Strange addictions

I have never been a fan of "reality" shows, have never felt any desire to watch any of the "Real Housewives" variations, Kardashians, or similar programming. There is one exception: cooking shows, sort of. Stuff like Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, Robert Irvine's Restaurant Impossible, and John Taffer's Bar Rescue. 

I have a definite addiction to Bar Rescue. Since I discovered it's possible to  stream Paramount Network through a Google tv box, I have been known to plop myself in a recliner, knitting or other handwork in my sweaty little hands, and binge watch Bar Rescue. I am so thoroughly addicted to the show that it doesn't matter how many times I've seen some episodes, I'm like a little kid with a favorite picture book. I don't do a blasé "oh, seen it before so I'll watch something else" for repeat episodes. Nope. I'm more like yelling to the S.O. that he needs to come see it because "this is the one with the raccoon in the ceiling" or "holy wah, there's a lot of mold in that ice machine!" 

I'm not sure what the attraction is. The Younger Daughter and I were talking about shows like Restaurant Impossible and Bar Rescue not long ago and mutually agreed it's moderately amazing we're still willing to eat in restaurants or bar and grill type places after seeing show after show with, as noted above, raccoons in the ceiling or mold in the ice machines. Not to mention the kitchens. The kitchens are always unreal. It's like just how drunk are the customers if they're willing to eat (or attempt to eat) the crap coming out of the incredibly filthy kitchens? Of course, given that these shows are always about places that are losing money while noticing fewer and fewer "guests" willing to sit on a bar stool maybe most of that crap food falls into the "tried it once; never going back" category. The last episode of Bar Rescue I watched featured multiple dead mice in a unbelievably filthy kitchen. Health departments obviously are not doing surprise inspections the way they should. 

It's not just crap food, naturally. It's also shit drinks inspiring "never again" reactions. A classic Taffer test is for consistency: if you have multiple bartenders, are they all following the same recipes? Are all the margaritas made the same way or is one bartender seriously overpouring the tequila while the other bartenders aren't pouring enough? And do they know how to make popular drinks, i.e., if someone asks for an incredibly common drink like a tequila sunrise or an old fashioned can the bartender make it without having to get out their phone and google it? In a recent episode (recent as in I watched it this week, not as in recent from the new season) two bartenders were totally clueless when asked to make a paloma. Palomas are apparently a popular alternative to margaritas. Margaritas are basically tequila, lime juice, and orange-flavored liqueur (triple sec); a paloma is tequila, lime juice, and grapefruit soda (Squirt) or actual grapefruit juice. It's a nice simple drink, no weird ingredients and can look good with the right garnish. You know, it's another drink that has people who see it thinking they'd like to try one, too. A bartender drawing a blank when asked to make a paloma isn't actually a bartender -- he or she is a person who knows how to remove the cap before handing the Bud Lite bottle to a customer.  

In any case, Bar Rescue always features people ordering a drink, taking one sip, and doing the classic "Christ on a crutch, this is bad. I need to spit it out fast" expression while clearly wondering if they can get away with spewing it on to the floor. How do bar owners not notice that customers think their bar's offerings are garbage?

Answer: easily. One thing that is consistent across multiple seasons is just how ignorant/naive/clueless bar owners can be. Lots of episodes with owners who think all they have to do is walk around the bar occasionally without doing any actual work (checking for cleanliness, for example). Of course, if your only exposure to a bar or a restaurant is as a customer, you most likely don't notice all the work that goes into a good drinking or dining experience: trained staff, consistency, a safe atmosphere. If you invest in a bar and just assume anyone calling themselves a bartender or a server knows what they're doing you're pretty much guaranteed to find yourself drowning in debt. If you own a business of any type no one with more than two brain cells to rub together should be hands-off and assume everything will take care of itself unless you're deliberately aiming for bankruptcy court.

Of course, you also have bar owners who bought a bar because they wanted a place to party, just kind of hang out with "friends" while watching their money go down the drain while they give away shots. Taffer has dealt with a lot of drunks who were more focused on having fun than on safeguarding their income. Sometimes he performs a minor miracle and gets them to realize they've been fucking up; sometimes you know that the drunk is going to go back to being a drunk as soon as the cameras stop rolling. Which is no doubt one reason there are sites that track the show and how the rescued bars do long term. A site called "Bar Rescue Update" includes a list of all the bars the show has visited and how many are still in business. I do find myself wondering whatever happened to the bar with the raccoon in the ceiling. Maybe I should figure out just what the name of that bar was and find out if the raccoon ever became a friend of Bill W. 

Pulitzer Project: Interpreter of Maladies

After I finished The Hours the Younger Daughter decided to read it, too, before returning it to the library. After all, the book was pretty light weight, both in size and content. I breezed through it quickly. So did she. And then she asked the usual question: What makes a work of fiction good enough to merit a Pulitzer? By then I had started reading Interpreter of Maladies so I had two recent examples to think about. So what does make a work of fiction Pulitzer worthy? I have no clue. Some past winners have been total dreck, literally unreadable, and others were amazing: beautifully written, a joy to read.

As for the most recent, it falls somewhere into the middle of the pack. Not bad, not great, just quietly announcing, yes, these are typical New Yorker short stories. Not great literature, not bad, just sort of there. The author is Indian American, sort of. According to Wikipedia, Lahiri was born in England and came to the United States at the age of 3 when her father was hired to work at a university library in Rhode Island. 

Her parents were Bengali and placed a lot of emphasis on remembering Bengali culture. The family made frequent trips to India and no doubt provided much of the material Lahiri drew on for her fiction. Her work is described as "autobiographical" but it's a bit of a stretch to call fiction autobiographical when the work is set years, even decades, before Lahiri was born. She may be channeling her parents' and other relatives' stories, but she didn't live any of it herself. 

The book is a collection of short stories, some longer than others. "Interpreter of Maladies" might be the longest. It's an odd narrative about a man who has two jobs: he works as an interpreter for a medical doctor translating patients' descriptions of symptoms and relaying the doctor's advice to the patients. India is a land of many languages and dialects, and the doctor has a sizable number of patients who speak a language the doctor doesn't know. The man's other job is as a tour guide, and it is through his conversations with American tourists that we learn about him being an interpreter of maladies. This is the story that won a prize from The New Yorker and again I'm not sure why. Maybe for being the penultimate New Yorker type of story? Exotic setting, intriguing cultural references, a faint hint of erotica in the tour guide's extremely G-rated thoughts about the female American tourist. Totally typical New Yorker, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary for that magazine other than the story being set in India instead of on a Caribbean island. 

The other stories in the book vary in setting and protagonists. Some are set in India, some in the U.S. One of the oddest stories for me involved a young married couple who moved into a new (to them) house and kept finding Christian tchotchkes: a snow globe with a Nativity scene, a garish poster, and even a large concrete Our Lady of Perpetual Cleanliness hiding in a clump of bushes in the yard -- why Mary wasn't in the usual old bathtub is a mystery. The house is apparently salted with tacky religious memorabilia. They keep finding stuff in odd places: tucked behind a radiator, for example. The wife is fascinated and wants to keep it all; her husband keeps reminding her that they're Hindu. I found myself thinking several kind of related thoughts: the tchotchkes collection is a guaranteed way to get nailed for the sin of cultural appropriation (something that no one was thinking much about back in the 1990s), non-Christians do get a little weird about religious memorabilia and holidays (lots of people celebrate Christmas or Easter with zero thought about the religious meaning of the holidays), and is it wrong of me to want a large statue of Ganesha for my garden? I have an old bathtub I could put him in. 

So how is the book in general? Well, it's competently written, i.e., it's definitely readable. Lahiri can write, which is good considering that her academic career seems to have consisted of teaching other people how to write. Would I recommend it to other readers? Yes. I mean, it doesn't suck. Or, to damn with truly faint praise, I've read worse. It's another middle of the pack book. Not great, not bad, just sort of there. 

Next up on the list? Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The Garland County Public Library on-line catalog says they have a copy on the shelves so I may get it read in the next week or so. Assuming, of course, that the library does have it. Here's hoping they do because this is one book I'm actually looking forward to reading. I liked Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel. I also know he was the head writer for Star Trek: Picard, but I'm not sure if that's a positive or not. In any case, after ignoring the Pulitzers for two years, I may cross three off the list in one month. 

Pulitzer Project: The Hours

It's been awhile since I thought about the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Back in 2023 I read the 1997 winner, Martin Dressler, and was so thoroughly unimpressed by it that I lost interest in moving on up the list. When I decided to get back to it I wasted about a year in trying to track down a copy of the 1998 winner, American Pastoral. Despite it being a Philip Roth novel and, if I recall correctly, a best seller, the local library did not have it. Nor did any of the other libraries in the library's interlibrary loan network. So then I did the looking for a used copy. Turned out used copies for sale were scarce, too, and the ones I found were priced higher than I felt like spending. I finally decided to step back from the obsessive need to do the list in the order the prize was awarded and moved on to 1999, Michael Cunningham's The Hours.

As usual, I knew nothing about the book before starting to read it. The cover made it clear it had been made into a movie -- even I recognized Meryl Streep -- but I didn't recall ever seeing the film. I'm pretty oblivious when it comes to cinema and had no recollection of a movie that it turns out was both a critical and financial success. According to The Google, it made tons of money and resulted in an Oscar for Nicole Kidman. 

Small digression. I find it intriguing that beautiful actresses, no matter how skilled they are, seem to get tapped for awards when they take on roles that erase their physical attractiveness. Kidman suffered through long sessions in the make-up trailer thanks to the prosthetic nose and other enhancements designed to make her physically resemble the author Virginia Woolf. (The Younger Daughter had seen the film and said she didn't realize it was Nicole Kidman until she saw the credits.) The following year Charlize Theron won an Oscar for her portrayal of Aileen Wuornos in Monster, a role for which Theron gained 30 pounds and shaved off her eyebrows. Of course, male actors do it, too, like Matthew McConaughey for The Dallas Buyers Club. He lost over 50 pounds so he could realistically portray someone suffering from AIDS.

Back to the book.. . . As is true for most of the Pulitzer winners I read, my knowledge of either the book or the author was basically nonexistent when I picked it up. My initial reaction was relief that it was a modestly sized trade paperback and not something with the physical heft of War and Peace or Kristin Lavransdatter. Both of which I enjoyed reading, but they weren't Pulitzer winners. The hefty Pulitzer winners have not been nearly as readable as anything by Tolstoy. If a Pulitzer winner looks like it would make a nice solid doorstop, I don't see that as a good sign.  

The Hours offers vignettes from three different women's lives: the author Virginia Woolf, a fairly young stay-at-home wife in late 1950s Los Angeles, and a middle-aged lesbian in New York City in the early 1990s. The three women are tied together by Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf is in the early stages of writing the book, she's working out plot points in her head. The L.A. trad wife is reading Mrs. Dalloway, and the New Yorker was nicknamed Mrs. Dalloway when she was in college. Her first name is Clarissa, the same as Mrs. Dalloway, so the nickname made sense at the time. Now, 30+ years later, she's not as sanguine about it as she was in her 20s. 

I have never read Mrs. Dalloway so I have no idea how the descriptions of the three women match up with themes in the book. I do know about Virginia Woolf's life (and death) but I have never read anything by her. I'm not sure why. Woolf is a feminist icon so maybe I should feel a little guilty about not knowing anything about her actual work. Then again, if she'd been published in one of the genres I have an addiction to (mysteries and science fiction and fantasy) I might have read her but then she wouldn't be the iconic author she is remembered as. 

So, having approached the book with my usual level of blissful ignorance and feeling cautiously optimistic ("How bad can it be? It got optioned for a movie."), how was the actual book? Brief summary: Definitely readable but thin. As noted, the novel offers slices of life, basically one day each, for the three women. The first chapter kind of threw me for a loop -- it's a description of Woolf's suicide in 1941 -- but then the frame shifts. In Woolf's case the narrative jumps back to a summer day in 1923. She's thinking about her next book (Mrs. Dalloway), preparing for a visit from her sister Vanessa, trying to persuade her husband to move back into London proper instead of being stuck in a dull suburb, and worrying about her own mental health. She apparently suffered from headaches so severe they triggered hallucinations. 

The book then jumps forward in time to a day in the life of "Mrs. D," the middle-aged New Yorker. She's running errands, shopping for fresh flowers, fussing about the health of the friend who gave her the Mrs. Dalloway nickname, and remembering incidents from back when she and the friend were young. He's now a well respected poet who's just been awarded a prestigious prize so Mrs. D is planning to host a party celebrating his accomplishments. She's worrying about the guest list (did she inadvertently invite someone Richard wouldn't want to see?), worrying about her 19-year-old daughter's friendship with a feminist activist, worrying about life in general. One odd little bit of business is while she's at the florist she notices a film company is set up down the block. There are a couple trailers for the actors, one of whom is reportedly a major female actress. She wonders if it could be Meryl Streep. Given that Meryl Street plays Mrs. D in the film, that struck me as an interesting coincidence. 

As for the party Mrs. D is stressing about, in the end other events cause its cancellation. 

The Woolf and Mrs. D chapters are reasonably interesting; the trad wife in L.A. was more of a slog. Not surprisingly, it's the thinnest sections. She's young, has been married for a few years, has one child (a boy) and is pregnant again. She is a passionate reader, has always had a reputation as a book worm, and given any sort of a choice she'd rather read than do anything else. She's also suffering from massive insecurity. She worries that she's doing a bad job as a parent, she throws out a cake because the frosting isn't perfect, she worries that she's lost herself. She feels sufficiently unmoored that she brings her 3 year old son to a neighbor to be watched while she drives into the city and gets a hotel room for a few hours so she can have a quiet place to read with no other obligations. Is this nod to A Room of Her Own? (One of the multiple Virginia Woolf novels I've heard of but never read.)

I'm sure book clubs had discussions centering on questions like "What is the theme of this book?" I have no idea. Maybe it's that we all live in our own heads too much and worry about stuff it's not worth worrying about?  Bottom line was The Hours is readable. Michael Cunningham can write. Can he write at an Edna Ferber or Upton Sinclair level? No, but good if not great beats quite a few other Pulitzer winners. On the usual1 to 10 scale, it's a respectable 6 or 7. Better than average and not work to read.

Would I recommend it to other readers? Yes, with the minor caveat of warning them not to be put off by the description of Virginia putting rocks in her pockets and walking into the Ouse in the first chapter. Cunningham must have realized a drowned woman wouldn't have much to say or think about. Virginia breathing in 1923 is a lot more engaging than a very damp Virginia drifting in a river 

Next up on the list, assuming a copy of American Pastoral doesn't drop from the sky, a collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. 

They call me Mr. Cribbs

This is Charlie Cribbs, the orange asshole who decided to adopt us a few months ago. He was living next door but after his favorite human landed in a nursing home Charlie started spending more time at our place. 

My cat Beelzebub was Charlie's bestie. Charlie shadowed Bubba for several years. He adored Bubba. I think it's probable Bubba was the only cat Charlie ever met outside his immediate family (mother and littermates). I know cats can wander amazing distances but I'm not sure just how far Charlie ever ambled because cats are not nearly as common up here on The Rock as they were a few decades ago. Back in the '70s the only neighbors who did not have cats were the households with inhabitants severely allergic to cat dander, like several of the S.O.'s cousins. Now the people who do have pet cats are the exception. No active farms around either so no barn cats. Lots of dogs, but very few felines. Given how much time Charlie spent hanging around our house over the course of several years, I don't think Mr. Cribbs ever succeeded in finding any other examples of Felis domestica.  

In any case, the first time we saw Charlie he was still kittenish. He was probably about 8 months old at the time and had the most amazing tail. He's a long haired cat so of course his tail was fluffy. Nothing notable about that except there seemed to be enough fluff for multiple cats, not just one. It was like he was a 5 pound cat with a 20 pound tail. He's still fluffy, but the tail is more in proportion with the rest of him now.

Charlie apparently wandered over the hill when he got old enough to want to explore beyond his front yard and realized Bubba existed. Cats are surprisingly social. Feral cats will form colonies. Even unneutered males get along with a lot less fighting than one would assume. Charlie met Bubba and it was like, Dude! Once Charlie and Bubba became best buds, Charlie hung out at our house a lot. There were times when it seemed like Charlie was on the porch every day and other times several weeks would go by without him coming around.

Then Charlie's human experienced a CVA severe enough to put him in a nursing home. Family members were making sure the cat got fed, but no one was living in the house. Charlie actually likes people so it was not a good situation for him. I talked with one of the neighbor's adult daughters about rehoming Charlie. The Plan was to make sure Mr. Cribbs was up to date on shots and healthy in general and then place him for adoption. We'd just foster him for awhile. 

Right. And pigs will fly. Mr. Cribbs obviously isn't going anywhere The little orange bastard has decided we belong to him and he's not likely to change his mind, not when being an orange cat means he's got rather limited neural processing capacity to begin with. 

I know there are a lot of jokes about orange cats not being the brightest but I am wondering if the jokes are true. Charlie is the first cat we've had that can't figure out how a pet door works. We put a cat door into the bathroom door because in an RV the best place for a litter box is in the bathtub. The cat door is to provide access for the cat but still allow the bathroom door to be closed so the cat box odor isn't quite as noticeable. Bubba had no problem with cat doors. Charlie does. We keep shoving him back and forth through the door but he still hasn't figured out he can push it open himself. I guess his one brain cell really is fried. 

A disquieting thought

One of the recurring themes regarding the current debacle with Homeland Security in Minneapolis has been that the big problem is new recruits. Everyone knows Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a massive hiring campaign going on, complete with bizarre ads that look like they've been lifted straight from the Third Reich, so the collective assumption is the Big Problem is poorly trained new recruits. When an ICE agent murdered Renee Good there was lots of confidence that it would turn out the agent was a newbie, an inexperienced rookie who had been rushed through an extremely superficial training program.

Except it wasn't. Turned out the man who murdered Good had 18 years experience with Customs and Border Patrol. He was about as thoroughly trained as it was possible to be. He shot an unarmed woman basically because he believed could. He believed he would suffer zero consequences on the job. No review, no administrative leave, he thought it would be business as usual, perhaps a commendation from his supervisors. 

And then Alex Pretti got shot in the back multiple times while being pinned face down to a sidewalk by half a dozen ICE agents. More inexperienced trigger happy rookies? Nope. Once again the shooters had multiple years of experience. 

These two shootings have me thinking a rather uncomfortable thought: all three men have worked for years along the Texas-Mexico border. How many dead mojados are out there in the sagebrush? How common is it for CBP and ICE to eliminate processing paperwork by dropping illegal immigrants in the desert rather than apprehending them and dealing with filling in forms? Maybe it was so easy for Good and Pretti's killers to shoot a couple of unarmed people because they already had lots of practice. 

CBP has had a shit reputation for decades. It's known for corruption and brutality. But what if it's even worse than we thought? 

Welcome to Wag the Dog

Does YamTits really believe stealing Venezuela's oil will make the Epstein files go away? Or is he assuming this is just another grift he can manage to get away with?

Years ago I read a book called, if I remember correctly, The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight. It was about a group of incompetent New York gangsters. If those guys were around today they'd be in the Trump administration. The Maduro fiasco is yet another example of Trump minions (and Trump himself) thinking that cosplay is all it takes. Planning? Considering what to do besides providing news media with dramatic footage of things blowing up in Caracas? Not in their skill set.

I have been wondering just what they planned to charge Maduro with. There was a lot of blustering about a cartel. Rubio designated said cartel as a terrorist organization a couple months ago. Turns out said cartel does not exist. The "cartel" was a nickname South American journalists had coined to describe the loose collection of corrupt officials and businesses that were taking advantage of the system in Venezuela to enrich themselves. No actual organization, no coordinated narco trafficking, Just a conspiracy fantasy. 

Then when you toss in the overall incompetence of the current crop of U.S. Department of Justice attorneys you know that any Maduro trial will be a shit show of stupidity of epic proportions. Does Court TV still exist? I smell a ratings boost. 

As for more evidence that the whole escapade was meant as a squirrel and not to cause serious regime change in Venezuela, the only change is that Maduro is gone. Maduro's vice president is now president, the Maduro administration remains intact, and other than about 80 people being dead (killed in the attack on the Presidential home) nothing has changed in Venezuela.

At least it's not snowing here

We have been in Arkansas for about 3 weeks. It feels longer for no apparent reason. As planned, we're at Stephens Park near Mountain Pine. It's been quiet, which isn't particularly surprising when it's December. There have been a few days when we're the only campers. Today it's unusually busy: four out of the nine sites are occupied. 

Thanks to a friend of a friend who used to work for the Corps of Engineers at Lake Ouachita and knew it was possible to manipulate recreation.gov to get more time on a site than the regulation 14 days, we're not going anywhere until sometime in January. More importantly, he knew that during the off season (now) that park rangers aren't going to care about long stays unless a site starts looking like Walter White has set up a lab.

The trek down here was Not Fun. We wound up spending an extra night at the Normal, Illinois, Love's RV Spot because of high winds. According to the weather reports, the wind was gusting up to 60 mph. High profile vehicles (e.g., Class A motorhomes) were advised to stay off the road. Given that the wind was rocking us pretty good where we were parked in the RV Spot we had zero desire to venture out on the Interstate. 

We'd stayed at the Normal RV Spot before. According to Love's web site, the RV Spots were designed in collaboration with KOA. They're a good choice for RV-ers who just need a spot for one night, although I guess it wouldn't be bad for someone who needed to be in that area for longer. The drawbacks, of course, are it's neither cheap nor quiet. I did enjoy watching the semis merging on to the I-55 or I-39 (the Normal RV Spot is right at the intersection) but there was definitely a lot of traffic noise. On the positive side, you're walking distance from the Love's store and whatever fast food restaurant is with it. Not that we felt much like walking anywhere with winds consistently gusting in the 30 to 40 mph range. 

We froze in Normal. Skippy has a good furnace but even with it running close to nonstop it was cold. Skippy is not a 4-seasons camper. The beast leaks heat like the proverbial sieve. We froze the first few days at Stephens Park, too, when temps were dropping below freezing at night, but then got smart: electric blankets for the beds and a second electric space heater. If we have two electric space heaters going, one on each end of Skippy, the furnace doesn't run nearly as often. It even feels downright cozy at times. We still go through propane faster than we'd like to, but we're no longer shivering. 

After freezing in Normal we treated ourselves to a night in a motel in Pocahontas. It was interesting. Thanksgiving Day and the motel was full of duck hunters. Dudes in camo and carrying multiple long guns. Duck hunting has always struck me as a lot of work for not much reward, but there are worse hobbies to indulge in. 

I'm not sure just how much ambling we're going to do with Skippy this winter. The S.O. does not enjoy driving the beast and it gets shit mileage. Although shit mileage is typical for motorhomes, especially Class As (they're about as aerodynamic as a large brick), so that's not a good reason for not ambling. I'm more sympathetic to the not fun to drive feeling. I know it's possible to reserve at least an additional month here at Stephens Park so maybe I'll do that as a just-in-case the S.O. makes it clear Skippy isn't going anywhere soon.

I had been a bit concerned about Mr. Cribbs. He came close to being feral by the time he chose to adopt us. He wasn't used to being confined, especially in a fairly small space. As it turns out, he's like most cats. All it takes to keep him happy is a full food dish and a choice of places to sleep. When he's awake he does like fantasizing about the squirrels he can see through the windows but he doesn't bother hanging out by the door and demanding to go out. Because he was allowed outside for almost 5 years we are careful with the door. We know he'll make a break for it if an opportunity presents itself even though he no longer feels the need to go looking for love. Just squirrels and birds. 

Life goes on

Although it is definitely a lot weirder than it used to be. I haven't been blogging much lately because all the weird-ass fuckery is a little overwhelming. As an atheist it feels odd to say this but I'm starting to hope the Christian version of Hell (aka eternal damnation) is real because there's a sizable crowd of Trump enablers who deserve divine retribution. Although I'd settle for seeing them on trial at the Hague. 

Once again I'll blame Reagan. Reagan re-defined government as a problem and taxes as theft rather than the dues we willingly paid to live in a decent society. He normalized homelessness: I never saw anyone sleeping on steam grates or someone panhandling with children until the Reagan administration. 

So what have I been up to other than avoiding listening to the news? Quilting, knitting, puttering in the yard, doing some container gardening, reading, the usual. Getting ready to be snowbirds. The S.O. and I have campground reservations in Hot Springs, Arkansas, later this month. It's a Corps of Engineers facility so here's hoping it's still open two weeks from now. Federal campgrounds are kind of hit or miss during this shutdown. My optimistic hope is that if they do close it will trigger a notice and refund from recreation.gov but who knows? 

I'm hoping it stays open. It's a place we've been before. We spent several weeks at Stephens Park with the 5th wheel a couple years ago. It's on the Ouachita River just below the Blakely Dam near Mountain Pine (hometown of radio personality Bobby Bones, whoever he is)(Mountain Pine is a really sad little town; the humongous sawmill closed a decade or two ago and the town effectively died). The town is depressing but the campground is nice: only 9 sites all with full hookups. It is snowing here today so Arkansas is looking good. 

It just hit me. I have no photos from Stephens Park, which is a bit odd for me. I thought the resurrection ferns on the trees were cool so it's odd I never immortalized them through technology. I liked the layout of the campground, too. Lots of space between the sites. Usually I do at least one photo of the camper as set up. Maybe this year. . .

We will be using Skippy, our vintage (1993) Fleetwood Bounder. It's a Class A. We've camped in the U.P. and northern Wisconsin with the beast but no long road trips yet. The farthest drive was from here to Hurricane River, about 150 miles one way. No issues, unless you count the abysmal mileage typical of a Class A. The best it did was about 7 mpg. There must have been a strong tailwind that day. 

It's a bit odd. Skippy is huge compared with our previous RVs and I do appreciate the space . . . but the 5th wheel felt cozier. We still have McGee. We talked about selling it after we acquired Skippy but never got around to advertising it, and now we're thinking we'd rather sell Skippy and keep the trailer. We do need to find a new (to us) pickup to tow McGee. Our F350 diesel needs the high pressure oil pump replaced. It's an expensive time consuming repair and one the S.O. cannot do himself. 

The S.O. talked with an experienced diesel mechanic. The guy said he'd done high pressure pump replacements. It took about 12 hours and he hopes to never do one again. Given that the pump alone costs over a grand and 12 hours of labor would add at least another $1500 we're inclined to take the mechanic's advice and watch for the price for scrap iron to get higher. The truck still runs but is sluggish so towing anything with it isn't a good idea. We're planning to truck shop in Arkansas. If we succeed we'll put Skippy up for sale in Hot Springs.

And now I need to get back to figuring out what needs to go in Skippy and what stays here. 

Aging

 Lost in the Bozone had a post recently on getting older.  This song seems to fit.

I thought I would miss it

Turns out I don't, at least not much.

I speak, of course, about the local historical society museum. I was a volunteer for 13 years, Treasurer for 12, and museum manager for 9. I truly enjoyed most of it. I'm sufficiently obsessive-compulsive that I actually liked accessioning donations and inventorying the thousands of uncataloged artifacts and documents that had been accumulated over the 50+ years of the historical society's existence. About the only volunteer chore I disliked was being a docent. I am not a people person. 

If anything,I am pretty much a total introvert - I fall so far into the psychotic loner quadrant on the Meyer Briggs type inventory I'm almost off the grid entirely - so making small talk with random tourists is not my idea of fun. But I could do a decent welcome to the museum spiel and answer questions so I managed. My favorite days, naturally, were ones where I got to write "Slow day no visitors" in the daily log. No visitors meant other stuff got done.

And then one of the newest members decided I was moving too slow on sucking up to the rather skeezy self-described millionaire who was doing lots of bullshitting about the piles of money he planned to donate in exchange for the Society building an addition to house his personal ancient artifacts collection. This was in May. At the time the only thing the dude had donated was words. Nonetheless, a couple members had convinced themselves that if the museum kissed the dude's ass more enthusiastically some sort of magic ATM would materialize and life would be wonderful. To quote a great philosopher, Bugs Bunny, "maroons." Or, even better, Robert Heinlein, TNSTAAFL. There's no such thing as a free lunch. 

Bottom line was they decided it was foolish to have a Treasurer who was actually consulting with an attorney and advising the Society that maybe sucking up to someone who (a) wanted us to commit federal tax fraud and (b) had up to that point donated nothing tangible wasn't a good idea. Why they decided kowtowing to the asshat residing 2000 miles away made sense is a mystery, but then when you combine greed and gullibility grifters win. So in mid-May I got voted out. And I walked away. 

It was a bit odd. I really did think I'd miss it. Turned out it was analogous to a bunch of banal phrases: flipping a switch, closing a door, etc.  I didn't miss it. If anything, I felt relieved. I got my life back. 

I do get asked occasionally about current happenings in Baraga. I am moderately amused by some of the stuff going on with the museum -- the poor saps have been working their butts off trying to empty the storage building ASAP because the fraud dude told them in mid-June that construction would start in early August. Right. And squadrons of flying pigs would arrive to harass the geese grazing on the museum's lawn. 

At the time the new president of the Society made that statement about groundbreaking, the group hadn't even seen the architect's concept drawings, but fraud dude living on the other side of the country tells them groundbreaking is a little over a month away? And they're all so frelling stupid they reacted like it was actually going to happen. It is now the end of August, they're still working hard doing stuff they really didn't need to do, but they're all too wired on fantasies of mega donations to do a reality check -- any construction project has a distinct process, a linear progression from initial idea to concept drawings to construction blueprints to calling for bids to applying for the multiple permits required to groundbreaking. Even if fraud dude had given them a shit ton of cash this summer, it would be next year before any construction began, assuming any contractors capable of doing a commercial building project still had openings for 2026 on their schedules. 

One of my friends who has been a Historical Society member for over fifty years is worried good stuff is being discarded that should be kept. And she's probably right. The people doing the emptying are no doubt tossing stuff that should stay and carefully keeping stuff that's not important. Shit happens. The membership demographic is retirees. Several past active volunteers succumbed to dementia, and they did some odd things before other Society members intervened. I found some bizarre things while going through the attic and the storage building (a half eaten sandwich carefully encased in bubble wrap, for example). Visitors occasionally asked about things the museum supposedly had but I never did find, like a complete Michigan state police officer's uniform and the mailboxes from a small village post office. Maybe that's the inevitable truth with small, local museums. Constant turnover in volunteers and also constant shifting of skill sets, cognitive abilities, and priorities. Something the membership thought was super important in 2015 is seen as worthless in 2025. Sad but predictable. 

I advised my friend to remember all the good stuff she did as a volunteer. She's voiced her concerns, she did her best, and anything that happens in the future is not her problem. It might be depressing to witness poor choices being made, but the Museum should survive. And even if it doesn't it won't be because of decisions she and I made.