I’ve come across a couple of articles on general health that are worth sharing.

Here’s the first one.  I provide the link because anything bringing a modicum of sanity into the world of pregnant women and babies is sorely, sorely needed.  It’s staggering how ideological anything to do with the health of these two groups has become, and how much sway extremist, unscientific opinions have — even in the medical world!

So this article on it being okay to drink alcohol during pregnancy is refreshing.

When I find the one saying coffee is fine and the risk from eating tuna is so colossally small that your baby is more likely to be born the Elephant Man, I’ll pass them along.  I’d search for them right now, but I’ve got to go hose down a nest of La Leche zealots with Raid Wasp & Hornet spray.

Today that momentous day officially becomes another year distant in history.

The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan is a fine book on the subject — and is particularly good in its “books on tape” version.

As an aside, two of the decisive machines of that day were the Higgins boat (officially, the Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP) and the assault glider.

God bless all those thousands of brave men.

Back to my old hometown of Buffalo.  I never got to see this while I was there (never got to that part of town) — but what a treasure it is!  HH Richardson, one of Louis Sullivan’s architectural contemporaries, designed this state insane asylum in 1870, and therefore very likely never foresaw its strong potential as a horror movie set.

You can see oodles of pictures here.  Sadly, the place is falling in, and it’s kind of tough to find a use for such a huge old place, particularly in a state that’s flat broke.

Did I mention that I’m training for a marathon?  Yeah, the Paavo Nurmi — no doubt you’ve heard of it? — in August.

So today I did my longest run ever:  10.1 miles.  It was painful, but not terribly so.  It was pretty cool out (70-ish) and spitting rain off and on, so very humid.  I don’t do humid very well.  All in all, though, my time was about where it should be (i.e., slow), and I got ‘er done.

Over the next month and a half, unless disaster strikes I’ll be pushing a new PB for distance pretty much every weekend.  This is just getting interesting…

I first saw Carolyn Leonhart when she sang backup for Steely Dan at the Memphis in May Music Festival some years ago.  I was with my little brother Rich, and we were pretty far back.  I said to him, “I’ve got to go up closer to see if that singer is as beautiful as she looks from way back here.”  I got back to him ten or fifteen minutes later (Steely Dan packed ’em in that night!) with an emphatic yes.

When I looked her up upon getting back home, my wife, the sweet Miss ViVi, asked, “Would you think she’s such a great singer if she didn’t look like that?”  To which I replied, “Oh, yeah.  Absolutely.  No doubt about.  Wait, actually, no.  Definitely not.”

But she is an extremely talented singer nonetheless.  And heart-meltingly gorgeous.

From Black Sabbath’s “Heaven and Hell,” from the eponymous album:

They say that life’s a carousel
Spinning fast, you’ve got to ride it well
The world is full of Kings and Queens
Who blind your eyes and steal your dreams
It’s Heaven and Hell, oh well
And they’ll tell you black is really white
The moon is just the sun at night
And when you walk in golden halls
You get to keep the gold that falls
It’s Heaven and Hell, oh no! Fool, fool!
You’ve got to bleed for the dancer!
Fool, fool! Look for the answer!
Fool, fool, fool!

What were you trying to tell me, Ronnie James Dio?!?

We’re fresh back from my homeland, Upper Michigan.  My sister Lucy put on a whale of a shindig at the camp she works at for her son Jon, who graduated yesterday.  It was a fantastic time, and a great family get-together.

Here’s Bug and me partying on Saturday night.

So the thing was at a camp.  But the lodgings weren’t like any camp I’ve ever imagined.  Very nice, which I appreciated — except for the skewed view of “camping” the Reverend Doctor Vinoski Sweetness will now have.

But he did have some fun in the lake:

Thanks to my sis Michelle for the great pictures!

A Facebook friend of mine posted this today:

“Jane Doe” via Mary: ‘The true soldier fights not because they hate what is in front of them, but because they love what is behind them.’ ~G. K. Chesterton

Except here’s what Chesterton really said:

  “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

Leave aside how puerile is the longstanding move to “pejoratize” the synecdochic masculine pronoun.  On this Memorial Day, besides remembering he who’s served — the brave man or woman — can’t we also remember that quotation marks mean something?

I read an article a couple months ago about how the majority of working journalists nowadays can’t identify this photograph:

So I sent it to a dear friend of mine, who is 27 and awfully smart and well-educated, to get a read on the depth of the problem.  She didn’t know it.

If the best schools in the country, which she surely attended, aren’t teaching about Iwo Jima, then I know damn well Sweet Miss ViVi and I will do a far better job at educating our boys overall.

PS — When I read Flags of Our Fathers, I decided, as a tribute to our soldiers in general, that I would always remember the names of those boys who raised that flag.  Three of them died on that godforsaken island.  They’re all gone now.

Left to right in the picture:  Private 1st Class Ira Hayes.  Private 1st Class Franklin Sousley.  Sgt. Michael Strank.  Pharmacist’s Mate Second Class John Bradley. Private 1st Class Harold Schultz.*  Private 1st Class Rene Gagnon.  Cpl. Harlon Block.  Thank you — and thanks to all our servicemen — for your sacrifice.

* Update June 2017: In 2016, amateur historians’ questions about whether John Bradley was actually in the iconic picture caused the Marines to conduct their own investigation, which concluded that Harold Schultz, not Bradley, was in the photo. I also added ranks for all the men.

So was everything in the ’60s exactly like Manos:  The Hands of Fate?