I come from a largish family, spread out across the US. Half of the family was invited to a nibling’s wedding, the other half did not make the guest list. I admit to wrestling with feeling bitter and rejected. NTL I still sent a gift from the registry, because I love my nibling, their parent however at this moment can fuck off. So am I terrible for feeling excitement that this hurricane Isaias is making travel miserable for the siblings invited. No no not at all.
Haha. I like eating Kit-Kats that way because I can hold the wrapper around the bottom, as I would with any other candy bar.
I bite string cheese like a flaccid white carrot, without peeling it into strings.
I once removed the “don’t remove this label” label from my matrass.
Barely slept that night.
I also eat it this way.
I am a woman (late 30s) who is not a fan of Taylor Swift. I respect her for making music that so many other people enjoy, but I’ve never heard a song of hers that I liked. Now, if I sat down and listened to every single song, I would probably discover two or three that I think are good…but I have no interest in doing it.
To those who don’t know, Taylor Swift’s fans have a reputation for being almost cult-like and aggressive, and some even think it’s anti-feminist to not be a fan of her.
I think you’ve got a lot of company on that bench!
I’ve been on one ghost tour and enjoyed it immensely. It was in Williamsburg. There were some spooky stories but it also had a bunch of tidbits of local history that were too small and personal to end up in most history books. It was fun.
I get that it’s a way to get otherwise uninterested people to take an interest in history, I do. I also get why people think supernatural bullshit is fun. But this ghost tour phenomenon has literally ruined some of the historical places I fell in love with as a kid. Williamsburg is one of them. Gettysburg is another. History is all around you in those places - you don’t need ghost stories to experience it. The last time I was in Williamsburg with my own kid it felt like going to a Ren Faire. We had a similar experience in Gettysburg that was only countered by taking a horseback tour of the battlefield with my daughter and visiting the spot where my 2nd Great Grandfather was wounded with both my mom and my daughter. I’ll never be back to either place - I’d much rather remember them for what I loved about them.
Similarly, I’ll never visit Sea World again. The first time we went, it was great; a learning experience with animals. A year later, they were Disneyfied — everything was now a “show”, the animals talked, they all performed to a “story,” I was bummed out. No more.
Why learn something when you can be entertained? Harrumph.
Where might I find your newsletter? 
Oh, something else (this is embarrassing) — my Dad dragged us to Gettysburg multiple times as kids and we always hated it. After watching Gettysburg on video, I could finally follow the story and really enjoyed it last time we went.
The first time I went it was with both my parents and my grandparents. I was maybe 9 or 10, and in those days we knew my grandmother’s grandfather had fought there, but we didn’t know where or with which regiment. I remember wandering around in the woods on Big Round Top. I imagined a Reb around every tree and found a Minie ball in some rocks, which I turned in to a Ranger (he let me keep it and thanked me for my honesty). By the next time my mom took me there I was 13 or so and had studied every aspect of the battle. By that time, the electric map was the highlight for me because it let me visualize what I had learned from maps in books. We took a bus tour that stopped near the high water mark and had an audio program that simulated Pickett’s charge. In my head I could actually see ranks of Pickett’s division marching across the field. Years later, we determined that my ancestor was in the 95th New York and had been wounded at the railroad cut. Few moments will compare to standing at the line marker for the 95th with 3 generations of his descendants. Later that day, my daughter wanted to us do the ghost tour at the Jennie Wade house. She didn’t even like it. And it pretty much ruined Gettysburg for me.
It sat there patiently waiting for you for 100-plus years. That. Is. Cool!
Yeah, the electric map is a wonderful tool.
It was semi-buried on a hillside. I thought it was a weird shape and dug it out. This was also the 70s, before people were wandering around the battlefield with metal detectors. I remember not long after that they were selling them in gift shops around town.
What a piece of work is man. 