Best I could do

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From Powerline’s The Week in Pictures where there are some pretty funny political ones. But this is not a political blog so I’ll leave it at this…

because yesterday Mr. Big Food and I participated in a ‘talk’ about this…

given by the author, who is Dean of the Honors College at State. It was quite interesting. Click on the image to get to Amazon and read about the book.

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We have lanes?!?

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Who knew?

Everyone drives straight down the middle and if you do happen to meet another truck you both slow down, shimmy over to the side, and do the farmer’s wave when you pass.

Unless it’s Pat or Doug. Then you pause when the driver’s side windows align and chat for a few minutes.

“Number, please?”

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A telephone switchboard and switchboard operator

Nothing in particular. Just something that came up in conversation.

Photos of the book must have been taken in 2013 before I learned how to auto-correct white balance in GIMP.

Being a Boy | The End

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We’ve made our way to the end.

I’m not excerpting anything from the final chapter because it’s too disjointed from the rest of the book. I don’t care for it. Today, being Friday, I’ll just circle ‘round to the first few sentences again.

“One of the best things in the world to be is a boy; it requires no experience, though it needs some practice to be a good one. The disadvantage of the position is that it does not last long enough; it is soon over; just as you get used to being a boy, you have to be something else, with a good deal more work to do and not half so much fun. And yet every boy is anxious to be a man, and is very uneasy with the restrictions that are put upon him as a boy.”

Citation coming right up.

Being a Boy, Charles Dudley Warner (1877).

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The Hero and the Hunter

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Last evening we watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The Italian post-doc leaves in just one month and this film was on the must watch list.

I laughed when I received an email from Mr. Big Food with the subject line:

reading before we watch “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”

From time to time Mr. Big Food teaches Introduction to Ethics and he uses classic Western movies to introduce and develop key concepts. Great class. One of the readings was a paper, Vico’s age of heroes and the age of men in John Ford’s film “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (Vittorio Hosle and Mark W. Roche, CLIO. 23.2 (Winter 1994) p131). The paper itself is as cumbersome as its title but it gets the idea across.

As Vico (1668-1744) conceives history– all ‘nations’ or as we’d put it, civilizations, do and must progress through three ages: The Age of Gods, The Age of Heroes, and The Age of Men. Of course there are transitions between them. In Liberty Valance the American West is transitioning from the Hero (Tom) to the Man (Rance).

This is the long way to come around to the title of this post. My brain is currently writing a scene for the next book, tentatively titled Miss Missy’s School Days, where we learn that the Deer Students have lost their great grandfather. I’ll say “lost” and then “died” but never “shot” but of course that’s what happened.

[Thanks for sticking with me on this.]

In these parts, deer blinds situated in trees are called “shooting houses.” In shop class, Jordan will teach the Deer how to build “hiding houses” to level the playing field. Of course, great grandfather will have none of this. People in shooting houses is wrong, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Disgrace to the sport, etc.

All of this got me thinking about the Hero and the Hunter in this Age of Men. Are today’s Hunters (not population controllers) men seeking worthy adversaries? And as real life is not a Die Hard movie, is a 12 point buck or an alligator or an elk the best he can find?

Lots of possible explanations for this. In case you’re wondering about Iowa, with 6.9% it’s #25.

Back to our regularly scheduled day.

UPDATED:

At Instapundit.

Being a Boy | Country Scenes

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“It is impossible to say at what age a New England country-boy becomes conscious that his trousers-legs are too short, and is anxious about the part of his hair and the fit of his woman-made roundabout. These harrowing thoughts come to him later than to the city lad. At least, a generation ago he served a long apprenticeship with nature only for a master, absolutely unconscious of the artificialities of life.

“But I do not think his early education was neglected. And yet it is easy to underestimate the influences that, unconsciously to him, were expanding his mind and nursing in him heroic purposes. There was the lovely but narrow valley, with its rapid mountain stream; there were the great hills which he climbed, only to see other hills stretching away to a broken and tempting horizon; there were the rocky pastures, and the wide sweeps of forest through which the winter tempests howled, upon which hung the haze of summer heat, over which the great shadows of summer clouds traveled; there were the clouds themselves, shouldering up above the peaks, hurrying across the narrow sky,—the clouds out of which the wind came, and the lightning and the sudden dashes of rain; and there were days when the sky was ineffably blue and distant, a fathomless vault of heaven where the hen-hawk and the eagle poised on outstretched wings and watched for their prey. Can you say how these things fed the imagination of the boy, who had few books and no contact with the great world?”

Being a Boy, Charles Dudley Warner (1877).

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One of Those Moments

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Though many people are familiar with the original 1967 Jungle Book, which Favreau’s film is remaking, what most people don’t know is that the Jungle Book is, ironically, based off of a book.

https://tylerbsearle.wordpress.com/compare-and-contrast-the-jungle-book/
  1. I kid you not, Dude is in JOURNALISM SCHOOL. Based off of a book.
  2. Does he know what irony is?
  3. It’s The (not the) Jungle Book.
  4. Just because you only figured out that the The Jungle Book is a Book 15 minutes ago doesn’t mean that “most people” don’t know this. It’s a binary choice. You know this or you don’t. So how does “most” even factor into this? More people know/don’t know. That would be a simple majority. But he said “most.” What’s that? 67%?
  5. How it is even conceivable that of the population of people who know about the movie, “most” don’t know about the book? Are people really this ignorant? Even if you didn’t know of the movie, if presented with the phrase, “the jungle book” and asked the question, “what sort of thing is that?” wouldn’t most people say– I dunno– “a book”?

There’s no mail today. That means my new alphabet book is sitting in the post office in town and not on my desk. Aurgh.

“Mine folds the sheet” | Portend

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Aggressive Behavior of the Meadow and Prairie Voles
Lowell L. Getz
Journal of Mammalogy, Vol. 43, No. 3. (Aug., 1962), pp. 351-358.

I am not kidding, I have tears in my eyes. This is such a beautiful study. And they just don’t do it this way anymore which is a real shame. Yeah, yeah. It has confounds galore and probably no power but so what?

Think of what’s to come.

The Poppies of Flaners Field

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Originally posted May 23, 2015 and not too subtly addressed to my children.

“In Flanders Fields” is a poem written by physician and poet John McCrae on May 3, 1915 (thanks, wikipedia!) after the death of a friend and fellow soldier in WWI.

Flanders, of course, refers to Belgium, specifically the western parts where during the Second Battle of Ypres, McCrae’s friend died. Apparently– and according to that infallible source— a consequence of battle at the time was an increase in the lime content of the soil and hence increased soil pH. Poppies like alkaline soil and poppy seeds need light to germinate. The increased pH and soil disruption were ideal. And so… .

Mother Nature covered freshly dug graves with red poppies.

Untitled

[Here’s the Botanical Interests link.]

In years past I have posted the poem for both Memorial and Veterans’ Days. See here, here, and here. But I’ve come to understand that some readers– you know who you are and I know where you live!—

DSCN3396

don’t read what I quote. You just read what I write.

And so tonight I write a request. Go read the poem. Like Kilmer’s “Trees,” it’s one of many poems Granda Bobby could recite by heart. The First World War was not within his memory, but the memory of it was– he was born in ’29. It’s not the best poem ever written, but it’s not bad.

Read the poem and you might understand why old guys who served in Viet Nam or The First Gulf War or Afghanistan are passing out red paper poppies at Farmers’ Markets.

“If ye break faith…”

Today’s Being a Boy

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comes courtesy of Gerard Van der Leun.

And so we did what any two young boys would do. We improved our fort and hauled in supplies. With some pruning sheers that my mother convinced herself she must have mislaid, we carefully trimmed out the inside stands of bamboo until a comfortable space was made (invisible to outside eyes) for two brothers to relax in a comfortable manner. We hauled in some water in bottles and some “rations” consisting of apples, jelly sandwiches, and chocolate chip cookies. These “rations” did not last the afternoon when we would pour over our latest comic books bought at the Paradise drug store and soda fountain.

After sober consideration, Tom and I decided that grown-ups could not be allowed to know what we were up to and where our fortress was located. To heighten our fortress security measures we named the place: “X.”  After that, we always referred to it as such confident that no eavesdropping adult would be able to break our code.

SNIP

But what was garbage to a gold miner was gold to a couple of young boys. We found old whiskey bottles and jars of uncertain provenance. We found rusted metal sheets and rods that we fashioned into a lean-to deep inside the bamboo walls of “X” so we could store our comic books and other treasures. We found many things and then…

then…

Then there was the day when we cut back a bunch of manzanita branches and pulled out a tightly dovetailed and nailed wooden box with the top stove in. Tom pulled back the shattered wood of the top to reveal a torn sheet of stiff brown paper. Widening the rip in the paper we looked in and saw about half a case of dynamite composed of broken sticks on the top and whole sticks of TNT on the bottom of the box.

Read the entire glorious story.

Fla Eta

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Further strengthening is possible today while the shear remains 
low-to-moderate.  However, all of the models do show increasing 
shear by tonight, and the NHC forecast continues to call for 
weakening of Eta as it approaches the west coast of Florida.  
However, it would take only a small forecast error to allow Eta to 
come ashore as a hurricane, and hence a Hurricane Watch has been 
issued this morning.  Rapid weakening is anticipated once Eta makes 
landfall, and strong shear should prevent any regeneration over the 
western Atlantic Ocean. The new forecast is a little higher than 
the previous advisory, mostly due to current trends, and is closer 
to the more bullish HMON and HWRF models.

I have had only one and one half cups of coffee so I’m in no position to criticize but HUH?

“To allow”

“Hence”

“A little higher”

Certainly seems so.

I had occasion to think of Hal this evening

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Published in The Commercial Appeal on Feb. 12, 2017.

He was my failed attempt at a Masters Degree advisor before I pissed him off by knowing Dan Dennett. But I learned a lot of biology from him. Claimed to be a Mississippi Boy which the Obit does not confirm.

Pretty much everything I know about periodical cicadas I learned from Hal. Never did try his recipe for sauteed cicadas, though.

Rebecca is still alive. That bridge didn’t burn. It got bombed out and was never rebuild. There are bridges between Hungary and Czechoslovakia that were rebuilt faster than the one between RZ and me.

Recipe: No-Bake Sweet Potato Pie

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Except for cooking the sweet potatoes and baking the pie shell– which fell terribly– it takes about 90 seconds to put together.

Mr. Big Food is quite enthusiastic about that 40 pound box of sweet potatoes!

Gall & Crew update

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I could not in good conscience let this go without note, though it is embarrassing. Yesterday I was searching Archive to see what Gall & Crew books it had and in the small collection of thumbnails I saw this book cover.

Holy *^#t! I have this book!

Not only do I have this book, I have the next three editions of it, too! Why are they not on my desk?!? So, I have a sewing table on which are a bunch of books about books and there they were. I have no earthly idea how I over looked them when I was gathering research materials for the Hall of Fame but I did. Embarrassing.

The entries in The Junior Book of Authors Second Edition (1951) are autobiographical if possible. From theirs I learn they were born and raised in McConnelsville, Ohio– a small town on the bank of the Muskingum River in southeastern Ohio.

This is a quiet, friendly little town at the edge of a lovely river, and is surrounded by tree-covered hills and rolling meadows.

Like most boys and girls, we loved the out-of-doors and were fond of taking hikes into the near-by woods and fields or along the banks of the small streams that flow down to the river. In the summer there were berries on the hillsides, and nuts in the fall. And there were always exciting excursions to be made to some shady pond where frogs and turtles lived, or through some secluded ravine where the more timid birds found shelter.

Of course, they “left our home and [went] out into the busy world.” One went to New York, the other to Cleveland. But they began to write about the creatures from their childhoods, “in the hope that we might help other children know and love them, too.”

But we no longer have to send our chapters back and forth to each other as we did at first, for now, after many years, we have both come back to our old home town to live.

With sentiment like this, how can Forgotten Flat Tail remain so forgotten?

Here are the search results for Alice Crew Gall at Amazon. Looks as if the new reprints are no longer being printed, which is too bad. But there are used hardcovers. Many more at Bookfinder (less expensive, too).

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Consider this a substitute for the Being a Boy post. Writing time.

Recipe: Kentucky Pork and Apple Rice

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Marica Cooks Monday. It was perfectly delicious and on target with respect to the weather. Two tips– it’s far easier to slice the pork thin if it’s on the frozen side. Mr. Big Food had gotten two thick chops from the freezer at about 6:30 yesterday morning and I sliced them maybe 4 hours later.

The sauce in the pork was a bit on the thin side, given the consistency of the rice so I added 1 Tbsp flour to thicken it up a bit.

Third tip. The small can of apple juice are no longer 12 ounces; they are 10. Adjust accordingly.