Thursday, May 30, 2013

Cleanliness And Yellow Flowers

     
Tucson Weather Today

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One season when I was young and somewhat  strapped for money, I moonlighted as a dish washer in an Interstate Truck Stop restaurant on the midnight shift. One thing I was shown early on was that all bread left on a customer's plate, whether bitten into of not, was brought back into the dish-washing area and lifted (by bare dirty hands of the bus boy) and deposited in a special 'bread only' trash-style can that was meant for storing the main ingredient for the next day's bread pudding.

Behind-the-scenes hand washing by employees in that specific eatery, as well in many other restaurants I've observed over the years, is nearly always a hit or miss activity, usually consisting of nothing more than a splash and sprinkle of water (no soap) across the fingers.

While loitering one day in the vicinity of a Florida Mall Food Court, I espied an employee grilling cheeseburgers. At one point the busy, busy young girl inadvertently nudged a large stack of cheese slices off the counter and onto the dirty, dirty floor. She quickly bent down and retrieved the errant stack and set it aside. In a few minutes, after a darting  look around the area, she reached over and brought the stack back to the grill and began using from it again. She did not remove the end slices which had come in contact with the floor, but she did give them a quick rub against her grime-smeared apron.

Restaurants aside, I noticed that every one of the ladies with whom I have enjoyed marriage or cohabitation and a modicum of domestic bliss exhibited this same lack of strict cleanliness. They washed their hands at all the appropriate times, but this (soapless) hand washing usually consisted of a quick flip of the fingers through a stream of cool running water.

That was once my method, too, at a young age, before I was taught the right way to wash. But when I was once delegated, at about the age of thirteen or so, to assist the two school janitors for a couple hours I learned the proper way to wash one's hands. I watched at lunch time as the two hard working men wet their hands with hot water at the restroom sink, applied liquid soap liberally, and vigorously rubbed their hand together, paying attention to getting every inch of exposed flesh soapy and then rinsing all the soap from their hands thoroughly under the hot, hot water.

And that's how I washed my hands, at that time and ever afterward.

Well, almost always afterward.

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Yellow Flowers Growing Alongside The Road
Tucson, Arizona - May 29, 2013

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TRIVIA

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

Accused Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan continues to draw his Army salary (currently $278,000) while awaiting trial. In May of 2013, 42 months after the Fort Hood shootings, a Dallas TV station reported that Hasan has been drawing his pay in the three and a half years since the incident. Hasan's confinement and medical expenses are also being pied by the military.

Confirmed by Snopes

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WORD FOR TODAY

ablution
noun
-  a cleansing with water or other liquid
-  washing yourself: the act of washing the hands or the whole of the body
-  the act of washing (as in the phrase "perform one's ablutions")
synonyms
cleansing, sanitizing, decontamination

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS


Gale Eugene Gale Eugene Sayers
(born May 30, 1943)
Gale Sayers, also known as "The Kansas Comet", is a former American college and professional football player who was a running back in the National Football League (NFL) for seven seasons during the 1960s and early 1970s. He played college football for the University of Kansas, and was twice recognized as an All-American. He was a first-round pick in the 1965 NFL Draft, and played his entire pro career for the NFL's Chicago Bears.



Meredith Lynn MacRae
(May 30, 1944 - July 14, 2000)
Meredith MacRae was an American actress and singer, known for her roles as Sally Ann on My Three Sons (1963–1965) and as Billie Jo on Petticoat Junction (1966–1970). On July 14, 2000, MacRae died from complications of brain cancer
.


Michael J. Pollard
(born May 30, 1939)
Michael J. Pollard (born Michael John Pollack, Jr.) is an American actor known for playing the character C.W. Moss in 1967 crime film Bonnie and Clyde. In Star Trek Season 1 Episode 8 "Miri", at age 27, he played a barely pre-pubescent boy, leader of a band of orphaned children.



Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc
(May 30, 1908 - July 10, 1989)
Mel Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros. as the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, the Tasmanian Devil and many of the other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons, during the "Golden age of American animation". He later worked for Hanna-Barbera's television cartoons, most notably as the voices of Barney Rubble in The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely in The Jetsons.

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"Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely."
--P. J. O'Rourke
   

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