We need to talk about Kevin.

Oy, what to do with Kevin. This is why I’m in such a mood of late — that and the cough that is now in day 10, but is oddly just-a-cough; I otherwise feel fine. (I don’t think that sentence was properly punctuated, but I don’t care.) Anyway, I find myself more sympathetic to Kevin, at the same time I wonder if we’re the right home for him.

His energy is boundless. (Ours is not.) His training is…sketchy. (Our expectations are higher, shall we say.) His attitude is stubborn. (So is ours.) Right now he’s whining at Alan because I’ve hidden his incredibly loud squeaky toy. And this is at the end of the day after a lot of fetch and a trip to the dog park.

So I feel like I need to look for someone who can fill those gaps. At the same time I’m trying to civilize him. He’s mastered Sit, some limited Stay and is working on Come. But he only does it under ideal conditions. Also, he nips. The little shit.

Then he jumps up on the couch with me and gives me the eyes:

I can’t help I got these long legs and too much energy. The other day he jumped on the couch and smashed me in the face in the process.

Ah well. We take it day to day.

Hope you all had a great Easter. It’s cold here. Supposed to snow tomorrow — three inches. It’s plainly going to be cold for the rest of my life. It is my curse.

So it was a good day to read this bone-chilling longform piece on a heretofore un- or little-known serial rapist to come through Joe Paterno’s Penn State football team. It’s a difficult read, but such a well-reported story. It doesn’t skimp on the details, but goes so deep, and covers the whole case without being exploitative. Set aside an hour, or a few days, to absorb it all.

That’s all I got — naughty Kevin and a rapist. We’re promised “a nice warmup” as the week goes on. We. Shall. See.

Posted at 9:45 pm in Same ol' same ol' |
 

74 responses to “We need to talk about Kevin.”

  1. Joe Kobiela said on April 17, 2022 at 10:53 pm

    Read the Penn state article, wonder if they would have given it the same coverage if it would have been a small division 3 school instead of a major division 1 school. Needless to say the guy was evil.
    Pilot Joe

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  2. Dexter Friend said on April 18, 2022 at 4:56 am

    The crime investigation show on Netflix, ‘Unbelievable’ “When a teen reports being raped, then recants her story, two female detectives follow evidence that could reveal the truth; based on a true story.
    Starring: Toni Collette; Merritt Wever; Kaitlyn Dever” source: Google
    is worthwhile, 8 episodes, I just finished it.

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  3. Jeff Gill said on April 18, 2022 at 7:43 am

    I read the Junod & Lavigne/ESPN article last week while on extended elder care duty in Indianapolis, where I do get leisure to read I don’t have back in Ohio, and I just kept thinking about the sheer amount of TIME it took to report that. That’s the lack in so much reporting right now: it takes a very stable and well funded platform to make it possible for two reporters to spend what had to be, rock stars though they both are as journalists, the better part of a year for two senior writers doing almost nothing else other than working this story.

    We’ve fairly recently gotten going at Denison University a Narrative Journalism concentration that just this past year became a Journalism major. Some of the students have done incredible work in getting into people’s homes, building relationships, and developing stories, and the worry is: will they have the time & backing to do this once they graduate? Even if they find full-time jobs in the field? And pragmatically, what should institutions do to develop that capacity in the field?

    Here’s one of our students at work here in Ohio, graduating next month but with more right behind her: https://beltmag.com/ohio-coal-mining-recreation-land-big-muskie/

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  4. kv450 said on April 18, 2022 at 8:43 am

    The espn article is worth reading.
    Sad that so many people let these women down. This violent narcissist should never been on the streets, free to rape and kill.

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  5. nancy said on April 18, 2022 at 9:00 am

    Joe, seriously, what goddamn difference does it make? As my friend Dave Jones wrote:

    The authors wrote it because no one has. Because it needed to be finally documented. And because the nebulous forces that reflexively protect a business at the expense of people always seem to win.

    So, not this time. At least not forever.

    The reaction has been typical of that of any major institution disparaged in public. Its devotees huddle around their beloved brand and attack the journalists. Its antagonists point in vindication and yell: See? They’ve been filthy all along. The superfan sites ignore it completely because it can’t generate either subscribers or clicks.

    Nobody seems able to read the story without taking a side. And maybe that’s the real point here: Why can’t we simply listen to the heretofore unheard?

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  6. Joe Kobiela said on April 18, 2022 at 9:13 am

    Nancy,
    It doesn’t make a difference, but there is no way it would get put into S.I. If it had happened at a small division 3 school instead of Penn State and that’s where I believe the problem is. How many times does this happen at a small school and never gets this type of coverage?
    Pilot Joe

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  7. basset said on April 18, 2022 at 9:20 am

    Haven’t read the football story yet, but I thought the Big Muskie story was particularly well told… also this one, unrelated but an adjacent link: https://beltmag.com/pittsburgh-fish-fries-city-of-cod/

    Yesterday’s dog, meanwhile, did make it to his forever home.

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  8. Jeff Borden said on April 18, 2022 at 9:23 am

    Two noteworthy stories from the NYT yesterday and this morning remind me of why it is so important to have a great national newspaper, even if it does occasionally drop the ball.

    The Sunday story was a deep dive into what happens to the men and women who pilot those drones seen through the eyes of an Air Force captain who more or less lost his mind and committed suicide. These folks, who labor in dark warrens of buildings and whose work is deeply top secret, are NOT considered to have participated in war and so have little in the way of counseling or other measures to help them deal with the after effects of what they’ve done. And they follow these targets sometimes for weeks and months, watching them interact with their children, neighbors, etc. before a Hellfire missile comes down to blow them into smithereens. Often, there are civilian casualties, too.

    Today’s paper explores the mindset of Russian troops and, folks, these are not soldiers in any sense we might understand. They are treated like shit within the army –the story says the Russian military operates on a kind of feudal level like Russian prisons with extreme hazing, bribery and a near total lack of accountability– so they take out their frustrations on the civilians around them. In short, the actions in Bucha were not an aberration but standard operating procedure for the Russians. Rape, torture and murder are not rare.

    But, clearly, this isn’t as important as the threat of transgenders or the insidious effect of critical race theory on elementary school mathematics books if you look at one of our two political parties. (Florida nixed 41% of proposed math books over concerns they might run afoul of the Don’t Say Gay or anti-CRT laws on the books.)

    I need more coffee…

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  9. JodiP said on April 18, 2022 at 9:54 am

    I feel for you with Kevin. I’ve shared we returned a rescue in November 2020 because of multiple issues–including attacking one of our cats.

    I never thought I’d be one to return a dog. It was really hard, because 95% of the time she was great. So, if you make that decision, don’t let anyone shame you for you it. He sounds like a lot, and he might need a more active family.

    As anyone who is friends with me on FB knows–and I’ve mentioned it a time or two here 🙂 we adopted again. We are so impressed with the gains he’s made in the last year. He’s super stubborn, but we’ve figured out what is worth setting limits on (pulling on leash, returning home when it’s time to work) and what’s not (oh, you have no interest in learning how to sit and you like crossing streets mid-block? Oh, OK, cool. He has learned that we do need to cross busy streets at the corner.)

    And ah, the weather. FB memories are helpful–I post about my garden so I have somewhat of a weather record. Winter’s refusal to move on is pretty common, maybe every 4 years we’re seeing snow, chilly temps etc. I don’t hate it any less! And it makes my indoor seedlings more fun as I’m still growing things.

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  10. Julie Robinson said on April 18, 2022 at 10:28 am

    A Fort Wayne friend just posted a snow picture. We’ve already hit hot and humid and oh how our garden is thriving. Jodi, what have you planted indoors?

    Kevin may need people with a large fenced in yard where he can run all day to work off some of that energy.* My family had to find a new home for a dog we adopted when I was kindergarten age. He wasn’t mean, but was out of control and couldn’t be trained out of jumping up on everyone.

    *Our son was like that too as a youngster. Good thing we had just such a yard!

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  11. ROGirl said on April 18, 2022 at 11:22 am

    I had a coworker named Kevin who had some significant “training” issues and pissed off the wrong people too many times. I tried to get him to change his behavior, but to no avail. He wouldn’t or couldn’t do things differently and he was let go.

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  12. Jeff Borden said on April 18, 2022 at 11:38 am

    Leave the dog. Take the cannoli.

    As our wonderful dog Cosmo approaches his 12th birthday next month –a pretty good age for a large dog to hit– we know his time with us grows shorter. And for the first time, we’ve accepted that our advanced age will dictate what kind of dog and what kind of temperament we’ll be able to handle. The pooch certainly won’t be as large (Cosmo is 70 pounds) and will need to be as chill and mellow as possible.

    It’s no one’s fault if Kevin is a bad match for your current situation.

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  13. Icarus said on April 18, 2022 at 11:41 am

    There must be something about the name, my Office Nemesis at a previous job was named Kevin. He was…a lot of bad things.

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  14. LAMary said on April 18, 2022 at 12:30 pm

    I have a bad history of Kevin interactions too. One was a really nice guy, the rest? Assholes.

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  15. Julie Robinson said on April 18, 2022 at 12:31 pm

    The rape story will have to wait until a day when I haven’t just read about attacks on public libraries like the one in Llano, Texas: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/04/17/public-libraries-books-censorship/.

    In short order the right-wingers fired a librarian for her display of banned books, took over the library board, closed the meetings, locked the building for three days while they removed books, shut down Overdrive because it supposedly lacked parental controls, and threatened to close the entire library system. Fine citizens of Florida are no doubt taking notes.

    If you have a WaPo click to give, notice the pictures of the complainers. Coincidentally or not, they all look like mean-spirited and close-minded rubes.

    We know a couple of good-guy Kevins.

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  16. JodiP said on April 18, 2022 at 12:33 pm

    Julie, I am growing things for a community garden as well as my own, so more than I usually do: several kinds of chilies (which are not thriving for reasons related having to create a cat-proof growing area which leads to Florida-like conditions, which leads to disease), eggplant, alpine strawberries, tomatillos, tomato “Black Cherry’ 3 kinds of basil. Flowers for my garden: cosmos, zinnias, poppies, bachelor’s buttons, nasturtiums, sunflowers, foxglove, flowering tobacco, and nigella.

    I started so much for the community garden I’ve had to recruit other volunteers to grow them on–I have a pretty small set up!

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  17. Dexter Friend said on April 18, 2022 at 12:38 pm

    My daughter Vanessa fosters Aussie Cattle Dogs, and they are feisty and nervous and need lots of exercise time. She just placed her latest with his forever home. Vanessa has two cattle dogs at home. I would never have a cattle dog as they bark constantly and are just crazy and nervous. I think they would be fine at a ranch where they could roam freely outside, but not so great in a setting where they are cooped up inside except for walks.
    Wanna do a survey? I just did it…take a few minutes.
    Go.osu.edu/impactcovidohio

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  18. Deborah said on April 18, 2022 at 12:41 pm

    Maybe you’ve said this before, Nancy forgive me if you have, has Kevin had his operation yet? If so, it seems like it hasn’t slowed him down, but sounds like the peeing on furniture has stopped (maybe?).

    On May 6 we head back to NM, I can’t believe how fast this time in Chicago has gone. We immediately leave for our road trip to Seattle, up through the mountainous west and back down the Pacific coast.

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  19. Sherri said on April 18, 2022 at 1:19 pm

    Pilot Joe, this happened at Penn State, and didn’t get any kind of coverage until decades later. I had never heard of this until I read this story last week, and I’m more aware than most people of rape scandals and college football, not just high profile D-1 programs. It still happens, because we don’t regard women as full people.

    In other news, despite all my care in staying away from my Covid-infected husband, I tested positive this morning. So far, all I have is a mild sore throat, but my meet is now in question.

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  20. Suzanne said on April 18, 2022 at 1:44 pm

    If you haven’t seen the trailer for Tucker Carlson’s show on manliness, you must see it. It’s…well, just watch
    https://news.yahoo.com/trailer-tucker-carlsons-upcoming-fox-061757128.html

    He is apparently also advocating testicular tanning as a means to increase virility.

    This added to the library story link above tells me are truly screwed as a society and a nation.

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  21. ROGirl said on April 18, 2022 at 2:18 pm

    He wasn’t an asshole to me, but he was frustrating and stubborn.
    I think he was just gunning to get fired because he was afraid to change and or quit.

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  22. LAMary said on April 18, 2022 at 5:39 pm

    There’s a prime example of Kevin jerk behavior representing part of CA in congress.

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  23. Jeff Borden said on April 18, 2022 at 6:47 pm

    Ever feel a tinge of sadness when a great TV program ends? I’m not ashamed to say the end of our binge watching of “Justified” has left me morose. What a great, wonderful show with oodles of quotable dialog in the vein of creator Elmore Leonard. Violent, yes, but so well written.

    BTW, Elmore Leonard’s “City Primeval” will be filming in Chicago, which will stand in for Detroit. Quentin Tarantino will be directing. Coolio.

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  24. Joe Kobiela said on April 18, 2022 at 7:19 pm

    Thank god someone with some common sense, no more mask on public transportation. You still want to wear one have at it, I’ll support you 1000%, you want to wear 10 mask go for it. Just don’t force me.
    Thank you
    Pilot Joe

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  25. Sue Manion said on April 18, 2022 at 7:40 pm

    Your heading, “We need to talk about Kevin” cracked me up. I am the mother of a 27 year old son named Kevin. For the first 17 years of his life, those were the first words out of my mouth when my husband came through the door from work. My Kevin and yours have had many similar traits….we did get through those times with no neutering or re-homing. But believe you me, they were on the list of options from time to time.

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  26. David C said on April 18, 2022 at 7:43 pm

    The strangest bit of Tuckum’s promo, other than irradiating your naughty bits was the milking cows bit. I’m sure they don’t teach this in prep school but before milking machines, milking cows in most places was considered women’s work.

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  27. Jeff Borden said on April 18, 2022 at 8:06 pm

    Floriduh dismissed 41% of proposed mathematics books because of alleged references TO CRT. Conservatives are making certain their children are poorly educated dolts. BTW, remember, DeathSantis is a Yalie snoot.

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  28. diane said on April 18, 2022 at 9:23 pm

    Let me just say that waiting to board a flight in the Miami airport is not the place you want to be when the mask mandate goes down.*

    *The Frontier gate attendant read a letter from Frontier announcing that they weren’t going to enforce it with absolute glee in her voice and there was much cheering.

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  29. jcburns said on April 18, 2022 at 9:31 pm

    But Joe, we need you to wear one too. It’s kinda like herd immunity.

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  30. LAMary said on April 18, 2022 at 10:24 pm

    Trump today said that Russia and Ukraine should talk to each other before everybody’s dead. If Eric Trump is right Putin will immediately stop being all warlike just be nice. Eric did say that Putin would never have invaded Ukraine if Trump told him not to.

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  31. Dexter Friend said on April 18, 2022 at 11:32 pm

    As I sat in the local health department’s waiting room , awaiting my second booster, wearing my regular 2 masks, a man came in unmasked and was quickly rushed a mask. He was there for Covid19 vaccine, but wore no mask. I don’t wear my masks all the time, but of course at the health department you just know they are going to “make” you wear one. So my 4th shot is done, no ill effects at all, no ill affects either…no sore arm, no nuthin’.

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  32. Sherri said on April 18, 2022 at 11:49 pm

    So a Federalist Society moron rated not qualified by the ABA appointed to the Federal bench in Florida by Trump gets to blow up public health for the entire country.

    What a country.

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  33. beb said on April 19, 2022 at 3:20 am

    Sherri@32 – I’d like to see some of these Trump judges making these largely logic-free ruling be impeached, which Congress has that power. It would still take two-thirds of the Senate to convict… The alternative is for the Executive branch to just say “You’ve made your ruling, now who’s going to enforce it?

    Tucker Carlson’s manliness special sounds like the gayest thing on TV since. Nope, sorry, I can’t think of anything gayer than this.

    Those book banners in Texas … they’re full-on Nazis. DeSantis is full-on Nazi as well. We kid ourselves if we say otherwise. The math book thing is weird because how many math book delve into using race for their story problems? Since the complaint was as much Common Core as CRT I wonder if most of their books were rejected for embracing Common Core. It just sounds like Florida is trying to make their children the stupidest MFs in the whole country.

    The four inches of snow we were promised looks like only an inch, unless it all melted as soon as it landed.

    Our daughter just went on her first big girl adventure to another city — Milwaukee to visit a friend. She’s be home tomorrow — OK, late tonight, since technically it already is tomorrow. Took the train to Chicago then another to Milwaukee.

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  34. alex said on April 19, 2022 at 6:59 am

    Tucker Carlson is like the jerk kid who talks other kids into jumping off the roof using an umbrella as a parachute. The marks who are still with him after breaking both legs, he owns them. Not libs.

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  35. Mark P said on April 19, 2022 at 9:02 am

    As we all know, common sense has been far more successful in making the world a better place than science. And we all know that a judge with no medical or scientific knowledge knows far more about medicine and epidemiology than the people who have been studying and practicing it for their entire lives.

    And besides, this “pandemic” is a hoax. And if it’s not a hoax, it’s no more serious than the common cold. And anyway, most people don’t get it, and if they do, it’s not serious. And if it is, herd immunity is the best way to end it, and I won’t get it, and I can’t breathe in a mask, and you can’t take my freedom away this is America and I know my rights and Democrats are socialistic pedophiles.

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  36. Icarus said on April 19, 2022 at 9:30 am

    Honestly, we had the weakest lockdown, shelter in place, and mask mandates in the entire world. Entire countries were able to rally together and do a better job of battling Covid than any one city in America.

    And Joe, maybe if everyone had just worn a mask and got vaccinated if they could, we’d be done with this by now.

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  37. Joe Kobiela said on April 19, 2022 at 9:53 am

    Icarus,
    Or maybe not.
    Pilot Joe

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  38. Mark P said on April 19, 2022 at 9:57 am

    I love it when pilots talk about science. It makes me want to run right out and fly a plane.

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  39. LAMary said on April 19, 2022 at 10:45 am

    I had a nasty surprise yesterday. I set up my tax payment to be sucked out of my checking account on 4/18. It was. Twice. I have a negative balance now and my bank is doing a stop payment on one of the debits but in the meantime automatic payments I had set up, none of the very big, are bouncing and the bank is charging me 33 bucks a hit. So much fun.

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  40. Julie Robinson said on April 19, 2022 at 11:11 am

    Mary, that is major suckage, especially if the places you were paying also make a charge. Hope you can track down how your tax payment was debited twice to prevent it from happening again. Our credit union charges $30 for a stop payment, too. It’s no wonder people hate banks.

    More deets on the Florida textbook debacle courtesy of my morning paper. First, these were books that had already been approved for use in the state. It’s not been stated why or who decided to purge the previously approved list.

    beb, you are right, some of the books were removed for evil Common Core standards. Others for promoting social and emotional intelligence. It seems that’s another way to promote liberal and idolatrous ideas.

    Because Florida mandated new standards for the next school year, most districts have to replace their books. If you’ve ever been involved you know it’s a long process, where teachers and curriculum specialists have meeting after meeting to examine and study each book in each grade. It takes months. Every single district in central Florida had every single book choice rescinded. Now they have to start over and hope and pray they can get new textbooks in by August.

    Did the state tell the districts the specifics of what they found objectionable? They did not. How would you feel if you were an educator? It’s yet another body blow.

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  41. LAMary said on April 19, 2022 at 11:56 am

    One of my brother, coincidentally the same one who rescued Brittanies, did about ten years on the school board. Book selection was a major pain in the ass then and that was 20 years ago. It’s got to be exponentially worse now.

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  42. Scout said on April 19, 2022 at 11:56 am

    Reading a lot of Twitter posts this morning about how pilots, mid-flight, gleefully announced the mask mandate had been lifted and that masks could come off. Many passengers on those flights who are immuno compromised or traveling with small unvaxxed children boarded those flights with the guarantee of mask mandated protection. Nobody had a choice to get off those planes mid flight. It makes me wonder, why are so many pilots MAGAt assholes? Oh and just wait until flights are delayed en masse when the inevitable outbreaks sideline airline employees. The muh body muh choice (except if you’re a woman) lunatics will blame Biden when their trip to Floriduh or Texass is cancelled.

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  43. Jeff Borden said on April 19, 2022 at 12:07 pm

    My wife was a flight attendant in the late ’60s-early ’70s. Most pilots were okay, but she said a number of them were pretty arrogant and snarky because they were pilots and she was not.

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  44. Joe Kobiela said on April 19, 2022 at 12:27 pm

    Mark p.
    Ring me up I am a primary, multi engine, instrument instructor and hold a Airline transport license, I can give you instructions from a Piper Cub thru a King Air 360, and Jeff most pilots at the airlines in the 60-70 were military from ww-2 and right or wrong that was the culture it’s not that way now. I wonder how many people crying about mask would be the first to light a cigarette in a airplane if that rule was reversed?
    Pilot Joe

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  45. Julie Robinson said on April 19, 2022 at 12:33 pm

    Eight years on the board for our little church school here. We trusted our teachers when it came to textbook selection, but they would report back each month so I know how much time it took.

    I didn’t have any trips planned but I will reconsider flying in the near future.

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  46. Heather said on April 19, 2022 at 12:47 pm

    I’m in Portugal. Masking on trains etc. is still required and compliance is about 100%. I haven’t seen or heard anyone bitching about it. I’m really ashamed of Americans today. Getting used to the feeling.

    I suspect most people don’t want to go back to smoking on planes for the same reason they want masks on planes…because we all share the same air, like it or not.

    And hey, come to think of it, one of my many mediocre bosses at my old job was named Kevin.

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  47. Sherri said on April 19, 2022 at 1:16 pm

    I served on a curriculum instruction committee for our district for the middle school math selection. It was a two year process of half day and all day meetings once a month, with teachers, administrators, and community members. This was soon after Common Core was adopted. I believe if you go back in the archives here, I wrote about my experiences.

    As a result, I looked at around 12-15 different curricula. I can assure you, they were not full of CRT. They were aligned with Common Core, because that’s what most of the states said they wanted. The people complaining about CRT and about Common Core know very little about either. Common Core has its good points and it’s problems, but the people complaining about it just use it as a bogeyman to attack public education.

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  48. Mark P said on April 19, 2022 at 1:19 pm

    So, Joe, you’re saying a person needs some kind of training to fly a plane?

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  49. Deborah said on April 19, 2022 at 1:27 pm

    We’re scheduled to fly to NM in a few weeks. We talked this morning about maybe driving down instead after hearing about the lifting of mask wearing on SW flights but we’re also scheduled to take a long road trip to Seattle from NM a few days after that flight. Two long road trips in a row seems daunting. Actually it would be three long road trips because we’re driving back from Seattle too. And all of the reservations have been made etc so would be a pain to cancel everything. At least we both have had our second boosters and good masks so fingers crossed.

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  50. LAMary said on April 19, 2022 at 1:29 pm

    Joe, I haven’t seen many people smoking even in places where it’s ok to smoke, so I doubt a plane would be full of smokers. And have you considered that if you’re not wearing a mask and the people around you aren’t either you’ve got a big opportunity to catch the latest variant? In a room full of masked folks not so much. Unmasked people are spreaders and catchers. Good luck. Darwin would enjoy this situation.

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  51. Sherri said on April 19, 2022 at 1:32 pm

    Joe, what do you consider your obligation to other people? What level of discomfort are you willing to tolerate to protect the lives of other people?

    Wearing a mask is at most uncomfortable. We’re still in a situation where ~500 Americans a day are dying from Covid. To fly, most passengers have to remove their shoes to go through screening, and nobody even died because someone tried to bring a shoe bomb on to an airplane.

    When we realized that second-hand smoke was harmful to the people who had to work in those environments, we banned smoking in environments like restaurants and planes. Would some of the people complaining about masks light up a cigarette on a plane if they could? Probably, because they’ve signaled that they think their comforts and desires are more important than the health and safety of other people.

    I think there are tremendous benefits to living in community. I also think there are responsibilities to living in community. Enjoying the benefits and not accepting the responsibilities of care for your fellow community members is freeloading.

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  52. ROGirl said on April 19, 2022 at 1:34 pm

    Wow. An employee who just started working at my company yesterday had a seizure while she was sitting at her desk. I’m on the other side of the cubicles and heard her, but didn’t see her. She fell on the floor and was convulsing. Several people helped her and someone called 911. The emts got here and took her to the hospital. Someone who is familiar with it said it was a grand mal epileptic seizure. It’s a lot to process, I hope she’s OK.

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  53. Deborah said on April 19, 2022 at 1:43 pm

    I forgot to say in my previous comment that I finally read that article about the hideously monstrous college football player. It’s quite a saga, very well written and horrendous to think about what those women had to go through during their assaults and for the rest of their lives. And how it was just swept under the rug by the university makes it all doubly vile.

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  54. Mark P said on April 19, 2022 at 1:55 pm

    Sherri, you take more time and give more effort than me. I like to just give the punchline and let everyone else fill in the lead up.

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  55. Dorothy said on April 19, 2022 at 2:00 pm

    I witnessed someone having a seizure in church once, ROGirl, so I know what that feels like. Not pleasant and more than a little scary.

    I started feeling a bad sore throat come on Saturday night, and on Easter Sunday morning it was much worse. I felt like I’d swallowed a pile of razors, it hurt so much. I spent a lot of the day sipping cold water and resting. Then yesterday I just slept most of the day. The sore throat stopped yesterday but then I had body aches and a regular headache. I did an at-home Covid test both Sunday and Monday and both were negative. I’m better today, and haven’t slept since the little snooze I had at 7:30 this morning after I had a bowl of cereal. I’ve been vaxed and boosted but haven’t gotten the second booster yet. Whatever I have, it was not pleasant and it is the first time I’ve been sick in more than three years. I know a few of you have had Covid – were any of your symptoms like mine?

    And y’all continue to engage with the troll – you DO know that attention just makes him worse, right?

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  56. Deborah said on April 19, 2022 at 2:17 pm

    A few years ago LB and I were walking back from an errand in Santa Fe and a car was slowly going through a red light on the street we were on, right next to us. It turned out that the woman driver was having a seizure. Some people figured it out and were able to stop her car and help her. When they opened the driver’s side door she fell out and was seizing on the street. One of the guys who had helped stop the car knew exactly what to do, he was terrific. LB and I were pretty nerved out by it, it could have been so much worse if her car had been hit.

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  57. Sherri said on April 19, 2022 at 2:26 pm

    Mark and Dorothy, a lot of times, it’s less that I’m engaging with this particular troll than I’m working out frustration with a mass of trolls I have to deal with in real life. Like unvaccinated firefighter/EMTs who think they deserve their jobs back, and other people who think their comfort is more important than other people’s safety. I’m pretty vocal, but there are circumstances where I can’t speak out, and so sometimes, smacking around a troll here is a substitute.

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  58. ROGirl said on April 19, 2022 at 3:04 pm

    The employee is OK and will be released from the hospital.

    Dorothy, I hope you feel better.

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  59. Mssr. Coffee said on April 19, 2022 at 3:44 pm

    Re #31: Dexter, my Friend, I’m glad your four shots and two masks haven’t hurt you. And I’m sure everyone will be equally glad to know that my zero shots and zero masks haven’t hurt me, either. If I felt any better, I’d feel obliged to give the money back. Life is good.

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  60. Joe Kobiela said on April 19, 2022 at 4:12 pm

    Markp,
    Some more than others, I soloed after only 6hr of duel instruction, your mileage may very.
    Pilot Joe

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  61. Dexter Friend said on April 19, 2022 at 5:06 pm

    Self-righteous people who believe the fucking bullshit that came out of the Trump presidency about the virus being a hoax and that masks are “ridiculous”, as Florida’s governor recently said while scolding school children who were masked around him are science deniers and frankly, just stupid, and I mean stupid as hell.
    Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, the sports show host, vaxxed and boosted, still got Covid19 and was flat on his back for 4 days and sick another week. Even as the vax protects us, and masks prevent many cases, the variants can still get through to us. A friend and his wife got it before Pfizer rolled out the vax, and he recovered after 2 hell-weeks, while his wife has long-haul effects, stopping after a few steps to catch her breath, and is generally a shell of her former energetic self. She works in elder care and said of the 19 Covid19 cases in her care, 18 were anti-vaxxers. The other got a J and J shot then succumbed quickly, and died horribly. My wife died just days before Pfizer rolled out the first shots. There are still many, mostly Trumpers, who won’t get vaccinated. At this point, it is hard to find compassion for blatant in-your-face ignorance. For fuck’s sake, people!

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  62. Jeff Gill said on April 19, 2022 at 5:08 pm

    Joe, I don’t think you’re a troll, and I actually believe you’re listening to the responses . . . but I do so want to take a snark at “duel instruction”! I’m envisioning a fight to the death between two rookie trainees locked into an aircraft, the instructor jumping out with a parachute at about 10,000 feet, leaving the pair in the front seats wrestling for control of the stick as the plane spirals down, down, closer to the ground . . .

    But I’m glad you’re here, even though sometimes I do agree you’re just poking the bear to hear it growl. Some sharp swipes come with that territory.

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  63. Dexter Friend said on April 19, 2022 at 5:13 pm

    Why, I’d fly with…awe, fuck it…delete post…

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  64. David C said on April 19, 2022 at 6:07 pm

    My first sign of spring. I have my annual sinus infection because I don’t think about taking my Allegra before I see green. So my week will be filled with Tylenol, Mucinex, and nasal irrigation. I hate my allergies.

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  65. Joe Kobiela said on April 19, 2022 at 6:18 pm

    Jeff G,
    It was more like my instructor jumping out on the ground and saying he was too scared to fly with me.
    Pilot Joe

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  66. Sherri said on April 19, 2022 at 6:45 pm

    Dorothy, on the sore throat, pretty much the only symptom I have is a sore throat. One thing I do with the home tests is that I swab the back of my throat before I swab my nose, because I read that after vaccination and with omicron, the virus doesn’t always show up in the nose. So I just do that routinely now.

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  67. Sherri said on April 19, 2022 at 7:20 pm

    You know, I have a friend who is a federal judge. Wonder if I can convince her to totally upend something across the country, only for good? Like, I don’t know, declare that the 14th amendment requires health care for all!

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  68. Mark P said on April 19, 2022 at 8:40 pm

    Have you seen the study that found about 80% of covid patients have at least one long-term symptom? I don’t suppose that will change anyone’s mind about trying to prevent the spread of the disease, though.

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  69. LAMary said on April 19, 2022 at 8:51 pm

    My symptoms were just scratchy throat and lots of snot. No fever. A cough. No headache. The rest of the household was pretty much the same. The cough hung on for a while afterwards too.
    I grew up with a brother who had grand mal epilepsy. I saw seizures pretty much every day. The meds he was on, phenobarbital and dilantin, didn’t do much to help. On a good day it was 0-1 seizures. On a bad day a half dozen. In the years since I left home I’ve dealt with three people having grand mal seizures. None of that tongue swallowing bullshit. Keep them from hurting themselves, hitting something hard when they fall, keeping them from smashing into something when they thrash around or swing their arms.

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  70. john (not mccain) said on April 20, 2022 at 1:15 am

    The really strange part is why would people tell a troll things that might keep it alive. That’s no way to make America great again.

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  71. Dexter Friend said on April 20, 2022 at 2:19 am

    I can’t find the clip from “Journeyman”, the 2007 TV show that had the star instantly finding himself in out-of-time situations. One episode had him on a plane in the 1970s; men were drunkenly pinching “stewardess’s” butts while milling around a totally cigarette smoke-filled cabin, cigarettes dangling from their lips and mixed drinks in their hands. Personally, I don’t think most folks want to revert to that. I remember debates as to whether people would ever stand for smokeless flights. Maybe nicotine gum helps?

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  72. LAMary said on April 20, 2022 at 10:26 am

    Maybe it’s a regional thing but I have only seen one person smoking in recent memory. One of my neighbors smokes. Considering the other vices he’s quit smoking is not a big deal.

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  73. Jeff Borden said on April 20, 2022 at 2:28 pm

    LAMary,

    When I started teaching at Loyola in 2004, there were always clusters of students around the entrances to the classroom buildings puffing away on their cigarettes. A few years ago, I noticed more vaping than smoking, though the numbers were down. Today, it’s a rarity. One student in my class, who is somewhat older than the others because he spent two years in the Army, told me he was giving up vaping for Lent and hoped to make it permanent. I believe he’s the only student who has copped to indulging in nicotine. Not that these are non-smokers, but their puff of choice is the legal reefer available here in the Land of Lincoln.

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  74. Sherri said on April 20, 2022 at 2:29 pm

    Nancy mentioned she was watching Winning Time, about the LA Lakers a while back, with no knowledge of its accuracy. I noted that a lot of people were unhappy with its portrayal of Jerry West, a beloved guy around the NBA. Now Jerry West has expressed his unhappiness as well, sending a letter demanding an apology.

    There have been a lot of docudramas lately featuring real people who are prominent and still alive – Winning Time, SuperPumped, Inventing Anna, WeCrashed, The Dropout, and so on. Where once these dramas would have been lightly fictionalized, like The Devil Wears Prada, now they use real people, but often as cartoon versions. These docudramas can be quite entertaining, but even when you know the underlying history quite well, it’s often hard to tell what’s real from what’s dramatized for effect.

    I followed the Uber story pretty closely as it happened, and still when I was watching SuperPumped I was having to stop and ask, wait, did that really happen? It’s also distracting to watch someone like David Drummond be portrayed as a good guy in this story, one of the grownups, when I also know that he was one of the senior execs at Google who was involved in sexual misconduct.

    It was also weird for me watching The Dropout and seeing someone I know as a character and portrayed by an actor. Avie Tevanian is a friend of mine from grad school, and was on the board of Theranos for a time until he got kicked off for asking too many questions.

    As entertaining as some of these shows are, I think I prefer a clearer demarcation between fact and fiction. Either tell the story straight, or change the names and fictionalize the story, but this middle ground is very weird.

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