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I wore my best summer dress bright yellow to the tea party the 7-year-old girl in our family gave for my birthday. Peonies and snapdragons in profusion. What more could I ask on a Tuesday afternoon in July?

Well, the company.

There were six of us at the lavish table: my mother and father, a sister, and her son and daughter. We were home away from home: in the Midwest house my grandfather built when he was a tall young man in Madison, on his first job in the Wisconsin Highway Department.

My mother grew up in this house, this village. Her summer job was teaching kids to swim in Lake Mendota. Every night, her father played ragtime on the piano, until he was very old. He died at 99.

Lush green grass was still rolling outside the window, where my grandfather bird-watched with binoculars. The raspberry patch has seen better days.

What an uncanny child to know Im an Anglophile at heart. I never told her about the storm-tossed London chapter of my life in my 20s. The British man I married told me, in all seriousness, that there was no calamity on land or sea that could not be calmed by a cup of tea. I grew fond of Earl Grey.

The birthday tea party was all the girls idea as we admired my grandmothers teacup collection, each adorned in a different flower design. Ive loved those teacups for a long time, but they stayed on a living room shelf for decades, even after my sweet Wisconsin grandmother died in the 1990s at 93. She grew up in a small town in Kansas.

Sterling, Kan., have you heard of it? Her large Kilbourn family lived in town but had a ranch, too, where she spent summers. The men worked from early in the morning and needed hearty meals.

So I got to choose the first teacup. Primroses please, to remind me of storybook Primrose Hill in Northwest London (of 101 Dalmatians fame). We were going to put these cups to work, by Jove.

This turned out a matrilineal thing, based on the female line. The girl had connected to my grandmother Eleanors spirit her great-grandmother. She was born 20 years after my grandmother died.

For the party, I made cucumber sandwiches, thinly sliced cukes on trimmed white bread with a bit of butter, cream cheese and, yes, salt and herbs if you wish. The English knew how to cope with the midday sun in India and Africa, a cricket match picnic at home.

The Championships at Wimbledon also create an English garden character. Elderflower cordials, a well-kept secret, are perfect on a summer day.

The boy requested Bengal Spice tea and coffee cake. He and my father were sports for this light-hearted affair. It gave me a magical contrast to the heat where I live.

Now Im back in the boiling cauldron and smoking guns of President Donald Trumps Washington. Im wearing my press pass to go to the Capitol. Must I go? Washington is one harshly masculine world after my Wisconsin tonic.

The scene here feels like The Mad Tea Party given by the Hatter in Alices Adventures in Wonderland. Its far less amusing, of course, and more sinister.

Fresh from dairylands sanity, the latest father and son Trump ties to Russia, apparently disclosed through emails, does not surprise. Like father, like son. What surprises me is all the powerful people on our shores who tolerate his utter nonsense. The British word is appalling.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., uses the Russian story to deflect the news media and people from the health-care repeal he means to ram through the Senate this scorching summer.

Trump talks, but McConnell moves, all day long.

Watching all these spinning Washington teacups has me yearning for my stable Wisconsin table.

The centerpiece was the lemon citrus cake. As you see, a tea party can be just the thing. A present from a prescient girl.

Jamie Stiehm writes about politics, culture and history as a weekly Creators Syndicate columnist and regular contributor to U.S. News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter: @jamiestiehm. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are her own.

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Jamie Stiehm: The Tea Party Takes the Cake - Noozhawk

Most people have been told not to take free things from strangers in a white van, Guisepi Spadafora joked. But thats exactly what I am.

Spadafora known to some as the tea man travels around the country, serving free tea and offering conversation to anybody who stops by and sits in one of the camping chairs set up around his parked 1989 Ford/Thomas bus.

For the past 11 years, Spadafora has been the man behind Free Tea Party. In that time, he estimates he has served over 30,000 cups of tea across 35 different states.

It all started when he was a recent college graduate, living in Los Angeles and working as a film editor for no pay. He was living out of a truck and found that his interactions with people didnt fill his need for genuine human interaction, he told Travel + Leisure.

After work, I started going to Hollywood Boulevard, Spadafora said. I opened up my tailgate, put out camping chairs, and turned on my Coleman stove to cook dinner. After a while, people would ask what I was doing and I would say Care to join?

A diverse group of people would join Spadaforas dinners college professors, tourists from around the world, street punk kids, etc. When the food was all done, Spadafora would put on a kettle of tea and people would stay to continue their conversations.

Spadafora said he was impressed by what happened when he took money out of the equation people from all different walks of life would sit down and have meaningful conversations about universal human topics.

It was never a conscious act to make a community, Spadafora told T+L. I was never like I am going to fill this loneliness by going around the country and making people tea. I just found that when I took money out of the equation, it made interactions much more genuine. It all happened pretty naturally.

After a few years, Spadafora took his van up and down the west coast. After about seven years of that, he started to criss-cross the rest of the country from coast to coast.

In the late afternoon, he will pull up to a random street and unpack his party: camping chairs, a giant kettle, and a sign that says free tea. Hell brew a large pot (generally non-caffeinated, herbal teas) and wait with his bus, named Edna Lu.

It may take a while, but eventually one brave person will sit down for a cup of tea, Spadafora said. Then another will join. Then more and more will join until its a party, with an eclectic group of people sitting around and talking about subjects as varied as hometowns, funny stories, or the economy of the world. Spadafora said the Free Tea Parties are reclaiming public space for noncommercial use.

While traversing the country, Spadafora takes a slow travel approach. He may only stay in certain cities for one night, but he may stay elsewhere for a few months, often helping with renovation or building projects and always serving free black, white, green, or oolong tea.

Because of the Tea Bus, strangers in the communities where Spadafora stops are no longer strangers. People exchange information and stay in contact. They have fallen in love, made friends, and even formed bands because of conversations in the Tea Bus.

His goal is to remind people that before currency was invented, humans had a sharing culture. Relationships are the highest form of value, Spadafora said.

Those questioning the bus's anti-monetary business model can learn how the project sustains itself on the Free Tea Party blog.

Spadafora and Edna Lu are currently on a writing hiatus in Arkansas. Later this summer, they will start serving free cups of tea again en route to Colorado.

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This Man Is Traveling the US and Hosting Free Tea Parties From His Van - Travel+Leisure

To read more on this years Comic-Con, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands Friday, orbuy it here now. Dont forget to subscribefor more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

Horror fans first met everyones favorite demented doll with pigtails in 2013s The Conjuring, and since then, Annabelle has gone on to star in her own 2014 standalone movie. Now, the prequel Annabelle: Creation is investigating her origins, and unsurprisingly theyre not exactly tea parties and rainbows.

Creation centers on a couple in the mid-1950s (Anthony Lapaglia and Miranda Otto) who turn their rural farmhouse into a girls orphanage. It isnt long, however, before their late daughters doll Annabelle starts wreaking havoc, and director David F. Sandberg (who helmed last years horror hit Lights Out) says he wanted to take advantage of the films eerie, isolated setting.

First of all, its great when you can make a horror movie and there are no cell phones, he says. But I just like the idea. Period movies, for some reason, just feel more ripe for horror movies. Lights Out was all shot on location, but this time, we shot on a soundstage at Warner Bros., and we were able to build this entire house and design it just the way we wanted it this old farmhouse that was sort of dilapidated and sort of worn down.

As for Annabelle herself? Shes just as creepy as ever even when the cameras arent rolling.

There were journalists interviewing me in my office when we were working on this, and they had to cover up the Annabelle doll that was sitting there because they were freaking out, Sandberg says with a laugh. And the same thing now, we have [an Annabelle] doll at our house that we have to hide away because people freak out when they see her.

Annabelle: Creation will hit theaters Aug. 11.

Continued here:
New Annabelle: Creation photo introduces the world's creepiest tea party - EW.com

Johnson City real estate agent Kay White alluded in a July 8 Facebook post that she would announce the launch of her campaign on July 22.

The avid Tea Party advocate issued the informal statement in response to a friend who had posted on her page.

I am making an official announcement on July 22nd at 5 p.m. at the Jonesborough Courthouse steps followed by a celebration at the Barn just off Boones Creek Road on to Old Gray Station Rd. There will be signs! Bring everyone with you. It is time that we have representation for upper East TN. Some people seem to think that East TN. stops in Knoxville! Many blessings, Kay White, the post read.

The announcement comes as a bit of a surprise considering, just a few months ago, White was a staunch supporter of Mount Juliet Sen. Mae Beavers bid for governor.

In a March Facebook post, which has since been deleted, White said Beavers is known for standing up for what is right against all odds.

She opposed the fuel tax, transgender bathrooms and has a bill ready to require all immigrants here on avisa with a drivers license to have those stampednon citizen to prohibit them from voting until they have gone through the proper channels and are legal citizens with voting rights, the posting said about Beavers.

Think about that, we would have our own Margaret Thatcher and Jan Brewer wrapped into one!

White did not answer a Johnson City Press reporters calls on Thursday.

On Wednesday, White told the Nashville Scene, which first reported Whites aspirations to become governor, that Beavers wasgreat but that some people affiliated with her campaign have caused me to doubt her judgment, which concerns me as far as who shed appoint should she win.

The social media-savvy Hawkins County native is a vocal proponent of President Donald Trump and served as East Tennessee chairman of his campaign during the 2016 election. White also attended both the 2016 Republican National Convention and Trumps inauguration ceremony.

Wow what a wonderful speech our President Trump gave to Americans tonight, White posted on July 1. If you missed it, watch the rerun! God blessed America when he allowed us to elect this man!

Whites politics were quite different in the 1990s, when she ran as a Democrat for the Tennessees 1st District U.S. House seat.

In 1998 and 1996, White lost both general elections to former Republican U.S Rep. Bill Jenkins. She did taste victory during the 1996 Democratic primary, earning 3,276 votes to defeat three other candidates.

If White follows through with the announcement, she will join Beavers, businessman Randy Boyd and Franklin native Bill Lee as Republican candidates.

Email Zach Vance at zvance@johnsoncitypress.com. Follow Zach Vance on Twitter at @ZachVanceJCP. Like him on Facebook at Facebook.com/ZachVanceJCP.

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Local Tea Party leader, Trump delegate to run for governor - Johnson City Press (subscription)

Not since the political control of the South switched from Democrat to Republican from the 1870s to the 1960s nearly a century has this nation seen such a disruption in political parties as we are experiencing right now. Early on, there were shifts from Federalists and Whigs to Democrats and Anti-Federalists to Democratic-Republicans and Republicans, with the first Democratic president being Andrew Jackson and the first Republican president being Abraham Lincoln. To this day, the two parties persist, yet are different in their makeup as when they were first founded. For many recent years, people associated the Republican party with the South, and the Democratic party with the North, though for many years prior it was the opposite. Aside from the Bull Moose Party of Theodore Roosevelt and the Dixiecrats which led to the South turning largely Republican, it has been relatively smooth. Now, it seems, the delineation is mainly between the coasts and the interior of the country. But even that is a nebulous line, though it can be said that the Northeast and California are solidly Democrat with the South solidly Republican.

Still, the solidity of the parties themselves is in question. Instead of two political parties, Id say we have four, with a president of no party but clearly to the right of the political spectrum on some very big issues. The Republican party has the traditional leaders, who some call RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. In that big tent have entered the tea party, or constitutionalists, represented in Congress by the Freedom Caucus. The tea party movement originated with opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and some say it is an acronym for Taxed enough already, though it harkened back to the Boston Tea Party and the fight for no taxation without representation. The tea party has all kinds but seems to be mainly focused on government spending. Taking over the tent, though really an independent is the president, who I thought would be more politically agnostic, though he seems to be doing a lot of different things to focus on his base, which appears to be an amalgamation of tea party people and others who did not like the left leanings of the prior administration. President Trump appeals to the populists and those who have been left behind by the technology generation while they are mostly center-of-the country Republicans, some are independents, or former working class Democrats who did not like the status quo.

One might think that such divisions between old guard Republicans, the tea party and populist newcomers would create a party in disarray, and that may be true, but the divisions in the Democratic party are becoming deep fissures.

In 2000, I knew someone who voted for Ralph Nader on principle and recall hearing a Gore supporter excoriate him for ruining it since Bush won. Fast-forward a few years and it seems that the Nader-style voters have grown as evidenced by the support for socialist Bernie Sanders. Now, it appears, a large percentage of the Democratic party has been taken over by Bernie supporters who believe in more government control, or at least their style of government control. Case in point is the single-payer health care debate in California, the election of the party chair or even the dissent against House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, in which the progressive wing is getting more aggressive. There have been whispers that this new energy has the potential to disrupt the Democratic party and turn off more moderate voters who stick to the middle of the road and perhaps like their politics backed by deliberative processes rather than theoretical philosophy.

The Democratic party is not the only one being disrupted right now but the head of the GOP and the ongoing turmoil that came with him can do wonders to paper over some dissension. However, that papering over can only come through victory, and there hasnt been that yet. In fact, victories are hard to come by on all ends right now, which largely speaks to the large-scale change facing political parties of all stripes right now. How will the parties end up? It took a few decades for our current political parties to form, with more than a few decades for them to become what they are today. So while we still maintain a two-party system, it might be a matter of a few more years, or even decades, for the progressives, the old-style Democrats, the traditional Republicans and the tea party Republicans to separate into new political parties. Or they could coalesce again into the traditional two-party system under new leadership that certainly is not apparent right now. So we will just have to wait and see.

Jon Mays is the editor in chief of the Daily Journal. He can be reached at jon@smdailyjournal.com. Follow Jon on Twitter @jonmays.

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Changing of the political parties - San Mateo Daily Journal