Bill Bennett is a very common name. Right now, I'm reading a book by the Australian film maker Bill Bennett. He hiked the Camino in 2013 and then wrote a book (and made an Australian movie, not available in the U.S.) about it. Seems he kept a blog about that hike, too. I went to look for his Camino blog, and found he started one years after the hike, but he didn't post regularly... His last post from 2022 announced his had Parkinson's and had kept the diagnosis secret for 4 years. Now that almost three years have passed from that post, I wonder what's happened to him. Blogs are weird. They just sit there. Anyone can stumble upon them, and read them. So I decided to keep looking for his Camino blog. https://billbennett.blog/home/ *** And I found another Bill Bennett, this one from New Zealand, who keeps a microblog. It's current and updated. "What's a microblog?" My wife asked. Well, I said, it's a small blog. Just a sentence or two for a post. ...
When someone does something repugnant or slimy, I often wonder: Who hurt you? With JD Vance, I've found myself thinking, "Bless his heart. He's just being Trump's bitch. I wonder who hurt him. Was he bullied much as a kid?" I've read Hillbilly Elegy, but I don't remember much in it. Below are a few places where he mentions being bullied: "When I was younger, I was the new kid in town. And as I quickly learned, the new kid always gets bullied." (Chapter 1) "At school, I was constantly picked on, and I couldn’t understand why. My classmates would make fun of my clothes, the way I talked, and the way my mom acted." (Chapter 2) "I was a poor kid with a messy home life, and I became the target of constant teasing, and that made me even more ashamed of where I came from." (Chapter 3) "It’s hard to be proud of yourself when every kid in your class has more than you, and the people who tease you are just one reminder of your soc...