Message Forum

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Let me offer a sincere thanks to everyone for the condolences. Those were very kind of you. But as Dr. Jim said, at our age unfortunately, this loss of close loved ones will become a more regular occurrance we all willl have to deal with (unless we are the ones being mourned, that is. Yikes.)

Note to Jack – Actually you are confusing my brother Tom with my bother Bob. But your sentiments still apply however, because poor Tom also passed away 10 months ago from a brain tumor. It has been a helluva year.

Anyway, enough about my situation, let's move on to sparring about politics, or goofy posts, etc.

Oh, and Jack I forgot to comment about your previous post about Dick Cheney. How ironic was it for him to be introduced with the Darth Vader musical theme as he came to the podium? This was long before his VP years when he proved himself most worthy of that association, was it not? Was that choice of music made by him or one of your crewmates? Maybe you yourself was the prescient one?

02/23/21 02:59 PM

#9084

“Do you believe that illegal entry at America’s borders should remain a crime?” The man who seeks to be the U.S. top law enforcement officer, cannot muster anything other than a non-committal answer. This is not complicated if we are, indeed, a nation of laws.

https://youtu.be/YLG5u7tpv3o

02/24/21 01:14 PM

#9085

Mary Anne McMahon (Herbst)

I heard from Ruth (Thomas) Thompson that her husband, Jim, passed away in October. They live in Florida and have for the last 5-6 years. Her address is 15 Boca Ciega St., Nokomis, FL 34275

02/24/21 03:03 PM

#9086

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Democrats are such wimps.

WASHINGTON — Days after President Biden took office, the Bureau of Land Management put a scenic landscape of a winding river at the top of its website, which during the previous administration had featured a photograph of a huge wall of coal.

02/24/21 05:14 PM

#9087

April, 2017

"The (BLM) agency says the coal photo was not intended to signal a shift in priorities and is instead part of a new digital strategy, where each week it will showcase a different scene from its vast land holdings — some 245 million acres, mostly located in the western United States."

https://www.fox13now.com/2017/04/07/photo-of-coal-on-bureau-of-land-managements-website-creates-confusion/

02/25/21 01:51 PM

#9088

Swamped Orlando White Castle ghost kitchen will reopen Thursday for pickup only

Sure we have sunshine and fresh air and hey I just walked out into my back yard to check out my flowering shrubs in full bloom and I had to cut the grass and clean out the swimming pool while I was at it.

But for all that I envy you guys who are still in Columbus town -- and so, apparently, do my friends and neighbors.

From today's Orlando Sentinel:

Facing overwhelming demand, White Castle shut down its Orlando ghost kitchen Thursday until the burger chain’s full restaurant opens near Disney World this spring.

It was like “having a dinner party for eight and 800 people showed up,” White Castle vice president Jamie Richardson said.

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He offered a “heartfelt apology to anyone who was hoping to be able to enjoy White Castle sooner.”

The White Castle ghost kitchen at 18 N. Dollins Ave. opened Tuesday and sold out within a few hours. It shut down Wednesday and re-opened briefly Thursday but had to stop orders within the first half-hour because of the demand, Richardson said.

The operation at the Dollins Avenue kitchen, which did not have a dining room, won’t come back online until the largest free-standing White Castle opens this spring in the O-Town West development on Daryl Carter Parkway near Disney, Richardson said. It will be the first White Castle in Florida since the 1960s.

FEB 24, 2021 AT 1:07 PM

“We are so glad we chose Orlando,” Richardson said. “We’re so glad we chose Central Florida. ... We’re just not used to that many people in a virtual kitchen situation using that resource.”

Twenty-one people worked at the restaurant, Richardson said.

Three are in manager roles and will be trained elsewhere, he said. The remaining employees will be offered the chance to draw pay from White Castle as they work for a local charity as the Orlando restaurants come back, but the details are still being determined, Richardson said.

Ghost kitchens do not have dining rooms and typically offer only delivery and takeout. The facility on Dollins Avenue has space for multiple restaurants and the Orlando Sentinel reported last year it was linked to Uber founder Travis Kalanick’s ghost kitchen business.

The O-Town West White Castle will be 4,567 square feet and feature two drive-through lanes along with indoor and outdoor seating

02/25/21 03:51 PM

#9089

Jack: a belated thanks for your extended yarn - particularly for the 9/11 experience. I got sent up there for that but was not that close to ground zero.

02/25/21 11:43 PM

#9090

My mom was an office telephone operator for the Headquarters of White Castle back aroung the late 20's or early 30's - one of her first jobs. She told about being there when they first installed those fancy "new" switchboards where they would pull the plug and long cord out of one connection and stick it into one of the other connections on the big board - ala Lily Tomlin and "one ringy dingy".

She and I used to love to go down to the one on High Street at the bottom of the hill on Arcadia and buy a bag full at the drive-thru window. She asked me to bring her WC's once a week during the last few months of her life.

She attended the office employee reunions until her 70's.

"America's only steam-grilled burgers"

and don't forget Mike, the holes are free.

02/26/21 11:28 AM

#9091

Dave: All I know is I'm thrilled they're turning up down here -- and not at all surprised at the frenzy.

I buy the frozen ones on occasion but it's just not the same.

Now if I could just get the Skyline cheese coneys I got addicted to when I was writing for the Cincinnati Enquirer to establish an outlet down here I can die happy. Of arteriosclerosis, probably.

Meanwhile here, for your reading enjoyment, is the sobering but gorgeously crafted beginning to a story about the lasting impact of the corona virus on humanity:

Last spring, coyotes strolled down the streets of San Francisco in broad daylight. Pods of rarely seen pink dolphins cavorted in the waters around Hong Kong. In Tel Aviv, jackals wandered a city park, a herd of mountain goats took over a town in Wales, and porcupines ambled through Rome’s ancient ruins. As the canals in Venice turned strangely clear, cormorants started diving for fish, and Canada geese escorted their goslings down the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard, passing empty shops displaying Montblanc pens and Fendi handbags.

Nature was expanding as billions of people were retreating from the Covid-19 pandemic. The change was so swift, so striking that scientists needed a new name for it: the anthropause.

But the anthropause did more than reconfigure the animal kingdom. It also altered the planet’s chemistry. As factories grew quiet and traffic dropped, ozone levels fell by 7 percent across the Northern Hemisphere. As air pollution across India dropped by a third, mountain snowpacks in the Indus Basin grew brighter. With less haze in the atmosphere, the sky let more sunlight through. The planet’s temperature temporarily jumped between a fifth and half of a degree.

At the same time, the pandemic etched a scar across humanity that will endure for decades. More than 2.4 million people have died so far from Covid-19, and millions more have suffered severe illness. In the United States, life expectancy fell by a full year in the first six months of 2020; for Black Americans, the drop was 2.7 years. The International Monetary Fund predicts that the global economy will lose over $22 trillion between 2020 and 2025. Unicef is warning that the pandemic could produce a “lost generation.”

02/27/21 03:01 PM

#9092

Mike – Thank you for that piece you just posted and called "gorgeously crafted," but whose writing is this? Is it yours, and you were just being self-deprecating by over praising yourself, or is it somenone else's? It was indeed "gorgeously crafted."

02/27/21 06:35 PM

#9093

Mark: If I thought I could pull it off I suppose I would try being self-deprecating while over-praising myself.

If you know how to do a trick like that please tell me your secret.

Hopefully that answers you question, but just in case it didn't:

No. I didn't write that. Wish I had. That story was the top of a piece that ran in the New York Times.

I'm just accustomed to sharing great writing with students and colleagues - especially very well done introductions, because that's aways the hardest part - and I guess sometimes that habit of mine overlaps here and I guess I should be more specific with quote marks, etc. instead of using my usual shorthand.

By the way, here's who your voice reminds me of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGD2N5hJ2e0

02/28/21 02:05 PM

#9094

Mike – I'll take that comparison to Nick Cave as a compliment. Much better than being compared to the gravel-throated sound of Tom Waits or the nasal-ized sound of Bob Dylan, but still, I know I am an acquired taste, to say the least.

02/28/21 03:42 PM

#9095

Yeah I'd like to hear you sing that song I sent.

Sure sounds like a sweet song to sing.

Alliteration is dangerous in the wrong hands, kids. I'm a professional. Don't try this at home.

03/01/21 02:00 PM

#9096

Mike – I find the lyrics of this song by Nick Cave creepily evocative, which I like to an extent, but in the end they are too many that remain too obscure for my taste. How many of us are supposed to recognize that his main image, "the red right hand" is an allusion to Milton"s description of God's vengeful hand ready to strike us sinners in Paradise Lost ? As for all of the other weird images, I have no idea. (Of course, I had to look up that Milton reference, although of course I would like to pretend otherwise.)

The only song I have ever written that has anything approaching this sort of creepy theme is this one I call Celebration Day. It imagines someone ready to toast a success (a political victory perhaps, but not necessarily), however his celebration is marred when his repressed conscience surfaces to become the voice of the song.

03/01/21 02:20 PM

#9097

Yeah Mark you nailed it. it was the creepy part that reminded me of you.

Actually the balance between being subtle and evocative while avoiding being just plain vague is the secret of songwriting.

Here's an example below.

People aren't even sure about the recurring name. Annie? Fanny?

Somehow it makes just enough sense to be a classic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph1GU1qQ1zQ

03/01/21 11:08 PM

#9098

https://www.newcomercolumbus.com/Obituary/196558/John-Kincaid/Columbus-OH

Almost forgot - It's St.Davids Day!

(for anothe hour or so)

I have been away from the forum for a few days and almost missed this opportunity to remind all of you that this is a HUGE day on the calendar of all Welshmen. It is St. David's Day - and all Wales has celebrated the day for millennia. St. David was the son of a 6th (or 7th?) Century King and a Nun - go figure.

One of my mother's grandmothers, Liza Jones, was born in Merthyer Tydfil, Wales and came to America as an orphan (as did one of my dad's grandmothers - but from Ireland). Merthyer Tydfil is sort of famous for two things (that I know of);

First, Richard Trevithick built the firtst steam engine in Merthyer Tydfil in 1804,

and Second, in 1966, in Aberfan, very near Merthyer Tydfil a mud slide of giganitc proportions (actually not mud but mining tailings - like slag) was released in a rain storm and flowed into the town and it's school building, killing 144 people, mostly school children. My mothers aunt, who lived in the ugliest house up near the beginnig of Abbington Road, still wrote to the distant cousins in Wales and informed my mother that we had lost 7 cousins in that tragic tailings pond slide. I was told the Beatles actually did a benefit concert to aid the town and the victim's families.

So Here is my salute to Wales and St. David.

I know only a bit about Wales. It is said to be gorgeous (in parts), they play soccer (with a passion), they drink (with a passion), and they sing (with even more passion). Every little tiny vilage has a men's choir. And they don't think much of the English.

Oh, and they have lots of words with double and triple L's, W's, and Y's.

(OOPs. I think I failed to make the connection that St. David is the patron saint of Wales.)

03/02/21 05:08 AM

#9099

Fred Clem

John Kincaid obituary:

May he rest in peace.

03/02/21 07:57 AM

#9100

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Thank you for sharing, Fred. Someone once said, "You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough." John certainly did it right! Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lird.

03/02/21 09:45 AM

#9101

A Big Life. Better than any work of art. Thanks Fred.

03/02/21 09:59 AM

#9102

James Hamilton, M. D.

A life well lived by a good man. RIP, John.

Jim

03/02/21 10:00 AM

#9103

Seems like a million years ago since I remember John in his basketball uniform at JV practices. Always a jokester. I struck him out a couple times in 8th grade baseball. The one game that I managed to get my pitches over the plate - LOL. Never knew him well but always a nice guy.

Wasn't John a part of that trio on talent day - in the gym? - - with Tim and Mike Haggerty? I thought they were pretty darn good.

And as for his service - "Welcome Home Brother". You deserve it.

03/02/21 11:07 PM

#9104

If I may touch on St. David's Day again and the subject of Wales - and movies.

Later this month, many of us will be recalling a great film for St. Patrick's Day (The Quiet Man - 1952 - John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara) - which I just enjoyed with friends tonight for perhaps the 20th time. It's a life-long family favorite.

But there is also a Hollywood "Welsh" film that is one of those wonderful sentimetnal family films.

"How Green Was My Valley" - 1941 winner of Best Picture, Director (John Ford - same director as The Quiet Man), and a few other Oscars, is something to enjoy, with Maureen O'Hara (again) and Walter Pidgeon. It's black and white, but oh, so good. Young Roddy McDowall (about 13) acts in the film as well as narrating it. Poor coal miners in Wales during changing times. Part of my Mother' family would have probably lived such a life back in the day.

From my Dad's favorite novel by Richard Llewellyn.

03/03/21 11:25 AM

#9105