They encountered a rattlesnake ...
It's Free for All Friday!
It’s Free for ALL Friday! Each week I keep track of some of the off-the-path things I've found, and work extra-hard to make sure you never hit a paywall, using my own subscriptions, gift links, and other (legal) hocus-pocus.
The (Unsurprising) History of Why US Election Day Isn't a Federal Holiday
Why isn’t Election Day a federal holiday? Or more specifically, why are so many schools closed on Election Day even though most parents still have to work?
The more I think about it, the less anything about Election Day makes sense. Why is it held on a Tuesday, anyway? In what world did the US government think this was even remotely practical?
So I looked into it. It turns out that Tuesday was actually incredibly convenient — for men in the 19th century.
In 1845, Congress passed the Presidential Election Day Act in an attempt to streamline what had been a pretty confusing election process. Until then, states had been free to hold elections whenever they wanted within a 34-day period that ended in early December.
At the time, the most common occupation for American men was farming. (Slavery still existed and women couldn’t vote, so the only people whose voting needs were considered were White men.)
Farmers often lived far away from their polling places and needed a full day to ride into town to vote. Many of them went to church on Sunday, so weekend voting didn’t work. Wednesday was market day, so it was out as well. Tuesday, however, was likely to be convenient for the most number of people. So that’s what Congress went with: “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November.” It was a thoughtful decision, really.
The problem, of course, is that 179 years later we’re all still voting to accommodate the needs of 19th century farmers.
Dreading the Constable’s Knock in an Eviction Capital
In fast-growing Phoenix, higher rents have pushed more people to their financial limits. Landlord-friendly laws mean evictions can be speedy.
On a recent afternoon, Rhys Torres crossed a partly shaded courtyard to a white stucco building. He tapped on a door and a woman in a fleece zip-up and sweatpants appeared.
“I understand what you’re here for,” she said. “You can come in.”
But she began to panic in the cramped living room that held a bed. “I can’t breathe,” she said.
“Take a slow breath,” Torres told her. “We’re good. We’ll give you some time.”
That meant about 10 minutes. It was enough time to put together an overnight bag with a few essentials, and Torres told the woman she could come back for bigger items later.
Torres, who works at one of 26 eviction courts in the county, has the job of removing people from their homes when they’ve stopped paying rent.
The constable has been busy this year. Court filings to evict tenants across Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, hit a single-month record of more than 8,000 in January. They have remained at higher than typical levels for much of the year.
Companies Ready Price Hikes to Offset Trump’s Global Tariff Plans
Executives say Americans, not foreign countries, will pay the tariffs.
Across the United States, companies that rely on foreign suppliers are preparing to raise prices in response to the massive import tariffs that former president Donald Trump promises if he wins the election Tuesday.
Producers of a range of items, including clothing, footwear, baby products, auto parts and hardware, say they will pass along the cost of the tariffs to their American customers.
The planned price increases next year would come as consumers are beginning to enjoy relief from the highest inflation in four decades, and they directly contradict Trump’s repeated assurances that foreigners will pay the tariff tab.
Timothy Boyle, CEO of Columbia Sportswear: "We’re set to raise prices. We’re buying stuff today for delivery next fall. So we’re just going to deal with it and we’ll just raise the prices. … It’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans."
Philip Daniele, CEO of AutoZone: "If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer. We’ll generally raise prices ahead of — we know what the tariffs will be — we generally raise prices ahead of that."
Donald Allan, CEO of Stanley Black & Decker: "We will have to do some surgical price actions."
America’s Top Archivist Puts a Rosy Spin on U.S. History—Pruning the Thorny Parts
Plans for new exhibits at the National Archives Museum included swapping a photo of Martin Luther King Jr. marching for Civil Rights for former President Nixon greeting Elvis.
U.S. Archivist Colleen Shogan and her top advisers at the National Archives and Records Administration, which operates a popular museum on the National Mall, have sought to de-emphasize negative [or controversial] parts of U.S. history. She has ordered the removal of prominent references to such landmark events as the government’s displacement of indigenous tribes and the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II from planned exhibits.
Visitors shouldn’t feel confronted, a senior official told employees, they should feel welcomed. Shogan and her senior advisers also have raised concerns that planned exhibits and educational displays expected to open next year might anger Republican lawmakers—who share control of the agency’s budget—or a potential Trump administration.
A few examples:
Shogan’s senior aides ordered that a proposed image of Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. be cut from a planned “Step Into History” photo booth in the Discovery Center.
The aides also ordered the removal of labor-union pioneer Dolores Huerta and Minnie Spotted-Wolf, the first Native American woman to join the Marine Corps. The aides proposed using instead images of former President Richard Nixon greeting Elvis Presley and former President Ronald Reagan with baseball player Cal Ripken Jr.
For an exhibit about patents that had changed the world, Shogan directed that the patent for the contraceptive pill be replaced. Aides substituted the patent for television.
They’re Giving Scammers All Their Money. The Kids Can’t Stop Them.
One son couldn’t prevent his father from giving about $1 million in savings to con artists, including one posing as a female wrestling star. The two became estranged.
When Chris Mancinelli walked into his father’s home for the first time after the 79-year-old man died last summer, he stopped to look at family photos displayed on the refrigerator door. Near a crayon drawing spelling out “grandpa” in rainbow colors were photos of his father’s three granddaughters at a swimming pool.
But one image jumped out: a photo of Alexa Bliss, a professional wrestling personality.
Mr. Mancinelli’s father, Alfred, was completely smitten with the star — or at least with the con artist impersonating her. He was convinced he was in a romantic relationship with Ms. Bliss, leading him to give up about $1 million in retirement savings (and his granddaughter’s college fund) to the impostor and a varied cast of online fraudsters he interacted with over several years.
When Mr. Mancinelli tried to intervene, moving his father’s last $100,000 to a safe account, Alfred sued him — his loyalty was to “Lexi.”
“There was nothing we could do to convince him,” said Mr. Mancinelli, 47, a chemical engineer in Collegeville, Pa. An elder care specialist deemed Alfred “really sharp,” he said, but lacking purpose.
Americans lost an estimated $12.5 billion to online criminals in 2023, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, including $652 million in losses tied to romance and confidence scams. Many more go unreported.
Mr. Mancinelli and others who have tried to awaken their loved ones from this trance often feel powerless, even after they’ve done everything to shatter the fiction and protect their assets. They say it’s as if their parent had been brainwashed into a cult.
‘I Traveled 8,000 Miles for the Camera That Killed Polaroid’
Nearly 50 years ago, the Polavision camera blended the company's revolutionary instant film with on-demand home video.
It’s the kind of story that can form the foundation of a company’s identity and, if they’re lucky, the plot for their eventual fictionalized biopic:It’s a great story ... when it’s successful.
When it’s not, well, that courageous grab for the brass ring of new technology can hamstring a company for years.
Which is why you’ve probably forgotten about the Polaroid Polavision camera. And why your likely reference points for Polaroid are their recent licensing deals that brought their instant cameras back in an ironic, kitschy zombie existence that only seems to rub salt in the wound of its attempt to redefine home movies in the late ‘70s.
The Polavision was touted as Polaroid’s biggest and most important innovation yet, having been in development for over a decade. Just as the company had pioneered the instant camera, it was going to head into the ‘80s as the leader in instant video.
The Polavision was a unique film production system, consisting of a handheld camera, film cartridge, and a proprietary viewer that would both process the film and then display what had been captured. Polaroid co-founder Edwin Land saw the Polavision as something of a personal crusade.
“Polaroid was a company that was absolutely dominant in the 20th century,” says Kevin Lieber, host of Popular Science’s Retro Tech video series. “They were dominating in instant photography and they thought the next big thing was going to be home movies, and that’s what the Polavision camera was–a very ambitious attempt to get into video. And it flopped. Really badly. It was dead within two years and is seen as the watershed moment for the company’s ultimate downfall.”
Two Hikers Encountered a Rattlesnake. Then They Fell In Love
This story did not go in the direction I originally thought it would. But I still found it interesting. I'm always a sucker for "how did you two guys meet?" tales.
Emmanuel Salas heard the snake before he saw it.
“There was that rattle,” Emmanuel, known as Manny, recalls to CNN Travel today. “Immediately, we jumped back.”
Manny tried not to panic, but when the snake came writhing out of a bush and proceeded to unfurl and stand alert, Manny felt the fear kick in.
It was early 2019. Manny and two friends were hiking back from the Bridge to Nowhere, a remote structure built for an abandoned 1930s highway project in California’s San Gabriel Mountains.
Twenty-something Manny was born in Mexico but grew up in California, and he was familiar with the state’s more hair-raising wildlife. But it was one thing reading about venomous rattlesnakes, and another thing coming face-to-face with one in the middle of nowhere.
Manny turned to see three women, each with a backpack strapped to them, each looking confused. The trio was familiar – one of them in particular – and Manny realized they’d all been at the Bridge to Nowhere together earlier that day.
“Under the bridge you can go and swim in these pools – there’s a river running underneath,” explains Manny. “We’d all stopped there and swam for a bit.”
While bathing in the pools, Manny had been struck by one of the women. She’d been sitting on a rock, laughing with her friends in between snapping photos of the view.
“I remember thinking, ‘Damn that girl looks pretty cute,’ ” says Manny.
Manny didn’t speak to her. And when Manny and his friends left the bridge, the women were still there.
But now they’d all unexpectedly reconvened to face down a rattlesnake.
The WSJ eviction article reminds me a lot of the book Evicted by Matthew Desmond, which won the Pulitzer Prize. That book came out in 2016 so this is very telling that things have gotten much worse since that time. The reality is that people don't matter much in this country; profits and money do, which is why people are evicted out of their homes. Yes, I understand this is all a financial transaction. People are not people in these instances. They're just pawns in a game. Except people are people with feelings and souls. God says to love your neighbors as you love yourself. Well, this makes me think we don't love ourselves well.
The other WSJ article about the archivist is sad, too. History is basically being edited by the National Archives workers who don't want any confrontation with Trump supporters (like Josh Hawley mentioned in the article). Whitewashing (literally) our history doesn't help anyone. How do people learn from their or their ancestors' mistakes if these things are deleted and ignored? Do we want Germany to deny Hitler's existence? People do evil things, but people also do really good things. Both have to be given the same lens.
I suspect that you love the “How did you all meet” stories because you have such a good one yourself! 😊