Since I’ll be up at my Mom’s the rest of the week – and doing a post by my phone is just too hard – how about a couple quickies?
Woozles Aren’t Allowed to Vote – BUT They Can Voice Their Opinion in Other Ways …
The Rethuglican Party Should Not Be Worried About Unifying Behind Trump – It’s Already Happening …
And One For The Dearly Departed Ted Cruz Since We Won’t Have Him To Kick Around Anymore …
I’m going to let the politicians do all the heavy-lifting for this week’s “Friday Fun” since I’m a bit busy getting ready to head up to Illinois to celebrate Mother’s Day with my Mom.
So let’s start things off with Carly Fiorina doing her best Three Stooges imitation with her recent plunge off a stage (she wasn’t injured) while the Cruz family pays no attention. Well, to be fair, Heidi seems a tad concerned – but just for a second, before she gets back to the more serious task of waving to the crowd:
Given Boehner’s recent disavowal of Cruz as “Lucifer in the flesh”, some cheeky wags claimed it was the Devil pulling Snarly down to Hades. I disagree and I don’t mean to get all “Wizardly” on you – but after studying that clip, I wonder if any of you can see some little girl in ruby-red slippers who might have thrown a bucket of water on her?
Next we’ll move to the Master – Pres. Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Fortunately someone has kindly preserved his best one-liners for us – so without further ado:
1). Next year at this time, someone else will be standing here in this very spot, and it’s anyone’s guess who she will be.
2). In just six short months, I will be officially a lame duck, which means Congress now will flat-out reject my authority. And Republican leaders won’t take my phone calls. And this is going to take some getting used to, it’s really going to — it’s a curve ball. I don’t know what to do with it.
3). And yet, somehow, despite all this, despite the churn, in my final year, my approval ratings keep going up. The last time I was this high, I was trying to decide on my major. And here’s the thing: I haven’t really done anything differently. So it’s odd. Even my aides can’t explain the rising poll numbers — what has changed, nobody can figure it out. [Slide of Cruz and Trump Shown] Puzzling …
4). A lot of folks have been surprised by the Bernie phenomenon, especially his appeal to young people. But not me, I get it. Just recently, a young person came up to me and said she was sick of politicians standing in the way of her dreams. As if we were actually going to let Malia go to Burning Man this year. That was not going to happen. Bernie might have let her go. Not us. I am hurt, though, Bernie, that you’ve distancing yourself a little from me. I mean, that’s just not something that you do to your comrade.
5). Look, I’ve said how much I admire Hillary’s toughness, her smarts, her policy chops, her experience. You’ve got to admit it, though, Hillary trying to appeal to young voters is a little bit like your relative just signed up for Facebook. “Dear America, did you get my poke?” “Is it appearing on your wall?” “I’m not sure I am using this right. Love, Aunt Hillary.” It’s not entirely persuasive.
6). Meanwhile, on the Republican side, things are a little more — how should we say this — a little “more loose.” Just look at the confusion over the invitations to tonight’s dinner. Guests were asked to check whether they wanted steak or fish, but instead, a whole bunch of you wrote in Paul Ryan. That’s not an option, people. Steak or fish. You may not like steak or fish –but that’s your choice.
7). Although I am a little hurt that he’s not here tonight. We had so much fun the last time. And it is surprising. You’ve got a room full of reporters, celebrities, cameras, and he says no? Is this dinner too tacky for The Donald? What could he possibly be doing instead? Is he at home, eating a Trump Steak tweeting out insults to Angela Merkel? What’s he doing?
8). Of course, in fact, for months now congressional Republicans have been saying there are things I cannot do in my final year. Unfortunately, this dinner was not one of them. But on everything else, it’s another story. And you know who you are, Republicans. In fact, I think we’ve got Republican Senators Tim Scott and Cory Gardner, they’re in the house, which reminds me, security, bar the doors! Judge Merrick Garland, come on out, we’re going to do this right here, right now. It’s like “The Red Wedding.”
9). But the prospect of leaving the White House is a mixed bag. You might have heard that someone jumped the White House fence last week, but I have to give Secret Service credit — they found Michelle, brought her back, she’s safe back at home now. It’s only nine more months, baby. Settle down.
10). And then there’s Ted Cruz. Ted had a tough week. He went to Indiana –- Hoosier country –- stood on a basketball court, and called the hoop a “basketball ring.” What else is in his lexicon? Baseball sticks? Football hats? But sure … I’m the foreign one.
And who will ever be able to forget his now iconic closing of “Obama out” with the mic drop.
But let’s not leave out the presumptive nominees of both parties. I’ve heard Herr Drumpf claim that he will win the general election because he’ll get Democrats to abandon their party and crossover to vote for him as the Rethuglican nominee.
If that happens, the average IQ of BOTH parties would be greatly enhanced.
In hopes of unifying the party, Herr Drumpf has said he’s going to put Ben Carson in charge of his VP Search Committee. Yeah, right – that should work out REALLY well ..
Lord knows your party needs LOTS of unifying. After all, it’s been reported that not a single GOP presidential candidate since 1988 is going to show up at the convention.
(Marco Rubio is also not going to attend. But, hell – he doesn’t show up for anything anyway!)
Oh, and before I forget, Herr Drumpf – whether you have big hands or little hands – here’s a warning to you just in case you really, REALLY believe that Hillary Clinton is, in your words, “not tough enough” to handle the job …
Consider yourself warned!
Sorry about "taking cuts" – and I held off thinking you might use it – but since not, someone has to do those "Oldies but Goodes"
So …
This will be an abbreviated edition consisting of telling you why there won’t be a full edition.
There are four of us in the family who celebrate our Birthdays in April, so the relatives get together just once at the end of the month to combine them in one big “B-Day Par-Tay!” So out-of-town guests starting arriving yesterday.
And now that all the “little kids” have grown up, we’ve graduated from the “Milk & Cookies” mode …
To more enjoyable types of libations …
But unfortunately the forecast for tomorrow’s shindigs here in KCMO is not too promising for partying outside …
Living in “Tornado Alley”, we just hope it doesn’t get any worse …
But whether it’s inside or outside, the downside is that sometimes the Party can get a bit wild and out-of-hand …
And you can always count on someone breaking out their Air Guitar
Hopefully I’ll have recovered enough by next week to resume normal activities. I think a nap of the cat variety should help …
Who among us can’t recall fond memories of our parents reading stories to us as children of the adventures of that honey-loving bear, Winnie-the-Pooh and his many friends – or reading them on our own as we grew older? But how many of us know that Winnie was inspired by the adventures of an actual orphaned bear from the forests of Canada who made it all the way to the London Zoo?
We have Lt. Harry Colebourn, a veterinarian who emigrated from London to settle in Winnipeg, Manitoba to thank for rescuing the protagonist of our childhood literary remembrances. At the outbreak of World War I Lt. Colebourn volunteered to serve in the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps (CAVC) and was en route to a training facility at Valcartier when his train stopped at White River, Ontario.
A trapper was on the train station's platform leading a young cub on a string, whose mother he most likely had killed in the spring of 1914, in hopes of selling the orphaned bear cub to someone. And that someone turned out to be our animal-lover, Harry Colebourn. Colebourn paid the princely sum of $20 for the cub which he named “Winnie” – short for his beloved adopted home of Winnipeg.
(I have no idea what the going rate for a bear cub back in 1914 was, but according to the Canadian Bank Inflation Calculator $20 back then would be worth $423.67 in 2016. That converts to ~$333.00 USD – which seems a bit pricey to me.)
Below is Colebourn's diary entry from August 24th, 1914 describing the transaction – I’ll transcribe it since it’s a bit hard to make out:
“Left Port Arthur, 7am, On train, bought bear, $20”
Winnie’s playfulness and gentle demeanor led her (yeah, unlike in the storybook the real-life Winnie was a female) to rapidly become the mascot for Colebourn’s Canadian cavalry regiment. She was so beloved by all that those in charge permitted her to accompany Colebourn’s regiment when they shipped out to England.
Colebourn had every intention of bringing Winnie home with him at the end of the war to settle her in the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg, but when his regiment received orders to deploy to the front line in France, he realized the front would not be a good place for the bear, so he arranged with the London Zoo to board her for the duration of WWI.
It was there that Winnie gained fame among her many visitors as an utterly genteel ursine – so much so that the zookeeper Ernest Scales wrote that Winnie was “the only bear they ever trusted entirely” to the point he would allow children into the cage to pet the bear and ride on her back! Can you imagine that happening today?
Although now Major Colebourn frequently visited Winnie at the London Zoo while on leave, when the war ended after three years on the front line, Colebourn sadly realized that not only had the visitors made Winnie the zoo’s major attraction, but Winnie was thriving on the love and attention she was receiving from her admirers. It was clear that his original intent of bringing her home to Canada would not be in Winnie’s best interest.
Below is the Receipt Colebourn received for his “gift” of Winnie, allowing her to remain at the London Zoo until her death on May 12, 1934.
And that picture above of the boy petting Winnie is none other than the real-life Christopher Robin Milne. Christopher Robin and his father, author A. A. Milne, were frequent visitors to the London Zoo. And Christopher Robin became so fond of Winnie that he rechristened his teddy bear, bought at Harrods Department Store, from Edward Bear to Winnie-the-Pooh.
Author A. A. Milne was so inspired by the adventures, both imaginary and real, his son shared with his plush toy, Winnie-the-Pooh, that he used them to publish his first story about a boy named Christopher Robin and his stuffed bear Winnie-the-Pooh in the London Evening News on Christmas Eve in 1925. It was shortly thereafter followed by his first book in October 1926.
How the toy teddy bear got the “Pooh” name is not entirely clear. Some sources say it came from a swan named Pooh that the family encountered on a vacation. But the author’s great-granddaughter, Lindsay Mattick, contends it was the sound Christopher Robin would make when he blew feathers of his pet swan (his own pet swan, name unknown but NOT the one they visited) off his clothes.
That seems to have some credence because in the first chapter Milne wrote about the bear’s name:
"But his arms were so stiff … they stayed up straight in the air for more than a week, and whenever a fly came and settled on his nose he had to blow it off. And I think – but I am not sure – that that is why he is always called Pooh."
Not only did a real little boy and his beloved plush toy bear become Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin, but most of the story locations are also inspired by real places. The Hundred Acre Wood, Roo’s Sandpit, Poohsticks Bridget are fictionalized names of real places in the Ashdown Forrest in Sussex, England where Milne bought a country home in 1925. For instance, the Hundred Acre Wood is really the Five Hundred Acre Wood and Galleon’s Leap is really Gill’s Lap.
And you can also see almost all of the real plush toys that Christopher Robin played with that inspired the actual characters in the books at the New York Public Library. All except for Roo, Christopher Robin lost his Roo plush in the thirties.
You would think that Christopher Robin Milne would be grateful for all the good fortune that came from having such a famous and beloved author-father – but you would be wrong. As an adult he wrote:
"It seemed to me almost that my father had got where he was by climbing on my infant shoulders, that he had filched from me my good name and left me nothing but empty fame".
Unlike Christopher Robin, we have long celebrated his father’s literary skills. His books have been translated into over fifty languages, including Latin. In fact the Latin translation – “WINNIE ILLE PU” – is believed to be the only foreign language book (but certainly the only book written in Latin) to have ever earned a spot on The New York Times bestseller list.
When Disney purchased the movie rights in 1961, Winnie-the-Pooh lost her hyphens and morphed into what many of us may be most familiar with as “Winnie the Pooh”.
But however you remember him (or her) – as the original Winnie-the-Pooh or today’s Winnie the Pooh – we can thank Harry Colebourn, an animal-loving veterinarian from Winnipeg who was willing to share his adopted gentle giant with the London Zoo where she won the affection of a little boy and his re-christened teddy bear, and then inspiring stories that still entertain millions.
So I leave you with some of Pooh’s wisest and best loved words:
“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.”
“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like ‘What about lunch?’”
“People say nothing is impossible … but I do nothing every day.”
“I'm not lost for I know where I am. But, however, where I am may be lost.”
“Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That's the problem.”
RESOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnipeg_(bear)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Colebourn
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/11/04/true-story-of-pooh
http://mentalfloss.com/article/22987/quick-10-winnie-pooh-particulars
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/18/books/winnie-ille-pu-nearly-xxv-years-later.html
There are few things as cute as a baby goat (kid) …
In southern Virginia, February’s kidding season at Caromont Farm (a goat cheese farm a few miles south of the University of Virginia) has usually been a harrowing, hectic time for owner Gail Hobbs-Page and her employees when her baby goats run wild and her staff is run ragged.
But this year, Gail, an accomplished chef for decades who transitioned to goat farmer in 2007, took the advice of her staff and decided to use social media to enlist the aid of volunteers who signed up for four-hour stints helping to keep almost 100 new baby goats (kids) warm, dry, clean and fed. Within a day the local NBC affiliate had a feature, and within two days the Washington Post ran a story on the “Goat Cuddlers”.
Gail, who is devoted to local agribusiness farming, was dubious about her staff’s suggestion of using the Caromon Farm’s Facebook page – but joyously overwhelmed when she had over 2,000 requests from people as far north as Quebec and far west as California! And all seventy-two of the four-hour slots were snapped up by young and old in just three days! People are already requesting the opportunity to cuddle and snuggle with the goats during next year’s kidding season.
“Every year we work our butts off with these baby goats, and everyone gets a little run-down,” says Gail Hobbs-Page, who started the farm in 2007. “I guess I really didn’t know how news works now,” says Hobbs-Page. “This—going viral—was never our intention. The phone is ringing off the hook.”
“What I tapped into is some sort of need that people have to connect…to connect with something so innocent as a baby goat, and to connect with where their food comes from.”
http://modernfarmer.com/2016/01/goat-snuggles/
Gail explained that having the volunteers work at keeping the kids warm, dry and fed was critical not only for their well-being, but also "When they become milkers for the cheese operation, they're easier to handle. If we didn't do this on some level, you couldn't get your hands on them. They'd just run away."
Caromont is a 120-goat farm that makes some 30,000 pounds of goat cheese each year to distribute up and down the east coast, as well as hosting gourmet dinners featuring … what else?
Consistent with what Hobbs-Page feels is her devotion to responsible, artisanal farming she does not use any GMO feed, pays her help a living wage, and extensively interviews anyone she sells her goats to.
But watching the volunteers in action this year helping to tend to her “kids”, Gail observed, "I'm not quite sure they need the cuddling as much as the people need to cuddle."
Well, there will be no full-fledged, formal “Friday Fun” – and that’s because I’m scheduled to meet with my tax guy today. And even though I’ve been working hard, I’m running late – and he thinks I’ve been making excuses and has gotten so impatient with my delays …
To the point that now I’ve had to reschedule and meet with the Junior partner – who also is rather impatient with me …
And yet early every morning I start the day with the best intentions of getting them done …
But I could always see the storm clouds forming …
And facing all that paperwork only served to make me angrier in trying to finish them up …
Frustrated? I’m pretty much ready to throw in the towel and surrender to the IRS …
So I can FINALLY get to do my happy dance …
Dateline – April 1, 2016
Johnson Space Center
April Holliday Newswire
NASA engineers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX are stunned and livid after learning that Republicans in the Texas state legislature yesterday passed, against unanimous Democratic opposition, a law that redefines the value of pi (π), a mathematical constant used extensively in the aerospace industry, as well as many other industries and educational centers.
The bill changes the value of pi from its widely accepted and commonly used value of 3.14159 to what its supporters contend is its true “Biblical” value of exactly three (3.00000). It was introduced without fanfare by a staunch Ted Cruz supporter, Sen. Iza Lou Zerr (R-Denton).
A letter campaign and an online-petition sponsored by the evangelical fundamentalist group “Let’s Get Back to the Bible” proved to be the difference in the bill’s rapid gain of right-wing support. The group’s Chairperson (who is also affiliated with a well-known White Supremacist organization) Rachel N. Tolerence, voiced her delight. “We need more laws that recognize the Bible as our sole source for guidance in all things – and that include math!”
Republican Governor, Greg Abbott, reported he will gladly sign it into law on Friday, April 1, 2016, saying, “We all should always believe that what’s in the Bible is the Gospel truth. After all, this isn’t rocket science, you know. So pi will now be its true Biblical value of 3.00000 – at least here in Texas”
According to Johnson Space Center’s Math Division Chair, Adam Upp, pi is a Greek letter derived from Euclidean geometry that signifies the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter and is frequently used by engineers to project rocket trajectories as well as many other calculations.
In utter shock, U. of Texas Electrical Engineering Professor, Alec Tricity, added that pi is a universal constant, and cannot arbitrarily be changed by lawmakers on a whim.
When informed of the legally mandated change in pi to a “Biblical” value of 3.0000, University of Texas Physics Professor Shirley U. Geste exclaimed, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Prof. Geste further explained that pi is an irrational number, which means that it has an infinite number of digits after the decimal point and can never be known exactly – and could never be rounded off to the even number of 3.0000.
Rep. Joe Kur (R-Plano) countered with "I think that it is the mathematicians that are being irrational. The Bible very clearly says in I Kings 7:23 that the altar font of Solomon's Temple was ten cubits in diameter and thirty cubits in circumference, and that it was round in compass. And that’s how one gets the true Biblical 3.0000 value for pi. It’s straight from scriptures!"
The law took the state's professionally trained scientific, mathematical and engineering communities by total surprise. “There was absolutely no warning at all this was about to happen,” Oliver Suddin, Chief Aerospace Engineer at the Johnson Space Center said.
Sen. Howard I. Nowe (R-Arlington), a co-sponsor of the bill, called into question the usefulness of any number that cannot be calculated exactly, and suggested that never knowing the precise value would harm students' self-esteem. "We need to return to some absolute values based on the Bible in our society," he said. “The Bible does not say that the font was ‘thirty-something’ cubits. It clearly says thirty cubits. Period. End. Full stop!"
Professionals from the education community are concerned that the legislation will adversely affect the way math is taught to children in Texas, a leading force in dictating how school books are written.
But one member of the Texas State School Board who is a strong supporter of home schooling based on “Christian values”, Lois Dee Nominator, is anxious to get the new value of pi into Texas’ math textbooks.
She would, however, consider a compromise allowing the non-Biblical value of 3.14159 based on actual math and scientific principles be retained as an alternative saying, "As far as I am concerned, the value of pi is only a theory, and we should be open to all interpretations." She looks forward to students having the freedom to decide for themselves what value pi should have.
Many experts are warning that this is just the beginning of a national battle over the value of pi between faith-based supporters and professionals in the education and scientific communities. “Let’s Get Back to the Bible” member Malcolm Tent agrees: "We’re ready to do battle. We just want to return pi to its true and Biblical value," he said. "And this, according to scriptures, is just plain old three – 3.00000. Can I hear an Amen on that?"
NOTE: Thanks to physicist Mark Boslough for his classic April Fool’s Day Hoax back in 1998, which can be read in its original format using Alabama as its foil HERE.
