Yes, it's a wonderful world

While lots of folks are dividing their time wondering whether Fox News will survive the Murdoch "scandal" and getting angry over the Casey Anthony jury verdict,  amazing things are going on, some of which I want to mention here.

01.  Dawn over Vesta.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has entered orbit around the massive asteroid Vesta!  Think about that for a while.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14160135

02.  A Light has gone out!

Our good friend, Jack Kolb passed away recently, and a memorial service was held for him at Carroll Lutheran Village in Westminster, Maryland.  I was priviledged to say a few words and read a touching letter from one of his daughters.

Jack had many talents.. he got his pilot's license when he turned 16;  he taught roller skating;  he had a photographic business;  he obtained two masters degrees;  he served in the Department of Defence for many years, in liaison with the U.S. Army and NSA;  he visited Greenland and the North Pole on twenty or so occasions;  he was listed in several Who's Who's of noted Americans;  he was an aide to Vice President Dan Quail; he was in contact with all of the American Nobel Laureates;  he was a frequent contributor to Reader's Digest;  he was a physics professor at American University;  etc, etc.

Jack was also a sponsor of a young lady who wants to be a pediatric nurse, as Jack's late wife, Rita, was.  Many of the great musicians and poets had "patrons" a few years ago.  Jack enjoyed being such a patron and ensuring that a gifted person would be able to study without financial care.

Jack was in his eighties and I thought that he would be around for at least another fifteen years.  I will miss his brilliant mind.  I  have been involved with Mensa and Intertel for over forty years, and have known some very smart folks.. however, none of them could match the breadth and depth of Jack's knowledge, in my opinion.

Rest In Peace, My Friend!

03.  Ah Choo!

Somebody sent me some "facts" that are supposed to be true..

One was:  when a person sneezes, their heart stops and brain functions cease.

If this is true.. there must be a lot of sneezing going on in Congress these days!

04.  Innie?  Outie? 

Another "fact" was:  Alfred Hitchcock did not have a belly button.

How could that be.. how did Lord Alfred get born.. I knew he was weird, but I didn't know it had something to do with parthenogenesis.  Is he a reincarnation of Adam? (Wait a minute... Michaelangelo showed Adam with a belly button... huh?)

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creation_of_Adam


I was taught in Sunday School that if one looked at a group of naked women, you would be able to tell which one was Eve by noting that she would be the only one without a belly button. (I always wondered why anyone would be interested in belly buttons in the company of naked women.)

Hey, Brother Joe.. help me out on this.

05.  Dear Anonymous:

This blog gets a lot of comments from someone named Anonymous.   Sometimes the comment is in Chinese or Japanese .. sometimes in Korean .. sometimes in French or German .. but most often in English.  I have tried to translate the Asian comments, but the results were usually unintelligible.. reading as though they were like "Headlines" on the Jay Leno show.  I can read the French, German and English ones, which are often advertisements, requests for help with computer issues, or requests for information on medical problems such as body odor, or similar.  

However, sometimes the comments relate to the blog entry and are very interesting, and I do try to respond with a related comment.  I would, however, ask that if you want an appropriate response, that you include your email address in your comment.

06.  Important Health Fact from an Almanac:

With proper care, the human body will last a lifetime.

07.  Now they tell me!

The Week magazine recently reported that  a Purdue University study shows that artificial sweeteners could be making you fat. 

The researchers found that "rats fed a steady diet of sugar substitutes were hungrier and gained more weight than rats that ate surgary food...  It appears that artificial sweeteners confuse the body, which is programmed to associate swet tastes with calories consumed, and when we repeatedly eat something sweet that provides little or no calories, we break that connection, and our confused bodies keep seeking more food."

"... the rats that frequently ate sugar substitutes, also didn't have the metabolic increase that usually follows eating a meal, so they burned fewer calories..." according to researcher Susan Swithers.

08.  Zukes

Our Earthbox gardens are overtaking our deck this Summer.  So far, we have enjoyed several red tomatoes, a number of yellow squashes, some green beans,  three cucumbers, and four giant zucchinis.
The other day, I found my Aunt Mary's Zucchini Bread recipe and I can't wait to make and taste some. However, before I can make it, I have to buy some things that we don't keep in our house:

sugar (see #07 above)
baking soda
baking powder

Whenever I would visit my Aunt Mary, she would always have zucchini bread for me to eat, Summer or Winter.. she started keeping some in her freezer, as soon as refridgerators began to have freezers connected to them. 

09.  The Iceman Cometh

What on earth  did we do before we had freezers?  I remember, as a kid, stealing ice shavings from the iceman as he went into houses to deliver giant blocks of ice for the icebox.  I remember my grandmother paying the iceman 35 cents for enough ice to fill our icebox, a big wooden cabinet, whose top opened up to reveal a metal container for the ice.

Once, on a tour of Thomas Jefferson's Virginia home, the tour guide showed us Mr. Jefferson's ice house.   In the Winter, his slaves would go out on the frozen ponds and cut out huge blocks of ice, which they would bring back to his estate and place in the ice house, which was dug out of the ground.  Then, they would cover the ice with straw and hay and hope that this would keep the ice more or less frozen for a long time.. perhaps even until the Summer months.

The tour guide reminded us of what a great equalizer ice was.  Everybody had ice..  the rich had it in the Summer, the poor had it in the Winter.

10.  Christmas in July

In New Windsor, Maryland..  about 25 miles northwest of Baltimore, and next to our Carroll Lutheran Village home in Westminster, Maryland.. is  an organization called SERRV.  This organization acts as a middleman for native people around the world who want to sell items that they produce.  The organization is church-affiliated and therefore is a non-profit organization. 

SERRV will be having a Christmas in July sale until July 23, 2011.  This year they will be featuring Christmas ornaments, tree skirts, nativity  scenes, Divine dark chocolate, baskets, specialty  coffee, and much more.  All items are at 60% of their usual price.

If you are looking for something to do, and you want to see some interesting and different merchandise, drop by.  And, if you purchase anything, you will be helping ordinary native craftsmen from around the world.

11.  Baby, Baby!

The Week magazine reports that a lady in Texas (of course.. everything in Texas is gigantic).. gave birth to a 2 foot long, 16 pound baby!  Ow! .. maybe not quite OW!.. because it was delivered by Caesarean Section.  ("Hey, doc, knock me out and wake me up when the hairdresser shows up.")

My late wife's French Canadian relatives talked about the 14 pound babies that were common back in Canada years ago.  Pregnant women were encouraged to eat 4 or more hefty meals each day during their nine months.  Of course, many women died in childbirth back in those days.  Pre-natal care? What was that?

12.  Handwriting!?

Indiana third-graders may no longer be taught cursive, because it is thought that they would never use it.. being so computer literate and such.. with texting much more useful...  Come on.. what kind of nonsense is this?  Are we supposed to allow a generation of people to grow up not knowing how to read a letter written by their grandmother?  (I would not be able to enjoy my Aunt Mary's zucchini recipe if I was not able to decipher her handwriting.)

When I was stationed in Germany, I taught myself basic German, including Gothic text and handwriting.. which at some point in time was not being taught to German school children.  Thus, I ended up in the strange situation where I, as an American,  could read letters written in the "old" handwriting, while some of my German-born and raised  acquaintances could not.   Will that be the case for cursive in the US? 

Should schools stop teaching math because we now rely mainly on calculators and computers?

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Odds and Ends

We'll be heading to Ocean City on Sunday, and I need to purge myself of some news comments that I have been saving up. You don't need to read this. I won't get mad.



01. Lester Young, "the President of Jazz" would have been 100 years old last week, if he had lived. He blew a very sweet sax. He died at age 49. (The army discharged him for using marijuana.. its just as well, because he refused to fire a gun and kill anyone.)



02. Somebody named "the great Zucchini" performed in DC last Saturday. What he did, I haven't the faintest idea.. but with a name like that it was probably wonderful.



03. Shoppers grocery shops in Maryland will no longer supply paper towels in their rest rooms. They feel this will help the environment. Instead, mechanical air blowers will dry your hands. Hey.. I've got news for you.. if you have ever been in a Men's Room you would know that men who don't see paper towels do not wash their hands. So, what would you rather have? A paperless environment or germ-infested hand shakes?

04. A company in Spain is making laptop holding bags that show front pages of newspapers as disguise. Urban camouflage!

05. An 87-year old is accused of killing a 91-year old fellow resident in a Columbia, Maryland senior citizen residence. The 87-year old beat the other to death with his fists. He was a former boxer.


My grandfather was forced to go into a nursing home when he was 86 years old, for his own protection. His children thought that he would burn his home down when he lit his pipe. The nursing home just happened to be in the house in which he was born.. in fact, his room was the room in which he was born. He liked to control TV in "his" common room in the building and another octogenarian resident didn't always like what he watched. He and my grandfather used to stand there arguing about TV, punching each other, like they used to do, 60 years earlier. Luckily, they were always stopped before they beat each other to death.


06. The Discovery Channel is starting a 5-year series called "Curiosity". Some of the episodes will be called: "Are we alone in the Universe?", "What is a virus?", "What is consciousness?", and other titles designed to bend our minds.


07. Cal Ripken, Jr's Number 8 is back at Camden Yards. Four guys had kidnapped it for a while.


08. Nicolas Sarkozy is getting ready to talk about a proposed carbon tax that would raise the cost of driving a car or heating a home in France. Will the French stand for more taxes? "Let them eat gas!"

09. A proposed tower building as tall as the Empire State Building has been circumcised in New York City. The City Planning Department ruled that 200 feet would have to be lopped off of the top of the building so that it would not upstage the city's long-reigning tallest building.


10. Bose has come out with the QuietComfort 15. It is a noise-cancellation headphone. Supposedly, for $300, you no longer have to hear "the rumble of the subway train, the rattle of the taxis..." as Stephen Williams of the New York Times reports.


11. Lang Lang, a 27-year old Chinese pianist is being called "Bang Bang" for his noisy rendition of one of Chopin's etudes.

12. A Republican candidate for governor of Idaho, Rex Rammell, heard someone talk about tags bought by hunters to allow them to shoot wolves. When that person also mentioned there should be tags for killing the President, Rammell said: "Obama tags? We'd buy some of those." He later told people that this was a joke.. and "besides, Idaho has no jurisdiction to issue tags in DC." Big joke, eh, Rex? What a jerk!

13. Along the same lines, the head of the Carroll County Republican Party has made it known that she is very upset that the name for September 11 was changed through Democratic efforts from Patriot's Day to A Day of Remembrance and Service. Huh?!

I am now an Independent and can look objectively at the utterances of both parties... but utterances like this one and the one before cause me to wonder what the devil is going on with the current members of the Party of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a uniter and not a divider.

14. Katharine Q. Seelye wrote about some statements that independents believe and disbelieve about Health Care Reform:

Independents believe these.. says Katharine:

The Federal Government will become directly in involved in making personal health care decisions for the public. (MYTH)

Health care will be rationed. (DEBATABLE)

Taxpayers will be required to pay for abortions. (MYTH)

Independents do not believe these.. says Katharine:

The Government will make the elderly decide how and when to die. (MYTH)

A public option will put private insurance companies out of business. (MYTH)

Illegal immigrants will be covered. (MYTH)

Regardless of the comments made by Rep. Wilson of South Carolina and FOX news, the items labeled MYTH above, remain MYTHS.

15. After all this, I will finish with what is supposed to be a joke.. but is probably a real situation, experienced by many husbands:

One day, a mild-mannered man decides that he is tired of his wife always bossing him around, so he decides to put his foot down and let his wife know, once and for all, who is in charge.

When he comes home from work that night he tells her:

"From now on, I'm the man of this home, and my word is law! When I come home from work, I want my supper on the table. Also, I want you to press a shirt and pants for me to wear tonight, because I am going out drinking with the boys. After that, I want you to draw me a hot bath. And after my bath, guess who is going to dress me and comb my hair?"

His wife replies: "The Undertaker!"

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Summer Thoughts 01

As I sit here finishing my morning coffee, and before I must get ready for meetings, errands, and chores, I am thinking about a few things that please, sadden, confuse, or upset me; for instance:

There is another giant zucchini growing on our back porch.. also two tomatoes showing red. We have already harvested three zukes and four little cukes. This pleases me.. even though I must carry 5 gallons of water each day to offer to my green plants. But they are appreciative.

Tomorrow, Bastille Day, is the 9th anniversary of the death of Elaine Langlois Vaughan. She was 63 years old when she died and should have normally had 24 more years of life in which to watch her beloved grandchildren mature and have families of their own. This saddens me.

Conservative Senators are gearing up to try to discredit Ms. Sotomayor during the Confirmation process. This confuses me. In my mind, she is the ideal candidate to help make the Supreme Court more representative of the U. S. population because she is a woman and an Hispanic. How could any Senator be against this.. besides, if they are too mean to her, they would probably kiss their reelection plans goodbye.

Last night, I opened a can of expensive cat food and found that it was moldy inside. This upsets me. I will be taking it back to the store, together with all of the other cans by the same company. I will ask them to check their stock and notify the company. By "them" I mean the store manager. My tuxedo cat is suffering from hyperthyroidism and if I had not examined the food before feeding it too him, who knows what effect it might have had on him.

Yesterday, we hung a pink rose plaque on the front side of the house. On the bottom, we will be placing our house numbers. Pink is Elaine's favorite color and this plaque pleases her and me. At the same time, we hung her butterfly windsock from the gutter. Now we have a good weather instrument. If it is stretched out sideways, we know the wind is blowing; if it is hanging straight down, we know the wind is calm; if it looks wet, we know it is raining; if it is white, we know that it is snowing.

Our service men are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, this saddens me. Also, the "news" just anncounced that the CIA lied to Congress about a secret program. The news also says that the secrecy was requested (ordered?) by the Vice President. The Constitution was written in such a way that the Executive Branch's actions would be tempered by interaction with the Legislature and the Judiciary. Violations of that procedure should be dealt with sternly, in my opinion.

Man's inhumanity to man continues to confuse me. Why do some people continue to act like animals? Fathers murdering their families. Drive-by shooting. Five-year olds being hit with bullets fired by seventeen-year olds. etc etc Just pick up the paper for any day of the week. And the churches try to curb this inhumanity, but I don't think they succeed. I remember when I was working.. on Monday, those folks who had gone to church on Sunday were very pleasant and tolerant.. but as the week grew older, these same folks reverted back to their old grouchy and prejudicial ways.. but then, maybe it was because it was Government work, and maybe, just maybe, it was me who was the grouchy one.

Finally, there is something that really upsets me. I received word on Saturday that my Uncle Allen had a stroke that day and was being rushed 50 miles away to Boston. Allen is my last living Uncle and is 89 years old. He has survived heart attacks and open heart surgery and I expected him to live to be 105. When he was a lot younger, he was called Popeye, because he was one tough son of a gun. I grew up in the same household as he did and he treated me like a brother.. and I think of him as a brother and also as a kind of father image. So, I am waiting for word now and I hope that his stroke was a mild one. Something that he can overcome.

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Lucky and our first Zuke

My laptop stopped working and the only thing that is working quickly on my desktop is blogspot.com, so I will do another blog, Today I will talk about my Tuxedo Cat, Lucky (alias Luciano, Houdini, de Tuxedo) and also about our first Zuke.

I think that it is Larry the Cable Guy who tells about his dog that has only three legs, is blind and deaf. His name is "Lucky".

Well, my cat "Lucky" is also not so lucky right now. He has hyperthyroidism and is pulling out all of his fur. He looks like he has male pattern baldness. Some parts of his body have no fur and Lucky walks around with fur hanging out of his mouth.

When he was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, the vet gave us a liquid to give to the cat. Lucky did not like that and after he chewed up my arm pretty badly we gave up on the liquid. The vet gave us some pills instead and Elaine found a wonderful thing in her effects.. its called a "pill popper". I grab Lucky and hold his paws while Elaine "pops" a pill down his gullet. It works.

Every morning I get out the vacuum cleaner and suck up the black fur deposited all over the house. Some of it embeds itself in the cheap wall-to-wall rug that we mis-ordered before we moved in.

Did I tell you about the derivation of Lucky's names? (All my cats have been named Lucky as far as I'm concerned even if other people in the house have given them other names. My late spouse called my prior cat "damn cat!" Elaine calls this cat "Kitty Kitty".)

I used "Luciano" because when I got him, his crying sounded like Pavarotti. I used "Houdini" because he learned to open locked doors. "De Tuxedo" is of course a name given to all black and white cats that look like they are preparing to go to a wedding.

Lucky has a companion: Su-Zee. I'm sure I have talked about this Siamese fireball before.

Yesterday, we picked our first zucchini from our balcony garden. It was about 5 inches long and we cut it up and mixed it into scrambled egg, as a mini-melange. Elaine ate some slices raw beforehand and said that it was the best she had ever tasted. The melange was delicious and we are looking forward to more zukes. There certainly are plenty of flowers on the plants. Elaine's daughter, Emily, says that you can fry up the blossoms. We'll have to try that.

Our tomato plants are all starting to burst forth with little tomatoes.. even our hanging tomato plant holder has a few flowers. For some reason, we are not having as good luck with the hanging holder as some of our neighbors. I look at their holders and I see large amounts of greenery hanging down. We have a few light green twiggs with brown leaves. Maybe I will pull the thing apart and put in a new plant, if I can find one now that tomato plants are being pulled because of the "blight."

Next year, Elaine wants to ask the Village for a small plot of land on which to plant some corn. So, in my old age I will become a farmer again. What about that "old rocking chair" time?