A Political Pollster Finally Called Me!

I promised myself I wouldn't write another political post anytime soon but here I am four weeks after the last one and I'm breaking my word. Don't worry, I promise it's not going to be a rant type post that will burn your eyeballs out if you support the Republican ticket. A telephone call from a pollster made me change my mind. At first I thought, Hell no! I'm not taking part in a political poll. But then I remembered how many times I've wondered, who are these people that take those polls? The media loves quoting them.  

Edited to add: The poll itself was taken the morning of the last day of the convention, before Trump's speech and the Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan performances. And this post was written two days before Biden dropped out of the race.

I must say the pollster was very professional. She didn't try to lead me in any particular direction and she didn't react in any way to my answers. It was a long poll taking over 25 minutes. The questions started with the basics: my age, sex, level of education, income, marital status and race. She asked who I voted for in the last election, how likely am I to vote in the next. Did I belong to a union? What are my views on abortion? Then it got down to the nitty-gritty of the call. Did I see any of the Republican convention? "Yes, most of it." Did I see any of the coverage of Trump getting shot? "Yes." Did it make you more likely or less likely to vote for him or no change? "No change." How much do you know about J.D. Vance? And she listed some multi-choice answers. I picked the one that I'd never heard of him before Trump picked him for his Vice President. 

She asked me what two things about the convention stood out the most. I wanted to joke that all the people wearing sympathy patches on their ears cracked me up. Oops, they call them solidarity patches.

But I replied that I thought Sarah Hunkleabee Sanders did a good job fulfilling her mission. The pollster followed up by asking what I meant and I told her Sanders's speech was intended soften Trump's image for women voters, make him seem more likable to that demo-graph as did the speech given by Trump's 17 year old grand-daughter. I had to repeat my answer a couple of times so the pollster could write my answer down word for word. The most genuine smile I've ever seen on Mr Trump's face came after that young girl finished. It made me wonder where has that guy has been all these years. I didn't mention that during to poll.

My answer about my second take-away from the convention was about how much I hated seeing Nikki Haley's speech. That I used to like her and thought she's was a good person to have in government, but her reversal in now kissing Trump's butt after months of saying he's unfit for office proves her values and moral compass can be bought off. (I've since learned that Vance did the same, exact thing.) What I didn’t tell the pollster is the night that J.D. Vance spoke I sat down to watch the convention and I fell asleep while he was on! So there may have been other, more noteworthy take-aways for me if I hadn't slept through his appearance. I did catch some of the highlights later that night but I've been watching both the Republican and Democratic conventions with every election since they've been televised so I felt bad about missing an important part of this one.

After the questions about the Republicans the pollster started in on Biden. She didn't ask me if I thought he should drop out of the race and that omission seemed telling to me. A hint about who contracted the poll? I asked that question but the pollster she said they are not given that information. She did ask me about six other Democrats going up against Trump and how I would vote. For example if the election was between Harris and Trump which one would I pick? If you're a long time reader of this blog you'll know I wouldn't vote for Trump if he was running for the county dog catcher. Which reminds me there was a funny meme on Facebook about Babydog, the bulldog that the governor of West Virginia was pulling around the convention floor in a cart. The meme said something about him keeping the dog away from Kristi Noem, the woman who was on Trump's short list for V.P. She's the North Dakota governor who bragged in her autobiography about how she shot the family's 18 month old puppy in a gravel pit because "he was untrainable." She thought it made her look like she was strong enough to make the tough decisions but it just made her look thickheaded for not taking the advice of her editor and others telling her not to include it. Even after they pointed out the uproar that Mitt Romney caused when a photo surfaced of him on vacation with the family dog in a cage strapped on top of his station wagon, she wouldn't back down about putting the puppy killing in her book. Killing that dog also made her look cold-hearted for not re-homing it to someone who just wanted a family pet and not a hunting dog.

There was only one question I refused to answer and the pollster came back to it three times before giving up. It was the one about do you think the country is headed in the right direction. I've always hated that question because 'the right direction' is too ambiguous. If you answer 'no' they assume you are not happy with the party currently in power. But I think you can say 'no' meaning you're not happy with how the government in general has become so Tribal and how 'compromise' has become a dirty word. We've been on that trend since 2010 when Mitch McConnell announced to the world that his job as senate minority leader was to make sure that Obama was a one term president. That's when the party quit representing the people who elected them and the Cult of Personality was born in the Republican Party.  ©

Until Next Wednesday.... 

No matter how you vote, you've got to admit this meme is funny, given the fact that both Trump and Vance have immigrant wives

 

 

 

 

  

 

Facebook and Green Burials

I love Facebook, especial the Short Reels. I watch them an hour and to an hour and a half every day. I suspect I'm addicted to them so I've resorted to setting a timer to limit my time. I don't feel guilty about spending time this way, however, because I learn things and often I get my post inspirations from the site. One of the most useful things I've learned is to never 'like' something on Facebook unless you want to see a gazillion of similar short videos and/or advertisements. I do follow certain people, though, to make sure I don't miss something they put online: Jon Steward, Stephen Colbert, Josh Johnson, The Good News Girl, and the Texas Beeworks girl are all people I follow for predictable content. 

In addition to these celebrities I follow some zoos for content about silverback gorillas, panda bears, sloths and elephants. I also follow or subscribe to Facebook sites about the following topics: Tiny Houses, Unique Trees, Lost Pets, Mid-Century Modern and Atomic Mid-Century Modern decor, cute puppies and kittens, Mahjong and freeing wild animals caught in dangerous situations. Currently I'm fascinated by the turtle pictured above who runs around on a skateboard tormenting the cat that I've actually seen helping the turtle get on his tiny skateboard. As my husband would have phrased it, "That little guy can really haul ass with those wheels under him!" As a kid I spent my summers at a lake so it's probably a sentimental thing, a throwback to when I had baby turtles as pets, that makes the turtles on skateboards so endearing.

I've seen giant tortoises, too, on what I thought had to be custom made skateboards. But I decided to fact check myself before I made that claim and I was shocked to find lots of sources for "Pet Skateboards" and as cheap as seven bucks. There are photos of birds, turtles, bearded dragons, small tortoises, cats, dogs and pigs acting as catalog models for the boards. You can even buy harnesses that go around the boards and your turtles so you can walk them on a leash like a dog. Please do an intervention for me if I start talking about getting a turtle as a pet. Wouldn't I be the talk of my independent living complex if I start walking a turtle? I did do a wee bit of research and learned I'd need at least a 29 gallon aquatic turtle aquarium for a smallish turtle and the water has to be changed weekly. That leaves me out because I can barely lift my gallon watering can to maintain the plants on my deck. 

Still, I miss having a dog. I'd had one in my life from birth to when Levi died a few months before moving here to independent living. Long time readers might remember when I researched getting a cage of canaries and I decided against the idea. There are seven dogs and five cats living here now so I do get to pet a dog almost daily, but I don't think I could find two people who'd agree to care for a dog if something happened to me which is in a document we have to sign to have a dog or cat living with us, plus we pay a $1,000 deposit. That's one of the disadvantages of not having any children or grandchildren or a big estate where I could hire strangers from the pet trust lawyer here in town to be a dog's guardian. The document makes sense in a place like this where every week someone gets hauled off to the hospital. If that person had a pet, the concierge or security guard would call the pet's guardian to come pick it up for temporary or permanent care depending on the outcome of the medical emergency.

Another one of my current fascinations on Facebook are Neil Degrassee Tyson clips. He's an astrophysicist, author, Noble Prize winner and the host of a National Geographics TV show. Not bad for a man with only 132 IQ, which is notably higher than the average person on the street with sixty-eight percent of us falling between 85 and 115. But Neil's is a far cry from smarty-pants public figures like Bill Gates (IQ 150), Elon Musk (155), Mark Zuckerberg (152) and Sunny Doel's 166. What Tyson has that most of these other guys don’t is an ability to communicate advanced theories and technical stuff to ordinary people in a way that we understand it. 

Recently I saw an interview of Neil's where he was asked what happens to us after we die and they got to talking about 'green burials' which is what Neil wants done with his body. I first heard the term on the Netflix series Six Feet Under and the Green Bureau Council defines them this way: “Green burial is a way of caring for the dead with minimal environmental impact that furthers legitimate ecological aims such as the conservation of natural resources, reduction of carbon emissions, protection of worker health, and the restoration and/or preservation of habitat.” What they aren't saying is your body is wrapped in burlap and placed in a shallow grave where the worms and bugs help decompose the body and the open land itself can eventually be reclaimed by nature. 

Neil says he wants this type of burial "so that the energy content contained within it [his body] gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime.” Not for me! I'd rather have the energy left in my dead body go up the smoke stack of a crematorium while its still legal. The National Death Centre says, "one cremation uses as much energy in the form of gas and electricity as a 500-mile car trip and releases a staggering 400 kilos of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, not to mention mercury vapor and other pollutants." 

Everything comes full circle if you give it enough time. I predict that 100 years from now our choices in deposing of our deceased will be between green burials and 'sky burials.' There are fourteen places in my state where green burials are legal now, but when I checked while I was binge watching Six Feet Under there were only a couple of places. So clearly this trend is becoming a real thing. They've got to be considerably cheaper without embalming, a casket, a cement vault or a cemetery marker which might account for the trend more than people being concerned about the environment.

Sky or celestial burials were used by indigenous populations and on every continent on earth dating back thousands of years. (How historians know this would fill an entire post.) Sky burials are still legal in Tibet and parts of India and there is a movement to bring them back as an Eco-friendly choice. A sky burial, in case you don't remember involve a raised platform or a tree and either fire or vultures. Yikes! I'm off to Facebook to find some puppy and kitten videos to replace that image in my head. But I'll leave you with this: If you haven't put your preferences in writing, you should because your next of kin might be a penny-pincher and choose something you (may) or may not like.

Until next Wednesday. © 

                      

Living Through an F-5 Tornado and its Aftermath

The1965 photograph above is of my husband standing on the back steps of what was left of the farmhouse where he grew up. A tornado hit the farm twice, ten years apart. The last time it was an F-5 and they couldn’t rebuild. Strange stories came out of that tornado like the fact that Don’s 24th birthday cake still sat on the kitchen table on the other side of the window on the far left in the photo---not a fleck of debris on it. The second story and roof above the cake were gone. The wall that was still standing upright to the right of Don had a clothesline running between it and a tree and when the clothesline was cut that wall fell in, starting a chain reaction that took down the wall with the window. (If you look hard enough you can see the clothesline on the right side in the photo.) 

Other strange things included one of their work horses was found miles away after the tornado passed---too far for him to run in such a short period of time. Not a scratch on him while the other horses who ran for the near-by woods weren't so lucky. A heavy china cabinet with a wave-glass front toppled over on its face and while three legs snapped off the wave-glass doors were intact. I still have a set of circa 1910 ivory elephants that were inside that china cabinet. Once a set of seven classic elephants but one was lost to the tornado and another suffered a broken leg. Which elephant got lost---happiness, wisdom, prudence, royal dignity, invincible power, longevity or intelligence---was debated a time or two over the years.

The first tornado didn't do as much physical damage but a scandal came out of it because the local insurance man had scammed all the people who 'bought' policies from him. He took their payments for years but never sent them into the main company to actually secure the policies he 'sold.' Victims like Don's parents were left to rebuild on their own. 

Just days before the second tornado Don's dad had bought his first tractor, a bright blue Ford and the barn it was parked in went flying all over the fields that they previously worked with a team of horses, but the tractor didn't get a scratch on it. The only work that tractor ever did was when the family used it to help drag what was left of the house and barn out to a gravel pit on the farm that they turned into a burn pit. Someone in the family had to camp out 24/7 on the driveway with a rifle close by to stop the looters who came along soon after the tornado left the area. And to the day he died, Don would never pass up a Salvation Army bucket without putting money in it. During that cleanup period someone from the organization would hike across the field to the burn pit every day to give the workers coffee and sandwiches so the women folks didn't have to stop to make lunches. Their job was to comb though the debris and sort out what could be salvaged and what had to be burned or buried.

In the decade that followed the tractor was parked in a garage at a house his parents moved into back in town. Eventually, Don bought it from his parents and he still had the tractor when he died twelve years ago---in storage most of that time. Even after he had a massive stroke in 2000 Don couldn't be talked into parting with that 1955 Ford. I finally sold it as an antique tractor after his death and even though I got a good price for it, it was a break-even thing if you factored in the decades of storage fees we paid for Don to hold on to a piece of his family history.  Some might see it as $8,000 thrown down a rabbit hole---as storage fees generally are---but it was his money that he worked hard for and I can think of worst things he could have done his money. I was glad to see it go, though, and I tell myself that Don would be happy that the buyer planned to enter that tractor in antique farm equipment shows. That was Don's retirement dream, taken away from him by his stroke.

The 160 acres of land that made up the farm had nothing left on it for years except a silo and 60 acres of virgin timber. For decades we could still go up there and pick rhubarb and raspberries and hike in woods. But eventually after the four brothers inherited the farm it was a source of many arguments between the head-strong brothers. Two wanted to develop it into a housing project and two wanted to turn it into a campground with hiking trails. After a half a decade of debating and getting no where, the county came along and wanted to buy it. They agreed to sell, but the family tried to get the buy/sell agreement to include the right to name the proposed 'public park' they claimed they wanted it for but the county was adamant that would be a deal breaker. After the sale went through we found out why. It wasn't a family picnic park they wanted the land for, they built a sports complex there and the corporation fronting the money to develop it wanted the naming rights. After the sale, Don could never drive by the old farm without bad feelings coming back up. He felt they'd been lied to and that they never would have agreed to sell if a family picnic park had not been the carrot held out to them. He always wondered if one of his brothers had clued the county in on how to sway the others to sell.

We humans are resilient creatures, aren't we. We go through horrific events like losing our homes, our jobs, our health or people who are important to us but somehow most of us manage to come out the other side of our tragedies to rebuild our lives again and again, and to dream again. But if you look deep enough those horrific events leave scars behind on our souls. 

Living through two tornadoes effected Don. Not only did he take storm warnings seriously and would go to the basement when the weather bureau issued their warnings. I believe if he hadn't stood  watching things like old license plates, his childhood pedal car, live chickens and 10 gallon milk cans spinning upward he wouldn't have spent his entire adult life trying to buy back his childhood in the form of all the toys and family pieces handed down through the generations. He couldn't pass up an estate sale, garage sale, auction or antique store without stopped.

This has been the backstory about how one memorabilia collector was born. All collectors have a backstory---whether it's the good stuff worth big bucks they collector or their houses are over taken by plastic recycling and rotten, bug-infested food. I'm grateful my obsessed collector was the former (sentiment driven) and not the latter (insecurity driven). If you've ever watched the TV show, Hoarders, you already know that they both have a common thread of a loss in their lives that contributes significantly to their need to surround themselves with whatever they collect, be it trash or treasures.  ©

Until Next Wednesday. 

This photo is of the farm before the tornado destroyed it.