The Blaisdell Blog

My husband’s sister, Kimberly Sue Wynn, died on May 1.   Kim was born with every card in the deck stacked against her.   Born of unknown parents, on an unknown date in an unknown place in South Korea any reasonable person would say that she had no chance for a good life.   It was not unheard of for unwanted Korean babies (especially girls) to be left on the roadside to die from exposure.   Indeed, a Korean child who did not have a Korean man declare himself as father did not even have citizenship.   But Kim’s mother made a critical choice, and Kim was placed in an orphanage.   The orphanage offered her life, though it would be a half-life at best.   She would be given marginal care, marginal food, marginal education.   She would be trained for a life of servitude, with virtually no opportunity for marriage or a family of her own.   But once again, fate took a hand. Half a world away, a family that embodied the best this country offers, decided to add to their family by adopting

  On April 12, 1861, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Ft. Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay, beginning the American Civil War.   Three months earlier, Benito Juarez had been elected President of Mexico.   Like Lincoln, Juarez inherited a country with serious, perhaps fatal, problems.   In Juarez’s case, however, the problems were primarily external. In 1861, Mexico was a country in financial ruin.   It owed money to all of the major European powers and, smelling blood in the water, they were circling the drowning nation.   When Juarez defaulted on the loans France, Britain and Spain all sent their ships into the harbor of Veracruz to wrest something, anything, of value from the destitute government.   Britain and Spain were satisfied with negotiated settlements, but France’s Napoleon III saw a chance to claim some semblance of imperial grandeur by annexing Mexico.    Napoleon III (nephew of the great Bonaparte) was certain he could assure a quick win (and therefore h

    A reader of my local paper recently pointed out, with proper disgust, a banner flying in public using the phrase “f--- Biden.”   The word was spelled out and the vowels were in place.   I have seen similar stickers on cars.   I have seen them on T-shirts.   Evidently the nugatory complaints against the current administration do not lend themselves to serious or substantive discourse, so vulgarities are all the pro-Trump rabble have left.   It diminishes both their standing and their argument—or lack thereof.                           All of this puts me in mind of the shortest job tenure of which I know.   That position belongs to the fledgling local news anchor, A. J. Clemente.   He was fired after his first-ever words on Bismarck, North Dakota’s NBC affiliate, KFYR, were, “f---ing sh-t.”   Clemente was immediately suspended and later fired.   Clemente’s meager defense seems to be that he didn’t know his microphone was on.   Do they not teach these journalistic wannabes