Maybe 'cause she’s pickled.

http://www.ketv.com/article/man-launches-gofundme-page-to-protect-betty-white-from-2016/8539848

@Ignorant - Clever. But it’s a good point that she should stay under the covers for the next few days. Wish money really could help.

@KDemo Amazing actor, very misunderstood.

@moondrake - Yes!
And perhaps in another league :

@heartny

Fresh blood of innocents every day. Does a pickled addict genius wonders in terms of life span.

@heartny He’s officially undead and will live until they drown him in holy water. Or until he decides to retire to his crypt to rest for a few centuries.

@heartny I like the “allegedly”

@f00l - I was going to add Carter. Such a virtuous man, and life.

@f00l -
Hard to imagine, James T Kirk is 85.

@KDemo

And still entertaining in many meanings of the word.

@KDemo Dude… 85? Never realized it. I hope I age that well.

Sadly, the lost Star Trek Christmas episode is a hoax.

@f00l - My heart breaks for them.

@KDemo

For a parent to live when a child is lost … I don’t have words.

@f00l

Debbie Reynolds, actress, is still alive at age 84.

I’m thinking maybe you shouldn’t add any more names to this thread.

@Pavlov - I don’t think this thread is to blame for the sucking black hole of death, corruption and bigotry that is 2016.
Anyway, Nicholas Cage is up there on the list, so there’s that. If something happens to the tree, though, I’ll acquiesce.

@KDemo Oh, don’t forget- Donald John Trump is still alive at 70!

@OldCatLady

@f00l unfortunately this is no longer true ☹️️

@Pavlov Indeed. Mom dies a day after daughter dies. Sad, sad year.

Yesterday hurt.

And this hurts too.

Damn it.

@magic_cave I just want to kick 2016 in the dick - really hard.

@KDemo So what you’re saying is that 2017 will probably suck just as badly as 2016?

Ouch! Not possible, is it? @Omehgawd, I hope not!

@f00l - No worries, Kenny will be back next episode.
It’s my understanding that the cat is a zombie, alive and dead. I think you have to shake the box to find out.

@KDemo

I suspect they keep this Zombie Cat in a box all the time because the Zombie Cat is seriously pissed off all the time.

PO’d at Time, among other things.

@f00l Imagine if trees could talk, what tales this one would tell.

@f00l - Incredible!

@heartny probably just go brbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrb a lot and complain about caribou shit.

@f00l As opposed to the loneliest tree on Earth, which lived 250 miles from the nearest other tree and was used as a landmark by Saharan travellers for centuries, which was murdered by a drunk driver in 1973.

@heartny Trees can’t talk; that’s just silly! Everyone knows they bark!

@Pavlov Pavlov knows all about barking.

@Pavlov Except for the maples, they’re just a bunch of saps.

/giphy treebeard

@f00l Looks like the professor from the original Jurassic Park.

@serpent I am sorry to report that Lord Richard Attenborough was taken from us by 2014.

@f00l He has been replaced by some dude who makes video game music. I heard an interview with the new dude on Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me.

@f00l that video is from almost 8 years ago.

I saw him this summer!

@jbartus

Only time I ever saw him was late 1990’s. His voice is so lovely.

@Pavlov Damn you, making me cry!

@Pavlov - Oh, sure, but did they get sweet, sweet puppies for the poor children in Africa? I think not!

@Pavlov - Seriously, I think the girl is just as sweet as the dog, and really seems to deserve her puppy. Thanks.

@KDemo

In much of Africa let’s focus on food, water, safety, shoes, education, and the right to go to school - instead of being starved, or a refugee, or kidnapped, and forcibly converted, and then forced to be a miner, or forced to be a soldier, or be forcibly married against one’s will.

@f00l - Uh, I left out the /s
Admittedly a poor choice of analogies.

@KDemo

I knew. It’s cool. Just wanted to vent.

@KDemo

@Pavlov

@f00l It’s a lot easier and the path is much clearer to give a man a fish than to cure the social problems that prevent him from fishing for himself.

@moondrake

I know. But much of central Africa

Gonna take a while.

Soneone - some lawyer or economist - wrote a very interesting looking book about how one reason development stalls is not only a lack of productive economic customs, but also legal structures, esp property laws which enable the poor and middle class to easily establish ownership of what ought to be theirs.

The only people who can navigate the system are the rich. So many of them have spend decades using the laws and courts to establish legal ownership of property they ought to have no right to.

Own this book, can’t remember the name. I read as yet.

@cranky1950 You’re cranky.

@cranky1950 - Want to star that comment for JT, but I can’t.
He rec’d the Kennedy Center Honors last night.

@jmendenhall - So I wonder, does it feel so much worse because we can share and commiserate online?

@KDemo
Don’t think so. Feels worse because it’s really bad and that was a while ago. We got past that. We haven’t gotten past this yet.

That’s a good question. I wonder if people in 1980 weren’t’ as affected by it because they didn’t have the power of social media/the internet. I also think there are a few names that died in 1980 that weren’t household names until years down the road (Ian Curtis!)

@jmendenhall @f00l - We can probably point some blame at 24 hr cable news, as well.

@KDemo I think MTV had more impact than cable news.

@jmendenhall I’m wondering how old you are; no offense, but as an old fart, I can’t help nominating 1968 as just waaaaaaaaaay fucking bad.

@gertiestn I’m with you on that. I’m 69.

@gertiestn 69&70 weren’t much better. All 3 years were a hellofa lot more fun though.

@cranky1950 So you remember those years well? 1968 was a very bad year. Whenever I go to DC, I visit some names on the wall. 2017 bids fair to be the worst in a long, long time, in many ways.

@gertiestn
@magic_cave
@OldCatLady
@cranky1950

Good music. Some decent films.

Otherwise

Started with Khe Sanh, the Tet Offensive, and the My Lai Massacre.
Then later you got the international confrontations, protests, overdoses, and assassinations.

Crosby Stills and Nash
Long Time Gone

Sympathy For The Devil, performed on The Davis Frost Show in 1968. Everyone except the Stones appears not to have a clue.

Short overview
7 min

These are about 15 min each I think?
Parts 1-4

Tom Brokaw’s piece on 1968
1:30

Documentary on the 60’s
2 hours

@f00l peter max, the Haight, Hitch hiking practically anywhere, the hog farm, acid tests, Timothy Leary, the endless summer, Biscayne Bay still had seagrass, mt trashmore had not been started yet, Hair, Love ins, Be ins, Hari Krishnas, Lots of Energy, cheap gas, cheap cars. the interstate system almost complete and never gridlocked. Great time to be 20

@cranky1950

Don’t forget the Democratic National Convention in Chicago - a brokered back-room convention:

And the protest of the Olympics in Mexico:

From 1969, another fine year:

It was a great time to be young and have wheels. (Never had one of these)

@f00l - More CSN&Y

@gertiestn I was born in the summer of 1980. I am not young, I am just working with a small sample size.

@KDemo
Yeah thought about “Ohio”, which is an incredible song - and which they I think started writing immediately after the shootings and had on the radio and in the stores within 2 weeks.

But Nixon wasn’t inaugurated till 1969 and Kent State shootings were 1970, so I left it out.

Here’s another somewhat earlier Stephen Stills song everyone then young will remember, performed by Buffalo Springfield.
Recorded Dec 1966, released Jan 1967.

For What It’s Worth

@mitzoe

https://meh.com/forum/topics/we-hate-you-2016--is-anyone-still-alive#58636ea4f619b304141a7862

Pure luck of the draw, but I’m keeping it. Karaoke :-}

@Shrdlu - I’m elated for that. I regret that we might not even know if one of our online friends died.

The internet is a cruel mistress.

@KDemo My BFF and The Spouse both have my “people to notify” list for net-friends, web-groups, and other places I frequent enough that someone might want to know where I went. And the tightest mailing list I’m on (12 women in 4 countries on 3 continents for the past 11 years) shares “who to call in an apparent emergency” lists.

It’s really quite disconcerting when someone just stops being around.

@magic_cave - That’s very thoughtful, actually. I, for one, would want to know.

@OldCatLady

Crap.

This year really needs to back off.

Debbie, pls be ok.

@OldCatLady Dang too much schmaltz’ll get ya everytime.

@OldCatLady - Nooo!
Make . It . Stop!

@cranky1950 Why blame rendered chicken fat? What did the chicken ever do to you?

@OldCatLady Clogs da tubes

@Dizavid Fuckin A YES WE CAN!!! Work will set us free!

Oh yeah. Trolls are still alive. Ho hum.

@Dizavid You starred your own post? Ew.

@Dizavid Haven’t disappeared yet jackass?

@cinoclav Notice, class, how this flaming comment stays up because it’s against me and not against obnoxious, salty liberals as all my moderated posts have been. Meh moderation is hypocritical bullshit.

@Dizavid Really? You might want to reread exactly what you wrote above. You started with calling everyone ‘dummies’ and moved on to a lovely ‘fuck you’ to those that don’t agree with your opinion. So do you really want to talk about moderated comments?

Let me make my own opinion perfectly clear. You’re an asshole. You’ve been an asshole since you started posting here. You’ll always be an asshole. It’s your nature. Class dismissed.

@cinoclav There are not enough stars in the universe for you right now.

@Dizavid, try not posting like a dick. It is one of the few rules, in the actual rules. And when you consistently post like a dick, other people pointing out you’re a dick will make it past moderation. For the most part, you spew nothing but inflammatory bile. hell, I’m an asshole, and even I cringe at your posts.

Sorry, also, BTW, if I have disparaged anyone named Dick, or Richard, inadvertently - my apologies.

@Dizavid

The rules. Not that I’m accusing you of breaking them

@KDemo Mine are younger. I’m old. Oh, are we posting gray hair glares? Okay!

@OldCatLady Geez where’d you find Jeffery Hunter?

@daveinwarsh - Damn damn damn.

@daveinwarsh That would be the opposite of still living. Try the RIP thread.

@daveinwarsh Tonight on MSNBC, James Lipton said that he never believed that anyone could die of a broken heart…until today.

@sammydog01 She was listed on a post above. Sorry if this was inappropriate…

@gertiestn Talking to myself here, but I just realized that James Lipton himself, at 90, can be added to the list of the great good living. I’ll also put in a good word for Maggie Smith, but she’s a mere 82.

@daveinwarsh
Not a prob.

I saw it flash across my phone while I was at a stoplight.

People who are already frail can be undone by grief and shock.

My heart goes out to the family.

@daveinwarsh Not inappropriate- that was supposed to be a joke.

@DMO I loved “St. Elsewhere”.

@KDemo
I love her.

@cranky1950

He autographed a copy of a book for me once. I winder what happened to that book?

@cranky1950

That’s quite a carpet ride you’ve taken us on.

@cranky1950
Now there’s a blast from the past.

Still have your catalogs?

The history
http://wholeearth.com/history-whole-earth-catalog.php

@f00l Yeah somewhere

@f00l - Haha! I used mine to press flowers.

@f00l I still have a copy of the WEC sitting around somewhere, probably right next to my copy of this:

@rockblossom
Abbie Hoffman. Saul Alinsky.

Met Hoffman a few times during the anti-nuke stiff of the late 70’s and early 80’s. He was treated as a revered statesman, but was no longer leading the charge.

@rockblossom @f00l - Still have my copy of

@KDemo
Had that book once. Paid for it tho.

I knew the bookstore owner. I spoze that means I’m simply uncool.

@f00l - I lived in a studio above the bookstore. They kept the book on the counter next to the cash register. I paid too.

@cranky1950

He should do a book on the Trumps.

@f00l Probably is

@cranky1950

Your memory is on a roll.

But most of the boomers should, I hope, be with us.

Of the 12 Astronauts who walked on the Moon, 7 are still with us

Buzz Aldrin (86)
Alan Bean (84)
Davis Scott (84)
John Young (86)
Charles Duke (81)
Eugene Cernan (82)
Harrison Schmitt (81)

@f00l

Nice pics from the filming location.

@f00l Now those are memories well worth the storage space. Pat Nixon and her Republican cloth coat were famous, too.

@OldCatLady

I think the reason this isn’t a strong memory for me is that I was just along for someone else’s ride. I didn’t choose the agenda or purpose. I had to choose being being conventionally “quite good” or being quite rude. If I couldn’t have behaved as my family would have wished, I would simply have declined the trip. I would never have been rude to these people. Which meant I couldn’t go see and do the things I would have liked.

If my own family unit had been the ones going, all of my generation would have had far more interesting times and gone off in unapproved directions. Parents and their preferences are fair game for a challenge. But I couldn’t do it to these relatives.

So it was kinda like a school trip except with lots of family along. Interesting, in a way, to witness it, but no passions engaged. For me the best part was the Smithsonian. And the strongest memory was of being so fucking cold and thinking that Pat Nixon was also.

Incidentally, many huge contributors and party operatives were at whatever hotel was ours. (Can’t remember now which hotel). I can attest to Pat Nixon’s choice of coat being a small minority opinion. Mostly you saw people in major furs. Plenty of them brought a fur wardrobe.

@f00l - Was it the Watergate?
Great story.

@f00l - I have worked (at least a little) on every presidential campaign since LBJ. It was easier for me, with liberal parents. As a young teen ~13, I canvassed door to door for the Dems. Collected so much $ I was honored at a ceremony in Kent Woodlands and introduced to Pierre Salinger.

Smithsonian is on my bucket list.

@KDemo

I don’t think the hotel I stayed was the Watergate. Couldn’t have been. Because I watched the entire Senate Committee hearings (Sam Ervin) every goddam day and that was only a few years after. I would have connected them in memory.

I talk to one of these relative every so often. Next time I do I’ll try to see if she remembers which hotel.

My family was a bit weird about politicals. We mostly did not confront or discuss. The two big exceptions were Civil Rights and Vietnam.

It seemed to cause my mother physical pain if she was confronted with that sort of disagreement. We just did our thing and never told them. And all the older generations were either extremely conservative D’s (more conservative than R’s socially - those D’s who went en masse to Reagan) or else R’s like my parents and the people I went to Washington with.

@KDemo @f00l

Never been to DC. Really wanna go though. Eventually maybe.

@KDemo

Ah. Marin County. Gorgeous expensive Marin County. Is it still gorgeous? Haven’t been there since the Reagan era.

@KDemo
@PlacidPenguin

You must both go to Washington if you can. Can be a wonderland to visit. And a lot of the best stuff is free.

@KDemo
@OldCatLady

My parents went to do the tourist thing in Washington in 1976. They had enough clout to be able to get the 2-minute handshake meetings with various Texans working on the Hill.

I should mention that my parents had a strong marriage.

My parents were looking for I think Lloyd Bentson’s office in whichever Senate office building, and had managed to get confused and turned around and onto the wrong floor.

They got into an empty elevator to try another floor, and then heard someone calling to hold the elevator, so they did.

It was Ted Kennedy. Mom said he simply radiated total gorgeousness. Dad snorted at this. Anyway, he asked them what they were doing in Washington, had a nice chat, and he gave them directions to Sen Bentson’s office.

When Sen Kennedy was out of sight, my mother put her hand to her chest, sighed, and pretended to nearly swoon, as tho she needed the wall for support. Dad said she had exactly the same dreamy “I just met a sex god” look on her face as you would expect from a 12-year-old bobby soxer in the 1950’s who had just spoken to Elvis.

He looked at her in some consternation and said, “You never even considered supporting a Kennedy or voting for one in your life”.

Mom swooned a little lower on the wall and spoke breathily, as tho she were about to faint, “Where’s the ballot box? I’ll make up for lost time.”

And then they came home happily. And both told that story around a bit. And no one knows how that story got back to Washington, but one day a large envelope showed up in the mail. It contained an unrequested, personalized and signed photo of Senator Ted Kennedy along with a note that it had been a pleasure to meet them.

T

@f00l @kdemo @PlacidPenguin re ‘…lot of the best stuff is free…’ Walk out of the National Archives on Pennsylvania Avenue, look to your right and see the U.S. Capitol Building, where it all happens. Takes my breath away every time. Go to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and touch the names of those who died. Go to the Library of Congress and tour the Jefferson Building. Choose which of the Smithsonian museums you want to see most, because your feet will wear out before you see them all. Have Navy Bean Soup in the Senate office building. Attend one of the free U.S. Navy Band events. Tour as many of the monuments and memorials as you have time for. Go to Washington National Cathedral. Attend a performance at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (this costs money). I’ve never done the White House or Congress tours, because you can see them all online. Then check out https://washington.org/things-do-washington-dc

@f00l @kdemo @PlacidPenguin I’ll echo everything @OldCatLady said and add a couple of comments. I walk around the Capitol Building every (work) day, and breathtaking is accurate. It’s also such a treasure that, unlike the distance one is fenced away from the White House, when you walk the Capitol grounds, you are right there next to it. Also, the grounds are littered with unique trees — if you walk the grounds, observe the trees.

While you’re there, you’re right next to the U.S. Botanic Gardens. I don’t think it’s my favorite botanical garden, but it is worth walking through, and deceptively large. Just past it is another nice little park/garden, Bartholdi Park.

You’re also quite close to the Japanese American War Memorial. It’s not quite the same as, say, the Vietnam Veterans wall, but something about seeing the names of all the internment camps carved into stone feels pretty important right about now.

Finally, the Newseum is not free, but if you walk past it, you get to see that day’s front pages from something like 80 different newspapers from around the country and around the world. I walk past this every (work) day as well, and it’s… fascinating.

I’m going to be super sad when I lose my excuse to be in DC every day job.

@f00l Holy Crap…1969…you must be like @mfladd OLD! My parents hadn’t met in 1969, so I wasn’t even a twinkle in dad’s eyes!!

@mikibell @f00l

So we CAN call @mfladd old?

Woohoo!

@OldCatLady

I got to go to Washington several times going along, and then a lot when I lived in NY. Love Washington. There’s so much. Like NYC, I never did a third of it. I think I’ve been to State but not Treasury. Went to all the mall museums tho you can never get enough of them.

Yes to the Mall, the Lincoln, the Jefferson, the Washington. Yes to the Wall. Yes to the Archives. Yes to the Marine Corps War Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery (there’s a story there). Yes to the art museums and Union Station. Yes to getting drunk in Georgetown. Yes to the Capital, many times, and to the White House (who was Pres? Honestly don’t remember which trip). Yes to the Library of Congress and the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Naval Observatory. Yes to the Supreme Court. Yes to jazz and blues. Yes to Mount Vernon. Yes to excellent Indian food. Yes to Annapolis and to Chesapeake and Rock Creek Park and the Potomac. Yes to the Botanic Gardens.

(Of course the coolest places are the Capitol, Air and Space, and Natural History).

Drove past the Pentagon and CIA but never stopped. I must have missed a ton of places. The Holocaust Museum did not exist then. No to many govt departments that would have been interesting. Never managed to visit the Air and Space extension at Dulles so have not seen the Enola Gay exhibit or the other large exhibits there.

Have not been there since the WWII memorial was built. Tried to talk my Dad into going. I think he finally did, when my brother and niece were both working there.

Remember this quote below? If you do, did you first see it in a book, or on a building? If in a book, do you remember which book? If on a building, do you remember which building? (We seem to have a lot of books and a few buildings in common.)

“He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.”

It is said to have been spoken by Samuel Johnson to Boswell, with Johnson himself sourcing it as a Spanish proverb.

But if you saw that quote in a book before you went to college, I’m betting the book wasn’t Life of Samuel Johnson, and that I know which hot book of the Cold War era had that quote in it.

Kilroy was there. And many of us were there with Kilroy.

R

@PlacidPenguin never asked permission…

@mikibell
@PlacidPenguin

@f00l Holy Crap…1969…you must be like @mfladd OLD! My parents hadn’t met in 1969, so I wasn’t even a twinkle in dad’s eyes!!
mikibell said 17 minutes ago

Yes damn it OLD.

Do you think you can say it again, louder this time? I don’t think everyone heard you. Perhaps you could yell, or use a PA system?

Yes I remember 1968. And 1969. And a few other years too. I remember when we all shopped for bomb shelters after the Cuban Missile Crisis (we never bought one, but for the families that did have them, it was where you went with your friends to smoke dope.)

I remember watching live on a tiny back and white screen as Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder and became the first human to set foot onto the moon.

Yes old. So FO.
/giphy OLD

@mikibell

@mikibell @f00l
So we CAN call @mfladd old?
Woohoo!
PlacidPenguin said 19 minutes ago

@PlacidPenguin never asked permission…
mikibell said 8 minutes ago

Trying to remember when you asked mine. Hmmmm.

Perhaps next time there’s an exchange, I’ll send you a box of socks. Old people always have lots of socks you know.

@f00l

I wasn’t referring to you.

It was @mfladd whom I was calling

OLD

@PlacidPenguin

My message was intended for @mikibell. You were just pinged in passing. Collateral damage.

@f00l but you LOVE me!

See, I am at an awkward age where I didn’t get to see them first walk on the moon, but I vividly remember air raid sirens… My son has never heard one and didn’t get people’s reactions to one…

I remember having a cool portable transistor radio…and a tiny little black and white tv…like 5" Diagonal…

@f00l

@f00l did you know that quote was from the computer “bug” lady?? Or as my son calls her, Grass Hopper? I didn’t know she was the source…

@f00l

Let me make this clear then.

Besides @mfladd being

OLD,

you @f00l are also

OLD

.

@f00l I will give your parents much money to allow me to destroy said photograph >.>

How I loathe that murderous swine.

(Might be a teeny bit bitter having had the displeasure of living in his state my whole life. Boy do we ever need congressional term limits… also he’s a murderer so there’s that…)

@PlacidPenguin

A little birdie whispered that in my ear a while back.

Sux then you make the best of it.

@mikibell

Lotsa socks for you.

@OldCatLady Actually, there are performances at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage every night at 6:00 p.m. and they’re free. They have a wide range of programs and performers, some a little more exciting than others, but they’re worth checking out. As a matter of fact, I think the Kennedy Center’s web page broadcasts each Millennium Stage event live at 6, so you don’t even have to get to DC to see them.

@gertiestn does the Kennedy Center have a large room with floor to ceiling windows? I swear I have been there, but I only remember a reception, not a performance or anything…

@f00l

@jbartus

The decades pass and you learn to go forwards, not backwards. In personal life and in politics. Most politicians have done hideous things, tho Ted Kennedy’s went all the way to extra hideousness and the death of someone he knew personally. But he’s gone, and it doesn’t pay to spend all your time on a high horse. People who live in political families or top-of-the-corp families learn that, if need be, by a hard path - but most people know it instinctively.

The photo and note have vanished. It could be that my parents themselves got did of it. I don’t know. If anyone knew where those items were, I don’t think my parents would have wanted, thru the years, any assistance in ethical evaluation of the encounter or the Senator - even tho they despised the NE liberal elite and the Kennedys in particular.

That’s what made my Mom’s comedy act so funny. I told the story for the humor. And he was very good-looking. They found it all funny, it was their encounter and their story, and I rest with their interpretation.

@brhfl Dang. What is your so-awesome job? I’ve never actually looked at the trees. Next year in D.C., as they say. Except not in winter, or August.

@mikibell As long as we’re recounting history, I was privileged to hear Admiral Doctor Amazing Grace Hopper speak, twice. She used to hand out nanoseconds- pieces of telephone wire as long as the distance an electron travels in a nanosecond. I still have mine. For picoseconds, she said, you put nanoseconds into a pepper grinder. I’m OLD.

@OldCatLady

Oh now I’m super super envious.

Send me some picoseconds if you have extras.

/giphy picosecond

@OldCatLady wow… I am impressed… To have heard Grace Hopper speak…she is an icon in our house!

And I didn’t intend to be rude to @f001, his photo made him look like a contempory of my hubby’s, and he is just barely 50. @mfladd, well, he is just a easy target and it was a gentle prod to come and play with us more…

The years don’t matter, but oh man, are the miles killing me

@mikibell

Photo? Of moi?

What photo?

Oh, this photo:

Yeah, i do look kinda old in that photo.

I look a bit younger it in photo. Flattering light ya know.

Oh, Fwiw:
My username is spelled

F
Zero
Zero
L
(Except lowercase, tho that doesn’t matter).

Are you using a “one” ( numeric notation) as the last character?

No biggie. I know typing it is a PITA. For me, too.

@mikibell About Hopper- there are several interviews on YouTube. She was on Letterman, with a visual for nanoseconds:

For more on nanoseconds:

@fzerozerol jeez, that was a pita

@OldCatLady There’s nothing particularly awesome about my job (well, a big part of it is ensuring that documents are accessible to users of assistive technology, which is awesome in its own way…) but the train schedule means I get to take the enjoyable walks to-and-from the office instead of merely the functional ones.

@OldCatLady - That Letterman interview was great, thanks!

@brhfl

@fzerozerol jeez, that was a pita
brhfl said 13 hours ago

But don’t you feel better, now that you did it?

/giphy dinosaur

@f00l

“He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.”

Union Station
Washington, D.C.

Back to this quote for a second. I guess it means nothing to anyone besides me.

The first known written use was as a recorded remark by Johnson to Boswell, and Johnson claimed at that time it was a traditional Spanish proverb. Well, given the content, I guess the Spanish would be the ones to know. .

The words are carved into the facade of Union Station in Washington D.C. (Which is called “Union Station” because previously each RR company had its own station. The opening of “Union Station” allowed the removal of railroad tracks and train traffic from the National Mall.)

In pre-WWII days, most of the elected officials and other notables came and went from Washington by train, and passed under those words. Even in the 1960’s it was commonplace for a person traveling to a location east of the Mississippi to go by train. So the station and the words became sorts of Washingtonian talismans.

I was quite a reader when young. And tho I liked Treasure Island and The Black Stallion and kid’s mysteries just fine. I discovered that altho Mom didn’t mind me reading Pride and Prejudice, there were other books on her small personal shelf (such as Rebecca) that she would take away from me, asking me to wait a few more years. (I was in second or third grade at the time.)

So of course that became a bookshelf where I took a look at stuff every so often. She didn’t have a lot, just a few bestsellers if the day. I would rearrange the books so she couldn’t tell one was gone.

Imagine my delight at finding a genuine 1940’s marriage manual, complete with charts and graphs of the variable male and female alleged “pleasure” as graphed against “activity” and “time”!

But the book that stuck in my head was Allen Drury’s Washingtonian novel, Advise and Consent. At the time (early elementary school) I thought it was great.

Now it’s maddening. He was a long term journalist in Washington and knew how things got done in the 1940’s and 1950’s, and it shows. But almost all the characters are overdone and much of the dialogue is plain godawful. Much of the book is plotted in what feels like 1950’s cliche’d layout. Many of the minor characters and filler scenes are just paint-by-numbers cartoons.

And things have changed. Rhetoric is just for TV cameras and perhaps Twitter now. Washington is corporate rather than righteous and grandiose.

But … the book resonates. Even when you wanna laugh out loud at the writing. There is a heart there, and a soul, and a presence. Stuff matters. Many of the characters and plot devices are composites of various people and events - Drury knew his material. The novel became a best-seller and won a Pulitzer. Unfortunately, this book was the best book he wrote - they went downhill sharply from there.

I don’t wanna spoil the book in case someone wants to read it cold. Be cautious about looking it up if you might wanna read it - most articles lay out many of the IRL political events and people. I’ll stop with this: many of the issues in the book were re-workings straight out of the McCarthy era.

And that quote above Union Station was used in the book as a running metaphor for his characters who, full of weaknesses and flaws and the need to survive and gain power, still try to do good now and then.

Here is a brief bit of the book that shouldn’t spoil it:

Going in gravely with the Senator from Minnesota and the Senator from Arkansas, the eye of the Senator from Illinois fell suddenly upon an inscription carved high on the face of the great gateway building.
He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, it said, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him. And he thought of his opponent as he had seen him last on television, the commanding presence, the magnificent defiance, and as he had seen him in their last talk together, laying the Presidency itself on the line in one supreme gamble to save his political reputation and his political power; and he thought with a grim, inescapable admiration that he had indeed brought home the wealth of the Indies, and indeed had carried the wealth of the Indies with him; and what it had all meant for his country, of good or ill, what man in this hour could truly say?

As a second or third grader I had no idea what that saying meant. But it stuck with me, and I kept worrying it, until I teased out something about burdens and the cost of achievement.

And when I think of Washington, to this day, I think of Union Station and that Spanish proverb.

@mikibell @PlacidPenguin

@sammydog01

Have a thing for listening to Joe Walsh play.

@f00l His hands were amazing.

@sammydog01 - You dated him?

@KDemo
@sammydog01

Joe Walsh story time!

@f00l One time at band camp…

@sammydog01

Come on! Done leave us hanging for more! Pls pls pls.

@KDemo
Mel Brooks is 90 and incredibly stupendously awesome.

@KDemo

Isn’t it sad though that it has to be pointed out that nobody newsworthy died?

Sigh

@KDemo Depends on who you consider a nobody. If you’re a college football fan, it’s sad to hear that LaVell Edwards died. He coached BYU for nearly 30 years.

@cinoclav - I was afraid someone would be able to contradict me. Abominable, cursed year.

@OldCatLady Is his Vice President that much better?

@sammydog01 Just as, if not scarier.

@cinoclav @sammydog01 One at a time. Moderation. Patience. One is a rabblerouser, the other is batshit cray, disliked by most.

@mikibell