What I see are people living longer with many more productive years. That should be a good thing, for them (us-I came late in the Boom) and for our society. Instead I’m seeing our longevity played as a ‘zero sum game’.

“The chocolates may be gone, but the box they came in is still good...” per Aunt Jackie.

A Bathory reference! I just love those. There’s something decidedly modern about her. So what if we’ve denuded the countryside of budding young women—one must keep the skin Plexiderm (tm) taut.

I’ve suffered from endometriosis from my late teens — I can’t express the relief and freedom taking the Pill granted me. (I know there’s more than one “formula”.) I can’t imagine anything less vibrant than being doubled over several days a month.

No he wasn’t. He’d already been seduced by the dark side and registered Republican.

One hundred years ago:

My VietNam-veteran uncle killed himself in 1980 and my Catholic grandmother, who passed away in 2008, never got over it. I’ve never heard of a parent losing a child who did, ever, get over it.

I’m trying to remember if it was during the Reagan terms or the Bush I & II terms that the right argued that Westerners couldn’t be truly poor; even the ‘Projects’ had hot and cold running water, refrigeration, and heating. If you lived this side of Tobacco Road or a drought-stricken west African village, you should…

Too broad a brush, but I understand your frustration. I’m a native St. Louisian, live about three miles from this cemetery, and am shaking with anger about this stupidity. (I’ll pass by there on my way to Aldi’s after work, this evening.)

Don’t you just love the *tsk, tsk*-ing... particularly by those who have just met the abuser and haven’t known s/he long enough to have experienced anything like your lifetime of manipulation?

Having been abused some years ago, I have waffled about whether to empathize with MT. Then I remembered that there was no out of that hellish relationship until I made up my own mind to get out. And I admitted to myself what I had been willing to do to others in order to avoid abusive episodes.

I lived in NYC in the mid-to-late 80's and worked not too far from Herald Square. The service wasn’t bad in those days. Now? I can’t begin to imagine.

Dillard’s took over the Stix, Baer & Fuller stores in the St. Louis region. Stix had the prettiest logos:

Famous Barr in St. Louis.