Christmas Trivia

According to the New York Times, the now beloved Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was introduced into our holiday seasons back in 1939, as part of an advertising campaign for Montgomery Ward, a catalog and brick and mortar behemoth of retail consumer goods that went belly up in 2001 after being in business for 132 years.  So Rudolph, sad to say, began as nothing more than mere commercialism.  Bah, humbug.

I want one of these too.

The New York Times published an article on November 14, 2019 that has me green with envy.  For the last 25 years Queen Elizabeth II has had someone who breaks in her shoes by wearing them first.

I am now taking applications for someone who wants to break in my Walmart loafers.  Pay and benefits are poor, but you will be able to hang out with me once in a while.

Monday, August 19. Game 126: McKay optioned to Durham after 9-3 blowout

Rays 3, Mariners 9

Record: 72-52

Attendance:  9,152


The Rays took one on the chin Monday night, falling to the Mariners 9-3, but the story line was not the loss, bad is it is for their long term chances of getting into the playoffs, but rather it is the wretched work of rookie pitcher Brendan McKay, who lasted two innings, giving up three hits (two were homers), three walks, and seven runs (three earned).  After the game, the Rays sent him down to Durham.

McKay's problems are very likely the result of a very busy year for the young man.  He was promoted from Class AA ball to Class AAA and then, with the Rays starting pitching razor thin, he was brought up to big leagues. He made his debut on July 29 against the Texas Rangers and went six excellent innings, which may have been misleading.  Certainly it wasn't fair to think of the kid as the savior for the 2019 starting rotation.

There was talk at the time of his call-up that the 23-year-year, the number four all-around pick in the 2017 draft, had never thrown so many innings as he had this year, which was a worry as he began pitching in the big leagues.  The Rays handled him gently, sending him down to Durham between some starts and eventually settling on a six-day rotation for him.  The idea was not to tax him too much in this his first exposure to major league hitters.

But McKay continued to impress after his first game against the Rangers.  On July 5 he pitched five innings against the Yankees, giving up three runs in a game they lost in the 11th, 8-4.  In his next game against the Orioles on July 13, he pitched five scoreless innings striking out 7 and walking none.  The first sign of trouble came against the White Sox on the 19th when he lasted three and a third giving up 10 hits and six runs in a 9-2 loss.  On August 1, he rebounded against the Red Sox winning his second game, posting five and a third innings and three runs on seven hits and one walk.  He struck out a season high eight men.

But the last three outings with six day intervals beginning on August 7, when he gave up four early runs and lost the game 4-3, six hits, one walk, two HRs, got progressively worse.  On the 13th against the Padres, he only lasted four innings, giving up five hits, six walks, and four earned runs.  Hoping McKay had bottomed out and was due for another good outing, the Rays started him against the Seattle Mariners on Monday night, but it turned out to be his worst outing yet:  seven runs in two innings on a pair of homers plus three hits and three walks.  In the eight games he has pitched this year, his ERA climbed from 1.69 to 5.55.

It seems reasonable to conclude that McKay, who has been running fast through three levels of professional baseball this summer, may well have hit his innings max for 2019.  Maybe the best plan is to shut him down before an injury shuts him down.  Maybe the best thing for him and the team is for them to get together again when pitchers and catchers show up in February 2020.

Fit for a Queen

   Originally written for the St. Petersburg Times in 2009 but never published.         

          Jill Simpson Cooper (46), now of Dade City, was born and raised in unpronounceable towns in Wales, like Cwm and Ebbw Vale before ending up at the crossroads of the Kingsway and Queensway Highways in Scunthorpe, England, about two and a half hours north of London by car.  Her father was a steelworker who followed the job trail to Scunthorpe in 1977, which is where and when Jill began setting down roots and settling into the life that saw her in seven short years become Queen Elizabeth’s chef.  Or one of them.

            Her first job as a thirteen-year-old in Scunthorpe was at a bakery, where she worked every morning from six to eight, and then trotted off to school, where she took cooking classes and miscellaneous Home Ec courses until she graduated in 1982 and became the chief cook and bottle washer at an assisted living facility her retired parents had bought and then moved into.

            For a while 19-year-old Jill ran the place, cooking, of course, but also supervising the transformation of the house into a health-care facility.  She dealt with  health department regulators and local building inspectors, getting the place ready for what we would call a certificate of occupancy.

She was also in charge of scheduling fire inspections.  Which is how she met her husband, Alan Cooper, who was the Chief Fire Prevention Officer of Scunthorpe.

After they were married in 1984, Alan volunteered his bride and talented cook for several “fire brigade” events sponsored by North Lincolnshire County.  Jill’s talents were noticed at once.  After she rose quickly up the ranks from vegetable helper to event planner to unofficial chef, town officials decided to send her to the local culinary college for a formal education.        

When she graduated, Jill helped plan and prepare meals for events all throughout North Lincolnshire, most grandly at Normanby Hall, a classic English mansion on a 350-acre estate that had passed into public hands in 1963 and been transformed into an all-purpose facility that would now and then receive members of the Royal Family, and up to forty of their specially-invited guests.  Jill was regularly one of the chefs  in charge of a select staff that served either lunch or dinner to Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, or to Prince Charles, say, or Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York.

Of course whenever the Queen stopped at Normanby Hall, the entire county went on high alert for months.  Newspaper and television coverage was constant, and the water-cooler buzz shifted from soccer to the Royal Family.  On the day of the dinner, “people lined the streets to see the Queen pass in her bullet-proof car,” Jill recalls. 

Of course, Jill and the entire staff were on high alert too.  The menu had to be planned carefully well in advance, and the day before the Queen’s arrival, there was a soup-to-nuts dress rehearsal.  Everything had to be perfect.  “By the time the Queen actually arrived,” Jill says, “we were mostly just relieved.”

Of all the meals she served the Queen, Jill remembers one disastrous dessert most, “Baked Pears and Chocolate Sauce,” because the sauce didn’t set properly.  There was a general kitchen panic, but in the end, she says, “I served it anyway.” 

It isn’t generally known, Jill says, but  it’s true that “when the Queen stops eating, everyone stops eating.”  Fortunately for the invited guests, Jill adds, “She’s a slow eater.”  It isn’t known, however, if the Queen stopped sooner than usual when the unset chocolate sauce was placed before her.

After several years of being in the culinary spotlight, Jill retired with Alan to Sarasota, where they spent a very profitable decade in a pool business before retiring again in 2007 to Dade City, not quite midway between their grown children living in Sarasota and Jacksonville. 

And now Jill Cooper is preparing a cookbook for American moms, perhaps to be titled Fit for a Queen.  It’s a project Jill’s had in mind for several years but has only just begun in earnest during the last several months.  Alan’s favorite is “Toad in the Hole,” a sausage and Yorkshire Pudding dish, while Jill prefers Salmon En Croute, which is salmon in a puff pastry.  They also list “fish and chips,” “Roast Lamb with Garlic and Rosemary,” and all manner of soups among their favorites.

When she isn’t working at her part-time job at Publix or traveling with Alan in their RV, Jill fine-tunes the 1500 recipes she’s collected through the years and brings trial samples to discriminating neighbors like Judy and Tom Moon who are happy Jill’s returned at long last to the culinary arts.  “Delicious,” Judy says of the most recent recipe, “Panini with Pesto Parmesan Ham.”  “I can’t wait to see the cookbook!”

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Roasted Herb and Garlic Chicken

4 chicken portions

1 clove garlic

2 teaspoons rosemary

1 teaspoon sage

1 teaspoon thyme

2 tablespoons oil.

Mix rub ingredients together and coat chicken portions.  Roast in a 400 degree oven until golden brown and crispy.

Apple and Walnut Maple Mustard Salad

1 bag spring greens

1 cup sour cream

2 tablespoons mustard

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1 green apple chopped

½ cup walnuts

Combine dressing ingredients, mix in apple and walnuts.  Chill.

When ready to eat, toss the dressing with the spring greens.

Peach and Blueberry Cornbread

4 peaches cut in 6’s

4 tablespoons good blueberry preserves

1 packet corn muffin mix

1 egg

One third cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Spread preserve over the bottom of 9-inch iron pan.  Arrange peach lices to cover preserve.  Mix cornbread according to package adding vanilla.  Bake at 375 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

Mt. St. Helens: A Fact Sheet

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 caught the United States volcano experts a little off guard.  It had been 65 years since the last mainland eruption.  It all began on March 20 when noises from the volcano became audible--and worrisome.  Within a week it was spewing magma every day all day accompanied by earthquakes.  People in the area were evacuated eight miles to safety.

It was at this point that Mt. St. Helens became the celebrity volcano, with cameras from all over the world focused on the light show.  TV crews crept too close to provide "film at eleven."  Helicopters by the dozen flew over the top of the mountain, daring the rumbling volcano to show its face.  But like a willful child who won't behave as instructed, Mt. St. Helens took its time deciding what it wanted to do.  News crews stopped their 24/7 coverage--an expensive proposition if the damn thing wasn't going to blow after all.

But then almost a month later on April 19, the northern side of the mountain began bulging threateningly with what should have been read as a forthcoming  lateral blast, but was not.  The experts missed the signs perhaps because the only volcanoes they had observed were in Hawaii, and they did not have lateral bulges and explosions.

Another month passed.  Then on Sunday May 18 at 8:32 in the morning it began.  Bill Bryson described what followed in his Short History of Nearly Everything (2003):  "The north side of the volcano collapsed, sending an enormous avalanche of dirt and rock rushing down the mountain slope at 150 miles an hour.  It was the biggest landslide in human history and carried enough material to bury the whole of Manhattan to a depth of four hundred feet.  A minute later, its flank severely weakened, St. Helens exploded with the force of five hundred Hiroshima-sized bombs, shooting out a murderous hot cloud at up to 650 miles an hour--much too fast, clearly, for anyone nearby to outrace.  Many people who were thought to be in safe areas, often far out of sight of the volcano, were overtaken.  Fifty-seven people were killed.  Twenty-three of the bodies were never found.  The toll would have been much higher except that it was a Sunday.  Had it been a weekday many lumber workers would have been working within the death zone.  As it was, people were killed eighteen miles away."

The facts:  Mt. St. Helens lost 1,300 feet from its peak. 230 square miles of forest were destroyed.  Damage was reported at $2.7 billion. The smoke and ash rose 60,000 feet in ten minutes.  The town of Yakima, Washington, 80 miles away, got covered in ash and smoke an hour and a half after the blast.

                                      At Mt. St. Helens in the Cascade Mountains, 31 years
                                      after the eruption in 1980 that blew 1,300 feet off the
                                      volcano's summit.  Photo by Roberta Cifelli, 2011.

What to be scared of

If Bill Bryson can be trusted (A Short History of Nearly Everything, 2003), we should all be afraid of asteroids. Here's why.

The last two hundred years have seen asteroid hunters working at a frantic pace to locate them in the heavens and write them up for future reference..  At the end of the nineteenth century about a thousand of them had been counted up and named, but it was the 20th-Century that improved the method and bookkeeping until by 2001 there were some 26,000 identified.  Which sounds good until you realize that there are about a billion more waiting to be discovered and catalogued, each one on a path that will bring it near to Earth at some point on its regular orbit.  It is inevitable that another impact, possibly of extinction magnitude, will occur.  Some experts think we are far overdue for just that sort of planetary cataclysm. It would be a Doomsday scenario.

Even if a relatively small asteroid, say the size of a house, were to hit, it would destroy a city, and these are much more common than the massive asteroids that would kill all life on the planet.  How many house-sized asteroids are floating around in "Earth-crossing orbits"?   The number "is almost certainly in the hundreds of thousands and possibly in the millions, and they are nearly impossible to track."

A couple of these house-sized asteroids zipped past Earth in 1991 and 1993, missing us by about a hundred thousand miles each, close calls when you talk about space dimensions.  We didn't see either one until it had passed us, which led one expert Timothy Ferris to say, in the words of Bryson, that "such near misses probably happen two or three times a week and go unnoticed."

The Doomsday Asteroid, Meteor, or Comet:

"An asteroid or comet traveling traveling at cosmic velocities would enter the Earths's atmosphere at such a speed that the air beneath it couldn't get out of the way. . . .In this instant of its arrival in our atmosphere, everything in the meteor's path--people, houses, factories, cars, would crinkle and vanish like cellophane in a flame.

"One second after entering the atmosphere, the meteorite would slam into the Earth's surface. . . . The meteorite itself would vaporize instantly, but the blast would blow out a thousand cubic kilometers of rock, earth, and superheated gases.  Every living thing within 150 miles that hadn't been killed by the heat of entry would now be killed by the blast. . . .

"For those outside the zone of immediate devastation, the first inkling of catastrophe would be a flash of blinding light, the brightest ever seen by human eyes--followed an instant to a minute or two later by an apocalyptic sight of unimaginable grandeur:  a roiling wall of darkness reaching high into the heavens, filling an entire field of view and traveling at thousands of miles an hour.  Its approach would be eerily silent since it would be moving far beyond the speed of sound. . . .

"But that's just the initial shockwave.  No one can do more than guess what the associative damage would be, other than that it would be brisk and global.  The impact would almost certainly set off a chain of devastating earthquakes.  Volcanoes across the globe would begin to rumble and spew.  Tsunamis would rise up and head devastatingly for distant shores.  Within an hour, a cloud of blackness would cover the planet, and burning rock and other debris would be pelting down everywhere, setting much of the planet ablaze.  It is estimated that at least a billion and a half people would be dead by the end of the first day. . . .

"And in all likelihood, remember, this would come without warning, out of a clear sky."

Where We Came From--and When

A little more than four and a half billion years ago, when the universe was already nine or ten billion years old, a floating mass of gas and dust some 15 billion miles across began to come together where we are now in the Milky Way galaxy.  More than 99 % of it formed itself into a star, our Sun.  The remainder of the dust and gas, little more than interstellar debris, began collecting in what we call our solar system, and gradually the largest collections of the debris formed into the planets that orbit the Sun.  Including Earth of course.

That all happened in a short space of time, some 200 million years.  Then, still in its planetary infancy, Earth was struck by a huge asteroid or planet which split off a big chunk of its surface and sent it hurtling into space, stopping some 240,000 miles away where it began orbiting the Earth it used to be a part of.  This of course is the moon.

An atmosphere of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane, and sulfur gradually formed above the Earth.  Carbon dioxide, the powerful greenhouse gas we hear so much about today, has a warming effect that threatens to melt Arctic ice caps and raise coastal water levels.  That same carbon dioxide  was also at work in the early years of Earth's formation when warming saved the planet by preventing it from freezing over.  The principal at work here may be that if you wait long enough good turns to bad and bad to good, at least in the case of carbon dioxide--and maybe everything else if you have time to wait and see.

It took another 500 million years before life formed and another four billion years after that before we showed up.  Those thoughts may get their own posting some day, but for now, however, it is remarkable to think even this briefly about where we came from--and when.


With thanks to the brilliant and always entertaining Bill Bryson, this time in his Short History of Nearly Everything (2003).

Robocalls, the 2018 Numbers

"Consumer Reports" (May 2019) published Robocall statistics that bear repeating--here and everywhere--for everyone who has the vague idea or dead certainty that there are more and more of these calls polluting our land lines and cell phones every day, week, month, and year.  You're right.  Here are the most recent robocall numbers from 2018:

1,517 per second
5,461,100 per hour
131,066,390 per day
3,986,602,683 per month
47,839,232,200 per year

With such outrageous impositions on all of us every second of every day, don't think twice ever again about hanging up on them.  It's self-defense.  A duty.  Do it.

Addendum from the Tampa Bay Times, Saturday, June 8:

Phone companies can now block robocalls

The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously Thursday to authorize phone carriers to automatically recognize and block robocalls, a move that could spare Americans from billions of unwanted telemarketing and scam calls each year.

Under the order, which passed 5-0, phone companies will be allowed to enroll customers in robocall-blocking programs by default unless consumers opt out. Previously, some companies had tools to fend off unwanted automated calls, but customers had to opt in to gain the benefits.

Robocalls have skyrocketed in recent years. Last year, Americans received 48 billion robocalls.

It's Called Classical or Symphonic or Orchestral. . . .

Words are clumsy things compared to music.  No contest.  The best poetry quickens the pulse or makes you gasp with sudden recognition, but there is always a barrier between the art and the feeling it evokes.  The words get in the way.

Music has no such barrier.  It sweeps you up and carries you away.  It leaves you limp.  It wears you out.  It enthralls you.  And while you are captured emotionally, helpless under its spell, you are at the same time struck by the underlying structures that you can feel on another level--even if you have little or no sense of what is sometimes called "serious" music.  Experiencing Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, the list is endless, is like being transported to a better place, emotionally and intellectually.

Take for example Pyotr Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet Overture Suite" (1880).  It is sheer magic, like the Shakespeare play it is based on.  But in Tchaikovsky's hands, you can feel the story of star-crossed lovers, the clash of warring families, the gorgeous melodic swelling of pure love.  And you also feel the sudden, shocking violence that bursts early and late before the music can find its painful ending.

But words fail.  The music speaks for itself.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxj8vSS2ELU

Merciless, a Review

My first movie review (slightly edited for its appearance here) ran in The New Jersey Herald on December 26, 1986.  Headline: "No Mercy" Riddled with Cliches and Violence.  With Richard Gere and Kim Basinger.  Herald rating:  C.

If "No Mercy" fails at the box office, it won't be because the producers missed any of the familiar ploys aimed at insuring its popular success.  The dialogue is coarse and vulgar; the screenplay is formula-driven and riddled with cinematic cliches; and most important, graphic violence is everywhere--accompanied by a short-fused sexual tension that eventually explodes.  "No Mercy" has it all.

The heart of the movie is the down-and-dirty romance between Eddie Jillette (Richard Gere) and Michel Duval (Kim Basinger).  They are, in fact, excellent together, a red-hot romantic duo.  Their combined sensuousness is as steamy as the Louisiana Bayou where, handcuffed together, the two sex symbols escape to.  Directer Richard Pearce nicely develops their sexual chemistry from the outset with soul-searching eye contact that literally promises later fireworks.  And producer Dino Conte has found the Gere-Basinger coupling so cinematically satisfying that he has more work already lined up for them.

Beyond the romance, however, "No Mercy" offers very little.

Before the passionate love scene and wild shoot-out at the end, we are led through an unlikely plot.  Jillette is a Chicago cop who learns of a New Orleans woman (Duval) looking for someone to murder her Louisiana crime lord lover, Losado (played with evil brilliance by Jeroen Krabbe).  Eddie and his partner take the job.  The job is complicated of course because Losado is determined to keep the woman who "belongs" to him.  He establishes his evil credentials by blowing up Michel's confidante and disemboweling Eddie's partner.

The death of his partner provides Eddie with a motive (unimaginative and worn out as it is) for tracking down the mysterious New Orleans crime king.  His job is thus transformed into a love-driven vendetta.

Because "No Mercy" is set in an unreal world, there is never a moment's doubt that Jillette will triumph in the end.  He will have his vengeance and his woman.  But before that triumph can work on screen, the menacing terror of Losado's brutality has to be established.  And it is--over and over again.  His squad of goons loft mortar-like bombs and burst into rooms with shotguns blazing, but it is Losado himself who is the most cold-blooded killer, cutting up his victims with a measured inhumanity.  He is, indeed, a worthy and fearsome adversary.

When Losado and his thugs come gunning for Jillette at movie's end, we are fully prepared for a monumental shootout.  And we get it.  There are booby traps, handguns, shotguns, even a car that explodes in a hotel lobby.  There is also, of course, Losado's ever-present hunting knife.  The final victory comes when Jillette defeats the arch-villain and rescues the slightly soiled maiden from a fate wore than death.  Thus the triumphant ending promised at the outset is dutifully delivered.  Ho hum.  There was never a doubt.

Viewing Guide:  Sex:  No nudity but plenty of sexual language and action.  Violence:  Explicit and insistent, a bloodbath.  Language:  Foul throughout.  Rated R.