I was actually going to address another topic this evening, but after late Friday and all of yesterday (and part of today, too) this topic is on my mind.  First we shall review my symptoms then get to some material released by CDC about this nasty bugger.

Friday evening I was answering comments for Popular Culture and started feeling a little funky.   I did not think much of it then, but I noticed that when I would stand up that my equilibrium was a bit off.  It was getting late, so I shut down the computer and went to bed.

I must first offer my apologies to Peter Townshend.  Pete, sorry, but I think that you would probably approve of this.  Please know that I mean no disrespect to the original song.  This is just political satire using one of your standards.

Normally I do not write highly political pieces, that function being done far better by others here, but tonight is an exception.  I hope that this gets my feelings about how the Republicans have taken what should be a foregone conclusion and twisted it to try to make their point, whatever that point is.  I have tried to be witty and not mean with it, but when talking ’bout Republicans sometimes it is difficult to keep from getting mean.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

This piece is mostly about two old rock buildings near Hackett.  One of them was the “old schoolhouse” to which my mum and dad met each other as first graders.  Their story was actually a love at first sight one, and that is actually, literally true.  My dad fell in love with my mum immediately, and their love affair continued to produce two sons, me being one of them, several grandchildren, and a circle of friends that still continue, although most of them are now gone.

The secondary story is about the consequences of posting about people.  I got a very irate email from the granddaughter of one of the men that I described months ago, just day before yesterday.  She was upset about the way I described him, and rightly so.  We communicated further, and became friends.  I shall show everyone what she said, my responses, and the consensus that we finally came to that resolved the issue.  I plan to continue this series, but will be a bit more considerate in future.

This is the forth and final installment on my short piece about milk.  This time, instead to focusing on human consumption of milk from other species, in particular from cattle, to the importance of human infants being given human milk until at least six months of age.  The first three installments can be found here, here, and here.

Human milk was universally used up until comparatively recently as the sole food for infants.  However, it was not always the mum of the child that supplied the milk.  Throughout history, surrogate women have supplied milk for other women’s children, a practice know as wet nursing.  This was pretty much confined to the wealthy class when the mum chose not to breastfeed her child and either hired other women to feed them or made slaves to that.  Although not explicitly said, the Mammy character in the book and motion picture was assumed to be Scarlett’s wet nurse.  In other cases friends of relatives of women who for some reason or another could not nurse a baby would fill in for her.  More on that later.

In the 1950s many countries began to encourage the use of infant formula as the “scientific” successor to natural breast milk.  While formula can be a wise choice in many circumstances, the latest research is pretty much a consensus that natural breast milk is superior in almost all ways to formula.  More on that later as well.

This is the third part of a four part series about milk.  The first and second parts are here and here.  The final installment will be about human milk with emphasis on its importance to the development of infants.

Cheese is one of the oldest processed food products known.  Whilst the origins of cheesemaking are obscure, it is fairly easy to speculate on how it got started, and we shall look at that in due time.  Archaeological evidence indicates that cheesemaking was an established art at least 4000 years ago, and the actual date of regular production is likely to be much older than that, but no records exist.

Because of the tremendous variety of cheese, I am sure not to mention one of your favorites.  Please pardon that oversight, but I like to keep under 5000 words!  However, I found an expert source that is likely to mention yours, and it appears directly under the fold.

Those of you who have been reading this series know that this will be the last installment about the history of The Who.  Although The Who continued to record new material and tour after 1978, to me the band really ended then and what was left was sort of what we now call a tribute band.

For 1978 to be such a disaster, it started off well enough, actually really well.  The Who were at the top of their game insofar as business interests went, Townshend, after being burnt by Kit Lambert, with whom he never reconciled, developed a high degree of business acumen, and The Who as a band were never strapped for cash again, although Moon and Entwistle had chronic money woes because of their lifestyles.  Daltrey was pretty conservative and also had a fairly successful acting career post 1978.

Although it pains me greatly to write this last installment, we might as well get on with it.  There are a number of ironies in 1978, and I shall point them out as we encounter them.  Please follow after the fold.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I started the eighth grade at Saint Anne’s High School in Fort Smith, Arkansas when I was 13 years old.  I sort of skipped the seventh grade, and the sisters at Saint Anne’s thought that I was OK to go directly to the eighth grade from the sixth.

I flourished there, and still have several of my friends there in contact.  My very best male friend was from there, and we converse almost every night.  We love each other as brothers do, and he is actually more of a brother to me than my own brother is in some respects.

Two weeks ago we began a short series on milk, in particular cow’s milk, used as a food by humans.  We mentioned that humans are the only species to drink any kind of milk after infancy (unless we feed it to animals).  We also mentioned that human milk is the very best food for human infants.  Next week we shall end the series by talking about the advantages of real milk to infants unless readers would rather see a discussion of cheese first.

Last time we pretty much focused on fresh milk and few derivatives of it.  This week we shall look at some of the derivatives of milk, either fresh or fermented.  There is a marvelous variety of liquid milk derivatives available, and some are very delicious.  In addition, there is butter which obviously is not liquid.

For a product as perishable as milk, it is amazing that so many wholesome fermented products can be made from it.  There are reasons for that, and we shall get to them in due course.

Last time we looked at the extremely busy 1976, a year filled with touring in Europe, the UK, and especially in North America.  It turns out that 1977 would be relatively quiet from that perspective, but quite lively from some others.

Townshend was burnt out from touring, and, interestingly, Daltrey was as well.  He even turned down a lucrative set of North American opportunities, saying that he could not devote the emotion and energy to a solo tour that he should reserve for future tours with The Who.

On the other hand, Entwistle and Moon lived to tour, but did not.  Moon never really had the wherewithal to tour solo, and the last time that Entwistle did he lost lots of money.  So they pretty stayed put for 1977.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I was not sure that I would be able to post tonight because I crashed my system doing something stupid night before last, but I finally got it going again.  I had to take the radical step of completely wiping my hard drive, reloading Windows, and then restoring all of the files that I had archived onto a USB hard drive.  I NEVER will make the mistake of trying to tweak my OS again!  I really like that external hard drive and will make backups of my critical files monthly.  I think that I will take it to my neighbors’ house when not using it in case of fire or somesuch.

In any event, I am here and tonight we shall discuss the railroad tracks that ran just south of my house.  It was operated by Midland Valley Lines, out of Muskogee, Oklahoma.  Mostly the branch by my house hauled coal, because Hackett coal was in high demand for making coke for the steel mills when I was a lad.