Thur Thoughts

Wow! Can you imagine the tornadoes threatening the Midwest again? The forces of Mother Nature are awesome and, frankly, can't be stopped, can they?

That said, I still want to be a television weatherman. How wrong can they be, so often, and still come on and tell us with their self-asserted correctness what the weather will be? Some guy tonight was comical. K was watching and I was listening from the other room. I came running into the living room and asked, "Did that guy just say we are going to get thunderstorms tomorrow afternoon or evening--or we might not?" Great; just great. And then, from the other room, I wondered, "Why do coaches let their college athletes talk to reporters?" They sound so darn stupid. Is there a cliche they don't use? Do they every really say anything? Of course, why do reporters have them? It must be just to fill time slots; they add nothing to anything. For that matter, why do some TV shows end with sappy music, songs with singers who have terrible voices and words that mean nothing? Is it to evoke some sort of emotion--I suppose other than laughter? And when did comedies become not at all funny? Some folks recommended some of these sit-coms as "really funny." I had seen some of their advertising and found them to be anything but funny--and aren't these teasers supposed to be the funniest parts to attract viewers? Well, I didn't last ten minutes. I have better things to do with my time and felt like I wasted ten minutes.

What took so long for the feds to come to Wayne County and Detroit? After all, for decades rumors have swirled about corruption, "pay to play," etc. And, what's preventing them from tackling Chicago? The rumors about the corruption in the Windy City are older than those in Detroit/Wayne County?

Salmon is pretty good food! I like it. Funny, as a kid, I didn't like fish a whole lot. Oh, there was one restaurant (Brown's) that had great deep-fried whitefish, but it was so expensive we had it once or twice a year. I didn't even like fishsticks, which many claim is a staple for kids, or tuna very much. The salmon we could afford then was the canned stuff, mixed with egg and breadcrumbs, and shaped into patties. Yuck! Now, I did like sardines! I think my first real taste of fish (other than Brown's) that I liked was at Amherst. Some of that stuff was pretty good, esp the scallops, which I never had before.

Speaking of food, imagine eating pemmican, an old Indian "energy bar" made with bear (or other animal lard) so thick the fat stuck to the roof of the mouth (like tallow of a candle!) and had to be scraped off with a knife? Oh, yuck!

I thought Cadillac, the found of Detroit, was the most scurrilous noted fellow in the history of Michigan. But, he has some rivals for that ranking. One is John Jacob Astor, head of the American Fur Company and the supposed first American millionaire. Another is Lewis Cass, a Michigan politician at the high levels and almost elected President.