Aggie Brose

This article does well at capturing the personality of Aggie Brose, a 35-year community organizer for my neighborhood. Considering this article is 10 years old, Aggie must be about 75, but she still has more spunk than most Millennials. I will ask her sometime to explain the circumstances of her knocking on the Federal Reserve chief's front door in 1997 (see article).

Chinese parenting

Is this woman emotionally retarded or exceptionally brilliant? It reminds me of my childhood, in small ways. Of course we never had firestorms about bad grades because I never got less than an A before leaving home.

Crash

My friend drives very carefully. We were chatting about something and he suddenly made a big fuss about something up ahead. He claims that he hit the horn for a good second as he brought the car to a stop about 60 feet before reaching the 4-way intersection with 4 stop signs, but I don't even remember.

What I saw was a full-size white pickup truck moving in from the right, I'll guess 33 mph, just as a large black 4-door truck or SUV was picking up speed towards us through the four-way intersection. Neither truck seemed to slow down, and the fraction of a second before the obviously imminent collision seemed to last much longer than it possible could have. The white truck struck the black truck just ahead of the black truck's driver, pushing the black truck sideways maybe 10 feet and totaling it.

The forward momentum of the black truck yanked the front of the white truck towards us, spinning it counter-clockwise 120 degrees, pointing approximately towards us. As it rotated I could see the driver flop down into the front passenger area. In an eerie 4 seconds after the main cacophony of smashing mettle and shattering headlights, the white truck, evidently without a cognizant driver, lazily bounced off the wreckage and meandered over to us, coming to rest just a couple feet ahead of our bumper. About the time it stopped, I remarked "maybe we should back up a little."

I called 911 somewhat reluctantly considering that there were many witnesses and I figured the lines would be jammed, but the attendant said I was the only caller. As I called, all four doors of the four-door truck opened and about that many people climbed out, much to my surprise, and went into the conveniently-located gas station to clean up or buy snacks or make sense of their lives, I guess. The driver of the white truck also climbed out. I happily informed the 911 dispatcher that it looked like everyone was out OK but I emphasized that both vehicles were totaled as if I needed to prove that it really was an important accident I was calling about. And for good measure I noted that one of the guys appeared to have a well-bloodied head. Then we left.

Yay Lord

I walked about 2 minutes down the hill this morning to scope out a church in my neighborhood. Why would someone do such a thing? I have this hunch that knowing my neighbors could be prophetable.

I was the only other white person in the church. The service lasted about 2 hours. I had to pee. A Dr. O was called up front to announce that the church hoped to raise 100k by October, praise God, please give as much as you can, Amen? The "pastor and first lady" sat at the front in white, flanked by well-suited men, including one in purple. A Ms. Someone announced that it was God that brought each of us there that day, Amen, and it was here he sent us -- not to the other churches, not to a Baptist church, not to a Methodist church, not to a church of Jesus Christ of the Latter days Saints, Thank God for That! The first lady gave a brief rundown of the most prominent donors towards the 100k goal, noting that so-and-so had pledged 1k, "and they are handing in the check today" at which point someone scrambled to the front to drop off a check. The first lady went on to humbly note that she and the pastor were contributing 10k, and Dr O, well, "Dr O, do you mind if I tell them what you pledged?", and he's like, "I don't care" and she said 5k. The preacher started out soft and ended up shouting and the congregation whooped along with him. A lot of nice people, but it seems that most of them are not my neighbors, driving in from at least a couple miles.