Better Husband, Architecture, New Monopoly, Trump and Hitler

There are so many things to post that I get overwhelmed.  A few drafts are backed up as I write and rewrite and gather more information and then try to shorten them to focus on the key points.  I try anyway.  But in the mean time here are a few things.


1.  I Quit Being a Therapist so I Could Be a Better Husband

 "I hated the idea of being someone who spends the day helping other families overcome difficult emotions but can’t do the same with himself at home for his family. I felt like a fraud."

"Early on, the skills I refined as a therapist made me a better husband. I got good at understanding the variety of reasons people do what they do. I became more compassionate in our marriage and I was better equipped to help Nhu-An navigate challenges in her family, with her friends, and at work. I think it’s also made me a better father to our daughter — more patient, present, and involved.
Three things changed."

 It's a good piece, I recommend you read it all.  It's positive, but also critical of the medical system.





3.  If Trump's Loves Classical Architecture, He Needs To Congratulate Nancy Pelosi On Her Home Town City Hall.

Trump had just issued an order about court houses needing to only be built in classical style.  No modern buildings (like his towers).  I thought about this as we walked past the San Francisco City Hall on our way to BART and the airport Wednesday.










2. San Francisco as we flew back to Seattle.  

3.  New Monopoly Uses Credit Cards Instead Of Money

My granddaughter insisted we play monopoly.  It was never one of my favorite activities, but she's my granddaughter, so what could I do?  It turns out that each player now gets credit cards and there's this little gadget you put the cards in.  Then you type how much money, and it either a) transfers it in or out of one card (if you pass go or have to pay Luxury Taxes, etc.) or b) transfers money from one card to the other (if you have to pay rent.)

As I recall, it was relatively easy to cheat when you used paper money.  This gadget takes that ease to a whole new level.  The banker just types it in and you get your card back.  Unless you insist the banker shows what your card is now, you have no idea how much money you have.

And the amounts are in the tens of thousands to millions.  One dollar bills?  Hah!



4.  Sound Transit (Seattle) Hate Free Zone

If you want to keep out of the darker side of politics, stop here.

4.  Leading Civil Rights Lawyer Shows 20 Ways Trump Is Copying Hitler’s Early Rhetoric and Policies  -  I've been talking about this since at least the election in 2016. (For example this post.)  No one can say we weren't warned.

"A younger Trump, according to his first wife’s divorce filings, kept and studied a book translating and annotating Adolf Hitler’s pre-World War II speeches in a locked bedside cabinet, Neuborne noted. The English edition of My New Order, published in 1941, also had analyses of the speeches’ impact on his era’s press and politics. “Ugly and appalling as they are, those speeches are masterpieces of demagogic manipulation,” Neuborne says.
“Watching Trump work his crowds, though, I see a dangerously manipulative narcissist unleashing the demagogic spells that he learned from studying Hitler’s speeches—spells that he cannot control and that are capable of eroding the fabric of American democracy,” Neuborne says. 'You see, we’ve seen what these rhetorical techniques can do. Much of Trump’s rhetoric—as a candidate and in office—mirrors the strategies, even the language, used by Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s to erode German democracy.'”