Posted in opinion

AMERICA’S PAST TIME

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

October means only one thing: we are in the midst of the “golden hour” of sports, with almost every major league playing games.  It’s a lovely thing for those of us who want to watch something other than the news.  Perhaps the most exciting is the MLB playoffs.  Not because baseball is intrinsically interesting, but because, in my opinion, playoffs in any sport are worth watching.  My grandmother, an avid SF Giants fan, would sit in her living room with her Giant’s cap on, and listen to every regular season game on the radio.  I did not inherit that gene. I don’t watch baseball or hockey all year until they start playing for the hardware.  Then, I choose a team (sometimes for ridiculous reasons, like their team colors) and I tune in.  On the other hand, I watch pro and college football games even when I don’t really have a reason to root for either team.  I think it’s because football season is relatively short, so each game is to be savored.  I know that all too soon it will be February and I’ll be stuck with basketball and hockey, who start their seasons in October and don’t wrap up until June!  JUNE!  That is ridiculous! My love for football, and waning interest in baseball, corresponds to the national trend: 53% of people say football is America’s sport, compared to just 27% for baseball. But this being MLB playoff season, I thought I’d dig up some famous moments from our former favorite past time.

Babe Ruth Calls His Shot – One of the most famous home runs in baseball history occurred in the 1932 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and the New York Yankees. At the top of the fifth inning, Yankees slugger Babe Ruth, with two balls and two strikes, pointed toward the outfield, and when the next pitch came, he hit a towering home run to center field. It proved to be the winning hit for the Yankees.  In the newspapers the next day, ecstatic reporters announced that Ruth had “called his shot,” and that his gesture toward the bleachers was a prediction of the home run. For years there was some doubt as to the legitimacy of this claim, but in 2020 an old radio interview was unearthed in which Lou Gehrig, who witnessed the event from the on-deck circle, confirmed that “the Bambino” really had called the shot.

Lou Gehrig Gives a Retirement Speech for the Ages – Speaking of Lou Gehrig, his career, and his retirement speech, still have a lasting legacy within the sport.  When Gehrig announced his retirement in 1939, it shocked the baseball world. During his career, Gehrig’s seemingly endless endurance had allowed him to play in 2,130 consecutive games (a record that stood for nearly 60 years), earning him the nickname “the Iron Horse.” However, in 1939, when Gehrig was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease ALS (which became commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), the Iron Horse was finally forced to end his baseball career. In the retirement speech he delivered at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, Gehrig told the crowd that despite his “bad break,” he considered himself “the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.” This iconic phrase, emblematic of Gehrig’s grace and humility, remains famous today, and his speech is often recognized as one of the greatest in sports history.

Hank Aaron Breaks Babe Ruth’s Home Run Record – In yet another Ruth connection, for nearly four decades after his retirement, he was hailed as the undisputed home run king. His 714 career home runs stood as a monument to his unrivaled power at the plate. Then Hank Aaron arrived. Since his MLB debut in 1954, Aaron had been an extremely consistent slugger, and he led the league in home runs four separate times. The years of steady power hitting paid off on April 8, 1974, when Aaron hit his 715th career home run and surpassed Ruth to inherit one of baseball’s most hallowed records. Aaron’s historic career continued for another three seasons, during which time he added 40 homers to his career total, retiring with a staggering 755 home runs. This record was eventually surpassed by Barry Bonds in 2007, but to this day Aaron remains celebrated as the first player to surpass the Sultan of Swat as the home run champion. And, let’s face it, Aaron didn’t have a hint of steroids in his achievement.

Willie Mays Makes “the Catch” – In deference to my grandmother, I couldn’t end this piece about baseball without including one of the Giants’ best players – Willie Mays, although his most famous play came when the Giants were still in New York, before the team came west and garnered my grandmother’s attention. Mays’ stunning play came during the 1954 World Series — it became known to history simply as “the Catch” (not to be confused with 49er Dwight Clark’s catch in the 1982 playoff game against the hated Cowgirls). Mays made the play in the eighth inning of Game 1, with the score tied 2-2 between Mays’ New York Giants and the Cleveland Indians. Cleveland slugger Vic Wertz hit a long fly ball toward Mays in center field. Mays turned and sprinted backward, making a miraculous over-the-shoulder catch 425 feet from home plate. As if that wasn’t a stunning-enough achievement, Mays completed the play by spinning around and making an incredible throw from the outfield to prevent Cleveland’s baserunners from getting home. The play saved the game for the Giants, who went on to sweep Cleveland in four games to become World Series champions.

Enjoy the MLB playoffs, relish the second half of football season and gird your loins for the endless basketball and hockey games that will loom until next summer.

 

Posted in travel

An Offer I Couldn’t Refuse

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by Bob Sparrow

Susan, Dennis, Linda and ‘what’s his name’

I spent most of last week in Las Vegas, so this week’s blog won’t give you the typical erudite, cogent presentation on a thought-provoking topic that you’ve come to expect . . . elsewhere!  Linda and I met Dennis & Susan Nespor in the real ‘city that doesn’t sleep’ for some fun and games.  Although we had a lot of fun, we didn’t win at too many games; except for Susan who finished the week with a nice ‘one armed bandit’ win.  Fortunately, I wasn’t in the typically generous mood that comes over me in Vegas, but neither was Vegas.

We had seen it advertised many times, but just never pulled the trigger on going to ‘The Mob Museum’.  But this time we did, so we drove downtown to an old court house building, two blocks off of Freemont Street, the main drag of ‘downtown’ Vegas, for a tour.

Electric chair in Mob Museum

I have to say that I’m not a big fan of The Mob, the Mafia, the Sopranos, etc.  I know, I’m in the minority on that one, although I did enjoy the Godfather books, so I was sort of looking forward to the tour, and everyone else wanted to see it, so I couldn’t refuse.  As it turned out, it was fantastic!

The museum takes up three floors and a basement of this old federal building.  We had an option of three additional paid events during our self-guided tour:

  • Firearm Training
  • Crime Lab
  • Distillery Tour & Tasting

Freemont Street

A bit hung over from being ‘over-served’ the night before, we did not trust ourselves to handle any firearms, so we passed on the first one, but did the other two.  In the Crime Lab we analyzed our own fingerprints to see what criminal had similar fingerprints.  We also analyzed bullet marking to see if we could match them to the right pistol.  We also got to analyze an image of a cadaver that that seemingly had been beaten and had some serious wounds on his body.  Based on the wounds, we had to figure out how he died.  We concluded that we didn’t want to be forensic pathologists.  Without a doubt our favorite tour was the Distillery Tour & Tasting; It may have been the ‘tasting’ that got us hooked.  While we took our seats inside a working distillery in the basement, we were told of the Mobs activities during Prohibition, and getting samples of three types of ‘moonshine’ that was typical of the beverages that were distilled by the mob.  The moonshine wasn’t bad, but it was a little strong!

After the tour, we walked the two blocks to Freemont Street and walked down the middle for a block or two, which was just enough to let us know that it was time to go back to our hotel.

Speaking of our hotel, we have consistently stayed at South Point, which is at the way south of the strip and we love.  It is several steps above of the hotels downtown, but not as big, glitzy or expensive as the hotels on the strip.  It has seven great restaurants, over 120 bowling lanes, movie theaters and a huge arena that features everything from full on rodeos to college basketball tournaments.  And of course has every game of chance that you want.  But, another great advantage of South Point is that it has our favorite act, the Bronx Wanderers, performs there many times during the year in an awesome, intimate theater that doesn’t have a bad seat.  They are a band made up of a father, his two sons and two other members who were the son’s friends growing up in New York.  They play music for every generation, but it is particularly entertaining for those who have experienced and enjoy the long history of rock & roll.  Linda and I saw them for the third time last week and I know Dennis and Sue really enjoyed their first exposure.  They are awesome, if you get a chance, spend the whopping $45 a ticket!!  You won’t be disappointed.

 

 

 

Posted in opinion

RISKY BUSINESS

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

According to the CDC’s National Health Interview Survey, only about 29% of US adults lived in a house with a landline phone as of 2022.  That is a reduction of 90% since 2004!  Before I launch into my interest in this trend, you might be wondering, as I did, why the same people who are monitoring Covid and the flu are also in charge of determining phone usage.  Well, apparently around twenty years ago the CDC began to worry about a “new” technology – the cell phone. Because the CDC conducts some of the nation’s most extensive phone surveys — used to produce vital information about rates of immunization, risky behavior, health care use and chronic conditions — they worried that changes in telephone access could distort their results. So, they began to survey both landline and cell phone households. Rather unexpectedly, they discovered a connection between the type of phone used and overall well-being and what they found was surprising: people who have cut the cord, eliminating a landline to rely only on wireless, are generally more likely to engage in risky behaviors, such as binge drinking, smoking, and eschewing health insurance. When I first read that sentence, I immediately thought of purple-haired, nose-ring-wearing millennials, but it turns out that the researchers controlled for age, sex, race, ethnicity and income and found it to be true across almost all demographics. Unsurprisingly, the only demographic for which households with landlines still outnumber wireless-only households is the 65 and older crowd.  In other words, me.  And yet…last month even I was driven to finally cut the cord.

Over the past several weeks it’s become abundantly apparent that it’s not good to live in a “swing” state in an election year.  And I’m not referring to the type of swing alluded to in the aforementioned “risky behavior” concern of the CDC. Arizona is one of the 6-7 states considered up for grabs, so we are inundated with ads on tv and we receive incessant phone calls from everyone running for office, from presidential contenders down to the local dog catcher.  I’ve registered with the National Do Not Call registry and with the Cox Nomorobo system, but to no avail.  The factories that pay people to annoy you with phone calls are always one step ahead.  I’d been thinking about abandoning my landline for almost a year, but I was reluctant to do so.  It’s been my home phone number for 26 years and every now and again an old friend will call on that line. Plus, I think when you live alone it’s good to have two numbers so in the (likely) event you forget where you left your phone, you can call yourself.  I read that it is good to have a landline in case of a power outage, but I recalled that years ago Cox changed my landline to VOIP, connected to my internet modem, so it would be useless when the power goes out.  The final straw in my decision-making occurred one night two weeks ago when I got a spam call at 1:20 a.m. I decided enough was enough.  In an “aha” moment in the shower that day I realized I could port the number over to a cell phone and use the settings to mute all of the calls.

            My old phones

I reluctantly went down to the Cox store with my idea.  Reluctant because dealing with any utility company is usually fraught with frustration and complicated service plans.  But my fears were unfounded.  A very nice young man took me under his wing.  I told him I wasn’t looking for the latest or greatest phone; I didn’t even need it to be smart.  What I needed was a dumb phone that was just…a phone.  He directed me to the most basic smart Android phone with just 1 GB of data allowed per month, suggesting that in an emergency I could still use it to text or look up the local office of FEMA.  Of course, it doesn’t have the bells and whistles of my iPhone, but I just need it to sit on my office desk and block political ads. Armed with my new device, I came home and pulled out all seven of my landline phones. Suddenly I felt 20 years younger.

So far, my little phone is doing a great job.  It’s blocking calls like crazy and I’m sleeping better.  Plus, I’m even saving $26 a month. If I use the CDC as an indicator, now that I’m without a landline I can use my monthly savings to binge drink, smoke, cancel my Medicare supplemental plan and engage in risky behavior.  I think I’m going to like not having a landline.

Posted in space

Are We Alone?

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by Bob Sparrow

Just the Milky Way galaxy

Haven’t we all wondered at one time or another . . . are we alone?  Yes, you may very well be alone while reading this blog and hopefully you were alone when you went to the bathroom this morning, but the graphic gives us the real intent of the question: Are we the only people in the universe, in all of space?

If we include ‘all of space’, first we don’t even have a clue as to how big ‘all of space’ is, but what we do know is that just in our Milky Way galaxy, there are trillions of planets with many of them orbiting stars just like our sun.  And if you consider space beyond our galaxy, the odds are pretty good that there is intelligent life out there somewhere; and to complicate matters in our search for intelligent life, lately we’re not even sure we can find intelligent life here on Earth!

A comment from famous American-Italian and Manhattan Project physicist, Enrico Fermi, is one of my favorites when contemplating the mystery of intelligent life ‘out there’..  After hearing how vast space is and the probable odds of having life out there somewhere, he said, “Where is everybody?”  This is known as the ‘Fermi Paradox’.

The process of ‘looking for life’ out there, includes first looking at how life on Earth began, which we’re really not sure about; we do know approximately when life started here on Earth (about 4 billion years ago), but we don’t know how it started!  Which complicates things when looking for life elsewhere. It’s been said that “If we played Earth’s history again, the emergence of intelligent life as we know it, is actually somewhat unlikely.”

Apollo 12 astronauts

However, there is a story that claims that when Apollo 11 reached the surface of the moon, Armstrong expressed astonishment at finding two unknown spacecraft already present on the moon. Armstrong further described these UFOs as being huge and lined up on the far side of the crater’s edge observing the Earth.  The theory originated from NASA’s claim about losing transmission from Apollo 11 for roughly two minutes. Did Armstrong really see aliens during that time?  Apollo 10 astronauts, Stafford, Young, and Cernan heard a certain whistling sort of music while circling the moon. The music lasted for almost an hour and creeped the living daylights out of the astronauts.  The Apollo 12 astronaut, Allen Bean saw a mysterious shining object on the moon.  American astronaut Leroy Chiao was the commander of the International Space Station in 2005, after seeing a series of lights outside the ISS, claims he is 100 percent convinced he was visited by aliens.

These are well-respected, educated men who did not just take up space in school.  So, if we assume that we are being watched, let’s look at some of the theories of how ‘they’ may be watching us:

  1. The ‘Dark Forrest Theory’ says that the reason we can’t see these alien civilizations is because they’re all in hiding. Unlike humanity—whose radio transmissions have long echoed throughout our local galactic neighborhood—these societies have all concluded that it’s simply too dangerous to broadcast their location to potentially hostile neighbors.
  2. The ‘Snow Glob Theory’ says that yes, there are aliens, but they are so much more advanced than us, that they have no interest in watching us for very long. It’s like looking at a snow globe and every once in a while, you’ll turn it upside down to see something a little different, and then leave it alone.
  3.  3. The ‘Zoo Theory’ says that aliens can and are watching us with some interest, but are so much more advanced than we are, that they are really not bothering to interfere with our simple, mundane existence. It’s sort of like us watching an ant colony.
  4. The ‘Been There, Done That Theory’ This is believed by people who can’t otherwise explain things like the Great Pyramids, saying that aliens were here for a while, built some stuff, got bored, and went home.

Fermi, “Where is everybody?”

The fact is that the universe is so vast and the building blocks of life are so abundant in the cosmos, and the number of planets in the cosmos is so large that it’s very unlikely that life on Earth is the only form of life that exists out there,

Whether you believe any of this stuff or not, it is with us to stay.  Earlier this year, a former Air Force intelligence officer testified that he had been told that the United States is in possession not only of crashed spacecraft of “non-human” origin but also alien “biologics.”

I’ll probably continue to take up space in the future and keep you posted on any further discoveries of life in space or here on Earth.

 

 

 

Posted in opinion

GOOD PARENTING

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

A group of friends and I were talking about parenting the other day.  We remarked that when we were growing up our parents sent us out the door in the morning and asked us not to return until dinner.  I think they had a general sense of where we were, but I wouldn’t swear to it.  Of course, we all grew up in small towns, where everyone knew everyone else, and you couldn’t get into too much trouble without being observed by someone who would rat you out to your parents.  And, in general, it was a safer time for kids to roam around unsupervised.  Still, even into the 80’s I remember my husband and I standing at the end of our driveway, waving to our daughter and her best friend as they drove off for spring break in Palm Desert.  She called to let us know they arrived safely, and we didn’t hear from her again until they set out for home.  I’m not sure we want to know what they were up to that week, but that is her fun memory to have and since we weren’t asked for bail money, I’m assuming she didn’t get into too much trouble.  But back to the discussion with my friends – we were commenting about how the advent of cell phones has allowed parents to track every movement of their kids. There are good and bad aspects to that.  There’s no question the cell phone has kept many an anxious parent from lying awake half the night wondering where their kids (and car) were.  On the other hand, I learned a lot of lessons on how to get myself out of a jam because no one was just a phone call away to help me out.

Coincidentally, earlier this week I received an article about old-fashioned parenting styles from one of the historical sites I subscribe to, and it was eye-opening to learn just how far we’ve come in supervising our children.  For example:

People Used to Mail Their Children – on January 1, 1913, the United States Post Office began offering parcel service.  The most brazen early parcel customers trusted the Post Office with their most precious cargo – their children. The first recorded baby delivered via parcel post was James Beagle, an 8-month-old resident of Glen Este, Ohio. His journey wasn’t long: a carrier picked up the “well wrapped” infant from his parents on January 25 and, per the address on an attached card, delivered him to his grandmother just a few miles away. The postage cost 15 cents, and his parents insured him for $50! The practice of mailing children to relatives continued, particularly in rural areas, until 1915, when the government finally made it illegal to pop your kid in the mail.

Kids Were Routinely Given Illegal Drugs – In an era before evidence-based medicine, parents often relied on dubious remedies to treat common childhood ailments. Substances such as Stickney and Poor’s Pure Paregoric syrup and Godfrey’s Cordial were commonly given to babies in the 19th century to relieve gas, soothe teething pain, and treat unexplained fussiness. The secret ingredients? Alcohol and opium.  Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup was also a popular treatment at the time. The syrup was said to be suitable for babies as young as newborns. While the vibrant marketing featured cheerful imagery of happy babies and mothers, the syrup, a concoction that included morphine and alcohol, resulted in the loss of thousands of children until it was denounced by the American Medical Association in the early 1900s.

Parents Aired Out Laundry and Children – Dr. Luther Emmett Holt, sort of a 19th century Dr. Spock, introduced the concept of “airing” infants. The practice of “airing” babies subsequently gained traction, and by the early 1900s, people even began placing babies in boxes on flat roofs. Baby cages also became popular as a way for city-dwelling parents to provide their babies with that all-important fresh air from the comfort of an enclosed frame suspended from a windowsill.

No Such Thing as Maternal Affection – In the early 1900s, John B. Watson (no relation!), an American psychologist known for his role in developing the field of behaviorism, stated that children should not receive “too much mother love.”  He argued that children should be greeted with a handshake in the morning, should not be allowed to sit in a parent’s lap, and should never be hugged or kissed, save for a peck on the forehead at bedtime. Many of the leading child psychologists of the day suggested that a baby be handled as little as possible lest it become spoiled.  Touching, they said, would sow indulgence that would reap anger, selfishness, irritability, and unbecomingness.  Instead, they suggested parents turn the baby occasionally from side to side, feed it, change it, keep it warm, and let it alone.  Kind of like you’d do with a hamster.

Such theories are unimaginable these days, but I guess it explains a lot of the stoic behavior in the past.  And if they treated their children like this, I hate to think about the living conditions of the family dog.  Dash the Wonder Dog, like most pets, is fortunate to live in a time when we buy unlimited toys, fluff their pillows, feed them organic food and let them nestle into a soft pillow on our beds.  We’ve come a long way.

Posted in politics

It’s the Most Important Election of Our Lifetime . . . Again

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by Bob Sparrow

Actually, both mascots should be ‘Cheetahs’

We here at ‘From A Birdseye View’, rarely, if ever, wade into the political swamp. Still, I now find myself tip-toeing, very gingerly, into what has become our political cesspool, as it’s simply impossible to ignore and will be for the next couple of months.  While election years typically provide different positions on various subjects, I feel like we’re watching a couple of junior high schoolers bad-mouthing each other.  I keep waiting for one of them to say, “Oh yeah, well I’m rubber, you’re glue, everything that you say, bounces off me and sticks on to you.  Neener, Neener!”

This childish display is partly due to the fact that we have two unique presidential candidates, who both believe and constantly remind us, that if their opponent wins, it will be the end of democracy as we know it.  Spoiler alert: I’m fairly certain that we will still have a democracy, no matter who wins.  Given the uniqueness of each of these two presidential candidates, it is hard to ignore the constant media coverage, which will get worse, as each candidate is vying to be the last one to insult the other.  Whether you’re for the cackling flip-flopper, the self-centered blowhard, or neither, the mud-slinging will only intensify as we get closer to election day.  It makes one wonder, are these the best two candidates we could come up with to become commander-in-chief of our armed forces and president of the most powerful country in the world?

The only thing the two candidates seem to agree on is that “This will be the most important election of our lifetime”.  Which is political babble for, ‘if you vote for the other person, YOU are going to be responsible for the destruction of our country as you know it’.  The use of this phrase sounded so familiar to me that I thought I’d do a little research into it.

Oliver Hardy for President!

The phrase, or something very similar, can actually be traced back to the election of Abraham Lincoln, but it can be found word-for-word dating back to the Great Depression.  Why is this phrase so popular? Because politicians need to make today’s election about tomorrow—which means they need voters to believe that the future literally depends on their vote today. So, while politicians are really just thinking about whether they are going to survive this election, they tend to use hyperbole to say, “It’s the most important election of our lifetime”.  As each candidate poses as someone who can save the world!

Last week’s debate ended with each candidate saying that they won, and of course, we can’t rely on the media to tell us the truth; the general left-slanted media has claimed the victory for Harris, while Fox will give Trump the nod.  Let me go back to what I just said, “we can’t rely on the media to tell us the truth”.  That’s discussing!!  News used to be a reporting of facts so that we could come to our own conclusions, now the so-called news, is trying to tell us how to think.  They have made it so that today you watch a network based on what you want to hear or don’t want to hear.  It’s obvious we can’t get unbiased reporting anywhere. What the hell happened?!!!

But what upsets me the most is that the two people vying for the trust of the American people must be ‘fact-checked‘, as it’s assumed they’re going to be lying to us.  And sure enough, each told us 5-6 lies during the debate.  Honest Abe would never get elected today.

How do I really feel about all this?  To quote slap-stick comedian Oliver Hardy, which seems appropriate:

“It’s another fine kettle of fish we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

 

Posted in opinion

ON SAFARI IN SCOTTSDALE

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

Tom the Tarantula

I have always been an animal lover.  Okay, maybe really just a dog lover. I can tolerate the occasional cat.  But last month I reached the limits of my admiration for the animal kingdom when a giant tarantula appeared on my front door.  Now generally I am not afraid of spiders.  Living in Arizona requires that you become adept at squashing any number of arachnoids with the heel of your shoe.  But this thing was roughly the size of the Volkswagen I drove in college.  Our security department takes care of wayward desert animals so I called to see if they could remove the tarantula.  Ten minutes later a young man came walking up to my front entrance with a little grin on his face.  I’m sure he thought I was some gray-haired old lady afraid of a little spider.  When I pointed to Tom the Tarantula (we were on a first-name basis by then), he turned toward the window and his mouth flew open.  “Oh my God,” he shouted. He told me he’d never seen one so large.  He eventually got a piece of paper, scraped it off the window and took it out to the street.  I had visions of Tom returning, perhaps when I was fast asleep.  But the guard assured me that within a few hours he would be eaten by a coyote or snake.  Rest in Peace, Tom.

         Lovely Rattlesnakes

Over the past year I’ve had an unusual number of encounters with local wildlife.  We had rattlesnakes that visited our lot when we were building the house (they are territorial, and we disrupted their space) but since we moved into the house in 2000, we haven’t seen another one.  Until last year.  They usually go into hibernation when the weather turns colder, so you can imagine my surprise when I came home from a dinner at the beginning of November to find a rattlesnake in the yard.  And not just the yard – but in Dash the Wonder Dog’s dog run.  Luckily my flashlight caught the glint of his skin, and I was able to grab Dash before he had an ugly encounter.  And me a $5,000 anti-venom vet bill.  Our security people came and took him out of my yard.  Two weeks later, the day before Thanksgiving, I went out to check my backflow valve and when I lifted the cover, lo and behold, there was a rattlesnake coiled around one of the pipes.  I’ve never run so damn fast in my life.  Again, security came to the rescue, but I’m sure they were beginning to suspect I was running a breeding farm.

         Be Very Afraid

Last fall I also encountered one of the desert’s worst sort – the Colorado River Toad.  These toads are nothing like Kermit the Frog.  These guys are mean.  They are smooth-skinned and dark, with a distinct cranial crest that curves above each eye, giving them a killer look from the outset. They are only semi-aquatic, meaning they burrow around and seek out water sources.  Again, this toad showed up out in the dog run.  He looked so vicious that I immediately looked up types of toads, spotted the species, and learned that their defense mechanism is a poison they emit that is lethal enough to kill a dog.  The next morning he was gone. Two weeks ago, I let Dash out right before bed and saw one sitting underneath my A/C condensation pipe, basking in the water.  I took the Scarlet O’Hara approach and decided to deal with it the next morning.  Unfortunately, the bugger was still there.  Once again, Security came and caught him and remarked on his large size.  My pool man says that he’s seen more of these toads this year than in any of the 30 years he’s been working on pools.  Great.

The owl, critiquing my cooking

Coyotes are a regular part of our existence, in fact, we have a coyote pathway right outside my kitchen window. Since I’ve become accustomed to them over the past 24 years, I’m not frightened by them anymore.  I just double-check they aren’t running to the supermarket when I take Dash out.  Javelinas are another animal we live with, but they usually only cause problems by destroying plants.  We shrug them off; the deer always destroyed our gardens when we lived in California.  We also have regular visits from owls, who I learned are quite cunning.  A friend lost her dog when an owl swooped down, picked it up, and carried it off to who knows where.  I had this one peering in the kitchen window a couple of years ago, but I think the sour look was due to his appraisal of my cooking skills.

         Beautiful bobcat

Every once in a while, we get a beautiful, but equally frightening bobcat that visits our yard.  During Covid I guess he was having a hard time finding food (and it was an especially hot summer) so he camped out on our back patio almost every afternoon, hoping the occasional rabbit would step into his lair.  He truly was a beautiful animal, and I felt sorry for him, as his bony ribs heaved up and down as he panted to try to cool off.  But not sorry enough to set out a of bowl of water.  I’m hoping he found food and shelter at a non-dog owner’s home.

I’ve been tested in many ways this year, but those snakes and toads have just about taken me over the edge.  Thank God for the nice young men in our security department that come to my rescue.  I think I’m going to owe them a big check at Christmas this year.

 

 

Posted in space

Stuck in Space

By Comments:10 Comments

by Bob Sparrow

Butch & Suni – “See you next week” NOT!!!

Watching a spectacular moonrise on the evening of the ‘Supermoon blue moon’ a couple of weeks ago made me wonder about those two astronauts who have been circling the earth since June on a NASA mission that was supposed to last eight days.  NASA now says that they may not be coming home until February 2025!  So, eight days turned into eight months!  And you thought you had it bad when your last flight was delayed a couple of hours.  The two U.S. astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, left Earth in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.  Yes, Boeing, that’s the same company that had trouble keeping a door on an Alaskan 737 aircraft during a flight in January of this year.  I’ve since sold my stock in Boeing!  And while the door didn’t fly off the Starliner, the problem with their spacecraft seems to be that of helium leaks and thruster failure.   To dumb that down for you, if the spacecraft was a man, he would have gas and erectile dysfunction.

Men pushing Boeing Starliner to get it started

I initially imagined these two astronauts circling the earth at 17,505 miles per hour in their 15-foot wide capsule and having to figure out how they were going to survive for the next six months on what they brought with them.  It would be like planning a weekend trip to the mountains and being snowed in all winter – think Donner Party.   When I thought that was the case, here are some things that crossed my mind:

  • Did they pack enough food (and wine) to last that long?
  • Forget the wine, did they pack enough oxygen?
  • OK, don’t forget the wine
  • Who’s taking out the garbage?
  • What if the potty needs emptying?
  • How happy are their spouses with them spending the Christmas holidays in such close quarters with one another?

As it turns out, the Boeing spacecraft isn’t going to be their home for the next six months, as they were able to catch a passing Uber, in the form of the ISS (International Space Station), and successfully dock with it.

ISS Uber

However, the capacity of the ISS they boarded is seven people, and before Butch and Suni joined the party, there were already seven on board – six men, three Russian cosmonauts, an American chemist, an American physician, an American Navy test pilot, and one woman, an American aerospace engineer.  So, I’m guessing there was ‘no room in the Inn’ for these two stranded American astronauts.  We’ve not been told what they were doing to accommodate these additional freeloaders.  I’m hoping it wasn’t something like Russian roulette, where the Russians would seem to have a clear advantage.  With zero gravity, do the newcomers have to sleep by just floating in mid-air in the kitchen, or does everyone just float in mid-air all night when sleeping?  And the big question, is there enough wine to get the nine of them through Christmas and New Year’s, although the Russians probably brought their own vodka?

There is a precedent for being trapped in space, in 1991, Russian Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev was told that he could not return home because the country that had promised to bring him back home, the Soviet Union, no longer existed.  He eventually did get back to Earth after 311 days in space.

I’m sure NASA will figure out a way to get our astronauts back home, after all, they’ve got Boeing working on it right now!  Not!!!  Boeing has been fired; the astronauts will be coming home aboard a SpaceX capsule.

As I’ve thought about the pluses and minuses of being isolated in space until next February, I’ve concluded that the big plus is that they will miss out on all the political bullshit the rest of us have to endure from now until November 5th.

Where do I sign up to get lost in space for the next three months?

 

 

Posted in opinion

WHAT A HEEL

By Comments:4 Comments

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

        The computer shoe

I read the other day that the artifacts collected by Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, are going up for auction.  Allen died in 2018 and, as you might imagine, he collected a wide range of items.  One of the most intriguing is the “computer shoe”. It was a re-release of Puma’s 1986 running shoe with a computer chip built into the heel, sort of like an Apple Watch for your feet. Originally designed for runners to track distance, time and calories, the shoes were updated in 2018 with new features that included USB charging and Bluetooth connectivity to a smartphone. Only 86 of the shoes were released and it’s estimated that Allen’s pair will sell for between $1,000 to $2,000.  At that price, one hopes not to step in any dog poop.  Or the New York Subway, for that matter.

       Sneex heel sneaker

Reading the article about the shoes led me down a rabbit hole about shoes in general, and high heels in particular.  And my timing was good, because also making the news this week is that Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, has launched a new company, Sneex,  that produces a shoe that combines a high heel with a tennis shoe.  Brilliant!  As she says, it’s hard to change the world when your feet hurt.  As someone who pounded the pavement of San Francisco’s financial district in high heels, I can attest that a comfortable pair of shoes would have made me a lot less grouchy in meetings.  Blakely’s shoes are engineered to eliminate pain points that are common with high heels, including the narrow toe box, the pitch at which weight is distributed onto the ball of the foot, and the all-to-common gap between the heel of the foot and the shoe. They are priced between $395 to $595, which is a real bargain compared to bunion surgery.

               The Persian fighting shoe

I have heard more than once that if men had to wear high heels a shoe company like Sneex would have been invented long ago.  But as it turns out, men were the original wearers of high heels.  Yep, long before the days of stilettos and pumps, kitten heels and wedges, high-heeled shoes were worn by men. As far back as the 10th century, Persian soldiers and emissaries wore heels when riding, battling, or traveling to faraway lands. These heels weren’t for show, however; they were for function. When a soldier wore heeled boots on a horse, he was able to better steady himself and generate more balance both for riding and fighting. Persian soldiers were also able to stand upright in their stirrups, positioning their feet so the space between the heel and the sole was snug in the stirrup, which gave them an advantage in battle.

     Louis and his red shoes

Once heels made their way to Europe in the 16th century, their purpose was much more akin to how we think of these shoes today. Men in the French, Spanish, German, and Russian courts wore heels to project height and physical stature in order to intimidate rivals and foreign diplomats in court. Sort of the modern-day equivalent of the men who put lifts in their shoes (I’m looking at you, Tom Cruise). Perhaps the best-known advocate of heels was Louis XIV, who popularized red shoes long before Christian Louboutin came along. He believed they signified power and prestige. Over time, around the beginning of the 18th century, the tables turned. Men found themselves saying, “Damn, my feet hurt!”, more often so their shoes became wider and lower.  Conversely, women’s shoes became higher, as it was thought that a bit of a shoe toe sticking out from under a skirt indicated daintiness.

These days, when it comes to shoes, I’m less concerned with looks and more interested in staying upright.  I am clumsy by nature, so I may be an early adopter of Sneex.  And I have a Baby Boomer suggestion for them: incorporate siderails on the shoe and you’ll have a huge hit at the retirement home.

Posted in Neighborhood

The Patrick Hike

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by Bob Sparrow

Patrick “Trail Boss” Michael

Last weekend part of our neighborhood gathered on Sunday morning at Peters Canyon for the annual ‘Patrick Hike’, which started in the summer of 2022 by neighbor Bob Pacelli.  It’s a three-mile hike to honor our neighbor and good friend, Patrick Michael, who passed away way too soon in April of 2021 at the age of 62.

If you ask most of the guys in our neighborhood about Patrick, they would say, “He was my best friend”.  And we all felt that way.  What a wonderful tribute to an amazing man.

Patrick was born and raised only a few miles from the ‘hood in Villa Park.  He went to Villa Park High School and completed his education at Cal Poly Pomona with a degree in Manufacturing & Industrial Engineering.  So, he was a very detail-oriented and skilled person, who could fix just about anything and he was always asking a lot of questions (I guess that’s how smart people get and stay smart – I wouldn’t know).  But more than that, he was the best friend that anyone could have, and we all felt that he would do anything for us and we would do anything for him – except he could do a lot of things, while the rest of us were fairly inept in the things we could do.  There is hardly a friend’s house in our ‘hood that doesn’t have something in it that Pat built, fixed, or redesigned.  He just really cared about people and let them know it.  What an amazing trait!

Hikers at Peters Canyon

Like everyone who knew Patrick, he was a special friend to me.  I believe that my close relationship with him started at a neighborhood Christmas party in 2007.  At that party, Patrick talked about how he and a friend had just summited Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the continental United States at 14,508 feet.  A number of fellow neighbors and I expressed an interest in doing that and asked if he would do it again with us.  He agreed but reminded us that the hike is up and back from Whitney Portal to the summit in one day, which is about 22 miles, with an elevation gain of over 6,000 feet. Being naive we said, “No problem”, and said we wanted to do it.  So, Patrick took on the name, ‘Trail Boss’, and laid out a training schedule for us so that we were ready to summit Mt. Whitney that next summer – and we did.

During our training for Whitney, we hiked several of the local mountains, including Mt. San Antonio (Baldy) several times and Mt. San Jacinto, the mountain that overlooks Palm Springs; both mountains are over 10,000 feet in altitude.  Patrick and I also hiked to the top of Half Dome from Yosemite Valley, and although it’s only just under 9,000 feet in altitude, it was probably one of the most beautiful hikes we’d ever been on.

Just last June we passed the 10th anniversary of our most epic hike, in Nepal, a gift from my wife for my 70th birthday.  We spent 10 days trekking in the Himalayas, climbing mountain tops, going through small villages, and spending our nights in ‘teahouses’, which are 8-10 room hostels along the trail, which also provided meals.  The next year we did a four-day hike on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu – another epic hike!  If you’ve been a long time subscriber to the blog, you’ve probably heard more than you needed to about those hikes.

Back to the ‘Hood: A delicious post-hike brunch was prepared by the Michael’s next-door neighbors and good friends, Marc & Lisa Webb.  The day before the hike I was walking the neighborhood and ran into Marc outside of his house and I stopped to chat a bit.  During the conversation, he asked me when our next gig was for the Monday Knights.  I told him that I had just retired from the band, and he then insisted that I bring my guitar to the brunch and get the neighborhood to sing some songs.  I initially refused, but Marc wouldn’t take ‘No’ for an answer, and the calluses hadn’t worn off my fingers yet, so I agreed.  The neighbors seemed to enjoy singing along to some old favorites.

The passing of Patrick and the passing of time, have unfortunately limited my hiking to a few miles around the neighborhood, but together Patrick and I created some amazing memories that I will cherish forever.