Another scorcher of a weekend, but that’s summer, or at least it’s super-heated climate-change summer, eh? After a Thursday/Friday work thing, I jumped at the chance to do something I haven’t done for years, i.e. attend a simple county fair with friends. In this case, Monroe County, just south of Wayne.
What did we find? Animals, junk food, crybabies. The crybabies were in the county GOP tent:
Oh, sit on a pin, people. I found this goat far more compelling:
What fascinating animals goats are, with those horizontal pupils. I scritched a few bony skulls in my pass through their lodgings.
It was the last day of the fair, and the livestock auction was going, with cages full of chickens and rabbits selling for a couple hundred bucks, mostly. What a far cry from my time as the Ohio State Fair reporter, when there was a doping scandal around the grand champion steer. I’m sure I’ve talked about this before in this space, so I won’t bore longtime readers, but the basic outline was: Losers in the beef cattle competition accused the winner of doping, but blood tests showed the champion was clean. The following year more accusations were made about the winner, more testing showed no shenanigans, but when they slaughtered the animal and stripped off the hide, great globs of silicone gel fell from the carcass, and oh my but did hell break loose. Farm kids, improving their animal’s contours with plastic surgery of a sort? And here we thought those kids were innocents.
Today I spent my morning editing video — see Thursday/Friday work obligations — and drifted the afternoon away in a friend’s pool. Man, did I need that on another 90 degree day. And now I’m making a promising dinner from the NYT — this one — and planning my week ahead, which I devoutly hope will be less crazy.
How’s ’bout you?
Joe Kobiela said on August 4, 2024 at 7:04 pm
The missus and I flew our plane up to willow run to visit daughter #2 who moved from Milwaukee to just east of Willow in May, had a cheese steak from Gabriel’s first one I have had since my check hauling days 10 yrs ago still as good as I remember, then over to Zingermans bake house for a piece of cheese cake, 45 minutes in the plane each way sure beats 2hr+ in a car each way any day.
Pilot Joe
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Ann said on August 4, 2024 at 7:05 pm
I do not remember that Ohio State Fair story and if there’s a longer version I’d be delighted to read it. The kids doing implants on the cow are probably now sitting at the Republican table.
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Dorothy said on August 4, 2024 at 7:34 pm
We treated some former neighbors who are good friends to the Columbus Clippers game today and great balls of fire was it hot! We did have seats in the last row of section 7, so by 1:30 (game started at 1:05) we started to get some shade from the sun. But we sweated and wiped our brows and generally bitched about how hot we all were. But it was nice to see them. We lived next door to one gal, who is divorced but has a great new guy in her life, and across the street from the other couple. Fred and I share the same birthday. I think of all of them as if they’re younger siblings. Really nice, down to earth people who are fun to laugh with and talk to. We need more of that in our lives.
Olivia danced at a feis yesterday (Irish dancing) in Columbus and don’t you know she won two medals?! She got first place for her light jig, and third place for her reel. She was so proud to wear the gold and bronze medals around her neck! Now we know when we bragged on how obvious it was that she was a good dancer for the age of 7 that it wasn’t just proud grandparents saying that. The judge thought she was good too! If she sticks with this dancing for awhile I’m going to have to try to not feel so negative about the gaudy wigs the older girls sometimes wear. And we should underwrite the expense of the fancy schmancy costumes that are in her future because we shoulder the blame (credit?) for getting her interested in it. In March 2023 I saw that the local PBS station was going to run the 25th anniversary of Riverdance one night so I recorded it. I put it on for her to watch after school on her brother’s first birthday (St. Patrick’s Day) and she was riveted. I mean we watched it every day, sometimes twice, for a few weeks! My mother’s father, Timothy J McCarthy of Abbeyfeale Ireland would be so proud.
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David C said on August 4, 2024 at 8:41 pm
Hot and humid here too. Next week brings pleasant highs in the mid-70s. Looking forward to that.
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brian stouder said on August 4, 2024 at 8:42 pm
Sounds like a superb sunny Sunday, indeed! I recall getting fried by the sun a time or two in aluminum grandstands at motorcar races; made me a believer in liberal amounts of sun-block lotion!
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alex said on August 4, 2024 at 9:12 pm
Tried this one from the NYT tonight. Can’t say it’s a keeper because I need to make it without going overboard on the creme fraiche and dijon, which was probably more than double what was needed. We’re trying to get more barley into our diets and sub it for high-glycemic foods like rice and noodles and I’m glad to try any recipe where this has been accomplished successfully.
What a weekend. Hubby’s leaving tomorrow for a 20-day work assignment. On Saturday we attended his employer’s annual golf outing where you don’t have to know how to play. You just have to know how to handle your liquor, and plenty of it, while driving around in golf carts and downing shots being offered up almost nonstop. And they gave all of the guests schmancy coolers full of frozen meats and booze and Ruth’s Chris gift cards. They treat us so well.
We came home from there and did a booze cruise with our neighbors, and tonight had dinner and another booze cruise. And still no news on Kamala’s veep pick, but they’re still blowing up my phone asking for money after I’ve already given them quite enough.
I noticed the Randy Richardville campaign sign and of course it makes me wonder if he’s somehow related to the half-French Miami chieftain Jean de Baptiste Richardville who is well known in Fort Wayne history. I also wonder how this illustrious Michigan pol could have escaped my attention all this time.
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Deborah said on August 4, 2024 at 9:48 pm
I’ve given as much politically as I can afford and then some, but they keep asking. I’ve had to respond “stop” on texts asking for more money which makes me feel guilty.
LB and I are painting the interior of the condo in Santa Fe. Our preferred color is the basic white in the can you get before adding tints at the paint store. We’re maybe 1/3 of the way through what we’re planning to do this summer which is the living room, hall and kichen. We’re holding off on the 2 bedrooms until maybe in the winter and we did the bathroom a couple of years ago, plus we did the ceilings in the living room previously so not doing that again for a while. It’s amazing how much better it looks already, so much cleaner looking and bright. But so upsetting the normal routines of life, I’ll be glad when this is over hopefully at the end of the week.
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Julie Robinson said on August 4, 2024 at 10:42 pm
We spent Friday and Saturday trying to pull the house back together from the repiping project, and today my body came to a grinding halt. If we pass inspection tomorrow the actual bathroom remodel can proceed. That’s assuming Debbie doesn’t stop the city inspectors.
We’ve had some dramatic rain and less dramatic wind, now if it will just clear long enough for our daughter’s flight out in the morning all will be good.
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Dexter Friend said on August 5, 2024 at 3:47 am
I am locked in to the horse race. Yesterday Kelly was out and Beshear was up to number 3, then he faded and Kelly now is number 2. Shapiro leading by a nose, Pete back of the pack with Pritzker, now Walz is in the runner-up slot, and Shapiro is still leading .
Other than that, TV baseball and that thrilling men’s bicycle race and then the American woman from Homer, Alaska, age 31,blowing through the peloton and the chase and cruising for Gold.
Hauled out a heavy-ass power recliner to the curb for trash pickup. Beautiful $2,500 deluxe chair levitated my ass up and then down for a long time, then burned out. Too cheap for another power chair, I picked up 2 bedbug-free manual recliners from Marketplace. Clean, like new. Cheap as a drunken fuck on a Saturday night, as Shane McGowan sang of. That man was a genius, the lyrics, the belting voice, dead last year at 65. The Pogues.
Now I welcome all RINOs and Republicans for Harris to our Harris for President campaign; this becomes official at noon today. BFD, I’ll say!
This took a few days for me, a Biden-all-the-way guy, and a Harris-no attitude to flip totally. This means I am full of beans and know not what the fuck I am writing about most of the time. I want Trump in stir ASAP. Gonna take a while….
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ROGirl said on August 5, 2024 at 5:11 am
Yesterday I spoke with a cousin who is involved in Democratic politics in his area in New York, the Hudson Valley. He told me that the big donors support Mark Kelly. We’ll see…
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Jeff Borden said on August 5, 2024 at 9:37 am
There’s a deep dive into Fauxbilly Vance’s plans to dismantle and destroy the left in today’s NYT. He simply can’t be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office, particularly if said office is filled by an overweight 78-year-old man who’s rapidly disintegrating mentally. Vance is truly a terrible man.
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Suzanne said on August 5, 2024 at 10:00 am
Vance has proven himself craven, sick, and predatory. He cannot be put in the Oval Office. Trump better watch his back. Vance is where he is because of oligarch backing and once he’s in place, Trump, with all his chaos & mental illness, will be expendible.
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alex said on August 5, 2024 at 10:10 am
This morning I read a piece about Peter Thiel’s other puppet, Blake Masters, who’s proving so creepy that even MAGAts won’t vote for him. But he used Vance’s rhetoric verbatim about a childless opponent not having any “skin in the game.”
I lit into a friend last night who told me he had planned to vote for Marianne Williamson but might consider Kamala Harris, but that would go against his desire to end the two-party system. I told him that voting for a third-party candidate is a great way to end the two-party system, all right. It’ll turn it into a one-party system when Trump gets elected and anyone who isn’t making Trump’s defeat a priority in this election cycle is contemptible as far as I’m concerned. The guy’s a college professor, which makes me especially angry that he of all people could have his head so far up his own ass.
Meanwhile my brother’s two kids, both living in the rarefied air of Athens, GA, are stubbornly committed to supporting Williamson to the dismay of everyone in the family.
I hope we can get through to them that this is no time to throw away their votes.
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Bob (not Greene) said on August 5, 2024 at 2:25 pm
Nancy,
I made that recipe about a week or so ago, because we had everything and it looked so easy. It was really good and am definitely making it again before the summer sweet corn leaves us. Enjoy!
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Deborah said on August 5, 2024 at 2:53 pm
I’m thinking about trying that recipe maybe Saturday after the painting is behind us. The worst part of it isn’t the actual painting it’s the prep and then the clean up after.
People like RFK Jr and Marianne Williamson need to get over themselves and they need to do it now. What in the world is their motivation? Besides their huge egos?
Did I mention that green chile roasting has been going on in the grocery store parking lots in Santa Fe? If I did already I’ll probably keep on mentioning it because it is a heavenly smell in town, that is amazing.
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FDChief said on August 5, 2024 at 4:56 pm
Alex: the US electoral system with its “first past the post” balloting has ALWAYS produced two major parties. If your professor pal doesn’t know that I can only hope he doesn’t teach political science!
The exceptions have almost always been brief and periods like the late 1850s when one party replaced another as the Republicans did the Whigs.
And when the third party WAS electorally significant – the example I’m thinking of was Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” run – all it accomplished was to siphon votes from the major party closest to it politically as TR did the GOP to elect Wilson.
The weekend was all doing things with adult kids; Obon with the Son Saturday for the taiko performances, Sunday for all things Daughter; Hong Kong dim sum, dahlia festival downvalley in Canby, IKEA, cute kittens at the Humane Society. Plus grocery shopping. Fun, but tiring!
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Mark P said on August 5, 2024 at 5:36 pm
Alex — Fucking naive Georgians. Tell your nephews to Google Lester Maddox and the 1966 Georgia gubernatorial election. That should show them what an “idealistic” vote for a third party can do.
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David C said on August 5, 2024 at 5:53 pm
If you ask people what they want from a third party, they almost never have a realistic answer. What they want is a snowflake of a party made just for them.
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Sherri said on August 5, 2024 at 7:32 pm
Most attempts at trying to create a third party are an amalgam of Republican tax policy and Democratic social policy, except toning down all that “identity politics” stuff. So, enough rights for minorities to not seem bigoted, but not enough to cede any real power, and certainly no social programs that cost money. Your basic social liberal/fiscal conservative contradiction; they’re not opposed to liberal social policies as long as it doesn’t really change anything or cost them anything. In other words, their bigotry is very polite.
Younger people who yearn for a third party are often just emotionally immature and think that there should be a special snowflake party that exactly meets their every position, no matter how little thought out that position is or how contradictory their positions are.
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Deborah said on August 5, 2024 at 9:16 pm
If you ever have to paint the wall where your cable/wifi hook up is and you think you should just unplug everything, clean all of the dust off all the wires and the back of everything before you paint the wall behind, don’t do it unless you absolutely know how to put it all back in place. We thought we were being smart about it but after everything was plugged back in we didn’t have wifi and were flumoxed for hours. Then LB remembered something and bingo it’s all OK again. I was freaking out for a while because I have a zoom call tomorrow and need the wifi connection for that.
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alex said on August 5, 2024 at 10:29 pm
My friend is a psychology prof and a committed Marxist (which I find tedious and I attribute to his relative youthful naivete) and perhaps this also comes from spending all of his time around college kids who haven’t yet learned how to balance idealism and pragmatism and checkbooks. Same as regards my nephews. I hate to admit it, but I can see where Republicans might think people in academia are full of shit. To some extent some of them are.
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Brandon said on August 6, 2024 at 1:52 am
A useful resource is the Politics1.com list of candidates for President.
Also, Ballot Access News “tracks the attempts of third party and independent candidates for various offices to secure ballot access … . The site also tracks changes in the law, court challenges and other interesting tidbits of third party news you usually won’t find elsewhere. Use this page to stay current on which third party and independent candidates will and won’t appear on your state’s general election ballot.”
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David C said on August 6, 2024 at 6:13 am
I saw a Kennedy/Shanahan yard sign yesterday evening. In fact five of them in one yard. I so wanted to knock on the door and find out what was going on.
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alex said on August 6, 2024 at 7:46 am
Kennedy will probably siphon off the frat boy vote from Trump now that his dead bear prank is making headlines.
So whaddaya think? Will Trump allow Harris an hour of free air time on ABC or will he show up to try and suck all the air out of it? Either way it’s a bad look for him.
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alex said on August 6, 2024 at 9:09 am
And it looks like Kamala’s gonna Walz away with presidency.
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Dexter Friend said on August 6, 2024 at 9:11 am
CNN exploded at 8:49 Eastern time with the news. We Shapiro backers realize it is not his time, but he will be President in 2032 or later. So that’s on the high shelf now with the stale candy.
Can we win with Trump now ensured of the Pennsylvania delegates votes? I am a Walz enthusiast now, and always have hoped it would be him if not Josh.
As a Progressive Liberal, I am for him 100%. His job from now until 11-5-24 is to put wind in Harris’s sails, and not screw up the works by doing, saying something stupid. He won’t. He won’t gain any electoral votes, but he won’t lose any. That is his job for the next 3 months. Pour on the coals and steamroll Trump and get him into prison.
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alex said on August 6, 2024 at 9:48 am
I think Walz can easily hold his own in a debate with Vance. He’s not only plain-spoken but clever, and I think he’ll do well on the campaign trail.
Biden’s problem was that he has always been an over-rehearsed and overly guarded retail politician and the public has come to see such people as phonies while mistaking Trump running his mouth for some sort of refreshing authenticity.
What better way to combat Trump than candidates who can riff spontaneously while doing so intelligently and coherently and who are gifted with much sunnier personalities.
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David C said on August 6, 2024 at 9:58 am
How fortunate were we to have so many great possibilities that whoever Kamala picked, nobody is saying she didn’t pick my guy so I’m out. I would have been fine with any of them.
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susan said on August 6, 2024 at 10:39 am
Yay for Walz! I thought for sure the Democrats were going to blow this, as usual. Shapiro has too much Zionist baggage. Ugh.
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Little Bird said on August 6, 2024 at 10:43 am
Yesterday morning I had a visit to my ENT (long story, but I’ve crossed paths with her many times starting back in St. Louis over 20 years ago) and had a bit of skin on my ear biopsied because my PCP thinks it might be skin cancer. It’s incredibly painful. And now I have to wear a bandaid type bandage on it to keep it covered while it heals. For a week or two. It’s my right ear. I’m using colorful bandages so I look less like a Trump supporter and it annoys me greatly that people will still think that anyway.
Moral of the story? Don’t forget your ears when applying sunscreen and consider wide brimmed hats.
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Jeff Borden said on August 6, 2024 at 10:46 am
A reminder that veep choices can hurt, but rarely help. Mitt Romney chose popular Wisconsin conservative Paul Ryan as his running mate in 2012. Not only did Obama carry the state, but he also won Ryan’s district. Choosing Shapiro didn’t guarantee winning Pennsylvania. Now, the progressive black woman from California has a small town Midwestern sidekick, which is a great balance.
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jim said on August 6, 2024 at 1:15 pm
Dexter: Shapiro will campaign like hell all around PA, and I think it will go for Harris/Walz with a higher percentage than the last election.
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Sherri said on August 6, 2024 at 2:00 pm
So much to like about the Walz pick, but one of the coolest parts is that his Lt Gov is Peggy Flanagan, a citizen of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. When Walz becomes VP, Flanagan would become the first Native American governor in the country.
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susan said on August 6, 2024 at 2:18 pm
“When Walz becomes VP, Flanagan would become the first woman Native American governor in the country.”
From wikipedia:
“A member of the Cherokee Nation, Stitt [of Oklahoma] is the second Native American governor after former Oklahoma governor Johnston Murray.”
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Sherri said on August 6, 2024 at 2:52 pm
I stand corrected.
What I like most about Walz is the empathy he has demonstrated. Back in 1999, he was the faculty advisor for his high school’s Gay Straight Alliance, because he thought being the football coach and the enlisted National Guard soldier sent an important message.
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Deborah said on August 6, 2024 at 4:47 pm
Except for being another white dude with white hair, I’m happy about Walz being chosen. I read this on Threads: the terms of this election are clearly–public servants against grifters, good people against the Smarm Brothers, normies against weirdos, mainstream values and goals vs. MAGA extremism. Or something similar, I can’t remember the exact words. I was still for Kelly before the announcement but I think Harris did the right thing. And the guy is kind of adorable. My niece who lives in Minneapolis is ecstatic.
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Jeff Gill said on August 6, 2024 at 5:57 pm
Yeah, but having Steve Martin back regularly on SNL would be nice. (He hasn’t asked for it, but the internet is campaigning hard for him to portray Walz this fall. He might be a short-termer like Jim Kerrey as Biden.)
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David C said on August 6, 2024 at 6:16 pm
I haven’t watched SNL for years. I’d watch for that.
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Deborah said on August 6, 2024 at 10:24 pm
Apparently Walz had a drinking and driving event that happened decades ago, he lived in rural Nebraska then. Having spent my college years in rural Nebraska, I wonder if there is anyone there who didn’t drink and drive at one time or another through the sparse rural highways of that state. Not excusing it, not a good thing to do, don’t get me wrong. He had been watching a football game with buddies and was driving home. They say he was 31 years old and in the military. He was excessively speeding in a 55 mph area. Again, no excuses it wasn’t good judgement at the time, at all. But in comparison to all of the things Trump has been indicted or found guilty of (i.e. rape) it seems minor.
I know I have driven while tipsy, not lately by any means but over my time driving which has been since I was 14, I know it happened. And one time my husband drove us home from a party where booze flowed excessively and he was full on drunk, we both were, we only had maybe less than a mile to get home, we probably should have walked or taken a cab. We didn’t get caught for our stupid decisions but we were just lucky and we learned our lessons.
Pilot Joe did you ever drive when you were drunk before you quit drinking? Maybe you didn’t get caught but did you ever do it? It seems like Trump supporters are ready to forgive their leader for obvious indiscretions.
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