Telling the Truth

From George Neumayr in The American Spectator 

Barack Obama threw his mom under the parish van on Tuesday, describing her as formlessly "spiritual" while casting himself as the self-made convert. "I am a Christian by choice," he said at a campaign event in New Mexico this week. In 2007, he said the opposite: that he became a Christian through his mother. "My mother was a Christian from Kansas...I was raised by my mother. So, I've always been a Christian," he told a voter who had inquired about his Islamic background.

I'm pretty sure this is what my mother had in mind when she admonished us to always tell the truth. It's easier on the memory.

Funny T-Shirt Contest

Here is a possible entry. It is better if these are worn by members of the male persuasion, especially if you are a slow reader.

Small Towns Cultivate Pro Athletes: Really?

How can that be? It doesn't seem to make much difference as to NFL, PGA, MLB etc. They all seem to show a remarkable and significant difference between towns of less than 50,000 and more than 5 million. I wonder if that would hold up when comparing say 50K and 500K? There aren't that many USA cities over 5M are there?

To the left is the article as it appeared this morning, 20 September, in the Sports Section of the Wall Street Journal.

When I try to remember back to my own childhood in a small town, <5K, in the 40s/50s in rural Wisconsin, I come up with memories of playing baseball all the warm months of the year and basketball all the cold months of the year. Maybe for a month or two in the fall we played tackle football without pads but this usually led to injuries so we would quickly switch to basketball. Adults were not present at our games until high school by which time we had seen and caught many thousands of hooking or fading wind-blown fly balls. On the other hand, most kids had fathers in the small town I grew up in. Even then we had a suspicion that if you didn't play catch with your dad at a young age, you probably were not cut out for baseball.

I'm not sure where this study was published but it surely was the most interesting article in the paper today. I doubt that the final answer is given here but it is interesting to think about possible answers.

Climate Change Prognosticator

From Watts Up With That  Very Funny.

Ruffin Prevost Explores the Surreal World of Bear Management

A well-written article in today's Gazette, that is, Wednesday 15 Sep, caught my attention. Going along with the idea that the really interesting story is not the original piece of news but rather the media's reaction to that news, this nicely written mini-essay documents the story of a bear killing a botanist back in June and then the aftermath of the media trying to get some information on the case.

Prevost mentions all the players from local sheriff's offices to the highest reaches of our federal agencies specializing in supporting the grizzly world of the Greater Yellowstone eco-system. One wonders exactly how many people and how many bears are actually involved, and if those numbers move in synchronous ways.

This article reminded me of the popular NCIS series in which a prominent feature is always one federal agency grating on another's overlapping jurisdictions. Have a read.

Sports Illustrated: The Baggy Pants Baseball Uniform Issue

While waiting to see my surgeon, the dour Scotsman, Dr McKenzie, I started reading one of the magazines in the waiting room subscribed to by his partner, the enthusiastic German Dr Dringman, both of them of Surgical Associates fame. The article on Stan the Man Musial by Joe Posnanski was good enough that I couldn't resist hiding the issue (Aug 2-9, the summer double issue) in my baggy pants on the way out so that I could finish it and have something to blog about while drinking my dissolved MiraLax on Tuesday in preparation for a takedown of my colostomy by Dr M on Wednesday morning.

I used to wear heavy, sweaty baggy baseball pants just like Stan Musial and Bob Feller and Dr Bobby Brown and a lot of other guys, so this picture set off an instant train of flashbacks, which included these WWII and Korean War vets—yes they all served unless they were 4-F. Musial was an outfielder, Feller a pitcher and Dr Brown played 3rd base for the New York Yankees while he was going to medical school and studying to be a cardiologist. I'm not sure how he pulled that off but in those days—when the teams travelled by train—the World Series, the October Classic, naturally enough, was played in the early part of October.

My father also served during WWII; he came home from Italy in 1945, guarded some German POWs for awhile, then learned how to be a butcher, and when the local Rock River League team needed some hitting and batting practice pitching help, he dug out his glove and volunteered for that duty too. One of the saddest days that I remember was when I borrowed his glove, one of those old-fashioned ones that if you didn't come up with the ball right in the middle of the pocket it would bounce away in an embarrassing way, and left it out overnight in the rain. There is a picture of one of those gloves on p. 51. I came across this picture of my dad batting at Mathes Park, age 15 or so.

I couldn't hit or throw a ball as well as those guys could in the 1940s but I dreamed along with my friends as we played ball all day all summer long. They are all approaching 90 now so maybe I could keep up with them, if my pending surgery is successful. I know the first two are still autographing baseballs, though I'm not sure about Dr Brown. According to Posnanski, Musial was not only the  favorite of many mid-Western boys—and maybe even a few girls too—but also the respect of every baseball player he would meet. There are a fair number of anecdotes in the article: after Alberto Pujols met Musial he started asking those who called Pujols El Hombre to stop doing that because there was only one The Man; Carl Erskine, a Dodger pitcher of that time, said that "his strategy for pitching Musial was to throw his best stuff, and then back up 3rd base."

One way you can tell if a hitter is hustling on the bases is comparing his doubles and triples. The slackers always have very few triples. Musial led the National League in doubles 8 times and triples 5 times. He was famous for never refusing a request for an autograph. I'm hoping I get a chance to test that out.

Red Rooster Cafe on Broadwater

Not very fancy on the outside, on the corner of Broadwater and 15th, near the American Legion Club, is the Red Rooster Cafe, open since some time in January of this year.

Down home menu, open from 7am to 3pm, breakfast until 11:30am, no beer or wine. Pleasant waittresses. I had a breakfast there this morning and was surprised when that included two good tasting and really good-sized sausage patties. They don't compete on price but they are not expensive either.

I told my wife about it, so we went back for a late lunch. Good creamy chicken and vegetable soup and a very nice 4 cheese grilled sandwich with tomato and bacon. She had some macaroni chili that looked good.

Worth another visit early or late.

Run by nice people for ordinary people. In addition to the usual stuff on the menu they also had a nice supply of jams and jellies, home-made on the premises.

So if you forgot to pick up some at the Farmer's Market this is the place to go.

There is take-out too if you are in a hurry.

Signs of the Times

This is made right there in Missoula Montana. In case you have trouble reading around the curve of the bottle this is Moose Drool, which probably deters the wimpish drinker. It is a very good dark beer, probably one of the best of the increasing number of micro-brews that we are becoming famous for.

This is the cashier's place at The Soup Place, where at lunch time today we had some of the beer above together with some excellent chicken soup, gazpacho and a nice Reuben sandwich. As you can see there is a lot of stuff going on in Billings in August, but who would have guessed we are having a "bellydance festival?" Check it out.

Driving home after lunch, at a safe level of blood alcohol of course, I came across this sign on Broadwater heading west. I know we have the promise of our Lord that his church will endure forever but it is still fairly comforting to know that while the rest of us are out working this place where a part of the church gathers on Sunday and Thursday is protected by a tough-sounding Security Center. Notice also the dark green foliage around the sign. By this time, middle August, in much of Montana things look fairly brown owing to a lack of rainfall.                                                                                            But this year is one of those that probably fooled our ancestors of the 19th century into thinking that they had found a piece of Paradise. When I look out into my backyard this summer I wonder why I planted the trees so close together.

The Last Five Years at BST

Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years is a two-person Sondheim-like operetta starring Lysa Fox and Kelly Martin, two of our best here in Billings. Two creative people try to make a marriage work: Jamie is the novelist in the early stages and Cathy is the aspiring actress who doesn't quite make the big time, a recipe for a difficult marriage. Music is a variety of styles often really good though not always successful in the recitative and amplified mode. I would have thought that amplification was not necessary for these two at the fairly intimate BST but perhaps it was thought to be too awkward if Lysa's voice over-powered Kelly's.

Brown borrows a little from Alan Ayckbourn in that he tells the story backwards for Cathy, starting with the seemingly inevitable breakup of the marriage, and forwards for Jamie, starting with their joyful first meeting, joining together only for the wedding scene, a nice duet. The playing with time theme is made a little too clear for the rest of us by Jamie's gift of a watch to Cathy at Christmas time but the song that goes with it, a Tailor by the name of Schmuel, a reminder of Fiddler on the Roof, was very good, especially the way Martin does it.

Lysa plays and sings well the usual story of the woman wronged. While I was watching these two excellent players and because of the fiddling with time which didn't work that well for me I couldn't help but think of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire and that famous quote: "Ginger Rogers did everything he did backwards. . .and in high heels!"

Piano, cello, violin and guitar make a good combo for this music and especially for the space of the BST. Worth seeing and hearing.

Max of Montana Slips Into Billings

With not a lot of fanfare preceding him, the senior Senator from Montana, Max Baucus, gave the commoners at several meetings including the Downtown Exchange Club yesterday the latest wisdom from Washington DC. He appeared to be sober. The picture above is from Max's adventures in Washington where he said that forcing people to pay for insurance was a "tax cut."

The article in the Gazette did not mention his paramour du jour so it was not known who was handling him on this rare trip to his home state. It seems clear that he didn't use a tele-prompter, or if he did, he simply read badly from it.

He was not asked if he had finally read any of the bills he put out of his Senate Finance Committee. He also was not asked why he voted for the tax rate cut for all in 2001 but now has changed his mind. He did say "it makes no sense to raise taxes. If anything we should do the opposite . . . ."

The article in the Gazette used the following pull quote:

"When you're treading water, you're sinking. You have to be moving forward."

While people were scratching their heads trying to figure out what this meant the smiling Senator made a quick getaway. Perhaps those in other Montana cities will be better able to understand what the Senator is worried about.