Archive for the ‘History’ Category
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12/06/2021 🌲X-mas Trivia🌲 Leave a comment
I’ve never been one to have an overabundance of Christmas spirit. I lost most of it back in 1963 when, while in college, I worked part time on a Christmas tree farm in Edinboro, Pennsylvania. After cutting, trimming, bundling, and loading close to 5000 trees onto trucks, I’d had enough. Took me three weeks to get all of the sap and pine smell off my body and out of my clothing. Every time I smell pine scent, it gives me flashbacks to that tree farm. But never let it be said that my issues with Christmas would keep me from supplying you with some holiday spirit in the form of Christmas trivia. Enjoy. . .
- Bing Crosby’s” White Christmas” was released in 1942 and is considered to be the best-selling Christmas song of all time.
- In Greek, X means Christ; that is where the word “Xmas” originated.
- Christmas Clubs, savings accounts in which a person deposits a fixed amount of money regularly to be used at Christmas for shopping, came about in 1905.
- America’s official national Christmas tree is located in Kings Canyon National Park in California. The tree, a giant sequoia is called the “General Grant Tree”, and is over 300 feet high. It was made the official Christmas tree by Congress in 1925.
- An average household in America will mail out 28 Christmas cards each year.
- California, Oregon, Michigan, Washington, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina are the top Christmas tree producing states. Oregon is the leading producer of Christmas trees harvesting approximately 8.6 million a year.
- Christmas caroling began as an old English custom cold “Wassailing” – toasting neighbors to a long and healthy life.
- In an effort to solicit cash to pay for a charity Christmas dinner in 1891, a large “crab pot” was set down on a San Francisco street corner, becoming the first Salvation Army collection kettle.
- During the Christmas/Hanukkah season, more than 1.7 6 billion candy canes will be made.
- Hallmark introduced its first Christmas cards in 1915, five years after the founding of the company.
- In Syria, Christmas gifts are distributed by one of the wise men’s camels. The gift-giving camel is said to have been the smallest one in the Wise Men’s caravan.
- In 1907, Oklahoma became the last US state to declare Christmas a legal holiday.
- Mistletoe, a traditional Christmas symbol, was once revered by the early Britons. It was so sacred that it had to be cut with a golden sickle.
18 More Shopping Days
MERRY CHRISTMAS
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House Passes Gas Tax on to Senate
12/05/2021 Suffering Fools Leave a comment
I thought I would get this semi-political post on its way before the drumbeat of Christmas and New Year’s drowns out almost everything until January. I’ve consistently had very few nice things to say about the government and its politicians. I once leaned to the political right but in truth it’s gotten to the point where you really can’t tell the political parties apart. Most people would rather be known as Independents rather than Republican or Democrat. As I’m a fan of the English language I decided that maybe I should make an attempt to soften my rhetoric a little. So, in the future my new term for these people will be “fools”, who are being “foolish”, and accomplishing nothing but “foolishness”.
Dictionary Definition
fool’ish
Resulting from poor showing a lack of sense; ill considered; unwise: a foolish action, a foolish speech.
Lacking forethought or caution. Trifling, insignificant, or paltry.
It sounds pretty tame to me and maybe it’s too tame. I’m afraid that at times I won’t be able to control my anger and an F-bomb or two may make an appearance. Oh well, I’m only human and “to err is human, to forgive divine” after all. I’m still working hard on reaching the “divine” stage. Every expert or intellectual feels a certain responsibility to make some grand quote on the term “foolish” and one or two are actually worth repeating. Here are few I’ve found but I make no guarantees as to their worth.
- “A foolish man tells a woman to stop talking, but a wise man tells her that her mouth is extremely beautiful when her lips are closed.”
- “You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Abraham Lincoln
- “You can educate a fool, but you cannot make him think “. The Talmad
And my all-time favorite:
- “He who is born a fool is never cured.” Proverbs
- “Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind.” Henry David Thoreau
- “When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.” Cynthia Heimel
- “By the time the fool has learned the game, the players have dispersed.” African Proverb
- “A fool may be known by six things: anger, without cause; speech, without profit; change, without progress; inquiry, without object; putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends.” Arabian Proverb
IT IS BETTER TO KEEP YOUR MOUTH CLOSED AND LET PEOPLE THINK YOU A FOOL
THAN TO OPEN IT AND REMOVE ALL DOUBT
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12/03/2021 Wisdom Teeth, Yah Right! Leave a comment
I’m about to write a short story which is a multilevel PSA (Public Service Announcement). I’ll explain what that means in a few minutes but first I wanted to mention a video I watched on Facebook a few days ago. It was a home video taken by Taylor Swift’s mother a short while after she’d had her wisdom teeth removed. She was a bit loopy, confused, and hysterically funny. I laughed along with everyone else until I sat down and started thinking about when I had my wisdom teeth removed. I’ve written about it in the past and it’s still funny now, but it wasn’t funny then as you’ll see.
It’s March of 1974, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, gas is $.55 a gallon, and I’m getting my damn wisdom teeth removed. I’m a 28-year-old police officer who was being driven to the dentist by his wife anticipating I wouldn’t be able to drive home. The dentist puts me in the chair, fills me with an anesthesia, and removes the wisdom teeth. I woke up a short time later in a side room and had no idea who or where I was. I’m force-fed a painkiller that in company with the residual anesthesia left me a damn zombie. I’m loaded into my car and driven a short distance to a local drugstore to pick up my painkiller prescription and ordered by my wife to stay in the car.
It’s March and it’s cold so I turn on the heater, close the windows, and relax. But only for a moment. Being the conscientious police officer I was, I remembered that I’d left my loaded pistol in the glove compartment. I removed the pistol, popped out the magazine, and placed it in my pocket. So far, so good. Out of habit I took the unloaded weapon and aimed it casually at the end of my foot and dry fired. Oops, I forgot about the round in the chamber and being a relatively good shot, I hit what I aimed at. The bullet punched a neat round hole through the toe of my shoe, removed a small crescent shaped chunk from the side of my big toe, on through the floor of the car, hitting the pavement and ricocheting into the passenger side tire.
I was hammered and stunned all at the same time. The car was filled with smoke, I couldn’t hear a thing and found myself laughing hysterically. In fact, the sound of the shot in the car deafened me for about 15 minutes. My wife arrived, opened the door, and four or five F-bombs later finally asked me if my foot was okay. Of course, her first priority was the tire, seeing as it was her car.
The moral of the story is simple. First never, ever, handle a gun while “stoned” with legal or illegal drugs. Secondly, never operate machinery, vehicles, or small pistols while taking painkillers, and thirdly, never trust a smiling dentist or a soon-to-be ex-wife. That’s my tale of woe and my admission to sheer stupidity. I’m hanging my head in shame even remembering it again. It sounds just as stupid now as it did then. What was I thinking? I obviously wasn’t.
I’LL BE THE STUPIDITY POSTER-BOY FOR THIS ONE
12/02/2021 Synchronicity ??? Leave a comment
The subject of this posting is synchronicity which is just another fancy word for coincidence. Being a former criminal investigator I was trained to believe there is no such thing as coincidence. For quite a few years I truly believed that there weren’t but one midnight shift in the summer of 1974 change all that. I’ll try to keep this as short as possible but I tend to ramble so bear with me.
It was an extremely hot August night; it was Sunday which was one of the slowest days of the week for police business. My partner and I were bored out of our minds because due to the heat there was very little activity. Around 2:30 in the morning we drove back to the state police barracks to check on the desk man who was working alone in the building. We brought him some soft drinks and lunch and we settled down to kill a few minutes.
We walked into the desk area, and it was like a bomb went off in there. He had been given an assignment on a slow night to start purging old reports from the files. We’re talking reports going back for years or more and he had three large trash barrels completely filled with pink slips. The pink slips were slips where each call was recorded and then forwarded to the appropriate officers for follow-up and reports. While both of us felt really sorry for the desk man, we didn’t feel sorry enough to jump into that nightmare. After 20 minutes of whining, we were guilted into helping the poor guy.
I was standing over one of the trash barrels that must’ve contained at least 400 old pink slips. While I was talking to the desk man I randomly picked one up and quickly read the title. Now you got to go back with me a few minutes because an hour or so prior to our visit to the barracks we’d been on a call for a suspicious vehicle at a specific residence at a specific time in the northern part of our county. I looked down at the pink slip I’d picked out of the barrel, and it was dated exactly one year ago and concerned a suspicious vehicle at a specific residence at a specific time in the northern part of the county. It was identical to the call we just completed. Exactly the same residence at exactly the same time and for the same reason. Then it got really weird because the officers assigned to the original complaint were my partner and me. To say we were stunned is an understatement.
To this day I can hardly believe the whole thing happened but it did. I have absolutely no explanation as to how that could have come about which I suppose is what keeps it interesting to this day. It’s made me wonder upon occasion if some of the weird coincidences we hear about are absolutely true.
I just finished reading a book titled Incredible Coincidences, written by Alan Vaughan. He documents dozens and dozens of cases similar to this and of course can offer no explanation for his either. It seems to me that it happens way more than we think if his book is any indicator. I’m still not a big believer in all the weirdness that people alleged is out there, but this incident gave me pause.
WEIRD!
12/01/2021 “CATS” Leave a comment
I’ve posted many times that I was a cat person. When I was a kid, my father raised beagles and trained them for hunting. We never had less than 10 or 12 puppies scampering around the yard and it was one of my chores to feed them, play with them, and shovel up after them. I would leave the house with food and I would be mobbed by gangs of puppies and it was a lot of fun but it got old after a few years. I’ve always found dogs to be very needy to the extreme and that put me off a little bit. My parents continued after the closing of the kennel to have one or two dogs for the rest of their lives. It was just how they were raised and they could never understand why I preferred cats. I’m not about to get into a long explanation on why I prefer cats because I’m sure you’ve all heard the pros and cons. It just seems that people raised with dogs prefer dogs and people who were raised with cats prefer cats. I’m not saying that’s the way it is for everyone but that’s the way it was for the people that I knew and why I took so much grief when I refused to have dogs as pets. I’ve loved every cat that’s been in my life regardless of their quirks.
Relationship between cats and humans goes back as far as you can imagine. Most historians believe it all began in ancient Egypt where cats were worshiped and, according to legend, were responsible for eliminating a plague of rats in Egypt. Egyptians not only mummified their dead pharaohs, but also mummified their dead cats. Over the centuries many superstitions have developed concerning cats and I think I’d like to review a few of them now especially for those of you who are dog people. Let’s go…
- In the dark ages cats were mistrusted and believed to consort with witches and warlocks. They allegedly brought evil and bad luck as well. Some folks reason that the bubonic plague that killed thousands of people in Europe during the medieval ages was caused by killing the then believed “evil cats.” In killing the cats, they were killing the natural predator of rats – the creatures who actually were spreading the plague with their fleas.
- Most superstitions about cats have been passed down from generation to generation and most are utter nonsense but believed nonetheless. To this day many people actually believe that if your path is crossed by a black cat, you are in for some bad luck.
- If a cat washes it’s ears, then bad weather is on its way. Or if the cat licks its tail, it is sure to rain. Of course, this has to be nonsense since that’s about all cats do is constantly wash their ears and tails. Cats are always cleaning themselves and are known to be exceptionally fastidious.
- If the first person a cat looks at after washing itself is young and single that person will marry soon. For this superstition to work, you have to be young and single. You middle-aged people can forget about it.
- It is said that if a cat is present at the marriage of a couple, they will have good luck in that marriage.
- For those of you cat haters, don’t throw a cat overboard while on a boat. It is said that will cause a storm to blow up. And honestly if you throw a cat into the sea, you deserve to have a storm blow up.
- Black cats spawned a variety of superstitions. If a black cat comes to your door, you will soon have a lover in your life. If a black cat adopts you, you will have bad luck, so send it away. If a black cat lies on a grave, it means the dead person’s soul is being possessed by the devil. And last but not least if you stroke a black cat’s tail seven times you will have good luck in cards.
- If you see a white cat, that means poverty, just seeing a black cat means wealth. And if during a full moon you see a white cat it means you’ll be married soon.
- The superstition that cats “suck” a baby’s breath away comes from the Dark Ages. A cat cannot and does not “take” a baby’s breath away. In fact, cats like babies and will often sleep at the bottom of their cribs the way they will sleep at the end of their masters or mistress’s bed.
- Many people are frustrated in dealing with cats because they are not obedient. They obey no one unless they feel like it. In some circles they have a bad reputation similar to those given to independent women. What kind of a world would it be without cats or independent women? Think about it.
I’ve owned seven cats in my life, some good and a few not so good. I would never ever be happy unless I had a cat at my side. In my opinion they are absolutely the best pets ever. As with any pets if you rescue them from a shelter, you could get some surprises. Cats like any other animals if treated badly or abused never forget it. If you adopt from a shelter, be prepared to deal with the issues they bring into the relationship. If you spend the time, you can bring them around and you’ll be even closer to them than you would’ve been without all of those problems. I’ll recommend to anyone a shelter cat and would never turn one way. Pets are to be enjoyed but as with anything you must put forth the appropriate effort to welcome them into your family.
DOGS ARE COOL BUT CATS RULE
11/30/2021 Joe Biden’s Next Read Leave a comment
It’s again time to visit the statements of past men of achievement. Only in studying their words and thoughts can we appreciate or detest our current leaders and circumstances. Joe Biden our current president, is just a poor copy of Barack Obama who himself was a poor copy of Jimmy Carter. Biden is slowly but surely sinking into a legacy much like his Democratic idols which will do the country more harm than good. He will likely accomplish more once he leaves office than he ever was able to accomplish while in office. At least those accomplishments won’t be paid for by our hard-earned tax dollars. Let’s hear from a few past leaders now.
- “He who is the greatest among you shall be your servant; whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. “ Jesus (AD first century) Matthew 23:11-12
- “The public does not in the long run respect leaders who mirror its own insecurities or see only the symptoms of crisis rather than the long-term trends. The role of leader is to assume the burden of acting on the basis of a confidence in his own assessment of the direction of events and how they can be influenced.” Henry A Kissinger, Diplomacy, 5, 1994
- “He is a man of his most recent word.” William F Buckley Junior
- “[A] sheep in sheep’s clothing” Winston Churchill 1976
- “A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action.” Jawaharial Nehru (1889-1964)
PRAY HE DOES NO MORE HARM
11/29/2021 X-mas 2021 Leave a comment
I’ve written many postings about the Christmas season over the years and as I recently read back through them, they appeared varied, somewhat interesting, and some even boring. I hate to admit that I was ever boring but there are times when Christmas can be a huge pain in the butt. I just don’t get the “buzz” like I did when I was a kid and it still amazes me that some people (without kids) turn into Christmas fanatics and go wild over it. I loved Christmas as a young child but each year I lost a little of the holiday magic everyone seems to be searching for. It saddens me a little but “it is what it is”. The only real enjoyment for me now is when the young grandchildren are running through the house wearing Christmas apparel and having a grand old time. I thoroughly enjoy living vicariously through them.
After my last two years of medical problems, I didn’t feel things would ever be getting any better. The years, 2019 and 2020, drained away what little fun I had left in me. If not for my better-half and a few other close family members I might not have survived to enjoy Christmas 2021, for that I am eternally grateful.
All of that being said, it’s time to prepare for the holidays once again. With the pandemic still gumming up the works I’m not sure what direction to take. Now that I’m cancer free you’d think I’d be ready to celebrate the hell out of just about anything. After the experiences of the last two years I’ve entered a phase in my life that was totally unexpected. I’ve become calmer, more thoughtful, and seriously introspective.
The grandchildren are no longer toddlers and are becoming actual people. They now can speak their minds and voice their feelings like never before. While I find that refreshing it makes my preparations for the holiday a little more troublesome. My education continues but now they are the teachers and I’m the student.
I now know more about Pokémon and the thousands of cards involved with that experience. It’s supposed to be a game but I have no idea what the rules are. I think he’s just messing with me because he seems to win every game. Which cards are rare and which ones are crappy, who knows?
I’ve seen the Alvin & the Chipmunks movie a hundred times and have been hearing that theme song in my head for five years. I find myself humming it at the oddest times, in the shower and while I’m cutting grass. Don’t even get me started about “Lady and the Tramp”.
I’ll bet you any amount of money that I know more about the cartoon “Larva” than anyone you know over the age of 15. I actually found myself purchasing a “Larva” tee shirt three years ago that the grandson wanted to give to his grandmother. Apparently, it was a bigger hit than I anticipated since she still wears it occasionally in odd moments.
I’ve also been coerced into becoming a soccer fan. I’ve hated soccer with a passion and have avoided it for most of my life. Not anymore unfortunately. Both grandsons have decided that soccer is a great game but it’s always much more fun when family members come to the games to cheer them on. So, my newest job is the official family sports photographer. I get to sit and watch groups of five-six-seven-eight-year-old boys and girls playing “at” soccer. Just shoot me now. It’s finally improving this year since they’ve added a real game to their curriculum, baseball. This I actually enjoy watching.
I guess I should be happy. Those boys have enough energy for us all and I think it’s rubbing off on me a little. They now have me looking forward to a Christmas I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to celebrate.
HO! HO! HO! ONCE AGAIN
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