Woman at the ballpark

Just about out of words on this one...

http://www.700wlw.com/pages/onair_scottsloan.html?article=11683702#.UkRSqjBFAac.facebook

I hope you can use the link, but if not, it shows a baseball going into the stands, apparently at Houston's Minute Maid Park. A young girl cradles the ball in her chest and a woman nearby grabs it out of the little girl's grasp and sits down. Celebrating with her friends.

There is a lot to be said, but the headline seems to say some of it--evil woman. Remember, this woman is sitting in the front row, right behind the dugout. Those seats are not cheap! Even in Houston. While she is probably not trailer trash due to income level, she certainly behaves in a despicable manner.

And then, for the coup d'état, some jerk in the second row high fives her. Congrats on kicking a puppy, too?

Sheesh.

Couple of updates

First, a typo--it was a 1960 Ford Starliner, not 1969, that I borrowed way back when in high school. That was in the blog post about operating above my pay grade. Don't know how I could have been driving a 1969 car when it was 1962.

Second, I have run onto some information about climate change that makes me wonder. Since I don't know anything about the subject except what I see in the press and what the local weatherman tells me, it is puzzling when it was reported by a London paper that the Arctic ice mass had increased this summer by 60% more than it was a year ago on the same date. The "experts" had predicted that the ice would essentially be gone so that there could be the long-anticipated Northwest Passage.

As it turns out, about 20 yachts are stranded in the ice with their only solution a rescue by the Canadian icebreakers. A cruise ship turned around and made it back to safe waters.

Have we seen anything about this in the regular press here? Like in the New York Times? I did see an article that refutes it...not the facts, but just that they are important. It says the reason it increased so much is because last year it decreased and it was expected. Tell that to the stranded boats??

It just makes me wonder...I have tried this question out on some friends; "When you see or hear a topic discussed on national TV or radio that deals with a subject that is familiar to you, is it properly presented?" All of the people I have so far asked have said, "No, they either get significant facts wrong, they completely miss the point...or both." This makes me fearful that I am not getting the right information about important topics.

Surgery

When they opened up the knee, they apparently took most of the meniscus. I know it had really been hurting, but hoped that some would remain so the potential for arthritis would not be so great.

When you have your ribs broken and your sternum sawed, broken, pulled apart and stuck back together with super glue and staples, it hurts. Especially if you cough, and you have to cough a lot to clear the lungs. I lived in fear of sneezing, believing that the staples would fly out of my body and everything would explode in a spasm of pain. Well, at least it would hurt a lot.

So why did every meal come with pepper? Isn't that kind of sadistic?

When you get your knee opened up, you are supposed to keep all weight off it and use crutches or a wheel chair for two days. They must have dumped a gallon of fluids in me with the IV, though, so off to the bathroom, over and over. Not easy with crutches, very awkward, took a long time.

Again, are they just sadistic?

Heretical thoughts

Lyn Yarbrough sent this, and the concept helps me out a bit. I listened to a TV weatherman go on about "global warming" and the inevitability of the future. While this guy may be a genius and know a lot about the future, it bothered me that I was being fed stuff by a TV weatherman.

An analysis of the value of heretical thought by one of the world's leading Physicists, Freeman Dyson at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.
http://edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-science-and-society

..."Here is another heretical thought. Instead of calculating world-wide averages of biomass growth, we may prefer to look at the problem locally. Consider a possible future, with China continuing to develop an industrial economy based largely on the burning of coal, and the United States deciding to absorb the resulting carbon dioxide by increasing the biomass in our topsoil. The quantity of biomass that can be accumulated in living plants and trees is limited, but there is no limit to the quantity that can be stored in topsoil. To grow topsoil on a massive scale may or may not be practical, depending on the economics of farming and forestry. It is at least a possibility to be seriously considered, that China could become rich by burning coal, while the United States could become environmentally virtuous by accumulating topsoil, with transport of carbon from mine in China to soil in America provided free of charge by the atmosphere, and the inventory of carbon in the atmosphere remaining constant. We should take such possibilities into account when we listen to predictions about climate change and fossil fuels. If biotechnology takes over the planet in the next fifty years, as computer technology has taken it over in the last fifty years, the rules of the climate game will be radically changed.

When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories. Many of the basic processes of planetary ecology are poorly understood. They must be better understood before we can reach an accurate diagnosis of the present condition of our planet. When we are trying to take care of a planet, just as when we are taking care of a human patient, diseases must be diagnosed before they can be cured. We need to observe and measure what is going on in the biosphere, rather than relying on computer models."

   

 

 

 

 

Quotes

From Jerry DeFrance

"Insanity in individuals is something rare..but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule."   Friedrich Nietzsche

"The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer."  Henry David Thoreau

"There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write."  William Makepeace Thackeray

Early tomorrow, I go in to have some of the meniscus in my knee removed. I apparently tore it and it is so sore. I limp and it interferes with sleep a lot. So I will be a bit woozy for a while as it is same-day surgery, but general anesthesia.

Jer sent these to me (he will get them returned as he gets these postings in email) and I found them to be new to me and especially interesting. He knows how much I love quotes and aphorisms, and apparently knows how poorly read I am.

First, the Nietzsche quote is apparent in modern US politics and we can go back in history and pinpoint many examples. One of the reasons it is unfair to compare the hysteria of 1930's Germany to any other period; it had its own unique insanity.

The Thoreau quote is so fundamental to every human--to be listened to! Seems like we often just take turns talking rather than trying to understand what the other person is offering.

The last is especially appropriate for what I have been trying to do on this blog for a couple of years--put some of those thoughts down in a cogent fashion. Difficult for me, and if nothing else, gives me a sense of appreciation for those who perform the task well.

Don't understand

A 71-year old Iowa man shot and killed an escaped convict who was holding he and his wife hostage. Shouldn't there be an investigation by the Federales? This must be another mistake of the stand your ground law. Let's accuse him of murder, or some Federal crime. You know, I am not much younger, I probably look like that guy.

Oh, wait, there are differences.

Also, notice that this story is not carried on NBC News (it was earlier, but you have to know where to find it) or Yahoo. I had to really dig to see it as it was taken down just about as soon as it was put up.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/20/justice/iowa-escaped-inmate-shot/index.html

Doesn't have the appeal that the Travon Martin shooting had...or has.

P & W

Prokofiev wrote it, "Peter and the Wolf" (1936), Disney switched it around (1946) and I listened to it in the one-room country school in the early 1950's.

Next spring, we are going to see it performed, and it will be the first time I have seen a live performance when the Virginia Symphony does it March 30, 2014...assuming the crick don't rise. In January and April, we will see "Bolero" and "Tchaikovsky's No. 6 Pathetique," respectively.

Both the Ravel and Tchaikovsky pieces are emotional, and I hope no one takes their own life after that fourth movement of Pathetique. Can't wait for this treat.

Just listened to a little bit of the Disney version of P & W on You Tube and the memories were really vivid. That room, Big Cut District 12, had a special smell on top of everything else, a combination of sweeping compound (does anybody know what that stuff was, and is it still used?) and a "school" smell. When it was too cold or stormy to go outside at lunch, Mrs. McKillip would sometimes let us play games, listen to her read a book or play a record, like the 78 rpm one of "Peter and the Wolf."

My vote was often for the record, but I have always been the kind who would play a song over and over until everyone else was ready to break the record or me!

Live performances of symphonic music are wonderful to me, as there is no electronic cluttering of the sounds, and once they are gone in that auditorium, they are really gone forever because those sounds will never be "live" again.

As many of you know, the symphony in Sioux City was special for me, and we are again lucky to be in a place that has a wonderful orchestra and a great place to perform, the nearly new Sandler Center in Virginia Beach. I still marvel that Klinger-Neal at Sioux City's Morningside College was built in 1964 and had such great acoustics.

At this stage of life, I have so much more discretionary time so it is possible to do some study on these pieces, get more familiar. Maybe we should rent Bo Derek's "10"? That came out 34 years ago. Doesn't seem possible, nor does it seem possible that Mary Cathleen Collins (Bo Derek) will be 57 years old this year. Whoa.

Can't wait to see and hear P&W, too, although I may yearn for that distinctive voice of Sterling Holloway.

Only thing that could make it better would be visitors to see it with us.