The Longest Day

Tomorrow, June 21st, we celebrate the Summer Solstice - the longest day of the year in our northern hemisphere. My nephew is up in Iceland waiting for the sun to set. And the Druids are gathering in Stonehenge to beat their drums and work their chants. Everyone else is glued to the World Cup. As the mercury inches up I feel Cape May beckoning and expect a short sabbatical from the daily deadline as I travel down there to partake of the "waters".
tjs

On Language

A recent obit about a Navajo Marine from WWII illuminated the use of the Navajo language as code to confuse the Japanese during the war in the Pacific. The Marines recruited and used as many as 375 "code talkers" who were extremely valuable at Iwo Jima and other battles.
This week the NY Times reported that a bribery case was declared a mistrial because some of the wire tapped phone messages were in Yiddish and the translations would have caused the trial such delay that the jury was dismissed.
I am glad that I had a rudimentary exposure to foreign languages - i.e. Latin I - Spanish I & II - French - menu only - German -nein - but I would have been lost on the Navajo Reservation and sought out Katz's Deli for the Yiddish.
tjs
PS - I grew up with Greeks and they taught me curse words phonetically - trippingly off the tongue!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/nyregion/mistrial-declared-in-malcolm-smith-corruption-trial.html?ref=nyregion&_r=0

Attention, Please!

The parish we have joined since returning to Philadelphia area is staffed by Augustinian Fathers who have just held their global convocation at Villanova.  Some years ago I met an old Augustinian retreat master, Fr. John S., who used to give spiritual retreats to college sophomores at Villanova and Merrimac Universities - before they were coed. One spring day, with the windows open, he faced a group of fidgety nineteen year old, who wanted to be anywhere but there. Fr. John knew he could never hold their attention in that atmosphere so he threw away his script. He then announced that today we would discuss COURTSHIP! All heads went up as he recited the following:
-Last night I held your little hand - so thrilled was I, I thought I'd die - my blood ran hot and then ran cold - of little hands one loves to hold - no other hand in all the world could greater solace bring - than the little hand I held last night - FOUR ACES AND A KING.
tjs

The Folly of Fashion

Several Manhattan retailers are foisting the above "business" suits on the fashion conscious world. Some years ago when I was doing business in New York City I had the nerve to wear a stiff straw hat (skimmer) after May 15th but I would never dream of baring my dimpled kneecaps to the public. I doubt that this trend will sell in Peoria and perhaps not even west of the Hamptons. JFK killed the dress hat, Ahmadinejad buried the cravat and now J. Crew & Barneys want to defrock the sock. What would Andy Rooney say?
tjs

Bloomsday

If you are a devotee of James Joyce you might find yourself in Dublin today - June 16th - which is designated Bloomsday the world over to commemorate Leopold Bloom's meandering thru that city on a given day - with certainly a stop at an Irish pub. My last visit to that fair city was circa 1978 when our agent had an office on a prominent thorofare- Grafton Street. He liked to hang out at the Paddock Bar in the Shelburne Hotel on St. Stephen's Green. There was no smoking ban then and you could cut it with a knife. Ah, but the stories they could tell - and the smoked salmon was the best thing on the menu.
tjs

Fish & Wildlife

Gov. Cuomo of New York announced that big things are happening in the Empire State. They will be adding a fish to their license plates for the first time. I didn't know that the Pisces had such a strong lobby. I hope this doesn't irritate all the gun owners there. I think I will stay indoors for a while until things cool off.
On the feathered side, as we were preparing to turn on the air conditioners, we found a bird nest in one window box with recently hatched eggs.  We will have to suffer the humidity until these little ones are airborne. Life is tough!
tjs

The Nearness of You

The NY Times alerted us Tuesday to a trend among musicians and others of buying burial plots near their idols. Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx seems to be a popular "plot" area.  Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Illinois Jacquet are buried there. A certain jazz saxophonist spent $25,000. to purchase land near the Duke. The practice spread to Brooklyn and elsewhere. "Not surprisingly, graves near the final resting places of famous people can carry premium prices." But the item that raised my eyebrows was as follows"A crypt above Marilyn Monroe's in a cemetery in Los Angeles had a winning bid of $4.6 million on eBay in 2009. The owner, a widow who wanted to pay off the $1 million mortgage her husband had left behind, moved his remains 23 years after he had been buried there." And you thought death was permanent!
tjs
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/nyregion/prime-real-estate-at-the-cemetery-is-a-plot-next-to-an-idol.html?hpw&rref=nyregion&_r=0

The Week in Sport

In a six day period we have/will experience the following events -we are still debating and assimilating the upset victory at the Belmont Stakes on Saturday.
-Tonight the NY Rangers face elimination in the Stanley Cup finals at Madison Square Garden. If the LA Kings win tonight it will be considered a "Clean Sweep" in sporting parlance. And if a visiting fan shows up with a broom I fear there could be an altercation - this being New York. I would bring my hard hat.
-Tomorrow the U.S. Open Golf Tournament will get under way at the historic Pinehurst 2 course in North Carolina for four days.
And also tomorrow the World Cup begins in Brasil - thirty-two teams playing "futball" in a dozen cities over four weeks. Teammates who played together in Europe now go home to their native countries to compete against each other. The atmosphere is uneasy in the host country and the Sao Paulo subway workers are on strike. But the World Cup every four years is a big event and will bear watching. Hardly any room for baseball, our national sport!
tjs

The Motor City

It seems that everyone is trying to bail out the beleaguered city of Detroit.  A wealthy hedge fund manager who keeps goats and makes cheese on his farm in Michigan has delivered twenty goats to a blighted neighborhood to munch on the tall grass surrounding the abandoned homes and promote urban farming. But it seems his good intentions were in violation of a city ordinance. The enforcement agency threatened to seize and "ticket" the goats at $500. per head if not gone by yesterday. The head of Animal Control also said he was dealing with wandering peacocks but one would think that a peacock would bring pride to a neighborhood.  As for the billys and nannys it's back to the cheese factory.
tjs

Latin Translation

You may have noticed that I occasionally make use of the Roman alphabet for certain designations. And for the last forty-four years the National Football League has designated their Super Bowl with a Roman numeral. But not so for 2016 which will be game number fifty which they have designated number "50" as a lonely "L" would not make for an attractive logo image. Latin is already a "dead" language and they want to shovel it into the dustbin. But wait! For year 2017 they plan to revert to LI (fifty-one)  - not to offend anyone but this sounds a bit Asian. Can't these folks make up their minds?
tjs

D Day

Today, June 6th, is the 70th anniversary of the D Day invasion and I will let the historians address the military side of this operation which turned the tide in WWII. Back on the home front we were dealing with rationing, blackout curtains, air raid drills,and collecting scrap metal for the war effort. Everything was scarce - families traded ration stamps - coffee for sugar - and it helped to have a big family as each child had their own book. Gasoline supplies depended on the type of sticker on your windshield. The butcher was king - and after listing your ground beef and pork chops you beseeched him for a quarter pound of butter. The draft was in effect and as the war droned on they took anybody. My cousin's husband, age 39, one child and flat feet was off to war. Mrs. R. down the block had four sons away and the flag in her window bore four BLUE stars. They all came home. The rumor was the Draft Board sent a van around and cleaned out the poolroom. (Chalk that up) My neighbor three doors down was our Air Raid Warden - he had to climb those old gas street lamps to dim them during blackout drills. As Walter Cronkite used to say "And that's the way it was!"
tjs

DCCC

The Google scorekeeper reminds me that this is my number 800 posting. This, after forty-four months and 41,000 page views. If all this were bound into an 800 page tome it would collapse your coffee table. Better, perhaps, to split into two 400 page bookends to gather dust on the shelf. With a bit of encouragement I will try to carry on. Thanks for reading me.
tjs

The Breeding Shed

Over the years of visiting race tracks in New Jersey and New York I always thought that all horse players should be interested in the improvement of the breed. This Saturday the third jewel in the Triple Crown will be contested at Belmont Park. The trainer of the favorite is a 77 year old from California visiting New York for the first time. In an interview this week he expounded on the subject of thorobred horse breeding. He started at the bottom preparing mares for breeding. "First you have to go to the teaser" he said. "The teaser is a horse that teases the mares when they are in heat but doesn't breed with them." I'm glad he enlightened me as I had always thought that the teaser was a female. I realize that this may be TMI for some of you but if you feel lucky his horse is CALIFORNIA CHROME.  As Stephen Foster wrote "I bet my money on the bobtail nag, somebody bet on de bay."
tjs

This Gun for Hire

The following eyebrow raising news event hit the papers last week. It seems that several former senior political gurus who were active in our last two presidential campaigns have now signed on as consultants with the British political parties as a prelude to future elections. After one agreed to advise the Tories then the Labour party said "we want one too" so the transatlantic shuttle commenced. Both these heavyweights were instrumental in Democratic successes in 2008 & 2012. It may be that these talented gents want to hone their skills in the off season to keep "sharp" for 2016 here.
tjs

Scavenger Hunt

A wealthy person in San Francisco is giving money away! Hidden in white envelopes across the city with searching clues from a Twitter hashtag. He is doling out on average $1000. per day to the lucky finders and has plans to expand this "fun" exercise into L.A. and possibly New York City. This is a rare example of the one percent giving something back. In another era it recalls John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil, handing out dimes. Continuing a theme of giving we read that Northwestern University has a class in philanthropy wherein students study non-profit organizations to determine their worthiness to receive donations and then distribute funds from a grant they are working with. Well, it's Spring and the giving  is easy. There must be something in the water.
tjs