Sunday Morning Coming Down

Tuesday, I had to go to the post office to mail three applications for magnet schools that Lisvey thinks she might be interested in.  I say might because she changes her mind quite regularly.  At fourteen I don't think she has made her mind up about anything.  She is going to a competitive middle school where kids come from all over Miami Dade County to study Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Mandarin Chinese. Blackhawk Jr. High was a good school I guess and I think Fenton High School was a good school as well.  Looking back at this I guess my parents lived in a place where the schools had a decent reputation and a tax base to support them. My entire adult life has been spent in the South.  Private schools and now charter schools have certainly changed the nature of a free public education and getting a good education is strangely a little more complicated than needs be.  Folks used to complain about busing the little children.  I wish it was t...

The ACLU has had the New York Mayor Deblasio ear when it comes low level policing.  It is now said that low level policing is a thing of the past in comparison to recent history when "broken window" or aggressive low level policing was the norm. The police union's believe that recent incidents and Mayor's policies directly contributed to the recently killing of two officers by a disturbed individual. Mayor Deblasio had a significant number of officers turn their backs when he spoke at a memorial service and he was booed at a police academy graduation ceremony.  The demonstrations after the death and video Eric Garner has exposed a very deep rift in  several communities. Low level policing might include arrests for possession of a small amount of marijuana, vagrancy, disorderly conduct, curfew violations, or loitering.  In New York it might also include riding your bicycle on the sidewalk or drinking in public.  The New York ACLU has studies that show that ...

A high school friend just posted an old article from the Bensenville Banner in April 1969, celebrating Fenton High School's victory in a state wide drama contest.  I noticed the newspaper cost 15 cents and a subscription was $2.00.  The story was front page news and the return to Bensenville and the high school to get picked up by parents happened.  Sadly I missed the cast party at the Holiday Inn in Normal. It was a barn burner and it took the edge off the award performance for all to see the next day. The Romancers, by Edmond Rostand was the model for The Fantasticks which is the longest running musical in theater history and is still in production after 50 plus years. Still trying to remember some details of that weekend and Soz's party which could have been a headliner as well.

According to Nielsen data for 2014 released Tuesday, the median age of an average CNN viewer during primetime fell to 58 from 60 in 2013 -- matching 2008 as the network's youngest-skewing year since at least 1992. At the same time, Fox News Channel held steady at a median age of 68 and MSNBC skewed slightly older this year (61 vs. 60 last year).

The price of gasoline is down.  Florida has not gotten the full benefit of lower oil prices but any decrease in price is welcome.  Experts have said this could save the average household $1500 and for the average family the equivalent of a 3% bump in family income. There are more hybrids on the road, cars are smaller, more people use public transportation and as the population gets older I imagine fewer miles are being driven even with the folks that still drive gas guzzlers. The United States has increased oil production and so it seems has lowered oil usage at least on the margins through the increased use of natural gas, wind power, ethanol and solar energy and conservation. The strategic value of almost energy independence is almost as important as the extra jingle in my pocket.  Hopefully this lagniappe will be used in some ways to build up our resiliency as a people and a country. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Steve Spurrier played for the Gators, two time All American and Heisman Trophy winner is the current coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks.  He played for the 49's and the Tampa Bay Bucs, was a successful coach in the defunct USFL before coaching at Duke, UF, Washington Redskins and South Carolina.  He wasn't a hit with the Redskins but has fit in well with the more redneck fandom of Florida and South Carolina. At age almost 70, he is competitive if a little less combative than his younger days. The University of Miami beat Spurrier and the Gators in the 2001 Sugar Bowl.  If you can't beat the Gators because they aren't bowl eligible, beating their ex coach is a suitable substitute. Canes and Gamecocks meet in Shreveport, LA on Saturday in the Duck Commander Independence Bowl at  3:30 ABC, not A&E.

Miami Marlins Park was the scene of a new college bowl game: The Miami Bowl.  I guess ESPN needed to fill a few hour and the Hotel and Visitors Bureau was happy to be a major sponsor.  The weather cooperated and the lid on Marlins Park was open and they turned the AC off. Memphis State versus Brigham Young were the combatants in "The Battle of the Beach."  The Miami Herald called it the Miami Beach Brawl and that it was as the two teams mixed it up after Memphis State intercepted a BYU pass to end the 2nd overtime and win the game 55-48. You might ask why would a Canes fan visit an obviously 3rd tier bowl game between two teams he knew nothing about, when he could have watched it on cable.  The simple answer is I was invited to the game by a friend from Memphis, that now calls Miami his home. The game plan was to troll the park perimeter for a scalper, face value of the tickets were $60.  We wanted a bargain.  This was not going to be a hot ticket in ...

Just finished some blogger's  rant about Guy Fieri of the Food Channel.  I sympathize with the writer with a big caveat.  He probably more clearly reflects the way most folks eat these days.  Cooking at home is just another job that takes money for stuff that you don't use very much.  Following recipes with more than four ingredients is aimed at folks that might home cook two meals a week.  Lots of folks these days are picking up takeout food.  Lots of families need two incomes and they have outsourced cooking instead of cooking and how many times a week do you eat at a place with white table clothes.

Children in Iceland leave their shoes on their window sill for the 13 nights before Christmas Eve. This is because for the 13 nights before Christmas they will be visited by one of Icelands 13 Santas - the Yule Lads (or yulemen). If the children have been good, they may be left a small treat, a sweet or a chocolate - but if they are bad, they will be left a raw potato in their shoe. But the children of Iceland are not lucky having 13 santas. Each Yule Lad is is the son of the evil troll woman, Grýla The Child Eater  - each Yule Lad has his own speciality, and will try to steal and cause mischief for the children and their families. In addition to the 13 Yule Lads, the children should also be careful of Grýla's pet - the  Yuletide Cat , which will eat any child who does not recieve new clothing for Christmas. See the yuleads.com for more details.  

ESPN ran the sequel to the "U" last Saturday.  In retrospect, as a graduate of the school, a season ticket holder in seasons past and a guy who once waited in line while Coach Butch Davis was getting money out of an ATM at the Bank of America early on a Sunday Morning, the University of Miami has had an interesting football program. I transferred to the University of Miami in 1971.  At the time they were about the only major college team to play on Friday nights.  The evening games were cooler but it didn't matter, the team wasn't very good and there wasn't much a crowd at the games.  I remember Fran Curci, Pete Elliot, and Carl Selmer. Graduating in 1973, I didn't think too much about college football until I went to graduate school at WVU in Morgantown, WV.  The Mountaineers weren't the greatest but the games were an absolute wonder in comparison to football at ISU or the UM.  I could see down into the football stadium from my room on Lorentz Avenue....

Jay Cutler has had some real stink out the joint games this year and replacing him with Jimmy Clausen is definitely a rear guard action.  Going back in history do the names Billy Wade and Rudy Bukich mean anything.  Da Bears have been challenged at QB for my entire life  except for the Jim McMahon era. I think the NFL has a quarterback problem.  A lot of the starting QBs are bad, inexperienced, or both. The position is important and the rules now emphasize passing which makes a crappy QB or a crappy game by the QB really stand out. The Bear Defense also stinks, the coach is a CFL/NFL retread and the Bear Ownership makes Al Davis look good and he has been dead a few years.  I'm not going to brag about the Dolphins but for the moment they are light years in front of the Bears.

An FIU poll of Cuban opinion says 88% of Cuban Americans between the ages of 18-29 favor normalization, and even 41% of those over 65 favor normalization. Rubio's gut reaction is that the embargo should be even tougher, he will block money for an embassy in Havana and do whatever he can to scuttle Obama's plans for Cuba. Senator Rubio's news conference yesterday was dismissive of the Obama policy shift because he is a Cuban American and his parents were refugees from Cuba.  Friends of his parents were also refugees and some of them could have been political prisoners.  This is the way things are in Miami and it colors a lot of things that happen down here except for University of Miami Football. Senator Rubio was born in the United States in 1971 and is a kid who ate burgers from McDonald's and arroz con pollo at home in West Miami.  The kid has done well, but this rant about Cuba and the Castro Brothers is way, way, way, too personal, hardly senatorial and even l...

Buy Buy Buy!  The Russians are not fools.  After their currency collapsed they ran to the big box stores to buy what they could before the clerks could change the prices.  Once this process gets started the medicine is ugly.  Interest rates in the country were hiked to 17%. Paul Volker and Jimmy Carter can testify that these kind of problems are not good for political careers. It will be interesting to see how much the drop in oil prices affects business in the U.S.A.  Gasoline isn't like the housing bubble so far but I'm sure the folks in the oil patch will be making adjustments.

President Obama has announced that the policy of isolating Cuba will be changing.  This is a huge change for countries in the Caribbean and South America.  Ironically the drop in the price of oil and not the embargo may have been the catalyst for the change in policy towards Cuba.  Venezuela was donating 100,000 barrels of oil to Cuba.  Russia also had some kindly trade terms with Cuba.  The steep drop in oil prices has hit two of the countries that helped prop up Cuba has left those two countries in shambles over the last six months or so.  Fidel is alive but out of the picture and Raul may not have been getting his phone calls for help being answered.  The embargo has been used by the Brothers Castro to cover up their own failures to move their own people forward. Cubans have been coming from Cuba to Miami, Florida, and the United States for over fifty years and before Castro there was a lot of travel and immigration between Miami and Havana. ...

The Washington Post December 8, 2014 published a story about the effects of a "Summer Jobs Program" in Chicago. Research on the program  conducted by the University of Chicago Crime Lab  and just published in the journal  Science  suggests that these summer jobs have actually had such an effect: Students who were randomly assigned to participate in the program had 43 percent fewer violent-crime arrests over 16 months, compared to students in a control group. The study indicates that violent crime by "at risk youth" was reduced by having a short term summer job.  "Nothing stops a bullet like a job" may be a little too simple an explanation, but I think that jobs programs like this have their place in public policy. One of the biggest problems with any jobs program is that they seem expensive when compared to doing nothing and critics of these kinds of programs believe they should deliver results that approximate perfection before being funded. Proje...

If I play a slot machine, the preferred way to lose money is to play a machine called Diamond Lotto. Pick six numbers and you are off to the races.  I particularly like house numbers.  A lot of other folks that play those machine like 222... 333... you get the idea.  Birthdays are also popular.  The machine also has wild cards that are diamond or  brillantes according to the locals.  I'm partial to 4209051 or 657321. Yesterday it was 12/13/14 on the calendar.  I played those numbers because on reflection I may not be around to play that kind of combination again.  A source on the internet says it won't happen again for about 89 years. The Hialeah Park Casino is open 24 hours on the weekends.  $5.00 free play isn't worth the drive but I needed to get some steps in towards my goal of 10,000 a day.  Barn B to Casino is about 3,000 steps round trip.  Randy and the first load of horses have arrived from Ocala.  Transporting hors...

Spending a lot of money on car repairs recently.  Brake jobs, a tune up, two tires, a serpentine belt and instead of driving with confidence because I've fixed a lot of things, I'm driving and looking over my shoulder what is going to breakdown next.  They are saying that the average age cars people are driving these days is 11.4 years. Yesterday the check engine idiot light and my ears told me I needed a tune up.  Unexpected yes, junk it expensive no, inconvenient yes, manageable inconvenience yes, go ahead and fix it.  No longer am I worried about getting to and from work so just about everything with cars is a manageable inconvenience because my legs still work and the grocery store is walkable. I think the only transportation issue I have in South Miami is getting to church.  The UU Campus is a nature preserve of sorts and we are more or less tree huggers as a group.  Yet, you need a car or a ride to church for Sunday Services or other activities. ...

Generally, I think the way the Senate Report on Torture has been handled has been ham handed and that is being very kind to all involved.  I don't like the partisan nature of they way it has been handled. John McCain, who is sometimes overstates what the military can do has been right about the use of torture or other extreme measures because those same measures can be used on our own people. It has no place in policy for this nation. Bad karma is bad karma what goes around comes around is more than possible, it is inevitable. Gathering of intelligence can save lives but it is also clear that cam also make things worse if not handled properly.  In this case I can only think that the timing of its release can only be bad.  The term lame duck, isn't exactly brain dead.  Senator Feinstein is rightly concerned that the report of CIA wrongdoing would go nowhere under republican leadership, but stateside all it has done is bring out more of the same from Dick Cheney and ...

A few weeks ago the Buffalo, New York area had a record snow storm, while Miami was having some nice fall weather which is one of the reasons folks that visit South Florida for some R&R are both lovingly and sometimes derisively called "snowbirds".  This morning the 8:00 am temperature was 51 degrees.  It might have been a little cooler before sun up but the coolest hour of the morning is usually right after sun up. The Florida Panther roams in the Everglades and must worry about the car traffic not just during the tourist season but year round.  The Florida Panthers are also a hockey team and in a little holiday montage they made to entertain the hometown fans they contrasted shoveling snow and other snow related activities like digging out your car from snow drifts, clearing your roof with beach scenes bikinis and a lot of jiggling  that could have come directly from the  from "Miami Vice" or "Burn Notice".  Unfortunately, they were playing the Buf...

Overweight and viewed as a “nerd,” Oscar lives a life of loneliness, always on the lookout for an opportunity for love. Yet the  fukú  curse follows him, betraying his love and his dreams. I'm rereading this novel.  It's Oscar's story and not mine.  I live in Miami, not New Jersey, and from everything I've ever heard about about the Dominican Republic, it is not on my bucket list.   I'm rereading the novel or more particularly the footnotes in the novel and trying to put together the history the footnotes tell.  In someways the whole Island of Hispanola is a pretty sad place in a lot of ways. #1 Part 1. Trujillo, one of the 20th Century's most infamous dictators, ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961 with implacable ruthless brutality. The next is one sentence.  A portly,sadistic, pig eyed mulato who bleached his skin, wore platform shoes, and had a fondness for Napoleon Era haberdashery, Trujillo (also known as El Jefe, the Failed Cat...

I was at Hialeah Park yesterday.  They are working steadily to get the place ready for racing that starts the day after Christmas.  Last year, Thunderstruck Stable made it to the winner's circle with Stolicknaya in the 10th on December 8th, 2013.  Beaver posed for this picture shortly before the end of the meet in 2014.  Looking forward to having another fun year.  Cowboy hats, boots and the smell of hay and horses will soon be here.  I'm also looking forward to "Breakfast Burritoes" in the Jock's Cafeteria.  I like the races but the show starts early in the morning, when the track is almost silent except for the hoofs and horses and their breathing as they come rolling down the stretch to the finish line and a leisurely walk back to the barn for a little TLC. Citation Statue and Park Area View from Club House Veranda. Stolicknaya aka The Beaver

Just finished listening to the U.S. Air Force Band and a "Flash Mob" musical presentation on Facebook. It was nice hearing our folks in uniform play at the Smithsonian on the Internet.  I had a cousin who played for the Army Jazz Band for over twenty years and went and heard him play during a concert tour of Florida.  This was one of those happy accidents. I hope this doesn't sound like an angry rant, there are things that done that are fun, pretty, interesting, inspiring and then there is other stuff that you just have to do to get through the day. And then there is stuff that is just screwed up, really screwed up, and at times just bat shit crazy, that cries out for self medicating.

Ohio State became the Big Ten Champion by destroying Wisconsin 59-0.  The win was enough to put them into the college football Final Four.  OSU leapfrogged TCU and Baylor and will join Oregon, Alabama, Florida State to round out the playoffs for the NCAA Football Championship. Baylor and TCU with one loss think otherwise but the Big 12 Conference ended their season with a whimper.  Kansas State vs. Baylor was a good game, but it was clear that a game between two good teams, that played well, wasn't able to stop the momentum generated by the OSU juggernaut. As conferences go the Big Ten was weak.  OSU was lucky to be forgiven for their season opening loss to Virginia Tech.  The Big 12 seemed to be an afterthought given the conference championships that filled the tube this weekend, and so it goes. Locally, I will struggle to watch UM vs. South Carolina in the Duck Commander Bowl on December 27, 2014.  I wonder how many tickets UM was require...

Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush were their parties candidate for POTUS in 1992.  And in 2014 it is possible the Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton may face off in 2016 for POTUS.  And in the interim we had eight years of George W. Bush as POTUS and Hillary Clinton as FLOTUS, Senator, from New York, Secretary of State.  The citizens of Florida had Jeb Bush as Governor from 1999 to 2007. I hope no one is upset by this use of internet slang. On one hand all of these folks have had distinguished careers already.   If you were electing resumes, they would be finalists.  Depending on perspective, they may or may not be the best candidates for the highest office in the land.  Experience is important, the kind of experience is also important, and it seems both have sufficient administration experience to know the bells, whistles, and buttons to push. I am concerned about the term dynasty or in this case competing dynasties.  Like it or not how long should ind...

This past week" From Here To Eternity" has been all over the Cable.  Then I realized it's Pearl Harbor Day today. The following battleships were severely damaged or destroyed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, The Arizona, California, Maryland, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia. The Navy no longer makes battleships.  They have been replaced by aircraft carriers that for the most part are named after Presidents of  The United States. One minute Donna Reed is one of the stars in "It's A Wonderful Life" and the next minute she's playing for pay in "From Here To Eternity" and she is starring in the Donna Reed Show.

About the last five minutes of the national news on Channel 10 in Miami was preempted by local reports about groups of folks walking around and restricting normal traffic flow on Friday evening. If this is the new form of civil disobedience to replace other more destructive forms form of civil disobedience, I guess it is an improvement.  Driving in Miami is bad, this will just give us something else to blame.  The roaming folks that made the news did it during the kick off of Art Basel which is one of the first and biggest touristy events in Miami. There may be some hand wringing by the Downtown Folks and the Wynwood Folks that make some serious cash this weekend, que lastima. Friday, the Herald reported on the 110 foot tall Pegasus Statue slaying a dragon in the parking lot at Gulfstream Park. The cost of this landmark is approximately $30 million.  I hope this works for the average horse player.  I can think of a lot of other things to do with that $30 million ...

I went out walking late Thursday afternoon to test a new pedometer and stopped at the Irish Times.  On the wall, inside the bar it is written: "Madness served a pint at a time".  I noticed a beer called 312 made by Goose Island Brewing.  My cousin Phil from Bensenville was nicknamed "Goose" and it was Happy Hour.  Two thousand steps into my journey, I thought I was going to help some craft brewer that might even live near Bensenville. Beer was good, they make up adjectives which are a stretch like urban wheat, to describe not Bud Lite. Further research reveals that Goose Island Brewing has already been bought out by Anheuser Busch, that has been bought by a Belgian Brewer. And so it goes. Morning Joe breaking new/old ground this as Joe takes a page out of Mike Huckabee's playbook by going live with some country western song I don't recognize.

The Miami Herald wrote about Fastrain, a for profit vocational school. Recruiters for private for profit colleges may have taken recruiting students to the next level.  On one hand you can imagine that recruiters would make outrageous promises about jobs, pointing to distinguished alumni in the community that got training related jobs and make some high pressure phone calls to try to close the deal and get the client to sign up so the college can start getting the Pell Grant Money and loan money to the school. Fasttrain, a discredited private for profit computer training school that received over 35 million dollars in Pell Grant Money and other Federal Moneys between 2009-2012.  The owner of the school is under criminal indictment and the feds want their money back.  The Feds say the school hired strippers and told them to recruit, recruit, recruit.  I don't remember that back in the playbook when I worked for the local job training agency I remember referring ...

Hans Huseby and his wife Laurie owned Footworks on Sunset in South Miami and the traffic was screwed up this Wednesday evening in South Miami.  He passed away this weekend and they were celebrating his life and  the entire block in front of the store was closed. Footworks was the place you went in Miami if you were a runner back in the day and today.  Along with shoes, running shorts and other stuff runners bought back then, you could always find out where the next weeks' races were, pay your entry fee, get your number, and your commemorative t-shirt. For several years I visited the store on an almost weekly basis and saw a lot of familiar faces.  If there was no race, you almost always trained by doing your long run on Saturday Morning, starting at sunrise at Parrot Jungle or Tropical Park. Hans and Laurie let you run a little bit after you tried the shoes on, and if they weren't right, they would try another pair.  They were also helpful with training ti...

A few of the Trustees at "the U" are upset because the football program was mediocre this year. They are spending a ton of money on Al Golden, who until recently was recruiting players while under the cloud of Nevin Shapiro, jailed ponzi schemer and former UM athletic program booster.  If it weren't for problems in the NCAA investigation of "the U" and a really big scandal at Penn State, the school might have been subject to the full force of NCAA sanctions and possibly the dreaded death penalty. No New Year's Day bowl game this year, and the last three games were very disappointing.  The season ending three game losing streak started with FSU and continued with Virginia and ended with Pitt.  The team ended the season flat, very flatly in fact. The other UM: Big Blue just fired Brady Hoke for two reasons, they couldn't beat Ohio State and their QB stayed in a game after obviously having a concussion in retrospect.  When Brady Hoke was fired nobody sa...

The Miami Dade County Commission passed an ordinance which will ban discrimination based on gender identity.  A lot of the folks that were against the ordinance were worried about bathroom and locker room issues.  Past experience while working is that is does take a little time to get accustomed to a co-worker that goes through sex reassignment, but the bathroom/locker room issue is way over done. One of the more arcane criticism was about birth certificates.  Que pasa? In Florida: Florida Statute: Fla. Stat. Ann. § 382.016 (2006) Administrative Code: Fla. Admin. Code Ann. r. 64V-1.003(1)(f) (2006) Notes: Florida Office of Vital Statistics policy allows for the change of sex designation on birth certificates upon the provision of: a completed Application for Amended Birth Certificate and notarized Affidavit of Amendment to Certificate of Live Birth; a certified copy of a court order of name change; a sworn affidavit from the physician who performed sex reassig...

Since Saturday, I've bought a tri fold "mattress", cleaning supplies, another pedometer, and made two donations to groups.  If I did a little shopping around they would deliver food to the front door and could watch sermons on the computer.  This is in addition to wagering on horse races and getting the form on line.

I guess this was kind of inevitable.  If you play for the St. Louis Rams, I would be very careful and not drink at the Gentleman's Clubs in the area.  "The Hands Up" gesture of support for Ferguson by the players on the Rams will easily be understood and misunderstood all at the same time.  The local police union is offended and the players of the local team are expressing themselves. At this particular point I have no horse in this race.  The Miami Heat wore hoodies in support of Travon Martin, some folks at my congregation did the same.  Somewhere over the weekend I watched an episode of Cops. The police officers on the show seemed reasonable, but who really wants their front door kicked in, put in handcuffs and taken "downtown".  Most people I know don't live that way, but that is not to say that shit doesn't happen and at the same time I intuitively understand reluctance to call police if it can be avoided and why folks clam up if the police come k...