RIP Carol Winker

During my Cayman era, I had the pleasure of meeting Carol Winker, a reporter for the daily newspaper. There were not too many reporters on island -- never mind women. Any newbies were spotted right away. We were a very, very small club - four or five in the whole country.

Carol covered the crime scene, and was incredibly adept at uncovering bullshit. She didn't mince words. Reminded me of another tough reporter who uncovers bulllshit regularly at the State House wonder who that is Katherine Gregg??I had started writing some stories which stirred up dust, she came up to me and said, "Well, at least you're not a lightweight."

Then she walked away. If I recall, she walked fast.

Carol also grew orchids - her garden was something else.

So was Carol.

Below is her obituary as seen in the newspaper where she worked her magic, The Cayman Compass.

https://caymannewsservice.com/2019/11/cayman-mourns-veteran-reporter/

Elizabeth Buffum Chace - Congratulations, Liz!

A bill honoring Abolitionist Elizabeth Buffum Chace has now passed the US House of Representatives and is heading towards the Senate.

I got a huge kick out of reading this, as I have a very s strong connection to Elizabeth, someone I lovingly refer to as Liz.

Some years back when I was Director of Communications at the RI Secretary of State’s office, I worked on a project that put me squarely in touch with this amazing, incredible Rhode Island icon.

At that time there was no image of a any woman at the Rhode Island Statehouse, never mind a Rhode Islander. I felt that was something very important, and after talking with the Secretary we decided to do something about it. The project became my "thing" and it took a year from start to finish. 

First we solicited names - and accepted nominations from all over the state. Once the names were vetted, ALL were included in the list of nominees. We wanted to make sure the project was a history lesson -- in which every woman's contribution was made public for all to read and learn.

Finally, we had a top choice -- Elizabeth Buffum Chace - and for two excruciating days three of us (the Secretary the head of RI Archives and myself) carried that name around in our heads. We had a giant photo of "Liz" which was unveiled with much fanfare and every reporter in town in attendance.

A sculptor was commissioned after another long search process and the image created. I recall going to the studio and seeing Liz come to life first in clay, then finally in stone. Liz did not arrive early -- the sculptor and I escorted her in at midnight the night before the big unveiling. I asked the security guard to open the main doors of the Statehouse for Liz -- no way was she going to make an entrance through the basement.

The unveiling was scheduled for a major Girl Scout anniversary during Women's History Month. We decided on a birthday party/unveiling and invited all Girl Scouts in Rhode Island. Well, some five hundred of them showed up! Girl Scout's headquarters was at a the bottom of Smith Hill and we arranged for a colonial drummer and a police escort as the girls marched up Smith Hill and into the State House.

As a result of this project, when little girls walk through the State House now they have an image of an incredible Rhode Island woman to admire.
And this not so little girl has some incredible memories.
Thanks, Liz. You rock.

DORIAN...And I Don't Mean The Painting

I've been cooped up in my apartment for the last several days glued to The Weather Channel and there is one single reason -- Dorian.

#Dorian is a hurricane. As a matter of fact, he will go down in history as one of THE hurricanes because of size, damage, and over all mayhem he caused. So far he has earned second place in terms of fastest wind speeds in recorded history.

Nice.

As of this hour,  Dorian is still wreaking havoc in his young career as a superstorm. For starters, he's spent a couple of days hanging out in the Bahamas. Those islands are pretty enough and anyone would want to hang out there. But Dorian is a storm, and for some oddball reason has not done the usual "storm" thing and whip through a location in a short period of time. Instead, Dorian has been hanging around the islands, refusing to leave.  Let's not say that Dorian had the audacity to become a Category 5 storm in the process.

I live in Miami -- and for those last several days that Dorian has been lurking in the ocean we residents of that city have been glued to our favorite media in hopes of finally learning when this behemoth is finally going to strafe the Florida coastline.

No dice.

After running around grocery stores picking up extra supplies (for some reason toilet paper seemed to be the thing at one store I frequented) South Floridians finally reached a saturation point. The stores got back to normal and traffic on city streets went back to its usual, raucous mess. The one difference is that all of the scooters had disappeared, apparently in a vortex of some kind.


Jim Cantore of The Weather Channel showed up in our backyard a couple of days ago. Not a good sign, people. Nope. Be careful out there.

Amen, and pass the mustard.

1776

So there I was at CVS picking up a few small items. Nothing out of the ordinary until the cashier told me the total amount -- seventeen dollars and seventy six cents.

Yep, 1776.

I was a tad stunned -- one of those randomly inexplicable life moments.

"Did you say 1776?" I asked the salesgirl. She looked to be in her twenties, wearing one of those  blue scrubs that the folks in the pharmacy section of the store wear. 

She looked surprised and checked out the register.

"Yes, it's 17 dollars and 76 cents." 

"Wow!" I said. "What are the odds of that number popping up as a sale?"

"What do you mean?" 

"You know, 1776." The girl stood silent as stone. It dawned on me that she might not know anything about the number in terms of its historical reference.

"Do you know what 1776 means?" 

The girl shook her head. "No, I don't. Is it a game of some sort?"

Again, I was stunned. I could not help myself. "Are you an American citizen?" I asked her. Hey, in Miami the likelihood of finding many people from other countries is incredibly high.

She nodded her head. "And you don't know what 1776 is?" At this point the chick looked really confused. I grabbed my small parcel and turned around, making my way towards the door.

"You might want to Google it, sweetheart. It's an important number for all Americans."

I wondered if the girl would bother to look up the number. I wondered where the girl had gone to school -- and how that school had not managed to embed that figure into her head. Let's not even consider how someone lives in the United States for over two decades and has no clue as to the birthday -- birth year actually -- of the land in which he or she lives.

Amen, and pass the mustard. 

Sundays Suck

I hate Sunday nights.

People squawk about Mondays being the worst day of the week, especially those who don't like their jobs. Hell, that has happened to me and I get it. On Monday you get up from a bed that seems more comfortable than it ever is -- and crawl out to begin the grind all over again.

But it's not Monday that provides the worst kind of weekday hell -- it's Sunday night. On Sunday nights you are forced to look down the barrel of Monday -- it's coming people, and you can't stop it. 


Sunday evenings are like when you are about to throw up and know for certain, no matter how much you pray to everything you consider holy, that barfing is in the cards. Drive that porcelain bus!

There's nothing you can do to fix Sunday evenings. TV stations take advantage and schedule major shows on those nights. Game of Thrones ruled Sunday nights. So did Sex and the City. And The Sopranos.

We all sat in front of the tubes because the networks played up to our collective ennui and made a bundle of money off each and every one of their viewers. Hell, a good TV show was way better than lying in bed trying to avoid sleep so that Monday would not arrive.

And in truth, Monday sneaks up on you and because you are befuddled you stumble around and somehow get yourself to where you are supposed to go because that is what Mondays bring out in all of us.

But Sunday nights are something else. We are told it's supposed to be a relaxing time, a period to recharge our batteries and get ready for the week. But come on, people, who are we fooling?

So let's admit it -- folks, Sundays nights stink. They are the worst part of the week. 

Amen, and pass the mustard,  it's Sunday night AGAIN.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus -- You Have Outgrown Elaine & You Deserve Another Emmy

A few days ago the latest spate of Emmy Award nominees were released to the public for our perusal.

And yes, there were the usual suspects we expected to overwhelm us this particular year, most notably Game of Thrones. I mean, really, who doesn't recognize the power of that series?

However, this year of all the female actors, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is at the top of the proverbial heap. No question.

We all remember seeing Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Seinfeld. She played Elaine Benis, a hyper-moving, hyper-talking funny chick who wore impossible shoes (those black and white bucks!) and a hair-raising hair line. Julia made Elaine mercurial, annoying, adorable and somebody we secretly wanted to have as a friend.

Then came Selina Meyer, the Vice President who wore fabulous outfits, slayed us with her wit and generally allowed Julia to stretch her acting chops even more than she had with Elaine.

Anyone who saw the Final Episode of VEEP watched Louis-Dreyfus morph Selina into the most horrific Presidential candidate anyone could possibly imagine. Selina out-bitched the worst bitches, turned on her friends, lied to her daughter, stabbed her long-time assistant in the back and well, did all the things many politicos do on their way up the ladder.

It was an acting tour-de-force to watch those last few minutes of the series. Now I hated Selina, loathed what she had become. I had rooted for her so long to reach the Presidency. And now that she had blurred so many lines to achieve her goal, I wanted nothing more to do with her.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a single hour subtly maneuvered Selina Meyer into the Oval Office by morphing her into a card-carrying politician with all the bad characteristics we have unfortunately come to expect from so many of them.

I vote for Julia Louis-Dreyfus to land a well-deserved Emmy this coming Fall. It's frightening to watch a television character snow a fictitious country into giving her the most important job in the United States, even as a fictional character. More frightening to consider which real-life person inspired Julia Louis-Dreyfus as she turned Selina into a monster. We can all learn a lesson from this.

Amen, and pass the mustard.

Tote Them Tiny Terrors

They are everywhere. You don't have to walk more than a few feet and you will spot one of these poor little things.

Dogs.

Okay, that's not such an unusual thing in most cases -- but this is a pack of puny pooches the likes of which I had never seen before.

Miami is a city of contrasts - and a place where many live in apartment complexes and high rises. Unlike life in the burbs this means reduced space and as such you learn to live with less, tote around less.  In other words, you downsize, and that's cool.

But in the case of pets, that's another story. Yes, those too are downsized -- but in a way that ends up not being terribly pleasant to the petite pooches.

Most of these Tiny Terrors (and yes I'm thinking of you Donna K.M. when I use those words) belong to women.

The cute critters are dragged at the end of a leash as the lady trots down the street staring at her smart phone. Meanwhile Fido or Fifi is doing his/her level best to keep up, little legs moving a bazillion times a minute. You can see them panting as they struggle, owner clueless to the Herculean effort the compact guys/gals are putting forth.

Worst of all are the heart-wrenching sights as the mighty-mites try to negotiate themselves over the curb, the puppy equivalent of Everest.

One solution appears occasionally in the form of a carriage, which the humans push along as the mini-mutt sits not walking at all.

But this is a stupid solution in my view.

Presumably, the reason behind the walk is for the dog to get some exercise. 

Putting it into a carriage seems to be counter productive. Perhaps the humans think they are being kind to the animal by stashing it into a contraption with wheels. Let's not talk about the million dollar industry that pets represents, carriages and all. (I mean the dog would not have any clue if the carriage once carried a Barbie doll, now would it?)

But wouldn't it simply be better all around for the human to figure out that since the little dog can only manage to walk a city block before it conks out-- then why not only walk it for that distance?

I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to pick up the poor thing and take it from the clueless chick more embroiled in her cell phone than the little animal who just wants to be with its human. The traffic, the noise, the water from the frequent rains that nearly drown them -- come on, people, pick up your diminutive dog and tote it?

Or even better, put down the phone and pay attention to it and your surroundings?

Woof, woof.

Amen, and pass the mustard.

Death By Coconut

The last couple of days I've been obsessed with coconuts.

Now anybody that knows me knows that I hate coconut. Will not eat it. Can tolerate the smell but that's about it.

The obsession is mostly about the potential of a coconut falling on my coconut, or anybody's for that matter. 

In my neck of the woods people do a lot of walking. As a result, the likelihood of passing a coconut palm is pretty good, since they grow here well, like coconuts.

What has me completely discombobulated is that most of these walkers appear to be nonchalant about the Death By Coconut threat overhead.

Look at this photograph. These coconuts (both the human and the plant variety) are fully grown. And as my friend Elizabeth tells me all the time, "Gravity. It's the law." That earthly force and the ripening coconuts are on a collision course to the nearest noggin underneath.

One swift wind -- and well, let's all use what's inside our coconuts as to the noise those coconuts will make on impact. I''m figuring this could happen anytime soon from the looks of those babies.

Death by Coconut. It happens. 

Amen, and pass the mustard.