So a big day in my village, as it was the Town of Bethany’s Biennial election. I take my civic duty seriously, and despite telling my mother I was not going to vote because they were all running unopposed and I didn’t want to encourage them, I went down and cast my vote. I noted that when I signed my name in the ledger to receive my ballot that my father had already been there and voted, as his signature line was directly above mine.
At any rate, the elections are in, and I am pleased to report that Mayor Shirley Kemp was re-elected to her third term with 27 votes!
Helen Moren also had a strong showing with 17 votes, and since she was not on the ballot and had not intended to run but was bullied strong-armed asked nicely, it was all write-in votes, so congratulations to her.
In other town news, I am relocating the stray cat house from my front porch to the side of the house to give them more privacy and to provide easier access for the possums and to discourage them for rooting around in the bird feed bins. The paving on main street is about to be complete and should be done in about three more days (it has not been paved this century other than a patch job after the sewer line repairs) so we are all quite excited about that, and I can report that there are no Gerber daisies or lavender plants to be found at any greenhouse in a 30 minute radius (don’t fucking ask it’s a sore subject).
We are also in the second day of rain after a several week drought, and it looks to be rainy again tomorrow, but after that it should be sunny and in the high seventies/low 80’s for the next few weeks.
Old School
Was Shirley Kemp the pro-Gerber daisy candidate? Or anti-?
Baud
I feel a John Denver song coming on.
dr. bloor
Cormac McCarthy nods with a wry smile on his way out the door.
different-church-lady
What did Kevin Clancy do to piss off seven people?
John Cole
@different-church-lady: He’s only lived here less than a decade people don’t know him well enough yet.
Steve in the ATL
I am clearly not high enough to be reading this blog tonight.
Alison Rose
Okay, I knew you lived in a small town, but seeing this, I had to look it up. Fuckin a, dude, 749 people? Everyone in that town must know whenever any one of y’all sneezes.
Sister Golden Bear
Sounds like things are positively bustling. Don’t let the constant activity overwhelm you.
different-church-lady
We need to start a pool for how many days it will be before they jackhammer up the fresh pavement.
BigJimSlade
“Several week drought”
Lol, southern California scoffs. I recall, from my Boston days, giggling at a drought of 6 weeks. In LA, 6 months is just a start.
Sister Golden Bear
@Alison Rose: Or when someone mops naked.
RaflW
The irises at the cabin started blooming about Monday, June 5th this year. They looked amazing. We left on Tuesday, got back this morning about 12:20 a.m. (Nominally we got back ‘last night’, and we did get to sleep about 1am, but point remains, it was really dark out.)
Alas I woke up, looked out the kitchen window, and the brief iris season is about 95% over. whaah whaah. We had a gay ol’ time in the big Minneapolitan metroplex, so I don’t regret the trip.
Gonna be a 2.5 micron smoke disaster in Minneapolis real soon, so we’ll miss that, but it’s comin’ for us here about 24h later. Fired up the brand new HEPA filter in the cabin living room as the near edge of the Canadian intrusion is already here at least a little.
dmsilev
@Alison Rose: That’s pretty small. Would drive me crazy, but to each their own.
dmsilev
‘Don’t fucking ask about the lavender’ should be this week’s blog motto.
Baud
@Alison Rose:
John is known as that fool Cole kid who voted for Biden.
Baud
@dmsilev:
Or a rotating tag.
Alison Rose
@Sister Golden Bear: He probably could’ve asked every resident about the mustard within an afternoon.
WaterGirl
I got these as a gift for my birthday today.
I don’t think they were purchased in WV.
Baud
@Steve in the ATL:
Baud
@WaterGirl:
That’s pretty.
Alison Rose
@WaterGirl: Those are gorgeous!! What are they? Kind of look like gerbera daisies to me, but I know nothing about plants.
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose:
They are gerbera daisies, but I had never seen any like that before. Kind of wild looking, I like them!
@Baud:
I thought so, too!
WaterGirl
@RaflW: I feel you. My peonies probably had 50 peonies, about to open, when I left to visit my family at the end of May.
When I returned 5 days later they were already done. So sad to have missed that. So I feel you on the iris.
WaterGirl
If you had a pretty active day, probably 15,000 – 17,000 steps, but your fucking fitbit was low on battery so when you finally got to check for steps after it charged, and you only had 241 fucking steps, did the day really happen?
Odie Hugh Manatee
Strawberries are starting to ripen, blackberries and raspberries are transitioning from blooms to berries, purple beans and snap peas are still growing but with no blossoms yet and the rest (carrots, lettuce and cucumbers) are putting along. Our weather has sucked this spring with lots of days with the marine layer hanging over everything. so shit is running slow.
Hopefully this summer is a sunny one. Last years summer was one big suck of gray and cool days. The fall was far better but too late for plants.
mrmoshpotato
New blacktop is always good.
dmsilev
@WaterGirl: Did you have your phone with you for most/all of that walking? There’s usually at least some level of step tracking there, so maybe the day partially existed.
mrmoshpotato
Chicago was a rainy fuck today. Had to shower after getting soaked while running afternoon errands.
Also, HU-MID! (Of course.)
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Country Roads Shake The Bones?
dmsilev
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
At work we have some people visiting from Canada, and they’ve spent the last month complaining about the LA weather and how cold it is here right now. I’ve told them that if word gets back home, their citizenship might get revoked.
prostratedragon
@WaterGirl: Ooo, gor-jay-oos!
mrmoshpotato
@Alison Rose:
Sister Golden Bear:
If it turned out that someone STOLE the mustard, Cole would probably know the person!
sralloway
Looks like we have a successor to Marshall Dodge and Garrison Keillor.
Marshall Dodge, for non-Mainers.
https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-mnet-001&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=mnet¶m1=796¶m2=84469&p=marshall+dodge+bert+and+i&type=type9043493-spa-796-84469#id=1&vid=97fdf03eb84f3437b02bc8a6b7115918&action=click
I lived in a town of 365 people, Sebec, Maine, for a few years. Kept an apartment in the big city of Portlan for escape. Now I’m in Philadelphia. Life changes.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@dmsilev:
Canadians in Cali complaining about the cold…lol!
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl:
🎶Well happy birthday to you!🎶
JaySinWA
We had some new cheap blacktop (rubberized I think) that took forever to set up properly and failed on some steep slopes. It took a few iterations to get the new process down. New is not always better.
frosty
@WaterGirl: Belt and suspenders: use a phone app too. Then you can wonder … if I didn’t have my phone with me when I was mowing the lawn, does it still count??
mrmoshpotato
@JaySinWA: I didn’t say cheap. :)
To hell with shoddy roadwork!
JaySinWA
@mrmoshpotato: I seem to recall a time when he was stuck on his roof when he lost his ladder. IIRC it took a while before he got down. Maybe everyone knew and just didn’t think it was any of their business.
Jackie
@WaterGirl: PRETTY! I LOVE the vibrant color! Happy Birthday!
Kelly
About 10 years ago one of the local wing nut churches took over our local water district board thru a stealth write in campaign. They didn’t register themselves on the ballot just got together and agreed amongst themselves who to write in. The same guys had been running unopposed forever. Oh and the original board were local Republican stalwarts you’d expect in timber country. Very few people bothered to fill in the water board part of the ballot. The wingnuts were clearly counting on that because if their names were there plenty of us would have thought “not that crazy son of a bitch”. The district serves about 1500 homes. The original board was upping the rates and talking about a bond issue. The 1950s to 1960s vintage infrastructure was wearing out and the number of households had more than doubled. The wingnuts were convinced they could run the system for on the cheap. They couldn’t. Next election the old crew had it back. During the 2020 Beachie Fire the district ran out of water and we finally passed a bond measure to update the system.
Now I always vote every line.
Alison Rose
@WaterGirl: Oh cool, I was right! I know there is a peppermint camellia — these kind of look like peppermint daisies :)
laura
Well dang, my casual first skim led me to believe that indicated the age of the winning candidates and now understand it was the number of votes- but for that brief, shining moment …
JaySinWA
@mrmoshpotato: I don’t think it was shoddy, it was a new process and done as a trial at first. I think they have the process down now so that it works reasonably well, but it isn’t as durable as regular asphalt. OTOH the road is not out of service for as long, and it should be cost effective
It did cause a lot of folks to object to the process and I confess I was not happy with tracking in the goop when walking on our non-sidewalked streets
ETA and a hot day with the blacktop sliding down the hill closed a major arterial for a day or so. So us early adopters got some bleeding edge experience.
mrmoshpotato
@JaySinWA:
Sorry for assuming. I stand by my condemnation of actually shoddy roadwork.
Mart
(it has not been paved this century other than a patch job after the sewer line repairs)
Expect you may have Joe Biden to thank for that. Our burb is wiring the whole town including sparsely populated hollers for high speed internet. The 80% Repup town’s mailed flyer says money has come from “Washington”.
TS
@Alison Rose:
Grew up in a town with less than 1000 people. My mother knew where I had been & what I had done before I ever got home. Other than that I can still recall the names of the families who lived in about 70% of the houses in town. Half a dozen families had a kid in every class of the school – they were useful for keeping up the number of teachers we had.
laura
@WaterGirl: What a lovely birthday gift! Call me crazy, but I see a googly eye face
The Moar You Know
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I have been in San Diego for most of my life, and the last time we had a summer this cold and wet was either 1974 or 1975. Pretty sure 75, but I was a child back then and things do get confused. It rained on me good today on my way to work. June. San Diego. Rain. I really like it TBH.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
An entire street made up of macadam’s families.
:)
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
Roadwork is done to a price, sadly, often the lowest bidder.
Long Lake Road is notorious for massive potholes.
It’s an old cordoroy road, later gravel, first paved, (asphalt) in the 1960’s.
There are a bunch of springs and seeps, under the road. In the winter they freeze, causing massive heaves, and then in the spring, well, the potholes and loose slabs of asphalt take out trucks, if you arn’t paying attention.
“They” could map the seeps and springs, trench the road, install drains,
instead all the MOT and the TNRD were willing to pay for, was trying sticking 4″ of HDEF in the potholes before paving them over, in the hopes that would prevent the ground water from freezing.
Did not work.
ICBC pays for the pothole damage to vehicles, so no skin off their nose, no hit to their budget. So every year, they repave the potholes in spring, which works until November. It’s okay sort of through the winter, because the snowplow’s clear the heaved pavement off to the side, and the packed snow and ice fills the potholes until melt.
rikyrah
👏🏾👏🏾 for that civic duty, Cole🤗
SectionH
@The Moar You Know: Me too – I mean I’ve really been enjoying the May Gray, and now the June Gloom. Afraid it’s not gonna last much longer.
SectionH
In more general local political news, the San Diego city council just 5-4 passed the ordinance making a lot of places illegal to camp in for homeless people*. I’m not sure what I think about that. There clearly aren’t sufficient shelters/actual individual housing for the demand right now. They mean well, but I’m not sure how fast they’ll be able to open options. We got $5 million from the state recently, or it was announced that we could budget that. I guess every little bit helps.
*Well, for anyone, but obviously…
Tony Jay
Heh. I went to Sixth-Form with Shirley Kemp. And with Helen Foren, not Goren, but I guess when people flee thousands of miles to start a new life in rural West By God Virginia, they might change their name slightly to put off the Cult’s seekers.
Anyway, that’s all.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@The Moar You Know:
Late reply but I love rain too (I do live about 400′ from the ocean!) but what we get is cool gray days with moisture from fog at the most. Day after day of that gets to be a grind after a while. Mid 40’s at night, mid 50’s during the day or if we’re really lucky it’s 50’s and 60’s, all gloomy and gray.
I have to quit looking at the weather service during the spring and summer as they’re almost always wrong (and too optimistic), getting my hopes up only to be dashed when I get up and look out the window…lol!
satby
You might think this is strange, but that was how it was in my neighborhood in big city Chicago when I was growing up. All of that. And because many of us bought houses in the same neighborhood when we grew up, it was still close to the same when I was raising my sons there. Big city neighborhoods can have the same community feeling as a small town, but they also allow for more privacy and independence if you prefer that.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 22, 1979 – GoComics
Kristine
@mrmoshpotato: I was so happy to see that rain. I need to check the gauges but hoping for an inch.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: good idea, but sadly, no. i don’t have big enough pockets!
Manyakitty
@WaterGirl: wow, so pretty 😍😍😍
WaterGirl
@laura: And another friend gave me a pretty purple clematis for my birthday, (which I planted the same day).
Crazy people, I wonder why they would think I would love flowers that I could plant in my garden? //
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: Those are lovely. A belated happy birthday to you!
SWMBO
@WaterGirl: Happy Birthday!
Joelle
@WaterGirl: I LOVE 💗 the color!
Joelle
Hmmmmm… sounds like someone could use a lil lavender in their life.