All This Turmoil...

... relatively close to me.  Yet it's quiet here.

I'm wondering if it's because we'd shoot the $#!+ out of the mamma's boys over here and they know it?

So I Was Thinking About the American's With Disabilities Act Today...

...and wondered how someone who is hearing impared and relies on lip reading can do that when masks are forced on people.

OW OW OW!!!

OW OW OW OW A cicada killer bee just got me twice OW OW OW I've had 4 nasty tick bites this year and now OW OW OW!!! I am so tired of things biting and stinging me OW OW OW!!!

It's So Doggone Hot That...

...I'm cleaning house and washing windows because even I, with my love of Summer heat, can't work outside.

I Went Out For a Beer and Came Home With a Cousin

Well, with her contact info. I'm still wandering around with my eyes as big as the full moon and my jaw scraping the ground. After a long walk with pup and getting some things done at the house, I gave in and went to Glory Days for a couple beers. It's hottern' hades and it's July 4th. Other regulars were there and we were chatting, talking history. And somewhere along the line I mentioned that my family is from Preston County, WV. And a woman at the table next to us asked "Where in Preston County?" It's not like there's a lot of options - Preston County is real West Virginia and is way more rural than where I live in Jefferson County. I told her that technically our address was Terra Alta, but we always say Whetsel Settlement. She knew the area and I asked what her name was. "Arnold." !!!!! "Who was your father? Grandfather?" "My grandfather was Ernest Arnold." OMG OMG OMG. Ernest was my great-uncle. He lived in Cleveland, OH, so we didn't have much contact with him or his family and things were weird and we lost contact with that branch decades ago but OMG OMG OMG. She's my cousin. She remembers the few Arnold reunions we had in the late 60s.

LOL! The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

I've set myself a goal of reading at least one biography of each of our presidents in order of their presidencies.  It's not like I'm charging through - I'm easily distracted.  Plus it's sometimes harder to find a good biography of some of our lesser known presidents than to find one of Elvis.  Which is annoying.  And sometimes the major issues of an administration just aren't that interesting:  I can stand about 2 pages of tariffs or monetary standards before I zone out.  The administrations of Cleveland, Harrison, and McKinley involve hundreds and hundreds of pages on those subjects. 

Currently, I'm reading In The Days of McKinley, written by Margaret Leech in 1959.  As she writes about the post-Spanish American War turmoil over what to do with the Philippines she comments:

"One resemblance between McKinley and Lincoln was not alleged.  Both reduced their political enemies to a jumble of inconsistent accusations that they were absurdly weak and dangerously strong.  The hostile press in 1899 endowed the occupant of the White House with a dual personality:  on the one hand, an amiable, ordinary politician, befuddled by adulation; and, on the other, a self-willed dictator whose policy in the Philippines forecast his benevolent assimilation of the functions of Congress."

 Sound familiar?  Trump is an incompetent, yet he lays waste to the country and the Constitution by every possible evil.