Sky Revisited

Cat in a Cupboard

Pass the gravy, please...

Public Library

Intercourse, PA

Raiders 16 - Redskins 13

It was a nice afternoon for a football game, a sunny, crisp fall day; it was so nice , in fact, that the Redskins offense decided not to show up. It attacked with the potency of an elderly sailor.

Norv Turner, the Raiders coach and former Redskins coach, was hospitalized after the game; they just couldn't seem to get that huge grin off his face after defeating his old boss, Mr. Snyder.

The fat-assed Raiders fan who sat beside me at the game let out a crazed scream when the game was decided not unlike the crazed but anguished scream of mine as the Redskins slip into mediocrity.

Prohibition- Era Euphemisms for Alcohol

Devil’s tears
Sleepy syrup
Zip sauce
Hop tallow
Trance juice
Grain guzzle
Mystery nip
Irish vinegar
Brain shellac
Jazz chowder
Fairy pee
Corn cologne
That slippery serum
Near beer
Stutter milk
Juniper jizz
and
Stun gravy

from My Areas of Expertise
by John Hodgman

Barn at Sunset

7:00 AM along the Skyline Drive

Meg & Colby

Veterans Day

The Story of Taps

The 24-note melancholy bugle call known as “taps” is thought to be a revision of a French bugle signal, called “tattoo,” that notified soldiers to cease an evening’s drinking and return to their garrisons. It was sounded an hour before the final bugle call to end the day by extinguishing fires and lights.

The revision that gave us present-day taps was made during America’s Civil War by Union Gen. Daniel Adams Butterfield, heading a brigade camped at Harrison Landing, Va., near Richmond. Up to that time, the U.S. Army’s infantry call to end the day was the French final call, “L’Extinction des feux.” Gen. Butterfield decided the “lights out” music was too formal to signal the day’s end. One day in July 1862 he recalled the tattoo music and hummed a version of it to an aide, who wrote it down in music. Butterfield then asked the brigade bugler, Oliver W. Norton, to play the notes and, after listening, lengthened and shortened them while keeping his original melody.

He ordered Norton to play this new call at the end of each day thereafter, instead of the regulation call. The music was heard and appreciated by other brigades, who asked for copies and adopted this bugle call. It was even adopted by Confederate buglers.

This music was made the official Army bugle call after the war, but not given the name “taps” until 1874

Lake in Autumn

Bicycle

Photograph by Robert Doisneau, sent along by my friend, T.

"When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle."

~Elizabeth West, Hovel in the Hills

For Sale

Near Bird-in-Hand, PA

The Top Ten

The National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry of America listed these as the top 10 songs of the 20th century:

Over the Rainbow – Judy Garland
White Christmas – Bing Crosby
This Land Is Your Land – Woody Guthrie
Respect – Aretha Franklin
American Pie – Don McLean
Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy – The Andrews Sisters
West Side Story (album) – the original cast
Take Me Out to the Ball Game – Billy Murray
You’re Lost that Lovin’ Feelin – The Righteous Brothers
The Entertainer – Scott Joplin

Marbles

Old Stone Bridge

Limericks

There once was a woman named Dee
Who hadn't yet learned how to pee
Like her brother Stan
She stood like a man
And the pee dribbled down on her knee



A buxom young farm girl named Claire
At eighteen has golden blond hair.
She grows apples and peaches,
And you know when she reaches,
That she also has grown a nice pear!