Day of the dead

On October 31, 1994, the city of Chicago experienced a torrential downpour.

Although the home town football team is famous for beating its opponents in inclement weather, the Bears managed to get trounced by the Green Bay Packers 33 to 6 later that evening at Soldier Field.

About an hour after returning from a business lunch with my new boss, John Platt, I was drying my socks in the microwave (seriously) when the phone call came from Minnesota. My mother called to let me know that my dad had had a heart attack while having lunch at their little house on 3rd Street in St. Paul. Although an army of paramedics arrived just a few minutes after she had called them, it was too late to save my dad.

Just as I think of my dad on February 3 (his birthday) , I also am reminded of him every year on the 31st of October, because that is when he left us for a new and better location. Although Halloween is usually a day of joy (especially for the younger generation) it always carries a sense of melancholy for my sister and me.

If you dig deeper into the origins of the holiday, Halloween SHOULD be a time of joy, not only for those who have lost loved ones on October 31, but other folks as well.

Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a three day Mexican festival that has ancient origins, possibly going back to the pre-Columbian times of 3000 years ago. In modern Mexico, the holiday focuses on family and friends getting together to pray for departed loved ones. The purpose of the meetings is to encourage visits by folks who are no longer with us, and the gatherings generally include offerings such as favorite foods, beverages, and memorabilia.

The offerings are called ofrendas, and may sometimes include items that would likely be considered unusual by most people. For reasons that I’ve explained previously, I brought a bag of oranges and 2 quarters to the ofrenda offering at a local church a few years ago.

Mexico isn’t the only country that celebrates the Day of the Dead, since it is celebrated in a number of countries in Latin America, Europe, and Asia. In 2004, I was stranded for 4 days in Hong Kong due to the fact that I had traveled there just before the Qingming holdiday (also called Grave Sweeping Day). Since the government office that I needed to go to for my visa was closed on the following Monday (Qingming) I had to wait until the following Tuesday to obtain the paperwork that I needed to return legally to my residence in Guangzhou, China.

I’ll never know for sure, but I strongly suspect that all the energy generated by the Day of the Dead offerings around the world will generate enough energy to bring the ghost of Larry Brennan a little closer to earth again.

After all, to quote one of my cousins (at his funeral), he was a really good guy.

yes, we have no bananas

Here’s a quick quiz for you.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is:

1) the name of a religious singing group

2) the lunch special at the local St. Vincent DePaul shelter

3) a country

If you didn’t pick #3, don’t feel bad. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is indeed a country, but that’s a fact that’s not known to a lot of people. It’s not a very big country, it doesn’t have a lot of people, and it has a fairly tiny GDP.

It’s total area is 150 square miles, roughly 2/3 the size of the city of Tucson. It has a total population of 120,000 people, roughly the same size as the city of Surprise, Arizona, and its GDP is $1.259 billion. To put that in perspective, its GDP is less than the Tea Party caused our country to lose per day during the recent shutdown.

Formerly a British colony, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines become fully independent in October of 1979. It is located in the eastern Caribbean, and is a very lovely place. The video below will allow you to take a tour of the islands that make up the country:

let’s take a tour

Since it is located in the Caribbean, it is subject to the tropical storms that are very common in this area - and therein lies the problem.

The main source of income for the country is banana production, although tourism and a secretive financial sector also make their contributions to the economy. Volcanic eruptions, and fairly frequent hurricanes, have caused extensive damage to the country’s banana plantations on occasion, causing the local plantation owners to sing a song that was first made popular in 1922:

yes, we have no bananas

The country came to light this morning, when it became the “topic of the day” on Bing. In the event that you aren’t familiar with Bing, it’s a search engine that was unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in May of 2009.

The country’s reliance on a single crop for most of its income mirrors the problems faced by the island nation of Nauru, which is the third smallest country in the world. When the phosphate mines that fueled the county’s economy petered out, the country briefly got support from the Russian mafia, but eventually switched to a reliance on tourism to sustain itself.

Few of us will ever get to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, but the recent filming of the Pirates of the Caribbean pictures has led to an increase in both visitors and investors, which should bode well for the country.

Eventually, the country will figure out a way to further diversify its economy, but until that happens, consider this option:

What a GREAT PLACE for a vacation !!

The Crisco kid

A couple of weeks ago, Sharon made another batch of her world famous chocolate chip cookies, filling the house with a marvelous aroma, and replenishing the supply of tasty treats in our glass cookie jars.

Naturally, she used Crisco as one of the ingredients, which got me to pondering the following question:

Where did Crisco come from?

In order to keep fats solid at normal storage temperature, it is necessary to hydrogenate the substance. The hydrogenation process was discovered in the late 19th Century, and was patented by a man named Wilhelm Normann in 1903. The patent was acquired by the Proctor and Gamble company a few years later. Although the original purpose of the patent was to produce soap, Proctor and Gamble used it to produce the world’s first shortening made entirely of vegetable oil. The name “Crisco” is actually a modification of the phrase “crystallized cottonseed oil”.

Even though the formula has been changed in recent years to reduce the fat content in Crisco, some nutritionists still feel it may not be good for your health, but it’s better than the alternative.

Lard.

Lard is pig fat in both its rendered and engendered form, and can be obtained from any part of the pig as long as there is a high concentration of fatty tissue. Despite its higher fat content (as compared to vegetable shortening) lard is still popular with many chefs and bakers because of its distinctive taste and wide range of applications. Rumor has it that lard was even used in Mrs. Wagner’s pies, which were made famous by Simon and Garfunkel in 1968. Sadly, even though Mrs. Wagner’s was the largest pie bakery in the country in 1940, the company went out of business in July of 1969.

Crisco contains less total fat than lard, even though it has a higher amount of polyunsaturated fat. Surprisingly, it also has less total fat than most other vegetable oils, including olive oil.

Trying to determine the health effects of hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils can be enormously difficult, but it appears that the real villain is something called “trans fats”, which can result from the hydrogenation process. Even though the can of Crisco in our pantry includes both fully and partially hydrogenated palm oil, it has ZERO trans fat.

Those delicious chocolate chip cookies in our cookie jars may not be the healthiest way to end a meal, but I’d heartily recommend having a couple for dessert on occasion.

After all, life is short.

Play ball !

The 1963 World Series started almost exactly 50 years ago - on October 2, 1963. The Series pitted the New York Yankees against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ultimately, the Dodgers prevailed, ending the hopes of the Yankees for winning three World Series in a row. It was the third title in franchise history for the Dodgers, and it was the first time in the history of baseball that the Yankees were swept in a World Series in only 4 games.

In 2013, the World Series won’t even start until October 23, and could last as long as Halloween, a full eight weeks into the start of the NFL season. Sadly, the World Series no longer generates the excitement that it did in 1963, which prompted a column in today’s New York Times:

is the game over?

Baseball is no longer “America’s pastime”, and it is now less popular than either professional football or professional basketball. The last eight years have produced the seven least watched Series in the history of baseball.

There WAS a time when baseball was a lot more important to most Americans. As James Earl Jones intoned in the 1984 movie, “The Natural”,

“the memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces .. the one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball .. Americans rolled by like steamrollers …, they’ve been erased, rebuilt, and erased again but baseball has marked the time .. the field, the game .. It’s a part of our past .. It reminds us of all that was once good, and could be again”

The irony of “America’s pastime” is that the balls that are used in play aren’t even made in America, and haven’t been for more than 30 years. Today, they are made in Costa Rica by workers who make $1.60 an hour, and produce roughly 200 baseballs a week.

Baseballs have been made in very much the same manner for over 100 years, but very few of us have seen HOW they are made. The link below (courtesy of YouTube) will let you watch baseballs being born:

how are baseballs made?

The Arizona Diamondbacks are arguably the most successful expansion team in the history of baseball, since the team won a World Series title in 2001, their 4th year in operation. In spite of that fact, though, I have yet to watch even ONE Diamondbacks game, and I’ll probably always be a Chicago Cubs fan, in spite of their years of futility.

One of the most famous play in the history of baseball was the Tinker to Evers to Chance triple play, which happened way back in 1907. However, THE most famous play in baseball was actually performed by another Cub, Rick Monday, in 1976, and should be watched again:

who is Rick Monday?

It’s easy to get caught up with the nonsense in Congress, the strife overseas, and the bickering over Obamacare, but there IS a way to make the world a more enjoyable place.

The smell of freshly cut grass, the crack of a bat, the roar of the crowd, and the taste of a ball park hotdog can chase away a lot of tension, and make you believe, at least for a while, the words used by James Earl Jones:

“life used to be good, and can be again … “

Let’s play ball !

Injun summer

Today is the Autumnal Equinox, one of the two times of the year when the the length of the day is the same as the length of the night. In the spring, the day is called the vernal equinox.

In the northern hemisphere, the autumnal equinox signals the start of a magical season called Indian summer. Leaves on trees start changing color, evening temperatures become a bit crisper, and Mother Nature gives us a handful of glorious warm and sunny days before the first snowflakes flutter to the ground. Due to the tilting of the earth’s axis, the full moon at this time of the year appears larger than normal, resulting in what many folks call the Harvest Moon:

Over 100 years ago, a man named John T. McCutcheon published a story in the Chicago Tribune that he titled “Injun Summer”. Some of the terms used in the story might be considered politically incorrect today, but reading the story always brings a smile to my face because it reminds of simpler times a long , long time ago. The full text of the story can be viewed by clicking on the link below:


To celebrate the autumnal equinox, I plan to have a Samuel Adams Octoberfest beer for lunch, after which I’m planning to do a little spelunking in some ancient caves a short drive north of town.

To keep the day fresh in your memory, I’d recommend that you listen to a song called “Shine on Harvest Moon”, that was originally released in 1909, two years after “Injun Summer” was first published. Scores of artists have done covers since that time, but Rosemary Clooney performed what I would consider to be the best version:

"Shine on Harvest Moon”

The secret to a long life

This morning’s Arizona Republic (citing an Associated Press article) reported that the world’s oldest man, 112 year old Salustino Sanchez-Blazquez, died on Friday of this week (Friday the 13th) in Grand Island, New York. Like most of the folks who have lived well beyond 100, Mr. Sanchez-Blazquez did not live an easy life. In his teens, he worked in the Kentucky coal mines, and he later worked in construction and in the industrial furnaces near the Niagara Falls area.

After his wife died, he lived with his daughter until he was 106 years old, at which point he moved into a nursing home. He attributed his longevity to the fact that he ate one banana every day, in addition to six Anacin tablets. His daughter believes the REAL reason he lived as long as he did was that he was an independent, stubborn man.

It is estimated that 30% of America's population accepts the words of the Bible literally. For those folks, the world’s oldest humans were Adam (930 years old) , Noah (950 years old) and Methuselah (969 years old). The specific references to these dates can be found in Genesis 5:4, Geneses 9:29, and Genesis 5:27. After these early humans, the maximum life span shortened considerably at some point in time, and is recorded in the Bible as being 120 years (Genesis 6:3).

For those of us who require factual proof of longevity, the world’s oldest human was a French woman named Jeanne Galmert, who lived to be more than 122 years old. She smoked from the time she was 21 until she was 117, she was a regular consumer of port wine, and she ate roughly 2 pounds of chocolate every week. In her own opinion, she attributes her longevity to olive oil, which she poured liberally on most of the food that she ate, and she also rubbed it into her skin.

Jeanne Calmert is an exception to the general rule that most people who have lived a long time have endured difficult lives, since the majority of them have had some ties to slavery.

Although Ms. Calmert was not particularly athletic, she DID take up fencing when she was 85 years old, and she rode her bicycle until she was 100. In the final analysis, though, it appears that she DID discover the way to have a long life - smoke, drink, and eat chocolate.

12 Angry Men

I don’t spend a lot of time watching movies, and I spend less time than that watching OLD movies. For reasons that I really can’t explain, I decided to watch a movie last night that was released in 1957, when I was still in elementary school.

I may have seen the movie once before years ago, but I have no memory of when or where. Nevertheless, it was a movie that is worth viewing, and its 96 minute total length flew by in a flash.

The movie was shot entirely in black and white, which somehow added the proper mood to the serious topic at hand. All but 3 minutes of the film were shot in a tiny 24 foot long jury room, which eliminated the distraction of gorgeous scenery shots competing with the story line.

The cast, headed by Henry Fonda, includes a number of well known actors, whose combined performance was good enough to get the picture nominated for Academy Award honors for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Writing of Adopted Screenplay.

Even though it’s an old movie, “12 Angry Men” has lessons that still apply today. One lesson is how to deal with prejudice, and the other lesson is how to deal with conflict.

More than 50 years after its release, it is still a very popular movie. In 2011, “12 Angry Men” was the second most screened film in secondary schools in the United Kingdom. If you’d like to take a trip down memory lane, just click on the link below:

a night at the movies