As Always, Time Goes By . . .

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Tucson Weather Today

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Latest News!

In the most recent PowerBall lottery drawing (Wednesday night) I won three dollars for picking the Power Ball, which was 39, short form for the year of my birth, 1939.

Glory be!

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Today the end of the first leg of my fitness walk proved to be the Fry's Supermarket (formerly Kroger) where I found that an item on their Super-Special Sale was one of my favorite foods (a 5-count tube of refrigerated bake in ten-minutes at 400 degree biscuits) -- which was only 25 cents per tube (usually 79-cents.) Well... let me tell you, I bought 12 tubes ($3 total) of those taste-tempting, mouth-watering puffed-up rounds of pure delight... potent reminders of the biscuits Grandma Morris used to bake from scratch on her old black wood burning flat-topped kitchen range back in the early 1940s.

Imagine that! Five pipin' hot buttery-flavored biscuits for a quarter. A nickel per biscuit. Mn-mm! What a deal; can't beat that with a big stick.

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Now for something completely different:

For Raymond Carver, a Lifetime of Storytelling

By STEWART KELLERMAN

Reprinted from the New York Times, May 31, 1988

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Three or four days ago I read a statement containing questionable grammar on the Sargento Cheese Company's website and, being the grumpy old busy-body I am, I volunteered an email comment to Sargento concerning their grammar. Here is the comment I sent them:

In the section of your website titled Our Company I read the following:

Sargento Foods Inc. is a family-owned company comprised of three business divisions: Consumer Products, Food Service and Food Ingredients.

The term "comprised of" is incorrect grammar. The correct usage would be "... is a family-owned company comprising three business divisions:" because the word of is never used with comprised -- and you can look it up if you don't wish to believe me.

Just trying to be helpful... I LOVE your cheese and buy some of it at the grocery store every week.

. . .

Yesterday I received the following reply:

Dear Mr. Chambers -- Thank you for your e-mail. My boss and I usually pride ourselves on being the "grammar gurus" at Sargento, but this one got by us. You'll be happy to know that we made the change you suggested. Thanks for caring!

Pat Lombardo
Sargento Consumer Affairs Department

Oh my goodness! Was that not most gracious of them? I am sincerely touched.

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Last night, after watching the first disc of a Stephen King DVD movie titled Rose Red, I went to sleep at ten-thirty o'clock, but woke up a little after midnight and could not get back to sleep, probably because I had foolishly ingested great quantities of caffeine throughout the day -- or perhaps because I had napped for a couple hours that afternoon.

Whatever the cause, I could not sleep so I got out of bed and went into the living room, reclined back in my recliner, and read two selections from The Best American Essays of the Century: Pamplona In July by Ernest Hemingway and The Hills of Zion by H.L. Mencken.

Hemingway gave me no trouble; he never does; I understood his every word. But, Mencken was another story. Below are four of the words I encountered in his essay that gave me some pause:

antinomianism
noun
1. the understanding that under the gospel dispensation of grace the moral law is of no use or obligation because faith alone is necessary to salvation
2. rejection of a socially established morality'

exegesis
noun
exposition, explanation; especially an explanation or critical interpretation of a text.

cosmogony
noun
1. a theory of the origin of the universe.
2. the creation or origin of the world or universe.

aurochs
noun
the ancestor of domestic cattle, aurochs was a type of huge wild cattle which inhabited Europe, Asia and North Africa, but is now extinct.

My goodness... Mencken certainly does make the unschooled among us (me) strive mightily for complete comprehension. It is well worth it though. He sure can write some outrageously humorous stuff.

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Well, it seems that a spending bill for 2011 has at last been passed by Congress. Yesterday, being happily subscribed to their news reports, I received the following email from NASA:

April 14, 2011

David Weaver
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
david.s.weaver@nasa.gov

RELEASE: 11-112

NASA ADMINISTRATOR CHARLES BOLDEN'S STATEMENT ON THE 2011 SPENDING BILL

WASHINGTON -- NASA Administrator Charles Bolden issued the following statement Thursday about the passage of the 2011 spending bill:

"We appreciate the work of Congress to pass a 2011 spending bill. NASA now has appropriated funds to implement the 2010 Authorization Act, which gives us a clear path forward to continue America's leadership in human spaceflight, exploration and scientific discovery. Among other things, this bill lifts funding restrictions that limited our flexibility to carry out our shared vision for the future. With this funding, we will continue to aggressively develop a new heavy lift rocket, multipurpose crew vehicle and commercial capability to transport our astronauts and their supplies on American-made and launched spacecraft. We are committed to living within our means in these tough fiscal times - and we are committed to carrying out our ambitious new plans for exploration and discovery."

-end-

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Time in its aging course brings all things to pass.
--Aeschylus