Junk Drawer (8)

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

Speaking of sharks, this snippet from Pliny the Elder writing around 77 C.E.: "The [sponge] divers, however, have terrible combats with the dogfish (sharks), which attack with avidity the groin, the heels, and all the whiter parts of the body." But swim easily. Humans kill around a hundred million sharks yearly. Sharks, on the other fin, take 5-10 of us in unprovoked attacks a year. 

But...but here's some good news for some of our underwater neighbors. Carbon dating of a 16-foot Greenland shark put her between 272 and 512 years old. Certainly confirms sharks as the longest living of the vertebrates. Since 24-foot specimens of Greenland sharks have been caught and since size is a function of age--well, staggers the imagination. May be sharks swimming about that were doing so in 1500. Or earlier.

I see the ads. The Emmy awards, still a thing?

Shortly after I moved to Baton Rouge in 1976, a veteran newspaper editor told me to read T. Harry Williams' biography of Huey Long to get a quicker understanding of political forces in Louisiana. Williams was a professor at LSU. I also chose to read Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, a fictional version of Long's rise and fall. Warren taught at LSU as well from 1933 to 1942. 

One of my favorite episodes occurred in 1934. Then Senator Long directed Gov. O. K. Allen to send 2500 National Guard troops to New Orleans to address alleged corrupt voting in the city. Mayor T. Semmes Walmsley deputized an additional 500 men and armed them with submachine guns to defend New Orleans' City Hall.  Walmsley protested the "invasion" to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and called Long another Hitler. National Guard, voter corruption, Hitler comparison--has it all.

Long's candidates won in the following election, so the troops were withdrawn without a violent showdown. Long was shot by a lone gunman at the state capitol in Baton Rouge in 1935. He died 2 days after the attack. And a lone gunman, too.

Given the news of late, three words have been more often coming to mind: enthrall, intractable, and venal.

So, finally September. The neighbors' kids have been back in school for two weeks.. High school football is underway. My Yoshino cherry dropped its leaves. Some maples I see when out and about are flashing reds and yellows, and oranges, too. Temperatures were in the upper 90s last week. Kind of blunts the thought of autumn. You know, highs in the 60s, the sun warm, no longer blistering. Windows open. Ceiling fans off. Something more than a sheet at night. And my favorite, coffee on the patio in the morning. What's that sound? Quiet. Nary an air-conditioner to be heard.