I stole the blog title from the 1898 horror novella by Henry James. I never read it, but I did have to read and take a final exam on the same author’s novel Daisy Miller. Not exactly a page turner…And later it was used as the story for a 20th-century English chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten. I never saw this version either, but I did hear the opera Billy Budd by the same composer. Not a lot of melodies or toe tapping ditties in that one. Puccini and Mozart can make me cry, but all this atonal two hours did for me was bring tears of boredom.

Still a brief lyric from the opera might ring true regarding events in the news:

Do you feel the turn of the screw?
Pushing harder, breaking through
It’s better than you ever knew
Now it gets to take care of you…

…by holding the door plug on an airline fuselage in place

We’ve all seen the pictures of the Alaska Airlines flight that lost its door plug at 16,000 feet, resulting in an explosive decompression. Thankfully no one was hurt and the plane landed safely. The FAA is on the case, and all Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft are grounded and being inspected.

Preliminary unofficial reports are disturbing. This door plug is secured in place by 4 bolts, and inspectors found loose ones on some of the inspected aircraft. And while the door plug itself was found in a teacher’s back yard, there were no accompanying bolts. Were they loose? Were they even installed at all?

When my dad and I were farming, we had a lot of bolts to tighten, and to my knowledge none ever came loose. We both had a bad habit of ‘making assurance double sure’ and occasionally our brute strength would shear off a bolt or strip the threads. We knew how to use lock washers too, or Loctite for appropriate applications.

Today my bolt tightening is mostly limited to my bikes, and with expensive carbon frames and parts it is a good idea to follow the torque specifications. I have a torque wrench and if the spec says 5 N.m, then 5 N.m it is, and not an N.m more. By the way N.m stands for Newton Meter, which is a measure of torque, as opposed to toque, which is a chef’s hat.

Once my friend Kent brought his bike over to check the torque on some of his parts. The seat post bolt spec was 5 N.m, but the bolt was quite a bit looser than that, maybe 2 N.m. So is that what happened to the airplane door? A creaking seat post is bad enough, but a blown out door plug at 30,000 feet could be catastrophic. Window or aisle…

There are lots of serious and dangerous events going on in the world and here in the United States. Too dangerous and serious for the Rich Freggiaro Cycling Blog. We try to keep things light-hearted here. Recently I came across a few items that are quite different, but related; call them Variations on a Theme…

PepsiCo and custom spirits maker Empirical are teaming up to launch a new spirit that tastes like a Doritos nacho cheese chip.

I was certain this had to be ‘fake news’ but it is true.

The Empirical x Doritos Nacho Cheese Vacuum Distilled Spirit is described as capturing “all the indulgent flavors of your favorite Nacho Cheese in liquid form,” according to Empirical’s website.

Not only is it real, but according to the company’s web site the supply is completely sold out. I was invited to sign up to receive an e mail or text informing me when it was back in stock, and I was assured they were ramping up production to meet the demand. I demurred; I get too much e mail as it is.

This addiction to the flavor of Doritos, to the extent that one craves it in his/her/their/ze pre-prandial cocktail is part of a larger problem: namely a large number of us are too large. (BTW did you notice how I am starting down the pronoun correctness path? A slippery slope…).

Like almost every cyclist I know, I fret over my weight. Of course back in March 1999, when I hit my doctor’s scale at 190 lbs. I had something to worry about. But now anytime I go north of my self assigned 169 lbs. (before breakfast without any clothes on) food turns to ashes in my mouth and I stay away from pizza or burritos, two of the things that make life worth living. 

Don’t believe I could have been approaching 200 lbs. at some point? Here is proof from September 2000, before I got serious about cycling. And the improved version from 2011.

I don’t think anyone I ride with is going to need this, but Southwest Airlines is quite accommodating to the new reality.

Low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines is being celebrated by “passengers of size” on TikTok after they discovered they can request complimentary seats – one or two, depending on needs – to accommodate their girth.
Customers whose bodies “encroach” past the armrest are entitled to an extra seat, according to Southwest’s inclusion policy.

I had no idea, but apparently there are ‘influencers’ who write about how to travel as a plus (+++) sized person.

“Super fat is how we identify,” Chaney, business owner of Jae Bae Productions, said. “There’s a spectrum of fatness. And as a super fat individual, you start needing different accommodations… I just felt really happy that there was something like this for people.”

I identify as a married monogamous heterosexual male cyclist, even if that last part might make some of my riding partners giggle as they power away leaving me in their dust.

Southwest is merely responding to the disturbing trend towards obesity and the accompanying adverse health effects. Those effects even have a name: “metabolic syndrome”. This includes a cluster of weight-related ailments such as high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, excessive abdominal fat, and a poor cellular response to the insulin hormone.

The U.K. has an idea…

“It’s quite right to urge that waist measurements be now taken annually from the time a child first goes to school,” Tam Fry, chair of the National Obesity Forum in the U.K., told The Telegraph.

Measure away: unless kids are going to play outside more and eat less junk food and spend less time looking at screens nothing is going to happen. Because many of their parents are doing the same thing. 

The U.K. is trying to follow Japan’s lead. Japan has a remarkably low obesity rate of 4.97%. Compare this to the U.S. (36.47% ) and U.K. (27.88%). And if you adjust for Sumo wrestlers, the Japanese number would be even more impressively low.

But even with such a comparatively lean population, Japan is trying to be proactive and passed a “Metabo Law”

The law mandates that all employees aged between 45 and 74 have their waistlines measured by their employer annually and receive guidance if they do not lose weight after three months, but, despite rumors, Japanese citizens themselves cannot be fined or imprisoned for being overweight.

The expression on the pretty young woman’s face is priceless. (I fell off the pronoun wagon: she is a she or I’m losing it). How would you like that job? An 8 hour shift of wrapping measuring tapes around the bare tummies of middle aged men and women and other genders.

I’m pretty sure the same people who brought us Covid lockdowns and want to take away gas powered leaf blowers cannot weight (!) to ‘help’ us lose excess adipose tissue. Cigarettes have warning labels (in France they are quite graphic). Perhaps the CDC will start with ‘hazardous to your health’ warnings at fast food restaurants and movie theater snack bars. Taxes and regulations to follow shortly…

Not in Boston…you may not know about this if you get all your news from NPR.

Michelle Wu (Mayor of Boston) drew criticism Wednesday after her aide sent a holiday party invite to all members of the Boston City Council for an “Electeds of Color Holiday Party,” even though seven of the officials are White.

Wu told reporters on Wednesday that the invite was not meant to be sent to White council members, who had their invitations rescinded about 15 minutes after the original email was sent.

Something similar went on back when Stoker was working for the library, although no racism or sexism was involved. Back then the discrimination was based on whether someone was a ‘professional’ librarian with an Master of Library Science degree.

The library director hosted an annual Christmas party at her north Stockton condo. But only the ‘professional’ staff and their guests were invited. This strategy left almost everyone unhappy. The uninvited library aides were resentful at being snubbed, while the MLS holders felt pressured to attend an event and talk shop on a Saturday night when they would much rather have been somewhere else.

The director’s excuse for the exclusion was that she didn’t have enough space, but in reality it was just to make a kind of caste distinction. 

Since I wanted to help Stoker keep on her boss’s good side, I always went along and made nice, playing my ‘simple farmer’ role. That is the same persona I used with the county ag people checking me for compliance with the regulations that are so fruitful and multiply every year. I never got fined, so I guess it worked. And of course I avoided any speech that could be considered in the least political. Other than Stoker it was a completely Blue crowd.

Ms. Wu’s party is a little disturbing. She is assuming that ‘Electeds of Color’ share some special bond that makes having a separate event without un-colored ‘Electeds’ appropriate. And she says the leak and coverage of the non-white event was politically motivated. As if her endorsement of such a party is a non-political act!

On Brumby Road we are concerned with people’s character and intelligence, not the amount of melanin in their bodies. Would it were so everywhere…

I learned a lot about paradoxes in college. “The Paradox of Value” asks the question why is water, which is essential for life, so much less expensive than diamond rings, which are not. Zeno’s Paradox takes many forms; balls that can never hit walls or tortoises that can never cross finish lines. My favorite version came from a class about infinite series, where the clever professor gave us an example a of a sequence of swimming pools with finite volume but infinite surface area. The paradox is that you can paint an infinite surface with a finite amount of paint!

I also took a course in business law. It was a pass-fail course offering a few easy units as respite from differential equations and macroeconomics. It was taught by a real life judge who, like many attorneys, was in love with the sound of his own voice. Having a large class of college students as an audience for his stand-up routine had to be the highlight of his week. He was most entertaining and I actually learned a lot about contracts and consideration and the Universal Commercial Code.

One thing I learned in that class is minors cannot enter into contracts.

Generally, only individuals with legal capacity can enter into a contract. This means that minors, persons of unsound mind, and persons deprived of civil rights are not capable of contracting.

Our laws offer special protections and restrictions regarding minors, to protect them from the consequences of their lack of experience and wisdom. Plenty of adults lack wisdom too, but society lets them deal with the fallout from their choices. Sometimes minors are allowed to make decisions if their parents permit it. Example:

(1) Persons under the age of 18 shall not receive body piercing unless the body piercing is performed in the presence of the person’s parent or guardian.

So a 17 year old who wants a nose ring or tongue stud has to have a parent present, and presumably agreeing to the procedure. Tattoos are even more restricted. I didn’t know this until I started to research this blog, but underage tattooing is verboten, whether mom and dad agree or not:

(2) All 50 states and the District of Columbia have statutory laws requiring a person receiving a tattoo be at least 18 years old. This is partially based on the legal principle that a minor cannot enter into a legal contract or otherwise render informed consent for a procedure.

The Paradox of Value is easily resolved: Marginal Cost=Marginal Utility. However (1) and (2) above have got me scratching my head over an obvious legal paradox here in California. There are a couple of ‘procedures’ that minors can have without parents even knowing, let along consenting. California considers these ‘procedures’ more ‘minor’ than tattoos or body piercings, so ‘minors’ can decide for themselves. Even Zeno might have trouble resolving this one. ” ‘Tis a Puzzlement” indeed.

On Saturday a group of my cycling friends decided to stay flat and local with a 50+ mile loop from Lodi to Thornton and Galt. The weather was perfect, cool but not frigid, and sunny with almost no wind. Everyone was relaxed and enjoying the day and the company instead of hammering up some hills on the official Club ride.

We don’t normally ride on Harney Lane east of Lodi. It is narrow, with a fair amount of high speed traffic. There are better east/west roads, such as Armstrong Road, Live Oak Road, and even Eight Mile Road which has traffic but also has a shoulder. But there is one short stretch of Harney Lane that we do ride. Curry Road is a delightful and very quiet road that runs north/south, but at Harney Lane it makes a little jog, so we have to ride on Harney for about 100 yards or so. It is normally pretty safe. We just wait to let any traffic clear, then use the gap to continue on Curry.

We were doing just that on Saturday. There were 11 of us at the intersection of Harney and Curry, pointing our bikes north. We were waiting to turn left on Harney and then make a quick right back on to Curry. Rider #1 saw what he/she thought was a big gap and turned onto Harney. Rider #1 had not reckoned on an SUV barreling along at 70+ mph in a 55 mph zone. Rider #1 also did not expect this speeding vehicle to give him about 14 inches of clearance instead of the legally mandated 3 feet.

Dear Reader, you may notice that I am not naming names or genders here. That is because I wasn’t an eye witness to everything, and even what I saw may be mis-remembered.

Rider #1 took umbrage at the dangerous vehicular behavior and made his/her feelings known with a gesture. None of the rest of us saw this because we were still waiting back at the intersection. Then Rider #1 turned onto Curry and soon the rest of us followed.

As we rode north on Curry I was the last rider, and suddenly I see an SUV in my mirror roaring towards me and I hear yelling and screaming. I’m as far to the right as I can be, and the SUV leaves the pavement onto the dirt vineyard headland and pulls next to me ON MY RIGHT! The driver’s window is down and he is screaming at me to “Get the F… off the road!”

I moved to the left side of the road and stopped off the pavement. The driver got out and continued yelling and screaming the same message. He didn’t approach me although he looked ready to beat me up. I tried to keep calm and quiet.

Riders #1, 2, 3 and 4 stopped just ahead and came back. The SUV driver was obviously angry at all of us but especially with Rider #1. There was a confrontation. Riders pulled out cell phones. I tried to take a video but my winter gloves let me down. I’m still standing relatively out of harm’s way and I didn’t get any closer to the potential fistfight, or worse. Call me prudent for trying not to escalate things. Call me a coward for not jumping to the defense of my friends. I’m not sure myself.

Rider #2 put his cell phone a bit too close for the driver’s liking, so he knocked it to the ground. Rider #2, normally a very calm individual, kind of threw what looked like a punch, or maybe a slap. Rider #3, showed the pepper spray that he/she keeps to deal with dogs, and the driver returned to the cab and pulled out a much bigger pepper spray. The SUV passenger got out and joined the proceedings. Rider #4, the smallest of us, got right in there close.

No actual blows were thrown, no one got pepper sprayed, or shot, which seemed a possibility for a time. Eventually the SUV sped off with the driver cursing at us the entire time. One thing the driver kept saying is that we were too f…ing old to be f,,,ing riding bikes on the f…ing road, you mf…ers. His vocabulary was limited so he had to use the same word quite a lot.

Rider #3 called the CHP, and after a short wait a very nice officer arrived. He told us that since no one was hurt, and since he didn’t observe any moving violations, he could not issue any citations. He said we could file a report, but that it would land at the DA’s office and again, since no one was hurt, they would sit on it for a year and then purge it from their system. He seemed reluctant to go through all the paperwork.

We did take down the license number, and the CHP officer ran the plates. Guess what? The vehicle was registered to an address in Valley Springs! Why am I not surprised?

Between my blood thinners making any fall potentially more serious, and the possibility of being a target for foothill rednecks who detest my mere presence on ‘their’ pavement, I’m wondering whether road cycling is worth the risk. I love riding my bike but I don’t like bleeding or bar fights in cycling shoes. Time to Zwift? Got to keep in shape for France next May where I cannot imagine anything like this happening.

Way back in December 2014 I woke up one morning with a very strange tingling sensation in my chest and I felt a little light headed. I took my blood pressure with our home monitor and discovered my pulse was over 100 beats per minute (bpm). That is about double what my normal resting pulse rate is.

I didn’t have any chest pain, so I skipped the ER, which probably wasn’t so smart. I was hoping it was just an ‘overtraining’ response from the long hard ride I had done the day before. Sometimes resting heart rates will be elevated if you have been riding a lot, although the increase is usually only 10 bpm, not 50.

I called my family doctor and he agreed to see me that afternoon. He listened to my heart for about 3 seconds, then started slapping leads and wires to my chest STAT! He wanted to get an EKG right away. I was in Atrial fibrillation (AFib). This was the first time I had ever heard of the condition.

Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is an irregular and often very rapid heart rhythm. An irregular heart rhythm is called an arrhythmia. AFib can lead to blood clots in the heart. The condition also increases the risk of stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications.

I started on a the blood thinner Xarelto right away. This was well before I reached the health care haven of Medicare, so there was real sticker shock. I also had a referral to a cardiologist and an echocardiogram.

The very next morning I woke up and the weird sensation and light headedness were gone. I felt fine and knew my pulse was normal. I slapped on my heart rate monitor and sure enough, 52 bpm.

The AFib never came back. I saw the cardiologist a couple of times and did a lot of research on my own. There is plenty of information out there. But the best source of help turned out to be a GI doctor (and fellow cyclist) at UC Davis. I see him about once a year. The reason will make another entertaining blog someday. An STD without the S…

It turns out he had experienced a one time AFib incident too. His happened on a bike ride. He had to stop and get someone to take him home. His AFib also went away quickly and didn’t come back. He took Xarelto for a couple of months, then decided to stop since there hadn’t been a recurrence.

He also told me about Kardia. This is before Apple Watches and other health monitoring devices became so common. Kardia works with your cell phone to take a medical grade 2-lead EKG anytime, anywhere. Strange my cardiologist had never even heard of the device when I showed him mine at my next appointment.

I have taken hundreds of home EKGs since my 2014 incident. For a while I carried my Kardia on bike rides in my jersey pocket, and would take EKGs at the coffee stops.I even did one on a climb up Mont Ventoux, just for grins. All of those EKGs have all been normal. Until October 17….

My nut counting job was at its busiest on October 16, and we expected an even more massive number of trucks the next day. I got home from work late and went to bed early and woke up at 3:30 since I had to get to work by 5:00.

I immediately knew something was wrong, and I knew what it was. Kardia confirmed the diagnosis. My heart rate was 106 and the EKG report was ‘Possible Atrial fibrillation’.

I sent a text to my walnut counting boss, then headed to the ER at Lodi Memorial. I wasn’t nervous at all, since I was pretty sure I knew what was happening. I was sorry and upset to have to let my walnut counting duties slide, but I really didn’t have a choice.

At the ER when they asked me why I was there I told them I was in AFib. They aren’t used to self diagnosis like that. After only a short wait they took me behind a curtain and did an EKG and concluded I was in AFib. They probably charged Medicare $1,000 for it. My $89 Kardia with a free App on my cell phone came to the same conclusion.

Eventually I saw a doctor, a very nice woman who actually listened to my story about this being AFib Incident #2, 9 years removed from Incident #1. Eventually I left the ER with a script for Eliquis and a follow up appointment with my family doctor the next morning.

I went to my nut counting job and arrived at 9 am. The truck drivers wondered what I was doing there. But there really wasn’t any reason to stay home. I did several EKG’s that day and all of them indicated AFib and an elevated pulse.

The next morning I woke up and knew that, unlike 2014, the AFib was still with me. Kardia agreed, although my heart rate was ‘only’ 90 bpm. I went to work at 6 am, but left to go to my doctor’s appointment around 9.

As I was driving to Lodi, I noticed that the strange tingling sensation in my chest and the light headedness seemed to be fading. By the time I got to the medical office, I felt normal. Kardia agreed: I took an EKG right there in the parking lot and it said 60 bpm and Normal Sinus Rhythm. Hooray! It felt like a frisson leaving my body followed by calmness and relaxation.

I’ve done a lot of EKGs over the last 5 weeks, and they’ve all been normal. I’m still on Eliquis, at least for now. More sticker shock: I have a Part D insurance plan but I opted for a low premium with a high deductible, so the first month tab was $500. More than our PGE bill! Although month #2 was only $150.

If I go another 9 years without going into AFib, do I need to stay on Eliquis? Should I risk cycling and possibly crashing while on it? Would I rather risk bleeding to death or having a stroke? The safest advice would be to stay on Eliquis and stop cycling on the road. Difficult choices…

Something startling appeared in my Facebook news feed yesterday (9/21):

Shimano recalls 760,000 Hollowtech road cranks after receiving 4,500 incident reports.

Shimano says 760,000 11-speed Hollowtech road cranksets will need to be inspected for signs of delamination. The affected cranks — Dura-Ace and Ultegra models manufactured prior to July 2019 — can separate and break; the company has received reports of 4,519 incidents of cranksets separating, and six reported injuries, including bone fractures, joint displacement and lacerations.

There are 4,519 reported crank failures, and there could be more. It is kind of remarkable that there are only 6 reported injuries. If the crank on the Bianchi above failed like that while someone was pedaling they could really get hurt.

There are a large number of these cranks on bikes ridden by Stockton Bike Club members. Ultegra components have a reputation for delivering quality at a bargain price. Comparing Ultegra to its higher cost big brother group set Dura Ace, there is very little weight or performance difference but the DA will set you back more than twice as much cash. But the recall affects both models…

Including mine. I have a Dura Ace crank on my Sampson titanium bike, and it is one of the problem parts. So I called Robbie’s Bike Shop in Stockton to see if they knew anything about the recall. They sure did; the shop is an authorized Shimano Dealer and they had already performed 3 inspections even though the recall was only announced that same day.

I dropped the Sampson off at the shop, and they said they would get to it Friday and I could pick it up that afternoon. If it passes inspection Shimano says it is safe to ride. If not the crank will have to be replaced.

Before I took the bike in I did my own inspection. I looked carefully for any signs of cracking. I didn’t see any. But the crank is black, and my aging eyes don’t see perfectly up close even with glasses. I watched a video, and the mechanic said one test is to tap the crank with the butt end of a plastic screwdriver and listen to whether it sounds solid or hollow. Even though the crank model name is ‘Hollowtech’ , a solid sound is good, and a hollow sound is bad. Mine sounds solid to me.

Another test of whether the crank is a problem is whether it is making a creaking noise when you pedal. Usually noises from that part of the bike involve the bottom bracket, but apparently a delaminating crank might be the culprit. For what its worth, my crank is silent.

I learned on line that the local shops who perform the inspections are going to be compensated by Shimano. The inspection is free for the bike owner, so if you have one of those cranks support your LBS and take it in. They will get paid.

I’m expecting the Sampson to get a passing grade and be back in my garage in time for the Sunday Club Ride. But if not I’ve got two other bikes I can use. N+1…

I have never liked riding my bike on bike paths. I think that they are actually more dangerous than riding on the road. Most paths are used by a variety of walkers, dog walkers, skateboarders, roller skaters, people on scooters, little kids wobbling on trikes or children’s bikes, or casual adult cyclists wobbling on their fat tire city bikes or Walmart mountain bikes. Even though I obey the bike path speed limit (usually 15 mph) and slow down and unclip whenever anyone approaches, I’m never really comfortable. unless the path is deserted.

So this story from Belgium got my attention:

The viral video shows the young girl and her mother walking along a nature trail as the unidentified 63-year-old cyclist comes up behind them and looks to deliberately stick out his knee, knocking the child down face-first into the snow. The cyclist then pedals away without apologizing, prompting the family to report the incident to police.

I don’t do viral videos. Life is too short and the Brumby Road internet connection is too slow. But apparently lots of people do and the cyclist was excoriated on social media. When cyclists behave badly there are plenty of haters out there ready to pile on. But did he behave badly?

The case eventually went to court in February 2021, according to a report from the New York Post, where the cyclist said he stuck out his knee to “avoid a fall” and that he “did not immediately realize” he knocked the young girl over.

Here are a couple of photos of the incident:

The first photo shows the girl standing on the far left side of the road, forcing the cyclist into the snow bank. The cyclist is wedged into a very narrow gap and good bike handlers will stick out the left knee to avoid crashing on the right. I’m not a good bike handler so I would probably have crashed. The fact that his knee hit the girl and caused her to lose her balance is unfortunate but really not the cyclist’s fault.

On the other hand, I have a very hard time believing that they cyclist did not know he had collided with the girl. Once he regained control he should have stopped. In the U.S. ‘hit and run’ is a serious offence, even for cyclists.

Now there is hardly a more cycling friendly country on Earth than Belgium. Cycling is deeply rooted in their culture. Look at that 63 year old out on a frigid day riding on a very wet and slippery cobbled path and you get a feel for the passion. Bicycle racing is the 2nd most popular sport there, after soccer. Almost everyone has a bike of some kind. So when the case went to trial, it really wasn’t surprising that the judge gave the cyclist a sweetheart deal, kind of like what the DOJ had in mind for Hunter before a judge threw it out.

The judge in the case ordered the cyclist to pay a small fine equivalent to about $1, reasoning that the biker did not intentionally hurt the girl, who was identified by the name Neia, and that he had since faced a rash of social media criticism.

The cyclist reacted to the ‘rash of social criticism’ by suing the girl’s parents for defamation. In the U.S. this case would have been laughable. You hit a little girl, leave the scene and then when daddy posts the video you scream defamation? But this is Belgium, and he won! The damages will be determined in court in April. Maybe he will get his $1 back.

Belgium actually has a law that says a cyclist MUST use a cycle path if there is one. I’ve never been cycling in Belgium but I have wanted to do so for a long time. And I still might make it. So I will be forced onto cycle paths whether I like them or not. I’ll be careful to unclip and stop for 5 year old girls, and then probably get hit from behind by a racing cyclist pedaling furiously with his head down. A problematic path puzzlement…

That is what we used to say back in high school when we were assigned reading material. “Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ was banned at our high school, so of course we went out and bought paperback copies to see what all the fuss was about. ‘The Godfather‘ wasn’t on any English Class reading lists, but we all knew what was on the bottom of page 27 and the top of page 28. Really good parts!

Stoker has a master’s degree in Library Science, although she achieved it before the Internet, which means it is more like a sheepskin in Ancient History. Over the years we have had a running debate about who gets to decide which books to purchase and make available with taxpayer dollars.

Her opinion is that librarians are trained to decide which books are important or useful or significant, and that they rarely eliminate a book because of its content. Freedom of the press runs deep in the librarian community, and the idea of non-librarians objecting to their choices offends them. They believe they are the defenders of freedom and know what is good and appropriate for the public.

Risking marital censure, I asked her if the library where she worked had copies of ‘Story of O‘. She said no and I asked why not? It is a significant book that was published in French in 1955 and won a prestigious prize. But the material was quite controversial and it wasn’t published in English until 1965. Stoker made some lame excuse that if the library purchased it people would just steal it. My point in asking is that librarians do their own censoring.

My own view is that private funds can be used to publish anything, no matter how salacious and seditious. Of course if it is libelous you risk getting sued, but other than that Freedom of the Press is pretty much absolute IMHO. But when taxpayers are footing the bill then which books libraries choose is a public matter and should be determined via representative democracy rather than librarian autocracy.

With that as back round, it’s Story Time in the U.S. Senate:

Senator John Kennedy, R-La., made Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias uncomfortable while reading aloud from several LGBTQ and sexually-themed children’s books during a recent Senate hearing.

Senator Kennedy has a delightful Southern/Cajun drawl that makes him sound like a redneck and conceals a very sharp legal and political mind. I’m pretty sure he was uncomfortable reading the material out loud. It probably made him ‘cringey’. If you are a regular reader you will recall that term. Need help? https://freehtt.org/2022/12/12/their-up-to-no-good/

Addressing the Secretary of State, the senator said, “Let’s take two books that have been much discussed. The first one is called ‘All Boys Aren’t Blue.’ And I will quote from it.”

Kennedy then read from “Gender Queer”:

What he read from these books discussed activities that have never reached our Brumby Road backwater. Those activities are completely inappropriate as a topic for the Rich Freggiaro Cycling Blog. We have standards here. I did read what the Senator said and listened to a brief part of it on video, and it was painful. The Illinois Secretary of State, who was there to argue that parents shouldn’t be able to restrict literary choices, was squirming in his chair when confronted with was in the books out loud. In a Senate Committee chamber, no less!

I got a little queasy trying to imagine what I would have thought of this as a 12 year old. I’m sure glad I don’t have kids and have to explain the material to them when they brought these books home from the school library.

You recall the old adage about how a conservative is a former liberal who got mugged? Case in point…

Shivanthi Sathanandan, the 2nd Vice Chairwoman for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, posted on Facebook Wednesday that she was “violently carjacked” by “four very young men, all carrying guns.”

At the height of the George Floyd riots in June 2020, Sathanandan wrote Facebook posts supporting efforts to “dismantle” the police. “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. Say it with me. DISMANTLE. The. Minneapolis. Police. Department,”.

Ms. Sathanandan (gender and she/her pronouns assumed) had quite a different point of view after her recent ‘road to Damascus’ incident.

We need to get illegal guns off of our streets, catch these young people who are running wild creating chaos across our city and HOLD THEM IN CUSTODY AND PROSECUTE THEM. PERIOD.”

There was a picture of the poor woman’s bloody head, which I did not include here. We try to keep thing light and humorous on the Rich Freggiaro Cycling Blog. She also claimed to have a broken leg, cuts and lacerations, and feeling “rage” against the lack of accountability against criminals. Welcome to my team, Ms. Sathanandan!

On a much lighter note, but closer to home, there is this:

Residents of the Spanos Park West and Westlake Village neighborhoods in Stockton were in for a rude awakening Thursday morning. Many reported vehicles along the neighborhoods with their tires missing.

For my readers all over the US and Europe (there is at least one ‘across the pond’) Spanos Park is a pretty upmarket part of Stockton. You might expect a car parked off of 8th street or El Dorado Street south of the Crosstown Freeway to be missing a few parts after sitting out over night. But not in Spanos Park .

Residents noted that most of the cars targeted were Hondas.

Stoker and I have owned nothing but Honda cars since we got married, and so far our tires have remained in place. But the catalytic converter on my Honda Element was stolen a few years ago. It’s hard to imagine a more staid, white bread (oops, was that a micro-aggression?) car brand. But apparently white bread is popular among car thieves: according to The Zebra website.

The most stolen car of the past decade is the Honda Accord.

I am aware that the Stockton Police Department is understaffed, But I still expected a more aggressive response than this tepid press release:

Police suggest that all residents take precautions and are asking people to keep their outdoor lights on to assist in capturing footage, use their parking garages if possible, and remain vigilant.

Yes, by all means remain vigilant. If you see something report it immediately. No officer will respond since no one was injured, and you will be directed to a web site to file a report. Then even if by some incredible lucky chance the police identify the thieves, what are the odds charges will be filed or that anyone will do any jail time?

Poor Ms. Sathanandan’s experience was extreme, but I imagine going out to your parked car and finding the wheels missing might cause some ‘defund the police’ politicians and citizens and non-citizens to rethink their position.