What Would Jimmy Do?

Today is election day — without doubt the most important one in my 67 years of voting. I’ve been a lot of places in this world and believe me, the privilege of voting shouldn’t be taken for granted. Don’t ever think of voting as your right, or duty — a lot of the world would give anything to have the opportunity to go to the polls today. Go vote!!!
— 30 —

Back a few years ago, I remember about writing about Twinkies — if I remember, there was a big uproar back then because the company that made them was going out of business or something like that. But some other company started making them, so all was good again. 

But today there was some nutritionist on one of the morning shows and was going on about how unhealthy the Twinkie is — and he made the, I guess, now famous claim that a Twinkie would stay fresh for 50 years or more. 

Well, I’m not sure where this all started, but I think it may have been during the cold war when people stocked survival foods in their household bomb shelters. For some reason a lot of people included Twinkies.

The truth is, a Twinkie’s shelf life is about 25 days. Actually, even that amount of time does seem like a lot of “stay fresh” time. But Twinkies are a processed food and contain no dairy products that can go bad in a hurry. If you check the label, you’ll find such ingredients as vegetable and/or animal shortening and partially hydrogenated soybean, cottonseed, or canola oil. These are all artificially produced fats and are more solid than clear liquid oils — and — are less likely to spoil. They are what supposedly help twinkles stay soft and tasty — but not for 50 years.
— 30 —

My niece and nephew recently sent me a book about ship wrecks on the Great Lakes. I found the book very interesting — it describes some of the earlier battles between mankind and the Great Lakes. 

Maybe because of that book, an interesting article caught my eye a few days ago. The book Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville was inspired by a real event that might have been even more spellbinding than the book. In 1820, the Nantucket whale ship Essex was repeatedly rammed by a large sperm whale and sank in the Pacific Ocean, leaving the 20 crew members adrift in three small whaleboats for 95 days. Only eight men survived.
Maybe truth is stranger than fiction…..
— 30 —

I have a whole different perspective of today, November 2, than I’ve ever had before. When I was growing up in Maysville, Oklahoma, I never heard of the “Day of the Dead.” We had Halloween and I knew of something called All Saints Day, but that’s about it. There were no church services or any kind of celebrations to even acknowledge the day existed. 

My first exposure to the “Day of the Dead,” came shortly after I had graduated and left Maysville — one year we were in Mexico for a few days over Halloween. That’s the first I learned of a November 2 holiday called Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead.) People celebrated the day by visiting the graves of deceased loved ones and setting up alters with their favorite foods, drinks, and photos. I was told that people believed that the souls of the dead return to visit their living families on this day. 

It made an impression on me — I had never been taught any such belief and had never given much thought to it…. but I remember thinking how great that would be if it was true. After meeting Claire, it wasn’t a foreign belief to her at all, and I assumed it must be a Catholic thing. But it’s become apparent to me that for the most part, people that celebrate the Day of the Dead don’t attach any religious significance to it — they see it as a day of merriment, remembrance, and acknowledgment of cultural roots.

So despite its bleak name, the Day of the Dead isn’t a time for mourning or for spooking friends and neighbors. It’s a celebration of life — a time to honor the memory of deceased loved ones, to pray for the souls in purgatory and ask for prayers from those in Heaven. 

I’m going to Mass today, for the first time on the Day of the Dead. Not to celebrate death, but accept it. After all, it’s something that comes — and is certain — for everyone. If I read my church’s teachings right, it’s something natural — a step toward Heaven.

I think about Claire all the time — one thing that consoles me is knowing that only what she did for herself died…. what she did for others and the world remains and is immortal.
— 30 —

Happy Anniversary to Dave and Chassie!!!!
Love you both!

The most recent residents on the circle where we live are from India. Today may be Halloween for the rest of us, but this year, for our neighbors it’s the most important festival of the year — Diwali. It is celebrated across faiths by more than a billion people. Over five days, people take part in festive gatherings, fireworks displays, feasts and prayer. 

Diwali is derived from the word “Deepavali,” which means “a row of lights.” People light rows of traditional clay oil lamps outside their homes to symbolize the victory of light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance. 

The dates of the festival are based on the Hindu lunar calendar and typically fall in late October or early November. This year, the holiday is celebrated on October 31 and November 1. 
Of course this year,  Diwali falls on Halloween in the U.S. It’ll be interesting to see how our neighborhood handles the combination…..
— 30 —

I realized that I’ve been using the word “hope” a lot lately. I hope you’re feeling better, I hope you do good on your test, hope you can come, I hope it doesn’t rain, I hope it does rain…. etc.
That got me to thinking about hope. We use the word all the time and we really do “hope” a lot. 
I’ve always heard the phrase “faith, hope and charity,” but I’m not sure I ever really knew what it meant, and why are those three things grouped together? 

What is hope? I looked it up — Hope is a longing or desire for something good in the future. So it seems that hope is the desire for something better, or maybe something we want or something we don’t have — yet.
I guess that means that if you’ve got everything you want, and are completely satisfied with everything that’s happening around you, you’d have no need for hope. Well, maybe you’d hope that nothing ever changed. 

As some of you know, I’m at a difficult place in my life right now and very often lately, I’ve been tempted to lose hope. But I think hope is important — very important. Maybe that’s why I seem to have been using the word a lot lately. 
We all experience desire, faith, pain, courage, love, sorrow, etc. — but when listing these things, we often leave out hope… but it’s probably an integral part of all of these experiences or “feelings.”  Hope is even a part of our prayers — we all hope that our prayers will be answered….

When we hope for something, it’s usually not a “slam-dunk.” If something is easy to come by, we usually don’t hope for it. Same thing when something is impossible, or beyond our grasp — we don’t hope for those things either. We hope for things that are possible — maybe difficult, but possible. 

The definition of hope says it’s a desire for some good in the future. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but sometimes I hope for something bad to happen — but not to me — I never hope something bad happens to me. Sometimes I hope that criminals are put in jail, or that a mass-shooter’s gun jams, or things like that. So is the something good in the definition of hope only hope for the one doing the hoping? 

If you’ve read this far, you know there’s probably no point to this rambling — it’s just more of my self-therapy. 
But I did run across someone that seems to have a better grasp of hope than I do and he states his thoughts much more eloquently….
French poet Charles Péguy describes hope this way:
“Hope is a little girl. She is, in fact, the younger sister of Faith and Charity. Hope walks hand in hand with her two sisters on the “uphill path” called life. At first, she may appear to be the weakest of the three. But, on the contrary, it is Hope who carries both Faith and Love. It is Hope who moves the world.”
— 30 —

I’ve been reading a little more lately than I usually do this time of year. I recently picked up a book about John A. Macdonald. In case you don’t know (I didn’t) he was Canada’s first prime minister. Part of the book was on the dull side, but it turns out that he was a pretty interesting guy. Seems like recently he’s been treated maybe a little unfairly. In 2018 his image was removed from the Canadian $10 bill — his face had been on the bill since 1971. His name was removed from the Ottawa airport that was named in his honor in 1993. And a number of statues and monuments erected to honor him have been removed. 
But from what I can tell, by most standards, Macdonald was a good-humored, tolerant, liberal-minded man. He was known for his indulgence of criticism and for the charm of his personality.  However, it does appear that he enjoyed much of life through an alcoholic haze — but — he wound up supporting the temperance movement….

John was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1820 and arrived in Kingston, Ontario with his family when he was five.The future Sir John practiced law when he was only 17, supporting his mother and sisters when his father died. He was known to have wit, a good grasp of psychology, and an encyclopedic memory.
He went into politics and had the goal of uniting the British North American colonies into a new country. The fact that the inhabitants of Upper Canada were soured on Lower Canada, and Lower Canada thought the same about Upper Canada didn’t faze him. On Canada’s official start date — July 1, 1867, Macdonald became Canada’s first prime minister and, with a few interruptions, stayed in charge until his death in 1891.

Sir John’s regime was often marked by scandal and he spent a good part of his career in the pocket of big railway interests. But despite his flaws, Sir John is still loved — even in the midst of current actions against his memory. For instance, a 2018 poll found that 70 percent of Canadians opposed the removal of his image from the $10 bill.

Some of the best known stories about Macdonald concern his heavy drinking. Even in the days when both the House of Commons and the Senate had a bar directly beneath, and fully half the Members of Parliament were drunk by the late evening, Sir John stood out (maybe not up, but out.)
On the way to an election event, Sir John imbibed a little too much. As a result, he actually vomited on stage while his opponent was speaking. When his turn came to address the audience, Macdonald apologized — “ I don’t know how it is, but every time I hear my opponent speak it turns my stomach.” The crowd thought it was pretty funny. 
When party members complained about the heavy drinking of another member of parliament, Macdonald chewed that member out — “Look here, McGee, this government can’t afford two drunkards, and you’ve got to stop.”

Sir John gave a speech late at night after a liquid dinner. The speech didn’t make much sense, so the reporter covering it visited Macdonald the next day and asked for help in reconstructing his words. As the reporter read his notes, Sir John jumped up and give the entire speech — correctly. The reporter thanked him and as he left, Sir John gave him a kind warning — “Never report on a public speaker when you are drunk.”
When a government commission looking into a complex real estate scandal called Macdonald to testify, he was on one of his binges. Macdonald had shaking hands and bleary eyes, and commission members sighed, giving up hope of anything useful. But Sir John then proceeded, without any hesitation or reference to notes, to give all the details of the transaction, going back 20 years, including exact dates. 

In later life, during his happy second marriage, Macdonald curtailed his drinking and gave support to the temperance movement.
Given the political atmosphere in this country today, a “Sir John” just might not be a terribly bad choice. 
— 30 —

If you’re like me, you’re probably tired of hearing presidential candidates go on and on about how only they can solve the nation’s problems and they’re the only ones that can save our declining nation. Of course a lot of the “problems” they intend to solve are over-blown or non-existent to begin with, but these claims seem to make them important. 

The other evening after listening to one of their ads, I thought about a long time ago when I was in Vietnam. There was an elderly gentlemen that served as kind of a “night watchman” for the building that I lived in. I paid him to keep an eye on my motorcycle and we became pretty good friends. There was a curfew and I usually came in about that time and I’d often stop and talk with him. The streets were pretty much empty at that time of night and it was nice to sit and listen to him — he had lots of stories or “legends.” I remember one he told that was about someone having a distorted impression of his own importance. I hope I can remember enough of it to do it justice…..

There was once a famous Vietnamese statesman whose name was Ly. Ly was very short — he was so short that the top of his head was only about up to a normal person’s waist. Statesman Ly was sent to China to settle a very important political problem with that nation. When the Emperor of China looked down from his throne and saw this little man, he asked, “Are all the Vietnamese people little like you?” 

Lys’s answer was “Sire, in Vietnam, we have both little men and big men. Our ambassadors are chosen in accordance with the importance of the problem. As this is a small matter, they have sent me to negotiate. When there is a big problem between us, we will send a big man to speak with you.”
The Emperor of China thought about that — “If the Vietnamese consider this important problem only  a small matter, they must indeed be a great and powerful people.” So he lessened his demands and the matter was settled then and there. 
I wonder if the matter could have been resolved as easily if the network news channels or the Internet had covered the meeting…..
— 30 —

My niece Sue brought up a subject the other night that I hadn’t given much (make that any) thought about. She wondered why a lot of dinnerware, that a lot of people refer to as china, is made in Japan or some other country. Time for some extensive research…..

I immediately ran across an article that said that in 1890, President McKinley instituted a tariff requiring imports to show the country of origin. Dishes from China were marked CHINA, which is why Americans came to call all dishes “china.”

But — that’s not true. Americans don’t refer to their dishes as “china” because it says China on the back. According to historians, the term became shorthand among early American settlers because a lot of those dishes originated in China or was made in England to approximate Chinese wares — not because pieces were stamped CHINA.

So what’s the difference in “China” and “Dinnerware?” 
China is crockery made from clay, kaolin, feldspar, and quartz. That combination is then fired up in a kiln to create intricate, beautiful crockery designs.Usually the term China is used generically to describe high-quality dishes reserved for use during special occasions. 
Dinnerware is a broad definition of plates, dishes, serving bowls, platters, etc., used for serving and eating meals. Because it’s definition is so broad, dinnerware often includes China as a subset. 

China doesn’t just refer to fancy dishes. There are different types of China dishes — each with their own distinct qualities and features.
For instance, Fine China is made from fine-particle clay combined with feldspar, kaolin, and quartz, fired up at high temperatures in a kiln. This makes it extremely durable and nonporous. This procedure allows the dishes to be more delicately constructed with a heavier body and a smooth, white, lustrous appearance. It also allows shaped details to be incorporated into the body’s design.
Bone China is made from feldspar, ball clay, quartz, kaolin, and bone ash from farm animals, ground into a fine powder or ash. The mixture is then heated at a lower temperature than fine china. The technique results in a lightweight and delicate feeling with a translucent milky appearance. Bone China looks and feels more fragile, but it’s the strongest and most durable.

I’m sure there’s much more to be learned about this subject, but honestly, I think I’ve learned enough. What I eat off of really isn’ that important to me. If you want to call all nice dishes china, I’m good with that — you can even call it fine china if that makes you feel better…. or if it’s porcelain you can call them porcelain or even fine porcelain. I think I’ll just stick with a term I know— even if they’re ridiculously overpriced — dishes.
— 30 —