Chocolate & Genes
Headline from nypost.com: “Hershey profits soar as US binges on sweets during COVID-19 lockdowns.” Count me in.
Here’s another: “Nearly half of happiness is genetic, so most of us are doomed.” Through the years I’ve come to believe we are at the mercy of our genes, be it physical or mental health, and it’s so hard to change, yet some folks seem to.
And this check on the ego: “There are 300 million planets that could support life: NASA.”
Here’s a snippet from an NYP op-ed piece by Ashley Allen: “… one month into Phase 3 of reopening, Florida’s daily death rate continues to drop, and hospitalizations remain stable.”
William H. “Pits” Pitsenbarger joined the Air Force at 19 in 1963 and volunteered for USAF Special Warfare as a Pararescue specialist, one of the most dangerous jobs going. On April 11, 1966, Airman 1st Class Pitsenbarger and his crew came to the rescue of an encircled and outnumbered infantry battalion at the Battle of Xa Cam My. When he learned the company’s medic had been killed, Pits descended into the fray. Amid intense enemy fire, he personally rescued nine wounded men and refused to evacuate, working instead to get more wounded out of harm’s way. When sniper and mortar fire increased, he took up arms. He repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire to care for the wounded, pulled them out of the line of fire, and returned fire whenever he could. He was hit three times, then mortally wounded. For some reason the effort to award him the Medal of Honor was rejected. In 1997 Parker Hayes, working at the Airmen Memorial Museum in Suitland, Maryland, learned of the event, and wrote a synopsis of Pits’ actions. He heard from veterans of the battle, who convinced him to help see justice done. Pits’ parents received the Medal at a ceremony at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in December 2000. (Culled from an article by Marc Leepson at https://vva.org, edited by yours truly.)… Last night, courtesy of Netflix, I watched a movie based on the aforementioned, The Last Full Measure (2019), which features a stellar cast. The title refers to a line from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and would these days be known as the “ultimate sacrifice.” Told in non-linear form, the film is frequently moving and treats military personnel with the respect they deserve. I was going to rate it four stars until I read Leepson’s piece. Writer/director Todd Robinson, who won an Emmy for the documentary The Legend of Billy the Kid (1994), used a fictitious character, a Washington insider shark, in place of Parker Hayes. For shame! Why didn’t he do another documentary? Here’s Pitsenbarger:
And Hayes, who at one time worked at the Smithsonian, the Baseball Hall of Fame and the U.S. Holocaust Museum. Tragically, he succumbed to cancer at 36 in 2009:
Don’t know if it was the incredible indian summer weather, but business was brisk today at the floating book shop. Here are some of the titles that sold: The Transforming Power Of Affect: A Model For Accelerated Change by Diana Fosha, A Philosophy of Simple Living by Jérôme Brillaud, Living Zen by Robert Linssen, four novels in Russian, including a translation of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie; two grammar workbooks; The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money by Dan Briody; Five Classics of Fairy Chess by Thomas Rayner Dawson, which someone has listed at $856 at Amazon; a Costco cookbook; and the only work of fiction to sell, a paperback collection of classic short stories. My thanks to the kind folks who made purchases. I love it when the more obscure titles go.
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