Same for Kappas. I’m pretty sure I remember being instructed to pay attention to how we were dressed when wearing our letters and such. Wouldn’t do to be seen hungover and ragged while wearing them, it might give people the idea that we weren’t proper ladies.

For some reason I always think “be a peach” should be said with the same awful tone as “bless your heart”.

They read about all those martyrs from the bible and they get all like, I can do that! It’s a win-win for people like her. No one is getting literally thrown to the lions any more and she’ll be celebrity within the far right for the rest of the presidential campaign. Instead of Joe the Plumber, they now have Kim the…

And this is so true. They leave everything up to “god’s will”. It totally absolves them of any responsibility for the outcome of their decision making. Who really cares what you do if you can ask for forgiveness from some being that can’t actually tell you yeah, it’s all cool or hit you upside the head and call you an…

I was hoping someone else was thinking of this!

Thank you for sharing with us this precious gift. Good gods these are TERRIBLE.

I was hoping that someone would have posted this!

I wasn’t saying that you were wrong. I’m just relaying the manner in which one old lady used a phrase. Like I said, nothing in her manner of use would lead me to believe that she thought it meant rape. I don’t know if it was something that her family used to say in the old country or if it was something she picked up…

Um, maybe in other circles but I have a hard thinking that an old lady would be telling her young grandchildren that gyspys were going to rape us because we didn’t listen to her about not eating all the cookies before dinner. Nonna was a bit wacky but I can’t imagine my mother standing by while her mom was basically…

That’s a Sicilian thing? I’ve always wondered where that came from. The only folks I knew who did that were definitely not Italian. I could see why your mom freaked out. Pretty brilliantly sneaky...could either be a whoops I forgot to put that in there or a you’re not good enough for my granddaughter thing. Which is…

Ha! Nona was from up near the Austrian border so she never did the evil eye thing, but she had the holy water at the front door and then at each of the bedrooms. Maybe that was her version of the red ribbon?

My paternal grandmother was a pretty fiery redhead, we’re talking total carrot top, and she always wore red lipstick. I remember her carefully applying while looking in her mirrored lipstick case. It was probably one of the few reasons she’d put down her cigarette.

I live in a blue state as well and both my husband and I have family members you’d swear weren’t born and raised in this state. My parents handled it by raising us to love everyone (thank you hippie Jesuit preists!) and to turn our relative’s ignorance into our inside jokes. We knew there was nothing that could be…

Naked cake!!! Love it.

Henry Weinhard’s will always be the nostalgic beer of my college years. It was the best cheap beer we could afford. But Hamm’s will always have a special place in my cooler.

Hope you like it! There’s an American Experience episode about the Big Burn but they focus mainly on the fire and Pulaski, not much done on the political side.

There’s a great book out, The Big Burn by Timothy Egan, that talks about Teddy R, Pinchot, and the USFS. It goes into their fight against the direction that the Republican party was taking back at the beginning of the 20th century. Really good book and really frustrating when you realize the path that the Republicans…

The arguments some of us would have over toe strap/no strap. And yes, Chaco are definitely sexy. Think it’s because you rarely see people who aren’t outdoorsy wearing them. You know the people wearing them have earned their Chaco calluses.

Ha! Props on not developing the Chaco stink. I’ve definitely dealt with it over the years. Imagine 5 naturalists wearing them everyday while leading hikes...that’s some funk. I could never stand Tevas long enough to get the stink.

Yes. Chacos forever!