The Blaisdell Blog

Everyone has a favorite holiday.   Mine has always— always —been Thanksgiving.   As a child it meant the best food, unremitting talk, games and play.   As an adult it means ever so much more.             In my years of making Thanksgiving dinner I have come to believe that Thanksgiving is a feminine holiday.   I don’t mean that it isn’t enjoyed equally by both men and women.   I certainly don’t mean that the deeper meaning of Thanksgiving isn’t appreciated and revered equally by both men and women.   I just mean that the essence of the holiday is feminine.   It is a day centered on two things, the meal and the meaning.   These are feminine strengths.               Men are great cooks, but they aren’t likely to plan a meal for a week, get the baking done the day before, set the table with matching candlesticks and get up at 4...

I became aware of CLIMB Wyoming this summer when my husband and I were attending the FMCA convention.   The Family Motor Coach Association held its annual convention in Gillette , Wyoming , and CLIMB was the designated charity for the event.    After a presentation of this program and its results, Tom and I gave generously.   CLIMB is a private, nonprofit organization that trains and place s low-income single mothers in careers that successfully support their families.    They have been given one state grant, but use no federal money.   How are they doing?   Look at this:   Category                     Before CLIMB                       After CLIMB   Monthly income         ...

4583 uninsured people could be given Cadillac insurance plans with the money conned from Medicare by one small clinic here in Texas .   Unfortunately, no one in a position to notice, care or act on this fact gives a damn.   Let me tell you what is currently making my teeth itch. This may take some time.   I am so livid with indignation that I frequently have to stop and sip some very good scotch to get my nouns and verbs in sync.                  The Lower Rio Grande Valley is not a metropolis.   This story shows a microcosm of what is happening all across this country.   In McAllen , Texas this story is vexatious.   Magnify it to include the entire nation and it changes to a deadly wrong that could very well poison this entire nation.    If you want to know why I don’t trust the federal government to manage 16% of the economy, just look at what they allow (nurtur...

What happens when your family gets together?   Some families make music.    Others dance, fish, play cards or softball; a few argue and we all eat.   In my family we seem to have only one skill—we talk.   Boy do we talk!   If there are eight people in the room there are ten conversations going on and you better be able to juggle three at once or people will consider you, “stand-offish.”               We learned this skill at our parents' knees.   Mom was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, Dad was a Democrat and politics was served at every meal.   The only rule was that you had to keep one foot on the floor.   The lessons have stayed with me.               I love politics.   In its purest form it is a chance for humans to exercise their better angels.   True, we seldom see it, but the opportunity is there....

My mother once was head accountant for Stapleton International Airport in Denver , Colorado .   Mom was a busy, cheerful woman who could travel farther and faster on high heels than any woman I ever knew, then or since.   Another thing you need to know about my mother is she was mad (mad!!!) about Lawrence Welk.    No, I can’t explain it.   Yet, on a weekly basis, we all had to sit down in front of the television while Mom watched the only program which didn’t put her immediately to sleep, the Lawrence Welk Show.   One day word reached mother that Mr. Welk had just flown in and was in the airport.   Mom wasted no time in heading to baggage claim.   She had a bead on him in a heartbeat and walked up to personally welcome him to Denver .   She then proceeded to ask him a question that had been preying on her mind.   “Why don’t you play as many polkas as you used to?”   Welk told Mom that he still played lots of polkas and th...

I am Wendy Davis’s worst nightmare.   On the surface of things, I should be one of her, “sure” votes.   While certainly no Democrat, I am a feminist of the first water.   Being a generation older than Ms. Davis, I was fighting her battles when she was in training pants.   Here is what she needs to know, but doesn’t. I marched for Civil Rights.   I fought for the Equal Rights Amendment.   I was the first teacher in my district to teach the full term of a pregnancy and did so under considerable duress; the first to seek a principal’s certification; the first to act as picket captain during a teachers’ strike.   I have beaten my head against one glass ceiling after another for my whole life. I did NOT do all of this so this self-serving, opportunistic woman could launch a run for office by enabling the Kermit Gosnell’s of this world and killing viable babies in the womb! While Ms. Davis and her minions would love to paint me as some, “Pro-Life” ...

There is a photograph on the wall of my sister’s home that is both precious and haunting to me.   It is a restored, blown up and framed photo of my father on his way to the South Pacific during World War II.   It was taken by an Army photographer from a small tender craft as my Dad’s ship, the S.S. Monterey, left harbor.   In a happy accident, the picture was taken with a close up of Pfc. Frank G. Yatckoske front and center.   He is in the midst of a host of soldiers leaning over the rail, all smiling and mugging for the camera.   My father is leaning out from the rest, his arms braced on the rail of the ship, his smile—a straight, wide grin filled with mischief—is set in a young, lean, handsome face.   Every man on that ship seems filled with enthusiasm, bonhomie, even a sense of adventure. Those poor young men didn’t have a clue.               I don’t want to contemplate what happened t...

In 1985 and again in 1986 Evelyn Adams won the New Jersey lottery.   Her total winnings were $5.4 million.   Evelyn (who admits to having a gambling problem) blew through both wins and now lives in a trailer.    She sounds like a soul mate for William Post who won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania lottery in 1988 and within one year had lost it all and was $1 million in debt.   He now lives on social security and food stamps.             Ken Proxmire of Michigan won $1 million and five years later was in bankruptcy.   Janite Lee ( Missouri ) won $18 million so it took her eight years to end up in the same boat.   William Hurt and Charles Riddle ($3 million and $1 million, respectively) both ended up not only broke, but selling cocaine.   At least Post and Proxmire tried investing in family businesses; Hurt and Riddle decided that starting a curb side addiction kiosk was their enterpr...

On this day in 1517 a man started a revolution.   To you, this is Halloween; to me it is Reformation Day.   Of course, if you are not a Lutheran, Reformation Day may not mean quite as much.   To the general public, Martin Luther is often depicted as a brooding, personally troubled man.   Pictures of him show a square-jawed German with a grim mouth and a furrowed brow.   Growing up in a Lutheran home, I was sure he had been a brave but angry man, nailing his 95 Thesis on the door of the church in Wittenberg and starting a religious revolution.   Even his decision to enter the priesthood, a vow to St. Anne if she would deliver him from the fury of a sudden storm, seemed to be born of fire.                Luther, who was not a simple monk, but a highly educated theologian, is a frequently misunderstood revolutionary.   He profited from being the right man at the right moment.   Luthe...

The ginkgo tree is a tall, hardy tree of Chinese origin.   It has been around, stinking up the environment, for over 250 million years.   We have abundant fossils from the Permian epoch of the Paleozoic era, all showing the distinctive fan shaped leaves of the ginkgo.                The ginkgo’s wrinkled, coral colored, fruit smells like vomit or dog poop (there’s a pleasant choice!), the interior seeds, however, are described as tasting just as good as edamame!   My contention is that the step from vomit to edamame is a small one.   I don’t care how popular these boiled-in-the-pod soybeans are, they taste like crap.   They are popular only if you are opposed to any food that contains calories, fat, carbohydrates or good taste.   They are also popular among those faddists in the community who are sure that eating something obscure makes you an epicure.      ...

My book club will be discussing The Passage by Justin Cronin in November.   This book is a well written and intriguing example of post-apocalyptic science fiction.   The Passage examines what happens when an unexpected, “effect” proceeds from a well-intentioned, “cause.”             There have been other, “before and after” moments in history, and I wonder if we are approaching one now. The Toba Catastrophe is such a time.   About 70,000 years ago Mount Toba , a super volcano in Indonesia , destroyed itself in an eruption of truly Biblical proportions.   The debris Toba ejected into the upper levels of the atmosphere altered not just the climate, but the population of this world.   This eruption brought about a decade long, “volcanic winter.”             The result of this entire climatic catastrophe was a serious die-off of our evolving ...

While smoke, mirrors and thunder sticks are being used to distract our attention from the walking nightmare called, “business as usual” in Congress our national debt has now reached $17 Trillion dollars.   To give you some clue as to how big that is, let me simply tell you that $10,000 in Benjamins could be carried in your pocket, $1 million could be carried in a plastic grocery bag, a trillion dollars in $100 bills would need acres of pallets, each stacked with bills taller than the average man (that would be 5’10” plus an extra 8” for their pride).     There is really no explaining this kind of money, but we can look at the percentages and try to make some sense of it all. There is a line in The Music Man that says, “There are burglars in the bedroom while you are fiddlin’ in the parlor.”   Well the media is fiddling with every issue pertaining to our latest governmental fiasco (at the behest of the Congress who wants attention on anything except themselves)...

When I want to find sensible, day-to-day, philosophy I seek out my Jewish friends.   When you truly are God’s chosen people, and are then persecuted for it, it leads to an interesting perspective on the world.   Which leads me to the commentary, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.”               We have had a, “lock-step” summer.   Everything was planned to the last turn of the tires on the RV and the calendar has been stuffed with every possible contingency and then some.   Our last adventure before heading back to Texas was a cross-country run from Olympia , Washington to St. Louis for a baby shower honoring our soon-to -arrive grandson.      The first day out I was experiencing blurred vision for distant objects, making me dizzy (I am blond!).   The second day I had pronounced double vision which started with objects in the distance but rapidly deteriorate...