I could tell you where this shot was taken, but that would spoil half the fun. If you know, give yourself 10 points. If you don’t, go take a drive in Adams County, PA, find it and then take your 10 points. (I’m really a generous scorer.)
Thing is, I enjoy history. Not book stuff, but real wander-around-in-it history.
I bought a container of ice cream, recently. In its upper corner was a big sign boasting of “2 extra scoops, over 15% more ice cream than 1.5 quarts.”
I know I’m in the ranks of Senior Citizens, but does anyone still alive remember when a half-gallon box of ice cream actually contained two quarts of the frozen treat?
In 2007, I wrote a tradition among through-hikers on the Appalachian Trail. When they arrived at the half-way point on their trek along the 2,100-mile Georgia-to-Maine trail, many of them paused to attempt the Half-Gallon Challenge. The challenge was to see how quickly they could consume a half-gallon of ice cream.
Granddaughter Kass graduated this month from Eighth Grade. It was a warmup for what will happen in four years; she and her classmates were introduced at the end of the ceremonies as the Class of 2016.
It was a warmup for the show slated four years hence – a warning round over Mom’s pocketbook.
“She’s gonna go get her beauty on,” said Mom, as mother and daughter prepared to head out.
“I am,” she said. “I’m getting curls, and then I need to get my eyebrows done.”
And she just turned 14.
The Constitution used to require only a simple majority for the U.S. Senate to pass a bill – 51 votes when the senate is fully complemented with 100 senators.
To the everlasting joy of a handful of senators, We The People seemed to have become convinced the Constitution has been amended to require 60 votes.
I went for a walk in the woods one day with the granddaughters, in search of the source of a creek which flows from the county where I live in south-central Pennsylvania, across the state line into Maryland, and joins the Monocacy River east of Thurmont.
A paper company once owned the particular piece of forest, 2,500 acres of the first tree farm in the state that gave birth to the nation’s forest conservation movement. There was a time when men with axes and horses took to the woods to cut trees and drag them to a nearby road, from whence they could be carted to the mill. Axes gave way to chainsaws, and horses to huge, powerful tractors called “skidders,” but even then, logging was a slow process. I know; I was raised where logging and paper making was the primary industry.
Chainsaws have been replaced by machines with air conditioned cabs from which one operator can virtually denude a mountainside in a matter days, instead of the months or years once required, leaving the owner to pay taxes for several decades while waiting patiently for trees to grow to usable girth. Glatfelter, owner of that 2,500 acres, had decided to sell the land, to let someone else pay the taxes and “call us when you’ve got wood to sell.” … Continue reading …
You can’t look out a window from 30,000 feet and see a flame burning on a wastewater treatment plant in Richmond, Va. I wonder what a wastewater treatment plant would have to burn to make that much flame.
I made that note on a drive last week to Florida, a purpose of which was to gather some photos and maybe contact some people working to get better wages for migrant farm workers. You can’t do either of those things in an airplane at 30,000 feet.
I sleep when I fly. When I drive, I think a lot, and talk to a voice-to-text app to keep notes. Such as, in 2,600 miles of driving, how much construction is putting people to work … Continue reading …
I lost two games of pool Sunday evening – the first games I’d lost in about 30 years. Maybe longer.
Of course, I hadn’t played pool in about 30 years. Maybe longer.
I had accompanied my son to the pool hall, where he is a regular competitor. I don’t know whether he’s ready for Las Vegas, but he’s pretty good. I am a good photographer, so I got several nice shots of him – through a low haze. There were a few guys and gals in the place who didn’t smoke. At least not directly.
I was raised with a father who smoked, mostly Phillip Morris, and a grandfather who smoked two packs of Tareytons a day. I swiped a pack from Dad’s stock … Continue reading …
“This planet has – or rather, had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.” from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
In 1985, I retired from the Navy and moved to Maine, next to Mom, where I’d been raised. That was the year Halley’s comet passed by, a treat I enjoyed on my way home for nearly a week of November evenings.
It hung there, as though, had I hiked up the power line to the top of the hill over which it seemed parked, I could have reached out and touched it. News reports excitedly proclaimed it to have come SO CLOSE – only about 93 million miles. A chunk of ice, rock and dust about 6 miles in diameter, with a tail some hundred million miles long, looking, from where I stopped each night to watch, like a baseball hit for a home run into deep center field, leaving a three-foot trail of dust.
Chinese astronomers first recorded its passage in 240 B.C., Continue reading …
My wife occasionally asks me how I want my final send-off to be arranged. Being a country boy with a penchant for history and “a blaze of glory,” I’ve suggested placing the part of me that used to look like me on a large pile of dry wood, crack a couple kegs of Corona and whatever other libation pleases those in attendance, turn up the Jimmy Buffett and set the pyre afire.
That’s illegal, she says.
Anyway, where I live the blaze likely would result in a fire department response, and a visit from a representative of the Department of Environmental Protection. Continue reading …
If you haven’t heard The Willys, you’ve missed a treat. We caught them one recent evening at The Underside, a restaurant and pub under the Altland House, on Abbottstown Square.
Their music is difficult to define. It’s been called “classic rock and beyond,” which leader Bill Serfass said sums it up about as well as any other description.
To my ear – I only know what I like but I’m not good with labels – it’s a mixture of gentle Rock-and-Roll and ballads. As my wife and I sat enjoying an appetizer of potato chips and sauce (both of which are made in the Underside kitchen) the group started one song I thought could have played in a Jimmy Buffett concert, though it wasn’t a Buffett song. In another number, Continue reading Songs you’ll wish you knew, and a few you do
A friend of mine died this week. I’d never met him, and I think I’m poorer for it, but another friend I’ve actually howdied with a couple times introduced me to Joe Bageant when she wrote of his departure from this plane. Then another friend (keep your shoes on; there aren’t that many more to count) said Joe was a great writer and would I like to read one of his books, the one called “Deer Hunting with Jesus,” if he could find his copy. Continue reading Books, birdlings and blind satellites
Ah, ‘tis the season.
A friend was informed by her husband that Thanksgiving is over and it’s time to put up the tree.
Another chimed in that her tree is up already.