I asked you guys to send me photos from your archives if you didn’t have new garden pics, and commentor Ozark Hillbilly responded nobly:
Our colors this year are somewhat muted but years past have been very colorful as the top pic shows. I took it it in 2012.
The last Dogwood leaves always seem especially vibrant to me.
This rose may or may not have been that years last, but those beetles certainly thought it would be.
This clematis has been blooming in Oct as well as spring for 2-3 years now. Not sure why it chooses to.
We had quite the haul of winter squash and gourds last year. The Woofmeister thought they were getting far too much attention. This year I did not plant any as I just did not feel like battling the squash bugs and was hoping that they would go elsewhere if I had no squash to share.
***********
What’s going on in your garden(s) this week?
greennotGreen
We won’t be having much color in middle Tennessee this year because it has been deathly dry. My cistern that I use for watering my greenhouse is completely empty, but I have a good, deep well.
Up at this ridiculous hour because I have a cold on top of chemo, but, on the bright side, the chemo seems to be working, and I’m feeling better cycle by cycle.
greennotGreen
BTW, Ozark Hillbilly, beautiful winter squash from last fall! I want some!
rikyrah
Good Morning?,Everyone?
rikyrah
What beautiful pictures??
OzarkHillbilly
@greennotGreen: They was tasty. Nice that your chemo is agreeing with you (kinda sorta)
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: Thanx.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Well done,
CarolDuhart2
We might actually have a 40 degree day today (at least in the morning). Barely fall here so far. We did actually have rain for a couple of days so maybe things will finally look fall-ish.
Mom’s memorial dinner will be next Saturday. Will try to get to the grave next weekend, first time since her funeral. It’s starting to sink in that’s she’s gone now that the holidays are upon us. There will be no Thanksgiving dinner (sis going out of town on third trip this year). So still trying to make plans on my own.
Christmas by Amazon!
Mary G
The Woofmeister looks like a younger version of Walter and Ellis. Beautiful woods, flowers and squash.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Very nice.
Mary G
The first holidays are hard. My mom died six years ago today and I hadn’t thought about it yet, so it gets better.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: @Mary G: @Baud: Thanx
satby
@greennotGreen: Good to hear that chemo is helping, hoping the best for you!
@OzarkHillbilly: I love autumn and pictures of the colors. A good fall must be spectacular in your neck of the woods.
OzarkHillbilly
@CarolDuhart2: @Mary G: A long time ago a friend of mine told me, “The pain never goes away, you just think of it less often.”
satby
@CarolDuhart2: I must have missed the news, condolences on your mom’s passing. I hear you about the holidays, it’s the first for our family too. Definitely a more muted holiday season this year. Best wishes for all of your family.
My mom was born on Christmas eve and was a twin, so it was always a double holiday for our family. Her twin has been gone a long time, so I’m now the oldest person on that side of the family. It’s a strange feeling.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: It’s not New England spectacular but it’s pretty nice. :-)
satby
@rikyrah: @raven: @Baud: Good morning youse guys!??
satby
@Mary G: aww, sorry MaryG! It does get better, but still poignant.
Baud
@satby: Good morning. How’ve you been?
raven
@satby: yo
Gindy51
@greennotGreen: Just a few hundred miles north (SE IN) we haven’t had to use our spring fed pond all summer. By now we are usually 3 months into using it but our cistern is still full. I do water the garden with unfiltered pond water, makes for some nice veggies when they do grow (which they did NOT this year, too wet and too cool most of the season).
Right now the peppers are doing well but the rest of the garden was a complete failure. The one thing that did grow well are the chipmunk tomatoes, the ones that grow where the chipmunks poop out the seeds after stealing them from the garden. I have hundreds of green ones since it never stayed hot enough, long enough for them to get red.
satby
@Baud: Doing ok. I’ll be unpacking stuff all winter it seems, the new job is going ok, and life has become stable. < hope that statement doesn't jinx it ?
@raven: fuck LBJ!
Joel
What’s a good perennial for pairing with daffodils? Not trying to match blooms so much as hide the post-bloom foliage.
Baud
@satby: Sounds like you’ve obtained some degree of normalcy. That’s wonderful. I also see there’s a small chance you can help turn Indiana blue this year! How awesome would that be
satby
@Joel: Daylillies, coneflowers, any of the daisy or rudbeckia families if it’s a sunny spot.
Astilbe would be nice if it’s more shady.
CarolDuhart2
@satby: Mom passed away on 5/3 this year after a brief illness at the age of 95. Long life, but still pretty quick (Fri-Tuesday). Even if you know it’s coming in a way-she was 95 so we knew the time was coming soon, it still is a loss. My sister took care of her for about 20 years or so when she could no longer get around on her own, and now she’s on her own taking care of her granddaughter. Things were pretty busy earlier in the year, all of the changes. But now things have slowed down a bit.
It’s pretty poignant. I have a coat of mom’s she never got to wear, and a great deal of her clothes. They all fit quite fine and are quite beautiful, but still I know I have them because she passed.
Holidays are a reminder of how much activity really was centered around her. She cooked Thanksgiving and Christmas for years, then my sister did that while we went to visit her, and then the last one she was in the nursing home surrounded by lights and carols when we came to visit. She came home for New Years, and was there until one month before she died. She came home again, went back for a short stay, and had a heart attack and went into a coma the day after she came home again. She was effectively dead that day, but never regained consciousness and died Tuesday.
satby
@Baud: well, locally I think S. Bend is normally blue, but the rural areas overwhelm the cities. I am hoping it flips, but not thinking it will.
Had a patient who complained that the lenses in his glasses were called “progressive”. Yeah, ok old white dude, fly that idiot flag high.
satby
@CarolDuhart2: Moms of that generation were the center of our worlds in a way that I don’t think is replicated now. Sounds like she had a wonderful long life and her passing was mercifully quick, and that’s a blessing in a way.
I have some of my mom’s clothes as well, and my current state of stability is because she saved more money than my sisters and I realized. I’m very grateful, but at the same time I would rather have had her a while longer instead of her stuff.
Baud
@satby: Ha! Of course they’re called progressive. They help you see better.
CarolDuhart2
@satby: I think it’s harder now. She never had to work 2 jobs a day-we babysat each other. Yes, it was merciful-she didn’t have to suffer long and she knew we all loved her at the end.
And it’s also about getting older-I turned 60 last week, and wished I could have shared the day with her. She used to sing “Happy Birthday” to me every birthday, and I would call her each accomplishment and milestone.
CarolDuhart2
@satby: Amen. One more Xmas, one more Birthday-worth more than all the stuff. One more day.
Women of that generation-more frugal-made it possible for us to weather some of the storms that came later. We learned how to cook and clean for our selves, to value hoarded pennies, to save our stuff and use it year after year. They had a natural dignity despite what life threw at them-and the obstacles both law and custom put in their way.
satby
@CarolDuhart2: agree with every word!
satby
@Baud: Sometimes I just move on rather than answer, because if I start I won’t stop. Which wouldn’t be fair to my doctor boss. But seriously, only a conservative is that stupid about words… like they’re magic incantations.
Eric S.
I took this yesterday. I’m not in on the joke around here but fuck it. Or him.
Baud
@satby: I wonder if those guys go through life wearing two right shoes.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: It would explain their crankiness.
satby
@Baud: I love that comment and want to marry it; it’s what I’ll be thinking the next time I deal with one of those guys (and they’re almost always guys. I know women can be that hateful, but they seldom spontaneously just say shit to strangers in a completely unrelated setting).
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: The pictures are beautiful. If I had to depend on my garden for food this winter, I’d be out of luck.
My maples are just now starting to change colors, so it will be a few weeks before I have to do daily raking.
Immanentize
Ozark — you really live in a beautiful place. And New England wasn’t so spectacular this year….
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: Thanx.
@Immanentize: Yes we do, and we count our blessings for it every day.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Nice shots. I especially love that top picture. It looks like both Ohio and New England.
It’s been very colorful around here, but the rains this week blew away most of the leaves.Driving has been hazardous this week because I’m too busy looking at the trees.
MomSense
@greennotGreen:
Glad chemo is working. Hope your cold improves too.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Beautiful photos, OH.
OzarkHillbilly
Heh:
You go, Bernie.
CarolDuhart2
There have been more losses this year. I lost my 16-year old cat (my second) back in January after another brief illness. He had a bladder tumor that was inoperable. I let him go after a week. I had him for 8 years. I adopted him out of a flyer I saw on a shop window. I had lost my first cat after 4 years (she was a magnificent black cat) and she was 18 when she died. I was looking, and there he was! Kirby was sweet at times and cranky at others. He would bite and sometimes even scratch, but other times, he would snuggle around my feet and lie next to me.
And I may be facing early retirement in a couple of years as well. While things probably won’t be dire there, it’s pretty unexpected too.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: @MomSense: thanx
debbie
@CarolDuhart2:
My father died at 44, when I was 19 and my youngest brother was 8. It’s literally been decades since them, but I still remember the first Christmas without him. I couldn’t get over how a room filled with the tree and presents could also feel so empty. All of us felt a real sense of loss like a heavy chilliness in the air. We each felt very far apart from each other, even though the room was pretty small.
Elizabelle
Good morning all. Nice chilly morning with sunshine to welcome Hillary to North Carolina again. She’s here for a quick visit. I’ll be canvassing later today.
@Eric S.: Nice pic.
The LBJ derision is in honor of commenter raven, a Viet Nam veteran who thinks LBJ has a lot to answer for.
satby
@CarolDuhart2: if it’s a couple of years you’ll be 62 and you can get Social Security, so that gives you at least a baseline income. I got the big layoff at age 59, and though I took lots of other jobs and started my own small business none of it was a steady reliable income. Even so, I pulled through ok and you will too, especially if you start now by paying off everything you can and downsizing other bills. I was in the process of that but not far enough along, so I took a big hit, but things were heading in the right direction after some tough years. So use this time to prepare and it might just be the most liberating time of your life when that retirement comes along.
CarolDuhart2
@debbie: That’s harder, because it’s so early in life and (I don’t know the details) probably so sudden. Living at home where he was and looking for him to show up any minute.
It does seem so empty, because it is. There’s a space that’s no longer filled, and no material thing can fill it. When I went to my sister’s house afterwards, I looked at her old chair and had to realize she would no longer sit in it. I went in her old bedroom, sorting out clothes, and realizing she no longer could object to us going to her things.
ThresherK (GPad)
@CarolDuhart2: Our home’s hearts go out to you, and the brevity of the illness is a relief.
This will be the third holidays without my MiL, who passed on 10/18. My wife was so distracted with some other problems this week I didn’t even mention it til yesterday.
greennotGreen
Thanks for the good thoughts, everyone.
While I’m sure it will be hard when my 93yo mother dies, my immediate goal is to outlive her because no parent should have to experience the death of their child. (Yes, of course it happens, but it would be better if it didn’t.) My cousin died in a car wreck when he was 20, and it just about broke my grandfather who had largely raised him. And I see what such a loss as done to my friends whose 6yo died at Sandy Hook. And always in the back of my family’s minds is what will happen to my sister should my nephew with cystic fibrosis predecease her.
So, for those of you who have lost parents, especially elderly parents, remember them lovingly but also rejoice that you remain – a testament to their lives – and things are as they should be. As Hillary said, “…our greatest monument on this earth won’t be what we build, but the lives we touch.”
Eric S.
@Elizabelle:
That makes a lot of sense. My father was drafted. He was lucky that a life long injury from a car accident when he was younger kept him state side. He doesn’t talk about it much but he’d agree about LBJ.
satby
@greennotGreen: so true. Thank you.
CarolDuhart2
@Eric S.: I wonder if that isn’t part of the divide in the Democrats between some older white males and everybody else.
Vietnam was poorly handled to say the least, but LBJ’s legacy is liberating for everybody else not them. Open accommodations, liberal immigration, the Great Society safety net, the Voting Rights act, adding women to civil rights (meant as a poison pill, but it still works), Pell Grants and student loans and open opportunities to actually go to college, the rise in minority representation. But he was hated because of Vietnam and because he was ,nt the charismatic Kennedy, and suspected because he was a southerner.
OzarkHillbilly
@efgoldman: This has been a bit of a strange year, wet wet wet wet wet and them…. Nothing for over a month. Really stressed all our trees and it showed up in brown blotches on all their leaves. Between that and the unseasonable warmth our colors are definitely down.
JMG
Friday night’s big storm and today’s big wind are taking most of the maple leaves (oaks fall after Halloween and before Thanksgiving) down west of Boston.
An update: Mel Brooks was great. After showing of Blazing Saddles he talked for about an hour, mostly about the casting of the movie, memories of his childhood, and some jokes which were old when he told them as a kid in the Catskills, but which came off because at 90, he still has perfect comedy timing.
debbie
@CarolDuhart2:
Exactly what I felt going through my mother’s stuff 10 years ago! In fact, I’ve decided to start tossing stuff I don’t want anyone seeing after I’ve slipped this mortal coil.
greennotGreen
@debbie:
Oh, God, you’re right! I have to throw out my most comfortable and rattiest bra RIGHT NOW!
Elmo
@efgoldman: I was in New Hampshire two weeks ago, almost 30 years to the day since the White Mountains tried to kill me and my friends (pro tip: never go *down* the Flume Trail and never plus ungood when it’s raining). 30 years ago the trees were bare on that trip. This year the colors weren’t even peaking yet.
MomSense
@CarolDuhart2:
Sorry to hear about your mom, Carol.
ThresherK
@efgoldman: My command of Spanish is…not at all. But even I know what contra means (especially thanks to Ronald Reagan). Maybe the little Trump was confusing it win con?
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie:
A discussion my wife and I just had, tho mostly because of how hard it was for her going thru all her parents stuff knowing she could only bring back a few boxes of it. There were more than a few items that meant a lot to her but she had to give up because there was just no feasible way of transporting them across an ocean (from Spain). She had a much harder time with the mourning than I did when mine died. Probably because she was an only child and I still had 4 brothers and sisters.
amygdala
Posies, pumpkins, and puppy… a lovely way to start Sunday. Peace to all, especially those coping with a loss.
WereBear
@CarolDuhart2: I’m sorry for your loss. It sounds like she left many lovely memories.
CarolDuhart2
Better news this morning:
Alain the site fixer
Appropriate to this discussion’s theme, I’m off to lay some flowers on the graves of my dear grandmother and grandfather and then celebrating the renewal of life with a cousin’s wedding this pm. As I recall, my grandmother had a baby boy who died before his first birthday, but not sure if he’s buried here or in OK or Bogota, Colombia. If so, I’ll pay him respect as well.
Best to all on this day!
laura
I’ll be spiffing up the back yard till noon, then a friend is coming over and we’ll start decorating for the Day of the Dead party Friday night. Satby, Mary G and CarolDuHart2 -you’ll all be on my mind. Mom died August 1st and will be front and center on the Ofrenda or offering table. One of the art installations will include the musicians and notables who’ve passed. Just the musicians alone represent a huge collective loss to our cultural heritage starting with Lemmy and ending -so far-with Buckwheat Zydeco.
We’ve been throwing this party for 15 years and the sheer volume of lost wives, husbands, parents, siblings, friends and pets over the years is staggering. And still, we remember and dance and drink and remember and celebrate and remind ourselves that loss shared makes loss a bit more bearable.
By this time next week, the candles will be burnt down to nubbins, the last tamale ate, sangria just a heap of scraggly fruit slices, a scavenger heaven around the recycle bin, marigolds sunflowers and gladiolas drooping and 100s of tears shed. Grief will have been waltzed around the room.
I am hoping Rikyrah’s Cubbies sweep the Series!!! If they continue to play like they did last night, well . . . Don’t want to jinx it, but, get after it!
Iowa Old Lady
@greennotGreen: Glad the chemo is working. I’m an enormous baby when I have a cold.
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: My wife and I have a box full of our old love letters to each other in the basement, and can’t bring ourselves to throw them away. But we’ve agreed that when one of us goes, the survivor burns the box.
lamh36
Good morning BJ!
Alright…time to get shit done…still don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing though…LOL.
It’s times like this that I wish I had a personal assistant.
Guess, it’ll be another day of non physical labor today.
So just a cleaning up the DVR and internet planning day!
Then later today, fix the meal for the week tonight…good ole Meatballs & Spaghetti
OzarkHillbilly
@Gin & Tonic: After our mother died (and Pop was in the Alzheimer facility) we found 5 shoe boxes of love letters written from Ma to Pop and vice versa during the Korean “conflict”. They are a treasure of shared hopes, dreams, and fears from the beginning of a marriage interrupted by war and separated by an ocean.
And yes, more than a few shared intimacies that would be embarrassing were they alive to be so, but they aren’t and I think my siblings and I treasure them even more for the humanness those details bring to the 2 people we could never know as anything other than parents.
Schlemazel
@Gin & Tonic:
Please reconsider. When My grandfather died I discovered letters he and grandma had exchanged while he was in France and just returned home from WWI. They were loving & lovely and humanized them in ways I found moving yet can’t explain. My sister burned them & that love is now lost.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: Have a box or two of letters my dad wrote my mom from Viet Nam — he did two tours of duty in the 1960s, one beginning in 1960. Only read one, but look forward to going through them after the campaign.
What I’d really love to see is my dad’s weekly letters to his mother in Indiana (she died mid-60s), but those never turned up (yet, do have a few boxes of family stuff I’ve not gone through).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
AM Joy has Pete Hoekstra, who last made national news when he ran an ad about the Chinese taking our jobs that may or may not have been written by the same guy who decided to cast Mickey Rooney as a Japanese man in I forget which 1960s movie, to defend Trump from charges of race-baiting
Corner Stone
@lamh36:
Made a huge pot of beef & barley soup/stew last night. Didn’t start out to make it a large batch but as always when I make soup it tends to grow out of control. I think I’m being smart because I only use about 3/4lb of chuck to start, so it can’t turn out to be that much, right? I’ve got enough leftover for the rest of the week and that’s after scarfing two yooge bowls last night.
BruceFromOhio
The burning bushes are halfway gone, the burst of color is a splendid contrast to the still-very-green lawn. The skunks have been digging up grubs, so my nematode treatment from the spring was less than fully effective. The locust tree has dumped its load of tiny leaves, so it’s an exercise to blast all that off the roof, gutters and mulched beds to make room for the arrival of the neighbor’s maple and poplar leaves.
Today is the first day that it truly feels like autumn; still a lot of green, and lots of leaves on trees, though the colors are starting to kick in, and clear blue sky makes for great photo ops.
WereBear
@greennotGreen: From what you say, the cold is worse than the chemo :)
I’m in bed recovering from a nasty cold that set me back on my own health recovery project.
Iowa Old Lady
@Corner Stone: What do you serve beef-barley with? I was thinking about making soup this week too, but I usually make tomato and serve with grilled cheese.
Gelfling 545
@Joel: Daylilies. Also catmint.
rikyrah
Hillary Clinton Stays Undefeated Against the Alpha Males
She’s taken the hits, stayed on her feet, and hit back harder, again and again and again.
MICHAEL TOMASKY
10.21.16 11:03 PM ET
Hillary Clinton, FiveThirtyEight tells us, is the most dominant debate winner in recent presidential history. They did all that ciphering they do over there and decided she won her three debates by +71, the highest score going back to 2000. She did it by being well prepared, yes. But she also did it, and bigly, by just standing there and taking his crap.
…………………………………………..
And there she sat, smiling, laughing, cool as you please. People ask why she’s winning, and the usual answer is that Trump is such a catastrophe. And he is, obviously. But I say she’s winning mainly because she’s one tough dame. She’s made of steel. And not Trumpian Chinese steel. And even though she’s going to face a wall of total resistance from Congress if she’s president, I say history tells us not to sell this woman short.
………………
All the predictions are grim for the post-inaugural period: She’ll have no mandate, and Republican opposition will be implacable because they’ll know that if they can bring her numbers down by 2018 they can romp in the midterms. For the most part I share this view. But I look back over the carcasses she’s left behind of men who were supposed to dominate her and I think just maybe she’ll figure something out.
BruceFromOhio
@Elizabelle: Thank you for elaborating on the LBJ connection.
Corner Stone
@Iowa Old Lady:
Apparently I serve it with another bowl of beef & barley soup. I normally don’t match anything with soup, just tuck in and go. I made this batch pretty hardy with lots of vegetables. Didn’t add as much barley as I would have liked but was worried about gumming up the mix if I went too far.
BruceFromOhio
@lamh36: MrsFromOhio made the same call – homemade sauce from scratch using canned and fresh ‘maters will be making wonderful kitchen smells a bit later. Yum!
WereBear
I have a Jack Reacher thriller, Harold Budd channel on Pandora, a new — very warm — blanket, and two kitties sleeping on me. This is about as therapeutic as it can get these days.
Schlemazel
@greennotGreen:
I expected the worst but felt very good, right up till I felt like crap. Don’t take it badly if you do start to feel awful, just be sure to take care of yourself and let people know how you are doing. With luck you’ll never feel awful. We are pulling for you.
JPL
@greennotGreen: That’s good news about your chemo. I admire your strength and have hopes that the treatment continues to do its job.
Felonius Monk
@WereBear:
Which one?
Taylor
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Breakfast at Tiffanys.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, sadly. Just cringeworthy, and makes what is otherwise a lovely, engaging film almost unwatchable.
WereBear
@Felonius Monk: It is the most recent one, Make Me.
I am now up to four cats, but one of them is not directly on me. He is our Big Boy, Mithrandir. So it is just as well; he could cut off circulation.
MomSense
@WereBear:
Sorry to hear that. Colds are bad enough but colds on top of other health issues are dreadful. Hope you feel much better.
Corner Stone
This Hoekstroika event going on at AMJoy is just other worldly in its delusional way.
Botsplainer
Wow – this return flight from Beijing was awful.
Wife got the upgrade, but I didn’t. I had the aisle (OK, I suppose), but The next seat was taken by a tall-ish 20-something Chinese guy who had no sense of respect for space, who was constantly elbowing into my space while texting between two phones, playing movies on a bright laptop at the same time sticking his knee into my space and coughing.
Fifteen hours of it, because we were on the ground a LONG time.
I guess it was karma over my glee at the upgrade outbound.
MomSense
@CarolDuhart2:
I’m friends with a lot of millennial young women and even some Xers who are going back to the old school ways. I knit a hat for my son years ago and he snagged it on a branch or something on his trip. His girlfriend mended it and then he posted a photo of her work. Turns out their friends are all really into mending, making, up cycling, and many of the skills the depression era generation mastered. These youngs are the recession era generation and they share many traits with the older generation.
Steeplejack (tablet)
Whoa! Pedro scores for Chelsea 30 seconds into the match with Manchester United.
germy
Elizabeth Warren has endorsed Zephyr Teachout.
Teachout is running against a man who wrote a NYTimes op-ed (I think it was 2004 or 2005) in favor of privatizing Social Security. “it would be a boon for wall street” Faso wrote.
germy
@Botsplainer: The last time we flew, I was seated in front of a male teenager who kicked my seat until I turned around and told him to stop. Also, a woman in the next aisle ORDERED my wife to close the window shade of the seat behind her. My wife said it wasn’t her window, and the woman yelled “yes it is!” and said some other rude things. (this was before the restless leg folks behind us boarded). I finally reached behind me and closed the shade. (When the restless leg passengers seated themselves, they opened it again)
It’s a tie between who is worse: the TSA, the airlines and their employees, or their customers.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer: I missed why you were going to China for 3 days?
CaseyL
What a beautiful autumn forest! Thanks for sharing, Ozark Hillbilly!
@germy:
Seriously? He said that in an OpEd? I mean, yeah: that’s why the GOP wants to privatize SocSec, all those billions of dollars none of their cronies can get at – but even in 2004-2005 (i.e., before the Crash) most pols knew better than to state it that plainly.
Corner Stone
i think I may be in love with Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter for Art of the Deal.
RoonieRoo
Ozark Hillbilly, I’m fascinated that the bugs on your rose is what you call Ladybeetles. To us, a Lady beetle (Lady Bird, Lady Bug) is a good bug and red/orange with black spots and rounder. What you called a Ladybeetle is a super bad bug to be killed and squashed and what we call cucumber beetles.
germy
@CaseyL:
greennotGreen
@germy: In general, I have found airline employees to be fine – helpful, patient. Everybody else you named, less so. Although, remember that TSA agents are doing a job that pisses a lot of people off, and it may be hard to be gracious under those circumstances.
WereBear
@germy: Such “traveling companions” have driven me to whip out my Inner Basilisk. I can make them behave more easily than the airline employees can :)
Botsplainer
@germy:
My favorite part of returning to the US is the barking about passports by a few of the heavier set TSA men, like they’re guards at Shawshank Prison.
It is truly welcoming.
It is
germy
@greennotGreen: The folks who work on the plane have been fine. But the airline managers are horrible. One was incredibly rude to my wife and I when his airline’s flight was late, causing us to miss a connecting flight. One TSA man demanded my wallet, looked at my drivers’ license, and made a condescending comment about the town I live in. From my experience (and I don’t care if this sounds bigoted) the TSA employees of color (the Black women and South Asian men) are polite and competent while the middle-aged white men are power tripping.
amk
@germy: nope, the pax are easily the worst. all the others are just doing their jobs.
CaseyL
@germy: Wow. Good on Teachout for reminding everyone about that!
Steeplejack
@WereBear:
I have liked the Reacher series, but the last couple have been meh bordering on “phoning it in.” On the plus side, you did motivate me to check Amazon, and there is a new one, Night School, coming out November 7. Hope springs eternal.
And there seems to be a new Harry Bosch novel—new to me, anyway—although I need to check, because the titles tend to run together.
ThresherK
@germy: I’m going back Before the Internet, but from the early 80s I remember an SNL parody airling ad with a jingle saying “It’s like flying in a cattle car with wings.”
Flight attendant (Mary Gross): “I hassle you about too much hand luggage, and make sure there are loads of boring magazines!”
Baggage handler (Eddie Murphy): “I’m Hank. I’m the guy who loses your luggage.”
ETA: It’s here.
debbie
@Corner Stone:
I hate when that happens!
I started using my oven for the first time since last spring. I’m making rice pudding now (one of my favorite desserts that I admit is boring), and yesterday I made a test batch of baked applesauce. I’ll never go back to stop-top applesauce again.
ThresherK
@ThresherK: So, I can’t hand-code a link in an edit. Video here for anyone interested.
Ben Cisco
@CarolDuhart2: I am very sorry for your loss.
Fall is pretty much here (or as much as we get in this part of NC). Used to be my favorite time of the year, but as with a great many other things, not feeling it so much this year. First fall without Mrs. C. Hard to believe it’s already been eight months. I’ll be going home to see my family at Thanksgiving (with luck Dad will be out of rehab by then), which means I’ll be here for the Christmas holidays. Grandniece/nephew are coming down, so I’ll put up a tree; otherwise I don’t think I would have bothered.
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
Just a lark, really. Saw awesome stuff, ate ox penis…
WereBear
@Steeplejack: I have also gotten into the series featuring John Milton as an ex-SAS fellow with a conscience. The first one is The Cleaner by Mark Dawson.
I still love Reacher, though for me the novellas and such just don’t have the momentum of the books. It took a long time for me to find a series I liked as much as Travis McGee, but Reacher is on that level for me.
It is a real challenge to age the character (but not too much) and mix up the situations (but still make them plausible) and get them in and out of romance in a way that doesn’t make them into jerks. One of the things I admired about John D. MacDonald is how, (despite his sexist reputation,) his women were widely varied, had their own brains, interests, and ambition.
For his time (he served in WWII) he was ground breaking.
WereBear
@Ben Cisco: It’s good you have motivation to get into the holidays. I know it’s tough (in 1999 I was widowed after 18 years.)
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
Just a lark. Saw the wall, neat historic sites. Ate ox pen!s…
JR in WV
@Eric S.: I was drafted, too, and help Raven along from time to time. I know VietNam wasn’t the only thing LBJ did, but even he knew it was a mistake from Day One.
Fuck LBJ, he laid the foundations for all the war crimes to follow.
Hi Raven! The WVU Mountaineers beat TCU 34-10, we’re undefeated, and OSU is NOT!
Yay!
WaterGirl
@debbie: How do you make baked applesauce? I don’t eat store bought applesauce, either, but I make mine on the stove. Yours sounds like it might be simpler.
Steeplejack
@CaseyL, @germy:
The whole 2004 op-ed piece is here.
John J. Faso, “How to Bring Home the Bacon” (November 28, 2004):
Hall of fame material for “bipartisan means Democrats do what Republicans want,” but completely nuts even in that context.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer:
You find me a man that wouldn’t fly 30+ hours round trip for a chance to eat ox pen!s and I’ll show you not much of man at all.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Sigh. I’m glad you were able to see through that stupid typo.
Wash the apples, cut them in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds and that little blossom thing at the end. Place the halves cut-side down in a buttered baking dish, cover, and cook at 375 degrees for at least a half hour or until the apples are very soft to the touch. Let them cool a bit so you can handle them, scoop out the flesh, and mash it with a fork. Also pour in the juices from the pan. I added some cinnamon and could have skipped sugar altogether, but added a bit of brown sugar.
I think if you cook them longer, the skins will just slip off, but scooping them out isn’t difficult. Longer cooking might intensify the flavor even more. The woman at the farmer’s market who told me about this method said she cooked them until they were falling apart (she had peeled and cored her apples). She thought the applesauce was too intense and added some water. I didn’t need to add any water at all.
This seems simpler to me, especially skipping all the peeling.
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
The guide tricked me into that one. Was surprised that I turned down donkey and turtle, but was pleased when I ate stomach (which was vaguely gross).
I genuinely enjoyed barbecue tendon and chicken heart hot pot.
Denali
@Ozark Hillbilly,
Great pictures! Now I have to get outside and bring in plants for the winter. Not enough room inside. My day is already complete because we visited the pumpkin patch with our grandson.
germy
@Steeplejack:
And he’s running even with Teachout. It’s 50-50, but he (and his supporters) are running twice as many ads.
Ruckus
@Eric S.:
I also agree with raven. LBJ did some good, we all know the legislation he pushed and got but he also did a very large amount of harm in this world, lots of people died because of him and many, many more had their lives damaged massively. There are still areas of the world where munitions from his war are still killing people. Maybe he thought it was proper but retrospectively we know the value of what happened and it was only death and destruction. Many of the people who he drafted to do his killing are still paying the price. Go to any VA facility and you can see them.
So Fuck LBJ. And just because I haven’t said it today, FUCK, FUCKING CANCER.
WaterGirl
@debbie: The peeling is the part of making applesauce that I hate! I will try this method for sure! I like my applesauce really chunky, so I think I might have to cook the apples for a shorter amount of time. I always added water when I made mine on the stove, so I think I will add the water, too.
If I see you in a thread, I’ll let you know how it comes out.
Steeplejack
@WereBear:
I liked the Travis McGee series a lot. Read them all in the ’70s. Somewhere on my to-do list is to go through them again. I remember in particular that Pale Gray for Guilt was, in addition to a good novel, a masterly description of the Florida real estate boom (and scams).
My problem with the last two Reacher novels was mostly that they were incredibly implausible to me. Don’t worry—no spoilers.
I’ll check out the Milton novels. Always looking for new stuff.
Ruckus
@greennotGreen:
I hope your chemo goes well and works.
I’m on my next to last week of radiation, 8 more days. I hope yours isn’t like mine, won’t know if it’s successful for maybe a year and have very few options if it isn’t.
@Schlemazel:
Sister went through 2 rounds and 2 remissions and said they were no big deal. But the third round didn’t go so well for her and she’s gone.
WereBear
I’m a science fiction fan. I have a high threshold :)
WereBear
@Ruckus: Dang, Ruckus. Sending hope your way.
Ruckus
@germy:
Once had a window seat, the man next to me was reading a Rush L book and gushing over it to his wife. She was loudly complaining about the seats and leg room with several inches to spare between her and the seat in front, while my knees were jammed up against it, and that next time they should demand first class. I wanted to Borne them something fierce, you know a sharp elbow repeatedly to the face. I was pretty sure the surrounding passengers would have applauded and no one would have testified against me. But my better angels took over. The bastards.
MomSense
@Ruckus:
Fuck fucking cancer! Hope you get good news after your treatments are finished.
Steeplejack
@WereBear:
LOL. I’m a science fiction fan too, but I like novels to be “series consistent,” if that could be a thing. In the last few Reacher has morphed into a bit too much of a superman, and, as I said, the setups were way more implausible than the norm for the series.
I was going to mention earlier that a really good series in which a whole cast of characters realistically ages over about 15 years is the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. They’re not just “ripping sea yarns.” O’Brian is a gifted writer and delves into all levels of British society in the Napoleonic era. He’s like Jane Austen with guns. The first one is Master and Commander.
Ruckus
@ThresherK:
On leave one time took a friend to the airport for his trip to boot camp. Of course back then you could go all the way up to the gate so we got to watch a baggage handler putting luggage on the conveyor belt. Suitcases? Set them down. Boxes? Set them down. Military duffel bags? Swing them over his head and slam them down on the belt, shaking the entire loader. I think he was an anti war guy. Strange way of showing it though.
germy
@Ruckus:
My better angels often don’t show up.
I wish they would more often.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
@MomSense:
Thanks. We all need that luck. Cancer can get anyone, anytime. Many of the treatments are barbaric at best, but it is what we know how to do. And many of the things that we do now used to be dramatically worse for the patient. The cancer cells have to be stopped from reproducing, something all cells do all the time. Stopping the cancer cells and not normal cells is a balancing act. And while medicine has and is continuing to learn, and rapidly, it is still a tough line to walk.
I’ve done 8 weeks of radiation treatments, every week day. Some types get chemo, some have to have surgery, some 2 treatment types, some all three.
Cancer changes your life, completely, even if you win. Mom won and lived for 45 yrs cancer free but was reminded every day. Her sister didn’t, her daughter didn’t, her son hasn’t yet.
Ruckus
@germy:
You can learn to call them.
germy
@Ruckus:
I think their phone is off the hook.
WereBear
@Steeplejack: Thanks for tip, Mr WereBear loved the movie.
Lee Child, author of the Reacher books, has a way of sneaking stuff past me that few authors can match. (Being a writer myself, I usually see it coming from miles away.) So I cut him lots of slack :)
Ruckus
@germy:
It’s actually a direct connection.
Often it’s full of static and such but still, it is direct.