Ain’t it just ducky?

Happy Saturday morning, just a short coffee this am since I’ll be participating in the Raptor 5K in nearby Milford Ohio in a bit and it’ll require plain H2O and not coffee. For this year the 5K theme bird is the Turkey Vulture. The sponsoring agency rehabilitates damaged birds and is actively talking about raptors and their place in nature by going and presenting in schools.

Mentioning a ‘short’ coffee reminds me of this. Years ago, I bought an Espresso coffee machine. Marcia doesn’t drink Espresso and soon I took it to Canada to share a ‘short’ coffee with visitors – didn’t happen much, if at all.

This spring I spent a week with my first cousin Guillaume from France – a double Espresso (or Cuban) each afternoon became the drill. A while later I was in Canada to open-up the cabin. Spotting the machine in a cupboard, I decided to drag it home. Let it be said, I am now hooked. “Hooked I say” (as Foghorn Leghorn would stutter).

Quotation – “It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” – Mark Twain

Duck à l’Orange – When Marcia and I were dating it reached a point where I invited her and her folks over for dinner (I was still in college). The meal, Duck à l’Orange (which I had NEVER attempted before) was a success, and the bird was roasted to perfection! Not certain if they ‘raved’ as much as me but I think they should have.

Fast forward to this past week where all over the news were images of ‘ducks’ and the ‘orange’ guy. What was a certainty is that amid all the hullabaloo there was a roasting. Trump, I have seen better, Kamela was well coached, probably by someone high up in acting school. However, it was the fact that Trump was on the short end of a three-on-one fracas which became noticeably irritating. Kamala getting 1 fact-check, Trump getting 33. It got so bad that when Trump responded to something he had said a long while back as being ‘sarcasm’, Muir-the-inquisitor responded with: “I didn’t see it that way”.

It was the serious face of Muir, the eye rolls and giggles from Kamela as being ‘serious’ and accepting as proper news since it came from a press release from the City Manager of voodoo-town i.e. Springfield, OH. No fact-checker had visited the town. However, weeks prior to all this stuff breaking loose citizens (note it’s plural) did speak up at Springfield Council hearings and there does exist record of 911 activity. But the ABC managers of the ‘debate’ made it clear – shut up, nothing to see here. And, by all means stay away from any mention of today’s serious national failings.

Yes, the Biden/Kamela crew opened the border entry points. However, this also happened while our ‘republican’ state overseers just stood by and watched.

Both parties are to blame as they try to shovel under the rug the fact that in short order one in four Springfield citizens are now ‘migrants’ in a very small town; without vetting, with minimal support, no cultural acclimation, no language prep. Housing has become untenable, car wrecks and litter increase, schools at the breaking point, as with hospitals and policing. In the meantime it’s, maybe just teach them to bake American Apple Pie and forget Duck à l’Orange.

Not long ago 50 Migrants were shipped from Florida to Martha’s Vineyard to spread the ‘open border’ impact around: a mere 50. On day two after the arrival of the migrants the Vineyard citizens had the Guard move them out – in two a mere days. And Springfield? Nah!

This is a Rules committee address made by Kentucky US Representative Thomas Massie – if I could jump across the river to vote I’d do so.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy – “a political theory outlined in 1966 by sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. The strategy proposes to create chaos (a political crisis) in the welfare system in order to overwhelm it, thus forcing the government to take action to fundamentally transform society.” – Substack
With the Biden/Harris open border tactic is that what we’re currently experiencing?

A Festival of Icons – Wednesday afternoon Marcia and I set out for our Riverbend Music Center. We had great seating at that evening’s “Outlaw Music Festival: Southern Avenue, John Mellencamp, Bob Dylan, and Willie Nelson. Wow!

Three icons each a national treasure. Each playing almost one hour. Both Dylan and Willie are older than me. Their voices are still strong and clear. The crowd was a healthy mix of old and young. Three couples sitting next to us were maybe in their early 30s and were having a blast.

Old favorites combined with a bunch of new. It’s hard to describe how good this event was. Maybe letting you know that we left the condo shortly after 3 and came home exactly at midnight – all without a SINGLE complaint from Marcia.

Willie closed out the show and near the end had us listen to his new song; “The Last Leaf on the Tree”. When he finished the crowd jumped to their feet and Marcia would have had she been able.

Duckly? – This must have been the week of the duck. It was announced that after a couple of decades the USPS has selected a brand new design specifically for their postal deliveries truck. It’s already being test driven somewhere. Anyway, is the nose modeled after a ‘duck’ or is it just me?

During the 1950s The Netherlands had a wealth of al fresco (outdoor) school classrooms – is this maybe where kids could spot an occasional duck?

Finally is this; ‘isn’t this just ducky?– “The Perpetual Penny Paradox” (Caity Weaver, NY Times) deals with the fact that Penny’s are dumped into jars and not circulated. This causes banks and businesses to run short. They order more pennies from the mint which are shipped all around only to be hoarded. Add to this the cost of shipping them from Maine to Alaska. Add to this the fact that it costs more to produce a penny than it’s worth. And they can’t stop minting them (unless we call a halt to the madness – which we won’t).

How big a $$ issue is all this craziness? As Weaver’s research says, “A conservative estimate holds that there are 240 billion pennies lying around the United States — about 724 ($7.24) for every man, woman and child there residing, and enough to hand two pennies to every bewildered human born since the dawn of man.”

Life is AMAZING!

May Peace prevail! Shalom.

Dirk

BONUS POINTS:

The mat used to roll Sushi is made from which material?

1) “slatted Wood”
2) “Kobi leather”
3) “Bamboo”
4) “rolled Copper”
5) “Limestone”
6) “Plastic”
7) “Banana leaf”