DENTAL ADVENTURE, A NEW COUSIN AND CHINA

Monday was an adventure.  I had crunched on something in my mouth which turned out to be a gold crown.  It had snapped of at the gum line and left a sharpish shard.

So I called the Dental office and they very kindly squeezed me in for a quick assessment.  Dr. Day very kindly ground off the shard so that I wouldn't savage myself.  And they made me an appointment for a couple weeks to pull or patch.  Okey dokey.

Got a phone call the next day, could I come in Monday.  sigh..
yeah I will be there.  I talked husband into taking me as I had no idea how long it would be.

In the meantime he went to a local junk store and wandered around looking for the occasional handy this or that.  Then he went to the brand new furniture store.  I may have to go check out the lamps. The lamp by my chair has seized up.  The on off switch had lodged itself into permanently off. That makes things bit darkish.

The good doctor looked me over and said that the remainder of the tooth needed to come out and he administered four or five shots.  I learned something very interesting. If you have a lovely meal before the anesthesia takes longer to process.  Hmm, wish I had known that.  I only drank a cup o mocha coffee and ate a couple small pieces of toast.  So about half way through I could feel the end of my tongue once again.  So he pumped in a few more thingies and said we could take as many breaks as I wanted.  Uh, no please hurry.  The first root felt like it took forever to leave my mouth.  Then another 30 minutes of grippy twisty etc. and the other root was taken out.  He offered antibiotics and pain killers and I refused as I had meds at home and I don't like to use a lot of pain killer type stuff any how. I was given some post op directions;  Do not chew for three days, do not use a straw, do not smoke, do not sneeze or blow your nose.  Sleep with head elevated.  

Next day, good progress.  I am eating Malt-O-Meal.  Yummy!

I got a phone call out of the blue from Patricia Marie Grogan Webster of Glendale, MO.  She had pictures of Wilma and Mom visiting in 96 and could I confirm their identities. Sure send me email.  So Patricia is 75 and I don't remember ever meeting her as we met a lot of people on the Cousins Reunion.  Not quite sure what generation we are 3rd, 4th?  

And now for China: I was listening to NPR and they were covering China's building projects in particular the silk road project.  China had also converted some of their coal fired power plants to gas.  

I was thinking, and you know that can get dangerous, how would it be if China built a high speed rail all along Mexico's northern border?  That would certainly be interesting and make the study of Mandarin much more important.  Unless of course Jeff or Mark invent the Universal Translator.

Vaccinations and swimming lessons

Ah..time to set the way back machine, and tell how we kids got vaccinated some swimming lessons.

First of all, remember that Mom was raised in dry land farming in Colorado.  That meant that the farmer sowed the seed and waited to see if anything would actually grow.  Sometimes yes, sometimes not so much.  There was at least one flood and the whole family stayed in Fort Morgan until the creek went down.  So no love of water sports engendered from that demographic.

I also remember watching Grandma Horn looking at a television show that showed someone driving along a mountain road in a severe rainstorm. The car  slid off the road and she shuddered in complete horror.  So no love of water sports from that side of the family.

I mention water sports because it was a commonly held belief that polio could be caught by going to the public swimming pools in the summer.  This was the age of iron lung treatment for some polio victims.  When the first polio vaccine came out approximately 1961 we did not participate mostly because of family fears. When the next batch came out I remember going to the Catholic Church to get a dose and it was on a sugar cube. I think it was two rounds of sugar cubes.

At that time measles, mumps and chicken pox were kids diseases that were dealt with by that kid staying home.  I think I had two kinds of measles, and chicken pox for sure.  Not sure about Mumps.  I do remember staying in a dark room during the day and watching the radio very carefully trying to see the little people inside the radio.

MMR was given in the late 60's.  I'm not sure if or when the rest of my siblings were vaccinated. 

I do remember getting the shoulder prick for small pox.  As a matter of fact one our cousins had visited and came in contact with one the pox and developed a similar lesion on her leg I think.  

To get back to polio for a minute.  Mom told me many years ago that she had spent a couple of weeks at Holy Rosary in Ontario with a case of "silent polio".  Which means she had the disease but none of the nasty bits manifested for her. Of course we learned a couple decades later that there was a chance for a case of latent polio to spring up its nasty head.  

So to get back to water sports.  As we moved around before finally settling in Emmett,  Mom did get us involved a couple of times with swimming lessons. There was a public pool right across the street from where we lived in Cascade.  So that summer we learned how to use paddle boards and splash. I was very good at splashing. From what I remember Mom was not very good at paddle board.

The next time the opportunity came up the folks were camped in a park near the Hell's Canyon dams.  We were acquainted with folks who lived in Haines, Oregon. Richard and I stayed a few weeks with the Barnes and took Red Cross Swimming lessons at the then called Indian Hot Springs.  We became competent.

The folks did take us to Roystone Hot Springs when we lived in Emmett on a more permanent basis.  It has been there for many year and when the folks took us there it was still very popular and there were dressing rooms all along both sides. Swimming suits could be rented and we did (shudder).  The snack bar had candy bars where they were not made with tempered chocolate so were gray looking when they were opened.  Dad had fond memories of going to the Natatorium in Boise as a youth.  He swam like a duck. 

That was it for the family type things.  Dad always wanted a boat so he could take it to Black Canyon Dam.  I think us kids would have loved it, but I think Mom would have sabotaged that plan.

As for kids swimming , we were surrounded by canals and the City Park had a public swimming pool.  And of course there were numerous irrigation ditches to go mess around with. Usually with a sharpened willow stick in hand looking for frogs and water snake. God help the water snakes. 

AUDIBLE BOOK REPORT KINDA

I just completed listening to the first three books written by S.M. Stirling "Dies The Fire", "The Protectors War" and "A Visit At Corvallis".

First of all it was well done. The narrator only made a few mistakes;  

The main characters name is  Mike Havel not Mike Hovel.

The town of Philomath is not pronounced Pillow Math.

The town of Umatilla is not pronounced Yooma Tee ya, it ain't Spanish. Pronounced Yooo ma tilla uh.  

And while the narrator did a decent job of varying the many voices in these books, please take some Posh Brit lessons so that Sir Nigel does not sound like Colonel Plum.  Please.

Speaking of Sir Nigel Loring.  I have discovered to my horror that Mr. Stirling will have his fun. He jacked the name from the story "The White Company" By Conan Doyle.  Sir Nigel in that book is not nearly as heroic as Junie's Sir Nigel.  And there is another character in same book with similar name of Sir Nigel's son.  I have ordered the book and will soon dive into the company of archers during the Hundred Years War.  Bother.

Oh and Sam Aylward and the very large Hortle could both use  some more Southern accents. Ya?

While I ordered the audible versions of these I also ordered the audile version of "Island In The Sea of Time"  because when the event happened in most of the world, the hunk of world that went to 1250BC had some haunting correlations. 

Right off the first "Easter Egg" I found was that of the guy the Signe Larson dated at their ranch in Montana.  Man named William Walker the baddest of bad guys in 1250BC.  Am confident that he would have been just as bad if he had stayed in Montana. 

Speaking of William Walker, this evil, wicked, bad and nasty (who looks like a gorgeous young Sundance Kid) was loosely based on a real historic person.  The real William Walker was a short man with a Napoleonic complex who talked people in to following him to Mexico and Nicaragua for invasion purposes, he so annoyed Cornelius Vanderbilt that the man ultimately met his fate in front of a firing squad.  There was a 1987 film staring Ed Harris as Walker and Peter Boyle as Vanderbilt.  The reviews were not favorable.

The next Easter Egg was Dennis Martins and his brother John Martins, Dennis stayed in The Hopping Toad and John was in Nantucket during the event and he made many swords because he was a very talented blacksmith.  He taught Bronze age folk how to forge iron.

Also I somehow missed the conversation Sir Nigel held with the Abbot at Mt Angel where they discussed the state of the Church in Rome.  Sir Nigel reported that Cardinal Gregory was one of the men in charge and the Abbot was pleased. When the book was released Pope Francis was not in the picture.

One of the last Easter Eggs was in both worlds.  William Walker stole a stallion from Nantucket and he mused later on that perhaps riding an uncut stallion was carrying machismo a bit far.

Norman Arminger, the Lord Protector also mused about his mount that perhaps riding an uncut stallion was carrying machismo a bit far.

And now I must do a little bit extra research and read all about being an archer in the 14h Century.  

O BOTHER

Yesterday was munching on something for lunch when I heard a muffled crunch.  Feeling carefully around inside my mouth I found a rather solid object.  It was my beautiful perfect cold molar. Snapped right off. It lasted longer than the tooth. What is left is a ragged snag that needs to be rasped off.

I shall call my local friendly dentist and get an appointment and I am prepared to beg him to spare me any attempt to save that socket. I  would rather he cap it off with a sawed  off bullet cartridge like I  saw in an old Western once.  Looked painful the cowboy bit the bullet and kept on keeping on.  Ugh.

And now for something slightly different.

I have been re-reading some of my older books on Kindle. By that I mean I went into the Amazon store and purchased the audible version and nifty pair of head phones.

I have since begun to listen to "Dies The Fire" by S.M. Stirling.  Listening is very different from actually reading.  I quite frankly have a different speaker inside my head.  Sometimes this is bit jarring when the narrator does not differentiate much between the dialog on the page.

This book has been well done.  I haven't  noticed anything egregious until in the third book of the trilogy a couple place names came up in a converstion between two characters. One place name was Philomath. The speaker said "pillow math". Another place name was Umatilla.  The speaker said "Ooma tee uh". It ain't Spanish.  

This story takes place in various places in Idaho and Oregon mostly little towns in and around the Willamette valley.  

I really enjoy listening. It's very relaxing, I may have to go fishing and see what else  would like to listen

I will let you know if I get any new choppers.  Erk.

THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN

On Easter Sunday I elected to watch "The Shoes Of The Fisherman"

This was adapted from the 1963 book and was filmed in Rome.  I am pretty sure I read the book as a youngster because Mom decided that we should have a prescription of Reader's Digest Condensed books.

I should probably read the original for the sake of authenticity.

The cast is quite wonderful. Anthony Quinn starred as Archbishop Kiril something Russian.  

He had been in the Gulag in Siberia as part of the Communist purge.  He was unexpectedly released by the Chairman.  They met and he was told that he could be very useful to Russia when he went to the Vatican.

Basically the political crisis in the book was that China was facing famine in three large areas and was poised to send the army to South East Asia for food.  And Russia was going to help but they would not be able to help enough.

So Kiril goes to the Vatican.  The Pope offers him a cardinals red robes and cap. He refused because after 20 years he just wanted a little church somewhere.  Not so fast says the Pope.  God put you here for a reason and this where you begin.

No sooner does he don the red robes that the Pope collapses.  He dies and we see the full panoply of a funeral and all the ceremonies.

So the ceremony where all the cardinals march into seclusion is very interesting.  They vote and vote and vote. Nuthin.

Eventually the wonderful qualities of Cardnal Kiril gets noticed and one of the Cardinals goes to his feet and nominates him.  He is horrified.  But ultimately accepts.

There is one scene where he dons a black robe and hat and sneaks out to see Rome.  He stumbles onto a situation where he assist sa doctor help a dying patient. The patient is Jewish and Kiril recites a pray in Hebrew.  

Eventually he is summoned to a sort of summit meeting between Russia, China and Rome.  He promises to help as much as he can.

On the day he is to be crowned.  There is a point in the ceremony where one of the Cardinals is about to put this ridiculous crown hat thing on his head.  Kiril motions it back and speaks into the microphone.

He pledged the entire wealth of the Roman Catholic church to help feed his brothers.  And the crowd went wild.  The End.

From what I understand the church currently isn't exactly sure how much it is worth.  

Now remember 1968 was a rugged year in America that was the year of then notorious political convention and a couple assassinations and they were in no mood to send aid or food to the fictional China.  Timing is everything in Hollywood.  So, no Glory. 

DAD'S WAR STORIES (kinda)

DAD'S WAR STORIES:

It was the summer that Dad decided that working for Idaho Power Company was sufficient. 

He had an itchy foot for travel that meant we all went with him.  He drove some sort of station wagon, large enough to hold a wife and six kids and could tow a small trailer that was NOT actually large enough to sleep that many.

We spent the summer in Arizona.  He drove to a little parking spot east of Pason near the Mugyon hills and if I spelled that correctly it may be minor miracle.  

I remember that we parked there and Dad worked as a shade tree mechanic.  I was the nominal baby sitter of three younger girls.  Richard and Phil were free to get into mischief that didn't kill them.

Occasionally Dad and the rest of us would all jump in the car and he would drive. On one of those drives or perhaps I am mixing two or three of them altogether in my memories, we drove down near Tucson.
  
Dad drove us by a spot where he spent the last year of the war.  He was transferred from Alaska to the German Prisoner of War camp, Camp Florence.  Dad was not a guard there he spent his time getting all polished up as a certifed motor mechanic. 

I did a little looking around on line.  Apparently Camp Florence was the largest POW camp in the USA.  By the end of the war there were over seven hundred thousand German POW's in various camps about the country.  

There was some attempt to divide the Germans.  The most dangerous ones, the SS were kept somewhere in Missouri I think.  There was another camp that kept the generals and their staff. The general all got small houses and gardens and the other were in barracks. 

Apparently the country did a pretty good job at the Geneva Conventions.  All of the soldiers were paid the same amount  as our guys which was about 80  cents per day. They were well fed.  One fellow wrote that when he first went into a POW camp he weighed 128 lbs and a year later he weighed 155 lbs.

Years later while working at WKMH I became acquainted with our Surgeon Locum Tenen, Dr. Wolfgang Gneuchtel.  He was an orthopedist.  He told us that he was in the Luftwaffe and was captured and sent to Canada as a POW. He said the diet was pretty steady and he NEVER wanted to eat tuna fish or peanut butter again as long as he lived. 

These POW's were paid for local labor and mostly worked in agriculture, harvest etc.  Because of the labor shortage, they were seen often in the small towns they naturally enough met local women.  There were a fair amount of war brides (I'm a bit surprised Hollywood never made a comedy entitled "I Was a Prisoner of War Bride) who went home as Hausfraus and some of the husband and wives stayed in the US.

At any rate we drove past that site and Dad recited the brief history of the place.  I was most interested in the visit to a Mall in Phoenix firstly it was air conditioned and I saw my first ever automatic dispensing machine that put hot water or coffee or chocolate in a cup for 25 cents. It was absolutely fascinating.  

We also visited a cactus garden. I was very careful to stay on the path.  I saw later that someone's purse had picked up a load of cactus spines from a too close encounter.  Saw a road runner there and that was way before Saturday morning cartoons. 

If there ever was a movie made about that summer it would have featured Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland and a host of charming children (cough) and while we sang along in the car, we did not pick up any Tony's.

WATCH YER STEP

About once a year I will see the show "I Want That".  This one was all about electonics gear and some of it was focused on the elderly and falls.

The first one was a young lady demonstrating a fall app on her cell phone.  Of course there were cameras mounted about the house.  And it looked like an infrared picture on the phone.  At any rate the young lady demonstrated by lying down on the floro and her body showed up on the  phone app and calls the person to be notified.

Then there was just about the silliest thing I have ever seen.  There was a nice senior citizen wearing what looked like a belt device with a short skirt hanging down.  When the senior falls a motion detector or an accellerometor inflates the skit from a foot long gas cannister.  They showed the actual demonstration in cartoon form. Yeah.  I'm thinking I would like to see the old lady bounce first.

I thought that I should research some of this stuff. l Googled Senior Fall Aids.  Found one; it is shoes made in Israel. The shoes have mini tracks mounted in the back half of the shoe.  There was a gentleman wearing a pair of these shoes. If a person, slips the tracks are supposed to roll in the opposite direction of the slip to compensate the balance. It is first generation and there is a large battery pack worn on the calf.  (Can I get a Boy Scout here?)

You, know with all the money that various entities are spending on Self Drive....Hey Amazon!  Whyn'tcha sell a Senior Guide Hat.  It could tell the wearer to go left, right, stop, start, locate glasses.  Yeah it could come with the Alexa app.  "Hey Alexa, where is my house?"  "Hey Alexa, what was my name again?"  This has distinct possibilities.

Living treasures

Carla recently posted an article on my Facebook page all about Beverly Cleary.  It listed 100 surprising things about Beverly Clearly.  The one that surprised me the most was that she had been named a National Living Treasure.

How nice, kind of like Japan.  They have national living treasures.  I watched a National Geographic piece on some of the then living treasures.

One of the most memorable one was that of a little old lady who wove kimono fabric dyed blue and rinsed in the creek running by her home.  It was completely charming.  She has limited production and her work is much sought after.

There was a pottery master who baked his clay pots in his home built kilns. It was quite a production.

Recently I watched a PBS show on "Touring Japan".  A young man from Australia was visiting a small town located on the eastern coast of Japan just north of Tokyo in the snow country.  They have a work shop there where a woman is teaching people how to weave flax into kimono material.  When it is complete they take it out on the snow to bleach out.  The UV rays bleach the material white leaving the print intact. Quite beautiful and the town is a Unesco Heritage site.  

I went looking for a list of living treasures in America and the closest I could get to was National Endowment of the Arts and there are about 80 winners.  

There are other sites that list living treasures but those consist mostly of celebrities.  Yay..

Happy Birthday Beverly Cleary I think you should get some sort of medal that says National Living Treasure.  

HERE IS A THOUGHT OR TWO

I have been thinking about the wall on the southern border of the USA.  

I wonder if anyone has thought of electrifying the wall?  That is kind of ouchy.  Pretty sure that appeals to the sadistic base.  If the Marquis had only know about electricity. 

Then there was my idea the other day about using all the debris from replacing the decaying infrastructure to build the wall.  Make it wide enough for two lane highway and charge tourists to make  the trip.  Put in rest stops and gas stations, name it I-4.  Presto change!

We also have a problem with spent nuclear fuel rods.  I did do a little looking online, it seems possible to get the licensure and approval (eventually) to construct dry storage along the wall.  I am sure the big international warning letters will scare off anyone wanting to climb over or dig under the wall. I also think that the Geiger counter click should be broadcast from the wall.  

Pretty sure Trussia's base will find this delightful.

And failing that how about contracting with Elon Musk to shoot some container cargo into low earth orbit and then on a long leisurely flight into the sun. The cargo would, of course, consist of used nuclear fuel. 

This method would help keep terrorists from digging up the wall for material to make dirty bombs.  

Pretty sure that what ever amount of money it took to accomplish any of these projects would all cost about the same.  Just guessing.

Main benefit would be permanent disposal of the nuclear fuel.    

Win win. 

Saturday April 6 pick your year

Today I shall meander and talk about Humpty Dumpty, the Battle of Colechester, classical education, The Wall and Andy Rooney.

I had been trying to think of something witty about Trussia, the Wall and Humpty Dumpty.

I got side tracked when I decided to do a little research (Google) and looked up Humpty Dumpty. Well,  he was an egg shaped character introduced by Lewis Carrol about 1710 in the  book "Alice in Wonderland".

Further search on Wikipedia revealed that Humpty Dumpty was the name of a large cannon used in the Battle of Colchester during the English Civil War about 1650 or so. The gun is famous because it actually fell off of the wall where it was located on Colechester castle and killed a lot people. Thus All the Kings horses and all the Kings men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

The things you learn when you have not had a classical education. Which naturally enough led me to several videos explaining things like classical education begins in childhood and the child starts with logic, something else and then rhetoric.  WHAT!?  

Well I am clearly doomed.  I was raised in a small farming community, in a large nuclear family with free access to the public and school libraries and when I went to public school the only "fad" going through the ranks was cursive writing and phonics. 

I do have a few thoughts about the wall.  I think I could get it done by combining two things.  Now the Democrats are all about infrastructure and the Republicans are all about the Wall.  

Why don't we get the construction companies disassemble all the rusty bridges and roadways and spread all of that along the Texas border.  Lots of people would be busy transporting and rebuilding infrastructure and helping build the bulwark of the border wall,

They might even be able to drive on top of the thing. If the border people charge tourists to make the drive it will pay for itself pretty quickly.

In parting,if I ever grew out my eyebrows, they would be as bushy as Andy Rooney's were.

The previous has been a circular metaphor, (curtsey)

SURVIVOR TALES

SURVIVOR:

I really enjoy this show.  This season they have added Exile Island where all of the voted off survivors are given the choice to exit for a bath and hamburger or pick up the torch and take a boat ride.  Exile island only has a little rice, no shelter. If anyone wants to leave all they have to do is hoist the flag up the mast and a boat will come pick them up.  

I have often thought of refinements that could be added to the game. 

1.  Let the voted off people came back as zombies at night so they can steal stuff, or play pranks but if they get caught they are permanently eliminated from the game.

2. If someone is voted off possessing an immunity idol, let them gift it to someone on the island.

3.  Bury some treasure somewhere, preferably food.

4.  Assign points to all survivor players. Track these points. Use the point system in Naked and Afraid.  Hmm, maybe NandF would like to participate in Survivor. Perhaps begin an international gaming association within which these points could be used in other games.  See book called Dream Park.  

Also I have watched other actual survival shows and some documentaries.

One of those documentaries showed women swatting themselves with bushes and leaves to be used as deodorant.  Research what those botanicals are and determine a method to test them.

The tribe does not fully utilize bamboo.  They could make lots of stuff.  It splits into very small sections that lumpy bed could be a lot flatter.  I would use the bamboo to make a largish cage to go catch those loose chickens.  

I am a little surprised that people don't utilize the properties of mud more often.  Use the mud to ward off insects such as mosquitoes and flies. Mud also works to protect skin from sunburn.  

Since the social game is so important I would utilize the Scherazade treatment.  I would tell stories at night.  In installments.  I think "Dies The Fire" By S.M. Stirling would be perfect.  I have been listening to it on audible and I have 9 hours left.  I think people would keep me around just to hear the story.
I would also institute the joke a day thing.  I would challenge them to tell the funniest joke they ever heard. And keep it clean if at all possible.

I also encourage the use of fake immunity idols.  You would have to be extraordinarily clever to fake one. They have become rather iconic.  Possibly steal a medallion from the immunity necklace when it is hanging on the tree.  Do a night raid.  Try to make it look like something accidentally dropped off or rearrange the remaining decorations so that it does not look like any part of the necklace is missing.  

Since there is so much trash in the ocean, give rewards for beach cleaning activities. 

Do some good deeds Hey, Jeff anyone listening?