off, I was irritating them, so I stopped. I actually had not checked my count for a while. It’s nice to know the day-count means something to someone else, and I congratulate you on the days. I know what it all boils down to: some people can drink, and some can’t. If you are a “can’t”, but do anyway…that is where and when the shit hits the fan and the nuthouse door is slammed shut and the cremains urn is sealed. Or worse, continuing long hospital stays and bankruptcy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0-wNWJxGFM

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  20. basset said on January 4, 2022 at 8:00 am

    I have a Leyton Orient Football Club supporter’s scarf in top of the line polyester and that’s it for me.
    Fisherman’s pie? Recipe?

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  21. JodiP said on January 4, 2022 at 8:57 am

    Hey basset, the recipe my wife used is from Cook’s Illustrated which has a paywall. There are a ton of recipes online. Think of a shepard’s pie, but with seafood in a creamy sauce topped with mashed potoates. We used a mix of cod, shrimp and salmon. Highly recommend!

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  22. Julie Robinson said on January 4, 2022 at 10:16 am

    Congratulations to all in the One Day at a Time club for your continued success. No need for dry January for me, alcohol no longer has any appeal. I had a small glass of wine at Christmas and my reaction was meh. It was supposedly good wine and I enjoyed the flavor, but it made my face all red and it just didn’t do anything for me.

    The anti-vaxxers are now claiming that Betty White was killed by the Covid booster she had three days before she died. How has our country gotten to the point that Betty White is controversial? Can’t we just be thankful for the amazing person she was? Apparently not.

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  23. alex said on January 4, 2022 at 12:23 pm

    All you ever wanted to know about the NutCon movement:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/01/04/jd-vance-hillbilly-elegy-radicalization/

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  24. Suzanne said on January 4, 2022 at 1:58 pm

    Rod Dreher money quote from Alex’s article:
    “ “S–t-posting has become the signature style of young radicals on the right, and this is particularly a hazard I think for Christians,” he told me.”
    Suuure, Rod?? Like “s—t posting” ever an option for the walk through the Christian life.

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  25. Jeff Borden said on January 4, 2022 at 7:01 pm

    I hated “Hillbilly Elegy.” I found Nancy Isenberg’s “White Trash” a much more compelling and honest look at America’s underclass. So, fuck J.D. Vance and his big money backer, Peter Thiel. All the QOP candidates for the Ohio Senate seat are awful people –even Vance isn’t as loathsome as Josh Mandel– but one of ’em will win it. The Buckeye State is now as red as Indiana. All that’s missing are legal fireworks!

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  26. Sherri said on January 4, 2022 at 10:37 pm

    Any book about America’s underclass that only talks about white people is incomplete, to say the least, if not willfully blind.

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  27. Dexter Friend said on January 5, 2022 at 2:00 am

    Jeff Borden, thankfully, for your television’s sake, you won’t be throwing a brick through your screen when you would have to suffer insatiate political ads for this fucking baboon named Mike Gibbons, a Cleveland/Parma “business man”, who garnered $15M taxable income in 2020 via “partnerships and salary”. He’s in the OH US Senate race, and his schtick is “President Trump protected you and I WILL TOO!”. Also he mentions themes like left wing socialists dragging us down, always painting Democrats as low-life scumbags. His rhetoric is about as repulsive as it gets. We have Mandel, a goddam Nazi I would guess, and the rest of that Republican primary ticket, all extreme right wingers under the thumb of The Stable Genius. Today is was revealed Trump’s number one adviser is Sean Hannity, and how Trump ignored everybody including Hannity as he , Trump, sat in front of a television and watched Rome burn, bowl of grapes on lap, wax in his ears…smiling like a lobotomized patient, Diet Coke dribbling down his chin, dreaming of pussy-grabbing and this time, a real golden throne in The Oval Office.

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  28. Suzanne said on January 5, 2022 at 8:27 am

    I finally read all of the JD Vance article and am more confused by him than ever. When his ideas about how to help the country are articulated, I found myself agreeing with much of it. And then he turns around and happily gets in bed with the likes of Thiel and Trump who are absolutely none of the things he claims to believe in.
    He’s got overlords that he bows to and kisses their you-know-what all the while claiming that elite overlords are what is ruining the country. Does he not see the hypocrisy in this?

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  29. Jeff Borden said on January 5, 2022 at 12:02 pm

    Sherri,

    “White Trash” is most assuredly not simply focused on white people. The subtitle, which I should’ve included, is: “The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America.” It is far more academic and thoughtful than Vance’s victim-blaming jeremiad and you get to avoid the frequent references to Meemaw, his sainted grandmother.

    I recently purchased “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson, which explores similar topics. It will have to wait until I finish David Halberstam’s “The 50’s,” which clocks in at 733 pages not including footnotes and other data. Man, screw those idiots who see the 1950s as some wonderful warm place. It’s a pretty ugly decade.

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  30. Icarus said on January 5, 2022 at 2:59 pm

    This Dry January is not off to a good start. On Monday we discovered that Nightingale’s phone number is Out-of-Service. After getting ahold of a live operator at the cell company, we learn that it was “accidentally” assigned to another carrier (that is somehow connected to ours). It will take 24-48 hours to get it settled. Spoiler alert: 48 hours later still no service.

    Of course, everything is connected to that number and NG is panicking and changing passwords and accounts as fast as she can, while also stressing me out.

    I checked my bank account and see a debit charge that makes no sense: a recurring $19 charge to a Cleaning Service (not sure because most of the vendor info is cut off) that started Jan 1 (charged Jan 3). I haven’t left the house since NYE, let alone purchased any cleaning service.

    I can cancel the card but first I have to answer some questions. is the card lost or stolen! how about neither! Hoping to get through to a live person at Chase but in the meantime, I’ve locked the card.

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  31. David C said on January 5, 2022 at 4:00 pm

    That’s about a once every couple of years thing for us Icarus. The credit union is great though. They cancel the card and delete the charges with zero hassle. It’s a pain waiting ten days for a replacement but if the debit cart gets hit I use the credit card and vice versa. I asked them a couple of times what I’m doing wrong. They told me I’m doing nothing wrong. Hackers are just that good.

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  32. Julie Robinson said on January 5, 2022 at 4:02 pm

    Oof, Icarus, how awful. And then if you cancel the card you have to wait for a new one and change all your auto-pays. Blergh.

    I’ve been going round and round with Social Security, which was supposed to start sending me money and hasn’t. I thought that snafu had been resolved, but in the meantime they sent a 1099 tax form showing that I had received all that money and it’s being reported to the IRS. Yeah, not paying taxes on money I didn’t receive. It only took an hour and 45 minutes yesterday to get it smoothed out, though it won’t show up on my record until February 1.

    So for anyone who is getting SS, I highly recommend checking your 1099 against what you received, minus Medicare premiums. Fortunately, D’s amounts matched, so that’s one less phone call.

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  33. LAMary said on January 5, 2022 at 5:26 pm

    Bummed. I can’t find a Rosca de Reyes for Kings’ day. Damn covid.

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  34. Deborah said on January 5, 2022 at 6:26 pm

    Geez Icarus, sounds like a nightmare. Was it a phone through Verizon by any chance?

    LAMary, can you make a Rosca De Reyes? I’ve seen lots of recipes, but there’s not a lot of time to make it, since epiphany is tomorrow.

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  35. LAMary said on January 5, 2022 at 6:31 pm

    I do not but I think a sweet yeast bread recipe would work. You just need to get some candied fruits to put on top. Usually I go out on Epiphany because it is my birthday. Due to Covid the Mexican restaurant we always go to has gone out of business. I will not have the waiters singing feliz cumpleanos panchita this year. On a more positive note, maybe there will not be an insurrection on my birthday this year. I have a small collection of the little plastic babies they put in three kings bread. Whenever I got one I had to buy beer for the waiters. That’s what the waiters said was traditional.

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  36. MarkH said on January 5, 2022 at 7:44 pm

    Uh-oh. Well, if you’ve lost Audie Cornish…

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/audie-cornish-npr-all-things-considered/2022/01/05/48e2d306-6d86-11ec-aaa8-35d1865a6977_story.html

    The one favorite on the show. I won’t miss ATC.

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  37. susan said on January 5, 2022 at 10:28 pm

    MarkH — I haven’t pined for treacly Scott Simon or ingratiating Steve Inskeep for a long time. Ugh. Or Cokie, RIP. Or David Brooks. Feh. Stopped listening to NPR years ago, because I was tired of yelling back at it. Mo’ better.

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  38. Little Bird said on January 6, 2022 at 9:06 am

    Happy Birthday LAMary!

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  39. LAMary said on January 6, 2022 at 9:58 am

    Thanks, LB.

    Morning edition has A Martinez now, and he’s good. At least I think so. He was previously on the staff of the Pasadena NPR station and he did a good job there. But having said that, I am so sick of Scott Simon.

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  40. Jeff Borden said on January 6, 2022 at 11:27 am

    Happy Treason Day! It’s a time when we celebrate the snakes, the rats, the cockroaches and all those other lovely creatures who embarrassed our nation before the world and brought us to the brink of a catastrophe that still looms before us. Dear dog, but Merrick Garland better start nailing some asses to the wall and not just the morons who trashed the Capitol. There are sitting Republican congressmen and senators who need to be charged. There are right-wing media figures who need to be charged. And, please, dog, please, it is time to charge the orange cancer.

    Re: Social Security. I had significant problems obtaining my benefits when I turned 70. I’d been receiving spousal benefits from my wife’s SS, but should’ve been receiving mine starting in April. It took months, but I finally scheduled a telephone consultation with an SSA employee who was wonderful. SS credited me with all the money I should’ve received in one lump sum. The key is finding a competent SSA worker. It is best to call SSA as early as possible in the day, when employees are alert and engaged rather than late in the day, when they are tired and looking at the clock.

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  41. Julie Robinson said on January 6, 2022 at 1:40 pm

    Happy Birthday, LAMary! I hope the sun is shining and that someone has located you that cake.

    Not sure what’s going on over at SS these days; my experience has been very different from when I helped my mom, sister, and husband. Because of all the delays it also delayed Medicare enrollment and I had to wait until the day I turned 65. They used to take your info and call you back, now you just have to sit there listening to the same mind-numbing hold music cycle over and over and over and over. Fingers crossed all was fixed and I won’t need to call again.

    Since we moved we don’t really have radios around the house but I’m reading news online. Wait Wait is on at a different time and I always forget so mostly I listen to that on podcast.

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  42. basset said on January 6, 2022 at 2:20 pm

    Snowing something fierce here in Nashville, Weather Channel live shots from the side of the highway and all. Used to like doing those when I was in tv news, we called em the “bridge watch”… go stand on your overpass of choice and tell everyone not to get out in whatever bad weather was happening.

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  43. Deborah said on January 6, 2022 at 4:31 pm

    Bummer, LB went through all the protocols about eating and drinking last night and this morning for what was supposed to be the day of her hip ablation. We drove out to the location where it was supposed to take place at 12:45 this afternoon and… nope. They didn’t have a probe that was needed to do it accurately but for some reason we couldn’t be told that until the last minute. LB was really looking forward to having it done so she could begin to be pain free or at least pain reduced. Now she has a new date of Feb 4th, when they’re supposed to have the correct probe. I was inconvenienced by driving her there etc but that’s nothing compared to what LB experienced.

    Happy birthday LAMary, hope you’re having a good one.

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  44. Deborah said on January 6, 2022 at 5:00 pm

    The Last Picture Show is one of my all time favorite movies, RIP Peter Bogdanovich, even though he was an asshole to the women in his life.

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  45. Sherri said on January 6, 2022 at 6:28 pm

    I’ve been following the whole Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos story and trial, and while I have no doubt that she committed fraud, I’m struck by how willing rich people were to give her money without asking the most important question: is this possible?

    What Elizabeth Holmes was promising to do and indeed claiming to have done with the Edison device *was never physically possible.* While there are some tests that can be done with a drop of blood, it was never going to be possible to run hundreds of tests on a drop of blood in a device like she was promising.

    I’ll concede that I might be more well-informed and smarter than the average bear, but it sure feels like everywhere I turn, I see people failing to ask the most basic questions about things: does this make sense? Is this even possible? I don’t claim to never be fooled, but damn, there sure seems like a lot of willful ignorance out there.

    And don’t even get me started on cryptocurrency and NFTs and related scams…

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  46. cathy c said on January 6, 2022 at 6:54 pm

    If you want to get started Sherri, I’m interested in hearing what you have to say on cryptocurrency and NFTs. Our 30-year old is intrigued, and I don’t understand it enough to weigh in. I also hear, but am unclear about their negative impacts to the environment and how that works. Just for starters…

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  47. Jenine said on January 7, 2022 at 12:11 pm

    So glad to hear I’m not the only npr listening who is TIRED of Scott Simon. Let a new voice in.

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