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Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery The World's Finest Knishes SINCE 1910; 137 East Houston Street; Between 1st & 2nd The Lower East Side

How many flavors, graham?

4,147 HITS @ 6:21 AM EST

I think COMMON GROUND would tend to be more common than it is high-falootin ....

And so ...

Where do you think you stand on the HIGH-FALOOTIN INDEX, graham?

I'm not even up to the bottom of it, myself ....

So I am off that chart, anyway ....

And I don't have any friends who drive Porsches ....

And I don't have a Mercedes-Benz ...

Oh, well ....

And so ...

I don't even wear shoes nor any high falootin' $100.00 sneakers

I have worn Converse or Keds sneakers since long as I can remember and keep em til the right one normally gets torn apart because when I drive
my foot is sideways, and the sneaker looks like the hole in Willie Nelson's acoustic guitar that he makes from the picks he uses that someday
will probably be in the Smithsonian

never had a fancy car
always been just a car Had Fords, Mercurys Dodge just regular 4 door cars
and when we moved to the house, the least expensive one on the block that needed work and got it

You're a LOW FALOOTIN dude at heart, graham ....

Me, too ....

And so ...

I'm into fisherman's sandles, myself ....

And so ...

I always thought of that as part of THE AMERICAN WAY ....

Keep working yourself upwards ...

And so ...

not everybody has the same options but in general...
you know, as an aside, when we moved into the house we did, we never advertised the fact that I am Jewish. (my wife isn't).And it was back far enough where it might have made a difference had we been "too vocal" on it. 20 years on it no longer matters here, but it did then.
And I think I did mention in the past a while back that when we lived in the small groundfloor apartment in Brooklyn, they all thought I was Italian
and that we had a Christmas tree was a plus that kept them quiet, til the dang old lady the week we were moving out, when we rented a Hertz and made a few trips with all our stuff,

she comes over (reminds me of some of the whiners here) and in my face said, You ain't Italian are you? I said what makes you think that.
And not one neighbor said goodbye to us(though they were peeping through the window as we walked down the stoop the last time
(I should add when we moved in, the Super had their little 6 year old daughter come downstairs and ask if we were Italian, and I said WHY and the
little girl must've thought I said yes, because they gave us the apartment (and its illegal in NYC to ask a question like that when renting or moving in)

I think bigotry is an American institution, graham ....

I see a family problem on the horizon. I'm going to my stepson's wedding in Oct. and I don't even own a tie.
I don't even remember the last time I wore one. I have been instructed to wear a solid navy blue suit
and TIE, so we'll see.

I would go without
or, if forced, take it off early on (maybe after the ceremony or the photos
Oct. can still be very hot and ties to me are like choking

Take my advice, rla, and don't wear a shirt that chokes you off when the top button is buttoned ....

And so ...

unless they force you or the photographers force you, if you gotta wear a tie, don't button the top button, let the tie hide it.

now that I think about it, it wasn't that I couldn't sleep last night, but that a helleva storm rolled in. Some of the loudest thunder, and hardest rain.

remember the old twilight zone episode-
Kick the can?

Hey fellas, wanna play kick the can

and the majority of the nursing home old people watch the kids play, then in the end, they play and they find that playing and laughter turned them back into little kids. Kick the can rejuevenated them
except for one older person

remember Jack Gilford? He was in the cracker jacks commercials. He played that ornery one who turned the old people into authorities and tried to stop the nonsense of kick the can

That was one of four of my favorite episodes.
The one with the bank teller (Burgess Meredith) who was a reader who locked himself in the vault, and came out to find the world had ended

Theone with the biz man who is all frazzled, he drives back to his hometown and finds himself back in the year of what, his 10th? birthday and meets his long deceased mom and dad (who in the end beleive him, but tell him this is the 10year olds moments, and there is no room for both of them

(that's 3 of the 4).

I have got to butt in...
In our townhouses there are a couple of kids who are visiting their grandparents.
They are not allowed to go swimming without an adult to watch them.
Gramma and grampa do not want to go...
SO my wife volunteered me.
What a hoot...

We play pool baseball and have splash contests.
For that time period i am just having brainless fun...
I forget that parts of me hurt.
I forget work and bills..
KICK THE CAN!!!

that is America!
that is feeling young and being young.

one of the things I like to do over the years with my kid is he would dive off the diving board or dock on the lake
and I would toss a ball (either a football or tennis ball and he would attempt to catch it in midair
and then his friends would want a shot at catching one

sometimes it is just fun to sit and watch the kids have fun, especially when the water is still too cold to swim in at the start of the season...Kids can jump into ice and they don't feel it

and I still like kicking a stone on the ground when walking (not many cans lying around these days)

Yes it did and it was noisy. I'm up in Pawling and it came in like gangbusters. Unsettled my dogs.
Hope its Okay to join the thread.
The Snuff

I'm kicking the can this weekend watching my son and a ton of his friends celebrate July Birthdays
Its sunny, warm. And they are headed to the pool. Thankfully they are old enough that I don't have
to watch them at the pool.

sure is you are more than welcome to stop by and have a seat anytime

HEY!

bigtom!

Nice to see you, dude!

And so ...

Not to turn morbid or maudlin, but I have a bad association "thing" with "KICK THE CAN" ....

In Viet Nam, Charlie figured out that Americans invariably will kick something like a can if it is left in their path ....

And fortuitously for Charlie, anyway, an American hand grenade with the spoon still on but the pin pulled would fit comfortably inside an empty American C-ration can, which were all over the place by then ...

So Charlie would put hand grenades in C-ration cans and leave them in the paths where we would travel and it was guaranteed that along would come an Americans who would KICK THE CAN!

Out would come the hand granade .....

BOOOOM! would go the hand grenade ....

MEDIC! MEDIC! would go the Americans who weren't killed when it went off ....

A very effective BOOBY TRAP it was, especially when America was supplying so many BOOBYS for it to catch ...

And so ...

I'll likely die with that association in my head ....

Sorry, graham ...

And so ...

Good for you, bigtom, that you have the capacity to do that ....

Hi, Snuf ....

It rained all night up here ....

It has been a wet, grey summer all in all ...

And so ...

very sorry to make you think of that
Is that an American thing, to kick something in the path...or skim a rock in the water

watching the British Open on tv in the background
59 year old Tom Watson is tied for lead in the third round and 16 holes finished.
59 years old!

No problem on your end, graham, you couldn't have known ...

I used to skim rocks on our pond all the time ....

I was pretty good at it ....

I think I got up to seven skips on one rock ....

One day, I found a real nice piece of shale to skip, and it sliced the end of my finger right open when I let fly ...

I still got the scar ...

And since I have been back from Viet Nam, I have watched people in cities when something is there on the sidewalk, and more often than not, somebody will come by and give it a kick, which always brings me back to those hand grenades ....

One person in my unit killed his lieutenant and two others when he kicked a can in their direction and out came the hand grenade ...

Just some American kid doing what he always did when a can was around - give it a good kick, see how far it can go ...

And so ...

Are they asking him about his ball-striking ability?

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more_spo...=1&page=all

Sunday, July 19th 2009, 4:00 AM

Last year it was Greg Norman, at 53, with his chance on the final day to win the British Open, to become the oldest winner of a major golf championship. This is much better now with Tom Watson, much bigger, what would be the biggest golf story of all time if he can win at Turnberry today, 32 years after he won a British Open there the first time. This is a story now that comes out of Scotland and out of golf and reaches out to everybody who cares about sports, who will watch this morning and into the early afternoon to see if Watson, a couple of months short of his 60th birthday, can actually do this. If he can be young again for one more day.

"I have a game plan," he said on ABC when his round Saturday was over, after he had played the last three holes in 2-under to get back the outright lead.

We will find out if his game plan, and his ball-striking, and the serenity he has shown so far, and the way he has driven and putted at his age will stand up over the last four or five hours at Turnberry. Oldest tournament in the world. Oldest golfer to ever come this close. Know this: If Watson can't close the deal, it won't be because he isn't tough enough.

When Watson was young, he putted the way kids do before they know putting is supposed to be hard. He didn't care how far past the cup he rammed the birdie putts he didn't make, because whether it was six feet or eight feet or even 10 feet coming back, he seemed to make them all.

He made all the putts the rest of us miss.

Until he stopped making them. He stopped making short putts. Watson had the yips, and after a while it was as terrible watching him stand over a 3-footer as it had been once with Ben Hogan. Watson stopped making putts and he stopped winning, even though he could hit the ball like a dream, the way he has so far at Turnberry. He was driving it better than ever and hitting irons as well as he ever had, and he couldn't win.

And Watson stayed in there. He didn't quit, he didn't go to a long putter or a belly putter or a cross-handed grip or the grip known as the "claw." He was still the tough kid from Kansas City who used to beat balls in the winter when no one else was around because he wanted to be great. He would figure this out.

A friend once asked why he didn't go to the belly putter or the long putter that other shaky golfers used, and got the look that Watson used to stare down even Jack Nicklaus with.

"It's not golf," Watson said.

Finally there was the Sunday afternoon at the Memorial, Jack's tournament, when he won again. It had taken nine years. He was 46. Now he is 59 and trying to win a British Open. Suddenly he, and not Tiger Woods, is the golfer the whole world is talking about. Here is what Jack Nicklaus was quoted as saying about his old friend, and old adversary, on Friday night when the questions started coming at Nicklaus from all over the world:

"I'm sure Tom knew he could play well, but perhaps he didn't know if he would play well. Now that he has played well and put himself in position for the next two days, hopefully he will forget his age and remember he is Tom Watson, and Tom Watson knows how to finish."

Then Nicklaus, who had just finished a round of golf at his Bear's Club in Jupiter, Fla., said to his friend Scott Tolley, "I watch very little golf, but I will watch this weekend."

These last 10 years have been a good time for Tom Watson. He is happily remarried. He still plays some senior golf. Every May he still goes fishing with his buddies Tom Devlin, who owns the Flint Hills National Golf Club in Wichita, and Max Moss, a retired veterinarian, at the ranch Watson owns outside Wichita. Barney Adams of Adams Golf is with them, too. They still stop in at the Toots diner outside Wichita for lunch. After dinner sometimes, Watson will still stand up in his living room and give Devlin or Moss a lesson.

Whatever happens today at Turnberry, whether he wins his sixth Claret Jug or not, he has thrilled us all. Only golf gives you a moment like this. We have been conditioned to believe that when Tiger Woods doesn't contend at a major that the tournament doesn't matter, that when he leaves a major early as he did this week, he takes the whole sport with him. Only this time he left us Tom Watson. He was in the lead Thursday night and still tied for the lead with Steve Marino on Friday night. Saturday he rolled in that bomb and nearly eagled No. 17 and barely made an unforced error all day and was at the top of another leaderboard in the British Open.

Another thing Nicklaus said Friday: "I always expect to see Tom Watson's name at the top of the leaderboard."

This is a sports story to make you cheer whether golf is your sport or not. This is what it would have been like for DiMaggio to get one more swing at the old Stadium, or Clyde to get one more chance to throw it to Bradley coming around a screen, or Namath to throw one deep to Maynard one more time at Shea. Watson doesn't play for all the old golfers today. He plays for everybody who dreams about being young again.

livyjr-
my aunt to this day hears thunder and she starts to scream, as it reminds her of the bombing in Germany, and has her entire life (she is in her mid80s now).

My wife just called and she won a 2nd place ribbon in her morning show. She has another showing this afternoon.
I'm really prowd of her...she did a little riding when she was a kid but she just got back into it about 10 years ago
when she was 47. She started off in Western Pleasure and didn't do real well in competition. Since she switched over to dressage 3 or 4 years ago she has done real well...

I heard an older golfer going on and on about this new terminology of "ball-striking" ....

It was quite amusing to listen to ....

He thinks calling it "ball-striking" is quite pretentious ....

According to him, golf is a game where you hit a little white ball ....

You don't strike anything ....

I think he has a point, graham, from a scientific perspective, anyway ....

And so ...

I work on being older gracefully ...

well nerves might have made him 2-putt and tie and force a playoff

we shall see if the big-mo is still with him or the other guy
4 hole playoff

I can well imagine that, graham ...

It has to be a terrible thing to have to go through if you are a civilian on the ground ...

Especially when the bombs are falling, and you never know where they are going to land ...

I never liked to think about that part of it when the mortars were falling lest the thought of where it might land catch the attention of one of those things and draw it right into your face ...

And so ...

Congratulations to her, rla, for the accomplishment and for keeping working at it ...

Did you make the sandwiches?

yes, congratulations to your wife RLA

1,242 HITS for "graham's song" at 4:20 PM EST ....

I made the sandwitches and they were a big hit...

The rest of the afternoon didn't turn out so well...some over sized German horse kicked Star on the leg and they
were not able to ride in the afternoon show. They're back home now and the injury doesn't appear to be so serious...

I hope your horse will be okay, rla ...

Yes, I hope Star is OK rla.

Funny thing about Star is that she knew from the very beginning that she was a star...extraordinarily prissy...
very pretty but very prissy...she is very loving to people and other horses so long as they show her adequate
deference...There was a 15 Hands high German horse there that apparently no one had informed to show Star
proper deference...

Ah, life in the world of horses is not all that different from life in the world of humans ....

And so ...

some songs for the morning

Harry Chapin
Flowers are Red
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noVC5Jt2Gu8

Ricky Van Shelton
Keep it between the lines
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a129CJhWPQA

Theme from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZn7X_-tF5I

the final scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3IYZu0pF64...feature=related

Chairman Mao had a "Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let One Hundred Schools Contend" program over in China, back when ....

But he only liked the red ones ....

So he had all the others cut down once they started to show some different colors ....

Harry Chapin had a lot of insights on life, is my thought ....

I wonder what he thought of war and strife and the Christian Bible, which is full of that stuff ...

Remember, graham, that the line has been put there by those who know more than you for YOUR own good ....

So stay within the lines, graham ....

And do not use a different color than the one designated by number in that space ....

That too is for your own protection ....

For which you should be eternally thankful ....

And so ...

Harry Chapin was one of my favorites.
Each year he did 2/3 of all his shows 100% for charity
Harry was one of the first of the post-60s protest singers (of course artists like Pete Seeger and 100s of others did so in the earlier years)
to devote so much to causes, something shortly after John Denver did. Most70s artists and 80s too were self-centered and money oriented.
Harry testified a number of times in DC before congress about helping the hungry

then Harry died.
And his manager later was one of the people who helped get the We are the World going.

Of which Michael Jackson's people took so much credit for after he died.
If it wasn't for Harry, probably wouldn't have been thought of in the first place

you would think just for his humanitarian work he would be in the Rock hall of fame, but nooooooo

What are the politics of getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, graham?

How would humanitarian work enter into that equation?

I don't think a lot of people ever think of Harry Chapin as rock and roll ....

I don't, myself ....

In my mind, he occupied his own unique niche in the world of music .....

Rock and roll used to be Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis ...

Now it is a term that don't seem to carry any real meaning ....

And so ...