Thanks! Only 4100 recipes in the database. Anyone needs anything, I got it, so long as you don't mind 5 gallon sauce batches and 200# taco filling yields. The latter is not an exaggeration. My big Mexican joint will routinely half a ton of meat in a day. I think we sold 7 thousand tacos last Cinco de Mayo.
Got up at 4 the other morning and decided to take a walk to the nearby nature conservancy. Once I got past the streetlights it was incredibly dark (no moon). I had a light with me but decided to try and simply let my eyes adjust, since most of the trails have limestone on them, making them whitish against the blackness. But it was harder than I thought, so I used my trekking poles almost the way a blind person uses a cane, almost stumbling over an occasional rock or root, and hearing the occasional mysterious rustle in the underbrush. I went up into the lesser-used trails, aiming to stop at a bench that overlooks a hollow. After a couple false starts (everything seems so much different in the dark) I came to the place I at first presumed to be where the bench was, then realized I must have gone past it. So I turned around and cautiously reached my poles out into the darkness until I tapped against it. I sat down and set my meditation timer for 20 minutes. I had my eyes half-open and could sense the approaching daylight. It was quite an experience. I got up and headed for home, following the now-quite-visible trails, even encountering a deer on my way back. Great way to start the day.
This aerial view shows the site of the projected Rockefeller Center in June 1930, before demolition started. Two hundred and twenty-nine brownstones were demolished in a three-block area, stretching from West 48th Street to West 51st Street and between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, to make way for the $250,000,000 commercial and cultural complex.
In 1956, John MacFarland robbed a jewelry salesman in the jewelry shop of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. MacFarland was well-known in Japan for being a professional wrstler. He was also a 6'4" Caucasian with red hair in Japan, and stopped in the lobby - with the briefcase full of stolen jewels - to sign autographs. The police quickly figured out who the culprit was. The jewels were never recovered.
In the off-and-on process of digitizing the box of photos I found in my mom's closet. They go back up to the 1880s and as recent as the early 21st century. All are emotionally moving in different ways. Right now I have a photo of my parents' kitchen in the house in the suburbs, circa the late 1980s. I hadn't had that image in my mind for years. Now I recognize the yellow patterned wall paper, the clunky microwave, the phone on the wall with message pad beside it, the back door leading to the covered deck that my grandfather added, and I know that if I turned right at that door I would find my way to the basement where my room had been, built by me and my father (mostly him, I was the designated "holder") and all the memories involved in that. I'm realizing how hard my parents worked to assemble a safe environment for their kids. Even kids like me, married and in my 30s at the time. As James Thurber says somewhere in his My Life and Hard Times, "I'd love to go back and relive it, but I don't suppose I can." Nope. I can't. All I have is this trail of memories, and they are bittersweet.
Something like this? The phone is right behind her head, and that's a roll of notepaper beside it. I know you said a pad—it just immediately made me think of the kitchen phone from That 70's Show.
An interesting fact, Britian has what is likely the world oldest ship still commissioned in her naval, as her flag ship no less. The HMS Victory. Admiral Nelson's ship from Trafalger.
I can't link to the NYT article, but this seems to be a good summary: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/editorial-case-study-on-how-schools-can-succeed-in-teaching-disadvantaged-students/ar-AA1i3S94 The Defense Department school system last year, post-pandemic, outperformed all 50 states on reading and math scores, both for fourth and eighth graders. Why? High standards. Racial and economic integration. More funding. More two-parent homes.
In music, the tritone, or flat fifth, or the "diablo in musica," or the note that essentially invented blues and metal, is a self-inverting interval. Meaning it clones and replicates itself without needing any help from the other notes around it. Try it on a guitar. Play any string on 0 then 6 then 12 then 18 then 24... it goes forever in all directions, togging between the notes that create the interval every 3 whole steps (6 frets). It is also the most dissonant interval in music (the "diablo") because its perfectly balanced. According to my teacher, symmetrical music is inherently unstable. Imbalance is the only way to make it sound balanced. Far out, man!
A mechanical (or “propelling”) pencil was patented by Sampson Mordan and John Isaac Hawkins in Britain in 1822.
I love my mechanical pencils. They stay sharp. My contribution to the cause of random thoughts: In 1895, Belle Fourche, SD was the world’s largest market to market shipping point for cattle, with 4500 railroad carloads of cattle leaving town each month during peak season.
The original Disneyland dates back to at least the 14th century. The Disney family, an aglicisation of the French name D'Isigny, were lords of the manor in what is now the village of Norton Disney (amongst other places) in Lincolnshire. A charter of 1386 names their estate as Disneyland. Walt Disney may be descended from the family. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67102341 Presumably, they did not have a steward of the manor named Michael.
That’s quite interesting for a random fact. Guess I always just thought this enterprise starts with Walt Disney himself. Might well explain why the French have a disneyland of their own and are arrogant about it. Think his biography should be better portrayed in film. The only time is when he was depicted defrauding P.L Traverse of Mary Poppins. Doesn’t do him justice.
With the 50 foot cord on the kitchen phone so my mother could use it anywhere. It would strangle you if you weren't paying attention when she was "mobile."
I believe I can recall when Ma Bell decided it would be better to have a coiled cord instead of the straight ones. But perhaps I made that up.
Actually, that appears to have come into use in 1937 according to Popular Science. But I still recall that our phones had straight cords in my earliest memory, so the coiled cords probably took awhile to get to our small town. After all, we still had operators until about 1960, though our phones were equipped with nonfunctioning dials.
On my desk, to one side of my laptop, I have a recently unearthed, now-framed, photo of my oldest daughter, around the age of 5 or 6 and my beloved German Shepherd Julia. They are posed side-by-side lying on the floor, leaning on their arms and front legs, respectively, and looking at the camera, daughter with a sly smile, dog with an attentive stare, looking, for all the world, like a pair of Chinese Fu dogs. Most striking about the photo is their eyes -- they bore into me, even now, after all those years, beacons reminding me of times long gone, almost inviting me back. Spooky and unsettling, but the tang of loss is welcome nonetheless. Time flows past, but the past is always with us.
How times have changed. Len Dawson enjoying a cigarette and Fresca on the sideline of Superbowl I January 15th, 1967
