Retiring Guy's Digest: 2022-02-20

Saturday, February 26, 2022

Jane Elearnor Toner Long (1932-2022) Warren High School class of 1950

1950 Dragon yearbook

Source: Meadville Tribune

1967 Warren City Directory

Toner Leon H (Wilma J; Toner's Sharpening Service) h66 North State Street North Warren
Toner Wilma J Mrs jury commissioner Warren County r66 North State Street North Warren

1983 Warren City Directory

Wilma listed at same address in county section

The popularity of Jane as a baby name is graphed here. Let's take a look at grandson Kip.

Source: Social Security Administration

Kip had an undistinguished 40-year run on the baby names chart, pearking at #379 in 1965.

Other members of the WHS class of 1950 (24):

2021

Barbara Ann Pierce Clark. (10/14)

Catherine Babcock Dangelo. (9/12)

Carol Ann Pasco Pangborn. (9/10)

Robert Venon Johnson. (1/11)

Alice Swanson Albaugh. (1/1)

2020

James Gray. (7/10)
Mabel Morse Horner. (2/4)

2019
Donald Cable. (8/27)
Clifford LeRoy Maze. (7/9)
Robert Lundmark. (7/1)
Donald Baldensperger. (1/26)

2018
John White. (10/12)
Geraldine Downey Gustafson. (10/7)

2017
Helen Quiggle Kroemer. (7/9)
Dale Witherell.  (5/31)
Betty Reynolds Mahan. (4/4)
Helen Kane Scalise. (2/23)

2016
William Lemmon. (8/30)
Joan Kondak Vernon. (8/3)
Barbara Reist Cook. (7/7)
Mary Sikstrom Bauer.  (6/20)
Robert Jones.  (6/4)

2015
Lewis McCullough. (7/6)
Joan Marlene Campbell Berdine. (2/18)

2014
Glen Valentine. (8/18)

GET ME REWRITE: Dan Patrick sez if clown school was good enough for me, it good enough for everyone else

Texas Observber, 2/23/2022

Nearly two years into a global pandemic, teachers are caught in the middle of fights over masking, school closures, remote learning, and other issues. Patrick’s latest threat to university tenure is another dose of salt in the wound. Educators at all levels now face the threat of termination and public shaming for talking frankly to their students about racism. Patrick’s attacks on tenure are a thinly veiled attack on academic freedom.
Patrick’s proposal comes on the heels of Abbott’s recent Parental Bill of Rights, which has been billed as giving parents greater influence over their children’s education in public schools but in reality is a continuation of the GOP’s onslaught on public education. It would amend the state constitution to fire teachers found teaching “pornography”—including material that deals with race, gender, or sexual orientation that Republicans find objectionable—and ban them from the profession.

Plain and simple: It's what they do ("GOP Lies" episode)

Top headline: Berkeley News, 9/29/2020

Middle headline: NPR, 11/13/2021
Bottom headline: Insider NJ, 8/23/2021

Wisconsin State Journal, 2/26/2022

Headline: Wisconsin Public Radio, 2/14/2022

2/11/2022 update starts here

Headline from New York Times, 2/10/2022

Original 12/15/2021 post, "Republicans are the Morman Tabernacle Choir of hypocrisy", starts here.

New York Times, 12/15/2021

Republican leaders across the country have been engaged in a similarly awkward dance over the past few months as they accept — and often champion — money from the $350 billion bucket of state and local aid included in the stimulus bill, which passed Congress without a single Republican vote.
In some states, like Ohio and Arizona, Republican governors are spending the funds while attempting to undercut the law that allowed the money to flow. Other governors are faulting Congress for not giving their state enough money. And, like their counterparts in Congress, many Republicans have blasted Mr. Biden’s stimulus bill for fueling inflation, even as they take the funds, and criticized Democrats for pushing for additional government spending plans.

GOP hypocrisy in full flower. (12/13/2021)
GET ME REWRITE: GOP lawmakers profess that 'the most effective government is government closest to the people' -- except when it comes to local sales tax increases (the continuing saga). (11/29/2021)

Wisconsin traffic death increase after Covid trough

Wisconsin Department of Transportation

Wisconsin Public Radio, 2/25/21022

Andrea Bill, assistant director of the Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which analyzes state traffic data, said people in all regions of the state are speeding more.
Researchers first tracked an increase in speeding when the pandemic shutdowns in early 2020 caused dramatic reductions in the number of cars on the road. By mid-2021, Bill said, volume in Wisconsin was nearly back to pre-pandemic levels — but average speeds hadn't come down.
"What I thought would happen was that when the traffic came back to normal, we would see the speeds go back down to where they were before 2020," Bill said. "And we did not see that in 2021."
The state ended 2021 with 601 traffic deaths. That’s tied with the total in 2012, which at the time was an outlier. Not since 2007, when 737 people died, has Wisconsin seen a deadlier year on the roads. In the decade that preceded the pandemic (from 2010 through 2019), the state averaged 537 traffic deaths per year.

Friday, February 25, 2022

New York Times trumpets Texas 'political upheaval' taking place in rural Trump's America

First of all, J. David Goodman arrived late to the party. Terrill County, of which Sanderson is the county seat, has voted Republican in a presidential election by double-digit margins since 2004.

Wikipedia (and below)

Secondly, the county appears to be emptying out. Its population has decreased 76% since its 1950 peak.

New York Times, 2/24/2022

In a remote corner of West Texas along the Rio Grandewhere cactuses far outnumber residents and the closest grocer is an hour’s drive, a quiet political upheaval has been taking place.

[snip]

The transformation of local politics in Terrell County — a working-class border community of fewer than 1,000 people — provides an ominous signal for Texas Democrats: Conservative Hispanics are not only realigning in presidential elections, but also in contests much closer to home.

The largest metro areas of Texas are trending blue. And this is where much of the state's population growth is taking place.

For Wisconsin Republcan legislators, it's always 1984

At left is the email fantasy Vos sent out today

Original 10/8/2021 post starts here

The GOP is fluent in Newspeak.

Bottom screenshot from Vos email blast

Dear Janel and Duey, We've been down this road before. And it was a wrong turn. Best, Retiring Guy

Fox6 Milwaukee, 2/24/2022

The bill's chief sponsors, Sen. Duey Stroebel and Rep. Janel Brandtjen, argue mandatory sentences will deter shoplifters and send a strong anti-crime message. Opponents, including the state public defender's office and the Wisconsin Counties Association, counter that the legislation will do little to deter crime and lead to overcrowded jail

Jay & the Americans' "Let's Lock the Door (and Throw Away the Key)" debuted at #81 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending December 26, 1964. It spent 10 weeks on the chart, peaking at #11 for two weeks.

Gayle Font Gray (1949-2022) Warren Area High School class of 1967

1966 Dragon yearbook

Source: Donald Lewis Funeral Home

1967 Warren City Directory

1983 Warren City Directory

Gray Gayle G Mrs office secretary Interroyal h10 Maple Street North Warren
Gray John M & Gayle F; maintenance man Warren State Hospital h10 Maple Street North Warren

Gayle experienced difficulty establishing herself during the first 3 decades of the 20th century. She gained some oomph during the 1930s and eventually spent 20 years in the top 200 (1940-1959), peaking at #124 in 1951. After 1970, she made a relatively swift departure off the baby names chart.

Source: Social Security Administration

Other class of 1967 graduates:
2021

Terry Liuttlefield. (2/24)

2020

Linda Calla Grove Voigt. (11/26)

Ronald Farnham. (3/6)

2019
Craig Goodwin. (11/25)
James Nelson. (8/21)
Marcia Peterson Weyel. (1/15)

2017

Judy Warr Tyler. (12/29)
William MacKenzie. (5/5)
Fritz Shoup. (3/5)
William Lucia. (2/22)

2015

Dorothy McClain Zimmerman. (7/31)

Susan Shaver. (3/30)

Greetings from Cabell County, West Virginia, where church and state are blended in a red froth

Cabell County is not nearly as Trumpy as the rest of West Virginia, where the Orange Guy received 68.6% of the vote in 2020, tops among the 50 states.

3rd-party candidates received 16% of vote in 1992, 9.5% of vote in 1996, 6.8% in 2016;

(Segregationist George Wallace received 10.8% of the vote in 1968)

In fact, Cabell County voters seemed to sour on Trump a bit.

Trump received 2,271 more votes than he did in 2016, a 11% increase, in a county where the 2020 population of 94,350 has decreased 13% since its 1960 peak of 108,202.

On the other hand, Biden received 3,547 more votes than Clinton did in 2016, an increase of 31%.

Trump's share of the vote decreased by 1 percentage point. Biden increased Clinton's share of the vote by 6 percentage points.

Trumpers still doin' their thing.

NPR, 2/18/2022

And getting some much-needed pushback

"For years, school system employees have violated the constitutional rights of students by promoting and advancing the Christian religion, as well as by coercing students into participating in Christian religious activity," the suit reads. The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a nonprofit that promotes the separation of church and state.
The suit follows a walkout at Huntington High School last week where more than 100 students left their classrooms chanting, "Separate the church and state," and, "My faith, my choice."

8/3/2021 update starts here

Wikipedia

NPR, 7/30/2021

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 500,000 Americans have died since companies began aggressively marketing and distributing prescription pain pills in the late 1990s.
Experts believe the flood of opioid medications served as a kind of gateway, igniting a deadly second wave of addiction and overdose deaths linked to heroin and the synthetic opioid fentanyl.

Original 8/4/2017 post starts here

The county seat is Huntington, where Trump held a campaign rally last night. The city's population peaked at 86,353 in 1950. Its estimated 2016 population is 48,113, a drop of 44%.