On bees and things...

A recent conversation with RR…

Me: “That was my mom on the phone. She says ‘hi’.”

RR: “‘Hi’. [LONG PAUSE] Oh, bother.”

Me: “What’s wrong?”

RR: “Oh, nothing really. [PAUSE] It’s just that I wish I would have said, ‘Word to your mother’.”

Me: “Oh, riiight. Of course you do.”

Midland? Really?

I took this quiz on Heather's Blog and have listed the results below. I'm not really sure how I feel about it. It's like they are telling me that I have a non accent or something (and I don't like the idea of being grouped in with newscasters, either).

Oh, the things that keep me up at night...

We have new toilet paper at the museum. It’s as soft as it is thin. I’m not sure it even qualifies as “half ply”. Sheryl Crow’s one square proposition (joke or not) wouldn't fly with this stuff. Doing so would raise serious sanitary concerns. It disintegrates on contact.

Anyway, it feels good to touch, but I’m not sure it’s very practical (seeing as though I have to use twice as much as I used to with the old, thick sandpaper-like TP we used to have in the staff bathroom). Who makes these decisions anyway? More importantly: Why wasn’t I consulted? I’d take functionality over comfort any day.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE: There's ONLY room for improvement...

Tuesday night I went to “Pub Quiz” at a local bar with Trevor and a friend of mine (who happens to work at another history-related museum in Dallas). Going into it, we thought we’d do really well. And, we did – for the first five or six questions. After that, though, it kinda’ went down hill. I blame the wine…

Anyway, we did not leave empty handed. They gave out gift certificates to the top two teams, and consolation Pez Dispensers to the group that, “played the whole game, but still came in dead last”. Yep, that was us - Team: DISGRUNTLED MUSEUM WORKERS (AND TREVOR).

*Sigh*

An update, if you will...

In the past month I’ve been doing a lot of traveling. First, my brother graduated from college in Tennessee. Then, I went to Vegas for a cousin’s wedding (June 1st – 3rd). This trip was followed by a jaunt up to Baltimore for a high school graduation on Saturday (June 9th). In fact, Trevor and I only returned from Maryland late last night. I feel like I could go to sleep and not wake up for days. I’m exhausted. The trip to Vegas alone just about did me in – that’s the kind of vacation you need a vacation to recover from!

Anyway, I have a lot of pictures from my travels, and plan on posting them sometime in the relatively near future. (Read: They're coming, just don't hold your breath.)

In other news: tonight is the fifth anniversary of my first date with Trevor. Due to extraordinary circumstances (none of them worth mentioning here) we no longer “celebrate” the anniversary. It’s much more about acknowledging that we’ve been together since the days of the dinosaurs, and moving on.

Happy Anniversary, TWINKIE!

And why not...?!

I had a close friend in college who was from the Green Mountain State. She was always poking fun at Texas, so I returned the favor by claiming that Vermont was part of Canada - not the U.S.

Guess I wasn't all that far off!

VT. SECESSION MOVEMENT GAINS TRACTION

By JOHN CURRAN, Associated Press Writer
Mon. Jun 4, 2:39 PM ET

MONTPELIER, Vt. - At Riverwalk Records, the all-vinyl music store just down the street from the state Capitol, the black "US Out of Vt.!" T-shirts are among the hottest sellers.

But to some people in Vermont, the idea is bigger than a $20 novelty. They want Vermont to secede from the United States — peacefully, of course.

Disillusioned by what they call an empire about to fall, a small cadre of writers and academics hopes to put the question before citizens in March. Eventually, they want to persuade state lawmakers to declare independence, returning Vermont to the status it held from 1777 to 1791.

Neither the state nor the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids secession, but few people think it is politically viable.

"I always thought the Civil War settled that," said Russell Wheeler, a constitutional law expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. If Vermont fought and won a war with the federal government, "then you could say Vermont proved the point. But that's not going to happen."

Still, the idea has found plenty of sympathetic ears in Vermont, a left-leaning state that said yes to civil unions, no to slavery (before any other) and last year elected a socialist to the U.S. Senate.

Supporters have published a "Green Mountain Manifesto" subtitled "Why and How Tiny Vermont Might Help Save America From Itself by Seceding from the Union."

In 2005, about 300 people turned out for a secession convention in the Statehouse, and plans for a second one are in the works. A poll this year by the University of Vermont's Center for Rural Studies found that 13 percent of those surveyed support secession, up from 8 percent a year before.

"The argument for secession is that the U.S. has become an empire that is essentially ungovernable — it's too big, it's too corrupt and it no longer serves the needs of its citizens," said Rob Williams, editor of Vermont Commons, a quarterly newspaper dedicated to secession.

"We have electoral fraud, rampant corporate corruption, a culture of militarism and war," Williams said. "If you care about democracy and self-governance and any kind of representative system, the only constitutional way to preserve what's left of the Republic is to peaceably take apart the empire."

Vermont, which was historically conservative, has evolved into one of the nation's most liberal states since the latter part of the 20th century, a tie-dyed bastion of countercultural dissent and New England self-reliance where folks wear their hearts — and their anti-war stickers — on their Subaru station wagon bumpers.

Secession movements have a long history. Key West, Fla., staged a mock secession from America in the 1980s. In Vermont, the town of Killington tried to break away and join New Hampshire in 2004, and Hawaii, Alaska, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Texas all have some form of secession organizations today.

The Vermont movement has been simmering for years but gained new traction because of the Iraq war, rising oil prices and the formation of several pro-secession groups.

Secession supporters hope to have the question considered in March on Town Meeting Day, when voters gather to discuss state and local issues.

Thomas Naylor, 70, a retired Duke University economics professor and author, wrote the manifesto and founded a secession group called Second Vermont Republic.

His 112-page manifesto contains little explanation of how Vermont would make do without federal aid for security, education and social programs. Some in the movement foresee a Vermont with its own currency and passports, for example, and some form of representative government formed once the secession has taken place.

Frank Bryan, a professor at the University of Vermont who has championed the cause for years, said the cachet of secession would make the new republic a magnet.

"People would obviously relish coming to the Republic of Vermont, the Switzerland of North America," he said. "Christ, you couldn't keep them away."

The Middlebury Institute, a Cold Spring, N.Y., think tank, hosted a North American Separatist Convention last fall in Burlington that drew representatives from 16 organizations. The group is co-sponsoring another conference in October in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Of course, skeptics abound.

"It doesn't make economic sense, it doesn't make political sense, it doesn't make historical sense. Other than that, it's a good idea," said Paul Gillies, a lawyer and Vermont historian.

For now, the would-be secessionists are hoping to draw enough support to get the question on Town Meeting Day agendas.

"We're normal human beings," said Williams, 39, a history professor at Champlain College. "But we're serious about this. We want people in Vermont to think about the options going forward. Do you want to stay in an empire that's in deep trouble?"