News, Notes, and Notions for 17MAR24
On that shopping trip the first morning of a roadtrip somewhere else cause you forgot stuff, plus links worth reading, watching, and more
There are certain truths to life. Then there are certain truths to life when your life involves numerous other people. The former means plans hold up. The latter means no plan survives first contact with friends and family.
Thus early on a Saturday morning after an evening of road tripping I arose from my hotel room, ate my bagel and banana at the included breakfast at the hotel, and then went shopping for the things various members of my household including myself needed for the day's activities.
In this case, the day's activities were a family wedding, so I was hunting for a v—neck white undershirt less the South Carolina temperature gets into sweating territory. Meanwhile thes youngest youngin was needing makeup and girl fixingupperstuff. Off to the box stores it was.
An attempt was made at the Walmart, but that was unsuccessful. The t-shirts of the kind I was in search for are in the aisles with the socks, underwear, and so forth. This aisle of socks, underwear, and so forth however was mostly barren and looked as if it had been subjected to one of the viral videos of stampeding area yutes. My mind thought back to 25 years early, when a young college dropout me worked for the then-still living Mr. Sam, and wondered if I’d left an aisle I’d been assigned to stock and zone looking like that if my manager would have merely maimed me or killed me on the spot. Kid reported back a similar unsatisfactory situation in the finding of girl fixingupperstuff.
Off to Target it was, thank you Google Maps.
Target has the overall vibe of being full of folks that ought to be shopping at Walmart but don’t think their brand could handle the ridicule. To be fair, if Walmart hadn’t fallen off as badly as it has they probably would, and Targets on the whole do seem to be an ever-so-slightly notch up. But such social notches are rather important to certain folks. For myself, I dislike Target immensely, with some irrational feeling it's a posing intermediate step between my preferred thrifting and Walmart to the higher level shopping experiences. Maybe it's all the red. I don’t know. I just don’t like Target.
But I need a white v-neck shirt for this rare occasion where I’m wearing a white shirt and tie with a suit. I emphasize I need one. Target is emphasizing I must buy 6, 10, or 20. I find a three pack, cut my losses, and with only some intermediate makeup shopping to appease girl fixingupperstuff end my retail sojourn for the morning.
I’ve just accepted that traveling means adapting. Sort of like running to the store really quick is never really quick. In fact, if a family member sends you to the store to fetch something you have two options.
Option 1: Rush, get just what sent for, have the phone go off with additional items right as you get back in your vehicle.
Option 2: Sit in your vehicle, relax, allow some elapsed time, play off the inevitable call/text for additional items, then go into the store.
Thus, thus, very well, thus. It is of course a privilege to live in the land of plenty where box stores and relatively cheap goods are on nearly every street corner no matter where you roam across the fruited plain. We Americans really are spoiled in that way, that we can complain about the variations between the Blue big box store and the Red big box store like it's some type of capitalistic War of the Roses. Maybe we should not be so cavalier about how good we have it when we forget something, or need something right quick, or just want something for the sake of wanting something.
Maybe.
But I still don’t like Target.
Worth Reading:
This is all kinds of awesome, from Metronews:
CLAY, W.Va. — It’s never too late to get your high school diploma.
That’s what 99-year-old World War II veteran Charles “Birdy” Edward Bird gets to do Friday at Clay County High School.
Through a joint effort with the West Virginia Board of Education (WVBE) and the West Virginia Veterans’ Council, per WVBE Policy 4355, Operation Recognition Program (ORP) gives veterans with honorable service in World War II, the Korean War or the Vietnam Conflict the opportunity to receive their high school diploma.
Bird was 18 years old when he was drafted into the U.S. Army during WWII in June of 1943. He never got a chance to graduate high school. Bird will receive his high school diploma from Clay County Schools Superintendent Phil Dobbins during an assembly at Clay County High School Friday morning.
“We could not be more honored to provide Mr. Bird with a diploma that he has earned,” Dobbins said.
According to Dobbins, Bird can’t wait to become a high school graduate.
“He is very pleased about this and excited,” said Dobbins.
Bird served in the 131st AAA Gun Battalion of the U.S. Army as a Technician Fifth Grade (WWII equivalent of Corporal) until 1946. He is one of four remaining WWII veterans in Clay County.
This is heartwrenchingly beautiful and life affirming from my friend Donnell Suggs about a retired missionary with terminal bone cancer:
On a recent doctor’s visit, Smucker complained of occasional headaches and joked that Penny had hit him over the head. Penny is clear about the fact that she is going to miss her husband when they part company for the last time.
“We’re living on borrowed time so we have to joke about it, because if we don’t joke about it from time to time we would sit around and cry,” Penny said.
The couple have been married for nearly three decades, they attend First Baptist Church of Gainesville and they still have moments when they have a good cry in the kitchen like they did a few days ago.
For the past couple of years, Smucker’s traveling consisted of he and Penny criss-crossing the globe to destinations they always wanted to visit, but never seemed to have time to. Following the cancer diagnosis, time was limited – but the couple has made far better use of it than they had in the past.
Smucker can no longer travel, but has fond memories (and photos) of those times.
“I couldn’t have done it without her,” Smucker said of his humanitarian work all these years and his wife’s dedication to raising the family while he was gone. He called the trips to Austria, Scandinavia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Yellowstone National Park “long overdue.”
“She was the one that made the sacrifice and let me go off on these adventures,” he said. “We just kind of went nuts those last two years.”
Of her husband’s many sojourns to foreign lands, Penny says supporting his humanitarian “calling” was something she had to do. “It was something he felt called to do, so who am I to say he can’t?” she said. “So many people need help.”
Now that he’s retired from missionary work there might just be time for a short but equally important trip this spring.
“I’m getting that baseball spring fever again,” Smucker said. An Atlanta Braves fan, he hopes to get one last opportunity to watch his team play again. The 2024 Major League Baseball season begins Thursday, March 28.
A man who once climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to help raise $100,000 for charity and completed a 30-day, 1,500-mile solo bicycle ride across Africa to raise money for Cycle For Hope, Smucker now walks with a cane and can’t stand for long stretches. Despite this fact he remains optimistic about his journey thus far, no matter how long that lasts.
“I think God gives each of us certain talents and gifts. Not all of us can preach in front of crowds, for example, but you have to find that gift and use it to the fullest,” Smucker said.
Powerful stuff from Michael Siegel at Ordinary Times:
Excited delirium has now been pushed for nearly forty years as a way to explain “mysterious” deaths that either happen in police custody or which the police are uninterested in investigating. It has been particularly been pushed by Axon International, manufacturer of the Taser, as an alternative explanation for why people sometimes die when subjected to a “non-lethal” tasering.
There is way too much in Radley’s article to sum up. It really is a “you should read the whole thing” thing even if it’s very very long. But my take from it, as a scientist, is fury. I understand why police and a big business might want scientists to tell them what they’re doing is fine. What I can not countenance is doctors, clinicians and scientists who are willing to do it, even as the evidence against their claims continues to pile up. If you’re going to dedicate your career toward telling the powerful what they want to hear, that’s fine. But don’t call yourself a scientist.
To the surprise of no one who pays attention, Iran is killing protesters, from VOA:
Documents apparently hacked from an Iranian government database and published exclusively by VOA's Persian Service have shed new light on how Iran's Islamist rulers covered up casualties from violent crackdowns on mostly peaceful mass protests and falsely labeled them as riots in recent years.
VOA received the documents on March 6 from the hacking group Edalat-e Ali, which last month began exposing what it said were confidential Iranian governmental records that it obtained from breaching the judiciary's computer system.
VOA Persian reviewed the documents and deemed them authentic but could not verify their veracity independently because it is barred from operating in Iran.
Iran's United Nations mission in New York did not immediately respond to a VOA request for comment emailed Friday. Tehran has responded to past leaks of purported Iranian government documents by dismissing them as fake.
One document from the latest Edalat-e Ali leak appears to be from a November 25, 2019, meeting of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, which is overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
It characterizes Iran's mostly peaceful nationwide anti-government protests of November 2019 as stemming from "disruptive and riotous behaviors." The U.S. State Department has said Iranian security forces used lethal force to suppress the protests, killing about 1,500 people.
Some people involved in the November 2019 protests damaged public buildings and businesses.
The Iranian government repeatedly has used the term "riots" to describe mostly peaceful popular protests of its authoritarian Islamist rule in recent years.
The Supreme National Security Council document directed state media, the judiciary and other government agencies to "prohibit" the release of "any information regarding the number of fatalities" from the 2019 protest crackdown and to hold offenders accountable for disseminating "classified information."
The document also directed government agencies to pursue legal actions against "rioters" accused of killing protesters, saying that in such cases, it would be "appropriate" to conduct investigations, offer condolences to families of victims, and provide media coverage.
A second leaked document from Edalat-e Ali relates to an apparent September 26, 2022, meeting of the Iranian Interior Ministry's National Domestic Security Council. The meeting came 10 days after the eruption of nationwide anti-government protests over the September 16, 2022, death in morality police custody of 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini.
The document indicates that the National Domestic Security Council directed government agencies including state broadcaster IRIB to "counter" what it described as the "oppositional media narrative" of the protests by emphasizing "discourse supporting the Islamic revolution."
Worth Watching:
I did some talking heading for our Canadian friends The News Forum, and talked about not-so Super Tuesday elections and effective end of the not-reallly a primary primary with David Clement, including Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, President Biden and more. Watch it here:
Presented without further comment, cause I don’t want to use the words that come to mind in public…Investigator presents his independent report into Uvalde response to the Robb Elementary shooting vi KSAT12
Our friend Michael Siegel reviews Dune 2, and tempers his own fandom by bringing his non-book reading, non-Dune fan daughter Abby along for some perspective
Sourdough is all the rage now, but the real history of the bread is one that is far more interesting than the viral videos make it out to be now, from the wonderful Townsends YouTube channel: