Here are two short ones I am just putting together to save space.
That time in Rio when Pelosi wasn’t home (Dec. 13): Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi apparently isn’t too badly hurt after a fall during an official congressional visit to Luxembourg, so as we wish her a speedy recovery, there’s no harm in a little levity about another of Pelosi’s travel experiences.
She wasn’t “fallen” then, but for a few seconds there was some confusion.
This was a story told both at the funeral of the late Rep. Sonny Callahan (R-AL) and in a book about him called Callahan Connections: Bridging the Congressional Divide.
On a trip to Rio de Janeiro in the 1990s to investigate something having to do with the Foreign Operations Subcommittee that Callahan chaired and on which Pelosi served, Pelosi and her staff were out late one night at a U2 concert. (U2’s Bono is a noted advocate for humanitarian aid, and he had become a close friend of Callahan’s.) Callahan, however, was tired and so he begged off the concert.
When a call from Pelosi’s husband Paul came to the switchboard well after midnight Rio time (which is two hours ahead of Eastern time), the front desk operator apparently had the wrong rooms listed for the wrong members of Congress. The call was routed to Callahan’s room, waking him up.
Surprised to hear Callahan’s voice in what he thought was his wife’s room, a confused Mr. Pelosi said “This is Paul. I am looking for Nancy.”
Callahan didn’t miss a beat. “Well,” he growled, “she damn sure ain’t here.” — 30 —
Carolina, two months later (Dec. 6): HENDERSONVILLE, North Carolina — Two months to the day after the remains of Hurricane Helene brought unprecedented devastation into the mountains of North Carolina, the remarkable damage is still plain to see. So, too, though, is the good old American pluck.
On a steep curve a few miles up Finley Cove Road, to the west and above Hendersonville proper, half the road remains collapsed in a mangle of rocks, dirt, steel, wires, and asphalt. All the way up and down the road, new vistas present themselves via open spaces where trees by the thousands have fallen. At the bottom of the hill, where otherwise unremarkable Mud Creek turned into a raging torrent, a large grocery store, bank, and other businesses remain shuttered due to flood damage behind “Keep Out” wire fencing, with reopenings not expected until the new year. Around the bend, ruined trailer homes remain surrounded by heaps of flotsam, a testament to Helene’s human toll…..
