The Daily Peeve / Rant

[catherine]

As I've said here before, Tradd, I love love love my hybrid. It's a Prius, and you are right about that car in cold climates and snow.

That said, we spoke with our mechanic a while back and he said that the car make that he sees the fewest repairs on is the Toyota, so I think your consideration of a Toyota RAV4 hybrid is a good choice. I am not giving up my Prius, because I don't have to drive much, and in the winter, I can drive DH's truck if the roads aren't good enough for the Prius to handle.

[Tradd]

That’s good to hear!

[Tybee]

Tradd, great choice! We would have gone with a Toyota but could not find one used--people don't like to let go of them, I guess. Was going to go to Carmax as they will send the cars to your Carmax for a fee depending on where the car is. Then we drove by the Subaru Forester, our other choice, and bought that on the spot.
It was hard to find a used car--very competitive market.

[Tradd]

Tybee, a Crosstrek or perhaps an Outback is my other choice. Plenty of diving friends drive “Scubarus.”

[happystuff]

Like catherine's, our mechanic told us years ago that Toyota and Honda cars were the ones to get. We've been lucky and have been able to find used.

[iris lilies]

Argh!! Small town newspapers! Tradd with her journalism training would not believe what I am reading in my local weekly newspaper.

I have mentioned a contentious issue on my block, a group home for a recovering alcoholic men. The federal government has mandated that it must be here. I am on the losing side. I accept it. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, but as a veteran of many of these neighborhood issues in the city of St. Louis, I am accustomed to losing because the rational citizens who pay taxes are not the ones that prevail in the Fed’s Crazy Town World.

Anyway – I’m seeing the most astonishing coverage of this issue in our local newspaper. Last week one of their information sources was a Facebook thread that has since been deleted. This newspaper actually made screen prints of the Facebook comments and published them. OY VEY. I’ve never seen anything like that. I wrote to the newspaper as well as the proprietor of the group home to tell them I thought the group home was poorly represented in this article, and I urged the proprietor to write his own article and submit it.


Small town newspapers be that way – write your own article and as long as it’s grammatical, and not too inflammatory, they will print it verbatim.

So, I had to write to the freaking newspaper to actually defend my opposition. How messed up is that? I did it because I don’t see how we can have a reasonable community dialogue about this group home without having simple facts, known by everyone.

Today’s newspaper edition brought another strange article—this time it was 3/4 reasonable in presenting the viewpoints and facts from our town’s City Attorney and Mayor, but also, the last 1/4 was pretty much conjecture and name calling of one of my neighbors. This is a single article mixing factual reporting and opinion.

WTH.

I guess this is small town stuff at its finest. Laughing ruefully here. I guess it is entertaining?

[Tradd]

I’m in choir at church. All acapella, no instruments, services are entirely sung or chanted (Eastern Orthodox). It’s not hymn 123 time. We have binders with maybe 8-9 music settings per part of the service. Binders have alphabetical tabs on sections and each music selection is numbered in each section. Director produced a guide sheet each Sunday/major feast day. I sit in the back row due my knees as standing for 1:45 is not possible. I’ve been a choir member for 20 years so I know the music well, actually could put a service together myself, and have no problems with the book. A couple of older women are at the music stand next to me. They cannot figure out how to make their way through the music binder even with the guide sheet. Someone else sets up their book with the few loose sheets of music in the proper place. Doesn’t help. They’ve been in choir for years and still don’t seem to get it. The director sees them constantly bothering me for “where are we in the book?” When I’m gone diving they muddle through somehow. Well, director and I have hit on a solution. She scans all the music into one pdf and she has that on her personal iPad. No big binder to flip through (she’s a college music teacher by profession). She and I hit on the solution of her sending me the pdf she directs from so I can have it on my own iPad. The reaction from the women at the stand next to me should be interesting. I literally cannot sing a service without being asked where we are every new music setting. We think they’re not making any effort as I was willing to help, but the questions have gotten too intrusive. I can barely concentrate on singing. I’ll report back how this works out.

[catherine]

Sounds very annoying, Tradd! I think you're right--they don't want to work at simply following a guide. They'd rather ask you and interrupt your concentration. I hope your new solution works out!

side note: I used to sing in the choir years ago, and I really loved it. I'm sure your congregation loves your choir's music--it's a wonderful contribution.

[flowerseverywhere]

A neighbor who just moved here to Florida is a retired reading teacher of 39 years. She went to the local school to find out if they needed volunteers. One of their requirements was she bring no books into the school as they need to only use “approved” books, but no one could tell her what the process was to get books reviewed or approved.

she met with the first grade teacher who told her she has no personal books in the classroom because it’s too risky to be accused of being a groomer, racist or “woke”.

I can’t imagine an elementary classroom not full of books.

how did it come to be so much about the politicians, religious groups and education hierarchy instead of experienced and caring teachers.

[iris lilies]

A neighbor who just moved here to Florida is a retired reading teacher of 39 years. She went to the local school to find out if they needed volunteers. One of their requirements was she bring no books into the school as they need to only use “approved” books, but no one could tell her what the process was to get books reviewed or approved.

she met with the first grade teacher who told her she has no personal books in the classroom because it’s too risky to be accused of being a groomer, racist or “woke”.

I can’t imagine an elementary classroom not full of books.

how did it come to be so much about the politicians, religious groups and education hierarchy instead of experienced and caring teachers.

I agree, this is awful. But it is an extreme reaction to an imagined extreme reaction.

Things will calm down after a while. My state has always* had a provision in law about providing pornography to minors; the recent tweak specifies visual materials as being problematic. It wouldnt be hard to provide books in this environment. Want to be extra cautious? Avoid the genre of graphic novels.

And none of the books in yours and my elementary school classroom in days of your, and probably in the classrooms of your children, would be problematic.

* always…meaning for decades.