What's new at the museum, you ask?

Odd assortment of little plastic dudes (and dog) 

Yes, I'm still volunteering there, although I definitely have days when I wonder why. You know that old adage about being careful what you wish for? Well, I wished for more members, got them, and have been enjoying cat herding. 

The nadir probably occurred last August when two of the newer volunteers decided to rearrange several long established exhibits, move not-yet-inventoried items out of storage and mix them into the exhibits, and cap it all by selling half a dozen books from the Museum's permanent James Oliver Curwood collection, all without bothering to check with the museum manager (moi) about any of it. And they did it all in a remarkably short time. One actually bragged that it had taken less than half an hour. Holy wah. Not just happy to admit to vandalism but proud of how quickly they had done it.

They had volunteered to work on inventorying and updating the Museum's vintage and antique toys exhibit. That was the one thing they didn't touch.

Speaking of vintage toys, a hard rubber car c1932

There was a moderately humorous element. When I freaked out I was treated to a lengthy treatise via email about how I obviously didn't have a clue how to manage a museum, all my talk about consulting with the National Park Service about museum practice was total bullshit, I was a liar because the person ranting about my incompetence had never seen a person with any connection to the Park Service in the museum, and the whole inventory thing (i.e., PastPerfect) was garbage I'd made up. (If only. If I had designed an inventory program it would be a heck of lot more user friendly than PastPerfect.) 

I saved the demented email, of course. I know stuff theoretically lives forever in cyberspace but it never hurts to archive weirdness. When my offspring heard about this incident they both asked the same question: how fucking stupid are the women that it never occurred to them to Google me? I'm not prone to ego-surfing but the second thing that came up when I did few minutes ago was a reference to me working as an architectural historian with the National Park Service. 

I also asked for keys back, which the person refused to do. Instead she doubled down on how I had no authority, was clueless, and she wouldn't return the keys unless one of the male members told her to. The dude she viewed as the ultimate authority is married to the other idiot volunteer, which makes life a little awkward. He's still saying the two women were good volunteers so we should be "bigger" and let their fuck-ups slide. Hell no, especially when his wife is also the bigot who pretty obviously is prejudiced against Native people (not a good look when the Museum is on the rez). The dude is actually a great volunteer so it's a shame his spouse is a racist moron. 

End result was ~$110 spent on a locksmith changing the locks. 

Minor digression: am I the only one who notices that the person being asked to be the bigger person, to just let things slide, is almost always the person who got damaged the most? 

Anyway, back to the museum. Despite feeling a strong urge to just say, "Fine, you think you can do it better? It's all yours," I resisted the urge to walk. Which turned out to be a good thing, at least for the museum, because in December the historical society was given an amazing offer, a potential million dollar donation, and we're now in the process of nailing that down and proceeding with planning for a major expansion. Details to follow when the donation is nailed down. I do not want to jinx it by saying too much until we've seen some actual funding. If it does come through, though, the museum's footprint will double and it may actually be able to hire a full-time manager. And I'll get to hand in my keys.  

The toys shown were found in a bucket in the museum's storage building. The bucket contained some obvious junk on top, but hiding underneath a dirty rag were the plastic guys, a railroad spike, three hard rubber cars from the early 1930s, and a spud wrench. Once again we found something nifty (the 1930s toys) in an unexpected place.

Memories, sort of

 

This photo was taken April 2, 2018. Nifty flora, obviously things were blooming in Arizona. Only question I now have is where did I decide this particular agave needed to be immortalized. Is it from the Boyce Thompson Arboretum over towards Phoenix, were we in Tucson at the Sonora Desert Museum, or was it someplace else, like Saguaro National Park? And if I can't remember where we were at the time, why did I bother saving the photo? 

The arboretum, incidentally, was lovely. We were there in the spring so maybe that is where I took the photo. It's a place I'd probably go to on a regular basis if we lived a whole lot closer. As it is, given our general dislike of everything within spitting distance of Phoenix and our total lack of desire to be snowbirds in the desert, we'll probably never visit it again.  

I have been going through hard copies of photos, pitching the ones that I figure would be meaningless to anyone other than myself. Basically saving my heirs some time and trash bags. So should I be doing the same with digital? Is anyone ever going to look at them for any reason? Probably not, so maybe they can just sit there quietly in electronic limbo indefinitely. 

How far do they expect people to commute?

This piece of advertising was in the mailbox the other day. It baffled me at the time because so far as I know the closest Amazon facility of any type is down near Milwaukee, which is a good five or six hour drive from here. Talked with a couple friends, and it appears that every mailbox in the 49946 zip code was graced with this gem. It turns out that Amazon is building a distribution center in Escanaba (or close to it). Escanaba is about 130 miles from where we live. I know desperate workers in various urban areas do some killer commutes but 100+ miles one way in the U.P.? Not going to happen, not unless the paychecks are a heck of a lot better than anything Amazon is willing to disburse. 

So, did Amazon blanket every zip code in the U.P. with this ad or did they think in terms of actual distance? You know, send a card to everyone between Ironwood and Sault Ste. Marie or just the addresses that might be within 150 miles? Then again, 150 miles from Escanaba in any direction could include most of upper Michigan. It seems odd for multiple reasons, the most obvious being that it's kind of weird to start advertising for workers before construction on the building has even begun.

There are way too many invertebrates out there

For years I've been hearing that the only effective way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them, call their bluff, dare them to do their worst, because as long as they keep getting their way the bullying will just get worse. Apparently way too many people in what one would assume are positions of power are actually spineless cowards because the number of people willing to stand up to the orange cockwomble is depressingly small. Cheeto Mussolini says "jump" and the cowards don't even bother to ask how high. They just comply. 

On the positive side, sort of, the high power law firm of Paul, Weiss is now enjoying a shit ton of condemnation from the legal community for caving in to the Human Yam's demands. Ditto Columbia University. And of course gutless Senator Schumer is getting to see his planned book tour cancelled because it was clear he was going to be greeted by jeering crowds anywhere he was dumb enough to go.

I am, to be honest, totally baffled why so many people who could actually do something are instead doing nothing, or worse. Nada. Zilch. Just a lot of baffled deer in the headlights body language and vague blathering on about the need to be civil and "work with" the Trump administration. Is there a polite way to say "fucking morons?"  

For sure I need to include our state's senior senator as a moron, the spineless idiot who is actually in a position to be confrontational -- he's announced he won't run again in 2026 so has nothing to lose by pissing off MAGAts or Cheeto Mussolini. Trump decided years ago to fuck over Michigan because he hates our Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, so Gary Peters could say or do anything and it wouldn't make things worse. 

There are numerous reports of how unhappy even the hard core right wing nutjobs are with the path of destruction tRump has created, but none of them are willing to stand up to him either. Joni Ernst, the junior senator from Iowa, was making noises about voting against one of Trump's nominees but then she reportedly got some death threats -- and that's when her spine turned to jello. Ditto her colleagues. They all know just how willing the MAGAts are to engage in violence -- anyone who was in Congress on January 6, 2021, got a vivid demonstration of MAGA lunacy -- but if a few of them managed to find the guts to say, screw it, do your worst, most of the MAGAts would just crawl back under their rocks. There are some who are sufficiently brain dead to harass people, threaten them in various ways, maybe even attempt to shoot someone, but the number of MAGAts willing to put their own lives on the line when they're not part of mob is pretty small. MAGAts may be delusional but most aren't totally stupid. Talking big at the local watering hole is one thing; going and actually doing something is different. 

In any case, all it would take is a handful of people with the guts to be the first to tell the Human Yam to fuck off to inspire others to stop cowering and grow some cojones. I don't think it's likely to happen -- the Republican Party has operated under Newt Gingrich rules* for too long -- but I can dream. 

*Gingrich believes the only thing that counts is winning a majority for the party; whatever happens to the country is irrelevant as long as the other party loses.

Turkeys have really big feet

1874 turkey track quilt

I spotted the biggest bird tracks I'd ever seen in the snow recently. I was ambling up the driveway to the Woman Cave when I saw the largest prints I'd ever seen outside of a zoo. My first thought was, holy wah, do the new neighbors have emus? If I'd spotted huge bird foot prints in the summer I'd have thought "sandhill crane" because we have a pair that nest on the edge of our property every year, but in early March? It didn't hit me immediately that lately most of the turkeys I've seen have been single birds, not flocks. 

The turkey tracks were, in any case, a nice distraction from the flaming dumpster fire that is the tRump administration's incredibly chaotic approach to governance. How incompetent do you have to be to think that first telling remote workers that they have to return to an office and then turning around and cancelling the leases on the offices they're supposed to come back to is some sort of genius solution to eliminating waste and fraud? I can understand (sort of) the decision to cancel leases on some facilities, the part-time offices where maybe a representative from the IRS or Social Security visits once a week, but cancelling leases for a national park's headquarters? Which is what the DOGE geniuses did in Arkansas: cancelled the lease on the headquarters for Buffalo National River. I've been to BUFF's headquarters multiple times. 

The park occupied multiple rooms in their leased space in Harrison. All of that space was used, packed full of stuff. The park historian's space alone was crammed with files and books and enough material that it would take several large U-Haul's to empty just that one room -- which does beg the question, where is that material supposed to go? Is it saving any money when the park then ends up having to rent storage elsewhere? Where do the fifty-plus years of park administrative records go? The archeological artifacts collection? The employees who were not fired but no longer have an office to go to? No planning, no thought, just a bunch of mindless Musk acolytes crossing stuff off lists and then bragging about how much they're saving the country by causing chaos. 

I noticed the news item about BUFF because it was (and still is) one of my favorite parks but the Younger Daughter tells me DOGE also hit facilities in Fayetteville, although she wasn't sure exactly what. She's actually been paying more attention to Cheeto Mussolini's antics than I have. She is a federal employee and she does worry about just how safe anyone's job is now. It's easy to imagine tRump deciding entire job categories aren't necessary, like historian or writer. If something doesn't have an obvious immediate resale value, the orange cockwomble figures it's useless or should be trashed. 

Only 202 weeks left to go, assuming we all survive.  

Jackie Sue was right

 

We're fucked. 

I've been watching Cheeto Mussolini and his minions in action since the inauguration. Every time I think they've done the dumbest thing ever they manage to do something even dumber. Planes are falling out of the sky? Not a problem. Just blame it on a nonissue (committing the sin of hiring people who aren't white or male) and say it's all Biden's or Obama's or maybe even Carter's fault. Claiming you're going to eliminate waste in government spending? Solution: fire every low level employee unlucky enough to still be on probation and ignore all the GS-15 dead weight, the various managers and supervisors who have been Retired on Active Duty (ROAD) or Retired in Place (RIP) for years. 

Anyone who's ever had a government job knows about the RIPs.  I think most agencies have slots where the people who fill them are the codgers (geezettes?) who are already eligible for retirement but want to keep getting a full paycheck for a few more years. When I worked for the National Park Service I swear there were a couple parks where the superintendents were already mentally on their bass boat. They were useless as managers. They'd found a geographic location they liked, they had the government move them (the higher in the food chain a position is, the more generous Transfer of Station funds become), help with the purchase of a house (their retirement cabin on the river or on a hillside with a great mountain view), and be bitched about by park staff for the next two, three, or four years. I doubt if any of that dead weight got noticed by the Musk's DOGE tech bros. 

But talking about RIP personnel is a bit of a digression. I'm more intrigued by Musk deciding he needed to re-invent the wheel, and do a piss poor job in the process. Some of us geezers still remember the 1990s and Clinton-Gore. Clinton et al. decided the Vice President should have more to do than attend funerals in foreign countries. Al Gore got tasked with reducing waste and redundancies in government. Spoiler alert: he actually did it. The task force cut the federal government's payroll by a significant amount, duplicate offices and agencies were eliminated. The one I always remember most clearly was in regulating coal mining. The Bureau of Mines vanished. My faith in the tRump administration to always fuck stuff up is so strong that I firmly believe the government will emerge from the DOGE purge with zero funds saved, gazillions being doled out to private contractors, and several new offices, task forces, agencies, etc., created to provide jobs to loyal suck-ups. They may even bring the Bureau of Mines back from the dead. No reason to, of course, but it could make some good sound bites for the orange cockwomble to brag about helping America's coal industry.

The way the Clinton administration's task force succeeded in shrinking government was, of course, to do it carefully. No blanket across the board reductions in force, just a meticulous examination of who was doing what and where. Had Musk possessed more brain cells than a gerbil (or had a shit ton less ego) he'd have followed similar methods. Less trauma, more good press, and for sure no internet memes speculating about the Muskrat's micro penis and/or botched dick enlargement surgery. (Those memes must be comforting to all the broke-ass dudes out there. If the richest man in the world can't buy himself a macro member then maybe being poor isn't so horrible after all.)

An appropriate graphic. Maybe

 I wanted to use this yesterday but couldn't figure out to do it using my phone. This notebook is a little more user friendly. 

Low information voters

The S.O. and I have been trying to get our heads around the fact that the Human Yam managed to win the election despite being an incredibly vile human being and obviously sliding rapidly into full blown senile dementia. Given my usual cynicism I was leaning toward Americans in general being too stupid to recognize a grifter even when he tells people explicitly they're all dumb as rocks. 

My belief in Stupidity as an explanation met with confirmation recently. I was at an event where a group of people were chatting about contacting our U.S. Congressman- a carpetbagger named Jack Bergmann (he's from Louisiana but claims his primary residence is a deer camp here in the U.P.). It'd been less than 2 weeks since the election but a couple people had no idea who Bergmann is. He's been our Congress critter for 4 terms now. He's pretty useless in general but his staff is apparently competent at helping constituents, hence, the suggestion to contact his office. 

So my question is basically just how willfully ignorant do you have to be to not know who the local Congress critter is when the election just happened and we've been inundated with nonstop advertising for months? And if you don't know who the Congress critter is what are the odds you've got a Made in China red hat and think that immigrants are barbecuing cats?

Back a gazillion years ago I had acquaintances from inner city neighborhoods who referred to cats as "roof rabbits." That label always made me wonder about the ingredients in traditional Southern cuisine. You know, is the deep fried chicken really chicken? Made me resolve to stick with just cole slaw and fries if I ever got asked to dine in a local eatery on Chicago's Southside. But, as usual, I digress.

Bottom line is that Americans in general tend to be on the dumb side so the spectacle of them voting for the guy who 4 years ago had most of the country wondering if coffee filters would work as toilet paper wasn't a huge surprise. Disappointing, yes, but a total shock? Nope. 

I am, of course, amused by the MAGAts who think that Donny Convict is going to lower gas prices. Given that his pick to head the Department of Energy is head of a fracking company does anyone seriously believe a fossil fuels executive is going to push for cheaper gas? Right now gas is going for about $3 per gallon. When the price doubles next year you know they'll blame Biden. Or Obama. Anyone but the fools who voted for Trump.

How to spot a racist

Here's a clue: if upon seeing a 55-year old photo of a local woman, a person who has been dead for decades, the first words out of an individual's mouth are "You know why half her kids were so dark? She had affairs with the porters on the train." Holy wah. Talk about bad re-runs of infantile gossip from the local junior high's mean girls table. 

Of course, the person regurgitating this ancient piece of junior high crap said it in total seriousness. Again, holy wah. It was remarkably stupid back in the '60s and it's remarkably stupid now. It was (and no doubt still is) a reflection of the steeped into the bone.anti-Native prejudice still much too common in an area that includes an Indian reservation and has always had a significant percentage of Anishinaabe students in the L'Anse and Baraga school districts, including the woman's children who were probably classmates of the racist. Odds are the dumb cunt* who spouted this nonsense first heard at the mean girls table back in 7th grade and has been sure it was true ever since. 

And, on top of the evidence of the idiot's ingrained bigotry, it also sets some sort of record for sheer stupidity. The S.O. and I both have railroad backgrounds. We joke that the family coat of arms includes a switch broom. I used to take the train a lot. As a dependent of a Chicago & Northwestern employee I got to ride for free, which I did on a regular basis. I know what conditions were like on passenger trains 60+ years ago. The idea of any porter, black, white, or purple, managing to do the nasty with a non-passenger even one time let alone multiple times gives a whole new dimension to the term ludicrous. The porters worked hard and did not have a lot of time for spending the two minutes the train stood in a station banging any of the locals. Then when you toss in the issue of sundown towns. . .My dad explained sundown towns when I asked why the African-American dining car waiter never got off the train in Ironwood even though it was a station where the train sat in the station long enough for the rest of the train crew to get off and hang out on the platform swapping gossip with the depot agent and chain smoking unfiltered cigarettes. (Male bonding in action.) Bottom line: It truly is the type of shitty stupid slur that can be generated only by middle school students or people with fewer brain cells than the typical hamster. 

FWIW, this particular photo has been seen by literally hundreds of museum visitors over the twelve years I've been volunteering. This being a small rural community many elderly visitors remember the woman. Universally, everyone who remembers her or knows her family says something positive. Until this one dumb cunt*.  You know, I can't help but feel a little sorry for her. How sad and empty must her life be if as a septuagenarian she feels compelled to share 60-year old racist gossip. And what was the point? 

*I've been watching the most recent season of "The Boys." Billy Butcher seems to be influencing my vocabulary.

It's Rapture Day

It's Eclipse Day at last. Given all the pre-event hype, I figure the actual eclipse may feel a tad anti-climactic. At this point here in Arkansas (we've been snowbirds in Hot Springs since December) the sun is still shining. There are high, thin clouds but the tv weather folks keep re-assuring us those clouds are high enough, thin enough, and scattered enough that totality will still be fully visible. We shall see.

The S.O., the Younger Daughter and I are equipped with the suggested eclipse glasses. Kroger started selling them before Christmas. Ditto tee-shirts and other memorabilia. We bought the glasses but, frugal people that we are, decided to wait until the tee-shirts go on sale for a lot less than they were selling for the last time I checked a price tag. That should start happening sometime later this afternoon. The partial starts here in about half an hour, totality a little before 2 p.m., and I figure half price tee shirts start about the same time. 

Lost in the Bozone has a post up about eclipse fever in Maine. Apparently traffic to reach the places where totality is guaranteed has become a bit messy. Maybe. According to the Arkansas DOT traffic counts were up this past weekend (one assumes out-of-state people travelling to hotels or campgrounds) but I am as usual skeptical. There's been a lot of talk abut how insanely congested Hot Springs might be thanks to the eclipse but when we were downtown on Saturday things looked like any good weekend now that tourist season (and gorgeous weather) has arrived. The National Park Service had an event happening on Arlington Lawn at the end of Bathhouse Row that looked like it had a decent crowd but no more than one would expect on any lovely, sunny day in a prime tourist location. 

One of the things that struck me in the lead up to the eclipse is just how many places seemed to believe that the world was going to beat a path to their specific location. While we were in Texas in January, we saw ads all over the place touting the wonders of reserving an RV space at the Llano airport (where the hell is Llano, you ask? I have no clue. Somewhere northwest of Johnson City and Marble Falls, I guess, because the advertising signs were along US-281 going north). You've really got to be a little strange about being sure of being in the path of totality if Llano, Texas (reachable, incidentally, only via state highways, no actual US-anything if Google Maps can be believed), strikes you as being the perfect place to park your motorhome. I never did believe the official paranoia about huge crowds, massive traffic jams, et cetera. And for sure having Governor Shuckabee declare an official Arkansas state emergency for today did nothing to persuade me there was any cause for concern. 

The Younger Daughter tells me that was a lot of discussion at work about how much of a headache the eclipse was going to create for the Forest Service. Personnel who had been at other national forests the last time there was a major eclipse said it was no big deal. Everyone imagined gazillions of visitors damaging resources and shedding trash wherever they went but it didn't happen. I'm thinking this event will be similar. Lots of people all assuming their specific location is going to be mobbed with people when the reality is the path of the eclipse covers 13 states and is pretty damn wide. People have a lot of choices of where to go, and for many it's not actually that far from home. All things considered. I am not surprised to see news items this morning saying that the hordes of visitors did not materialize in the Texas Hill Country (an area well worth visiting at this time of year even without an eclipse; March and April are the best months to be in Texas). No doubt there will be similar news briefs and after action reports as it sinks in that the anticipated (hoped for?) thousands of visitors at any one site were at best hundreds.