I’m Here Because of Lileks

 

Okay, not just Lileks, but he is probably my favorite of all the guys on the Ricochet podcast, which I’ve been enjoying for several months now. I finally took the bait and became a member.

I’m a former liberal (just want to get that off my chest from the start). I’ve lived in various regions of the U.S., but I’m Midwest born and bred. I earned a bachelor’s in English in 2009 and published a few short stories online. (Currently working in state government, so you know how that whole writing thing turned out.) Among my interests/likes: philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, cycling, Jane Austen novels, knitting, and baking my own granola bars.

What I love about Lileks: During the podcast, he almost always asks the follow-up question I’m asking (but no one can hear).

However, I lately discovered that we differ drastically on the issue of changing our clocks. It’s stupid. I hate it.

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  1. Malka Davis Inactive
    Malka Davis
    @Malkadavis

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    OkieSailor (View Comment):

    HankRhody Freelance Philosopher (View Comment):

    Howdy.

    Malka Davis: However, I lately discovered that we differ drastically on the issue of changing our clocks. It’s stupid. I hate it.

    I’ve become radicalized. No DST! No time zones! Burn it all down!

    DST is stupidity on stilts and should have been ash-canned years ago. As for the time zones, they make sense until they don’t. When we moved almost 2 hours south of Louisville, KY a few years ago the infrequent trips to the big City became somewhat confusing due to living in Central Time and going to and from Eastern Time. “OK, we need to get there at 9:30.” “Is that Central Time or Eastern?” And so on. Then one day Mrs. OS solved the whole thing with one astute observation, “It takes 3 hours to get to Louisville and 1 hour to get back.” Genius because it simplifies the calculations. Must be why I married her 53 years ago.

     

     

    It could be worse. As best I can recall, Indiana does DST by county.

    I grew up in an Amish community in Ohio. The Amish, of course, don’t do daylight savings time. So we had “government time” and “real time.” Which meant that much of the time, none of us really knew what time it was.

    Me: I’ll bring the grain binder over tomorrow at 9am.

    Yuri Gingrich: When is that?

    Me: I don’t know.

    That’s hilarious. I hope it’s true. Have you written about this experience before?

    • #61
  2. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    Malka Davis (View Comment):

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    OkieSailor (View Comment):

    HankRhody Freelance Philosopher (View Comment):

    Howdy.

    Malka Davis: However, I lately discovered that we differ drastically on the issue of changing our clocks. It’s stupid. I hate it.

    I’ve become radicalized. No DST! No time zones! Burn it all down!

    DST is stupidity on stilts and should have been ash-canned years ago. As for the time zones, they make sense until they don’t. When we moved almost 2 hours south of Louisville, KY a few years ago the infrequent trips to the big City became somewhat confusing due to living in Central Time and going to and from Eastern Time. “OK, we need to get there at 9:30.” “Is that Central Time or Eastern?” And so on. Then one day Mrs. OS solved the whole thing with one astute observation, “It takes 3 hours to get to Louisville and 1 hour to get back.” Genius because it simplifies the calculations. Must be why I married her 53 years ago.

     

     

    It could be worse. As best I can recall, Indiana does DST by county.

    I grew up in an Amish community in Ohio. The Amish, of course, don’t do daylight savings time. So we had “government time” and “real time.” Which meant that much of the time, none of us really knew what time it was.

    Me: I’ll bring the grain binder over tomorrow at 9am.

    Yuri Gingrich: When is that?

    Me: I don’t know.

    That’s hilarious. I hope it’s true. Have you written about this experience before?

    It’s very true.

    I’ve written about my Amish background before.  I don’t think I’ve written about DST before.

    • #62
  3. Malka Davis Inactive
    Malka Davis
    @Malkadavis

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    Malka Davis (View Comment):

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    OkieSailor (View Comment):

    HankRhody Freelance Philosopher (View Comment):

    Howdy.

    Malka Davis: However, I lately discovered that we differ drastically on the issue of changing our clocks. It’s stupid. I hate it.

    I’ve become radicalized. No DST! No time zones! Burn it all down!

    DST is stupidity on stilts and should have been ash-canned years ago. As for the time zones, they make sense until they don’t. When we moved almost 2 hours south of Louisville, KY a few years ago the infrequent trips to the big City became somewhat confusing due to living in Central Time and going to and from Eastern Time. “OK, we need to get there at 9:30.” “Is that Central Time or Eastern?” And so on. Then one day Mrs. OS solved the whole thing with one astute observation, “It takes 3 hours to get to Louisville and 1 hour to get back.” Genius because it simplifies the calculations. Must be why I married her 53 years ago.

     

     

    It could be worse. As best I can recall, Indiana does DST by county.

    I grew up in an Amish community in Ohio. The Amish, of course, don’t do daylight savings time. So we had “government time” and “real time.” Which meant that much of the time, none of us really knew what time it was.

    Me: I’ll bring the grain binder over tomorrow at 9am.

    Yuri Gingrich: When is that?

    Me: I don’t know.

    That’s hilarious. I hope it’s true. Have you written about this experience before?

    It’s very true.

    I’ve written about my Amish background before. I don’t think I’ve written about DST before.

    On Ricochet? If you have a link, I would love to read it.

    • #63
  4. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    Malka Davis (View Comment):

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    Malka Davis (View Comment):

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    OkieSailor (View Comment):

    HankRhody Freelance Philosopher (View Comment):

    Howdy.

    Malka Davis: However, I lately discovered that we differ drastically on the issue of changing our clocks. It’s stupid. I hate it.

    I’ve become radicalized. No DST! No time zones! Burn it all down!

    DST is stupidity on stilts and should have been ash-canned years ago. As for the time zones, they make sense until they don’t. When we moved almost 2 hours south of Louisville, KY a few years ago the infrequent trips to the big City became somewhat confusing due to living in Central Time and going to and from Eastern Time. “OK, we need to get there at 9:30.” “Is that Central Time or Eastern?” And so on. Then one day Mrs. OS solved the whole thing with one astute observation, “It takes 3 hours to get to Louisville and 1 hour to get back.” Genius because it simplifies the calculations. Must be why I married her 53 years ago.

    It could be worse. As best I can recall, Indiana does DST by county.

    I grew up in an Amish community in Ohio. The Amish, of course, don’t do daylight savings time. So we had “government time” and “real time.” Which meant that much of the time, none of us really knew what time it was.

    Me: I’ll bring the grain binder over tomorrow at 9am.

    Yuri Gingrich: When is that?

    Me: I don’t know.

    That’s hilarious. I hope it’s true. Have you written about this experience before?

    It’s very true.

    I’ve written about my Amish background before. I don’t think I’ve written about DST before.

    On Ricochet? If you have a link, I would love to read it.

    The most interesting part of his life was when he lived in Elizabethton.  Now he’s just some kind of concierge doctor on Hilton Head.

    • #64
  5. Phil Turmel Inactive
    Phil Turmel
    @PhilTurmel

    Malka Davis (View Comment):
    On Ricochet? If you have a link, I would love to read it.

    Heh.  Now you are into Ricochet’s dirty laundry.  Searching this site is, shall we say, difficult.  Especially for so prolific a writer as our good Dr. Bastiat:

    https://ricochet.com/members/drbastiat/blog/

    (:

    (Fair warning:  you won’t be able to stop if you dig into his œuvre.)

    • #65
  6. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Glad you’re here. 

    • #66
  7. Norm McDonald Bought The Farm Inactive
    Norm McDonald Bought The Farm
    @Pseudodionysius

    BTW, @malka-davis its customary for new members to pay a special “frat initiation” fee to all long term members as a way of paying it forward and keeping the site going. Expect an email from Nigeria shortly, signed by me, explaining the terms and conditions.

    • #67
  8. Malka Davis Inactive
    Malka Davis
    @Malkadavis

    Norm McDonald Bought The Farm (View Comment):

    BTW, @ malka-davis its customary for new members to pay a special “frat initiation” fee to all long term members as a way of paying it forward and keeping the site going. Expect an email from Nigeria shortly, signed by me, explaining the terms and conditions.

    Checkbook at the ready.

    • #68
  9. Manny Coolidge
    Manny
    @Manny

    Welcome!  Lileks is a great reason to be here.  I got my English degree in 2000, but it was my second degree and part of a mid-life reassessment.  But it was not and still isn’t my career path either.  I look forward to reading your posts and interacting with you.  

    • #69
  10. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    Phil Turmel (View Comment):
    Searching this site is, shall we say, difficult

    Phil is exactly right.  I’ve never been able to find anything on Ricochet with the search feature.

    I’ll often get an idea for a post, but then I won’t write it because I think, “Um, I think I may have written something like that before…”  And there’s no way for me to find out.  And I’m not going to manually scroll through 650 posts to find out.  So I skip it.

    I use Google to search Ricochet sometimes, and it works ok if I know exactly what I’m looking for.

     

    Malka Davis (View Comment):

    I grew up in an Amish community in Ohio. The Amish, of course, don’t do daylight savings time. So we had “government time” and “real time.” Which meant that much of the time, none of us really knew what time it was.

    Me: I’ll bring the grain binder over tomorrow at 9am.

    Yuri Gingrich: When is that?

    Me: I don’t know.

    That’s hilarious. I hope it’s true. Have you written about this experience before?

    It’s very true.

    I’ve written about my Amish background before. I don’t think I’ve written about DST before.

    On Ricochet? If you have a link, I would love to read it.

    I’ll see if I can find posts that I’ve written about that era of my life.  But to Phil’s point again, I may not be able to find them.  I’ll see what I can do.

    • #70
  11. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):
    I’ll see if I can find posts that I’ve written about that era of my life.  But to Phil’s point again, I may not be able to find them.  I’ll see what I can do.

    You did talk about it some here:

    https://ricochet.com/815850/loc-with-dr-bastiat/

    • #71
  12. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    You mention it in others, such as the one about Sweden or this:

    https://ricochet.com/736248/the-lasting-benefits-of-repeated-failure/

    • #72
  13. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    And I don’t see why people are always ragging on the search function here. I have no problems.

    • #73
  14. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    Arahant (View Comment):

    You mention it in others, such as the one about Sweden or this:

    https://ricochet.com/736248/the-lasting-benefits-of-repeated-failure/

    Thanks Arahant!

    • #74
  15. Duane Oyen Member
    Duane Oyen
    @DuaneOyen

    I don’t know how many of you are aware that the Sainted James Lileks was actually a doctrinaire, garden-variety liberal- particularly when he worked inside the beltway for the Washington Post.  He got tired of that hubris he encountered every day there and missed the bedrock reality of the Midwest and his fellow Fargoites. 

    When he returned to Minneapolis around 30 years ago (where he had gone to college at my alma mater and could now live just an afternoon’s drive away from his parents in Fargo), he prided himself on being as militant moderate- both sides were too extreme, etc.  That was when I first discovered and listened to him on his local Saturday radio show on AM1500. By the end of the 1990’s he was a sensible Gingrich acolyte (self-described when I called his show on day and asked about his drift rightward), and went all the way after 9-11.

    His “Back Fence” newspaper column was, for a long time, one of two bearable non-sports things about the StarTribune (which I was delivering daily to 80+ customers when James was in primary school), the other being Kathy Kersten’s weekly column.  Kathy was eventually purged as an alleged economy move by wokester editors, and at one point Lileks was also briefly removed from his by-line, but he was too popular for the boycott to be sustained.  Fortunately, the Strib owner is actually not a lefty so the editors can’t be as monolithically port-side frisky as they would like.  (the paper has no choice but to trend left overall because the city itself is basically the Midwest Seattle/SanFran/Portland subscriber base)

    • #75
  16. Duane Oyen Member
    Duane Oyen
    @DuaneOyen

    Duane Oyen (View Comment):

    I don’t know how many of you are aware that the Sainted James Lileks was actually a doctrinaire, garden-variety liberal- particularly when he worked inside the beltway for the Washington Post. He got tired of that hubris he encountered every day there and missed the bedrock reality of the Midwest and his fellow Fargoites.

    When he returned to Minneapolis around 30 years ago (where he had gone to college at my alma mater and could now live just an afternoon’s drive away from his parents in Fargo), he prided himself on being as militant moderate- both sides were too extreme, etc. That was when I first discovered and listened to him on his local Saturday radio show on AM1500. By the end of the 1990’s he was a sensible Gingrich acolyte (self-described when I called his show on day and asked about his drift rightward), and went all the way after 9-11.

    His “Back Fence” newspaper column was, for a long time, one of two bearable non-sports things about the StarTribune (which I was delivering daily to 80+ customers when James was in primary school), the other being Kathy Kersten’s weekly column. Kathy was eventually purged as an alleged economy move by wokester editors, and at one point Lileks was also briefly removed from his by-line, but he was too popular for the boycott to be sustained. Fortunately, the Strib owner is actually not a lefty so the editors can’t be as monolithically port-side frisky as they would like. (the paper has no choice but to trend left overall because the city itself is basically the Midwest Seattle/SanFran/Portland subscriber base)

    BTW, his books are all fun and I have virtually all of them on my shelves.  The only one I didn’t really care about was Mr Obvious.  The rest are great, starting with Falling Up The Stairs. the battle against AIL.

    • #76
  17. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Duane Oyen (View Comment):

    I don’t know how many of you are aware that the Sainted James Lileks was actually a doctrinaire, garden-variety liberal- 

    ~le gasp~

    • #77
  18. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    TBA (View Comment):

    Duane Oyen (View Comment):

    I don’t know how many of you are aware that the Sainted James Lileks was actually a doctrinaire, garden-variety liberal-

    ~le gasp~

    Like in his 20s, not real surprising is it?

    • #78
  19. Autistic License Coolidge
    Autistic License
    @AutisticLicense

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Welcome!

    You show up and James posts a new Ramble? Coincidence?

    Everybody, now, Three, Two, One…

    RAAAAMBAAAAL!

     

    Happy days are here again, the sky above is clear again…

    • #79
  20. Ambrianne Member
    Ambrianne
    @Ambrianne

    She (View Comment):

    Malka Davis: I earned a bachelor’s in English in 2009 and published a few short stories online. (Currently working in state government, so you know how that whole writing thing turned out.)

    Welcome to Ricochet, @ malka-davis. I earned mine in 1976, and the writing thing didn’t pan out for me, either. But I retired from a much-loved IT career several years ago. Useful things, those English degrees. Don’t give up the ship.

    Regards,

    Another Knitter

    Here, here on the English degree. Mine was in 1991 and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’ve been a full-time homeschooling mom, a lobbyist, and managed a 50-person department. Now I’m executive at a non-profit and working on an MBA. Welcome!

    • #80
  21. Douglas Pratt Coolidge
    Douglas Pratt
    @DouglasPratt

    Duane Oyen (View Comment):

    BTW, his books are all fun and I have virtually all of them on my shelves. The only one I didn’t really care about was Mr Obvious. The rest are great, starting with Falling Up The Stairs. the battle against AIL.

    Thanks for the summary. I too have the books, loved Falling Up, finished Mr. Obvious but didn’t re-read. On the other hand I have gleefully given copies of Interior Desecrations and Regrettable Food to folks at Christmas. They seem to be going out of print, which makes lileks.com that much more valuable.

    • #81
  22. Malka Davis Inactive
    Malka Davis
    @Malkadavis

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):

    You mention it in others, such as the one about Sweden or this:

    https://ricochet.com/736248/the-lasting-benefits-of-repeated-failure/

    Thanks Arahant!

    This is really excellent. And it’s a topic on which I consider myself something of an expert. I’m glad @Arahant found it. 

    • #82
  23. Duane Oyen Member
    Duane Oyen
    @DuaneOyen

    kedavis (View Comment):

    TBA (View Comment):

    Duane Oyen (View Comment):

    I don’t know how many of you are aware that the Sainted James Lileks was actually a doctrinaire, garden-variety liberal-

    ~le gasp~

    Like in his 20s, not real surprising is it?

    To whom? Not me, although I did skip that phase, having been born sans heart.

    • #83
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