"It was nonstop ticks the whole time."

"Two dogs, three adults, one state park add up to 100 ticks in less than 24 hours" (Star Tribune).

ADDED: Just thinking about that story, I hallucinate ticks crawling on me!

IN THE COMMENTS: Tommy Duncan said, "Both my dog and I have had Lyme disease. It was a awful experience for both of us." That makes me want to link to this new NYT story, "Living With Lyme Disease, Stronger With Love/Brian Nicholson thought Brooke Geahan was the most beautiful woman he had ever met. He also knew that she was very ill." It's the "Vows" story of the week (that is, a wedding story). When the 2 met, the woman, who was 40, was already struggling with the disease:

A summer tick bite had dropped Ms. Geahan to a low beyond her imagining. Formerly wildly social, an avid tennis player, and a mainstay of New York City’s downtown literary scene, the illness kept her in her apartment for days at a time. At the Catskills house, she ensconced herself in a “sick fort,” wrapping herself in blankets and nesting into a couch with Paddington, her beloved rescue dog....

Mr. Nicholson felt a tinge smitten, but he was also a realist. “It’s crazy to think of someone that ill out of your league, but that’s what I felt,” he said. Instead he pinned his hopes on a possible friendship.

Ms. Geahan had zero energy for any starry-eyed attachment. “I was older than Brian, miserably sick, and broke from treating Lyme,” she said. “I was not a great catch.”...

One night, Mr. Nicholson exposed deeper feelings, but for Ms. Geahan, a relationship was still untenable. “I was a total freak who didn’t eat regular food, couldn’t drink, couldn’t exercise, couldn’t dance, and was stinging herself with bees every other day,” she said. “I didn’t want to be a burden to anyone.”

There's something called "bee venom therapy." She had that, and she also had Salman Rushdie speaking at her wedding. He said: “It takes patience, understanding, determination, passion, tenderness, tough-mindedness, originality, desire, imagination, and love, above all, love.”

ALSO: In yesterday's post "Today, the heart of Facebook is blackish-purple," mocking Facebook's promotion of "groups," I wrote in the comments:

I actually am in 2 Facebook groups — both are about the place I lived when I went to high school. I joined them long ago. I considered, just now, joining some other groups. I was especially interested in the one about Wisconsin State Parks, but I considered joining one of the groups about Bob Dylan and one of the groups about anosmia. But the Dylan groups didn't follow the paths of interestingness I want to travel, and the anosmia group required you to request admission and I didn't feel like explaining myself. Actually the Wisconsin State Parks one, the only one I tried to join, requires them to accept you. If I'd realized that, I wouldn't have clicked "join." I don't like asking for acceptance. That's what I like about this blog!

Well, I was accepted into the Wisconsin State Parks group and, as a consequence, the first thing I saw was that "nonstop ticks" article. I followed my passion — going for walks in Wisconsin state parks — and the first thing that happened was passion-crushing. Facebook is evil.

An image bigger than The Caravan fills the pre-midterm American mind: BOMBS!!

The main link goes to a Reuters article, "Obama, Clinton among targets of suspected bombs ahead of U.S. election":

At least eight suspicious parcels were intercepted before reaching any intended recipients, including Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, former CIA Director John Brennan and prominent Democratic Party donor George Soros. Two packages were sent to California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the FBI said. Investigators were trying to track down another suspicious parcel they believe was addressed to Obama's vice president, Joe Biden, a federal official told Reuters late on Wednesday.

None of the eight packages detonated, and nobody was hurt. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Does "None of the eight packages detonated" mean that the packages looked suspicious but were not actually bombs or that they were indeed bombs but the bombs didn't blow up? I see that what was sent to Soros was "detonated by police," which sounds like there was no test to determine whether the device itself would detonate, and that the evidence was destroyed, ostensibly for safety. Does that mean we don't and will never know if these things were real bombs?

But news of the bomb threats heightened tension in a nation deeply polarized ahead of elections on Nov. 6.... Some leading Democrats were quick to accuse Trump himself of stoking the potential for political violence by frequently engaging in hyper-partisan, vitriolic rhetoric....  All of the targets are frequently maligned by right-wing critics....

So the packages are something that work as a political springboard. If the question is who benefits?, the answer is the Democrats. As the post title indicates, this is great distraction. I remember when anthrax in the mail was able to distract us from jet airplanes flying into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon back in 2001. America is very sensitive to the intrusion that is the mail.

At an event in Austin, Texas on Wednesday, [former CIA Director John Brennan , one of the addressees of the packages] faulted Trump for frequent inflammatory rhetoric, saying the president "too often has helped incite some of these feelings of anger, if not violence, when he points to acts of violence. He should not be beating the tom-toms of anger and animosity and war," said the former CIA chief, whose security clearance was revoked by Trump after he criticized the president's summit earlier this year with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Tom-toms of anger"? Can I distract you with a discussion of political correctness? To my ear, "tom-toms of anger" sounds like you're talking about something like this.

IN THE COMMENTS: Tommy Duncan quotes the NYT article, "Pipe Bombs Sent to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and CNN Offices":

None of the devices harmed anyone, and it was not immediately clear whether any of them could have. One law enforcement official said investigators were examining the possibility that they were hoax devices that were constructed to look like bombs but would not have exploded.

Why does the headline call them "bombs" if they might be fake bombs?

"Bill Clinton had a very difficult job last night: He was tasked with making it seem like Hillary would have been the nominee even if she wasn't Mrs. Bill Clinton, the wife of the former Governor of Arkansas and the former President of the US."

Wrote Tommy Duncan, in the comments to the previous post.

That made me think of this section of Bill Clinton's big speech:

Meanwhile, I was still trying to get her to marry me. The second time I asked, I tried a different tactic. I said, "I really want you to marry me, but you shouldn't do it." She smiled and looked at me like what is this boy up to. She said, "That is not a very good sales pitch." I said, "I know but it's true." And I meant it. It was true. I said, "I know most of the young Democrats our age who want to go into politics, they mean well and they speak well, but none of them is as good as you are at actually doing things to make positive changes in people's lives."

So I suggested she go home to Illinois or move to New York and look for a chance to run for office. She laughed and said, "Are you out of your mind? Nobody would ever vote for me." So I finally got her to come visit me in Arkansas. And when she did, the people at the law school were so impressed, they offered her a teaching position. And she decided to take a huge chance.

She moved to a strange place, more rural and conservative than anywhere she had been. Where she knew good and well that people were wondering what in the world she was like and whether they could or should accept her. Didn't take them long to find out what she was like....

It takes a third asking before she agrees to marry him, but she's already moved to Arkansas and begun living with (near?) him. He's linked her up with a job at the law school where he works. Why would she go and teach in Arkansas if not to be with him? There's a way that you go about getting a lawprof position if that's what you want, and the normal thing to do is to apply to the best schools in the places where you'd be willing to live and to see how well you can do.

Any graduate of Yale Law School would know to do that if she wanted to enter academia. You wouldn't just snap up a job because Arkansas happened to see you when you were in town and threw an offer your way. Obviously, she was stepping down career-wise in order to be with Bill — a man whose offer of marriage she'd already turned down twice.

I know, it's only the story he tells, certainly not the whole truth and possibly hardly true at all, but I'm analyzing the speech. Bear with me.

Later, he buys a house and she — liking the house?! — accepts his offer of marriage, but it's the decision to bag her high-level career and exile herself in Arkansas that's really important, and look why she does it. It's the idea that in Illinois or New York, she'll have trouble establishing a power base, and not just because these places are big, but because "Nobody would ever vote for me." Why not? And what does that have to do with marrying her fortunes to Bill?

We know the answer to that question. It's the basis of the statement in the post title. She had a lot but she lacked something crucial, political charisma. She's still got that problem, even after all those decades of hard work and dogged desire. Bill was the magic missing ingredient, and she needed that in him. I know that last phrase looks like double entendre, but I only mean to dangle that in front of you for your amusement, not because I believe it's true that she wanted him sexually. She wanted his charisma in her, merged with her, giving her what without which Nobody would ever vote for me.