Eleanor Roosevelt Redux?

I watched part of the so-called debate between  Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama last night. I wondered if her concession speech at the end of the show was sort of an audition for the role of Eleanor Roosevelt in the Reality Show Called American Politics.

El Barbudo Graciously Relinquishes Power

Now that our man in Havana has turned over the reins to his brother Raul, will he travel to Hollywood for his lifetime achievement Oscar, or to Stockholm for his Nobel Peace Prize?

My guess is both.

The picture above was taken at a Semester at Sea propaganda class during a visit to Havana in the spring of 2004. Fidel talked for almost 4 hours, not quite as passionate as in his younger days, but still proud of his accomplishments. He autographed a baseball for later auction.

The Crypt of the Capuchins

I forgot to mention one of our stops in Rome on our recent Italian adventure. This is on the via Veneto and gets a lot of tourists. But I think it was actually put together before tourism became all that big a deal. Well, now that I think about it, I suppose touring Rome has always been the thing to do in Europe. They used to call themselves pilgrims. Yes, you are correct, the picture above are skulls, artfully arranged of course.

Anyway the Capuchins have been here since 1631. I am not sure when they got started with the bony artwork. One source says after they moved earlier burials to this place in the 17th century. Another says that the arranging of bones started after 1870. They say they came to pray here before retiring for the night: the message being perhaps that death closes the gate of time and opens that of eternity. Of course, we moderns have completely forgotten about the long history of the Catholic (especially in the days when Catholic meant all Christians) cult of the dead, the skull on the desk to remind themselves of their mortality etc. "What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be."

When the Last Trumpet sounds there is going to be a lot of confusion at this spot, as the bones of any one individual are pretty much scattered around, and I suppose the mice have carried off a few as well.

I am in the process of sorting through shoeboxes, I mean literally shoeboxes, filled to the brim with old pictures, in no special order. Some of these go back to the 60s and before, like in "the olden days" as our kids used to say about any time before they were born. The one to the right is a faded, poorly exposed snapshot taken sometime during the 40s. The girl on the right is Carol and I think that is her sister on the left, or is it the other way around?

To the left is one from another life, now closed off almost completely by virtue of advancing age. Fortunately we didn't take so many pictures in the pre-digital age. We still throw away as many now as then.

Carol had the wit to label it, otherwise we would still be guessing. I don't care what they say, I liked those big hairdos. And I liked wearing fancy uniforms too.

Then there are a ton of scrapbooks from my mother's basement. There are some real prizes here. I am trying to get these in shape before the 2nd Mueller Melee this summer.

A chocolate heart for friends of St Valentine

I meant to post this a few days ago. Only in America. I was walking down an aisle in our local drug store when I was attracted by this giant chocolate heart. Three (3) pounds for $24.99. That is about three times the size of the normal heart. Probably because I am on a diet I immediately thought: how long would it take me to eat the whole thing? And then, how long before my first coronary occlusion?

Kind of looks like it is going to drip down on the text, doesn't it?

Ostia Antica: Communal Crapper

The wide-awake among you may have noted that this blog has been culled of at least a few travel entries, most recently of our trip to Italy. The notes and pictures on that trip have been moved to web.mac.com/kmueller40/muellertravel_Over_There Just click on this address and it will get you there.

Of course I couldn't resist puttting the name of the now abandoned Roman seaport on the title because when I googled it, I found a reference to my blog right up there with the really helpful ones. Which surprised me.

And I couldn't resist posting a picture of a communal crapper I found in Ostia Antica. I wonder if this was the equivalent of our "smoke-filled" committee rooms where important decisions were made before going to the forum. These are some references to hygiene in ancient Rome.

Touring Ostia Antica is a really nice website by Caroline Lawrence, who has written some good stuff for kids on the BBC.

AmericanPapist: Not Your Average Catholic!: Your PPOTD! Friday, February 1st

AmericanPapist: Not Your Average Catholic!: Your PPOTD! Friday, February 1st

Busy Day for Elderly Pathologist

For a mostly retired pathologist I had a busy day.

First thing was a post-mortem examination on a 40 year old male who didn’t wake up yesterday morning. Now that I think about it, with the amount of skin slippage that he had, it was probably at least 3 or 4 days ago that he didn’t wake up. He had a heart large enough to do him in.

Then I hurried to St Pius for a funeral mass for the wife of a retired surgeon. Apparently she just up and died one evening a few days ago. Another reminder that we need to treasure all our gatherings as they may be cut short at any time, so always say what needs to be said, just in case one or the other of us doesn’t wake up.

A quick lunch at home, then off to First Presbyterian where we celebrated the life of Bob W., president of the Billings Mustangs for quite a few years, and a good guy. He was known to have some kind of heart disease and fairly severe Parkinson’s disease, but as bad luck would have it, he slipped and fell while shoveling snow on 1 January, broke his hip, and then took about a month to die.

Then back to the morgue to examine a month old male whose mother was in jail and was being looked after by his step-father: not a very auspicious start in life, and not surprisingly, he didn’t get very far either. He was filled with pus in all his airways and even in his urine. The “old man’s friend” can affect the very young too.

Standing out in my mind at the end of the day was the reading from Proverbs about the good wife at the morning funeral and the eulogy from an articulate 11 year old grandson at the afternoon funeral.

What has been offered for learning today? 1) Choose your ancestors wisely; and 2) Get somebody else to shovel your driveway.

Wall Street Journal Strikes Again

This paper, the Wall Street Journal, must be rapidly overtaking the far left blather of the New York Times as America's newspaper of record. This morning I read a medium-size news story on Kenyan goings-on. Compared to the truncated (I assume) Associated Press version seen in our local newspaper, the Billings Gazette, it was almost scholarly. Comparing the two versions was particularly instructive when I noted what the AP left out, but now that I think about it, isn't that what our friends on the left continually give us, a highly selective compilation of the tons of flotsam and jetsam rolling down the information superhighway?

My eyes jumped to paragraphs with place names like Naivasha and Nakuru, (see the entry back in September 2005) places where we spent long weekends in the fall of 2005 while working in the laboratory at Kijabe Hospital. We were mainly interested in the small and large animals in the nearby parks and lakes, but we drove through the towns in order to get to the animals. I wouldn't have the courage to do that these days. I remember seeing signs for Eldoret just up the road apparently, and that is where the present killing rampage started.

More pictures of the new ballpark: Sorry I'm Starting to Repeat Myself

I just can't resist driving around the city block the new ballpark is being built upon, especially around the outfield.

See what is being called the outfield wall just below. It looks like it is being built with the same bricks being used for the grandstand and the players clubhouses. If I were an outfielder I would probably be a little leery approaching this wall with any speed at all.


The picture above right shows that the show goes on even when it is cold and snowy.







Checking out the pictures from the excellent website of the Parks, Recreation and Public Lands, aka the PRPL, is also very helpful. That is where all these pictures come from.

These are miscellaneous pictures from late December to late January. The one at the top right is from 24 January and shows the work going on despite the snowy and cold weather. Below left is of the outfield wall. The last one is behind and to the right of home plate looking toward the Mustangs dugout on the 3rd base line. It may give you an idea of how the playing field is going to be sunken as the main entrance is to the left of the picture and street level is at the top of the stands.

Tuesday of the 2nd Week in Ordinary Time

Spent much of the day gathering information and writing emails and talking on the phone to older and younger relatives about this summer get-together, tentatively being called the Mueller Family Melee.

Finished Jacqueline Winspear’s Messenger of Truth, the fourth in a series about some of the close and distant and usually unforeseen consequences of the Great War on the survivors in Britain. It was a good story about good and evil, as were the earlier ones in the series. One really cares about many of the characters, especially her main heroine, Maisie Dobbs. I suppose the critics would call the series a kind of a soap-opera in book form.

Two quotes stood out for me. One in the front matter was a poem that didn’t rhyme by Paul Nash, who served with the Artists’ Rifles and the Royal Hampshire Regiment during the Great War.

I am no longer an artist interested and anxious,
I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men
who are fighting to those who want the war to go on forever.
Feeble, inarticulate, will be my message, but it will have a
bitter truth, and may it burn in their lousy souls.

and then on p. 166, a few lines of prose, some of which rhymed, where the narrator describes a diphtheria fever hospital in the early 30s: “Austere, iron-framed cots were lined up, each with just a sheet and rough blanket to cover the feverish body of a child. The vapor of disinfectant barely masked another lingering smell, the foul breath of death waiting for another victim to weaken.”

I can actually remember an infectious disease ward, having had the privelege of serving in one in Cincinnati in the middle 60s. We knew it was a leftover from an earlier time, and probably not going to be around much longer, but tradition dies slowly in some places, and there was a peculiar smell I can still recall. I didn't know then much about the "foul breath of death."