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Michael McLeod

Tim:

Here's mine.

They are both in favor of a level playing field. 

Timothy Lavelle

Clare, your reply was fabulous but I think the fact that you dated both Mike and John at WHS has to be taken into account here. To keep your feet on the ground...I think Hilary was once called "perfect".

Jim, the courtroom scene was really funny. Labella and Gandy, indeed. Both you and Fred saw what I was going for but I sense an evil smirk from both of you. I, of couse, am faultless...

There are scores of comparisons, when your favored teams let you down. I am certainly a fair-weather friend in this instance. 

Ohio State has a lengthy history of great football and based only on that history, currently accepts an overrated position in the face of the fact that half the teams in the SEC would hand them their asses in a basket. The Dems truly believe they have the numbers and thus they fail to focus, plan, or even acknowledge afterwards that they have been Trumped. The Martian Party could have taken the House, and you know that.

Both groups share a motto: "Fake it til you make it"

Each has invested heavily in Centers of Adequacy

Incredibly, both groups share the motto "It's enough to just show up"

Before each major contest each refers to their opponents as "The Inferiors"

Afterwards, they share a similar view, "Wow!"

Each answered my survey, when asked what their theme song is with the following: "I think I can Fly".

Each received the very same results in an after-the-fact analysis. "You can't fly" which came as a surprise to both groups.

I abound in sarcasm. It's a very easy job and I don't have to break a sweat.

David Mitchell

Tim,

Very interesting answer(s). Although I should take issue with your second and third lines from the bottom - I have to confess, even helicopters can't really fly. (Sorry I have been deceiving you all this whole time). They are actually just a bunch of spare parts beating their way through the air in a nice, tight formation. 

Great old GOP vs. Dem story; I remember hearing Bill MIller (Goldwater's running mate) admitting in an interview (years later) that they had once locked Nelson Rockefeller's pilot crew in a bathroom at some rural airpot so he could (NOT) make his flight to appear at a campaign rally. I guess now that's child's play compared to the Cyber mischief that is going on out there in the "ether".

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Bucks need a wake up call before this Saturday. That "Terps" QB  should have hit his (wide open) TE in the end zone for 2 points. We dodged a bullet there! Something's missing on this team. Sports anaysts hint that the early season "Urban distraction" is syill hanging over the team. Lack of focus on the Defense. Maybe we need Bonnie to call Earl and give him a piece of her mind. 

Yup, that ought'a do it!

David Mitchell

Jack,

I feel ya man. It's all the way down to 62 here today. Too rainy to sit out on the dock. Ain't life a bitch?

Frank Ganley

I am a huge country fan!!!!!!!  In and around 75 or so i hated country music and even if i was in your car i would just turn that crap off. What changed was a company that i went to work for was headquartered in Nashville. First time there i asked any way to get an opry ticket, i was laughed at and called a yankee boy as i did not know you just can’t get a ticket to the oprey , you had to have ordered them months ago. Many people plan their vacations to nashville as to when their favorite artist was in town. A little background on the oprey, it started in the rymen theatre which started out as a church. Still the seats are pews. It is only open on friday and saturday night. It is live. Headliners are booked month in advance  , if you are a member of the oprey and in town you’ll be playing that weekend. The playbill is still printed on church bulletin paper and no one knows whose the supporting players till thursday. The company manages to get some tickets for 5 of us. I sat next to a guy from texas who is telling me the history who is playing and how it all works. I saw them all but the main star was marty robbins. He is on a few times during the show and closes. As i said its live. Marty is singin and playin away when they announce good night everybody but marty was having none of that and told the emcee he is playin till he says he’s done. It was tremendous. While listening to all of the bands etc i was washed in the blood of country music. Now jazz i guess is cool but i don’t get it. A friend went to take a guitar lesson and the instructor had him play a few scales . He said if you make no mistakes that music , if put a twang it country but if you play a wrong note and repeat it thats called jazz. For those jazz fans please explain, how it makes sense and then explain myles to us all. 

Timothy Lavelle

Gandy,

The first requisite for enjoying country music is an IQ below 75. Except for my lovely, who would happily go ten rounds with Ms. Kidman if the outcome was a warmish evening with that Urban blight, Keith.

So, Jazz. You are a musician, I am not. BUT...imagine yourself standing by a white rapids in a scenic stretch of river. Would you consider realigning the rocks so that the water flowed more uniformly? At an art event would you ask someone to de-blur an impressionist painting so your soul could better revel in a paint-by-numbers offering? Might I suggest, before turning on that jazz radio station, loosen your belt, unkink your backbone, practice squinting your eyes and moving your head to and fro, smoke a fatty. Turn it up a bit and give up asking the music to inform you by telegraph what notes are coming next...just let it come.

Nashville is more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Enough beer to lower the old IQ so we can all sing-along about our broken down trucks and dogs that won't hunt!   

David Mitchell

Can't decide between Miles Davis and Chet Baker, vs. Vince Gill and Glenn Cambell?? 

Hmmm, Its just too loose LauTrec.

(Caution! Winslow Homer fan here - and Edmund Turner, the weird British Impressionist - cool but strange movie a few years ago "Turner") - Do'know much 'bout art, but I know what I like. Earl Biss, born Chipewa but painted southwest native culture - native American impressionism - very cool!

Like all kinds of musak - long as it's gud. 

(Oh, George Benson - Pat Metheny ---  and Al Jurreau - "After All". And there will only ever be one Ella - deal with it.) 

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My youngest daughter lived in Nashville for a few years - married a boy from there (for a while). Much more going on there than just country music. Pretty neat town. She used to go over to another side of town to help her mother in law shop groceries and kept running into three ladies on a number on occaisions.  Lee Ann Womack, a lesser known Kim Richey (who's CD I love!), and one of the Dixie Chicks (not Natalie Maines - below). Actually got a little friendly with Kim Richey. And the secretary at the school she taught montesorry at was married to the guy who wrote some of Kathy Mattea's hits ("18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses" - "Where've You Been?").

She talks about the famous impromptu music sessions downtown at a famous Honky Tonk called "Robert's Western World". Maybe you found that place Frank. Local musicians play and now and then somebody famous steps out fo the crowd and joins on stage. She was there with her (ex) husband when some tiny chick named Patty Griffin they had never heard of before got up and knocked the crowd out! Not long after I saw her on David Letterman  

John Jackson

Dave, I’m a huge fan of Patty Griffin – I’ve got all her CD’s.  She’s got a tremendous range of material from waif-like innocence to angry/almost punk.

Speaking of CD’s – with all the streaming services (audio and video) I worry if we’ll be able to get disc players five years from now.  I’ve got lot of CD’s and a fair number are pretty obscure.  I’ve ripped my favorite tracks but I like knowing I have the CD’s as a backup in case my computer goes belly-up or my phone catches fire.

David Mitchell

John,

I always knew you were a man o' cultcha.

Great minds.....................

James Hamilton, M. D.

Michael McLeod

Jim:

I don't remember drills where we hid under our desks in the idiotic assumption that they would protect us from an a-bomb blast any more than, say, a spritz or two of holy water would have.

Do you really have a distinct memory of doing that?

James Hamilton, M. D.

Michael McLeod

Just got this text from a friend. Happy Holidays!

The text:

And so it begins! 

Virginia's flight is diverted to Kansas City because the couple in front of her couldn't resolve their marital issues.

Mark Schweickart

Well it's that time of year again, it's NaNoWriMo-time. For those of you who don't recall me talking about this, this weird acronym stands for National Novel Writing Month. It is an on-line organization that encourages all of us would-be writers to meet their challenge to write 50,000 words during the month of November of a rough draft  of that procrastinated something that has been knotted up inside you and wanting to get out. You don't win anything particulalrly from the organization other than their kudos for a job well done – they don't even read what you have written. You just log in occasionally during the month and update your slowly mounting word count. The absolutely mind-bogling thing is that by giving yourself this totally arbitrary deadline, it for some reason gets your ass in the chair and forces you to write. It does for me anyway.

Last November I wrote a historical novel following the life of a 19 year old woman set in Detroit in 1943 at the height of the war-manufacturing boom and the unfortunate race riot that occurred there that year, and then in 1959 as 38 year old single mother in a setting you would recognize from life in suburban Ohio. Both section revolve around the theme of race relations. My plan was to try my hand at doing two things: creating believable fictional characters, and taking the reader through a point in time they may know something of vaguely, but probably would enjoy knowing more about – Detroit during the war years. This effort came out prety well, I thought, but at 53,000 words it did not really feel like a novel. A novella, at best.

So this year, I am taking my main character forward to 1961 in order to combine this year's effort with last year's to make something that has the length of what most would expect of a novel. This time she becomes involved in the another historical event that, like the Detroit setting, is sort of well known, but not really – the Freedom Rides through the South that were done to test compliance with Federal law regarding interstate travel, and the hostility this provoked, especially in Alabama and Mississippi.

Once I get through this rough draft by the end of the month, and then take some time to polish it a bit, I would be happy to share it with anyone interested in the topic.

And for those of you out there that need some motivational help in getting the juices flowing  to write that memoir or novel churning within, if you do not get to it sooner, see you next November. I am thinking of all the usual suspects who occasionaly drop memory bombs on us here in the forum, you know who you are.

Timothy Lavelle

Speaking as a lazy male, Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday.

No presents to buy. No required church-going. All a guy had to do was show up on time, sniff the air in a long gratifying way, maybe shout "Gobble Gobble" to the queen of the castle to denote satisfaction with her red hot kitchen efforts. Eat far too much; pay hommage to Dad for his compulsive 11 pies of different sorts; have a cigarette on the back porch with the weird uncle; go back in and have seconds; fall asleep in any available space while someone threw a forward pass on TV.

From all men, to all women...Gobble Gobble, and thanks so much for all your efforts to put us men to sleep so you could do tequila shots with your crazy sister in the pantry!

I have been advised by my in-laws that it is OK to report the folowing. They lost both family homes, burnt to the foundations in Paradise, Ca. The oldsters made it out early with little hassle but my bro-in-law stayed and fought the fire. An amazing story of gonads in large portions. He is fine if brought very low from losing everything. Count your blessings, is all I can think to say to all of you!

John Jackson

Jim, we OLP’ers were pretty unconcerned about the prospect of nuclear annihilation because we had to contend almost daily with something much more fearsome than any thermonuclear blast – our pastor, Father Foley.  

James Hamilton, M. D.

David Mitchell

John,

WORD!

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Mike, Yes we did those "duck and cover" drills all the time. Down under our desks. But when Father Foley came in snorting in anger and in pain with his huge swollen elephantitis(?) leg, it was Katie bar the door - fear and trembling would be the operative word. Talk about an eminent threat to our security!  

But on a god day, all we had to worry about was sister Macaria's paddle with the holes drilled through it for aeordyanics. Good thing she kept that little bottle of her (Russian, potato-based) "holy water" in a flask in her desk drawer.That helped her calm down - I guess. (if it's clear, it must be Holy Water -  right?)

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Tim, 

Thanks for finally filling us in. I was afraid your long silence meant harsh news. Can't imagine what this must be like for them. The heroic stories and photos from Paradise are gut wrenching. 

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And I have friends in Conway S.C who are STILL ripping out drywall and floors from "Florence". The town is stil a mess.

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Bonnie, Hope you are doing well. My best friend's (Roger, the Cobra pilot and builder) wife just got home from a successsful mastectomy.

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So is this where we all say - grateful to be alive?

Jeanine Eilers (Decker)

Tim— so sorry about your in-laws losses.  Hope they will have a new home and something to be thankful for soon.

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Thank you, Father, for having created us and given us to each other in the human family. Thank you for being with us in all our joys and sorrows, for your comfort in our sadness, your companionship in our loneliness. Thank you for yesterday, today, tomorrow and for the whole of our lives. Thank you for friends, for health and for grace. May we live this and every day conscious of all that has been given to us.

Amen

An additional thought. Giving thanks as a nation goes back to President George Washington's Proclamation of 1789.  It might do us all well to re-read it in light of our current political and cultural division.  

Happy Thanksgiving.

MM

https://youtu.be/FdLDS7COr-0

Michael McLeod

I'm waiting on someone from I.C. to tell me they have a specific memory of duck and cover armageddon drills. 

Just out of curiousity. 'Cause again - I do not remember this supposedly iconic experience of our generation. 

And I want all the excuses I can come up with to blame my bad behavior as an adult on childhood traumas that were beyond my control. 

Plus there have been lots of studies about memory that include the phenomenon of "implanted" memories -- particularly among children -- meaning stories you have heard so often that your mind tricks you into thinking they happened. 

Like how that one time you borrowed that 200 bucks from me dave - hey when am I getting it back?

Mark Schweickart

Tim -- Excellent portrayal of Thanksgiiving at the LaVelle's. You never fail to amuse with your sarcastic wit and wisdom.

Mike -- I went through this same dilemma about the duck and cover drills at St. Michaels on the forum a year or two ago, and it was decided that we too never had such drills, (and thankfully, we did not have a Hurricane Foley to dive from).

To all of you Forum particpants -- thanks for another year of lively observations and conversation.

James Hamilton, M. D.

Kathleen Wintering (Nagy)

Tim. I am so sorry to hear about your relatives losing two homes in Paradise, California!  What a rough year it has been for people out there with all of these fires. We all need to pray for some decent rains out there. Kathy Wintering Nagy

Kathleen Wintering (Nagy)

 Mike: I definitely remember drills where I was under the desk growing up! I also remember my second graders doing when I was a teacher in North Baltimore, Ohio many years ago! Kathy Wintering Nagy