What Would Jimmy Do?

A number of years ago, our daughter, Kelly, gave Claire a recipe for a cake. It turned out to be very popular with just about everyone, and Claire made it often when we had guests for dinner, or sometimes just for us. The name of the cake is “Kelly’s Chocolate Cavity Maker Cake.” If you’re interested in trying it, it’s one of the recipes that’s in the St. Agnes Cookbook that Claire put together a number of years ago.

I guess because of the name, I always thought about an experience we had more than 40 years ago. Living in Manila, we had a filipino maid that was an excellent cook. And our cook, Carmen, had a “cousin” that was mostly Chinese (I never fully figured out the relationship) and her cousin didn’t speak English nearly as well as Carmen. But it turns out that the “cousin” was actually even a better cook than Carmen, and she often helped Carmen in the kitchen when we had dinner parties and sometimes she just came over and hung out for a few days at at time.

One year on Claire’s birthday, we came home from work and were planning to go out to celebrate her birthday later that night. When we came in there was a very big, elaborately decorated cake sitting on the table and Carmen and her “cousin” were smiling ear to ear. It was very impressive. The frosting had all sorts of designs and swirls in it. Claire was absolutely thrilled and heaped praise on both Carmen and her “cousin.” Carmen said that her “cousin” had made it especially for her birthday. Claire asked how did she manage to make some of the really intricate designs in the frosting. The “cousin” said, “I use toothbrush.” I guess Claire’s expression changed a bit on hearing that, and apparently, the “cousin” noticed it and understood her concern. She said, “No worry, Mum — I no use your toothbrush — I use my toothbrush.”
We could never think of Kelly’s cavity maker cake without remembering that birthday…..
— 30 —

I was invited out to dinner with 3 couples last week and during the conversation, someone mentioned the term “wedded bliss.” I hadn’t heard that for a long time. Well, of course, that got me to thinking — what the heck is bliss anyway? I checked the dictionary and it defined bliss as (1) complete happiness; (2) Paradise, Heaven. It also indicated that the first known use of bliss was before the 12th century.

But, as is often the case, dictionary definitions don’t really shed much light on a subject. I think when most people think of happiness, they think of everyday happiness, or things that make them happy in their day-to-day experiences. But bliss seems to be more — like some kind of happiness on a different plane. 

So, in my quest, I turned to someone that I’ve always had mixed thoughts about — Buddha. Well, as I expected, Buddhist texts didn’t let me down. If you’re interested, check out the writings of Buddha Amitabha (the Buddha of Infinite Light.) He talks about the Buddhist concept of an ideal world — the “Land of Bliss.” If I read it correctly, it breaks down to something like:
Bliss is an innate state of inner joy, a state of unity, transcendence, completeness, knowingness, wholeness and uplifted consciousness — a feeling of oneness and connection with all of creation. Bliss is where happiness, meaning, and truth converge.
It’s interesting that the writings indicate that bliss is found in every religion but does not require a specific religion in order to know it. 

So I guess bliss is something we should all strive for. 
But it seems to me that although I’ve heard the term “wedded bliss,” I’ve probably heard the phrase “ignorance is bliss” more often. It used to be a fairly common saying meaning  that happiness can be found in unawareness or lack of knowledge. If you think about it, “ignorance is bliss” is kind of like “what you don’t know can’t hurt you.” So to satisfy myself, and as a public service, I did a little extensive research:
Ignorance is bliss seems to have originated in a passage from a poem by Thomas Gray in 1742 — Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. The actual wording is “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”

That actually sounds pretty good — if we didn’t read about others’ actions or national or global events it might shield us from todays’ stress and turmoil. But then again, would choosing to remain unaware of our world, or turning a blind eye to everything equate to bliss?
Is ignorance really bliss ? Probably not…..
— 30 —

I guess it shouldn’t come as any surprise to you that living in the Far East for a number of years, we ate a lot of rice. If we had a meal with potatoes, it was a real treat, and it rarely happened. 
I’m not complaining ‚ I like rice and have it often, even today. 

I think I’ve mentioned before that my maid/cook in Vietnam was a very good cook. But in all honesty, she was much better when she was making native dishes — she didn’t cook “western” dishes that often, but when she did, they were good. Maybe not as good as when she stuck to the Vietnamese traditional menu, but very tasty.
Anyhow, after things had settled down from the Tet uprising, one 4th of July, a co-worker came over one afternoon to have a drink. Unless I told her otherwise, the maid usually left shortly afternoon. But when we came in that afternoon/evening she was still there and asked if we wanted to eat. We said, sure — why not? She served us a traditional American meal, complete with a big bowl of mashed potatoes — with red, white and blue stripes. I think we were amazed, and she had the biggest smile you could imagine. I always thought that was pretty cool that she stayed late and prepared a special meal to celebrate a traditional American holiday. 
— 30 —

Some friends that were members of our church moved to Ireland about a year ago. A few of us were talking about them a few days ago and someone said that they probably moved to Ireland because the wife was afraid of snakes. And of course someone said thank goodness for Saint Patrick.

Well, most people know that there’s no validity to the rumor that Saint Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland.
The fact is, snakes have never slithered into Ireland. I actually read an interesting article about that in National Geographic a few years ago. Initially, what is now known as Ireland lacked a climate that was warm enough to accommodate snakes. About 8,500 years ago, temperatures rose enough to make Ireland a nice home for snakes. But the “heat wave” melted the ice that connected Ireland to Europe, and it became the island it is today. Since it was surrounded by water, the snakes couldn’t reach the land — that might be where the luck of the Irish came in.

So why, you might ask, does Great Britain, Ireland’s closest neighbor and also an island, have snakes? Well, Great Britain was connected to Europe until about 6,500 years ago. Snakes made it to Great Britain before the melting glaciers created the English Channel and isolated it from the mainland. So the snakes only got as far as Great Britain — Ireland was already an Island.

So how did the story of Saint Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland come about? Well, my English professor in college was a big believer that the use of a story or poem that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning — especially a moral or political one — was a powerful form of storytelling. Maybe in the case of Saint Patrick, snakes might have represented pagans because he worked tirelessly to convert people to Christianity — or  — maybe not. 
And while we’re on the topic of snakes, Ireland isn’t the only place without them. New Zealand, Antarctica, Iceland and Greenland are all places without snakes.
— 30 —

You may know that I have a bit of history with ships and for a number of reasons, I’m not writing about most of them here. But today I thought I’d talk about a ship that I’ve been familiar with for a good number of years, but never directly involved in the story. 

The SS United States was historic right from her beginning. She was the fastest ocean liner in her day — and — is still the fastest. 
After World War II, the U.S. realized how valuable it would be to have luxury liners that could be converted into troop ships. The SS United States’ designer, William Francis Gibbs, did research for years about how to make the fastest ship possible. 
The SS United States was designed as a top-secret, convertible troop carrier and Cold War weapon that could transport 14,000 troops 10,000 miles without refueling.

The ship was built (in secrecy) at Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company — it was the first major ocean liner to be built in dry dock — primarily to keep prying eyes away. The ship was built from keel-laying to delivery in just two years and three months. The job employed over 3,100 shipyard workers. 
The designer used all aluminum to keep the ship light. She was 100 feet longer than the Titanic, and all the furnishings were made fireproof — almost no wood was used on board. But what was used was flame-proof — even the wooden piano.

In her maiden voyage, the SS United States reached a speed of 36 knots. During sea trials, the ship topped out at 38 knots (44 mph.) The ship shattered the previous transatlantic speed record and that record has yet to be broken by another ocean liner. 

The ship was nicknamed America’s Flagship and carried many celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and Judy Garland as well as four U.S. presidents. It turns out that even the commander of the ship was a celebrity — Commodore Harry Manning had been a co-pilot of Amelia Earhart. 

But as famous and record-breaking as she was, the ship has been sitting in Philadelphia for years. So why did she wind up out of use in Philadelphia? The answer is the jet-age arrived — and ship crossings fell in popularity. The ship was taken out of service and sealed in 1969. The U.S. Navy kept her ready until 1978. Over the years a series of private owners had big plans for the SS United States — like sea-going time-share condominiums. The Norwegian Cruise Line bought the ship in 2003 and planned to rehabilitate it for cruise service, but the recession put an end to that plan. Just recently, a contingent contract was approved to move the ship to Destin-Fort Walton Beach, Florida, where she will be intentionally sunk offshore and transformed into a diving mecca.
So if that happens, she’ll be able to add another record to her impressive list — the world’s largest artificial reef.
— 30 — 

I was watching the History Channel on TV the other night and there was a program about various “mysteries” that hadn’t been solved over the years. One story that got its fair share of the one hour program was about Amelia Earhart. She kind of became famous by becoming lost and never found, but she really had a pretty interesting life. Most of the stories I’ve read about her over the years indicated she was an outstanding pilot, and at the time, being female made her even more amazing. She did become an inspiration to women everywhere, although just how good a pilot she was is debatable. 

In 1928, a friend of the New York publisher George Palmer Putnam approached Amelia Earhart with an idea. Putnam wanted to finance a flight that would make Earhart the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane. After the flight, she’d write a book about it and he’d publish it. 
Admittedly, she’d only be a passenger, but Putnam thought that, seeing as how it was only 1928, even that would be newsworthy. Earhart, who was 31 at the time, already had some experience as a pilot, but not enough — so the job of flying the plane, a trimotor Fokker called “Friendship,” was given to Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon. Amelia was given the title “commander,” but there wasn’t really anything to command.

On June 18, the Friendship took off from Nova Scotia, heading for Ireland. On the other side of the ocean, bad weather forced them to land in South Wales — the fog had gotten bad and there wasn’t much fuel left, but they landed safely in Europe. Amelia had made a name for herself. She had also made a friend in Putnam — actually, more than a friend. And since Putnam was married, people started talking. In 1929, Putnam’s wife went to Reno to get a divorce. Putnam and Earhart were married in 1931. Soon afterwards, her book, 20 Hours, 40 Minutes, was published. Amelia’s new husband worked hard to keep her name in front of the public. At his urging, she flew solo from the East coast to the West coast where she attended the National Air Races in California, then returned to do a lecture tour to promote her book. 
Amelia organized the first air race for women pilots, which the papers dubbed a “powder puff derby.” That same year, Earhart and 98 other women pilots founded “the Ninety-Nines,” an organization of woman pilots. 

Five years to the day after Lindberg’s flight, on May 20, 1932, Earhart flew solo across the atlantic. When she landed in Londonderry in Northern Ireland she’d broken two records: not only was she the first woman to fly across the Atlantic solo, at the time she also was the only person to have crossed the Atlantic by plane twice.
With the Atlantic under her belt, she turned to the west. Her next solo flight crossed the Pacific, flying from Hawaii to California. After that, she wanted to be the first woman to fly around the world. 

On her first attempt at an around the world flight, as she and her navigator, Frederick Noonan, were taking off, Amelia made an error in judgement, and overcompensated for a dipping wing. The plane crashed, but Earhart and Noonan survived. They tried again two months later.

After 22,000 miles — with only 7.000 miles to go — they  landed at Lae, New Guinea. When they took off again, it was the last time anyone ever saw them. 
Nineteen hours and 30 minutes after leaving Lae, broadcasting on a strong signal, Amelia radioed, “We must be on you but cannot see you… gas is running low.” One final voice transmission followed, the last position report. Then nothing.

The Coast Guard began the search. President Franklin Roosevelt ordered nine Navy ships and 66 aircraft to join the effort, but no trace of the flyers or their plane was found. After the official search was called off, George Putnam instigated a further search, but no luck. 

There are lots of theories — some of them wacky — about Earhart’s intimate fate. The most reasonable, but unlikely, is that she was on a spy mission for the U.S. Another just as unlikely scenario is that she purposely committed suicide. One popular rumor even claimed that Earhart was the voice of the infamous “Tokyo Rose,”
Some physical evidence recovered on an uninhabited Pacific reef points to a possible landing there, but even if true, it doesn’t account for the remains of the pilot and her navigator.

The tabloids still report the uncovered “truth” of Earhart’s fate. Until the real truth comes to light, I imagine they’ll go on claiming that she was on a secret mission or is still alive on a remote Pacific Island — probably living with Elvis.
— 30 —

Years ago there was a TV show that we used to watch called “Six Feet Under.” And there’s always the line in some cheesy movie that goes like: “One more move, and I’ll put you six feet under.” No matter if the phrase is spouted by a cowboy in a back hat or a mobster wearing pinstripes, everyone knows that six feet under represents the depth where coffins reside after burial. In fact it’s widely believed that the standard graveyard procedure is to put a coffin six feet under. But, actually, that’s not the case.

The final resting place of someone in a coffin varies depending on the site of the burial. The depths can range from 18 inches to 12 feet. There is no rule or regulation that decrees that a person must be put to rest exactly six feet below ground level. I guess if you think about it, that makes sense. Digging a six-foot grave someplace like New Orleans, that is below sea level, might get pretty soggy.

Most grave depths are determined by local, state, or national governments. In New Orleans, most of its dead are placed above ground in crypts. In that area, gravesite in the ground are almost always less than two feet deep — and even then, occasionally the coffin will pop out of the ground. 
The California requirement is a mere 18 inches. In Quebec, Canada, the law states that coffins “shall be deposited in a grave and covered with at least one meter of earth.” New South Wales in Australia, calls for 900 millimeters (slightly less than three feet.)
And the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management in London says that “no body shall be buried in such a manner that any part of the coffin is less than three feet below the level of any ground adjoining the grave.”

So — if burial depths vary from place to place, how did the phrase “six feet under” come to life? Historians believe it originated in England. London’s Great Plague of 1665 killed 75,000 to 100,00 people. In the book, A Journal of the Plague Year, by Daniel Defoe, the author writes that the city’s lord mayor issued an edict that all graves had to be dug six feet deep to limit the spread of the plague outbreak.

But today we don’t have a uniform burial depth — I doubt that it really matters — but I’m glad six feet under became popular…. can you imagine a good cowboy or gangster movie without that line?
— 30 —

Still cleaning out some of the stuff that’s accumulated around here over the years. Yesterday I ran across a program from “The King and I.” We saw the performance at the Kennedy Center a number of years ago. I remember that “The King and I” movie was banned in Thailand when I was there — probably still is, but I’m not sure.

I imagine most of you have seen either the movie or the stage presentation, but in case you’re not familiar or have forgotten… The movie and musical is a performance version of a semi-fictional novel that was in turn based on the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, in which she presents her version of events that supposedly took place while she was an English teacher at the court of King Mongkut (also known as King Rama IV) of Siam (present-day Thailand.) Mrs. Leonowens was hired to teach English, and maybe some other subjects, to the king’s many wives/mistresses and children.

There’s a lot of reasons that “The King and I” was banned in Thailand. In the movie/play, Anna was portrayed as the head-strong governess that tamed the king of Siam, but is that who she really was, or was she just a low-down dirty liar? 
I did some extensive research and here’s what I found…..

Anna’s autobiography says she was born Anna Crawford in 1834 in Wales, but the truth is her maiden name was Anna Edwards and she was born in India in 1831.
Her father was reported to be an army captain who died during a Sikh uprising in India when she was six years old — the truth is her father was a cabinetmaker who died three months before she was born. 

Another falsehood is that she married Major Thomas Leonowens when she was 17. He died of sunstroke during a tiger hunt in Singapore. But the truth is she did marry young, at age 18, but her husband’s name was Thomas Leon Owens. Thomas had difficulty keeping a job and the couple moved around a lot. He died of apoplexy in Penang, Malaya in 1859.

The story is that she was a highly respected British governess, But she was not a governess — a position with a broad range of duties in the royal household of Siam — she was simply a teacher of English. That was what King Mongkut hired her for. 

In her book The Romance of the Harem, she claimed that King Mongkut was a tyrant and threw his wives into underground dungeons if they failed to please him — there were no underground dungeons in Siam.
As famously portrayed in Anna’s story, King Mongkut ordered the public torture and beheading of one of his mistresses who had fallen in love with a monk. That whole episode appears to be nothing more than an invention. There were many foreign correspondents in Siam at the time and none of them mention much an incident.

The movie hints at a romance between Anna and the king, and the movie and play both suggest Anna became very close to the king. The truth is that King Mongkut hardly knew Anna Leonowens. The king kept detailed diaries and in the five years that she worked in the royal court, he mentions her only once, and then only briefly. 

It appears that Anna came to respect King Mongkut and praised him for his visionary outlook. But — in her writings Anna presented the king as a conservative, intolerant, reactionary bigot who was stuck in a time warp. She did not give him any credit for his modern policies and his embracing of Western knowledge. 

In “The King and I,” Anna was opposed to the British imperialist attitude toward Siam and courageously stood up to the British hierarchy on behalf of her adopted people. Not so — Anna was, in fact, an imperialist defender and a great supporter of the British colonial ventures in the Far East.  She purposefully portrayed the people of Siam as childlike and backward to strengthen public support for British intervention and “enlightenment.”

One major fabrication in all this is that Anna became known as an authority on all things Siamese and lived her later years in respected retirement, but the truth is as soon as first book was published, Anna was sued for plagiarism and the dissemination of false information. The more books she wrote, the more court cases she generated. The academic world refused to acknowledge her writings, and she was roundly condemned as a sensationalist writer of fiction.

So….. “The King and I” was not only loosely based on Anna Leonowens’ accounts, but historians believe many of Anna’s own recollections were exaggerated or totally made-up. “The King and I” may be an interesting movie that contains elements of Thai history and culture, but it is severely lacking when it comes to being factually correct. About the only thing about the Anna legend that appears to be true is that she did serve for five years in the royal court of Siam. 
— 30 —

We were talking the other day and someone said that most people never use mathematics beyond the regular adding and subtracting and occasionally multiplying and dividing. The discussion drug on and a couple of the guys said that only basic math should be taught — higher math courses, for most people, were probably pretty much useless. Well I disagreed with that opinion — math wasn’t my favorite subject, but I didn’t mind it. In fact I still remember some of it.
So as a public service, I offer you something I learned in a mathematics class many years ago…
Tree crickets sing in exact mathematic ratio to the temperature of the air. You don’t need a thermometer on a summer night. Just count the number of chirps a cricket makes in 15 seconds, add 40 and the result will be the current air temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.
— 30 —

I was watching Dateline or one of those shows that talk about real crimes that have been committed, and a couple of the criminals received multiple life sentences for their crimes. I was thinking that seems kind of silly. given that if you don’t believe in reincarnation, there’s only one life…. so why multiple sentences? Well, I decided to look into that a little bit more.

Judges often hand down multiple sentences to punish multiple criminal offenses. Multiple charges may be decided in the same trial, but they are still considered separate crimes and often call for separate punishments. Even in cases of life imprisonment, multiple sentences can be very important in instances in which convictions are overturned on appeal.
Let’s say that a jury finds a man guilty of killing five people. The judge might sentence him to five life sentences. If one, or even four of the convictions is overturned, the murderer still has to serve a life sentence. He would have to be exonerated of all five murders for him to walk free.

And in the judicial system, “life” doesn’t always mean an entire lifetime. Depending on the sentencing guidelines of the state, the judge may sentence someone to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. In a case like that, life is the maximum length of the sentence — meaning that the defendant could conceivably go free if a parole board releases them after they’ve served the minimum time.
But — if a defendant is convicted on multiple charges, the judge may hand down multiple life sentences with the possibility of parole . And the judge can also specify that those sentences are to be served consecutively rather than concurrently. This means that the prisoner won’t get a parole hearing until the minimum time for all the sentences put together has been served.

So like just about everything these days, multiple life sentences are somewhat controversial, but they are a safeguard to ensure bad guys don’t see the light of day…..
— 30 —