From Registered Republican to a Registered Democrat

Many women have been writing about how their experiences with misogyny have led them to support Hillary Clinton.

I whole-heartedly agree, though my experiences have been a little different. So I want to talk about my gender issues and how my politics have evolved over time.

I was never a girly girl, I was the classic tomboy. Now, I'd identify myself as "gender queer" - I never had much interest in dressing up or wearing uncomfortable shoes or make-up or pretending to be stupid to satisfy other people's beliefs about what a woman should be.

I was and am loud and fat and I never related well to other kids, got harassed and beaten up but also fought back and stood up for myself. Unlike most kids, I didn't automatically assume I was straight. I thought about it and realized I was straight (on the Kinsey scale, I'm probably more of a 1 than a 0). I wondered if I might be trans as I was a very aggressive girl, but I realized I was comfortable with my physical gender, it was more society's expectation around what a girl was that angered me.

So I was a straight girl interested in boys but they generally weren't interested back, though I've always had male friends. I didn't have the kind of sexual harassment most women report. I was more harassed about my weight and my hypersensitivty (struggled with depression from very early in childhood). But I decided I was going to have an interesting life, and not be afraid to try different things. Loved theater from an early age, sang in groups, loved travel early on, went to the movies a lot, and wasn't afraid to go do things on my own. I had some friends, but kept getting close to girls who would then move out of town. I was isolated much of the time so I read more which led me late in high school to find science fiction and science fiction fandom, a place where loud, fat, smart women were welcome. While there was some sexism in fandom, it wasn't as pervasive as it felt in the culture at large. Men did assume you were more sexually available, but they also seemed much better about taking "No" for an answer, at least from me, as I was never afraid to say "No" until I was damn good and ready to start a sexual relationship. No, I wasn't a romantic but I fell for the right guy anyway, someone who was smart, very independent, geeky and not into rigid gender stereotypes. So I've had a very happy personal life for the last 40 years despite a rather rocky start.

While I haven't had the blatantly sexist experiences that many women have, I've believed women who talked about the harassment and assaults that are all too frequent in this society. While a few women may lie about sexual assault, that pales beside the number of men who lie about sexual assault, or, in the case of Donald Trump, boast about sexual assault and then deny it.

As for politics, I grew up in Massachusetts, always a very liberal state, but my parents were registered Republicans (at least my mother was and I assume my father, who's always been very "don't ask, don't tell" on politics, is as well). So in the late '60s and early '70s, I was one of the few kids in my school who supported the Viet Nam War and Nixon. But, at the same time, I believed adamantly that all people in America deserved equal rights under the law. Scenes on TV of black kids in the south just a little older than me being attacked by whites with water cannons and dogs appalled me. I didn't understand during the '60s and early '70s that Republicans were fighting civil rights, not just "crime" as the law and order types kept insisting.

My first step in getting away from the Republican party was in 1973. I initially believed as my mother kept saying that Nixon was innocent in Watergate. But then I watched the Watergate hearings, and it was clear Nixon was guilty. So, at first, I believed that the corruption in the Republican party was limited to Nixon and some of Nixon's people. In those days, the Republicans, in theory, were pro small-government and pro business. And in those days, you could support the ERA, abortion rights and gay rights and still be a Republican. So when I registered to vote for the first time in early 1975, I registered as a Republican. It's pretty typical for kids to adapt the political party of their parents, and in that way I was quite typical.

In 1976 I voted for Ford over Carter, partially because I was a Republican but also because I felt pardoning Nixon was the right thing to do. Ford was a bit more middle of the road than Nixon was, but, I did another typical thing in college which was to become more liberal and start fighting for the ERA. It was clear that Republicans were not very supportive of the ERA. It turned out Ford was the last Republican presidential candidate I ever voted for, but...during the '70s I just didn't like Carter very much.

My second step away from the Republican party was to not vote for Reagan in 1980. Ford might have been OK politically but Reagan was definitely too far to the right and sounded like a war monger much of the time. I voted for John Anderson, the last time I voted for an Independent for president.

Gradually, I stopped voting for Republicans. I stopped registering Republican and registered as an Independent. Sometimes I'd register as a Democrat to support a Democrat in a primary, but I'd switch back to being an Independent after the primary. I last voted for a Republican at some point in the late '90s, and voted my first straight Democratic ticket in 2000.

My complete disillusionment with the Republican party climaxed during the 2004 election when Kerry lost to Bush. I've been a registered Democrat ever since. The Democrats are the party of the future, and the Republicans are the party of our racist, sexist, homophobic past. The Republicans have done nothing for our country in decades - they voted against the Violence Against Women Act, they voted against the Minimum Wage, they voted against better background checks for guns, they voted for invading Iraq (sadly, they had too much Democratic help there)...I will #NeverVoteRepublican ever again.

I want a government that works for the people. I believe rich people should pay more of their share - not the 90% tax rate on the wealthiest common back in the 1950s and 1960s when the US was economically stable. I believe there should be more of a "windfall profit" tax on people who make over a half million dollars a year. I believe government on all levels needs to be more responsive to the people and less responsive to special interest and themselves. I believe government shutdowns should be illegal.

People like to blame the behavior of Republicans on Donald Trump, but I do not believe that. Trump is just the ultimate Republican - fact free and working only for himself and for the continuing hold on governmental power by white men.

#ImWithHer

2016.11.10: And the results of the election demonstrate how easily led about 25% of the adult population are. Nearly 50% of the possible electorate failed to vote despite the fact that a Trump presidency is likely to lead to war, chaos, evisceration of environmental laws and the Health Care Act and re-normalized bigotry. I despair for our country but I will always fight the bigots and the know-nothings, even though more of them will be in power in the US.

2017.01.25: So far, Trump has been even worse than expected. Usually there are a few people from other parties in the Cabinet, but not Trump, who just selected a Basket of Deplorables for his Cabinet & advisors. And, sadly, it seems like they're all being confirmed.

2018.07.17: Luckily, no war yet, but I've been right on everything else the Trump Regime would do. And then there was the time that he committed treason in a live television interview with Putin at his side. I'm angry and disgusted. But, today, somewhat calmly, I called my Senators and Congressional Representative and asked them to start hearings on Russian election influence, Emoluments Clause & to protect Mueller & Rosenstein's investigation. #CallYourPol

How to Estimate Affordable Care Act Insurance Premiums (AKA Obamacare) Using https://www.healthcare.gov/see-plans/

Remember the initial chaos of the poorly-designed healthcare.gov Website? Well, overall, it is a lot better. But it's also really, really stupid in places.

Not everyone who wants to know how much health insurance will cost is necessarily going to be buying now. And it is now excessively difficult to figure out how to estimate your potential healthcare costs on the site.

There was no link for "estimating costs" so I just went through and opened an account, which was a huge waste of time.

After going through most of the motions, I called their helpline (you can't E-mail their helpline...sigh) and after a 16 minute wait, spoke to a very nice person...who had me make a few searches....none of which found anything helpful about estimating premium costs.

But, luckily, the helpline woman figured out the right URL pretty quickly even if it wasn't findable from search or the home page of healthcare.gov. She provided friendly and fairly fast customer service, but this should have been obvious information for her to have.

Any Website should make it easy to find things. The fact that "estimating premium costs" was not a findable search term on healthcare.gov means the people who developed the Website (which is otherwise pretty good) aren't thinking about search terms and didn't run thorough user testing.

Granted, you can't put every possible task on the top toolbar, but "Estimating Costs" is a very important concept for people looking for insurance.

So if you just want to estimate the cost of an ACA insurance plan for your state and age, go to: https://www.healthcare.gov/see-plans/. That provides all the information you need, and the information you need to provide is much less than the info for opening an account.

Trump Will Fail Debate - He Can't Get Past These Already Debunked Lies

This was the single most brilliant move by the Clinton campaign - to release a catalog of many (but probably not all) of Trump's lies just before the "debate:" 19 Pages of Trump's Lies, as of September 23, 2016 #ImWithHer #NeverVoteRepublican

Leavetakings - July 2016

July 2016 was a month of leavetakings, the happy and the sad.

We had long encouraged our daughter to move out, but we tried not to nag about it too much. She's 35 and really should be out on her own. Suddenly in June, she said she was starting to look for a place. It turns out she had a good reason for her long delay - she wanted to save at least a year's worth of rent before moving out. Leslie found an apartment that was even closer to her work than we are. So by July 8, she had moved out. She has us out to her place every Sunday night for dinner. So this was a happy leavetaking as we were all ready for her to be out on her own.

And then my mother died on Tuesday, July 26.

This was not unexpected. She was 86, had had breast cancer twice over the last few years, and was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer in February. Mom was an extraordinarily anxious person but took this news with equanimity. Not to say she was never anxious about anything in the intervening months. She had had a stillbirth in about 1961 and had some overpowering episodes of guilt over it this year. It was strange because she'd talked about her miscarriages (she had 3 before me) and the stillbirth pretty matter-of-factly while I was growing up. She talked some to the ministers at her church about it and she wrote a short poem about the baby and had it put in her casket.

My mother had a lot of support over the last few months, from our family (especially my brother Terry and sister-in-law Jess with whom Mom lived), from Jewish Home Hospice, and from the ministers at the First Congregational Church in West Boylston, particularly Steven Small and Chip Hurd. She was able to die at home which had been her hope.

Mom was really the first person I was very close to who's died, which seems like an odd thing to say when you're almost 60. While we visited our grandparents and other older relatives while I was growing up (and even lived with her parents for a few months when I was around three), I really never felt that close to them. But I lived with Mom for 18 years and while we fought we were close. We talked a lot about everything. We were both non-crafty, loved to read and write and really enjoyed food especially really sharp cheddar cheese and chocolate. We preferred comfortable clothes (though when Mom was young, she was thin and dressed more glamorously). We had kind of a morbid sense of humor and sarcasm (though Dad is still very much like that). I last saw her about three weeks before her death and she would still joke "I'm still here..."

She had a few scary health episodes this year, particularly in the last two months of her life. She got a little cold in late May, at a time when Jim and I and my brother Jeff were en route for a planned visit. When we got there she was having trouble breathing and was using a nebulizer. But she rallied; the next day she was feeling better. However, she was then pretty much bed-bound for the rest of her life. I was up visiting in early July and came over to find her napping but breathing very shallowly. Her aide was concerned about that too. But about a half hour later, she gradually woke up, and after about 10 minutes, she became quite alert and we had a wonderful talk. In doing some cleaning, I'd found a trunk of hers we'd been looking for for years. It had a lot of fascinating old family stuff in it, including some photos of her I'd never seen, her stepmother's nursing certificates and a hooked hanging, trim from her grandmother's wedding gown and her father's baby cap. I was so glad to show her a few things that afternoon.

Which turned out to be the last time I ever spoke to her.

Mom had written her own obituary and planned her funeral, so we didn't have to do very much other then be there.

The funeral was on Saturday, July 30. It was a very hot day in Central Massachusetts. Chip, the associate minister, led most of the service, but Steven, the longtime minister, came down from his vacation in New Hampshire to participate as well. Over 200 people came. She had a simple and musical service. While she didn't want a eulogy, Chip gave her a very warm and mostly accurate one (though did skip over her sarcasm, but that had toned down a bit over the last few months).

She was interred in her family's plot in Vermont the following Monday. It was cool and sprinkling early. Her cousins were there, and some of their children, and a few of us had breakfast at her favorite place, the Miss Lyndonville Diner. But it started to rain torentially just before the service. I felt sorry for Steven who wore a full ministerial gown that morning and was drenched despite the tent over the gravesite. She was buried beside her father (whom she outlived by nearly 50 years), mother (outlived by 77 years), step-mother (outlived by nearly 25 years) and other relatives.

We were a little lucky that she died when she did. Despite having bone cancer, she didn't have much pain until the last few weeks. On top of her other health problems, she'd had a very gradual dementia over the last 10 years or so. But she never forgot her family, or close friends, her past, or that she'd lived a pretty interesting life for the classic '50s woman. And I'm glad about that.

• Mom's WPI obituary.
• Some links to news about my mother's involvement at Worcester Polytechnic Institute,  as well as some of her writing for the Alumni Journal.
• An essay Mom wrote about her kids back in the early '60s.
• And then Dad died 8 months later...

An Essay By My Mother, 1962: A Young Mother's Story

[[My mother, Ruth Shonyo Trask, is a free-lance writer who spent over 20 years working for the WPI Journal as a writer and an editor. She wrote this in 1962 when she was in her early 30s. While my father recently unearthed this essay after many decades of being MIA, the last page has not been found.]]

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Carrie, Ruth, Jeff, Laurie
1962

All our books on child development and psychology have been relegated to the deepest part of the closet. Time was when they were referred to daily. As an inexperienced, first-time mother it was reassuring for me to have an expert as close as the nearest book shelf. Now, after five years and three babies, I have finally decided that in child rearing, it is better to play it by ear.

According to the books, Laurie, our first-born, was almost certainly doomed to physical or mental retardation. Perhaps both. At age one she had not yet sat up alone. She had not creeped. She rolled. She was placid, sometimes almost to the point of inertia. She rarely uttered an intelligible syllable. After reading what the "average" child her age was doing, I began to be frightened.

The family doctor assured me that there was nothing to be worried about. But being an anxious, expert-oriented mother, I continued to worry until at least 18 months our "little laggard" finally took her first step. She hasn't stopped going of growing since.

Now, at five, she is a peppy, straight-backed extrovert whose strong will, emotions and off-beat humor are both our pleasure and our bane. Her exposes of family conversations keep us on tenderhooks.

Recently a very punctual professor friend who had suffered a heart attack was nearly an hour late for lunch. We phoned him repeatedly, but there was no answer. "Oh," I moaned, "I hope he hasn't had another heart attack - or something worse."

A few minutes later he rang the doorbell and Laurie greeted him with, "Why, Uncle Claude, aren't you dead yet?" (Luckily, he has a sense of humor.) [[Note from Laurie in 2016: I remember that day. He had a great laugh over it.]]

Anyway, since age one, Laurie has leaned to communicate. Sometimes only too well.

After Laurie came Carrie, 4, and Jeff, 3. Although, of necessity, the household was busier than ever, I did try to follow the book's advice, particularly in the matter of discipline. Nothing can be more frustrating, especially when the experts say:

    "Never Spank a Child. Reason with Him."

On the surface this sounds fine. I always tell my children what they are being punished for and why they should not do what they are doing. Then I ask them if they understand. This often works with the older youngsters. But trying to "reason" with a two year old when he is doing something dangerous (like darting out in front of an oncoming car) is utterly ridiculous. A sharp, open-handed spank kept our Jeff out of the road at two and today at three (the beginning of the "Age of Reason") he more clearly understands why he must be careful. The spanks are now few and far between.

On one point I heartily agree with the experts, but purely for practical reasons. In our case banishing the children to their rooms is to no avail as a punishment. They simply unlock their first floor window and slide down the bulkhead as soon as my back is turned!

If, after reasoning, et.c. the older girls continue to misbehave, warming their derrieres is still effective. Actually the worst punishment for them is taking away of special privileges. (Bribery in reverse.)

    "Never Bribe a Child to Make Him Behave."

In theory this seems sound and is aimed a eliminating the child's mistaken notion throughout life "If I'm good, somehow I'll get paid for it." There is an age, I am sure, when children can be successfully taught that "Vriture is its own reward." For most pre-schoolers (especially mine!) that concept is utterly incomprehensible. If giving a timid child a pressed leaf to take to Sunday School will get him there without the usual fuss, it seems sensible to do so. The dentist's "Good Patient" balloon lure our little ones in for a cleaning with hardly a murmur of dissent. Perhaps I should feel guilty but I just feel grateful. When they are older and more able to understand, they can elarn the adult idea of being good for goodness' sake.

    "Never Let Your Child Violate the Rights of Others."

Nearly everyone wants his child to respect the rights of his family and friends. Practically nobody wants him to be the bleak bully, the instigator of every neighborhood free-for-all. But after a pre-schooler has had his own rights violated it seems grossly unfair if he is severely reprimanded when he fights back. Naturally such altercations should be limited. No bites, sticks, or stones, please!

Our eldest is sometimes a too vigorous protector of her rights while the younger ones often let others take advantage of them. Some day they will have to learn to take their place in life without being pushed aside. Again, as they grown older, they will all learn, I hope, that good humor and common sense are better defenders than fists.

    "Never Let Your Child Feel Insecure."

Unfortunately this chestnut has led many innocent parents (myself included) into a maze of trouble. We are drawn into overindulgence of the grossest kind. We are so afraid that our children might undergo a moment's insecurity that we are constantly at their beck and call, give them expensive gifts, pre-plan too much of their time, fight their fights, and in the process erroneously teach them that life is one great featherbed of togetherness. What a shock when they get out into world and discover they aren't the only pepples on the beach!

I believe that if we truly love our children and demonstrate our love verbally or with a pat on the head, that coupled with the providing of the basic necessities and a disciplined, decent home atmosphere is all that should be expected of us parents. From such an encouraging climate there could emerge a sensible brand of "security;" a security which allows for some individual independence.

    "Never Break a Promise to Your Child."

This, of course, goes hand in hand with the "security" problem. The idea seems to be that if enough promises are broken the child is bound to be insecure. Theoretically this is probably true.

However, in practice, it is sometimes impossible to keep every promise. Conditions change. The bicycle promised in September may be an economic impossibility by Christmas. If such an unhappy occasion arises, a reasonable explanation is in order.

Perhaps the best way to get around the "promising" block is to try to keep promises at a minimum and, most of all, to keep them. We are having better luck with the "We'll see" tactic which does offer some hope of fulfillment without the ensnarement of a real promise. [[Note from Laurie in 2016: I agree with an awful lot of what my mother wrote in this essay, but I hated "we'll see" because they did use it quite a lot in childhood, especially my father. From an early age, I thought of this as the "parental indefinite." When we had Leslie, I avoided it as much as possible, though I tended to do many of the things Mom recommended here - read childrearing books to a point then did what seemed sensible.]]

Actually if things do not always turn out as expected by our children, it may be all to the good. It teaches them at an early age that life is unpredictable and that they will have to accept the bitter with the sweet.

Enough of books and experts! They are fine for occasional reference but often misleading and unnerving as a daily diet.

We parents must lear to fend for ourselves and use the system that works best in raising our particular families. Most of all, we should remember that we are...[[[Note from Laurie in 2016: Page 5 lost]]

*      *      *

[[Almost anyone who knows me know would agree with the observations Mom made about me back in 1962. I am a trifle mellower at least. My mother died on July 26, 2016.]]

Why I Love the Always Hungry Diet: Obese, Post-Menopausal Woman on the Journey to Being "High Normal"

I've been a fat person for nearly 50 years, an obese person for nearly 33 of those years, and a morbidly obese person for about 3 of those years.

With bad cholesterol, high blood pressure and the like, I've known I needed to be a thinner person for a long time.

Ever since I was very small, I always preferred processed carbs and protein. Didn't like any vegetables except for potatoes (of course), carrots and corn. Not a fruit lover either.  Major junk food fanatic.

Usually I was a kid looking at the camera, but here I am at about 5, staring at a friend's birthday cake.

But I really didn't get fat until I was about 9. The year was 1966, Twiggy was the major role model and being thin was more than in.  By the time I was 11, I looked more like this.

Being a fat girl in high school in the '70s was a miserable experience.  I was harassed about my weight every single day.  But I kept on eating, kept on feeling depressed and angry, and hated gym class most of all.

I decided to go as far away to college as I could afford.  That would be about 550 miles - from central Massachusetts to southwestern Pennsylvania and Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh.  By the time I got to college, I'd started reading science fiction and hanging out with science fiction fans.  Fans were much more accepting of people of all sizes.  I understood I  should accept myself no matter my size and not be a self-hating fat person.  And I met & fell in love with Jim Mann who was a fan who loved me back.  So, we got married, had a daughter, worked hard in the computer industry...and, over 20 years, I ate my way up to 255 pounds, even though I was happy most of the time.  Should note - I only gained 20 pounds when I was pregnant, but while I lost 15 pounds right away, I gained most of the baby weight back.

I did periodically diet a little and would sometimes lose 20 pounds...then gain back 25 pounds.  I lost weight when Leslie was a toddler and had to chase after her, but gained 30 pounds in a few months when I went to work full time and was sitting at a desk.  And we had pizza a lot in those days.   But I really hated dieting as I was hungry all the time and still didn't like most vegetables, though I would sometimes eat salad and had learned to like cooked broccoli and tomatoes that hadn't been turned into sauce.

Here I am at my 20th high school reunion, the time you want to be exceptionally thin.  I was close to my all time high weight (I might have weighed as much as 260, but I didn't have a scale in those days).

I was torn.  On the one hand, I honestly believe we should like ourselves and never hide ourselves away no matter our weight.  We shouldn't harass fat people. Being fat is not inherently bad or mean that you're lazy, stupid, non-sexual or have a character defect.  But...being fat can be unhealthy.  My blood pressure and cholesterol were already creeping upward.  I wasn't particularly active. 

It wasn't like I woke up one day and started eating better and exercising.  Very gradually over the next few years, I started doing simple things like parking further away when I went places.  Trying to eat a little less and a little better. Having a little less junk food in the house.   And I finally bought a scale.  By the time I was 40, I was down about 15 pounds and noticed I could stand longer and walk a little more.

So between the ages of 40 and 55, I continued working on a very gradual weight loss and activity increase. But by my late 40s, my cholesterol had gotten bad enough that I went on Lipitor. Later, I had to add a blood pressure drug.

In my mid-40s I developed severe insomnia.  I want to note that I was down about 25 pounds from my all-time high weight, was walking more, and when I finally had a sleep study I did not have sleep apnea.  Women in my mother's family tended to have insomnia from about the age of 45 until they were through menopause.   I wound up going on Ambien.  That gave me about an extra half hour of sleep a night...and, an odd side effect - Ambien depressed my craving for carbohydrates.  While on Ambien, I lost about 5 pounds a year.  However, Ambien stopped working as a sleep aid after a few years, as it inevitably does, so I went off it and the renewed carbohydrate craving, combined with going through surgical menopause, led to a 5 pound weight gain overall.  Not horrible, all things considered, but kind of depressing.

As I was generally unemployed due to my lack of sleep and we'd moved out to the country, I took up walking more seriously in 2012.  I started walking 2 miles a day and the next year 3 miles a day most days.  But, being post-menopausal meant my weight would rarely budge.  When we traveled, I would always gain a little weight, and when I got home, I would get back to the pre-vacation weight pretty quickly...except the weight wouldn't go any lower.  Here are Jim and I on a Game of Thrones tour outside of Belfast in August 2014.  I weighed about 220 in this photo.  During a 3 week trip to the UK that year, I walked 75 miles but gained 12 pounds.  I lost 10 pounds pretty easily when I got home.  When I got back from that trip, I realized there was a Diabetes Prevention Coach working in the same building as my doctor.  Given my weight issues and the fact that there have been a number of type two diabetics in my family,  I started going to see Joellen Brewton.  It was helpful to go and talk about food issues, weight issues.  She encouraged me to avoid juice (which I was able to do) and avoid carbohydrates (which I wasn't having as much luck with).  While I wasn't working, I was doing a huge volunteer project in 2015, which meant I didn't walk as much as I'd hoped and I often found myself snacking.  I was also achy and generally not feeling very well even after the volunteer job was over.

In late 2015, realizing 2016 would mark 50 years of being a fat person, I felt I had to make changes.  I decided I would walk at least 1,000 miles and would start dieting very conscientiously, on January 1.  And I did, but I was having the same problem I always had when I dieted - I was always hungry.  

In early January 2016, I was listening to the radio and heard Dr. David Ludwig, an endocrinologist, talking about dieting.  Yes, he had a new diet book out and it was called Always Hungry?.  Everything he said sounded extremely reasonable. Hmmm.  I think I ordered the book from Amazon before the show was over.  What did I have to lose?

In early January, I started tracking my eating and lost 2 pounds the traditional way--eating less of everything, being hungry all times and craving carbs a lot.  In mid-January, I got the Always Hungry? book and leapt into it (it encourages you to take a week to read the book and clean out your pantry).  Suddenly, I was eating eggs and full-fat yogurt and making shakes and not eating bread.  Aside from its Phase 1 which is pretty strict, it encourages you to adapt the diet to suit your likes, so long as you avoid processed carbs (bread, pastas, cookies, alcohol and also potatoes).  By following Phase 1 very strictly, I stopped craving breads and chips almost immediately.  Eating more full-fat foods and more vegetables (learned to like roasted cauliflower!!) made a huge difference.  And the recipes, developed by Dr. Ludwig's wife chef Dana Ludwig, were mostly excellent.

During January, I lost 7 pounds.  Yes, I know some of that was water weight.  But still - 7 pounds without feeling constantly hungry or wanting crackers.

I found a weird but good way to keep exercising even in the winter.  I walk 2-4 miles outside almost every day.  When it was too cold or rainy to walk outside, I'd walk around the rooms of the house.  It took about 21 minutes to walk about a mile in the house.  I'd also climb up to the second floor at least once a mile.  I've been able to keep walking 100 miles a month that way, well on the way to walking 1,200 miles this year, even more than I'd planned.

After 2 weeks, the Phase 2 of the diet encourages you to start re-adding whole grains and the like.  One food Always Hungry? recommended a lot was steel-cut oatmeal.  I found quickly that nothing, and I mean nothing, makes me crave more carbs as badly as steel-cut oatmeal does.  This diet encourages you to listen to your body about cravings, and I did.  So I stuck to either having eggs, a yogurt berry shake or a fritatta (more eggs) for breakfast - no oatmeal, cereal, or my longtime traditional breakfast of a piece of whole wheat toast, Smuckers all-natural crunchy peanut butter and a glass of skim milk.  We haven't had skim milk in the house since January which is very odd, but I don't generally drink whole milk either.  I've generally been drinking kefir (a yogurt-based drink) or water.  And generally one Diet Coke a day.  While the diet discourages artificial sweeteners (and there are some people who are quite fanatical about that), I like my Coke and appreciate having a little bit of caffein every day since I can't drink coffee.

Other cheats for me - some crispy-burnt hash browns when I have an omelette in a restaurant, small pieces of crusty cibatta bread, a few whole wheat crackers occasionally with peanut butter.  Generally limit alcohol to trips, and try to stick to prosecco but still enjoy a beer, red wine or Moscow mule from time to time.  But I was surprised by how well steamed cauliflower and white beans mashed together will substitute for mashed potatoes. And some of my favorite foods like unsalted peanuts and cheddar cheese are not cheat foods!

I've lost 17 pounds over 19 weeks.  Now, granted, that's not a huge amount of weight, it's slightly under a pound a week. My BMI is still in the obese range at 31 but it's getting closer to the merely overweight range all the time.  But as a post-menopausal woman who does, admittedly, cheat on this diet, it tells me I've finally found an eating plan I can live with and lose weight.  I'm down a total of 57 pounds since 1996, without gastric surgery.  I'm finally learning how to eat and exercise most of the time.  We travel some and I love to go to restaurants.  There I will eat and drink things I avoid at home.  I generally come home a couple of pounds heavier.  But I go back on Always Hungry Phase 1 diet pretty quickly, the vacation weight goes away in days and I go back to losing about a pound a week overall.

The thing I particularly like about Always Hungry? is that the carbohydrate cravings are gone.  Most afternoons, I can have fruit or cold (but cooked) cauliflower with hummus. Yes, I do sometimes get hungry between meals but mere hunger is much easier to deal with than carb cravings.  My diet counselor says that's a clear sign that my insulin resistance is in good shape.   And the second most important thing is that my cholesterol  and blood pressure are both better.  And...I still like food.  Dieters tend to view food as the enemy.  We need to eat and I'll eat unapologetically.  But I'll eat better and move more most of the time.

Most people report a lot of physical changes improvements from dieting.  I couldn't say the Always Hungry? diet made me feel better or sleep better.  In fact, I've felt like crap most of the last year.  And then I realized - a common side effect of Lipitor is body aches.  Maybe, even though I didn't have body aches the first 11 years I was on Lipitor, maybe I was getting them now?  So I took myself off of Lipitor...and the body aches went away over a week.  At the end of June, I'll ask my doctor if I can have another cholesterol test to see if the dieting is keeping the cholesterol low enough without medication.

So thanks, Dr. Ludwig and the Always Hungry? diet book for finally helping me to find an eating plan that will help take me from being an obese women to being a more normal weight.  And thanks to Joellen Brewton for providing excellent counseling over the last two years.  My goal is to get down to about 150.  I will probably still look a little fat at 150, but, technically, that's "high normal."  I haven't weighed 150 since college.  I will generally avoid processed carbs.  And any time I reach 160 pounds in the future, I will go back to eating Phase 1 of the Always Hungry? diet.

Laurie Mann, 5/13/16, 5'7", 198 pounds

Quick Lower Calorie Smore

Desserts are often a sore point if you're trying to cut back on junk food. But sometimes you want more than fruit. Certainly eating a little 85% chocolate (thanks, Dr. Ludwig for my favorite hint from the Always Hungry? book!) helps to satisfy chocolate cravings. But what happens when you have a house with marshmallows and graham crackers after the first cookout of the year? Here's an easy way to have a smore without blowing your diet.

• 1 graham cracker
• 3 small squares of 85% chocolate
• 1 marshmallow

Break up chocolate into small pieces over the graham cracker. Cut marshmallow into 2 or 4 pieces, put on chocolate. Heat in a toaster oven for a few minutes until the marshmallow & chocolate soften.

If you're tracking your foods on MyFitnessPal, the recipe "Quick Lower Calorie Smore" is in the database.

Calories 153
Total Fat 7 g 10%
Saturated Fat 3 g 15%
Monounsaturated Fat 0 g
Polyunsaturated Fat 1 g
Trans Fat 0 g
Cholesterol 0 mg 0%
Sodium 86 mg 4%
Potassium 25 mg 1%
Total Carbohydrate 22 g 7%
Dietary Fiber 2 g 6%
Sugars 10 g
Protein 2 g 5%
Vitamin A 0%
Vitamin C 0%
Calcium 0%
Iron 4%

For Always Hungry? fans out there, this isn't strictly kosher obviously. May be OK for Phases 2 or 3. I find this doesn't trigger junk food cravings for me, but I know different people crave different kinds of carbs. Could work well with chickpea flour crackers.

30 Years After the Challenger Disaster

Just about half a lifetime ago, I was working for Stratus Computer in Hudson Massachusetts. During group meetings, we sometimes saw the famous wheelchair Boston marathoners Dick and Rick Hoyt train around the nearby reservoir. I had to run an errand at lunch. I was listening to the Challenger launch on the car radio as I was driving back to work...and...suddenly

....things were not going right.

I got back to work and ran upstairs where the word was already spreading. No Web with live video in those days, but everyone had E-mail, some people could lurk on USENET groups during the day and many had radios in their offices. One of the engineers had a little TV which he brought into the outer office. We just stood and watch replays of the take-off in shock for at least 20 minutes.

Most computer people were gung-ho space people so this was very traumatic for us.

It was also personal. Christa McAuliffe's younger sister Lisa was a Stratus employee. She was in Florida to watch her sister's launch.

A few months later, we planted a tree outside of Building 1 in Marlboro in honor of Christa. While Stratus hasn't been at that location in many years, I'll try to remember to visit that spot this spring to see if the tree is still there.

As an almost 30-year-old, I was cynical having already lived through the assassination of a president, deaths of 3 astronauts in the Apollo 1 fire in 1967, the Viet Nam War, Watergate, the ERA failing to pass and the election of Reagan. But I always loved space travel unreservedly. Still do.

It's one strong symbol of progress, of looking forward, of taking that next giant leap for mankind.

Thinking about the Challenger and Stratus, made me dig out and digitize a photo of myself from the winter of 1986, while at a party at Stratus one Friday afternoon, and a 2015 photo with my sister-in-law, nephew & niece

March 1986	December 2015

My Best Movies of 2015

I had a feeling when I first saw Spotlight that it would be my favorite movie of the year, and it is. Exceptionally intelligently written, one of the best ensemble casts ever, it brilliantly portrayed how difficult dealing with child abuse in general is and how very difficult it was to deal with it in Boston when the biggest perpetrators were employees of the Catholic Church. It's a powerful and painful movie that never lost track of the importance of the past in dealing with horrors of the present.

I lived in Massachusetts in the '80s and '90s. I was horrified by the former Father James Porter case and utterly dismayed by how little things changed after that case became oh so public. Spotlight insightfully portrayed why things failed to change after former Father Porter went to jail.

The writers, Tom McCarthy & Josh Singer deserve all best original screenplay awards for 2015 hands down. I didn't see another movie all last year that was as solid as this movie. McCarthy also previously wrote & directed The Station Agent (Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson & Bobby Carnivale) and The Visitor (Richard Jenkins) and wrote the story for one of the best animated features ever, Up. Almost everything he touches portrays real people like real people on camera and I love that (yes, even in Up).

I'd long been a fan of Michael Keaton and I'm very pleased that he's been in each of my favorite movies of the last two years (Birdman and Spotlight). Mark Ruffalo gave both a passionate and compassionate performance. And the actors who played the abuse survivors, particularly Neal Huff (Phil Saviano), Michael Cyril Creighton (Joe Crowley), and Jimmy LeBlanc (Patrick McSorely) captured the difficulties of telling their stories.

While much of this movie may come off as religion-bashing and a love letter to The Boston Globe, watch carefully because there were times when the Globe failed and other times when individuals in the Catholic Church tried to help and were rebuffed as no one (including the Globe) believed them.

When I look back at so many movies this year, I've seen many with great performances (like The Danish Girl and Concussion) but they seem to be lacking something in the storytelling. Spotlight lacks for nothing.

My Top Ten Movies

1. Spotlight
2. The Big Short
3. Suffragette
4. Grandma
5. Bridge of Spies
6. Room Youth
7. Inside/Out
8. Trainwreck
9. The Martian
10. Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Honorable Mentions: Youth, Ex Machina, Spy, Steve Jobs, Brooklyn, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

I have not seen some movies as they either haven't played in Pittsburgh yet or were here very briefly and I've missed them: Room, 45 Years, Tangerine, Anomalisa. [[1/28 - have seen Room now and it's an amazing flick with a career-making performance by Brie Larson. So it's in my "Top Ten" and Youth has fallen to "Honorable Mention."]]

I don't go to movies that are overly violent, so I will not see Fury Road, Hateful Eight or Revenent in a theater, but I might watch them on cable someday. [[Have since seen Fury Road on cable (early morning of the day the Oscar nominations were announced). Charlise Theron and the production values were great. Felt the script was on the weak side, but the journey back to Theron's home was great.]]

I go to most movies shot in Pittsburgh. I tend to avoid movies that look bad to begin with, but saw The Last Witch Hunter as I worked on it. I was the worst movie I paid to see all year. Will Smith gave a great performance in Concussion but the script and photography killed it. Love the Coopers was kind of fun.

Spoilers * Star Wars, The Force Awakens Comments and Spoilers

So if you really don't want to read spoilers, STOP NOW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I went to this movie not knowing anything new (though I've just rewatched I, IV, V & VI). Always been a big fan of the first three movies (Star Wars: A New Hope, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi), and didn't care for the second three (Star Wars: Phantom Menace, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith). I knew by the end of Empire that Leia was "the other," something I argued about for three years because an amazing number of Star Wars fans couldn't see Leia as having that potential.

I was really convinced going in to see The Force Awakens that Rey was Han and Leia's daughter, and, perhaps to protect her, they "hid" her away. She looks much more like their offspring than Adam Driver does. And I thought that helped to explain why she was instantly at home in the Millennium Falcon. But Rey is a great character, and if she's Luke's daughter, that explains a lot (except for her height). It is striking that when Daisy Riley has her hair done more "Earth style," she looks a lot like very tall Natalie Portman. Daisy Ridley was wonderful and I think she'll go far in the movie biz.

I'm not an Adam Driver fan, but I loved him as Kylo - he was basically the ultimate malicious fan boy but the object of his devotion was Darth Vader. If you noticed, he had some power, but he seemed to be barely tolerated by much of the Empire. His parentage was a great surprise and I'm glad that wasn't spoiled for me.

Really liked both Jon Boyega & Oscar Isaac (whom I met when we were working on a movie in Pittsburgh a few years back). Some people were critical of Boyega, but, remember, his character getting his bearings as an individual deserter for the first half of the movie and he was overwhelmed a lot of the time. That was appropriate. Both Boyega & Isaac were terrific and I look forward to them working together in future SW movies.

Adored the Mas character, one of the most realistic CGI characters ever. I hope she survived the bombing of her cantina.

When Han and Kylo both wound up on that bridge, I knew at least one of them would not walk off. That was well-done.

Thought the on-again/off-again relationship of Han and Leia worked very well.

The effects/production values mostly quite good. The practical effects were excellent. There's a tendency for full-CGI sequences to look very gray (particularly noticeable in Harry Potter movies and sometimes in LOTR movies). The filmmakers avoided this.

Loved the "Empire spaceship graveyard."

The bad things:

Not enough Carrie Fisher - Leia. After being a forceful, competent leader as a 19-year-old, Leia seems to have badly faded away. Hated that. Bad scriptwriting there.

Gwendolyn Christie was really underused. She might not have been killed so maybe she'll be back. She's wonderful with weapons and it was sad you never saw her with a light saber or at least a staff. [[Yes, I hear she'll be back YAY!]] Gwendolyn deserves the "best sport" award during the marketing of the movie because we had no clue that she was going to be so invisible in this movie.

The Empire seemed overwhelmingly huge and the Republic seemed incredibly tiny. This was a serious mistake. They needed to be slightly more evenly matched. The Rebellion can't survive with 10 X-wings and one base.

The new Death Star-ish weapon was just too powerful. With the Empire losing two huge weapons in the past, you think their weaponry would be better distributed and not in one basket like that. On the other hand, it was bizarre that the Empire destroyed all the planets in a system except for the planet where they knew the little droid was (since destroying the droid would have solved the problem of Luke's location getting out).

Since moviemakers can do anything with CGI, they did just that. As a result, we got an utterly unbelievable sequence with the Millennium Falcon flying very close to the ground. Sorry, that didn't work for me at all. The asteroid sequence in Empire, pre-CGI, is still the best science-fictional flight sequence ever.

There was way too much running around in the desert town in the first 20 minutes of the movie. Way too much. Pacing of the movie was generally frenetic after that, but usually made more sense.

A few too many convenient coincidences, especially R2-D2 "waking up" at a key moment in the plot (though a friend suggested R2-D2 may be sensitive to "the Force" and started coming around when Rey was in the area.

Finally, the overall plot is too much like the overall plot of A New Hope. Rian Johnson wrote the rather loopy Looper which I liked a lot and wrote the next script so I hope it's not so derivative of earlier Star Wars movies. He'll also be directing episode VIII.

"This Is John Lennon's 75th Birthday" and Other Language Mangles Around Death (a plea from Dead People Server)

I have always hated when people write things like:

Today is John Lennon's 75th birthday

No, no, a thousand times NO!

When people die, they stop aging. That's part of the point of death. John Lennon will never be older than 40. John Kennedy will never by older than 46. Marilyn Monroe will never be older than 36.

Attaching an age older than the age of a person at their death is just plain silly and it denies that they've died.

It is correct to say:

Today is 75th anniversary of John Lennon's birth

That acknowledges that time has passed since he was born, and that he is no longer with us.

Almost as bad is the all-too-common phrase

Today would have been John Lennon's 75th birthday.

Now, when a person dies fairly young, this is a common phrase, and it didn't start bothering me until recently. You expect when someone is murdered at 40, that they could very well have lived another 40 years or so more. But, somehow, once you start saying "X would have been 90" today, that gets much less likely. The vast majority of people don't live to be 90.

My tendency from now on will be to say:

Today could have been John Lennon's 75th birthday.

John Lennon could still have been hit by a bus or something at 41. Just because he was murdered young doesn't mean he would have lived to be very old.

I think acknowledging a dead person's birthday as "anniversary of their birth," while a little wordy, is much more accurate.

Finally, I really don't like the term "passed away," but I understand why people prefer to use it. It sounds less harsh than to say "died." But "died" is more accurate and more honest. So when I die, please say "Laurie has died." I haven't passed anywhere except into death.

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2015 Emmys - Even More Diverse Than You Think...

I'm really glad that Viola Davis, Regina King & Uzo Aduba won Emmys last night. Viola Davis is one of the finest actors working today. Congratulations!!

But the Emmys were even more diverse than most people realize.

For one thing, women-centered productions really dominated. In addition to the female winners mentioned above, Amy Schumer, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and Frances McDormand (who was the person behind bringing Olive Kitteridge to screen when she bought the rights to the novel years ago) all won Emmys for their work.

For another, a fantasy show finally won Best Drama. Game of Thrones really ruled. For years, even good SF/fantasy shows (notably The Twilight Zone and Star Trek: The Next Generation) rarely got Emmy nominations beyond the special effects and some production awards. But Game of Thrones won an acting award, a writing award & a directing award in addition to Best Drama last night, in addition to a pile of production Emmys.

It has been over 50 years since a fantasy show won an Emmy for writing - Rod Serling won two writing Emmys for Twilight Zone.

Voters also finally noticed Orphan Black enough to give the versatile Tatiana Maslany an Emmy nomination for Best Actress. Long overdue, and there's always next year for her.

And, finally, as a longtime Mad Men fan, it was very nice to see Jon Hamm get his due. He was brilliant from the very first episode of the show. And he's also wildly funny. As Saturday Night Live has been kind of shakey the last few years, he was awesome every time he hosted the show.

One entertainment commentator observed this morning that the Emmys expanded its voting pool this year, which could be why the winners were more diverse beyond the usual. I'm really glad they did that.

So congratulations, Emmys, for awarding all kinds of shows run by all kinds of people and starring all kinds of people.

Three Sane #SCOTUS Rulings in Two Days - Marriage Equity, Affirming ACA & Fair Housing

I'm very happy for these victories for modernity. However, we need to be ever-vigilant. Civil rights for all races, genders and religions hasn't rid our nation of racism, sexism or religious bigotry. Likewise homophobia will not vanish due to changes in the law. We can't be complacent because I assure you the people who would rather have theocratic, 19th century laws will keep up the fight to drag us back. FORWARD!

Obese Woman Walks 13.1 Miles and Survives!

Is that click-baity enough for you?

The actual title of this should be "Walking the Pittsburgh Half-Marathon Route," but these days you need an inciteful title to get any readers.

Anyway...

The last few years, I've been increasing my walking. I've walked over 2,450 miles since January 2012. I rarely walk a lot all at once; 3-4 miles a day tends to be my limit, except for a few days while on vacation. I've about walked 8-10 miles per day while on vacation a few times.

I can't run, but I've always been interested in walking a marathon. So I decided I'd try by following the route of the Pittsburgh half marathon.

Walking the Pittsburgh Half-Marathon Route, Saturday, May 2, 2015

The Problem with Slate-Voting for Popular Awards Like the Hugos

Like the vast majority of people who've been voting for the Hugos for years, I have never, ever voted for a slate of people/works. It's certainly been tried. I haven't voted for people I've known for a long time, because I've never viewed the Hugos purely as a popularity contest. I have always believed the Hugos should go for quality works.

I don't believe the slate-voting that produced the 2015 Hugo nominations was a crime or an act or war. I think it was wrong, but it did not break any of the current set of rules, mostly because no individual/group had ever carried the notion of a slate to such an extreme.

In fandom, we often work together, but we act as individuals. It was unthinkable to find 200 people in fandom to vote in the lock step manner the SP slate demanded. So I'd argue anyone who did vote the SP slate is, by default, not a fan.

No matter who wins next August, unlike almost every other year, this year's Hugos will not reflect the votes of Worldcon members, because the nominations were so skewed. Some good works probably will win, but many good works, under the old "cream rises to the top" theory, didn't even make the ballot.

The fact that a slate took over the nominations does not mean I won't vote this summer. I certainly will vote, and I will work to help keep slates from taking over a ballot in the future.

Reviving the "25 Things About Me" Meme

It's probably the ultimate in navel-gazing, but what the hell. I responded to the meme in early 2009, I've added some additional comments [[in double brackets]] in early 2015, just after my 58th birthday.

1. My parents met at Middlebury College in about 1950. Dad was a history major, Mom was an English major and I've always been interested in both history and English (though I went on to be an English major, too). They had relatives who were into genealogy, so I know I've had ancestors in New England from both sides of my family since 1642.
2. I'm the oldest of four children - two girls/two boys. As was more common in the '50s and '60s, my mother had four children in seven years.
3. I learned how to read when I was 5, mostly because I spent weeks in the hospital and at home suffering from nephritis. I was hyperactive and was one of the few girls on Ritalin in 1962.
4. I was one of the tallest kids in kindergarten with one of the biggest voices so I played Santa Claus in the Christmas pagent. "Ho Ho Ho."
5. My father spent most of his career as Director of Placement for Worcester Polytechnic Institute and my mother was a free lance writer who went on to work for WPI's Alumni Journal. Dad was active in local theater groups (including playing Mr. Gibbs in Our Town the week I graduated from high school) and Mom was sometimes sang in a church choir.
6. We rarely traveled out of New England while I was growing up (with 4 kids, it was a little tricky), but in 1968, we made a big cross country trip with our grandmother completely by train since my mother wouldn't fly. We went to Chicago, Phoenix, the Grand Canyon, Anaheim, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, Vancouver and Montreal. Ironically, a landslide hit the train in the Canadian Rockies and killed one passenger.
7. In the '70s, West Boylston Jr.-Sr. High was a small school with an odd configuration - grades 8-12. The eighth graders were not supposed to join the senior high clubs, but I showed up at Drama Club anyway and wasn't tossed out. There may still exist a black and white tape of my adaptation of "Repent Harlequin, Said the TickTockMan" that I wrote and starred in for a Drama Class in about 1974.
8. I touched my first computer keyboard nearly 35 years ago. It was an early Wang that our school got to teach students computer programming. Paul Yankowskas was also in the computer class, where we learned how to program "Hello World" in BASIC.
9. During high school, I was in Central District Choir three times and Massachusetts All-State once. I made a touring choir (Concordia Youth Chorale) in 1974 and spent three weeks touring Germany, Austria and Italy, with a lunch in Switzerland. This trip made me love international travel and lager beer.
10. While my parents strongly encouraged me to go to Middlebury, I wanted to go to a college in a city out of New England but in the northeast. After spending years researching colleges, I narrowed it down to Case Western (Cleveland) and Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh). I visited both colleges a few weeks before graduation and picked CMU because I liked Pittsburgh much more than Cleveland.
11. I met Jim Mann at a science fiction club meeting on campus two weeks to the day that I arrived. While we became fast friends, we didn't start to date until the following February. The rest, as they say, is history.
12. When Jim and I got married in Massachusetts on May 22, 1977, it was 96 degrees! We had a simple ceremony with an informal reception at an estate on the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
13. I made the University of Pittsburgh College Bowl Trivia Team, at a time when College Bowl wasn't televised but was an interscholastic competition. We placed second in a regional competition. While I later did well playing trivia in bars, I've taken the Jeopardy test twice and failed both times.
14. Leslie was due Election Day 1980, so I got an absentee ballot...which I never needed to file since she wound up being nearly three weeks early. Her first trip outside was so I could go vote. I have voted in every federal election since 1976.
15. When we moved up to Massachusetts in 1982, a huge number of the members of NESFA, the local science fiction club, worked for Digital Equipment Corporation. I was interested in going to work for a computer company, and, eventually, got a job with Stratus Computer (thanks, Kurt Baty!). I worked for Stratus in a number of jobs for nearly ten years; Jim later worked there for about eight years as a technical writer.
16. I've had an E-mail address since 1983, owned a PC since 1988 and been active on the Internet since 1988. At Stratus, I created a departmental intranet in 1986, in an effort to help track forms, training information and other information about publication production.
17. I learned HTML in 1994 and created the first Hugo/Nebula site in HTML (AwardWeb) that October. I went on to run Women Leaders online for a few years, and then took over Dead People Server, a site I've been curating since 1997.
18. I burned out after working for about three years at ANSYS (which included an insane schedule to convert documents to XML in advance of our then-current publishing software failing at the end of 1999), and went back to finish my long-delayed college degree at Pitt in 2000. I graduated with honors in April 2001.
19. I'm enough of a movie fan that 2009 marks the 40th year I both predicted Oscar winners and will be watching the show. In 2004, I actually watched the Oscars from a ballroom in Hollywood along with 1,000 rowdy Lord of the Rings fans. About 20 members of the cast and crew of LOTR visited our party later than night with their Oscars.
20. Our daughter had no first cousins (except for one step-first-cousin) until she was 23 years old; now she she has 4.
21. While most of my family have been longtime Republicans, my mother's cousin Alice was a Democratic legislator in Vermont who used to commute to Montpelier with Howard Dean in his pick-up truck. Politically, I take after Alice's side of the family (at least after 1975 or so).
22. While I can't say "I was nominated for a Hugo," I can say "A book I edited was nominated for a Hugo" since William Tenn's "Dancing Naked" was nominated for a Non-Fiction Hugo in 2005. Since Phil was unable to go to Worldcon in Scotland, I was his designated acceptor. It was an honor to be a designated acceptor! ;->
23. I worked for Obama, voted for him (only the 3rd time I voted for a winning president), and attended his Inauguration (1.5 miles away from the Capitol, but what the hell).
24. My movie geekdom probably reached its peak in 2008 when I was an extra on "She's Out of My League," and I started the fan site "The Road Rumors and News." Both movies are due out in 2009. [[Since then, I've been on about 30 different movie/TV sets.]]
25. [[We've been able to take some big trips since 2009, and have gone to southeastern Australia, Alaska, England, Ireland, Wales and Canada (twice).]]

Why To Vote in the Mid-Terms

It's simple - anyone who tells you "it's not worth voting since all politicians are the same" is lying!

Are the Democrats perfect? Well, no. But the Democrats:

• Believe in raising the minimum wage - Republicans do not.
• Believe in stronger gun background checks - Republicans do not.
• Believe in supporting the Violence Against Women Act consistently - Republicans voted against it in 2013, but enough supported it in 2014 that it was finally renewed.
• Believe in keeping the government up and running - Republicans do not.
• Believe in government support of peer-reviewed scientific research - Republicans do not.
• Believe in bringing rapists in the military to justice - Republicans do not.
• Believe the US must pay its debts - Republicans do not.

So I will vote for the party who cares more about supporting the people than what the Koch Brothers and ALEC tell them to do - I will vote for Democrats. I used to vote Republican regularly, but, over the years, the Republicans have become the party of the rich and cares little about this country as a whole. And that's very sad.

Don't Stay In a Relationship When Someone Beats You

I have always known about abused women because, as early as in high school, I knew girls who were beaten up by their boyfriends. As much as I wanted a boyfriend, I swore I would never be in a relationship where a man beat me.

While my parents were argumentative, I never saw either parent ever lay a hand each other. And the same is true of Jim and me - we certainly argue (especially when we were younger) but we don't beat one another.

People need to expect to be in relationships that include mutual respect. If it includes beating, the person needs to leave.

Now, I certainly understand why women, in particular might stay - status, financial issues, if there are kids involved...but that goes back to needing to have a positive self-image, which, sadly, many women don't have. And I'm sorry if this comes off as being too judgmental about women like Janay [Ray Lewis's fiance now wife]...but I'd rather work in WalMART (and I despise WalMART) than be in a relationship where a man treated me badly.

But, the fact is, women are trained, particularly by many religious, to be subservient to men. That leaves men thinking that they have the right to abuse women, that they have ownership.

Enough already.

So how to we raise our children to know:

• You don't beat people
• You don't let yourself be beaten
• You don't stay in a relationship where you are beaten

?

What City Has the Most Bridges and Why Is This Fact Unfindable on the Web?

I am a trivia fanatic. I grew up glued to College Bowl, Jeopardy and almost memorizing the '70s version of the Guinness Books of World Records.

When I was younger and had a better memory, it was easy to memorize trivial facts because they are facts. Tom Hanks won the Best Actor Oscar for Forrest Gump the year after winning one for Philadelphia. Easy. The Union beat the Confederacy in the Civil War. Clearly a fact though some people might still argue that particular one.

I do a little work for a company that gives tours of Pittsburgh. I know one trivial fact about Pittsburgh we always said was "Pittsburgh has the second most bridges in the world after Venice." Makes sense. Both are cities with rivers/canals and loads of bridges that go over them. I visited Venice in 1974, and saw many, many tiny bridges that were walkways over narrow canals all over town. The next year, I moved to Pittsburgh to go to college and saw a very different landscape - bridges over much wider rivers, and bridges that went between the many ridges and hills in the area.

But yesterday I was talking to a woman from Hamburg, Germany who was insistent that Hamburg had the most number of bridges of any city in the world. I really don't know anything about Hamburg, so I tried to look it up online...And found it was really hard. Because the first "fact" about "most bridges in a city" was from ask.com - and it was completely wrong. Ask.com claims that Pittsburgh has the most bridges of any city - more than Venice, even - 446. Venice only has 409. So Pittsburgh has more bridges than Venice.

But, after digging a little more, I found that Hamburg has at least 2300 bridges. Maybe it's a geographically huge city, because that's a lot of bridges.

So vis a vis bridges, Hamburg was #1, Pittsburgh was #2 and Venice was #3.

But then someone said "What about Amsterdam?" so I looked - and Amsterdam has 1281 bridges.

So that means ask.com is at least doubly-wrong about the number of bridges; Hamburg is #1, Amsterdam is #2, Pittsburgh is #3 and Venice is #4.

Ask.com has no obvious place to send corrections.

---

And I am curious about this, so if you know about a city that has at least 400 bridges and a way online to verify this fact, send it to me and I'll keep a running tally here.

Cities with the Most Bridges

last updated 4/15/2016

• Hamburg, Germany: 2,300
• Amsterdam, Netherlands: 1,281 -- a site in Dutch seems to say Amsterdam has over 2,300 bridges
• New York, New York, USA: 788
• Pittsburgh, PA, USA: 446
• Venice, Italy: 409
• Seattle, WA, USA: 149

Cities that probably have loads of bridges but I can't find a specific number:
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Live in Southcentral PA & Know a Person with a Dark-Colored Ford Ranger XLT Pickup with Recent Damage?

Just read of a tragic gun murder in Pennsylvania, yet another example of crazy people having access to guns.

If you live in southcentral Pennsylvania, northcentral Maryland or northeastern West Virginia, and you know someone with a dark colored Ford Ranger XLT pickup with damage on the driver's side from ramming another car on 1/5, you may know a murderer.

CNN's coverage of this story.

Please share this information around if you live in the region - you may know someone who'd murder a random motorist, and who may be connected to one or two other shootings in the region over the last few months. You can help find the murderer of Timothy Davison if you share the CNN story with others, and if you be on the lookout for a dark colored Ford Ranger XLT pickup.

Of course, if you do know a gun owner who owns this kind of truck, talk to the cops. Don't try to be a hero or, for that matter, accuse an innocent person of a murder.