Have you been busy turning your clocks back this morning?
Politicians have been busy, too, but not with clock changing.
Instead, politicians are busy with election-related stuff.
The 2022 election being tomorrow and all that.
Republicans are busy with full-time sucking up to Donald Trump.
Democrats are busy with full-time pretending that they aren’t going to lose the House, the Senate, and then the White House in 2024.
So maybe when the election dust settles, the politicians – while they still have their jobs – could turn their attention to this issue, one that everyone wants resolved:
Daylight Saving Time is important because:
Everyone says “Daylight Savings” but there’s no final “s” in “Saving” so everyone is wrong.
People in most states must change their clocks or they’ll be way early or way late for work.
It’s the only thing members of the Senate have unanimously agreed on in recent – or long-term – memory.
All of the above.
Answer: #4.
And – yes! #3 is true, hard as that is to believe. Back in March:
“After losing an hour of sleep over the weekend, members of the United States Senate returned to the Capitol this week a bit groggy and in a mood to put an end to all this frustrating clock changing.
“So on Tuesday, with almost no warning and no debate, the Senate unanimously passed legislation to do away with the biannual springing forward and falling back that most Americans have come to despise, in favor of making daylight saving time permanent. The bill’s fate in the House was not immediately clear, but if the legislation were to pass there and be signed by President Biden, it would take effect in November 2023.”
The stop-changing-clocks legislation has a rather sweet name:
The Sunshine Protection Act went to the House, and since then…
That was in July, and this was in September:
This is now:
And this will be us for the foreseeable future:
Because in the House, according to the The Hill article:
“‘I can’t say it’s a priority,’ Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told The Hill recently.
“‘We have so many other priorities, but it doesn’t mean because it’s not a priority that we’re not trying to work on it. We are…’”
We are…
Not a priority.
And the day after election day, passing the Sunshine Protection Act won’t be a priority either.
Because the day after election day, lots of politicians are still going to be busy, but not because they’re doing this:
They’ll be busy with other priorities like this…
And this:
And…
Maybe I’m wrong?
Maybe on election day, Democrats won’t lose the House, the Senate, and then the White House in 2024!
And then the House can pass the Sunshine Protection Act…
Category: Humorous Fiction, Contemporary Women Fiction, Contemporary Romance.
Review, short version: Three skunks out of four.
Review, long version:
Katie Cotugno’s Birds of California has two main characters: Fiona St. James, 28, and Sam Fox, 31. They’re both actors, and years ago they starred in a hit TV series, Birds of California, which ran for four years. Apparently, both are gorgeous. She’s a good actress, and smart. He’s B-list actor, and shallow.
At the beginning of the book, Fiona has been out of acting for a long time. She had a public crash and burn, and her self-destructive behavior led to the show’s cancellation when she was in her late teens. This was followed by a number of years of more self-destructive behavior, and ongoing, multiple posts on social media by people who loved to point out how flawed she was. She eventually got some help, though she’s still quite capable of going off the deep end. She’s now living with her father and younger sister, and managing the print shop that her parents started.
Fiona’s mother abandoned the family 10 years ago. Instead of going to the print shop, her father sits at home and doesn’t do much.
At the beginning of the book, Sam is still in the acting business. He left Birds of California before it was cancelled because his agent promised Sam great movie roles. Though years have passed, the great movie roles haven’t happened and Sam is still working in television. His latest series has just been cancelled. He feels like a fraud and fears he’ll be exposed. He has huge credit card debt, he’s about to lose his leased car, and he can’t pay his next month’s rent.
Sam never knew his dad, and his mother is receiving treatments for terminal cancer.
At the end of the book, Fiona is still quite capable of going off the deep end. She’s still living with her father and younger sister, and still managing the print shop that her parents started.
Her mother is still gone, and her father is still sitting at home.
At the end of the book, Sam still feels like a fraud and fears he’ll be exposed. He’s still unemployed, still has huge credit card debt, is still about to lose his leased car, and still can’t pay his next month’s rent.
He still doesn’t know his dad, and his is mother is still receiving treatments for terminal cancer.
The end.
For less boring Birds of California reading, I recommend:
If you took U.S. history in school, you probably learned that at the start of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) there were 13 colonies:
Thirteen colonies is the accepted fact, and 13 was the number of stars and stripes on the first American flag. The number of stars has grown to 50, but our flag continues with 13 stripes today:
So, if “How many colonies were there at the start of the Revolutionary War?” appeared as a question on a test, you would have answered “13.”
You would have been wrong.
If this came up as the Final Jeopardy! topic…
And the answer was ““Number colonies at the start of the Revolutionary War…”
You would have written, “What is 13?”
You would have been wrong.
At the start of the American Revolution, there were 15 colonies, an almost-unknown fact that I recently learned in a fascinating PBS documentary, America’s Untold Story.
I highly recommend this four-hour film – it’s full of important information about our country, much of which we don’t find in our history books.
The part I’m focusing on is the 15 colonies story, but this needs a bit of backstory, plus this caveat:
I’m a history lover, not a history expert. Don’t use me as a source – your history professor will not be impressed, and quoting me about how many colonies won’t win Final Jeopardy! for you.
So, as I understand it…
Ponce de León statue in St. Augustine’s Plaza de La Constitución.
Spanish Florida was established in North America in 1513, when Juan Ponce de León claimed peninsular Florida for Spain during the first official European expedition to North America. Ponce de León named the territory “la Florida” which means “full of flowers” or “flowery.”
That Spanish claim was enlarged as several explorers landed near Tampa in the mid-1500s, and they wandered as far north as the Appalachian Mountains and as far west as Texas, in largely unsuccessful searches for gold.
In their wanderings the Spanish explorers claimed every foot of ground they walked on for their mother country – as all good colonizers do.
After the British settled Jamestown, VA in 1607, more British began arriving on the east coast and doing the wandering-claiming-colonizing thing as well.
Then came the Seven Years War (1754-1763), also known as the French and Indian War. The British had captured Spanish Cuba and the Philippines and, in order to get these valuable colonies back, Spain was forced to give up Florida. Signed on February 10, 1763, the First Treaty of Paris gave all of Florida to the British.
Now we come the 14th and 15th colonies, but first I wanted to double-check if what I learned in America’s Untold Story was accurate.
According to this and other articles:
“…the British took control of Florida in 1763.
“The British separated the area into East Florida, with its capital in St. Augustine, and West Florida, with its capital in Pensacola. Under British rule, East Florida consisted of what is the modern boundary of the state, east of the Apalachicola River. West Florida included the modern Panhandle of Florida, as well as parts of what are now Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama”:
There they are: the 14th and 15th colonies.
Now, we tend to think that during the American Revolution, everyone in the colonies wanted to gain their independence from Great Britain, but that wasn’t the case.
Depiction of the Boston Tea Party, 1773.
Historians have estimated that during the American Revolution, between 15 and 20 percent of the white population of the colonies, or about 500,000 people, were loyal to Great Britain, which earned them the moniker of “Loyalists.” They were horrified that many of their fellow colonists – who were supposed to be loyal to King George III – were instead throwing chests of tea into Boston Harbor and harboring traitorous notions about “independence.”
Thousands of these Loyalists became refugees, fleeing the 13 colonies, many of them to East and West Florida.
Why?
When the Continental Congress formally declared – in 1776 – that their new nation would henceforth be known as the “United States,” the 14th and 15th colonies in Florida were not considered part of the big picture
As a prize of war, Spain had ceded Florida to the British in 1763.
Why?
Because of that 1763 First Treaty of Paris, Florida was a British prize of war – the Seven Years War – rather than territory settled by English colonists.
And there’s the bottom line:
Thirteen colonies rebelled against Great Britain, but the 14th and 15th colonies – East and West Florida – remained loyal to Great Britain until the end of the war in 1783.
And Florida didn’t join the United States at the end of the Revolutionary War. Rather, it was handed back to Spain by the British, and Spain kept it for another three decades.
But that’s another story.
So now I know that what I learned in school was wrong: While the American Revolutionary War was fought by many who resided in the 13 colonies, there were, in fact, 15 colonies.
This got me wondering what other “facts” in history textbooks are wrong – here are a few examples I found online:
History textbook: “Columbus first reached North America in 1492.”
Correction: Columbus never reached North America. He explored Caribbean islands and the northern coast of South America.
History textbook: “Before the Civil War, greenbacks [paper money] were redeemable for either gold or silver coins.”
A $1 greenback, first issued in 1862.
Correction: There were no greenbacks before the Civil War. They originated in the 1862 Legal Tender Act, during the Civil War.
History textbook: “The 15th Amendment of the Constitution…guaranteed voting rights to all citizens.”
Correction: The 15th Amendment did not guarantee voting rights to all citizens. It omitted women, making the 19th Amendment necessary.
But – here’s a fact I encountered in my research (and triple-verified) that just might make you the Final Jeopardy! winner:
If you answer “Florida…”
I’m sorry!
Your answer is correct, but it had to be in the form of a question!
It’s hard for me to decide what I dislike most about Halloween – my list is that long.
Top of the list is the idea of parents allowing – no, encouraging – their children to approach home the homes of strangers and get candy.
Teaching kids at an early age to take candy from strangers.
What a bad idea.
Next on the list is it the fact that Halloween-related TV food shows start in July.
Shows with names like Halloween Wars, Halloween Cookie Challenge, Halloween Baking Championship, and Outrageous Pumpkins, the latter of which brings together…
“Four of America’s best pumpkin carvers for a Halloween pumpkin carving competition that defies expectations. In three rounds of challenges, the spectacularly talented artists use carving and sculpting tools ranging from toothpicks to saws to execute their amazingly intricate Halloween designs. The carver who impresses the expert panel of judges the most takes home a $10,000 prize.”
Based on the online images, what appear to be normal-looking people come together with pumpkins…
And create something like this:
And quickly take pictures before the pumpkin is carted off to the local landfill.
I’ll have more to say about Halloween TV offerings later.
Another item on my What-I-Dislike-About-Halloween is this:
Not candy itself, but that people are buying it for Halloween. According to Statista.com:
“In 2022, consumers in the United States expected to spend a combined total of roughly three billion U.S. dollars on trick-or-treat candy for the Halloween season.”
Food prices are way up, and that’s going to continue, says this recent article:
And – understandably – people keep complaining about the high cost of food.
And yet they’re loading up their shopping carts with around $3 billion in Halloween candy?
To give away?
To strangers?
Here’s a graphic from the Statista.com article that shows – in billions of dollars – what people are spending overall on Halloween in 2022, including the aforementioned candy:
It adds up to more than $10 billion, on stuff like yard decorations:
And costumes for humans:
And costumes for pets:
And to what end?
So they can take selfies and post them on Instagram?
And speaking of pets…
I’m circling back to Halloween TV offerings…
And pets.
Specifically:
A bit of backstory:
At one time there was a television station called the Travel Channel. At one time it actually was a channel that aired…
Travel shows.
Over the years the station went through a series of logos:
The current logo – bottom row, far right – is now missing the “a” and “e” which I guess leaves viewers asking, “Should we see what’s on Tervil?”
But the Travel – I mean, Tervil – Channel changed, as this writer lamented:
“What happened to travel television? Growing up, I used to watch the Travel Channel for hours on end. Yes, as a child, I loved watching shows about travel. I would sit in awe, learning about fascinating places around the world. I specifically recall the first time I saw a show about Angkor Wat and couldn’t believe such an historic place was never mentioned in school.
“These were the good days of travel television. Viewers were entertained, informed and inspired. Oh, how times have changed.”
And this writer:
Explained what happened to the Trvl Channel:
“TV networks show what works, so even if you don’t love paranormal shows, that’s what’s been driving revenue for the Travel Channel since 2018. When they started showing these types of shows, the Travel Channel had their best year ever! Sorry to say, these types of shows don’t appear to be going away anytime soon.”
And what better time to air “paranormal shows” than at Halloween?
Let’s take a look at Trvl’s offerings for today – Halloween.
Start your morning out right with these masterpieces:
Grab your lunch and settle in for the afternoon:
And now…as it’s getting dark…hunker down and get ready for your best Halloween night ever, right up to midnight:
Want to make your best Halloween night even better?
Then add in this:
Now, I’ve heard of humans being possessed, or thinking their possessed, or their families thinking they’re possessed.
The Catholic Church is very big on dealing with evil possession – just go online and request and exorcism:
But possessed pets?
Here’s the indisputable evidence, brought to you by Eli Roth, a sort of actor who evolved into a sort of director/producer and apparently – according to the Trvl Channel – is now the “master of horror.”
My Possessed Pet is a four-part series that concluded 10 days ago, but don’t despair – it’s streaming on discovery+. And if you’re not set up for that, you’ll get set up for it after you read Trvl’s program description:
“Few things are more profound than the quiet bond between a person and their pet. But what if an evil presence takes hold of the animal and uses the trusted companion to get to us?”
“ELI ROTH PRESENTS: MY POSSESSED PET explores the true, terrifying tales of what happens when evil spirits, curses and demons take over family pets and turn them against their terrified owners. Each episode will follow the chilling and deeply personal story of someone who has had their profound and loving relationship ripped apart by supernatural forces beyond their control.”
Here’s an image from the show about a “possessed” dog:
Though Eli Roth also could have used this one:
So – there’s just a partial recounting of my What-I-Dislike-About-Halloween list: people spending $10 billion on Halloween crap while they whine about inflation, a proliferation of Halloween TV shows that start in July, the craziness of parents encouraging their children to take candy from strangers…
That’s what’s happening in Chula Vista, CA, a city located between San Diego and the U.S./Mexico border:
The dead man is Simon Silva, who was – and still is – running for Chula Vista City Attorney. He died on September 3 and, due to election codes, it was too late to remove his name from the ballot or add new candidates.
Silva was – is – a Democrat. His opponent is Dan Smith, a Republican.
When I saw this story on October 25, it noted that Silva’s website is still up and running – almost two months after Silva’s death. On October 26 I went online and sure enough:
You can still volunteer for Silva’s campaign.
You can still donate to Silva’s campaign.
And according to this October 20 article:
Silva’s website isn’t the only platform that’s continuing to support the Dead Man Running:
“The Democratic Party’s official endorsement voter guide, as listed on their website, does not include the Chula Vista city attorney race, but campaign mailers sent recently to voters listed Silva as their choice for the seat. On September 18, they also held a campaign kickoff event with canvassing for its selected candidates that included Silva.
“There has been no mention in their communications of Silva’s death.”
And as you can see from the above headline, Silva’s Republican opponent wants this to stop:
Dan Smith.
“Dan Smith, a lawyer running for Chula Vista city attorney, is demanding the San Diego County Democratic Party stop promoting and encouraging voters to elect the late Simon Silva, who died last month.
“In an October 17 letter mailed to the Democratic Party and Mayor Mary Casillas Salas, Smith said the Democratic Party must cease ‘all advertising, promotions and endorsements for Mr. Simon Silva.’”
Smith’s reason for wanting “advertising, promotions and endorsements” to cease is simple:
If voters elect the deceased Silva, Smith loses.
Smith, of course, isn’t saying that. Instead he’s expressing his concerns in I’m-just-looking-out-for-taxpayers terms:
“‘Misinformation by perpetuating this fraud on the voters of Chula Vista is potentially causing the expenditure of millions of dollars, which is a substantial amount of taxpayer funds.’”
And in this instance, he’s speaking the truth.
According to this story:
“If Silva beats Smith in November, that will force Chula Vista to hold a special election to replace Silva. That could cost the city upwards of $2 million.”
A special election would give the Democrats an opportunity to run another candidate – presumably a living one – and win.
Sounds like there’s enough sleaze to go around for both Republicans and Democrats.
The Republican candidate is positioning himself as the champion of taxpayers, and the Democrats are endorsing a candidate while neglecting to mention he’s deceased.
Deceased candidate Silva who, the NBC 7 story noted, is “still the front runner” as of October 25.
So where are we today, October 28, less than two weeks from election day?
Republican Smith is getting the word out with mailers with Silva’s picture and the word “DECEASED”:
Democrats aren’t getting the word out – Silva campaign signs are still very much in evidence:
And the Democratic Party “did not respond” to the Union-Tribune’s requests for comment on this issue.
Lots of sleaze – both parties are running veritable sleaze machines.
But at least the City of Chula Vista and a Silva colleague took the time to remember that Simon Silva is more than a pawn to be used by Democrats and Republicans to get votes:
“‘His quiet leadership, ethics, unparalleled knowledge of personnel and housing laws as well as his prior experience as a Sheriff’s deputy and as a Marine made him a force to be reckoned with. He will be greatly missed,’ the city wrote in a statement.”
“‘Simon Silva was a profoundly good person who lawyered the way he lived, with intelligence, humility, and the highest degree of integrity,’ said City Attorney Glen Googins.”
“‘He clearly loved what he did, and he was beloved in return, both by his colleagues within the City Attorney’s office and throughout the ranks of his City family.’
“‘The great loves of his life, though, were his wife, Claudia, and their two daughters, Gabriela and Isabel. I feel incredibly blessed to have had him as a close colleague and friend these past 12 years. We are all heartbroken by his sudden passing,’ Googins said.”
Carlsbad, CA is on the coast about 35 miles north of San Diego. It’s a nice town…
…with lovely beaches:
The population is about 116,000; their median income is around $113,000; and the median home price is $1.3M.
And this article:
Included Carlsbad among its “10 U.S. Cities” where the rich love to live.
That would not be me.
My husband and I were passing through Carlsbad, stopped at a traffic signal, when I noticed a building sign. Part of it was obscured by trees; this is what I saw:
“What the hell,” I thought, “is that?”
A brothel, thinly disguised?
Not in downtown-upscale Carlsbad.
A revival of a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers 1930s musical?
Don’t think so.
A school for those wishing to sharpen their alliteration skills?
Because, gosh – “Lovely Little Ladies” is practically the definition of alliteration.
I made a note of the name, looked for a website when I got home and…
Here’s the full sign:
Lovely Little Ladies is a company that targets young girls…
…and younger girls…
…who are in dire need of, as the website puts it:
“…signature spa services – manicures, pedicures, facials, make-up and glam-hairstyling…”
Calling all 10-year-olds!
Lovely Little Ladies is the go-to place for…
Facials, including cucumbers (or pickles?) on the eyes…
…manicures and makeup…
And the “Doll Me Up” hair salon…
…where girls get “glam-hairstyling” like these for just $65 and $70.
All this because 10-year-olds are so frazzled by life that they need cucumbers (or pickles?) on their eyes?
Apparently yes – all of this is clearly fulfilling every young girl’s dream. It says so on the Lovely Little Ladies Facebook page, so it must be true:
Their Facebook page also says (here’s the image at the top of this post, this time full-on):
To be one of the “cool kids” you must come to Lovely Little Ladies.
Otherwise…
You’re not one of us.
And this all pisses me off – from the first word of the company’s name to their images (yuck, all that pink) to their online language.
Why?
Because the Lovely Little Ladies’ message to young girls from the get-go is:
You are all about…
Sure, the owners pay lip service to how Lovely Little Ladies…
“…has created a space where she can feel whole, complete and comfortable to be her best self.”
And how this experience will help girls:
“…follow their passion and conquer their dreams, feeling fabulous, fearless, and fierce!”
But only if they come to Lovely Little Ladies to focus on…
Lovely Little Ladies also invites moms to join their daughters; for example, at the “Boujee Babes Group Spa” for oh, maybe $500 or $600…
Because, says the website:
“We are an all-inclusive company of everything Mother & Daughter needed for lasting memories.”
But…if the moms are otherwise occupied that day – say, joining other ladies-who-lunch and posting foodie pictures on Instagram (where they secretly aspire to become influencers) …
Moms can pass their daughters the plastic…
And send the girls off for a full day of focusing on…
And don’t forget: Hanging out with the “cool kids.”
Speaking of being inclusive, let’s go back to that “all-inclusive company” quote.
Here’s my suggestion for the Lovely Little Ladies company:
If you’re sincere about being “all-inclusive…”
Why not include boys?
Why not?
You have stereotyping-pink bathrobes for the girls – just stock up on blue bathrobes for the boys and you’ll double your stereotyping and your business!
Then girls and boys can buy those bathrobes for just $55, or go for the robe and slipper combo for a mere $80; throw in some personalized party swag bags at just $25 each; and add that perfect finishing touch: Bling! A tiara and sash for just $65 are sure to be a big hit with all the kids:
Now that would be all-inclusive.
How about it, Little Lovely Ladies?
Hmmm.
The folks at Lovely Little Ladies don’t seem warm to this idea.
Well, if you prefer to keep your environment all-female, how about if you suggest to moms – parents – that they encourage their girls and boys to have equal time in this environment:
What’s that? You’ve never heard of STEAM? Or STEAM Camps?
STEAM camps are in-person camp programs for kids that focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math – hence the acronym.
According to this and other articles:
Exposure to STEAM learning can help generate better test scores and an improved sense of well-being, and also help children succeed in both school and real life by combining the scientific method with the creative process.
The “scientific method” – for girls, too?
What a concept!
And…STEAM Camps are lots of fun – and all-inclusive.
So, Moms – how about it?
If you’re going to send your daughters to Lovely Little Ladies to focus on…
How about equal time at a STEAM Camp, where they can focus on…
I reckon that for as long as humans have been around, protestors have, too.
Currently you’ll find protestors in many countries, most with serious causes, some less serious…
This was a protest in London in 2017, and I’m not sure what their cause was.
Recently there’s been a different group of protestors in London.
Their cause is serious.
And so is their vandalism:
On the left is Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh, a treasured part of the collection of London’s National Gallery. The same painting is on the right, defaced on October 14 with the contents of two cans of tomato soup.
Heinz Cream of Tomato soup, to be specific.
Here’s a larger image of one of the protestors holding a soup can, with the painting behind her:
Here’s the same protestor with her colleague – also holding a soup can – now with their hands glued to the wall:
According to this and many other articles:
“The two young women [were] from the campaign group Just Stop Oil…which represents a coalition of groups working together to stop the UK government from committing to new licenses concerning the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels.”
This led me to the Just Stop Oil website, where the vandalized painting was the lead story:
“The actions this month are timed to coincide with the planned launch of a new round of oil and gas licensing in which over 100 new licences for oil and gas projects are likely to be awarded and an energy price hike on October 1st, which means almost 8 million households are expected to fall into fuel poverty by April 1st 2023.”
There’s no doubt that the thoughts expressed on the website are strong and sincere; here’s a quote from one of the London Gallery protestors:
“Is art worth more than life? More than food? More than justice?
“The cost of living crisis is driven by fossil fuels – everyday life has become unaffordable for millions of cold hungry families – they can’t even afford to heat a tin of soup. Meanwhile, crops are failing and people are dying in supercharged monsoons, massive wildfires and endless droughts caused by climate breakdown. We can’t afford new oil and gas, it’s going to take everything. We will look back and mourn all we have lostunless we act immediately.”
Hence the Heinz soup tie-in.
And according to this article:
The Just Stop Oil protests weren’t limited to the October 14 painting defacing:
“A group of protesters from the same group later gathered at police headquarters and sprayed yellow paint over the rotating ‘New Scotland Yard’ sign in front of it. Several also glued themselves to the road, blocking traffic. Police said 24 people were arrested.
“Just Stop Oil has drawn attention, and criticism, for targeting artworks in museums. In July, Just Stop Oil activists glued themselves to the frame of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, and to John Constable’s The Hay Wain in the National Gallery.”
So the protests are widespread, but I’d like to focus on the two Heinz Cream of Tomato soup throwers:
I’m wondering if either of these women ever gave any thought to how those cans of soup came to be in available to them.
Let’s start with the tomatoes, which were grown in a field and then likely harvested with equipment like this…
Equipment powered by…
Oil. Fossil fuel.
Then trucks loaded with tomatoes…trucks powered by oil…
…went to a Heinz canning factory – maybe this one:
A factory probably powered by oil.
The canned soup was shipped all over England, perhaps this time by a freight train…
…powered by oil.
And the soup would then be loaded onto trucks…powered by oil…for delivery to our protestors’ grocery stores:
A store with lights and heating and cooling likely…powered by oil.
I’m thinking that without oil, the protestors would not have had cans of Heinz Cream of Tomato soup to throw at van Gogh’s Sunflowers.
I’m also thinking that thought didn’t cross their minds.
You may have noticed that one of the protestors has a hair color…
That looks like it came from a product like this one:
We could go through the whole drill again – from factory to store and how it got there – but I think I’ve made my point.
I say this emphatically – I’m not unsympathetic to the goals of the Just Stop Oil protestors. I wish our world’s dependency on oil was a thing of the past. I wish climate change was something kids learned about in history books, instead of living with it every day. I wish all our energy came from clean, renewable sources.
Headlines like this infuriate me:
And I live in California, where we’re getting no relief on the price of gasoline as this recent article attests:
But…I don’t think this:
…is the way to reduce our dependence on oil.
On October 15 – the day after the painting was defaced – the BBC reported:
“One of Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers paintings has been cleaned and is back on display, after climate activists threw tins of what appeared to be tomato soup over it.
“London’s National Gallery confirmed it is now back in place, about six hours after the soup incident.”
If the goal of Just Stop Oil was to get attention – they got it.
Briefly.
They also got this:
I fear the warning in this article:
“University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said he worries that the vandalism ‘alienates many people we need to bring into the fold. People who are natural allies in the climate battle but will draw negative associations with climate advocacy and activism from such acts.’”
I also fear protestors like this:
And most of all, I fear this:
Update: Taking a page from the soup throwers’ handbook, on October 23 in the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany, …
“Two climate activists threw mashed potatoes on a glass-covered painting by the celebrated French Impressionist Claude Monet…the latest art attack intended to draw attention to climate change.”
The activists each glued a hand to the wall:
And then:
“…the woman shouted in German that the world was in ‘a climate catastrophe, and all you are afraid of is tomato soup or mashed potatoes in a painting…’”
The article concluded:
“The activists appear to be targeting artworks with global resonance, hoping that notable names and paintings will garner more publicity.”
I have two thoughts. The first is regarding what the activists are “hoping”:
Or as they say in Germany:
The second: Those mashed potatoes came from potatoes that grew in a field and were harvested by a machine…fueled by oil…
Despite my recent negative comments on this blog about the San Diego Central Library, I will readily say that the San Diego Library system – which encompasses the Central Library and 34 branches – is doing something that’s pretty cool:
This event presents a very real challenge to many writers, including me – that challenge being…
San Diego Public Library’s Matchbook Story Contest is the opposite of this writing contest:
The Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest honors Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins with “It was a dark and stormy night.” The contest challenges participants to write an atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written, and here’s the 2022 grand prize winner:
This is just the opening sentence of an imaginary novel, and at 70+ words it’s a perfect example of the opposite of brevity, which is:
Instead, the Matchbook Story Contest invites writers to create an entire story that’s so short, it will fit on the inside of a matchbook cover:
Figure 40-50 words…
To tell an entire story.
Now, that’s brevity.
I first learned about the Matchbook Story Contest – now in its sixth year – only recently, in this article:
The article included the 2021 contest winner, described as “a playful twist on the supposed serenity of meditation apps”:
“Imagine yourself as a frog on a lily pad,” the soothing voice murmurs in my ear. Obediently, I picture it: Slimy and cold, I am adrift in a polluted pond. A heron’s lethal beak looms. My legs prepare to leap but it is too late. I delete the meditation app.
This sent me to the library’s Matchbook Story Contest website for more examples. Here’s the 2020 winner:
After their date he turns to her, pausing. Smiling, she gets ready to say: I had fun too, or yes let’s do this again, or even, I love you too. But he says, “This has been really weird.”
Here’s the 2019 winner, pictured on the matchbook cover above:
Who stole my youth? The detective I hired uncovered the truth. “They were in it together,” he said, passing me photos. Father Time showed no remorse, his face kind and gentle. Mother Nature was unrepentant. “Honestly, darling,” she said when questioned, “what did you expect?”
The contest website had more examples, and I liked the second-place winner from 2017:
My life in six words: Cursed with happy childhood; No bestseller.
While I didn’t care much for 2017’s third-place winner:
January Thaw At last, skates off. Kicking, gliding, she Rocketed up toward the light, but she could Not find that broken surface in the ice.
But whether or not the Matchbook Stories resonated with me, they were, indeed, stories and they were, indeed, short.
A challenge.
Brevity can be anathema to writers – some of us consider every word we write as gold, so how dare an editor suggest that we cut a word…a sentence…an entire paragraph?
Like an experience I had with an editor. I’d worked hard on a magazine article and was delighted with the finished piece. I presented it to the editor, and sat with him in his office as he read it. I was aglow with anticipation of what I was sure would be his forthcoming lavish praise.
“Well,” he said.
And then, “I want you to get rid of the third and ninth paragraphs.”
I gasped, turned pale, and clutched my throat in shock.
“And the last paragraph needs to be shorter – much shorter.”
“But…but…” I stammered.
Then the editor said something I’ve never forgotten:
“Nobody but you and I know those words are there. And nobody will miss them but you.”
I may not always apply that lesson in brevity, but I’ll always remember it.
So – could I write a short story worthy of submission to the San Diego Public Library Matchbook Story Contest?
And submit it by the contest closing date: November 15, 2022?
And if I expend my time and energy – and $5 entry fee – attempting this, what might my reward be?
Here’s the payoff, says the contest website:
The winning short story will be printed on 2,000 matchbooks available for purchase at the Library Shop:
The winning author will receive 50 matchbooks…
…a $50 Library Shop gift card, publication of their story in the Library Connections e-newsletter (circulation 200,000), and exhibition of the Matchbook in the Hervey Family Rare Book Room’s tiny book display:
The winning story will be announced at the Third Annual Shorties, “San Diego’s Shortest and Quirkiest Awards Gala,” on Thursday, December 8th:
That sounds like a pretty great payoff.
But the competition will be tough: The 2021 contest drew about 400 entries, the most ever, with writers ranging in age from 8 to 92.
So: Am I up for the challenge?
I am!
I’ve written a story of 45 words and I’m going to enter the contest!
And on December 8, when my story is announced as the 2022 Matchbook Story Contest winner…
And I’m up on stage making my acceptance speech…
I’ll endeavor to remember that editor’s lesson about brevity…
The funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September was a stately, solemn occasion, a dignified celebration of the life of England’s longest-reigning monarch:
I’m repeating the above image below so you can take note of the bouquet, and the white card on top of it:
Invitations to the ceremony for Queen Elizabeth were desired by many but given to only a few.
And it seems that some of those in attendance weren’t paying much attention to the funeral, but rather to this – uninvited – guest on the white card on top of the bouquet:
According to this:
And many other articles:
“Eagle-eyed royal watchers couldn’t help but notice a crawling creature on top of a letter that was placed onto the coffin.”
And apparently these royal watchers also “couldn’t help but” sharing their thoughts after spotting the creature.
And isn’t that just the way of our world?
Instead of respectfully bowing their heads and reflecting on the life and death of the queen – and perhaps their own lives and mortality – some at the queen’s funeral were gawking, taking pictures and videos, and quickly posting on every possible social media platform.
And the posts – these people were practically obsessed by this spider:
“Throughout the full of the Queen’s funeral I keep thinking about the spider I saw on her flowers and where the f – – k it is now???? Wouldn’t catch me picking her back up I’d be out of there.”
Nice.
“Bro there’s a spider running across the card on the queen’s coffin.”
“Bro”? Glad you let Bro know.
“The most famous spider in the world right now. God save the Royal Spider.”
God save us from all this arachnid attention overload.
There were many more examples but I thought I’d spare you – and myself.
Honestly, the only redeeming thing to come out of all this attention on the spider was this rather punny headline in the Washington Post:
Otherwise…come on, folks!
We’re talking about an uninvited, unwelcome pest that, had I spotted it in my house, I would not have immortalized it forever on social media but would instead have done this:
I hate spiders. Arachnids. Whatever you care to call them.
And my theory is that one – probably more – spider may have seen all the social media fuss and attention their funeral-crashing colleague got, and decided to make their presence known on my side on the world.
Not long after the Queen’s funeral, a spider took up residence in my back yard.
The spider was huge.
Bigger than my head – see?
Terrorizing me.
I was living in constant fear that this spider was going to make itself comfortable in the back yard, and then invite itself into our house, like that “Royal Spider” invited itself into the Queen’s funeral.
Oh, this all started out looking innocent enough:
You see that single, silver spider web strand glinting in the sun?
Just a single strand, no big deal.
Except for one thing:
That single strand stretched from a structure in our back yard to an awning on the back of our house:
A distance of 15 feet.
If a spider needs a web that starts out at 15 feet across, how the hell big is that spider?
In an effort to discourage the spider from further web-building (and while I hid behind the sofa), my knight-in-shining-armor husband went outside, rolled out the awning and rolled it back in again.
That single silver strand rippled and bounced and waved, and then stretched right back to its full 15 feet – undamaged.
Spider: 1.
Humans: 0.
Nighttime fell, and we gave up our efforts.
We slept, but the spider didn’t.
And the next morning…
That non-paying guest had made a web in the back yard:
Spider:
Humans:
And lest you think I’m exaggerating, let’s have a look at the world’s biggest (though I now know better) spider:
Meet the goliath birdeater. Yes, it’s venomous, and it has inch-long fangs.
Its bigger cousin was living in our back yard.
No wonder I hate spiders.
But…I also know it’s true that spiders are an important part of our ecosystem. This article, for example:
Says that spiders provide incredible services to our ecosystem and to humans, including:
Spiders survive on insects like fleas, flies, and mosquitoes – many of which have the capability of destroying produce crops and carrying potentially dangerous diseases.
Spider silk is so strong, scientists and developers have even experimented with integrating spider silk in bulletproof vests.
Spider venom has been used in medical research, and has helped in creating painkillers, cancer treatments, and even male contraceptives.
While this site:
Notes that:
“Spiders are a food source for other animals: Its top predators include lizards, birds, and fish. In desert climates, spiders are valuable food for mammals.”
And:
“Spiders are crucial in controlling insect populations in every ecosystem they’re a part of. If spiders vanished, it would set off a domino effect of problems that would harm and eventually destroy the world as we know it.”
Yikes!
“Eventually destroy the world as we know it”?
Hmmm.
Maybe I should rethink my strategy of…
Maybe I should leave that monster spider in my back yard alone.
OK, Resolved:
An armistice is declared.
With this caveat:
Spiders can live up to two years.
I’m thinking of all the nasty mosquitos it can eat – good news.
And maybe it will become a lizard’s lunch – also good news…
But…but…
If there’s bad news – if that spider comes into my house…
Not content with pouring his lies into the ears of gullible Americans, on October 9 Donald Trump spewed his verbal diarrhea at a far-right political rally in Spain.
According to this article:
“Former U.S. President Donald Trump threw his weight behind Spain’s far-right Sunday in a video shown at a rally in Madrid that also featured messages by the leading stars of Europe’s populist right like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Hungary’s Viktor Orban.”
I couldn’t help but imagine the prep work that was involved when Trump’s toadies approached him about recording the video.
Toady #1: Good morning, sir. Are you enjoying your breakfast Big Macs?
Trump (mouth full, chewing): Mummphe jogabvile mmm (swallow) can’t a guy (chewing) plubemink laj-ing breamck around here?
Toady #2: Sir, we’re here to suggest you record a video for an upcoming rally in Spain of far-right leaders.
Trump (still chewing): Whaddaya mean(belches), “far-right leaders”? I’m the far-right leader! Right? I’m right – right? Not left. I can never keep that straight.
Toady #3: Yes, sir, you are the first and foremost far-right leader. These are…ah…secondary far-right leaders.
Trump: You’re damn right I am. So what are these – a bunch of guys from those shithole countries?
Toady #4: No, sir! These are European far-right leaders.
Trump: Oh, Europe. Yeah. They love me over there. The queen? You know, what’s-her-name? She loves me. She told me that, when I was talking to her the other day.
Toady #5: Sir, are you…referring to…um…Queen Elizabeth? The queen who died on September 8?
Trump: She did? She croaked? Why didn’t you dumbasses tell me? What the hell am I paying you for? Fucking overpaying you, I should say!
Toady #1: Sir, ah…we did tell you. And sent a lovely floral arrangement in your name.
Trump: Why didn’t I go to the funeral?
Today #3: Ah…um…Sir. You, ah…weren’t invited.
Trump: Oh, yeah, I remember. I was too busy to go.
(Silence)
Trump (belches again): So what’s this rally crap? Did you say something about Spain? Oh, yeah – that’s in South America. I’ve been there.
(Silence)
Toady #5: The rally is this Sunday, and will also feature messages by some of Europe’s populist right leaders like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
Trump: Never heard of ‘em.
Toady #2: Um, sir? You met with Viktor Orban in August? Here, I’ve got a picture on my phone…
Trump: Nope. Never met him. What was that other name? George somebody?
Toady #4: Giorgia Meloni, sir. Last month her party won the most votes in Italy’s national election, and she’s likely to be Italy’s first female premier.
Trump: A broad? Another broad in charge, like that #@!%&*#! Pelosi? Goddamnit, voters are so stupid! I’ve said that a million times. Another broad. So, you got a picture of her?
Toady #3: Yes, sir, that’s Ms. Meloni, sir, right there!
Trump (incredulous): Her? Are you fuckin’ kidding me? She’s fat!
Toady #5: Sir, if we could get back to your video for the rally…
Trump: Forget it. I don’t wanna share the stage with no friggin’ fat lady.
Toady #2: Sir, the rally is for Spain’s far-right party Vox and its leader, Santiago Abascal.
Trump: Abba what? What is with these people and their weird names?
Toady #4: Santiago Abascal, sir. Here, I’ve got a picture…that’s him on the left.
Trump: Abascal, you said? Where’s this guy from?
Toady #1: Spain, sir.
Trump: A spic, right? What the hell kind of rally is this? Spics are all drug dealers and murderers, throw in some fat ladies – what is this? A circus or something?
Toady #3: No, sir! And –
Trump (interrupting): And who’s that other guy in the picture?
Toady #5: On the right – that’s Viktor Orban, sir. The president of Hungary? You met him in –
Trump (interrupts): Who? Nope, never met him.
Toady #4: Sir, your video would be a short, congratulatory message to Santiago Abascal that will be seen at the Vox party’s annual rally. Vox is the third-largest force in the Spanish Parliament. Its platform is described as anti-immigrant and anti-Islam, and among other things, it’s sought to roll back legislation aimed at protecting women from gender violence, claiming it discriminates against men.
Trump: You’re damn right that gender crap discriminates against men! All a guy has to do is say “pussy” a couple a times and women are screaming about their “rights” and whining about “misconduct” this and “assault” that, and –
Toady #2 (coughs to interrupt): Vox also embraces the legacy of General Francisco Franco’s 20th-century dictatorship.
Trump: Franco? Franco! Now, there’s a guy I can get behind. He invented those SpaghettiOs, you ever had them? With meatballs? Good stuff.
Trump: I think I’ll have that for lunch today. Is it lunchtime? Will one of you dummies tell what’s-his-name I want SpaghettiOs for lunch?
Toady #3: So the video, sir? We’ll have prepared remarks that will last about 40 seconds, and it will all be on cue cards. We’ll shoot the video while you’re on the plane going to the rally in Arizona.
(Silence)
Toady #1: Sir?
Trump: Who else is gonna be at this spic rally? Anybody important? I mean real important, besides me?
Toady #5: Sir, I’m told there will also be video appearances by former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, Chilean right-wing politician José Antonio Kast, and –
Trump (explodes): Spics! They’re ALL SPICS! I said IMPORTANT people!
Toady #4 (quietly): Ah, well…sir? Um…Senator Cruz is also preparing a video?
Trump: I said IMPORTANT people and…Wait. Cruz? Cruz is one of the speakers? Texas Ted? Lyin’ Ted?
Toady #3: Yes, sir, and –
Trump (interrupting): You want me to share stage time with Lyin’ Ted Cruz? You want an example of his lies? Here, I’ve got plenty of ‘em on my phone…Yeah! Here’s what he said about me in 2016: that I’m a “pathological liar, a narcissist, a serial philanderer, a sniveling coward…”
Toady #1: Sir, if you’d like to review your script for the video –
Trump (interrupting): And Cruz said, and this is a direct quote: “If I were in my car and getting ready to reverse and saw Donald in the backup camera, I’m not confident which pedal I’d push.” Cruz said that! He threatened to kill me! To kill the president!
Toady #5: Sir, that was during the presidential campaign before you were president, and –
Trump (enraged): I WAS PRESIDENT THEN AND I’M PRESIDENT NOW! The 2020 election was stolen! Ask Mike Lindell, the Pillow Guy! He’ll be at the rally in Arizona – ask him!
Toady #3: Sir, I’m sure Senator Cruz was speaking metaphorically. In his video he’s going to talk about conservative populists, who share the values of God, and country and family and freedom.”
Trump: Oh, fine – now Cruz is stealing my lines. What the hell am I gonna talk about?
Toady #2: Well, sir, you’ll thank Santiago Abascal for the incredible job he does, and how we all have to make sure we protect our borders and –
Trump (interrupting): And yadda yadda yadda. Jesus! And I suppose I’m supposed to talk about how great Spain is and all that crap?
(Silence)
Trump: All right, all right! I’ll do the frigging video. Now get out of here and get me my goddamn lunch!
Toadies (in unison): Sir, yes, sir! (the toadies exit)
Trump (yelling): And tell ‘em I want some Franco Ravioli, too! The Garfield stuff!
Trump (to himself): That Garfield, he’s a huge fan of mine. HUGE. I’m gonna get him to come to my next rally!
This story appeared on September 30 and then disappeared:
ABC 10 News San Diego appears to be the only local media outlet that covered the story.
And the story didn’t run until four days after the humpback whale was rescued in late September. According to the ABC 10 News story:
“A private boater spotted the whale and alerted authorities on Monday, September 26. Soon after, SeaWorld San Diego Rescue quickly arrived at the scene.”
The media didn’t treat this as a big deal – so I will.
I think rescuing a humpback whale is a big deal, every time.
According to my research:
“Humans once hunted humpback whales to the brink of extinction; the population fell to around 5,000 by the 1960s.”
Illegal humpback whale hunting is still going on, and the species is also facing these human-made threats:
Underwater noise which interferes with whale communication.
Pollution.
Vehicle collisions.
Over-harvesting of prey such as krill.
Habitat degradation.
Climate change.
Marine debris.
Getting caught in fishing gear.
“Getting caught in fishing gear” – as in this rescue story.
The ABC 10 New story was short and the details were scanty, including no information about the whale’s size.
So I’ll offer this graphic comparing a humpback whale to an elephant and a human:
In this image the humpback is 46 feet long, but according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “humpbacks can grow to 60 feet long, and they can weigh a whopping 40 tons.”
Now, our whale (and yes, I am thinking of him or her as “our whale”) may not have been that big, but considering the fact that at birth, humpback whales “are between 10 and 15 feet long and weigh up to a ton…”
There are no small humpback whales.
And when the SeaWorld Rescue team goes out in a little inflatable boat like this:
They’re way outmatched in terms of size.
The article said the humpback was “entangled in a rope,” which was understating the case. Here’s just one image of the piles of ropes and floats and who-knows-what-else the humpback was caught in:
And it’s worth noting that while the humpback was spotted off the coast of Carlsbad, a town located about a half-hour north of San Diego:
That’s not where the rescue took place:
“With help from NOAA, Oceanside Harbor Police Department, California State parks staff, and Del Mar Lifeguards, [SeaWorld] crews were able to safely relocate the whale to San Elijo State Beach area.”
The article doesn’t say why the groups relocated our humpback, but it was a distance (on land) of about 12 miles:
And I suspect “relocating” a humpback whale anywhere is quite a feat.
I’m pretty sure humpbacks tend to not listen to stuff like “Head south!” or, “Turn left!” or “Slow the hell down!”
Now the teams had our whale where they wanted it, and SeaWorld Rescue approached it in their boat. And then…
“Using a knife on the end of a long carbon fiber pole…
“…the team made a single cut, freeing the whale from the entanglement.”
Just imagine the skill that took – wielding a long pole with a sharp knife at the end while you’re standing in a boat that’s moving forward and up and down at the same time.
Knowing that one wrong move and the knife could cut the whale. And yes, while the whale wouldn’t be seriously injured, if the injury caused bleeding, well…
We know what lives in the ocean and is attracted to blood:
Instead, the knife sliced the rope and our whale was freed.
The alternative to our happy ending?
According to this article:
“Once entangled in the fishing line, whales may suffer for months, dragging heavy fishing gear behind them that hinders their ability to feed. Many entangled whales eventually die from infection, severed appendages, starvation, drowning or a combination of these impacts.”
I think SeaWorld Rescue demonstrated great skill, courage, and compassion.
For SeaWorld Rescue, it was just another day at the office.
And SeaWorld was quick to credit their fellow rescuers:
“‘The successful rescue of this whale was made possible by the collaborative efforts of all parties involved,’ SeaWorld San Diego Rescue said in a statement.”
Now: I am aware that SeaWorld and other marine parks get a lot of negative publicity:
As do zoos:
And I’ll leave the pros and cons to wiser heads than mine, because I don’t know the answer.
What I do know is this:
SeaWorld does important work:
I also know this:
That on September 26, SeaWorld Rescue saved a humpback whale, leaving it free to – hopefully – join friends for dinner…
Category: Historical Mystery, Women’s Domestic Life Fiction, Historical Thrillers
Review, short version: Two skunks for two of the three lead characters.
Review, long version:
The authors of The Lost Summers of Newport are Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White.
These are three authors I’d given up reading, but when they joined forces to write The Glass Ocean in 2018, I read it. Not because they’d written it, but because the setting intrigued me – the Lusitania, a British luxury ocean liner that was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine in 1915 during the first World War.
I thought The Glass Ocean was good, so when Lost Summers came out, I wanted to read that as well.
The setting is the fictitious Sprague mansion in Newport, RI. In its heyday – the Gilded Age (1870s-1900s) – the seaside town of Newport was THE place for the richer-than-rich to spend their summers: Vanderbilts, Astors and the like. They built summer “cottages” like these:
And the rich gathered to revel in their conspicuous consumption, and delight in excluding those who didn’t measure up.
The premise of Lost Summers is three interlinked stories about three women in three different centuries:
June 1899: Ellen Daniels, who arrives at the Sprague mansion to give singing lessons to Maybelle Sprague. Ellen – not her real name – has no family or friends to help her, and she’s on the run from someone who wants to kill her.
July 1957: Lucia “Lucky” Sprague is married to Stuyvesant Sprague, scion of her Sprague stepfamily. Lucky is Maybelle’s granddaughter – or is she?
September 2019: Andie Figuero is an architectural historian, television producer and host of a home renovation show, on site at the crumbling Sprague mansion to do a show about the makeover of three of its major rooms. Which Andie is hoping will save her show, her career, and her family.
The book’s chapters rotate among the three women’s stories, and I have to give the authors kudos for mastering the art of a cliffhanger ending to almost every chapter. They’ve nailed it. This kept me reading, even Andie’s chapters, and I didn’t care much for her.
Andie – the 2019 character – has a six-year-old, Petey, whom she treats more like an accessory that she only sometimes remembers. On page 10 Andie gets a call from Petey’s school, reminding her that today is her turn to provide snacks for his class, but…
She forgot.
Not long after, Andie brings Petey to the Sprague mansion because she can’t find a babysitter. Only…Petey wanders off because Andie forgets to watch him.
Panic ensues.
Petey is found and eventually Andie takes him home, driving a car that has bald tires, something she keeps forgetting to replace. Her phone dies because she forgot to recharge it and forgot where she left the charger.
This is how I picture Ellen – a scared but strong survivor.
Flaky.
On the other hand, I liked Ellen, the 1899 character. She’s scared for her life, but still strong and brave and resourceful. Her plan is to hide out at the Sprague mansion, give Maybelle singing lessons, regroup, and figure out her next step. Ellen is a survivor and she’s smart, and you can’t help but root for her.
Then there’s Lucky in 1957, best described as a socialite, married to Stuy, best described as an alcoholic. Lucky will also appear in Andie’s chapters – Lucky, by now around 90, still lives at the Sprague mansion. But the rooms Lucky occupies, and Lucky herself, are off-limits to Andie and her film crew. Or are they?
People mysteriously disappear near the mansion, things mysteriously disappear in the mansion…
And Lost Summers mysteriously appeared on the June 5 New York Times best seller list…
You owe me $6.5 million. I’ve got all the proof I need – the auditors came in and caught you red-handed.
You’re in all sorts of trouble – mismanagement, misuse of public funds, conflicts of interest and potential fraud.
You’ve systematically misspent my money, and overbilled the me for years.
So here’s what we’re going to do.
First, I’m going to reduce that $6.5 million to $3.9 million.
Don’t ask me why – just say “Thank you!”
Now, for the balance – instead of giving me the $3.9 million, you’re going to transfer ownership of two buildings you own to me.
The assessed value of those two buildings is $4.1 million, which is more than the $3.9 million you owe me.
So now – I owe YOU money!
What’s that? Yes, I know – those two buildings are going to need a lot of repairs and upgrades.
About $10 million in repairs and upgrades.
But that money I’m paying you? And that money for repairs and upgrades? Hell, it’s not coming out of my pocket.
It’s taxpayers’…
*****
Welcome to San Diego County.
Where our County Board of Supervisors…
Took in our county tax dollars, and did this:
And before you snicker and think, “Those supervisors really stick it to San Diego County taxpayers!”
Think again.
The County of San Diego gets state and federal tax dollars, as well.
Here’s a handy graphic that shows the county’s sources of revenue. It’s a few years old, but I think it’s safe to assume that the sources are still the same:
So it appears that every taxpayer has the pleasure of being part of the financial FUBAR I’m about to share.
It started with this story in May 2021:
It involves this nonprofit organization:
Volunteers of America Southwest (VOASW).
They’re a chapter of Volunteers of America (VOA) and, according to the VOA website…
…VOA is an accredited Better Business Bureau charity and a “Great Place to Work” certified organization.
I did some checking and it appears that Volunteers of America Southwest is neither an accredited Better Business Bureau charity or a “Great Place to Work” certified organization, and the reasons soon became clear.
Here’s a more recent Voice of San Diego story by the same reporter, May 2022:
According to the article,
“In 2018, two employees within Volunteers of America Southwest’s San Diego office noticed suspicious payments from the nonprofit to three different companies. They discovered the companies were owned by two women who worked for Volunteers of America Southwest, and were also the sisters-in-law of the charity’s chief financial officer.
“The companies billed for a wide array of goods and services from skin cleanser to sofas and gym weights. It’s unclear any of those goods or services were ever provided – and some products sold for more than their market rate.
“The two whistleblowers raised their concerns to the nonprofit’s Chief Executive Officer Gerald McFadden repeatedly, they said. But no one stopped the alleged double-dealing – and ultimately both whistleblowers lost their jobs.”
Uh-oh.
I reckon that means no “Great Place to Work” certification VOASW, at least from the two whistleblowers.
The article goes on to say that Volunteers of America Southwest had been one of San Diego’s largest charities serving marginalized populations. VOASW ran several treatment centers for those struggling with mental illness and addiction, as well veterans and those experiencing homelessness.
San Diego County officials audited Volunteers of America Southwest, and there were allegations that the charity’s managers engaged in mismanagement, misuse of public funds, conflicts of interest and potential fraud:
“Officials demanded Volunteers of America Southwest refund the county $6.5 million in payments made to the nonprofit between 2018 and 2020.”
That where that $6.5 million figure in this post’s headline came from.
I reckon that means no Better Business Bureau accreditation for VOASW, either.
And since then?
In addition:
The Volunteers of America Southwest chapter was subsumed by Volunteers of America’s national office.
The charity’s president/CEO was forced to resign and its volunteer board of directors was disbanded.
VOASW is under criminal investigation by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
The county no longer provides any funding to Volunteers of America Southwest.
I beg to differ with that last bullet.
Remember that $6.5 million that San Diego County officials were demanding be refunded by VOASW?
On September 10 came this story:
“…the county Board of Supervisors is scheduled to approve a settlement that calls for Volunteers of America Southwest to transfer ownership of two National City properties to the county portfolio.”
“After months of negotiations, the county agreed to reduce the debt owed by Volunteers of America to $3.9 million.
“The county will pay just over $227,000 for the two properties – the difference between their $4.1 million assessed value and the amount owed by the charity.
“But the buildings need up to $10 million in repairs and upgrades before they can reopen for public services.”
The two buildings were constructed in the 1960s (asbestos, anyone?) and were most recently used as a 120-bed alcohol- and drug-treatment center operated by Volunteers of America Southwest. It closed in March. The facility will be used to accommodate a new behavioral health facility.
And I have no argument with that – we need the services this facility will provide.
My argument is with the County of San Diego supervisors who – for reasons unstated – lopped off $2.6 million of that $6.5 million they were demanding be refunded.
Why did the supervisors just blow off $2.6 million – a good chunk of it our tax dollars – instead of holding Voice of America Southwest accountable?
So, the $6.5 million was whittled down to $3.9 million, but instead of demanding the cash, the county supervisors are instead taking two very old, crappy buildings that need an estimated $10 million in repairs and upgrades – and come on! We know these government-managed projects NEVER stay on budget.
Taking the buildings PLUS giving Volunteers of America “just over $227,000” more?
Apparently.
And apparently the county supervisors are unanimously happy about all this.
The September 10 Union-Tribune article says:
“The settlement received unanimous preliminary approval at a Board of Supervisors meeting last month, so it is likely to pass at its second hearing.”
So this bunch:
Is high-fiving each other over this brilliant deal they made.
And speaking of our county supervisors, isn’t this interesting?
Back in May 2021, Nathan Fletcher, the chairman of the county Board of Supervisors, was quoted in a Union-Tribune article as saying this about Volunteers of America Southwest:
“There is a special place in hell for those who betray the public trust of the public by committing fraud with funds designated to help our veterans and the least among us. We will continue our work to recover all misused funds and hope those responsible face the full weight of the law for their actions.”
But, in this August 2022 article:
Nathan Fletcher – the same guy who in 2021 was yammering about recovering “all misused funds,” now in May 2022 – said:
“I wish we could get every dollar they defrauded from taxpayers at a one-to-one rate, but the reality is you can’t get blood from a turnip. The value is not just dollars and cents…When we get this [facility] running, it will help the entire region.”
The “turnip” Fletcher is referring to is Volunteers of America, the organization that “subsumed” its Volunteers of America Southwest chapter.
According to Volunteers of America 2020 Annual Report “Statement of Financial Position”:
Page 30: Total assets: $2,963,972,255
Page 31: Total net assets: $1,309,991,606
This is the “turnip” that Nathan Fletcher, the chairman of the County Board of Supervisors, declared you “can’t get blood from.”
But Fletcher obviously has no qualms about getting blood from us turnip taxpayers.
So, My Fellow Turnips, remember this graphic?
With this FUBAR, I’m on the hook for San Diego County property taxes and state taxes and federal taxes.
How about you?
I think it’s clear this is officially FUBAR…
Update: As anticipated, the San Diego Board of Supervisors approved this financial FUBAR:
One of the county supervisors said,
“It’s not ideal. It would have been better to recover the money, but this is a good deal given the options available.”
“A good deal…” for whom?
Not us taxpayers.
As for that nagging question – Why did the supervisors go from demanding that $6.5 million repayment in May 2021…
…to reducing that amount to $3.9 million?
The September 13 Union-Tribune article said:
“The initial $6.5 million identified by auditors was pared to $3.9 million under a recalculation of the debt reached during the settlement negotiations.”
“A recalculation.”
My response:
To: San Diego County Tax Assessor
Re: 2022-2023 County Taxes
Dear Sir:
I am in receipt of your tax bill for fiscal year 2022-2023 in the amount of $2,452.58:
Emulating the policies and procedures recently involved in the San Diego County Board of Supervisors’ settlement with Volunteers of America Southwest, I have done a recalculation of the amount billed to me.
According to my recalculation, the County of San Diego owes me $4,183.22.
This amount is due and payable in full to me within 30 days of today’s date.
We know there are many ways to die, but who knew there were so many after-death options?
Such as those described in this undated article:
“Burial alternatives” aren’t something I spend time thinking about, but a recent article about yet another after-death option caught my eye:
Are they talking about composting as in:
And…
This sounded so weird…and even creepy…that I was curious.
According to the above Los Angeles Times article, the human composting process is:
“…natural organic reduction, a method in which human remains naturally decompose over a 30-to-45-day period after being placed in a steel vessel and buried in wood chips, alfalfa and other biodegradable materials. The nutrient-dense soil created by the process can then be returned to families or donated to conservation land.”
Hmmm.
I guess they are – sort of – talking about this:
The article said that California is joining Washington, Colorado, Oregon and Vermont in allowing human composting, and mentioned a Seattle, WA company, Recompose.
Here’s what happens, according to the Recompose website.
If the deceased, family and/or loved ones so choose, Recompose offers what it calls the “laying-in ceremony”:
“The laying-in ceremony is similar to a graveside service or a green funeral and allows you the opportunity to honor your loved one with care and respect.”
“The body is present on a dark green bed – the cradle – and shrouded in natural cloth and greenery for the laying-in ceremony.
“At the end of the ceremony, the cradle is moved into the threshold vessel, where the transformation into soil begins.”
The next step is “soil transformation” – the “composting” part:
“Your loved one’s body will be surrounded by wood chips, alfalfa, and straw in a vessel where microbes will naturally break the body down. The entire process, from placing your person into the vessel to finished soil, takes between six to eight weeks.”
I’m surprised to say that I thought I’d be feeling squeamish at this point – but I wasn’t.
How about you?
And now the last step: Soil transformation/giving back:
“Once complete, similar to ashes from a cremation, the soil can be used however you choose – to enrich a garden, plant a tree, or spread across multiple locations. If you prefer not to keep all, or any, of the soil, we will donate it to Bells Mountain, 700 acres of conserved land in southern Washington.”
Well.
As with every topic these days, there are widely differing points of view. Again from the Los Angeles Times article, here’s a pro-human-composting opinion:
“Supporters say it’s an eco-friendly alternative to traditional end-of-life options. Cremation, for example, is an energy-intense process that produces carbon dioxide emissions, while traditional burial uses chemicals to embalm bodies and a nonbiodegradable coffin to store them.”
“…for every person who is composted versus buried or cremated, the environmental impact is immediate. The companies that offer human composting say that for every person who chooses the option over burial or cremation, it will save the equivalent of one metric ton of carbon from entering the environment.”
And – not that anybody asked them – but the Catholic Church chimed in with their anti-human-composting point of view:
“The California Catholic Conference opposed the bill, saying the process ‘reduces the human body to simply a disposable commodity.’
“‘The practice of respectfully burying the bodies or the honoring the ashes of the deceased comports with the virtually universal norm of reverence and care towards the deceased,’ said the group, which is the public policy voice of the Catholic Church in California.”
I could comment about the Catholic Church comporting with the “virtually universal norm” of not allowing priests to sexually abuse children, but I won’t
Recompose and other companies that offer human composting aren’t in this business for entirely ecological reasons, of course – this is a business, after all.
In this article:
The Seattle Times called Recompose “the first full-service human-composting funeral home in the United States,” and said:
“Recompose costs $5,500 for everything: the body pickup…the paperwork, the process itself and an optional service.”
That doesn’t seem out of bounds, when you consider the figures from this 2022 article:
“A 2021 study from the National Funeral Directors Association shows the median cost of an adult funeral with viewing and burial is $7,848…The median cost of an adult funeral with viewing and cremation is $6,970.”
And really – human composting doesn’t seem any stranger than some of the options offered in the above Lexikin article, like these:
There’s this option if you like bling:
And this option if you like to sing:
And…What the hell is this thing?
(The above three after-death options involve using cremated remains for a Memorial Diamond, a Vinyl Compression record, and Plastination, in case you were wondering.)
Now that I’ve had some time to process all this, human composting doesn’t seem all that weird or creepy to me, as I’d thought earlier.
How about you?
My normal modus operandi for closing a blog post is to have the last word, but this time I’ll turn that over to Katrina Spade, founder of Recompose. Below are excerpts from this interview:
I think Spade’s use of the phrase “death care” as a natural follow-up to “health care” is worth noting:
“…the problem is that people choose their death care, or they – I should say, they don’t choose their death care. They just go with the default. A lot of the time, it’s not a meaningful choice. It’s just, I guess I’ll cremate Grandma.”
Katrina Spade.
“…it is worth noting that when you look at the avoidance of pollution from cremation and conventional burial…we’re saving about a metric ton of carbon per person.”
“…because we use so much plant material to cocoon the body, the final result is a cubic yard of soil…”
“I set out on a plan to redesign death care. Could I create a system that was beneficial to the Earth, that used nature as a guide rather than something to be feared, something that was gentle to the planet? That planet, after all, supports our living bodies our whole lives.”
(This is the sequel to Part 1 from Friday, September 30.)
I started Part 1 by talking about the new word I’d learned:
Trumpiest
And how well it applied to Trump’s fake coats of arms.
How did I first learn about Trump’s fake coats of arms?
I was doing research for an earlier blog post and happened across this article:
The article is about Trump’s Boeing 757 which he modestly calls “Trump Force One,” and recounts many details about the plane’s interior including this:
“Fabrics were flown in from Paris, including the Trump family crest embroidered into the headrests of the seats with gold thread.”
“Trump family crest?” I thought.
No, no, no, no, no.
No family crest, no coat of arms, no, none, none of the above.
There was absolutely no way Trump has been awarded a family crest (that is, a coat of arms) by a monarch.
Of course not.
As I said in Part 1…
Trump stole it.
In Part 1 I said that Trump has two fake coats of arms:
Now let’s move on to Trump’s fake coat of arms #2, above on the right.
In 2008 Trump was marketing his new golf course in Aberdeenshire, on Scotland’s east coast. But the above fake coat of arms #2 he was using in his marketing materials ran afoul of the coat-of-arms authorities in Scotland – and I mean really afoul – and it was big news.
In Great Britain:
Nationally:
And internationally:
According to this article:
“The crest used by the billionaire to promote his controversial proposals has fallen foul of a 336-year-old law.
“He faces being brought before an Edinburgh court, fined, and ordered to remove the insignia and any flags bearing the design.”
Now, this is where things get confusing, and things often do when Trump in involved.
The above Daily Record article described Trump’s law-breaking coat of arms as follows:
“The crest shows the Trump name along with a spear-wielding fist above a knight’s helmet on a shield of lions and chevrons and is understood to have been designed by the tycoon himself.”
That describes the image on below on the right, which was copied (stolen) from Joseph Edward Davies’ legitimate coat of arms on the left:
The image on the right was clearly not designed by “the tycoon himself,” though I have no trouble imagining Trump saying exactly that.
While this article:
Says that Trump began promoting his golf course in Scotland:
“…with a coat-of-arms that someone in the Trump Organization designed: a shield with three chevrons and two stars, with a helmet above the shield and a crest of a lion waving a flag…”
Which clearly is this image:
The closeup on the right is a variation in living, lurid color.
This is the fake coat of arms #2 is what Trump was using in Scotland.
Mistakenly – in my opinion – the Scottish authorities eventually granted Trump permission to use fake coat of arms #2. Probably because they were enraptured by this description, no doubt also concocted by “someone in the Trump Organization”:
“Three chevronels are used to denote the sky, sand dunes and sea – the essential components of the [Scotland golf resort] site – and the double-sided eagle represents the dual nature and nationality of Trump’s heritage. The eagle clutches golf balls, making reference to the great game of golf, and the motto ‘Numquam Concedere’ is Latin for ‘Never Give Up’ – Trump’s philosophy.”
I’m sure Trump was pleased with this description, especially the Latin part.
Renowned Latin scholar that he is.
Though perhaps Trump a bit less pleased that he now had a coat of arms legitimatized by Scotland.
In this instance he was no longer breaking the law, and we know how Trump loves doing that.
The Trump toady who wrote the above description failed to mention that the “double-sided eagle” – more correctly know as a “double-headed eagle” – has long been a symbol of royalty, and material and spiritual power. For example, the imperial Romanov dynasty of Russia used it:
As did the Habsburgs, imperial emperors of Austria-Hungary:
Were they still around, I doubt either imperial house would have welcomed this Trumpiest connection.
Trump’s coat of arms with the double-headed eagle clutching golf balls…
…is without a doubt the Trumpiest part of this Trumpiest travesty.
Seriously? The eagle is clutching golf balls?
Now I’m imaging that “someone in the Trump Organization” who designed phony coat of arms #2:
Toady #1: Trump told me to, like, come up with a new coat of arms for the Scotland golf course. Like, yesterday! What am I gonna do?
Toady #4: Just google coat-of-armsy stuff and throw it together – like lions! Lions are hot on coats of arms.
Toady #1: Lions, OK. What else?
Toady #4: Oh…stars and bars and crap like that, you know?
Toady #1: Yeah, got it. Hey – what about an eagle, like on the one-dollar bill? You know, holding stuff in its feet, right?
Toady #4: Right. And…(thinks for a moment). Why not give the eagle, you know – two heads? Cuz two heads are better than one?
Toady #1 (snickering): I thought you were going to say because Trump is so two-faced.
Toady #4: Shhh! Don’t let anyone hear you say that!
Toady #1: Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Hey, what should our two-headed eagle be holding in its feet, like on the one-dollar bill?
(Several moments of silence, and then…)
Toadies, in unison: Golf balls!
And fake coat of arms #2 was born.
The ball-clutching eagle can be seen at Trump’s gold courses in Scotland and Ireland:
Which clearly are benefitting from displaying Trump’s fake coat of arms:
Where’s does this all leave us?
Well, I learned a new word – Trumpiest – and if I may say so, used it widely and, I hope, well.
Trump will continue waving his flags with his fake coats of arms at his U.S. and European golf courses:
And pissing off people:
And remember Mr. Tydings from Part 1, the former United States senator from Maryland who is the grandson of Joseph Edward Davies?
Joseph Edward Davies married Marjorie Merriweather Post in 1935 – she was the socialite who built Mar-a-Lago. In 1939, British authorities granted the legit coat of arms (below, left) to Davies which Trump then stole after he bought Mar-a-Lago, slapped his name on it, and has used it ever since – without permission (below, right).
In the 2017 New York Times article, Mr. Tydings was asked what Ms. Post and his grandfather would make of Mr. Trump.
“‘I knew him and the way he operates,’ Mr. Tydings said. ‘And the way he operates, you don’t sue Trump, because you’ll be in court for years and years and years.’
“His grandfather, he added, ‘would be rolling over in his grave to think Trump was using his crest.’”
As for me – I think I’ve just found a Trumpiest that may out-Trump the coats-of-arms Trumpiest.
This has to do with Trump’s claim of declassifying the government documents he’s been illegally hoarding at Mar-a-Lago.
According to this September 22 article:
This from Trump:
“If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified – even by thinking about it,” Trump said.
I’m not referring to the words that get added to dictionaries each year, as in this article:
Although those words are always worth noting, especially this one:
Click on the word and sure enough, there it is in Merriam-Webster:
Fun…but not where I’m going with this.
The “new words” I’m referring to are words that have been around for awhile, but are new to me.
And the word fitting that description is one I heard only recently for the first time:
Trumpiest
My spellcheck sure doesn’t like that one.
It appears that using “Trumpiest” goes back to at least 2020:
It was in use in 2021:
Right up to the present:
And not to be outdone, the New York Times…
…jumped in with the three degrees of adjective comparison: positive (or negative), comparative, and superlative.
Like in ugly, uglier, ugliest but it’s Trumpy, Trumpier, Trumpiest.
But even in its widespread use and all its degrees of comparison, an awareness of Trumpiest eluded me.
Until this article about the results of the recent New Hampshire primary:
And Trump’s reaction to the primary results:
“‘Nice! The “Trumpiest” people ALL won in New Hampshire last night. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!’ Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.”
I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here to suggest that Trump thinks describing something as “Trumpiest” is high praise, indeed.
I, on the other hand, would be insulted beyond words if someone described me or anything about me as “Trumpiest.”
And for the purpose of this post – yes, I’m finally getting around to the purpose – I will utilize “Trumpiest” as an insult.
Think “liar.” Think “cheater.” Think “fraudster.”
Allow me to introduce my choice for the Trumpiest thing I’ve ever encountered:
The image on the left features three lions and two chevrons on a shield, below a gloved hand gripping an arrow.
The image on the right displays a two-headed eagle, three chevrons and two stars on the shield, below a lion gripping a pennant.
In my research I encountered articles that referred to these images as a “coat of arms.” Other articles refer to the images as a “family crest.”
Because I can be a real jerk stickler about these things, I wanted to learn the difference, and which was correct.
It’s actually pretty easy:
A coat of arms is a detailed symbol used to identify families or individuals.
The family crest is a smaller part of the design, often located at the top.
So:
Coat of arms, family crest at the top, plenty of garni all around.
So these are coats of arms:
You don’t hear a lot about coats of arms in the U.S., but this is a matter of serious importance to many people in Great Britain. It’s called heraldry, which is:
Coat of arms of England’s Duke of Norfolk. The first Norfolk coat of arms was granted in 1397.
“The art and science of devising, displaying, and granting armorial insignia and of tracing and recording genealogies. The use of heraldic symbols, or ‘coats of arms,’ as a means of identification spread through European nobility in the 13th century.
“Only the highest classes of people in medieval Europe used coats of arms, as they were the only one with ancestors distinguished enough to have been granted them by the kings of the time.”
“An individual had to be granted a coat of arms by a ruling monarch to be able to legally use it.”
If you were granted a coat of arms by a ruling monarch, it was a big deal. Your coat of arms said you’d arrived. You weren’t just somebody, but somebody important. You proudly displayed your coat of arms everywhere including on your armor:
Over the front entrance of your castle:
Incorporated into your castle windows:
And people – including people who couldn’t read – recognized your combination of symbols, your high rank, and treated you with respect.
Respect, because you’d earned it.
Unlike the user of these coats of arms:
These coats of arms are the Trumpiest thing I’ve ever seen.
They’re coats of arms used by Donald Trump.
Let’s start with the complete coat of arms on the left:
The emblem is used at Trump’s golf courses across the U.S. At the Trump National Golf Club outside Washington, it’s everywhere – the pro shop, the exercise room, the sign out front:
You can buy Trump golf balls with the coat of arms:
And in a truly Trumpiest manner, Trump has incorporated his coat of arms into the American flag:
Now, you know and I know there’s absolutely no way a ruling monarch had granted Trump a coat of arms.
No.
Trump got his coat of arms the old-fashioned way:
He stole it.
According to this article:
“…Mr. Trump’s American coat of arms belongs to another family. It was granted by British authorities in 1939 to Joseph Edward Davies, the third husband of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the socialite who built the Mar-a-Lago resort that is now Mr. Trump’s cherished getaway.”
On the left below is the real deal: Mr. Davies’ coat of arms; on the right – the Trump fake:
“…the Trump Organization took Mr. Davies’s coat of arms for its own, making one small adjustment – replacing the word ‘Integritas,’ Latin for integrity, with ‘Trump.’”
Obviously because Trump doesn’t understand the meaning of integrity, in English or Latin.
“Joseph D. Tydings, a Democrat and former United States senator from Maryland who is the grandson of Mr. Davies, learned that Mr. Trump was using the emblem, at least at Mar-a-Lago, when he visited the property. Mr. Trump had never asked permission.”
Are you shocked?
Me, neither.
Trump bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985, and I’m picturing him walking around, gloating, surrounded by his usual toadies. He points to something on a wall – perhaps above a fireplace:
Trump: What the hell is that?
Toady #1: Sir, that’s the coat of arms of Joseph Edward Davies, who received it when he was married to Marjorie Merriweather Post and they were living here at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump: What the hell is a coat awhatis?
Toady #2 (frantically waving his hand): Sir, I know! I know! It’s like…an award…I think?
Today #3 (also waving his hand): I know, too! A coat of arms indicates, like, someone who’s powerful! It was given to Davies by the monarch. Of England! Like, only monarchs can do that.
Trump: It says you’re powerful? And it’s from a monarch? Well, what the fuck? Why don’t I have one of those watch-a-callits?
(He looks around at his toadies, whose heads hang in shame.)
Trump: Do I have to come up with all the great ideas? What am I paying you assholes for?
(Silence)
Trump (pointing to coat of arms): Take that thing down and put my name on it. And tell those dummies in the marketing department I want that thing everywhere. And I mean everywhere!
Toadies (in unison): Sir, yes, sir!
Trump: Everywhere, goddamnit! Including the bathrooms! I’ll show people who’s powerful, including when they’re wiping their –
Toadies (interrupting, in unison): Sir, yes, sir!
And Trump’s fake coast of arts #1 was born.
But wait – how did I learn about Trump’s fake coats of arms in the first place?
Where: Park Boulevard and J Street, downtown San Diego, CA.
A tourist stands on a sidewalk, looking at the above building. As a passerby – who happens to be a San Diego resident – approaches, the tourist asks a question.
Tourist: Excuse me, hello! I’ve been admiring this beautiful building – do you know what it is?
Resident: I do – it’s San Diego’s newest homeless shelter.
Tourist: That’s…a homeless shelter?
Resident: Yes! And (a bit boastfully) I happen to know quite a lot about it. Would you like to know more?
Tourist: I would!
Resident: Well, everyone wants to know “What did that building cost?” In today’s money, it cost $250 million. It’s more than 360,000 square feet, and nine stories. And you see that dome?
Tourist: Yes, I was wondering about that.
Resident: That’s a steel-and-mesh lattice dome. We’ve come to think of it as iconic – it’s recognizable from all over downtown:
Resident: The shelter has a state-of-the-art theater that seats 300…
Resident: And a dining room with wonderful views…
Resident: Free Wi-Fi…
Resident: And a nice outdoor area…
Resident: And plenty space around the building if the homeless would rather pitch their tents there than sleep inside:
Tourist: Well, I am just amazed by all this.
Resident: Yes, it’s impressive, isn’t it? Oh – I didn’t mention, the building has won several awards, and…Hey – since you’re so interested, why don’t you take a tour?
Tourist: They give tours…of a homeless shelter?
Resident: Sure do! Or – kill two birds with one stone! You like art? Take an art gallery tour…
Tourist: An art gallery? Wow! I have to say…I’m amazed at what you’re doing here. My city – well, every city could learn a lot from San Diego about taking care of the homeless.
Resident: Well, we do think of San Diego as America’s Finest City. Although…I should mention that…ah…that this building didn’t start out as a homeless shelter.
Tourist: Oh?
Resident: No. It started out as the San Diego Central Library.
*****
No, this conversation hasn’t happened. Yet.
According to this article:
“…the majority of patrons at downtown’s Central Library are homeless.”
The article attributes this imbalance – in part – to this:
“The ratio has been amplified, in part, because of a nationwide decrease in library visits over the past several years while the number of people living without shelter has increased.”
The article does not suggest – so I will – that a decrease in library visits may also have something to do with the Central Library becoming a less desirable destination. The article quotes San Diego Public Library Director Misty Jones:
“‘We need to make this a safe place for everybody,’ she said, adding that incidents involving drug use and psychotic episodes are a daily occurrence at the library, and too often the solution is to escort a person off-site, sometimes with instructions not to return.
“There has been a string of overdoses at the Central Library, and a homeless person died by suicide after jumping from an upper floor of the library in August 2019.”
Perhaps Mom is disinclined to take her child to the Central Library in case they encounter this:
This is a big problem – and it’s not a new problem.
In 2015, two years after the Central Library opened, according to this article:
“About 3,000 people visit the library every day, and staff estimates about a third of those are homeless, an issue officials knew existed way before opening the facility.
“But in just a 60-day period, the Central Library had 60 calls to service by the San Diego Police Department. The types of disturbances included 11 calls involving some kind of violent behavior, four robberies and nine welfare checks.
“[Misty Jones, the San Diego Public Library director] admits they have had to increase the number of temporary suspension letters to patrons because of behavioral issues. They also see the need to boost their uniformed police presence inside.”
The NBC 7 story goes back even further – to 2010 – and a City Council member saying that the Central Library…
“…would become an economic boondoggle or turn into a gold-plated daycare center for the homeless.”
The Central Library may not be a gold-plated daycare center for the homeless – yet – but they’ve certainly rolled out the metaphorical welcome mat for them.
Back to the Union-Tribune article:
“The Central Library already has a Veterans Resource Center staffed by People Assisting the Homeless, and another office staffed with an outreach worker from the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
“In the fall semester, another office will be staffed by SDSU intern Maria Temporal, who is earning a master’s degree in social work…to provide another level of help for homeless people, as she is a trained mental health therapist who can do one-on-one counseling.”
“San Diego Public Library Director Misty Jones welcomes the addition of the social worker…and she is optimistic the move will create a better environment for all library visitors.”
The article also talks about Lianne Urada, an associate professor of social work at SDSU, who’s done research into how libraries can address homelessness in their cities. She said:
“The public library presents a unique opportunity to access an otherwise hidden population.”
Urada said the Central Library is following a national trend of major cities recognizing the role libraries can play as a type of homeless services provider, and that “a growing number of libraries across the country are providing assistance to their homeless patrons…At least 31 other libraries in the country have added social workers and other social services professionals to their teams.”
And while the Central Library does have a homeless and mental health office, said Urada…
“‘What they need is to have some professional social worker who can really help with crisis management.’”
So…
“Libraries as a type of homeless services provider.”
I am aware of how fortunate I am to have a home and food and so many things that homeless people do not. I have compassion for the homeless, and I know that there, but for the grace of God, go I.
I know that anyone – including me – can become homeless.
I do not – and never have – objected to my tax dollars being spent on helping homeless people, whether the need is temporary and permanent housing services, food, clothing, health care, substance use treatments and more.
And according to MyNeighbor.org, a San Diego nonprofit, my tax dollars are spent to help the homeless.
On a city level:
“In the 2020-2021 San Diego budget, the city spent $64 million through its Homelessness Strategies Department, which oversees and develops homelessness-related programs and services.”
And at the state level:
“$10.7 billion has been earmarked in the 2021-22 budget to fund 50 housing and homelessness-related programs across California.”
And the federal level:
“…in 2021, the U.S. federal government enacted over $51 billion in funding for selected homelessness and housing programs.
But damn it, I do not agree with a library evolving into a “gold-plated day care center for the homeless.”
I say it’s time for public libraries to stop kowtowing to the homeless and start prioritizing the people who pay for public libraries to exist:
Us.
The taxpayers.
How to do that?
Here’s how:
Ask people entering the library for current proof of residency.
The California DMV – and probably your state, as well – has a list of documents it accepts as proof of residency including a rental/lease agreement with signatures of the owner/landlord and the tenant/resident; deed/title to residential real property; mortgage bill; home utility bill…
You’d like to visit the library?
Just show your current proof of residency.
Is it a nuisance?
Yes, it’s a small nuisance.
Certainly a smaller nuisance than this:
And if someone is a tourist who wants to visit the library, they’re required to show their out-of-state driver license.
I believe this is worth trying.
I believe this will help us take back our libraries.
Ron, you’re making lots of headlines these days regarding the events of September 14.
You know – September 14, when you sent two airplanes to pick up 50 Venezuelan migrants in San Antonio, TX to dump take them to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
But before I get to those headlines, this event begs the question:
You’re the governor of Florida, so why did you want migrants from Texas?
According to the Migration Policy Institute:
You have nearly three-quarters of a million “unauthorized population” right there in the Sunshine State.
So, why migrants from Texas, Ron?
I found the answer to that question in a September 19 ClickOrlando.com article, which suggested you somehow knew that those 50 migrants in San Antonio were “intending to come to Florida.”
Were they standing around somewhere in San Antonio with signs reading “I’m Intending To Go To Florida”?
Well, back to those headlines.
Lots of headlines, Ron, and the look – well, may I be frank?
This is not a good look for you.
Here’s just a recent sampling:
Among the above and other sites was this, for example:
A Texas sheriff has opened a criminal inquiry into your “migrant stunt.”
And this September 20 article:
Suggests that what you did smacks of “family separation.”
And, uh-oh.
You and a bunch of other people are being sued:
“In addition to Gov. DeSantis, the lawsuit also named the state of Florida, Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue, and their accomplices as defendants.”
Ron, you have “accomplices”? Whew!
And this story, from a TV station in Jacksonville, FL…
…says that sending the two airplanes with migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard cost $615,000.
That’s $615,000 of Florida taxpayers’ money, Ron.
And maybe some of my federal tax dollars, too?
No, this not a good look for you, Ron. Not a good look at all.
But don’t despair:
I can help you do better with your next move-the-migrants event.
We know you’re going to keep at – you’ve allocated lots of money for exactly that purpose:
“In June 2022, DeSantis signed the 2022-2023 Freedom First Budget, totaling $109.9 billion. That budget allocated $12 million for a ‘program within the Florida Department of Transportation (DOT) to transport unauthorized aliens’ out of the state.
“…the $12 million for that program is allocated to ‘facilitate the transport of illegal aliens to Martha’s Vineyard and other sanctuary states.’ DeSantis began proposing that Florida send migrants to the Vineyard and other locations as early as April 2022.”
But Ron, what if instead of spending taxpayers’ money to pick up migrants in Texas and put them on expensive airplanes to send them somewhere…
Why don’t you – as they say – think globally, act locally?
Locally, as in – why don’t you pick on pick up migrants right there in Florida?
And then move the migrants via a cheap, short bus trip to a local location?
“Local” meaning – this location:
Mar-a-Lago!
Ron, it’s right there in Florida, in Palm Beach!
Mar-a-Lago is owned by your good buddy:
And if you just explain what’s going on to Trump, I’m sure he’ll be fine with the idea.
Trump known for being a reasonable, rational kind of guy and all.
Ron, let’s look at the advantages of taking your migrants to Mar-a-Lago.
We’ll start with security.
Mar-a-Lago has a nice, big gate:
And just last year, we taxpayers paid big bucks for a security upgrade:
What’s that? I know, I know – when it comes to security, maybe Mar-a-Lago isn’t quite the greatest…
But wait!
The migrants you send there won’t have any reason to try and escape, because Mar-a-Lago has everything they need.
For instance, it has nice rooms:
And by that I mean available rooms – it says so, right on the Mar-a-Lago website:
“We will be happy to show any unoccupied room to…those who are interested in overnight stays. Please contact the Front Desk to schedule an appointment and to discuss room availability and pricing.”
Don’t worry about that “pricing” stuff.
I’m sure Trump will comp your migrants.
Mar-a-Lago has restaurants…
…with plenty of food for three squares a day – guests are…
“…welcome to dine for breakfast, lunch, dinner and Sunday brunch, and can choose to dine indoors in our opulent, historic Main Dining Room, in the Teahouse, or on the al fresco Patio.”
And if the migrants need a change of clothes and/or some toiletries, the Trump Boutique…
…carries…
“…plush Frette bathrobes, tee shirts encrusted with Swarovski crystals, aromatic candles, the Trump Signature line of skin care & body products and much more.”
I know the migrants will especially appreciate those “tee shirts encrusted with Swarovski crystals” – just the thing to wear to their asylum hearings, yes?
And Ron, you don’t need to pay for taxis to take the migrants to their hearings, because Mar-a-Lago offers transportation:
“Four (4) types of luxury vehicles from TRUMP National Transportation Service’s fleet will be available to accommodate the various transportation needs of…single individuals to large groups.”
And Mar-a-Lago offers so much more – a fitness center, a spa, and I mustn’t forget the Mar-a-Lago Club:
“…an oceanfront experience unlike anything ever had before. The complex includes a 132-foot by 50-foot pool, whirlpool, a private beach, and a charming full-service beachfront Bistro.”
Plus, with stunning artwork like this to admire…
And all that interesting, easily available reading material…
By the way, Ron – just between you and me – did you get a load of the ugly carpet?
Talk about tacky!
But other than that…
Your migrants should be quite content at Mar-a-Lago.
And no worries about anyone expecting Trump’s Mar-a-Lago neighbors to open their generous arms and hearts to the migrants, like the folks on Martha’s Vineyard did:
No, no worries about that at all.
And Ron, I’m telling you, if you send your migrants to Mar-a-Lago, there won’t be any talk about pesky “class action lawsuits.”
No sheriffs starting a “criminal inquiry.”
No one suggesting you’re forcing “family separation.”
No, your migrants will happily stay at Mar-a-Lago…
And thank you for it!
What’s that you say? You don’t think Trump would like your migrants-to-Mar-a-Lago plan?
Look, I know you and Trump have had your differences…
Ouch! “Gutless”?
Wow, that must have really hurt a sensitive guy like you.
But you and your buddy Trump can work that out.
And then…
Won’t that be great?
And Ron – if, after all this, you’re still fixated on flying migrants out of state, then at least consider saving us taxpayers some money on the transportation and consider this alternative.
Now that you and Trump are BFFs again, don’t pay to charter this:
Just tell Trump you want to borrow this:
He won’t be needing his plane for a long, long time.
I’ve written about TV commercials many times on this blog.
And every post included one or both of these laments:
First:Why are these and so many other commercials so stupid?
Second:Is nothing private anymore?
Now my next offering about commercials, this time around for…
Not to be confused with:
THE LUME Indianapolis is a “multi-sensory experience that will feature nearly 150 state-of-the-art digital projectors showcasing famous master paintings.”
No, the Lumē under discussion here has a macron – a diacritical mark – over the e, which makes the pronunciation of Lumē sound a lot like “looney.”
Which is apropos, as my research soon revealed.
The scene:
I’m at home on a Sunday evening, watching a program on CNN.
Program pause, commercial break, and I see this:
I wondered why, instead of filling the screen, the commercial had all that blank blue space on either side. It looked like a very amateurish video on an influencer-wannabe’s Instagram site.
Then I started paying attention to what the woman was saying, and the first thing that registered was her suggesting that…
“A pea-sized amount of Lumē applied between your butt cheeks…”
This was a first.
I’d never heard “butt cheeks” used in a commercial.
And then:
“The average crotch has an odor score of five to six out of 10.”
Another first.
I’d never heard “crotch” used in a commercial.
And what determines the “average crotch”? How many crotches are needed to determine what’s “average”?
And what about “odor score”? How is that determined?
Is it something that involves judges, like the Olympics?
Now the image changed, making use of that blank blue space…
With graphics including “Stink Level.”
What is this stuff? I wondered.
The 30-second commercial’s last visual answered that – sort of:
Lumē.
I wanted to know more…
Or did I?
I’d already encountered “butt cheeks,” “crotch” and “stink level” in one commercial. Was spending more in this environment going to improve my life?
Well…
But…perhaps this was a too-good-to-miss opportunity for mockery?
Yes!
My first destination was YouTube, to find the commercial I’d seen and confirm what I’d heard.
Found, watched, confirmed.
Then I watched a longer Lumē commercial – two minutes and 18 seconds – where an actress began by applying “a pea-sized amount of Lumē” (that sounded familiar) “to your privates,” with this piece of fruit standing in for your “privates”:
Other language included:
Kiss your stinky butt good-bye.
Butt incense.
In bed doing some stinky-winky.
Your junk smells so awful, you’re bad at playing hide-and-seek.
Use it on pits, feet or any other stinky crevice.
You’ll be able to geni-tell the difference (geni-tell as in genital).
Message received:
Our bodies are God-awful smelly but Lumē – and only Lumē – will make us less smelly and therefore more socially acceptable.
And happy. Buying Lumē will also make you happy.
The commercial encouraged me to go to the Lumē website, which I did:
Where I was exhorted to…
Apply Anywhere You Have Odor Think pits, underboobs, belly buttons, tummy folds, butt cracks, thigh creases, vulvas, balls, and feet!
Yet another commercial first: “vulvas.”
And wow – who knew “underboobs” was a word?
Who knew our bodies possessed all those odor opportunities?
This person knew:
Meet Dr. Shannon Klingman, Lumē spokesperson and an OB-GYN who, says her website,
“…worked for 10 years to create a solution that would work for ALL body odor, not just smelly pits.”
Apparently not satisfied with her tacky self-made videos, Shannon hired the Harmon Brothers ad agency:
I guess because she wanted to get a “crap-ton of eyeballs” looking at Lumē.
Who knew “crap-ton” was a word?
In this Harmon Brothers news release…
Shannon said,
“…so when we created this revolutionary product, we knew we needed to find a way to talk about it publicly. Who better than Harmon Brothers, the agency whose success was sparked by making the smell of human odors easy to talk about.”
Who knew that “making the smell of human odors easy to talk about” is the new benchmark for successful advertising agencies?
The news release is dated January 2019 and says that Harmon Brothers launched their first Lumē ad just before Christmas.
The ad:
“…features a made-from-scratch musical number…the leading lady manages to convince the viewers that they actually want body odor – just so they can experience the pleasure of using Lumē to dismiss it away.”
Who knew someone could convince us that we want body odor?
The ad was more than four minutes long, and because I care about you, I watched it so you wouldn’t have to.
Here’s the “leading lady”:
At 1:55 into the commercial I learned that bacteria eat the fluids on our skin and then the bacteria…
But no worries – at 3:20 in we’re assured that with Lumē, your HOO-HA:
Can smell OOH-LA-LA:
But only if we…
Click the link and get Lumē today:
I guess the Harmon Brothers – the folks known for “making the smell of human odors easy to talk about” – were doing something right.
According to the 2019 news release:
“For Lumē, sales are up 526% and the company is on track to grow from $1.5 million annually to $15 million annually based on current indicators.”
And in late 2021, Lumē was acquired:
No financial terms were disclosed, but one website – I can’t testify to its veracity – valued Lumē “in the range of $10M-$37.5M.”
What do I think of all this?
Well, Lumē proved to be something easy to mock, and that’s been fun.
But it also proved to be something ugly and exploitative.
And I think Lumē – and Shannon – stink.
NOT because I object to someone coming up with an idea, bringing the idea to fruition, and making lots of money from it.
I admire the entrepreneurial spirit.
What I think stinks is Klingman’s message that our bodies are disgusting, smelly, and hopelessly repulsive and will continue that way forevermore unless we buy her product.
It’s one more advertising campaign like so many – telling us that unless we purchase their brand of lipstick or shoes or cars or whatever…
We are doomed…
We’ll never be happy…
And we are stupid.
I think this Lumē reviewer …
Said it very well:
“This ad is a direct attack on women and our self-esteem…”
“Calling women’s vaginas ‘stinky crevices’ is not only revolting and insulting but it’s completely incorrect! Vaginas are self-cleaning, thanks. When are you going to put out ads about men’s stinky penises?
“The whole thing is absolutely all about creating an unnecessary need and then meeting it.”
Klingman and her Lumē ads are a perfect example of using blatant body shaming – for women and men – to make Klingman lots of money.
And while she’s body shaming and making millions, she’s mouthing meaningless sentiments like these, from an interview:
“If I can be an inspiration to young girls and women around the world and make the path a little clearer for them to dream and develop and problem solve, then I have done a good thing.”
“It feels great to know that in our small way, we are making a big difference in the lives of women.”
What a load of…
Let’s go back to what I talked about at the beginning of this post – the two laments I have with the commercials I’ve written about, and so many, many other commercials:
First: Why are so many commercials so stupid?
Because people like Shannon Klingman and her pals at Harmon Brothers advertising think their audience (you and me) is stupid, and they have to dumb-down their message to get us to buy their products.
Second: Is nothing private anymore?
No.
In summary:
Dr. Klingman, take your Lumē products and stick them in your…
The Danube River is the second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia. It rises in the Black Forest mountains of western Germany and flows for 1,770 miles to its mouth on the Black Sea:
Along its course it passes through 10 countries: Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and Ukraine.
River cruises on the Danube are popular, like the Viking River Cruise’s Budapest-to-Bucharest trip that follows this course:
You’ll see I marked “Iron Gate” with an arrow. It’s a gorge on the Danube.
Here’s a Viking River Cruise in the Iron Gate:
It’s not the only ship in the area.
There are others there are well:
According to this article:
“Europe’s worst drought in years has pushed the mighty river Danube to one of its lowest levels in almost a century, exposing the hulks of dozens of explosives-laden German warships sunk during World War II near Serbia’s river port town of Prahovo.”
“The vessels were among hundreds scuttled along the Danube by Nazi Germany’s Black Sea fleet in 1944 as they retreated from advancing Soviet forces, and still hamper river traffic during low water levels.”
“However, this year’s drought – viewed by scientists as a consequence of global warming – has exposed more than 20 hulks on a stretch of the Danube near Prahovo in eastern Serbia, many of which still contain tons of ammunition and explosives and pose a danger to shipping.”
The sunken ships pose a danger not only to shipping, but to the local fishing industry of both Serbia, and Romania across the river.
And the wrecks present a massive threat in terms of human life and the environment – according to an August 23 New York Times article:
“The wrecks contain nearly 10,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance according to the Serbian authorities.”
Ah, the Nazis: their gifts just keep on giving.
Here’s a bit more about Germany scuttling their ships from this article:
“The ships, some still laden with munition, belonged to Nazi Germany’s Black Sea fleet that was deliberately sunk by the Germans as they retreated from Romania as Soviet forces advanced.
“Historians say up to 200 German warships were scuttled in September 1944 near Prahovo in the Danube gorge known as The Iron Gate on the orders of the fleet’s commander as they came under heavy fire from the Soviets. The idea behind the deliberate sinking was to at least slow down the Soviet advance in the Balkans. But it didn’t help, and Nazi Germany surrendered months later, in May 1945.”
The appearance of the sunken ships was not a surprise – they’ve been hampering shipping for years. And for years there were plans to take the ships out of the muddy waters, but the operation was considered too risky because of the explosives they carried and there were no funds to do it.
Fortunately, it appears that’s about to change – somewhat. Again, according to the Star Advertiser:
“Now, the European Union and the European Investment Bank have agreed to provide loans and grants to finance the operation to remove some of the vessels near Prahovo in order to improve the traffic capacity of the Danube. The total cost of the operation is estimated at 30 million euros ($30 million), of which about $16 million are grants.
“Alessandro Bragonzi, the head of the European Investment Bank in the Western Balkans…said the project consists of the removal of 21 sunken vessels.
“‘It has been estimated that more vessels are underwater, up to 40, but those that are currently impeding the fairway conditions of the Danube, especially during periods of low water level, are 21’ Bragonzi said.”
On August 30 NBC reported:
“Experts say the salvage operation will consist of removing the explosive materials from the sunken vessels and then destroying the wrecks, rather than dragging the ships out of the river.”
Removing explosives safely, disposing of them safely, destroying the wrecks, cleaning up from destroying the wrecks – a huge, costly, and dangerous process.
Here’s another dangerous gift from the Nazis that keeps on giving:
Riverside, CA 2009:
Charlottesville, VA 2017:
Washington, DC January 6, 2021:
This is Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, 32, of New Jersey.
He participated in the January 6 attack on the Capitol and, according to this article:
Prosecutors portrayed him as:
“…an extremist, who hoped for a second ‘civil war.’ The government presented evidence of Hale-Cusanelli using racist, antisemitic and anti-gay slurs, yelling obscenities at officers protecting the Capitol, and later enthusiastically boasting about breaching the building to a roommate.”
“Video showed how he joined the mob on the west side of the Capitol…Another video taken that day shows him moving a bike rack, which police had been using as a barrier against the demonstrators. When a group of rioters eventually broke a window on the Senate side and gave the mob access to the building, Hale-Cusanelli followed them in.”
This article…
added:
“One Navy seaman said Hale-Cusanelli told him ‘he would kill all the Jews and eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and he wouldn’t need to season them because the salt from their tears would make it flavorful enough,’ according to prosecutors.”
“Hale-Cusanelli was indicted on five counts: obstruction of an official proceeding, entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly or destructive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building. The obstruction charge is a felony. The rest are misdemeanors.”
Update: September 19:
I waited to upload this post because Timothy Hale-Cusanelli was scheduled to be sentenced on Friday, September 16. It appears sentencing has been delayed.
Prosecutors are asking for 6.5 years.
Prior to his arrest, Hale-Cusanelli served in the U.S. Army Reserves as a human resources specialist and also worked as a security guard at a Naval base. In court filings the government said he wore the “Hitler mustache” to work.
Category: Women’s Friendship Fiction, Mothers and Children Fiction, Women’s Domestic Life Fiction
Review, short version: The above skunks and more.
Review, long version:
Perhaps, in this post’s title, instead of “cheap” I should have used the word “expensive,” since the dust jacket on Emily Giffin’s Meant to Be says “$28.”
But I got the word “cheesy” right: “not very good or original, and lacking style in a way that is embarrassing; shabby.”
And I got “rip-off” right, too: “a cheap, exploitive imitation; an inferior imitation of something.”
Meant to Be is based on two actual people, and I know that authors base characters on actual people all the time. Sometimes those characters are described as “thinly disguised.”
But there was nothing “disguised” – thinly or otherwise – in Giffin’s two lead characters, Joe Kingsley and Cate Cooper.
They’re straight, direct rip-offs of John F. Kennedy, Jr. and his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy:
JFK, Jr., Carolyn, and her sister Lauren, died in the crash of the plane he was flying in 1999.
But the rip-off wasn’t enough for Giffin. She also somehow presumes to think she knows John and Carolyn so well that she writes each of them in the first person, as though she’d somehow been privy to their thoughts.
Utter nonsense.
Giffin is nothing more than a Kennedy groupie. In her author’s note at the end of the book, she writes:
“After I graduated from law school in 1997, I moved to New York, took the bar exam, and went to work at a large firm.
“I had never lived in a big city before, and it was crazy to think that I might at any moment run into JFK, Jr., or his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, whether on the subway, in Central Park, or at their usual Tribeca haunts, from El Teddy’s to Bubby’s to the Odeon.”
Did I say “groupie”?
Maybe I should have said “stalker.”
In just the first few pages of, and then throughout, the book, we’re practically smothered in information Giffin simply lifted from JFK, Jr.’s life:
Joe Kingsley and John Kennedy – same initials. Joe has a dog named “Thursday,” JFK, Jr. had a dog named “Friday.” Joe’s family is American “royalty,” like JFK, Jr.’s. family. Joe’s father died when Joe was three, like JFK, Jr.’s father did. Joe’s father is buried at Arlington, like JFK, Jr.’s father is. Joe’s father had a rocking chair, like JFK, Jr.’s father did.
It continues….
Joe’s father served in World War II, like JFK, Jr.’s father did. Joe’s father ran for Senate, like JFK, Jr.’s father did. Joe’s mother is a fashion icon, like JFK, Jr.’s mother was. Joe marries a woman whose first name begins with “C,” like JFK, Jr. did. Joe is a pilot, just like JFK, Jr. was. Joe’s plane crashes, just like JFK, Jr.’s plane did. There’s a “Kingsley curse,” just like the “Kennedy curse.”
And as for the Cate character, I don’t know much about Carolyn’s background so Giffin may – may – have showed a scintilla of imagination there.
It’s almost as if Giffin was on a deadline for her next novel and desperate to come up with a storyline, so she copied some online JFK, Jr. and Carolyn stories, pasted them into Word, then hit the “Find and Replace” feature:
So, I think Meant to Be is tripe.
Even the cover of the book is a rip-off:
I headed on over to Amazon to see what others were saying about the book and – no surprise here – I’m out of step with 83% of Amazon reviewers and the 4.3 out of 5 stars rating.
So I skipped the four- and five-star reviews and went straight to one- and two-stars – here’s a sampling:
Skip this one In Author’s Note Emily writes that the characters are purely fictional, while she uses John and Caroline’s story to create the story line of this book. Keeping the story of their tragic loss alive for $$$. Unoriginal and will not read her books again.
Don’t bother I hated this book because the author just lazily re-wrote the romance of JFK and Carolyn Bessette, all of which is public record and therefore required zero creativity or real imagination…
An embarrassment for the author and me I’ve read other Giffin novels. They’re simple and somewhat trite, but I’ve enjoyed the sentimentality. This one was dreadful. An embarrassment for the author who spun this pathetic “novel.” An embarrassment for me that I finished it.
I, too, am embarrassed that I finished Meant to Be.
There are so many other worthwhile things I could have been doing with my time.
This story taking place in San Diego – often called “America’s Finest City” by us locals – came and went in one day.
But it stuck with me.
It has to do with shopping carts
A rather pedestrian item that we don’t give much thought to.
And we’re so accustomed to seeing abandoned shopping carts this that we barely notice this:
Of course, not all shopping carts are abandoned:
We’ll circle back around to shopping carts and the homeless shortly.
This shopping carts story stuck with me because my husband’s parents owned a small grocery store. When customers walked off with (stolen) shopping carts – to transport their purchases to their homes or to the bus stop, for example…
…the shopping carts had to be replaced.
His parents had to pay for those replacements, and this wasn’t something they could just write off as “the cost of doing business.”
That cost had to be passed on to customers – to those who stole and to those who wouldn’t dream of stealing a grocery cart.
And it isn’t just small stores that pass on the cost of stolen shopping carts – most, probably all stores do this:
“The Food Marketing Institute reports that nearly two million shopping carts are stolen each year, translating into a per-store loss of $8,000 to $10,000 annually – and that’s only in the food industry.
“Shoppers wouldn’t think of borrowing a car to get their purchases home, but these same people assume that as customers they are allowed to take baskets and carts with them.”
Stores are fighting back, of course – some turning to companies whose business is shopping cart theft prevention, like this one:
The options might include high-tech electronic systems – for example, the shopping cart is fitted with an electronic locking wheel clamp or “boot…”
…and transmitter with a thin wire is placed around the perimeter of the parking lot. The boot locks when the cart leaves the designated area, and store personnel must then deactivate the lock with a handheld remote control to return the cart to stock.
Then there are low-tech options such as vertical posts at the store entrance to keep carts from being taken into the parking lot, or mounting a pole taller than the entrance onto the shopping cart, so that the pole will block exit of the cart:
And this news story:
Demonstrated how to get a shopping cart lock to release: Insert a quarter. When you return the cart, your quarter pops out of the lock.
High-tech or low-tech, who pays for this theft prevention?
Here’s looking at you, kid.
And me.
A system that isn’t proactive like these, but rather reactive, is the one that’s been around the longest:
A cart retrieval service collects carts found off the store’s premises and returns them to the store for a fee. Who is that fee passed on to?
Here’s looking at you again, kid.
And me.
Shopping cart retrieval services are all over the country and can range from one guy in his pickup truck to large-scale operations like this:
This is RMS, offering shopping cart retrieval services right here in San Diego.
I said I’d circle back around to shopping carts and the homeless, and here goes.
We all know that some homeless people use shopping carts. And sometimes those shopping carts end up in homeless encampments:
According to this article:
In recent months in downtown San Diego and other areas where the city has increased enforcement of laws prohibiting sidewalk homeless encampments:
“During cleanups, crews toss shopping carts…into a trash truck, where they are crushed and hauled to a landfill.”
The article also says:
“City officials originally were asked in mid-July why shopping carts found in homeless encampments were destroyed rather than given back to their owners. The question was referred to RMS, and conversations with city officials on Friday still did not explain why carts were destroyed.”
Yet Matthew Dodson, president of RMS’ cart-retrieval service CarTrac, said he was unaware that the city was destroying shopping carts until contacted for a comment about the policy.
So America’s Finest City ducked the question and referred it to RMS, RMS didn’t know San Diego was destroying shopping carts, and oh, by the way – according to Dodson, “destroying shopping carts is illegal”:
“A section of the California Business and Professions code states cities and counties must notify retailers if shopping carts are impounded, and they must be held 30 days before being discarded or sold.”
Unsurprisingly,
“City officials have not commented about Dodson’s claim about the code violation.”
City officials can be amazingly mum when it suits them.
A supervising public information officer for San Diego said the city does contact RMS when people report shopping carts in public places through the city’s Get It Done app.
This public servant also unhelpfully noted:
“Cart owners have the option to install theft prevention devices that would eliminate these carts from ending up in canyons, riverbeds or sidewalks.”
So this person is suggesting that it’s not San Diego’s fault that San Diego is destroying shopping carts – it’s the cart owners fault because the cart owners haven’t installed theft protection devices?
San Diego shoppers are paying for stores to replace stolen grocery carts and paying for San Diego to destroy them.
Does any city official see how screwed up this is?
And continues to be?
The Union-Tribune article was dated August 14 but I haven’t posted about it until now because I kept checking for follow-up articles – something that would indicate that America’s Finest City has stopped throwing away shopping carts.
I’m partial to penguins, and when I see them, it makes me smile.
So when I saw the above picture, I started to smile.
That felt good.
But then…
The picture reminded me of something unpleasant.
That was bad.
Now, how could a picture of adorable penguins remind me of something unpleasant?
Let’s start with the where, who and what:
The penguin picture is from the ZSL London Zoo’s annual animal weigh-in (ZSL stands for Zoological Society London).
According to this story:
“With more than 14,000 animals in their care, ZSL London Zoo’s keepers spend hours throughout the year recording the heights and weights of all the animals – vital information which helps them to monitor their health and well-being.
“The annual weigh-in is an opportunity for keepers at ZSL London Zoo to make sure the information they’ve recorded is up-to-date and accurate, with each measurement then added to the Zoological Information Management System (ZIMS), a database shared with zoos all over the world that helps zookeepers to compare important information on thousands of endangered species.”
So it wasn’t just penguins who were getting weighed, but – as in often the case – penguins getting much of the attention. In addition to the image at the top, there were plenty of others, like this:
I hop on the scale, get weighed, hop off the scale, and get a fish!
These ZSL London Zoo residents are Humboldt penguins, whose native habitat is along the coasts of Chile and Peru in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. They’re described as “medium sized,” grow to be about 26 to 28 inches long and weigh about 10.4 pounds.
And I’m betting that if one of those penguins weighed in at 10.9 pounds or even 11 pounds, they wouldn’t be banished from the ZSL London Zoo’s Penguin Beach exhibit for being overweight.
They wouldn’t be told, “You’re suspended without pay and if you don’t lose that extra weight, you’ll be terminated.”
But if you were a flight attendant, that’s exactly what could – and still can – happen to you.
I know, because I was a flight attendant.
When I was flying (this was back shortly after the Wright brothers’ first flight), every time my fellow crew members and I checked in at our home base airport to go on duty – work a flight – each of us was weighed. And the senior flight attendant wrote down our weights.
Just like the zookeepers do:
If you were a pound or two over your maximum weight – as decreed by the airline – you might get off with just The Look from the senior flight attendant.
You know – The Look.
I was never suspended or terminated for my weight, but I got The Look a number of times.
Just showing up for work meant gut-clenching, high anxiety – every time.
And then…whew. Dodged the bullet again.
If you were 10 pounds over, you could be suspended without pay, and advised to lose the weight and come back in two weeks for a weigh-in.
But more than 10 pounds?
Unemployment: Likely.
I must mention that weight requirements did not apply to the cockpit crews. They get FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) physicals and if the FAA says a cockpit crew member is good to fly – regardless of their weight – then they fly.
But not flight attendants.
This article:
Described a weight-related termination case:
“In 1972, Sandie Hendrix, a stewardess at United, was fired after weighing in at a 127 pounds. (Hendrix was five feet two, and the limit for her height 118 pounds.)
“Her story made the national news, but not everyone was on her side: one nationally syndicated columnist, writing about the possible end of the airlines’ weight rules, bemoaned a future in which ‘human hippos’ start handing out the trays.”
“Human hippos.”
It was all about female flight attendants, and how they looked.
Nothing to do with the fact – and it is a fact – that flight attendants are on airplanes for one reason:
Your safety.
Whether that’s safety demonstrations before flights take off and land, administering first aid and medical care in emergencies, or saving your life by helping you get off the plane as quickly and safely as possible in the event of a crash or water ditching.
And more recently – and regrettably – flight attendants have also had to deal with a tsunami of “unruly passengers,” many due to face mask and other COVID-related issues.
The beverages, snacks and whatever served by flight attendants are just window dressing.
A flight attendant’s value should never have been, and should never be, determined by their weight or anything else about their appearance.
But it was, and still is.
The above New Yorker article also references Diane Tucker, a flight attendant who has worked for United since 1968:
“Tucker started every workday by hiking her skirt so that an older woman, known as an ‘appearance supervisor,’ could peer underneath. ‘We lifted our skirt and showed our girdle,’ Tucker said. ‘They didn’t ask me whether I had my manual or my flashlight, or whether I had enough money to get a taxi if I needed it – they just wanted to know if I had my girdle on.’”
“…some women took diet pills or starved themselves to avoid losing their jobs. ‘If there was any suspicion that you didn’t look exactly the way the appearance supervisor thought you should look, she would have you hop on the scale in front of everybody,’ Tucker said. ‘If you were ten pounds over what your maximum was, they would remove you from your flight.’”
If removing a flight attendant from a flight leaves the crew shorthanded according to FAA regulations, then the airline must find a substitute before the flight can take off. This can cause a flight delay which can cause angry passengers, sometimes passenger compensation, and sometimes trouble with the FAA.
But some airlines thought all that was preferable to having “human hippos” handing out the trays.
In the 1990s airlines began to drop or relax their weight standards for flight attendants, according to this April 1994 article:
“USAir yesterday became the latest airline to drop its weight standards for flight attendants, settling a 1992 lawsuit filed by the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”
“American Airlines, to settle a lawsuit, agreed in 1991 to relax its weight standards overall and to increase the weight limits further with age. As part of the settlement, American reinstated some flight attendants who had been dismissed because their weights violated the old guidelines.”
In these and other cases, it took lawsuits to bring about changes.
“Weight standards for flight attendants have been the subject of legal battles since the mid-1970s, when flight attendants began to assert that it was a form of sex discrimination to require them to meet weight requirements as a condition of holding their jobs. Many flight attendants saw the weight standards as a throwback to the era when they were ‘stewardesses’ and automatically lost their jobs when they married or turned 32.”
The article noted that United Airlines was still using weight restrictions for flight attendants, but a few months after the above New York Times article, that changed, according to this July 1994 article:
But the flight attendants weren’t done with United Airlines:
“United Airlines discriminated against female flight attendants from 1989 to 1994 by requiring them to stay thinner than their male counterparts, a federal court ruled Wednesday.
“The court said United’s weight policy was discriminatory on its face. The rules required women to stay within the ideal weight range for women with medium body frames. By contrast, men had it easy, the court said. Even men with small body frames were free to bulk up so their weight fell into the range for men with large body frames.”
“‘They wanted attractive, sexy flight attendants,’ said flight attendants’ attorney Edith Benay, referring to United Executives. ‘It was just a lack of respect for women who were doing their job well, in some cases for many years. All of a sudden, when they started to gain weight, they were out.’”
And apparently, some airlines are still showing that sexist, discriminatory mentality.
From 2015:
“According to an unnamed crew member, a flight attendant for Qingdao Airlines was recently grounded from flying because she weighed too much. The crew member, who refused to be identified, told the South China Morning Post that the airline had previously suspended – or even fired – flight attendants who exceeded the airline’s height-to-weight ratio.”
From 2020:
(Note: The “9st” in the article is “9 stone,” a British weight measure. One stone is 14 pounds; “9st” is 126 pounds.)
“A flight attendant who was fired by Malaysia Airlines for being overweight has lost an unfair dismissal case.
“Ina Meliesa Hassim, who had worked for the airline for 25 years, weighed 9st 7lbs when her contract was terminated in 2017.
“The company stipulates that cabin crew’s Body Mass Index (BMI) must fall within the ‘healthy’ range to continue working for the company.
“At 5ft 2in, Ms Hassim needed to weigh a maximum of 9st 6lbs to stay in the ‘healthy’ bracket.”
And this, from January 2022:
“Former employees said it [a ‘glamorous Emirates face’] was so important that there was an ‘Appearance Management Program’ run by image and grooming officers dedicated to ensuring flight attendants meet the airline’s standards.
“But where Emirates appears to go further than industry norms is in its weight requirements. Former cabin crew said image and grooming officers monitored and punished flight attendants deemed overweight.
“Internally at Emirates, these officers were known by some former staffers as the ‘weight police.’
“‘Weight police’ punishments include taking crew members off flights and job loss, some former employees told Insider.”
So – some foreign carriers are still operating in the aviation Dark Ages, while domestic carriers doing away with weight restrictions for flight attendants are showing some level of enlightenment.
I’ll wrap this up with two wishes.
Wish #1: That not just more airlines, but more passengers become enlightened as to the qualities that make great flight attendants. Which is not their weight, or their age, or whatever other “flaw” some ignorant people choose to find with their appearance.
And that we’ll see less crap like this 2015 article – and this attitude:
“As flight attendant Marcia served me water, I caught myself counting the wrinkles on her face. If I went by the wrinkles on her face, I would say that she was a great grandmother. Her co-worker Sheila was as round as a butterball turkey.”
And that we’ll see more articles – and appreciation – like this recent story:
“An 86-year-old American Airlines flight attendant was recognized by the Guinness World Records this week as the longest-serving and oldest flight attendant in the world.
“Bette Nash of Boston has been working at American Airlines for 65 years, which Guinness says is a record.”
Nash has her own memories of the bad old days:
“‘You had to be a certain height, you had to be a certain weight. It used to be horrible. You put on a few pounds and you had to keep weighing yourself, and then if you stayed that way, they would take you off the payroll,’ Nash recalled.”
Wish #2: Now that I’ve done my therapy by doing this post, I wish that the next time I see a ZSL London Zoo story about the penguin weigh-in or any story about penguins, I’ll have only smiling, and not unpleasant, thoughts.
A notable news story over Labor Day weekend was the delay of NASA’s second Artemis launch attempt. It was originally scheduled for August 29, but on that attempt…
Actually, Artemis was originally scheduled to launch in 2017. But who’s keeping track?
Other than me and millions of other taxpayers?
So the August 29 launch was moved to September 3, and that, too, was scuttled:
This and other articles recounted issues including “engine temperature problems” and “dangerous fuel leak” and “hydrogen leaks.”
When you hear what Artemis costs, you may wonder – as I did…
“I paid #@%!&%@! dollars for this #@%!&%@! thing…and it leaks?”
A September 3 Associated Press article said,
“With a two-week launch blackout period looming in just a few days, the rocket is now grounded until late September or October.”
Of the entire Artemis program, this article noted:
“NASA’s own auditors recently estimated that a single launch of the rocket will cost $4.1 billion – eight times greater than what the agency estimated in 2013.”
And since we’re talking costs, the total cost for Artemis from FY2012, when the Space Launch System (SLS) program began, through FY2025 will be $93 billion.
So, years late and billions of dollars over estimates, but who’s keeping track?
Same answer as above.
Now let’s compare and contrast that piece of machinery with another piece of machinery our government built – this:
This is the USS Texas, a Navy battleship that was launched 1912 and commissioned in 1914. According to the Battleship Texas Historic Site brochure:
In World War I, Texas served as part of the Battleship Force of the Atlantic Fleet, participating with the American squadron in maneuvers in the North Sea against threats from the German High Seas Fleet.
Facing the German High Seas Fleet…
…was no walk in the park.
Texas survived World War I and after some modifications, from 1927 to 1939 it served as the flagship of the American fleet in the Atlantic and Pacific, representing American naval power:
Texas circa 1928.
During World War II Texas saw action in the invasions of North Africa (November 1942), Normandy (June 1944) and Southern France (August 1944). Moving into the Pacific in late 1944, Texas provided support for the landing at Iwo Jima in February and March 1945. In April it took part in the invasion of Okinawa, the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific theater.
At the end of the war, Texas carried many prisoners of war from the Philippines to Pearl Harbor, and made three voyages from Pearl Harbor to California, bringing nearly 5,000 troops home from the Pacific – troops like these:
Texas was decommissioned in 1948 but instead of ending up in a scrapyard, it survived and is the only battleship in existence today that fought in both World War I and World War II.
Texas is still around.
One hundred years after it was launched.
That’s what I meant by this post’s title:
They Just Don’t Build ‘Em Like They Used To
If Texas was being built by NASA, it would still be sitting somewhere, unfinished and/or unseaworthy, instead of facing down our enemies in World War I and World War II.
While NASA whined about engine temperature problems and leaking fuel and asked us taxpayers for more money.
And more money.
Again, from the brochure:
“Texas was scheduled to be used as a bombing target, but Texas citizens launched a successful statewide fund drive to save the ship. The U.S. Navy towed it to Texas to become the nation’s first permanent memorial battleship, and it was officially transferred to the state in ceremonies at San Jacinto Battleground in April 1948. For 35 years, Texas was administered by the Battleship Texas Commission, then it became part of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in 1983.”
I’m not going to pretend that Texas hasn’t needed plenty of maintenance since it took up residence in Texas – of course it has. But as the above paragraph states, it wasn’t our federal tax dollars that brought the ship to Texas – it was a “successful statewide fund drive.”
The people of Texas wanted Battleship Texas, and they put up their money to make it happen.
Texas was in active service from 1914 to 1948 – 34 years. It served our country well, and continues to do so.
According to the foundation in charge of its care – the Battleship Texas Foundation:
“The mission of the Battleship Texas Foundation is to preserve and enhance the Battleship Texas and develop this historic ship into a premier museum and visitor attraction.”
Texas has been and will continue to be source of knowledge about our country’s past – and its future.
And to that end, on August 31 the ship was towed from its location in the Battleship Texas State Historic Site:
Texas is in Galveston for repairs estimated at $35 million, to “repair the hull and ultimately restore the ship to its former glory,” according to this Associated Press story:
“In 2019 the Texas legislature approved the funds to fix the hull. The foundation plans to make other fixes that it’s paying for.”
The people of Texas and donors to the Battleship Texas Foundation are paying, not U.S. taxpayers.
And,
“Travis Davis, the foundation’s vice president of ship operations and who was aboard the vessel during it trip, said Battleship Texas did really well during its journey: ‘She’s been a champ the whole time.’”
Texas has been a “champ” since it launched in 1912.
While this thing…
Languishes on its launchpad, waiting to try another launch attempt in “late September or October” or more likely…
Waiting until the…
Or perhaps – unlike the long-lived and well-traveled Texas – the only journey Artemis makes will be this one…
This happened around 10:30am on a recent Thursday morning.
Yes, the plane looks pitiful:
But when we pull back from the picture to see where the plane ended up – in El Cajon, CA – you’ll see why I think this was an excellent landing.
El Cajon is located about 16 miles northeast of San Diego:
The population is around 107,000 people in 15 square miles – pretty dense.
Now let’s look at where the plane crashed:
The plane crashed on Greenfield Drive.
And do you see those yellow lines on the map?
That’s the Interstate 8 freeway.
The plane crashed where Greenfield Drive and the I-8 intersect.
Freeways in San Diego County – including the I-8 – often look like this:
Now let’s go back and look at the plane…
It crashed on Greenfield Drive between the east- and westbound-sides of the I-8 freeway.
Not on the freeway.
Not on the nearby houses, schools, churches or businesses.
Not like this plane near El Cajon just eight months earlier:
This plane crashed, burned, damaged a home and took down power lines.
There were no survivors in that crash.
In our excellent landing, the pilot survived.
And what about other people – was anyone hurt?
According to this article:
When it hit the street, “the aircraft grazed an SUV.”
That must have been horrifying for the driver.
Fortunately, she was uninjured, able to pull her car over to the side of the street, and later talk to reporters:
One reporter suggested that after such good luck, she should buy a lottery ticket.
Excellent.
I haven’t found any follow-up stories so we don’t know much about the pilot who survived this:
We know he’s a San Diego resident but don’t know his name. He was taken to a hospital “for treatment of significant but apparently not life-threatening trauma.”
We know that, according to the CHP, “Alcohol or drugs were not considered a factor in the crash at this time.”
We don’t know if the cause of the crash was a pilot error, mechanical failure, both, or neither.
We don’t know if the pilot was trying to land on the I-8 freeway – as some articles have suggested – or if he had another option in mind.
We don’t know where the pilot was coming from or headed to.
We don’t know if the excellent landing was due to the pilot’s skills, a copious amount of good luck, or both.
But considering that aircraft crashes in San Diego County neighborhoods seem to be a regular – and often fatal – occurrence, according to an NBC 7 San Diego recently aired story with these statistics:
And considering that one of those crashes took place this past October in Santee, about three miles away from El Cajon…
And that Santee crash killed the pilot, and a UPS driver who was months away from retirement; several others were injured; two homes were destroyed…
There are some traditions I think we should terminate.
One in the presidential pardon for turkeys.
I don’t pardoning mean these turkeys:
I mean pardoning these turkeys:
Here’s another tradition I think we should terminate:
There were two catalysts for this post:
First, today is Labor Day, that end-of-summer holiday when many people are having houseguests or are houseguests.
And second, a recent Dear Abby letter in which the writer described the annual two-week visit from her brother and his wife:
“She is rude, nags my brother and asks him if he has showered, changed his underwear, etc. She treats him like a child, and ‘reminds’ everyone else how smart she is…She expects everyone to wait on her because of the distance they’ve traveled. We feel three days is long enough. How do I tell them without hard feelings this not an acceptable length of time to stay?”
Abby wimped out and said, in part:
“Tell your brother and his wife that while you love them, you are unable to accommodate them for longer than three days and, if they wish to stay in your city longer than that, they will need to arrange other accommodations.”
“…and stick to your guns without arguing or explaining further.”
While I agree with Abby’s last sentence, instead of all that “unable to accommodate” stuff, I will offer this response:
“We don’t do houseguests anymore.”
Five words: Simple, direct and honest.
Or, if you feel the need to soften the shock of your response, add a preface:
“We’d love to see you, but…”
The BUT is critical.
And so is this:
There must be NO pause between the “you” and “but.”
No chance for them to interrupt.
Say it like this:
To that response many would cry…
Did you?
When I said “We don’t do houseguests anymore” was your first reaction that I was wrong or selfish or something equally bad, and/or that’s not what nice people say, and/or everyone has houseguests because that’s what people do?
Yes, that’s what people do, and that’s why houseguest horror stories abound:
When I googled “houseguest horror stories” I got more than a million results.
But we continue to have houseguests because…because…
Here’s why:
The worst reason to do anything.
How could you possibly say “No” your parents, your siblings, other family members, your best friend, your sort-of friends, your not-really-friends but they’re going to visit your city, your neighbors from when you lived next door before you moved seven years ago, a person you’ve never met but he’s a relative of the neighbors from when you lived next door…
We say “Yes” because…
Otherwise, they’ll think we don’t love them. Or…
Otherwise, they won’t love us anymore. Or…
Otherwise, they’ll think we’re bad people.
Otherwise schmotherwise.
I was going to start this sentence with “The worst houseguests are…”
But I can’t decide which is the worst.
How about the cousins you haven’t seen in years who are in town to take their four kids to the nearby theme park?
They show up at your front door – no call, no text, no heads-up of any kind, and:
“Hi! I’m your cousin Louise, remember me? We’re in town to go to WunderWorld and I just remembered you live here, so we cancelled our hotel reservations and…can we come in?”
Or the people who call and invite themselves to your place for 10 days? You spinelessly succumb, and politely say…
“Well! Now that we’ve settled the dates, what do you like for breakfast? Coffee? Juice? Toast?… Oh? You like Eggs Benedict? With fresh Hollandaise sauce? And…what’s that? You said your girlfriend does too, but she’ll want vegan? Vegan Eggs Benedict? And…champagne? Did you say champagne?”
And then there are the houseguests who – no surprise here – are also the biggest liars:
“We won’t be any trouble, I promise! You’ll barely know we’re there!”
And the last part is true. They’ll be nowhere in sight when it’s time to do the dishes or pick up the tab at a restaurant. But they’ll definitely make their presence felt when shortly after they arrive, they advise that they’re accustomed to having clean sheets and towels…
Every day.
OK. I have decided on my ultimate worst. My ultimate horror story of…
In my very first blog post back in May 2017, I recounted a pre- “We-don’t-do-houseguests-anymore” story of a girlfriend who asked if she and her Significant Other could say for one night.
I didn’t want houseguests, but I was spineless and said “Yes” (excuse: she’s a close friend) and so they arrived.
And it was fine – we had pizza and salad delivered, we chatted, the evening wound down, and we said good night.
And I ended up like this:
Not because my houseguests were snoring – though that would have been bad enough.
But rather because my friend and her Significant Other – in the bedroom right next to mine – were having egregiously loud sex, complete with groans, moans, “Oh, Gods!” and a variety of other sound effects.
The noise seemed to go on forever.
Then…the big crescendo. A few more “Oh, Gods!”
And finally…silence.
I was furious.
They were guests in my home for ONE night – and they couldn’t refrain for just ONE night?
Or at least…have sex without the sound effects?
Apparently not.
When they left the next day, them thanking us profusely for the lovely visit, and me, smiling and struggling mightily not to give them the Evil Eye for disturbing my sleep…
That’s when I decided:
When houseguests arrive, you can no longer be yourself. You have to be upbeat and cheerful, even when you’re feeling neither. When they recount their trip to the local zoo with 133 accompanying pictures, you have to be enthused and impressed, even when you’re feeling neither.
And when your houseguest arrives with his dog in tow – the dog he hadn’t mentioned he was bringing – you warmly welcome him and his dog, even when you’re feeling warmth toward neither.
I say:
No more…
And I invite you to join me in putting out the Unwelcome mat:
The two guys in the above image should look like they’re ready to party-hearty.
It was a big day and should have been a happy occasion.
Instead, the guy on left – arms crossed, tense, with a surly – even belligerent – expression, does not look like he’s about to don a party hat and hoist a brewski.
The guy on the right – shoulders bowed, eyes lowered – looks like he’s reading a eulogy at his best friend’s funeral.
It was Monday, August 29.
The men are San Diego State University (SDSU) head football coach Brady Hoke (left), and athletic director John David Wicker.
The occasion was a news conference ahead of the Saturday, September 3 start of SDSU’s 100th football season – certainly something to celebrate.
And the game will be played in SDSU’s brand-new $310 million Snapdragon Stadium:
Yet another reason to celebrate.
But Hoke and Wicker weren’t celebrating:
In fact, Hoke looked as if he was about to leap off his chair and throttle the reporter who’s asking a question.
Hoke and Wicker didn’t like the questions that reporters were asking.
The reporters were asking about a local story that’s now gone national:
“Gang rape allegation.”
Gang rape allegations against members of SDSU’s football team.
As the reporters persisted, Hoke and Wicker abruptly got up and walked out of the news conference:
Guys, great example you’re setting for the SDSU students who look to you for leadership.
Instead of answering the tough questions, you ducked them.
When the going got tough, the tough got going – out the door.
According to this story:
“Monday’s sit-down with Wicker, Hoke and several reporters started with Wicker and Hoke issuing statements regarding the allegations. A school official said the two men would not take questions about the incident, but would talk about football and the upcoming season.”
“But after the statement, the news conference grew heated, with reporters repeatedly asking questions about who knew what about the alleged rape and when, and why the school did not move to address the matter internally. Wicker and Hoke then walked out.
“About 15 minutes later, Wicker returned and answered questions related to the allegations.”
I’ll give Wicker some – but not a lot of – credit for returning.
What are the allegations against the SDSU football players?
That multiple SDSU football players gang raped a 17-year-old girl in October 2021.
According to the Union-Tribune:
“News of the rape allegations became public when the Los Angeles Times broke the story in June.”
Much of the media attention is focused on – and suggesting a possible SDSU cover-up of – the alleged gang rape. Of prioritizing protection of its football team over the possible harm done by some of its players.
When questions about that were raised at the August 29 news conference, Hoke and Wicker walked out.
That story made headlines, too:
Not a good look.
And at the big game on Saturday, if reporters ask Hoke and Wicker more of those #&@!#%!* questions…
Will they walk out again?
This story will continue to play out in the local, national and international media for months.
It’s got all the elements of headline news: a high-profile football team, big money involved, alleged gang rape of an underage girl by multiple football players…
And as that happens, I hope San Diego State University will put on a better face than the two the guys whose first impulse, when they couldn’t stand the heat…
I’m $103.46 better off, and not because these companies raised their hand and offered me the money.
I had to ask.
I was not satisfied with two online transactions, but I could have shrugged and decided, “Oh, well, I’ll just live with it.”
Or, “It’s not worth the hassle.”
Or, “I don’t have time for this.”
No.
I won’t just “live with it,” it is “worth the hassle” and I’ll find the time.
First: DoorDash.
My husband and I have ordered meals with DoorDash a few times and been happy with the results, but this last time – three strikeouts.
Three items were missing from the order.
Three items!
We ate the rest of the meal, and I could have left it at that.
Happy Bear!
Instead, I went online and “chatted” with a DoorDash representative. To their credit – no hassle. They offered a $40.68 DoorDash credit toward my next order, which was significantly more than I’d imagined.
I gladly accepted.
If I hadn’t asked – no $40.68 credit.
Second: Amazon.
Happy Bear!
A $62.78 credit from Amazon was a different story.
A professional acquaintance sent us a gift he’d purchased through Amazon. We couldn’t use it, so I went through the Amazon return process, which in this instance – like earlier instances – was very easy.
Then I waited for the credit to show up on my Amazon account.
And waited.
And waited.
I went on the Amazon website and spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to talk to a customer service person. Somehow I found it, and then all I had to do was click a button and my phone rang a minute later.
Not-So-Happy-Bear.
The customer service person was very pleasant, but also adamant that the credit would be issued to the sender, not the receiver.
This was not right, and I knew it wasn’t right.
We went back and forth about this, including at one point, my saying, “If the sender had ordered the gift from Macy’s and I walked into Macy’s and returned it, then Macy’s would give me a refund. Are you saying this is not Amazon’s policy?”
Really-Not-Happy Bear.
She insisted it was not.
I insisted that the refund should come to me.
I don’t know if she just got sick of my insistence, or if it was coffee break time, or what, but she asked if she could put me on hold.
A few minutes later she came back on and advised that the $62.78 would be credited to my Amazon account.
Happy Bear!
If I hadn’t asked, nicely at first, and then…
So – one online chat, one conversation:
Total back in my pocket: $103.46.
Ask and you shall receive…
By now I’m…
Loaded for bear, as they say, and it’s a good thing – I have another Amazon return, this time for items that I purchased.
Back story:
I ordered three packages of undershirts for my husband, and specified the size. I didn’t notice that the seller was “Star Hills” – I rarely notice the seller’s name.
Amazon charged my credit card for the purchase.
Not-So-Happy Bear.
When my order hadn’t arrived 13 days later, I decided to cancel and look elsewhere. I went online and typed in my cancellation request, and received this reply from Amazon:
“I sent your message to Star Hills. Give the seller a couple days to respond. If you haven’t heard back from Star Hills in 48 hours, or if they haven’t been able to help you, please contact us again.”
Hmmm.
I hadn’t had this experience with Amazon before – telling me I’d be contacted by a seller?
So I waited.
The next day, Star Hills responded:
“Dear Buyer, It seems like a lost shipment. Would you like a replacement sent asap? Kindly advise.”
I immediately responded, “Yes, please send a replacement asap.”
Not-So-Happy Bear
I waited.
And waited.
Nine days later, when my order still hadn’t arrived, I requested a cancellation and refund.
Instead, Star Hills sent me tracking information and it appeared that the order would arrive the next day, which it did.
Really-Not-Happy Bear.
Twenty-four days after I’d placed my order.
And the order was wrong.
There were two packages of undershirts instead of the three I ordered, and they were all the wrong size.
So, I went through the Amazon return process again, and this time Amazon accepted my return request.
Happy Bear!
Now I’m on my way to the UPS store to drop off the undershirts.
From here on in, it should all be easy-peasy, right?
Right.
Except…
The paperwork indicates I’m returning three packages of undershirts, and I’m returning only two – which is all I’d received, and all that Star Hills is going to receive.
I learn a lot every time I research a blog post topic, and here’s something that I believe is true:
There are such extremes in the art world that the phrase from the sublime to the ridiculous is completely appropriate.
The sublime, for example, was a mid-July story about the discovery of a previously unknown van Gogh self-portrait discovered on the back of another van Gogh painting.
The ridiculous, for me, is just about anything connected to the world of contemporary art, like a recent story from this and many other sources:
Yes, you read the headline correctly.
Welcome to Michael Lett, “a contemporary art gallery in Auckland, New Zealand” according to the gallery’s Facebook page.
As the story goes, an Australian guy who considers himself an artist named Matthew Griffin ordered a McDonald’s cheeseburger, walked into Michael Lett Gallery, took out a pickle from his burger, and flung it onto the gallery’s ceiling:
Fine Arts, Sydney – the gallery that represents Griffin – refers to this as a “sculpture” in their press release.
I know this image of the press release is impossible to read, so I’ve enlarged the important part:
The sculpture’s title – showing very creative thinking here – is:
Pickle
The Fine Arts, Sydney gallery explains:
“The show includes four new works by each of the four artists the gallery represents, each exhibited for the first time. The themes these works touch upon, including Pickle, are related to transience, distance, and time. From here, flinging the pickle from the ground up is an example of distance.”
I know that when I first saw this image:
The thought that immediately came to my mind was, “Distance! Yes, of course!” and I’m sure that’s true for you, too.
Actually, the thought that came to my mind was…
#@!*&!#%…?
Here’s yet another so-called contemporary artist creating his so-called contemporary art, and being treated as though he has credibility, if the price tag on this “sculpture” is anything to go by:
That’s $10,000 in New Zealand dollars.
And what do you get for your $6,275/$10,000?
Not Griffin’s Pickle, according to this story:
“…any purchaser of the work won’t receive the exact pickle from the exhibit but will be given ‘instructions on how to recreate the art in their own space.’”
So you give “artist” Matthew Griffin $6,275/$10,000 and he says,
“Go to McDonald’s, buy a cheeseburger, go home, extract a pickle from the cheeseburger, and throw it at the ceiling.”
See Matthew Griffin. See Matthew Griffin pictured right. See Matthew Griffin pictured right, laughing all the way to the bank.
Lest you think the art world isn’t taking Pickle seriously, let’s hear from Ryan Moore, the director of Fine Arts Sydney, the gallery that represents the pickle flinger:
“‘People don’t have to think it’s art if they don’t want to. Anything can be an artwork, but not everything is,’ he told news.com.au. ‘What makes an artwork is when whatever an artist makes or does is able to be used as art: when the object or action is thought about or talked about as an artwork. And that’s what we are doing here, which I think is great.’”
I’m sure Moore thinks his commission on this $6,275/$10,000 “sculpture” would be “great,” too.
Here are some additional enlightening comments from Moore about Pickle:
“…a deliberately ‘provocative gesture’ designed to question what has value…’”
“…questions ‘the way value and meaning is generated between people.’”
Reminder: What he’s talking about here is a pickle, clinging to the ceiling with nothing but the assorted sauces and inherent stickiness it was served with.
“Generally speaking, artists aren’t the ones deciding whether something is art is not – they are the ones who make and do things. Whether something is valuable and meaningful as artwork is the way that we collectively, as a society, choose to use it or talk about it.
“As much as this looks like a pickle attached to the ceiling – and there is no artifice there, that is exactly what it is – there is something in the encounter with that as a sculpture or a sculptural gesture.”
The “gesture” that comes to my mind involves my middle finger, but I’ll let that go for now.
And here’s the last of gallery director Moore’s insights:
“It’s not about the virtuosity of the artist standing there in the gallery throwing it to the ceiling – how it gets there doesn’t matter, as long as someone takes it out of the burger and flicks it on to the ceiling.”
Let’s thank Ryan Moore for providing us with many examples of artspeak, and if you want to know more about that, just google “artspeak sucks” and this and other articles will clarify:
“True artspeak is impenetrable to any sane person, who will recognize it as words arranged nonsensically and purported to be profound. People don’t know what artspeak means, because artspeak means nothing.”
And how about reactions from people who speak intelligible English, rather than artspeak?
Reviews of Pickle – as the Newshub headline suggested – have been mixed. According to this article:
Pickle viewer comments included:
“I got kicked out of a McDonald’s by the police for doing this when I was a teenager, now it’s art.”
“That thing is going to leave a nasty stain on the ceiling.”
It appears that the nay-sayers were outnumbered by Pickle lovers:
“…many praised the artist for his brilliant work with one simply calling it ‘superb’ and another saying ‘love it.’”
“One commenter added: ‘I’m siding with the genius crowd on this. Genius.’”
“Another added: ‘I hate pickles. I love this.’”
At this time, it’s unknown if anyone purchased Pickle.
Or rather, purchased the right to be “given instructions on how to recreate the art in their own space.”
Now…
Before you book your plane tickets for Auckland, New Zealand to visit the Michael Lett gallery and view Pickle…
The exhibition closed on July 30.
But – to help alleviate your disappointment, a reminder:
Your space has ceilings, and your town has McDonald’s, and McDonald’s has cheeseburgers, and cheeseburgers have pickles, and that leaves us with just one burning question…
Are you, like me, having trouble finding good excuses about why you were late for work?
The old excuses of traffic, weather, being arrested, etc. just not working for you anymore?
Well, NASA has now given me new language for being late to work:
This came from a story about NASA’s Artemis 1 which, according to many online articles like this one from CNBC…
“Artemis is the name of NASA’s lunar program. It represents a series of missions for which the agency is developing its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule, which would deliver astronauts to the moon. Boeing is the lead contractor building SLS, while Lockheed Martin is leading Orion development.”
The mission of Artemis is to put the U.S. astronauts back on the moon for the first time since 1972.
It was begun by NASA in 2012 and scheduled to launch in 2017.
Now, according to this article:
“The space agency is aiming for a lunar-orbiting flight with astronauts in two years and a lunar landing by a human crew as early as 2025.”
See? Artemis launch delayed from 2017 to 2022. This is what NASA calls a…
So I’ve got my new late-to-work excuse ready for next time:
“Ms. Colby, I had a schedule slip this morning.”
She’ll be so awed by my originality, she’ll probably give me a raise.
Otherwise, I can’t say I’ve learned much of anything from NASA except how to waste money, and I’ll reference Artemis 1 for that, as well:
“Paul Martin told a congressional subcommittee today that each of the first four Artemis missions will cost $4.1 billion and projected the agency will spend $53 billion on Artemis from FY2021-2025.”
“That does not include development costs. His office projects the total cost for Artemis from FY2012, when the Space Launch System (SLS) program began, through FY2025 will be $93 billion. Of that, $53 billion is for FY2021-2025.”
Wait.
There is something more to learn from NASA.
Specifically, that the above-mentioned Paul Martin said each of the four missions will cost “$4.1 billion,” and that “$93 billion” total…
With a straight face:
NASA Inspector General Paul Martin.
Martin’s straight face is especially impressive, considering the first of the four Artemis 1 missions – which is supposed to launch Monday, August 29 – is unmanned. Again, according to the AP article:
“No one will be inside the crew capsule atop the rocket, just three mannequins swarming with sensors to measure radiation and vibration.”
So instead of sending humans, we’re paying $4.1 billion for three dummies to go on this dress rehearsal?
Shouldn’t there be some kind of discount for no humans on board?
And can I pick the dummies? I’ll start with this guy:
Elon Musk being a space enthusiast, and all.
And a dumb idiot, and all…
At that same hearing NASA Inspector General Martin also…
“…pointed to ‘varying degrees of technical risk that will push launch schedules from months to years’ beyond current plans, leading to his estimate that the first return to the Moon ‘likely will slip to 2026 at the earliest.’”
Now the 2025 astronauts-on-the-moon launch “likely will slip to 2026 at the earliest”:
Armed with my well-rehearsed straight face, I’ll say:
“And Ms. Colby, my arrival time tomorrow will likely slip to noon at the earliest.”
This is good stuff I’m learning.
Here’s another Artemis-related article and more good stuff to learn:
This goes back to November 2021 and NASA Administrator/Head Honcho Bill Nelson…
…who was explaining that “bumps” in the above AP headline as follows:
“Congress did not provide enough money to develop a landing system for its Artemis moon program and more money is needed for its Orion capsule.”
Here we’ve got a combination straight-face-and-more-money request:
“Ms. Colby, this company does not provide enough money for me to live in the lifestyle to which I could become accustomed, and more money is needed…”
NASA Administrator Nelson also “made note of China’s ambitious and aggressive space program, and warned it could overtake the U.S. in lunar exploration.”
Way to go, Bill!
Blame China for needing tons more money for Artemis 1!
Why not? We blame China for everything – the mega-billion-dollar trade deficit, building better high-speed rail systems, for hogging all the pandas…
Yeah! Blame China!
“Ms. Colby, my schedule slip this morning was due to vomiting up the three-week-old leftover Chinese food I ate for dinner last night.”
By now you may have gathered that I am not a NASA fan.
Or NA$A, as I like to spell it.
I don’t deny that there’s much to learn beyond the confines of our planet, but $93 billion to put astronauts on the moon?
Hell, we’ve already done that a half-dozen times…
But – $93 billion taxpayer dollars aside, I have learned lots of good stuff from NASA.
And if NASA Administrator Bill Nelson can say this with a straight face:
“NASA is committed to help restore America’s standing in the world.”
I’m confident that I can now say, straight-faced:
“Ms. Colby, I’m committed to help restore America’s standing in the world, and that requires my taking the rest of the week off to get started.”
I don’t recall the first time I saw Diane Keaton in a movie, but I do recall how unimpressed I was.
Keaton’s hat is from her self-named clothing line.
Since then, I haven’t seen a movie because Keaton was in it, but rather despite that.
My impression of the characters Keaton has chosen to play include words like shallow. And vacuous. And ditzy. Same character, over and over again.
And inevitably, there would be a scene in the movie – often more than one – where an actor would ask Keaton’s character a simple question, and her response was this or some version of it:
Actor: Do you want a salad?
Keaton: Oh! Well…hmmm. Y-e-s-s, but, uh…Well, I…I…don’t…I…well. You know? I, ah…no, but I…well…maybe if…hmmm? OK. OK! I mean, maybe, unless…I…uh…What?
Pity the poor actor who then had to ask what she wanted for an entrée.
So I didn’t like Keaton’s acting, and…
And what’s with the hats? Are these some sort of trademark? Some reminder to all of Keaton’s…what? Endearing eccentricity? Wonderful sense of whimsy? Forgetting to wash her hair?
I hadn’t seen Keaton in quite awhile – which was fine with me – and then she appeared at my Sunday breakfast table, included with my newspaper on the cover of a recent Parade magazine.
No hat this time, but with her hair looking like it had been styled at the nearby wind farm:
No need to waste time on Keaton’s interview. I’ve seen her interviewed and she’s as shallow and vacuous and ditzy in person as she is on screen.
“Well,” I thought, “I can skip this issue of Parade.”
And I mostly did, except to page through it because I do like to read the weekly Ask Marilyn Q&A by Marilyn vos Savant.
And on my way to Marilyn, something in the upper-right corner of page seven caught my eye.
And gave me yet another reason to dislike Diane Keaton.
Two reasons, actually.
In the Keaton article was a sidebar entitled Keaton Cues, and here was the first “cue”:
Interviewer: “Fashion must-have?”
Keaton: “Turtleneck. My neck is disgusting, and I hate it. But I don’t want to chop it off because I want to stay alive!”
Dislike #1: Keaton has just engaged in…
Body shaming: the action or practice of humiliating someone by making mocking or critical comments about some aspect of their appearance.
Dislike #2: Keaton has just engaged in the worst kind of body shaming:
When Keaton referred to her neck, I assume she’s referring to the fact that as a 76-year-old woman, her neck has transitioned from how it once looked to how it looks now. This is a part of aging for many women:
It’s just a fact of life. We age, our skin ages and can lose elasticity, muscles can weaken, gravity can play a role.
And the neck can be the first, and most noticeable, place it shows.
So Keaton is self-shaming her body for showing signs of aging (Dislike #2) and in a larger sense, suggesting that all women with aging necks should feel likewise (Dislike #1).
What she’s saying is,
“My neck is disgusting and yours is, too, and I hate my neck, and you should hate yours, too.”
Referring to part of her body as “disgusting” instead of…
Celebrating that she’s had 76 years of life – which many people don’t get to have…
Appreciating that she’s still appearing in movies – when most actresses her age were discarded by Hollywood long ago…
Expressing gratitude that she’s rich, and doesn’t have to choose between paying for food or paying for her medications…
Keaton instead felt compelled to share with the Parade magazine readers – an audience that ranges from 50-80 million, depending on what website you’re reading – that her aging neck is “disgusting…”
And your aging neck is, too.
And you should hate it, too.
I suppose that maybe we should applaud Keaton for demonstrating her firm grasp of the obvious with her final sentence:
“But I don’t want to chop it off because I want to stay alive!”
Well done, Diane. You’ve connected the dots and comprehended that chopping off one’s neck is not conducive to staying alive.
But you sure don’t comprehend that an aging body is the privilege of a continuing life.
Not disgusting.
Not hate worthy.
Well…
This really goes against the grain, but I suppose that maybe Keaton deserves a second chance.
Let’s hit the rewind button and ask her again about her “fashion must-have,” and see if she can come up with a better answer.
Me: “Diane, what is your fashion-must have, and this time, without the body shaming of yourself and others?”
Keaton: Oh! Well…hmmm. Y-e-s-s, but, uh…Well, I…I…don’t…I…well. You know? I, ah…no, but I…well…maybe if…hmmm? OK. OK! I mean, maybe, unless…I…uh…
Older people are swindled out of more than $3 billion each year.
More than 3.5 million older adults are victims of financial exploitation each year.
Seniors targeted by fraudsters suffer an average loss of $34,200.
I’m reasonably certain these statistics do not include seniors targeted by this fraudster:
According to Ballotpedia.org:
“Save America is a leadership PAC (political action committee) created by President Donald Trump on November 9, 2020, following the 2020 presidential election.”
This article:
States that:
“Former U.S. President Donald Trump raised $250 million in donations in the weeks after the November 2020 presidential election for an organization ostensibly intended to fund court challenges in support of his false claims that the election was fraudulent. Instead, he directed that money to an unrelated political action committee, or PAC, according to congressional investigators.”
“The committee said some of the money Trump’s campaign raised in the weeks after the election went to paying down campaign debt and into the coffers of the Republican National Committee. A large amount also went to a new leadership PAC called Save America, which was formed three days after the election.”
“It was grift, pure and simple, but on a massive scale,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, in a prepared statement. “Donald Trump was not content to just ignore the will of the American people and attempt to steal the 2020 election in a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy. He was determined to make a lot of money doing it.”
And many of those “American people,” according to this article:
Are “retirees” like the couple pictured above.
The scammed couple pictured above.
And the money continues to pour into Save America from retirees, and people of all ages.
OpenSecrets.org states that as of June 30, 2022, Trump’s Save America PAC had raised almost $104 million in 2021-2022.
Let’s do the math: $104 million divided by 20 months.
That’s averages out to $5.2 million per month.
Most – perhaps all – of those donors think they’re supporting Trump’s bid for the White House in 2024. They believe he’s their man, the only man who can Make America Great Again, the only man who can SAVE AMERICA. And even if it’s only $5 or $20 or $30, they’ll give what they can to help Trump win.
They donate money, and they also buy stuff like this:
Here’s the problem:
Trump isn’t running for president in 2024.
Not yet.
And until Trump declares that he’s running for president in 2024, he can spend the Save America PAC money pretty much any damn way he wants to.
And he is.
A sampling from this article:
“The money in the Save America PAC, unlike money contributed to a standard campaign committee, can be used to benefit Trump in innumerable ways. Memberships at golf clubs. Travel. Rallies. Even payments directly to Trump himself, as long as he declares it as income.”
From Politico:
“According to Save America PAC’s new filing, tens of thousands of dollars were paid to law firms representing top Trump aides who have gotten subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the January 6 riots on Capitol Hill.”
In addition…
“Out of $1.35 million the PAC spent on ‘like-minded causes and endorsed candidates,’ $1 million went to former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows’ new nonprofit organization, the Conservative Partnership Institute.”
And back to the June 14, 2022 Washington Post article, and more Save America spending:
$1 million to the America First Policy Institute, an organization that aims to be the core advocate for Trump’s political vision.
More than $200,000 to hotels owned by the Trump Organization.
$5 million to the company that ran Trump’s January 6 rally outside the White House.
I wonder what Kimberly gets paid to act as this guy’s babysitter?
The article goes on to note:
“Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle (pictured), ‘was paid for the introduction she gave at the speech on January 6. She received compensation for that’ – to the tune of $60,000. The speech was a little more than two minutes long.”
Did George and Linda Smith know the money they took from their retirement savings was going toward paying Kimberly Guilfoyle close to $30,000 per minute to speak?
I doubt it.
I also doubt that the Smiths know about this recent Save America spending:
“Donald Trump’s Save America political action committee…gave $60,000 to a fashion designer associated with former First Lady Melania Trump.
“USA Today reported that according to the Federal Elections Commission, from April 7 to June 24 of this year the Save America PAC made six payments totaling $60,000 to Hervé Pierre Braillard, the French designer who styled Melania during the Trump presidency.
“…nearly 2.5 million people donated to the Save America PAC, which formed just days after Joe Biden’s victory. Of those 2.5 million, two-thirds of them stated their occupation as retired. Instead of cracking down on voter fraud, however, some of the retirees’ money was used to settle the bill with a fashion designer.”
I wonder if ole Hervé is the one who “styled” this memorable garment of Melania’s:
I’m betting that Save America also paid for this recent update:
“It appears that Trump’s 757 is airworthy and ready for campaigning once again…the substitution of the ‘T’ for the American flag on the tail gives us a good clue that Trump is not ready to step away from political life.”
Here’s the new paint job with the flag on the tail:
The article is referencing Trump’s Boeing 757 that he narcissistically calls “Trump Force One.” It’s the plane he used during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Back in 2021, the plane that, according to this article:
“…today it sits idle on an airport ramp in Orange County, New York, about 60 miles north of Manhattan…One engine is missing parts. The other is shrink-wrapped in plastic.”
“Flight records accessed by CNN show the 757 hasn’t been flown at all since Inauguration Day.”
That would be Inauguration Day, 2016.
At some point, Trump decided off with the old and on with the new, and in March 2022 we learned this:
Trump’s Save America PAC blasted a question to supporters:
“DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE NEW TRUMP FORCE ONE?”
“‘Do you remember Trump Force One?’ the email reads. ‘Before becoming the greatest President of all time, I traveled the Country in my plane, known as Trump Force One. I have a very important update on my plane but I need to trust that you won’t share it with anyone: my team is building a BRAND NEW Trump Force One.’”
The article noted, “The box making a donation recur month-to-month was pre-checked.”
(In Trump World, the box making a donation recur month-to-month is always pre-checked.)
Did George and Linda Smith and others donate towards Trump’s new plane?
The above July 2022 Live and Let’s Fly article says now it’s back on with the old plane, and forget about “building” the new one.
Estimated cost to fix the old plane: high six figures.
This begs the question:
Trump has now spiffed up his old plane, so what happened to the money that George and Linda Smith and others donated back in March to buy him a “BRAND NEW Trump Force One”?
Maybe the Save American PAC repurposed the money to update the old plane?
Because after all, says the December 2020 Washington Post article:
“‘…there’s no prohibition on how they use the money.’”
“Donors to the committee, of course, probably don’t know any of this. Yes, there’s some fine print once you get to the contribution page explaining that the money given will go to Save America up to a certain point, but the impression one gets from the campaign’s voluminous emails is that the money will go to Trump’s dubious efforts to wrench a second term from the jaws of electoral defeat.
“What has obviously happened so far is Trump and his team have figured out a way to parlay his base’s concerns about the election – concerns Trump has been hyping for months – into a well-stocked bank account with few limitations on how it is used.”
And let’s not overlook this:
The day after the Department of Justice – with a valid search warrant – entered Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, Trump’s Save America PAC sent an email with this headline,
“BREAKING: THE FBI RAIDED PRESIDENT TRUMP’S HOME: MAR-A-LAGO”
Only Trump and his toadies would figure out how to monetize Trump’s criminal acts.
The email included that personal touch, without which no Trump communication would be complete:
“Please rush in a donation IMMEDIATELY to publicly stand with me against this NEVERENDING WITCH HUNT.”
And – unfortunately – people do keep rushing in donations:
People like George and Linda Smith.
The next time they and others like them walk over to their computer or pick up their phones and see this or something like it…
…will they reach for their credit cards and checkbooks?
It makes me sad to think how many nice people – retired and otherwise – are continuing to get scammed by the greatest con man of all times.
(On August 17 Part I of this post began as a California issue, but it turns out – this problem is nationwide.)
Gas and oil well owners just walk away from their wells, and somehow we taxpayers are responsible for cleaning up their mess?
Yes, says this article:
“When oil and gas companies go bankrupt or stop taking care of their equipment, their wells fall into the state’s hands.”
This makes no sense to me.
I wondered if all these wells were on state lands, and since states issue drilling permits, in some twisted way that makes the states (and the state taxpayers) responsible?
Not so.
In this story:
We meet a guy in Wyoming named Bill West. There are “more than a hundred defunct natural gas wells on his 10,000-acre property.”
Two decades ago West gave a Michigan-based company permission to drill for coalbed methane on their land. “We got quite a lot of money out of it, lease money,” said West.
Orphan well, Wyoming.
The wells changed hands, and the company that bought the wells – High Plains Gas, Inc. – went out of business four years ago, leaving behind fuse boxes, internet boxes and thousands of feet of underground pipe.
West made a lot of money from the drilling on his property, so surely he’s now responsible for at least some of the mess, right?
Wrong.
“‘They just walked away and left everything sitting,’ said West. It’s up to the state to take care of it now.’
What’s wrong with this picture?
The NPR article quote Jill Morrison, executive director of the Powder River Basin Resource Council, an environmental group in Wyoming:
“‘…the industry has not been held accountable by the regulators and by the government to pay the cost of doing business.’
“‘We’re going to quickly be in the tens of millions of dollars responsible for plugging and reclaiming oil and gas wells if we don’t require upfront bonding,’ she said.”
Orphan well, Louisiana.
“That means making companies pay the full cost of plugging wells even before they start drilling.”
In other words, when companies get a permit to drill, they should pay a hefty bond that covers the cost of plugging and reclaiming the well. If they plug the well themselves, they get the money back. If they don’t, the state would have the money on hand to do the job.
The companies are – of course – opposed to this idea.
You and I are handed the tab.
My takeaways?
First: I did not know there were 35,000 orphaned gas and oil wells in California. I didn’t know that some of them are leaking methane. I didn’t know that when that happens, other chemicals like benzene, a known carcinogen, and volatile organic compounds that are the building blocks of smog, are also often being emitted.
Second: California taxpayers (but NOT just California taxpayers – keep reading) appear to be on the hook for fixing this mess. According to the earlier Associated Press article:
Orphan well, Kansas.
“In June, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a budget that includes participation in a global effort to slash emissions call the Methane Accountability Project. The state will spend $100 million to use satellites to track large methane leaks in order to help the state identify sources of the gas and cap leaks.”
Um…excuse me? The “state” will spend $100 million?
No.
The state taxpayers will spend.
In addition, says the Associated Press article,
“A new [California] Senate proposal would provide hundreds of millions of dollars to plug wells and reduce pollution from them, especially in hard-hit communities.”
Just put it on my tab.
Third: Orphaned oil and gas wells aren’t unique to California – they’re all over the country:
According to this news release:
“The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are 3.3 million abandoned wells around the country that are orphaned or idle.”
Enter your federal tax dollars!
This news release says the federal government…
“…has allocated $4.7 billion for orphaned well site plugging, remediation, and restoration activities.”
That would be $4.7 billion of our tax dollars allocated to 26 states to “address orphan wells” that you and I didn’t create, didn’t profit from, but somehow are responsible for.
And it appears we are responsible, because if we don’t clean up the orphan wells that the companies abandoned…
Then some, or many, of the estimated three million+ orphan wells in this country will keep on leaking methane and other gases into the air, increasing climate change; causing health problems and even death; and possibly causing explosions.
Bad for climate change, bad for our health…
And bad for this homeowner:
According to the story, a man named Bruce George owned three abandoned natural gas wells in Bradford, PA.
In February 2011, according to the Department of Environmental Protection’s investigation, one of the wells, about 300 feet from the home, caused an explosion.
The explosion destroyed the home.
Fortunately, homeowner Thomas Federspiel was outside of his home.
And at least – in this rare case – the abandoned wells owner was held accountable.
And perhaps more companies will be held accountable by states, starting with Colorado:
“Oil and gas companies in Colorado will now have more financial responsibility to plug aging wells and remove contaminants from surrounding areas under new rules approved by state regulators this week.
“It’s the first overhaul of the financial assurance process for oil and gas companies in decades, according to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which unanimously passed the rules Tuesday. The commission requires oil and gas companies drilling in Colorado to secure bonds as a guarantee to plug wells that are no longer being used.
Orphan well, Colorado.
“In a statement, Commission Chair Jeff Robbins called the regulations, ‘a model that is now the most robust in the country with by far the highest financial assurance requirements.’”
So – circling back around to my home state…
Heads up, California – Colorado is way out in front here.
In this situation, Colorado is proving itself the most proactive, forward-thinking, lead-the-way, first-in-the-nation state.
Not only is California not measuring the amount of methane gas leaking from orphan wells, now it’s lagging behind Colorado in addressing future wells issues.
The story above about Colorado is hopeful news, going forward.
But what about those millions of abandoned wells already in the U.S.?
I’ve lived in other places, and I know this is the right match for me.
And I’m glad I live in California, the super-blue state.
One reason I’m glad is because California considers itself a forward-thinking, proactive state. And it does, in fact, often lead the way, becoming the “first in the nation” as these examples show:
And when it comes to climate change, we like to think we’re leading the way there as well. For instance:
Anything climate-related, California considers itself front and center.
And in May, when Governor Newsom proposed a budget:
It included a:
“$47.1 billion climate commitment – an increase of $32 billion this year – to tackle pollution, build climate resilient water supplies, reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, ensure grid reliability and accelerate clean energy solutions, and protect communities from extreme heat.”
A big “climate commitment.”
What’s not to like about that?
How about this:
“California claims to know how much climate-warming gas is going into the air from within its borders. It’s the law: California limits climate pollution and each year the limits get stricter.
“The state has also been a major oil and gas producer for more than a century, and authorities are well aware some 35,000 old, inactive oil and gas wells perforate the landscape.
“Yet officials with the agency responsible for regulating greenhouse gas emissions say they don’t include methane that leaks from these idle wells in their inventory of the state’s emissions.”
First: How can California calculate how much climate-warming gas is going into the air from within our borders if leaking wells aren’t part of the calculation?
Sounds like a Do As I Say, Not As I Do on California’s part.
Second: Why are there “35,000 old, inactive oil and gas wells” littering California’s landscape? If they’re not in use, why haven’t the oil and gas companies removed them and plugged them and done whatever else responsible owners should do?
Here’s what one of California’s inactive – often called “orphan” – wells looks like:
Now multiply that by 35,000.
Oil and gas wells are all over the state:
That’s a lot of ugly.
And, apparently, dangerous.
Let’s talk a bit about what some (perhaps many) of these orphan wells are leaking – methane gas:
Methane (CH4) is a colorless, odorless and highly flammable gas, composed of carbon and hydrogen. It is a potent greenhouse gas, meaning it affects climate change by contributing to increased warming, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Methane traps 86 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Nearly 20% of the planet’s warming can be attributed to methane.
Methane reductions are crucial to slowing today’s unprecedented rate of global warming and helping avert our most acute climate risks including crop loss, wildfires, extreme weather, and rising sea levels.
And these methane-leaking oil wells aren’t new news – according to this May 23 article:
“‘We’ve been trying to get the state to address idle orphan wells for years,’ said Maricruz Ramirez, a community organizer with the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. ‘All these issues have been brought up time and time again, and we’re sure this is not a unique occurrence among the thousands of idle oil and gas wells that go unchecked every year. The state can’t continue to drag their feet on matters like this while simultaneously preaching their climate leadership.’”
“Climate leadership”?
California touts its “$47.1 billion climate commitment” and how proactive we are about anything climate-related, yet the state is allowing methane gas to leak from abandoned wells?
So there’s the methane/climate change issue.
Orphan wells, Bakersfield, CA.
The USA Today article above also mentions methane health-related issues, including:
“…blurry vision, vomiting, headaches and in extreme cases, asphyxiation.”
Plus, there’s the possibility of the wells leaching toxins into groundwater, which is used for drinking water by close to 50 percent of the people in the U.S.
And again from the USA Today article, there’s the danger-of-explosions part:
“…the levels detected in spot readings at four of the long-dormant wells reached 50,000 parts per million – high enough to explode – within a few yards of each of those wells…”
“The real risk, the state engineer said, lies underground, with unknown amounts of methane possibly building up in tight spaces and exploding.”
That story was about six leaking oil wells Bakersfield, CA in May.
Here’s an update from June:
“A total of 21 oil wells have been found to be leaking methane in or near two Bakersfield neighborhoods, and more than two dozen are being tested by state and regional air regulators.”
The 35,000 wells are described as “abandoned” and/or “inactive,” but the “orphan” wells have “parents” – the owners – and three of them are mentioned in the article:
And yet, says the Desert Sun,
“Idled wells are a burgeoning problem in California’s century-old oil fields. A state study concluded two years ago that taxpayers could be saddled with more than $1 billion in cleanup costs if operators walk away from their responsibilities to properly plug and abandon them.
“A report released Thursday by a consumer advocacy group and a coalition of environmental justice groups concludes costs associated with the industry to the state could top $10 trillion by 2045.”
“Taxpayers could be saddled”?
Yes: And not just California taxpayers, but federal taxpayers as well.
Category: Performing Arts; Rich & Famous Biographies; Actor & Entertainer Biographies.
Review, short version: Three out of four roses.
Review, long version:
A woman and a man.
Big egos, big insecurities, big romance.
Infidelities, notoriety, divorces, abandoned families, mental illness, more infidelities, more divorces, heartbreak.
All the elements of a blockbuster movie.
But when all these elements are combined in real life…
More often than not, the outcome is…
The book is Truly, Madly: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and the Romance of the Century by Stephen Galloway.
I added the “Sadly” in my post’s title because that’s how it ends. And I already knew that, but…
It was even sadder than I’d realized.
The “Romance of the Century” in the book’s title was what the French would call une grande passion – a great passion, a can’t-keep-their-hands-off-each-other attraction between two people.
Une grande passion is très épuisant:
Very exhausting.
Vivien Leigh (1913-1967) was a British actress, famous for starring as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939).
Laurence “Larry” Olivier (1907-1989) was a British actor, famous for both his roles on stage and in films.
Their romance was not just big – it was headline-making, dramatic, loving, despairing, sometimes loud, sometimes whimpering.
And for more than two decades, millions of people found it…
Fascinating.
When they met, both Leigh and Olivier were married to others and each had a young child. They abandoned their families and ran away together, which might work well in a movie script but in real life, a lot of pain was inflicted on innocent bystanders.
But – Leigh died 55 years ago. Olivier died 33 years ago.
Why, I wondered, write a book now about these two people when – according to some online sources – nearly half the world’s population is under 30? Which means half of the people in the world were born after both Leigh and Olivier were gone, and plenty of them have never or barely heard of the actors and seen their movies?
Olivier starring in “Hamlet,” 1948.
The logical place to go for answers was author Galloway’s website, but it appears he doesn’t have one.
Next, I looked online for magazine and newspaper articles about Galloway. I found book reviews, but nothing about the why now?
I did find a 45-minute podcast, StoryBeat, on YouTube. And while Galloway did talk about Truly, Madly at length, the show host didn’t ask and Galloway didn’t say why he wrote about Leigh and Olivier.
And why now?
Galloway did offer this about Truly, Madly:
“The book was an exploration of not so much love, as passion.”
“I wanted the book to be a biography of their marriage, not two biographies.”
I guess my why now? will go unanswered.
Leigh and Olivier are tragic figures, Leigh due to suffering from bipolar disorder that was then called “manic depression.” It was little understood, there were no medications for it, and as one article put it:
Leigh in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” 1951.
“Leigh’s moods would swing from vertiginous highs to debilitating lows. During the highs, she never seemed to sleep and would indulge in extraordinary excesses, sexual and material; during the lows, she could barely function.”
Olivier’s suffering was due in part to watching Leigh suffer and being unable to help her, and also from dealing with her highs and lows. After 20 years of marriage (1940-1960), they separated, then divorced. Both continued to work, Olivier achieving much, Leigh achieving much less due at least in part to her illness.
In January 2016 during the presidential campaign, Donald Trump said,
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.”
I’m not aware of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – also known as MBS – making the same statement publicly, but apparently he believes he can also get away with murder because apparently, he has.
Jamal Khashoggi (pictured), a Saudi Arabian journalist and dissident and a columnist for the Washington Post, was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.
Less than a month later, came this:
Shortly after that, came this:
The G20 Summit in Buenos Aires, November 30-December 1, 2018, where the world’s leaders didn’t seem to mind posing with MBS:
And doing this:
Time passed, as time tends to do, and nothing changed, as it sometimes doesn’t.
Seven months later came the June 2019 G20 Summit in Japan.
Where again, the world’s leaders didn’t seem to mind posing with MBS:
And posing for more pictures:
MBS and the late Shinzo Abe, former prime minister of Japan.
And more “exchanging pleasantries”:
And more time passed.
Then came this, February 2021:
And nothing changed.
Then came July 2022:
President Biden and MBS, July 15.Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and MBS, July 26.
French President Macron and MBS, July 28.
Of the Macron handshake, according to this article:
“Rehabilitation tour”?
I doubt that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman thinks of this as a “rehabilitation tour.”
I doubt that needing “rehabilitation” has ever crossed his mind.
Because, as the Washington Post article summed it up so well:
“…the war in Ukraine and a downturn in the global economy have reaffirmed the Saudi kingdom’s status as a critical source of global energy and investment and brought world leaders pleading for assistance, including an increase in oil production.
“Macron, Biden and some other Western leaders have also argued there is no way to address global crises, such as the war in Yemen, without the help of the crown prince, who could rule Saudi Arabia for decades.”
And as for Trump committing murder…
So far he hasn’t shot someone “in the middle of Fifth Avenue.”
But he has, perhaps, gotten away with murder, too
Multiple murders.
Including this man:
The man above is Mark Urquiza of Arizona, with his daughter Kristin.
Mark was 65 with no known pre-existing conditions when he contracted COVID in June 2020. He passed away on June 30, 2020, three weeks after initially contracting the virus.
In August 2020 Kristin was a speaker at the Democratic National Convention. She said:
“My dad was a healthy 65-year-old. His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump.
“And for that, he paid with his life, by trusting the President’s repeated insistence that the pandemic would go away.
“My dad, like so many others, should not have died from COVID-19.”
Kristin’s Facebook page, Marked By COVID, was started to build “an awareness campaign so fewer families are forced to endure this”:
If you grew up, as I did, when salt and pepper shakers made a daily appearance on the dinner table…
Then it’s quite possible that one of these young ladies resided in your kitchen:
These are the Morton Girls, found on…
Morton Salt.
Motto: When It Rains, It Pours.
Morton is the salt I grew up with and still use every day…
And when I opened the door to the kitchen cupboard where that iconic, cylindrical, navy blue container of Morton Salt resides, I got to thinking…
I know nothing about Morton Salt.
Time to rectify that.
First, let’s get the scientific stuff out of the way.
Healthwise, salt gets a bad rap these days; some restaurants don’t even put salt and pepper shakers on their tables and if you want salt, you have to ask for it.
And when you use that saltshaker, sometimes other diners give you The Look – you know the one I mean – as if you were sprinkling your fries with cocaine.
But the truth is – salt is necessary for human life.
It’s too much salt that’s the problem. Too much salt can contribute to all sorts of health issues – high blood pressure, which is linked to conditions like heart failure and heart attack, kidney problems, fluid retention, stroke, and osteoporosis.
Here’s why salt is necessary for human life, according to this and many other articles:
“As salt dissolves in a solution or on food, it breaks into its component ions: sodium and chloride (Na+ and Cl–, respectively). The salty flavor primarily comes from the sodium ions.
“Salt plays a crucial role in maintaining human health. It is the main source of sodium and chloride ions in the human diet. Sodium is essential for nerve and muscle function and is involved in the regulation of fluids in the body. Sodium also plays a role in the body’s control of blood pressure and volume.
“Chloride ions serve as important electrolytes by regulating blood pH and pressure. Electrolytes are compounds, often salts, which dissociate into their ionic components in solvents like water. Chloride is also a crucial component in the production of stomach acid (HCl). Humans excrete salt when sweating and must replenish these lost sodium and chloride ions through their diet.”
OK, Science class dismissed!
Second, something else about salt.
It’s been used by humans for thousands of years, from food preservation to seasoning. Salt’s ability to preserve food helped eliminate dependence on seasonal availability of food, and made it possible to transport food over large distances.
Salt was often difficult to obtain, so it was a highly valued trade item, and was considered a form of currency by certain people. Many salt roads – routes by which salt was transported to regions that lacked it – had been established by the Bronze Age (3300 BC to 1200 BC).
Nobody knew about salt’s health benefits, but the financial benefits were huge.
Third, back to Morton Salt.
According to the Made in Chicago Museum:
Meet Joy Morton (pictured), born in Nebraska Territory in 1855 (his first name was a tribute to the maiden name of his mother, Caroline Joy). Joy’s daddy was rich, but instead of following his footsteps into the newspaper business, Joy went to work in the railroad industry. This work brought him to Chicago, where 25-year-old Morton went into business in Chicago, eventually buying his way into a salt firm called E.I. Wheeler & Co.
The museum’s website says,
“By 1885, Joy and his brother Mark took over full financial control of Wheeler & Co. and rechristened it Joy Morton & Company. As with hundreds of other businesses, Morton benefited from a right place/right time element, as Chicago was the rapidly growing central hub between the big salt mines of the East and the new ones in the expanding West.”
“The Morton Salt Company was already the undisputed top dog of the industry by the early 20th century…”
And the Mortons were innovators:
In 1911 they added magnesium carbonate to prevent their salt from caking.
They created a new container with a pour spout and a blue paper label.
The Mortons adopted the When It Rains, It Pours slogan, based on an old saying, It never rains but it pours, a clever reference to the fact that Morton’s salt wouldn’t cake together when the humidity rose.
From this concept, the first Morton Girl, with her yellow dress and umbrella, emerged, to look like this in 1914:
Another Morton innovation:
Goiters – an enlarged thyroid (pictured) – is something we don’t hear much about anymore, but at one time they were a major health problem.
During the early 1920s, Dr. David Murray Cowie of the University of Michigan had championed a theory that adding iodine to common table salt could help combat goiters. Since goiters were linked to iodine deficiencies, making small doses of iodine more readily available in an affordable, everyday food additive seemed the ideal course of action.
By the fall of 1924, Morton became the first company to sell iodized salt nationally, and it quickly emerged as a new prominent selling point.
The advertising was updated but the Morton Girl remained, though she has changed her fashions six – or possibly more – times, including this 1930s version:
Which, according to the Made in Chicago Museum,
“The full-scale Morton Girl logo on the back of this 1930s container includes far more intricate Shirley Temple-esque detailing than the simplified miniature logo on the front side.”
Morton Girl’s last fashion change was in 1968 – here are six of her iterations:
And here’s something that hasn’t changed. Let’s go back and look at the front of that 1914 Morton Salt container:
The weight in 1914 was “26 OZ. (1 LB., 10 OZ.).”
And in 2022, it still is:
No shrinkflation here.
But of course, Morton Salt has evolved, or at least its packaging has.
The side panel now contains “Nutrition Facts”:
The Morton Girl on the back of the container has shrunk, to make room for other stuff:
And Morton Salt has a website – something not even imagined back in 1914:
It also has a Facebook page:
And an Instagram page with more than 11 thousand followers:
Now let’s circle back around to my growing-up years, for on last change.
Mom’s disposal of the empty Morton Salt box, and mine:
I’m betting Joy Morton would approve.
Now that I’ve read so much about salt, Morton-wise and otherwise, I can state unequivocally that I am an expert on the subject.
Though somehow, I’m guessing you’ll take that with a grain of…
This is a question that’s puzzled me for a long time.
I’m not in any way denigrating or minimizing the efforts of Americans who go to other countries to help people and/or animals. I’m certain the work they do is worthwhile, and often lifesaving.
One medical example: Americans affiliated with Doctors Without Borders:
One helping-animals example: American author Delia Owens.
According to a July 19 New York Times article, in 1974 Delia and husband Mark Owens…
The Owens in the North Luangwa National Park in Zambia in September 1990.
“…moved to Africa to study wildlife, an experience they wrote about in their co-authored nonfiction books, The Eye of the Elephant, published in 1992, and Secrets of the Savanna, released in 2006. At their research camp in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, they studied the migration patterns and social behaviors of lions and hyenas. In 1985, they moved to Zambia, where they maintained a 5,000-square-mile preserve to prevent poaching of elephants and other wildlife.”
The Owens were in Zambia until 1996, when they moved to Idaho.
So – important work by Doctors Without Borders, important work by Delia and Mark Owens.
It’s just that…
Doctors Without Borders is spread out over 70 countries.
While here in this country, according to government agency HRSA (Health Resources Services and Administration), there are millions of medically underserved people.
Here’s a 2021 HRSA map of U.S. medically underserved counties in green:
Why would a U.S. doctor or nurse go to Haiti, for example, when her/his services are so desperately needed for so many people right now in the U.S.?
This article from 2019 demonstrates what I’m talking about:
“In the medical desert that has become rural America, nothing is more basic or more essential than access to doctors, but they are increasingly difficult to find. The federal government now designates nearly 80 percent of rural America as ‘medically underserved.’
“It is home to 20 percent of the U.S. population but fewer than 10 percent of its doctors, and that ratio is worsening each year because of what health experts refer to as ‘the gray wave.’ Rural doctors are three years older than urban doctors on average, with half over 50 and more than a quarter beyond 60. Health officials predict the number of rural doctors will decline by 23 percent over the next decade as the number of urban doctors remains flat.”
Then there are Delia and Mark Owens, and others who leave the U.S. to help animals in other countries.
While in this country, in September 2021 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service…
…proposed delisting 23 species from the Endangered Species Act due to extinction.
While the Owens were in Africa (1974-1996), here are three of those 23 species that were going extinct:
It’s not my intention to single out the Owens – many people go to other countries on behalf of animals, and this article lists 10 ways to do that:
Options include:
Why are people going to other countries, while animals are going extinct here and now?
The Owens story came to my attention in a roundabout way.
Delia Owens today.
I’ve mentioned that Delia Owens and her husband co-authored two nonfiction books about their African experience. They also wrote a bestselling 1984 memoir, Cry of the Kalahari.
Then in 2018 Delia published her first novel, Where the Crawdads Sing, and it’s been phenomenally successful: 168 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and 15 million copies sold. A movie based on the book opened in mid-July and brought in $17 million on its opening weekend.
All of this has drawn a lot of attention to Delia, some of it not what she was looking for, according to this article:
“…the novel’s, and now the film’s, commercial success has been clouded by renewed questions about Owens’s conservation work in Zambia, which was clouded by controversy following the death of a suspected poacher in 1995. The death happened during an anti-poaching patrol, which was part of a conservation project run by Owens and her then-husband, Mark Owens. The shooting was recorded by an ABC crew that was filming a documentary about the work the Owens did there. After the episode aired in 1996, Zambian officials opened an investigation, but the victim was never identified and the case was never solved.”
When Delia was asked about the incident during an interview with the New York Times in 2019, this was her response:
“I was not involved,” she said. “There was never a case, there was nothing.”
The July 19, 2022 New York Times article above references this article:
Author Jeffrey Goldberg says, in part:
“The country’s director of public prosecutions, Lillian Shawa-Siyuni, confirmed what officials at the Criminal Investigation Department of the Zambian national police told me: Mark, Delia, and Christopher Owens [Mark’s son] are still wanted for questioning related to the killing of the alleged poacher, as well as other possible criminal activities in North Luangwa. ‘There is no statute of limitations on murder in Zambia,’ Siyuni said. ‘They are all wanted for questioning in this case, including Delia Owens.’”
While in this review of the Crawdads movie, the author notes:
“The release of the film version of Where the Crawdads Sing has drawn fresh attention to Owens’ troubled past as a wildlife conservationist and bestselling nonfiction author in Africa. In short, Owens’ husband Mark ran what was effectively a lawless armed militia while battling poachers in Zambia and eventually the couple was forced to flee the country, where they are still wanted for questioning in a 1995 murder case.”
Perhaps it would have been better for the Owens to stay stateside and help keep the Bachman’s warbler and those 22 other species from going extinct.
Perhaps it would have been better for these three aid workers from Doctors Without Borders to have stayed home, as well:
So, circling back to the beginning of this…
If anyone out there can answer my question – and educate me – I’d be grateful:
When I look for a video on YouTube, I also get a vertical row of additional videos on the right-hand side of my screen:
Most/all of these videos have no relevance to what I was searching for, and I have no idea how the YouTube whatchamacallits select these videos to accompany my search results.
Normally I ignore the videos, but one of the above caught my eye and sparked my curiosity:
I like stories about art, and the headline got me wondering…
Why does that lady have a fly on her head?
My mind then jumped to a story from 2020 about a fly landing on the head of then-vice president Mike Pence:
Which then brought to mind the expression…
Which then got me wondering – how many other idioms include the word “fly,” meaning the insect, not (for example) a “fly” in baseball?
And then that got me wondering – why do we use flies in idioms when flies are such nasty, filthy, maggot-laying, disease-carrying pests?
Which then got me wondering – do flies deserve their bad reputation?
This is how my mind sometimes works.
Sometimes it’s scary.
But sometimes it leads me on a journey of learning new things, and I love that.
So here’s some of what I’ve learned, if you care to join me on the journey.
Why Does This Lady Have A Fly On Her Head?
There are plenty of articles online that attempt to answer that question, including this one:
The official title of this painting is Portrait of a Woman of the Hofer Family, and it was painted around 1470 by an unknown artist. It resides in the National Gallery in London.
Why-the-fly theories from the articles include:
The fly might have been included as a symbolic element. Flies have been used in art as a symbol of mortality, and the woman is holding a forget-me-not flower, so it’s possible that this artist is using the fly as an expression of remembrance for this woman after she has died.
Flies were sometimes seen as a symbol of sinfulness, so its presence might be intended to ward against evil and illness.
The artist added the fly looking as realistic as possible to puzzle the viewer, to make them wonder if a fly has landed on the painting.
The artist may be showing off his skill in creating a three-dimensional image on a flat panel.
It’s a joke – the fly has been tricked into thinking this is a real headdress, fooled by the painter’s mastery.
The answer to, Why does this lady have a fly on her head?
No one knows for sure.
What Was The Fly Seen Round The World?
The painting led me to remember former vice president Mike Pence and the fly on his head (pictured) during the only vice-presidential debate of the 2020 election.
I discovered I wasn’t the first person whose brain had made that leap:
“After this week’s vice-presidential debate in the United States, the fly that landed on Vice President Mike Pence’s head was more of a sensation than the details of the debate – at least on social media.”
The author, an art historian, goes on to talk about why-the-fly-in-the-painting theories, and concludes with, “The point is that flies still remind us of unpleasant things.”
And yes, watching Pence suck up to Trump for four years was unpleasant – sickening, actually – but I must give him credit for showing some spine on January 6 and not caving in to Trump’s relentless bullying.
Segueing to…
How Many Idioms Include The Word “Fly”?
“No flies on us” is an old British idiom used to describe someone who’s quick to understand things and not easily fooled: “Yeah, he’s a smart one – no flies on him!”
There are many “fly” (as in insect) idioms – here are a few you may have heard/used:
The only fly in the ointment in an otherwise perfect wedding was that the bride tripped when walking down the aisle.
I wish I’d been a fly on the wall at the meeting when you said that!
Yes, you’ve got some money issues, but filing for bankruptcy would be killing a fly with an elephant gun.
So you (well, I) can’t help but wonder…
Why So Many “Fly” Idioms When We Think Flies Are So Disgusting?
To ascertain just how disgusting flies are I needed to look no further than this website:
Orkin, an American company that provides residential and commercial pest control services, has been around since 1901.
So I figure they know a thing or two about flies:
“House flies…create an eyesore in homes and often fly in people’s faces or hover over food. While these behaviors are frustrating on their own, these insects also carry a variety of bacteria and other disease-causing organisms.
“With their diet of feces, trash, rotting produce, and spoiled meats, house flies constantly pick up pathogens. The insects then carry these germs and leave them behind wherever they land. The transfer process only takes a matter of seconds.
“In addition to spreading the bacteria that cling to their bodies, these flies often vomit and defecate where they land and feed. These pests often gather in kitchens and buzz around food, so this behavioral tendency adds to the potential spread of house fly diseases.”
The article goes on to suggest that house flies can carry at least 65 illnesses that infect people including food poisoning, dysentery, diarrhea, anthrax, cholera, salmonella, tuberculosis and typhoid.
After reading this I was feeling borderline queasy, but I still wanted to know…
Do Flies Deserve Their Bad Reputation?
I say flies do deserve their bad reputation, but in the interest of equal time, I decided to discover if flies have any redeeming qualities.
These folks say flies do:
“Although they so often share an antagonistic relationship with humans as an annoyance or a potential carrier of diseases, these insects also serve many important ecological roles.
“They are the second most common pollinators, behind only bees. They help to keep the environment free of decomposing animal flesh. And as a common subject of genetic research, they also help to advance the frontiers of human knowledge.”
And according to this 2019 article:
Dr. Erica McAlister, who was interviewed for the article, is the Senior Curator of Diptera at Great Britain’s Natural History Museum.
“Diptera” being “a large order of winged or rarely wingless insects including the housefly, mosquitoes, midges, and gnats.”
Dr. McAlister thinks flies are “the best animals on the planet.”
The article goes on to say,
“Perhaps most compelling is the direct role they have in our lives. Although few of us realise it, without flies and other decomposers we’d be up to our eyeballs in poo and dead bodies.”
(Those Brits do have a way with words, don’t they?)
“‘Their larvae are cleaning up after us and the adults are pollinating for us. This is why you’ve got to love a fly,’ enthuses Erica.”
Well, “love a fly” is a stretch even for my imagination, but I’ll now concede that flies do have some redeeming qualities.
Just as I thought I’d completed my why-the-fly journey, one last question occurred to me:
Why Is The Opening Of Men’s Pants Called A “Fly”?
Any guesses?
I had none, so back to the internet I went.
And found Unzipping the Origin of “Fly” by Rob Kyff at Creators.com:
“Fly, derived from the Old English flowan (to flow), has acquired many meanings over the centuries, e.g., a winged insect, a baseball hit high into the air, the space above a theater stage, and a late-1960s word for cool.
“Fly also came to mean something attached by one edge, like a flag or banner flying from a rope or pole. With this meaning in mind, 19th-century tailors used the term fly for a flap of cloth attached at one side to cover an opening in a garment.”
Kyff also noted,
“Interestingly, fly seems to be used exclusively for the opening on MEN’s trousers. Has one woman ever told another that her fly (or barndoor) is open? I think not.”
And Google Books brought me Why Rattlesnakes Rattle…And 250 Other Things You Should Know by Valeri Helterbran, who says, in part:
“…a fly is not the buttons or zipper but, more correctly, the flap of material used to hide these mechanisms of closure. The distinction has been all but lost, and the flap and fasteners are now almost universally called a fly.”
So – my why-the-fly query is now at least somewhat satisfied.
(This is a story that involves an incident at a homeless encampment, but it is not a story about homeless issues.)
There was a time when I thought I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
I’d grown weary of the 9-to-5, five days week. Weary of horrible managers, and coworkers who were more slackers than workers. Weary of endless meetings, and office politics, and work that was sometimes mind-numbingly boring.
“I want to work for myself,” I’d think. “I want to be an entrepreneur. And get rich, like these guys…”
But doing…
What?
That’s where I was stumped. I couldn’t think of anything I was burning to do that I could turn into a viable business.
Silly me:
I never considered…
Like one group of entrepreneurial folks recently did.
These were not your everyday thieves. You know – break into a home or business, grab the goods, get caught on video, get caught, arrested, convicted.
No, sir.
This group demonstrated a number of the qualities described in this article:
The 20 Signs list includes:
#1: You plan your work, then work your plan. #2: You are self-motivated. #4: You are a risk-taker. #6: You’re a self-starter. #8: You take advantage of available resources. #9: You love to juggle many tasks at once. #11: You’re not afraid of failure. #12: You’re a creative problem-solver. #17: You’re a go-getter.
Here’s the story, from San Jose, CA:
But before anybody stole acquired anything, the thieves entrepreneurs built an underground bunker to house their acquisitions:
Clearly an example of…
#6: You’re a self-starter.
And they didn’t just pick any old location to build their bunker – they chose a homeless encampment, knowing that homeless encampments are places most people avoid.
Nobody’s going to stroll into a homeless encampment as say, “Anybody seen bunker around here?” – right?
So again yes, from the list…
#12: You’re a creative problem-solver.
Then our group built their bunker. Various articles described it as “elaborate” and “sophisticated,” and it is:
Walls and a ceiling and sturdy wooden beams for support.
#1: You plan your work, then work your plan.
And not only that, there were also electric cords that were “plugged into somebody’s else’s source.”
Another source, like a home or business. And when that family or business saw their electric bill increasing for no apparent reason, well – California utility companies increase our rates on a regular basis for no apparent reason. We’re used to it.
#8: You take advantage of available resources.
While the bunker building was going on, our entrepreneurs were also conferring about whom to rob acquire items from, and when. This would have required extensive research, a careful assessment of potential gains, and probably an excessive amount of whiteboarding, because no meeting is complete without that.
Yet another entrepreneurial quality checked off our list:
#9: You love to juggle many tasks at once.
A date was chosen: Monday, July 11.
A source was identified: An electrical contractor business.
The potential gains identified: Power tools, hunting shotguns, ammunition and other items.
#17: You’re a go-getter.
Transportation would be needed to move the items, so our group stole acquired three pickup trucks from the same business, a real time-saver.
#4: You are a risk-taker, and #11: You’re not afraid of failure.
Monday, July 11: Our entrepreneurs acquire $100,000 worth of power tools, guns, ammunition and other items.
True entrepreneurs, one and all!
But then, alas…
On the very day our group implemented the heist Part II of their business plan…
One of our entrepreneurs exhibited a quality that definitely was not on the 20 Signs list:
Stupidity.
According to this article:
“Officers saw one of the stolen trucks in the area and stopped a man near the vehicle on Monday, after the theft was reported to authorities.
“Police said that man was searched by officers because he was on probation for auto theft and that he had a ghost gun, the term used for privately assembled firearms that are usually impossible to trace because they are not registered and do not have serial numbers.”
Oh, dear. Our entrepreneur was already on probation for auto theft, and now he’s found with a stolen acquired truck and a ghost gun?
One thing led to another, and on Tuesday, July 12 the bunker was searched, and five more people were arrested:
Police tweets were tweeted:
Pictures of guns, ammo and power tools were taken:
Shadows were interviewed:
Headlines were made, including internationally, this one from the United Kingdom:
And this one, from Fox News:
Fox News suggested that our thieves entrepreneurs were left-wing Democrat communist deep state pinkos led by Hilary Clinton who were going to foment an uprising to reverse the November 2022 election results if any Republicans won.
I’m not sure how power tools would fit into that plan, but since it’s Fox News, it must be true.
And it fulfills the last item on our 20 Items list:
#2: You are self-motivated.
Based on all this, I guess I’ll have to accept the fact that I’m just not entrepreneur material.
Nevertheless, if I may…
I’d like to make one suggestion that was not included in the 20 Items article for our San Jose entrepreneurs to consider:
#21: You love putting together a business plan and meeting with venture capitalists
If your business plan is going to include a team photo, you might want to consider a different image than this one:
There’s a TV ad campaign that’s been around for years and poses the question,
What would you do for a Klondike Bar?
A Klondike Bar being a square of ice cream coated with a thin layer of chocolate.
The commercials suggest that people would do just about anything to get a Klondike bar, such as enduring painful removal of body hair with tape:
The Klondike commercials came to mind when I read a news story that made me want to ask folks:
What would you do for a selfie?
A selfie being a self-portrait taken with a smartphone camera and then uploaded to as many social media sites as possible in the hope that it will go viral and millions of people will see it and understand that you actually are pretty awesome after all.
I understand that some people will go to great lengths to get what they believe will be the perfect selfie.
But I think this guy went too far:
“An American tourist in Italy survived a fall into the crater of Mount Vesuvius after he tried to reach for his phone to take a selfie, according to Italian police and local officials.”
Yes, the Mount Vesuvius in Italy:
The Mount Vesuvius, an active volcano:
Mount Vesuvius, which in 79 A.D. erupted in one of the deadliest volcanic events ever recorded in Europe. For nearly two days, a violent cloud of hot gas and ash spewed out of the volcano’s main vent, blanketing the city of Pompeii in lethally hot volcanic material.
The Pompeii – a thriving city of around 12,000 people that was buried under millions of tons of volcanic material that killed more than 2,000 inhabitants.
You’ve probably seen images of their remains, like this:
And this:
And that selfie-craving American who fell into the crater of Mount Vesuvius?
He’s been identified as Philip Carroll, 23, from Baltimore, who was hiking on the famed volcano with his family earlier this month.
Now, hiking on an active volcano is definitely not something on my bucket list, but it is for some.
And it’s also a big business. You can get your tickets here:
And from many other websites.
So Philip Carroll and his family on Mount Vesuvius wasn’t unusual.
And Philip wanting a selfie on Mount Vesuvius wasn’t unusual. Hell, it was practically mandatory, wasn’t it?
What was unusual – or at least, unfortunate – was that when the family…
“…accessed the top of Vesuvius through a forbidden trail…”
Uh-oh.
Even I, who have never hiked in my life, know that when a trail is “forbidden,” there’s probably a good reason for it.
“When the family reached the top of the volcano…Carroll reached for his phone to commemorate being atop the 4,000-foot-high volcano.”
But Carroll fumbled the phone, and it fell into the crater of Mount Vesuvius.
“Instead of recovering the phone and snapping the perfect photo for Instagram, the man slipped and dropped a few feet into the crater.”
That “dropped a few feet into the crater” turned out to be 15 meters, which is 50 feet.
Even I, who have never fallen into a volcano in my life, know that 50 feet is a damn big fall, especially when it’s into a live volcano.
When the rescue team reached Carroll he was unconscious. At some point he woke up, the team extracted him from the crater and he was treated in an ambulance farther down the mountain. Carroll had suffered abrasions on his legs, arm and back, as was shown on Facebook:
Even I, who have never taken a selfie in my life, know that this image of Carroll is not a selfie.
“Carroll was taken into custody by the local police. It’s unclear what charges he may face.”
I’ve found no follow-up stories so we don’t know what charges, if any, Carroll faced.
Maybe…Selfie Stupidity? Might that be a crime in Italy?
Let’s ask the Italian polizia:
I’d say he made his feelings clear.
What the myriad news stories about Carroll also don’t talk about – but I will, here, for the first time ever – is that Carroll wasn’t the first to have a cell-phone-Mount-Vesuvius-related incident.
Remember those earlier pictures, the remains of Pompeii residents who in 79 A.D. were caught unawares and buried in tons of lethally hot volcanic material?
They were caught unawares because they were distracted.
And what do we keep on our PCs and laptops and whatever other devices except files that we care about?
Files that matter:
Work-related stuff, if you’ve been working from home or always work from home; and personal files – maybe medical records, insurance records, information about your home or car or warranties; plus your Christmas card list, birthdays list, restaurants you’d try again or wouldn’t.
For me – I have a lot of files including yearly lists of all the books I read and movies I watch; Word and Publisher and Excel docs from 700+ blog posts (plus hundreds of jpeg and png images); reams of other writing; projects I’m working on; family and other pictures…
I have a lot of files.
158,625 files, to be exact.
I know this because they suddenly became inaccessible, locked in my hard drive with no way to retrieve them.
Here’s what happened:
I walked by my computer one Tuesday afternoon and glanced at the screen. It was black – that was normal – except for one sentence across the top, which was not normal.
A sentence which struck terror into my heart:
ERROR: NO BOOT DISK HAS BEEN DETECTED OR THE DISK HAS FAILED.
What the hell? Just all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I’m in big trouble?
I was.
Panicked, I called my computer guy, whom I’ll call Computer Guy, or CG.
I read the sentence to CG and he said that yes – it sounded like my hard drive had failed. And as tech-challenged as I am, I knew what that meant.
No computer.
No internet, no email, no access to my files.
No nothing.
CG arrived the next afternoon, 24 agonizing hours later, and confirmed: My hard drive had failed.
He tried several approaches to access the hard drive and – no luck.
So he packed up my tower and hard drive, and took them home for additional testing. On Thursday – after yet another agonizing 24 hours – he confirmed:
I needed a new hard drive. He couldn’t access my files to download them to the new hard drive.
CG said he’d return to my home Friday afternoon with my tower and a new hard drive, get me set up and…
That was another 24-hour wait.
But I won’t keep you waiting:
CG said he could restore all my files.
All 158,625 of them.
For one reason.
I have…
I am not doing a commercial for Carbonite.
It just happens to be the backup system that my previous CG suggested in 2021.
But I am endorsing some kind of backup…
For the files you care about.
I resisted the idea at first – I didn’t want to spend the money, blah, blah, blah.
But because CG strongly recommended backing up my files, I subscribed to Carbonite and paid $75.59 for the first year.
At the end of the first year I considered not renewing – I hadn’t needed Carbonite in 2021, so why get it again?
Especially at the increased price of $83.99?
After wavering for awhile, I resubscribed for 2022.
Back to the present.
CG set up my computer to download all my files from Carbonite, and he told me it was going to take hours.
“You have a lot of files,” he said, shaking his head. “You have more files than some companies do.”
The file download lasted until Saturday morning, a clear demonstration that I have WAY too many files.
And it’s time to delete stuff I don’t look at and don’t need.
But my files? Yes, my files were back in place.
If I hadn’t had a backup system…
OK: I’ve used words like “agonizing” and “horror story,” and I know that’s overboard.
In the big scheme of life, these are computer files.
Not the war in Ukraine.
But in my life – and I’m betting in your life – we care about our files.
…when a 10-year-old girl is raped and becomes pregnant?
And she can’t receive the medical care she needs in her home state?
And adding to the tragedy is a guy named Jim Bopp:
Bopp is an Indiana lawyer, the general counsel for the National Right to Life, and he’s the author of a model law written for state legislatures considering more restrictive abortion measures.
Of the 10-year-old girl, Bopp said:
“She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child…We don’t think, as heart-wrenching as those circumstances are, we don’t think we should devalue the life of the baby because of the sins of the father.”
According to Wikipedia, Bopp has three daughters.
I wonder if he would have been quite so righteous if one of his daughters had been a pregnant, 10-year-old rape victim?
If he would have told his daughter that she’d be forced to carry the baby to term, and ultimately understand “the benefit of having the child”?
The Ohio girl’s story is just the tip of the iceberg.
The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade is reaching into many areas, including a woman’s fallopian tubes.
In this article:
A doctor was quoted about “the horrible downstream effects of criminalizing abortion care.”
“Downstream effects”?
The article examples include:
An obstetrician delays inducing a miscarriage until a woman with severe pregnancy complications seems “sick enough.”
A lupus patient must stop taking medication that controls her illness because it can also cause miscarriages.
A sexual assault survivor chooses sterilization so that if she is ever attacked again, she won’t be forced to give birth to a rapist’s baby.
Let’s talk about the sexual assault survivor.
She is Julie Ann Nitsch, who provided this 2022 photo showing her in a hospital in Texas, before surgery to remove her fallopian tubes.
From the Associated Press article:
“Nitsch says she chose sterilization at age 36 rather than risk getting pregnant by another rapist.
“‘I ripped my organs out’ to avoid that, she said.
“Nitsch said she ‘saw the writing on the wall’ after Texas enacted a law last year banning most abortions after six weeks, even in cases of rape or incest. She said she sensed that Roe vs. Wade would be overturned, so she had surgery to remove her fallopian tubes in February.
“‘It’s sad to think that I can’t have kids, but it’s better than being forced to have children,’ Nitsch said.”
And Nitsch is not alone:
“Dr. Tyler Handcock, an Austin OB-GYN, said his clinic has heard from hundreds of patients seeking sterilization since the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision. Many choose this route because they fear long-acting birth control or other contraceptives could also become targets, he said.
“His clinic scheduled a July 9 group counseling session to handle the surge, and every one of his 20 patients who showed up to hear about the risks and ramifications of fallopian tube removal made an appointment to have the surgery.”
The Associated Press article details other “downstream effects,” but let’s turn here for the most obvious downstream effect:
The article quotes from a May 14, 2022 editorial in The Lancet, one of the world’s oldest and most well-known medical journals, which says in part that Supreme Court Justice Alito’s…
“‘…shocking, inhuman, and irrational’ draft opinion ‘utterly fails to consider the health of women today who seek abortion.’”
The Lancet also says this, loud and clear on the cover:
And it’s not just “Alito and his supporters” who will have blood on their hands.
It’s every person, female and male, in Congress, in state legislatures, judges and governors and local officials and their supporters, and people like Jim Bopp, who believe they – not we – should have control over our bodily autonomy.
Well, we know what we have to do:
Update: Caitlin Bernard is the Indiana obstetrician-gynecologist who provided the abortion for the 10-year-old rape victim.
She wrote an opinion piece for the July 22 Washington Post and summed up this tragic situation better than I ever could.
Dr. Bernard said, in part:
“Next week, the Indiana legislature will contemplate dramatically restricting abortion, as many states have done since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Lawmakers will debate the particulars of the law and thus the fate of my patients. They will debate whether to include an exception for rape, whether to require a child incest victim to testify under oath that her family member abused and impregnated her before she could access medical care, how sick someone needs to get before they will allow us to save her life, whether to allow a mother to spare her baby from the worst suffering, to spare herself from the unimaginable agony of watching her baby die in her arms.
“But they will never face my patients. They will never stand in their shoes or hold their hands. They will never know their pain. Legislators are the last people who should be in the business of deciding who gets medical care and who does not.”
I’ve got a thing for giraffes, as I talked about in my May 20 post.
That post was about the little gal on the right, Msituni (pronounced See-TU-Nee, Swahili for “In the forest”). She’s now five months old.
The giraffe on the left, Nuru, is grooming Msituni.
Msituni is liking it.
The image was taken last week in the East African habitat at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
Because I felt like ending the week on a high note, I’m happy to say that now – thanks to human intervention and creative thinking – Msituni is thriving and doing all the things a giraffe her age should be doing.
She was about six feet tall at birth, will grow to around 14 feet tall…
…and she’ll eat up to 75 pounds of leaves a day.
When Msituni is three to four years old, she might start having babies.
But in the meantime, Msituni can be found frolicking with the rest of the giraffe herd in the Safari Park’s 60-acre East Africa savanna habitat…
On June 24, 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, it wasn’t enough for Justice Clarence Thomas (pictured) to know he’d helped eradicate a woman’s right to her bodily autonomy.
He couldn’t just sit back and say, “There! That’ll show ‘em!”
No, Thomas had to add his own two cents’ worth in his concurring opinion, according to this any many other articles:
“…that the justices ‘should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell’ – referring to three cases having to do with Americans’ fundamental privacy, due process and equal protection rights.”
In other words, says the article:
“…that the Supreme Court ‘should reconsider’ its past rulings codifying rights to contraception access, same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage.”
The article continues,
“The court’s liberal wing – Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – echoed concerns in a dissenting opinion released on Friday, writing that ‘no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work.’
“‘The constitutional right to abortion ‘does not stand alone,’ the three justices wrote. ‘To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation.’”
The writer of this article:
Expanded on Thomas two cents’ worth:
“…Thomas wrote that the high court has a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in Obergefell vs. Hodges (2015), which legalized same-sex marriage, Lawrence vs. Texas (2003), which protects same-sex relations, and Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965), which protects married couples’ access to contraception.”
Thomas wants to “correct the error.”
I wonder if Thomas feels that was about another Supreme Court landmark civil rights decision, this one from 1967.
Some background:
1958: Virginia residents Mildred and Richard met in high school, fell in love, and got married.
A few weeks later, local police raided their home in the early morning hours. Mildred and Richard were arrested, and charged with breaking the law. They pled guilty and were each sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended on condition that the couple leave Virginia and not return together for at least 25 years.
Their crime?
Mildred Loving was black and Richard Loving was white, and their marriage violated Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which made marriage between whites and non-whites a crime.
What crime?
The crime of miscegenation: a mixture of races especially marriage, cohabitation, or sexual intercourse between a white person and a member of another race.
Virginia wasn’t the only state with anti-miscegenation laws.
In fact, only nine states have never enacted anti-miscegenation laws: Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Wisconsin.
Though Mildred and Richard had married in Washington, DC, their marriage wasn’t legal in Virginia.
The Lovings appealed their conviction to the Supreme Court of Virginia, which upheld it. They then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear their case.
In 1967, in Loving vs. Virginia, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in the Lovings’ favor and overturned their convictions. Its decision struck down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law and ended all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
In 1967, the remaining 15 states with anti-miscegenation laws saw them overturned by Loving vs. Virginia – here’s a map, showing all 16 states in gray:
So, how about it, Justice Thomas?
Is Loving vs. Virginia one of those Supreme Court rulings that needs to be “reconsidered’?
Is Loving vs. Virginia one of those “errors” that needs correcting?
Oh, wait.
Silly me!
Of course you’re not – look who you’re married to!
The Dutch post-impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 and died in 1890.
In 1888 he wrote to his brother Theo,
“I can do nothing about it if my paintings don’t sell.
“The day will come, though, when people will see that they’re worth more than the cost of the paint and my subsistence, very meagre in fact that we put into them.”
And van Gogh’s paintings didn’t sell – there are stories of him selling “one” painting in his lifetime or a “handful” of paintings, a poor showing for an artist who created more than 850 paintings and nearly 1,300 drawings and sketches in an artistic career that lasted only 10 years.
No one, including van Gogh, considered him a successful artist.
So I hope van Gogh is smiling over the excitement this recent story is creating:
The image below on the right is an x-ray of the back of the image on the left:
The image on the left, according to the article is:
“…van Gogh’s Head of a Peasant Woman, an 1885 study for a larger painting, The Potato Eaters, widely considered one of Van Gogh’s masterpieces.”
The image on the right “had been hiding in plain sight, inside a painting that had belonged to the National Galleries of Scotland for over 60 years.”
The “hiding in plain sight” image on the right is believed to be a van Gogh self-portrait, discovered by a conservator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art when she x-rayed Head of a Peasant Woman ahead of an exhibition – a routine step.
According to this article:
“…the x-ray showed ‘a bearded sitter in a brimmed hat with a neckerchief loosely tied at the throat. He fixes the viewer with an intense stare, the right side of his face in shadow and his left ear clearly visible.’”
Back to the Washington Post:
“Hidden under layers of glue and cardboard was another painting on its reverse – a portrait of a man in a hat with a scarf tied around his throat.
“‘I saw it then and there,’ senior curator Frances Fowle said. ‘It was a self-portrait by Van Gogh, on the back of our painting.’”
Why would van Gogh have painted something on the back of another painting?
“Van Gogh was known to reuse canvasses because of lack of money, and Scottish conservators believe that was the case here.”
Lack of money was also a reason van Gogh painted so many self-portraits – “no fewer than 35,” according to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which has examined the x-ray of the newly uncovered painting and deemed it “almost certainly” a van Gogh self-portrait.
Van Gogh couldn’t afford to pay artist models, so he painted himself, experimenting with colors and light and techniques, as in this self-portrait from 1887:
Van Gogh self-portrait, 1887, the Detroit Institute of Arts.
According to various articles:
“Van Gogh became his own best sitter, saying, ‘I purposely bought a good enough mirror to work from myself, for want of a model.’”
So what looks to be a major discovery was painted, and on the back of the canvas another image was painted to save money on canvasses. By an artist who frequently painted himself, because he was too poor to hire actual models.
And – an artist who gave many of his paintings and drawings to others, only for them to often throw away those gifts.
So, who’s the culprit who covered the self-portrait with cardboard and glue…
And why?
The self-portrait, says this Washington Post article:
“…had been covered in cardboard, most likely by Johanna van Gogh-Bonger [pictured], the wife of van Gogh’s younger brother Theo, in 1905, when she sent Head of a Peasant Woman to an important exhibition in Amsterdam.”
I’m imagining what was going through Johanna’s mind, how excited she was that Head of a Peasant Woman by her dead brother-in-law Vincent was going to be in an important exhibition!
Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, 1889
She turned the painting over, and there’s a…oh. “Is this another one of those self-portraits by poor old Vincent? And not even finished? I’ll just cover it up so it doesn’t distract from the good stuff.”
Johanna sent Head of a Peasant Woman to Amsterdam, and van Gogh’s self-portrait went unseen for over a century.
National Galleries of Scotland said its experts were looking at how to remove the glue and cardboard covering the self-portrait without damaging Head of a Peasant Woman.
The lost-now-found self-portrait x-ray image will be on view at the July 30-November 13 exhibition, A Taste for Impressionism, at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh.
If all this excitement isn’t enough to make Vincent smile, I’ll add this recent story to the mix:
Van Gogh’s Fields Near the Alpilles (1889) was expected to sell for around $45 million at Christie’s Auction House May 2022 auction.
It sold for $51,915,000.
And it joins a list of van Gogh paintings that have sold for millions, including these top five, according to this 2022 article:
Irises; price: $53.9 million, 1987 A Wheat Field with Cypresses; price: $57 million, 1993 Portrait of Joseph Roulin; price: $58 million, 1989 Portrait de l’artiste Sans Barbe; price: $71.5 million, 1998 Portrait of Dr. Gachet; price: $82.5 million, 1990
Vincent, I’d say there’s no doubt that people feel that your works are…
“…worth more than the cost of the paint and my subsistence.”
On June 24, 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, it wasn’t enough for Justice Clarence Thomas (pictured) to know he’d helped eradicate a woman’s right to her bodily autonomy.
He couldn’t just sit back and say, “There! That’ll show ‘em!”
No, Thomas had to add his own two cents’ worth in his concurring opinion, according to this any many other articles:
Thomas wrote,
“…that the justices ‘should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell’ – referring to three cases having to do with Americans’ fundamental privacy, due process and equal protection rights.”
In other words, says the article:
“…that the Supreme Court ‘should reconsider’ its past rulings codifying rights to contraception access, same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage.”
The article continues:
“The court’s liberal wing – Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – echoed concerns in a dissenting opinion released on Friday, writing that ‘no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work.’
“‘The constitutional right to abortion ‘does not stand alone,’ the three justices wrote. ‘To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation.’”
The writer of this article:
Expanded on Thomas two cents’ worth:
“…Thomas wrote that the high court has a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in Obergefell vs. Hodges (2015), which legalized same-sex marriage, Lawrence vs. Texas (2003), which protects same-sex relations, and Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965), which protects married couples’ access to contraception.”
Thomas wants to “correct the error.”
I wonder if Thomas feels that was about another Supreme Court landmark civil rights decision, this one from 1967?
Some background:
1958: Virginia residents Mildred and Richard met in high school, fell in love, and got married.
A few weeks later, local police raided their home in the early morning hours. Mildred and Richard were arrested, and charged with breaking the law. They pled guilty and were each sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended on condition that the couple leave Virginia and not return together for at least 25 years.
Their crime?
Mildred Loving was black and Richard Loving was white, and their marriage violated Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which made marriage between whites and non-whites a crime.
What crime?
The crime of miscegenation: a mixture of races especially marriage, cohabitation, or sexual intercourse between a white person and a member of another race.
Virginia wasn’t the only state with anti-miscegenation laws.
In fact, only nine states have never enacted anti-miscegenation laws: Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Wisconsin.
Though Mildred and Richard had married in Washington, DC, their marriage wasn’t legal in Virginia.
The Lovings appealed their conviction to the Supreme Court of Virginia, which upheld it. They then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear their case.
In 1967, in Loving vs. Virginia, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in the Lovings’ favor and overturned their convictions. Its decision struck down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law and ended all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
In 1967, the remaining 15 states with anti-miscegenation laws saw them overturned by Loving vs. Virginia – here’s a map, showing all 16 states in gray:
So, how about it, Justice Thomas?
Is Loving vs. Virginia one of those Supreme Court rulings you think should be “reconsidered’?
Is Loving vs. Virginia one of those “errors” that needs correcting?
Sometimes the profanity is used in combination with other words, such as “New York Fucking City” and “Patty Fucking Hearst,” which is a variation, but not a particularly creative one.
Profanity is the effort of a feeble brain to express itself forcibly.
So, what is Ginder’s book about?
His website says the book is:
“…a poignant, funny, and slyly beguiling novel which proves that, like democracy, family is a messy and fragile thing…”
“Smart, funny and tear-jerking, Let’s Not Do That Again shows that family, like politics, can hurt like a mother.”
So, another (yawn) dysfunctional family. Add in politics (yawn), so they’re even more dysfunctional.
But still, I could go for “funny” and “smart.” And “tear-jerking” can be good.
Those qualities are all good – if they’re not lost in an incessant sludge of profanity.
Profanity is the last refuge of the truly ignorant.
I stopped listing the profanities above after page 44 because that’s where I stopped reading. And that was more than enough.
It appears that many read Ginder’s book and thought it was great, like the raves quoted on Amazon from reviewers at publications I respect including Publishers Weekly, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.
In fact, the Washington Post was one of a number of raves that compared Let’s Not Do That Again to Veep, a TV show that ran for seven seasons from 2012-2019.
I did a blog post about Veep in 2019, in which I also lamented its excessive use of profanity – “That just tickles my twat!” was one of many examples I cited – so yes, I can see the comparison.
If I’ve come off sounding like a major killjoy, wet blanket and all-around prude – so be it.
And guess what? I don’t care.
Life is too short to waste my time on books like Ginder’s that show such a lack of skill, style, and command of our wonderful language.
I Hate Houseguests 