Sunday Morning Coming Down

Walter Palmer killed Cecil the Lion on his latest hunting trip to Zimbabwe. Walter is a Minnesota dentist who allegedly paid over $50,000 for the trip, license, and guide services. It is not completely clear if the proper licenses were obtained and it is alleged that the guide baited the lion to get him to leave a protected park area where hunting is not allowed to stray on to land where he could be hunted. The baiting described is forbidden. Not very sporting to leave a tempting meal across the border of the park and then hunting an animal looking for a meal. There is hunting, but this kind of big game hunting is stretching any reasonable definition of hunting I would support. I've eaten deer while living in West Virginia, the next door neighbor was sharing meat from his freezer. I gladly accepted the food and ate it immediately after it defrosted. I've eaten pheasants, ducks, and geese that were killed by shotguns. I'm not a vegetarian and have my doubts...

I figured out how to access Siriusxm radio (which is part of my new vehicle) on the internet. The satellite radio service allows you to access baseball games from across the country and last night I was able to listen to the Chicago Cubs on the radio. A Cubs radio broadcast was a distant memory and back then the house in Illinois had no air conditioning and on a really hot night the transistor radio tuned to WGN and a box fan in the basement did the trick.

Colin Cowherd, late of ESPN was given a relatively unceremonious send off from ESPN Radio among other things conflating Dominicans, baseball, and intelligence. To paraphrase: The game is so simple even players from the Dominican Republic are good at the game and just about anybody could manage a major league baseball team. Little experience is required. Young Dominicans play baseball and the best go to baseball camps to hone their skills, with the express purpose of going to the "Majors" In the USA, Little League Baseball and Football and Basketball and other minor sports can possibly lead to college scholarships even if they don't lead to professional careers. Keith Olberman and Bill Simmons are leaving ESPN along with Cowherd. I think opinionated radio hosts and sports have their place, but it isn't on ESPN. It's just too easy to anger the NFL, MLB, NBA, or the NCAA and indirectly sponsors raising sand in places where the leagues and advertisers don't wa...

One day I hear the song "Fast Car" by Tracey Chapman and by Tuesday Morning I'm driving a new car and exploring the Sirius/XM radio in my new car. First stop was Rural Radio. Channel #80.  Crop reports, weather reports, the peanut crop forecast, and then an extended conversation on beef, pork bellies, and other live stock prices and information from a report the USDA had released after the markets had closed. Back in Illinois, about fifty years ago, I remember my Dad's experimentation with trading grain futures as part of his job. The company sold canned corn beef among other things and he was developing a trading strategy to hedge the price of raw materials for stuff that had a shelf life of "forever". I got to Hialeah and was going to have a sandwich at the Moose Lodge, but they didn't open until 3:00 pm. Settled for "ropa vieja" and a "cerveza bien fria" at a cafeteria on East 4th Avenue. Looked like rain so I headed for home...

Embassies in Havana, Cuba and Washington D.C. reopened yesterday, about seven months after President Obama announced a change in policy that had been in place for about fifty years. Marco Rubio has announced there won't be an American Ambassador to Cuba while he is the Senate. The Diaz Balarts and Illeana Ros Lehtenen and Carlos Curbelo also spoke out against the change in policy.  The English version of the Miami Herald covered about 2/3 of the front page with a picture of the Cuban Military Guards that raised the Cuban Flag in Washington D.C. The local news all covered the story from Little Havana and from the Versailles Restaurant where a distinctly older conservative crowd hangs out and anti Castro Brother politics will be discussed on a daily basis. Folks from both sides of the issue had their signs and the conversation was loud. Congress won't change the embargo policy and the United States won't be giving up Guantanamo. Carnival Cruise Line will be establishing...

I've been driving an older second vehicle for about the last three years. Year one, more or less routine, by the end of year two, there seemed to be something that needed fixing every other month, and lately even more often and stuff I really can't do for myself anymore. The past two weeks I've been studying the car ads, and yesterday, I was going to get the Sonata fixed, and rent a car while it was in the shop. (I promised myself this would be the last time). This morning, rail to Avis, no cars available. I bought a new car from the dealer across the street from Avis. A smallish Chevy Sonic was something I had planned on buying a little bit closer to the end of the model year, but necessity sometimes is a/the mother of things to come.  The process was kind of painless, mostly because my credit score was excellent and there was no trade in. And so it goes, handyman is considering buying the sonata. Not quite happy, happy, happy but it is progress.

On the role of regret A lot of people, their regret is kind of hedged with justification or with a continued commitment to the cause that they were fighting for. A lot of the [Irish Republican Army] guys will say, "I don't regret being in the IRA; I think our aims were correct. But I regret some of the things that happened. I regret some of the things that we did.".  This is from NPR and a story about the troubles. Amazingly, these thoughts on the role of regret seem to roll around in a lot of thinking on an awful lot of topics.  I wonder if the regret is for what was or what was not accomplished. It is difficult to not have a life where regret does not take some place in our thinking.

The last few days I have been listening to music on the radio and at home. Whether this is just a break or another change it's not clear.  The music on 93.1 in Miami is older than The Beatles and not head banger stuff  It is stuff that made it to the radio in 80's, 90's would find the songs familiar and maybe stuff that you got tired of listening to back then.  Catchy tunes. Easy and usually undemanding lyrics. Maybe, it's just summer in Miami, the beach, or cold beer.  I think it's sort of like "Call Me, Maybe" for those getting ready for social security.

I've been following the run up to the publication of Go Set A Watchman.  During the last year I've reread To Kill A Mockingbird and watched the movie. The book was published over fifty years ago. I've heard reports on NPR that Go Set A Watchman was something submitted for publication and the editors suggested the book be rewritten/edited and the result was To Kill A Mockingbird. The publication of Go Set A Watchman might just be a publisher taking advantage of the old manuscript.  I'm unaware of any comments by the author.  The "new" novel has generated a lot of sales and interest and more than a little controversy about Atticus and Gregory Peck. I think I'll wait till it gets to the library.

The MBSF is going to be run at Canterbury Park outside Minneapolis this afternoon. RW Quarters has two qualifiers in this race and a reasonable chance at winning some serious jingle.  About 20 days ago when they had the qualifying races, I seriously thought about visiting the Midwest for the finals on the 12th. As of late, I will be watching the race on the internet, and communicating electronically.  The race was run on Sunday. The results were disappointing. If the owners were expecting to win about $17,000 for a race that lasted only about 18.287 seconds but finished in 18.652 seconds and won only $1,850 you might understand their disappointment. The chart said it all. "Bumped and bore out." A clean start would have helped, but she lost by a little more than a length.  

The Local Channel 10 is in the Dominican Republic reporting on Dominicans deporting Haitians and other undocumented "Dominicans". The Miami Herald is reporting on Puerto Ricans leaving the Greece of the Caribbean, and folks with tourist b-2 visas often over stay their visas. Really? San Francisco is being tarred and feathered for the tragic killing of Kathryn Steinle by an undocumented male with multiple felony convictions and multiple deportations. San Francisco takes issue with being required to cooperate with federal immigration on deporting folks without warrants. Ms Steinle's death points to some obvious issues with the sanctuary movement. Some folks may warrant sanctuary while others deserve Devil's Island or worse. As the world gets more global the velvet rope still exists. The devil is in the details. I'm looking forward to seeing how Carnival Cruise Line's educational visits to Havana is going to work out and whether the Cuban/Haitian Adjustme...

The simple explanation for this is change in location of the Confederate Battle Flag is simply change. This is no longer a country that will abide slavery, even though there is still a warm fuzzy feeling for aspects of the good old days that we each define ourselves. Donald Trump can say whatever he wants about Mexicans and roil the waters. Jeb Bush's wife is from Mexico. President Obama is the result of a union of an African and an Anglo from Kansas. And the Supreme Court has ruled marriage equality is the law of the land, and oh by the way South Carolina has African American, Republican Senator and an Indian American Female governor and even the grandson of Strom Thurmond is having some second thoughts about his past after the latest hate crime. The fantasies that folks entertain will continue in spite of both a macro and micro reality. It will be interesting to see when and where the breaking point will be on the behavior of Donald Trump, Daniel Snyder, and others of similar...

I remember the days when you had to go to a fireworks display that was supervised by the fire department. I'm not even sure you could buy sparklers legally in Bensenville. Then I moved to England where they celebrated Guy Fawkes Day and the 4th of July was a day for ex-patriots and the smallish display was held at Bushy Park AFB and other bases in England.  You could buy "bangers" at the toy store for a few pennies each and bottle rockets were just a little more expensive. Bigger "bombs" were available but they were out of the financial reach of an eight year old. Returning to the States, you saw the occasional roadside stand but the really good stuff only seemed to be legal or purchasable at "South of the Border", in South Carolina. I have a mixed history. The low point was Slattery trying to throw and M-80 out of his car and trying to land it in AKR's yard. He dropped it in the car and we both bailed out. It never went off and we were able to...

I would like to think of the Gold Coast of Florida as the center of the Universe. Oh well, at least Greece had a lot of smart folks along time ago.

PBS is running a three part series on "The Abolitionists" starting this evening in Miami. The ideas related to abolition of slavery among the Unitarians and Universalists have evolved. The following is from the UU website: The debate about slavery in the United States proved contentious within both Unitarianism and Universalism. While some of the country's leading abolitionists were women and men who identified as Unitarian or Universalist, each of the young denominations struggled to articulate a unified stand. Churches in the Southern states felt the stresses acutely, because their congregational membership was drawn from both the North and the South and their ministers were most often Northerners. In the North, too, Unitarians and Universalists took a variety of positions on slavery, and some prominent Unitarians and Universalists debated on the national stage. For example, John Quincy Adams, a Unitarian, stood up against the agreement that kept Congress from deb...

I just finished reading about a company that changed its retirement policies because two of their employees had babies with expensive medical issues when they were born and had cost a lot of money. One, a premature infant spent about two months or more in neonatal intensive care. I have a bone to chew in this case, when I was born I too spent a long time in an incubator. It was the 1951. When I discussed my medical history with a doctor, he made a comment that I was probably lucky to be alive, all things considered. The mother of one of AOL’s “distressed babies” penned a  searing reply  to Armstrong on Sunday, explaining how she had given birth only five months into her pregnancy. “I take issue with how he reduced my daughter to a ‘distressed baby’ who cost the company too much money. How he blamed the saving of her life for his decision to scale back employee benefits. How he exposed the most searing experience of our lives, one that my husband and I still struggle to discu...

Today marks the return of Jose Fernandez from the disabled list to pitch for the Miami Marlins. Jose was the Marlin's Ace fourteen months ago, before he tore his rotator cuff and underwent "Tommy John" surgery and a lot of "rice" which includes rest, immobilize, compression and elevation.  Jose is quoted as saying he played an awful lot of dominoes during his recovery. Along with immobilize, I would include ice and along with elevation folks are encouraged to do therapeutic exercises. Today's game will have a big crowd. Guaranteed! It's camp day and the Marlin's have lots of kids attending.  The T-shirts will make the place colorful. Regardless of what you might think about school uniforms it will  make it easier to keep track of the campers. Along with day campers a lot of the 55+ crowd will be able to get free tickets for the afternoon game with the San Francisco Giants.  A crowd of 30,000 plus is expected which could be the biggest crowd since...