Thread by @MollyMcKew

Well, tweeps, following a pony show this morning (no, really), the McKew sisters will embark on a semi-ridiculous roadtrip to our parents' old house to spend the weekend sorting through boxes from high school & college that were abandoned long ago, b/c clearly we don't need them.

Again, no, really.

But as we never want to hear about these boxes again, off we go!

It's 10000% humidity, raining, and we're driving a huge van so my parents can load it with stuff we will probably throw in a gas station dumpster 500m from the house.

I've packed one dress and 2 bottles of Jameson.

Anyway, if there's a lot of cursing this weekend, now you know why!

278 more miles to go in what is basically a giant surveillance van. Oh yeah baby. Livin' the dream.

That's how we keep you young & fair in the merry old land of Oz...

PURSUE YOUR HAPPINESS but ...

... ALL FIREWORKS LEGAL

I want this in my living room

We are now in Hicksylvania where there are FIVE country music stations

Infrastructure week:

Imagine coming here, and seeing this, and having no idea how much further west the land and the trees and the rivers went.

The ghostly Lordstowne plant ...

... But they have installed a huge bank of solar panels in the very huge, very empty parking lot...

TWEEPS. I have found a semi-abandoned tiki bar on an abandoned interstate in Ohio.

And I will now have a drink with the guy who taught me to shotgun beers in high school. Major.

Boom.

Please send the coffee robot and ask it to bring aspirin.

Convo next to me at breakfast:
"Well you aren't supposed to open the door and throw things out of a flying taxi!"

(The debate is flying taxis vs underground tunnels. Love it.)

Tweeps there is so much stuff here.

High school art project

Tweeps what do you do with past life award plaques? Keep, toss, burn?

It was very satisfying to toss the non-shooting ones in a dumpster.

This is an actual bathroom countertop in my parents' house -- pebbles in acrylic -- look all ye mighty and despair.

From my first trip to the Guinness brewery! Cc @page88

My sister was such a cheater!!

Lol. I was such a lion.

Also, that sweatshirt dress was once the most expensive thing I owned

I think my previous posts about my mom's brother Steve failed to mention his most excellent ginger mustaches in his youth.

My sister has everyone of her bus passes from Boise. In order!

OMG I still have a copy of the worst corporate Christmas card ever!! Note the logo on the bulldozer -- watch our happy dear!! Daddy progress is coming for you!

Oh retro luggage. Come home with mama.

Mom saved this from our childhood bedroom because it didn't give us enough nightmares the first time.

My 7.46 GPA my senior year 😂

Still miss the old Irish coins! The harps and animals and Celtic knots.

My mom is insisting on keeping every user manual for every item that has ever come into -- and gone out of -- this house.

you can laugh at this pantry if you want but when the zombie apocalypse comes & you're eating roaches my mom & dad will be dining in saltines & chestnuts

Daddy bought me a pint of Jameson

Tweeps the Ghostbusters are trying to get the heck out of Ohio, too.

Ok, so, as we hurl back toward DC, some Sunday reveries about conversations in Ohio -- aka the supposed "real America" everyone obsesses about during our now forever-elections.

So first thing. Let's talk about jobs, the myth of returning jobs/fossil fuel energy jobs, and "immigration."

You saw the closed Lordstown plant -- death of the old economy, which ain't coming back.

Now, there is a surprising amount of fracking happening in Ohio...

... Which is notable in particular with the fun new seismic activity that fracking brings to a community.

But this means jobs for petroleum related extractives industry. And I learned that basically every Marriott-ish "suites" hotel in NE Ohio is half full of these peeps ...

... Many of whom are engineers from Romania, Chile, India, other far away places. Aka places that still focus on education programs which in particular produce engineers. Which isn't here.

They come 6 months at a time, whatever; it's cheaper to stay in these hotels than settle.

So yea, old energy has some jobs. But these jobs aren't doing much for locals who don't have the skills to do them.

Also, by living in hotels, they avoid having to integrate with communities, or not.

Cleveland was a city of immigrants. I find this separation sad.

Also, I noticed a lot of new gas wells on personal properties, many of which probably still have well water. I really hope that the right environmental regs are being observed before Ohio turns into Wyoming, land of the flaming tap water.

So second thing -- an observation on how fast schools are changing, courtesy of my shotgunning-beers friend who is a career public school teacher.

TWEEPS -- no joke, ice ice baby was just in the radio AND MY SISTER CHANGED THE STATION.

So my friend the career high school teacher described a couple of things I really worry about.

Especially how technology is being used in schools. Some things -- like having 3D printer labs that have basically replaced the school library -- have ups and downs...

... Great exposure to a cool thing! But, without anyone to teach them how to use these shiny tools, you basically have the smartest kids in school now using the library as shop class. Which is layers upon layers of irony.

Struggle between new and old knowledge -- interesting.

But, we really, really need to talk about data, privacy, and laptops/tablets/apps issued by schools.

Let's say for example this school district was issuing chromebooks to all the kids, and swearing they weren't data-stalking the students (which wasn't fully true)...

... What exactly the data was being used for inside the school system wasn't clear.

Externally tho -- so Google offers "student profiles" that aren't supposed to track and archive data from kids. Cool.

But when they graduate, they are given the convenient option --

-- of merging their student profile (contacts, photos etc) into a public profile, and as soon as they do, all that data probably becomes available to the Google vacuum with their identity attached.

We all need to pay more attention to all of this.

I know there's this pressure on schools to get data and metrics so they can make themselves look good on a stat sheet. But at what cost?

I posted that picture of an old, rusting, very-much still in use railway bridge as an example of the duality we live in. This dumb era can be the edge of decay, or of metamorphosis. We haven't chosen to define which yet.

Which will be catastrophic.

So, now, I would like to know why you have to pay 8 EXTRA dollars in tolls to leave Ohio than to come into it.

I mean yeah, we're with you -- everyone wants out! But this seems a bit highway robbery -- literally.

Also, I'm not sure, Pennsylvania, why we have to pay $20 for the privilege to drive through your state on this crappy turnpike that for long stretches is worse than the regular ol' roads we get to drive in for free.

At times, it's like we're riding on ponies -- ungracefully.

Drivin' down the highway behind a folded up carousel ....

Hell is: any service plaza on PA turnpike. Bathrooms: wet. toilet paper: helpfully mounted 6" from wet floor. Everything smells like Auntie Anne's but lines so long, who knows. Gas: impossible. Could film a comet apocalypse "everyone get out of town" scene any day w/ no extras

Oh no! The carousel broke down. Send carnies!

DRINK MILK!!!

... But he doesn't seem to be smiling...

My sister has put on a playlist that has a lot of Black Eyed Peas.

S
O
S

Just over the highway wall is an old tavern, inaccessible and forlorn from dead-stopped traffic

Tweeps, the road has grammar.