Live from the potholes
August 18th, 2009 | Uncategorized
I have lived five minutes from this phenomenal swimming site for thirteen years, and this afternoon is the first time I’ve ever been to it. Hol dragged me away from my computer and here I am immersed in Joiner Brook.
Look, all the kids are jumping lower down. Hol & I have gravitated to the old peoples’ pool up above, where everyone’s smoking and drinking Coors Lite.
It’s awesome.
86 Responses to “Live from the potholes”
Hurray for getting dragged away from the computer and into amazing sites! Enjoy.
Looks great. Won’t catch me catching rays though — I’d much rather be in the water. Too bad I haven’t been swimming in well over 5 years, maybe as long as 10.
At an assertiveness training session, years ago, we were asked to name an activity that we really enjoyed. And then to say how long it was since we had last done it.
Most of the answers, including mine, contained the words swimming and a very long time. Felt pretty silly. So when are you coming into the water Kelli?
Two things about the pictures: they really don’t do the place justice, and just so you know, that isn’t me basking in the sun–I was busy taking pictures of Alison damming up water spouts! Fun!
Great pictures, Holly! I’m like Kelli, it’s been eons since I’ve been in the water. I’d have to buy a bathing suit and get a bikini wax. But St. Jerome would love to catch rays…
This reminds me to do stuff right in my own backyard….For example, I have yet to make it to one of many outdoor movie screenings that take place in the summer. Happy to say I am riding my bike like crazy these days, which I’d been neglecting. You know it’s been too long when you have to brush the cat hair off the bike shoes….
If there’s one thing I miss the most about Vermont it is the awesome swimming holes, especially the ones with rope swings.
I have always said I would know I was old when I went through an entire swimming season without doing a backflip. Glad to say I’m still young at this point!!
love swimming…just got back from the pool…3 x per week
You don’t need no bikini wax at th’potholes, thank god!
Best things I have seen all day. I love water, that is why I continue to live in the Great Lakes/Rust Belt.
Lots of great swimming holes in Central Texas, too, and I want to go to one before the summer is over. Unfortunately, you can’t really get to them without a car, something I don’t have at the moment. We’ll have to talk some friends with transportation into it one of these weekends.
good lord, no-one needs a bikini wax ANYWHERE!
How cold was the water?
One of my fondest memories of grad school at Goddard College: swimming in the Onion River, a few miles outside Plainfield.
It was my first residency, and one afternoon a handful of us skipped a late day reading, piled in a car, and took off for a swimming hole. It had been an unusually hot summer so the water was cool but not frigid.
(Colorado mountain lakes are mostly snow melt. I’ll go for a dip after a long hike, but rarely more than that.)
We swimmers didn’t know each other very well yet, but that outing solidified our friendship.
Thanks for the photos, Holly. Summer’s not over yet!
That place looks fantastic, dangerous too! Wow, five minutes away for thirteen years without going, you are worse than me. Luckily my GF is a dragger outerer too.
those swimming holes look beautiful. I’m headed “down the shore” this weekend… been awhile since I took a dip in the ocean…but, jelly fish, medical waste n’ all… I can’t wait to catch a wave or two.
then I’ll get back to work too. these are the dog days of summer.
Hey Aunt S —
The Jersey Shore medical waste headlines from the 80’s were mostly overblown, though I have been accosted by jelly fish in the past. This year, dolphins! Enjoy the sunrises, sandcastles and jetties.
awww man….hold on! I’m getting my trunks.
Bikini wax….oooowwwwWWWWWWWwwww!
That place looks like heaven. I wish I could go there and get naked! (I’ve never skinnydipped, sad to say, and I’d love to try. Anyone out there done that?) I’m on vacation this week, and I plan on spending at least one day at the beach (it’s only a couple of blocks away). But Ellen brought up water temperature – that’s the downfall of Chicago beaches. The water’s…um…let’s go with refreshing. Brisk…invigorating…fucking freezing. Doesn’t stop us, though. I wish we had something like those swimming holes – those are summer perfection.
And now we return to…bacon! Here is a blog entry from my favorite food critic, Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl. At the end of the post is a recipe for bacon ketchup. Also, I am so going to the Chef Shack on Sunday–it’s minutes from my house!
http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/media/Blogs/Dear-Dara/August-2009/Lisa-Carlson-rsquos-Bacon-Ketchup-Recipe-mdashRevealed/
Yep, Ginjoint, I have skinnydipped at one of my frequent vacation spots where skinnydipping is a favored activity. My mother (I was an adult at the time) found out about it and turned to my father with a highly indignant glare. Poor Dad was expecting the usual “talk to YOUR daughter” speech; what he GOT was “Honey,*I* want to go next year!” Thank goodness that never happened. It would have involved tents, and Mother thought roughing it involved having a kitchenette and having to cook on vacation.
The swimming hole looks wonderful, I love wild swimming. I remember once swimming somewhere in the Gorge de Galamus in the Pyrenees and we were just lolling around having a good wallow when suddenly a group of people in identical black wetsuits and bright blue helmety things scampered up the rocks and one after another,flung themselves into the water. This happened again about 15 minutes later only they were all wearing yellow helmets. And then 15 minutes after that but all red. And then back to blue. It went on and on, it was like watching a live action version of ye olde computer game Lemmings. We were in hysterics by the end of it. But that could have been the wine…
Ah the joys of the dog days of August and a nice cool swimming hole. I’m surprised some bureaucrat hasn’t shut it down as dangerous or at the very least required a life guard to be present all times.
The town of Johnsburg, NY owns some of the land that Mill’s Creek runs through, including the site of “the Black Hole” – a generation-to-generation swim spot of which not even scuba divers have ever touched the bottom. When the town came into ownership of the land, it was generally assumed that they’d try to shut the Black Hole down.
Instead, they put up a rope swing.
This is why I miss the east coast.
http://www.adkland.com/75Acres/Black_Hole1.jpg – picture of a kid swinging off the Black Hole rope.
Hey Ginjoint – I love skinny dipping, used to do that a lot in Ontario. My gf and I were up Island (Parksville, B.C.) this weekend and I had to BUY a bathing suit – first time in 15 years!! Parksville has an awesome sand sculpture competition every year too if people are up this way: http://www.parksvillebeachfest.ca/index.asp
Ayah, the Bolton Potholes are thought to have been carved during the last ice age, possibly in one event that involved the sudden break-up of an ice dam along a stream that released a monumental torrent of water that had been impounded upstream of the ice dam.
I was walking across campus today, when I saw that some distrubed individual had posted an image of President Obama as The Joker, with the word “FASCISM” printed underneath the image. Whoever did this does not have a good grasp of European politics in the first half of the 20th century. Also, I am becoming increasingly concerned about the number of people carrying loaded sidearms and automatic weapons who show up at appearances by Obama to “protest” his policies. One wonders if they are going to start showing up at polling stations at the next election. I also remember that, just a few years ago, a middle aged couple who showed up at a 2004 campaign rally for President George Bush wearing sweatshirts with the name “Bush” inside a circle with a line through it were arrested when they refused to take the sweatshirts off. I guess security standards have changed a lot since then…
Re: swimming: I went to a women’s college, and for most of the last two years there I swam early every morning in the nearly-empty pool. I loved it, and it was good for me. Somehow, I’ve been sort of trapped since then on the horns of the appearence dilemma: on the one hand, my body image is, er, not totally happy, and on the other hand, I absolutely refuse to shave anything, ever. And I’m kind of furry. The other factor that limits my willingness to swim is that the public pools are pretty crowded, and I don’t know anything like a proper stroke. I bumped into people for about a week in my local pool and finally gave up.
Can you call it skinnydipping if you’re fat? (grin)
I have fat-or-skinny-dipped more places than I can name. I’ve wallowed nekkid in the mud at Michigan with other wimmin and had my photo (taken without my knowledge) appear on calendars the following year. (If you have one of those calenders, PLEASE contact me.) I have stripped to swim in the ocean on the Gulf Coast (warm water but beware the stingrays buried in the sand) and in Northern California (hypothermic but it feels so good to get out). I’ve swum in lakes with alligators and water moccasins, and while being naked makes no real difference in the threat level, it feels scarier to be nude and see a cottonmouth making S-shapes two feet away.
I once worked in an office where I was the only (out) lesbian and all the straight women discussed, all day long, was (1) how awful their husbands/boyfriends were and (2) dieting. Well, come to think of it, that describes every office I’ve ever worked in. You want to hear serious man-hating, none of the dykes I ever knew could hold a candle to a 30-something married woman.
Anyhow, one woman there, Laura, I really liked and I thought she was gorgeous, zaftig, funny, smart, and she was one of the few who liked her husband. She and I were talking and I mentioned I’d been down on South Padre the weekend before, gotten a sunburn on my breasts, not a good idea. She whispered “You didn’t wear a bathing suit?”
“Nope. More to the point, I didn’t refresh my sunscreen.”
“And you as fat as you are? Don’t people stare?”
“They’re gonna stare anyhow, Laura, me being naked and all.”
“And your — girlfriend, is that the right word? She likes you doing that?”
I leaned in to whisper back, “Honey, the women I’ve been with ADORE my body the way it is and if it’s visible, so much the better.”
She turned beet red but she was grinning. And the next week, after talking it over with her husband, she quit dieting. I have the feeling he was all for it.
Diamond, I’ll be out there as soon as I: 1) find a place to swim that I’m comfortable with; and 2) buy a swimsuit I’m comfortable in.
How said to see photos of an ol’ swimmin’ hole where everyone is wearing BATHING SUITS. Frankly, I think the swimsuit is the single most ludicrous invention of mankind. It doesn’t keep you warm, it doesn’t keep you dry, and nobody over about 19 looks good in one. Everyone, on the other hand, looks just fine in his or her own skin, which is tailored to fit and, moreover, perfectly accessorizes one’s complexion.
I have skinny dipped… but in a pool… at night…. not in a lake or the ocean… which, I think, would be more fun.
I love seeing the dolphins off the shore at the beach in NJ! It’s so exciting. Last week my daughter and I saw two beautiful foxes taking a little stroll in a field in Pennsylvania. That was exciting too… simple pleasures.
I feel so … so prudish listening to all of these stories of skinnydipping. I’m strictly a swimming pool kinda guy despite the chlorine etc. I really don’t like swimming in the sea as the waves scare me!
By the way, I didn’t realise they were making a film out of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and going by this trailer:
http://wherethewildthingsare.warnerbros.com/
It looks fantastic! Looks like the feelgood film of the year.
off topic…gender politics hit the sports scene again:
Check it out: http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/news?slug=ap-worlds-gendertest&prov=ap&type=lgns
That place looks so awesome! I want to go next time I’m in VT. bee-yoo-tea-full!
Re:skinny dipping…pool and a river, the river was much more fun, but it could have been the crowd 🙂
I’ve skinny-dipped in ponds, rivers, pools and oceans, in all kinds of company.
A few weeks ago the local punk rock promoter put together a 3-band show at a private swim club across the river in Jersey. The music was mediocre, the event was very poorly organized, but you haven’t moshed unless you’ve moshed in chest-deep water! My only complaint is that the bathing suits stayed on.
Judybusy – I love Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, too, though I have to admit to being disappointed that she added the Grumdahl when she got married. (She probably gave her kids her husband’s last name, too…) Anyway,she’s an amazing writer and food guru. Lisa Carlson was the chef – or pastry chef? – at the old Cafe Wyrd (in the place that’s now Cafe Barbette), the amazing Kim Bartmann’s first establishment in MPLS. I haven’t been to the Chef Shack yet, but now I want to, too!
Ginjoint et al., yes – skinny dipping is great. I’ve only done it in lakes (this being the land of 10,000 of them…)but it seems that the ocean would be even more fun. Late night skinny dipping in Cedar lake has always been a secret pleasure on the hottest days of summer.
Maggie – loved the story. Thanks.
xo,
J.
@ 29 – Maggie Jochild:
Thank you for posting this…. I needed this laugh, and so did my sister (a 30-something married straight woman!). Our mother died today… well, Wednesday, and all the laughs and love here are helping me on this sleepless night.
meldyke
Meldyke, from one motherless child to another, blessings on you this night and all nights to come. Glad you and your sister have each other, eggs who once floated together not just in your mother’s womb but in her mother’s as well before you mother was born. Women hopscotch that way down the generations.
Re: In the good old summertime. This summer is unusual–I’ve had quick dips in a lake and a river(the latter was very cold),and will be going on a group camping trip tomorrow which has *2* swimming holes. This will be great as I’m due for some R & R…I’ve skinny dipped in lakes and a reservoir,but haven’t done that since my early 40s.I would need to feel comfortable with my companions in order to do so now.
Re: update on my job telenovela. You may recall I have a summer job,paid by State stimulus funds, tutoring/teaching unemployed folks so they can pass their GEDs and then go on to gain more job skills.
Although my boss threatened to lay me off in July,I’m still working there and finally got paid;it took 6 weeks. However,I’ve been paid $1/hour less than I should,as clearly stated in the job description. I’ve written the union pres.about this,so hope it’ll be resolved soon and I’ll get my back pay. The students,esp.the Spanish speakers,have been wonderful,focused and motivated.
Our summer program ends 8/26,and the students will get a grad party. Which is fine,but the budget is $750;if the dept.can afford that amount,I should be paid what I’m due.Never in all my working years have I had a boss with so many control issues. And I’ve had some doozies. 🙂 Fortunately,I haven’t had to interact with her in a month; she’s been taking lots of vacation time.
(Hums the Internationale before falling asleep at the keyboard.)
So your cat wants a massage?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnZhi5gaX8g
@33-Ian
It does look fantastic! Dave Eggers wrote the screenplay…another reason to look forward to it.
We only wear our bathing suits when our kids are between ten and sixteen, usually, depending on the kids, and we complain a lot while we’re doing it.
meldyke, I wish you comfort at this hard time.
Maggie, loved your words about siblings as eggs floating in the mother’s womb. I never thought about quite like that, and it was a lovely image.
j.b.t., I so miss Dara in the City Pages! I always forget to check her blog–guess I should subscribe! Now my plans have changed on Sunday. It’s my partner’s birthday and she got the day off, so I’ll be serving breakfast in bed instead of going to the Chef Shack! Buttermilk pancakes with peaches and blueberries, real maple syrup, and Tollefson’s bacon from the big farmer’s market.
Are you available on my birthday, judybusy? That breakfast sounds fantastic!
skinny-dipping… so daring, so prudery-defying. goodness… i spend my days off in winter at the lake baths in geneva, where the sauna precinct is discreetly shielded from public view by potted bamboos, and where swimming suits are the ex ception rather than the norm.
it’s a great place, saunas, hammam and turkish bath, all alfresco and the lake slowly drops from 25°C in september to 5°C in january. if you swim every day, you hardly notice the difference.
and tuesdays are women-only (cue noise of US dykedom stampeding to geneva…)
All London visitors should spend a day at the Ladies’ Pond at Hampstead Heath (there is a chaps’ pond too, and a mixed one}. You can’t swim naked but you can sunbathe with top off as long as you don’t sit up – there are very fierce guardians with whistles to enforce this. The crowd is an eclectic mix of older Hampstead Ladies and miscellaneous dykes, each discreetly watching the other. The pond is cold all year – it’s fed by a stream – and you get to swim with ducks. It’s deep. I’ve seen women breaking the ice to have their daily swim.
Two things, both rather off topic:
What I would least like to have for Thanksgiving, even though it includes bacon: http://bacontoday.com/turbaconducken-turducken-wrapped-in-bacon/ (Yes. There is a bacon blog.)
And a NYT article about librarians AND Tintin: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/a-librarys-approach-to-books-that-offend/ (not to make light of all angles of the issue that this represents…)
Just got back form Minnesota’s north shore, where I jumped into the Temperance River from tall rock formations… didn’t skinny-dip, but it was heavenly fun all the same!
#47 Hmm, I’ve been thinking, as I read the skinny-dipping thread, about the time I actually skinny-dipped in Geneva one fall day many years ago–not in a discreetly shielded area, I must admit. Not one of my saner moments, but memorable! Other foolish skinny-dipping choices include a Nantucket beach in the middle of a very foggy storm… I have pictures of both events somewhere–hard to believe that it’s really me. These days I confine my skinny dips to nighttime lakes–nothing like floating under the stars, though I share the sense of heightened creepiness (#29) in facing water creatures, real or imagined in my case, without a bathing suit on.
Re Pam I.: “I’ve seen women breaking the ice to have their daily swim.” Now there’s a line, and image, to remember.
And AEB (Alison Everywoman Bechdel?): Another image, someone skinny-dipping on a Nantucket Beach in the middle of a very foggy storm. If you locate the photo, do share.
There once was a folk on Nantucket beach
Whose skin was as soft as a late August peach
Observors weren’t many
As s/he dipped her skinny
In fog that attempted to hide her from reach
Re turducken: I’ve had one. Prefer plain old turkey basted in spicy cashew butter. Bacon on the side, for those who’ve broken ice to get there.
@ReneeS #34: It’s been interesting to watch the debate about Caster Semenya. The commentators have been very supportive of the runner’s feelings. However, it’s the biggest debate on the issue of intersex/hermaphroditism (both terms have been used, rightly or wrongly in this debate). In fact, it’s interesting that instead of previous comments about athletes that are perceived to be more masculine, she’s not being “accused” of being a man (for want of a better phrase, although accusation is definitely a part of the discourse), but focusing more on the possibility that her gender is indeterminate. By the way, Caster Semenya identifies as a woman, no ifs, ands or buts about it. It’ll be fascinating to see how this is resolved.
By the way, in LBTQWXYZ sporting heroes news, the German woman, Steffi Nerius, who won the Javelin, is an out lesbian. I know of other lesbians in track and field, but she’s the only out one I can think of. Still no out men though. 🙁
PS @Feminista #41: glad you got some of your work issues resolved. Here’s hoping you get the right salary too! I’ve had similar experiences on contract jobs as well.
@MaggiJoChild You calls it nekkie-swimming. Or just swimming. 🙂 I prefer non-clothed swimming over the wearing of a bathing suit, but that’s usually because I’m fat and the bathing suits aren’t made to fit me right. If the bottom fits, the top is too big. If the top fits, the bottom is giving me a wedgie.
More to the point, I wear a bathing suit if I must, and sometimes I wear it for the protection of some of the tender bits of skin from the sun’s evil rays. In other words, I’m so pale I would go up in flame in full sun without any protection. And some bits don’t like the sunscreen. at all.
I must get out and go swimming this year. I brought my suit along on the one vacation I’ve had, and only wore it when I went kayaking with my sister-in-law. The potholes look wonderful! I don’t think they let us swim in the potholes in Shelburne Falls, MA anymore.
I think this question’s been answered, and I think I’m not going to like the answer, but hope springs eternal: I want to email somebody #129, from 1992, “Good Housekeeping.” Planet Out seems to have blank pages for all the DTWOF links, and the archives here don’t go back that far. I’m outta luck, right?
I can’t think of another group of people that I would rather skinny-dip with! 🙂
Here is the URL for a story aboput last night’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where he interviewed health care reform critic Betsy McCaughey. She was a leading critic of the last serious attempt to start a national health service in the United States back during the Clinton administration, and this time around McCaughey has been identified as the origin of the “death panel” smear that claims health care reform would put the elderly to death. It has to be seen to be believed. For non-US folk… the medicare program that McCaughy praises is actually government-managed health care for the elderly that was denounced as socialism and communism when it was begun by a Democratic administration and congress back in the early 1960’s.
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/08/21/tds/?source=refresh
Kate L,
I had the great misfortune of getting into a discussion on health care reform with a conspiracy theory libertarian last night…….it was so awful I wanted to stick pins in my eyes!!
His points got more and more paranoid, less and less logical and more and more “woo.” I had to just shut down at some point because I was no longer able to coherently express myself.
The worst thing was, he wasn’t even well informed as to what the plans before congress ARE…..guh!! Argh!!!
On a separate note, any dykes to watch out for in Seattle should come to a fantastic show tomorrow night! We’re doing baroque opera scenes from the 17th Century. 2009 Accademia d’Amore performance, 7pm Saturday, Seattle Pacific University, tickets available through Brown Paper Tickets.
And in our e-mail, today’s obligatory obscure Fun Home Reference:
Ning
Some fat, naked swimmers I know go with “chunky dunking.”
I just want to commend the outdoorsy tone that these blog postings have taken. I haven’t felt so at home since I was out in the field in the company of women geologists intent on exploring nature! Continuing the outdoors theme, here is a link to a USA Today article about how humans in the wild tend to walk in circles when they don’t have directional clues. I have long suspected this, because in the summer of 1974 I was hiking in the high pine forest of the Sacremento Mountains of New Mexico on an overcast day, when I became lost. I tried several times to make it to the nearest road, but after many minutes of hiking I kept circling back to the same deserted campgrounds. The last time this happened, it began to rain and thunder. Frightened, I blundered out in a random direction that brought me to another campground that was actually in use. An elderly couple in an RV was kind enough to drive me to where my brother worked. I think that the moral of this story is: I couldn’t go straight if my life depended on it! 🙂
http://blogs.usatoday.com/sciencefair/2009/08/humans-walk-in-circles-but-we-think-were-going-straight.html?poe=HFMostPopular&loc=interstitialskip
I love “chunky dunking!”
I’ll look for the Nantucket picture, Maggie–it was a day worthy of your lovely limerick (52)!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/video/2009/aug/21/wild-swim-skye-fairy-pools
for all the selkies amongst us…. Isle of Skye wild swimming
#62 Great video SK brrrr. I’ve swum in the sea lochs of Skye – the summer I was thinking about coming out, 1976, the year of endless sunshine (or drought, to the pessimists). It was the first time I’d swum for years. Two seals turned up.
Heidi, thanks for the compliment! It should be yummers!
Off-topic good news…
The Christian Science Monitor reports that the largest Lutheran denomination in the US, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), will allow clergy in same-sex relationships.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0822/p25s13-usgn.html
Quoting from the article:
—
Meeting in Minneapolis, the 4.7-million member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States, voted Friday “to allow Lutherans in same-gender relationships to serve as pastors of congregations and serve in other professional leadership roles.” Until now, only celibate gay men and lesbians could serve such church roles.
—
But on the flip side:
“King Asa got the sodomites out of the land, Jehoshaphat exterminated the sodomites that were left from the days of his father, Asa. Why? Because the sodomites are infectious, that’s why. Because they’re not reproducers, that goes without saying, they’re recruiters.”
-Steve Anderson, Pastor, Faithful Word Baptist Church.
There’s more and uglier at C&L:
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/gospel-hate-arizona-pastor-steve-and
And, in VT, here come the goofballs from Kansas.
General consensus says to just ignore them when they show up Sept. 1 – please don’t feed the hate trolls! Go enjoy the Champlain Fair instead. : )
Coors Lite? How in the name of all the Beer Gods can people drink that swill brewed by extreme right wingers in the land of Magic Hat and those other fine breweries?
Mmm, Magic Hat and Long Trail.
(Calico #67) Greetings from Kansas. There may actually be a bright light in the Obama administration’s efforts to, for the first time, begin universal health care coverage in the United States. It may not seem that way when you start reading this. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel, a reliable mouthpiece for the Republican Party, is giving extensive coverage to a press release by Republican Party chairman Michael Steele. In it, Steele claims that Republicans have issued a “senior citizen bill of rights” that argues against rationed care, restricted choice of doctors, and “interfering with end-of-life care discussions”. The latter is Republican code for advocation of government “death panels”. Needless to say, none of the 5 democratic bills proposed to reform health care would do any of that. But by setting up straw men like this, Steele may be positioning his party to claim, if and when health care reform passes, that the bill containing what Obama wanted from the beginning was the result of Republican efforts. That is to say, the chairman of the Republican Party may believe that some form of health care reform will pass Congress and be signed by President Obama. 🙂
Btw, as recently as last night, Fox News Channel was repeating its 100% negative coverage of Britain’s National Health Service, calling it a “universal nightmare”. This coverage has been condemned by everyone from Gordon Brown to Stephen Hawking, but Fox News Channel does not report any of THAT.
As a BWMA alumna, I thought you might be itnerested in this story about a woman judo expert finally finding justice after 50 years:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2009/08/22/2009-08-22_judo_medals_a_kick_ymca_finally_does_right_by_first_female_champ_stripped_of_gol.html
#70 – I certainly hope you don’t think I am referring to you when I say goofball!
I am referring more to the inimitable Phelps clan, who plan to protest in fromt of Montpelier, VT HS Sept. 1, the same day Gay Marriage becomes legal in VT.
Re: health care, I live in QC and recently received my Quebec health care card-before that I had private insurance when I had to have my appendix removed here in 2008-everyone was fantastic and extremely professional.
And no, there’s no Death Panel here either!
I just don’t know what to think about the Repub’s paranoia about care. They’re already paying for a great many the uninsured and illegals, so you would think they would embrace some change, but I guess that’s not in their blood for the most part, unless they can claim some semblance of victory.
As for Fox news,I never watch it. Meh.
The only thing I watch on Fox is “Hell’s Kitchen.”
(Speaking of inimitable, Ramsay is all that. And I’ve had crazier bosses than him.)
Re: beer, with all the lovely choices coming out of Nova Scotia (Alex Keith’s), Quebec (Unibroue and Belle Gueule), and Ontario (Sleeman’s), many many folks here swill Bud and Coors. Funky.
Sorry to burst in – I’ve been enjoying following along – have missed y’all,
but:
Sen. Ted Kennedy just died. “The Lion of the Senate” was so much on the right side of history during the many years of covert US war in Central America. And on healthcare. And on many issues. Saddened in Massachusetts… and hoping for “health insurance reform.”
ok back to summer fun. Y’all must know that I’m an unshaven skinny-dipper (yes, kinda furry, like you, Geogeek) when feeling brazen (more often when I was younger, perhaps…)
@R2A
Saddened in NY too. Ted Kennedy had his well-documented personal flaws, but he walked the walk and talked the talk when it came to the Senate.
Last year when I was doing physical rehab, some obscure provision in the Medicare law for seniors which permitted more than 12 therapy sessions per year for certain conditions (among them osteoarthritis) was about to expire. All these old folks were in a panic because they couldn’t afford treatment on their own and Medicare wasn’t going to pay for it. The bill’s renewal was in doubt in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Ted Kennedy, still in treatment for brain cancer, flew from Massachusetts to DC and cast the deciding vote in favor of the bill. Every one of these folks in rehab with me gave thanks to Ted Kennedy.
He will be missed.
I tuned into National Public Radio this morning, and that’s when I heard that Senator Kennedy had died. 🙁 And, CNN had a very good point that although three of the Kennedy brothers all served in the senate, Edward was the one most suited to it. The saddest thing is, Edward was the only brother in his family to die of natural causes (the eldest, Joe, was killed over the English Channel in World War II; John and Robert were, as we all know, murdered).
(Calico #72) Yes, I assumed that. 🙂 Couldn’t resist getting in a little dig. And, I watch Fox News Channel because even though I pay for MSNBC, the signal is blocked like the premium channels I don’t pay for. The intereference is worst from 8 pm to 9 pm Central (U.S.) time, when Rachel Maddow is on the air. I wonder if (Big Name Nation-Wide Cable Company) is having this “problem” in a lot of the markets that it serves. Calico, you may be interested that this morning, Fox News was giving Britain’s National Health Service a rest while they tore into Canada’s.
I knew the riotous behaviour in constitutent meetings for Members of the House of Representatives reminded me of something. For my first 4 years at (the university I’m still working at), part of my employment was with an EPA-funded regional center headquartered on campus that sent me to locations in a ten-state area to act as an interpreter of technical information for people living around various contaminated sites undergoing clean-up. These sites varied, from suburban Denver to an Indian reservation in South Dakota that you may have read a book about. The Indian tribe was always friendly and hospitable, much in contrast to another site about 60 miles away where the local population were mainly ranchers. The regulars at the meetings in rancher country would carry on, loudly, about secret underground bases, black helicopters, and even (I’m not making this up) “ninja warriors” swarming out of secret hillside entrances to an underground base. Silly. Everyone knows those helicopters are really dark green. The wildest of these citizen’s meetings reportedly included a visit by the local “militia” (right-wing paramilitary group), but that happened just before I started working for the center, so I did not experience this myself.
Anyway, after the first couple of meetings with the ranchers, I assumed that these eccentric indivuals must be typical of the local anglo population. Then, my boss got the idea of me setting up an informational booth at the local county fair, which I did for several years in addition to my other duties. I saw lots and lots of locals who never went to the “citizen’s meetings”, which were always dominated by the same angry people. In fact, many of the people I met at the county fair said they stayed away from those meetings because of the angry personalities that liked to show up. The people at the county fair, in contrast, were resonable and thoughtful people. I have to wonder if the angry folks at the recent congressional town hall meetings are like the usual attendees at those meetings that I attended. Could it be that Fox News Channel might be WRONG about Americans being against a better health care system for the United States? I suppose it could just be possible that most Americans actually want universal health care that is not rationed by clerks at private insurance companies! 😉
@Kate L #70: When I hear right-wingers warn that public provision of health care would result in “rationed care, restricted choice of doctors, and “interfering with end-of-life care discussions,”” I remember a THIS MODERN WORLD comic from last year. A litany like that leads one of the characters to exclaim earnestly, “Unlike our present system, in which these things are unknown!”
You make another good point in #77. Mrs Acilius is a sociologist, so I often hear about self-selection bias, about ways in which groups people choose to join tend to be unrepresentative of the community at large. So it’s no surprise that people who select themselves to attend issues meetings aren’t representative of the community.
That’s one of the reasons why my favorite part of the US political system is the petit jury. Juries are better than “citizens’ meetings,” not only because they consist of citizens who are chosen at random and compelled to attend, but also because they bear definite responsibilities, require face-to-face interaction, and depend on consensus. So a blowhard will face pressure from the rest of the group to shape up. Of course there will be times when the blowhard is right and the majority is wrong, and in those cases the wrong decision might be made. But elite decision-making and mass decision-making are at least as likely to be wrong. I for one would like to see juries decide a much wider range of questions than they do now, not just to issue verdicts in court cases, but to draw the boundaries of electoral districts, referee disputed elections, set pay for public officials, and do many other things.
Kate L (and everyone else)
Here’s the website for RAM (Remote access medicine) a group that started up providing free health care in the Majority World (aka Third world), and now does the same in the richest country in the world. They pick an area, call up all volunteer health providers – doctors, nurses, dental techs, etc. – and spend four-five days tending to as many people as they can, people who line up for days to get treatment that they cannot afford elsewhere. The guy that runs it is open about the fact that he’s trying to make a point, but by goddess, does he have a point to make.
http://www.ramusa.org/
I bet you there were a few people similar to your county fair attendants at RAM’s latest health gathering, and I bet you there were even some black helicopter-type folk as well. Like those folk that scream about socialised medicine but don’t you touch my Medicare…
While not deprecating any individual who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, I do feel like I am observing an entire country, scarily the most powerful in the world, with lots of nuclear weapons, entering into an episode of collective schizophrenia, thanks to Fox News and all its cohorts, an ineffective opposition, and the great god Consumer Choice.
Speaking of the late lamented Sen Ken, what did Rachel Maddow have to say of same? Anybody see her on the subject?
80 said it right
Even during his journy through the long dark night the liberal lion still brings us all together on common ground. Having so many ‘politicos’ in my home town right now would normally make me shudder, but I can not help but to be moved and inspired by the joining of diversity, the outpouring of memories and the reminder of how Edward M Kennedy helped push us all towards the common good. RIP
It’s a week and a half later and that hot spell is a rapidly fading memory, and I still can’t resist adding that I like it that Alison and Holly “gravitated” upwards. You know it was a good day when your personal gravitational polarity got reversed. Here’s to more days like that.
I know I am late in the game on this post, so probably won’t get an answer. But I *need* to know.
Where is this place?
I have been there, I am sure of it, about ten years ago. I was taken by a coworker (we were outward bound instructors) and it was totally glorious. I have never been able to remember how to get there though, and I can’t even say how many hours I have spent driving around NH and VT looking for the swimming hole that got away…
Directions? anyone? I live in Cambridge, MA now, but I will find my way there if I have some hints!
Sarah M:
Google for “Joiner Brook” (from the original article above). Should supply all the information you need.
thanks @NLC (85) – I found directions!!
http://www.northeastwaterfalls.com/waterfall.php?num=50&p=0