Charming Billy

Can she bake a cherry pie, charming Billy?
She can bake a cherry pie, quick as a cat can wink an eye
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

How old is she charming Billy?
Three times six and four times seven
Twenty eight and eleven
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

I thought of this old folk tune the other day when I browsed Chef John's recipe files. As I tried to remember some of the verses I began to recall other tunes my brothers and sisters and I sang as children.

Johnson boys eat peas and honey,
They have done it all their life,
It makes the peas taste mighty funny,
But it keeps them on the knife.

And of course there was 'Bile them cabbage down' and Barnacle Bill, the sailor who would black your eyes and eat your pies. On occasion we could coax Dad into singing

Darling Nelly Gray, they have taken her away
And I'll never see my darling anymore.
They have taken her to Georgia,
Just to work her life away,
And I'll never see my darling anymore.

One of my favorite memories is grandma W singing Jessie James for us.

“It was a dirty coward, that shot Mr Howard,
and laid poor Jessie in his grave”

On warm summer nights after all the small children were asleep in bed, we older ones would join grandma as she sat in a rocking chair on the porch, and we on the steps keeping her company. After we found out that she knew the words to Jessie James, we begged her to sing it for us. It took a bit of coaxing, but when she consented to sing for us, she sang all the verses.



Dulcimer Player

“What to do, Percy? What to do?”

The above refrain is from an old record of Swiss Family Robinson that our family listened to back in the late'50s and early '60s. Since then, when a perplexing problem arose requiring the opinion of an authority figure, (usually Mother), we always asked, “What to do, Percy? What to do?”

We might well ask the question now concerning the drinking water in Flint, Michigan.

Its unconscionable that people in the area have been drinking water polluted with lead, and that their complaints barely made a ripple in the nation's conscious. Have our elected officials, who swore to protect and defend, become so immune to the greedy machinations of those who slyly pollute our environment that nothing is done to correct the situation until the problem becomes a crisis?

"What to do, Percy? What to do?"



Water?

Curling, aka “chess on ice”

When surfing the TV for something interesting to watch the other evening, I came across a broadcast of the winter sport Curling. I always enjoyed watching the Olympic curling teams, so I stopped surfing and watched the game between the U S and Japan. Not really knowing much about the sport, I became aware that pushing stones across the ice toward a point some distance away required some deliberate cogitation rather than a chancy push, with fingers crossed for luck. Consequently, I went to the internet to learn more.

Curling is a game of strategy, tactics and skill. Its a sport played by both men and women. It has been an Olympic sport since 1998. There are both men and women tournaments as well as mixed teams with 2 women and 2 men per team. Its a sport in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area of segmented 4 concentric circles. Two teams, each with 4 players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones called rocks, toward the circular target called the house. Each team has 8 stones with points being scored for stones resting closest to the center called the button. It can be played aggressively or defensively. Aggressive play puts a lot of stones in play and can be exciting, but also very risky but with great reward, as opposed to defensive play.

The process of sliding the stone across the ice sheet is called 'delivery' and its trajectory is influenced by two 'sweepers' to make the stone turn or curl. The typical rate of turn is 2 ½ rotations before resting. Sweeping reduces friction underneath the stone and decreases the amount of curl as debris is swept from the stones path.

Curling images also can be found in movies and ads, sometimes without the viewers realizing that they are looking at a bona fide sport.



Old Fashioned Curling Stone

Hello 2016

The early hours of the new year are still reflecting the high hopes for the usual health, wealth and happiness wished for when ringing bells signaled the new year.

On the personal level, there's the usual resolutions for dieting and exercising, but new concerns paramount in our lives also concern the country.

The spreading popularity of gun legislation, allowing 'open carry' of guns, replicates the old wild west when pistol packing cowboys walked with a chip on their shoulders and dared anyone to out draw them. I am not convinced that more guns in the hands of citizens is the answer to the threat of violence by terrorists or the brazen crimes committed by home grown criminals. There must be a gene in our DNA that triggers violent actions against each other. I just hope I'm not shopping for veggies in a grocery store if a shoot out takes place.

Hiding behind bins of oranges or watermelons just isn't going to work.



Oranges for Body Armor?