Lift Up Your Hearts!

Somewhat against my better judgement, I watched the presidential debate. I knew that once people started talking, I'd be tempted to say something about it, so I'd better have first-hand knowledge.

I cannot understand what all the fuss is about since then. Why it seems to have been such a surprise to so many people.

But first, my own reactions.

• I have no idea why Trump agreed to the debate. It was held on clearly hostile territory (CNN, with the moderators manifestly against him, politically). The format did not play to his strengths, i.e. without a crowd to play to and be encouraged by. He was already ahead in the polls, so on the face of it, the debate was riskier for him than for Biden.
• The moderators did a better job than I expected of keeping their biases in check, so I give them some credit for that.  But they did a lousy job of keeping the debaters in check. They weren't moderating anything, just reading questions (that weren't answered).
• Can we make it a rule that no one can run for president without first having participated in debate in high school? This was the second-most ridiculous so-called debate I've ever seen. Not that I've seen very many, but I have some idea of how the participants are supposed to behave, and this was not it.
• I found Trump more cogent and intelligent than Biden, certainly, but neither one of them answered the questions! They poked back and forth at each other like a couple of rude middle school boys, and said what they wanted to say irrespective of the questions. I wanted to hear about issues—they wanted to hammer on and on about how terrible the other guy was.
• Biden was so embarrassing—worse, he was really scary. The hatred I saw in his eyes when he looked at Trump was like a kick in the stomach, the same as I saw during his Independence Hall speech. Then again, I may have been misjudging his expression; I couldn't help wondering if he has had a small stroke, given the asymmetry of his smiles.
• Trump could have made all his points about how badly Biden has done by instead being positive about what he will do to fix the problems. He shouldn't have stooped to the level his enemies were hoping for. This argument over who was the worst president in American history? Absurd, and middle-schoolish at best. (I think they're both wrong.)
• Trump also should not have let Biden play the Reagan card. As incapacitated as he was, Biden managed to maneuver Trump into saying how terrible America is, and how much trouble we're in (Carter's position), while portraying himself as the positive, optimistic candidate (Reagan's). Anyone who has been looking at the last four years with open eyes knows better, but those aren't the people Trump needs to reach.
• The exclusion of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was inexcusable. He would have made the debate much more interesting, and quite possibly would have set an example by actually answering the questions asked. It's not that I think he's really a viable candidate—I agree with Mark Groubert that he (and we) would be much better off if he quits his presidential campaign and runs instead for California's governor or senator position, for either of which he should be a shoe-in. But his ideas are rational and important, and they deserved to be heard in the context of the other participants' answers.

Most Trump supporters apparently think that he won the debate. If so, it was only because Biden clearly lost. There's a reason why I generally avoid listening to politicians talk. When I hear them speak, I despair. It's when I look at what they have actually done that I feel I can make an intelligent voting decision.

What really puzzles me is the shockwave that has been rocking the Democratic Party because of Biden's performance. Really? Who can be shocked? Biden's cognitive decline was visible at least as far back as 2020, and has gotten progressively and significantly worse. It's long past the point for giving him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the casual citizen, who only hears sound bites and sees highly edited videos, could have missed it, but the party movers and shakers? The news media who edited the video footage? Those closest to him in the government? How could they possibly have been surprised?

Is it all an act? Did they know, and plan to use what they expected to be a disaster of a debate to give them an excuse to manipulate a more reliable candidate into being their presidential candidate? Did they somehow hope Biden could hold things together and come across better than he did, to win the election and establish himself as president just long enough for the vice president to take over? Did they really delude themselves into believing he was okay—until the debate made it impossible to deny? I have no idea; none of it makes sense to me.

I am left with two questions.

• What is the Democratic Party going to do? Prop up Biden and hope he can survive until he is sworn in, then take him out as gently as possible? Or go through whatever machinations they can to put forth an alternate presidential candidate, one chosen in the old-fashioned way, by political hacks in smoke-filled back rooms? (Here in Florida, we didn't even have a primary to vote in.)
• Who has really been running the country for the past few years? Whatever person, or cabal, it might be, they were not elected to this position, and have been doing a spectacularly terrible job of it. How do you vote out someone who was never voted in?

Finally, a warning for Republicans: Be careful what you wish for. "It can't get worse" does not have a good track record.

An article in today's Orlando Sentinel boasts this headline: Florida students make ‘substantial gains’ on state tests, new results show. I'm not going to say much about this happy headline, except to note that the joy includes the fact that only 22% of third graders failed to read at grade level, down from 27% last year. Other statistics are similarly dismal. This in a state that U.S. News & World Report ranked #1 in education.

But it's not the schools I'm taking issue with at the moment. It's the newspaper, which with the article ran this photo of middle school students learning math. (Photo credit Willie J. Allen Jr/Orlando Sentinel) (click to enlarge).

As near as I can figure out, the problem is to find the distance between two points on a Cartesian plane, (-3, -3) and (-3, -4). What's written is not the way I would have approached the problem, but—assuming scalar distance, since no direction was specified—the answer is, indeed, 1. I'm also assuming that some of the work was done in the student's head, and these are just notes taken along the way.

Nonetheless, instead of a room full of (possibly) eager math students, what stands out to me—in an article bragging about improvement in math scores—is the equation,

3 - 4 = 1

Bragging about her grandchildren is written right into the Grandmother Contract, and I've certainly done my part in the past. But never like this.

The pathology report on Grace's colon biopsy indicates graft versus host disease. (That's not what I'm bragging about.) It is a mild form of GVHD, and they believe a couple of weeks of steroids should take care of it.

My own grandmother-gut suspicion, based on no medical expertise at all, is that the GVHD showed up in her colon because that's been the weakest and most stressed part of her body for most of her life. It was intestinal problems that eventually led to her NF1/JMML diagnosis. (Once the doctors got out of the rut of thinking, "it's just food allergies.")

We thank God that the doctors believe this will be a short-lived problem.

And here's the punch line. Two-year-old Grace has no doubt been set back somewhat in her development by all her medical problems and procedures. But there's no doubt that she listens, pays attention, and thinks about what she hears. When she overheard that the diagnosis was GVHD, she got very upset!

They anticipate discharge on Wednesday.

Here's the latest Daley update, complete with pictures.

The Reader's Digest version:

• Grace and Jon are still at Boston Children's, so she can be observed while awaiting the test results.
• The bone marrow aspiration went better than last time and they got all the marrow they need for their tests (but results will come later).
• Grace's esophagus looks fine.
• Her colon is quite inflamed, which the doctors are sure is causing her GI symptoms. They have no idea why, but are hoping for enlightenment when the pathologist looks at her colon biopsy. Hopefully that will be early next week, as in the meantime the doctors involved don't agree on what to do with her diet.
• She had some cardiac irregularities when waking up from the anesthesia, but they were short-lived, and otherwise her recovery went well.
• During a video call last night, she was eating a bagel, laughing at her brothers, talking, and playing.
• The rest of the family had a great activity day, arranged by on-belay.org, an organization supporting kids impacted by a loved one's cancer. They all had fun, but Faith is still frustrated by the pain that continues to restrict her activities, so please remember to pray for her as well.

As always, we are so grateful for your support.

I've always been ambivalent about electric cars. On the consumer end, eliminating exhaust fumes and engine noise is attractive, especially in cities, though I'm not convinced that electric cars are all that environmentally friendly when you look at the big picture. The electricity has to be produced somewhere, and while large-scale power generation and distribution might be more efficient than having an engine in every car, that doesn't make it harmless. It is beyond me why California—which already suffers from lack of what it takes to produce enough power for its popuation—is pushing to ban non-electric cars. Then there's the problem of the batteries that drive these cars: expensive to produce, requiring scarce resources, relatively short-lived, and difficult to recycle—I'm not convinced they aren't worse than the problem they are trying to solve. I don't think we know enough about it at this point, and I can't see burning our bridges until we know the cure isn't worse than the disease. We've had enough of that approach!

Be that as it may, I can still see the attraction, for the individual, of a small electric car for tooling around town. Not that I forsee living long enough for an electric car to fit into our budget. Even used they are ridiculously expensive. But that doesn't mean I'm not open to the idea.

Or rather, I was open. Having had an electric rental car forced upon us during our recent time in Maryland, you'd pretty much have to give us an electric car to make me want one at this point.

That's not to say that the computer nerd in me didn't find it exciting to read our Chevy Bolt's instruction manual. So many amazing features! It was a lot like getting a new computer, and upgrading to Windows 11 from Windows 3.1. Only no one ever expected me to learn a new computer operating system at highway speeds with our lives, and those of two grandchildren, depending on it. Fortunately, Porter—who had lots of experience with strange rental cars during his IBM travelling years, though none were electric—did a fine job. I wasn't even driving, but the flurry of on-the-fly questions ("What does that light mean? What does this button do? Where on earth is the shift lever? (There wasn't one.) How do I read these dispay heiroglyphics?") and the rapid flipping through the very thick manual on my part, hoping for answers, about did me in. I'm not against new technology, but prefer to get acquainted with it slowly.

That, however, was the least of my complaints. I was not at all happy with the 200-mile range of the car. Fortunately, all the wedding venues were reasonably close to the hotel, so we managed to get back to the airport without having to give it a recharge, but that doesn't mean it wasn't stressful. Especially since the battery lost about 20 miles of reserve just sitting in the parking garage overnight. It's not as if we could have just zipped into a gas station for 5 minutes to "fill the tank." I have run out of gas once in my life, and that's an experience I don't wish to repeat.

I know, theoretically there are places available for recharging electric vehicles. Even our local botanical gardens has a couple of spots in its parking lot where you can charge while you admire the plants. But we were in a strange city, and in all our driving never saw such a place to pull over and fill up. Google indicated that there were some in the area, but we never saw them. Oh, wait—even if we'd found such a place, we didn't have the time it would have taken for a recharge.

When we picked up the car, the Avis agent had brushed off our concern, with "any decent hotel will have plenty of charging stations." True, our otherwise lovely Hyatt Regency had a good number of such stations—but every single one of them was out of order, so we couldn't recharge overnight.

We survived the experience—Porter even enjoyed braking with the turn signal. That's not quite an accurate description, but it's what it looked like. There was also a foot pedal brake, but the hand brake somehow shunted power back into the battery, which was cool. But I don't quite see the usefulness of an electric vehicle if you want to travel more than 200 miles away from home; 100 miles if it's a day trip.

Maybe if we needed a second car just for short trips, an electric one would be nice. But for now, I hope we can enjoy for many more years our 11-year-old gasoline-powered car that seats eight, has a range of over 400 miles, and a tank that can be fully replenished in under 10 minutes. Okay, 30 minutes if the stop is at Buc-ee's.

From Heather (emphasis mine):

Grace has been on a clear liquid diet until today where she is getting nothing into her stomach until anesthesia at 5:30. She will be getting a complete GI scope and a bone marrow biopsy. Please pray for the anesthesiologist and the surgeons as well as for Grace.

Jon called this morning to say that they will be at the hospital at least until Monday, because the doctors want to observe her as she goes back on feeds. Also, for the results of the biopsies. (I'm assuming intestinal, because the bone marrow takes a week.)

Jon is discouraged and sleep-deprived, and it's not really practical for me to go there because of Hope.

Grace and Jon did have a good day yesterday, playing games, doing crafts, reading books, painting, watching Mary Poppins.

We're holding on here at home, but now will need to prepare for and go to Family Camp without two important members of the family. Hopefully, they will be able to join us soon.

In other news, Noah is 18 today, and to celebrate true adulthood, has a written FAA test and a dentist appointment. 

In case you were wondering, those of you who know of Noah as a baker, he is making his own cake today. Maybe I'll have pictures later.

And here's a joyful update, which I'm sure is helping Jon a lot:

We have a friend who just volunteered to go down and give him a break. Praise God for his people!

I readily admit ignorance of a lot of things, but I can't say I'd never heard of Tucker Carlson. That is, I had heard his name—but I'd never heard him speak, and certainly wouldn't have recognized him. I couldn't have told you a single thing that he was known for, nor any of his beliefs.

You may not believe that anyone could be so ignorant, but there it is. If you need an even greater example of the extent of my cultural ignorance, I'll tell you that—until I was recently schooled by a choir friend whose granddaughter was over the moon to have attended one of her concerts—I knew nothing about Taylor Swift. Well, I'd figured out that she was a singer, as our rector has made several references to her songs in his sermons, and Porter had told me that there was something between her and some football player whose name and team I promptly forgot because that's what my mind does to information with the term "football" attached. But that was it. There are limits to both my brain capacity and my interest, and neither Taylor Swift nor Tucker Carlson ticked enough checkboxes to stick.

Until Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox.

That news made so much of a buzz that even I couldn't miss it. That was enough to induce me to take a look at just who this person was who inspired so much love and so much hatred. 

I listened to some of his programs, and to my amazement discovered someone who makes sense. He's obviously intelligent, a quick and clear thinker, a good speaker, and someone whose opinions are sufficiently similar to and different from my own to make him interesting.

The only problem I've found so far is that he seems to have far more time to produce videos than I have to watch them. That's nothing new, however. My list of videos to watch is not as long as my list of books to read, but it's equally impossible.

The following speech, given in Australia, is very nearly an hour long, which will no doubt put a lot of people off, but I found it worthwhile. The actual talk ends at 21:30; the rest is a Q&A session, which is also interesting. Since he thoughtfully provided a table of contents, I'll include it here.

0:00 Intro
2:31 Tucker reacts to Julian Assange's release
16:13 Christianity
21:49 Q&A
21:55 Who's the most difficult person Tucker has interviewed?
27:32 Tucker clashes with journalist over Putin
32:33 Assange
37:05 Is China a threat?
43:22 Heated exchange between Tucker and liberal journalist on immigration

Who knows? Maybe I'd actually like Taylor Swift's music if I took the time to listen to her.

This was Heather's morning post. (I'm copying the text, but if you click on the link, you'll see a cute picture.)

When Jon and Grace got back from Dartmouth, Jon asked me to take her temperature. He could feel that she was hot, but the thermometer they used at Dartmouth did not register a fever (it was the kind that you hold a centimeter away from the forehead.) My initial armpit reading was 101.8. That means Boston admission. So I had Joy and Nathaniel pack a few more days of clothes for Jon and Grace (our emergency bag in the car only has two days' worth) and Jon got her medicines and his work stuff ready. By the time they left, her armpit temperature was 103.3.

Jon's midnight update included that her fever had gone down to 38.1 (100.8) by the time they arrived at the ER and that she had eaten half a popsicle and smiled for the first time all day. She got all sorts of tests done and abdomen x-rays. So far, according to the portal, she is negative for flu and cold viruses and x-rays show nothing unusual. Her hemoglobin fell significantly, so I expect she got/is getting some blood this morning. At midnight, she had not been admitted yet, but she is in 6 West now.

First, I have to make a correction. That may have been the first smile Jon saw yesterday, but we Skyped with her mid-morning, and she was smiling then, even though she had just thrown up.

(Kudos to Heather, who had to clean up what must have been an all-time record for spreading vomitus in the most inconvenient places.)

Since then, she has had some very welcome visitors, having had the good sense (?) to get herself admitted just in time to catch our favorite Boston Childrens' pediatrician before she becomes our favorite pediatrician at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. (Whether it was a good move to show up just in time for the arrival of the annual batch of newly-minted residents is another question.)

The plan is to talk with the gastroenterology people today. In preparation, Grace is not allowed to eat. Apparently that is making her sad, which is actually good news, because since getting sick she has had little to no interest in eating. Is she still getting nutrition through her NG tube? I don't know. Is there any medical person who can tell me if "NPO" means "no input to the system" rather than literally "nothing by mouth"? If the point is to have her system empty for her procedure(s), putting the food directly into her stomach would seem just as bad.

I don't know if she received blood or not, but maybe not, since they're blaming her hemoglobin drop on having pumped a lot of fluids into her (because of the fever, I assume).

That's all, folks ... for now.

The doctors seemed to be taking Grace's recent intestinal problems very casually, but since she threw up her NG tube this morning, they're sitting up and taking notice. The new plan is for Grace to be admitted (in Boston) on Friday for observation and testing. (Not the way they wanted to celebrate her brother's 18th birthday!) Here's Heather's latest post.

Today, Boston called to say they'd like to observe Grace over the weekend and to prepare for admission on Friday. They will likely do a colonoscopy and maybe even an endoscopy. (And Dartmouth suggested they get some bone marrow while she's sedated.)

She threw up her NG tube this morning and so Jon took her to Dartmouth. They were able to do her regular appointment stuff so we don't have to go in tomorrow. It was a more traumatic NG tube placement than the other two times, and their tape is not as good.

We have been giving her zofran the last few days. Her appetite has been practically nil. There's definitely something going on. It's not the typical GVHD symptoms, but they haven't ruled it out yet. There might be an NF1 related cause; I've done minimal research on that and it's a possibility.

We depend on God to hold us up, so please intercede on our behalf.

How quickly things can change.

I can be a sucker for headlines like "Second grade math question has the internet fighting over the answer," and this time I was caught despite knowing it was click-bait.  Here's the question:

A mother posted what she said was her child’s second-grade math homework. Here’s how the question goes: “There are 49 dogs signed up to compete in a dog show. There are 36 more small dogs than large dogs signed up to compete. How many small dogs are signed up to compete?”

I took it seriously, knowing there must be a trick or it wouldn't be controversial.  But I quickly dismissed questions like, "How do you draw the line between large and small dogs?" as being uninteresting, and decided to take the problem at face value.

It's one of the easiest, most basic algebra problems.  If you are wondering why an algebra problem was given to second graders—well, I've seen children even younger solve such puzzles through logic and an intuitive sense of the world that school hasn't yet had a chance to squeeze out of them.

So.  Simple algebra.  (It's a lot faster and easier than it looks, written out, but bear with me.)

• Let L = the number of large dogs.
• Let S = the number of small dogs
• We know L + S = 49
• Therefore L = 49 - S
• We know S = L + 36
• Therefore S = (49 - S) + 36  [substituting (49 -  S) for L]
• Therefore S = (49+36) - S
• Therefore S = 85 - S
• Therefore 2S = 85  [adding S to both sides]
• Therefore S = 42.5

That's where the Algebra I student stops.  The second grader knows better:  "Half a dog?  Are you crazy?  Math makes no sense."

Math makes plenty of sense.  All too often, math textbooks and tests do not.

The teacher whose homework assignment caused the kerfuffle admitted that the problem itself was wrong, casting the blame on the school district.  She confirmed, however, that 42.5 would be the correct answer, "if done at an age appropriate grade."

No.  Just no.

This is why bridges fall down.

Math word problems that purport to be about real-world situations should reasonably conform to reality.  If you want to use those numbers, maybe try something like, "Tom and Lisa shared a box of 49 Krispy Kreme donuts.  Tom ate 36 more than Lisa.  How many did Tom eat?" ("Enough for a massive stomach ache," would be my answer.)  Or just change the numbers!  (Maybe the error was a misprint.)

The only correct answer to the problem as stated is, "This question is not answerable."

If we teach our children that it's okay to plug numbers into an algorithm (or a computer model) and make decisions based on the results without considering whether or not the answers actually make real-world sense; if we teach them that giving a wrong answer is better than saying, "we don't know," or even "we can't know"; then bridges are going to collapse, windows are going to blow out of airplanes, economies are going to crash, countries are going to start wars, and people are going to die.

Although it made Tampa's NBC News affiliate only two days ago, the story is at least five years old, as you can see here (if you don't mind the language).

For what it's worth, this was my thought process once I realized that the problem was the problem.

1. The total number of dogs, 49, is an odd number.
2. The only way two integers can sum to an odd number is if one of them is odd, and the other is even.
3. The number of small dogs and the number of large dogs differs by 36, which is an even number.
4. The only way two integers can differ by an even number is if they are either both odd, or both even.
5. (2) and (4) are mutually exclusive conditions.
6. Since dogs must be counted by positive integers and not fractions, the problem is not solvable.

There's one more difficulty in this puzzling and disturbing report.

The Tampa news team ends the story with their own solution:

The digital team from Nexstar affiliate WTAJ took a crack at it, with their own Olivia Bosar determining the following:

“You first subtract the 36 to group them as small dogs since you need at least 36 small dogs. You then divide the remaining 13 into two categories: large dogs and small dogs. But you have to divide them in a way that would give you the ability to create a class that’s X and a class that’s X+36. It’s not possible in this equation because 13 is a prime number.”

As a prime number, once you try to divide 13, you end up with a .5 in your answer, and, well, obviously, you can’t have half of a dog.

I give them credit for recognizing that you can't have half a dog, at least not if you want him alive enough to compete in a show.  But what does the fact that 13 is a prime number have to do with anything?  If you make the total number of dogs 51 instead of 49, then after you subtract 36 the number of remaining dogs is 15.  Fifteen is not prime, but the problem is jut as insoluble.

Back in elementary school, I loved what was then called the "New Math."  Working with sets, and other bases—I ate it up.  (Tom Lehrer has a great song about it.)  But today's Newer Math?  I have my doubts.

With good reason, we have been focusing here on Grace. But there's another half to this bone marror transplant, and that's her sister-donor, Faith. They were a perfect bone-marrow match, and Faith was delighted to be able to provide this life-saving gift to her little sister.

But it has not come without significant sacrifice, and I daresay insufficient preparation. The bone marrow transplant literature makes it out to be a much lighter procedure than it is. The pre-donation testing is rigorous and extensive—Faith fainted at one point—and the donation itself involved forty-seven separate insertions of the needle into her bones! (Possibly twice that many; I don't remember if that number was total, or for each side.) They had made so little of the strenuousness of the procedure that Faith had hoped to be able to join her friends on a ski trip a few days afterwards—not to ski, of course, but to sit in the lodge and enjoy the camaraderie and atmosphere. That was so far from the reality that I question whether "informed consent" was taken seriously.

Here's what happened, and is happening, according to Jon's most recent post:

When Faith signed up for the donation, she was told to expect one or maybe two days of significant pain, and then a week of pain that should be managed with Tylenol and then no running and jumping for six weeks, even if she felt like it.

She had 3-4 days of significant pain, and has certainly gotten better since the first week, but at more than 4 months, continues to have 2 out of 10 pain 24 hours a day. And more pain if she exerts herself too hard.

Grace's doctors referred Faith to her primary care, who took some x-rays and referred her to physical therapy. The x-rays didn't show any fractures. The physical therapist didn't really know what to do, in that she didn't know anything about bone marrow donation, but asked a bunch of good questions and gave her some exercises to do daily. She is supposed to go back to her primary care if she is still in pain in a month or two. We did find on Google that 4% of donors are still in pain at 9 months and 1% are in pain at 12 months, but the cancer doctors said that Faith shouldn't be in that class of donors, since she is so young. We do wonder if the "hard time" the doctors had when collecting the bone marrow would result in this extra pain, but we don't know.

Faith wants to play soccer in the fall, but if the pain continues, will not be able to. She would appreciate your prayers as she tries to rest, but also work on getting her body ready for soccer.

I know Faith, and I know that she would have made the donation anyway, even if she had known the consequences. But facilities that do bone marrow transplants should be paying more attention to the donors, who are an absolutely essential part of their cancer treatment process. Shouldn't there be someone on staff who knows about the consequences and complications, and can do more than send her back to a primary care doctor who undoubtedly knows little to none of that? I have great respect for physical therapists, and this one sounds good, but they don't have this specialized knowledge.

When you pray for Grace (thank you!) would you please also pray for Faith?  For wisdom for her, her parents and the doctors; for complete healing; and that she will be able to get fully back to normal life (and soccer!).

It has been blessedly quiet on the Grace front for a while, giving the family a chance to focus on Hope, her new little sister. No news has been great news, with Grace being weaned off the cyclosporin, laughing, smiling, playing, growing hair, and generally enjoying life despite the remaining presence of her nasogastric tube and central lines.

But now we're back with another prayer request. In Heather's words,

Grace has been having belly pain and a lot of mucous in her stool, often with blood as well. We have taken her off cow's milk again (she had been asking for it instead of almond milk.) We haven't seen much improvement in the last week, and she does complain that her belly hurts and she also has a diaper rash. There is the possibility that this is GVHD (graft vs. host disease) and for the moment we have stopped weaning her cyclosporine. We are waiting for her Dartmouth team to communicate with her Boston team to see what to do.

Please pray for complete gut healing, normal stools, and normal appetite. And wisdom and peace.

Thank you all.

Reading his amazon.com "about the author" page, I found nothing about Mark Groubert to attract me. Hollywood, MTV, National Lampoon, celebrity culture, drug rehab—these are not descriptors calculated to grab my attention, except negatively.

So it's a good thing that's not where I learned about him.

Credit for that goes to David Freiheit, aka Viva Frei, the man I still still call my favorite Canadian lawyer, even though he's no longer practicing law and now lives in South Florida, the man whose podcast was one of my first YouTube Channel Discoveries, even though he now does most of his work on Rumble and Locals. At some point, he discovered America's Untold Stories and shared his discovery with the world. That link takes you to the YouTube channel, but again, most of the fun is on Rumble and Locals.

It was Porter who followed up that lead, but as sometimes happens, I wandered in while he was watching some of their broadcasts, and found them fascinating. I haven't seen nearly as many as I would like to, if I had infinite time—it's rather like the very large pile of books on my to-read list.

America's Untold Stories is hosted by Eric Hunley and Mark Groubert. Again, the subtitle, "A Magical Mystery Tour of Pop Culture and History" is not something to attract me. But these two are fascinating to listen to. Groubert is a consummate storyteller with a brilliant mind, and Hunley is a great host and facilitator. Do you know people who just happen to find themselves in the right places at the right times and have the social skills to get to know a large number of amazing people? We do. And Mark Groubert is another one. From this background, plus some high-powered research skills, his stories emerge.

I'd never paid much attention to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (not even when it happened—I was 11), and definitely wasn't interested in all the theories about why the official story of that event wasn't accurate. However, I do know enough to be certain that when someone says "we won't let you look at the data till 75 years have passed"—whether it's about JFK or COVID policy or anything else—something is being covered up, and it's probably done to protect not the innocent, but the guilty.

America's Untold Stories tells extensively-researched and entertaining tales about the times and places and people of Kennedy's era that will make your hair curl. (I don't know why that's supposed to be a bad thing; maybe it's an expression created by someone like me, who was forced as a child to wear painful curlers to bed at night, at least until my mother finally gave up on civilizing me.) The stories of President Lyndon Johnson alone make me wonder how America has survived so many really terrible presidents. I've noted before that very unsavory people can make good presidents, and good people can make terrible presidents. Johnson managed to be both a bad person and a bad president.

Hunley and Groubert cover history, current events, and personalities in a way that captivates me more than any history teacher I ever had, even the best one. I find their current series on Watergate especially interesting, since I lived through those times at an older age (early 20's). There is so much I never picked up at the time, and so much more that only came to light much later. Just as with the Kennedy assassination.

America's Untold Stories makes people and history interesting, whether politicians or pop culture personalities or mob bosses or high-end hookers. I'm sure there's a lot more to Eric Hunley than I know, but what I can say for sure is that he reminds me of the best piano accompanists, who know that their job is to make the soloist shine; he and Groubert are a great team.

I've chosen the following video to include here because it is relatively short (only half an hour on normal speed). It was posted for Thanksgiving 2021, and goes back to the beginnings of our country: tales of the Mayflower and its times you don't usually hear. Since I know a bit about the subject, I'm not sure Groubert has a good grasp of the overall picture. For example, he never mentions the differences between the "Saints" and the "Strangers" among the passengers, which was a significant division. Despite that, and even though much of what he mentions was familiar to me, I learned quite a bit. We all know how important tea is to the British, but I never knew how its introduction, in the 1650's, mitigated the scourge that followed the discovery of gin, which had been devastating Europe for a hundred years. In those days, the water was commonly so polluted that drinking it led to disease and death. Tea, made with water that had been boiled, provided a safe, non-alcoholic drink. The Mayflower passengers, who landed here in 1620, vied with the crew over the remaining beer and wine stores (needed for the crew's voyage back to England), until they were desperate enough to drink from the pristine streams of the New World, which they regarded as poisonous.

We had the privilege of meeting Eric Hunley and Mark Groubert recently, but that's a tale for another post.

Here's a post from someone—Sasha Stone—who has a great perspective on Father's day, having found a way to honor fathers, and her own less-than-ideal father, despite being herself one of a long line of "single mothers raising babies and absent dads not living up to their responsibilities."

It’s been six years since my dad died. He was a great guy, even if he wasn’t there the way I always imagined a father should be there. He was usually floating high on weed when he spent time with us, but I look back with gratitude that he was there at all. ... He was uncomfortable in family situations—he preferred to be banging on the drums at a jazz club to making idle small talk about mortgages and careers. He always existed on the fringes of life, never quite becoming the man he wanted to be. He was always the sucker who fell for a scam. He never had any money and he lived with my grandma until she died then he lived in her house until he died. But he stuck. He showed up. He was there at every Thanksgiving, every birthday, every Christmas. He would bring over bags of groceries for my daughter and me, loaves of wheat bread, hot dogs—all the things he thought we’d like from the dollar store. It’s been six years since he died and I think of him almost every day.

I’ve had so many male friends who have felt obligated to step up and be a father figure for my daughter. ... As great as it is, it’s not the same as having a father there. Fathers build courage and strength. Fathers make children, girls especially, feel like they can trust the world. Without a father there, the world seems unpredictable because no woman, no matter how great she is as a mom, can do everything and be everything.

We seem to be living through a time where fathers aren’t as valued as they once were because men aren’t as valued as they once were. It seems to have set things off balance, like our entire country is now fatherless. We seem to be collectively craving that kind of leadership now. Just give us a good dad. He’ll make things right.

Sasha's post includes six movie clips of fathers. She often embeds videos in her posts, and I confess that although I read all of her words, I usually skip the videos. I watched these, however. (I really need to see It's a Wonderful Life sometime. I never have.) And then she writes a profound commentary on our time, which I've highlighted in bold.

Since I grew up watching movies I’ve always loved the movie dads in some of my favorite films. And it’s true when you watch them you think about how badly you’d love to have a dad like that. But now, I look at them and think about how I wish we had a culture that still valued dads like that.

Back in January of this year, Jordan Peterson and Tucker Carlson answered a question about where they saw 2024 headed. Here we are in the middle of the year, and what they have to say is still relevant. This is a 10-minute excerpt from a much longer show, which I'll say upfront I haven't seen. But, being a very much johnny-come-lately fan of both men, I appreciate their differing points of view—and especially how they come together at the end.

Fathers, we need you. The future of the world depends on you. Well, no—not entirely. But the great Father upon whom all depends invites you to be part of His work. Understand the truth of the dark times Carlson foresees, and take hold of Peterson's optimisitic solution.

Happy Father's Day!