...Ya jus' gotta go to war in the unnerwear ya got on.
--Dolly
Now it's your turn...
Remember -- If I don't like it, it hits the bit bucket.
If you hijack my comments for purposes not consonant with my purpose for operating this blog, your post will be deleted, your membership cancelled, and your IP address banned.
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CGHill writes...
A remarkable woman indeed -- and we need many more such in the years to come.
Posted by CGHill on 02/19/10
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Joan of Argghh! writes...
Essays like this are an exposition on Solomon's observation that the house of mourning is where wisdom resides.
May you find comfort in her remarkable life and legacy.
Posted by Joan of Argghh! on 02/19/10
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Guy S writes...
You lovingly captured the vibrancy of your Aunt to share with all of us. Thank you sir! May she rest easy in the arms of God, and may the pain of your loss be lessened in the warmth of memories left behind.
Posted by Guy S on 02/20/10
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Kevin Baker writes...
Damn, Alger, my condolences. I know it wasn't exactly intended as such, but that was a fine eulogy. Thanks for sharing your aunt with us.
Posted by Kevin Baker on 02/20/10
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og writes...
My belated condolences too. Great vignettes of the lady, thank you for sharing them and keeping her memory alive.
Posted by og on 02/21/10
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Page 1 of 1 pages
Sometimes When Politicians...
SAY THEY'RE LAYING aside the burdens of office "to be with family," it's for real.
Baby Sister, the Senator, left a legislative session to rush home to the hospital bedside of our Aunt Chris -- our mother's older sister -- who apparently has had a stroke or a similar trauma. According to broadcast emails ("Sent from My Blackberry" ... how much bad news is being delivered this way these days?), it's not likely Aunt Chris will survive very long.
I know grief is for the living, but I can't help it. This world will be so much the poorer without Chris Story in it. As Sis put it, Aunt Chris was/is/has been a fiercely independent woman, ahead of her time. Back when Steinem and Friedan and the rest of the feminist icons were bitching about how bad their po' Ivy League asses had it, Aunt Chris was taking up a second (or third?) career as an architect and general contractor. This was before you ever saw the "first woman carpenter" or the "first female lineman" in news stories. She was bossing house-building crews and building some of the best homes in the county. Did it on sheer brass and competence. And she only had to ask a guy once to come on a second job with her.
It was her second husband -- Uncle Cliff -- to whom I have referred many times in these pixels. He was the underage kid who signed up for the Marines after Pearl Harbor and ended up landing with the First Marine Division at Guadalcanal. Who went to school on the GI Bill and wound up a boss engineer in the aerospace industry. Who has been an inspiration to me and who was closer than a surrogate father to Baby Sis. It says a lot about Chris that she could "catch" such a man.
We used to tease her about her foibles, now fondly remembered as gentle eccentricities that she joined in the teasing of herself on occasion. There's OCD and there's borderline, and there's over the border. Aunt Chris was over the border and over the top. But her house was always beautiful, immaculate, and comfortable. And, second hand from Mom, I learned a lot from her about how to keep house, even if you couldn't tell from looking at my current environs. Every tip I can remember was prefaced with "Chris says..." or "Chris has a trick with a hole in it."
She was thrifty before it was cool -- back in the go-go '60s. She would put out paper napkins at meals, and write people's names on them, to be reused from lunch to dinner and from one day to the next. We kids -- brats all -- learned early on to shred our napkins at a meal, so we could get a fresh one next time we sat down. I bet she figured it out. She was pretty canny that way, and had a way of cocking a knowing grin at you sideways when she caught you.
A lot of people in my life have died over the years. But few are as close to the core of who I am as Aunt Chris. For the next... however long ... I'll be mourning her and remembering that part of her life that touched mine.
A final story about her. Her real name wasn't Chris. Oh, I think she legally adopted it somewhen along the line. But her given name was Gertrude. Her brothers hung the name Chris on her, after Crisco, whose tag line in the '30s was apparently "Fat in the Can." And, rather than let it stand as an insult, letting them know their needling got to her, she proudly took on the name and made it hers, threw it back in their faces. There's a lesson in there for a lot of overly sensitive members in the congregation at Our Lady of the Perpetually Offended.
I'm sure she will shortly be casting a critical eye on the cleanliness of the Pearly Gates and taking St. Peter to task for the blots on his escutcheon.
Update: Chris passed at 9:30 local time on Thursday, at just about the time I posted this.
My name is Gabrielle Dolly and I approve the contents of this blog.
I'm little, but I'm loud.
All helicopters are black after midnight.
Yes, a broken clock is right twice a day, but it is still broken.
No, I don't want to live forever, but neither do I want to spend the rest of my life dying.
Screw feminism; celebrate your babe-ness.
If you've got 'em, flaunt 'em. And, Baby, I got 'em.
Get some on ya. More usually does the trick.
Yeah, I'm anti-war. Trouble is, the enemy isn't. So, what're ya gonna do? Bleed on 'em?
You look to me like somebody who actually believes that there's no such thing as a stupid question.
"Life's too short to box with stupid liberals. Trouble is: there ain't any smart ones."
Okay. Here's how this works: If all you got's a hammer, pretty soon, every problem starts to look like a nail. Folla? 'N' if all you've got is government, pretty soon every solution starts to look like oppression.
Beauty may be only skin-deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.
You may not be able to impose democracy on a country, but you sure as hell can impose socialism. Stop it!
Damned right I'm an enemy of the state. Aren't you? Why the hell not?
Just so's y' know: I didn't pick the fight.
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I don't PLAN on fightin' in a leather bikini with my midriff exposed and my boobs half hangin' out. It's just... sometimes a fight comes at you without giving you a chance to get all armored up. 'N' ya jus' gotta go to war in the unnerwear ya got on.
Cincinnati novelist Mark Alger is one of nature's noblemen, and one of the best writers on the Web. Treat yourself. --Francis W. Porretto
Mark Alger is a writer, who just happens to blog. And if you're not checking him out you're doing yourself a disservice. --Raging Dave
Mark Alger's Baby Troll Blog, whose look at life and the world around him, along with pithy comments from the effervescent Dolly, deserve to be on everyone's required reading list. --Guy S.
YOUR QUOTE HERE
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SIG-BLOCK QUOTES
"Society has no right to be unjust to a single one of its members, ... the whole society minus one, is not authorised to obstruct the latter in his opinions, nor in those actions which are not harmful, in the use of his property or the exercise of his labour, save in those cases where that use or that exercise would obstruct another individual possessing the same rights." --Benjamin Constant
"Individual liberty; Individual Responsibility." --Russell Means
"When you want to blather away into the ether, collecting the accolades and shunning the negative response, you're not advocating for speech to be free -- you're advocating for talk to be cheap." --Jane Galt
"A leftist idea can be recognized by three earmarks, It will be: 1)Founded in ignorance, 2) Focussed on irrelevance, 3) Engaged in wishful thinking. --Mark Alger
4) "And threaten use of the coercive power of the state to extract compliance." --Arnold's Corrollary (ed.)
"I could tolerate leftists if they had any coherent ideas for a better way to do things. But they don't. They cling stubbornly to failed brain-fart dreams that have been attempted over and over again with disastrous results, but they never learn. When better ideas come along, they simply screech and holler at them, then fling feces like the monkeys they are." --Acidman
"All the extravagance and incompetence of our present government is due, in the main, to lawyers.They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizen has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half." -- H.L. Mencken.
Just One Question Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons? --Joe Huffman.
The Jews in the Attic Test
I looked at all laws that restricted freedom with a view to the impact it would have in a worst case scenario of our government run amok. Will this law make it difficult or impossible to protect innocent life from a government intent on their imprisonment or death? ...I told them I called this test my "Jews In The Attic Test". Furthermore I told them that if it fails this test no further discussion is really needed, the law must be opposed in the most vigorous manner possible.
--Joe Huffman
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APHORISMS PASSED
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." -- Barry Goldwater
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"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." -- Thomas Jefferson
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"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government... -- Thomas Jefferson, 1776
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At the core of modern liberalism is the spoiled child -- miserable, as all
spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and
useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats. --P.J. O'Rourke
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[W]e're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with unalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of the killers, and no concession, bribe or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.
On the contrary, they target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence. Against such an enemy there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory.
--President George W. Bush
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THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. --Thomas Paine
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"How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual... as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of." ----Texas State Rep. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp
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One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that "violence begets violence." I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure -- and in some cases I have -- that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy. --Jeff Cooper
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The only sure way to get the money out of politics is to get the power out of government. --Mark Alger
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When Obama says he wants to "spread the wealth," you can be sure it's your wealth he's talking about, not his.
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Carry your gun - it's a lighter burden than regret. --Breda
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Only fools speak of "climate change" as though it were something remarkable or frightening. Climate is change.
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To all the hogs at the trough in DC: You don't get to waive my rights.
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In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. --George Orwell
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It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, "Peace, Peace!" -- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! --Patrick Henry
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Compromise, hell! That's what has happened to us all down the line - and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time? --Jesse Helms
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COMMENT: You know, it amazes me the stupidity of all your get-rich-quick schemes. They fail on one singular point: commerce requires trust. Your sneak attacks and unwanted turds-in-burning-paper-bags-on-the-doorstep comment spam portray an individual or organization who is willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get what he wants. Yeah. Right. I want to do business with somebody like that. And then you don't give any contact information except for HTML links. What makes you think anybody would follow those? Sorry, Bub. Not from this site. My readers aren't that stupid. Or that gullible.
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