” i love americans! you all have a good taste.”
– claude, an american werewolf in paris
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credits: npr radio, science friday
out walking with the kinders
i come up behind
an unlikely pair
who generally aren’t together,
mid-conversation.
one who is learning to cope
with separating from a twin,
the other who is having a hard time coping
with separating from a best friend.
the only real separation
is that the friend/twin in each case
wants to seek out other friends
and expand their horizons.
one says to the other,
“i know she wants to play with other people
and when she needs to do that,
i just let her go.
i know it’s what she has to do
and then she comes back later.”
the other responds,
“wow. how do you do that?”
she answers,
“it’s just what you do.”
i am amazed by
this four year-old’s insight and advice,
as many adults
still have not mastered this understanding.
—–
the only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on.
it is never of any use to oneself.
– oscar wilde
—
image credit: google images
young dick cheney, it seems, did not look kindly upon coffee addictions. when he was deputy chief of staff in gerald ford’s white house, the future vice president sent a terse memo regarding donald rumsfeld’s coffee consumption. in september 1975, the then-chief of staff had spent more than $100 on coffee in a month—adjusted for inflation, about $450 in 2015 dollars. and it appears this wasn’t the first time.
“can you please tell me what’s going on?” a 34-year-old cheney wrote to staff secretary jim connor. rumsfeld’s nine-person staff (and their guests) had consumed a whopping 200 pots of coffee—about 50 pots per week. in a handwritten note, connor laid out the facts: “they are drinking too much coffee and have too many people drinking it!”
—
credits: gerald ford presidential library, mental floss magazine
went for a farmer’s market visit
saw all the stuff they grew
kinders met the farmers
asked them questions
painted pumpkins
filled their bags
soap maker
vegetable growers
fruit lady
flower farmers
pumpkin man
beekeeper/honey maker
bakers
artists
fairy treasures
candy
one showed us
the special black dirt
he grows things in
it is like magic.
tomorrow we cook.
—
the farmer has to be an optimist
or he wouldn’t still be a farmer.
– will rogers
last weekend, the residents of tualatin, oregon held its annual west coast giant pumpkin regatta—a quirky annual october event in which participants dress in costumes, hollow giant gourds into makeshift vessels, and paddle them across a local lake.
the oversized squash are generously provided by the pacific giant vegetable growers, a regional group of gardeners who promote the cultivation of “obscenely large, healthy vegetables.” (this year, one of their offerings tipped the scale at 1,794.5 pounds.)
after the pumpkins are measured in a “terminator weigh off,” they’re cut open, scooped out, and transformed into tiny watercrafts.
contestants climb into them, take to the water, and engage in a series of races—that is, if their boats don’t start leaking, which happened to at least one contestant.
twenty-one individuals attempted the 2015 regatta—a physical feat that, despite its whimsical nature, one frustrated rower described to as “brutal” and “exhausting.” now in its 12th incarnation, the regatta drew thousands of onlookers, who enjoyed pie-eating contests, costume competitions, and live entertainment while they weren’t watching others flail around in the water.
—
“i would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself,
than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”
― henry david thoreau
—
credits: mental floss magazine, oregon live