Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

Be careful how much nutmeg you use on your pumpkin pies tomorrow [yesterday now]: "A Warning on Nutmeg." Excerpt:

The spice trade first brought nutmeg to Europe in the 12th century, where it rapidly gained a reputation as a seed of unusual potency, strong enough to fight infection (including the Black Plague), stimulating enough to bring on menstruation, poisonous enough to induce an abortion. It also earned shady credentials for inducing a kind of hazy, druglike high that could include hallucinations.

I tagged you in a post on Facebook: "The Most Honest Three Minutes in Television History." [Would embed the code, but "embedding disabled by request."
    Article on Naked Capitalism site. Excerpt:

...from HBO’s The Newsroom, starring Jeff Daniels, the “We Just Decided To” episode...The scene is one of those “town halls,” with a moderator and some talking heads (Daniels plays Will McAvoy, a network anchor), held in an auditorium at Northwestern University. During the question period, a student steps up to the mic....]

My desk in Annapolis has a sign on it that reads, “No Irish need apply.”
    The sign is a reminder that almost all of us were once strangers in a strange land, and that we should do what we can to respect and appreciate the dignity of every individual.
    Our diversity is our greatest strength. And the phrase on the seal of the United States – E Pluribus Unum – is not some bygone slogan from yesterday. It is the energy that fuels this great nation’s future.
    That’s why I’m thrilled by [last week]’s long-awaited victory for families across America – families that are American in every way except on paper....
    Unfortunately, Republicans are already threatening to shut down the government and block the new Attorney General nominee in response to the President’s action. President Obama needs to know that we stand with him.

George Packer nails the Republican Party to the cross they've constructed for themselves: "The Harder Part." Excerpt:

On November 4th, [the GOP's strategy] all seemed to pay off....The Party that has spent the past six years doing everything in its power to prevent the President from stimulating growth, boosting wages, improving infrastructure, controlling health-care costs, and regulating Wall Street was rewarded with clear majorities in both houses. The only prize left is the big one in 2016.
    Republican leaders, determined to prove that they can build as well as destroy, have made a mighty effort not to seem high on victory....
    There are reasons to be skeptical that the Party has really turned a corner on its chronic obstructionism. Within ten days of the election, McConnell was sounding like himself again. After China and the United States announced common goals for reducing greenhouse gases, he accused Obama of sending “a signal that he has no intention of moving toward the middle”—a place, apparently, where the two parties agree on limitless carbon emissions from coal plants, like the ones in McConnell’s home state, Kentucky. The House Speaker, John Boehner, concurred: “The President intends to double down on his job-crushing policies no matter how devastating the impact.”
    The recent, utterly alarming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change got through to the Chinese leadership, but not to the G.O.P.’s. The probable next chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is James Inhofe, of Oklahoma, who has called global warming a “hoax.” He’s joined in ignorance by Senator Ted Cruz, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Science and Space....
    In a post-election editorial, the conservative National Review...urged the Republican leadership to dedicate itself to one goal: winning the White House—an extension of McConnell’s stated determination in 2010 to make Obama a one-term President. In both cases, the main objective is power. You can hear the voice of the Party’s enablers: why sober up now that the bad behavior is paying off?

I was startled to learn of Mo Knudsen’s death in last week's column. It was the first I’d heard of it. Did I miss something? To add to the confusion, I thought he’d died a few years ago.
    Ave atque vale. One of my three or four best teachers ever...and one of the best men I’ve ever known.

I remember our father's Panhard running and we took it to the "farm" – three acres with thirty or so California oaks. The car looked like a mouse to me. Only one of the many wild rides with Mo.

Yet another stunning road. Stelvio Pass, Eastern Alps, Italy:

    The Stelvio Pass, located in Italy, at 2757 m (9045 feet) is the highest paved mountain pass in the Eastern Alps, and the second highest in the Alps, slightly below the Col de l’Iseran (2770 m, 9088 feet). Stelvio was also picked by the British automotive show Top Gear as its choice for the “greatest driving road in the world”, although their search was concentrated only in Europe. This conclusion was reached after the team went in search of a road that would satisfy every “petrolhead’s” driving fantasies in the premiere of the show’s 10th season. Top Gear later decided that the Transfagarasan Highway in Romania was possibly a superior driving road.

Little boys grew up with the mythology that they needed to go out and kill a deer or a bear to pass to manhood. Well, guess what? They and their generations of cohorts have proven their manhood once and for all. They now take their high-powered, scope-equipped rifles out into fields and forests and sit up in a tree to "hunt." From a quarter of a mile they can now take down their prey. Humans have grown up to be such adults as to have killed not only individual animals but whole species.

Andy Rooney had the gift of saying so much with so few words:

• Love, not time, heals all wounds.
• The easiest way for me to grow as a person is to surround myself with people smarter than I am.
• Everyone you meet deserves to be greeted with a smile.
• No one is perfect until you fall in love with them.

Wow, sounds fantastic! In our future here? "Solar Bike Path Opens This Week In The Netherlands." Excerpt:

A Dutch project that integrates solar panels into a bike commuter path will officially open this week, on a special roadway outside Amsterdam. Power generated by the SolaRoad's panels will be funneled into the national energy grid.
    The project in the town of Krommenie is being called the world's first public road that includes embedded solar cells. The crystalline silicon solar cells are encased in two layers of tempered safety glass, mounted in a concrete housing.
    he equipment is part of pre-built concrete slabs that SolaRoad says have been refined in years of testing. The company says it's been a challenge to produce energy-producing slabs that are both durable and rideable by thousands of cyclists a day.

If you're planning to visit France but don't speak French, I'd recommend Pierre Capretz's French in Action program. Learn by immersion. There was an article about it in "Mystère et boules de gomme!: The internet watering hole for fans of the 'French in Action' language video course."

I looked through scrap books to find some of Cliff's poems. The first one was written in 2005 on an Easter card to me:

My cute little Honeykins Bunnykins,
My dream, my wife, my Loveykins.
    So tender and sweet,
    My Easter Treat!
My cute little Honeykins Bunneykins.

Limerick of the week:

The bacon-addicted tell themselves lies:
pigs feel no pain, express none with their cries;
    sows confined to reproduce
    never long to be let loose
or feel the panic showing in their eyes.

Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean