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Post by Kimby on Jun 26, 2017 21:26:57 GMT
50 "strangers" saying nice things beats one "helper" saying insensitive things, K2. As my mommy taught me, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."
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Post by fumobici on Jun 27, 2017 2:31:06 GMT
Thank you everyone for your good wishes, and apologies for harshing the buzz of what should be a celebratory thread. In a sense K2 although it was more to do with gluttony. You see, we had, for the first time ever since I've been here, rabbits move into the neighborhood and her lust for bunny flesh (in fairness to her it is very nice) and that lust lured her out of our large yard she was ordinarily quite content to stay close and lord over. The rabbits had made a nest across the way in the shrubbery and it was too much of an attractive nuisance for her to resist, she'd proudly been bringing bunny pieces for us on the front porch.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 27, 2017 3:27:46 GMT
Thank you for elevating the discussion, fumobici. You are a truly elegant person.
As for people who give lessons in politeness, I guess some of us were raised with a different sense of values. I was taught that someone who makes remarks about how other people should behave is the person who is in effect behaving badly. Trying to display superior moral values by disparaging someone else always backfires. I do understand that kitty cats are a hot button issue here and can make people lose control.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2017 13:03:20 GMT
What I don't understand Kerouac is why you have conveyed compassionate and given seemingly heartfelt condolences in the past in the Aging/Ill Animals to "strangers", including myself and my husband, you now take this stance. I find it most hypocritical and a tad "schizoid".
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Post by Kimby on Jun 27, 2017 13:11:46 GMT
Maybe his "helper" status makes him object to the inadvertent threadjack of the Highlighting Today thread. He could fix this by moving the pertinent comments to the Aging/Ill Animals thread. Or just deleting the objectionable posts....
A highlight for today: in 1922, the first Newberry Medal for excellence in children's literature was awarded. The book was "The Story of Mankind" by Hendrick Willem van Loon. (Never heard of it.)
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 27, 2017 14:11:16 GMT
The first ATM entered service 50 years ago today in London, using the Barclaycard, precursor of Visa.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 27, 2017 16:05:10 GMT
Interesting!
I didn't know that either one of those things (Newberry Medal and ATMs) were that old.
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Post by Kimby on Jun 29, 2017 13:05:00 GMT
The iPhone is ten years old today. Only 10? I'd have guessed MUCH older.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2017 18:53:09 GMT
The Fourth of July celebrations/holiday here. I'm off to a pot luck gathering in our Community Garden with a dozen or so neighbors. I made a pesto pasta cold salad. Gratefully, there is a gazebo that will afford us some shade as it is swelteringly ungodly hot . Afterwards, off to go dance in the air conditioned neighborhood saloon.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 4, 2017 21:10:39 GMT
Obviously, I always enjoyed the 4th of July, especially since it coincided with the Mississippi Gulf Coast Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo, which was also in charge of the fireworks display. There was a big tent with smelly fish and also one of my uncles had a TV dealership with a stand in there. It had a camera pointed at the crowd which displayed our blurry images on a screen! Wow! In 1960 when my family went to France for the first big trip since my parents got married, we missed the fishing rodeo. My father had to take a leave of absence from work for the summer, because just the transatlantic crossing back and forth from New York to Le Havre would have used up his entire vacation. I had no idea about this at the time, but the railroad tickets to New York were completely free, because he had passes as an employee of the Illinois Central. The rail trip itself was something like 18 hours, maybe more.
Anyway, we settled in at my grandparents' house in France and a couple of weeks later, my father received a letter from his mother saying "Cut, you won the boat!" (The most unbelievable part of this story is probably the fact that my father's name was Cuthbert.) He had actually won the grand prize at the Fishing Rodeo raffle, a very nice boat with an outboard motor. It was waiting in the driveway when we got home. We really used that boat a lot, probably just about every weekend when the weather was nice, mostly in Bayou Bernard, and sometimes we pressed on all the way to Tchouticabouffa (just in case you're wondering, the local pronunciation is Chew-tick-a-buff). The Milner Cutoff was our favourite fishing area, just below the old Milner plantation, which looked like a haunted house, appropriately surrounded by trees groaning under Spanish moss. Green trout, bream, perch, pumpkinseed and sometimes some damned nasty catfish were in abundance, and we also lowered some crab nets from the boat because there were often some pretty good crabs in the bayou. They really liked the rotten chicken necks that we got from the A&P.
This went on until 1966 and the divorce. I think I missed the boat and Bayou Bernard more than I missed my father, once I realised the sort of person he was. But that boat was the symbol of the 4th of July to me for those six years...
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2017 5:45:42 GMT
That's a poignant memory Kerouac and so well recorded. I'm familiar with some of the bodies of water you refer to.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 5, 2017 6:59:59 GMT
Great, evocative story, Kerouac. Really, you could flesh that out and make a movie of it!
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Post by patricklondon on Jul 14, 2017 13:56:20 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 14, 2017 14:03:07 GMT
Ohhhh, Patrick! What a perfect way to honor the day. Absolutely gorgeous photograph.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 14, 2017 14:29:55 GMT
The leaf shadows on the flags are spectacular.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 20, 2017 11:32:08 GMT
So, the president of the United States has been in office for six months. 3½ years to go?
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Post by Kimby on Jul 20, 2017 12:56:18 GMT
Gawd, I hope not! Special Investigator Mueller is likely to come up with enough to lead to an early resignation. Let the indictments roll!
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Post by mossie on Jul 20, 2017 14:35:17 GMT
Oh no! Let us have something to enjoy while this country sinks deeper in the sh1t
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 20, 2017 15:41:43 GMT
Special Investigator Mueller is likely to come up with enough to lead to an early resignation. Let the indictments roll! Amen! The whole disgusting family and all their cohorts must be exposed, humiliated, removed from office and sent to prison. And can't we pretty-please be allowed to have a group shit on Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell? On this day in 1969: At 10:56 p.m. EDT Armstrong is ready to plant the first human foot on another world. With more than half a billion people watching on television, he climbs down the ladder and proclaims: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Aldrin joins him shortly, and offers a simple but powerful description of the lunar surface: "magnificent desolation." They explore the surface for two and a half hours, collecting samples and taking photographs.www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11.html
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Post by patricklondon on Jul 20, 2017 16:19:58 GMT
There are some present-day people that one simply could not imagine representing the US, never mind humanity, on the moon.... My blog | My photos | My video clips"too literate to be spam"
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 24, 2017 5:33:30 GMT
50 years ago today, Charles de Gaulle was responsible for some malicious mischief in Canada when he said "Vive le Québec libre!" in a speech. Repercussions are still being felt in the 21st century.
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Post by patricklondon on Jul 24, 2017 7:39:43 GMT
With the benefit of 50 years of esprit d'escalier, I'd have been tempted to reply that Quebec and Quebeckers had been freer, whether from Bourbon absolutism, revolutionary terror or Bonapartist megalomania, than most French-speakers..... My blog | My photos | My video clips"too literate to be spam"
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Post by mossie on Jul 24, 2017 18:42:48 GMT
Doing some boasting again, but this day in 1955 was very nearly my last. We had taken off to do a routine interception exercise at 01.45 that morning, but part way through we were recalled because our airfield was being covered by a blanket of fog. When we got back overhead most of the airfield was obliterated and the fog was creeping steadily over the rest. All airfields had a red light which flashed out the identification letters so making them easy to find and identify, but the light was strong enough to glow through the fog. Joe, my pilot who I trusted implicitly, had a good idea where the end of the runway lay in relation to this light which, by the time we had descended to landing circuit level, was all we could see. We also knew that a shallow valley led up to the runway in the direction from which we would approach, so we made the decision to attempt to land.
So, taking a careful turn round the light onto the runway heading and descending into the fog down to the runway height we prepared to land, both keeping a very keen look out for any light or anything to positively fix our position. Nothing but grey fog. Then a very abrupt call with an urgent tone of voice from the control tower. "77 Divert to Manston", and we knew it was hopeless, so full power, undercarriage and flaps up and climb back into the murk. Manston was across the Thames Estuary at the tip of Kent and was the Master Diversion airfield always ready to take aircraft lost or in trouble, so off we went. It was also a USAF base so we were soon having to translate the American messages we were getting.
Long story short, we landed there, got tucked up in bed and after a late breakfast flew home to our base at Wattisham. Having a drink in the mess that evening one of the sergeants who had been on duty when we made out shot at landing there told me that they had seen us fly past the control tower window!!! Joe had slightly misjudged the position of the runway relative to the light and we were between the runway and the tower, another 30 yards perhaps further over.
And we would have flown through the tower, not good news for the controllers or us !!
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 24, 2017 18:52:25 GMT
Good grief -- that wouldn't have been a happy ending!
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 24, 2017 18:53:35 GMT
Such a nice day! To see how things can go wrong in the sky, you should see the movie Dunkirk.
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Post by questa on Jul 24, 2017 23:34:39 GMT
Mossie, the quote at the foot of your posts takes on a complete new aspect now. The perfect aphorism for a navigator.
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Post by Kimby on Jul 24, 2017 23:40:20 GMT
On this date in 1974, the US Supreme Court ruled that Tricky Dick Nixon had to turn over the subpoenaed tape recordings made in the Oval Office. Beginning of the end. We can only hope that things go as well with the dismantling of the Trump presidency. Don the Con needs to go. And his smarmy children too!
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Post by questa on Jul 25, 2017 14:12:27 GMT
Those kids of his should be encouraged to make speeches, answer questions from media and party like their peers do. Soon they will make enough grief for Big Daddy that he will become compromised in trying to influence the outcomes of their foul-ups. hehehe.
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Post by mossie on Jul 25, 2017 19:07:48 GMT
Sorry, I have to go back to Questa re post 1615 above. I had with my avatar a quote she referred to. This was derived from this old woodcut goo.gl/images/riRfYxWhich appeared on the front of the manual from which we were taught navigation. This manual had largely been compiled by a certain Francis Chichester who had flown a single engined biplane single handedly from Australia to New Zealand, navigating by "dead reckoning", and by using a sextant, of which the woodcut depicts a very early example. Some wag would always add 'only temporarily uncertain of his position', because that was very often the case. Chichester's book "The lonely Sea and the Sky" is a real boys own adventure. He went on to become the first man to sail single handedly round the world. his aeroplane was a Gypsy Moth and he named his yachts after it, the one he used for round the world is on view at Greenwich near the Cutty Sark.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 25, 2017 19:59:05 GMT
Oh, that is very cool! I didn't see the airplane when I was there though.
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