The Blaisdell Blog

The Republican Convention is over and my husband is slowly starting to unclench his masculine jaw.   Next week, when we start gavel to gavel coverage of the Democratic Convention, our rolls with be reversed.   I’ll be the one chewing the inside of my mouth (followed by the carpeting, the cabinetry and probably the tires on the car).   We have rules in this house that essentially turn it in to a demilitarized zone in the heat of the political battle.   No snide comments, eye rolling or long-suffering sighs when the other side is talking.   Don’t bring up a topic if you don’t want to hear the other side.   They are sensible rules for us, and, of course, we vote—even if we just cancel each other out.               Of course, there are times when we do vote for the same person, or issue.   I’ve only voted against one tax increase in my life, and that was for a county recreational fee for wh...

Do you know who Gene Cernan is?   The Commander of Apollo 17, he was the last human being to walk on the moon.   It was December 13, 1972.   Not just my grandchildren, but my daughters don’t know what it is like to see live footage of an American walking the surface of the moon—let alone Mars, which is where we should be by now.   In so many ways, this country has lost its focus and our desertion of space exploration is probably the least cited but most telling.   Space exploration is knowledge for the sake of knowledge.   Pure science.   That which only a society sure of itself seeks.   Our whole lives have been linked to the space program.   My family tracked Sputnik across the sky and worried about the Russians beating us into space and what that meant to the cold war.   Our nation’s history, from Alan Shepard’s first suborbital flight in May of 1961 to Apollo 11’s landing on the moon, July 20, 1969, has been our history. ...

Bainbridge Colby, born in St. Louis but a thorough-going New Yorker, was a handsome man.   He was tall, ramrod straight, with an oval face, sandy hair and wide, heavy lidded eyes.   Proving that sin and sensation were not invented in the age of social media, Bainbridge had an interesting personal life.   He married a lady 20 years his junior (Anne Von Ahlstrand Ely) a month after getting a divorce in Reno , Nevada from his wife of 34 years (Nathalie Sedgwick).   The dated wording of a 1929 Time Magazine article states that the divorce included a, “…$1500-per-month agreement to keep her from ridiculing him in her writings.”   There certainly is material for a modern novel here, but it all sounds like business as usual in modern America .   When not finding happiness with a younger woman (and who is to say that it wasn’t both true and deserved happiness) Mr. Colby was Mark Twain’s attorney and a close and trusted associate of Woodrow Wilson.  ...

After spending days in a hot lather about politics and the people who live in those exotic environments I had maxed out on anger and angst.   I was ready for a day of pure tourist adventure on vacation here in the Olympic Peninsula.   It was more than a good day.   It was a day that I needed.   We are currently in Forks, a town made famous as the home of Stephanie Meyers, Twilight, series of books about vampires, the girls who love them and the super wolves who hunt them.   In truth, Forks is a timber town.   The timber industry has taken a big hit in the recession, but it still lives.   A lumber mill was the first stop.   This mill has kept itself running by doing three things.   First, it is light on its feet.   Every man there could do more than one job.   They floated from task to task as the day required.   No one was idle.   Second, the company looks for work from a multitude of wholesalers and lumber users...

Every political party has someone that is a perpetual embarrassment to them.   Unfortunately, Todd Akin is more than that.   He is out to punish all the women out there who are trying to fool us as to whether they were or were not raped.   Evidently the litmus test for this atrocity is whether or not the lady becomes pregnant.   In this man’s mind, a positive pregnancy test equals no, “legitimate” rape.              Folks, I was active in Missouri politics for decades.    I started volunteering for local campaigns in 1968.   I have stuffed envelopes, looked up phone numbers and gone door to door for candidates running for everything from school board to governor of the state.   I was on the Missouri speakers’ bureau for President Reagan and worked with the White House advance team for the first George Bush.   I know Todd Akin.   On this man’s best day he has nothing beyond a...

My husband and I travel each summer in a large motor home.   It has a 127 gallon tank that needs to be filled with diesel fuel that is running close to $4/gallon.   The price we pay for the fuel is the price we pay for the fun.   But with numbers that big, smart people have a budget.   We have a budget.   Next year we were planning on going to Newfoundland .   But the same budget that got us from Texas to the Olympic Peninsula won’t get us to Newfoundland .   So, if we cut Newfoundland from the plans, but use the same money we used this year for a trip around the Great Lakes , have we cut money from the budget?   Or saved money?   Or just made a smart and necessary decision?             For the intelligent among you, here endeth the lesson.    Of course, I am talking about the current crop of equally offensive and misleading statements being made by both sides about Med...

Trivia question:   Whose face is on the $1000 bill?   Answer: Grover Cleveland .   These large bills were last printed about 70 years ago.   They were used by banks to conduct large money transfers before the days of electronic banking.   There are about 165,000 still in circulation, but I doubt that you will ever see one.   How high do you think a stack of a million dollars would be in $1000 bills?   No fair looking ahead—guess!   One million dollars worth of $1000 bills will be just 4 inches high.   What about using those same bills to make a stack worth a billion dollars?   Will it be 10 inches?   Four feet?   Forty feet?   Wrong.   One billion will be 364 feet tall.   That’s half as tall as the St. Louis Gateway Arch!   Now for the money question.   How high would one trillion dollars worth of $1000 bills be?    Try 63 miles!   That is considered the altitude at which outer space ...

John Nance Garner (D-Texas) was the last member of the House of Representatives, nominated as a Vice President, who was on a winning ticket.   It was the 1932 election and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was his President.   Garner is probably best known as describing the Vice Presidency as, “…not worth a bucket of warm spit [No, “spit” is not the word he used].”   Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), will be the next Representative, nominated as Vice President, on a winning ticket.   Paul Ryan will be a much better Vice President than Garner; but then, Mitt Romney will be a much better President as well.               In selecting Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has gone deep.   He chose not a boutique choice, nor a main-stream choice, certainly not a, “flavor of the month” choice but a strong, smart, savvy man, with a degree in economics, who knows what this campaign is really about.   Some people will say that Ryan...

Campaigns cost a great deal of money.   The reason, of course, is television time and access to modern day technology.   Personally, I would love to have all television advertising for political causes, people and votes made illegal.   The populous would have to learn about issues the old fashioned way, by reading and listening to candidates and their surrogates speak in forums.   I would, of course, let television give time to candidates for debate and stump speaking—heck how many repeats of crime dramas and sitcoms do we need to see?   But that isn’t going to happen; so campaigns cost a great deal of money.               As a result, politicians have to raise money.   In May of last year, President Obama was in Austin , Texas for a rare visit and some serious purse jingling.   His pattern was predictable.   He held a much touted college campus event where the poor students got in...

If I have any remorse over the death of Wade Michael Page it is that he can not be used as a lab rat to find out how a human being turns himself into a foul beast.   Page was rightfully shot to death on the site of his attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin .   As with all pusillanimous shooters of innocents, I think their only social value is to be studied to find out what screwed them up past the point of humanity.               We have photos and articles showing Page trying to act the big shot in front of disgusting images of White Power and Nazi flags.   Page displayed the usual pattern of the perpetually ineffectual loser who is attracted to any movement that can layer on the manhood which nature seems to have left out.   He was a washout in the Army, had a criminal record that includes DUI’s and petty mischief.   He didn’t have a steady job, other than the marginal existence of a rock band. ...

If I have any remorse over the death of Wade Michael Page it is that he can not be used as a lab rat to find out how a human being turns himself into a foul beast.   Page was rightfully shot to death on the site of his attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin .   As with all pusillanimous shooters of innocents, I think their only social value is to be studied to find out what screwed them up past the point of humanity.               We have photos and articles showing Page trying to act the big shot in front of disgusting images of White Power and Nazi flags.   Page displayed the usual pattern of the perpetually ineffectual loser who is attracted to any movement that can layer on the manhood which nature seems to have left out.   He was a washout in the Army, had a criminal record that includes DUI’s and petty mischief.   He didn’t have a steady job, other than the marginal existence of a rock band. ...

We are back in the States after spending five great days with friends on Vancouver Island in British Columbia , Canada .   That means we were watching the Olympics with a Canadian twist and I was cheering them on just like the Americans.   As of this writing, Canada has 10 Olympic medals.   I don’t differentiate gold, silver or bronze here.   Frankly, when you are competing with the world’s best athletes, and the difference between rankings is measured in one one-thousandth of a second, or tenths of an inch, or hundredths of a point, any medal is a remarkable achievement.   But Olympians were not the bravest people I found evidence of in Canada .   That distinction was held jointly by a group of Korean War veterans, and some modern women.   I learned about the Canadian men at their memorial on Radar Hill in the interior mountains of Vancouver Island .    They were the 2 nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (2 PPCL...

There are a handful of items that need addressing, but do not warrant an entire column.   So, today is a series of Butler Bits.   Topping this list is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s current effort to promote breast feeding by making formula difficult to get, and laced with paperwork.   Now, don’t get me wrong.   I nursed both my girls and encourage every new mother to do the same.   It is the best route for baby, mother, and society.   But it amazes me that the same people who are all for, “choice” when it comes to aborting a baby are the same people who want to put hurdles in the way of mothers who choose formula over nursing.   What is more, the hospitals are not to dispense formula without giving the mother a lesson on what is wrong with formula and what is right with breast feeding.   Isn’t this the same kind of intelligence requested by opponents of abortion (counseling, sonograms, etc.) but loudly denounced by those who are pro ab...

I am an unabashed Anglophile.   While three of my grandparents are immigrants (two from Norway , one from Germany ) my Grandfather Blaisdell is part of a long line of Englishmen who came from the Lancashire, England area in 1635.   Whether because of Ralph Blaisdell’s heroic journey to this country, an affinity for a country which was pivotal in creating the American character, or simple good taste I have spent a lifetime loving all things British.   Our tradition of representative government comes from England .   Great Britain used its hard won world prominence to advance science and society.   Several of my favorite authors are British.   You can’t get better nonfiction writing than Simon Winchester; Edward Rutherfurd writes great epic fiction; Ken Follett, J. K. Rowling, J. R. R. Tolkein, Agatha Christie, Jane Austin and all of the Brontes, have all brightened hours of my life.     The list is endless and we haven’t even started on Shakesp...

Sally Ride, America ’s first woman in space, died on Monday of pancreatic cancer.   She was 61 years old.   The woman was a class act from the word, “go” and deserves her place in history.   She is the kind of woman that I want my granddaughters—and grandsons—to use as a role model.               Ride, who at age 32 was also the youngest astronaut to go into space, had a PhD in Physics from Stanford University .   She was the complete package: smart, pretty, a nationally ranked tennis player, with a work ethic that compelled her to succeed at every level.   She was also the child of Presbyterians who lived their faith.   All of these things helped create a woman who had her eyes on the stars and her feet on the ground.   It also, evidently, gave her the grace to work past the stupid, sexist, pandering questions that accompanied her unique position as a female astronaut in the ‘80’s. ...

The world is too heavy today.   Let’s take a walk on the light side.              When I think of light banter, there is nothing that comes to mind quicker or easier than the battle of the sexes.   I was put into mind of this the other day when my husband walked through the house and said, “So, we need all the lights on?”   That is his way of telling me that our house should have all the overhead lighting of the Lascaux caves.   For some reason, probably associated with our Neanderthal beginnings, men always want the lights out and the heat turned down.   Women, on the other hand, assume that if the electric bill has been paid that the lights should be on and the ambient temperature should be comfortable.    It is the inherent difference between having two sensible, “x” chromosomes and being stuck with just one, “x” and a truncated version called a, “y.”      ...