Dick Enberg, sports broadcaster 1935-2017

The Newsday obituary

Thanks to Bob Balascio, the last paragraph of Mr. Enberg's obituary:

“I loved acknowledging the subtle arrogance of Hall of Famer Rod Carew’s drag bunt,” he said. “The sleight-of-hand of Brooks Robinson magically reducing doubles into 5-3 putouts. The towering arc of a Ted Williams mortar shot deposited in the bleachers high. The classic confrontation of the best hitter against the best pitcher and the immaculately executed ballet of a double play.”

He added, “I love the double play.”
-----------------------

Me too, Dick. Me too.

Requiescat in Pace
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Sauce or Gravy?

Let's end the mystery. In Italy, made with tomatoes, it's sauce. Always. Except when it's sugo or ragù, then it's a meat sauce. Pasta Bolognese may properly be called Pasta Bolognese Sugo or Ragù, but its popularity has eliminated the last defining word; every mother's son knows what Pasta Bolognese is,    without any further ID.

Why is this even a thing? Because many second and third generation Italian Americans, in learning their new language, translated it as such. The sauce-as-gravy Italian Americans have strong outposts in Philadelphia, New Jersey, Chicago, New York and, oddly enough, New Orleans. The vast majority of Italian Americans, however, call it sauce. End of story..
No? This isn't definitive enough for you? Well then, arm yourself! Click here, on the word 'GRAVY', and get ready for war!

In my family, we accept both words. Our version came to America in 1916, from the little town of Rodi Garganico (population 4,000) a little spit of Apulia on the Adriatic - easily located because it's on the spur of the Italian boot. My mother-in-law, Maria Teresa Giuiliani, brought her family sauce over in her heart and passed it along to my wife, Diana, and our children, Teresa, Jennifer and Katherine. 

There is no recipe. It's different every time and the same every time. Back 50 years ago, when wifey was earning her bones, there were good sauces and better sauces; now we have only 'spectacular' or OMG versions. explainable with 'I added something different,' or 'I didn't put as much _____in this time.
Today is leftover spaghetti and meat balls. Which is what inspired this article.

Rodi Garganico

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Can't Wait to Try This

Italian Sausage Frittata

Can't wait to surprise Diana with this. We've been doing a lot of late-supper TV movies lately; this would be perfect!

Italian sausage frittata is a meal in itself. It is a filling dish with a hint of peppery spice from the sausage. The vegetables on the other hand complement each bite. Add some chili flakes for more zing if desired.

Serves 2
Ingredients:

2 pcs Italian sausage, sliced
4 button mushrooms, sliced
2 tablespoons chopped white onions
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons chopped red bell peppers
2 tablespoons chopped black olives
4 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup chopped tomatoes, fresh or canned
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup grated cheddar cheese

Heat half of the oil in a medium sized frying pan over medium heat. Sauté the garlic and onions for one to two minutes or until the garlic is browned and the onions are translucent. Add the sausages, red bell peppers, olives and mushrooms. Stir-fry them for 3-5 minutes or until the sausages are cooked and the bell peppers are soft. Transfer it to a plate and set aside.

Place the remaining oil in the same pan. Pour in the eggs. Cook it until it is set. Top it with the sautéed sausage mixture and grated cheese. Cook it until the cheese melts. Carefully slide it onto a plate and serve with the tomatoes. Serve immediately.



(Stole this from http://www.bfeedme.com/, a no-nonsense recipe site. Try them.)

To my Trump-supporting friends

Please explain to me the President's conduct regarding the four American soldiers killed in Niger. Why do we have no information?
Also, please explain his phone conversation with one of the widows and her mother.
Lastly, what about the $25,000 check he gave to the family of a fallen soldier? Is this going to be his ongoing personal tribute to our KIAs?
I'm trying to be civil and curious, here; please respond in kind.

Stuff You Don't Know - About Cats Falling

(Caveat: I heard this on NPR; I was driving, so nothing has been fact-checked; it's my memory vs. Alzheimer's.)

In a study made by some professional-sounding organization (Sue me, I don't remember) in a given year in Manhattan, about 1,300 cats either jumped, fell, or were otherwise defenestrated from their respective perches. (Defenestrated? It's a real word - look it up!)

Not surprisingly (we all know about cat-like reflexes) falls from 1-to-5 stories are almost all survived, and  an amazing number of cats were unscathed in falls from even greater heights. The record? One cat walked away after plummeting 41 stories!

Here's the interesting part. The highest percentage of fatalities was achieved on floors 6 to 9! After that, all the way up to 41, survivability actually increased. Pick any high floor -- little kitty has roughly a 50-50 chance.

Why is that? I was pulling into the garage and lost the satellite signal. The last thing I remember was something about reaching an equilibrium between terminal velocity and wind resistance; I'm counting on you science guys to fill in the blanks!

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The street-smart squirrel

   The New England Journal of Ruminants has recently published a two-part exposition paper that alleges the possibility that crazy squirrels appear to have gone extinct.  Increased observation has revealed a dearth of street darters and circlers, while  remaining millennial squirrels have acquired life-extending street smarts; they hit the pavement at high speed, racing on a straight angle until they've crossed safely. Some have even picked up on the inherent safety of  street lanes; others have been observed actually using crosswalks.

Biologists and other relevant scientists are excited. In a test facility outside Madison, NJ, they are attempting to discover whether squirrel road skills can be genetically transferred to other species. 

'We currently are working with a test herd of Jersey deer,' said one clinician. 'We think we've taught them to cavort - which would be a significant step forward - but that opinion is by no means unanimous.'
Look to this blog for any updates.

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A Ford Adventure

August 1956. I had to report to my first Air Force assignment, Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX. I planned no route, but I couldn't really sight see; I had two days' drive time, and I didn't think being AWOL was a good way to start a military career.

Anyway, I was driving a beauty of a '49 Ford, and I quickly broad-brushed my route. West Virginia (heard it was beautiful and that turned out to be true) Nashville (Guitars and the Grand Old Opry) Memphis (The Sun Record company was making some noise with a guy named Elvis) and then down to the Louisiana bayou and across to Texas and Kelly AFB.

I never heard of the Texas/Louisiana border town of Beaumont, TX until I roared through it at 3AM. I think I exited Beaumont at about 3:10, and I honestly never expected to see or hear anything about it ever again.

Beaumont, sadly, filled my radar last month with the arrival of Hurricane Harvey.  And because I'd been there, however briefly and innocuously, I identified with them.  I felt their pain. It was easier to fork over a few dollars.

We should all do that - identify with people in trouble, people with problems, people with no hope - see yourself in their predicament. It shouldn't take a 60-year-old memory to spark some empathy.

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Stuff we don't know ---

In Patagonia, Argentina, the Perito Moreno glacier is less than a 2-hour bus ride from the nearest town. The glacier is 20 miles long, 3 miles wide and as high as two football fields. Unlike most glaciers, which are retreating (melting) this big guy is advancing, sometimes 6 feet a day!

Top Secret Heros

The young girls came from all over the United States, volunteers all, wanting to help the war effort in any way they could. They headquartered and were trained in Washington, DC; sworn to secrecy and given Top Secret clearances, these 10,000 dedicated women formed the core of America's enemy code breakers.

They comprised 70 percent of the code-breaking operation, but as women in a male dominated society they walked without curiosity through the government's most restricted halls. When they were occasionally questioned, they gave innocuous - and successful! - replies: 'I sharpen pencils,' or 'I'm an assistant secretary for General so-and-so.' 

After the war many of these women used their experience to leapfrog into careers previously unattainable for females, but they always kept their war duties secret, so much so that only now have their exploits been uncovered. Read about them in 'Code Girls.'

A Blast from the Past

The Maxwell House coffee sign dominated the Hoboken, NJ skyline until the '90s. Ever wonder what's there, now?

The one percenters are moving in. The dockside city that Frank Sinatra called home, where Marlon Brando made his bones in the gritty film drama 'On the Waterfront', where the Hudson Tubes (If you're under 50, read PATH) daily shuttles thousands of Jerseyites under the river to Manhattan now can be yours in a spectacular condo complex called Maxwell Place.


For a mere million and a half you can own a one-bedroom, two-bath beauty with an unobstructed view of the Empire State Building. Get a ticket to ride the 14th Street ferry a couple of blocks north and you can be sipping coffee in your Wall Street office while the great unwashed are stilling humping it aboard NJ Transit.


Ain't capitalism grand?

Sliced Bread? The story, right here!

On occasion, you may have heard it said of some wonderful gadget, “This is the greatest invention since sliced bread!” This is intended to be both a compliment and a reference to how revolutionary and world-changing the invention is. It’s worth bearing in mind, though, that while people have been slicing bread for eons, pre-sliced, packaged bread has only been available since 1928, when Otto Frederick Rohwedder introduced the world’s first mechanical bread slicer.

At first sales were not spectacular; bakers complained that pre-sliced bread would dry out quickly. Then a slicer-owner figured out how to slice and bag the bread simltaneously and the revolution began. The first national baker to use the slicer was Wonder Bread.

In an amusing afternote, the Toastmaster company had invented a pop-up toaster four years before sliced bread, but sales of manually sliced toast were slow. The pop-up toaster and uniformly sliced bread was a marriage made in heaven. By 1933, only five years after its introduction, American bakeries were turning out more sliced than unsliced bread, and the rest, as they say in the pulps, is history.
(Liberally edited and re-written by JAK from web material.)
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My 15-year-old, cobbled-together computer finally gave up the ghost. It's taken me a while to get a replacement, but I finally settled on this puppy. It's taking me some time to get comfortable with it, though; going from Windows 7 to 10 has given me the bends!

Memorial Day 2017

I'm doing something different this Memorial Day. I'm gonna remember one guy, an 18-year-old kid who drowned in the surf at Normandy Beach on June 6, 1944. His backpack was too heavy, and he was too seasick from the ride to shore. He wanted to be a hero, wanted to keep America free and all that claptrap fog of war shit, but all that happened was he died. His family tree has one limb missing; he didn't get married, have kids; he didn't get to see Donkey Kong, or HDTV, or feel central air conditioning, or buy a pack of smokes at a 24/7 convenience store. He's dead. Forever.

I don't know if it matters, but thanks, kid. Thanks for trying.

The French at Normandy always remember

Kiwis in Space!

The launch site is on North Island's Mahia peninsula.

Very interesting deal, here. We're talking about launching small, low-cost creative boxes called cubesats - only a few kilos each, with photographic, weather and agricultural capabilities. New Zealand is well away from commercial air traffic patterns, so there would be little cause for launch delays because of busy skies, and the Kiwis are uniquely positioned to achieve north-south orbit.

Read all about  it, see more pictures, just click here.

Me, a sharp knife and a pineapple - GO!

Wifey gave me a chore today: cut and dice a pineapple. That's not a skill I learned on South 17th Street in Newark, but Google rescued me!

Lest we forget... the glories of the Roman Empire - Pont du Gard

The Pont du Gard is an ancient Roman aqueduct that crosses the Gardon River near the town of Vers-Pont-du-Gard in southern France. The Pont du Gard is the highest of all elevated Roman aqueducts, and, along with the Aqueduct of Segovia, one of the best preserved. It was added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1985 because of its historical importance.

The aqueduct bridge is part of the Nîmes aqueduct, a 50-kilometre (31 mi) system built in the first century AD to carry water from a spring at Uzès to Nîmes. Because of the uneven terrain between the two points, the mostly underground aqueduct followed a long, winding route that called for a bridge across the gorge of the Gardon River.

The bridge has three tiers of arches, stands 48.8 m (160 ft) high, and descends a mere 2.5 centimetres (1 in) – a gradient of only 1 in 18,241 – while the whole aqueduct descends in height by only 12.6 m (41 ft) over its entire length, which is indicative of the great precision that Roman engineers were able to achieve, using simple technology. The aqueduct formerly carried an estimated 40,000 m³(8,800,000 imp gal) of water a day to the fountains, baths and homes of the citizens of Nîmes. It may have been in use as late as the 6th century, with some parts used for significantly longer, but a lack of maintenance after the 4th century led to clogging by mineral deposits and debris that eventually choked off the flow of water.

After the Roman Empire collapsed and the aqueduct fell into disuse, the Pont du Gard remained largely intact, due to the importance of its secondary function, as a toll bridge. For centuries the local lords and bishops were responsible for its upkeep, in exchange for the right to levy tolls on travellers using it to cross the river, although some of its stones were looted and serious damage was inflicted on it in the 17th century. It attracted increasing attention starting in the 18th century, and became an important tourist destination.

It underwent a series of renovations between the 18th and 21st centuries, commissioned by the local authorities and the French state, that culminated in 2000 with the opening of a new visitor centre and the removal of traffic and buildings from the bridge and the area immediately around it. Today it is one of France's most popular tourist attractions, and has attracted the attention of a succession of literary and artistic visitors.
(from Wikipedia) Thanks to Facebook's Johnny Haddo for the pic that prompted this post.

Vocabulary, word a day

A first for me - a word I wish I never heard of:

Possibly Photoshopped,
but it makes the point.

kakistocracy - government by the worst element of a society, coined in 1829 by Thomas Love Peacock , an analogy of its opposite, aristocracy, from Greek kakistos "worst," superlative of kakos "bad" (which perhaps is related to the general Indo-European word for "defecate;" see caco- + -cracy.

80s Celebrity Sightings

Milo O'Shea, he's at the bar of an Irish pub, I'm at a table. I tell the waiter to comp his next drink, he motions me to greet him. 'It's an honor meeting you,' I said, 'I very much admired you in Ulysses.'
'Ulysses is it, you wonderful man! I'm so pleased it wasn't Barbarella!'


Christopher Walken, dining alone in the corner of a neighborhood restaurant. Our eyes meet, and he knows he's been had. My friend and I ignore him; he finishes his meal, walks past us, leans down, puts his hand on my shoulder. 'Thank you so much,' he said.
I smiled. 'It wasn't easy!' He gave us the Walken laugh.

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Ya think I would've bought a damn t-shirt!

The longest game in Organized Baseball history occurred in 1981 between the Pawtucket Red Sox and Rochester Red Wings of the International League at Pawtucket's McCoy Stadium and lasted 33 innings. The game began on April 18 and lasted 32 innings before being stopped, with play to resume later in the season. On June 23, the game resumed with it only taking one additional inning to settle the game as Pawtucket won it by a score of 3 - 2 in the bottom of the 33rd inning. The game included future Hall of Famers Wade Boggs and Cal Ripken Jr. as the two third basemen. Bob Ojeda and Marty Barrett also went on to notable careers in the major leagues.
Oh, I almost forgot. Major League baseball was in the 11th day of the 1981 strike, which lasted until August. A friend and I felt so baseball deprived we drove out to McCoy Stadium (four hours from NYC) to witness the historic conclusion.

(published in honor of the Mets-Marlins 16-inning Holy Thursday game)

A Hormone Test

Three hours out of Anchorage, MATS Super Connie, starboard electrical fire, back to Sea-Tac. Seats in the upright position, all sharp objects out of pockets, put on inflatable life jackets, listen to stewardess's instructions.

After maybe five minutes of OMG! there was calm. I looked out the window at Canadian forest, and wondered how much good a Mae West would be. A few people had mistakenly inflated their jackets; the stewardess climbed over passengers, deflated the jackets and gave out new ones.

We landed without incident on a foam-covered runway, with emergency vehicles racing alongside. Women and children were automatically shunted to the exits. As we walked on the tarmac to the terminal, I remarked to my seat mate how lucky we were, and how we had a plane crash survival story to tell our grandchildren. He looked back and smiled.

'Did you see the ass on that stew, climbing over those seats? I'd do this again, just for that view!'

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Stawa Młyny - the Windmill that isn't

Stawa Młyny is a beacon in the shape of a windmill in Świnoujście, West Pomeranian Voivodeship,  in Poland. The beacon acts as a signal for vessels

entering the Port of Świnoujście, from the Baltic Sea; it is 10 meters in height, colored in white with a black roof, and was built between 1873-1874 during the modernization of the ship route into the port.

 The beacon is a popular tourist attraction on the Island of Uznam; it is featured on postcards of the town, and is a popular part of guided tours.

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Awinouj%C5%9Bcie

The 400-year-old saga of: Huygens- Cassini - and a grand finale!

I swear folks, this is the greatest enduring achievement of humankind, Science and exploration, fellowship and fealty, with knowledge the only prize. If we could only stop killing each other, this could be our future.
(Click Huygens-Cassini, then go back to click the finale)

Jaxonia Redux: Huygens- Cassini -- Two guys joined at the hip: Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) was a Dutch scientist who discovered Saturn's rings and, in 1655, its largest moon, Titan. Italian Jean...

And now, the finale! (Click here)

The Wild Blue Yonder

1957- I was hitchhiking home from Kelly Air Force Base to Otis AFB on Cape Cod and I caught a ride on this long-range radar equipped Super Connie. You needed a Top Secret clearance to board one of these, so a qualified hitcher was unusual, and the flight chief checked my orders. When he discovered I was a Russian language voice intercept operator I got VIP treatment; it was a long flight, and I had a full-sized bed! We left around midnight, and the chief gently woke me around 5AM. Breakfast, he said, would be served directly, IN THE COCKPIT!

I padded forward. The flight engineer's station was usually right behind the co-pilot, but it had been replaced by a jury rigged diner grill, upon which the captain was busily finishing up my bacon, eggs, home fries, toast and coffee, which he handed me on one of those ubiquitous military chow hall trays. 'Take my seat, spy man,' he said.
I sat there in the pre-dawn dark, scarfing down breakfast at 20,000 feet, with a slender orange ribbon on the horizon. On my left I could see the spark-plug glow from the port engines. The captain asked all kinds of questions about my job, and he loved memorizing 'на посадочном шасси выпустил' (na posadochnom shassi veeposteel) which was what MIG pilots said when they were landing. (Final approach, gear down). "I can't wait to say that back at Kelly!" he laughed.
Yes, it was the time of my life!

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Targets for Spring

Mickey Mantle's on Central Park South opened in 1988, and Diana and I were there like we were shot out of cannon. Mickey's favorite - chicken fried steak and pan gravy - was our go-to meal.
The place had a decent run, closing its doors in 2012, but the memory of chicken-fried steak lives on. Now, thanks to a serendipitous Yelp review, the memory just may be taken off the injured list and re-activated.
There's a joint in Williamsburg, the Brooklyn Star, that features the Mantle fave -- with a Dr. Pepper on the side, no less.  They don't credit the Mick, and they serve it with classic southern gravy, but

what the hell -- I don't have much to do these days, and a cruise over the Willy B is still in my wheelhouse. Let's see if I can make this happen. Stay tuned.  

Dodger great Pedro Guerrero in grave condition at Bronx hospital

Pedro Guerrero, the former Dodgers and Cardinals slugger who shared MVP honors in the 1981 World Series, reportedly is fighting for his life in a New York hospital.
The 60-year-old was hospitalized after suffering his second stroke in a little over two years, ESPN Deportes reported. The Dominican newspaper Hoy said Guerrero is on a ventilator at a hospital in the Bronx.

2015  Old Timer's Day at Dodger Stadium: Pedro Guerrero
 returns to Dodger Stadium.

Guerrero previously was hospitalized in the Dominican Republic in February 2015 after a stroke but recovered quickly enough to attend an old-timer's game at Dodger Stadium three months later.
“It was serious. It was scary,” Guerrero said at the time, via MLB.com. “All the doctors that attended to me in the Dominican, they all said the same thing: ‘They can’t believe I’m alive.’ I’m serious. There’s one doctor who told me, ‘I don’t know if it’s the color of your blood or what, but 92, no 99 out of 100 people who had the same thing you had, they’re gone.’"
Guerrero was a five-time All-Star selection in 15 years in the majors and finished in the top five in National League MVP voting four times. His best season came in 1985, when he hit .320/.422/.577 and had 33 home runs for Los Angeles in 137 games.
He went 7-for-21 with a pair of homers and seven RBIs in the Dodgers' six-game win over the Yankees in the 1981 World Series and shared MVP honors with teammates Ron Cey and Steve Yeager.

(from MSN.com)

Chaos Incarnate

It is not difficult to extrapolate chaos from seeming order. Consider the universe as existing on a leaf, floating in a lazy arc in an eddy. The leaf will eventually be caught up in the whirlpool and dashed to pieces in the turbulent waterfall, but until then, serenity and logic appear to rule.

Now consider 23-year-old Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, a brilliant Polish-Cuban American who just may be the next Einstein. An M.I.T. 5.0 grad and Harvard graduate student, she's a dabbler in Physics, but considers some of her most rewarding achievements the times when she 'spots elegance within the chaos'. Click her name, read her story. We may be trapped in a universe that ultimately is mindless, but we're not going down without a fight!
(And thanks to FB-er/friend Jim Lent for discovering this gem.)

Incidental addendum: Isn't it refreshing to see how exciting our inclusionary, multi-cultural future can be? 

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Who writes those cable crawls?

Here's what ran across the bottom of the screen during tonight's Rachel Maddow show:
'Workers use cable to lift a 6,000 ton South Korean ferry that sank nearly three years ago and killed more than 300 people from the sea, an emotional moment following one of the country's deadliest disasters.'

OK, it's not horrific. All the facts are there, but they ramble like a grocery list, with no thought to emphasis or importance. I understand there's a time constraint, but here's a re-write that took five minutes:
'In an emotional moment marking one of South Korea's major marine disasters, workers use cable to lift from the sea a 6,000 ton ferry that sank nearly three years ago, with more than 300 fatalities.'
----------------------------------
Back in the day, professional writers were birthed into the business with a whack on the ass and a copy of Strunk & White in their in-box. My guess is they don't give books away any more.
+JAK

Really? Isn't that, well, stupid?

Yeah, maybe, but when someone is willing to pay $600,000 for a 44-year-old car, 'stupid is as stupid does:'
 The 1971 Ferrari Daytona's seatbacks are non-adjustable. On the plus side - you're sitting at the precise angle Enzo liked best. 

Sure It's Photoshopped...

... but look at it as a political cartoon, in the spirit of Thomas Nast; the overreaching, macho backswing symbolic of a spoiled child's testosterone overdose, the bloated stomach a badge of gluttonous sloth, the imperfect, slathered-on orange tan, a narcissistic Dorian Gray caricature.

This is fake news, Mr. President, right back atcha!

Thanks for the ride, Chuck

Rain water blowin' all under my hood,
I knew that was doin' my motor good...

Chuck Berry  1926-2017

'Chuck Berry was rock's greatest practitioner, guitarist, and the greatest pure rock 'n' roll writer who ever lived.' - Bruce Springsteen

Following our President

President Trump has taken to calling 'fake' any news report or article he doesn't agree with. This not only does a grave disservice to the fourth estate, it also cheapens and demeans the office of the Presidency.

News can be slanted. It can be politically motivated. It is up to us to read it, to see it, and to make informed judgments as to its ultimate veracity.
Follow the advice cited here.before you call any news 'fake.'

A really cool plane for under $5 million

The Pilatus PC-12 is a single-engine turboprop passenger and cargo aircraft manufactured by Pilatus Aircraft of Switzerland. The main market for the aircraft is corporate transport and regional airliner operators. The United States Air Force's designation is the U-28A. The PC-12 holds the distinction of being the best selling pressurized, single-engine, turbine-powered aircraft in the world.

Pilatus PC-12 taking off from short, unimproved airfield

The PC-12 is designed for performing in multiple roles and to deliver equal performance and safety to twin-engine aircraft. It is powered by a single Pratt & Whitney engine and is capable of operating within the most rugged environments, such as the Australian outback; it is one of the few pressurized turbine-powered aircraft capable of operating from rough landing strips. A trailing arm landing gear arrangement is used to enable the PC-12 to access thousands of airfields that most jet aircraft are incapable of using.

Memorial Day 2017 - A Suggestion

Marine Sgt.Major Dan Daly, a double
 Medal of Honor winner at Cypress Hills*

Before the boardwalk and the beach, before sausage and peppers and fireworks, how about a field trip first?

Cypress Hills National Cemetery is the only United States National Cemetery in New York City and has more than 21,100 interments of veterans and civilians. There are 24 Medal of Honor recipients buried in the cemetery, including three men who won the award twice. Although Cypress Hills was established to honor Civil War veterans, its grounds include the graves of soldiers who fought in the American Revolutionary War, Spanish–American War, Korean War and Vietnam War.

Cypress Hills National Cemetery opened in 1862 and gravesites were exhausted in 1954. However, burials of veteran’s spouses continues at the rate of approximately ten per year. The two sections of this national cemetery are located approximately one half mile apart (see below, three sections of Cypress Hills).

The cemetery is located in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, and encompasses 18.2 acres. It is easily reached on the J line at the Cypress Hills station, approximately 45 minutes from Manhattan.

-------------------

* Sgt. Daly, exhorting his troops to charge during the famed WWI Battle of Belleau Wood: 'Come on you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?'

A blue-footed booby dives off San Cristóbal Island, Ecuador

Few creatures on Earth can claim to have conquered land, air, and sea. We might giggle at the blue-footed booby's name, but its hunting skills are no laughing matter. A booby may leave its perch, anywhere from Mexico to Ecuador, to glide over the waters of the Pacific, until it spots a school of sardines, anchovies, or other small fish. In a flash, the blue-footed booby dives from the air, folds in its wings, and shoots under the ocean’s surface like a missile. Once submerged, the booby can swim for a short period of time—just long enough to grab a fish and take flight again.
(Spectacular in flight, but when a booby meets a booby, comin thro' the Rye, they're kind of ordinary, except maybe for those sneakers!)

My apologies to Robert Burns and J.D. Salinger;
this is what Trump is doing to me!

This really is embarrassing!

 He looks so out of place (and his hand really looks small!) Check out the entourage around him; don't they seem to be, well, just a little ill at ease? Maybe it's me.

Trump Visits USS Gerald R. Ford