I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

1Athena1

The fashion scene has moved to London now, but this Anna Sui collection from New York bears mention. A total overload of color, and wonderfully done. Very jeune fille and lively:

I could wear every single one of these looks. There was a 50s/60s Hepburn-esque air to some pieces in the collection. You really felt like strolling down Park Avenue and magically falling in love. The clothes give a sense of endless possibility...

CherrylH

Jackie and E, thank you for the great wishes. I have been celebrating all day and will continue through the weekend. When  you get to be my age, one day is not enough to properly celebrate!!

1Athena1

Back to politics: Poor Chuck Hagel. Vote against a War of Choice that was declared based on lies and you will never be forgiven by the Gone Old Party, who will stoop to using a newbie from Texas (Sen. Cruz) to stall you. Has the Gone Old Party ever met a failed policy it didn't like in the past ten years? Silly question.

1Athena1

Best returns of the day to you, bartender!

ETA: Apologies - we crossposted.

Momine

I always quite liked Anna Sui, and those were nice pictures. Again, several of those outfits would work for flatties, I think, especially that green dress. I loved the matching knee socks.

Enjoyful

I would definitely wear the first three.  

Now that I'm finally out of my grey/beige/black phase, I LOVE color!

crazy4carrots

Lovely clothes, Athena.  They remind me of the dresses I wore when I was 16-18 (in age, that is!) -- short, flared, and brightly coloured.  And it was "de rigeuer" to have matching jewelry, if not leggings!

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

IllinoisLady

Athena....I am so with you.   Of course, we heard the voice of reason today on MTP, Sen. McCain ( choke-choke ) using the opportunity to be somewhat sneering and derisive about Chuck Hagel.  You know paragons of virtue can do that.  If only his best friend Chuck had stayed with the rt. all would be well and we would then not have to filibuster for a week.  Good thing I had not as yet eaten....

Oh well --- we can still play with Benghazi -- mileage going nowhere.  What does it take to get it??

Jackie

Anonymous

Jackie - that is the BEST poem, I really appreciate you're sharing it with us - do we know the author???

Athena - I love the colors of the first dress, what a perfect mix of red, oranges, analogous color schemes intrigue me.

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY birthday, bartender - if we're gonna have an Age Party, I'll be 68 years young in March ;-)

There was a wonderful pic of Iris Apfel ( one of my HEROINES!!!!) in today's NY Sunday Times Style section, wearing the most most wonderful SHINY red snow kinda boots ( but not LLBEAN, damn, wish I knew whose they were!) with HOT HOT HOT pink socks - makes my heart flutter - I adore her style, spirit, JOY in her self...

Any word from Kam??? Wondering how her tests are going.  Know she has to drive pretty far to see her docs.  Hope all's well. 

Anyone else notice how much "nicer" things seem to be on this site since the first of the year?  kinder, kinder, kinder....

well, on the weather front, we didn't get snow, just a few inch flurries, BUT, temps in the 20's and 30mph winds are vurrry, vurrrrry cold - so much snow blowing around, it almost looks as if it's snowing, but it's not.

Nice to see Bren, hope your work is going well - and you have just the right amount, well the amount YOU want...

QuinnCat

Hi all - I'm finally back from Portland.  This trip was just for routine doctor visits....boring stuff. All of the exciting stuff was with my "local" MO, who is 85 miles away.  Mostly it was a shopping spree..you know, small town girl goes to big city and even gets excited about eating at a California Pizza kitchen.  I stay with a friend from college and I really enjoy her company, so just a lot of talk talk talking.  I have in no way caught up with this thread and at the moment fighting a headache, so it might be awhile.  It is nice to be home and I hope all of you are feeling well, including your dogs, cats and big horse!  Oh, and your human families too.  For some reason, it's taking me a while to settle back into a routine here.

Athena - according to my friend, Portland is becoming known for clothing design....haute couture, maybe not.  In fact, her neighbor just got back from a job in NYC, working for a designer (she is a local clothing designer). Ofcourse, I still remember the horrible clothes made by that one Project Runway winner from Portland...well, not horrible, but not necessarily high fashion. More like birkenstocks and gunny sack clothing.

1Athena1

Yes, I am also wondering about Kam (bolding to catch hre eye).

Sunny - will search for that for you when I get back...

QuinnCat

LOL - I just posted before you Athena! 

IllinoisLady

Sun....I really don't know the author of that poem.  My Dad  did teach it to me when I was a young un-caring teen for the most part.  You are only a bit older as my next birthday in Sept. will put me at 68.  There was a time when 68 sounded like one should be thinking extremely seriously about last wishes.  That is at least 25 yrs. minimum away from me at this point.  Age is just a number.....but wow, can you have a major amount of flexibility depending on when you think about it ( that is the age YOU yourself are ) at different  times in your life. 

I have a long, long time yet.  Still, I have actually done some things in advance just due to timing.  My hubby and I purchased the two grave sites just below my parents after my Mom passed on.  We paid for our stones and have them already set. That way...my children, or any others still around at the time, can visit just one spot basically for parents and child as well as the man I've spent my life with since 1974.  The only part we have not done is payment of final service.  We think it will be such a long time that  ( as happened with my Dad ) what is paid now may not even come close to what costs might be in several years. 

Hope Sunday continues to be good for everyone. 

Jackie

bluedahlia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dQVfQCpYocQ

aluminum beanies anyone?

bluedahlia

Enjoyful

TERROR BABIES!  LOLOLOL!!!!!!!

We have no proof, which makes it even MORE sinister...!

Edited to add:  AND STOP ASKING ME FOR PROOF!

Chickadee

Hate to live in the same state with fools like that guy......and the ignoramuses that put him in any office of responsibility. ..

Enjoyful

I cannot stop the giggles.

YramAL

"Sir, you are not presenting any evidence other than yelling." LOL!

Mary

Chickadee

Well shoot, they had to ruin Downton Abbey. Why can't writers let someone be happy for more than a season. Ick.

crazy4carrots

Not the writers' fault, Chick.  The actor who plays Matthew signed on for 3 seasons and wouldn't re-sign.  Darn it!

crazy4carrots

Re Gohmert et al:  Has anyone noticed that Joe McCarthy has been re-incarnated in several different forms?  These "forms" are dropping "what ifs" with absolutely no evidence and too many examples to list here.  No, they have no shame.

1Athena1

Kam - No one could believe that Gretchen Jones won thaqt PR season. She made good artisan-style clothes (my take) but she was favorited over Mondo Guerra, one of the most talented young designers ever to go on PR.

LOL - I left my post up, was distracted and hit submit probably while you were posting. Glad to "see" you.

Exhausted after much home re-arranging. But there is a column by Frank Bruni about that joker Ted Cruz and his ilk:

Excerpt:

"And Ted Cruz, a Republican freshman in the Senate who has been front and center in his party’s effort to squash Chuck Hagel’s nomination as secretary of defense, has a problem. He’s an ornery, swaggering piece of work. Just six weeks since his arrival on Capitol Hill, he’s already known for his naysaying, his nit-picking and his itch to upbraid lawmakers who are vastly senior to him, who have sacrificed more than he has and who deserve a measure of respect, or at least an iota of courtesy. Courtesy isn’t Cruz’s métier. Grandstanding and browbeating are.

"He sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and during its final meeting on Tuesday about Hagel’s nomination, he made such nefarious and hectoring insinuations about Hagel’s possible corruption by foreign influences that McCain, who’d gleefully raked Hagel over the coals himself, more or less told Cruz to cool it. It was an unforgettable moment, and one that Republicans shouldn’t soon forget, because Cruz, 42, isn’t simply the latest overeager beaver to start gnawing his way through the halls of Congress. He’s a prime illustration of what plagues the Republican Party and holds it back.

"A fascinating illustration, too. On the surface, he should be part of the solution: young, Latino, with a hardscrabble family story including his father’s imprisonment in Cuba and escape to the United States. But Republicans who look to him and see any kind of savior overlook much of what drags the party down, which isn’t merely or even principally the genealogy of their candidates. It’s the intransigent social conservatism, the whiff of meanness and the showy eruptions. It’s what Cruz, who rode a wave of Tea Party ardor to victory in Texas in November, distills.

"I don’t say that to celebrate the Republicans’ struggles. Just as the country benefits from a balance of powers between branches of government, it’s best served by two viable parties in healthy tension, each checking any capacity in the other for ideological indulgence and excess. And right now the Republican Party accommodates too much quackery, belligerence and misplaced moralism to play a fully credible part in a vital, essential debate about the size and scope of government. The party should be a place where voters who are reasonably concerned about government overreach can turn. It shouldn’t be a bastion of regressive social ideas and foul tempers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/opinion/sunday/ted-cruz-the-gops-nasty-newcomer.html?hp

1Athena1

Re: Terror babies - it pisses me off when CNN (average IQ - about 50) takes everything so seriously. AC --who I find naive and not very bright-- should not be interviewing goons like that if he considers himself a serious journalist. What a losing, flop of a chanel will do for ratings. Makes me angry every time. The media gives the 1 percent nuttiest nuts so much air time that they end up serving as a mouthpiece to indoctrinate millions of gullible viewers in the views and ways of that 1 percent. That's how extremism grows. The media's yellow journalism is partly to blame. There is NO DAYLIGHT between this junk news and something the Enquirer might have about Martians landing.

Can you imagine if these networks started interviewing Holocaust deniers and publicizing their views and actions? I can ASSURE you all that within a week polls would show that about 30 prcent of Americans "do not think the Holocaust happened." It's how stupid, uneducated and easily swayed our public is. TV conspiracy theories are the substitute "education", often in place of failing schools and/or indifferent parents and a culture that disdains intellectualism. I PROMISE you this would happen. Let Limbaugh have a show dedicated to denying the Holocaust on, say, a Monday. Then let some crazy middle aged female politician (sadly,it's always that demogtraphic) come out saying she "has evidence" that history books are being tainted - on a Wednesday. Then let the stupid media run after the story and cover a group of five stragglers somewhere putting up posters denying the Holocaust on a Friday, and BANG! America is "educated," and the idiotic Sunday talk shows are full of the story. That's how 30 percent "know" the "truth."

It's best not to repeat these bored journalist's bottomfeeding. Honestly, I just wish the whole country would watch nothing but cartoons. We'd be far wiser.

Thank you for listening to my rant.

Chickadee

A pox on Matthew, I should have known all the sappy love stuff was over the top......but sure did enjoy it. Great escapism from political idiots.

CherrylH

Chickadee, I thought there were so many hints that some bad was going to happen. Too bad. I really liked his character.

RetiredLibby

OK, I admit it. I am confessing. I cheated. I went to UK websites and read spoilers about Season 3 of "Downton Abbey." I knew in advance about Sybil and about Matthew. I'm glad I did it, too - much less shocking and upsetting that way! I am wondering, though, how they will continue the modernization of the estate. It was a mite ham-handed that Shrimpy and Robert had the discussion about Shrimpy losing HIS estate because he didn't modernize like Robert, so I expect Robert will press forward with Tom's help. I also wonder if Mary will take an active role to protect her son's legacy. I LOVE "Downton Abbey" - I explained to DH that it is just a high-class soap opera. Does anyone remember "Poldark" from the mid-late 70s? THAT was good, too!



Terror babies? Puh-leeze! Next thing you know people will be accusing the Bush family of genetic manipulation to intentionally produce a president with the IQ of an eggplant just to enrich Republican donors by starting wars for no reason. (Look quick, I'm sure some busybody will complain!)



L

Anonymous

HL - it wasn't cheating - I was getting tired of the 'soap opera' taking itself toooooo seriously...Agents in UK will only allow 3 years contracts, in the States TV shows often get much longer ones.  Think the "Tom branson" character is about to get a much larger role, and the niece Rose will add some intrigue to DownLoad Abby, as my friends call it- good that the Brits get it earlier than we do, makes it easier than putting up with the PBS hype around it...

Blue - that interview with Anderson Cooper was unreal - and this guy has served 4 terms in House.  Jeez - and the woman ( with the HIDEOUSLY nasal voice) - I'm never leaving the state of MA - where we are all SO HAPPY to keep repeating the words, Senator Elizabeth Warren

pip57

I hope CNN isn't trying to take on the Fox style of 'news' by inflaming peoples' fears and hatred.  But ratings are the bottom line.

AnneW

Kam, welcome home. Glad all's well! I'd like to spend more time in Portland. Been there once and spent hours at Powells, the coolest, biggest bookstore on the planet. And another time passing through to get started riding bikes down the Oregon Coast. Talk about a gorgeous area!

I've had enough of John McCain. In 2006, he was endorsing Hagel for Sec of State. Now, he's all puckered up like he sucked a lemon. Tired old man in a tired old party. Hateful. And the new blood they're promoting is curdled and disgusting. True Repbulicans (by this I mean non Tea-Baggers) I know are quite dismayed about where the state of our political parties are heading. Current Dems are not Progressive enough to suit me. I'm a bit dismayed myself.