Girlfriend doesn’t want to hang with nudes
Retired Archway Ford salesman and father of former Maryland governor remembered for ‘conditionless love for his family’
Dear Readers: Every year during this time I step away from my column to work on other creative projects. I hope you enjoy these (edited) “Best Of ” Q&As from 10 years ago. Today’s topic is: the male gaze.
I’ll be back with fresh columns in two weeks.
Dear Amy: I’m a 25-yearold woman. I’m in a great long-term relationship with a very nice 27-yearold guy.
Last month he moved into a loft apartment with two other guys, who have been living there for a few years. His roommates are generally very gracious and creative people.
The problem is the decoration in the loft. It’s full of images of naked or almost-naked women. Some are fine art prints, but others are just raunchy pornography, including a headless female mannequin wearing nothing but lingerie.
I don’t feel comfortable hanging out there with so many women being displayed like that.
I asked the girlfriend of one of the roommates what she thought of the mannequin, and she said it was funny.
My boyfriend has told me he does not want to upset the new apple cart by demanding that they change the apartment around. I don’t want to come off as a demanding prude by saying they should redecorate their place, so what should I do?
— Grossed-out Girlfriend
Dear Girlfriend: Like you, I wouldn’t want to hang out in a porn palace, but your boyfriend isn’t willing to represent your point of view to his roommates. Your only other option is to react to this decor yourself. You can assume they’d be happy to explain their choices to someone who is willing to challenge them.
When you get to know them better, say: “OK. I’m dying to know. What’s with all the nudes?” If they say they “love the human form,” you can tell them you’ve got a vintage centerfold of Burt Reynolds you’d be happy to present to them. Otherwise, if you can’t adjust to this, I suggest you steer clear.
Dear Amy: Iama 65-year-old woman. My significant other is a self-professed “boob” man.
He recently booked a trip to a topless resort. I can’t imagine enjoying a week of sitting around topless with a bunch of hard bodies while he ogles.
He thinks I am being unreasonable and not taking his priorities into consideration. I think he is being unfair to think that would be a fun time for me. Am I being unreasonable?
— Saggy 65
Dear Saggy: You’re not being unreasonable. If your guy absolutely must go on a boob-watching trip, and you aren’t interested, then don’t go. One advantage of being a “significant other” is that occasionally you get to be “other” and go your own way.
If you are happy being with someone with this diverting hobby, then — by all means — tell him you will be awaiting his return.
Dear Amy: You answered a letter from a woman (“Distraught”) who said her husband was addicted to pornography. You’ve said (among other things) that pornography “desensitizes” people to actual physical encounters.
I, like millions of older men, view porn online, and I’m not desensitized.
I’m frustrated because my wife, like millions of other wives, has let herself go and is no longer interested in sex. Maybe Distraught needs to try to wear something sexy to get her husband interested.
We know our wives are not 20, 30 or even 40 anymore, but we still love them. We’ve put on weight and don’t look the same as we did 30 or 40 years ago, either, but we still want to be intimate with our wives.
I’ve been married for almost 40 years. We have not been intimate in more than 15 years.
I have bought my wife many sexy teddies and other lingerie, only to be told that she didn’t like wearing that kind of stuff.
I bought her plus-size teddies, but she won’t wear them. She never wears anything even slightly sexy.
— Frustrated in the South
The idea of plus-size teddies does not thrill every plussize woman. Maybe your wife would like to be thought beautiful, sexy and desirable in flannel. Only one thing is certain: Sexy lingerie won’t fix this. You’ll have to try to find another way to communicate.
Dear Frustrated:
WASHINGTON — Final congressional approval of the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill Wednesday represents an undeniable victory for President Joe Biden — and one the White House knows it needs to sell to the public.
The White House is poised to begin an ambitious campaign that will showcase the bill’s contents to people while looking to build momentum for the next, perhaps thornier, parts of the president’s ambitious agenda.
Animating the public relations outreach is a determination to avoid repeating the mistakes from more than a decade earlier, when President Barack Obama’s administration did not fully educate the public about the benefits of its own economic recovery plan.
“We didn’t adequately explain what we had done. Barack was so modest, he didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap,’ ” Biden, who was Obama’s vice president, said this week. “I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did.’ He said, ‘We don’t have time. I’m not going to take a victory lap.’ And we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.”
Biden will make the first prime-time address of his presidency Thursday to mark the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 lockdowns. He also will use the moment to pitch toward the future and how prospects will be improved by the nearly $2 trillion aid package, which he will sign into law Friday at the White House.
Expect an uptick in travel by the president, first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, as well as Cabinet secretaries and other surrogates, according to the memo by deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon. The document circulated among West Wing senior staff members Wednesday and was obtained by The Associated Press.
“He will be hitting the road, the vice president will be hitting the road, the first lady will be hitting the road,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki, adding that the administration would also make officials available for local news interviews and other virtual events from Washington.
A blitz of interviews and events with more than 400 mayors and governors, including Republicans, will begin in earnest next week; the local officials will discuss what the plan means for their communities. There also will be an effort to plainly spell out the benefits of the plan and how it could affect each American.
O’Malley Dillon wrote that “the distillation of our message to the American people in the coming weeks” is that the country “can be confident in knowing that the help they need will be there for them: to make it through financial difficulties, to get vaccinated so they can see their loved ones again, and to safely send their kids back to school and get back to work themselves.”
There will also be an effort to produce a steady stream of vaccination headlines, with the nation’s economic recovery intrinsically linked to inoculating Americans and getting them back to work.
Many working in Biden’s West Wing are veterans of the Obama administration and they acknowledge that not enough was done to sell the 2009 recovery act — to the public or to Congress, with whom the White House had a shaky relationship — and highlight how it helped stabilize a battered economy during the Great Recession.
“I was here during that period of time,” said Psaki, “and I would say that any of my colleagues at the time would say that we didn’t do enough to explain to the American people what the benefits were of the rescue plan, and we didn’t do enough to do it in terms that people would be talking about at their dinner tables.”
The Obama bill faced headwinds because it followed the bailout of the banks, engineered under President George W. Bush, and came as the economy remained stagnant. This time, economic forecasts project a robust recovery by year’s end and Biden should be able point to concrete job growth.
The White House has repeatedly pointed to polling that suggests that the relief bill enjoys broad support among Democratic and Republican voters, even though not one GOP lawmaker signed on to support it.
Robert L. Ehrlich Sr., a retired Ford salesman and the father of a former Maryland governor who enthusiastically campaigned for his son as a young athlete and later as a political candidate, died Tuesday at his son’s Annapolis home. He was 90.
His only child, former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., said, “He just wore out. He died of natural causes.”
Born in Baltimore and raised on West Mulberry Street near Bon Secours Hospital, he was the son of Clickner Ehrlich, a Baltimore City police officer, and his wife, Margaret Krausse. He was a graduate of Forest Park High School and as a young man he worked for the A&P grocery chain.
In a 2002 Sun story, Mr. Ehrlich recalled how his father’s dad, the police officer, loved baseball and football and invited him to games at the old Orioles International League ballpark on East 29th Street in the 1930s and early 1940s.
He went on to enlist in the Marine Corps and fight in the Korean War.
“My father did not talk about this much. He lost a lot of his friends. He was the survivor of a foxhole. He emerged a very proud Marine,” said the former governor, adding that he accompanied his parents on a return trip to Korea about a decade ago and toured the country as the guests of the South Korean government.
The elder Mr. Ehrlich met his future wife, Nancy Bottorf, in church when they were both in their teens. In a Sun story, she recalled singing in a church choir and “every time I looked up, he was looking at me.”
In 1954 they went on a date to see the movie “The Moon is Blue.” They married in 1956.
Mr. Ehrlich and his family settled in Arbutus and later lived on Dolores Avenue. He belonged to the Dewey Lowman Post of the American Legion and was a frequent patron of neighborhood gathering spots Leon’s and Paul’s, and in later years, a 7-Eleven. He liked the shrimp salad at Kibby’s on Wilkens Avenue, his son said.
“He was Mister Arbutus but then again, there are many who could claim that title,” the younger Mr. Ehrlich said. “My father was as much my agent as my dad. His conditionless love for his family was conveyed in so many ways.”
Mr. Ehrlich went from working for the grocery chain to getting a salesman’s job at Archway Ford on Hilton Street.
“He was our steady salesperson,” said Alan Abramson, who owned the agency and now lives in Naples, Florida. “I started shortly after Bob — my father had hired him. We were the youngest guys on the shift. Bob was a unique, laid-back guy. His selling style was friendly. Once you saw him put his arm around a customer’s shoulder, you knew he had a sale.”
Mr. Abramson described Mr. Ehrlich as a devoted father and soon began asking him to his son’s sports games.
“Some of Robert Sr.’s fondest memories are of playing ball, watching in disbelief as his 7-year-old Bobby [the future governor] made acrobatic football catches at the nearby junior high school field, receptions no boy his age had any business making,” said a Sun story.
“He also suggested to me that I might help him get into a different school, which I did. I suggested him to Nick Schloeder, a Gilman coach,” Mr. Abramson said.
The future governor received a scholarship and graduated from the Roland Avenue boys school. He became an attorney and entered Republican politics.
“My father was a legend in political circles for his campaigning. He’d say, ‘Please vote for my little boy,’ ” the former governor said.
A 2002 Sun story detailed the elder Mr. Ehrlich’s affection for his son.
“The elder Mr. Ehrlich’s dedication to his son became well known during the governor’s race last year — perhaps best exemplified by the 14 scrapbooks full of newspaper clippings and photographs he has kept chronicling Ehrlich’s accomplishments from sandlot football onward,” the 2003 Sun story said.
After the 2002 Maryland gubernatorial election and Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.’s move to Annapolis, his father became known as Senior.
“Senior’s eyes widen as he recalls his son’s accomplishments,” a Sun
story said.
“Honesty, hard work, perseverance,” Mr. Ehrlich said of his son. “I wasn’t the kid he was. I curse. I drink a couple of beers.”
When his son was inaugurated as governor in 2003, Senior admitted to a few tears. “An ex-Marine’s not supposed to cry,” he said.
Former Gov. Ehrlich said, “Of my own accomplishments, he was more proud of me being captain of the Princeton football team than he was of my being governor.”
When his son and wife were away from Annapolis, the elder Mr. Ehrlich and his wife moved into Government House for a week to care for their grandson.
“At first, they were reluctant to ask the staff for help. Eventually, they figured out that they could ask the chef to make anything they wanted,” a Sun story said.
“We had lobster for dinner,” Senior revealed in a hushed voice. “Twice,” he said.
Funeral services are private. A celebration of life is being planned for May 23 at Arbutus Town Hall.
Survivors include Mr. Ehrlich’s wife of 63 years, a retired legal assistant at the Weinberg & Green law firm; his son; and two grandsons, Drew Ehrlich, a student at Washington & Jefferson College, and Josh Ehrlich, a Broadneck High School student.
As a retired nurse, I have been volunteering to give COVID-19 vaccine injections in my county’s health department in order to ensure as many people get vaccinated as quickly as possible. This week, I was told my services were not needed due to a shortage of vaccines!
I learned from the article in The Baltimore Sun (“Many of Maryland’s biggest counties got smaller per capita shares of COVID vaccines over first 11 weeks,” March 8), that my county (Anne Arundel) receives significantly fewer doses of the vaccines than other counties. Kent County gets the highest at 283 doses per 1,000 residents, while Anne Arundel is at the bottom with only 88 doses per 1,000.
What is the reason for this huge discrepancy? I hope the Maryland Department of Health, which is responsible for vaccine allocation, is working on changing its policy to ensure fairness and equity to all counties in Maryland.