“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” (Mark Twain, attributed)
Inspired by Mark’s valiant struggle with a second division pathology.
(This started, once again, as a comment that got out of hand)
My beloved Oakland A’s left such a significant imprint in my youth with their early 70’s title run that I can never quite abandoned them.
Their 2018 performance, however, gives credence to the notion that irrelevant narratives are given an unencumbered range to unfold naturally, but that the outcomes of key games are foretold. Continue reading “A Fan’s Notes-“
I am a sort-of baseball fan, one who used to be a real fan. The team I chose to brand on was the Cincinnati Reds. They are falling off the map. If the Major Leagues were formed today, that city would have, at best, a AAA franchise.
The Atlanta Braves inspired a bumper sticker years ago that said “Bring professional baseball to Atlanta.” Cincinnati now inspires such a sentiment. Its teams have been moribund, dreadful, boring, its managers uninspired and behind the times. The reason, I am told, or at least assume, is that this is a small market team doing all it can afford to do.
So this article by Steve Mancuso opened my eyes. Starting with the assumption that the Reds have to trade some viable young prospects in lieu of paying outright for proven talent, Mancuso took me on a ride.
Continue reading “A revealing article from a sports journalist”
I took this photo back in the mid-1990s … out on the prairie of Eastern Montana. It has survived many moves. The sheep were herded into a trailer where a shearing awaited. Even as they had gone through this procedures many times before, they still had no clue why they were doing it again.
It was another long summer of smoke-filled eyes in the West. An early snow storm in the Northern Rockies ushers in a season of peace and solitude. Wildfires frighten tourists, excite the media and reacquaint homeowners who built in the forest to Mother Nature’s laws. Hey, I get it, fires are deadly and sexy – good ratings. But after decades of kicking the environmental can down the road, at the first sign of smoke most politicians want someone else to blame for their pathetic past performances.
Three of the last four summers (2015, 2017, 2018), Glacier National Park erupted in a fury of smoke and flames. Tourists scampered away to Yellowstone, “inholder” homes were evacuated, some incinerated. But that’s not why I picked up the pen today. Let’s talk about quiet, yes quiet. Where has our quiet gone? Continue reading “Quiet, Please! The Latest Threat to the Big Wild”
Every once in a while I try to explain critical elements of global debt-slavery. It’s not a popular topic, I suppose, because we all — excluding the ruling elite — live the same lie. Democracy. Freedom. Justice. Equality. You get the picture. All giant lies. The following comment over at Moon of Alabama this morning may help bring reality into greater focus for some who either deny, or cannot, for one reason or another, bring themselves to accept what simply is. Thank you “donkeytale.” Enjoy! Continue reading “Smell the Coffee.”
I’m sure many of our “baby boomer” friends will remember the soap ads from the 1950s and 60s. Clean was big business then, clean was beautiful, and nobody wanted to stink. B.O. (body odor) was a hot topic thanks to decades of marketing.
Dial wasn’t the first “deodorant” soap, but it was the first one that didn’t smell like turpentine or paint thinner – oh, I’m talkin’ “Lifebuoy.” Lifebuoy, originally made by Lever Bros. (now Unilever) in England, has been around since 1895. The smell was phenol, a compound made with carbolic acid extracted from coal tar. To fight B.O. you could instead smell like an auto body repair shop.
Dial, named for its “round-the-clock” anti-B.O. protection (from perspiration), was introduced in 1948 by Armour Co. (yes, the meat-packers) in Chicago. Armour had made tallow-based laundry soap since 1888. With the help of some clever chemists, Armour added hexachlorophene, or G-11 or AT-7. How about those numbers? Continue reading “A Good Clean Kill, And Other Beauty Secrets”
Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday.Suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be
There’s a shadow hanging over me.
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.
I’ve been running these lyrics through my head lately, as something about them does not fit. The song Yesterday was supposedly written by Paul McCartney in 1964 when he would have been age 20 or 22, depending on which Paul McCartney we are talking about – the original Beatle who performed the song, born 6/18/1942, or the twin brother given a spooky birth date of 1/7/44.
