entertainment from elderly Republicans
Re: Nunes and the Russian investigation

John McCain:
"And so, it’s turning into a centipede like these things have a tendency of doing. And another shoe seems to drop every few days."

Lindsey Graham:
“The problem that he’s created is he’s gone off on a lark by himself, sort of an Inspector Clouseau investigation here.”

Thanks to Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post for pointing them out.

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reminder to self about listening to one's body
The 3/4 marathon is in six days. A week ago, during a 17 mile training run, I did something untoward to a portion of a calf muscle. It wasn't clear until Tuesday that it was an injury rather than just soreness. Lots of rest, self-massage, walking carefully rather than rushing. Now it feels much better, but the likelihood of re-injury this soon is very high. I should not throw my poor body to the wolves and try to run for hours on Sunday. In fact, in my imagination, my body is saying the opposite thing: "We got away from those wolves last week. This time, it's your responsibility to avoid them to begin with, rather than having to run away." There are other races as part of a set - I'd like to participate, so maybe I could switch to the 5K.

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separation of powers
Trump has said that the two choices for the House today are pass the Kill them all bill (AHCA) or just stick with the ACA. He's moving on. It's my impression that it's not up to him. If the ever-worsening bill (they removed protections for pre-existing conditions overnight) doesn't pass (I am still glumly presuming it will), people could start over next week. The president has to sign a bill when it's done, but making legislation is legally up to the Congress, not the folks in the White House.

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what's a terrorist?
I admit that I spent the better part of an hour yesterday afternoon just staring at cable news, including the BBC, watching the mostly repetitive coverage of the person armed with SUV and knives who mowed down pedestrians on the Westminster Bridge in London, smashed into the gate, and then got out and stabbed a police officer to death. Clearly his goal was Parliament, but it's hard to know right away, because people did the US thing and shot him, leading to his death. Investigators are planning to interrogate his laptop and phone, though, and have arrested a bunch of people who knew him The anti-terrorism laws in Britain permit suspending many individual rights. I asked Arthur how many times he thought I had walked across that bridge. He said lots. I said dozens? He said to leave it at lots. In my case, the most recent was almost precisely five weeks prior to yesterday's attack (Wednesday, 15 February, but probably more like 3:45 than 2:45). Could've been me, is all I'm saying. I would guess that all the carnage on the bridge was "collateral damage," because if his goal was to smash through the gate, he lost a bit of momentum with every body (and curb) he hit. I am always startled by the *number* of people one vehicle can break. In Nice, it was a bigger truck, but the number of casualties was much larger, because the crowd seemed to be the target. In my circle of acquaintance, there have been several people killed or permanently changed or eventually fine, but each was in a one person at a time crash.
On the other hand, a suspect yesterday surrendered to police in NYC after his photo had been spread in what is currently called second degree murder, but may be changed to a hate crime. James Harris Jackson traveled from Baltimore earlier this week with the intention of murdering black people in a big city, in order to make a statement. He stabbed Timothy Caughman with a sword. TC apparently died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, or at the hospital. Why isn't this front page terrorism news? It was carefully reported in the NYT, but it counts as local news there, and was in the NY/Region section.
Also, as Twitter reminded me, the murder in Yorkshire of MP Jo Cox last June was a terrorist attack (not called that in the news, presumably because the guy was white, and in fact called her a "traitor to white people"). Their categorization doesn't make any more sense than ours does.

Update: Jackson will be tried as a terrorist in NYC.

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Protecting the church neighborhood?
The crux of the story:
>>Ralph Shortey, a 35-year-old conservative Republican who has a wife and three young daughters, surrendered to authorities on charges of engaging in child prostitution, transporting a minor for prostitution and engaging in prostitution within 1,000 feet of a church.<<

This happened in Oklahoma. I am not going to talk about hypocrisy, but I wonder what prompted people to specifically make it illegal to engage in prostitution close to a church. If it's illegal everywhere, it should already be illegal near a church. Was this some sort of response to the clergy sex abuse scandals?

Whole article here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/oklahoma-senator-found-with-teen-in-motel-could-face-charges/2017/03/15/95ad7492-09e6-11e7-bd19-fd3afa0f7e2a_story.html?utm_term=.af9cf17cf1ec

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not using my education
In 2010, I was awarded a BS in Exercise Physiology. There were courses in making exercise programs for people as part of the major. Also explanations of concepts like "specificity of training" and so forth. I also have studied some of the physical therapy techniques to help fix people up who have sports-related injuries. It's been a while, but I remember much of it. Maybe I am just a good example of "do what I say, not what I do." Months ago I registered for a 3/4 marathon because I thought the idea was entertaining, and came up with a preparation plan. My actual training has been inconsistent, to say the least. I have been mostly a slacker about the strengthening exercises. I haven't been good about baseline mileage, although I have done most of the long-distance runs. And at the beginning of March, I suddenly decided to add lots of meters on the rowing machine, due to the Concept2 March challenge. Cross training in theory is not a bad thing, but I was rowing 5000 meters even on high mileage days. On Sunday I decided that it was harming me,and convinced myself to cut that out until after the race, at least (< three weeks!). I noticed yesterday that the sidewalk on a hill on Mass Ave near home was clear and dry, so I spent 45 minutes going up and down the hill, rather than trying to run a partly iced-over circuit that was more mildly rolling. Today I woke up wondering why I was so sore, until it dawned on me that I haven't previously followed-up on the planned hill training, either.

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on the alert
Due to the blizzard watch for Tuesday, the French Toast alert level is high. http://www.universalhub.com/french-toast
https://twitter.com/FrenchToastAlrt
We have a box of frozen french toast. Does that mean we're prepared?

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A vigil of one
There are shockingly many disabled people murdered by their caregivers.
The links here are mostly pointing out that media coverage tends toward sympathizing with the perpetrators, rather than the victims:
http://www.thismess.net/2017/03/murder-of-disabled-people-by-caregivers.html
The national day of mourning was Wednesday, but I saw a notice of a vigil in Harvard Square (Brattle Square) today from 1-3PM, I think. I got there at 1:30, and saw nothing that could be it. Just people passing by, and the usual homeless folks not passing by but not mourning, either. Did they meet on time, decide it was too cold, and go somewhere else? This is my vigil substitute, I guess.

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All Russia, all the time
I am intrigues by the constant Russia fixation in the news. I am more worried by Trump telling Putin that he (DJT) is planning to get rid of the new Start treaty than I am concerned that the Russians somehow rigged our election. They didn't need to rig our election - the domestic gerrymandering and voter discrimination policies did that.

Arthur is going to Russia in the fall, to attend a conference and give some talks. He presumed that I would want to go along. I can understand the presumption - I spent a month in the USSR in 1976, on a camping tour with a bunch of students (and an Intourist guide, and very specific itinerary). It would be nice to compare and contrast, and a good brain exercise to go back and try to re-learn the language - I can get words from time to time on the news, but couldn't even make simple conversation. Still, I think Trump is hoping to start WWIII, and I am hesitant about overseas travel at all, much less to a country with which we are already sort of in a proxy war, in Syria.

On the other hand, it's like there is some sort of conspiracy to keep me interested. I know one of the bell ringers at the Danilov Monastery near Moscow (wouldn't have been possible in 1976 - the bells were in Cambridge, at Lowell House in Harvard). I just heard an interview on the radio with Anya von Bremzen, discussing the nostalgia for Soviet-era food, even though better is now available. There are apparently retro-stolovaya places (cheap cafeterias for workers - we ate in them almost every day). I need to make up my mind soon, because getting a spouse visa (really) will take months.

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Enchanted 10K part two (more accurately, staying at WDW)
To maximize profits, the races that are run on the Disney properties take place before the parks open to the public. The registration is quite high, but the runners have to be off the course (and out of the parks, as well as off of roadways) well before opening time. So we had to be on the way into the corrals by 5 AM. All the Disney property hotels have a shuttle bus service to the various theme parks, but there were extra ones added on for the races. This seemed much more practical than trying to stay elsewhere and fight traffic that early, so we booked a room at the All Star Music resort, the lowest priced of the lodgings (still not cheap, but not shocking), rather than staying out of Disney's area. Until recently, Arthur's parents lived about half an hour away, so our trips to the Magic Kingdom (not since almost twenty years ago, I guess) were all day trips from their house. The place was fine. There was a guitar shaped pool, and all the buildings had enormous music-related decorations on the outside (and themed shower curtains in the rooms). We had expected just a simple room for our money, but got a suite, most of which we didn't use. The food in the cafeteria was also OK, but there were hardly any vegetarian choices - Arthur had a veggie burger and I had mac & cheese. The only other option would have been pizza. If we were staying for days on end, we'd have to buy groceries and use our kitchenette, I guess.
The only thing I bought at the expo was a tiara headband(with elastic. Made in Brooklyn, I was told). I didn't wear it while running. It's on my dresser now. Arthur won a box of rice at one of the vendor booths.

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Disney enchanted 10K part one
I may write more later, but here's a short note to say that it was fun. I didn't dress up, but I did visit one of the official photo stops along the route
http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/lauradi7/4732924/22501/22501_100.jpg
This was Elena of Avalor. I had never heard of the character (she is usually animated, and is fairly recent), but hers was the first stop, and I guessed the line would be shortest - some people were still waiting to begin running at the time I reached her. There were seven corrals, I think, and I was glad to be in the second one, rather than spending all that time watching other people start.
I ran for the first three miles, more or less (except for photo stops with Elena and the mile markers), but once we hit Epcot, where I had never been, I turned totally into a tourist and mostly walked and stopped to take photos. Slowest 10K time ever.

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Is this how rumors start?
I spent a while last night following the twitter reaction to the photo of Kellyanne Conway sitting with her feet under her on a sofa, texting, while the representatives of the Historically Black colleges and universities were meeting with the president in the Oval Office.

There were a number of white guys (not to put a fine point on it) online who couldn't see the problem. My feeling is that it would be OK to put feet on one's own couch, or that of family members if you knew it was OK, but definitely not in THE OVAL OFFICE, especially during an official event. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that well-educated POC are invisible to Conway, so it may have seemed to her that just she and DT were in the room, but it's still inappropriate. Unless maybe she *does* think she's at home. Once my reasoning got to that point, I thought: "She's sleeping with him." This is not evidence-based in any way, but what other explanation can there be? Not something their respective spouses and children would like to think, I presume.
(raised in a barn would be incorrect, according to wikipedia, but apparently she did spend her summers picking blueberries).

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A metaphor for what?
In Carrie Vaughn's "Martians Abroad," a group of high school (more or less) students have attended a performance in the historical theme park that Manhattan has become two hundred years from now. A brother describes it to his sister:
"About gangsters and a floating craps game. Everybody sang songs when they got emotional."
"And what is a floating craps game?"
"I think it's a metaphor."

Without mentioning the title, they have clearly seen "Guys and Dolls." Possibly this is an idea the author has been trying to get off her chest since *she* was in high school. Arthur and I are pondering what it could be a metaphor for? The only thing I came up with was that it's about not being able to commit (one of the other main themes of the play). The fact that it is permanently floating, rather than housed in a particular place, being a metaphor for the marriage avoidance of two of the players?

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Is the White House "Green Acres?"
Fifty years ago, there was a popular TV show (a spin-off of "Petticoat Junction") that featured a couple who moved from Manhattan to a rural area, with much protest from the younger Eastern European immigrant wife. Unlike Melania Trump, character Lisa Douglas did move along with her husband
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umS3XM3xAPk
DC isn't currently the yellow-fever swamp it was in the late 18th century, but it's not 5th Avenue. I am not one of the people who feels sorry for MT - she and Donald seem well-matched, if her suit against the Daily Mail is any indication. Her plans for being first lady apparently were to start a business that fed off her fame as the wife of the president
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2017/02/07/melania-trump-daily-mail-libel-lawsuit-first-lady-profit/97590284/
In an interview during the campaign, she said her first lady project would be to work against cyber bullying of children. No evidence of that yet. White House tours have been held up because she hasn't selected a staff (which makes no sense to me - I'd think the tours would be their own little sub-business, with permanent staff. Like the butler). Not willing to move to the backwater.

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Could Elizabeth Warren be a Disney Princess?
Alert readers may recall that I am scheduled to run in the Enchanted 10K in a couple of weeks, part of the Disney Princess race weekend. I had many changes of mind about dressing as General Leia Organa, down to acquiring a suitable shirt and getting the fabric ready to make the vest, but decided that that many warm layers would be foolish when the temperature at race time is likely to be in the 50s (cool for standing around; warm for running). I went back to the idea of wearing my blue & green Sparkle skirt with some sort of accessories to make me be a vague wood nymph, or water creature, or something as yet unspecified. Then the Elizabeth Warren/Coretta Scott King/Mitch McConnell thing happened. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a52937/mcconnell-silence-warren/
The Trumps may not understand capitalism (if Nordstrom was losing money by stocking Ivanka's products, of course they should dump her), but the internet does. As expected, within a few hours, there were many choices for a t-shirt with some variation of "Nevertheless, she persisted." I ordered a green one. I don't know if it will arrive in time for the race, but if it does, can I claim to be Elizabeth Warren, warrior princess? Disney has made a series of youtube ads of girls who are inspired to do impressive things by watching the Disney movies with impressive female characters. It seems to me that EW would be a good role model of that sort, even though she probably wouldn't be willing to shill for the corporation. It's a useful slogan for a race, anyway, even if I decide that I am just dressed up to be myself.

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it's up to us
At immigration rallies, there have been a lot of signs that riff on Martin Niemöller's famous "first they came for" quotation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
These say "First they came for the Muslims" and continue "not this time" (some with added obscenities). And yet, most of the people in the US, however they feel, probably wouldn't go out to protect someone.
This is worth remembering, with anguish:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-airport-inhumanity-20170206-story.html

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Death, or not
It's Holocaust remembrance day today (as opposed to Yom Hashoah, which happens after Passover). A lot has been made of the fact that the press release from the White House today is sadly remembering at the very same time that Trump is denying entrance to refugees. On Twitter there has been a very pointed series of tweets all day from dead people - passengers on the St Louis, who were refused admittance to the US during the Holocaust. It must have been in planning even before the coincidence (?) of the day, because people's names from the manifest are linked with the camp they ended up in, and I don't think that kind of research could have happened at the last minute. Or maybe there's a list somewhere, and it just required inspiration and typing. An example:
My name is Blanca Trödel. The US turned me away at the border in 1939. I was murdered in Auschwitz.
The twitter handle is @Stl_Manifest if you want to see lots more, many with photos.

It's the 50th anniversary of the fire that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. There was a commemoration today at Cape Canaveral, and a new museum exhibit. Item of trivia, from Betty Grissom's memoir - they had a lemon tree in the yard. One day (not the fire day), Gus took a lemon in to work and hung it on the capsule. Argh.

For the second time in a few months, I happened to be visiting my parents when we received news that one of their cousins had died. I went to the memorial service for my mother's in the fall, and the visitation for my father's on Wednesday. I had seen some of the maternal relatives a few times sort of recently, but on my father's side, I figured that I hadn't seen any of them for 28 years (my daughter was a baby at the last family gathering I recall). I heard a story that was new to me - at some point during the Depression, after my father's father had died, my father and his mother lived with her brother. According to one of the elderly surviving cousins, they enjoyed visiting the household, because Uncle William was such a good piano player.
My own parents keep on. My mother told me the joke one of her high school friends made - "I read the obituaries, but I never see anybody I know, because they are all younger than we are." There is some statistic about that - once you get to be some old age, for every day you live, your life expectancy goes up by more than a day (I guess because you have lived past most of the things that kill people young).

One of those things that kills people young is apparently the flu. I know someone who died this week of complications from the flu (I looked it up on the CDC website, and the options for dying from influenza seem wide-ranging). She was healthy beforehand, so it isn't just people who are immunocompromised in some way. I'm actually more friendly with her mother, who is in the knitting group, but I had known her for years. Her son was in the choir with my daughter. She was in her 50s. Poof - gone.

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Here we go
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-immigration-exclusive-idUSKBN1582XQ

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March adjacent
I didn't really participate. As mentioned previously, I did the usual things of the day. On the bus to Alewife to get to Tai Chi, someone got on in Lexington Center and brightly said "Lots of marchers." I told her that is seemed about half and half to me, marchers and 8:30 Saturday bus regulars, but as we got closer to the station, the proportion tipped. At Alewife itself, there were long snaky lines to the ticket machines and the restrooms (which were originally designed for just T personnel and are never adequate, or clean). No train in the station. Eight minutes wait. People kept arriving from buses and the parking garage. I had been quite eye-roley about the pink pussy hats, but once I saw hundreds of them, I was filled with regret about not trying to make one. Nobody likes being left out. Got on the train at about 9 AM. I remarked to the marcher next to me that she would be early. Got to Davis, late for class, but stopped to take a photo of the statues wearing pink crowns. I emerged from Tai Chi at 10:15. By that point, the T folks had already opened the gate, letting people in, to speed the crowd. The overhead sign indicated a train every few minutes, but the platform was so packed that I turned around and took the 87 bus to Lechmere. Again, a fair mix of marchers and shoppers, but by the time we got to the Green line, it seemed to me that almost everyone was on the way to the march. Train absolutely packed, but I managed to get off at North station and got to ringing practice only a little late.
My stereotyping conclusion was that people of retirement age decided to travel early, to avoid lateness, and younger people traveled closer to the starting time, hoping for the best.
I had received a call from a non-marching friend suggesting that we run along the bikeway from Bedford, so I dropped my plan to stop by the march after practice, and just went home, worrying about finishing our run before dark (which we did, barely). T much less crowded outbound (1:15 PM), but I did see someone I know (who is about 80, I suppose), who was discouraged about not being able to hear any of the speakers, so she decided to head out. We rode the Red Line together.
I am pleased at the high numbers everywhere. I am a little envious after hearing/reading the reports of friends near and far (I guess the farthest away person I know is eegatland, in Scotland, but I was pleased to hear the story of the mother of an acquaintance, who attended the march in St Petersburg, FL. As she rolled along in her motorized wheelchair, she enjoyed hearing "you go, girl"). I don't know that it will make much difference. All of us need to do much more direct action, but it was a fun start. Quoting Bill McKibben, who tweeted:
"Credit where due. Trump said he'd make American great again, and today it seems pretty darned great!"
While I'm quoting tweets, though, it has been rightly pointed out that there have been lots of other peaceful marches in which the police we not so friendly. Tens of thousands of white women weren't likely to be brutalized the way protesters of color probably would have been.

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pondering transportation
I am planning to do my usual Saturday morning things (Tai Chi in Davis Square, ringing at the Old North Church) and then maybe stopping by the March for a few minutes. The MBTA web site does not mention any extra service, and I am wondering whether everything will run smoothly, or the opposite. I have in mind the day that there was a duckboat parade for the Bruins. That must have been summer of 2011. The bus that normally takes half an hour to Alewife took at least double that, because traffic was crawling, and when we finally got to the Red Line platform, it was like photographs of the Tokyo subway, without the professional people pushers. As for tomorrow, I support the right of peaceable assembly, but I would rather not be inconvenienced by it. Should I presume to have to walk miles to get home, as on some Independence Days of old, when it was impossible to squeeze into a train?

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