No kidding

My Mom and sister and nephew are coming to town today. I hope we get some sun while they're here, but the prognosis is not good. We'll have fun anyway. Or something. On a lighter note, I just bought a tasty new fresh pineapple (cheap! $1.98!!) and some fresh strawberries (also cheap! $2.98/quart!), so nothing else matters as much.

In 1975 the Rand (South Africa) Daily Mail reported that fisherman Mohamed Sefu from Kilwa, Tanzania, had landed in his nets a rather odd fish. 'It had two legs, each with 10 toes. The arms protruded from its chest, where there was also one eye. On his right side there was another eye which glowed brightly at night. It also had a small horn, like that of a cow, one ear, one hump, a large toothless mouth and a beard under its chin.' No measurements were given, but it was said the creature remained alive for some time after it was caught.

third time's the charm

On this day in 1916, 1917, and 1918, Codell Kansas was hit by tornadoes.

Dark Days

It was beautifully sunny here yesterday, so we set off for a hike by the beach. As we wound our way down out of the Coast Range to the coast... as we rounded the last bend before the exit to the beach... we saw the fog. Dense, heavy fog, blanketing the coast. 1000' visibility, at best. It was a beautiful hike anyway, and it started to clear up as we were there. Winter was particularly hard on the Coast Range this year: the trail we had hiked a dozen times before was now largely unfamiliar- big sections had fallen down the side of the mountain; huge trees had fallen in several places, blocking the old path in some places, and obliterating it in others.

And that's to say nothing of what we saw on the way there. Parts of the Coast Range look as though a tornado went through: vast swaths of large old trees laid down like so many matchsticks across the hillsides, and other fields of huge old trees snapped-off midway up their trunks. Must have been quite a storm. I'm glad I wasn't there.

Drunken archers, take up your bows! It's the Feast Day of St. Dunstan!

And in 1780, complete darkness fell on New England and eastern Canada. Candles were required all day, after about noon. It remains unexplained to this day.

What's news? What's the difference between 'censorship' and 'editing'? ...and 'publisher's discretion' for that matter? Two words: politics and money. What the news media doesn't talk about is often more important than what it does talk about.

Hot Hot Hot

In 1911, Big Joe Turner was born.
In 1980, Mt. St. Helens blew up.