It was May 31st. I did not hear or read a word about this until I saw this article in Catholic media. Coincidentally I was at an Archdiocese "Bible Summit" last Saturday and one of the prime speakers was Bishop Espaillat, the youngest (46) Bishop in the Country.
June 7th, 2014, at the age of 88. Jeanne Faranda had a 50+ year career as a nurse - one of the first to receive a BSN (from the College of Mt. St. Vincent in the Bronx). She had a huge variety of positions in her career - educator, public health, etc. Her MS was in Public Health.
And four sons! She thought that was pretty cool. At the end of her life, she was still grimacing and rolling her eyes at my jokes.
That's me - mouth open. My Dad was in Korea when I was born; didn't see me til I was near one year old.
Tom and newcomer Jim. I think I'm Wyatt Earp?
I have posted this the last two years. When you have 15 or 20 minutes sit down and read it.
A great piece of writing from their November, 1960 issue. Absorbing reading; terrifying and heroic...
Unlike what happens to other great battles, the passing of the years and the retelling of the story have softened the horror of Omaha Beach on D Day.
This fluke of history is doubly ironic since no other decisive battle has ever been so thoroughly reported for the official record. While the troops were still fighting in Normandy, what had happened to each unit in the landing had become known through the eyewitness testimony of all survivors. It was this research by the field historians which first determined where each company had hit the beach and by what route it had moved inland. Owing to the fact that every unit save one had been mislanded, it took this work to show the troops where they had fought.
How they fought and what they suffered were also determined in detail during the field research. As published today, the map data showing where the troops came ashore check exactly with the work done in the field; but the accompanying narrative describing their ordeal is a sanitized version of the original field notes.
I think first posted in 2016. Everything repeated below.
Lost track of the # of years I've posted this. It never gets old! Now 42 43 44 45 46 47 years ago...
The sad part - Michael and Karen, Bill & Kevin are no longer with us... Original posting text below with no changes.
Ahhh, 40 years ago - June fifth, 1976. In Downing Stadium, a Rugby Festival with four games. After three New York teams all get steamrolled by English sides, the England Champions Gosforth take on the NY champions - and my club - Essex. Along with Colin Kiley, I was co-captain of the team - in those days there were two captains, one for the backs and one for the forwards. We had won the NY Championship by going 5-0 in the first division.
The final score, Gosforth 17, Essex 8.
The following is excerpted from the Essex Rugby Club 1978 brochure - thanks to Brigid for scanning in the pictures and for my friend and business associate Judy for typing in the text.
Training for the Spring, 1976 Season was hampered by late winter snow. The March 13th opener against Manhattan was delayed one hour while players waited out a fierce hailstorm which left the field wet in some spots and ice-covered in others. This was not the type of weather in which to take on the seasoned Manhattan Pack. To make matters worse, U.S. Eagle Tom Selfridge had been installed in the back row by Manhattan and both experienced Essex fly-halves were unavailable for the match. Both sides felt each other out until the fifteenth minute when Mike Kenefick and newcomer Bill Gardner combined for a try in the corner. Early in the second-half Bruce Corrigan stole an errant Manhattan pass and raced fifty yards to score under the posts with Krenn converting for a 10-0 lead. From that point Essex held on for a 10-8 victory and the club’s first ever “big game” win.
Essex continued to improve as the season progressed to the point where it had won eight of its first nine matches and was looking ahead toward a showdown with Old Blue to determine the Met Union Championship. The new, young players were providing speed and enthusiasm and were meshing nicely with several of the more experienced originals who by now had developed some sense of what the game was all about. As the match which would determine the championship drew near, Essex was thinking and playing confidently.
Prior to May 8, 1976 Essex had never beaten Old Blue’s first XV. No sooner had the game begun than Essex spotted the opposition to a 0-6 lead and it looked as though they might never beat them. Winger Bob Piazza dummied two defenders and went in for a try from the weak side to get Essex rolling and the ever present Peter Cozens blocked a kick, scooped up the loose ball and turned it into four points as Essex rolled up 17 points before Old Blue was able to strike again. The 17-14 final victory assured the Essex Rugby Club of the 1976 Metropolitan New York Rugby Union Championship and some long awaited recognition. It also won for Essex the right to be the final opponent for England’s touring John Player Cup Champions, the Gosforth Football Club.
With one week to prepare for England’s finest club side, severe anxiety set in. Reports of the rugged Gosforth pack anchored by Irish and British Lion prop Ray McLoughlin filtered down from Boston where the tourists were manhandling some of the finest American club and select sides. In addition to hosting the party loving Englishmen for two days prior to the match, Essex had to witness a Fylde massacre of Old Maroon only minutes before taking the field. The eighty minutes that followed have to be considered the club’s finest hour. The Essex forwards contested the much heavier, veteran Gosforth pack at every turn. Tom Faranda was nothing less than outstanding in checking his opposite number, Steve Smith of Sale and England. Corrigan, Kiley, McDonough and Cozens covered by field. Mike Kenefick and Tom Crowley in the centers stopped every Gosforth rush, often well behind the line and penetrated the English defenses on any number of occasions. Bill Gardner and Peter Ferrara scored unconverted trys, the latter of which saw at least nine Essex players handling the ball. The 8-17 victory for Gosforth was the closest call that they had on their tour and unquestionably a victory for the Essex Rugby Club and the 2,000 or so New York area spectators.
Forty years later, thinking about why we didn't get blown out:
My recollection is that the post-match party was pretty good!
I wish I were this clever.
"I hear woke millennials just can't resist avocado toast," Musk was heard murmuring as he constructed the complex apparatus of the trap. "My vast knowledge of industry and technology has taught me that if I'm ever going to root out the source of censorship at Twitter, this is how I must do it."
Users had begun to raise concerns about instances of ongoing unfairness, leading to the belief that people with "woke" agendas still remained employed at the company. Fortunately, Musk's trap is specifically designed to catch hipster millennial tech employees. "It starts with turning a large crank," Musk explained. "It then involves a combination of elements, including a rolling marble, an old bathtub, and a figurine of a man diving into a small swimming pool before a string pulls out a stick propping up a wooden box that drops down onto the individual — or individuals — eating the avocado toast. It is, without question, my greatest invention."
At a cost of just shy of $6 billion, the trap is seen by Musk as a bargain. "If I spent $44 billion to buy the company, this is a small price to pay to weed out problem employees," he said.
At publishing time, no one had taken the bait as the toast wasn't gluten-free.
Real research. Not a joke.
In the study about sexual satisfaction, researchers at San Diego State University, Penna State, the University of California San Diego and Boston University tracked more than 800 men aged 56 to 68 over a 12-year period.
Their conclusion: that those who reported declining satisfaction with their sex lives over the 12-year period also performed worse on average in a variety of standardized memory tests. Those for whom erectile dysfunction was more common also tended to perform worse on memory tests, as did those who saw their incidence of ED increase over the course of the study.
“Decreases in erectile function and sexual satisfaction were both associated with memory decline,” the researchers write in the latest issue of the medical journal the Gerontologist. “Decreasing sexual health may signal an increased risk for cognitive decline.”
***************************
More sex may not ward off dementia. But better safe than sorry, right?
Ugh. Tough one. Word is JAZZY.
Good. The opinions seem to be that at least 150 Republicans will support the legislation and almost all but the total Democrat whackos will also support it. They may not like the concessions to McCarthy but know a default would be very bad for Biden.
Here's Mike Lawler statement.
When it comes to the debt ceiling, I have said from the beginning that I had three parameters: the President must negotiate with the Speaker, we must cut spending, and we cannot default.
I am pleased that the legislation negotiated by the Speaker and the White House over the weekend meets all three of these parameters and that is why I will proudly be supporting the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
This legislation reduces discretionary spending for the first time in decades, a crucial step to getting us back to fiscal solvency. It also cuts non-defense and non-VA spending to 2022 levels, the same levels that were set by the Limit, Save, Grow Act.
Additionally, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Fiscal Responsibility Act will save U.S. taxpayers $2.1 trillion over the next six years. This is done while blocking $5 trillion in new taxes proposed by the Biden Administration. It also claws back billions of dollars in unspent COVID funds and establishes guardrails on spending by executive orders.
With a divided government, no party is going to get 100% of what it wants. Both parties need to come together and compromise. The Fiscal Responsibility Act is a bipartisan compromise that puts us on the path to fiscal sanity, protects our commitments to veterans and seniors, and responsibly raises the debt ceiling so we don’t default.
I have heard from many of you in recent weeks who have reached out urging us to work across the aisle to ensure we do not default.
Came down to three words - house, mouse, or louse. Good thing it was not louse!
From BB News -
"Florida is a terrible place, really terrible, a hellhole, really," said Trump. "Only very, very stupid people live in Florida. That's how bad it is. So bad, really bad. But it would be a wonderful, perfect place if Ron DeSanctimonious, Meatball Ron, hadn't driven it into the ground--like a dog. Now, only very bad dummies still live there. And I know a thing or two about really bad dummies. Sad!"
Trump then vowed he would work with CNN, MSNBC, and Dr. Fauci to ensure DeSantis didn't win and then make the entire country just like Florida, where stupid people live.
"If Ron DeStupid wins the Presidency, which he won't, the entire country will be a balmy tropical paradise with freedom and low taxes," said Trump. "But it will be a balmy tropical paradise with freedom and low taxes where I am not President, and that would be terrible. Nobody wants that!"
At publishing time, DeSantis had retaliated by giving Disney approval to build a resort at Trump International Golf Club.
Jim Brown died on May 18th at the age of 87. Mutli-sport amazing - phenomenal all round athlete - and certainly the greatest NFL running back - who went on to have an interesting life. He and NY Giant linebacker Sam Huff had some great duels. I remember how shocked people were when he retired from football at the age of 30.
Took one minute. Lucky always helps.
Close call.
Plenty of evidence.
In a 19-page advisory, the United States surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, noted that the effects of social media on adolescent mental health were not fully understood, and that social media can be beneficial to some users. Nonetheless, he wrote, “There are ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”
The report included practical recommendations to help families guide children’s social media use. It recommended that families keep mealtimes and in-person gatherings free of devices to help build social bonds and promote conversation. It suggested creating a “family media plan” to set expectations for social media use, including boundaries around content and keeping personal information private.
Dr. Murthy also called on tech companies to enforce minimum age limits and to create default settings for children with high safety and privacy standards. And he urged the government to create age-appropriate health and safety standards for technology platforms.
Adolescents “are not just smaller adults,” Dr. Murthy said in an interview on Monday. “They’re in a different phase of development, and they’re in a critical phase of brain development.”
*******************
At the same time, the surgeon general’s advisory noted, social media platforms brim with “extreme, inappropriate and harmful content,” including content that “can normalize” self-harm, eating disorders and other self-destructive behavior. Cyberbullying is rampant.
Moreover, social media spaces can be fraught for young people especially, the advisory added: “In early adolescence, when identities and sense of self-worth are forming, brain development is especially susceptible to social pressures, peer opinions and peer comparison.”
*******************
In the interview on Monday, Dr. Murthy acknowledged that the lack of clarity around social media was a heavy burden for users and families to bear.
“That’s a lot to ask of parents, to take a new technology that’s rapidly evolving and that fundamentally changes how kids perceive themselves,” Dr. Murthy said. “So we’ve got to do what we do in other areas where we have product safety issues, which is to set in place safety standards that parents can rely on, that are actually enforced.”
Recent Comments