I seem to be late to the party, but I recognized the quote right away.
Maybe I should follow with "I don't want to spoil the party so I'll go." But before I go, two nuggets:
(a) This week was the 40th -- yes, fortieth -- anniversary of the release of Pet Sounds.
And (b) I expect we shall all get our kicks from the next Open Thread.
E. writes, "I once was the third person in an email chain where the first person spelled it 'chord' and the second person spelled it 'cored.' Unfortunately, the word they wanted was 'cord.'"
The other night, I was reading David Maraniss' new biography of Roberto Clemente and ran across "vocal chord" [sic]. (In the 7th game of the 1960 World Series a bad hop caused a baseball to hit Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek in the throat, injuring his vocal cord. It was the second worst thing to happen to the Yankees in that game, notes the evilly-grinning Pirates fan at the keyboard.) I was wondering which player misfielded that error: the spell-check or the copyeditor with a bad ear for eggcorns. Although most likely it was a double play, and they both botched it.
P.S. After his playing days, Kubek became an announcer.
In myn neighbourhoode, ye lawne moweres and ye strynge trymmers ben hummynge alle ye afternoone (atte leaste onne Saturdaye & Sundaye).
Ond ye lilacks begynneth to ope! Ich coulde smelle thir swetenesse whilst watchyng ye televisioune.
progress/Congress
Terry Karney: but pronouncing it that way gives it that certain cachet.
And to change the topic: Teresa, a while back -- a year or so -- you mentioned a pattern for knitting scarves in a Moebius strip. I finally over my trepidations and got around to trying one, and it was a lot of fun! The circular needles get alarmingly twisted around, and only untwist when you're binding off. I just did a garter stitch, nothing fancy, though I used a fancy yarn (chenille, which was really soft to work with, and warm to wear). I really am thinking about doing some for Christmas presents.
Taking out Anglo Montreal (Anglo largely because the Francophone upper class moved back to France after 1750, one of the worst choices ever made. I could wish I knew enough of the appropriate history to construct an alternate history where the divergence point is that not happening)
Graydon: After 1760, I suspect -- after the French and Indian War, which is the USAn name for what the rest of you call the Seven Years' War. It was in that war that France lost title to Quebec, including Montreal.
The obvious divergence would be France winning, or at least not losing as badly. Giving Montcalm more resources to defend Quebec (and his not getting killed), for starters.
The F&IW happens to be a favorite bit of history for me since it got started in, around, and over my neck of the woods, by a 22-year-old kid named George Washington. Winston Churchill, in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, called it the real first World War. (Britain gained a lot of other territory besides Canada in the war, too, including India and large bits of Africa.)
PBS is currently showing a miniseries on the war and its aftermath (including its influence on the American Revolution, which was to some extent a sequel), called "The War that Made America" produced by WQED Pittsburgh. I recommend it.
Four jobs I’ve had in my life: department store clerk (Kaufmann's, Downtown Pittsburgh); worker in a factory that made women's handbags; babysitter; reference librarian
Four movies I could watch over and over: Local Hero; Casablanca; Buckaroo Banzai; Much Ado About Nothing
Four places I’ve lived: North Huntingdon, Pa.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Perth Amboy, N.J; Weirton, W.Va.
Four TV shows I have loved to watch: Maverick; The Bob Newhart Show; St. Elsewhere; The West Wing.
Four places I’ve been on vacation: Houston, TX; Coudersport, PA; Toronto, ON; Linesville, PA.
Four websites I visit daily: My Yahoo; LiveJournal; Making Light; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Four of my favorite foods: Chocolate milk; French toast; French onion soup; cherry pie. (A balanced diet!)
Four places I’d rather be: Somewhere on a warm, sunny beach (with sunscreen); a humongous library where I can just read and not answer questions from patrons; with my family; at a baseball game (Pirates winning).
(Crossposted to my LiveJournal.)
Merry Christmas to all* and to all a good night!
*Or, where applicable, Happy Hanukkah. And to those who observe neither, have a nice day just on general principles.
Marilee wonders what would have happened had Eugene McCarthy won in 1968.
Won what? A primary? He didn't even do that -- he had a strong showing in New Hampshire but lost it. That encouraged Robert Kennedy, the only Democratic anti-war candidate with any chance of winning, to enter the race. RFK won all the primaries he entered except Oregon but IIRC Humphrey won that one. (Maybe I'm wrong and McCarthy won Oregon. I'll try to remember to look it up tomorrow when I go to work. If I go -- I have a bad cold that seemed to settle on me this morning.)
It's not even certain that if Bobby had lived he would have won the nomination, much less the election. The party regulars and bosses were still firmly ensconced and tended to be for the safe (not rocking the boat) Vice President Humphrey. Also, I don't think McCarthy could have beat Nixon. There were too many dirty tricks even in 1968, and I doubt that "Clean Gene" would have been up for that sort of thing. Bobby, though, could give as well as he got, so that would have been interesting. Maybe not the ideal sort of politics we learned about in school, but interesting. I also still think RFK would have had a better chance of winning the election than Humphrey, had he got the nomination, and Humphrey lost by a very small margin. (I remember being up until 4:30 in the TV lounge in the dorm waiting for the networks to declare a winner.)
I do think that *if* either Kennedy or McCarthy, though, won in 1968 that we would probably have gotten out of Vietnam earlier and that the civil rights and war on poverty problems at home would have been addressed better.
That said, I do have a McCarthy button around here. I stopped into his campaign headquarters and picked it up after RFK died, in fact the week of the convention (which was the week of our freshman orientation). It was by then a sure thing that HHH would win the nomination, though.
(I could not vote then, not being of age, which was 21 then, and I didn't even turn 18 until later in November. But I did work a bit for the campaign for Pennsylvania's senator Joe Clark [who lost], which was my first real "pol ac".
And my *dad* voted for McCarthy in one of the elections where he ran as an independent. Dad had come to dislike the two-party system and as a bit of a protest, though he remained registered as a Democrat, voted for a "third-party" candidate in every Presidential election for about 20 years. McCarthy, Wallace, Anderson, it didn't make much difference to Dad. But Dad broke the mold in 1992, his last election, by voting for Clinton. "I couldn't bring myself to vote for a billionaire," meaning Perot, he told me.
Serge asks, "Has there ever been a case of someone who lost the actual Race who was given a second chance? I know, I know, he didn't really lose, but you know what I mean."
Grover Cleveland.
He was elected President in 1884. (Despite rumors that he'd fathered a child out of wedlock.)
In 1888 he "lost" in much the same way as Gore did in 2000. Cleveland won the popular vote but lost a disputed electoral vote (in Florida, no less) to Benjamin Harrison.
Cleveland came back and won in 1892.
Geez, I could swear that said "musicians" when I wrote it. (Though muscians are welcome to participate too, I guess.) My need for sleep is becoming all too apparent.
This seems to be related:
Guitars and Rockets: Surprising Similarity Between. Or, How is Clint Black's guitar like the Space Shuttle?
Namely, "They both resonate." The article goes on to discuss some of the problems such vibrations -- especially the "sustain" -- cause in rockets and how NASA tries to deal with it.
Anyway, if the Shuttle resonates, it seems not unlikely that buildings like the Flatiron do too. The Flatiron's peculiar shape could well have an influence on it, but I'll leave that to the (choose all that apply):while I go away for a couple of days to a family thing. One of my nephews got married recently and this is a belated reception for the couple.
a) engineers
b) scientists
c) muscians
d) wide awake
P.S. The clock on your blog still seems to be running on Daylight Time. I have 4:40 a.m. and it's telling me I'm posting this at 5:40.
My dad worked for the Pennsylvania/Penn-Central/Conrail railroad(s) for over 40 years, and smoked for over 50 years, so I have a special appreciation for both the model railroading and the loved-one-died-of-lung-disease-brought-on-by-tobacco-use threads here.
There are a lot of model-railroading magazines, books, videos, etc, that explore the making of models and of layouts that are meant to depict real (or fictional but, to their makers, "real") railroads. Quite a few modelers try to depict a real railroad in a specific place and time-period, as realistically as possible. Thus slums, industrial areas, etc., are part of the overall scheme.
Some PBS stations run a program called "Tracks Ahead" which shows many of these layouts and tips on making them, as well as stories about real rail systems, past and present.
Dad never got more into model railroading than the traditional Lionel set under the Christmas tree. Heck, why should he when he had a real railroad to run?
But after he retired and aged, it turned out that he had emphysema, bronchitis, high blood pressure, and type II diabetes ... but it wasn't until he started coughing up blood that his doctor found that lung cancer had entered the mix. (My sister the nurse says there are only two causes for coughing up blood, and neither is good.) This was about eight years after he'd quit smoking, but he'd started when he was a teenager -- got kicked off the high-school football team for it! --, so the carcinogens had had plenty of time to do their thing. The cancer had apparently been there awhile, but the other problems had masked it until it was too late. His rapid weight loss did cure the HBP and the diabetes, but not in a way we would have liked. He died about seven months after he was diagnosed -- ten years ago next month.
Some of my nieces and nephews smoke. I keep trying to remind them of what happened to their Grandpap, but they don't seem to think it will happen to them. I keep nagging anyway.
I don't do model railroading either. But I have a small collection of toy engines and a few books on the history of the Pennsy in memory of my dad. One of the last things he ever asked me was if I remembered steam engines. I reassured him that I did; they were still running when I was little.
I've always been fascinated by weather maps.
Besides, I have, or have had, tons* of relatives around the Gulf, from my grandparents in Florida (since deceased) to my sister in Biloxi** (now back home in Pittsburgh where she belongs) to my aunts, uncles, cousins, brother, sister-in-law (originally from Corpus Christi), nieces, nephews, etc. in the Houston area...
A few years ago my aunt and uncle, the only aunt and uncle I have left, got flooded out of their house after a storm, and moved inland far enough that they should be fine. My brother and his family have recently moved to Arizona, so I know they're OK, and some of the cousins are also inland. But several of my cousins and their families are still in the Houston-Galveston area.
*Literally. It's a big family, and there are some big people in it.
** Her husband was stationed there, in the Air Force. My nephew was born there. This was in 1973, four years after Camille, and my sister was amazed at the devastation still visible then. At the time, my brother and his family were living in Louisiana. The two couples got together for a weekend in New Orleans, where my brother and sister-in-law had spent their honeymoon.
An' be it duly noted, mateys, that the Pittsburgh Pirates made the Houston Astros walk the plank, 7-0.
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/recap?gid=250919123
Arrrrr!
And of course the maple trees, which are a symbol of another foreign country. One whose name starts with C, no less. Furthermore, maple leaves turn -- well, OK, not all, but most of the colors of the rainbow.
But he had the Domino Effect.
This news makes me really happy.
In fact, quite a few US cities are disasters waiting to happen. Los Angeles and Tacoma, Washington are two that spring to mind. Many Midwestern cities are inevitably going to be exposed to tornadoes sooner or later.
Not to mention what happens when the New Madrid fault lets loose again. It will; it's been 190 years since the last big one. The only questions are when, and how bad. Good bye St. Louis and Memphis, to name just two. It's liable to be felt much farther away than that. And what havoc it will wreak to the Mississippi Valley! (That's not a question. It's a certainty.)
Or the supervolcano under Yellowstone...
I saw on the news that there were long lines of people trying to get into the Superdome, but they had to wait because of the security procedures, checking baggage. Geez, are they more afraid of potential terrorists than they are of an actual Level 5 hurricane?
Also a family in a community on the actual coast planning to ride out the hurricane on their shrimpboat: a young couple, who looked to be in their twenties, if that, who didn't think they had any other alternative -- and their 3-year-old daughter!
When my brother-in-law was in the Air Force and my sister was pregnant with their first baby, they were stationed in Biloxi. This was 1973, four years after Camille, and the area was still recovering. My sister was amazed at the devastation still visible.
Lots of prayers and good wishes for everyone in the Gulf area. Especially those who can't get out, like that young family, those like Nicole's family who are staying to help, and those like Terry's National Guard unit whose help will be needed all too soon.
Lucy says:
but it wasn't Lithuania when my grandmother left it, it was I think Russia, though the family insisted it was really Poland. Funny how a town can be an immigrant too.
The borders of "Poland" have changed quite a bit over the centuries, especially in the last century after each of the World Wars. A lot of what's now Poland used to be Germany and a lot of the now-independent former Communist countries of Eastern Europe used to be at least partially considered Poland.
For awhile (I believe after Napoleon and until after World War I) there was no official "Poland." It was just a memory of a country that had been divvied up among neighboring countries. My sister's mother-in-law's Polish grandparents technically came to America from "Austria-Hungary" (as did my stepgrandfather's Slovenian family).
And there are guesses about 1848 on my father's German side
Mine too. That was about the time when the Fundises came over. My dad and I were speculating on it once, whether that had to do with them migrating, but we've never been sure. The only politics we know for certain of that side of the family in that era was the one -- I think an uncle of my dad's father's father -- who died in the Civil War.
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