It is Sunday, September 29 and there are only 87 days until Christmas.  Time to get going on the cards and letters if you haven't already sent them (I warned you a few weeks ago).  Birthday greetings to Michael Servetus, Greer Garson and Erika Eleniak.  Today in 1789 the US War Department established a regular army, in 1907 construction began on the Washington National Cathedral and the first color telecast of a football game was shown on CBS in 1951.  It is Dhimbhulhami Tsechhu in Bhutan, Constitution Day in Brunei and Gold Star Mother's Day in the US.

This is one of those weeks when I do not have much to discuss.  Now that the lovely Elaine is back to school,we don't go out as much so I don't get as many chances to see weird people and things or to get annoyed by the people who seem to have been put on earth forthe express purpose of being annoying. Those people, as I am sure you are aware, are quite good at fulfilling their purpose.  They seem to go out of their way to do it.  And it appears to be intentional.  There is no way they could be doing it accidentally.

I would like to point out that, having just had my father's funeral, I have discovered that there is money in death.  Think about it for a few moments.  Everything you do costs money - everything! There is a cost for the use of the funeral home, the hearse, the church, the priest, the music, even the men who try to look sad (I suppose the word somber would be better) as they wheel the casket in and out of the buildings.  I wouldn't mind if they actually carried the casket, but six men are getting paid to wheel it around.

Let's also reflect on the casket itself.  Those things go for thousands of dollars.  I have seen some that were $11,000 and there were some that cost far more.  For what? You put the deceased in it, people come and pay their last respects, the funeral is held and then the casket is put in the ground and covered with dirt, never to be seen again.  That seems like an awful lot of money for something that is going into the ground.  I think the caskets should be made out of the cardboard material they make some egg cartons out of.  It would be less expensive and would break down easier in the ground.
Another issue that I always find interesting is the way people behave at the wake.  They all try to talk quietly and "show respect" during the wake.  I will say this now for anyone who may attend my wake  - I do not want people to be quiet and respectful.  I am not, never have been and do not want it at my wake.  I have told the lovely Elaine that I would like to be in a small room, with just enough space for people to come by the casket and see me.  Let's face it, there are always people who come just to be sure you are actually dead. I want to select a funeral home that is close to a restaurant so that you come by the body then go to the party that I want held.  I want people to go home thinking, "Damn,that was one fine wake."

I also requested that when I am being prepared, I want a smile on my face.  If you look at most people when they are in the casket the look on their face looks like they are try to suppress gas.  I don't want that look.  On other thing I wanted was to have a whoopee cushion put in the kneeler they usually put by the casket, to add some levity to the event.  When I mentioned this to the lovely Elaine I got the look.  I'm guessing there will be no whoopee cushion. Oh well, some people just don't know how to have fun.

This week's fact tells us that 68% of a Hostess Twinkie is air.  That means that 2% is cake and the rest is a combination of chemicals.  These chemicals, if changed slightly, would form a 1957 Chevy Impala with metal flakepaint.  Yum, give me that polysorbate 80.

Today is Sunday, September 22 and there are only 94 days until Christmas.  If you listen closely, you can hear retailers raising prices in preparation.  Today’s birthday wishes go to Paul Muni, Henryk Szeryng and Debby Boone.  On this day in 1692 the last person was hanged for witchcraft in the US, President Lincoln made his Emancipation Proclamation speech in 1863 and in 1973 Henry Kissinger was sworn in as America’s first Jewish Secretary of State.  It is Independence Day in Mali, Press Sunday in the US and Wheaton, Illinois is having their Autumn Harvest Festival.

This week is a sad time for me and my family.  My father passed away this past Thursday.  He was 92. While making the final arrangements for his funeral, my brothers and I had the opportunity to reminisce about some of the things he used to say and do that made him unique.  He once told his mother that the reason he stopped playing the violin was because my mother had cut the strings on his bow.  When heading north on the parkway he would get off at the Bloomfield Ave exit because the toll there was ten cents cheaper than going the extra mile to Hoover Avenue and paying a quarter.  The fact that driving through all the back streets of Bloomfield to get home probably burned ten cents more in gas never occurred to him.

He once drove home from work with the windows open in his car and then another time with them closed and the AC on to see which would use less gas.  As you might guess, he was, in his words, frugal.  In our words he was cheap.  I have quoted him in this blog on several occasions and his comments will appear in future writings, too.

Most notably, as we have always been proud to say, my father, and my mother by the way, helped end WW II.  My father was drafted into the Army in 1944.  He claims that if you look, you can still see the fingernail marks in the sidewalk in front of my grandmother’s house from when they dragged him away.  Because of his degree in chemical engineering and his experience in munitions, he was assigned to the Manhattan Project and helped develop the atom bomb.  My mother followed him out to Los Alamos from Pennsylvania and also worked on the project, in a lab.  They were married out there.

As kids, we got to go on a number of vacations to places like Nova Scotia, the Rocky Mountains, Pike’s Peak, the Grand Canyon, Texas, Louisiana and other places.  We have great memories of those trips, like the time we had to stop and go pick up my brand new cowboy hat after I let it blow out the window in Arizona.  Another time my brother let our map fly out a window and we had to go looking for it along the road in a Florida swamp.  We got to throw snowballs at each other in July while in the Rockies.  We saw the Alamo and were disappointed to find out that Davy Crocket looked nothing like Fess Parker.

Until a few years ago, my parents’ wills had us kids going to live with my Uncle Fred if both of them had died.  Fortunately for Uncle Fred, the wills were updated and we are on our own now.  I think if he and Aunt Joan thought we were on our way to Austin, Texas to move in with them, they would have moved and left no forwarding address.

During the past couple years Dad’s health had declined and he had to be admitted into a nursing home in April.  He developed additional problems and his overall condition went steadily downhill.  One of the last conversations my brother had with Dad was when he asked when Halloween was.  We are not really sure why that was a concern.  Fortunately we waited to buy his costume.

 
When his time came he went quietly and did not suffer.  I guess, in the end, that is all any of us can ask for.   He had a good life, he had three grandsons and two great grandsons.  He left behind a family that will miss him and a number of memories that will help keep him with us.

It is Sunday, September 15 and there are only 101 days until Christmas.  K-Mart has already started the commercials for their lay-away program so that you can have “more Christmas.”  Today celebrates the natal anniversary of James Fenimore Cooper, Dame Agatha Christie and Henry Dreyfus Brant.  On this day in 1620 the Mayflower departed from Plymouth, England with 102 pilgrims, in 1830 William Huskisson of England was the first person to be run-over by a railroad train and in 1970 Decca Records awarded Bing Crosby a second platinum disc for selling 300 million records.  It is Respect for the Aged Day in Japan, Mexico is celebrating Independence Day and the United Kingdom is observing Battle of Britain Day.

I don’t know about you, but I have been curious about all the gluten-free products lately and wonder what all the fuss is about.  Gluten is the major protein found in some grains.  It is present in all forms of wheat as well as barley and rye.  The kicker is that only about 1% of the population have a condition known as celiac disease.  This disease is triggered by gluten.  The rest of us are worried about it for no apparent reason. 

This is the type of thing you see all the time.  Someone has a problem (or in this case 1% of the population) and suddenly it is an issue for everybody.  After all, if it wasn’t a big issue why would all the food producers start advertising that they are gluten-free?  I sometimes think that these issues are manufactured by the TV news people so that they have filler when the real news is slow.  Then they run promos like, “Are you consuming gluten?  Do you know the dangers?  See our report at 11.”  But I digress …

If you check, you will find that many gluten-free products are more expensive than regular ones so I guess we know one reason why there is a big push to go in that direction.  What most people do not realize is that living gluten-free can make you fat.  That’s because they consume gluten-free packaged products that are often just as high in saturated fat, sugar and sodium as other junk food.  These products often contain high-glycemic refined ingredients that can affect your blood sugar and trigger cravings.

So if you are a manufacturer of snack foods, you want to be sure that your product does not have gluten.  That way people will eat your stuff and then develop a craving and end up eating more of your stuff.  As a food manufacturer you should also have something for weight watchers, since they are going to need it at some point.  You want to get really rich?  Make a product for weight watchers that is also gluten-free.  That will keep the cycle going forever!

Another issue that has puzzled me for some time is the big hubbub about high fructose corn syrup (hfcs).  I saw a commercial once that said sugar is sugar and there is no difference between sugar and hfcs.  Other commercials claim that hfcs is bad for you and it is blamed for everything from obesity to ingrown toenails.  I decided to look into this to find out what the story is.  I hope you all appreciate the lengths I go to make this blog informative and entertaining.

Anyway, I found that hfcs and sugar are basically the same both in terms of composition and the calories they contain.  It seems that there is no scientific evidence that hfcs is to blame for obesity and diabetes.  It is a natural sweetener that contains nothing artificial or synthetic and has almost the same level of sweetness as sugar.  Both sugar and hfcs are bad for your health when used in excessive amounts.

Hfcs is produced from corn starch and is used in food because it is less expensive.  White sugar is produced from sugar beets and sugar cane.  Am I the only one who thinks this whole controversy was created by the beet and cane farmers?  Were they losing out to the corn growers?  Our trip to Iowa back in August showed us that corn is an abundant crop.  That was just there.  I am sure other states grow corn, too.  Probably more than the states that grow sugar beets and sugar cane.   

I’m just saying  …

I hope this has helped you come to terms with the issues of gluten and high fructose corn syrup.  I am sure many of you have stayed awake at night trying to deal with these weighty issues.  You have probably had dreams where corn stalks and sugar cane fight each other in fields trying for domination of the sugar industry.  Or not.  I do hope this has at least shed some light onto these issues for you.

This week our fact tells us that 15% of Americans bite their toes.  The rest either cannot even see their toes because they have been eating too much gluten-free food or we simply cannot get to a point where we can get our foot to our mouth because our joints won’t let us.  Keep in mind that this is not the same as putting your foot in your mouth.

Putting your foot in your mouth is when you say something that is stupid or embarrassing.  I have heard this referred to as odontopodology.  A possible point of origin for the phrase traces back to the 18^th century.  Irish Parliamentarian Sir Boyle Roche once said, “Half the lies our opponents tell about me are not true.”  Someone remarked of Roche, “Every time he opens his mouth he puts his foot in it.”  I am not sure why his foot as opposed to anything else, but there it is.  

So, I have digressed enough for now.  Have a nice week and keep your feet out of your mouth, literally and figuratively. 

Today is Sunday, September 8 and there are only 108 days until Christmas.  Time to get the Christmas movies out and start getting into the spirit.  This is the birthday of Richard the Lion Hearted, Peter Sellers and Cristy Thom.  St. Augustine, Florida, the first permanent settlement in the US was formed in 1565, “The Pledge of Allegiance” made its first appearance in Youth’s Companion in 1892 and in 1966 “Star Trek” premiered on NBC-TV.  It is National Day in Andorra, Sheriff’s Ride Ceremony in Lichfield, England and Thanksgiving Day in South Korea.

In an effort to try not to be entirely self serving, I will on occasion give information that you may or may not find interesting, but to paraphrase our governor, “I don’t care what you want.”  Today I would like to give you some information on the anniversary of the Pledge of Allegiance.  The pledge was written in August, 1892 by socialist minister Francis Bellamy and was first published on September 8, 1892.  In its original form it read, “I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

In 1923 the words, “the flag of the United States of America” were added.  In 1954, in response to the communist threat of the times, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words “under God” creating the 31 word pledge we say today:

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,

and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

So here we are at the beginning of another school year.  If you talk to most teachers, they will tell you that the year does not begin on January first.  Whenever they speak of the beginning of the year they are referring to September.  Their mental calendar always runs from September to August.  Even retired teachers adhere to that idea.  I never quite got that, but I am not in education.  Here is another issue I have with education.  Why do we tell children that they have to read books during the summer.  I thought summer vacation was an opportunity for children to unwind, not to develop an intense dislike for reading books.  I always thought the goal was to get them to read, not to hate doing it.

Let’s face it – how would teachers feel if they were told that one day a week throughout the summer they had to take a group of children and teach them something.  They would probably be as unhappy as the kids are about having to read while on vacation.  What is the purpose?  If it is to get them to read something they will hate reading and will forget as soon as they can, then the goal is achieved on a yearly basis.  Good Job!  Personally, I think that is something that should be rethought.

Moving on to another issue totally unrelated to education, I wanted to discuss how you can look at signs and come up with different meanings.  I recently went into the mens room in a diner.  When I came out, I explained to my wife that I did not wash my hands.  When she asked me why I said there was a sign in there that said “Employees must wash hands.”  Since I am retired, I am not an employee and do not have to wash them(before you all go “UGH!” I did actually wash them).  She gave me the look and said, “I don’t think that was what they meant.”

Another time, we were driving and I told her to quick throw some garbage out the window.  She asked me why.  I explained that we had just passed a sign that said “No Litter. $200 Fine.”  I was not going to pay $200 just because we did not throw something away.  At this point imagine the hand gestures of my younger grandson as he patiently explains what he just said and says, “Get it?  No litter, $200 fine?”  He usually goes through this with us because he assumes that we need additional help because we are grandparents and; therefore, incapable of understanding things the first time through ... but I digress

When my son was a young boy and we would be out in the car, I used to try and help him understand what the various traffic signs meant.  There was the sign that warned of black deer standing on their hind legs, the sign that warned of cars driving on black spaghetti and the sign that warned of break dancers (deer area, slippery road, pedestrians).  I am pretty sure he did not believe me, but I always thought it was amusing to interpret them differently.  Again this was generally something that only I thought was funny.  This is the problem that we creative people often have.  No one gets us.  Oh well.  And yet - life goes on.

This week’s fact tells us that 160 cars can drive side by side on the Monumental Axis in Brazil, the world’s widest road.  Some drivers try to make this happen when you come out of the toll plaza on the parkway in Union, too.

Well, have a nice week and please obey the signs.