Kiwiwriter47

Gerbils with wheels...

I got "friended" by someone who promptly asked me if I had got my prize from Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. He said he saw my name on the list, and I should claim it from a Facebook page earing the name of the woman who gives it out. I then got a message from her saying that I was indeed about to get my money, but I first had to fill out a form on Facebook that included such minor details as my birthdate, Social Security Number, and checking account routing number. I treated them to some choice obscenities, reported both accounts to management, and blocked them.

giant Yellow Submarine...

I'm listening to "Streets of Philadelphia" by Bruce Springsteen. Here's the link to the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z2DtNW79sQ

More dog shots: The dog with the stripe on his face at left is Bodhi Bodacious. Three years old, 75 lbs. He is half Preso Canarias, half Pitbull. He has sad eyes...HE HAS SAD EYES!!!! But he is a "mass of hot air and love." At right is Gemma Gen, a pure-bred two-year-old 130-lb. South African Boerboel (Mastiff). She is "a mass of chaos and sweetness." As you see, they are best friends forever, and this is one of their favorite things to do...they always lie in the same V formation on their dog bed unless they line up on it. When not playing with each other, they play with their family. When not playing with their family, they play with dog toys (often with each other). When not doing that, they snooze in various places. The second photo shows Bodhi taking in the sun on our back deck. It was THAT kind of day. The last shot is an older one of Bodhi and Gemma snoozing in the kitchen. It's about a year-and-a-half old, when Gemma was only 50 pounds. She grew some. Right now we have a brindle puppy over as well, Squishy Chewbacca Muraca, a very young brindle puppy selected from an animal shelter and named by our niece Lexi. She's the family dog of my wife's brother. Squishy is very sweet, not disciplined yet, but plays well with people and our dogs. Her ancestry is very mixed. Everybody likes her.

Moby Dick arrived...

Just wrapped up "Deathly Deception" about "The Man Who Never Was," which fills in the gaps created by Ewen Montagu's original book, which had to obscure Ultra and Bletchley Park's role in that bizarre and highly successful affair. Now I'm reading about Bletchley Park.

Outstanding book. A touch outdated by Ballard's findings, but Lord admits it in his follow- "The Night Lives On." I have a bunch of his books, all autographed. I never knew that he was very friendly and liked to meet fans of his writing and the Titanic. I never met him before he died, and I would have liked to have told him to his face that he remains one of the four greatest influences on my writing.

graffiti on a....

Peshtigo is on the northeast side of Wisconsin, right? That's where the fire was, the same day as the Chicago fire. The only thing I know about Wisconsin is that it is the home of the rare and flowing "Snickerdoodle."

I was referring to the industrial 20th century and post-industrial 21st century. However, I doubt that the owners of factories and mills in the South cared much about heat and cold levels in both facilities during any weather conditions, as workers there would attest. That led to a lot of court battles over child labor and union battles over the right to organize. The most interesting one was the UAW vs. Henry Ford, who refused to give in until 1941, when the US government said, "If you want contracts, you have to allow elections." Ford may have been a Nazi sympathizer and an anti-Semite, but he wanted that money. So the bitter old man grudgingly allowed his workers to vote whether or not they wanted to join the UAW. He thought they were so loyal to him because of his safety programs and Harry Bennett's private police, they would vote against the UAW or stick with the "company union." They didn't. They voted to unionize in the UAW. Ford, aging and bitter, was stunned. When Walter Reuther came to negotiate the contract, Reuther expected a fierce battle from the Old Man. Instead, a flattened Ford gave the UAW everything it wanted. He gave up control of the company in 1943 to Henry Ford II, whose first act was to fire Harry Bennett and eliminate the goons. His second act was to tell Ford dealers to stop selling the "Dearborn Independent" which mostly reprinted anti-Semitic writings. Meanwhile, Ford haunted his mansion, extremely depressed by the greatest war in history. He had backed Hitler, who was now a losing horse, and when the GIs liberated Dachau and Buchenwald, his grandson brought in the newsreel footage of Hitler's concentration camps. Ford, a pacifist and a Quaker, was so shocked by the grisly material, he suffered the first of the series of strokes that ultimately killed him in 1948. But I digress... The South was dependent on agriculture then and now, and, of course, today on oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The agricultural economy of 1609 to the 1940s would have done better if it wasn't so labor-intensive and they had crop rotation back then. Last time I saw "Roots," with my family, I told them that if I was running some plantation back before the Civil War, I'd do two things. 1. Rotate the crops to end over-dependence on King Cotton. That would likely add to profits and efficiency. 2. Summon all the slaves to a meeting in front of the big house and tell them "You are now all employees of the Apple Wapple Company. You will be paid wages based on hours worked with overtime. There will be no use of whips or torture on Apple Wapple property. All Apple Wapple employee children -- and that includes mine and the staff -- will attend a school together. You will all be issued Apple Wapple Employee cars, which will function as 'Slave Passes' for when you have to deal with idiots. In 30 days time, I expect you to unionize and prepare for me a list of issues to be addressed by management in our contract. And the only sex between management and union will be consensual." That might show a profit, make some lives better, and drag the Apple Wapple Company out of the "Old South."

Please tell me the cable cars are still running. They have National Historic Landmark status, you know. They appear in Star Trek, with their tracks slightly shifted to accommodate the realities of the 23rd century. Personally, in the 21st century, I think the California Street line should be extended past Van Ness Avenue, and the city leaders should take a look at their maps and hills and figure out where they can restore the lines they demolished. It takes two hours of standing in the "line ride" at Powell and Market to get on a cable car. It's ridickle-orst. Simply because the San Francisco Cable Cars only accommodate tourists and not commuters, they do NOT make my list of top five commuter railroads. Those are, in no alphabetical order: Chicago City Subway and El (The longest subway station in the world, an elevated line still in the downtown, and a beautifully restored historic station at Quincy Street) Glasgow Underground (small orange earthworms in an inner and outer loop) London Underground (A gigantic system that spreads everywhere. Soon enough it will have a line that connects directly with New York's Long Island Railroad at Montauk or Jamaica. Change at Jamaica for the train to Penn Station or King's Cross. It's just a long trip ) New York Subway (Another gigantic system that spreads everywhere, bringing vast development in its wake. Its advantage over the larger London system is that it has 24-hour-a-day expresses and a flat fare. You can lose your mind trying to figure out the London fare system. It's also converted a subway station into its Transit Museum. I've been a member for 20 years) Other favorites, but not in that class: Montreal Metro (Only one I ever saw that had a public library branch in a station) Washington DC Metro (Clearly designed by the same guy who created the Death Star. Every time I ride it, I expect to see Lord Vader himself checking tickets) Philadelphia City Subway (complete with underground trolleys, but I haven't ridden it enough) Boston City Subway (America's oldest and also has trolleys, and goes direct to Fenway Park) Bay Area Rapid Transit (zooms around, real fast, connects Oakland with San Fran, but does not connect A's Stadium with Oracle Park) MUNI (great trolley and trolleybus routes, and Trolley Festival on Market Streets, which includes 12 former Newark PCC cars, 11 of them painted up for various cities around the country. The 12th retains its Newark livery) Hong Kong (clearly a modern knock-off of the London Underground, but an enjoyable one) Toronto, Los Angeles, and Kyoto were visually dull. I didn't get enough of a ride on San Diego to make a judgment. Port Authority Trans-Hudson lost some of its luster for me when they removed the distinctive red-and-white signs and replaced them with blue-and-white. Exchange Place now has the charm of Fort Bragg with all the tiles. Pavonia, Hoboken, Christopher Street, 9th Street, and 33rd have retained some of their charm. A careful PATH train rider can see the abandoned 19th Street station and the raised platform for the sealed-off 28th Street station, and see that the 33rd Street station was moved back to 32nd Street. I ride the Newark Light Rail every day to work and while the underground stations are great (machine-age mosaics and terra-cotta art), the local riffraff use the staircases as men's rooms and they stink.

Here's another good SimCity sign: "Whatchoo want!"

Air conditioning is what made the South's economic development possible. Paul Johnson wrote that in a book, "How We Got To Where We Are." He also discusses the importance of the sewer system.