My big sister is ahead of the curve according to my son-in-law. She likes to gift massive amounts of toilet paper, paper plates, utensils, brushes, etc. to new home owners. After we moved into the lake house she showed up with gift-wrapped TP and toilet brush that literally lasted me a year (the brush still in use). So we showed up with massive amounts of TP and paper towels on our first visit to my daughter's new house.... as did his Mother....as did the new homeowners. Oh well-three bathrooms, no waiting. The rest of the conversation was "who knew the value of toilet paper before the pandemic?" I mentioned that my sis "gifted" this way before the pandemic made TP solid gold, which then prompted the original statement.
Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires. Why is a country that is basically mountains and desert such a catalyst for unlucky would-be conquerers and a source of expense, death and embarrassment for so many? Well they are major exporters of opium and have massive lithium deposits, but perhaps it is their strategic position in Asia - surrounded by Russia, China, Pakistan, etc. At any rate, Biden had two horrible choices - continue and escalate this war or pull out of a bad deal all the way around. The fact that the government could not hold for a month shows the fruitlessness of further "support". On the other hand, why did we pull out the troops before the civilians were evacuated? Black eyes all the way around.We did defeat Al-Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11 in three months but when they offered total surrender we decided to try "empire building" instead. As usual -bad decision perpetuated by President after President.
Though he will suffer for it, Biden did the right thing. Our continuing presence there, to this observer, seemed more of a desire of the military than the American people, who by the way, were surprised we had been fighting a "war" for 20 years. At least he is appearing before the American people daily and taking the blame though when the former prez made the deal with the Taliban to withdraw (not the Afghan govt) all heralded it. He even campaigned on it "you want to continue the war elect Biden". No doubt he would be hiding in the "bunker" and assigning blame to "all and sundry" as Mother used to say.
Podcast this week was with an MSU Professor who is also a Civil and Environmental Engineer as well as an expert in traffic safety and highway management. The discussion centered around people driving less during the pandemic, but more fatalities (including pedestrian and bikers) were reported. Some occurred due to speed, but an intuitive discussion (read undocumented guesses) ensued on what else could be factors, such as fatigue, unfamiliarity with driving, lack of public transport and the big bugaboo - distracted driving. Oddly enough people don't list these other issues on the police report, but interesting to contemplate. I mentioned the Jetson world with self-driving cars might eliminate the problem allowing us to read War and Peace on a long road trip.
He offered a startling statistic of the large number of fatalities in cars occurred when one was not wearing a seatbelt. When I first went to the City as the Safety Director one of the first campaigns the Mayor wanted was a seatbelt push for Lansing residents. This was 1987 and seatbelts were still being protested (deja vu right?) I became the City's "Seatbelt Czar" and was responsible for those billboards that showed a seatbelt around the Capitol saying put a belt around it or something like that. It was only after they were up that we realized the belt was going the wrong way-oh well. We also gave burger king coupons to the LPD to hand out on random traffic stops when they noted seatbelt use. Scared the hell out of a few folks when they got stopped. Also flubbed my first radio interview-which went well in rehearsal-which sounds oddly familiar to my experience with podcast interviews. I tried to answer the practiced questions without taking a breath when we went live. Totally embarrassing.
Busy week as we hosted the grandson. Mom started a hybrid schedule of home and office. He is a typical active and talkative nine-year old. Golf with Grandpa the first day where he showed quite an aptitude coming closer to the pin than his mentor a couple of times. Arcade activities the next day where getting as many tickets as possible to trade in was the goal (for junk basically) . Third day was bowling. We promised a fun activity once a day to keep the video gaming to a minimum, but I built in a nap each day (no, not for him, us). Went shopping the 4th day where he ran into more people he knew or knew him than we ever do which meant a long conversation each time. When we dropped him off to his folks Friday night and were driving home I remarked "it's like all the energy went out of the room". Rinse and repeat this week, but we are going to the Lake. He hates the drive, but loves to swim.
THINGS THAT USED TO BE COMMON DEPT - made an odd observation the other day when I was packing up my "studio" for a couple of weeks while the boys were shooting pool in the other room. As I was dusting I kept moving objects around and discovered we still had two ashtrays. Remember when people actually smoked and you had to provide a disgusting receptacle? Not sure what one provides for the vaping or mary jane connoisseurs. Standard answer is "take it outside". In our case we never smoked but they used to be common everywhere; so our two were "borrowed" items from interesting places - like the Playboy Club.
Speaking of MJ and sorting old pictures, reminded me of our downstairs neighbors in our first apartment. The reek of illegal smoke was always prevalent as one ascended the stairs to our place. But at $110 a month, you put up with a little inconvenience. Having been raised to pay your bills, I was surprised when the landlord remarked we were his only tenants that he did not have to chase down every month for the rent. I did not know we had the option.
Our next door neighbors were "dyed in the wool" hippies with a little boy and many amphibious, lizard-like creatures roaming their house. Did not visit in-person very often after my first encounter with "something" under the couch. Also if I knew I would have to move all our hand-me-down furniture up those stairs, I would have sold everything when I got an offer while sitting on the street waiting for the boy to come back from dropping off the trailer. (See picture)
Deja vu again helping the kids a couple of times with moves. Hurts more the next day though than it used to....
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