Archive for the ‘book-review’ Tag

11/19/2024 “THE LADIES HAVE SPOKEN”   2 comments

Helen Rowland

Almost everyone loves quoting experts about everything and no different. Today’s post is exclusively and completely written by women with their opinions on Men, Women, and Marriage. It should be interesting.

ON WOMEN

  • “A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.” Eleanor Roosevelt 1981
  • ” I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.” Mary Wollstonecraft 1792
  • In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.” Margaret Thatcher 1970

ON MEN

  • ” Man for the sake of getting a living forget to live.” Margaret Fuller 1844
  • “We don’t believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack.” Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 1905
  • “Fate of love is that it always seems too little or too much.” Amelia E. Barr 1904

ON LOVE & ROMANCE

  • “I do not consider divorce an evil by any means. It’s just as much a refuge for women married to brutal man as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters.” Susan B. Anthony 1898
  • “A husband is what is left of the lover, after the nerve has been extracted.” Helen Rowland
  • ” I married beneath me, all women do.” Nancy Astor 1981
Louisa May Alcott

I’d like to finish this post with a quote from Louisa May Alcott written on April 11, 1868.

“One of the trials of womankind is the fear of being an old maid. To escape this dreadful doom, young girls rushed into matrimony with a recklessness which astonishes the beholder; never pausing to remember that the loss of liberty, happiness, and self-respect is poorly repaid by the barren honor of being called Mrs. instead of Ms.”

Do I agree to all of the material I just posted, mostly! Many of these quotes were from a different time but the facts of marriage and men and women hasn’t changed all that much in any case. At the time some of these quotes were made they carried serious weight to the nation and had a lot to do with women eventually getting the vote.

And they still hope to run everything. LOL

04/09/2024 “Crime & Punishment”   2 comments

I’ve had a relationship for more than fifty years with the criminal justice system in this country. Starting as a cop, then a private investigator, a corporate Loss Prevention specialist, and eventually working for the State of Maine in the Judicial Branch. I’m fascinated with all aspects of the profession which includes collecting odd bits of trivia which I’ll share with you today.

  • The world’s first police detective was Eugene Françoise Vidocq. The Frenchman founded the plainclothes civil police unit, the Brigade de la se Surete, in 1812.
  • C. Auguste Dupin was the world’s first fictional police detective. Edgar Allen Poe used Eugene François Vidocq as a model for his character C. Auguste Dupin in the 1841 short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which is considered to be the world’s first detective story.
  • The act of hanging, drawing, and quartering was not abolished in England until 1870.
  • Sheraton Hope and Ormond Sacker were the original names of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous crime-fighting duo, Sherlock Homes and Dr. John Watson. They first appeared in a novel called “A Tangled Skein.” Doyle ultimately changed the novel’s title to “A Study in Scarlet” when it was officially published in 1887.
  • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has sold more books than J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien combined.

  • One in four convicts ultimately exonerated by DNA evidence confessed or pled guilty to crimes they did not commit.
  • Until 1998 it was a valid defense against rape or sexual battery in Mississippi to claim that the female victim was not chaste in character.
  • From the 11th to the 18th centuries criminals were executed in southeast Asia by being crushed by an elephant.
  • A real-life member of Scotland Yard, Inspector Charles Frederick Field, was friends with author Charles Dickens and introduced Dickens to many of London’s criminal haunts. Dickens later featured the inspector in his 1851 short story “On Duty with Inspector Field.”

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL POLICE

01/13/2024 “Retro Football v. Now”   1 comment

With the playoffs and Superbowl looming in our immediate future and Belichick ending his reign as a Patriot, it seems the right time for a football post. Football has been making numerous mistakes in recent months with questionable NFL officiating and the fiasco with Michigan and coach Jim Harbaugh that was blatantly unfair, biased, and embarrassing. So, let me take you back in time to review a few old time slight-of-hand coaching maneuvers when the game was more fun and not controlled by the almighty dollar and the media’s talking heads.

Johnny Heisman, for whom the Heisman Trophy is named, was one of football’s most inventive coaches. One of his oddest inventions was the old hidden ball trick. One day in 1895, a player asked him if it was illegal to hide the ball during a play. He knew it wasn’t against the rules, but how could it be done?

Two of Heisman’s players at Auburn, Walt Shafer and “Tick” Tichenor, thought the ball could be hidden under a running backs jersey, and they helped devise a play. As the ball was snapped to Tichenor, the rest of the team would drop back and form a circle around him. Then Tichenor would slip the ball under his jersey, and he would drop to one knee. The team would run to the right and the defenders would follow them. Then Tichenor would get up and run the other way. Auburn tried the trick against Vanderbilt soon after and scored a touchdown with it.

Tighter uniforms and faster play have made the hidden ball trick harder and harder to perform. The bizarre play is hardly ever used today, thank God. It would totally befuddle the indecisive officials of this modern era. It would require an immediate replay, a delay of game, and a group discussion by a panel of league officials to get a final decision. What an absolute waste of time and energy. A quick and effective way to take the fun out of the game.

Here is another sample of old-time footballers attempting to circumvent and bend the rules a little.

Two of the smartest football coaches of all time were Percy Haughton of Harvard and “Pop” Warner, who coached at Carlisle Institute and later at Stanford. In 1908 Warner’s team from Carlisle was scheduled to play Harvard. The week before the Harvard game, Warner had to use a clever trick to help defeat a strong Syracuse team. Carlisle players had pads sewn to their pants and jerseys. The pads were the same size, shape and color as a football, making it very difficult to tell which player had the football and which one was only pretending. When Carlisle started to practice on Harvard’s field the day before the game, Haughton saw the football-like pads. “That’s not fair,” said Haughton mildly. “It’s not against the rules,” laughed Warner. ”I can put anything I like on my players jerseys.

But Haughton had a few tricks up his sleeve as well. Just before kickoff time, Warner and Haughton met on the field to pick out the game football. Warner reached into the bag of balls Haughton had brought and pulled one out. It was red! Haughton had dyed all of the balls crimson, the color of Harvard’s jerseys. “It’s not against the rules, Haughton smiled, a football doesn’t have to be brown, does it? Warner walked back to the sidelines muttering to himself. Harvard won the game, 17-0. 

And amazingly as far as I can tell nobody was disciplined, fined, or suspended. The game was played, someone won, and someone lost. Truth be told it’s still just that simple even in this day and age of computers and the plethora of alleged football media experts.

OH, FOR A RETURN TO THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Go Steelers!!!