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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 25, 2023 18:22:58 GMT -5
Found the pictures. This is the most recent, taken about four months ago: ![](https://i.imgur.com/6n4JLR7.jpg) And this is from my last visit, for her 90th birthday. That's my brother Tom on the left. ![](https://i.imgur.com/nBXYafp.jpg)
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 25, 2023 17:13:24 GMT -5
I still don’t know what the difference between a police commissioner and chief of police is, though. This will help: work.chron.com/police-commissioners-job-25236.html"Police departments around the U.S. call their top police officer by different titles, which can be confusing. Not all police departments have police commissioners. For some cities and towns, the police chief is the top officer. Others call their top officer the police commissioner, but the job is more like that of the police chief. Only a few large cities have both a police commissioner and a police chief, but when they do, the commissioner is the top brass." In Portland, the nearest big city to me, the mayor is also the police commissioner, and there's a police chief. PS. Blue Bloods is a good show. It's still running.
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 25, 2023 1:41:08 GMT -5
My condolences to you and your family, Rob. I hope her passing was peaceful. I should have mentioned that. She lived in her own house to the end; on Friday the 14th she had trouble breathing and my brother took her to the hospital. They diagnosed pneumonia and gave her antibiotics which helped her breathing but she never regained full consciousness. She was just too weak by that point. Despite her medical background, she smoked cigarettes for 70 years. That took its toll.
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 25, 2023 0:38:02 GMT -5
I suppose I should have mentioned this during the Zoom meeting yesterday. My mom died on Thursday afternoon.
Jo Ann Heald Allen 7/1/1931 - 4/20/2023
She was born in Alabama and died in Virginia, but wasn't a Southerner. She spent most of her life in New Jersey. Her parents were from Ohio; her dad was a chemical engineer who got his first post-grad job at a company in Anniston AL. The company went bust - it was the Depression - and he was hired by Colgate-Palmolive in Jersey City NJ, where he worked for 30 years. She grew up in Nutley NJ and became a nurse - an RN with a Bachelor's degree, which was rare at the time. On her first clinical rotation as a student nurse, she met an orderly who worked on the psych ward while studying at night. My parents enjoyed telling people that they'd met on the psych ward. She worked as a nurse until my brother was born and I was 3, then went back to work part-time as I was entering my teens. Part-time soon became full-time and then up the management ladder - she ended up being Director of Nursing at three different long-term geriatric care facilities in NJ. When she and my dad were in their sixties (i.e. the age I am now) they and my brother bought a derelict 1857 farmhouse in rural Virginia and turned it into a country inn/farm vacation place. It was like a bed-and-breakfast but they had to provide all three meals because there was no place to eat nearby. They ran Loblolly Plantation for ten years until the insurance premiums suddenly increased. They sold the big house and bought 20 acres nearby, where they put two manufactured homes, one for the folks and one for my brother. My dad died in 2011 and Mom spent most of the last dozen years watching old Westerns on TV.
I'll find some pictures to post.
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 24, 2023 14:26:32 GMT -5
Do audience-participation midnight shows still happen? cstpdx.com/the-rocky-horror-picture-show/ - "The Clinton Street Theater has been showing The Rocky Horror Picture Show weekly since 1978, making it one of the longest running movies in the world! Join us every Saturday night!" Schedule, and prop & costume suggestions at the link.
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 24, 2023 14:21:08 GMT -5
Now we're watching The Maltese Falcon. She's never seen it before! Maltese Falcon was a hit with her - she wanted to see more movies with Bogart as Sam Spade. Oh well. We followed up with Casablanca. These DVDs were all in a set called "Classic Hollywood Cinema" put together by our public library.
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 23, 2023 13:43:34 GMT -5
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 20, 2023 20:13:27 GMT -5
I should be around on Sunday.
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 20, 2023 20:08:08 GMT -5
Listening to, and watching, a live stream of the Skull & Roses festival from Ventura CA.
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 20, 2023 12:42:55 GMT -5
A comic that I'm very happy to own - The Gods of Mount Olympus #2, May 1974. Cover by Joe Staton. ![](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ff4AAOSwhM9jh3Sq/s-l1600.png)
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 20, 2023 10:50:58 GMT -5
After Sunset Boulevard we went to A Streetcar Named Desire, both of which my wife found unpleasant. Her family had too much experience with mental illness for her to be comfortable watching movies where women go crazy.
Now we're watching The Maltese Falcon. She's never seen it before!
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 18, 2023 20:03:25 GMT -5
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 18, 2023 19:55:29 GMT -5
Originally introduced in issue #27, I didn’t think much of that issue. The next few issues were reprints of 50s sci-fi stories which did nothing for me. [...] STRANGE TALES #90 was on sale, and it was yet another anthology book that reprinted sci-fi stories of the 1950s. Those 1961 fantasy titles - Strange Tales, Journey into Mystery, Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense, weren't reprints. They were similar to the stories done in the 50s, but they were new. A typical issue would have a Kirby cover and story, one by Ditko, and one by Heck, with others like Paul Reinman showing up occasionally.
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 18, 2023 19:40:11 GMT -5
Then there are things it feels impossible to know unless one was there. I do know, because I was there. I've been everywhere. Whether I remember it all is another story...
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 18, 2023 14:49:05 GMT -5
At one point in How Green Was My Valley my wife wondered, where did people get the idea that unions meant socialism? I did a little googling and found that Karl Marx wrote about unions. So it came right from the horse's mouth, as it were.
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