Hello Darling and Goils!
Trust you are well and using Maggie's tail for a finishing paint brush! I am scheduled to arrive on Air Canada Flight #297 at 3:20pm, local time. Grogg said he was leaving on Friday, around 7:00ish, I think.
I'm off to pack before dinner. Will call your parents at Pam's later. (They are in to "babysit" Dustan. Apparently he came home drunk on Saturday night, vomitting everywhere! Pam is off to Thunder Bay tonight, until Thursday, I think.) Swam two miles at Pan Am this morning and then met Jim for lunch at a food court in old Eaton's Mail Order building across the street from WPL. Afterwards I went to library and had a brief visit with Arthur Cohen. He looks very much the same but his hair is completely white. He has a ten year old! He is working about half-time, I think. He sends his regards. Had popped by earlier, just after I met Jim and when I came out of elevator, (Arthur's office is on 3rd floor.), Nora was waiting to get on. She is off to a cabin somewhere and was loading up on books for week away.
Meal consisted of two different ribs, ones with salted coating, other with dark, sweet sauce of some kind, corn-on-the-cob, roasted small potatoes and strawberry/spinach salad. Everything was simply delicious, delicious. I brought along a Tempranillo, 15%, and it complimented the ribs and our ribs very nicely! No room for Angel Food Cake and more fresh strawberries as I ate Dustan's rib overlefts! Mad dash to the airport and then Spumoni dropped me off on Harvard. I invited her in but hse had much to do to get ready to leave next day.
Had a grand visit with Nora, Ian, Liam, Jamie, Sam and Nicole, his girlfriend, lovely young woman, latter both in from Toronto as well as Nora. She will be staying in Winnpeg all summer. Apparently her Mom has Crohn's and has had some major surgery. Didn't have a chance to talk to Noreen about a lot of things but she seems very well. Ian made a gluten-free carrot cake which was enormously delicious. (I was ready for dessert by this time!) Dogs everywhere as Ian is looking after two of Kevin's pooches while he is in Toronto. Lily, Noreen's dog, you might recall, wasn't amused! Ian very kindly drove me home. I was pleased to have had quite a good visit with him. I have always found him to be rather shy and/or retiring when other brothers are around so it was great to talk when not in the shadow of more extroverted siblings.Filmer picked up steaks, (I insisted on buying them. Least I could do.), for dinner and is doing them on the bbq. Nice enough, (no bugs), that we might eat outside. Kaitlyn and Scott are coming, as well as Travis. He will be leaving for Dublin next week. At this point he is not sure how long he will be away. He did very, very well in his Surveying Technology at Red River and has been offered a job already so will probably start once he returns from travelling. Sally is at a work related meeting and Scott works until 6:00pm so won't eat until Sally is back, probably by 7:30pm.
Filmer is going to take me to the airport tomorrow. Not sure if I'll have time for a swim or not but think I can squeeze in at least a mile and a half if I start right at 9:00pm. Probably have to leave for airport by 12:10pm and can only catch a bus from Grant Avenue, outside pool, to Point Road off Pembina Highway, (probably one transfer somewhere to get there), and then walk to Wildwood, Section H, about 15-20 minutes. Have to be at airport by 12:30-12:45pm as I'm checking my bag.
Loads of love to one and all. Cheers, Dad/Patrizzio!
PS: There was a deer sauntering down the sidewalk across the street from Noreen's place last night about 9:00pm! All the dogs went crazy!
Skidmore, Missouri is a tiny town in the northwest corner of the state. As of the 2010 census, 284 people lived there, down from 342 ten years prior. When something of any significance happens in town, one imagines that the whole town soon finds out, given the size of the municipality. Which is what makes the unsolved murder of Ken McElroy both strange and entirely expected. On July 10, 1981, McElroy was murdered in broad daylight while sitting in his car, next to his wife Trena, in front of the Skidmore pool hall. He was shot twice by two different shooters, based on forensic reports. There were three or four dozen witnesses. To date, no one has been charged with McElroy's murder, let alone convicted.
McElroy, a functionally-illiterate fifth grade dropout who, while always unemployed, always seemed to have money, and was 47 years old at the time of his murder. But his relatively young age hadn't prevented him from totaling up a lifetime of indictments. Earlier in 1981, he was found guilty of shooting the town's 70 year-old shopkeeper over a piece of candy, per one report. This conviction was notable because of the twenty other times that McElroy was indicted, this was the only time a jury handed down a guilty verdict. Some charges were dropped under strange circumstances (one explained below) while a few others were tried to a not guilty verdict. The guilty verdict from the shooting of the shopkeeper, though, didn't stick. McElroy appealed and was released on bond pending a retrial.
Trena ended up filing a wrongful death suit against the sheriff, the town, and the county. She asked for $5 million but settled for less than $20,000. No one -- not then, not before, and not since -- admitted to the killing of her late husband.
Bonus fact: The murder of McElroy isn't Skidmore's most grisly crime. That "honor" goes to the slaying of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was murdered on December 16, 2004. Stinnett was eight months pregnant at the time. The killer, a lady named Lisa Montgomery, killed Stinnett and removed the unborn child to take as her own. She was caught four days later and was sentenced to death. She is currently in prison as she exhausts appeals and other legal mechanisms. The baby was returned to Ms. Stinnett's family.
Author: Henry Weincek
Title: The
Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson
Publisher: Smithsonian magazine
Date: October 2012
The paradox between Thomas Jefferson's authorship of the Declaration of Independence and his ownership of slaves. When he drafted the Declaration of Independence Jefferson wrote that the slave trade was an "execrable commerce ...this assemblage of horrors," a "cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberties." Yet when he had the opportunity in 1817 due to a bequest from Revolutionary War hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko, he did not free his slaves. Jefferson owned more than 600 slaves in his lifetime and at any given time approximately 100 slaves lived on Monticello. In 1792, Jefferson calculated that he was making a 4 percent profit per year on the birth of black children. Jefferson's nail boys alone produced 5,000 to 10,000 nails a day, for a gross income of $2000 in 1796, $35,000 in 2013.
"With five simple
words in the Declaration of Independence -- 'all men are created equal'
-- Thomas Jefferson undid Aristotle's ancient formula, which had
governed human affairs until 1776: 'From the hour of
their birth, some men are marked out for subjection, others for rule.'
In his original draft of the Declaration, in soaring, damning, fiery
prose, Jefferson denounced the slave trade as an 'execrable commerce
...this assemblage of horrors,' a 'cruel war against
human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life &
liberties.' ...
"But in the 1790s,
... 'the most remarkable thing about Jefferson's stand on slavery is his
immense silence.' And later, [historian David Brion] Davis finds,
Jefferson's emancipation efforts 'virtually ceased.'
...
"In 1817, Jefferson's
old friend, the Revolutionary War hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko, died in
Switzerland. The Polish nobleman, who had arrived from Europe in 1776 to
aid the Americans, left a substantial fortune
to Jefferson. Kosciuszko bequeathed funds to free Jefferson's slaves
and purchase land and farming equipment for them to begin a life on
their own. In the spring of 1819, Jefferson pondered what to do with the
legacy. Kosciuszko had made him executor of the
will, so Jefferson had a legal duty, as well as a personal obligation
to his deceased friend, to carry out the terms of the document.
"The terms came as no surprise to Jefferson. He had helped
Kosciuszko draft the will, which states, 'I hereby authorize my friend,
Thomas Jefferson, to employ the whole [bequest] in purchasing Negroes
from his own or any others and giving them liberty
in my name.' Kosciuszko's estate was nearly $20,000, the equivalent
today of roughly $280,000. But Jefferson refused the gift, even though
it would have reduced the debt hanging over Monticello, while also
relieving him, in part at least, of what he himself
had described in 1814 as the 'moral reproach' of slavery.
"If Jefferson had accepted
the legacy, as much as half of it would have gone not to Jefferson but,
in effect, to his slaves -- to the purchase price for land, livestock,
equipment and transportation to establish
them in a place such as Illinois or Ohio. Moreover, the slaves most
suited for immediate emancipation -- smiths, coopers, carpenters, the
most skilled farmers -- were the very ones whom Jefferson most valued.
He also shrank from any public identification with
the cause of emancipation. ...
"In the 1790s, as Jefferson was mortgaging his slaves to build Monticello, George Washington was trying to scrape together financing for an emancipation at Mount Vernon, which he finally ordered in his will. He proved that emancipation was not only possible, but practical, and he overturned all the Jeffersonian rationalizations. Jefferson insisted that a multiracial society with free black people was impossible, but Washington did not think so. Never did Washington suggest that blacks were inferior or that they should be exiled.
 |
|
an enslaved blacksmith who
worked on Jefferson's
plantation.
|
"It is curious that
we accept Jefferson as the moral standard of the founders' era, not
Washington. Perhaps it is because the Father of his Country left a
somewhat troubling legacy: His emancipation of his
slaves stands as not a tribute but a rebuke to his era, and to the
prevaricators and profiteers of the future, and declares that if you
claim to have principles, you must live by them.
The shock has worn off. It’s now been over a week since the biggest surprise election result in BC’s history: a fourth term for the BC Liberal Party. Early on in the election the BC NDP took a strong stance against the two tar sands pipelines that threaten BC’s rivers, communities and coastline, and the party was projected to take office. The polls were wrong. And now, we must urge the Liberal government to prioritize the people and the planet over nasty tar sands projects.
It’s time to move forward… and we have a plan. The leadership of the BC Liberal Party does provide us pro-green jobs and energy alternatives folks with opportunity. And along the way you’ve helped build a massive social movement in this part of country that will not rest until we stop the threat posed by Oil Giants Enbridge and Kinder Morgan. Rest assured, the BC Liberals are taking note.
Premier Christy Clark has restated that the Enbridge pipeline still does not meet her five conditions for approval
1.
This is a big step in the right direction for the Clark government.
Now, with the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel hearings
almost complete, Christy Clark is about to make her final submission on
behalf of BC. We need to encourage her to stand strong against the
Enbridge pipeline on our behalf.
Sign our petition to the BC government demanding it say "no" to more tar sands pipelines and tankers!
We may not have as much money as Big Oil and their friends in government but we have each other and in a democracy that's what matters. Christy Clark is listening. Now is the time to remind her that the movement to stop these tar sands projects is more determined than ever.
Sincerely, Ben West, Tar Sands Campaign Director, ForestEthics Advocacy
Delanceyplace is a brief daily email with an excerpt or quote we view as
interesting or noteworthy, offered with commentary to provide context.
There is no theme, except that most excerpts will come from a
non-fiction work, mainly works of history, are occasionally
controversial, and we hope will have a more universal relevance than
simply the subject of the book from which they came.
Dear Patrick,The shock has worn off. It’s now been over a week since the biggest surprise election result in BC’s history: a fourth term for the BC Liberal Party. Early on in the election the BC NDP took a strong stance against the two tar sands pipelines that threaten BC’s rivers, communities and coastline, and the party was projected to take office. The polls were wrong. And now, we must urge the Liberal government to prioritize the people and the planet over nasty tar sands projects.
It’s time to move forward… and we have a plan. The leadership of the BC Liberal Party does provide us pro-green jobs and energy alternatives folks with opportunity. And along the way you’ve helped build a massive social movement in this part of country that will not rest until we stop the threat posed by Oil Giants Enbridge and Kinder Morgan. Rest assured, the BC Liberals are taking note.
 |
Portrait of Thomas Jefferson
by
Rembrandt Peale, 1800
|
Sign our petition to the BC government demanding it say "no" to more tar sands pipelines and tankers!
We may not have as much money as Big Oil and their friends in government but we have each other and in a democracy that's what matters. Christy Clark is listening. Now is the time to remind her that the movement to stop these tar sands projects is more determined than ever.
Sincerely, Ben West, Tar Sands Campaign Director, ForestEthics Advocacy
 |
| Roman ruins on the Palatine Hill
Photo:
Ellyn Peirson
|
Mark Twain once said, "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter -- it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."
Also do you know when Greg is leaving?
Hugs
Corinne
Hi folks:
I will be making a flying visit to Vancouver next week, and if you are at home I would love to try to tee up a get-together. I am working all week, with several meetings not yet clearly scheduled, but perhaps can establish at least if you are around? I arrive on Saturday morning 1 June and leave on the afternoon of Monday 10 June, with most of my weekends already booked in for family biz. Staying with my mum. Love and cheers from Kathleen
Dear Collaborators, Another value red wine for your consideration. Collaboratively, John
I will be making a flying visit to Vancouver next week, and if you are at home I would love to try to tee up a get-together. I am working all week, with several meetings not yet clearly scheduled, but perhaps can establish at least if you are around? I arrive on Saturday morning 1 June and leave on the afternoon of Monday 10 June, with most of my weekends already booked in for family biz. Staying with my mum. Love and cheers from Kathleen
Another excellent value wine came to my attention this past week
whilst quaffing a bottle of Jacob’s Creek Reserve Shiraz with
collaborator Victor Horton over a tenderloin of pork delightfully
encased in pastry along with prosciutto and a mushroom mélange and
accompanied by a purée of yams and parsnip. The Shiraz – 2010 in
this case – proved to be a wonderful Auzzie-style wine from the
venerable Barossa Valley winery.
At $17 and ratings varying from 88 to 91, a true value wine with a vcr
in the 5+ range.
One published review for the 2008 vintage that holds for the 2010 in
my view:
It's a reliable red but it's in particularly good form of late - now that the
emphasis is more on the fruit than on the oak. It tasted good from the get-go
but given a little air the tannin structure and fleshiness of the fruit really started
to de-robe - in an enticing way. This is pretty good clobber. It tastes of
blackberries and coffee grounds, ripe plum and toffee. It's a medium weight
wine of exemplary balance. It's best young but it may cellar for even longer
than predicted below.
Vintage: 2008 Score: 91 points Campbell Mattinson Source: The Wine Front
Vintage: 2008 Score: 91 points Campbell Mattinson Source: The Wine Front
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