We needed tough lessons as children. An occasional playground fight was expected as the norm, and if we complained to our mother that we were being teased, we were treated to this glorious aphorism: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” My mom used to say that all the time, one of the seemingly endless adages she had at her disposal to deal with any of life’s problems. To this day I think long and hard about the practical application that dogma had on my life.
The idea that you could actually choose whether or not to be hurt by words: that was huge for me. Even though it has been repeated ad nauseam for generations, “sticks and stones” really is a powerful bit of philosophy to a kid. That’s one of the great things about being a parent: you can spout nothing but clichés, and yet, to your child, you come off as one of the great thinkers in Western culture.
–from MEAN DADS FOR A BETTER AMERICA, by Tom Shillue
Yesterday’s video failed to upload. We’ll see how this one does.it was called “by the fire…with no fire”
Thank you for reminding me. I wanted to talk about our post-show hangout in Memphis and here it is:
“A fatal”
Ass goose?
We stayed at a little motel in Arco ID last night.
Arco ID (population 879) was the first city in the world to be powered by a nuclear reactor, for an hour, July 17, 1955.
This was a test by what is now the ‘Idaho National Labratory’.
Recently, I watched a YouTube video on fatal practical jokes.
July 3, 1961, three men were killed when the nuclear reactor they were working on exploded here, at the National Labratory.
They were slowly removing the control rods, so that they could be clamped in place for maintenance. For some reason, they jerked one of the rods too high, too fast. This created a spike in the reactor, that caused all of the cooling water to instantly turn to steam, and explode.
The only explanation they could come up with was that one of the men was a known practical joker.
He may have goosed the man manually lifting the rods. Causing him to stand quickly, pulling the rod 20 inches to high.
Picture: Sitting in a giant Rocking chair, out side Pickles ...
