Hi,
Pleasant Valley, the homeless shelter on Brighton that’s associated with the Great Pittsburgh Food Bank is hosting a fund raising spaghetti dinner Saturday April 28 from 4:30 until 7 at the Northmont Presbyterian Church at 8169 Perry Highway 15237. They are offering eat in and take out. They are also offering gluten free option. Pleasant Valley is a division of Northside Common Ministries, the local outlet for the food pantry. A worthy cause!
I’ve always been intrigued with the WWII Nazi Enigma machine. It was the Nazi machine that encrypted communication within their military to keep the Allies from knowing what they were up to and planning. The Allies spent years trying to figure out how to decipher the codes, I believe there’s a recent movie on this, which I didn’t see. Scientists in Bletchley Park, England eventually figured it out. Of the 35,000 in use during the war, there is only around 35 left. Carnegie Mellon’s Hunt Library has 2! They are on public display (behind glass). There are three types of enigmas, three rotors, four rotors and five rotors. The more rotors, the more en cryptically secure was the machine. The sender and receiver both had to have the same machine and they had to be coordinated that their settings were the same.
Pittsburgh’s getting our own floating tiki bars. Dale McCue, Greg Darby and partners came up with the idea in Ft Lauderdale, FL. They were immediately very popular. Instead of constructing them for others, Dale decided to patent the idea and franchise the idea, smart move Dale. They don’t seem to have a dedicated website, but have a presence in face book & Twitter. They don’t have a liquor license (yet) 🙂 nor a license to make food (yet). On the food side, they are partnering with a local restaurant to make up a “to go” menu you can pick up and take with you and you also can bring your “beverage of choice”. They currently will be docked out of Station Square and are negotiating with SEA to be able to stop on the Northshore. They plan on having a wet bar, bottled water and a Blue Tooth stereo system. You can rent one that will old up to six persons for around $400 for two hours.
Gerrymandering has been fairly big news the last several years. Pennsylvania’s most recent gerrymandered voting districts were created by the Republicans (the Democrats have done the same thing over the years) and this is not unique to Pennsylvania, many states are under scrutiny for this. Does it come as any surprise that even though a case against these gerrymandered districts came up to the PA Supreme Court and the justices ruled that the Republican controlled legislature needed to come up with a more fair redistricting plan? The Republicans whined that they didn’t have enough time to complete a new redistricting plan in time for this year’s elections. The Justices said if the Republicans didn’t, the Justices would do it. And the Justices were able to do it by the dead line! So the Republicans threatened to sue that the Justices were violating our separation of powers. Well Mr. & Mrs. Republicans maybe do you job, that court case didn’t just pop up on the Justices docket. While your at it, maybe pass a balanced budget on time, just a thought. 🙂
While we are talking about Supreme Court Justices, lets move over a bit and talk about retired US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. He has made a case for repealing the Second Amendment. I’m not suggesting that we repeal it, but he makes some valid points that we should consider. There’s part of is commentary I didn’t understand, so I will leave it to you to make up your own mind.
OK, this is kind of old news, but why can’t we play nice together. Emma Gonzalez is one of the prime advocates from the Parkland, FL school shooting that started the Never Again movement. She had a Cuban flag stitched on her jacket and the Republican US Congressman Steve King from Iowa picked on her for being proud of her heritage. And worse during her speech at the DC rally she said she’s of Cuban decent and bisexual was the response of Maine state house candidate Leslie Gibson saying and I need to quote him here “There is nothing about this skinhead lesbian that impresses me and there is nothing that she has to say unless you’re a frothing at the mouth moonbat,”. He has since apologized and dropped out of the race. We have serious problems in America and calling each other names absolutely should not be tolerated by anyone, let alone elect officials. I saw Emma’s 17 minutes of silence and was very moved, that last thing I thought of “Was is she a moonbat.” By the way, what is a moonbat? Is it a Main thing, something like a snipe we used to get younger kids to try and capture when I was a kid in Finleyville?
There is still a ban on monetary commerce between the USA and Cuba, but I believe we can swap equal values. Pennsylvania dairy farmers are looking for new markets, particularly since Dean Foods has pulled much of their operations out of PA because of an over supply. Cuba’s relatively close and in dire need of dairy and could supply us with their famed rum. Shall we start a #milkforrum?
There’s a trend in interior design using shagreen, luckily they have come up with a faux product that seems to do the job. Shagreen is untanned shark and skate skins used in the 17 & 18th centuries as a high end covering for pill boxes, jewelry cases, sword hilts and other products. It is now being used on tables, armoires and other pieces of furniture. That it’s faux has given out ocean inhabitants a relief.
Speaking of animals, I have some new ones (or will soon), Ester is definitely pregnant and it looks like we’re going to get another squirrel any day now. Also, the chipmunks are back, I had them last spring and then they left. They’re back eating peanuts outside my office window.
The Harmar eagle couple’s first egg hatched and the other should be hatching any day now. Unfortunately, two of the Hays eagle eggs weren’t viable. So they just have one chick. It’s nice that you can just toggle back and forth between the two nests now.
That’s it for today, have a great one,
ed
