It’s a good thing to wear steel-toe shoes on a CTA bus. Baby carriages.
I really like my bone doctor. He’s young, intelligent, concerned and is helping my messed up shoulder. Plus, his first name is Igor. Great name for a sports injury doctor.
Watched Diane Keaton’s first appearance on the Tonight Show Sunday night – from the mid-to-late 70s. She hadn’t yet blossomed into the star she became – even after the Godfather. Probably not until Annie Hall. But less than a minute into the interview and I realized something I’d never thought of – Shelly Long’s character on Cheers was a parody of Ms. Keaton. Btw – what a great singer the real Diane is! Remember her spot in Woody Allen’s Radio Days?
Thought my Lil’ Buddy – the squirrel – was gone forever. She was MIA at ‘the spot’ for a couple of days. The way squirrels bound around traffic and fight amongst themselves, you never know. I’d have missed her. Fed her since the summer and watched her grow. I kind of make a noise when I get to the spot to let the squirrels know I’m there, but I think they can smell my pipe smoke from a block away. She was back, saw her coming down a large tree, then hopping along the top of the wooden fence, headed…towards me? No, headed to a big meal! A yam leftover from Thanksgiving yesterday and an apple and plenty of nuts this afternoon.
If the sun was out today (it wasn’t – heavy clouds), it would have felt like the first day of spring, instead of heading into winter. Almost 50 in Chicago – it wasn’t long before the cold winds began blowing in. We’ll be frigid the next couple of days, then a good warmup. Only four months to opening day for baseball!
Should’ve taken a pic: I usually finish my pipe by the Jewel before I grocery shop. I heard the Salvation Army guy, who stands near the door, singing. Now these good folks are on duty, in one place, about 8 hrs. a day, from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve. It’s got to be boring, just ringing a bell for such a long time (I know, I did it about 10 years ago), so the guy was passing time by singing Christmas carols. No great voice, but instead of complaining to myself, I figured I can’t do any better, so I put my pipe away, went over and joined him. We finished White Christmas together – in harmony! That was fun.
Yep – I still play guitar. Till the day I die. Just tried an impromptu jazzy Jingle Bells. Will record and post if I can edit out the clams!
Decorated the apartment in about an hour this year. Only put up a third of the decorations I did last year, but this time, I had enough energy to wrap gifts! I wonder where I put that box of Christmas lights. Maybe I’ll find it next year!
Well, Christmas is shaping up. Hope it is for you, too. I’m going to take a stab at making almond crescent cookies with the powdered sugar. I’ll experiment after I see my cardiologist this week. I lost 21 lbs. this year – wish someone would tell that to my waistline!
I hope to watch the end of Polar Express later tonight. Real cool Pixar movie from a few years back, with Tom Hanks playing the conductor on a train that takes kids to the North Pole. Now what young girl or boy wouldn’t want to do that?
A few more things to do this evening and then, before I settle in for the movie, maybe I can edit a couple of more pages in my book. It’s not over yet – everybody asks me when it;s going to be done, but it’s about getting the best out of each scene. And that takes time and concentration. But the closer I get, great and strange feelings.
An Aquarium in Tennessee has found a way to use its electric eel to power Christmas lights and spark some awe in holiday visitors.
The eel, named Miguel Wattson, releases low-voltage bolts of electricity whenever he’s looking for food — and a special machine hooked up to his tank uses the shocks to light up the nearby tree. The intensity of the flashes depends on what he’s currently doing and how he is feeling.
“The bigger flashes are caused by the higher voltage shocks he emits when he’s eating or excited,” Kimberly Hurt, an aquarist at Tennessee Aquarium, said in a press release.
Wattson, who has his own popular Twitter account with over 30,000 followers, posted a video of himself “shocking” around the Christmas tree.
ICYMI, here’s a video of yours truly attempting to use my discharges to power the lights on a Christmas tree. (SPOILER ALERT ::: Of course I pull it off. My phenomenal cosmic — well, bio-electric — power is basically limitless.) pic.twitter.com/g4r5JPHWoH
— Miguel Wattson TNAQ (@EelectricMiguel) December 2, 2019
In fact, the clever eel even powers his own Twitter account. Coders at Tennessee Tech University’s iCube center created the algorithm, powered by his jolts, in 2015 to help give Wattson a voice and an ability to better engage with the public.
He typically tweets out fun messages like “za-BOOSH!!!!,” “KRASNAPPA-TAT!!!” and, most recently, “BAZINGG!!!”.
The aquarium hopes its latest festive effort will spur further interest in the freshwater fish.
For us Blue-Liners, the Holiday Train will roar through our neighborhood, Dec. 12. 13 and 14. Full schedule is in the article below.
Photo by my old STMG colleague, and excellent photographer, Joel Lerner.
Story by Ro Coleman, Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Transit Authority announced the return of its annual CTA holiday fleet, starting the week of Thanksgiving and spreading good cheer throughout the holiday season.
The Allstate CTA Holiday Train will be on its merry way starting Friday, Nov. 29. Commuters can expect a festive, six-car train filled with holiday scenes, lights and Santa following along on all CTA rail lines.
Then the Allstate CTA Elves Workshop train — first introduced to the Holiday Fleet in 2016, its halls decked with winter scenes as elves onboard share candy canes with riders — will follow right behind the holiday train.
The Allstate CTA Holiday Bus will make its debut Saturday in the annual Magnificent Mile Tree-Lighting Parade before it hits the streets Tuesday on 15 different bus routes throughout Chicago.
“Ralphie the Reindeer” — and his bright green nose — will light the way around town on the exterior of the bus.
In addition to festive artwork by students at Perkins Bass Elementary School, the inside of the bus will feature a mini-village, lights, holiday-themed seating and Santa and his sleigh.
If you will, read this interview of Wilfred McClay, a history professor, who wrote ‘The Land of Hope: And Invitation to the Great American Story.’ It’s about gratitude – in its purest form.
Thank you! And have a happy Thanskgiving.
Fundamental American values manifested in the story of Thanksgiving centuries before the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, explained Wilfred McClay, author of Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story and professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, in a Tuesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.
Mansour invited McClay’s assessment of criticisms of the November holiday among left-wing teachers calling for students to “unlearn” a “feel-good” Thanksgiving “myth.”
McClay said of leftist contempt for Thanksgiving, “I think it’s a reflection of what — for some people — is the obsession with the politicization of all aspects of life, and everything has to be brought into conformity with some kind of ideological worldview.”
McClay continued, “It’s almost like a kind of revolutionary religion, like in the French Revolution, the way they abolished the calendar, and tried to reinvent civilization from the bottom up. It’s the kind of mentality [against] something that really … is one of most admirable holidays imaginable. Of course, we aren’t the only ones that have Thanksgiving in the world, but it is integral to our essential practises, and it’s an expression of gratitude.”
“It has religious roots,” said McClay of the history of Thanksgiving. “In the 1620s — there’s some debate over when the first Thanksgiving was, whether it was in Virginia or whether it was in Plymouth, but it’s in the 17th century — it had religious overtones, particularly with the Pilgrims in 1621.”
McClay added, “It is an amazing story. Of course they had come in pursuit of freedom to practise their religion and raise their children as they saw fit. They had come from the Netherlands, where religious liberty was available to them, but it was a hard place to live for various reasons, and particularly for their children, to have them grow up not speaking English and all of that, so they got on the Mayflower and came on over.”
“It was a terrible, brutal first winter,” stated McClay. “They suffered from disease and exposure, and about half of them died. Many of them never came off the ship because they saw the landing as so dangerous, but they did have favorable contacts with some of the native tribes, the Patuxet Tribe [and] Squanto, and he taught them how to cultivate corn, what plants to eat and what plants not to eat.”
“[Squanto] was an intermediary,” explained McClay. “He helped [the Pilgrims] form relationships with the Wampanoag Tribe. … They had this celebratory feast in November 1621 to celebrate a successful harvest of corn that Squanto had helped show them [how] to cultivate. So that’s seen as the historical origin of it, and it was, by all accounts, by everything we know about it, and we don’t know a lot.”
McClay remarked, “Puritans were great about keeping journals and diaries. They saw success or failure as evidence of the degree to which they were being faithful to God. … That’s what their settlement was all about. They saw this as a mission, this errand into the wilderness.”
“Ten years later, John Winthrop, who led the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which became Boston — he gave this magnificent speech … where the phrase ‘city on a hill’ comes from — makes it very clear this was a religious enterprise, so they’re grateful to God [for] the success in finally getting through — or at least having the materials to get through — the coming winter,” added McClay.
Fundamental American values were being developed by the early colonists, explained McClay.
“What they did was enact social compact theory that had been sort of kicked around in Europe — especially in Britain — for awhile,” McClay noted. “They created a body politic out of the consent of those who were aboard the ship, and they had the foresight to realize they should [and] could do that … two centuries before the Declaration of Independence, the idea that government is based on the consent of the governed, which of course is one of the fundamental American ideas. So all of this is prefigured by the Mayflower Compact.”
McClay said, “There’s a kind of audacity about these [first colonists] that we miss, I think, in the historical accounts. Their journeys were dangerous. The habitats into which they were coming were brutal, and they lost many lives, and yet they had this sense that …. they were on a mission of God, ‘The eyes of all people are upon us.’ … They were so deeply committed to the vision of what they were doing, and that was the germ of what became, ultimately, a great nation.”
The Puritans sought religious restoration via their settlement enterprise, explained McClay.
“[The Puritans] wanted to just have a faithful remnant of a church that they thought had become corrupt in England, and in Europe, in general,” McClay shared. “What they really wanted to do was recreate what [William Bradford] called, ‘the primitive church,’ and that doesn’t mean people running around with spears and that sort of thing. It meant a church that resembled the church of the time of the apostles and Jesus and immediately after Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, the early time of the church, when it was simpler, when you didn’t have a lot of pomp and ceremony and popes and bishops running around in fancy robes and the accumulation of wealth and worldly power.”
McClay added, “It’s proper, I think, that we really trace Thanksgiving more to the Puritans, to a kind of reverent Thanksgiving.”
“[Left-wing criticism of Thanksgiving] doesn’t touch the validity of the holiday for us, because we don’t necessarily ground what we value of Thanksgiving in that historical episode. It’s not like the founding is, where it really matters what the language of the [Declaration of Independence] and Constitution was, and we want to try to stay as close as we can to the original intent of those documents. We don’t have that same kind of relationship to the first Thanksgiving, so I think it’s kind of a phony charge, what it does reflect to me is this pervasive politicization of American life, particularly from a left, radical, critical perspective.”
McClay described Thanksgiving as an “aspirational” holiday.
“A myth, properly understood, is not a falsehood,” McClay said. “We say that we believe all men are created equal. In some literal way, of course that’s not true, so what do we mean? Do we mean all men are created equal in the eyes of God? Maybe, although secular people might object to that formulation, but we certainly mean we have a kind of aspiration towards recognition of — in some ultimate way that’s very hard to define — the equal worth of all individual people. That’s really, I think, fundamentally religious. It’ s hard to imagine that existing out of a Juedo-Christian understanding of human beings.”
McClay went on, “We have this day because we aspire to reconciliation to one another and a recognition of just how profoundly indebted we are to those who came before us, to our parents, to our surrounding society, to our neighbors and friends, that there’s so much that we take for granted every single day.”
“How are you going to go through life?” asked McClay. “How are you going to go through the world? Are you going to go through it thinking that everything is your due and everything you don’t get [means] you’re being cheated by the world? Or do you think, ‘Why do I have something rather than nothing? Isn’t that great?’”
McClay continued, “The Christian view — I’m sweeping widely, here — is that we don’t really deserve anything. Our sinful nature is that we don’t really have anything coming to us, that it’s God’s graciousness that is the source of all these good things that we really don’t deserve.”
“It is a time in which we recognize our own insufficiencies, that we are not islands unto ourselves and that we depend on others, and that there are so many people in our lives to whom we owe profound gratitude, and just the bounty of existence,” determined McClay. “These are all reasons for gratitude.”
McClay contrasted gratitude and ingratitude.
“Gratitude is the proper disposition of a healthy human soul, and it’s the proper disposition of a good citizen in a democratic society,” assessed McClay. “If we lose those things and we become, sort of, brats — and I’m not meaning to say all the radical critiques of American society are bratty, most of them are, but not all of them — brattiness is a kind of ingratitude and a feeling that, ‘I deserve it all and whatever I don’t get is a form of expropriation.’ It’s the seed of other good things, other forms of mutual appreciation and reconciliation that can occur, and to take that away atomizes people.it leaves people without a means to reach out to one another.”
Left-wing critiques of Thanksgiving are generally a part of a broader political campaign to undermine America’s founding, concluded McClay.
Egg yolks are not our enemy. For the selenium alone. And cholesterol is not bad for you.
I’ve searched for the most nutrient dense foods, where a little goes a long way. Power foods. I found the answer – eat what you eat, but eat smaller. And go for a walk.
Michael Medved was just on Dennis Prager’s show. He’s got a book out about God’s continuing providence in America. He said the lead bomber for Japan in the Pearl Harbor attack, confessed that he saw God’s hand on America and Pearl Harbor – during the bombing. He became a Christian, moved to America and appeared at crusades with Billy Graham.
There would be no good without evil because there would be no way to gauge either. But for all the free will, there would be neither without the consequence and rewards of choice established in God’s natural order.
If you customize it, the Fender Mustang is better than the Gibson SG.
Walter Becker and Donald Fagen went to Bard College, and became true bards. They were Jack Londons, postbeat. Call of the Urban Wild.
If you eat enough Lactose free ice cream, it’ll effect your system just like regular ice cream. In some cases (ahem) in the middle of the night.
[Radio commercial – lady’s voice, husky, hoarse, a bit of a southern drawl.] “Ah used to have these brown, scaly creepy things all over mah face. They was ugly, I tell ya. But then I took this pill, this one l’il pill with all this food in it, so they say. Ah swallowed it, and all of a sudden, ah looked like a supermodel and became as rah-pay-sheeous as a 20-year old! Ah do cartwheels all day long now an’ only stop tah take another pill! Ahm gonna live for-ever! Whoo!” [Voices fades, announcer’s voice fades in.] “For only $130 bucks a month – and if you give us every bit of private information your own, we’ll drop that price down to a special $125.99 – you too can have this highly reaserched, highly developed, fountain of snake oil. Give us your phone number and all your passwords, NOW!”
Black Friday conceals the fact that the blacker the Friday, the redder the Saturday for consumers’ checking accounts.
Have a great Thanksgiving, everybody. I have to make green beans and croutons for the celebration at my sister’s house tomorrow.
Fed my pal, the female squirrel (aka Little Buddy) in the rain. Well, squirrels have to eat too. (pix coming)
Two happy errands today. Picked up my bro-in-law Steve’s favorite coffee (Christmas gift) at the Starbucks on Lawrence/Central. The Central Ave. 85 northbound bus smelled a LOT like the inside of a hot dog stand.
My friend Carol P. had a special birthday today. Carol lives in my building and works as a cashier at Jewel Foods, right across the street from the Starbucks. Had some shopping to do anyway, so I crossed the street – which was heavily under construction – and headed, beneath threatening skies, to the Jewel.
I tried not to let Carol see me until I was in line. Bought a Happy Birthday balloon, and a chocolate bar that I hoped she’d like (she did). I got my other groceries, then got in line. “Is that balloon for me?” she said, as soon as she spotted me. “Shh,” I said.
It took forever to get up there, but Carol appreciated the balloon and candy. She told me I had to ring out cashier presents (she must get a lot of them) at customer service, which I did when we were done.
As Carol rang me up, I announced to all who were around – and there were plenty of folks, many regular customers who knew her – not too loudly, but loud enough, that our cashier, Carol “is having a very special birthday. It’s a milestone for her and she’s turning 40! Forty!” I was 20 years off on purpose, but Carol looks great and is putting in really long shifts for the holiday.
“So, if you don’t mind, folks…” They were ahead of me. “Happy Birthday, to you…”
Haha! That was fun. I told Carol it put a little color in her cheeks.
Back home on the bus. The cloudy skies opened and I was drenched – waits between buses were pretty long. Two buses later, the rain was on and off, so I decided to stay outside and smoke my pipe. I walked a couple of blocks north to see if the squirrels were out. They were – even when the rain came hard again. I had a hood – all they had was fur. Guess it worked for them, they were happy to grab a shelled peanut, stuff it in their mouth, and and scamper off to bury it as usual.
I put some peanuts in a hole up in the big Maple tree for Little Buddy. She took them first. It’s a sheltered spot, inside the tree. She even walked the fence plank get the roasted ones; the ones she likes for ‘dinner’. Sometimes, it’s English Walnuts.
Finally I came home. I often stay out as long as I can ’cause I don’t feel like coming in – until I hear my mom’s voice: “Get inside already, it’s raining cats and dogs!” Or, “it’s dark out. What are you waiting for, a special invitation?” Thanks, Mom. Miss those words.
Laundry, drying clothes, cooking a cornish hen – almost time to check the oven. Gotta go!
PS – Whatever happened to Bill Granger’s November Man? Bill used to write for the Sun-Times, edited the DePaulia before that. ’63, if I remember. We shared that distinction – my time as editor came in ’70-71, right after Kent State. Bill led the students through the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, the end of Camelot, and the cultural turbulence that began to form with VietNam and the events that led to the Kennedy Assasination. Bill had a stroke and died way too early. He wrote a weekly column for the Times and later, the Daily Herald. Over the years, he also penned the November Man series.
Mr. Clifford, 98, worked on the monument, which was completed in 1941, for 14 years. He was hired as a teenager because he was able to use a jackhammer. He is survived by his wife, Carolyn.
Look this one up if you get a chance. True tale by Mike Rowe – the dirty jobs guy – told in a podcast on Christmas Eve, 2017. You’ll learn things about a famous movie I bet you never knew.
Evening rush hour commuters had a tough go navigating our record 3″ snowfall on Veteran’s Day last Monday (11/11/19). The temp was in the high 40s today and it will remain reasonably warm through most of next week.
Ice GrippersJewel Foods did a good job of keeping the sidewalk clear.
