martinimade

This is what I'll be planning for 2017, especially #19 and #33. You?

• I, too, was not asked.
• Bourdain lays down some wisdom, even though he'd be the last to call it that.
• A list you need. Maybe. If you have very dark needs.
• My friend Karl spent some time in Moscow during the coup many years ago. Here are his thoughts. 
• If Mama Ain't Happy ...
• It has been a year. The pictures tell the tale.
• On bathrooms and power.
• Runners are liars.
• For people of a certain age, our anthem.

"It has been a long year. For Americans who care not just about their own families but about the families of those they will never meet, at home and abroad, there is rage and there is broken-winged but vital hope. These are not mutually exclusive. To be alive and aware is to be angry sometimes. To stay alive, on purpose, as well as you can, for as long as you can, is an act of hope."

-- In Praise of Hopeful Rage, Sara Benincasa

The Albany airport is our airport of choice. It's big enough to have a decent selection of flights but not so big that the trip from gate to baggage claim ever takes more than ten minutes. Also: it has therapy pets. I've stopped to pet a few dogs over the years we've lived in this area.

The four of us just got back from Florida. On our way out, we met this guy:

His name's Murphy and he's a Newf. The kids loved him:

I did, too, but adopting a Murphy would require an addition on the house. 

We also met this guy:

His name is Bacon Bits. Because of course it is. 

• Running in Trumpland.
• These three things feel like they are related.
• We can all agree on dogs.
• We can also agree on how cool space is.
• Also, also: Stevie Wonder.
• The fact that I enjoy this annual round-up should tell you exactly what kind of dork I am.

Over at Mason Dixon Knitting, I had a chat with Mary Jane Mucklestone, Our Lady of the Stopover.

• Trust me when I say that you really need to read this piece about fancy butter.
• Asma Khalid's reporting helped get me through the last 18 months. And this story shows us where we are as a nation.
• Related to the above.
• Whenever life seems to be too much to bear, I look at images like these. They offer a nice sense of perspective.
• #signedbyTrump #NSFW
• What we need more of. 
• SIGN ME UP.

Apparently, the past few weeks have been all about me! Well, not so much me! as things I have written, like this interview with Brown Sheep Yarns' Peggy Jo Wells.

"Bottom line: The Founding Fathers didn’t fully trust democracy, fearing mob rule, and so created a republic. They correctly worried that a pure democracy could result in the election of a demagogue (ahem), or a charismatic autocrat (ahem), or someone under foreign influence (ditto), hence the rule that a president must have been born in the United States. We know how seriously Trump takes the latter."

-- Kathleen Parker on the Electoral College. While, on the whole, I think the Hamilton Electors movement is doomed, I can help but support it because, seriously? This is where we are?

If it's Thursday, it must be time for another Dry Martini column at Another Mother Runner.