New post, old times

A friend of a friend rehomed her cat to my house - she is my new old cat.

MamaM's post has inspired me to write a post that I have been thinking about for a while. This blog has been part of my life for longer than I can remember and I have encountered some remarkable folks here.

First and foremost, the late, great Chip Ahoy. He has been gone for years now but his work, both here and IRL, sticks with me. He was as creative and productive a human as I have ever encountered. When his brother posthumously posted links to works Chip had not posted here I was blown away - what a wide range of interests and what a remarkable set of skills he had. I am sure he is greatly missed by everyone who knew him.

Next, of course, The Trooper - now there is a guy who has been shouldering a mighty load here. He needs to pop up and post more of his writing, and I am sure he will in his own good time. I want to know how some of those stories turn out!

The other day I read about two new super heavy elements - 119 and 120 - ununennium and unbinilium respectively. I would have named the latter unobtainium, but that name is already taken. That story reminded me of our resident chemist and grammar genius, Chicklit. I miss his writing and I hope he is doing well with his new venture and in his new location. Every time I saw some aromatic White Oak or apply some Waterlox to a finished product I am reminded of him. 

Evi L. Bloggerlady, the floofy red cow who got his name from the sobriquet that Trooper applied to a certain communist blogger still comments and blogs. He's a funny guy. 

Various commenters here have popped up on other sites - I used to see RicPic's comments over at Instapundit, but I haven't seen his name over there in a year. Michael Haz still shows up occasionally, which is good. The woman from Colorado who is now known as Hunter'sHooker still comments over there - she's pretty funny. 

Others have disappeared into the ether of the internet. TT Burnett - gone. The woodworker up in Maine, no trace of him. 

And so it goes with life. 

One of my classmates just returned from a visit to Minnesota and she brought me some wild rice that is produced up in Bemidji - guess what I am having for supper!

*Update - I forgot to mention that I have now met two people associated with this blog in real life - as you might imagine, they are awesome people. Carry on!

It's all a lie

This post was inspired by MamaM, whose very touching words from behind enemy lines inspired me.

That's a photo of George Floyd and the officer accused of killing him. You will note Officer J. Alexander Kueng is not white. You will also not he is nowhere near the size of George Floyd. As I noted in a comment, the autopsy said Floyd died from an OD of fenanyl and meth (when you read how, be ready to roll your eyes).

We must all ask ourselves, if we were the cop and had a guy that big freaking out, how do you subdue him?

Here's a link to the https://www.startribune.com/read-the-transcript-of-thomas-lane-s-body-camera-footage/571678791/transcript from the cop's body cam.

I'm also linking the https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/07/must-read-body-cam-transcript-tells-different-story-death-george-floyd/post from Gateway, which contains pertinent background material such as the fact the Minneapolis (or Mogadishu On The Mississippi, as the locals call it) DA withheld all this while the country was burning.

So, how does this relate to Mama's post?  Simply that the Lefties, all of them, are lying; whether it is Kung Flu or race issues or the economy or anything else. When I was a lad 50 years ago, I read a piece in the local paper saying how the Establishment always lied if the truth didn't fit the narrative. That never rang true to me and I started watching the news a little more carefully and began to realize it wasn't the Establishment that was lying.

That was before I heard the line, presumably from Uncle Saul, "Accuse them of what we do". There are those who challenge it was Uncle Saul, but it certainly sounds like him.

Today, the hippies are the Establishment and they lie whether the truth fits or not.

Memorial Day: The Funeral of John Smith

MamaM said...

What came up for you when you thought a lot about this Memorial day?

I thought about a lot of things.

I thought of Mike the guy who lived on the top floor of the brownstone on Tompkins Place in the 1960's when I was a kid. He was the coolest guy I knew. He had a Mustang Convertible. Dated cheerleaders and the hot daughter of one of the local mob guys. He went to Vietnam and had both of his legs shot off.

I thought of the quiet guy who I used to say hello too at Church. He was quiet and unassuming and helped when we had to stack chairs or bring in Christmas decorations even though he was in his seventies. He never talked about his life. When he died we found out that he was a survivor of the Pearl Harbor attacks and served on the Arizona.

I thought of my Uncle V who served in the Navy during World War 2 and was stationed on Guam for a year. He developed a fondness for Spam and fish that he tried to pass on to his nephews even though it never took. He did give me a peacoat and a machete/saw that I have to this day.

I thought of my Dad who ran away to join the Army when he was sixteen and had to use his brothers ID.  He spent a lot of time in Korea as an MP. Served in Alaska and Hawaii. Never talked about it. Never bragged about it. He just served. 

I thought of all the guys who are represented by Trooper John Smith. I have posted that video before. It is instructive how Confederate soldiers were looked at when John Ford made that movie. They were considered gallant foes who were terribly wrong but still our brothers. Now they would be destroyed by the social justice warriors. Captain Brittles would lose his commission for honoring him. It beggars belief.

I thought of where we are today. Where Karen's and social justice warriors with I-phone cameras call the tune. Where honor duty and country were important. Where we honored our warriors.

Yeah I thought about a lot of things.

I think about them every Memorial Day.

Storied Visions

Overheard at Lem's:

The dictionary of Etymology tells me that the history of the word 'story' holds meanings of 'wise-man' and the verb 'to see'. link

Sufficiently piqued, I looked into that assertion. My Oxford Dictionary Of The English Language (dead tree edition), teaches that the word "story" comes to us from the word history* which in turn roots back in the Latin word historia meaning a "recital of events" and a "narrative designed for entertainment."  There is more detail under the word history -- "knowing, learned, wise man, judge' -- but nothing about the verb "to see." That verb -- meaning "to perceive with the eyes" -- is very old, but there's no link to the word "story" that I can see. Interestingly, I learned that the word "to see" is linked to the Latin word sequi meaning "to follow" (cf. sequel) in the sense of "to follow with the eyes."  Cool.

Some time ago, I wrote on the kinship between the words "face" and the verb "to view" (cf. visage) both in German and in English. Perhaps there is a missing link in German. The German word for "history," die Geschichte, looks like the German word for "face," das Gesicht. Alas, I find no connection between "story" and "to see."  There is the notion of a "seer of visions" which nicely convolutes "to see" and "face" (visage), but the tense is wrong: an historian looks backwards while a visionary looks forwards.

One last thing that I learned is that the two words "story" and "storey" (British spelling) are closely related. "Story" as in "second or third story" essentially means "any of the parts one above another of which a building consists." That meaning came from tiered "stories" presented in the Middle Ages:

Link to original

______________________________
*The shortening of "history" to "story" reminds me of Hispania morphing into Spain.

1685 on the AM dial...

Without further comment.

War canoe of acacia koa, or maybe Quercus virginiana, depending upon one's constitution...

As a yute I fell in with a bad crowd, surfers. I rode the wild waves of the Atlantic on an inflatable raft I bought at a seaside resort, but I read the magazines about real waves and real surfboards. History was presented on those pages along with exotic names and places, such as Duke Kahanamoku who rode a 16' board made of koa wood in the perfect curls forming off of Waikiki beach on Oahu. Exotic, far away, but fascinating to someone who loved being in the ocean.

Years later I traveled to Hawaii, the big island. I snorkeled in Makaiwa bay, body surfed dangerous waves on a black sand beach near Hawi, at the end of the Akoni Pule highway, not far from the King Kamehameha statue that was lost, but now is found.

I drove as many of the roads as I could on the Big Island, on a quest to buy some koa. Tried every shop I saw in every town I drove through, but the answer was always the same - no koa (for haoles), although that last part was unstated.

That was in 1990, however, back in 1974 I obtained employment at a mainframe computer manufacturer in Sunnyvale. I worked with a great bunch of people, many of whom I have kept in touch with over the decades. One bought a bowl from me last July, we talked,  and I asked about another guy who now lives on the Big Island (that story is awesome, but only so many words fit here). I told him I wanted some koa, and he knew a guy who might be able to obtain some. More communications, months pass, then yesterday the koa showed up.

MamaM asked about what prompted my purchase of that koa and this post is some of the back story. Those of you who have been paying attention know that I am cheap. Real cheap. I am willing to gas up my saw and drive a county or two away to saw some free wood, but the thought of paying for a chunk large enough to make a bowl hurts me. All the while I was negotiating with my koa benefactor he never once mentioned price. Well, even a cursory search for curly koa wood brings up prices that are painful. Fifty dollars a board foot is not unknown. But what do you know - dude sent me eight board feet free, gratis, didn't even ask to be reimbursed for shipping from Kurtistown. Is this a great country or what? Here is a picture of the kind of work my koa guy does:

So that is the story of how some beautiful koa arrived here in my snowy realm. It truly is a wonderful world.

The best ukuleles are made of koa.

KLEM AM

Getting a Handel on Christmas...

linkage

That one came highly recommended by Sixty Grit and MamaM -- two of the straightest shooters at Lem's.

Here's the thing: Handel is gorgeous but above all -- baroque. I crave simplicity. Musically, I actually liked three-man power trios better than The Beach Boys and The Beatles. Maybe that's why I like small molecule chemistry better that molecular biology. Simplicity. Less is more.

Consider the following video that I found, researching a post a few nights ago:

linkage

What daunting challenges that musician faces! Four keyboards and more foot pedals than a centipede could master -- and yet somehow he does. Why was that instrument perfected for a soloist?  Why didn't organists have footmen, much like a locomotive engineer had a fireman? Because they could?

I suppose that next you'll tell me that the pipe organ soloist evolved specifically to play baroque music.

Merry Christmas, All!

Heads Will Roll!

I get the feeling that political tensions are coming to a head. We need a diversion.

Overheard at Lem's:

MamaM said...
Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors, visited in London when I was eleven, left an indelible impression on me.
Seeing, hearing, knowing what humans were capable of doing to each other was truly horrifying and beyond my imagination at that time. Still is, come to think of it.
October 16, 2016 at 11:39 AM

I first learned about Tussauds as a boy on the back of comic book covers. Remember this from the fabulous 1960's?

The model was made and sold by Aurora Plastics Corp out of New York. The kit appeared on shelves in 1964, was wildly popular, but was subsequently banned.  A reissue of the kit appeared in the 1990s. Aurora had planned a series of model kits, including Hangin' Tree.
______________________

Evi L. Bloggerlady reminds us that Marie Antoinette was guillotined exactly 223 years ago.

22 Manly Ways To Reuse An Altoids Tin

Commenter MamaM contributes a link to "22 Manly Ways To Reuse An Altoids Tin"

I like the "martini on the go" one.  The valet idea is a little unmanly, I'd say, but it was contributed by a woman, so there you go.

Teaching birds to sing

The Bird Fancyer's Delight, a title first used in 1714 by Thomas Ward, is a collection of tunes intended to coax birds to sing music not natural to them, but within their vocal range.

Teaching birds to sing "lessons properly composed within the faculty and compass of each bird," was a popular and lucrative hobby in the eighteenth century. The instruments used were the bird-flageolet and the recorder and other small home-made pipes.

Here is are a few examples of songs played on the recorder by Sarah Angliss. (Play button in top bar.)

Many thanks to MamaM who first introduced me to the subject.