Six Steps to Save Our Democracy

I hope what I watched yesterday are the final death throes of one of the worst years in our country.

On January 6, 2021, Congress held a joint session to confirm the results of the national elections, an event usually symbolic in nature, only to have their session interrupted when protestors (insurrectionists) breached the walls and entered the building to stop the proceedings. 

There was talk before this of Republican legislators choosing to not accept the electoral judges votes for Biden, which would have pushed us to the brink of our democracy. Instead, an "attempted coup," as CNN describes it, halted the proceeding before they got to that point. Security around the building was not prepared for the mob that approached them. It's hard to believe how easily and quickly they were able to access the building while every single member of Congress, the current vice president and future vice president were in the building. Think about that for a minute the next time you are tempted to compare this event to a Black Lives Matter protest where some white guy lights a Target on fire.

Some quotes from this evening:

"Can the United States last for the next two weeks with a president who incites acts of violence?" CNN anchor.

"Are these the death throes of something, or are these birth pains? Will we come away from this broken...or better?" Van Jones, CNN commentator.

Whatever happens from this...we need a reboot. 

I hope that we can actually have a peaceful transfer of power. And then, when the dust has settled and the smoke cleared, we need to re-assess what it means to be the United States of America, what it means to be a Democrat, a Republican, independent, non-political, a citizen.

I believe our two major parties need to be challenged. If you actually talk to someone who is on the other side of the fence (talk to, not type at), you'll discover that their party does a lot of things they don't agree with. There are a lot of parts of the Democratic platform that I don't agree with: there is a lot the Republican party stands for that people who consider themselves Republicans don't agree with as well. 

For us to survive as country we need:

1. Term limits. No more than 6 years in office for House of Representatives, no more than 12 years (2 terms) in the Senate. No more focus on fundraising, re-election campaigns, political futures. Do your jobs and focus on the needs of the American people. Then leave and become a private citizen.

2. Campaign spending reform. Companies are not people and do not get to donate to political campaigns. Too often legislation goes the way of whomever spent the most money to make it happen, and not the way that will help the most people. Check out represent.us for more on this. 

3. A strong third party that pulls the moderates from both parties. Leave the far left and right in the original two and create a party that meets people where they agree. 

4. A reinstatement of the Federal Communications Commission fairness doctrine which requires broadcast media to address issues important to the public and to provide "fair and balanced" coverage of issues. This doctrine was in place from 1947-1987 and it was removed by the urging of emerging cable networks who said it had a "chilling effect" on free speech. That it did, if you wanted to spread conspiracy theories and bald lies about someone. (In case you didn't catch it, Fox News, the network that had pushed for the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, began reporting yesterday evening that the people who committed insurrection yesterday were actually BLM and antifa people. Sure...because BLM protestors like to carry around confederate flags and have white supremacy tattoos...)

5. An expansion of FCC regulation over social media networks. Regulation has not kept up with technology where news is shared; clearly we need to expand this because the industry has proven that it cannot and will not patrol itself. Watch The Social Dilemma for a better understanding. 

And finally...and this is the biggest one..

6. We need to address the myth that we live in a post-racist society, fess up to the human rights violations that this country was built on and begin the process of reparations. We have a sitting president (for the next two weeks) who, in a presidential debate, would not denounce white supremacy groups and said to the Proud Boys, an organization identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center to be a hate group, to "Stand down and stand by." He then spent the last two weeks encouraging his followers to disrupt the proceedings 

The difference between how BLM protestors were treated over the summer — when peacefully protesting for the right to not be killed while going about their lives — and the way the mobs yesterday were treated was yet another nail in the coffin in the myth of "justice and freedom for all" that we purportedly live in. 

We've got two weeks left before Biden is inaugurated. Let's hope that we can survive these 14 days as a republic. Then, let's get to work.

Living in Two Different Cities

I'm sitting in my backyard with the fire pit burning, a dog snuggled up next to me and the quiet sounds of urban wildlife settling down for the night. The sun is slowly setting, we can see it through the little window where our trees open up to the west.

5/30/2020, 9 p.m., Fulton neighborhood, Minneapolis 

A family having a birthday celebration earlier today at Bde Maka Ska.

Three blocks from us, our local shops are boarded up. The grocery store closed at 5 p.m., the liquor store closed last night at 6:30 p.m. and will not re-open until Tuesday. 

The jewelry store down the street is also boarded up and the message "all jewelry has been removed from the premises" spray-painted across the plywood.

Jewelry store at 50th & France.

On one of the businesses at 50th & France.

Our Walgreens, the one where Beauty is so beloved by all the staff members, was broken into two nights ago. One of their doors is covered with plywood. They are open for business because people need their prescriptions, but they, too, closed early.

It feels like the calm before the storm. 

Our family is feeling helpless — we wish we could do more, so we started looking around to see how we could help. Local food shelves are now serving families whose local grocery stores were damaged or are closed anticipating violence. A Minneapolis public school in the 3rd precinct, where all this began, needs help getting food to their low-income families who would normally still be getting free lunch food. So Lindsey and I wrote down the list of what they needed and decided to buy the items, put together the food bags and drop them off tomorrow.

The line at our local Lund's of people waiting to go in to shop was out the door. The grocery store was closing early and still limiting the number of people in the store due to social distancing. So we decided to drive further out, to Bloomington, to shop for these families in need.

The store in Bloomington was also closing at 5; we got there around 3:30 p.m. The lines to check out snaked all the way to the back of the store. It took us two hours to get the groceries needed that we'll donate, as well as the few we needed for ourselves. 

One woman was there to get grocery for her sister, since her sister lives in the area of the protests and can't get to a store. Another was stocking up just in case the store there was a target too and she wouldn't be able to get groceries later on. And then there were people like us, who thought that driving to Bloomington was far enough away for us to avoid a crowd. Silly us.

The line to check out at Cub Foods in Bloomington.

It is so frustrating that just as our businesses were opening back up,after months of being closed due to the pandemic, they are closing again due to civil unrest. Salons that were going to be opening on Monday aren't any more, nor are the restaurants and bars that were set to open June 1. This could send some small business owners over the edge financially. 

All Minneapolis residents are under curfew start at 8 p.m. It is estimated that 10,000 agitators from out-of-state are in our city now, causing chaos and using this unrest as a cover for looting and destroying our city. In today's press conference, Mayor Melvin Carter of St. Paul said that of the 120 arrests that took place in St. Paul last night, 100% of them were from out-of-town. Gov. Walz says that their surveillance is estimating that 80% of the protestors are not from here, many from known white supremist groups. 

I am saddened by what is happening, moreso because we seem to go through this cycle every few years. Brutal murder, followed by outrage, followed by a promise for change, followed by a slipping back to old ways, followed by a brutal murder. And the fact that white supremacists are using this opportunity to besmirch the work of the black community legitimately protesting yet another unjustified death in this country angers me to no end.

I hope for peace. I hope for change. I hope for equality for all and protection under the law.

More later. Thank you for reading.

Pecking Order and Your Food (They are Related, Really)

 You've probably heard the term "pecking order," it usually means something about corporate  or social hierarchy, also expressed as "Sh*t rolls downhill."

Except there's an actual reality to pecking order. They're called chickens.

You know, those pink, small pieces of meat you buy from the grocery store? That chicken. My daughter was 4 before she realized that a living chicken was the same thing as a roasted chicken breast on her plate.

Long ago, back when farmers were farming for their families mostly, and hoped to sell a few items on the side to support their family, they raised chicken by what we now call "free range" methods.

Chickens could roam freely through the farmland. They could go anywhere they wanted, eat anything they wanted. And they established a pecking order, because that's how chickens work as a species.

The strongest chickens would "peck" the smaller and weaker chickens for food and water, which would peck weaker chickens in turn, and a social order was established. Chickens were hurt. Many had wounds, lost their eyesight, their mobility and their lives.

Cartoon of a chicken pecking another because showing an actual photo would be graphic and cruel.

Farmers got frustrated losing so many of their chickens. The birds had clearly suffered. It was expensive. So they started putting the chickens in cages.

In cages, the strongest chickens could not get to the weakest. They could not establish a "pecking order," and they had no need to. Their world was as small as the cage they were in -- they didn't give two clucks about the chicken in the cage over there.

Mortality decreased. Production increased. And farmers could finally sell more eggs than their families consumed.

Yes, this is simplistic. Yes, this does not take into consideration all that is known about animal science today. But...the clamor for cage-free eggs does not take animal science into consideration either. Because guess what: forcing farmers to raise chickens in the old way, the "cage free" way, is forcing them to have more chickens die. Do they get paid more for eggs raised from cage-free chickens? Not necessarily.

As a matter of fact, in California, where legislation has required that shelled eggs, the kind most of us know from grocery stores, must come from cage-free farms. Instead of paying, say, $2.00 a dozen, they cost $4.00 a dozen to cover the losses. (And by "losses" I mean the higher chicken mortality rate.) The people who advocated for and voted this into law order their groceries online, get them delivered to their house, and pay twice as much for eggs as they paid before, and don't think twice about it.

In the meantime, the family that is barely scraping by, the one with a single parent working two jobs, can no longer afford eggs. At all. Since the $2.00/dozen eggs are no longer available due to legislation, they are left with what is available at the food bank; powdered eggs, which are not required to come from cage-free chickens, if they purchase eggs at all.

Then the price of eggs drops, because the demand did not keep up with supply. The cage-free farmers don't actually get $4.00/dozen, they get more like $2.50, because people without the means to buy $4.00 eggs stop buying them. Now the farmers are in a lose-lose proposition, and because this is the law they can't go back to raising chickens the way they used to. Some choose to raise some other livestock, thus reducing the supply of eggs, permanently keeping fresh eggs from the lowest socioeconomic people in our society.

This is not a free capital market.

I am not an economist, nor a food producer. I am a consumer, seeing and hearing the news, and listening to people who don't know what "GMO" means clamor for non-GMO food. (FYI, "honey crisp" apples exist because of GMO practices. So do poodles.)

We are not them. They are not us. 

I am sure there are more factors pressing upon the market than the one I just described. I just ask that people listen and be open to more possibilities than the one being spooned to them by advocacy groups, no matter the intention. Being organic, cage-free, non-GMO is not necessarily better, just different. Choose wisely.

Feminists Do WHAT, You Say?

Our wedding day, Sept. 1995. We paid extra for that vignette effect on this print. 

The other evening, while my eldest and I were waiting in a Starbucks when the youngest daughter was at tutoring, I overheard an interesting conversation.

A couple were discussing their marriage with another individual. At first I thought the person they were talking with was perhaps a wedding planner, but it soon became clear that he would be officiating the ceremony.

They worked out how they were going to seat people (no ushers, no assigned seats), how they would like the processional to go, and what the order of the ceremony would be. I tried not to listen, but it's difficult when you're only one seat away from the lively discussion.

At one point the person officiating asked, "Now how would you like to be introduced at the end of the ceremony?"

The couple seemed confused by his question, so he gave examples.

"Do you want to be introduced as Mr. and Mrs. Johnson? Or Becky and Ray Johnson?"

"Oh! That's what you mean. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson is perfect, that's what we want," the bride said confidently.

And then the person officiating went on to say how some people -- women in particular -- did not like to be introduced as "Mr. and Mrs."

"Some feminists don't like it," he went on, "Some ultra feminists don't even take their husband's last names."

The bride and groom made the expected "tsk tsk" noises and agreed how terrible that is for women to not change their last names upon marriage.

Ahem.

I had a hard time restraining myself from going over there and educating these people.

For one thing, the definition of a feminist is "someone who believes that men and women should have equal rights." I would take that to mean that both genders enjoy the right to vote, the right to work, the right to be paid equally for said work, to not be denied housing on the basis of gender...I could go on. Oh wait, I think I already did.

So what exactly is an ultra feminist? Someone who believes that women should have more rights than men, like the right to not change their name when they get married? Well, I guess that would be just an equal right, because men don't have to change their names when they get married. So they're equal in that regard.

This visual effect was even more unique and expensive. 

This fall Wayne and I will celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. Twenty years. Women choosing to keep their given names upon marriage is not a new concept. Had I chosen to change my last name, I would have to be married for another four years before I would have a married name longer than I had my given name.

My kids don't wonder if I'm their mother. Sure, when they were younger they had questions, and, being girls, they could relate when I talked to them about it.

"Imagine," I said, "that one day you met your prince, the love of your life. You decide to get married. And this prince's name is Joe Smith. So do you decide to become Lindsey Smith? Or do you decide to be Lindsey Horsman? There's no right or wrong, but you have the choice."

They also go to a school where classmates have hyphenated last names that combine both the mother and father's last names, or two parents of the same gender with different last names, or stepparents and half brothers and sisters from other unions.

By the way, I am not alone in my choice. I have met many women in my life who did not change their names, several on my street alone, for no other reason than they wanted to exercise that right.

Guess that makes us a bunch of ultra feminists. I think there are worse things to be.

Would You Risk Ruining Lake Superior Forever...for a Job?

I welcome to my blog my good friend and writer, Janey Palmer. She is a Twin Cities-based communications consultant who owns a home on Lake Superior. Janey isn't typically a politial activist. But there's an issue going on right now in our own backyard that has her hackles raised, and I offered to give her this platform to spread the word. 

Read on and get involved. Our environment's future for generations to come is at stake.

Submerged rocks at Split Rock State Park. Photo credit Steven Gaertner

My hair’s on fire.

No, not literally. But if it were, I’d go to the tap and douse it in water. But what if that water were polluted with sulfuric acid?

The reason my hair is on proverbial fire is because our beloved Lake Superior, the world’s third-largest freshwater lake and home to one of the biggest sources of drinking and hair-extinguishing water, is under threat by mining companies—in the guise of “job creators”— looking to extract copper, nickel and other metals in the very heart of the north woods and at the convergence of streams that carry fresh water into the big lake.

The Lake Superior watershed is one of the most special places in the world.

Poly-Met, a Canadian company, wants to set up the first of what will likely be many copper/nickel mines right outside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The byproduct of this mining is the aforementioned sulfuric acid – and the possibility of this leaching into the streams and into Lake Superior is great, despite what the mining companies say (and there is no real contingency plan to mitigate this built into their proposal).

WestVirginians can tell you why clean, fresh water is important. They can also tell you why regulation is important. And they can also probably tell you why regulation doesn’t always stop bad things from happening. 

The offending polluter in that case? Yep, declared bankruptcy.

As a former public relations pro, my hat is off to Poly-Met. They’ve done a great job plying the hearts and minds of the good people of the Hoyt Lakes area as well as labor unions with promises of jobs. Yes, the mine says it will provide 350 jobs for 20 years, but shouldn’t careers be longer than that? And is mining the only way to make a living up there? It can’t possibly be the only choice. I know there are a lot of very smart people who live up there, and I know if given a chance, together we could find a way to bring economic opportunity to northern Minnesota that doesn’t extract such a high price from all of us.

An environmental impact statement said the best case scenario is that this type of mining will require at least 500 years of water treatment. 500 years! Who in their right mind believes anyone would be willing to keep that up for even 50 years? And there is not enough “assurancemoney” in the world to ensure clean drinking water long after the mines close or declare bankruptcy, the latter of which seems to be de rigueur.

So, 350 questionable local jobs x 20 years = 500+ years of pollution. That’s the equation. Does it add up for you?

If not, I urge you to join me in telling the DNR to deny permits for Poly-Met and any other mining operation like it from now on. The time for public commentary is here. We have a short window of opportunity to get our voice heard. Comments will be accepted until 4:30 PM CT on Thursday, March 13, 2014.

To learn more, click here – and be sure to personalize your message. There’s a lot more at stake than my head of curly locks.

Are We Really Still Doing This to Our Girls?

Somehow a co-worker of mine got put on the subscription list at work to both Boy's Life and Girl's Life. Perhaps they think that by giving the PR manager at a children's hospital a free subscription that the magazines will end up in our waiting rooms and reception areas.

She, of course, begs to differ, and I had to agree upon looking at the magazines. 

For the first thing, take a look at both magazine covers.

No really, these covers are indeed from this year.

The Boy's Life one? I don't feel I can comment too much on this one, I never was a boy and am not the parent of boys. But from the outside, it doesn't look too awful. About skiing, the perfect ski outing, the most dangerous job in showbiz, and "true stories of Scouts in action." All sounds wholesome although obviously slanted to the outdoors and an active lifestyle. Perhaps it should be re-named "Active Boy's Life."

But then we have this.

"Look Amazing!! Major outfit inspo inside" (We can't even be bothered to write the word "inspiration" in full?)

"Get Your Dream Hair"

"Steal Her Beauty Secrets: Shhh! Tips and tricks from gorgeous girls." (Because we all know what it's like to look at the gorgeous girls, hate them but want to be them, too. But we shouldn't know what that feels like, that's the problem.)

And the ultimate headline: "Quiz: Should You Date Him?"

Oh. My God.

I looked up this magazine's advertising stats -- age range of its subscribers are 12 to 17, median age is 15.  They have more than 2.1 magazines in circulation, of those 400,000 are paid subscribers. 

You mean there are actually 400,000 parents who paid to expose their girls to this crap? Haven't we moved beyond this yet?

I try to shield my kids from ridiculous stereotypes and unreal expectations. They may comment on a beautiful woman on a bulletin board, and I'll let them know that her body was probably photoshopped or her make-up airbrushed on.

They and their friends are currently mocking Miley Cyrus for her choices in wardrobe and actions. But then we'll have a conversation about bullying, and how it must feel to be Miley Cyrus and have everyone make a parody of her song "Wrecking Ball." (Poor Miley.)

I made the mistake of opening the magazine to see if the content was really as bad as the cover promised. 

It was.  

On the traditional "reader asks questions" page:

"I think I repel guys. I get top grades, am captain of my sports teams and do choir. My friends say guys are intimidated."

One editor writes: It's not that you're successful, it's how you carry that success. Downplay it. Put the spotlight on others, and point out special things about those around you.

The other editor's response is: "At the risk of being a little sexist, flirt. Smile. Laugh at his jokes." 

My response to that editor: You didn't risk being a little sexist, you ARE incredibly sexist for giving that advice to 15-year-olds.

So the message here is: Be smart, but not too smart. And if you are really smart and talented, don't be proud about it, be sure to shine the spotlight on others or rely on your good looks so you can get a guy.

Now imagine that readers take that advice, apply it to their high school education, their college education, and then eventually to their careers.

And we wonder why women are still not well represented in the C-suite of company management rosters.

We need to stop giving in to societal pressure that the value of women in our society is in their beauty and not in their talents. 

I wish I could make this crap stop. I don't know why it's still out there. No wait, I do know why: I looked up the statistics for this magazine on their advertising page. A full-page ad in this magazine costs $27,000, more for the back cover or inside flap. Guess who their #1 advertisers are? Yep, you got it, cosmetics companies. Hair products. Apparel retailers. 

So we may want to tell "Girl's Life" that we will never buy their crap, but unfortunately enough people are buying it that advertisers want to be there.

So I will target the advertisers. Skechers has a four-color back page ad, the most expensive ad of the publication. A product called "No!No! Skin" promises to zap away your zits on the inside back cover. "Series 31" jeans has full-page four-color ads.

I could write a little letter to these, but I think I'll be a little more public about it -- Ooo! Look! Skechers has a Facebook page....

Stay tuned...

Or better yet, want to join me?

I Didn't Realize the Presidency Was For Sale

This may come as no surprise -- I support re-electing President Obama. While he's become a lightning rod for everything wrong with this country, there is so much he is doing right. and he can only do so much with a gridlocked legislative branch.

I find it frustrating that only one year into his four-year term political pundits were already talking about his chances of being re-elected. Let the man just do his job, instead of campaigning to keep his job, mkay?

I have been slightly engaged in this presidential campaign, signing online petitions, getting involved in social media, but not supporting financially or advocating passionately.

But now I'm getting annoyed and angry at the entire process. At the end of June both Obama's camp and Romney's camp released their financial statements, disclosing the names of their highest dollar donors and the total amount that's been raised. Now that the Republican field has been narrowed down to a single candidate, Romney's camp raised $107 million, while Obama's camp raise $70 million.

That's a whole lotta money. I know a lot of charities that could do some good with that money, change people's lives and all that.

And because I've been involved in Obama's camp, I'm now getting the emails from his side:

"We're being outspent. If this continues we will lose." And then the kicker at the end:

"Paid for by Obama for America."

So...my $3 is going to go towards creating and sending an email that asks other people to donate $3?

If you click through the email to the donation form, you'll see that if you've already given your limit of $2,500 to this campaign, you have several options to support Obama.

Like give to the Obama Victory Fund. Or the joint fundraising committee of the Democratic National Committee. Give to them all until you've giving your $2,500 limit, then find the next super PAC that is fundraising as well.

In the past four years, while the household income of the average American declined by 20%, the income of our congressmen have increased 20%. The disparity between the have's and the have-nots has grown. And now the fact that our leadership can be bought is being made blatantly clear to everyone in America, including people like me, who were asked for a measly $3 to help support the president.

Who else sees something wrong with our political process?  I think I'm going to start advocating hard to campaign reform. This is getting ridiculous.

Sorry I'm Late to the Party

This weekend I am going to be at the Twin Cities Pride parade, showing my support for a group called Minnesotans United for All Families, who is fighting the marriage amendment that Minnesotans will be voting on this November. This amendment strictly defines marriage as existing between a man and a woman and makes it legally prohibitive to allow same-sex marriages.
I was telling some of my family what I will be doing this weekend and was surprised by their reaction, which was "I didn't know you were gay!" While said in jest, it said a lot about why gay rights haven't moved much in this country until recently.

I suspect that very sentiment is why so many straights have chosen not to support gay rights, at least publicly. "Gay" isn't something that is for the most part physically obvious, unlike race or gender. For many of us, fear of being classified with homosexuals kept us from standing up for their rights.

Yet if you look back in history, every time a group that had been discriminated against moved forward in their struggle for equality, it was because of the work of people outside of that group. There was not a single black person in Congress when slavery was abolished in 1865, not a single woman in a seat of power when women got the right to vote in 1920. And the civil rights movement of the 1960s could not have made the progress that it made without the support of whites who put their lives in danger to stand up for the rights of their fellow citizens.

I hadn't really thought about the impact of gays being denied the ability to marry until I heard stories from a good friend who is gay. She and her partner are incredibly committed to each other, as much if not moreso than any heterosexual couple. They own a house and have a child together, all of which has to be done at considerable legal expense to protect their rights.

I took for granted until talking to them the legal rights that I'm afforded in the home purchases my husband and I have made over the years. Buying a house as a married couple is easy -- our earning power and credit scores are pooled together and we own the home together. As a gay couple, they have to produce legal documents binding them financially in the purchase of the home and defining joint ownership. If they haven't already, they will have to take on the expense of having my friend adopt her own daughter, because she is biologically her partner's and not hers. If one of them were to die unexpectedly, the other would have no benefits as a surviving spouse. And don't even get me started on custodial rights of their daughter in that situation.

I suspect that lawyers LOVE same-sex couples and are voting for the marriage amendment -- it'll keep them in business.

I have looked on in frustration as state after state passed these marriage amendments, wishing there was something I could do to help. Now that the issue is being brought to the table in Minnesota, I am ready to stand up for my fellow citizens' rights.

I'm sorry I didn't speak up earlier or make my opinions more well known to support the LGBT community. Minnesotans United organizers encourage supporters to tell others that they support it -- once someone shares that they do, others will finally open up that they are also in agreement. I have a little bit bigger soapbox than others through this blog, so I am making my opinions known.

Sorry I'm late to the party. But I'm here now, so let's rock and roll.

Vote NO in NOvember.

I Can't Read It. But I Can't Look Away

I get so angry. Sad. Frustrated.

I want to pick her up lifeless body and hug her, let her know that someone somewhere cared for her, would have loved her, would have treated her differently.

I read about children who were abused, chained to beds or beaten with sticks and I want to put my arms around them all. All ages, all colors, all backgrounds.

I do not understand how people can be cruel to a child. I look in my children's innocent, trusting eyes and I cannot imagine someone choosing to break that trust, to destroy that innocence.

My use of social media makes it difficult for me to avoid these stories. They pop up in my newsfeed, they land on my homepage of my personal email, they are hard to ignore.

I feel so helpless.

So I will channel that helplessness into extra hugs, extra kisses, extra time spent with my kids. If I cannot save them all, at least I can let two little girls know how much they are loved.

Winter Driving or why my commute takes twice as long

Dear City of Minneapolis,

I know, budget cuts SUCK.

So take this grumbling in light of the fact that I know you've cut down on plowing to save a buck or two.

And that over Christmas, when we were getting dumped on day after day, you really didn't want to pay drivers triple time to plow the roads over the holidays. I get that. But the problem is...I still have to live here.

You see, there is a 3 foot tall hump of ice to turn right onto 47th St from France Ave now, and unless I take it at 2 mph it likes to grate against the bottom of my poor little Civic, and that's not very nice. And the dumbasses behind me with their big SUVs and four-wheel drives honk loudly when they see me come to what seems to be a complete stop in order to turn onto my street.

Since I-94 is a parking lot in the evenings as I attempt to come home from work, I leave the comfort of stop-and-go traffic to take my chances on city streets. Usually I'd rather sit at a stoplight with opportunities of actual movement between stoplights than sit on a highway that's supposed to be 55 mph but is actually 10. Except now I also have to account for which streets may or may not be clear of ice and snow as I attempt to pick my route through the city streets.

On the remainder of the city streets, the non-emergency routes which did NOT get plowed for 4 days over Christmas, my poor suspension squeaks and pops if I go more than 10 mph and God help me if I leave the two wheel groove that goes in the middle of the road, or I am in even-bumpier-ville.

But sometimes I need to leave those two-lane grooves, because there is this thing called ON-COMING TRAFFIC, see, you know, cars coming toward me on a street that's supposed to be two-way? And I understand that you couldn't get ALL the snow off the street, and that people have the right to park on both sides of the street even still, but when they do that only allows one car to pass at a time. Which means I either have to leave the grooves and pull over to the side, or wait within the grooves for the other car to pass and then hope to God I can get traction to get started again within the ice grooves that our roads have turned into.

My saving salvation, Portland Ave S, which I take for approximately 5 miles south, used to be a nicely moving 3-lane one-way street. But now it's a 2 and three-quarters one-way street, with the poor people who have to park their cars on that street wondering which is worse: parking their car into the snowbank or taking a chance that someone might sideswipe their car if they park it just a little, itty bit into the driving lane. So now it's a game of bob-and-weave between drivers attempting to use the farthest right-hand lane and the middle lane, wondering if the car moving next to you is going to have to drive in your driving lane in order to avoid a parked car.

Just in case you think I'm alone in thinking that the roads are worse than they've ever been this winter, I am obviously not alone:

Don't Like MN weather? Too bad! (Star Tribune)
Anybody Seen Our Roads? (St Paul Pioneer Press)

And now that it's been below zero and in the single digits, there isn't a damn thing we can do about it until it warms up enough to allow the salt and chemicals to do their job. But even after it turns into slop and slush, I suspect that it will just continue to sit there on our roads, creating deep, icy ruts when it finally re-freezes, unless you once again fire up the snowplows and get the damn stuff off the roads while it's still movable.

So please, find something else to cut -- got some extra legislative aids who are not earning their keep working 60 hrs a week for $10/hr? Cut those slackers and plow our roads.

Child Sexual Offender Caught

This morning on the radio I heard about a child sexual offender who was recently arrested in Michigan. He had been arrested at a home where he had thought he would be meeting a 14-year-old girl for sex.


He showed up for the meeting with the teenager wearing a shirt that said "World's Greatest Dad."



I feel for his kids.

Time Article: Pregnancy Pact by Teens

Click on above post title for the Time article.

The saddest statement of this story has to be:

"They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally. I try to explain it's hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m."

-- Amanda Ireland, 18-year old graduate of Gloucester High School, who had a child her freshman year.

Amanda theorizes that many girls in the pregnancy pact saw her as a role model and agreed to get pregnant together.

Where are these girls' parents?

Top 'Er Off

Yesterday I was going by a gas station near our house and decided to top off the Civic even though the tank was three-quarters full. After all, this particular gas station was a full 12 cents cheaper than every other one around us!

So I put $16.08 worth of gas into the Civic, which was 4.05 gallons.

$3.97 is now a "deal" for gas.