This is the Old Red Mill in Jericho, Vermont, not far from where Howard Dean owns some land. Howard Dean is first! And this recent photo shows the Mill at flood stage.
I'm going to get off the 'puter pretty soon. But listener, following up on the last thread discussion....
My best friend's husband is Puerto Rican. He avidly listens to Fox News and believes all the crud they spew. Like many he's full of judgment and anger, always at the wrong people. I wonder how he can be a Republican (because he is) when the Republicans have such a strong anti-hispanic drive. Does he think he's exempt because he's not Mexican? I just don't get it. I don't see how anyone who engages two brain cells could possibly be a Republican.
It seems to me it's all about who they trust and who they fear. If the people they trust give the thumbs up to Fox News and the GOP, that's who they'll trust. If the people they therefore fear are progressive, it doesn't matter what they're saying. The fact is that none of us believe anything a politician says on the surface. What matters is who you think is ultimately trustworthy. They don't have to be perfect, or even right, just trusted. We need to speak to something deep in each person. How?
Hmmm...for one thing, we'll need to speak to them directly and not through dissing the people they trust. As soon as we say something against their heroes, they will cease to take in what we're saying. Once they stop listening, you might as well stop talking.
But, just to add, I know some folks who live in the Bible Belt and always voted Republican. They had a big family. Most of their children now vote Democrat, and that's partially because they married more liberal spouses, but also because this family actually did teach their children to think for themselves. They just always thought they'd naturally think they way the parents do. The opera ain't over.
Melting snow...it happens in Spring, but that is the highest we've ever seen the Mill river! Tonight a road north of us was closed... http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20110102/NEWS02/110102010/1007/Water-from-melting-snow-closes-Vermont-highway
The grandbebes were wanting to play Rook, which I haven't for about 60 years, so had to be retaught. The teams were to the two kiddles and the kid and his mum. They won two, we won two, and we quit, everyone happy. Was kinda fun. Then we watched Space Cowboys ~~ an oh my all these *absolutely* delicious elderly men, lol!
"As I see it, there is a culture in the South as strong as any ethnic religion" --listener
Yes, it is the thing that brought on the Civil War, and it is still there. The belief that everyone in the country should think and do things the same way as white southerners. It wasn't enough that for them that people in non-slave states should not interfere with the institution of slavery in the slave states; they insisted on universal complicity with it. And here they still are, still at it, and still with their undying claims of persecution. Their fellow citizens are patient, but not infinitely so.
For those interested, here is a good presentation of how the Chicago mayor's race currently stands: http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2011/01/01/davis-endorsement-of-braun-a-game-changer/.
This implicitly assumes the courts will rule the Emanuel meets the residency requirements to run. That's probably a good assumption, even though the legal situation is more than complex. The courts have traditionally leaned very far backward to rule candidates eligible.
We have a hutch in the guest room that used to be Daughter's. We gave it to her when she struck out on her own and it added an elegant touch to her humble apartment. When she got her house, though, the hutch was deemed too lowly and was given back to us. So we have it until another chick requires the use of it. I stash the wrapping paper in the lower half ~ the big rolls go in the lower cabinet and the tape, ribbons and bows and scissors go into the two drawers. (The glassed upper portion holds vases and other such items that don't go anywhere else this time of year.) It's a perfect place for wrapping because there's the bed and a desk in there to work upon. I'm sure going to miss it when the hutch moves on. LOL!
And Happy Spring Cleaning! What a brilliant idea to start in January, to sort of trick the mind into thinking Spring is imminent. Then when Spring does come 'round you get to spend more of it playing outside.
In the book I'm reading the main characters are spending some time in Ireland at an Inn and they're reading through a journal of the man who was the doctor there during the Civil War. The doctor is naturally dismayed by the carnage taking place in the States and mentions it from time to time. At one point he says he knows the South is fighting for slavery, but that's greed. Then he opines that the North's quest is primarily greed as well. As the book's author is a southerner, I wish she would have one of her present-day characters comment on that remark. I do not see what the North was about as being centered on greed. Where would that idea come from, do you suppose?
But, seriously, they are overflowing with hatred. Hatred breeds fear and, so it would seem, fear turns people into lemmings. Or is that giving lemmings a bad name? Anyhow, they just deliberately shut off their brains and allow themselves to be led around by the nose. It would be funny if it weren't so appallingly sad and scary.
Indeed. teaching your kids to think for themselves is always a gamble. Take my mother and me. She raised me to be what she was when she was young, a liberal Democrat. But, I've always, literally always, been way to the left of her, even before she caught Fox Pox.
I donno, listener. But isn't war usually, ultimately, about one side wanting something the other side has, be that land or labor or whatever?*We* think the Civil War was justified, but I should imagine the southerners fancy it was all about destroying *their* way of life, just wantonly destroying it out of envy or spite. Or else they think we wanted their land and labor. *shrug* The victors get to write the history, but the vanquished don't always have a clear perspective either.
No chance of a landslide. It's almost a given that he will be one of the two people in the run-off. But he could lose the run-off if the other candidate is good at coalition building.
Actually, as a Puerto Rican your friend's husband *is* exempt. Puerto Ricans are automatically US Citizens and there's nothing the Republicans can do about it. "Hispanic" is an arbitrary grouping of people who have very little in common other than language.
(And not always language, strangely enough. We have a long-term friend who is legally classified as Hispanic even though the two languages she grew up speaking are Dutch and English. The legal definition of Hispanic is someone born in an area south of the US border, with named exceptions, who has a native-level understanding of Spanish language and culture. The Dutch West Indies is not one of the named exceptions. And Elise is now Professor of Romance Languages and Literature at Bemidj State University, where people born and raised in South America are willing to certify that her knowledge of Spanish language and culture are as good as theirs. Whether she also has a native-level understanding of French language and culture has not come up.)
I am going to try to address all three previouis posts in this thread. But first directly to Alan: As you may or may not be aware, I was born and raised in Arkansas. I haven't been back for more than 50 years, but I haven't entirely lost my roots. Yes, there are definitely cultural differences. Food preferences, for one thing. It has been said, with a great deal of truth that the War Between the States was about hot bread versus cold bread. ([sigh] I love corn bread. But I married a Yankee, so I haven't had it for decades.) But your claim is the precise reverse of the truth. We never wanted to force everyone to eat hot corn bread, no matter how yummy. We just want the right to have our own cultural traditions respected. (Can you honestly claim you didn't expect me to be angry?)
You implicitly quote Lincoln's promise not to interfere with slavery. But how many politicians, especially of the opposite party, do you actually believe? After many decades of friction, only peripherally about slavaery, the South decided that Lincoln's election was a signal that its interests and values were going to be routinely ignored by the Union government and that it would be better off as an independent nation.
This long-term friction was partially cultural but also strongly economic -- especially as it focussed on tariffs. There had been repeated attempts, some successful, some not, to enact tariffs that would benefit Northeastern businessmen and inductrialists while harming Southern farmers. (And Midwestern farmers, I suppose, but there weren't enough of them at the time to matter.) You'll notice that Lincoln didn't say anything about tariffs. It's easy to see this whole taiff issue in the light of capitalist plutocrats telling poor farmers, "If you don't have enough money to live as I do, you don't matter." And it's easy to see Lincoln's refusal to accept secession not as loyalty to some abstract ideal of The Union but as reflecting the plutocrats' horror at loss of a captive market.
I'm half Irish and half Scottish with a tad of Cherokee into the mix to make things interesting. But I've never set foot in Ireland, visited Scotland once, and have met more Abenakis than Cherokees. I can't speak Gaelic of any type or Cherokee.
That doesn't mean I'm not Irish, Sottish or Cherokee.
Bill, I don't know what to say. I don't feel I know enough about the tariff issue to comment.
However, Hubby says he doesn't believe that brothers fight brothers and fathers fight sons over markets. He says that the South was fighting for a way of life, but fighting to not have to accept blacks as people.
Assuming all of the above is true...what Hubby said and what you said, I still side with the North, because no amount of money is equal to the worth of a human being.
That said, I very much appreciate you giving me some idea of what the author was pointing to when she had her character remark about the North's greed. Thank-you.
The point was, Bill, that if friend's hubby drove through an area where they do profiling, he'd be profiled because of his appearance, and probably asked for his "papers" too.
One of the more intriguing quiestions of alternate history is whether, if the South had won, blacks would have been freed within a couple of decades. I con't pretend to have the answer (hypotheticals are, by definition, hypothetical), but slavery is not a truly efficient economic system.
Jacky's daughter is being horrid to Subway on FB. She claims Jacky died on February Twelfth, "And I have the death certificate to prove it."
I remember when Jacky died, and I know it was just a couple days after New Years. I also remember how devastated Subway was. Why would her daughter harass him like that? You know, I don't remember a daughter who ever came to visit, much less who ever actually helped. Subway devoted his life to looking after Jacky. If he wants to post on FB a simple statement of how much he misses her, I certainly think he should be able to do so without being emotionally pummeled.
I left him a hug. Maybe, Puddle and listener, you might want to do the same? Just to lend him a little moral support.
Do you think that today the USA is like the South and China like the North? We've pretty much sent the majority of our manufacturers to China, they hold massive loans to us, and it's hard to find anything for sale that doesn't have a "Made in China" sticker on it.
I always thought the South's absence of means to manufacture things was a big handicap during the Civil War. Now the USA is in that position in respect to China.
Interesting question, but it would be hard to draw the analogy too closely. For one thing, I believe the US still has more manufacturing capability than China. The fact that so much of what China makes gets exported tends to mislead us. Of course, China's manufacturing capability is expanding rapidly. Things are changing. But in most areas the US is, so far as I know, not losing manusfacuring capability. That happened in the 1980s -- due partially to mistakes by US manufacturers -- but not so much now.
Another difference is that the South had always been predominantly agricultural. For the most part, manufacturing just never developed -- any more than you see a lot of manufacturing in Kansas. So the dynamics are different.
And the fact that the US and China are two nations among many, rather than the two pars of one nation, also has a big effect on the dynamics.
Not according to the Trustees. They are a bunch of sweeties, though. So I look upon it as my excuse to get some nice clothes. I only work 3 days in the week. I can wear jeans the other 4 days.
This is the Old Red Mill in Jericho, Vermont, not far from where Howard Dean owns some land.
ReplyDeleteHoward Dean is first! And this recent photo shows the Mill at flood stage.
Wow! Flood is right! That is just scary.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to get off the 'puter pretty soon. But listener, following up on the last thread discussion....
ReplyDeleteMy best friend's husband is Puerto Rican. He avidly listens to Fox News and believes all the crud they spew. Like many he's full of judgment and anger, always at the wrong people. I wonder how he can be a Republican (because he is) when the Republicans have such a strong anti-hispanic drive. Does he think he's exempt because he's not Mexican? I just don't get it. I don't see how anyone who engages two brain cells could possibly be a Republican.
Okay, under the wing for tonight.
Oh, I hear ya, Susan.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me it's all about who they trust and who they fear.
If the people they trust give the thumbs up to Fox News and the GOP, that's who they'll trust.
If the people they therefore fear are progressive, it doesn't matter what they're saying.
The fact is that none of us believe anything a politician says on the surface.
What matters is who you think is ultimately trustworthy.
They don't have to be perfect, or even right, just trusted.
We need to speak to something deep in each person. How?
Hmmm...for one thing, we'll need to speak to them directly and not through dissing the people they trust. As soon as we say something against their heroes, they will cease to take in what we're saying. Once they stop listening, you might as well stop talking.
ReplyDeleteBut, just to add, I know some folks who live in the Bible Belt and always voted Republican. They had a big family. Most of their children now vote Democrat, and that's partially because they married more liberal spouses, but also because this family actually did teach their children to think for themselves. They just always thought they'd naturally think they way the parents do. The opera ain't over.
ReplyDeleteMelting snow...it happens in Spring, but that is the highest we've ever seen the Mill river!
ReplyDeleteTonight a road north of us was closed...
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20110102/NEWS02/110102010/1007/Water-from-melting-snow-closes-Vermont-highway
Under the Wing, y'all. Take care returning to the post-holiday routine. Deep breaths.
ReplyDeleteThe grandbebes were wanting to play Rook, which I haven't for about 60 years, so had to be retaught. The teams were to the two kiddles and the kid and his mum. They won two, we won two, and we quit, everyone happy. Was kinda fun. Then we watched Space Cowboys ~~ an oh my all these *absolutely* delicious elderly men, lol!
ReplyDelete"As I see it, there is a culture in the South as strong as any ethnic religion"
ReplyDelete--listener
Yes, it is the thing that brought on the Civil War, and it is still there. The belief that everyone in the country should think and do things the same way as white southerners. It wasn't enough that for them that people in non-slave states should not interfere with the institution of slavery in the slave states; they insisted on universal complicity with it. And here they still are, still at it, and still with their undying claims of persecution. Their fellow citizens are patient, but not infinitely so.
Beautiful day this one is. Not so warm as the weekend, but bright and sunny, and nothing that could be described as frigid cp to the last month.
ReplyDeleteNow needing to gather together all the wrapping paper and ribbon and get it back to a place I can find it next year, lol! And start spring cleaning.
For those interested, here is a good presentation of how the Chicago mayor's race currently stands: http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2011/01/01/davis-endorsement-of-braun-a-game-changer/.
ReplyDeleteThis implicitly assumes the courts will rule the Emanuel meets the residency requirements to run. That's probably a good assumption, even though the legal situation is more than complex. The courts have traditionally leaned very far backward to rule candidates eligible.
I hope he *is* found eligible, then loses by a landslide.
ReplyDeleteWe have a hutch in the guest room that used to be Daughter's. We gave it to her when she struck out on her own and it added an elegant touch to her humble apartment. When she got her house, though, the hutch was deemed too lowly and was given back to us. So we have it until another chick requires the use of it. I stash the wrapping paper in the lower half ~ the big rolls go in the lower cabinet and the tape, ribbons and bows and scissors go into the two drawers. (The glassed upper portion holds vases and other such items that don't go anywhere else this time of year.) It's a perfect place for wrapping because there's the bed and a desk in there to work upon. I'm sure going to miss it when the hutch moves on. LOL!
ReplyDeleteAnd Happy Spring Cleaning! What a brilliant idea to start in January, to sort of trick the mind into thinking Spring is imminent. Then when Spring does come 'round you get to spend more of it playing outside.
In the book I'm reading the main characters are spending some time in Ireland at an Inn and they're reading through a journal of the man who was the doctor there during the Civil War. The doctor is naturally dismayed by the carnage taking place in the States and mentions it from time to time. At one point he says he knows the South is fighting for slavery, but that's greed. Then he opines that the North's quest is primarily greed as well. As the book's author is a southerner, I wish she would have one of her present-day characters comment on that remark. I do not see what the North was about as being centered on greed. Where would that idea come from, do you suppose?
ReplyDeleteLOL Susan.
ReplyDeleteBut, seriously, they are overflowing with hatred. Hatred breeds fear and, so it would seem, fear turns people into lemmings. Or is that giving lemmings a bad name? Anyhow, they just deliberately shut off their brains and allow themselves to be led around by the nose. It would be funny if it weren't so appallingly sad and scary.
Indeed. teaching your kids to think for themselves is always a gamble. Take my mother and me. She raised me to be what she was when she was young, a liberal Democrat. But, I've always, literally always, been way to the left of her, even before she caught Fox Pox.
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah. I've been wanting to see that.
ReplyDeleteGorgeous and sunny here too.
ReplyDeleteI donno, listener. But isn't war usually, ultimately, about one side wanting something the other side has, be that land or labor or whatever?*We* think the Civil War was justified, but I should imagine the southerners fancy it was all about destroying *their* way of life, just wantonly destroying it out of envy or spite. Or else they think we wanted their land and labor. *shrug* The victors get to write the history, but the vanquished don't always have a clear perspective either.
ReplyDeletelistener! That is uncharacteristically spiteful for you. Not that I'm saying you're wrong...
ReplyDeleteNo chance of a landslide. It's almost a given that he will be one of the two people in the run-off. But he could lose the run-off if the other candidate is good at coalition building.
ReplyDeleteSusan,
ReplyDeleteActually, as a Puerto Rican your friend's husband *is* exempt. Puerto Ricans are automatically US Citizens and there's nothing the Republicans can do about it. "Hispanic" is an arbitrary grouping of people who have very little in common other than language.
(And not always language, strangely enough. We have a long-term friend who is legally classified as Hispanic even though the two languages she grew up speaking are Dutch and English. The legal definition of Hispanic is someone born in an area south of the US border, with named exceptions, who has a native-level understanding of Spanish language and culture. The Dutch West Indies is not one of the named exceptions. And Elise is now Professor of Romance Languages and Literature at Bemidj State University, where people born and raised in South America are willing to certify that her knowledge of Spanish language and culture are as good as theirs. Whether she also has a native-level understanding of French language and culture has not come up.)
I am going to try to address all three previouis posts in this thread. But first directly to Alan: As you may or may not be aware, I was born and raised in Arkansas. I haven't been back for more than 50 years, but I haven't entirely lost my roots. Yes, there are definitely cultural differences. Food preferences, for one thing. It has been said, with a great deal of truth that the War Between the States was about hot bread versus cold bread. ([sigh] I love corn bread. But I married a Yankee, so I haven't had it for decades.) But your claim is the precise reverse of the truth. We never wanted to force everyone to eat hot corn bread, no matter how yummy. We just want the right to have our own cultural traditions respected. (Can you honestly claim you didn't expect me to be angry?)
ReplyDeleteYou implicitly quote Lincoln's promise not to interfere with slavery. But how many politicians, especially of the opposite party, do you actually believe? After many decades of friction, only peripherally about slavaery, the South decided that Lincoln's election was a signal that its interests and values were going to be routinely ignored by the Union government and that it would be better off as an independent nation.
This long-term friction was partially cultural but also strongly economic -- especially as it focussed on tariffs. There had been repeated attempts, some successful, some not, to enact tariffs that would benefit Northeastern businessmen and inductrialists while harming Southern farmers. (And Midwestern farmers, I suppose, but there weren't enough of them at the time to matter.) You'll notice that Lincoln didn't say anything about tariffs. It's easy to see this whole taiff issue in the light of capitalist plutocrats telling poor farmers, "If you don't have enough money to live as I do, you don't matter." And it's easy to see Lincoln's refusal to accept secession not as loyalty to some abstract ideal of The Union but as reflecting the plutocrats' horror at loss of a captive market.
Being Hispanic is also about heritage.
ReplyDeleteI'm half Irish and half Scottish with a tad of Cherokee into the mix to make things interesting. But I've never set foot in Ireland, visited Scotland once, and have met more Abenakis than Cherokees. I can't speak Gaelic of any type or Cherokee.
That doesn't mean I'm not Irish, Sottish or Cherokee.
Er, I meant "brilliant idear"...!
ReplyDeleteI know, I know.
ReplyDeleteR.E. is my Niagra Falls!
And slowly I turn....
How's this, then:
ReplyDeleteMay God bless and keep Rahm Emanuel...
...far away from us!!
;-)
LABOR QUOTE: "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." --Oscar Wilde
ReplyDeleteErr... Do any of you swingin' hep cats know what pajama jeans are? I'm much too square to have a clue.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I ask, Sis and one of her friends are discussing this mystery article of clothing on FB.
Ah, listener. That's better. 8)
ReplyDeleteEverything you need to know about pajama jeans. . . .
ReplyDeletehttp://www.diet-blog.com/11/pajama_jeans_the_latest_fashion_craze.php
Bill, I don't know what to say. I don't feel I know enough about the tariff issue to comment.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Hubby says he doesn't believe that brothers fight brothers and fathers fight sons over markets. He says that the South was fighting for a way of life, but fighting to not have to accept blacks as people.
Assuming all of the above is true...what Hubby said and what you said, I still side with the North, because no amount of money is equal to the worth of a human being.
That said, I very much appreciate you giving me some idea of what the author was pointing to when she had her character remark about the North's greed. Thank-you.
ReplyDeleteLooks like jeans but feels like pajamas:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.pajamajeans.com/flare/next?tag=he|af
What I need is jeans that look like dress pants.
ReplyDeleteWe aren't allowed to wear jeans to work.
It's the ONLY stipulation, set by the Trustees.
I'd do okay, listener, I actually *prefer* dresses, lol! Don't know why, jus' do.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree. One mile isn't far enough.
ReplyDeleteWhat? Jeans *aren't* dress pants? LOL
ReplyDeleteThe point was, Bill, that if friend's hubby drove through an area where they do profiling, he'd be profiled because of his appearance, and probably asked for his "papers" too.
ReplyDeleteOne of the more intriguing quiestions of alternate history is whether, if the South had won, blacks would have been freed within a couple of decades. I con't pretend to have the answer (hypotheticals are, by definition, hypothetical), but slavery is not a truly efficient economic system.
ReplyDeleteJacky's daughter is being horrid to Subway on FB. She claims Jacky died on February Twelfth, "And I have the death certificate to prove it."
ReplyDeleteI remember when Jacky died, and I know it was just a couple days after New Years. I also remember how devastated Subway was. Why would her daughter harass him like that? You know, I don't remember a daughter who ever came to visit, much less who ever actually helped. Subway devoted his life to looking after Jacky. If he wants to post on FB a simple statement of how much he misses her, I certainly think he should be able to do so without being emotionally pummeled.
I left him a hug. Maybe, Puddle and listener, you might want to do the same? Just to lend him a little moral support.
Do you think that today the USA is like the South and China like the North? We've pretty much sent the majority of our manufacturers to China, they hold massive loans to us, and it's hard to find anything for sale that doesn't have a "Made in China" sticker on it.
ReplyDeleteI always thought the South's absence of means to manufacture things was a big handicap during the Civil War. Now the USA is in that position in respect to China.
Thanks for the head's up, Cat. Done. ♥
ReplyDeleteI hope Subway comes by the blog here for some love.
{{{ {{ { ♥ SUBWAY ♥ } }} }}}
ReplyDeleteSusan,
ReplyDeleteInteresting question, but it would be hard to draw the analogy too closely. For one thing, I believe the US still has more manufacturing capability than China. The fact that so much of what China makes gets exported tends to mislead us. Of course, China's manufacturing capability is expanding rapidly. Things are changing. But in most areas the US is, so far as I know, not losing manusfacuring capability. That happened in the 1980s -- due partially to mistakes by US manufacturers -- but not so much now.
Another difference is that the South had always been predominantly agricultural. For the most part, manufacturing just never developed -- any more than you see a lot of manufacturing in Kansas. So the dynamics are different.
And the fact that the US and China are two nations among many, rather than the two pars of one nation, also has a big effect on the dynamics.
Not according to the Trustees.
ReplyDeleteThey are a bunch of sweeties, though.
So I look upon it as my excuse to get some nice clothes.
I only work 3 days in the week. I can wear jeans the other 4 days.
Hello folks, Thanks for the remembrances of my late wife. I promise to be back moar often.
ReplyDeleteDavid