Message Forum

Fist Bump Season

Lot of primaries today. I am particularly interested in Arizona, where it would appear, all three importonat offices - Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State will fall into the hands of conspiracy theorists. It boggles my mind that people can allow themselves to be so easiely lured away from the facts.

Remember, Arizona had three official recounts, and the "pro-Trump" "Ninja so and sos" firm they hired to do that long drawn out recount in that fairgrounds building came up with a few hundred more votes for Biden than first thought. And the charge that some of 280 odd votes were cast by dead people was later proven to be completely fabricated - I beleive they called every sngle person and found it was actually one single dead voter.

But my expectation is that tonight will confirm the beginning of the end for our democratic system.

Will we see more fist bumps?

(or Senators running in fear of their lives?)

---------------------

Just had to throw this one more thing in. Speaking of lies and conspiracies - check out what this guy Mike Peroutka (running for Marlyland's AG) said on his radio shows a few years back;

The Republican Party's nominee for Maryland attorney general hosted a series of five radio shows in 2006 devoted to arguing in support of 9/11 conspiracy theories questioning if the terror attack was the work of an "elite bureaucrat" who had demolition charges in every building in New York City and even suggesting if those who died after a hijacked plane hit the Pentagon were killed elsewhere.

Michael Peroutka, a candidate best known for his ties to neo-Confederate organizations, made the remarks on The American View, a radio show he co-hosted, in October 2006 while discussing the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

(the whole article goes on and gets even worse. He claims that teh second building did not have a plane fly into it, but it was instead, a missile disguised as an airliner)

GOOD LUCK, MARYLAND VOTERS!

08/04/22 08:28 AM

#11424

Saturday at 4:20 A.M. (California time - 7:20 Columbus time) we finally got underway on our trip to the midwest.

A quick (45+ minutes) just East of Sacramento we stopped for a McDonalds breakfast (don't ask). Then we continued on the approximately 90 miles of mostly uphill twisting roads towards Reno. On the Eastern side of Reno we stopped for fuel, Nevada, excluding the mountainous ride UP from Sacramento is an awesome drive. About four hundred miles of I-80 through some beautiful scenery. Then into Utah. At this point the scenery is almost like the lunar surface - Bleak. You must remember that for over a hundred miles you are looking at Salt flats beginning with the famous Bonevillle Salt Flats and ending with what is left of the Great Salt Lake. The temperature was over 102 degrees through the Salt Flats and into Salt Lake City. We stopped for the night in the city of Murray (a suburbs of Salt Lake City) to end about 8:45 P.M. Mountain time.

The next day, Sunday, we started (8:10 A.M. local) East on I-80 with a climb up the mountains towards Park City (where they held Winter Olympics years ago.) The climb (about 30 miles to Park City) is much harder than the climb from Sacramento to Reno. You are constantly going through right then left curves, it is a trucker's nightmare. After Park City the road mainly levels out, but the scenery is often very Western spectacular. We continued East into Wyoming, passing through Laramie then Cheyenne, where they were holding Frontier Days Rodeo, etc.. Pushed into Wyoming and on to North Platte, WY for the night. Settling in about 9:25 P.M., after another hour change,

More tomorrow. That;s a THREAT!!!!!!

08/04/22 10:12 AM

#11425

Thanks Joe. Feel likeI've been on a roller coaster ride just from reading that. Safe travels and I'm looking forward to your next installment. If you were in my class you'd get an A for your prose.

Speaking of class: Florida is 9000 short of public school teachers as classes start. Just in case anybody's got grandkids in the teaching game. Come on down!

08/04/22 05:31 PM

#11426

Damn it, Joe,

I'm getting car sick.

-------------------------------

BTW, As you travel east of Reno, I think you pass near the "Fallon Payute-Shoshone" Tribal reservation. Had a special member of my Troop in Vinh Long from there. A Native American, West Point grad, Green Beret and helicopter pilot. A very likeable young Captain and quite a guy. Obviously a bit of an underachiever. Been trying to locate his family near the reservation for several years.

Always wanted to ski Park City. Next door neighbor's daughter is a ski instructor there.

08/05/22 07:47 AM

#11427

Dave, as I recall, Fallon is about an hour East of Reno. As I remember it there is a military air base located there. Don't recall if that is the Naval or Air Force base; the other (base) is located on Route 50 that runs from I-70 in Colorado to Sacramento, CA while passing through Ely, NV, the other "F" ( starts with F) Air Base town, the Silver Mining towns, Lake Tahoe, and into Sacramento. Route 50, as I previously said, is one of my favorite roads when I'm not in a hurry.

Route 50 in Colorado follows/joins with I-70 for a distance then heads Southerly towards Pueblo. Another beautiful drive if one is not in a hurry.

08/05/22 12:47 PM

#11428

send me his name and his reservation/tribal affiliation if you know it dave.

longshot but I have a first nations piece in the works and may run into somebody helpful.

OR I could have paid more attention to your post, as I see just now.

Duh.

Here's a preview I just wrote that has to do with he story I am talking about. It is about an art exhibit that with travel here in a couple of months. I'll be meeting the artists when they come to town. It's a long shot but there may be someone affliliated with the exhibit who might be helpful. The book I mention is just astounding. I love their native american nicknames for him,

Disappearing Act
Google “American Indian photographs.” Most of the images you’ll see were made
a century ago by one man: Edward Sheriff Curtis. “Shadow Catcher,” as some ofthe tribes came to call him, spent the first three decades of the 20 th century in a single-minded journey through the western United States to photograph rapidly dwindling First Nation communities and capture the essence of their lifestyle andbeliefs. (His single luxury, an inflatable mattress, gave rise to another Native American nickname: “Man Who Sleeps on His Breath.”)

One of the few white men who not only saw but came to understand the depth and meaning of a sacred
sun dance, Curtis tautly answered those who dismissed it as naïve superstition by
explaining: “To say they are just worshipping the sun is like saying Christians
worship the cross.” He would eventually publish a 20-volume ethnography,
illustrated with some of the more than more than 40,000 rotogravure photos he
took while being driven by his conviction that Native Americans were soon to
tragically disappear.
Now Google “American Indian population, 2022,” and you’ll see that they did not.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the current United States Native American
population is 6.79 million. However noble, Curtis’s crusade and the photos he took
play no small part in a persistent, western-movie type stereotype imbedded in our
collective consciousness. That stereotype has inspired a generation of modern
native-American visual artists to provide visual perspectives of their own as
updated counterpoints. Among them is Will Wilson, a Navajo who grew up on
Indian land in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah who has embarked on a
photographic journey of his own. Some of his images, paired as a visual
counterpoint with a selection of Curtis’s early 20 th century photos, will be on
display at the Mennello Museum of American Art from Oct. 28 through Feb. 12.
He uses a 19 th century photographic process and an updated philosophy about
collaborating with his subjects to take tintype portraits of modern Native
Americans in a studio setting. The images themselves are arresting in part because
of the clash between the antiquity of the sepia-tinted photographic process and the
candid modernity of the faces.
Curtis crafted painterly images that put the figures in his photos on a romanticized
pedestal. Wilson strives for a more realistic dynamic. He draws his subjects into a
collaborative process, asking them to dress however they like, and further
personalizes the process by making audio recordings of them and posting them on
the Internet paired with the photos: He calls them “talking tintypes.” His
subjects can speak for themselves – and they aren’t about to disappear into the
mist.
Wilson also presents each of them with the original daguerreotype, thinking of it as
a modern-day ceremony of empowerment. He says he often wonders: “What if an Indian invented photography? Would there be another set of relations and traditions associated with making that imagery?”

Like any good artist, he’s is in the process of answering his own questions.

08/05/22 04:14 PM

#11429

Yeah Mike,

It was the "Fallon Payute-Shoshone" reservation east of Reno, NV. The guy I was referring to was the one killed in a dreadful crash after he bugged me to switch aircraft with him. I posted the story a year or so ago. Classmate Sheila McCarthy, who lived in nearby Gardenerville NV helped me find some info on him and I got more off of the tribal website. Tried to contact the family but hard to get a response from the closed Tribal offices and family phone numbers disconnected. I think their tribe was hit hard by Covid and the tribal offices were closed for a long time. I should pick up again where I left off but a lot on my plate lately.

The frustrating thing is that I found a story about his family - with photos - being hosted as a our "Gold Star" family at one of the Vietnam Helicopter Pilot's Association annual renions, held that year, (about 10 years ago) in Reno. It had photos and names of family members and I could not reach a single one of them by phone.

08/05/22 08:26 PM

#11430

So there we were Monday morning ( 8:10 A.M.) leaving North Platte, NE, headed for Bloomington, IL. Ahead lies the second and third worst parts of the trip, depending what time you enter and leave Omaha, NE and Des Moines, IA. There can be heavy traffic when you consider that the approximately 650 miles is across open farm land . Don't get me wrong it's a nice part of the country, but compared to Nevada and Utah, it is not as exciting. But you do get to drive and drive across what would have been Prairie. MM a note at this point. The drive takes you past miles and miles and fields and fields of fuel for vehicles (read CORN.)

Once through most of the trip on I-80 you come to THE I-80 Truck Stop; the largest truck stop in the country if not the world. Tried it once and now stop across I-80 at a Love's truck stop for fuel before taking the outer-belt around the Quad Cities and heading for I-74 towards Indianapolis, Aside, when is Indianapolis going to be "politically correct" and change thier name to something besides Indian_______.

We finally made landfall at Bloomington. Checked into the Hampton and grabbed a quick meal at the Bob Evans rather than the Cracker Barrel we usually stop at for dinner. A quick stop for petrol (gasoline) and back to the Hampton at 8:55 P.M., tomorrow we have the last time change.

I can almost smell the food at Polaris Grill; but that will be days away. Tomorrow is the fourth worst section of the trip. The outerbelt around Indianapolis and I-70 into Columbus. WHY don't they expand the roadway to six or more lanes (three or more East and West?

Good night all.

08/06/22 08:34 AM

#11431

takes a warrior to drive long distance these days, Joe. You need to get a st. christopher tatoo.

In the meantime, for anyone else who loves words as I do, here is sheer poetry - but poetry in motion, if you will.

A fabulous moment, and the oral history that goes with it. Worth your while whether you love baseball or not. It may remind you of the famous quote: "God is in the details." There's no telling for sure who said it first, but it's often wrongly attributed to a German architect. As a writer that is the gold I am always mining for: the little things that say a lot.

link below just copy and paste

https://www.salon.com/1999/10/12/scully_koufax/

08/07/22 04:20 PM

#11432

Mike I had hoped that at least you would have caught my WORST in my post.

At 7:45 A.M. (Columbus time) I had a nice drive up to Cleveland (Ohio) area; the return was marred by the rain and the crazy California drivers who forgot the are required to turn their headlights on whenever they have to use their windshield wipers. Just under two hours up North and almost three coming back (12:03 P.M. till 2:48 P.M. Oh well it was worth it - JANIE I acquired two more for the reunion.

Joe

08/07/22 08:03 PM

#11433

Mark Schweickart

Mike – Thanks for the link to Vin Sculley’s play-by-play poetic riffing as Sandy Koufax blazed through the ninth inning to complete his perfect game back in 1965. All these years later, reading Sculley's description was so vivid it put me on the edge of my seat just reading it, even though I already knew the outcome. I can see why you were impressed by his verbal dexterity.

Although, to be quite honest, after Koufax finished retiring the 27th batter to secure not only the win, but a place in baseball history, I was left scratching my head by the way Sculley ended his excited remarks with, "And Sandy Koufax, whose name will always remind you of strikeouts, did it with a flurry. He struck out the last six consecutive batters. So when he wrote his name in capital letters in the record books, that "K" stands out even more than the O-U-F-A-X.”

And as I just said, I was left thinking,” What…? Why does the “K” stand out?”

I am afraid I am not a big enough baseball fan, so I was not aware that a baseball scorecard uses “K” to denote a strikeout. It dawned on me that this, or something like this, must be what Sculley was assuming his listeners would know. So, to be sure that I was guessing correctly, I googled up the answer. (Is “googled up” an expression?) Anyway, I did indeed guess correctly, and while on this hunt for the elusive K-meaning, I discovered another piece of baseball probably-forgotten lore that you may find interesting, being the journalist that you are. Are you aware that there is only one journalist who is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame?

"And why is that," you may ask?" And who is that?" The answer lies in the creation of the enigmatic "K" for "strikeout."

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "The box score of a baseball game is filled with all kinds of shorthand, which is necessitated by the desire for a concise encapsulation of the contest and by the constraints of print space, since box scores were found only in newspapers for the first century of their existence. As a result, baseball fans are familiar with the common abbreviations of the box score, such as E (error), HR (home run), DP (double play), and SB (stolen base). All of those have fairly obvious origins, but what about K, which stands for strikeout?

The use of K has arguably transcended the box score to a greater degree than any other shorthand notation. The letter is often chanted by fans in a stadium when an opponent has two strikes, and placards with K on them are frequently displayed around a stadium to count how many strikeouts the home team’s pitcher has tallied. However, most of these fans are likely not aware that the catchy abbreviation they’re using owes its origin to a 19th-century Englishman who simply ran out of letters.

That man, Henry Chadwick, was a writer who had transferred his love of cricket to baseball when he saw the new game played in 1856. While working as a baseball reporter, Chadwick created many of the now-common features of baseball scoring and statistics keeping, including the numbers used to denote defensive positions (1 for pitcher, 2 for catcher, etc.). He had already chosen S to stand for sacrifice in a box score, so he used K for a strikeout, since that is the last letter in “struck,” which was at the time the most popular way to refer to a batter’s being out after three strikes. (A backwards K has come to indicate that a batter struck out without swinging at the third strike.) Chadwick’s box score of an 1859 game has been recognized as the first box score ever (although there are a number of sources that dispute this claim), and his choices made in it have reverberated throughout baseball history. His impact on how we describe the game was so great that Chadwick became the only journalist officially enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame."

Anyway, as I am sure everyone knows, Vin Sculley passed away this week, after calling baseball games for 67 years. Wow. He sort of out-classed any pitcher’s perfect nine innings with that stat, wouldn’t you say?

08/07/22 08:24 PM

#11434

Mark:

Thanks for the response. I can see that you and I share a fascination with letters and the trivia thereof. I think we can pardon Vince for his occasional obscurities. People like that fascinate me. I have a great respect and a longstanding awe with obsession of any sort, but particularly with letters -- oh, I mean letters in the broader sense, as a synonym for literature.

I have developed a fabulous relationship with Billy Collins, the two-time us poet laureate who retired to a community near me, and I'm always fascinated by the weird little channels of fascinating literati and word usage weirdnesses he takes me down when we meet. He's one of those people that when you are with him you just sit back and listen and feel like you just tuned into a really cool show on pbs.

Hoping to get to the reunion.

08/07/22 09:21 PM

#11435

Janie Albright (Blank)

REUNION UPDATE

We are 4 weeks out from our 55th +1 high school reunion. We are closing in on about 50 classmates plus various spouses on top of that number. Lots from out of state and out of town. Many of you making a great effort to attend. If you haven't sent an email yet please do so we can add you to the list. There are some of you who always come that we haven't heard from yet. Hopefully just an oversight.

Watterson1966@aol.com

08/07/22 09:30 PM

#11436

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mark,

Thank you for that historical information - and I chose that word instead of "trivia" - because it is a part of Americana and "America's Pastime". I always wondered how "K" became the symbol for strike out.

You know, we discuss a lot of things on this Forum and I think we all have learned many things from the thoughts, lives and experiences of our fellow classmates. I know that I have and it has brought me closer to some of you with whom I had but casual relationships back at Watterson. Yes, we argue politics but that seldom (if ever) leads to a change in how we think or what we believe.

Four weeks from today I look forward to seeing many of you in person at our 55+1 Reunion. Wow, are we getting old or what? But it will be just a continuation of what we have been doing here on a regular basis. And it is my hope that more will join the Forum and educate us on things that have been important to them and enriched their lives. Perhaps tuneing down or even turning off the politics will bring more on board. It is not too late in our lives to learn and we all have something to teach.

Let's put our Golden Years to good use.

Jim

08/08/22 02:20 PM

#11437

Growing up, Sandy Koufax was one of my idols. I loved watching pitchers, and he was like no other. I think it was Richie Ashburn who struck out 5 times in one game facing Koufax and later said something like, "Either I'm going blind, or he is the fastest pitcher I've ever faced. I also loved the Cardinals Bob Gibson, who was also capable of simply blowing it past most hitters with his fastball.

Speaking of great pitchers, my first major league baseball game (about 5th grade, with John Jackson, our two dad's, and another friend) at old Cleveland Municipal Stadium was a game in which Yankees great Whitey Ford pitched against Clevelands's Herb Score.

08/09/22 11:27 AM

#11438

Ditto with your sentiment about politics, Jim.

I stopped posting overtly political opinions here quite some time ago in deference to the sentimental tack our upcoming reunion will surely take.

And I'm glad everybody enjoyed the Sandy "K" for strikeout" Koufax material.

08/09/22 12:59 PM

#11439

Good idea Mike,

Not much happenin' in politics these days anyway - right?

Not much!

08/09/22 01:40 PM

#11440

It's a real test of character, Dave. Like I'm on a diet and somebody just baked me a rhubard pie.

08/09/22 02:54 PM

#11441

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mike,

As a fan of words, it is interesting that, what with our recent baseball lingo discussion, you chose a rhubarb pie in your post regarding avoiding political arguments. Do you know how that word is used in baseball?

Jim

08/09/22 02:59 PM

#11442

Jim: Now that you mention it, let's just say I'd like to think I did it on purpose. I do remember the usage -- not sure if it's still in play, so to speak -- of "rhubarb" being used as baseball slang, (and strictly baseball, I don't recall it being used as applied to any other sport, at least regularly) to describe a heated argument over a disputed call or whatever.

And I will also say, in all honesty, that we had rhubarb growing in our back yard as I grew up, and that my mother served up rhubarb for us, cooked just by itself as a breakfast dish, and more often as pies the likes of which I've not seen since.

There is one store down here in Orlando that offers them, and they're good but nothing like the confections I enjoyed at 580 East North Broadway, Columbus, Ohio, way back when.

I have encountered but utterly reject strawberry/rhubarb pies, which are for sissies.

If you've ever see the plant itself it's a homely soul -- just big elephant ear leaves growing low to the earth, knee level at best, on stalks that turn red as they ripen.

But I'm not the kind of guy to judge either plants or people by how they look. Particularly when I glimpse myself in the mirror these days.

08/09/22 06:33 PM

#11443

John Jackson

Dave, I remember the game we went to with our dads in Cleveland. What I remember even more is how, on the drive home, after they thought we had fallen asleep in the back seat, our dads discussed the Communist menace and the possibility of nuclear annihilation. It scared the living daylights out of me…

And now Putin’s up to the same old tricks and Russia still has its nukes. If I’m not mistaken, Yogi Berra had a relevant saying about the current situation in Ukraine.

08/09/22 10:14 PM

#11444

ok ok don't tell me I think I've got it.

was it "90 percent of the game is half mental?"

Or was it: "I knew the record would stand until it was broken"?

08/10/22 11:53 AM

#11445

PS On rhubarb:

I KNEW there was something else about its usage that I had forgotten, and it nagged at me till I woke up this morning and remembered: "rhubard" was introduced and popularized as a term to refer to a heated argument by Red Barber, the immortal radio commentator for the Cincinnati Reds.

So that is, you could say, a home-grown term as far as we who were raised in Ohio are concerned.

Although that is stretching it a bit given that Barber, who went on to call games for the Dodgers when they were still in NYC, grew up in the south, and that was where he heard many of the bucolic terms that he used while broadcasting games.

I found a list of some of them on wikipedia. Enjoy.

A croker sack, if that one puzzles you, is a sack that flour came in. Country people kept them around and used them for various other purposes.

Barber became famous for his signature catchphrases, including these:

"They're tearin' up the pea patch" – used for a team on a winning streak.
"The bases are F.O.B. (full of Brooklyns)" – indicating the Dodgers had loaded the bases.
"Can of corn" – describing a softly hit, easily caught fly ball.
"Rhubarb" – any kind of heated on-field dispute or altercation.
"Sittin' in the catbird seat" – used when a player or team was performing exceptionally well.
"Walkin' in the tall cotton" – also used to describe success.
"Slicker than boiled okra" – describing a ball that a fielder was unable to get a grip on.
"Easy as a bank of fog" – describing the graceful movement of a fielder.
"Tighter than a new pair of shoes on a rainy day" – describing a closely contested game.
"Tied up in a croker sack" – describing a one-sided game where the outcome was all but decided.

08/10/22 12:58 PM

#11446

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mike,

Looks like we have "slud" into a facet of baseball that outpaces all other sports and sports players/ commentators: colorful and down home sayings. We can add to Yogi and Red perhaps one of the best - Dizzy Dean.

They don't make 'em like those guys anymore.

Jim

08/10/22 03:13 PM

#11447