Gone Girl

Bones discovered on a Pacific island belong to Amelia Earhart, a new forensic analysis claims
-Washington Post

Three things you can always count on, (1) someone announcing they know who Jack the Ripper was, (2) someone announcing they know who killed Elizabeth Short (The Black Dahlia), and (3) someone announcing they know what happened to Amelia Earhart.

The most important paragraph in the Washington Post story:

"A new scientific study claims that bones found in 1940 on the Pacific Island of Nikumaroro belong to Earhart, despite a forensic analysis of the remains conducted in 1941 that linked the bones to a man. The bones, revisited in the study “Amelia Earhart and the Nikumaroro Bones” by University of Tennessee professor Richard L. Jantz, were discarded."

This "scientific study" did not examine the bones because there are no bones. Jantz "analyzed measurements taken in1941 by Dr. D. W. Hoodless, principal of the Central Medical School, Fiji." (Quote from the paper written by Richard L. Jantz.)

So, this guy is basing his conclusions on measurement which could be wrong but cannot be verified since there are no bones.  This is not  scientific study; this is wishful thinking.

Bread And Water Can So Easily Be Toast And Tea

- Celestial Seasonings Tea  saying

I've been eating Dave's Killer Bread for about a year now. My favorite is the thin-sliced Powerseed. I like the way the bread taste and I like the way it toasts, very crunchy. My only problem is with one of the different types of seeds they sprinkle on the top of the bread before they bake it. I don't know what type of seed it is but it falls off the toast and onto the plate while you are buttering it. Well, actually, the problem isn't the seeds falling off the toast. The problem is those seeds look just like baby cockroaches. I'm getting used to that but it's still jolt when I notice the seeds have fallen on the kitchen floor.

"Ahhh, cockroaches! No, wait, they're just bread seeds."

Why Does Marie Callender's Think It Needs To Put The Words "MADE WITH REAL PUMPKIN" On The Box?

Have I been naive thinking store bought pumpkin pie is made with real pumpkin all these years?


Maybe not.

This is the list of ingredients for Blue Bell's Pistachio Almond ice cream:

Milk, Cream, Sugar, Buttermilk, Almonds (Almonds, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Butter, Salt), Corn Syrup, Natural Pistachio Flavor With Other Natural Flavors, Carob Bean Gum, Guar Gum, Mono & Diglycerides, Carrageenan, Blue 1, Yellow 5.


I do not see pistachios on that list that list, only 'natural pistachio flavor" and blue and yellow dye to  make the ice cream green. Not the same thing at all.

I Vote And I Do Jury Duty

As 2016 Ends

Dining Room in the Country, 1913 by Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867-1947)

Yes, I need a little Sunshine
Right this very minute
Colors and a window
Chair with a cat in it

For I've grown a little leaner
Grown a little colder
Grown a little sadder
Grown a little older

And I need a little angel
Sitting on my shoulder
I need a little Sunshine now

(With apologizes to Jerry Herman.)

Letter From Wells Fargo

 

Over the last several weeks, you may have heard about the settlements we've made involving some of our customers receiving products or services that they did not want or request. We are deeply committed to serving you and your financial needs, and in those instances, we did not live up to our commitment. This is inconsistent with our values and with the culture we work hard to maintain. It's not who we are as a company.

It's important for you to know that making things right and restoring the faith you have in us is the very top priority for our entire Wells Fargo leadership team. There is nothing more important than for you to experience the very best from us.

Here's what we're already doing:

 

• Putting your interests first: We have eliminated product sales goals for our Retail Banking team members who serve customers in our bank branches and call centers.
   
• Proactively communicating with you: We send a confirmation after you open a new consumer or small business checking, savings, or credit card account so that you know what is happening and can tell us if anything we've confirmed is different than what you expected.
   
• Full transparency: You can always see your eligible accounts any time when enrolled in Wells Fargo Online^®.
   
• Fixing what went wrong: We have provided full refunds to customers we have already identified and we're broadening our scope of work to find customers we may have missed. If we have any doubt about whether one of your accounts was authorized, and any fees were incurred on that account, we will contact you and refund fees.
   

If you have any concerns about your accounts or any aspect of your relationship with Wells Fargo, please come into a branch and speak with our team in person, or call us on our dedicated hotline 24/7 at 1-877-924-8697. We will continue to update wellsfargo.com/commitment to keep you informed.

The trust you place in us means everything and we will work hard every day to earn your trust back.

 

All I can say in reply is, "Too little, to late."
You will never earn my trust back and here is one reason why. What you did is consistent with your values and with the culture you work so hard to maintain. It also is certainly who you are as a company and putting Timothy J. Sloan in charge only proves it.  I am done with you.

Grow Old With Me, The Best Is Yet To Come

"Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulation and possessions, the shell of the ego."
-Anne Marrow Lindbergh, age 49

 "We are brainwashed about what age you're supposed to marry, what age you're supposed to have a kid, what age you're supposed to do this or that. Oh my God! Who died and left those people in charge?"
-Cyndi Lauper, age 63

"Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
-Dorothy L. Sayers, age 63

 "Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.It's a different stage of life, and if you are going to pretend it's youth, you are going to miss it. You are going to miss the surprises, the possibilities and the evolution that we are just beginning to know about because there are no role models and there are no guide posts and there are no signs."
-Betty Friedan, age 72

" ...old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do. You can't stop the plane, you can't stop the storm, you can't stop time. So one might as well accept it calmly, wisely."
-Golda Meir, age 74

"Mark my words, the time goes fast. And those are the only things that matter. The things that you really had fun with."
-Lily Tomlin, age 76

A Short Story About Store Bought Tomatoes

Store bought tomatoes are crap.

The End

Why I Will Never Be Rich

Because I would never think of this. They are packing peanuts, people! Packing peanuts!

Mortal Lessons

 “A man does not know whose hands will stroke from him the last bubbles of his life. That alone should make him kinder to strangers.”
― Richard Selzer, Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery


Doctor Richard Selzer died yesterday and when I saw his obituary I recognized his name but did not know why until I realized he wrote the most fascinating book I have ever read. The book came out in the late 1970s and his writing captivated me so much I am still a prisoner of it all these years later. Beautiful book, rest in peace Doctor Selzer.

Doctor Selzer's obituary in the New York Times.

Age, With His Stealing Steps, Hath Clawed Me In His Clutch.

-Hamlet (5,1,73-4), William Shakespeare


When my mother had her first heart attack I flew out to New York to see her.  One afternoon while visiting her in her hospital room she stopped talking and gazed sadly out the window.  When I asked her what was wrong she turned her face back toward me and said, "When I was young I used to think that seventy was so old."
She died three years later.

This article brought this memory back to me. 

Soul Truth

Sometimes I read something that speaks directly to my soul causing it to shudder a bit. This is because the words reveal a soul truth I did not realize I already intuitively understood until someone with greater insight than I wrote down what was in their own soul.

"The sister whose hand I am clutching in the picture is dead. I wonder every day whether she still exists. A person whom one has loved seems altogether too significant a thing to simple vanish altogether from the world. A person whom one loves IS the world, just as one knows oneself to be a world. How can worlds like these simple cease altogether? But if my sister does exist, then WHAT is she, and what makes that thing that she now is identical with the beautiful girl laughing at her little sister on that forgotten day?"

-Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza,  quoted in The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.

This Could Be The Start Of Something Big

July 27, 1866, the first permanent transatlantic telegraph cable completed.

Around The World In Less Than 80 Days

July 15, 1939, Clara Adams lands at Newark Airport and becomes the first woman to fly around the world, doing it in 16 days and 19 hours. Her trip took her from New York to the Azores, then to Lisbon, Portugal; Marseille, France; Leipzig, Germany; Athens, Greece; Basra, Iraq; Jodphur, India; Rangoon, Burma; Bangkok, Thailand; Hong Kong; Manila, Philippines; Guam; Wake Island; Midway Island; Honolulu, Hawaii; San Francisco and back to New York.

Clara Adams in Honolulu, Hawaii

Clara Adams itinerary.

Portmanteau

:  a word or morpheme whose form and meaning are derived from a blending of two or more distinct forms (as smog from smoke and fog) -Merriam-Webster Dictionary

24 Brilliant Portmanteaus ....well, maybe not that brilliant but definitely amusing. 

RIP Linda Lee (Sept. 13, 1955 - Sept. 13, 2014 )

A tall tree, turn and face the west
Oh we're running with the wind
On high cliff top we're waiting with the rest
For this journey to begin

And these broken wings won't fly
These broken wings won't fly
These broken wings won't fly at all

See how we laugh, maybe we should crawl
And beg to be excused
We shout loudly, have answers to it all
But we have been refused

And these broken wings won't fly
These broken wings won't fly
These broken wings won't fly at all

Girl child, you're dancing with the wind
Growing with the silver trees
Your young questions, you ask me what it means
But I am not at ease

And these broken wings won't fly
These broken wings won't fly
These broken wings won't fly at all

A tall tree, turn and face the west
Oh we're running with the wind
On high cliff top we're waiting with the rest
For this journey to begin

And these broken wings won't fly
These broken wings won't fly
These broken wings won't fly at all

These broken wings won't fly
These broken wings won't fly
These broken wings won't fly

(Sigh)

Home Town News

"The pest management and school staff have indicated that the current pest management system generally addresses work orders in response to specific sightings and does not implement an integrated plan for the entire school. This is NOT an effective way of mitigating a pest infestation."
-Danica Lee, Food Safety Manager for Denver Environmental Health.

I can't tell you how many apartment buildings I lived in that played chase the cockroaches from apartment to apartment. If you want to get rid of pests you must spray not only the infected apartment but also the apartments on either side and above and below the one you are treating. In the long run this is cheaper; something some apartment owners and, it looks like, the Denver Public Schools do not seem to understand either.

Thanksgiving 2014

- Convection roasting produces a beautifully browned turkey.

- Costco's Bistro 28 Organic Cranberry Sauce is very tasty. Ingredients: Organic cranberries, organic sugar, and water.

- Al Roker's mom's Sweet Potato dish is yummy.

- Turkey sandwiches the day after are always better with a side of mashed potatoes, stuffing and cranberry sauce.

- "Little Thanksgiving" on Saturday night, when the majority of leftover Thanksgiving dinner was eaten up, is in some ways even better than Turkey Day.

- Stirring a Lindor orange dark chocolate truffle into your hot cocoa makes it a hot cocoa to die for. Adding a shot of Cointreau doesn't hurt either.

- Thanksgiving wouldn't be Thanksgiving without family and friends.



(Edited at 1:50 PM to add hot cocoa note.)

Bad Politicians

This explains why tweeting the photo below

forced a British politician to resign today.