by admin | Nov 23, 2007 |
As usual the Iowa caucus is receiving an inordinate amount of attention in the form of media coverage, political money, contender visits, pundit prognostications and political rhetoric in general. Unlike most of you who will read this, I have actually participated in the Iowa caucus, but even so, it may be hard to say anything about the subject that hasn’t already been said and said again. Indeed my participation in the Iowa political process dates back to 1960 and my senior year in high school in Ames, Iowa. Perhaps by virtue of the fact that I had received some local notoriety as the student body and student council president I was asked to run the youth...
by admin | Nov 14, 2007 |
There’s always more than meets the eye. As many of you intrepid readers will know, Veterans Day did not start out as Veterans Day, but as Armistice Day which was intended to commemorate the end of WWI, but didn’t. OK, let me explain. WWI was officially ended by the Treaty of Versailles which was signed by the previously warring parties on June 28, 1919, but hostilities had terminated (I guess they just stopped pulling the triggers) on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. Many of our European friends and some of our enemies had the good sense to recognize November 11 as Armistice Day well before it occurred to us. It was designated a...
by admin | Oct 31, 2007 |
I can’t pinpoint the time or place when or where truffles (genus tubar, sub genus hypogecous ascomycetes) first came into my consciousness, but I know it wasn’t in San Angelo. I suspect it was in the mid 80’s and in Paris…..France that is. S. and I were wandering the streets and found ourselves in Place de l’Opera. On the one hand, the edifice of Palais Garnier, home of the inestimable Paris Ballet de l”Opera and on the other, Fouchon, the pinnacle of French gourmet foods. Of course, I opted for the food instead of culture. It was there, I think, that I first saw a blackish, golf ball sized orb that resembled a desiccated monkey brain. I remember...
by admin | Sep 26, 2007 |
I normally react negatively to a group name with a number appended. Except in the case of the Little Cyclone five (my high school basketball team), this naming convention normally connotes a number of individuals who have done something illegal or socially unacceptable but are being treated as a group so as to avoid individual accountability, often at the behest of third parties with a separate agenda. Not so the Little Rock Nine. This group of nine young black Americans, who played such an important role in changing the face of public education in America had dropped from my consciousness due to the passage of time, events and, I guess, apathy. Jim Lehrer...
