And yet he represents them, anyway!

During the election cycle, by and large the Venezuelan population in Florida decided to go all-in on Trump because... reasons!

There was some chattering that "obviously" trump hated Maduro and he'd be likely to grant visas for people who were here, fleeing the regime.

Never mind that he never actually said anything about it. It just had to be true!

And Biden, well, he was a socialist, so therefore he was just like Maduro and won't help them.

Flash forward to this morning. Oh look, Biden doesn't like Maduro either. Shocking, I know. And he's not much like him, either, it turns out.

Oh, and he represented the interests of people who didn't vote for him, people who openly opposed and mocked him during the election. And without even telling them they had to apologize first.



The conclusion to one part of my genealogy research

If you read a piece I did some time ago, you may remember that I had a family mystery with my grandmother - she had a legal issue and I thought she went to jail.

I felt determined to figure out what happened. So I dove right in. Once in a while you get lucky, and hit on a thing or two and can get rolling.

At first I struggled with her name. She used several variations of her name almost like stage names. She also did a lot of misdirection. So it was slow going for a while.

But then I found her divorce record which included her legal name. I went to the dade county court site. Nothing. Then I visited the Miami herald archives.

And bonanza. There were articles and it was easy enough to follow the story.

She held a lease on a 4 unit building (I'm not clear whether her stake was just one unit or the whole thing) and it was insured for $14,000 (it appears to have been on the contents, what's up with that)...

She found a 16 year old "troublemaker" and offered him $500 to burn the place down. Its a little sordid, because she found him via my dad, and met him on a park bench to work out the details of the fire.

She left gasoline and other combustibles in one unit, and gave him a key and $100. She offered $400 more when she got paid from the insurance. She also said she'd get two of the tenants out of the building - but not a third, elderly man.

The boy took the money, and then had second thoughts. He told his parents, and they went to the police. The police investigated and found the gasoline and arrested my grandmother, at a store she owned (I don't know where in the world she got the money for the store or this apartment; this wasn't where she lived - she resided on Miami Beach).

The trial was fairly short, and she was convicted, and got 3 years, but had the sentence reduced for good behavior.

My mom told me that jogged her memory, and my grandmother wound up paying off the attorney's fees by going to work for him as a receptionist for a few years.

That settles that piece of it, but of course raises more questions.

Now I can sleep at night. Ha.

An intriguing family mystery of sorts

A while back, I talked about my own genealogy research.

And then this week, I got a random letter about some property a distant relative owned.

So I opened up the Family Search history and poked around, curious about whether this person was related. It turns out that my paternal grandfather had a sister, which I knew.

She travelled from Newfoundland to NY, at some point to room with my grandfather, which I did not know.

And later, she married and had a daughter. That would be my dads first cousin, who lived in NY.

And, my grandfathers sister lived in NY and died in the mid 70s. So she outlived my grandfather.

I asked my mom about it and she remembered that my grandfather was "close to his sister" ... and yet my mom doesn't think he saw her after he moved to Florida, in about 1942. And she doesn't recall my dad ever meeting (or even knowing about) his cousin. Or having seen his aunt.

Aside: my dad spent some of the summer in NY at the worlds fair in 1964, and didn't "look her up" while he was there, most likely because he didn't know she was there.

That's just strange in a way.

I also poked around my grandfathers other siblings, and they each had children, and they'd be dads first cousins as well. They were in Canada, so I get why we never saw them. But I didn't even know about all of them.

We met some of them a number of years ago, but there are more than we knew about.

It's weird how family simply drifts and loses touch. Or at least used to in this pre-connected world.

Intriguing premise

I found a show called Bletchley Circle on Amazon Prime video.  And I have to say that while the show is good, the premise is what grabbed me, and its really has stuck with me.

So here's the underlying story: while the men were off fighting the second world war, a few were left to oversee the operation of intelligence gathering, codebreaking, and determining how to best counter German actions.  But the grunt work of actually breaking the codes and understanding what was in the messages was left to a group of gifted women.  They were good at recognizing patterns, looking at threads, and generally following up on leads as they sat behind desks in Bletchley or worked with Turing on his enigma machine.

And then the war ended.  Turing was outed as being gay and ostracized and shunned for the rest of his life (before committing suicide).  And the women went back to doing the mundane chores that were allotted to women in England.  Everyone that worked on codebreaking or intelligence was required to sign documents that they would never reveal what they did during the war, under penalty of treason. 

A group of these women, upon whom the story revolves, had agreed to "never be ordinary..." and yet here we are 9 years after the war, and one is a librarian, one is married with two children, one is married with an abusive husband, and one has been anything but ordinary.  

But the bug to follow their passion and be creative and use those skills still lives in them, and they wind up chasing down a serial killer.

Its the nature of this utilizing women when they were needed, and yet putting them back into "traditional roles" after the war that got me.  Its kind of sad in a way.  They were never given their due, well perhaps until recently.  And the work they did mostly remained secret.

I wonder how much further ahead England (or society in general) would have been if they had been encouraged to continue being clever along the way?

Another letter about impeachment to Florida’s senators.

Senator,

I noted yesterday that while the house impeachment manager showed the video that *unequivocally* demonstrates that trump called for the insurrection, you had your head down, pretending to read some papers.

Almost like the apocryphal ostrich burying it's head in the sand at a sign of trouble.

When history books tell the accounts of January 6th, they will surely talk about the assault on democracy, insurrection, and sedition. And they will undoubtedly list the 44 senators who chose to vote against impeachment for their own selfish reasons.

And your name will be on that list. History will judge you for these actions. And remember you as being a self-involved coward who was complicit in the actions that day.

You are an embarrassment to florida and to our nation.

There is no mistake. Trump committed a high crime and your duty is to uphold the constitution. But you violated your own oath of office and that is your legacy.

Valley News - Dartmouth halts $200 million project after excavation goes awry

Sometimes the world is a funny place.

The construction error happened on new *engineering* school.

I guess they can literally write the book on how not to engineer a project.

https://www.vnews.com/Dartmouth-halts-massive-project-after-hole-dug-in-wrong-place-26602507


Short. Sweet. To the point. That's the beauty Dave's iPhone.

Best comment I’ve seen on mask wearing

Nah, he has to wear a mask even if he doesn't want to. 🤷🏼‍♀️ Those are the rules everywhere. Grow up and wear your mask properly, or stay home. I work as a cashier in my local grocery store, I am literally putting myself and my family at risk to serve the public, and not wearing a mask properly or at all, is one of the most selfish things you can do (not that you people care, all that matters to you is your comfort and your feelings). A lot of my coworkers have had to stay home for two weeks, sometimes a whole month, because they're getting exposed to the virus thanks to selfish customers. Everyone would rather report us to corporate and accuse us of "discrimination" and "being mean"– essentially lying about the situation, just so they can get out of wearing a nask! But of course they won't stay home because it's "not fair to make them suffer by trapping them at home", but they will make up any excuse to not wear a mask. Heck, they would probably flip if they knew any grocery employees got sick, and accuse us of putting *them* at risk for it!

I am over all excuses for not wearing a nask. Tell someone who cares, because it ain't me. Wear a damn mask!