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.