Taking a news breather.

 

Lucian3D | Deposit Photos

Adweek reported on Friday that for the week prior, according to Nielsen, the three top cable news channels -- Fox, CNN, and MSNBC -- continued to see a drop in viewership compared to prior to the election early last month. While Fox News is still blowing away its rivals (as it has done for the past two decades) with a 72% share of the prime-time audience, Adweek says, "MSNBC and CNN received below 20% of the share across both dayparts, a trend that has remained constant since Election Night." Among adults ages 25-54, CNN attracted 79,000 sets of eyeballs during prime time to 60,000 for MSNBC.  

If the ratings news held a bright spot for MSNBC, it was that viewership dropped way less during the week of November 18th than it had the previous week, after morning hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski admitted they'd gone down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump's ring. But overall, MSNBC viewership during prime time has dropped by 52 percent since November 5th.

Those dismal figures came on the heels of a report that Comcast is thinking of selling MSNBC (and Elon Musk has trolled that he's interested in buying it).

What's going on? It could just be a post-election ratings dip for the losing side. It's happened in previous elections, to both left- and right-leaning media. And this election loss was particularly disheartening to folks on the left. We'd seen this farce before, and we were sure the American people wouldn't want to live through it again -- and yet, here we are.

So folks are turning off the news on their TVs and the notifications on their phones -- for a couple of reasons. The Washington Post (free article at the link) quoted one MSNBC viewer as saying he thought the Monday-morning quarterbacking -- "the finger-pointing and bashing of the Democratic party" -- started way too soon. 

Another viewer told WaPo that she's not interested in revisiting the Trump-as-president horror show right now: "'I just don't even want to know what kind of outrageous thing he's going to do,' she says. 'I'm resigned to, "He's going to do outrageous things, and we'll deal with it when he's gone."'"

I hear that. It seemed to me like the media pivoted way too easily, post-election, to listicles of reasons why Harris didn't win. I was not ready for that. I'm still not ready. And having lived through one Trump freak show, it's been hard for me to gin up more than an eyeroll over his Cabinet picks. I know he's going to do outrageous things. Do I need to know the particulars in breathless detail right now?

After all, the holidays are upon us. That means gift shopping and wrapping, cookie baking, holiday concerts, and all the rest. As for TV viewing, well, there's a lot of comfort TV on offer: Christmas rom-coms, Charlie Brown, and the Grinch. And hey, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is celebrating its 60th anniversary by coming back to NBC this Friday. That sounds like must-see TV to me!

Does all that seem like escapism? I dunno. To me, it feels more like taking a breather. 

Joe Biden is still president. The country's safe for another seven weeks. Anything can happen in seven weeks. 

Not to say it will. But it could. 'Tis the season for miracles, after all.

***

It seems unlikely to me that I was six years old (technically, a day shy of seven) when ol' Rudolph first flew on NBC. I've always thought I was a year or two younger than that. But I'm trusting the people who actually keep track of such things.

***

These moments of bloggy denialism -- er, I mean news-breather blogginess -- have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

What is gratitude? Part 2.

(American) Thanksgiving is bearing down upon us, and this time of year always encourages people to make public lists of the things they're grateful for. But hardly anyone talks about toxic gratitude. That's what I'd like to tackle in this week's post.

My posts this week and last week were prompted by a post in a private, Pagan Facebook group. Last week's post is here. I'm not naming the original poster because it's a private group. 

***

So: toxic gratitude.

I thought I'd made this phrase up all by myself, but as ever, the internet has beaten me to it. Google's AI stole its definition from this Times of India article, in which toxic gratitude is defined as "expressing thanks without truly meaning it". 

AsierRomeroCarballo | Deposit Photos

The article says you can spot toxic gratitude when it's prompted by social pressure (or, I would add, religious pressure); the result of either being manipulated by someone or by your attempt to manipulate someone; and over-apologizing or over-thanking someone. 

Manipulation is kind of a side trip into gaslighting, which I've talked about before. Go check out those links if you're interested. Today, what I want to look at are social pressure and over-apologizing/over-thanking.

Let's take on over-apologizing/over-thanking first. There's nothing wrong with thanking someone who has done you a favor -- we're all supposed to do that, right? But there's a line. To me, it ought to be a one-and-done. Well, maybe a two-and-done. But thanking me over and over -- or apologizing more than once -- puts the onus on me: I'm constantly being forced to express my gratitude to you for the favor/support/whatever, or to forgive you even if, by your actions, you've done nothing to earn it. (I get in trouble every time I link to that post about forgiveness. Fair warning: my take on the subject is very different from the Christian viewpoint.)

Look, it's not my job to constantly reassure you that you did a good thing or I still love you or whatever. To me, that sounds very much like a you problem. It feels to me like your boundaries aren't stable, and you need for me to reinforce them for you. Not a sign of a healthy relationship. Plus I'm not going to do it.

It's a short step from there to manipulation of the "Say to me this exact thing in this exact way!" variety, which I have no patience for. Or the "Believe everything I believe and hate all the things I hate, or you're part of the problem!" variety, which I also have no patience for (and to be honest, I thought we'd all left that cliqueish crap behind in junior high).

I'm not talking about instances where, for example, a person is spewing hatred and lies and expecting everyone around them to show their loyalty by kissing his ring; of course, that's wrong (not to mention dangerous for our country). I'm talking about interpersonal relationships on a smaller scale: If you want to gather like-minded people around you, you have to accept that some of those people will have opinions that differ from yours. In fact, one sure way to push your friends away is to demand that they behave exactly the way you want them to. That's your insecurity talking. It's a you problem, and one I can't solve for you.

Since we've sort of segued into the topic of social pressure anyhow, let's talk about gratitude journaling. As I said at the outset, 'tis the season to profess what you're grateful for to everyone you know. 

There's a benefit, for sure, in recognizing the good things in your life. But I see a danger in pressuring people to post online a list of stuff they're grateful for. For one thing, most people aren't going to post negative stuff on social media, for obvious reasons. But if you don't express those negative feelings somehow, even privately, or if you're determined to put a positive spin on everything, then you're gaslighting yourself with toxic positivity: "Even the bad stuff has its upside!" And it's a short step from there to... well, selling yourself short. Keeping your light under a bushel basket. Making it your business to make everyone else happy at the expense of your authentic self.

If your life sucks right now, own it. I think there's a lot of wisdom in this quote by a therapist: "When my clients can't summon a genuine feeling for gratitude in their lives and the activity of gratitude journaling feels superficial and dismissive of their real experiences, I invite them to appreciate the crap for what it is -- crap."

Sometimes life is crap. Sugar-coating it just gives you sugar-coated crap. The only healthy way out is through. 

***

These moments of bloggy gratitude for those who read this post all the way to the end have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Happy Thanksgiving!

What is gratitude? Part 1.

trombax | Deposit Photos

In a Pagan group on Facebook this week, another member (I'm not using her name because it's a private group) posted some questions meant to get at the heart of this topic: "What is gratitude?" She said she's not looking for reasons why gratitude is important; she's more interested in delving into the things that we call gratitude. More of a deconstruction; less of an admonishment.

Here we are in mid November, and gratitude season -- aka Thanksgiving -- is nearly upon us. So I told her I would tackle a few of her questions here on the blog.

One of the problems she sees -- and I see it, too -- is that the concept of gratitude has been infiltrated by what she calls "unhealthy impostors". Here's an example: What if you're giving something out of the goodness of your heart, but the person you're giving the thing to says they don't want it? 

Let's say your workplace or church has a food drive for the poor, or you attend an event where the admission price is a can of something for the local food pantry. So you do what a lot of us do: You bring a box or two of Kraft Mac & Cheese and a couple of cans of tuna and throw them in the collection box. You've done a good thing, right?

Maybe; maybe not. What if the person who gets your donation is diabetic? Lactose intolerant? Has celiac disease? Those are all legitimate health issues. But if the person you're donating to says "no thank you" to your offering -- for whatever reason -- do you think of them as ungrateful?

We haven't even gotten into how someone is supposed to make blue-box mac and cheese without milk and butter. Butter's tough without refrigeration, but dry milk is definitely a thing.

Then, too, poor people are people, with likes and dislikes. When I worked at the big DC law firm, we had partner offices overlooking Murrow Park on Pennsylvania Avenue NW. One late afternoon, one of the partners said to me, "It's funny, isn't it? There's always a flock of seagulls that show up and fly around the park every day at about this time."

"Maybe that's why," I said, pointing out his window and down. A van from one of the charities that feed the homeless was parked at the curb, and volunteers inside were handing out sandwiches to street people -- and some of the street people were sharing their sandwiches with the birds. 

Say what you will about seagulls, but they know a meal ticket when they see one.

It wasn't just the partner's cluelessness that has stuck with me about that scene. It was seeing people who had little or nothing themselves sharing their dinner with birds. I wondered why. Were they not hungry? Seemed unlikely. Did they not like the sandwiches? We were about ten floors up, so I couldn't tell what they were made from, but there was definitely white bread involved. No idea what the filling was, or whether they came with any condiments. A slice of cheese? A piece of wilted lettuce? Maybe a wan tomato slice? I didn't know. Maybe they were just bologna and bread.

Maybe people were tired of bologna and bread. 

How did the volunteers in the van feel about seeing their hard work going to the seagulls? I don't know the answer to that, either.

But I could understand the feelings of everyone involved: The volunteers, who were doing their best with whatever donations, both food and cash, they received; the street people, who were probably hungry, but maybe not for that; the birds, who were doing bird things; and maybe even the partner, who I'm sure donated to charities of his choice. (As do I.)

Is it necessary to expect gratitude when you gift someone something they didn't ask for? I don't think it is. I think it's better to ask what the person needs or wants. Even if they're poor.

And I think it's important to not fault a person who doesn't want what you're offering. Even if they're poor.

Because that makes the giving more about you than it does about the people you're trying to help.

***

These moments of bloggy gratitude have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

All political careers end in failure. His will, too.

Effective immediately, I am hanging up my hat as a prognosticator. Back in August, I predicted that Trump would never be president again. Oh haha. 

I mean, we have a bit of time until January 20; he could still be sent to jail or choke on a hamberder or something, but I'm not counting on it.

Since my comeuppance on Tuesday, I've mostly been laying low on social media. I've been reading comments from my friends, though, and the occasional news story when I have the stomach for it. (When John Dickerson said on CBS Tuesday night, as the returns looked increasingly dismal for Vice President Harris, that he wanted to talk about what an amazing comeback Trump had made -- "amazing comeback", forsooth! -- I turned off the TV and went to bed.) 

I have seen a lot of anguish from our side, of course, and fear about what will happen now. I've also seen some comments along the lines of, "They'll be sorry they elected him!" I've read some uncorroborated stories about that happening already; there was a memorable one by some poster somewhere who said their cousin's sister's uncle (or something) was shocked when the boss said they'd have to forgo their Christmas bonuses this year because the company needed to buy a bunch of manufacturing supplies now, before Trump's Chinese tariffs go into effect. Then the boss explained to them that tariffs don't work the way Trump said they do. There's no way for me to prove any of that, but it sure makes a great story.

There has also been an avalanche of news stories covering the nuts and bolts of how we were all mistaken when we thought the Harris/Walz campaign had it in the bag. Mostly it's been lots of finger pointing. I have been ignoring that junk, mainly because I ran into some revisionist history a while back about the reason some other Democratic candidate for president failed to win (I said it was this; others said no, scholars dug into it years later and discovered it was actually that). I don't remember now which election it was about, but it doesn't matter; my point is that the cause will be found out in due time, and it's likely that whatever the pundits are feverishly saying right now won't be it.

***

In counterpoint to these dour postmortems, I ran across this dose of encouragement today.

Andy Borowitz, who wrote a humor column for The New Yorker before they fired him, now publishes his work on Substack. He made today's blog post there free, and in it, he uses history to puncture a bunch of the doom-and-gloom that's been so pervasive on social media this week. I recommend this post to everybody. Pay attention in particular to what he says about Nixon and Reagan, who both won second terms in honest-to-goodness landslides that didn't turn out so well for them. You've heard of Watergate and Iran-Contra, I trust.

Anyway, the title of my post comes from Borowitz's post. It's a paraphrase of a quote by Enoch Powell, a British Conservative politician who died in 1918. Here's the quote in full: 

All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.

Here's hoping.

***

On Friday, Robert Reich, who was Labor Secretary under President Clinton and who seems to have repudiated Clinton's neoliberalism since then, posted an essay on his Substack that he called "The Lesson". It's a listicle of six of those "what happened" reasons I alluded to above, along with his critique of each one and his assessment of what really did happen (TL;DR: It's the economy, stupid. Biden made great strides in four years, but not enough to break through the right-wing punditry noise).

I want to touch on the third point in his listicle: Republicans won because of misinformation and right-wing propaganda... The answer is for Democrats to cultivate an equivalent media ecosystem that rivals what the right has built. He rates this as mostly true. I partly agree. But I disagree with the second sentence, and here I refer you, Gentle Reader, to my post on media bias from a couple of weeks ago. My point then, which I probably should have hammered harder, is that liberals and progressives have already built an equivalent media ecosystem to Fox News and the rest, and a whole lot of us are already siloing ourselves in it: MSNBC, CNN, and so on. Moreover, many are fleeing from sources of factual news like the major newspapers because they're not telling the story the way you want it to be told. 

Folks, that's pretty much the definition of "biased information". Just because you want a thing to be true doesn't make it so. Just because a liberal politician or a left-wing pundit or a political hanger-on tells you a thing, it's not necessarily the truth. We are all supposed to practice discernment -- not just the people on the other side.

Here's something to think about: Maybe you were shocked and surprised that Trump won because you'd siloed yourself from all information to the contrary. 

I am not saying everybody should stop watching Rachel Maddow and switch to Fox and Friends. I'm saying to take a step back. If something seems too good to be true, it's likely not. That's as true for statements from pundits and talk show hosts as it is for emails from Nigerian princes.

This goes for me, too. There were times over the past few months when I read something that pinged my ol' journalistic skepticism. I should have listened to it. But damn, it was comfortable in my silo, surrounded by like-minded friends, y'know?

***

One more thing -- this one from Jay Kuo. Not sure where he's getting his numbers (the AP's are different), but when Trump says he won in a landslide (as he inevitably will), at least we know it's not so: 

It won't stop Trump from lying about the election outcome, and it won't matter to his fans. There's only so much we can do.

***

Because the algorithm needs an illustration: I went to a wine-and-painting class last night, and this guy was the result. He seems wild-eyed in his spacy universe. Full of hope, maybe? 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

For now, I'm calling him Space Raven. Feel free to suggest a better name.

***

These moments of bloggy wishes for a happy juncture have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Resist!
 

This is it. Don't forget to be kind.

Sorry I'm a day late with this post. I would have written yesterday, but my brand-new clothes dryer and I had a major disagreement that is not yet resolved. It kept stopping after five minutes and insisting that its lint filter was full. Over and over and over again. Regardless of how many times I told it how wrong it was at the top of my voice. 

The repair guy is coming Friday. 

***

But it's almost better this way, right? Because now I can write a last-minute post about the election! 

chipus82 | Deposit Photos

As you might have heard, tomorrow is the last day to vote this year. A lot of folks have already voted -- me included -- but if you haven't yet, now is the time. 

I have been studiously avoiding any and all news stories about polling. They are too anxiety-provoking for me. And anyway we're probably, what, 24 to 48 hours out from knowing the results of the only poll that counts.

So what on earth can I talk about in this post? How about this: Regardless of which way it goes tomorrow, remember to be kind.

I can hear you laughing. But it's not the first time I've been laughed at for this stance. And derisive laughter hasn't changed my opinion one bit since the last time I wrote about kindness in connection with politics: yes, we are polarized as a nation, but compassion can go a long way in bringing our country back together.

In fact, my opinion has solidified. Especially after reading this column by Charles R. Pierce at Esquire a couple of weeks back. Pierce quoted at length from a CNN report about how elderly folks, some with dementia, have been scammed out of their life savings by political fundraising operations. Both parties are guilty, but the GOP's operation has been the most egregious. From the CNN story: "The Republican fundraising machine has been subject to more than 800 complaints to the Federal Trade Commission since 2022 -- nearly seven times more than the number of complaints lodged against the other side."

But wait, there's more: "Donors identified by CNN were often in their 80s and 90s. They included... people who donated more money than they paid for their homes, according to records and interviews.... Donors took out new credit cards and mortgages to pay for the contributions. In some cases, they gave away most of their life savings.... At least one person continued to be charged for contributions after his death.... [I]n all, the long list of Republican candidates and causes took in nearly $4 million."

Call me a softie. Call me a snowflake. But if your grandpa, who was kinda sorta losing it, called you to give him a ride to Walgreens because the IRS wanted him to pay them thousands in back taxes with Visa gift cards, who would you be mad at? Grandpa, who's losing his mind? Or the asshole pretending to be the IRS, who's waiting for those sweet, sweet, untraceable gift cards?

And if you're madder at the asshole than at Grandpa -- who, let's be honest here, can't help it -- then why would your answer be any different if the asshole hitting him up was a Republican politician?

Look. Grifters prey on the innocent and befuddled. Their marks are victims.

And it's not only the elderly who have been taken in by the MAGAts' vicious lies, as we all know by now.

I don't know how many times I have to say this before it sinks in: Drop the hatred, folks. Find it in your hearts to forgive the victims of this maddeningly insane ruse that's been perpetrated on our country.

Feel free to be angry. But be angry at the right people: the ones pushing the lies.

For gods' sake, I'm not even a Christian, and I'm saying we should forgive the MAGAts' victims.

You guys know how I feel about forgiveness: I only give it to those who deserve it. I put victims of crime in that category -- no matter who their abusers were.

You do you, I guess. But do you want to have a functioning democracy again or not? This is the only way I can see to do it. 

After, that is, we vote the abusers out. 

***

Gonna put in a link here to my post from last week about media bias, since Facebook decided not to let me promote it. They can't stop me from promoting it on my own blog, dammit, so there.

***

I made a prediction more than a year ago about how this presidential race would end. Here it is. Was I right or wrong? We'll know pretty soon! Check back here next week!

*** 

These moments of kindly blogginess in the face of derisive laughter have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. If you haven't voted yet, tomorrow's the day!

Post 2 of 2: Finally, the laundry closet, before and after.

Okay, now for the fun post. I don't know how many of you have been waiting to see the finished laundry closet, but I said I'd post the pictures, so here you go.

The before...

...and the after.

My previous posts on the project are here, here, and here. I'm going to try to avoid repeating myself, so check those out for the blow-by-blow.

This is not, as you can see, an Instagram-worthy wall o' cabinetry. I didn't have the money for that. What I do have now, though, is a functional laundry space. There is room on top of the machines for my laundry basket (when it's empty, which presently it, um, isn't). I have a shelf, two drawers, and a cubby for storing supplies; for a bit of extra storage, there's also a little plastic cart from Ikea on the right side of the machines, which Ikea was more than happy to ship to me for five bucks. The stacking kit between the washer and dryer also has the pull-out shelf I wanted.

The shelf on the wall came via Etsy from a guy in Ukraine. I ordered black, but he sent me walnut. No matter -- it looks great on the wall. And the packaging alone was worth it.

Lynne Cantwell 2024

The "countertop" is another Etsy purchase. It's a melamine-covered shelf in a custom size. I've bought shelving from this guy before, so I knew I was getting good quality.

The most troublesome improvement, apart from getting the machines delivered, was that cute little pendant light. I bought it from Amazon for $50, thinking I could turn it into a plug-in swag lamp, but it came with a copper grounding wire that made it unsuitable. So I called my very expensive electrician to put it up for me -- and that's when we discovered that the back wall of that closet is concrete-filled concrete block. Which explains why the old wire shelves were falling down: the wall anchors were just sitting in the layer of drywall over the concrete. It also explains why the new shelf is on the side wall, which is a regular stud wall. I wasn't about to try to install that thing in drywall-over-concrete. Anyway, several thousand dollars later, the light is up, the walls are all patched, and I can finally see what I'm doing in there.

That style of light is called a Moravian star. It shows up a lot in Mexican interiors, and since I'm going for a Southwestern boho vibe, it works on that level. But also Moravia is a province of Czechia, and since I'm half Czech, it works that way, too. The things I do to amuse myself...

***

A couple of people have asked about the countertop in the bottom left corner of the "before" photo. That's the edge of the 72-inch, two-sink vanity. I am eventually going to replace it with a shorter vanity with just one sink installed. That will allow me to get into the laundry closet without having to move Tigs's litter box. But first I need to get over the electrician's bill from the laundry closet.

***

These moments of home improvement blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get out and vote!

Post 1 of 2: WaPo's non-endorsement and the state of media bias today.

Of course it's the week when I promised y'all a fun post that a Big News Thing blows up that I feel the need to comment on. Neither subject will wait, in my opinion. So for the first time in hearth/myth history, I'm releasing two blog posts on the same day. Here's the first one.

***

On Friday, the Washington Post editorial staff -- reportedly under pressure from the paper's owner, multibillionaire Jeff Bezos -- declined to endorse either party's political candidate for president. Reportedly, the editors had an endorsement of Democratic nominee and sitting Vice President Kamala Harris all ready to go, but Bezos stepped in and killed it. There has been a ton of speculation as to why; while the why matters in the real world, it doesn't matter for the purposes of this post. What matters to me is the reaction of staff and subscribers.

In short, there's been a lot of outrage. The union that represents staffers at the paper issued a statement criticizing the decision:

Stolen from the dead bird app

A number of the paper's op-ed columnists issued their own, more strongly worded, statement. Former WaPo columnists have also blasted the paper for the decision not to buck Bezos. At least one editorial staffer has resigned. I've also seen whole bunch of people -- whether subscribers or general troublemakers -- call on more staffers to resign. 

A personal anecdote: As most of you know, I was a broadcast journalist, mostly in radio, from the time I graduated from college in 1979 until my last layoff, from Mutual/NBC Radio News, in 1999. In that 20-year span, I saw the business change a lot. It went from stations being owned by local folks who believed that they had a responsibility to program their stations in the public interest, convenience and necessity to those same local stations being snapped up by corporations interested only in ginning up ratings to make more money for their shareholders. That was a big reason that I decided to get out of the news business in 1999.

But another big reason was this: I had nowhere to go. If you think my options for news jobs in the nation's capital would have been unlimited, you're wrong. By the fall of 1999, network radio news outfits had dwindled to a handful, mostly staffed by a skeleton crew: the Associated Press, ABC, Mutual/NBC, CBS, and NPR. ABC had maybe ten people in DC. CBS's newsroom in DC consisted of only two or three people, and anyway, our shop at Mutual/NBC was being folded into the CBS operation in New York. NPR wanted reporters with experience in long-form programming. In short, there were no jobs. And at the time, I was a single mom with two small children. So I went back to school for a paralegal certificate and started working for lawyers.

For the past ten or 15 years, I've been watching the same thing happening to newspapers that happened to radio news: People with money have been snapping up papers, big and small, in the interest of turning a big profit for their shareholders and themselves. News staffs have been cut in the name of saving money. The practical result for journalists is that there are fewer jobs. But when journalists lose their jobs, subscribers lose, too; they lose a source of news of both their community and the wider world.

WaPo's subscribers today are angry -- understandably so -- and tens of thousands have threatened to cancel their subscriptions. It's unclear how many have actually followed through on their threats, although confirmed reports indicate the Post received 1,600 cancellations in the first three hours after the decision not to endorse anybody appeared. (I've also seen rumors that a total of 60,000 subscribers canceled, but I can't find any evidence backing that up, and frankly I think somebody pulled the number out of their ass.) Here is my problem with that line of thinking: Bezos is, as I said above, a multibillionaire. A digital subscription to the Washington Post is about $16 a month. (I know this because that's what I'm paying for mine.) Does anyone in their right mind think that depriving a multibillionaire of his cut of $16 a month is going to make a dent? Even if 60,000 subscribers did quit, that's only $960,000 a month, and he only gets part of that. That's chump change for a guy who's worth more than $200 billion.

You know who will be hurt by the paper losing subscribers, though? The journalists who work there. And at that level, there are only a handful of places they can go -- all of which will be under the same financial constraints that WaPo has been under.

Why don't people in any industry who work for shitty bosses just up and quit? Generally, it's because they can't afford to.

I've made lots of politically based decisions on where to spend my money. I don't buy Papa John's pizza because their founder is an asshole; I refuse to enter a Hobby Lobby because of their anti-LGBTQ+ stance; I avoid Home Depot like the plague; I wouldn't have a MyPillow in my house on a bet; and on and on. But I will not make a spending decision that will deprive working journalists of an income. 

***

This is already pretty long, but I want to do the media bias thing, too. 

Last night, I asked friends on Facebook which news sources they rely on, given that several of them had said they were canceling their WaPo subscriptions. I didn't tell them that I was going to use their answers as fodder for this post (apologies for the subterfuge, guys).

Anyway, this afternoon, I made a little spreadsheet of the responses as of about noon my time. Then I went to the media bias chart that has made the rounds on social media from time to time and looked up as many of  the responses as I could find. (It appears the chart doesn't rate many Substack blogs, and some others weren't rated for whatever reason.)

I've boiled it down to this graphic: 

Everything above the orange "Bias" line is from my impromptu survey. Surprise! My friends all get their news from left-leaning outlets. What differentiates these news outfits is how reliable, and how biased, each one is. Tops for reliability is ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization. Least biased is the BBC; the AP is next. 

Least reliable and most biased on this list is the Meidas Touch.

The two outfits in blue got the most mentions. Heather Cox Richardson -- who I think is terrific, by the way -- is pretty reliable but not always, and her bias rating, while not terrible, definitely skews left.

I bring this up because liberals and progressives give conservatives a hard time for their news consuming habits: Fox News, Newsmax, Sinclair stations, and so on. But those of us on the left kinda live in a news silo, too -- me included. It might behoove all of us to broaden our reading and viewing habits. I'm not suggesting that we go to the dark side, but heading closer to the center line couldn't hurt.

The three outfits at the bottom of the graphic are the top rated in this iteration of the media bias chart, and all three are rated better than any of the news outlets mentioned by my Facebook friends. Two are podcasts, one from NPR and the other from (y'all are gonna hate this) the Wall Street Journal. The third is the "CBS Evening News".

***

For the record, I voted by mail -- straight Democratic, thanks -- and my county clerk already has my ballot.

***

These moments of media blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get out and vote!

Laundry closet progress, or: Dude, where's my dryer?

To perhaps no one's surprise but mine, the laundry closet is still not done. This project is starting to feel like the Trump administration's promises for a new health care plan: "Two weeks!"

We did make progress this week. The walls have been patched, textured, and painted, and the overhead light has been installed. And the washer is here! 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

Where, you ask, is the dryer? Welp, thereby hangs a tale.

To recap: In mid August, I ordered the new washer and dryer from Best Buy and had Habitat for Humanity retrieve the old units so I could get in there to paint the closet and redo the floor. I ordered Electrolux compact units -- a washer and ventless dryer, plus the matching stacking kit -- to make sure there would be enough room in the closet for both units with the doors closed. The original delivery date for the machines was just after Labor Day, but then Best Buy informed me that the washer wouldn't be in stock 'til mid October (which is when I bought the teeny washer).

Last week, I think it was, Best Buy told me that they didn't have the stacking kit. No worries, I said to myself, and canceled the stacking kit order; I could put the machines side by side, although it would throw a monkey wrench into my plans. The washer was delivered on Thursday as scheduled -- hooray! The dryer was supposed to come the next day. They even sent me an email with a delivery window of Friday morning. But when I received no further communication from them, I checked the app -- and discovered Best Buy was asking me to reschedule the dryer delivery, with the earliest date being October 30th. 

I was... oh, let's be nice and call it nonplussed. 

I called Best Buy. The guy in their call center apologized and said he was going to "escalate" my issue, whatever the hell that means. He said not to pick a new delivery date on the app because my case was escalated; instead, someone would contact me, maybe later that day, maybe this coming week. But I should call back if I hadn't heard by, y'know, the end of the week.

So the bottom line is that Best Buy sold me a washer and dryer they didn't have in stock and gave me bullshit estimates for delivery.

What is going on? Supply chain issues still? The pandemic shutdown was more than three years ago -- haven't we ironed out those wrinkles by now? Eh, maybe not. According to this somewhat impenetrable article, among other things, companies are beginning to wind down the improvements in inventory buffering and controls they made to get through the pandemic. So while you may be hearing about threats to international shipping like turmoil in Middle East and the dockworkers' strike (which lasted all of, what, three days?) causing today's delays, I have to wonder whether some of this mess isn't an excuse to jack up prices to protect shareholders.

As for appliances specifically, some of the delays may be down to a shortage of semiconductor chips, although that ought to be easing. Thanks to the Biden administration pushing the CHIPS and Science Act through Congress in 2022, semiconductor manufacturing is forecast to triple in the U.S. within the next ten years.

None of which gets me a new dryer in a timely manner. So on Friday, I called around. A regional appliance chain has my dryer -- and the stacking kit! -- in stock in a warehouse in Albuquerque. They're delivering it on Tuesday. And once it gets here, I will take great pleasure in calling Best Buy and canceling my order.

And then? Then I will do laundry.

***

These moments of delayed bloggy gratification have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Don't forget to vote!

Dragonflies, framed.

At some point, I will probably revisit last week's post on giftedness. It did get a conversation going on Facebook, which I'm glad of. I think a lot of us smart folks learn to hide our light under a bushel basket to appear "normal", so that we aren't subjected to bullying, jealousy, and so on.

I do want to apologize for some of my terminology, though. I did not mean to denigrate people who have ADHD or are on the autism spectrum. My beef is with those who would lump everybody who's not "normal" into the same basket and offer all of them the same sorts of solutions for their "problems", when it's clear that our situations are wildly different.

Anyway, I'm sorry.

***

I am hoping to be in a position to reveal the new and improved laundry closet in next week's post. There have been some setbacks over the past couple of weeks, so I'm not promising anything. But I want to focus this week on small bits of progress -- like this picture. 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

It's not actually a picture. It's a piece of Italian wrapping paper that I found at Barnes & Noble. I put it in the frame yesterday. (I also covered some in clear contact paper and glued it to a small wooden crate.) I thought the colors would go really well with the yellow walls. But the dragonflies are symbolic, too.

If you ask Mama Google "dragonfly meaning", you'll get a whole bunch of hits, most of them centering around the idea of transformation. Dragonflies start out as larvae and eventually transform into the four-winged creatures we're familiar with. When you extend that idea symbolically, you get the idea of maturing -- from a childhood state into a more evolved, more mature form. So dragonflies represent not just transformation, but also the gaining of wisdom that comes with maturity.

I've written about dragonflies before, in July of 2016. Back then, I talked about how I think of them liminal creatures because they live on land but must stay near water to lay their eggs. That connection to water also connects them to the emotions, and gods know this has been an emotional time for me. Besides all the complications with renovating a literal closet in my home (more on that next week, assuming all goes well this week), I've also been dealing with the thing in my head that I mentioned briefly in July.

What I have is an acoustic neuroma -- a benign tumor on the auditory nerve of my left ear. It's also called a vestibular schwannanoma. This type of tumor is slow growing; I first realized I had a problem in February 2021, when I was sitting at my dinette table one day, minding my own business, and suddenly the hearing in my left ear cut out and tinnitus replaced it. It tooks months to see an ENT here in Santa Fe. An MRI confirmed that the thing was in there. The protocol then was "watch and wait", plus another MRI in a year's time. After the second MRI, I was referred to an ENT specialist in Rio Rancho.

There are two treatment options besides "watch and wait": surgery, in which the surgeon literally cuts into your skull and fetches the thing out; and gamma knife radiation or gamma knife radiosurgery, in which the doctors and technicians put you in a machine and focus a whole bunch of gamma rays on the tumor. That wrecks its DNA, so that eventually it dies off and hopefully shrinks. My docs said I was a good candidate for gamma knife, so that's what I had done on October 3rd. 

The worst part was having the metal frame attached to my head. It has pins that go through your skin and anchor it to your skull in four places. The frame is then clipped into an MRI machine so they can map your brain and figure out how to target the tumor; then it's clipped into the gamma knife machine for the actual procedure. We got there at 6:30 a.m. and were done before noon.

For a couple of days after, I had a mild headache and swollen eyes. Plus the pin above my right eye hit a blood vessel, and I still have a pretty good shiner from it. I've also been more tired than usual. But that's pretty much it for side effects.

Because the tumor grows slowly, it'll take a couple of years before we know whether the procedure worked. If not, then the option of last resort is surgery. But gamma knife has a success rate above 95%, so I'm hoping this will be it. Some patients get their hearing back, but my docs say it's not gonna happen in my case. Which sucks, because I can only understand 12% of the words I hear in my left ear. 

So yeah, it's been a crazy time here. 

But coming back to the surface: Dragonflies live near water. Laundry rooms are a place where water comes into your home. And a transformation happens there: the machines remove dirt and stains from your clothes and linens, fluff them up, and dry them. Right? So if you're looking to put some symbolism in your laundry area, dragonflies are perfect. 

Plus this wrapping paper goes really well with the yellow walls. So I framed it.

***

These moments of transformational blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Make sure you're registered to vote -- and then do it!

What does "smart" mean, anyway?

SergeyNivens | Deposit Photos

When I was in my 20s, I took the test for Mensa. It was actually two standardized IQ tests, given on the same day. To qualify for membership, you have to score at or above the 98th percentile on one of the tests. I scored above the 98th percentile on both -- and on one (don't ask me which one -- it was 40 years ago), I scored above the 99th percentile, which also qualified me for membership in Intertel. In short, I am what used to be called "smart". When my kids were in school, it was called "gifted and talented", or just "gifted". 

Please miss me with your comments about how IQ tests are biased bullshit. There has been a culture-fair alternative IQ test available since 1949, although not everybody agrees that it's actually culturally fair. I suspect that complete fairness will require each culture to create its own IQ test -- a herculean task. 

But to be honest, I think some in the sniffy crowd are just mad that they're White but didn't make the cut. That's a culture-based response, guys. Americans are so obsessed with the idea that Everybody's! Equal! that they're suspicious of anyone who has superior abilities (unless those abilities can be monetized by some promoter, but I digress). And they're sure as hell not inclined to help anybody who thinks faster than they do.

But here is the thing: Differences in cognitive ability are real, and they don't exist only on the low end of the scale. 

Which brings me to the new concept -- or new to me, anyway -- that giftedness is better defined as a form of neurodivergence. Like, say, autism or ADHD. Here's a Venn diagram developed by a therapist that attempts to show how the traits of giftedness, autism, and ADHD overlap. 

A free, more readable PDF version is available here.

I have mixed emotions about this concept. On one hand, the traits that the author associates with giftedness mostly seem to tally with my experience (she says right on the diagram that it's not meant to be a diagnostic tool, and she emphasizes elsewhere on her blog that not everybody in these categories has every trait). For instance: I do "skip thinking", aka logical leaps; I developed the concept of fairness very young; I prefer precision in expression; I make connections across domains (the Pipe Woman Chronicles being one example); I need time alone; and so on. Plus psychology has always interested me -- it's one of my many wide-ranging interests, to use another trait from the diagram.

On the other hand, giftedness-as-neurodivergence feels like a way to lump smart people together with the weird kids. Remember what I said earlier about how Americans view anyone of above-average intelligence with suspicion? Labeling gifted people as neurodivergent could give "normal" people an excuse to hand us a ticket for the short bus.

Do you think that's an exaggeration? Take a look at this blog post, in which the author attempts to argue that labeling someone "gifted" is a way to whitewash ADHD and/or autism: "'Gifted' is autism/ADHD/neurodivergence with the crusts cut off to make it more palatable to neurotypicals, slicing away anything that makes things hard and leaving only the child's strengths to praise and enjoy." She also blames the "gifted kid" label for the "social isolation" that some gifted adults experience. 

Did I feel socially isolated as a gifted adult? Well, yes. Why do you think I joined Mensa? For the dubious prestige of it? Nope, it was to meet other people with whom I could have a conversation on my level. And if you believe that statement makes me some kind of superior asshole, I refer you to that culture-based bias against intelligence that I mentioned in the third paragraph.

Anyway, the point this blogger misses is that not every gifted person is ADHD and/or autistic. Some of us are just ... smart.

***

Not for nothing, "neurotypicals" can exhibit traits on that Venn diagram, too. 

The definition of "neurotypical" tickles me. According to Oxford Languages, it's "not displaying or characterized by ... neurologically atypical patterns of thought or behavior." In other words, you can't define it with precision without knowing every possible neurodivergence -- which we seem to be busy labeling. At the rate we're going, I can envision a time (there I go again with the giftedness traits: forseeing problems!) when the pool of neurotypical people will become vanishingly small. And then what Margaret Mead once said will really be true: "Always remember that you're absolutely unique -- just like everyone else."

***

This post was prompted by a recent conversation with a friend I'd met in Mensa. As we talked, I remembered that I'd hated geometry in high school because doing proofs seemed pointless to me -- and then I realized why: My brain moved so fast through the steps that it was stupid and annoying to have to write them out. In short, I was bored. Giftedness or ADHD? You decide.

***

These moments of possibly neurodivergent blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Make sure you're registered to vote -- and then do it!

On demons and rattlesnakes and other things best left alone.

I took another unscheduled week off from the blog last week. (Did ya miss me?) I had a friend visiting for the week, so things last weekend were a little hectic.

It's too bad, too, because I had a topic all ready to go and everything. But it might even be better for this week, since today is the fall equinox in the Northern Hemisphere -- some Pagans call it Mabon -- which means we're progressing into the dark half of the year. Our attention may be turning not just to pumpkin spice everything, but toward ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night. Like, say, demons.

blueringmedia | Deposit Photos

Why am I using a graphic of a rattlesnake when I just said demons, you ask? I'm getting to that. 

My go-to Druid priest, John Beckett, recently wrote a post on Patheos about the Pagan view of demons. You can read his post here, but basically he says that demons exist in many cultures and religions around the world, not just in Christianity, and they take on different roles in other cultures and other religions than they do here in the West. But in general, he says, "demons are spiritual persons who are generally antagonistic toward humans." He says it's possible to do magical work with them, but it's best to do it from a place of mutual respect. Starting off, as many old texts advise, by puffing yourself up as a "mighty sorceror" and demanding that a demon appear and do your bidding is probably not going to end well for you.

I mean, think about it. Say you're a spiritual person, kinda crabby in general and an introvert anyway, especially when it comes to interacting with humanity, and some human gets hold of your name and insists that you appear before them and do whatever they want you to do. I sure wouldn't be inclined to play nice with the idiot. Would you?

This put me in mind of the way sane humans ought to treat rattlesnakes and other critters that can hurt us: treat them with respect, and don't rile them up if you can help it.

After all, snakes aren't evil. A rattlesnake in your path is just a snake doing its snake thing. Leave it alone, and you'll be fine. Same holds true for demons.

But Christianity has scared us into worrying about demons -- specifically, about being possessed by one. (Not to get political, but MAGA world has been freaking out, ever since Vice President Harris won the Democratic nomination for president, over the idea that she is a demon whose election would usher in the Apocalypse.) Beckett says the number of cases of actual demonic possession is pretty small historically, and we're talking centuries here. So the odds are that if someone is calling someone else a demon, they're just trying to scare you.

To sum up the Pagan view of demons: Yes, they exist. Yes, you can make one mad enough to give you trouble. But no, they're not going to possess you for funsies. Give them a lot of respect and a wide berth, and you'll be fine. Just as you would a rattlesnake.

***

Fair warning: I may end up taking next weekend off from the blog, too. We'll see how it goes. I just don't want anybody to think the demons got me if I don't do a post next Sunday.

***

These moments of reassuring blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Check your voter registration here! I just did!

Laundry improvement, bit by bit.

Lynne Cantwell 2024

I was very much hoping to give y'all a before-and-after report on the redo of my laundry closet this week, but we'll have to settle for a before-and-during.

It all started when I looked up the manufacturing dates for all the major appliances in the condo I bought in 2021 and realized they were all seriously old. So I began replacing them all with new machines. This fall, it's the washer and dryer's turn. 

Ever since I first used the old machines, I'd hated them. The washer was a top loader whose lid opened the wrong way for the closet configuration, and the dryer never heated up enough to suit me. Built in 1997, they still worked, but I felt justified in getting rid of them on the grounds of annoyance alone. 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

That towel on the floor was there to block the draft from the dryer vent.

The closet clearly hadn't been updated in many years -- maybe since before these machines were installed -- so the plan was to donate the beasts to Habitat for Humanity, thereby clearing out the closet so I could paint, get rid of the wire shelf in favor of something nicer, and redo the flooring (whoever installed the Saltillo tile in the bathroom stopped at the threshold to the laundry closet) before the new machines arrived.

Pickup of the old machines went off without a hitch. Demolition consisted of taking down the wire shelf (which, as it turned out, was pulling itself out of the wall anyway) and pulling up some suspicious-looking duct tape from the vinyl sheet flooring. I was worried that somebody had duct-taped over a floor drain, but it was just a hole in the sheet vinyl; if there had ever been a floor drain there, it was covered in plywood, and I wasn't inclined to undo the whole floor to find out. Instead, I patched the hole with a piece of peel-and-stick tile and called it good.

Then I painted the closet a sunny yellow. Well, it was supposed to be a sunny yellow -- it's more like an aggressively cheerful yellow. Pulled off the baseboards, put down some of the leftover luxury vinyl plank flooring from last summer's water leak mitigation, painted the baseboards black to match the frame around the closet doors, reinstalled the baseboards, touched up the baseboard paint from the reinstallation, capped off the dryer vent (I'll explain below), installed a piece of quarter-round to finish off the edge along the Saltillo tile, caulked (I suck at caulking -- please make a note), installed a fun new switchplate cover, and it was done. All I needed were the new machines. 

The yellow color in this pic is off. See the one below.
Lynne Cantwell 2024

Then I got a message from the vendor: delivery of the new machines is delayed until mid-October.

It would be an understatement to say that the thought of hauling my laundry to a laundromat for the next six weeks dismayed me. But then I remembered how I'd done laundry while I lived in that tiny apartment near the plaza during the pandemic shutdown, back when we had a coin shortage so I couldn't get quarters for the coin-op machines in the apartment building. 

So call me crazy, but a week ago today, I went on Amazon and ordered a teeny washing machine. It was delivered Thursday. The Amazon delivery guy, bless his heart, even brought it up my miserable stairs for free. Take that, Best Buy! 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

The little box on the bench by the door contained a dolly for the teeny washer -- a necessity in the apartment downtown where I had to store the washer at the foot of my bed and roll it into the bathroom to wash clothes, but not as critical here, as this washer fits in the laundry closet with lots of room to spare.

It works just fine. I even went ahead and moved into place the little rustic cabinet I'd bought for the closet a few weeks back. Tigs seems to like it. 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

For the new machines, I decided to go with compact units, largely to make sure that they'd fit in the closet. The dryer will be a ventless condenser dryer, hence why I capped the vent in the wall (although it was also a strategic move to keep a certain curious kitty cat from seeing where the tube would lead). The new machines will be a lot smaller than the elderly ones I got rid of. But I figure they'll feel luxurious after this teeny machine: 1.38 cubic feet of washer, plus draping all the wet stuff over a drying rack, compared to 2.4 cubic feet of washer and an electric dryer? Yes, please!

I sold the teeny washer I had downtown when I moved here, and I'm figuring on doing the same thing with this machine when the new washer and dryer finally arrive. But I might keep it, just in case.

There's more to come with the closet: I have a pendant light on order (the lighting in there has always been stupid); I want to rig up a taller and deeper countertop for the cabinet; and I'm going to need either an upper cabinet or a shelf, plus a lint bin and a place to hang my octopus. I've put off all that 'til the washer and dryer are in. So as I said, this is a before-and-during instead of a before-and-after. Stay tuned.

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Yes, the little sign at the top of this post is destined for the laundry closet, whenever everything else is installed.

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Oh hey, I should update y'all on the sleeper sofa. Pickup of the broken one and delivery of the new one both went off without a hitch. Here's the new one:

Lynne Cantwell 2024

At least something is going right...

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These moments of bloggy home improvement have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Make your voting plan now!

The ongoing demise of the old journalistic hegemony.

 

One of the most interesting sidebar stories to come out of the Democratic National Convention last month -- to me, at least -- was about complaints from mainstream journalists that they were kind of given short shrift this year. In their view, the Harris campaign gave preference to social media influencers: meeting with them separately; giving them opportunities for access to the candidates at the same time that mainstream outlets were complaining that the candidates hadn't given any interviews yet; and so on.

Asawin Suebsang covered the convention for Rolling Stone, and he wrote about this kerfuffle last week: 

Much of what I witnessed and heard about during my time in Chicago reinforced my preexisting beliefs that far too many so-called elite members of my profession — national political media scribes who fancy themselves as speaking truth to power, but more often just speak words to financially destructive Google algorithms — are mollycoddled hogs who are doing everything they can to fail to meet the enormity of this moment.

"There were times," he goes on, "I thought I had been teleported back to 2010, when we as an industry were debating how to treat bloggers." And he relates how "multi-lanyard-wearing, sweat-flecked envoys of the U.S. media elite berat[ed] the lowest-level convention volunteers to let them into their seats at once" when security cut off access to the press section due to overcrowding on Thursday night: 

I would be naming names at this point, if I could tell you with certainty who any of these people were, other than the fact that their respective demeanors suggested that they were accustomed to bellowing: "Do you know who I am?"

All this, he says, in an atmosphere where "much of the mainstream political press has been (correctly) programming its audience to believe this year's race is not a normal presidential election, and then too many in that media elite get upset when the public points out that they're covering it like a normal presidential election...".

Amen, brother, amen.

Alert hearth/myth readers know of my journalistic background, and of how I've been gradually coming around to the realization that the business has changed radically since I last sat before a microphone to deliver the news. I mean, I knew the business was changing; that's a big reason why I got out. But the coverage of Donald Trump from 2015 on has made it abundantly clear to me that journalists now see themselves as stars first, deliverers of eyeballs to advertisers and ad dollars to shareholders second, and purveyors of truth third, if at all. Here we are, at another inflection point in the history of our country -- the third election in a row in which democracy is threatened with extinction in the United States -- and these people in my previous profession are all butthurt about their privilege.

Honestly, it doesn't surprise me that the Harris campaign is stepping around them to get its message out. Political influencers command huge audiences, and they're inclined to give favorable coverage to the campaign -- unlike the mainstream folks, who call it hard-hitting journalism when they fall for every made-up controversy promulgated by the other side.

About that: I saw a comment not long ago, although I don't remember where now, from someone in the news business who was asked why journalists aren't talking about Trump's age and obvious decline, the way they did President Biden's. The newsperson's answer? The Democrats have to make an issue of it first -- then they'll cover it.

That's utter bullshit. In no universe ever has a real journalist passed up a story because nobody else was talking about it.

I'm appalled at the state of political journalism today. C'mon, you guys -- do better. Our nation's continued existence -- as well as your continued relevance -- depend on it.

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These moments of bloggy journalistic exhortation have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe! And be sure to vote!

The demise of my sleeper sofa.

When did furniture become so cheaply built?

When I retired from the big DC law firm in 2020, the firm graciously offered to buy me anything I wanted, up to a certain price point. I opted for a full-size sleeper sofa. I figured it would be a great way to have both seating in the new place in Santa Fe and sleeping accommodations for overnight guests. Plus a full-size sofa would fit best in the 500-square-foot apartment I was getting. Genius, right?

Here's the sofa I asked for:

Stolen from Wayfair's website

Here's the sofa I got (I bought the throw pillows just recently): 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

You'll note that it has three sections across the back, not two. That's because what they sent me is a queen-size sleeper. It pretty much dominated the living room of that little apartment. It fits better in the condo -- but that has become a moot point since this happened a couple of weeks ago:

Lynne Cantwell 2024

See that little stubby piece of metal sticking up at the bottom of the picture? It was once welded to the pipe that I'm holding. The bed part still works fine; the sofa part, not so much. 

The two-by-four is part of my attempt to support that loose pipe so that the weld on the other side doesn't also break. It's working about as well as you'd expect.

The sad thing is that the sofa was actually pretty comfy. That's unusual for a sleeper, in my experience, and it runs counter to a recent trend that consumers have complained about: reasonably-priced sofas that look good online but are super uncomfortable once you receive them. I could blame the pandemic for my troubles -- I did take delivery of the sofa in the middle of 2020 -- but it turns out that people had been complaining about the quality of new furniture for years before the supply chain broke. 

What's the culprit? Cheap imported furniture, which caused sales of US-made furniture to crater, causing those manufacturers to lay off their workers and sell out to hedge funds -- which have done what they've done to every other part of the manufacturing sector they could get their hands on. That's how you get the Broyhill name attached to crappily made furniture sold exclusively by Big Lots. The made-in-the-US furniture companies that have survived, according to the article at the link above, are building much more expensive products for affluent customers who can afford to hire interior designers to do their shopping for them.

As for the rest of us, it might be worth haunting thrift and consignment stores for well-made pieces from the past. But who has that kind of time?

If I knew someone with a welding setup, I suppose I could get my sofa repaired -- but I don't. And taking it to someone's shop seems problematic. So I'm biting the bullet and buying a replacement from Apt 2B. The company has good reviews (which, hopefully, they didn't pay for), the furniture is made in the US (they claim), and the mattress will definitely be full-sized. It was three times the price of my retirement gift, but hopefully it will last longer than four years. 

It sucks to have to get a new sofa so soon.

Anyway, I'll report back.

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These moments of bloggy planned obsolescence have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe! And make sure you're (still) registered to vote!

Native voting is pretty new, actually.

This weekend is the annual Indian Market in Santa Fe. It's huge -- there were 1,000 artists displaying their work this year -- and it was hot and crowded when I went yesterday afternoon. Collectors come from all over the country to see the best in Native American art. The artists come from all over the country, too; I met one who's a member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi (which, coincidentally, is Darrell Warren's tribe). (I wish I'd grabbed his business card so I could tell you his name. He tattoos his art onto buffalo skins, which you've got to admit is pretty cool.)

Along with the art, this poster caught my eye: 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

(The phrase is from Reservation Dogs, which ran on FX until last year. The photo is of Zahn McClarnon, who played a cop on the show. He also plays a cop on Dark Winds on AMC.)

It wasn't surprising to see a get-out-the-vote effort at Indian Market; we are in an election year, after all. But then I ducked into the Palace of the Governors in an effort to beat the heat, and I found an exhibit that explained why voting is a really big deal for Native Americans.

Here's the thing: Even though Native tribes were here first, the U.S. government treated their members as foreigners for legal purposes (along with treating them as stupid savages and less than human, but I digress). Birthright citizenship was not extended to Indians. They were allowed to enlist in the armed forces and fight for the United States, but they weren't citizens until Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924. In that legislation, Congress left it up to individual states to decide whether to allow Native Americans to vote. Here in New Mexico, it took a court ruling to grant them suffrage. 

The case, Trujillo v. Garley, centered on Miguel Trujillo (Isleta Pueblo), a World War II veteran. After returning home from the war, Trujillo tried to register to vote in Valencia County, NM, but the county registrar, Eloy Garley, refused his request because he was an "Indian not taxed" -- a provision in state law that took advantage of a loophole in the U.S. Constitution. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Congress of American Indians, Trujillo sued Garley in federal court in 1948, disputing the state's contention that he did not pay taxes -- and providing receipts. A panel of three U.S. district court judges agreed with Trujillo and ordered the county to register him to vote. For the panel, Judge Orie Phillips wrote: 

[The constitution of New Mexico] says that "Indians not taxed" may not vote, although they possess every other qualification. We are unable to escape the conclusion that, under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, that constitutes a discrimination on the ground of race. Any other citizen, regardless of race, in the State of New Mexico who has not paid one cent of tax of any kind or character, if he possesses the other qualification, may vote. An Indian, and only an Indian, in order to meet the qualifications to vote must have paid a tax. How you can escape the conclusion that makes a requirement with respect to an Indian as a qualification to exercise the elective franchise and does not make that requirement with respect to the member of any race is beyond me.

Two weeks earlier, the Arizona Supreme Court had overturned the law in that state that prohibited Native Americans there from registering to vote. 

You'd think that would have been the end of it, but no -- Utah didn't extend the franchise to Native Americans until 1957. And all of these actions only allowed Native men to vote; Native women weren't allowed to register until 1965, when Congress passed the Voting Rights Act.

(Contrast that with the 15th Amendment, added to the Constitution in 1870, that enfranchised Black men. But I digress.)

Barriers remain, of course. Many reservations are vast, and people have to travel long distances to get to a polling place. In addition, some states require those who register to vote to have a street address, which disenfranchises folks on reservations whose homes don't have street addresses. The New Mexico legislature enacted a law last year that, among other things, allows tribes to designate their tribal offices as a legal street address for members who don't have one.

The issue, as always, is control. The powers-that-be have never been comfortable with granting rights to large groups of people who they have mistreated and who might just vote to turn them out of power. There's evidence that it actually happened in Arizona in the 2020 election: turnout was high on the Navajo and Hopi reservations, and President Biden won the state by about 10,500 votes. 

White folks have had the right to vote in this country for a long, long time. We shouldn't take it for granted. We've recently had a federal right taken away from us and left up to state legislatures to decide whether to grant. (You know which one I mean.) And there's that Project 2025 thing looming. So don't be a shitass -- vote!

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These moments of historical blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Check your voter registration early and often!