happy đ halloween đ
Monthly Archives: October 2021
to the owner of the ship inn
Dear Ship Inn Owner,
Did you not take heed of the advice that Chef Robert Irvine gave you? I have now been into the restaurant several times since the makeover and since the Restaurant Impossible episode aired. I have to ask are you trying to tank your restaurant at this point?
You have a fabulous makeover. Youâve got a nice chef and nice staff. Yet you are miserable to them, and that is not invisible to your customers. We have a front row seat.
When I watched the episode of Restaurant Impossible, I distinctly remember Chef Robert Irvine not so subtlety telling you to not be so miserable to your employees, to not reprimand them on the dining room floor, to not be such a control freak essentially and give them a chance to do their jobs.
Everyone knows you still have the property for sale. I think probably the way to save the restaurant and the location is for somebody to buy it from you. But you are presuming everyone wants to assume the amount of debt you wracked up. In my opinion, itâs overpriced. I know people looking for historic sites for fine dining, and they arenât looking your way.
The first time we came in for dinner after the show aired, first you kept us waiting while you âeducatedâ your staff in front of us. I didnât say a word but it was uncomfortable. Then after we were seated a while you YELLED at your servers ON the dining room floor. My husband has refused to return for dinner since because he found that so offensive. Which is a shame because dinner was good.
I have been back for lunch a few different times with friends. Every time you have been omnipresent and unpleasant with staff. Reprimanding and even yelling at staff again on dining room floor. Storming in and out of kitchen and your guests can hear the kitchens contretemps too.
Most recently I was there for lunch last Friday. I met a friend. We had wonderful salads but something that wasnât so wonderful occurred before my friend arrived. The waitresses were setting up a couple of other tables coming in and they were right next to me and I forget what one of them said to the other but it struck me as funny and I laughed. You yelled at one waitress on the floor and shushed her for laughing too loud.
I said to you âExcuse me Iâm really sorry if you thought it was too loud but it was actually me, not your staff.â You looked at me, said NOTHING and just turned your back to all and walked into the kitchen.
This is one of the things I donât like every time Iâve been there (including in the past.) You are ALWAYS reprimanding or yelling at some staff member ON the restaurant floor for all of the guests to see and ironically for anyone saw the Ship Inn episode of Restaurant Impossible this is part of what Chef Robert Irvine said had to stop and he also told YOU that you needed a front of house so you got off of the floor. You are not particularly user friendly.
I really wish you would STOP doing this and not be so omni-present on the dining room floor. Your staff IS capable and NICE. I want this place to succeed. I really do.
âźď¸ALSO See: https://www.foodnetworkgossip.com/2021/07/ship-inn-restaurant-impossible-update.html âźď¸
I have sat and thought about this for days because I donât want people to think I donât like the restaurant. I do. But I donât like the way you treat people, and that actually includes customers because what you should have done was apologize to me for snapping at the waitress and making me feel uncomfortable because it was something I did, not her.
People are chattering about this around town itâs not just me. You can see it in your reviews you can see it all over social media. Part of the chatter is youâve lost staff in your kitchen already and is that true?
I will note that you have monkeyed with the menu again and youâve done a very heavy special for Oktoberfest or something. No one does the old-fashioned businessmanâs lunch anymore. That menu is fine for dinner, but for lunch itâs too heavy and too expensive.
And the furniture in the made over formerly 1970s disaster of a main room? I guess you ran out of money for new tables and chairs? so in the back of the new room you have the old tables and the old chairs which are very out of place and hodgepodge and destroys the uniformity of the space that was designed for you.
And you still havenât refreshed your ladies room. You should white wash it with bead board to kind of have it match the made over dining room. Itâs clean but itâs very tired and it looks very shabby. And you could refresh it for not a heck of a lot of money. I have to wonder if the way the ladies room looks is the way you think of women in general?
I really hope you can get it together, because right now I actually fear for the restaurant and itâs survival not because of the staff, not because of the food, but because of you being like the black cloud of doom in the restaurant. You have a wonderful place there but if you donât believe in it and the people working for you then whatâs the point?
Try to be happy, and just be pleasant. If you canât be pleasant, donât be present. As patrons and diners we want to enjoy our experience, and thatâs what weâre paying for is the experience and food and service. Weâre not paying for the slideshow of yelling at your staff, which interferes with everything.
Eventually I will be back to give it one more try but not for a while. I might be the only one blogging about this locally, but Iâm not the only of your local patrons to feel this way.
Signed,
A customer
whatâs a gal to do when she has âfansâ? đ kiss kiss đ?
I do not understand this woman. She started off almost a month ago by posting a 10 year old photo of me that I donât even know where it came from itâs so old right as breast cancer awareness month was beginning. Again why that is important is she posted a photo of me in a hospital gown either right before my breast cancer surgery or right before I start a treatment after surgery. Nice lady, right?
And yes I wrote about it.
She has made herself a public figure by making herself a public spectacle. She flips out in public meetings, she has this crazy litigation against a school district, she gets quoted by the media. And then she posts all these things publicly hence the little globe on Facebook so I donât know why she thinks no oneâs going to comment.
So I donât know what happened to this darling woman today, but sheâs kind of delaminating, isnât she?
She posted this thing about me which obviously I donât see because I block her everywhere but people sent me screenshots. Then I hear this screenshot was taken down or made private. Of course one of the things that comes to mind is is this like a bad blonde joke that all brunettes look like? The woman in her screenshot above isnât me. Iâm a cancer survivor, I donât smoke. Most importantly I literally have not been to a public meeting in person since COVID-19 hit.
Itâs kind of like in the category of whatever itâs just so crazy. I donât even smoke so who is the picture of at or outside some meeting? And sheâs stalking my gardening group? Why? Gardening is a happy thing, so why on earth would that interest her? Sheâs not even a member.
On one level you have to feel sorry for someone so miserable. Then you have to wonder what itâs like living with her?
Her behavior is absurd. She calls me now useful idiot and more idiot and less useful. Itâs just astounding how she goes off. Makes you wonder if you are safe around someone like her even in a public place doesnât it? Not being a drama queen sheâs a very angry person or thatâs the persona she gives off isnât it?
Here are some of whatâs been sent to me. The last screenshot is something she flipped out about. I do not know the lady in question.
Alicia, Alicia, Alicia are you still moving to the Netherlands, or did they close the borders to you? Can you do yoga or meditate? Tranquilizers? Do you just need attention good, bad, or indifferent? The funny thing is because I had blocked you, I had kind of forgotten you existed.
I think the only thing I can say at this point is kiss kiss, Alicia đ
art makes me happy
I have written about family friend and Philadelphia artist Margery Niblock a few times before. Her art is just something I have loved since I was a child. She was kind of my first artist.
She was a part of my childhood and I remember her home studio and her prints wafting in the breeze pinned to a clothesline with old fashioned wooden clothes pins at the Head House Craft Fair.
Margery also was one of my teachers back in the day. As a child she taught me to do woodblock and linoleum prints. I actually wasnât that bad at it. It was a very fun process.
So recently, a very nice friend gave me some prints that he and his wife had collected while they lived not too far from where we lived when I was little. Prints I had literally not seen since I was a child! And three were owls! (I love owls!)
Receiving these prints was so exciting! They had literally never seen the light of day since they were purchased.
I took them over to Framers Market Gallery in Malvern to be framed. (Jayne and Dave the owners do all of my framing and re-framing at this point.) Jayne and I spent a good part of an afternoon about a month ago choosing the framing and mats. The store is so much fun because they have so many beautiful choices.
So here we are! The finished product!
Art makes me happy. And it doesnât have to be outrageously expensive to have value to you. Buy what you like and hang what you like. Check thrift shops and flea markets and fairs and local art shows. Find your artist and enjoy them.
Thanks for stopping by!
a meander
Different things matter to different people. I can be a little introspective at times. But I also often think things happen for a reason.
Last week was another week of my past and present being together. It was a weekend of family and friends. Still small and careful gatherings in our COVID19 world. And masks where asked without complaint.
I am really lucky to have amazing friends in my life, including from grade school and high school. I saw some more at a brunch yesterday. And my family, I just love.
One of my friends did something yesterday which was so touching. He told me how much it meant to him that my husband and I were the way we were in high school, and that he was grateful that we were always just his friend.
You see, back in the late 70s and early 80s, Main Line private schools were integrating yes, but it doesnât mean that there werenât huge invisible dividing lines inside the schools. There were. Maybe not all of the time, but they existed. My friend spoke of being a black boy from West Philadelphia at a Main Line private school – in this case, my alma mater, Shipley. I never really thought of it until yesterday, but him coming to school with us at first mustâve been literally like putting him on a different planet.
Maybe I was just that naĂŻve back then, or maybe it was just a different time but I didnât think of a lot of this then. He was just another one of my high school friends. And he was a nice guy who grew up to be a nice man. I did recognize that the truly not so invisible dividing lines often existed, but I often didnât necessarily pay attention to them like I didnât pay attention to cliques back then. My friends were simply my friends.
Thereâs that phrase hindsight is 20/20, except when Iâm looking back now Iâm looking back with the eyes of an adult. Back then I was just a kid. But no matter what our race, creed, color I think we all have to live through the past to reach today, right?
I guess this is why today, I often have issues with what I see going on around me. And part of what I see going on around me is a general dumbing down of life, even after all that we have gone through in this country over the past few years.
A lot of that dumbing down occurs on social media. I actually had a conversation with someone yesterday afternoon where they were talking about how are you bridge that gap between whatâs actually going on in your life and what people want to see on social media? I guess the short answer is you have to live your own truth. Nobodyâs lives are perfect.
Things Iâve seen lately on social media that drives me crazy include the responses people have to those discussing some of the particularly bad school board candidates who have cropped up. Iâve written about them.
A lot of these candidates are just absurd. And theyâre not absurd in a good way that they are just good theater and amusing to see go by, they are absurd because they are such bad candidates that they could cause real damage to local public education systems.
But here in the fluffy white clouds of social media you canât call a spade a shovel or a shovel a spade or even a trowel. You canât actually have your opinion the way you wish to articulate it. And Iâm not saying cursing up a storm, just telling people how you feel and why about a candidate in a school board race. Apparently a lot of us, myself included, did not get the memo with the requirement of pink fluffy bunnies and bubbles. And they have new champions like the couple of blogs which have cropped up for the election season.
Iâm being called ageist and mean because I simply donât understand how a candidate who has been invisible the entire campaign season for the school board races in Great Valley School District who is a teenager and college student will have time between classes and keggers to be on a school board? That is not ageist, thatâs accurate. Itâs common sense. If she was Alex P. Keaton with boobs, we would have seen a lot of her around, not just her Cher/Madonna campaign signs all of a sudden a couple of weeks before the election.
I think itâs that whole theory of everybody gets a gold star today, instead of actually earning the gold star.
But the thing about this weekend, is it was yet another weekend after such a long time, where I actually spent time with people who matter to me, including family, and reveled in the ability to have normal conversations with people. There wasnât that built in censorship of overly paranoid political correctness, there was just good conversation. And even if we didnât agree 100% with the other personâs opinion, there were no Facebook-like meltdowns. We talked, we laughed, we shared.
This matters to me. It matters to me to be able to have realistic and real conversations with people. They donât necessarily have to be super deep all the time, they can be light social setting chit chat.
Being real matters. And part of being real is not sitting your entire life on Facebook telling people an alternate view of reality. Maybe your life on your planet is grand, I donât ask people to move there and elect you supervisor of a real place, or to a school board.
And then there are the people who hide in the shadows and send all the nasty messages about what you write and say.
While we are speaking Facebook, letâs talk about the people whom you donât know who just want to message you whenever the spirit moves them. Sometimes that spirit is moving them in the middle of the night, or other times itâs just when youâre not available. And when you tell them youâre not available, they donât respect those boundaries they donât take those social cues, they just keep going. These are the people that demand respect, but they donât give respect. If you were to contact any of them, their response would be âwhy are you contacting me?â yet conversely, you are supposed to just drop everything when they private message you?
Itâs like society is becoming a caricature of itself. Itâs kind of fascinating to watch, but itâs also equal parts scary and pathetic. In the 18th and 19th century there were scores of political and social commentators who wrote these fabulous plays and drew these damn funny cartoons and lampoons of life in that time.
Take Richard Brinsley Sheridan who wrote the play âSchool for Scandalâ in 1777. It was a comedy of manners. Itâs still a hysterical play. Most of you have no idea who he was or this play, which of course is an entirely another conversation on what I think is lacking in todayâs world and in education . But think if we had a time machine and we took Sheridan from the 18th century London to 21st Century today and put him on Facebook. What would he have to say?
I can tell you at the end of the day my friends and family are what matter to me. Having a home we love, husband and child I love, pets I love. What matters to me also is being able to do things like garden because it brings me joy. Or to decorate for Christmas.
What doesnât matter at the end of the day is the minutia. And there are people who definitely count within that minutia because thatâs where they should be, in the category of minutia.
Liberals of convenience running for supervisor donât impress me, and donât tell people to vote for them because they are your political party, anymore than anyone who has a brain should vote for a good percentage of these newly minted politicians running for school board. Remove the political parties, and look at the people as individuals and listen to what they are saying and not saying.
This seems to be the season of a lot of social media candidates. You donât see them around, but you see them on social media. A couple you donât even see on social media, and you donât see them around. These are not anyoneâs candidates. These are jokes.
And while I would love it if people adored my opinions 24/7, in truth it would actually be a little creepy. Life is made up of variety, not Stepford Wives named Karen. Stupid doesnât live here.
The lack of behavior modification, the ability to take social cues, and respect boundaries is something that bothers me regarding social media. Sadly it has spilled over into the real world. Hopefully it will eventually correct itself.
Thanks for stopping by.
(A brief post script on the photos- I took them but they donât have any real connection to this post. I just like the variety of architecture that you find in places. And the graffiti was in a place I had never noticed it before.)
unacceptable
I am starting this post with humor. Why? Because by the END of this post, you will appreciate a little humor.
Saturday Night Live had a skit recently on what school board meetings have become from coast to coast.
Why?
Because from coast to coast, people have just plain lost their damn minds.
I have written about the school board meetings here. I have written about the anti-masker, anti-vaxxer protests. I have written about the QAnon school board candidates…and the anti-masker, anti-vaxxer candidates.
Now it occurred to me with posting the cartoons and Saturday Night Live skit and cartoons that this is what I find unacceptable. Ummm, no, and nice try. I find the election season bull sheit unacceptable.
Let’s start with Caroline O’Halloran’s startling revelation in the recent Savvy. I will be quoting liberally:
“For the last month, weâve been trying to decipher the new forces in play in local school board races.
It hasnât been easy.
We sought answers from four new groups: Reimagine Radnor PAC, Back to School PA PAC, Pioneer PAC and Neighbors United PA. In an age when campaigns clamor for âtransparency,â our questions were straightforward: Who are you? Do you have ties to statewide or national groups? How are you funded? What is your purpose?
At the same time, we reached out repeatedly to Conservative Women of the Main Line (CWML), a one-year-old PAC with T/E roots that hosts monthly speakers for paid members.
CWMLâs September speaker was high-profile Stop the Steal activist Scott Presler, whoâs been traveling the country helping the GOP âtake back the school boards.â A lightning rod for progressives, Presler has been blasted for his work supporting the anti-Muslim group, Act! for America, and for calling the January 6 insurrection âthe largest civil rights protest in American history.â….For weeks, we didnât know if weâd even run a story. We were simply gathering information to see if there was a story worth reporting.
And then a few days ago, we received this from an encrypted â and therefore, untraceable â IP address. A pre-emptive strike to scare us off the story? You decide. Here it is, copy-pasted, unedited and word-for-word:
~ Savvy October 21, 2021
Now before I get to THAT, let’s talk about the other part of this article:
About that photo with far right activist Scott Presler:
Tredyffrin Republicans Chair Raffi Terzian and CWML President/Tredyffrin Republicans Vice Chair Rosanna Hagg ignored our repeated questions. We tried three times.
We did, however, hear back from T/Eâs best-funded school board candidate, Deana Wang, who was also pictured with Presler. Wang said she was ânot aware of any of those events associated with Scott Preslerâ and attended the CWML event âto meet more voters.â
When we asked in a follow-up email if she regretted posing with Presler, Wang suggested that Presler may have been mistreated by the press. âWe should stop basing all our opinions about a person ⌠based on what the media publishes,â she said.
We also took the opportunity to ask about her funding. Wang had already amassed $16,000 in the spring and who-knows-how-much since then â huge dollars for a school board candidate. Hence, her omnipresent yard signs and polished mailers.
~ Savvy October 21, 2021
Deana, Deana, Deana…if you expect us to believe that you knew NOTHING about this long haired conservative Jesus, is the Tooth Fairy your running mate? If you actually for reals know nothing, you are a dangerous candidate for your ignorance alone, but my take? You all in that dumb photo thought you would enjoy 15 minutes of Internet fame, so honey how is that working out for you?
These people are exhausting. PACs popping up faster that dandelions in June.
Now back to the nasty-gram sent to the ever so nice Savvy Caroline:
So now this journalist is getting nasty comments threatening her publication?
This is unacceptable. I will note that I have had comments come in from protonmail as well. The latest one was from someone who didnât like me mocking the anti-masker anti-vaxxer protest I saw on 100 in Exton in front of the mall.
These people told the writer to stick to writing about Kentucky Derby Hats and her writing was poor and she was political, etc. etc.
Really Trolls? Sheâs a great and seasoned writer, is polite and respectful to those she writes about and interviews, and then you threaten her site and advertisers?
And her writing isnât remotely political – she is covering local stories and hey now yâall do your crap for attention, right? And then you complain when you get attention and threaten? Nice. Pretzel logic. Awesomesauce.
These are total troll moves, what many of you attempt with me a blogger quite often. Itâs not acceptable with me either, which is why some comments over the past few months have actually been reviewed by police in more than one jurisdiction, and PS they came to me after they read them. I actually didnât go to them.
The first amendment entitles me to my opinions and Savvy to their local reporting of whatever THEY choose to cover. Itâs not Pravda on this bus, Comrades.
This is why no matter where you are in Southeastern Pennsylvania whether itâs on the Main Line or in Chester County you need to send these school board candidates that these threateners, meeting disrupters, and harassers are backing… packing.
I will also note that although Caroline O’Halloran has always written about fashion and style (she had an awesome section once upon a time when Main Line Media News/Main Line Times was still a real newspaper, as opposed to the hedge-fund eviscerated shell), that is not all she has ever done. And for what it is worth, she has never written about Kentucky Derby Hats BUT she has been a guest judge at Devon Horse Show’s Ladies Hat Day. THAT makes me laugh because I am sure many of those broads in Conservative Women of the Main Line have paraded in front of her and other judges like tarted-up Thanksgiving turkeys and well the humor in the hypocrisy of it all much?
Keep exposing the nasty comments, Caroline. Bullies breed in the darkness. Bring them into the light. You keep doing you, it’s why we think you are wonderful, no matter what our political persuasion. With the distinct lack of local news reporting, you keep us in the know, accurately and fairly. You share all sorts of things with us of all topics, and we thank you.
These school board races.
They are hideous.
Can we talk West Chester Area School District for a Nanosecond? We’ll start with Anonymous Ada Nestor. After all, she claims she ain’t no QAnon Hussy BUT…
And of course lil’ Ada isn’t Q’Anon according to her mouthpiece Stacey Whomsley, until you see this:
For more on the crazy that is West Chester Area School District candidates please visit HERE. And HERE.
There are all sorts of pages and blogs cropping up which seem to be targeting West Chester and Downingtown. Can’t keep up with them, don’t want to it’s like the fake news express with a few thees and thous thrown in and potential “a-ha” moments that are more accurately “D’oh we already knew that so what?”
In the Great Valley School District the “Republican” candidates are as scary as their counterparts in Downingtown School District and West Chester Area School District. Here is their latest propaganda (their mistakes included):
I like fiction, don’t you? So is Lauren Dicranian able to legally drink yet? You have to laugh at the home printed literature that is being distributed by the 2 Region 1 candidates- ZERO attempt to look professional by having a real flyer. A bunch of nonsense put together on lunch break or something, with typosâŚBy the way…The survey mentioned has been around for years and it is not mandatory, it’s an easy opt out; students also have the option to skip questions they don’t want answered.
Now onto the other “unacceptable” because the Great Valley School District loving hands at home literature isn’t unacceptable, merely pathetic. West Chester Area School District’s triplets of crazy (Whomsley, Nestor, Edgarian) are also ridiculously predictable in their onbviousness. Everyone knows they are generally unacceptable, but we go next to Downingtown.
Yes that sign is popping up all over the Downingtown Area School District.
This is the crappiest campaign stunt yet from the lunatics in Downingtown. These women referred to (Rebecca Britton and LeeAnn Wisdom) also happen to be friends of mine. They are among the nicest, most genuine, thoughtful women I know.
I stand with them, and condemn the bull sheit being hurled and spewed at them. No one is claiming production of these signs and a lot of them are appearing where not invited, so I am guessing a lot are disappearing, as well they should. One little child of one of these candidates keeps asking their mommy why these people say these things? How do you explain to an innocent child that there are just people as mean as snakes? Oh wait, I just did.
But these signs? Unacceptable.
Folks this is all I have got on this topic. At least for now. Send the nutters packing on election day. Our democracy and public school system depend upon it.
Peace, love, and candy corn (it is almost Halloween, after all.)
a spin on chicken sauce piquant
A friend from Baton Rouge, Louisiana phoned the other day and some how we got on the topic of Cajun/ Cajun inspired food. He gave me his Chicken Sauce Piquant recipe. I have modified it to suit what I was doing so here it is (my version):
1 cut up whole chicken
2 onions â one red. One white
4 red hatch chiles sliced
2 Italian green sweet long peppers sliced
3 stalks of celery diced (like 2/3 cup)
Salt & Pepper
Garlic
Cajun seasoning
2 Tuscanini Italian Tomato Sauce, Premium Italian Passata, 17 oz (amazing and I hate prepared sauce)
1 small package of andouille sausage sliced into thin rounds (about 8 oz is the package I used)
Wine to deglaze pan after removing chicken to start vegetablesRice on the side.
Now here are my friend’s recipe notes that I based this off of:
Ingredients
1 chicken cut in pieces
1 medium onion, chopped
tomato sauce
2 tablespoons corn starch
Salt
Black pepper
Cayenne pepper
Garlic powder
4 tablespoons cooking oilDirections:
Heavily season chicken with salt, peppers, and garlic powder.
Brown chicken using oil in Dutch oven pot on medium high heat, then remove chicken from pot.
SautĂŠ onions until clear on medium to medium low heat, then add tomato sauce.
On medium low heat, stir onion-tomato sauce gravy for 5 minutes or until sauce turns darker.
Add chicken back to pot stirring gravy and chicken to blend and cover the chicken.
With heat on medium low, cover pot and cook for 40 minutes stirring occasionally.Mix corn starch with 2 tablespoons of water, then pour into chicken sauce stirring well. Let sauce simmer for 5 minutes.
Serve over rice
I dredged my chicken in flour with Cajun spices and garlic powder before browning, so I omitted corn starch and deglazed the pan before sautĂŠing vegetables. I omitted the Cayenne pepper because I used my own home grown peppers. I will note I caused the smoke detector to go off when I deglazed the pan.
Everything simmered on the stove a good couple of hours (I didn’t time it, sorry). Really good. Spicy but not burn the inside of your mouth out spicy…just good spicy. And the tomato sauce/gravy was a wonderful not too thick but thick enough consistency.
Mmmmmm
womenâŚ.a mystery even to other women
and is just a painting I saw a while back
that I found interesting- and itâs women
and thatâs the topic of this post.
Before I dive into writing my post, letâs talk about Gwyneth Paltrow for a second. Personally I think sheâs bizarre. And narcissistic.
Gwyneth has announced she is going Sex Ed, including a new show that will be launching on Netflix this week. I saw an outtake of the show this morning on the Today Show, and they were talking Wolverine Claws. Yep sharp pointy claw things that can literally draw blood. Sex Ed with a side of kink, anyone? And like two in Bravoâs Real Housewives franchises , she will be selling vibrators on her Goop website and some female libido pill. But itâs a Goop product so they will be more wholesome, right?
I totally get her whole women having body issues. I especially get it after having breast cancer because quite frankly I have an uneven chest but I donât want fake plastic boobs. Oh I guess this is going to be too much for some of my male readers, so I apologize in advance. But I have always said this blog is about whatever strikes my fancy and today the topic is women. This was just a quasi related segue.
Someone asked me the other day about a woman who used to be a very close friend. when we were in our 20s even up to my 30s. We did tons of stuff together. It wasnât a weekend if I didnât hang out with her at some point. She was a lot of fun and is still one of the most naturally beautiful women I have ever met. Men literally fell at her feet. Mostly they ignored the rest of us with her, although they would often buy us cocktails just so they could be in her presence. She was often a lot nicer to some of them than they deserved.
Our friendship started to change and wane a little when she got involved with this weird cult-like group. The group sold seminars under the whole guise of personal wellness and well-being but I remember going to a couple of things with her and it was like freaky Friday at least for me. I felt like the people that ran it were a bunch of charlatans and they were very happy to take peopleâs money, but I couldnât get if the âhelpâ they offered had any value. But she was a friend so I didnât say anything and I accepted this was something she needed in her life.
Then one day she asked me to help her rewrite her rĂŠsumĂŠ. So I did it for her and she got a fabulous job in New York. And dropped me like a hot potato. There was no argument or disagreement, she was literally just done with me. Reinvented herself and was finished with those who knew her when. It really hurt. At this point in my life, this was the first time I had ever experienced anything like this. I have seen her fly by here and there over the years on the social media of others and she looks happy, and she got married. I hope she has everything she wants in life. But I hope sheâs learned to treat people better.
Now this was a woman whose company I enjoyed very much, so she is someone I actually miss from time to time. But I think I just canât let people in again all the time after great hurt. Itâs not about not being able to forgive someone, itâs more about being practical because if theyâve done it once they will inevitably do it again and do you want to put yourself through that?
Next came a woman who was a very close friend, I was even one of her bridesmaids. Our parents kind of knew each other through other people, there was a lot of commonality. But I always kind of knew in the back of my head if I was honest she wouldnât last.
When I realized this about this woman, ironically it was at her wedding. There were a lot of people she invited that none of us in her current circle had ever known existed in her world. She was one of those people that has one set of friends and then moves to the next set of friends and so on and so forth. She is also someone who would periodically disappear for long durations of time (years) from her friendsâ lives and then just pop up like nothing had ever happened. She did that to me actually. And it was really weird, and hurt. But I forgave it the first time because it was nice to have her back in my life.
The second time I walked away from her entirely. The second time it occurred when I moved to Chester County. When I moved to Chester County I was the out of sight, out of mind person. And coming out here when I did in my 40s was a big change for me. I had lived my life and practically its entirety in only one other place except for early childhood. Chester County was completely unknown although I wanted very much to be here. So it wasnât the simplest of transitions because it was so emotionally loaded. Here I am standing on the precipice of the rest of my life where I very much want to be, yet at the same time nervous because I was literally leaving everything else I knew someplace else.
This woman literally just stopped returning my calls after I was out here a little over a year. I was no longer geographically convenient for her as a friend, I suppose. But because I had given our friendship a second chance when she disappeared the first time, I was just quietly done. I am not going to chase after someone whom I had fulfilled my end of the friendship so to speak. And I had told myself after the first time, if it happened again, the life door was just not going to reopen.
The other thing I discovered with this other woman is she has become dependent on extreme forms of Christianity. That is her comfort level. It keeps her insulated from I think the reality she is trying to escape. Thatâs her jam, and I respect it because I think she actually deeply believes it. I have also seen her a couple of times here and there, and it made me realize that while I was over the hurt she caused me, I just Iâm not going to let her back in this time. I will always be happy to run into her, but I just canât again.
I have had some missteps with new women in my life moving to Chester County. There was one woman I actually really enjoyed. But she used confidences we shared with each other to curry favor with others. Thatâs a disloyalty that I can never get my head wrapped around. At the time when that happened, I was so new to Chester County and feeling the loss of my aforementioned friend, so this was briefly hurtful. But I just walked away. I closed the door. I realized after a bit they had their own issues, and this was for the best. And I hadnât invested that much in knowing them at that point so it stung, but it wasnât a permanent hurt.
Trust is a big value with me. And once you feel like itâs broken in a relationship for me thatâs really hard to go back and deal with. Maybe thatâs a character flaw on my part, I donât know.
Then there were a couple of women that were kind of out of my childhood, and I was delighted to find them out here. Well one I already knew was out here, the other came out here after I moved here.
These couple of women are women I used to have a lot of fun with. And then one really wanted to just be the controlling person in the relationship like I was a child, and the other was kind of a copycat on things I liked. And of course then there were the extreme political views that emerged just like with a lot of people. I kind of said goodbye to both of these women at once. With one of them it wasnât so hard a decision. The other one it was a harder decision, because I knew her longer and better. But having either of them in my life, meant chaos and unreal drama, so I chose myself and peace.
But as we grow and evolve as human beings, sometimes our friendships donât grow in the same way. However, when you experience the loss of longer-term friendships it kind of makes it hard to trust sometimes the new people you meet. You want to let them in because they just seem so nice, but it takes a minute, know what I mean?
So thereâs this one woman I met within the past couple of years whom I really enjoyed. I really thought sheâd be a new friend. And maybe someday again she will be, but she did something I found completely disloyal. And when I kind of called her on it privately, she turned it around that it was my fault.
What my fault was is that she wanted to have a political discussion on a day where my head was just too full. You know those days, you just know that you canât do one more thing. And I was working on something for a client. When I am working, I am working, and with the onset of Covid-19 a lot of people blur those lines. But I canât be all things to all people 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year. So I said I couldnât talk. Because I literally couldnât – I was working and I was just tired, physically and emotionally.
The other things people donât realize is because Iâm a blogger, some days I literally get private messages and reach outs from people around the clock. Can I look at this, can I comment on this, why havenât I done that or the other thing? Some days I just get tired.
So this person blamed me for her essentially kind of being crappy to me. And Iâm just done for now. This is not somebody I really want to walk away from because I think theyâre really interesting, but this is a question of mutual respect and friend loyalty. Which means Iâm letting go of them for now. I am not angry, although it has made me pissy. But itâs something Iâm hitting the pause button on. At least for now. And it wasnât an easy decision, either.
But as I said to someone who once taught me, and as an adult is a dear friend, these situations are one of those things that you think as you get older maybe the people will get better? But still it almost goes back to the same stuff you were dealing with in high school, just on a different playing field. Sociologically itâs interesting. Personally it can be hurtful, and you also get to a point in your life where you feel like you just need to hit pause.
And this is a very female on female or female response, because I also have encountered women who will just throw men and women under the bus just because they are threatened by change. Or they just crave attention good bad or indifferent.
My male friends arenât this way. If one of my male friends has a problem, they donât post it on social media they contact me and they pretty much say âso whatâs up?â
I donât pretend to be perfect, or to have led a perfect life. But I find women to be cruel and hurtful to one and other over the dumbest sheit.
I guess this just makes me a little sad because as I have settled into life over the years in Chester County, I have met some amazing women. But as we age as women, trust and loyalty go a long way.
If as a woman if you really have a problem with a woman you know, talk to them. And if they tell you one of the days you want to talk to them they just canât do it, accept that at face value and try again another day. Maybe it will be a while, but sometimes it isnât about what you want, itâs about what they need and whatever they have asked you to hit the pause button on.
Well ladies, thatâs all Iâve got for today. Thanks for stopping by.
r.i.p colin powell
I have always been a fan of former United States Secretary of State, General Colin Powell. Today he died due to complications of COVID19.
He WAS fully vaccinated. He was however, immunocompromised due to battling cancer. He suffered from a breakthrough case of COVID-19 and before fake news takes over, this isnât an issue of the lack of efficacy of the vaccine, this is about the breakthrough COVID-19 variants health officials have been warning us about. I am sure the rabid anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers wonât pay attention to this, or will twist it up, but this is how and why he died. This virus is a killer and doesnât care who you are, or where youâre from it will take your life anyway.
If you are immunocompromised in any way , this is what you fear. Here we had a literal lion, an amazing human being, and COVID-19 has taken him from his family, and this country.
So for all of you who want to send me articles about how COVID-19 still isnât real, etc. just stop. It is.
I actually met this amazing human being once upon a time way back when Philadelphia hosted the RNC 2000, or when you still recognized Republicans NOT as a party corrupted and ruined by Donald Trump.
I was a media relations volunteer at the RNC 2000. I was stationed primarily at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. I met all sorts of fascinating people during this time. I met Powell the same day I met Larry King and an ABC network news guy.
Larry King was with his super tall blonde wife (# 7) and was so short and his face was pulled so tight he resembled a praying mantis. The ABC network news guy was just too important to talk to anyone and quite rude. I donât remember his name. But I believe heâs retired.
But Colin Powell? He was just amazing. He was gracious and pleasant and spoke to us volunteers. Meeting him was a complete fluke, he was at the train station to pick his wife up from the train.
That was a crazy volunteer experience that was very memorable. I got to meet people like Arnold Schwarzenegger and his then wife Maria Shriver. I also helped a then slightly harried young Congressman from Mississippi named Chip Pickering. He had taken a train up from Washington without his wallet. I let him cab fare to get to the convention center or I believe he was a platform speaker of some sort. I remember somebody saying to me âYou just lent a stranger money. Youâll never see that again!â Well not only did he pay me back, but his secretary sent me tickets to some of the best parties that week!
But meeting Colin Powell? That was the best.
What I have always liked about Colin Powell is he is the definition of a true patriot, and lived his life that way. In recent years, people have kind of tossed that word around like a verbal potato chip. But Colin Powell lived it. He served his country, not just some political party.
Colin Powell said on January 11, 2011 after the insurrection in Washington, D.C. that he could no longer call himself a Republican. He was quoted in The New York Time as follows:
đIn an interview on CNN, the host, Fareed Zakaria, asked Mr. Powell if Republican Party members ârealize that in a sense they caused, that they encouraged at least this wildness to grow and grow,â referring to Mr. Trumpâs chaotic governance, which culminated in the violence last week.
Mr. Powell, 83 and a longtime Republican Party member, replied, âThey did, and thatâs why I can no longer call myself a fellow Republican.â
This country lost someone special today. R.I.P. Colin Powell and God speed.
NPR: PHOTOS: Colin Powell’s life in public service
Updated October 18, 20215:02 PM ET
CNN: Colin Powell, first Black US secretary of state, dies of Covid-19 complications amid cancer battle
By Devan Cole, CNN
Updated 1:33 PM EDT, Mon October 18, 2021
By Bradley Graham
why some just arenât suited for public office
People in the end will vote for whomever they choose. I like to educate people on the candidates and what they do, and my opinion on how they will be if elected.
When someone decides to run for public office, they are in the public view. What candidates say and do becomes fair game as they are candidates for elected political office. So I am not breaking new ground or doing anything wrong. Also my opinion is covered by the first amendment.
Now that being said, if I lived in Willistown, I would NOT vote for Susan Rosso. I donât expect candidates for public office to know everything, but one does expect them to have a grasp of the basics. Politician in training, Susan Rosso does not.
She deals in vague, foggy, dot.dot.dot statements. She heard, she thinks, sheâs not sure. But tell her what ails you and she says if elected will make all your problems disappear with a magic wand and promises of a glorious future. I am always suspicious of candidates who promised everyone something different because they generally donât deliver on anything do they?
And then there is this whole thing where she says she supports the residents fighting pipelines. She says she protested in Harrisburg. Then how is it she does not know that most of the residents fighting against the pipelines in Chester County have no love for Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and feel completely betrayed by him? How does she not know that a few years ago he came to Chester County and essentially had a photo op with affected residents, and they never heard from him again? That he does nothing to help residents over this issue and in fact, blocks people on social media who question him about this?
So then she POSES with him for HER own photo op recently? And then posts it because visually it looks like a visual endorsement whether or not it actually IS an endorsement?
And then there are the hyper local issues. She likes to promise things without actually knowing how things work. And criticize the meeting minutes in Willistown which are the same kind of minutes taken by all townships. They are not verbatim, they are summary. And then thereâs the whole thing of why Willistown doesnât record their meetings. Well I asked the same question truthfully, and I believe their answer that equipment is on back order because like most everything else in the land of Covid itâs on back order. So I told them how I noted East Goshen was doing their meetings, and that municipalities like Phoenixville and East Whiteland use the Municipal Meeting service. But I kind of think these townships have to have some of their own basic equipment first?
Oh and most importantly you are allowed as a resident to record a public meeting. You just have to tell them at the beginning of the meeting that you are going to do so.
And then there is her response to people wondering why she took her grandchild to the opening of a beer garden. Why people asked is because of how vulnerable small children can be to COVID and you just donât know do you? It wasnât a bad thing to support a local business opening in another local municipality, just why bring a baby to essentially a bar combined with COVID? Now while that photo remains on her campaign page, the John Fetterman photo seems to have been suppressed ?
Oh and she seems to have been speaking to me personally when she asked me if I donât patronize establishments that sell alcohol, and that couldnât be further from the truth, although I do not drink beer – I just donât like it. The truth of the matter is I live an immunocompromised life and have older relatives . I am not comfortable in particularly crowded situations, and I only attend things selectively if I am fairly comfortable that the majority of the people are vaccinated and also being careful. We are still living the COVID life, after all.
And then there is Wildflower Farm. Wildflower Farm and how they are being treated is a legit worrisome issue in Willistown and Chester County. It is no joke that small farms are at risk everywhere, and while she has been asked to state her position on said aforementioned issue as a politician, a candidate for public office, she seems to have played dodge ball with the issue? Now on one hand you canât really blame her because itâs a political hot potato, but this is the job she is asking Willistown residents to consider her for, correct? So when she says she isnât taking sides is that true?
Here:
Okay? So sheâs NOT taking sides, but sheâs taking sides? Huh? I guess itâs full on political pretzel logic season? And how can she opine on what she obviously knows so little about? And sheâs offering an opinion yet it seems like she hasnât even been on the street because she doesnât actually know where on the street the farm is located? She seems to be parroting what the neighbors who filed a zoning action against the farm want out there, but again, sheâs not taking sides? Does that make sense to you is that who you want in a local elected official? Someone who doesnât actually understand the issues, no the processes, and keeps thinking if she says itâs because she âheard itâ somewhere she wonât be held accountable as a politician?
I mean Wildflower Farm is this crazy issue now. And itâs been living in the shadows for months. I had somebody send me a screenshot of some thing they found on Google. The message basically said that I was wrong that this was an event venue. OK they sent me a screenshot of a farm that is a wedding venue in Ontario Canada called Wildflowers (plural) Farm!
Wildflower Farm is but one issue in Willistown. Like other municipalities, it seems to be rife with issues these days.
But whomever you choose, chose them for the right reasons. Maybe Susan Rosso will surprise everyone some day and get her act together and become a viable candidate, but right now in 2021? Sheâs not a smart choice. Why? So many reasons, but another example is some days she is like the ultimate poster of fake news. Havenât Americans in general had enough of that?
Again, I donât expect candidates, especially those who have never sought any type of elected office to know everything, but they do need to have a grasp of the basics. Susan Rosso is not that candidate. She doesnât even know who lives in her township or area. That is electoral rolls 101. And she seems obsessed with stormwater on Jacqueline Drive? Why is that?
Someone said to me recently but when it comes to politics Iâm not afraid to call a spade a shovel. Itâs in the category if I donât suffer fools lightly. And my final word on this topic is I really cannot stand when political parties tell you the only reason you should vote for someone is because they are of your political party. That is the dumbing down of politics, and the last reason. So donât be dumb, check out your candidates beyond the cute little political hat they wear.
And I am all for a balance of power, but when meeting detractors run for public office and they want your vote because they want to level the playing field by their very temperament theyâre going to create more issues than solutions. Every politician has an agenda. Maybe not at first, maybe not the whole time, but they have to be able to work with their other fellow politicians up there on the dais for the benefit of the people and this is not a candidate who will ever be able to do that.
Thanks for stopping by.