Yard notes, for you gardeners: Our back yard, having been thoroughly ruined by some previous owner, has been a work in progress since we moved in, and I think we’ve brought it back about as far as we can, short of tearing down and rebuilding the garage where it should be, at the end of the driveway. (The owner moved it 90 degrees to gain a parking pad for their RV, we were told.) Along the way, Alan planted a climbing hydrangea along the back fence, where it dwelt in deep shade. Year after year, it would cover a smallish patch of the fence and do little more. A couple years back, Alan dug it up and replanted it against the side of the house, where it gets afternoon sun.
The motto for climbing hydrangea and other perennials, we’ve learned, is “first it sleeps, then it creeps, then it leaps.” The decade or so against the fence were its sleeping years. The first year on the house, creeping. But I’d say the Era of Leaping has fully arrived:
Not bad, little dude. Still to be revealed: The autumn-blooming clematis Alan put in this year to replace the honeysuckle that threw in the towel over the winter. Stay tuned.
How was everyone’s weekend? Mine? Can’t complain. Did some things, went out to a fancy dinner (32nd anniversary, Barda for you locals), stayed in with burgers the next night. A typical weekend, during which it was clear that Friday’s summery temperatures would give way to far springier ones, and they did. It was the benign touch of the storm system that devastated those to our south, and we’ll see what comes of that. The new FEMA director is being pretty open about the fact he doesn’t have a plan for hurricane season (which starts June 1) or anything else:
He also seemed to express surprise at the vast range of FEMA’s responsibilities, raising concerns among career officials about his ability to run the nation’s disaster-management agency. Richardson, who leads FEMA in an acting capacity, took over the complex agency last week.
“I feel a little bit like Bubba from ‘Forrest Gump,’ ” Richardson said, according to the video. “We’ve got hurricanes, we’ve got fires, we’ve got mudslides, we’ve got flash floods, we’ve got tornadoes, we’ve got droughts, we’ve got heat waves and now we’ve got volcanoes to worry about.”
Buck up, Dave. How hard can it be?
Then we had the Mexican yacht drifting into the Brooklyn Bridge. A car bomb at a fertility clinic. (He was opposed to “bringing people into the world against their will,” allegedly.) So many strange things happening, and it all feels very September 10, 2001 in the U.S. these days. Maybe it’s me. Happy week ahead, and the start of summer.
Icarus said on May 18, 2025 at 2:42 pm
it all feels very September 10, 2001
I’ve been thinking that for a while now. With all the divisiveness in this country, what would a repeat of 9-11 look like?
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David C said on May 18, 2025 at 4:49 pm
I don’t recall getting a vote on coming into the world. I guess we’re all hostages here.
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Dorothy said on May 18, 2025 at 5:00 pm
We got a climbing hydrangea last year and it looks pretty good so far. We lost a very expensive climber whose identity escapes me. All I know is we paid around $70 for it and I’m so pissed that it didn’t survive the winter. I might look through last May’s receipts folder and see if I can find what it was called. And I’ll let the nursery know it lasted only a year, but they’ll probably tell me I didn’t take care of it properly. Sigh.
Biden has been in the news a lot this week for such sad reasons – the book by Jake Tapper and some other dude, and now the prostate cancer diagnosis. It’s possible he’ll be gone by the end of the year since it’s in his bones. Will that make the maniac change his comments about him? Of course not. Maybe a deceased Joe Biden can work some kind of magic from the other side and bring about Tang-face’s downfall. I can hope anyway, can’t I?
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Suzanne said on May 18, 2025 at 5:41 pm
The Mexican ship was in NYC on a goodwill tour when it slammed into the Brooklyn Bridge. If that doesn’t sum up the state of the country under Trump, nothing does.
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David C said on May 18, 2025 at 7:41 pm
Biden’s diagnosis may not be as grim as it sounds. My father-in-law had an aggressive testosterone-sensitive prostate cancer. Testosterone blockers kept it at bay for ten or so years before it finally took his life when he was 92.
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Julie Robinson said on May 18, 2025 at 8:07 pm
Does anyone else wonder how this was missed while Biden was in the White House? Any man of his age should be getting PSAs with every blood draw. I’d hate to think it developed that fast.
Maybe this will sink Jake Tapper’s hateful book.
Courage, Joe.
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David C said on May 18, 2025 at 8:17 pm
PSA tests are notorious for both false positives and false negatives. They often detect turtle cancers that grow so slowly they’ll never be a problem. They do detect rabbits, which are fast growing, but treatable. When they detect bird cancers, it’s usually too late.
https://lactobacto.com/2018/02/13/viewing-cancers-as-birds-rabbits-and-turtles/
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Sherri said on May 18, 2025 at 8:34 pm
What David said. My father had a high PSA, that detected a turtle cancer. His urologist told him that it was cancer that didn’t need treatment, that he wouldn’t die from it (he was in his early 80’s at the time), but that it could be treated with radiation. Well, knowing there was a cancer meant to my Dad that it must be treated now, and aggressively, and nothing I could tell him would change that.
So, he got the radiation, and if there were side effects, I haven’t heard about them, but here’s the thing: his PSA didn’t come down. This drove him crazy, leading him to find another urologist who would give him a different treatment that did bring his PSA down. All for a cancer that didn’t need to be treated.
Meanwhile, he put off knee replacement for twenty years to the point where he’s no longer a good candidate for the surgery, and now at 86 is having trouble getting around.
Cancer screenings are not magic.
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Colleen said on May 18, 2025 at 10:56 pm
The worrisome parts of Biden’s diagnosis are the bone mets and high Gleason score. PSA is not really reliable for diagnosis, but more for tracking the disease in the individual patient. If his disease can be controlled with androgen deprivation therapy, he may well go on until something else causes his death. That all said, cancer sucks, and I am sorry he got this diagnosis.
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susan said on May 19, 2025 at 1:00 am
Regarding Jake Tapper….
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Gretchen said on May 19, 2025 at 1:13 am
I read that PSAs aren’t standard after age 70. Same with Pap smears.
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Jeff Gill said on May 19, 2025 at 7:06 am
Happy anniversary to you both! We’re marking 40 years today; got to Corbin, Kentucky last night & had a surprisingly fun time visiting the Harlan Sanders Museum which is also a working KFC. They do a good job of telling the story of how the erstwhile Colonel had myriad failures before he became a global success.
On to Cumberland Gap today, then to Grandfather Mountain & Blowing Rock, with some stops in the Smokies on the way . . . beautiful sunrise just now.
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alex said on May 19, 2025 at 8:00 am
The Harland Sanders Museum! What memories.
I had a gig at a large publishing company doing travel writing, only they weren’t sending us on expense-paid trips to glean firsthand information. They were having us rewrite the work of their competitors, and we had to do it in such a way that the theft would be untraceable. One of my assignments was the Harland Sanders Museum and I was cribbing from Lonely Planet and other guides. We had to be very cautious as other publishers were known to insert “poison pills” in their work in order to catch predators like us.
It was hard to beat what others had written about Sanders. They’d told his life story and made it both funny and poignant, so I remember that one as being particularly challenging. As for the museum itself, I’ve never been there.
That’s a gorgeous hydrangea. And don’t worry about the autumn clematis. It’s considered invasive and we have some growing like gangbusters in full shade and I swear there is nothing that could kill it. We have it covering a tall trellis and it could easily be mistaken for a big bush.
The weekend here was all about gardening. Got all of my flowers and most of my veggies planted. I was mowing down an explosion of Canada thistles on a hillside when something ripped the valve stem out of one of my tractor tires and today I’ve gotta go see about getting that fixed. I can’t remember how I juggled shit like this when I was working full-time; only that I felt like I didn’t have time.
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Dexter Friend said on May 19, 2025 at 1:47 pm
1 of 2 old men over 70 have prostate cancer that won’t be what kills us. Doctor Zeke and Doctor Vin Gupta both are on cable today explaining how prostate cancer isn’t even tested for after 70 or even 65 because PSA tests are not reliable. My VA doc has tested me via PSA blood test a few times already. My former doctor insisted on the finger test when I hit 62.
Joe has likely had his cancer for 10 years according to Doctor Ezekiel Emmanuel , and not being tested all the time is standard for old men. Joe found out when he developed urinary difficulty.
My old friend Bert , the WW1 veteran, from Bellevue and I visited his cousin from rural Huntington , Indiana, 45 years ago. The cousin was Eiffel Plasterer, famous for being a bubble man, who had been on many national shows, even David Letterman. Eiffel told of developing a blockage, rushed to hospital, and just before his bladder burst, a catheter gave him relief. Then a procedure fixed him. Eiffel was up in his 80s then. Time came to leave, as Eiffel had to get back to the sorghum harvest.
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Suzanne said on May 19, 2025 at 2:30 pm
All I know about aggressive cancer is the acute leukemia I had several years ago which taught me that aggressive hits out of nowhere. I had had routine bloodwork done near the end of October that showed nothing out of the ordinary in my blood but by the middle of February, I was diagnosed and off to the races. First round of treatment was a 24/7 drip of chemo with no breaks. My doctor said without treatments, I would have likely been dead within 2 to 8 weeks.
So, I have no trouble believing that this just hit Biden because that’s what aggressive cancer does.
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Sherri said on May 19, 2025 at 3:07 pm
My PCP and I have had several discussions about whether mammograms are helpful, and her thinking about them has evolved over the years (or maybe she’s just stopped pushing me so hard.) I maintain that they don’t actually save lives, so I don’t see the point of putting my tit in a wringer, she tried to talk me into getting one at least occasionally. I did convince her that I was doing really research about it, reading serious papers and understanding concepts.
Yes, mammograms find cancers. But the mortality rate from breast cancer hasn’t dropped because of mammograms, because mammograms find cancers that don’t kill. No, I don’t argue with friends who have had cancers treated after mammograms and think mammograms saved their lives. I also remember my friend who had a clean mammogram and then felt a lump soon afterwards. She’s alive, thankfully, but she had a double mastectomy and had her ovaries removed, because she’s BRCA positive and has a bad family history.
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Deborah said on May 19, 2025 at 3:37 pm
I’m in NM again, for 3 weeks for now. I had a bad day yesterday, my flight was delayed as I expected it might be because of FAA issues, not that much of a delay but just enough to make getting my shuttle from ABQ to Santa Fe a race. I managed to flag down the van as it was leaving the airport but they weren’t able to accommodate my bags in the back so I had to sit with them on my lap for 60 miles.
Then LB and I immediately went out to look for the plants we want because gardening is my whole reason for being here for these few weeks. I was dismayed at how puny the plant offerings were at the nurseries, not nearly as many as there usually are and the ones that they had didn’t look that healthy. I figured that it’s because of deporting the growers and potters and supply chain delays from Mexico and Central America because of tariffs. So thanks a lot Trump for making me have a crappy day yesterday.
Today we went out for bagged dirt and compost, because it’s rainy and windy so being outside working isn’t ideal but I can’t blame anyone for that.
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Julie Robinson said on May 19, 2025 at 4:28 pm
susan, that sums up my feelings on Jake Tapper; thank you.
I really didn’t know cancers could grow that quickly, and most of what I know about prostate cancer is because it runs in D’s family. He’s been getting PSAs done for quite a few years and while it went up one time it was back down the next. I don’t think anyone has suggested discontinuing and he turns 70 next year.
Congratulations to the old-marrieds! I would have to dragged to the Sanders’ museum, especially since they serve KFC. Fried chicken and I
don’t get along.
Deborah, a friend from Chicago was flying through Newark to Portugal and was delayed 36 hours. She was headed off for one of those river cruises and feared she would miss it. Luckily she had built in a couple of extra days at the beginning. I don’t ever like to have anything nonrefundable on the first day of a trip.
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Mark P said on May 19, 2025 at 4:54 pm
I just turned 75 yesterday (If you can believe it, good for you, because I sure can’t.) My PCP just put me on Flo max, which makes a slight difference. I am scheduled for a knee replacement on June 10, the first of two. I hope to get a cataract removed before that, the first of two. I feel like an old British sports car. Nothing works like it used to, and maintenance and repair are a constant problem.
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susan said on May 19, 2025 at 5:10 pm
Mark P., you’re not an old British sports car unless your electrical system goes wonky.
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SusanG said on May 19, 2025 at 5:11 pm
Tornadoes hit southern Indiana (EF2). Took out a post office, damaged over 100 houses. Destroyed a horse barn at the state park. A therapeutic horse facility lost some of their buildings. One human death, no horses lost.
As an individual who survived 4th stage lymphoma, sometimes the more aggressive are easier to treat. Mine was everywhere, including my arm and heading for the central nervous system. According to my oncologist, it was a dumb cancer (who knew?) and chemo destroyed it immediately. At least the Biden’s are sharing the type and details of treatment. Better than the creepy way royals handled it.
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Mark P said on May 19, 2025 at 5:43 pm
Susan — Well, I did have some heart rhythm problems a few years ago.
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Sherri said on May 19, 2025 at 6:33 pm
My husband had a somewhat elevated PSA and an enlarged prostate, but no cancer, just difficultly emptying his bladder. He was on Flomax for a while, but it didn’t help enough, so he had surgery about a year ago to open things up, and everything is flowing nicely now. He’s off Flomax now.
He’s also one of those people who can eat whatever he wants and his weight doesn’t really change. He’s 66, and weighs pretty much the same as when I met him over 40 years ago. He does okay squash several times a week, but his weight has never really changed whether he’s exercising or not. Not so much for me…
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David C said on May 19, 2025 at 6:37 pm
My wife came to the same conclusion on mammograms as you, Sherri. It’s the same for PSA tests. They find cancers but they haven’t moved the needle on survival.
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Julie Robinson said on May 19, 2025 at 7:29 pm
Which state park? There’s so many in southern Indiana.
My internist told me I don’t have to have any more pelvic/pap exams. I said oh darn. A German friend says instead of mammogram, they start with ultrasounds. Having had both, I definitely prefer ultrasound!
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SusanG said on May 19, 2025 at 7:44 pm
Julie
It was Horseman’s Camp in Brown Co. State Park. And one horse died; another injured. The other horse facility was People and Animal Learning Services (PALS). All their horses survived. LOTs of damage over three counties.
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Deborah said on May 19, 2025 at 9:52 pm
One more hiccup in the gardening expectations for Santa Fe, they had signs on one of the nurseries that we went to today that freezing temps were expected tonight and recommended people not plant before tomorrow. My guess is those are for the higher altitude residences but just in case we bought all of the plants inside that we hadn’t planted yet because of the rain and wind today. So the living room looks quite amazing with plants everywhere. We will be busy tomorrow with temps expected in the 70s. Weather gone wild.
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basset said on May 19, 2025 at 11:56 pm
Mark P, the obvious old English sports car to be is the Jaguar E-type… which a motoring writer famously referred to, some years ago, as “the greatest crumpet catcher known to mankind.”
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alex said on May 20, 2025 at 8:14 am
Gift article! I’m in the Washington Post! Come see my happy hyacinths on a hillside (and a lot of other cool landscapes):
https://wapo.st/4kqOpGK
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Deborah said on May 20, 2025 at 9:28 am
How cool Alex! How did they contact you? I wish we could grow that much coverage in our condo yard in Santa Fe. We’ve ended up using lots of rocks (not gravel), one thing we have plenty of from our land in Abiquiu.
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Heather said on May 20, 2025 at 10:12 am
Very nice, Alex! I’ve been trying to get our condo association to get rid of the grass in our parkway for years. My neighbor scattered some clover seed, so maybe that will help.
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alex said on May 20, 2025 at 10:20 am
Deborah, they had an article about naturalized lawns quite a few months ago and they asked for reader submissions. I love sharing what we did with ours.
When I bought this place 20 years ago it was almost all lawn and it was boring, and because it’s largely shaded, grass didn’t want to grow thick and lush and was full of bare spots. Dumping chemicals on it only fed the algae in the lake but didn’t make the lawn grass grow where it didn’t want to grow, so I let nature do its thing, and now I’m surrounded by a lush forest floor with a much minimized lawn. It’s still a lot of work, but at least I’m working with nature and not against it, and I’m always thrilled when utility crews and passersby tell me that I have the best yard in the neighborhood.
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Jenine said on May 20, 2025 at 10:26 am
@Mark P, “an old British sports car” sounds about right.
When I was a teenager and thought MGs were the cutest things around, my dad said I could have one as soon as we could convince a British mechanic to come live in our garage.
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Julie Robinson said on May 20, 2025 at 10:28 am
Woohoo, Alex, internet famous! It’s so beautiful and serene.
We take a similar approach, with native plantings and coquina borders. Coquina is crushed up shells, so considered more native than mulch. You can’t really grow grass here anyway, despite lawn services pouring on chemicals. Like your place, those go straight to the lake.
For those who love gazing on gardens, this was in the NYT yesterday. I’ll confess to not reading the words, just scrolling the pretty pictures. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/t-magazine/best-gardens-england-japan-france.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ik8.zTZZ.viqXd3nTRtEY&smid=url-share
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Sherri said on May 20, 2025 at 1:49 pm
Fire your writers. Use generative AI to produce a summer reading list. I’m sure no one will notice.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/05/chicago-sun-times-prints-summer-reading-list-full-of-fake-books/
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Dexter Friend said on May 20, 2025 at 2:11 pm
WaPo wants my email and name to create an account to read and look at Alex’s posting.
Fuck Bezos and that goddam rag. I quit them for good and forever.
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Jeff Borden said on May 20, 2025 at 3:05 pm
There’s an old joke about the Lucas electrical systems used in many British cars:
Why do the British drink their beer warm?
Because the refrigerator is a Lucas.
On a less amusing note, our esteemed Secretary of Homeland Hair Extensions revealed herself in Congressional testimony not only to be heartless, cruel and vicious but also to be incredibly stupid.
Asked by Sen. Maggie Hassan to define Habeas Corpus, Noam testified, “Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.” Imagine that. One of the top law enforcement people in ‘Murica and she doesn’t know this legal term dating to the Magna Carta.
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David C said on May 20, 2025 at 5:47 pm
She knows. She just said that for Fox and the rubes.
Some good news. After months of looking and being outbid, we had an offer accepted on a condo. We were looking in Grand Rapids/Holland area and ended up in Portage, a suburb of Kalamazoo. An hour away from our families is better than six, though. It’s more fun to say Kalamazoo than Grand Rapids anyway.
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alex said on May 20, 2025 at 6:12 pm
Congrats, David C. My brother’s girlfriend lives in Kalamazoo and he’s up there a lot when he’s not home tending to our dad. I have a feeling he’s going to be moving there eventually. And I’ve been thinking about buying a new car from a dealership in Portage, of all places. It’s been in their inventory for 250 days or something like that and it’s thousands less than the same car locally. The colors I want, both exterior and interior. And a motivated seller. Now if I could just be a motivated buyer while the stock market is enjoying a momentary high again.
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basset said on May 20, 2025 at 6:15 pm
Mrs. B is from Portage, seems like a nice place.
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Julie Robinson said on May 20, 2025 at 6:52 pm
Congratulations, David, hope you’ll like living there.
I don’t think Noam does know what Habeas Corpus is. I think she gets a very short list of talking points and is lost beyond that.
Welp, I’m on jury duty tomorrow morning. Have to report at 7:30 am. Since I retired, I don’t even get out of bed that early. For my services I will receive the princely sum of $15.
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Mark P said on May 20, 2025 at 7:22 pm
Basset – if only I were an XK-E. Unfortunately I’m a rusty TR-3. It’s hard to believe the E-Type came out in 1961. If you’re hankering for an MGB, you can get essentially every part either new or NOS. I think you could build an entire car from a car parts catalog. Of course it would cost way more than it would be worth.
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Deborah said on May 20, 2025 at 7:55 pm
I had a series of MGs, one after the other. All were in the shop constantly for electrical work. I think I’ve commented about this before but one of my MGs started with no key in the ignition when you turned the lights on. When the Miata came out I said good bye to the Brit cars. Then when we moved to Chicago I gave up on little sport car convertibles. I don’t miss them, except when I’m full of anxiety. I used to drive out in the country by myself with the top down and scream my lungs out for a few minutes, amazing how cathartic that was.
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Deborah said on May 20, 2025 at 10:02 pm
What a difference a day makes. Today I went to a couple of nurseries looking for Karl Foerester Reed Grass, it has been very hard to find usually when I get to Santa Fe closer to June but today I found lots of it, and I’m going back to get more tomorrow. It’s very popular here because it looks great and holds up through the winter which because of the altitude can be rough. But it’s not native to the area, which is why it may be hard to find. I think it was developed in Germany.
also the nurseries had so many more plants today than a few days ago, we actually found everything we were looking for and more. It’s hard for me to turn off the spigot when I’m looking for plants, I need a minder.
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Colleen said on May 20, 2025 at 10:14 pm
When my parents got married my dad had an Austin Healey Sprite. As goodbyes were being said and the newlyweds were taking off in said car, my mom’s Auntie Anna leaned in and said in her thick Hungarian accent…”thees little car…is for sheeet.” Not a fan of the British automotive scene…..
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