Sound Familiar?

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us…

 

– Excerpts from the charges against King George III in the Declaration of Independence.

Hydrangeas

Not as vivid as some, but you can at least get a hint of the variation possible.

They’re in full bloom as I write this. Bushes three feet high or so, with huge clusters of bright pink or vivid blue flowers – with every shade in between (even a sort of pale yellow green at times). Sometimes even on the same bush. I don’t know why – probably something to do with a genetic quirk in the plant coupled with some soil chemistry. I could look it up, but seeing them has sent my thoughts in another direction.

Traditionally (at least in the US), light blue / sky blue / powder blue has been used to designate a boy at a birth celebration. Pink has been used to denote a girl. If you follow the news as much as I do, you cannot help but notice that there’s a lot of stuff about people who don’t exactly fit into the normal “boy/male” or “girl/female” boxes. Instead of Blue or Pink, they’re purple.

When we see the varied colors of hydrangea blossoms, we don’t consider them to be different plants, do we. So why shouldn’t we do the same with all the variations in people? Why waste the effort to force them into just one or two “colors”, when the variety is much nicer – and more natural?

Jaws at 50

I find it odd that one of the best and most important movies of all time never seems to get the respect it deserves. It spawned sequels and knock-offs, launched the careers of not just Steven Spielberg but John Williams, invented the “summer blockbuster”, and even gave rise to “Shark Week”. Get people talking about it, and they’ll soon agree it’s one of the greatest movies ever – or should at least be in the discussion. But come back to them the next day, and ask them to make a list of the Greatest Movies Ever…….

I think there are a couple of reasons for this neglect.

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Great Moments in Basketball History

I’m not a basketball fan. I can just about follow a game, but I have only the basic knowledge of the sport that one who glances at the sports news every day manages to acquire over the years. For example, I know that the NBA Finals are in full swing – but I couldn’t tell you what teams are involved.

But if you check out the “Book Reviews” page here, you’ll see that I’m a fan of history – and sports history. Recently (inspired largely by Joe Posnanski’s Why We Love Baseball and Why We Love Football), I started wondering what events and incidents would – or should – be included in a list of Great Moments in Basketball History.

There are plenty of lists out there – but I’m taking a much broader view of what belongs.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Great River

The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi
Boyce Upholt
W.W. Norton & Company
(c) 2024 by the author

The Mississippi River is one of the longest rivers in the world. Add its many tributaries to it – the Ohio, the Missouri, the Tennessee, the Arkansas, the Red – and you’ve got one of the greatest river systems on the planet. Upholt concentrates on the “Big Muddy” itself, giving a rough history of how people have used and tried to control it.

It’s not a perfectly linear history; like the river itself, he meanders quite a bit. A quick look at how people decided on what would be the source of the river gives way to the geological history of the river basin, which goes right in to its ‘discovery’ and exploration by Europeans. Then comes its role in the development and growth of the United States, complete with steamboats and river rafts. And then it’s back to the past as people start wondering about all those odd mounds that seem to pop up all around the river.

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City Connections

So Major League Baseball is starting Version 2.0 of the “City Connect” uniforms. Some of the new versions are clear improvements (e.g. Dodgers (though it wasn’t hard to come up with something better for them)); others are along the lines of “What were you thinking? Your first ones were great!” (e.g. Boston) Cynics can see them as just another way to suck money away from fans; others can see them as cool and fun ways to try something different on occasion.

I, of course, have my own Thoughts on the Matter.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Frankenhooker (1990)

If you dig in the heap of “Awful Movies That Are Still Fun to Watch”, you will undoubtedly come across The Brain that Wouldn’t Die (1962). It’s about a doctor whose radical ideas on transplants has him on the outs with the medical establishment. He gets the chance to Show Them All! When his girlfriend is decapitated in an accident. Fortunately, he manages to keep her head alive – now all he needs is a body to graft it to.

Weird idea, but not one that’s unusual. In competent hands, and with some resources given to it, one just might be able to create a passable movie on that premise.

Frank Henenlotter wrote that he came up with the idea for Frankenhooker out of thin air when his pitch for another movie failed. But the similarities between the two movies are too strong for it to have been a mere coincidence. Perhaps he saw the older movie and vaguely remembered the plot, or perhaps he knew that “Brain” was in the public domain, so he was free to riff on it to his heart’s content.

Anyway…..

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Going to Overtime

The NBA and NHL Playoffs are in full swing, and with a couple of local (to me) teams involved, it’s hard to avoid hearing the latest results. My mind started to wonder – have any Game Sevens in the final championship round gone to overtime? Have the two teams ever been so evenly matched that they needed to keep going past the normal limit to determine a champion?

(NOTE: The year given refers to the year in which the game was played, not the year the regular season began)

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Charm City – 6

I noticed something on the drive down. Everyone, with reason, talks about the foliage of fall. All those brilliant and vivid golds, oranges, and reds on the trees, mixed in with the remaining greens. But in the spring, and lasting for about the same amount of time, one can notice a similar display on the trees as new growth bursts out of its protective coverings. Golds and reds among the many shades of yellow-green, with the occasional splash of pink, white, or purple from an ornamental tree that managed to escape into the wild. The colors are rather less “saturated”, of course, but they are there if you are willing to look.

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