The eyes of Texas may or may not be upon you

One of my favorite (British, favourite) activities as a youngster in Texas seven decades ago was learning about the night sky (Northern Hemisphere version) by gazing at it with my father. He showed me Orion the Hunter's shoulders (the stars Rigel and Betelgeuse), knees, and the three stars in Orion's belt. He showed me Canis Major with Sirius (the "Dog Star") at Orion's side. He showed me red Antares in Scorpius, the constellation that actually resembles a scorpion with a curled tail, and Leo the Lion, and the Big Dipper in Ursa Major. He showed me how I could extend a line through the Big Dipper's two front stars to find Polaris, the North Star, at the end of the handle of the Little Dipper in Ursa Minor, and how if I extended the imaginary line an equal distance beyond Polaris I would see a big letter W in the night sky that is the constellation Cassiopeia.

Some of you know that I was diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in 2017 and that I have been receiving injections in both eyes every couple of months to try to slow or possibly even halt the degeneration of my vision and save what remains instead of slowly going blind.

About a year ago I was dismayed to realize that I could no longer see Orion's belt. My vision is currently at the point that I can see only four objects in the night sky: the moon, the planet Venus, the planet Jupiter, and Sirius, the "Dog Star", which is the brightest star of all. I can no longer see Orion at all, or any other stars or constellations, for that matter. My daytime vision is actually still pretty good.

On a happier note, I knew three answers on Jeopardy! tonight that none of the three contestants knew:

Who is Minnie Pearl?
What is a cloche?
Who is Brunhilda?

Thumb-twiddling time

It was north Georgia's coldest morning of the season this morning when I took Abby out to perform her necessaries. This morning's low temperature was 23°F (-5°C). Having put on a pea coat, a scarf, and a toboggan, I looked quite dashing, I thought, although no one was looking. After living in south Florida for several years, where the weather is always tropical, I was happy to move to Atlanta, which enjoys four actual seasons, none of them extreme in the way, say, Phoenix. Arizona and Fargo, North Dakota are extreme. Last winter we had only two hard freezss. The first occurred on Christmas Day. The second, which occurred just before the vernal equinox in March, turned 2023 into The Year Of No Gardenias.

By this afternoon it had warmed up to 53°F (11°C) with prospects of warm spell, cold spell, rinse, repeat happening with regularity over the next few weeks. Pneumonia weather, Mrs. RWP calls it.

As you have undoubtedly discerned, I have nothing of interest to share with you today.

Keep on keeping on. Things can only look up from this nadir of my blogging career.

This just in: The highest temperature ever recorded in Phoenix, Arizona was 122°F (50°C) and the lowest temperature ever recorded in Fargo, North Dakota was -39°F (-39°C).

And the caissons go rolling along

My continued apologies to everyone who reads this blog for what must surely seem to have become my new modus operandi, namely a haphazard and sporadic approach to replying to your comments. Family obligations during this Thanksgiving week certainly haven't helped. Please be assured that each person who comments here is very special to me. But since it is also true that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, I can only quote another Latin phrase seldom heard nowadays, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I shall attempt to do better (translation: answer more promptly) but I cannot promise because I may be sliding slowly into senility.

The Times They Are A-Changin' Department: My country, the good old U S of A, seems to be going to hell in a handbasket, and not so slowly either. More of a headlong rush, if you ask me. Open antisemitism, which sane people thought had disappeared or gone deeply underground with the fall of the Third Reich in 1945, is back with a vengeance. It seems especially strong among college students at elite, liberal universities, fueled by radical faculty members. Raucous public protests have occurred in major cities. When asked by reporters to comment on the situation, the president's press secretary deflected and discussed strategies to combat Islamophobia. There are several extremely pro-Palestinian members of Congress (most notably Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the common denominator being the D for Democrat) but for now both the House of Representatives and the Senate are still overwhelmngly pro-Israel, as are 70 to 80% of the country according to recent polls. I'm glad we have a First Amendment to our Constitution that guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and freedom of peaceful assembly, but the 'woke' crowd and the 'cancel culture" folks have a radical agenda and seem determned to have things their way regardless of what anyone else thinks, callng them racist and Nazis and destroying our country in the process.

Our 2024 election season looms, so the next year will be crazy. That is all I'm going to say about that.

I really don't want this blog to change into a political blog, but my brain is rebelling today. Perhaps it is reacting to too much L-tryptophan in the Thanksgiving turkey.

Far left Democrats of an antisemitic bent should probably skip the next paragraph.

I see that Hanukkah this year begins at sunset on December 7th and ends at nightfall on December 15th, so do not wait until the week before Christmas to wish any Jewish friends and colleagues a Happy Hanukkah or they will think you are well-meaning but ill-informed (and they would be right).

Welcome back, far left Democrats. I see by the old clock on the wall that it is time to heat up some more Thanksgiving leftovers, so I will sign off for now.

Strange but true, scout’s honor/honour

North Carolina and South Carolina both have towns named Beaufort. The one in North Carolina is pronounced BOH-furt and the one in South Carolina is pronounced BEW-furt.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun Department: Dick Van Dyke is 98 years old. Nancy Sinatra, Frank's daughter, is 82. Jerry Mathers of Leave It To Beaver fame is 75.

Despite her popularity, I have never heard Taylor Swift sing nor do I know what she looks like. I have not studiously avoided her career but neither have I made any effort to follow it either.

The city of Reno, Nevada is farther west than Los Angeles, California. It's true. The former is at 119°49'19" West longitude; the latter is at 118°15' West longitude.

Even though (a) the Atlantic Ocean is east of North and South America and (b) the Pacific Ocean is west of North and South America, the Pacific end of the Panama Canal is actually east of the Atlantic (okay, Caribbean) end. Look it up on a map.

When a well-known person dies, one would think that newscasters would know how to pronounce his or her name. But noooo. Rosalynn Carter, wife of President Jimmy Carter, died this afternoon and many of the people reporting her death over the telly said RAHZA-lynn (as in Rosalind Russell) but as all Georgians know, it's ROHZA-lynn (as in Rosa Parks).

Maybe I'm being overly sensitive because I lived in Boca Raton, Florida for seven years. People who weren't residents mispronounce it all the time. It's not Boca Ra-TAHN, people, it's Boca Ra-TOHN.

Today is the 160th anniversary of the day in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln went to an address in Gettysburg.

Keep those cards and letters coming.

Miscellany

Solomon Grundy,
Born on Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
That was the end
Of Solomon Grundy.

Two recent answers on Jeopardy! that I knew but none of the contestants did include Albrecht Dürer and James Fenimore Cooper. The clues mentioned Praying Hands and the Leatherstocking Tales.

Rachel used the word "toff" in her post today. Since I had never encountered the word before, I did the following search:

toff definition

Below, verbatim, is the answer I received from a dictionary website that shall remain nameless:

toff meaning: 1. a rich person from a high social class. 2. a rich person from a high social class.

I am confused as to which meaning Rachel meant.

Unless I am mistaken, this Wednesday is the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was a cataclysmic event in our nation's histoey. I remember it like it happened yesterday.

The Ides of November

Do you remember the song "Scarborough Fair" that Simon and Garfunkel sang several decades ago? When it runs through my head, as it sometimes does, I usually get the second line wrong. For some strange reason, instead of singing:

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme

my brain remembers it as:

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, cheese, rosemary, and thyme

This glimpse into my daily life is not a lead-in to anything. I'm not going anywhere with it. I just felt like sharing it with you today. If you detect some deep psychological meaning or flaw in my make-up, please share the details with all of us in a comment.

Gene Simmons and all the members of Kiss, or Heath Ledger as The Joker in the Batman movie, now there are guys with the possibility of flaws in their make-up.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Moving right along....

Since many or even most of you don't seem to care for geography or quizzes, and especially geographical quizzes, today's Geographical Momennt (yes, we're going to have one) is not a quiz but a simple, straightforward presentation I call Obscure Countries And Their Obscure Capitals. The format is Country (Capital):

Uzbekistan (Tashkent)
Turkmenistan (Ashgabat)
Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek)
Tajikistan (Dushanbe)
Eswatini (Mbabane, Lobamba)
Azerbaijan (Baku)
Lesotho (Maseru)
The Gambia (Banjul)
Malawi (Lilongwe)
Tuvalu (Funafuti)

An alternate name for the preceding list might be Places I Never Heard Of or, a little more eruditely, Places With Which I Was Heretofore Unfamiliar.

If you haven't yet found something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, be thankful I didn't ask you to match capitals to all 195 countries recognized by the United Nations.

Yea, verily.

I can't believe that the month is half over already and this is only my second post. There are just 40 days until Christmas, which fact should not give you merely pause but yet another reason besides the existence of this post to fear, as did Julius Caesar of old, the Ides of November.

Or something like that.

As Tigger always said, Ta Ta For Now.

The power of suggestibility

Instead of our regular geography lesson today, class, we're going to have a pop quiz. Let's begin.

1. Ougadoudou, Bobo-Dioulasso, Kougoudou, and Ouahigouya are:

a. Four people groups in Papua New Guinea
b. Four cities in Burkina Faso
c. Four languages spoken in Ghana
d. Four islands in the Malay/Indonesian archipelago

2. Sekpele, Lelemi, Siwu, and Tumulung are:

a. Four people groups in Papua New Guinea
b. Four cities in Burkina Faso
c. Four languages spoken in Ghana
d. Four islands in the Malay/Indonesian archipelago

3. Buka Buka, Legundi, Sebesi, and Sebuku are:

a. Four people groups in Papua New Guinea
b. Four cities in Burkina Faso
c. Four languages spoken in Ghana
d. Four islands in the Malay/Indonesian archipelago

Before proceeding, let's review your answers to the three questions posed above. There is still time to change your answers if you are unsure of them.

I'll wait.

The correct answers are 1-b, 2-c, and 3-d. Let me now ask you a final question.

4. What are Bonete, Tupungato, Sajama, and Palcaraju?

If, thinking logically, you said to yourself "Okay, if 1 is b and 2 is c and 3 is d, the answer to 4 is "a. Four people groups in Papua New Guinea" you would be wrong.

Actually, question 4 is not related in any way to questions 1, 2, and 3. Notice that I didn't repeat choices a, b, c, or d.

Bonete, Tupungato, Sajama, and Palcaraju are mountain peaks in the Andes range of South America.

"No fair," some of you are saying, "you led us astray." I did not lead you astray. You were led astray by falling into a pattern and being susceptible to suggestion.

I learned about this all-too-human tendency of ours in the eighth grade when our teacher, Mrs. Mary Lillard, asked the whole class to answer in unison out loud the principal parts of various verbs in English class.

"Be" said Mrs. Lillard and we said "Am, was, been."

"Go" said Mrs. Lillard and we said "Go, went, gone."

We went through quite a few verbs that day, both regular and irregular, when Mrs. Lillard must have had a twinkle in her eye.

"Only three more," she said. "Sink."

"Sink, sank, sunk," we said.

"Drink" said Mrs.Lillard and we said "Drink, drank, drunk."

"Think" said Mrs. Lillard and the whole class, warming to the task and brimmng with confidence, called out in unison "Think, thank, thunk."

The absurdity of it hit us almost immediately and we burst into laughter. From that day until now I have always tried to stay alert for pitfalls when answering a question.