Through the Looking Glass at The Vintage Source - Another Lost Weekend

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I took my monthly outing to see the ladies at The Vintage Source, the Fine, Funky Home Decor and Social Club of Southern Maryland where nothing is as it seems and not the least the four ladies who never seem to lose their thirst for living or good wine.

Of course there were the bargains, hundreds of them, and hundreds more had already been purchased before I got there. If you are not waiting in line before daybreak the third Saturday and Sunday of every month you lose out on the best buys. I tried it once but prefer to wait until the crowd thins and I can get the latest news from the most unusual proprietor and partners on the East coast.



If you haven't made it there you are missing out on great bargains, great conversation and the opportunity to see the world through their eyes, from the back side of the mirror, and a most bizarre view it can be. You see there are no rules when it comes to creative thinking when this gang gets together.



There is Michelle, who set out on a dream to build a business from a tent in her front yard and wound up building a spectacle where people line the street before it opens waiting to get in the doors. She actually thought she could be successful being open one weekend a month and did it. Outside running the Hotdog Wagon serving the best dogs this side of Manhattan is Tyler, her husband, a vice principal during the week and dawg hawker on weekends.



Then there is Cathe, the blueblood of Philadelphia and debutant of the Pocono Mountain resorts who shattered all the strictures of the Philly upper crust and ran off and married a Sicilian who joined the Navy. This girl was so sheltered that when she got married she had never driven a car (why when you had a chauffeured limo), cooked a meal or even seen a washer and dryer. From Dirty Dancing to Navy housewife it was a heroic transition.



The third wheel of the original gang is Cheryl, Miss perpetual motion from the Texas panhandle who also married into the military and used it as a stepping stone to learn every craft there is related to furniture, homes and unusual things. Cheryl took hands on experience to a whole new dimension with a desire to understand how everything is made, repaired or reconditioned in the world of antique furniture.



Finally there is Joy, the survivor of a vaudeville family upbringing who was once lost as a child in her mother's collection of over 600 antique dolls. I have never seen her not laughing about life even though she is also married to yet another military dude. But then I had the pleasure of meeting her rather eccentric mother and I could see how Joy was so full of joy with a mother like that.



So this month it was a little like joining Alice in Wonderland as they showed me their newest marketing gimmick. There were four antiqued postcards about The Vintage Source, each with a photo of one of the ladies when they were quite young. I was supposed to match them to the ladies. Nothing is as it seems.



You try it if you think it is so easy. Match the kid shots with the grown up shots in this story. I was okay with Joy (the weird dog), then Cheryl (the red hair), and finally Cathe (who else climbs out of a Pocono Mountains resort pool with dry hair). But Michelle, now that was a stretch no matter how hard I studied the photo.



Either the ladies were playing a joke on me and it was not her, or she had been the victim of an alien abduction and they returned the wrong body to her home. Since that happened to me once between second and third grade I was suspicious. You look at these photos and tell me you don't agree.



The little Michelle looks like a midget football player in drag with a strange hair style, a large soup bowl cut, and nothing at all like the rather stunning specimen remaining today. On her worst day of the year she could not look like the little curmudgeon of yesteryear on the postcard. I know when a person was replaced and if that was her back then we need to look for her on Mars today, not at The Vintage Source. In the meantime we will keep the alien.



You really should experience the place one of these days. Maybe you will meet Michelle's mother and you can ask her for the truth about her daughter. Was she abducted and was she returned or replaced? See you at the true Source, The Vintage Source.

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Liberals Choke on Own Words as Sarah Palin Catches Obama in Polls

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For well over a year the liberal media has been trying to complete the destruction of Sarah Palin in the eyes of the public with one of the meanest, most vicious attempts at political assassination ever undertaken in America. In spite of this, Sarah has steadily moved up to a 46% national approval rating while Obama has collapsed from 68% to 46-48% national approval in various polls this week.



It seems every couple of months they believe they have finally put her to rest for good. First it was after the Kate Couric interview, then when her daughter became pregnant, and once more when McCain lost the election. To make sure she was finished they had a bunch of ethics charges brought against her in Alaska even after the election.



Then they smeared her through Levi Johnston, the father of her grandchild. When Palin resigned as governor the media thought she was finally six feet under. But this gun toting mother from the back woods of Alaska has more lives than Felix, Garfield, Sylvester and Morris combined.



Sarah needed money to fight back, or reload as her father described it, and reload she did as her recent book tour once again established her as the pre-eminent people's choice to oppose the liberal or socialist agenda of Barack Obama.



This time, when the media turned on the book, the public sent a message loud and clear to the citadels of elitist journalism by making Sarah the runaway best selling political writer in history with over 1 million book sales the first week and a remarkable climb in the national approval polls.



Today one of the most amazing resurrection acts in centuries was completed when Sarah caught up in the favorable polls with the President of the United States, the poster boy for the extreme liberals, The Chosen One for the elitist media, Barack Obama.



As Obama continues his 22 point collapse in the polls Palin continues her 8 point rise in the polls and waves as she watches him pass by. Every day Palin wipes out more of the memories of the media pasting she took during the campaign, a slaughter that could have been prevented if McCain aides would have come to her rescue and let her lead the defense.



Instead they silenced her, kept her away from the media, and refused to let her appear on national shows except for the highly rated appearance on Saturday Night Live where she was a solid hit. Now Palin does not have a campaign gagging her and fight back she is demonstrating once and for all that she is a viable representative and spokesperson for a huge number of Americans.



Contrary to what the elitist media would have you believe, she is smart on the issues, charming with the press and tuned into the hearts of America. If anyone had a right to run against the media it was Palin but she forgave them. Being a journalism graduate and journalist herself, she knows the importance of being able to reach people through the media.



Sarah embraced the very people who expended every ounce of energy in their being to destroy her career. She appeared on Oprah, with Barbara Walters, and gave numerous interviews to people she had not been allowed to speak with during the campaign. This past weekend she even went into the "belly of the beast" according to the Los Angeles Times and gave a hilarious speech before the Gridiron Club in Washington, DC, the more than century old club of the most influential journalists in America. An op-ed piece by Palin appeared in the Washington Post this week. Even MSNBC has defended her lately.



Slowly but surely, as her poll numbers continue to move up the stories about Palin have become increasingly fair and unbiased. Only an industry insider would understand how to bring about such a radical change in the highly charged political atmosphere that exists. Make no mistake, she is a media pro and with three years to go before the next election, she stands once again as a monumental problem for the Obama gang whose propensity for demeaning, distorting and destroying opponents seems to have backfired with Sarah.



The Chicago thugs seem to have met their match with the gun toting, corruption fighting, people's pick from Alaska who never wavers from her core beliefs of religion, life, liberty, family values and populism, and does not run from the fight of her life, taking on the old boys network and establishment in our nation's capitol and on Wall Street.