Those Were The Days

This is one of the early works produced at Apple Records.

From One Room To Another

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

Helen Keller

• As I sit here, waiting on an inevitable phone call, this quote provides some solace. Helen Keller lived most of her 88 years trapped in a body without hearing or sight. For her, death meant freedom in the afterlife.

Water Break

Bruce, you've got my hat on.

O'Malley Skips Town

Fifty years ago today, in 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers played their last game at Ebbets Field. The Dodgers defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-0. The 1958 season was played in Los Angeles.

• In the 60's, my dad worked as a salesman in a sporting goods store. He brought home some defunct Brooklyn Dodgers t-shirts which were my favorite clothes to wear. This may have begun my affection for baseball history.

Just Another Road

Outside of Boston, overlooking the water near Hull. The childhood home of my sisters' in-law mother. Must have been a nice place because she turned out pretty good. I think the punctuation is right, two of my brothers married sisters.

Annie and Thomas

A puzzle for the children of my brother Bruce.

Useless Hearings

Go to the link and find this cartoon, the artist explains, very well, his meaning.

Greetings

Returned from Boston yesterday afternoon. It took till lunchtime today before I felt home. While retrieving my chicken fillet combination I was greeted with an smile and:

How are you today punkin?

This is close to the more musical:

What would you like for lunch today, shoougga?

Which reminds me, surely this is regional quaintness:

Long story short.

Which translated means "getting to the point", in negotiation this is a statement qualifier, whatever comes after means the opposite. This is a statement that Yankee's make after they've already given you the long story. Effectively, you get both the long and short versions of the story.

That Is Not The Reason

This war is not about slavery.

Robert E. Lee

• Years ago I very much enjoyed an argument between history graduates of Emory and Harvard, debating the root cause of the war. The Harvard graduate offered the typical Yankee politically condition education, slavery, slavery, slavery. The Emory graduate spoke with the confidence of familial experience and suffering.
• Lincoln wanted the issue of slavery disconnected from the war discussion even after the war had started. For him the focal point was maintaining the union. Lee had been offered command the the union armies, he declined. Lee declined because he was a citizen of Virginia first, the intrusion of federal troops constituted an invasion. General Lee fought to protect his beloved Virginia. Lincoln introduced abolition as the primary war incentive in order to whip up war support in the face of general disillusion with the war progress. The results are well established.
• In the Ken Burns series there was description of a discussion between Confederate and Union soldiers. The Union soldier asked "You are poor and own no slaves, why do you fight against the Union?". The answer was "Because you are here". This parallels Lee's beliefs and mine.

Yankee Fan at Fenway

This past Thursday was an ALS Angel Fund event at Fenway park. An off day in before the Yankees came to town. The man in the sport coat is my dad, a lifelong Yankee's fan, standing at the top row above the Green Monster. I suppose that he could not get comfortable enough to sit, being on foreign soil and all.

Einstein

• 
  Just finished reading another book, "EINSTEIN HIS LIFE AND UNIVERSE" written by Walter Isaacson, 551 pages, published by Simon & Schuster in 2007.
  
  This biography tracks the physicist's life from his childhood fascination with compasses to his unfulfilled search for unifying physical laws linking the astronomical to the atomic.
  
  The great accomplishments in his life came early in his career while he worked as a patent officer in Switzerland. Drawn to his native Germany following is published success he eventually forsake home to avoid the wave of Nazi anti-semitism. Einstein's intellectual strength came from an ability to visualize models for thought experiments and to challenge scientific misconceptions. This scientist worked with an array of notable scientists and mathematicians, Madame Currie, Haber, Planck, deBroglie, Heisenberger, Schrodinger, Born, Bohr and Oppenheimer.
  
  Einstein came to the United States to stay in the 1930's, at that time there was no preference of the American to European countries, just the opportunities and potential pay offered by Princeton and Cal Tech. Always man who practiced freedom of speech, he came to appreciate the "self-righting capability" of US democracy, even in the face of what he considered to be an over reactive public opinion, e.g. McCarthy in the 50's.
  
  This was a man who had prophetic ability:
  
  

  Brief is this existence, as a fleeting visit in a strange house. The path to be pursued is poorly lit by a flicking conscience.

  Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.

  When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours that's relativity.

  This was a book I enjoyed very much, on a scale of 1 to 10, "EINSTEIN HIS LIFE AND UNIVERSE" gets an 8.

Perpetual Fear

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.

Douglas MacArthur

• The General was not a man who would coddle politicians. This posture would lead to his dismissal by Truman.
• The statement fits very well to modern day Democrats.

Tried Scrapple?

Ingredients for Scrapple

• 2 pounds ground lean pork
• 1 pound beef liver
• 1 cup buckwheat flour
• 3 cups yellow corn meal
• 4 tablespoons salt
• 4 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons sage
• 2 teaspoons ground mace
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 2 teaspoons ground thyme 2 teaspoons whole sweet marjoram
• 3 quarts of water

Cooking Instructions for Scrapple

• In a large pot bring the water to a boil.
• Add beef liver and boil 10 minutes.
• Remove the , either run through a chopper or use a knife and cut it in as small as possible.
• Return chopped liver to the pot.
• Add the ground pork, a little at a time, and stir.
• Simmer for 20 minutes. Mix buckwheat flour, corn meal, salt, and spices; add to meat and broth slowly, stirring constantly for 1 hour. Use lowest possible heat, as mixture scorches easily.
• Pour into two greased loaf pans.
• Bounce the pans so that the scrapple settles.
• Set scrapple in the refrigerator to cool.
• Remove the scrapple from the refrigerator cut into to 3/8 inch slices. Freeze by laying slices on sheets of waxed, place in freezer bags.
• Thaw , dust with flour.
• Fry in either bacon grease or lard until golden brown. Avoid using cooking spray.
  

Last week, while ordering breakfast at a Philadelphia hotel, found scrapple on the menu. Ordered a helping and was served two golden brown slices. Scrapple was a treat served by my grandmother, Issie passed in December 1981 so it has been over 25 years since my last taste. My co-worker, with some encouragement, tried the scrapple and had no objections. Later in the day we told a customer about our breakfast and he described scrapple as being made from pig brains and assholes. Well the asshole thing got me to thinking and on the web I found this decription for manufacture. You have to love the part about using the ears for a grip, there is only one better use I can think of for that.

First, we begin with the head of a pig (fresh is always preferable to frozen). Exactly which parts of a pig's head are included in Scrapple depends somewhat on regional preference. To begin, the head should be cut in half, or even quartered. The ears make for convenient handles while sawing the skull. While an axe or cleaver can be used to split the head, a saw is preferable in that it produces no bone fragments. Once the head is sectioned, some people remove the brains. Some remove the teeth—bashing them off with a cleaver. Yet others remove the eyes. The most nutritious scrapple contains the entire head! That said, however, special care should be taken to remove the ear drums. Left in place, they contribute a distinctively bitter taste to the Scrapple, which while popular in Pittsburgh, is generally disliked elsewhere. Next, all desirous head and non-head matter, including heart, feet and tail, are cooked in a pot with just enough water to cover. During cooking, meat loosens from bone and the skin, ears, rooter and nearly all head gristle softens. The resulting broth harbors an explosion of nutritional goodness! Bones and loosened meaty matter are strained from the broth, which should be set aside. When the meat has cooled, pick through it, removing bones and hard gristle. Grind up the skin and soft gristle, rooter and so on. Recombine the ground meats with all but about a cup of the strained broth. For each two cups of broth reunited with meat, add one cup cereal (cornmeal) to thicken. Bring to a slow boil, stirring all the time. Add salt, black pepper, red pepper, sage, onion powder, and if you're feeling adventurous, some bacon bits. Continue stirring until it arrives at the consistency of porridge. Pour into loaf pans and cool. The Scrapple is finished!"

I seriously doubt that Mr. Steve is going to have another go at scrapple. For me, as good as it tastes, I am glad that it is not common in Atlanta. My cholesterol count with benefit without this dish of fried organs bathed fat.

Control

I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.

Robert E. Lee

• For myself, a constant struggle.

Reporter Bias

Watch the White House press room, pick out the nastiest looking thing and there you have her, Helen Thomas. Miss prune face had these kind words for our president.

We are five years into the illegal war that he started and still cannot justify.

The president also told the VFW that we left Vietnam too soon. The late Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford knew better.

Bush may remember that during the Vietnam debacle, the American people were in the streets denouncing that war which ended up taking more than 58,000 American lives and untold thousands Vietnamese lives. By the way, where was he?

No one in high places thought it was wrong to leave Saigon with the North Vietnamese at the gate.

On the first quote, somebody please tell me from what action or broken law the characterization of the Iraq Was became "illegal"? The constant drum beat of liberal media and x-gen bumper stickers claiming "illegal" and "impeach" carry no weight, and make the believers of such appear simple, naive and confused.

The points about Vietnam by the are provably wrong. Recently released tapes of Richard Nixon predicted the collapse, as a result of a Democratic Congress refusing to provide additional funding.

I thought Helen Thomas was supposed to be a reporter, not an editorialist.

Jeffry Flake

Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona's 6th district. You do not hear glowing praise of this man because he has made it his cause to expose earmarks. On a weekly basis Flake publicly decries foul after foul. These are examples of his weekly press releases.

Aug 30 - Flake, denounced a pork project contained in the Transportation-Treasury-HUD appropriations bill for fiscal year 2006.This week’s egregious earmark: $100,000 to Guntersville, Alabama for renovations to the Whole Backstage Theater.

“Earmarks played a leading role in Republicans’ ‘exit stage right’ from control of Congress last year,” said Flake.

Aug 24 - Flake, highlighted a pork project contained in the Transportation-Treasury-HUD appropriations bill for fiscal year 2006. This week’s egregious earmark: $3,200,000 to the University of Wisconsin - Marathon County for the construction of a building.

“It seems like Congress is running around in circles on earmark reform,” said Flake.

Aug 17 - Flake, highlighted a pork project contained in the Transportation-Treasury-HUD appropriations bill for fiscal year 2006. This week’s egregious earmark: $200,000 for the Museum of Aviation in Warner Robins, Georgia for expansion of the aviation flight and technology center.

“I think most taxpayers wish this earmark would crash and burn,” said Flake.

Aug 6 - Congressman Flake to Introduce Legislation Preventing States with Deficient Bridges from Receiving Wasteful Transportation Earmarks Earmarks Should Not Divert Funding From Bridge Inspection and Repair. Republican Congressman Jeff Flake, announced that he plans to introduce legislation that will prevent states with deficient bridges from receiving transportation earmarks that are not directly related to transportation, such as bike paths, transportation museums, parking lots, and road beautification projects. Many of the more than 6,000 earmarks in the most recent transportation bill went to such projects.

“It’s difficult to justify spending money on parking lots and road beautification projects when there are clearly more vital transportation needs,” said Flake.

Under the transportation bill passed in 2005, a state’s earmarks are subtracted from that state’s funding allocation, so every dollar spent on a bike path or transportation museum is a dollar the state cannot spend on more important transportation needs.

June 22 - Highlighted a project contained in the Transportation-Treasury-HUD appropriations bill for fiscal year 2006. This week’s egregious earmark: $500,000 for the Detroit Science Center to create a Space Science Discovery Lab.

“Congress is boldly going where no earmark has gone before,” said Flake.

• A space science center for Detroit? They have been looking for a football team since the 50's. Give the 500k to the Lions so they can afford a better general manager. Hell, give the money to the city for cleaning the damned bathrooms in the airport.
• This man, on domestic issues is about as true a Libertarian as possible. It is a courageous act to hold contemporaries up to scrutiny when the penalty will potentially be lack of support for his own district's needs if that need comes to pass. One thing is for sure, there will not be superfluous pork projects in the 6th district.

Not Much

Worth no more 'n a row of pins.

E

• Came up today in a discussion about how little people had during the depression, in Augusta Georgia. E helped serve at the soup kitchen her father organized at St. Luke's.