Your old-new cyber friends are happy for you, C.T.!

And you are a delight to meet in person.

Thank you for your service, in uniform and out of uniform.

Your public service now is as important as what you did before.

The war on poverty is relentless and takes far too many prisoners.

When did children stop walking to their school-bus stops?

Every morning I find myself behind a bus that turns on the lights, stops, waits for a kid to board and be seated, coasts 20 yards with the lights on and the door open and picks up the next kid.

The bus in question makes a total of six stops of this nature over a distance of about 1/4 of a mile.

There is more than enough space for a group of children to wait and no safety issue with regard to them walking twenty yards.

The kids look to be middle-school or older, they're not toddlers.

So why six stops instead of one?

Many American parents have an exaggerated (Crazy) fear of stranger abduction.
My wife's running buddy while we lived in York was one such case.
She would sit at the end of her driveway with her son waiting for the bus, not trusting him to be there alone, for fear on an abduction.

Of course, years later, when he turned 16, indulgent mommy bought him some outrageous muscle car to drive around in at all hours of the day and nite.
Of course, the inexperienced, unsupervised driver totalled the car. Thankfully, he was not seriously hurt.
I don't understand how parents can be terrified of a remote risk, and oblivious to a common one.
The human mind is an interesting thing.

Last edited by Goose (11/16/2016 6:15 pm)

11/16/2016

 The mood is elevated.

 Actually, I'm vibrating like a tuning fork.

 But I'm good with it.

 I had a rather severe pain flair-up. It started last Thursday and ran right through Tuesday morning. I still managed to get out of the house on Friday but there was no way I was getting out again.

 So I was doped up and moping.

 So I thought I'd try this:

 There is a regional dish...at least I think it's regional...called Hog Maw. Really attractive name, yes? Kinda like “Snot Pudding” or “Turd Loaf”. Okay, that last one was over the top but there it is.

 A hog maw is basically a hog stomach with the tripe scraped clean stuffed with sausage and potatoes with a little chopped onion mixed in and baked. It's served in slices. Admittedly, they look like titanic slugs going into the oven but once they're browned they make my mouth water.

 I received my recipe for hog maw from my mother who received in from her mother and so on. There were four boys and I was the only one that seemed inclined to cook so I got the lessons. I managed to follow my mother's recipe for a decade or so before realizing I had basically doubled the amount of stuffing.

 Yet I still managed to cram it all in to the same two maws.

 That pan is always lifted with a grunt. It weighs around eleven pounds. But the actual ingredients are always correct so they turn out well.

 I usually do a hog maw—a pair, really--around Thanksgiving. Not for any particular reason. I just develop a craving so I go with it. I'd been casting about for a place to get a proper maw for stuffing and went with Superior Meats on South Queen St.

 It's one of those old-style butcher shops. They do meat. You can get anything you want...as long as it's meat. Get it? They've been there for as long as I can remember. I stopped in and asked for a hog maw and he told me they have both stuffed and un-stuffed.

 Okay, call me lazy. I'm going with one of the stuffed ones. Mostly, I'm just curious. It's hard to judge them because they're wrapped in butcher paper and frozen solid. But it had a satisfying weight to it so I bought one.

 It was in the laundry-room fridge since Monday and now it's in the oven.

 I didn't get pictures of it going in because of the aforementioned sluggyness.

 I'll be sure to get some snaps after it's baked.

 Thanks for listening.