the short fingered vulgarian

Good to see the hypothetical wife make a cameo appearance in the ivied halls.  I can see her, like that guy contemplating the skull of Yorick, and thinking just one more of these damn things and we will be done with them, and thinking again why wait and tossing it into the wild.  Not far enough apparently, but it has a happy ending as the rutabaga was then seasoned the proper way and was a taste treat.  Still I suspect that it was some time until rutabagas appeared again on the menu of the freehold.

A couple new projects from the Old Dog, I can't wait to hear.  I remember many interesting projects related over beers at the Friday night seminars.  The 3D printer was the center of many of these, but my favorite was the multi-generation saga of the Asian cockroach.  

I watched a little of the hearings on the sacking of the capitol.  Pretty technical and kind of boring.  I am embarrassed to admit that I was looking for something a little more partisan, yet another implication of the small fingers at the end of the arms of the vulgarian.  Nevertheless a clear picture of the evil forces became clear to me.

At the top of course, is Trump, standing alone a sneer on his face, his arms crossed against his chest, standing for himself, whatever mood he happens to be in at the time, focused on his narrow self-interest and mostly just on blasting those he sees as his enemies.

On the next level is the republican party, elected officials, former officials and pundits.  These can be divided into three groups, the first is the  Ever Trumpers, like Lindsey Graham who have hitched their wagons to his star and don't intend to look back.  Second is the Never Trumpers. who thinks he is going to bring  the whole party down and the sooner he is gone the better. They are exemplified by murky moderates like Romney and fire-breathing right-wingers like Liz Cheney.  And then there are the guys like Moscow Mitch, who believe like the Never Trumpers, but are not yet ready to dump him because they are afraid of him and his base and they think they can ride the tiger longer and get something out of it.

The next level is the Trumpian base which right now is something like 80 percent of republican voters.  The question in front of these guys is was the sacking of the capital a bad thing or was it pretty cool?  If they think it was a bad thing then they have to believe that Trump didn't actually inspire it, he was just, you know, being Trump, or maybe all those guys were actually antifa,  If it was a cool thing, called upon by Trump then they have to wonder why is he not openly embracing him, and maybe they will move on to something else following the mysterious and fickle Qanon.

So it is all on the murky base now, who respond to neither reason nor the facts right in front of their fate and only on that dark place in their hearts that only Trump can touch, so who knows.

With Old Dog off on a couple new projects I don't see where there will be anything from him on the Kindergarten Baby thing, but something else has arisen.  Earlier I referenced that short-fingered vulgarian thing, and now I am wondering where it came from.  It turns out that it was from kind of a snooty satirical publication named Spy, way back in 1988, 16 years before that awful tv show and 28 years before he descended the golden escalator, back when he was just kind of a joke for snobby New Yorkers, hence the vulgarian, and the short fingers a subtle reference to his equipment, kind of like Texans are said to reference blowhards by saying they are all hat and no cattle.  I like it.

The Last Rutabaga

 The Wiki article called them "swedes", which is just another name for rutabagas.  They certainly are hard to skin, the trick is to cut the rind off with a sharp knife, don't try to peel it like an apple.  Don't be afraid to cut off some of the good part with the rind, kind of like you would do with a pumpkin or squash.

  When the papermill was on strike back in '73 a friend of mine offered me a healthy share of the produce if I would help him bring in the final harvest from his garden.  It was a really big garden.  Part of my share was a hundred pound feed sack full of rutabagas.  It took us a couple of months, but we ate them all, or so I had thought.  When the snow melted in the spring I noticed this big old rutabaga on top of the ground out behind the house.  After some interrogation, my hypothetical wife confessed that she had pitched the last one out the back door because she was tired of cleaning them, cooking them, and eating them.  There it sat, covered with snow until the spring thaw revealed its presence.  There didn't seem to be  anything wrong with it, so we cooked it up and ate it.  To our surprise, it tasted way better than all the other ones we had eaten.  

I found out later that you're supposed to freeze rutabagas before you cook them.  Indeed, the old timers used to just leave their rutabagas in the garden and dig them out of the snow as needed.  I seem to remember that you could do the same thing with cabbages, but I'm not sure if they would last all winter.  I know that deer like sugar beets better after they have been frozen but, if they freeze and thaw several times, they turn to mush.  That won't happen if they get well buried in snow after they freeze the first time and stay that way until the deer discover them.  

This just in:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/why-president-biden-cant-make-states-vaccinate-teachers-%E2%80%94-or-anyone-else/ar-BB1dW2dP?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

Please Stand By

I notice that Old Dog has not, as is his custom, posted yesterday.

Yep, the Old Dog has been very busy with a couple of new projects and some experimentation.  Thank you for your patience.

Kindergarten Baby wash your face in gravy

 Now there is some information about pasties.  I wonder if there is a story about I don't know, some crusty vet selling pasties, or maybe there is some fable about the boy who saved the little Finnish village by bonking the yeti with a stale pastie.

Rutabagas aye?  I bought one at the farmer's market but it was hard as a rock.  Once I got the rind off and cooked it it was okay, but it took forever to get that rind off.  I rather prefer the turnip (indeed google sez that rutabaga is a half-breed, half turnip and half cabbage).  I really liked the turnip back in the day when however many turnips you stuck into that flimsy plastic bag and put on the self-serve scale the cost turned out to fifty cents for the lot.  But somebody ratted and now you have to pay the full $1.79 @ pound.  Which isn't bad, but if the only turnips are those those big old boys that you have to saw through I pass them by.  Likely to purchase parsnips, which are much easier to slice, but they have a slightly sweetish taste that pleases me not.

Those gravy soaked crusts sound appealing.  Why is it that there is all this fancy food made by guys with hats twice the size of their heads who spend years learning and pull down a fortune, but when you come down right to it, nothing beats some kind of bread soaked in gravy?

This is off the subject, but one of my earliest memories is coming out the Kindergarten door and some older kid, a second grade bruiser perhaps, yelled at me.  "Kindergarten baby, wash your face in gravy."  I did not have a comeback.  Still don't.  

OMG.  Just took a little side trip down google lane and there is a taunt, that continues to this very day, of Kindergarten baby born in the gravy, or Kindergarten Baby stick your head in gravy.  The latter, I suspect an offshoot of the former.  

I swear this is the first time I have heard that phrase since that day seventy years ago on the sidewalk of Tonti Elementary.  And about half an hour's search has not gotten me any closer to its origin.  

I notice that Old Dog has not, as is his custom, posted yesterday. He has a canny way of slashing through the internet jungle.  Perhaps he can come up with something.

More About Pasties

The pasty tradition in the Cheboygan area is not nearly as strong as it is in the Upper Peninsula, but they can usually be found in the frozen food section of the local supermarket.  Those aren't as good as the homemade ones, but they are a lot less work to prepare.  The ones sold by the vets offer the the best of both worlds, homemade fast food that you don't have to make yourself.  We first discovered them years ago when the vets were selling them in front of one of our local stores.  Since Friday is our main shopping day anyway, it was handy to pick up a couple pasties and re-warm them later for supper.  We eventually found out that the ones being sold in town were actually the leftovers from the main sale at the VVA hall.  Sometimes they would be sold out before we got to them, so I started making a separate trip to the hall in the morning before either of us went shopping, which turned out to be a more reliable source.  I usually buy four of them, two for supper that evening and two for the freezer to be thawed and eaten a week or two later.  The vets don't make them in December, so I would buy eight of them in November, or twelve of them in October if the third Friday of November fell too close to opening day of deer season.

Although the Wiki article mentions that there are different styles of pasties, we've only eaten one kind, ground beef, potatoes, rutabagas, and onions wrapped up in a piece of pie crust.  Tradition has it that the Cornish miners who introduced them to the UP used to hold them in their grimy hands while eating them for lunch down in the mines.  The thick hard edge of the crust made for a handy handle that could be discarded after the rest of the pasty was consumed.  We have come to prefer eating them on a real plate and pouring canned beef gravy over them.  The stiff part of the crust soaks up a lot of the gravy, which makes it treat unto itself.  

black-eyed peas

 I was hoping to hear some personal stories about those pasties. does he eat them regularly, or as part of some sort of a holiday, what is his favorite pastie?  Surely there is some story involving pasties, maybe an interesting tidbit about Beagles discovering pasties, and his reaction to that.  And of course there are many readily available puns on the subject.

Herrin Hospital had a cafeteria which was nice, all the personnel of the hospital eating together under the same roof from the actual godlike figures of the doctors to those of us who served by merely pushing a mop.  Not too long after I started dining there I noticed some spotted beans, well very well, I have always liked beans.  But when I got back to my table the natives informed me that these were black-eyed peas.  I had heard that name before.  

Those black-eyed peas, kind of dry, kind of tasteless, not much to recommend them, but if you cook them up with bacon grease they can be tasteful enough.

We CO's were given a choice of three places to go, and at the time I had been reading Faulkner so I chose the southernmost location.  Hardly the deep south, maybe more like Kentucky or Tennessee, with a bit of Appalachia. because of the fading coal mines.  But still plenty exotic enough for a Chicago boy such as myself.

Many years later I found myself in the even more exotic state of Texas in a bar where I was watching the Bears play the Redskins.  I was pleased and surprised to see that all those Texans were rooting for the Bears, did Texas, for some reason, like the Bears?  Not at all it turned out, they had a long-standing feud with the Washington Redskins, and it was all about the enemy of my enemy.

It happened to be New Years Day and in a huge cauldron in the corner black-eyed peas were simmering.  It turns out that eating black-eyed peas on New Years Day is a good luck southern thing, and before long the hospitable southern folks had pressed a bowl into my hands, and I reckon it had some bacon grease in it because it was not bad.  Not bad at all.

And that year the Bears won the superbowl for the first time ever.  And in the 35 years since, during which I have never again eaten black-eyed peas, they have not won again.  Coincidence?  You be the judge.

The Pasties are Back!

Don't feel bad if you don't know about pasties, I never heard of them till I moved up here.

 The Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In some areas, pasties are a significant tourist attraction,^[54] including an annual Pasty Fest in Calumet, Michigan in mid August. Pasties in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan have a particularly unusual history. Many ethnic groups adopted the pasty for use in the Copper Country copper mines; the Finnish immigrants to the region mistook it for the traditional piiraat and kuuko pastries.^[55][56] The pasty has become strongly associated with all cultures in this area, and in the similar Iron Range in northern Minnesota.

Pasty - Wikipedia

For some years now our local chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America has conducted a pasty sale on the third Friday of every month except December.  They make these things from scratch, assembling the ingredients the day before, baking them in the early morning hours, and selling them from 10:00 AM until sold out, usually by 1:00 PM.  Their pasties are so popular that the market would easily support a full time restaurant business, but the Vietnam Vets are getting on in years and are not interested in going into the restaurant business.  They just do this once a month to raise money for the support of their chapter and its various charity operations.  They stopped holding these sales a year ago when the COVID hit the fan, and have just now resumed the operation.  I don't know if Queen Gretchen shut them down or if the vets themselves decided they were too risky, but the important thing is they are back now, which I take as a sign that we are finally on the road to recovery.

The powers that be are still jerking us around with their vaccination program.  You have to "pre-register", which means you are on a waiting list to get on the real list.  They say that they don't know how much vaccine they will receive in any give week, but it's been consistently less than they requested.  The thing is, much of the vaccine is manufactured right here in Michigan, but it has to be routed to the federal government, which allocates it to the state governments, which allocates it to the local health departments.  

I was never really afraid of catching the virus because it was pretty scarce around here until recently.  Last I heard Cheboygan County was up to almost a thousand cases and 34 deaths, after hanging all summer at 21 cases and three deaths.  In the beginning we were advised to avoid crowds and stay home as much as possible, and I've been living like that for a long time anyway.  I never did lollygag in town, preferring to conduct my business and go home as soon as possible.  The things that bothered me the most about the pandemic were the empty shelves in the stores and those stupid masks.  I don't even mind the social distancing, six feet is plenty close enough as far as I'm concerned.

Happy Friday

 Got my second vac today.  The last thing I read was that you get the full 95% immunity about three weeks after the first shot and the second shot is to keep that immunity going  for, well nobody is sure how long it lasts because it's brand new.  

There is still that small chance that I might get it, but if I do it will probably just be mild, like the flu maybe.  So I can still spread it, so I will have to continue with the mask,  Not for my safety, just for other people, but now I won't feel so uptight when some jerk boards the train with his mask below his nose.  

Funny when it first hit I was pretty uptight about catching it.  I would dash through the grocery store picking up this and that and getting out of there as soon as I could.  But as the months passed and I didn't get it, even though it was getting worse every day, I became less afraid of it.  I was still careful, but I didn't worry so much.  It was like when I first started taking airplanes I would have to put away a few beers at the airport bar and more in flight, and still I would be staring nervously at the wing wondering when it would fall off.  After maybe a half dozen flights with no crashes I wasn't worried at all and I couldn't even tease myself into a scare by thinking of the wing falling off.  

I got my vacs at Hyde Park, that strange intellectual island surrounded by the ghetto.  I could have gone to college there you know.  When you take those entrance tests they send them to three colleges of your choice, and one of mine was U Chicago which accepted me.  I imagine the classes would have been more difficult than the ones at U Illinois which I struggled with, but on the other hand I would have been a commuter student and I would not have been surrounded by bars that served underage kids like me.  But of course my main reason for going to college was to get away from the house so that I could live free.

Still there is something special about Hyde Park.  It just seems so intellectual.  I always feel that even the kid at the fast food making my hot dog is twice as smart as I am.

And the temps should be above zero by the end of the weekend,  In Sheboygan too.  I have been watching those weather maps and despite being about two hundred miles north of us Sheboygan has been slightly warmer than Chicago.  Doesn't seem fair.  Covid cases are way down in Illinois and in the rest of the US, even Florida I think.  And Trump, well it is hard to tell.  The battle between the Ever and the Never Trumpers looks pretty even so far.  But at least we only hear from him like once or twice a week and then not for very long.  That whining sneering voice has largely vanished from the airwaves and that is a good thing.

So happy Friday everybody.

The Glaciers of Chicago

We lived on a corner lot, so we had more sidewalk to shovel than most people.  I don't remember when I took over the shoveling from my dad, but I didn't mind it.  The long part on Whipple Street wasn't so bad if you kept after it but, if you left it for very long, it would get all packed down from people walking on it, which made it much harder to remove.  The short part on 51st Street was different because there was no grass strip between the street and the sidewalk and the building and and yard fence came right up to the other side of the sidewalk.  The only place to shovel to was the street itself and, as soon as you were done, the snowplow would come along and throw it right back on the sidewalk, along with the snow that had originally been on the street.  By this time it wasn't really snow anymore, it was this brown slushy shit.  I think that was caused by the salt, with maybe a little help from auto exhaust and general air pollution.  There was nothing to do but shovel it back into the street and hope it would melt before the plow came back the next day, which it usually did.  

There were a couple of winters when the snow didn't melt till spring, it just kept piling up.  They never plowed the side streets, which usually wasn't a problem because there was enough traffic on them to keep the snow packed down until it melted. During those couple of long winters, though, ruts developed on the side streets that you could drive in but couldn't get out of until you got to an intersection.  When two cars met going in opposite directions, one of them had to back up to the corner.

Those were the years that huge piles of snow were formed in various places by piling it up with front end loaders.  A big pile like that takes longer to melt than the regular snow because successive thawing and freezing hardens it up.  It's a common thing in Northern Michigan, but it was a novelty in Chicago in those days.  People were calling them "The Glaciers of Chicago".  Kids were warned that it was dangerous to climb on those glaciers, so of course we all did it.  Toward spring somebody proposed that the people on welfare be put to work breaking the glaciers up with picks and shovels so they could be loaded into dump trucks and hauled away, but nothing ever came of it, and they eventually melted on their own.

Ash Wednesday

 Is just another day to me.  I step out and go about my business.  I go here and there and do this and that, but suddenly I come across somebody with a dirty forehead, then another, and another.  Oh I guess this must be Ash Wednesday.

Well those Catholics, they do have their things don't they?  Growing up a prot in Chicago is like being a stranger in a strange land.  Half the crew that gathers for games on those long summer evenings go to Catholic School, a dark place where kids get beaten up by nuns and have tons of homework to do.  And then there was one afternoon a week when all the Catholic kids in the public school (about half of us) were released to go to the church for some kind of religious thing.  Lucky them you might think, but actually they had to do some kind of study while we prots brought in board and card games and idled the day away.

I left the hood maybe in the mid sixties and didn't come back until twenty years later, and I had to get back into all this Chicago stuff like no mustard on hot dogs and one of them was paczkis.  Gage Park was one third Irish and one third Polish, and one third everybody else who was white, so it was very Catholic, but I never remember hearing about paczkis.  But apparently they are a big Chicago thing.

Well okay, they are tasty enough.  I got some maybe three years ago and their were too many in the box so I left some outside my neighbor's door.  She grew up in the boot heel of Missouri and one day somebody came back from a visit and told her about this wondrous city of Chicago, and as soon as she was of age she flew north and has lived here all the rest of her life so I  guess she is more Chicago than I am, and she was delighted to have paczkis right outside her door.

So I got her some last year, and yesterday I set out after the big snowstorm to the Jewel to get some for the two of us.  

And I was disgusted.  Growing up in Gage Park one of our big Chicago things was that everybody shoveled their walk.  If you couldn't or didn't want to, likely your neighbor would do it for you and there were plenty of kids like me with shovels and an open hand who were more than eager to do the job.  Shoveling the whole sidewalk was the usual thing, but if you just did a shovel-wide that people could squeeze through that was okay, but if you didn't do anything at all (which was rare, maybe one per block) the whole neighborhood frowned upon you.

When I lived in Urbana, even though I rented, I owned a snow shovel and I was out there with the drop of the snowflake, and there was a vacant lot next door so I did that too, because, you know, it was the thing to do.  It was what good citizens do.  When I moved back to Chicago and was living in my parents' attic I was out there with every snow, proud to be a real Chicagoan.

But yesterday, here in the very heart of Chicago half the walks were not shoveled at all, many of them have not been shoveled all winter.  I was disgusted.

There is this social media thing, NextDoor which is neighborhood centric and mostly people use it to sell that old chair or coat or whatever but sometimes people use it to make some statement about the hood or whatever.  I went right to it and made a blistering post about how we should boycott stores who don't shovel their sidewalk.  I included the detail about the paczkis to show them that I was a real Chicagoan, just like them.  

I sat back to wait for the expected Right On Brother responses, and instead I got blistered.  All these stores that are just getting by run by crippled old ladies who can't handle a shovel or afford to pay anybody to do it for them, and I am trying to run them out of business.  I got called a Karen and a cancel culture guy and a fat slob seeking sweet pastries and on and on.  Posts were running four out of five against me.  It was a pile on.

You know I read those things about cyber bullying and I have previously thought oh c'mon, it's just words on a computer, who cares.  But I have to tell you it did not feel good.  I made one half-hearted attempt at justification, but that just attracted more insults, and finally I just stopped looking at it.

I was going to add a link to it so that the dogs could see how unfairly I had been treated but this morning I see that the whole thing has been taken down, I assume the people who run it wanted to hide the seamy side of the internet.  

Well that was Fat Tuesday as all good Catholics know, which precedes Lent when all our Catholic neighbors had to give something up while we prots could just act like we always did, because we were all going to hell anyway.  But for now it is Ash Wednesday and I ate two of my paczkis yesterday and will eat the other two today because I am a fat slob who seeks sweet pastries, and a real Chicagoan.

Out With the Old, In With the New

 I took our old TV out to the junkyard today.  The new one is working fine and we don't have room in this house for two TVs.  I tried to find a good home for the old one, calling Goodwill, Habitat For Humanity, and the Salvation Army, but nobody wanted it.  It was still working last I knew, but it was getting glitchy so it was only a matter of time.  I would have felt better about it if my neighbor, who owns the junkyard, had told me to put it in one of his buildings, but they were all full so he told me to just leave it outside in the weather.  His son likes to tinker with electronics, so there is a chance he might pick it up before it rains or snows again.  If not, my neighbor will likely blast it with a shotgun so he can safely salvage the platinum from the picture tube.  Oh well, nothing lasts forever and life marches on.

The good news is I found a way to get more sound out of the DVD player.  The tip came from an unlikely source, Annie's Mailbox, which is the successor to the old Ann Landers column.  I don't know why I still read that thing, habit I guess.  I started reading Ann Landers when I was a little kid and, when she retired and a different Annie took it over, I just kept reading it.  Somebody had written in to complain that she was having a hard time hearing the dialog on her new TV because the music was too loud.  Annie told her to write to the stations about it, but another reader wrote in a few days later and suggested that she go into the settings and see if the TV was set up for stereo or mono.  They said there should be an option to choose stereo or mono and, if it was set to stereo and the TV didn't have stereo speakers, the TV might think that the dialog is going to another speaker.  Since I was only having trouble with the sound from my DVD player, I checked its settings and found that it was set to Dolby, which I knew was a form of stereo.  The other option was Bitmark, or something like that, which I assumed to be a form of mono.  I changed it to Bitmark and the sound is much better now.  The moral of the story is that good advice is where you find it.  It doesn't matter who said it as long as it works.

pigeons and power drills

 For a long time there was just the occasional bird on my balcony, once a raven, once a blue jay, and some others that I could not tell right off what kind of bird they were.  They seemed to be lost or maybe just exploring for no apparent reason.  Then a few years back the house finches appeared feeding on my sunflowers.  A spirited, chirpy, lean and graceful breed I was soon putting out seed for them. This went on for some years, but then this fall I noticed that they suddenly seemed fat, and instead of perching prettily on the railing they were hopping like a mob all over the floor of the balcony, and looking closely I discovered they were not finches at all.  A little internet research revealed that they were sparrows.  Further research revealed that sparrows were terrible birds, pushing eggs out of other birds' nests and replacing them with their own and outright attacking other birds just for the sport of it.

Further internet research revealed that they don't do any of that. I had just somehow stumbled on a band of bluebird lovers who for some reason had it in for sparrows.  I have no idea why, but you know, the internet.

I still see the finches occasionally passing through, checking out the old homestead, but repelled by the sparrow mob, the morlocks to their eloi, moving on.  Oh and I have a lonesome dove who keeps to itself pecking morosely on the floor, and most recently these two pigeons.  

A pigeon on Daley Plaza is just one of a crowd pecking around with one red eye out for some saint with a pocket full of seed or popcorn or whatever who they immediately mob in almost blood curdling manner.

But up in the austere reaches of the 21st floor they are much more dignified, and when they decide to fly from one end of the railing to the other they are a fantastical flurry of feathers.  My heart in hiding stirs for these birds.

I always see just these two, never any others, and rarely one alone.  And I was thinking my my, they must pair for life and that seemed like nice behavior and made me like them even more.

But further research revealed that almost all birds mate for life, even those uncouth sparrows.  I guess even those awful birds who push eggs out of other birds' nests mate for life.  

However nosy scientists have discovered that there is bit of cheating going on, but not nearly as much as among us mammals, and the reason appears to be those very mammary glands that give us our name.  Once the egg is laid both parents contribute evenly to the raising, while only the female mammal can feed the young, and this leads to an uneven balance and this weakens the partnership.

That is quite some kitchen you have their Old Dog, shipshape like a good galley should be.  And I am glad to hear the culinary arts are not being neglected.  I reckon that hole in the middle of the Finnish rye was so that you could put your arm through it and carry it along and maybe even take the occasional bite from it as you were lopping off the heads of good Christians to the south.

My limited (their choice) experience with women has led me to believe that the aroma of the kitchen does melt the feminine heart.  I suggest that once the pandemic fades Old Dog could tuck a cookbook into his pocket so that the title is prominently displayed, and strike up conversations along the lines of fennel or tarragon.

I have neither chain saw nor band saw, but I do have a power drill, one of those things that looks like a pistol.  I have to admit that I was surprised when they sold it to me.  Did they have any idea who I was?  Not long after I moved into the condo I drilled holes in the walls so that I could hang up my deathless art to inspire myself to even greater heights of, I don't know, artiness.  That was twenty-eight years ago and it has been sitting on the same shelf ever since.  Maybe I should take it out of its box after this post just to see if it still drills.  Prolly not though, I might hurt myself.   

Cold Monday in the neighborhood

There's a simple reason why nothing ever comes over my transom; it's painted shut.

...or tell another story about your chain saw.

By golly, I sure wish I had a chain saw.  I have no need for one, it's just one of those tools that puts a gleam in my eye.  Perhaps Uncle Ken lacks the gene that causes an increased heart rate when a Snap-On truck drives by.  But I have a decent equivalent for an apartment dweller, a portable bandsaw.  It can cut wood or metal depending on the blade, and since it's electrical the noise level is tolerable.  It's a fun tool to use.

-----

Ah, the Hawk!  It seems that the inner city folk have their own language.  If you hang out long enough you may get called out for selling wolf tickets.  I never heard that expression until I worked for the city in the Model Cities program, which was about 90% black.  Good times.

-----

I wonder what is the unique Finnish twist on rye sourdough bread...

Ever see round flat bread with a hole in it?

Glad to see the Old Dog baking again.

Oh, I've been baking a little but doing more cooking, fooling around and tweaking recipes I run across.  A while back I ran across a recipe for brownies and though I'm not a big fan some of the ingredients sounded intriguing.  I gave it a try and it was quite the learning experience and I learned something new about cocoa.  I wasn't happy with the first batch so I started tweaking the ingredients, a little more of this, a little less of that, and a secret ingredient or two.  By the fourth batch I nailed it, as far as I'm concerned.  I'd much rather bake them than eat them so now I have a whole lot of brownies from the different iterations in the freezer.  They'll keep for three months or so, from what I've read, and will come in very handy for any upcoming family gatherings.  Chocolate has always been very popular with the ladies and maybe word will get out that a certain geezer knows his way around an oven.  A fella can dream, can't he?

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If you guys like sardines I have a recommendation for you, smoked sprats.  The flavor is less intense than sardines and they are quite tasty; my first encounter with a Latvian delicacy was a pleasant  surprise.

 

 

happy friday

 It's been my habit for months now. after firing up the computer and seeing what has come over the transom in the hallowed halls of Beaglestonia, to check on the daily Illinois corona count which is today the lowest it's been since early October but slightly more than it was a few days ago, which is maybe just a blip in the overall falling rate or perhaps the start of a new surge.  Most likely the latter as trends seem to be going down in every state.  My first vac was slightly more than two weeks ago, which according to a random internet report should be kicking in full force this week.  95 percent effective, which I guess is pretty good, but would you dine on a puffer fish that only kills one out of twenty people who eat it?

Beginning a week ago another thing I check straightaway is my Yahoo Weather Report and it is showing a temp of 30 degrees next Sunday. Ten days away to be sure but we haven't seen 30 degrees since I'm guessing ten days so that's maybe the brown brink beckoning.

There are no people in the wilderness, that's why I called it a wilderness.  Maybe he will die of starvation and maybe there will be plenty of wild game and berries and nuts, and being a bad guy maybe he won't mind living alone.  Perhaps he will meditate and find inner peace at last, it doesn't matter, it's an abstraction.  When you hear the story of the good Samaritan do you want to know if he's a rich guy or a poor guy, is his donkey a girl donkey or a boy donkey?

I was just extrapolating on the dem's motives for the impeachment, to punish a very bad man, or to weaken the republican party and thereby increase peace and prosperity across this land (oh oh oh oh, all over this land)?  Likely some were in it for both and I don't know what the sex of the donkeys they rode in on were.

Are deeds good or bad just in themselves or do we have to take into account the effects they will have in order to judge them?  Choose one, or discuss them, or tell another story about your chain saw.  It's Friday, have a ball.

It Depends

 "Here is the question.  There is a very bad man who has done bad things, let's say murder, but he has escaped, escaped to a distant wilderness from which he will never return to do his bad deeds again.  We could raise up a small army and pursue him, but it would cost a lot of money and doubtless some of the soldiers will lose their lives.  Do we pursue him or do we not pursue him?" - Uncle Ken

I am not a great fan of those hypothetical scenarios, but I'll do what I can with this one. Are we to suppose that this distant wilderness is entirely devoid of people?  If so, the bad guy is not likely to survive there for very long, so chasing after him would be a waste of time and resources.  If not, allowing the bad guy to live there with impunity is just foisting our problem onto someone else.  That's all I've got, at least for now.

I don't see how this scenario relates to Trump.  He has not escaped to some wilderness, he is still here among us.  Maybe that's what the impeachment effort is all about, to render Trump harmless by banishing him to the outer darkness.  If that's the case, it may not work.  They might end up making him a martyr to his followers, inspiring them to even greater efforts.  

 

a philosophical question

 I have this buddy John, and for the last five, ten, years, we meet every other Wednesday for brunch and mostly for a long conversation.  Do you guys remember a movie from the 80's, My Dinner with Andre?  It's about two hours long and it consists entirely of these two guys talking to each other over dinner.  It got good reviews but I didn't see it for some time, I mean just two guys talking over dinner?  C'mon Man.  But eventually I did see it, and I liked a lot.

I like to think that my brunch with John is something like that, probably not, but they are pretty good, philosophical and touching on a variety of topics, but these last four years they have been tainted.

By Trump of course.  No matter how well the conversation started it would veer off into Trump, seemingly within minutes, and once in the gutter beside the road of high-mindedness, it would just sputter along there until finally one of us would bonk themselves on the forehead and change the subject.  Even then like as not, we would find ourselves back in the ditch within minutes.

But yesterday in over three hours of conversation, Trump came up only a couple times for only a few minutes, and then for the last twenty minutes but only in the context of how pleasant it was not to be talking about him.  

But out of habit I had CNN on when I came back from my dinner with John, and it was the dems presenting their case, but I was reading the paper and stuff and listened with less than half an ear.  Sure Trump was guilty, but I had heard this all so many times before (the videos were pretty good though), and everybody knows the dems will never get 17 reps on their side to convict him, so nothing will happen, so why bother?

I can think of two reasons which I will call the utilitarian and the stoical, roughly after two schools of philosophy.   The utilitarian reason would be to hurt the republican party.  These senators are worried sick about which fork (McConnell or Trump) the republican river will take and don't want to be in the smaller fork, so they have been straddling for some time and would like to continue until the answer is clearer but their vote in this manner will make them choose one side or the other.  This would be a boon for the dems.

The stoical reason is less strategic, it just wants revenge.  Trump is a bad man and he needs to be punished, just because.  

Here is the question.  There is a very bad man who has done bad things, let's say murder, but he has escaped, escaped to a distant wilderness from which he will never return to do his bad deeds again.  We could raise up a small army and pursue him, but it would cost a lot of money and doubtless some of the soldiers will lose their lives.  Do we pursue him or do we not pursue him? 

Selective Memory

 People generally remember the extremes of everything more than they do the normal stuff.   I remember the 1950s as having a couple of harsh winters and at least one mild one.  I remember the mild one because my grandparents went down to Florida around Christmas that year and it was actually warmer in Chicago than it was in Florida.  The winter of 1967 was a record breaker, both in Chicago and in Cheboygan.  I remember that because it was the year I got out of the army.  When I came home on March 1, the winter had already passed into local memory in Chicago but, when I visited Cheboygan two weeks later, the snow was still waist deep and the temp was 15 below.  I don't remember it ever being that cold in March since then, but I do remember the temperature ranging from zero to 100 in the month of April, 1970.  That's the year we moved into out new house in Indian River, about 20 miles south of Cheboygan.  I found out later that Indian River often has more extreme temperatures than Cheboygan because it's farther away from the Great Lakes.  Both towns are on the fringe of the Snow Belt, but Indian River is on the inside of the fringe while Cheboygan is on the outside.  

I found that Lou Rawls song on You Tube, and it sounded familiar.  That must have been where I got the idea that The Hawk was hatched in Chicago.  I don't remember any of the Black guys I knew in the army as coming from the Windy City.

I forget that you guys had crowded sidewalks in Chicago.  There are no sidewalks in my neighborhood, but they do have them in parts of Cheboygan.  The ones in the downtown strip may get crowded at times, but certainly not this time of year.  I still don't think masks are required outdoors in Michigan if people stay six feet apart.  Inside the stores, we are required to wear masks and stay six feet apart.  The mask rule is strictly enforced, but the six foot rule not so much, except when you're standing in the checkout line.

Queen Gretchen has graciously allowed school sports to resume, but of course the pending lawsuit had nothing to do with it.  All the players are wearing masks in the photos and videos that I have seen.  I get breathless just walking around in the supermarket wearing a mask, I can't imagine playing sports with one on, but the kids don't seem to have a problem with it.  Who was it that said, "Youth is such a wonderful thing, it's  shame that it's wasted on children."

return of the polar vortex

 The winters of my youth as I remember them, were much harsher than the current ones.  I seem to remember it snowing sometime in the middle of December and from that date to March there was always some snow somewhere.  When I moved back to Chicago in 87, twenty-four years after I had left it, I was expecting those monster winters, but instead they weren't that bad at all.  Some winters I only dragged my big old overcoat out of the closet three or four times.  

I hadn't worn it at all this year until maybe a week ago when the polar vortex tipped its frosty hat.  Strangely they are not calling it the polar vortex this year although that is what it looks like on weather maps.  Strangely also though Cheboygan is about two hundred miles north of us its weather is slightly warmer because the center of the vortex is to the west.  Looking at my Yahoo weather map I don't see a temp above 20 until next Wednesday, and on the following Thursday it will rise to 24.

The streets are indeed slippery, that snow that fell last week will be with us until well after Valentines day, melting, refreezing, fresh snow on top of that, a many layered cake underfoot to send us crashing down.

I guess The Hawk was around in the ghetto for some years but we white folks didn't hear about it until 1967 with Lou Rawls' Dead End Street.  

I would be breaking my condo rules if I stepped outside my door without my mask on.  Out and about in stores and walking on crowded sidewalks I keep it on, though if I happen upon a near empty block I will pull it down for a bit.  It got uncomfortable in the summer, but currently it is a welcome accessory to my winterizing.

I wonder what is the unique Finnish twist on rye sourdough bread, but as a fan of all things rye I say that it sounds pretty good.  Glad to see the Old Dog baking again.  I still have some boxes of corn muffin mix lying around in the kitchen, maybe I should whip some up if for no other reason than the thrill of opening the oven door to that exquisite aroma.

I never thought that Biden would actually run, and when he was running I never thought that he would win.  He was way down on my list of candidates, but when he began soaring I didn't feel too bad about it because it seemed like he had the best odds of beating Trump.  And now it's way too early to make a judgment.  Calling him a hack sounds a little extreme to me.  I think he believes what he is saying a opposed to say, oh, Cruz, who spews whatever seems advantageous at the moment.  One thing that held  Obama back was that he thought he could compromise with the republicans and Biden has no such illusion.

The radio just played a snippet of the speech Trump gave urging on the mob, and I had to appreciate how seldom anymore I hear that whining, sneering, voice and how pleasant it is not to hear it.  Well I reckon he won't be convicted, and he won't even be censored, but I am thinking of a fine old American tradition which is tarring and feathering and riding down to Mar A Largo on a rail.  I wouldn't even need to see it, just to know that it was being done would be sustenance to my soul.  Well maybe I would peek a little.

The Hawk is Biting

When I was in the army, the Black guys used to refer to cold weather as "The Hawk", as in "The Hawk is sure biting today!"  Somebody told me that the term originated in Chicago, but I never heard of it until I got to Berlin.  The Hawk has been kind to us in Beaglesonia this winter, until recently that is.  We've had three nights in a row that got below zero, but that was the first time this season.  I don't think we have a foot of snow on the ground yet, but it's getting close to that.  The jet stream has been pushing most of the storms south of us so far, but we have had to deal with some lake effect.  Cheboygan is just outside the traditional lake effect zone, or "Snow Belt" as they call it, but we do get clipped by it from time to time.  

You guys have to wear your masks outdoors?  We only have to wear them inside public buildings or crowded places where social distancing is not possible.  I only wear glasses for reading, but they do fog up when I put them on to read a label or something.  What you're supposed to do to prevent that is to wear a taller mask and tuck the top edge under your glasses, or so I have been told.  As for me, I just pull the mask down off my nose so that it just covers my mouth.  I have seen people who wear their mask that way all the time, but I only do it when I put on my reading glasses or get short of breath.  Funny, I breathe through my mouth when I'm sort of breath, but pulling the mask down below my nose seems to help.  Maybe it's all in my head.

Last I heard, there was plenty of yeast in Cheboygan, but we still get rolling shortages of different products.  Toilet paper got scarce when Queen Gretchen imposed her last partial lockdown, but the supply chain quickly recovered.  Still, there are a few items on our weekly list that can't be found in our local Walmart on any particular day.  Then we have to go to another store or, if we are a week ahead, which we usually are, come back next week and see if they've got it in yet.  It's nothing like it was last spring, but it's still a pain in the ass.

Winter wonderland

I don't remember the last time I saw a good, old fashioned winter in Chicago, but By Golly! we have one now.  About a foot of snow on the ground and temperatures in the single digits; this is more like it!  Traipsing to and from the supermarket can be a little tricky because of poor footing and maintaining your balance with your hands full carrying bags, but it's a fine challenge.  The big problem is fogging eyeglasses because of the face mask; I sometimes have to pause to get a good look at the icy and lumpy sidewalk ahead of me.

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So I'm in the store and couldn't help but notice the variety of yeasts that are available.  Is there still a shortage with the merchants serving Cheboygan, Mr. Beagles?  Despite the good supply of yeast in this area I'm giving sourdough a try.  I found a recipe for Finnish sourdough rye that looks pretty interesting but it will be a couple of weeks before the sourdough is alive and kicking.

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Trump is out of office and yet the political nonsense continues.  It seems to me that most of the discussions are about personalities rather than actual issues.  Lots of finger pointing, arm waving, and name calling but not a lot of substance.  You have to dig a little further than I'm willing to go before you can get to the meat of some of the issues.  And the swamp still needs draining and I fear that Biden is going to be a big disappointment to a lot of people.  I can't put my finger on it but it seems to me that he is being very carefully managed.  Mental lapses from a long time political hack can be problematic, regardless of good intentions.

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And because we don't have enough problems with the Covid pandemic, there is a new bacterium that is killing chimpanzees and researchers are worried that it could cross over to humans.  Yikes!

Uncle Ken, I dug a little and found out more about that vaccine that had different results in different countries.  I probably misread the article, or it was poorly phrased, but they were talking about the variants in different countries, not the original virus.  Mea Culpa.

Monday Monday

 I've always liked Mondays, even when I had to work for a living.  It was Sunday that gave me the blues.  Most of the day was okay, but come around five o'clock when the weekend can truly be said to be over, because it's just another night when you are getting ready for work the next day.  See that's the thing, a whole week of work ahead of me after yet another weekend when I hadn't really had as much fun as I was hoping for, and nothing to be done about it until the next morning.  But come Monday morning I could begin cutting through the week and getting closer to the weekend.  Only 39 hours, now 38, it was getting closer every hour.

I still allow myself a few more beers on the weekend and kind of celebrate it in general, but Sunday I kind of get the blues all day, just listless and I don't know, world weary, housekeeping chores and whatnot I can't be bothered to bother with, I'll do it tomorrow.  And I usually do,  Even now the laundry downstairs is in the wash cycle.  And just now I heard that Tampa Bay has beaten the Chiefs.  I hate the cheater, but I guess I really don't care that much.

This Trump as a double agent thing, since it is your private fantasy I reckon you can think whatever you want about it.  I still think that putting the Queen of England or Elvis Presley at the head of it, would give it more pizzazz, but hey it is your own private Qanon, or maybe it can be Banon.

Since I thought Cruz was the worst of the bunch I guess it is no surprise that Beagles would pick the prick for the next election.  He is said to be the most hated man in congress.  Recently I heard an interview where Al Franken said, "You know, I liked Cruz more than most of his colleagues, and I hated him."  But I guess that is even more reason for Beagles to like him.  And the fact that Cruz continues to be one of Tump's more blatant backers should not be a problem because Beagles had no problem voting for the man himself.

If the republican party comes up with somebody more to Beagles's liking, judging by the guys Beagles likes, they probably won't stand a chance in the next election which is fine with me.  

The second impeachment begins today I think.  I can't muster up much emotion for it.  I guess it will be a test to see where the republican party will be going, but I think it is too early to mean much.  I expect most reps will stay in the Trump fold for now, but later as the star dims in Mar A Largo they will fade away.  You can say you have heard it from me who has been wrong in just about all my Trump predictions so far.

Meanwhile we will be chugging along through this current deep freeze, the longest stretch of below freezing since 1957 I heard the weatherman say yesterday.  Oh look at the clock, my clothes should be ready to pop out of the dryer.

Trump and His Legacy

 I don't think those Qanon guys mean the same thing as I do when they say that Trump is a double agent.  What I mean is that his true mission was to damage the Republican Party and the conservative cause in general.  At first it may have been just to help Hillary win by making her look good by comparison, or maybe to keep Cruz from getting the nomination.  I believe that Trump was just as surprised as anyone when he actually won the election.  I mean, how could anyone who acts like that expect to get elected to anything?  Once he was in office, the power might have gone to his head and he became the character that he had played on that bogus TV show.  

Uncle Ken may be right about all those psychopaths jumping on the Trump bandwagon early in the game.  Since he follows that stuff more than I do, I will take his word for that.  During the primary campaign, I was mostly preoccupied with trying to find out something about the other candidates so I could decide which one had the best chance of beating Trump.  All the guys I was interested in ended up dropping out, so I settled on Cruz as the lesser of several evils.  I don't know what to say about all those psychopaths except that some people are attracted to power because they hope some of it will rub off on them, like the subdominant turkeys who play wingman for the dominant tom.

If the Republican Party is able to shake off the Trump virus, I hope they can come up with a more acceptable candidate next time, someone who does some of the same things that Trump tried to do without being such a prick about it.  If not, I don't know who I'm going to vote for since, last I heard, the Libertarians were in favor of abortion and gay marriage.     

the dustbin of history

  The Qanoners, like Trump, have no particular love for the Republican party. They see him as some guy who is there to root out all the pedophiles in government which they assume are mostly democrats but probably a few republicans also.  He is a double agent in that they think he is working for them and not the republican party.  

At first all the rep candidates said (truthfully) terrible things about Trump, especially those who later became his biggest sycophants, but at the debates nobody would take him on.  They knew that he would attack back and that he had that fearsome horde behind him, and they all hoped that one of the the other candidates would have the guts to take him on, but that never happened.  They didn't wait for the election, they all hopped right into bed with him the moment he secured the nomination.

I don't go for the canard that this is just a part of the normal yingyang of one party wins and then the other wins and it is just the typical ebb and flow of the way the US does politics.  There is nothing normal about Trump.  I don't think I need any backup for that statement.

I am surprised that neither of the dogs has taken up on that poetry thing.  I know Beagles has a fondness for Service, and I'm sure there is plenty of Kipling that he would like, and surely some whiff of poesy has touched the heart of Old Dog as he walked the streets of his hood.

But anyway:

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Last night that Joan of Arc (who, don't get me wrong, I highly detest) took on the Trump lovers in the house and defeated them handily 145 to 61. and that Qanon chick, though they didn't harm a hair on her blonde head, they made her step back and sort of apologize for her Qanon leanings, which may sound like weak tea, but a heady brew indeed for a Trumpist.

There is still the impeachment.  I expect maybe ten rep sens will vote for it, and the rest will be against, though more on a procedural grounds than that stolen election crap.  The dems, busy with bringing social justice and prosperity to all, will not want to raise a fuss about it.  It seems at this point that Trump has been shuffled into the dustbin of history.

Of course I have been wrong about this many many times before.

The People Have Spoken

" I submit to Beagles that the question is not is Trump a double agent (which is very close to what Qanon is saying), as to what is wrong with a political party that so happily breaks down like a shotgun for him?  Is this a party worth saving?" - Uncle Ken

What little I know about Qanon I picked up from listening to a few minutes of an NPR interview that came over the radio while I was driving my pickup.  I'm surprised to hear that they accuse Trump of being a double agent, I thought they were fans of his.  Some people were saying way back in 2016 that Trump was a "Trojan horse".  I suppose, since Trojans are rubbers and rubbers go on a dick, that makes some sense, but I think that "double agent" is more accurately descriptive.  

I don't remember any Republicans being favorable to Trump before, or even after, he won the nomination, it was only after he won the election that they started saying nice things about him.  I speculated at the time that this was because he won the election.  They had nominated two reasonable candidates in the two previous elections and they both lost.  Along comes Trump and he wins.  The people had spoken, and the party listened.  Now the people have spoken again, and the party must listen again if they want to stay in business.

Since the days of Ross Perot, both major parties seem to have assimilated their lunatic fringes.  The Democrats seem to have theirs under control, at least for now, the Republicans, not so much, but that can change.

If the Republican Party does crash and burn, it won't be the end of the world.  Sooner or later, a new conservative party will rise from the ashes.  There has always been, and there always will be, a conservative party in this country.  Remember, you heard it first from Talks With Beagles. 

groundhog day

  I never said that the lockdowns had no effect, I just said that they have failed to stop the virus.  

Well there we are then.  It seemed to me that you had said that about a week ago when this maddening exchange began but I do not have the heart to search for it right now.  And of course I don't think anybody, including myself, ever said that it would stop the virus, it will merely slow it down and fewer deaths will ensue.

There are some things that don't add up for me, like how is it that a vaccine that is 95% effective in the US is only 70% effective in another country? 

It is indeed a puzzlement.  I would definitely look into that if I knew what vaccine is being spoken of and what that other country is.

I'm glad to hear that Old Dog's kidney stone was just a glancing blow.  And kudos on him for breaking the chains of tobacco.  Let me salute him with this from one of my favorite shows of many years ago.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgIMJcBpqKI

Groundhog Day.  January is in the rear view mirror. God is it only two weeks ago that Trump hit the rear view mirror?  It seems like months since my teeth clenched whenever I heard the words, "The president."  That vac has been percolating in my veins almost a week.  Things are looking up.  My show about big cats and alleys has been up in the Ten Cat windows since July 27 and this afternoon I will be replacing them with reruns of corn and tomatoes.  I am calling it Summertime 2021, which is a long way off I know, but it is something to look forward to at last.

And this just in in the Trump/GOP wars:  Moscow has just denounced that crazy Qanon chick from Georgia who wants to have Nancy Pelosi executed.  I would have mentioned her name except that neither did Moscow who clearly thought that would be imprudent.  A profile in courage.

I submit to Beagles that the question is not is Trump a double agent (which is very close to what Qanon is saying), as to what is wrong with a political party that so happily breaks down like a shotgun for him?  Is this a party worth saving?

Some Clarifications

 I never said that the lockdowns had no effect, I just said that they have failed to stop the virus.  It was shortly after the first lockdown that I made that statement, and none of the subsequent lockdowns have changed my mind about that.  The first lockdown was supposed to be temporary, which led me to believe that the virus itself was temporary.  Looking back on it, Queen Gretchen did not promise any such thing, but it is human nature to read what we want to hear into what is actually being said.  

Like in many states, the urban areas of Michigan tend to vote Democrat, the rural areas tend to vote Republican, and the suburban areas tend to swing back and forth based on how unhappy they are with the current administration.  Our governor and state senators serve four year terms, while our state representatives serve for two years.  This means that everybody's term doesn't expire at once.  If people are pissed at a governor who still has two years left to serve, they retaliate by voting for state and federal legislators of the opposite party.  For some reason, all of our federal senators seem to be Democrats, which might be a coincidence.  They serve for six years, but both of their terms do not expire at once.  Maybe every time a Michigan US Senator comes up for re-election, the suburbanites coincidently are pissed at the Republicans that year.  Just guessing.  I have already conceded that there has been some gerrymandering going on.  A ballot proposal passed a few yeas ago promised to end that, but we won't know if it actually will till after the effects of the 2020 census are felt.  

I advanced the theory that Trump was a double agent way back in 2016.  I subsequently found out that some others had said it before me, but you heard it first from Talks With Beagles.  I said that he was sent by somebody because I don't know who sent him.  It might have been the Democrats, the Russians, the Red Chinese, the Mafia, or Trump might even have been working for his own self.  One way or another, Trump was on a mission to damage the Republican Party, and he did a pretty good job of it.  If the party ever hopes to recover from this, they need to cast Trump into the outer darkness where men shall weep and gnash their teeth.

My point about the chainsaw repair was that I am not the guy on the next barstool telling somebody how to fix their chainsaw, I am the owner of the broken saw and will take whatever advice comes my way, but I don't expect to pay for that advice if it doesn't work.

My real chainsaw in real life probably has a blown engine.  This is what I suspected, and the guy at Ace confirmed it.  I don't even know if it's possible to change out the engine but, if it is, I'm pretty sure it would be cheaper to buy a whole new machine.  The guy told me upfront that it would be a long time before he could get to it because he has been really busy lately.  To my knowledge, he is the only guy doing small engine repair in the Cheboygan area since Taylor Equipment went out of business.  I was in no hurry anyway because I have another chainsaw, which the Ace guy had repaired for me before I turned in the second one.  I am a pretty good  amateur chainsaw repairman if I do say so myself, but some jobs are best handled by a professional.    

 

Happy February

Someday I'll be able to make some sense of the pandemic but I don't think it will be anytime soon.  There are some things that don't add up for me, like how is it that a vaccine that is 95% effective in the US is only 70% effective in another country?  I wasn't planning on getting the vaccine but the Johnson & Johnson version might change my mind.  It's much less effective than the  others but it's only one shot, and none of the people that caught the virus ended up in the hospital or dead.  With all the new variants popping up it seems like a crap shoot; there were a couple of guys in Brazil that had two versions of the virus at the same time.  Face masks and social distancing still seem like a good strategy to me.

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I find it hard to believe that such a simple thing as a chainsaw can't be repaired but it's very easy to believe that the folks at Ace Hardware didn't have a clue.  If it took them a month to decide that it couldn't be fixed I suspect that it sat on a shelf and nobody wanted to deal with it, or knew how to deal with it.  I ran "chainsaw repair Cheboygan MI" through Google and got a few hits, some nearby and others as far away as Traverse City.  Also, this could be another case of it being cheaper to get a new one than fixing the old one.  Are there local tool rental places that you can use in the meantime?  Finally, did you try troubleshooting the problem yourself? 

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Just saw the latest post from Uncle Ken, guess he couldn't wait for my later-than-usual Monday post.

Anyhow, the kidney stone must have passed; there was only one day of discomfort and it wasn't as bad as some other times.  I think if I keep a closer eye on my diet I'll be fine.

More than two years since the noxious weed, can almost taste it and think about it way too much.  No going back, though. 

Hey Old Dog

 A couple things I have been meaning to ask Old Dog, but then Monday comes and goes, and I know I won't hear from him for a week, so I don't bother and the next thing I know Monday has passed again.  You know what I mean.

So here they are.  

Did that kidney stone ever pass?

Are you still staying away from the noxious weed?   How is that going?

Thank you very much.

Monday morning conspiracies

 Like Uncle Ken said, the numbers generally declined while the lockdowns were in force, and shot back up again after they were lifted.

See that is all I was saying.  The lockdowns are effective in cutting down on covid deaths (PERIOD).  If you want to make a case that they are not a good idea because they damage the economy you can well make that case, but if you begin it with saying that the lockdowns don't have any effect it's like saying two plus two equals five.  Your argument is dead in the water.

It appears that Beagles' main argument is not so much about the covid as it is about gutsy Gretchen.  In fact the whole state seems to be a bit nutsy about Gretchen.  The Governor of Michigan is a democrat as are both of its senators, elected under the principle of one man one vote, but the statehouse is republican.  Why is that?  Could it be gerrymandered.  Submit the question to google and you will learn that it certainly is.  Well that is all I have to say about Michigan.

The story about the mechanic was about who do you trust to fix problems, the experts in the field or the loudmouth on the next barstool? Though I am sad that Beagles' chain saw was irreparable, but happy that he learned that it without cost, it has nothing to do with what I was talking about.

While all the cool people were hopping on the Qanon bandwagon Beagles has remained aloof, espousing instead his very own conspiracy theory that Trump is some kind of double agent sent by ahem, somebody.  See just saying somebody is not going to cut it.  It's just too amorphous.  Why not blame the Queen of England or Elvis Presley, who we all know isn't really dead?  Then you can print up some t shirts and make a few bucks.  Or here's one, my personal favorite, maybe it was the moral rot of a party whose only real goal is tax cuts for the rich.  Kind of hard to fit that on a t shirt though.