Monday OYSTERS

Good morning from Paradise,

Quote of the day:

“With you and me dying is easy. When everyone that you have ever loved has been raped or butchered, it is living that is hard.”

                            Clint Eastwood as Josey Wales

Back to who would I support for President. One of the questions I ask myself is who would I want to be facing Putin and others with the possibility of nuclear war in the balance? It ain't Donald...he wears his ego like a thorny crown...It ain't Hillary, she lies and blames everyone else for her mistakes...It ain't Bernie, he was a conscientious objector which makes me believe that Putin and the other would gauge as being timid...I want someone that is level headed and realizes that Putin and others understand steely-eyed determination and strength of character. I am still weighing all of that.

Breakfast in E-3 (A condo on Pensacola Beach) a while back:

6 large shrimp that had been covered with Old Bay seasoning and steamed.

12 raw oysters on saltine crackers and covered with a sauce made of ketchup, horseradish, soy sauce and Tabasco. This dish is eaten in one bite per oyster and chewed vigorously.

4 slices of raw yellow fin tuna that had been marinating in a mixture of soy sauce, lemon juice and a few drops of Tabasco. Chop sticks are optional.

A small slice of Key Lime pie.

One small Cuba Libra. This is rum, Coca Cola and a squeeze of lime.

For lunch I will probably have a Sidelines hot dog. It is a hot dog made with a Kielbasa sausage, chili, onions, Cole slaw and sauerkraut. It is so voluminous that it cannot be lifted without falling apart and must be eaten with a knife and fork...Yummy!

A while back Willie’s Nelson threw a free concert. It was paid for by BP because of the oil spill. He opened with his signature song “Whiskey River.” Willie is probably the most traveled musician that ever existed. What has Willie NOT seen in his lifetime? There is rumor that after four days of I.W. Harper whiskey and grass with very little sleep, Willie was supposed to have a song for a movie ready by the end of the day. His bus driver said “Come on Willie, we have to get on the road.” Willie sat down and wrote “On the road again, I can't wait to get back on the road again….” The song was ready in 10 minutes. By the way, Willie wrote “Crazy” made famous by Patsy Cline and “Hello Walls” made famous by Faron Young among many, many others. My favorite is “Blue Eyes crying in the Rain”. What a treasure he is to us all.

A while back when I was on a sabbatical to Pensacola Beach I wrote this about the local news:

I am sorry to report that I cannot find any gun duels, drive-by shootings, over-zealous cops stopping people for nothing, no robberies of a convenience store, etc. There were three DUI citations. But considering the number of people moving around this weekend that is a surprising statistic. The high temperature today will be about 81 with partly cloudy skies and calm winds. If there is a wind it will be off the Gulf of Mexico.

This Date in History October 19

1781 On this immortal day, after eight years of blood, sweat, toil and tears the British Army of 8,000 soldiers and sailors commanded by General Charles Cornwallis surrendered to the Patriot army commanded by General George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia essentially ending the Revolutionary War in the United States. There were a few sea battles and skirmishes elsewhere afterward but the land war in America was over. Earlier in mid-September Cornwallis had retreated with his ragged army from the Carolinas after being bled white by several engagements with US General Nathaneal Greene. Greene did not win any of the engagements but made the British pay a tall price for each victory. Cornwallis decided to head back toward New York and the umbrella of British General Sir Henry Clinton and his troops and ships. Cornwallis decided that it would be prudent to travel north up the east coast so as to have the British Navy close aboard for supply and reinforcements. The only problem was that the French fleet had arrived at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay first and established a blockade which the British navy could not breach which essentially isolated Cornwallis. Cornwallis and his troops dug in on Gloucester Hill near Yorktown, Virginia. Washington sent the Marquis de Lafayette and 5,000 troops to cut off a retreat to the south and Washington and his troops sealed off a retreat to the north. With the French controlled Chesapeake Bay at his back, Cornwallis had no option but to surrender or risk total annihilation. On the afternoon of this day, Cornwallis feigned sickness and under a white flag sent his second in command Colonel John O’Hara out with his sword. As the British troops stacked their arms their band played “The World Turned Upside Down.” In 1783 the United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris which recognized the United States as a free and independent nation.

1812 In June of 1812 Napoleon Bonaparte and his enormous army of 500,000 launch an attack on Russia. This was the largest army ever assembled up to that time. The Russian army knew it would be fruitless to combat such an enormous army and set about a campaign of delay, harassment and destroying anything of use ahead of the Frenchmen. On September 10, Napoleon arrived in Moscow but found no one home. The Russians had evacuated the entire city and they weren’t done yet. A day or two after Napoleon’s arrival, he started seeing flames and soon the entire city was ablaze which denied Napoleon and his army shelter for the infamous Russian winter which was already upon them. On this date, Napoleon decided that he had better head for the house and turned his army west and set out. If there was ever hell on earth it was Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow with the Russian army nipping at his heels every step of the way. There is no use in me telling y'all what hell those troops suffered before arriving back in Europe. The Russians got ahead of them and burned each and every bridge they had to cross heading west making Napoleon’s engineers and his troops stay a little longer in the numbing cold of the winter while they rebuilt bridges. The final analysis was that Napoleon arrived back in France with only 100,000 of the original 500,000 troops. Even with this famous disaster known to the world, Adolph Hitler tried the same thing in 1942 with nearly the same result. Dictators with visions of glory are all the same, they seek fame and power at the expense of the lives of others.

Quotable quotes:

When asked why she never married, Gloria Steinem said “I cannot mate in captivity.”

“Why do men get married? So they don’t have to hold their stomachs in anymore.”

Red Skelton

“Basically my wife was immature. She would come into the bathroom while I was in the tub and sink all of my boats.”

Woody Allen

“Why did God create men...because a vibrator can’t mow the lawn.”

Madonna

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow