Back to index of "this and that in my life" pages by Donald Sauter.

Conversations with me, No. 9
Email highlights, ca. February 1998

Dedicated to the proposition that every thought that's ever been thunk may be of use or interest to someone . . .


ME: You have me stumped.  I'm sure it should jump right out at me, and 
I have a bit of a knack for word puzzles and all, but I need a clue on 
  
   TGIMINHTNIWTACWMSW. 

I get bogged down after "Thank God I'm in New Hampshire tonight..." 

I'm a dumby.  


ME: No need to explain the sound quality of the tape - I'm quite used to 
the experience.  Most of the Pearl Jam songs I'm familiar with from the 
radio, although I could never put titles to them.  After all these years 
I finally see that what sounds something like "Tell me spoken..."  
is "Jeremy [something]..."  Live and learn! 


ME: In your list of favorite artists, you left out the one who produced 
my still-reigning favorite album of the '90s - Positively Phranc.  
I've played it many, many times and still dig it.  Last time I was 
in a Tower Records (happens every few years), there were a couple 
of copies in the bargain bin.  The first song starts, "I respect you; 
I really appreciate the things you do," leaving all previous love 
songs in the dust.  


THEE: Your pages are great Don, but they need a little color babe.  
Your pages are very informative, they just need some artsy stuff to 
jazz it up.  Did you know you could also add music when the page is 
opened up???  


THEE: Eddie was on last night...SP2...Self Pollution 2...MOnkeywrench 
radio.  Pearl Jam does a pirate radio show once in a while... 
talk, live performances, spins records.  11PM til 3 AM EST. 
99.1 dropped it at 2 AM, but luckily WIYY played it all!!! 


THEE: Ha, I don't think I would be thanking god I was in NH!  On that 
note, I saw a cute anecdote in Readers Digest: 

It was a play on words for our motto.  Instead of Live Free or Die, it 
was Live, Freeze or Die.  That about says it.  


THEE: "All Men Are Pigs" (present company excepted of course).  I thought 
that was a univeral truth.  So shouldn't we all, male and female alike, 
wish we were attracted to women?   They're not all pigs.  Or are they? . . . 


ME: Thanks for the offer of a light and sound spectacular.  That's 
very kind and generous, but I'm afraid I must pass.  Personal 
standards and ethics to uphold, you know.  
  
Sorry to be such a web-curmudgeon, but pidgers 
have nothing to do with what I have to offer.  Besides, 
there is a graphic-artistic unity to *all* of my pages - wouldn't 
want an oddball page or two, would I?  I hear people complain all the 
time about useless graphics on the web.  They're turning off the 
graphics on their browsers.  Darn if I want to be part of the 
problem.  Not to mention, Shakespeare, Dickens, Poe, Twain... 
somehow made do without cartoons.  Plus you know that I'm not 
a visual person.  I used to have to force myself to go back and 
look at the pictures when I finished reading a Beatles Book Monthly.  
Additionally, I will need all 3 megabytes for unloading my head.  
And lastly, my browser is text-only so I wouldn't even see what 
I had wrought.  
  
But thanks for the offer! 

Yep, I've been around your site a few times.  It led me to an 
IQ test that ruined my life...  (Just kidding.) 


ME: That's interesting that Jeremy was written by the bass player, 
because the bass is so distinctive in Rain.  It wouldn't be unlike me 
to be hopelessly confused, but the clue I gave in a previous message 
before I knew the title - the prominent lyrics "clearly I remember..." - 
that's from Jeremy, right? 

I heard a bit of Monkeywrench last night, myself.  I thought it was 
DC101.  Would they be playing the same thing as HFS at the same time??? 


THEE: LOL about your 'clearly I remember'!!!  YES!! That is a line from JEREMY!! 
See...you've been a Pearl Jam fan ALL ALONG!!!  The new album has TWO 
songs written by the bass player.  THIS time, lyrics and all.  Jeff Ament-- 
the Bass player--wrote PILATE and LOWLIGHT. 

Seems DC101 probably was playing the same as 99.1.  They have in the 
past--whenever Eddie does these radio things.  I was listening to 99.1 AND 
THEY DROPPED the broadcast at 2AM!!!  I was so ticked!!  Luckily, 98 rock 
was still airing it!!  Or I wouldn't have heard Stone Gossard's side band, 
Brad...Stone playing DJ...the last PJ song (Nothingman)...and Eddie commenting 
on the President... 


THEE: Saw "Spice World" Saturday night.  I'm not proud of it but I did.  
It was fun to see Beatlemania ca. 1998.  The film portrays an England 
that is perpetually sunny and well-off. 

The film borrows from the Beatles heavily, I'm glad to say.  At one 
point the Spice Girls escape from their overbearing manager for a 
happy jaunt around the Thames in a motorboat.  As they leapt joyously 
out of their touring HQ, I remarked to Hself, "Here comes the bit in 
the field." 

Elsewhere, the girls go to dance lessons and their instructor is an 
incomprehensible Sergeant Major! 

Hself thought that the Spice Girls--Scary, Sporty, Posh, Ginger, and 
Baby--didn't have the personalities of the Fabs.  Maybe, but they had 
better figures, for the most part.  Still, it's fun to see what the 
kids like these days. 


THEE: The idea of finding most recent common ancestors via 
mtDNA analysis isn't crazy, just shaky.  Getting absolute dates 
is dubious but it does show how closely related the Irish are to 
the Japanese. I remember the Y-chromsome study with zero 
differences and of course that was nonsense, but I think 
reasonable ones have been done since.  The basic ancestry pattern 
is this: first division is between sub-saharan Africans and 
everyone else.  Next split is between Southeast Asians and other 
Eurasians, most recent big split is between Europeans and North 
Asians (including Amerindians).  There are old, deep splits among 
the sub-Saharan Africans, basically into the Bantu, the tall, 
skinny Nilotics, Khoi-san (Bushmen), and the Pygmies. These 
genetic differences are actually larger than those between 
Europeans and Japanese. 

If you're frustrated with silly science, you're not alone.  Go 
look at the M.D.s, if you want to see some nonsense.  I've been 
doing some work with medical implications and have been immersed 
in the biomedical literature. It averages pretty silly. My chief 
complaint is about the way the M.D.s talk about diseases whose 
cause is unknown.  They call them 'multifactorial' or 'complex 
genetic diseases'.   They ascribe these conditions to some 
mixture of heredity, environment, and stress.  Usually the bad 
environmental influence is the act of eating anything other than 
cardboard.  They calculate statistical correlations (often 
incorrectly) between a disease syndrome and various factors and 
call those factors with positive associations 'causes'. What 
crap.  They said all these things about peptic ulcer for years 
and were totally wrong.  It's a bacterial infection. Eating 
Szechuan has nothing to do with it.   Who knows, maybe stress 
makes the ulcer more likely - or maybe the ulcer causes stress - 
but without that particular bacterium, helicobacter pylori, no 
ulcer.  Maybe genes influence susceptibility, but even when your 
identical twin has it, you don't get it without the bacterium.  
It turns out that a similar explanation may exist for heart 
disease.  An odd bacterium has been found growing in the 
atherosclerotic plaque. It starts out as a respiratory infection 
and, obviously, is more common in smokers. That bacteria causes 
arterial plaque to form rapidly in experimental animals. The 
germ, chlamydia pneumoniae, is killed by tetracycline and related 
drugs.  Ongoing trials on individuals with recent heart atatcks 
appear to show, thus far, that antibiotic treatments drop the 
risk of death and serious complication fourfold, even those these 
individuals have very advanced heart disease. 

My idea is that it's very difficult for any common, serious 
disease to have mainly genetic causes, at least if it has been 
around for a long time. Natural selection tends to eliminate 
genes of that sort more rapidly than people think.  On the other 
hand, it _is_ possible for a common, serious disease to exist for 
hundreds of generations if it is caused by some infectious agent, 
because those agents co-evolve, developing counters to improved 
human defences, just as they have developed counters to 
antibiotics..  Certainly malaria and smallpox managed to exist 
and cause lots of trouble for hundreds of human generations. 

Sickle cell anemia is an interesting exception.  It is an 
expensive hereditary defense against malaria, is common only 
where malaria is, and fades away over a few tens of generations 
in the absence of malaria.  It can exist for hundreds of 
generations only because malaria can.  You might call it a 
second-order effect of malaria. 

So, if this view is correct, most diseases are caused by 
something new in the environment, something we have had no chance 
to adapt to, or by infectious organisms, which are always new due 
their rapid evolution.  And of course there will be mixed cases 
in which some environmental change opens the door wider for some 
pre-existing pathogen.   This argument doesn't apply much to 
diseases of old age, where the power of natural selection is 
weaker, but it should apply to diseases of middle age and 
especially to anything that strikes earlier.  Rare diseases (like 
PKU) can be caused by mutations but they stay rare as long as 
natural selection keeps eliminating them. 

The way to analyze disease using this approach is examine its impact 
on fitness.  Fitness is used in the technical sense of genetic 
representation in the next generation.  If  a disease has a big 
negative effect on fitness and has existed for a long time, it is 
almost certainly infectious - or, possibley an expensive defense 
against some big infectious disease.  This applies to all sorts 
of syndromes. For instance, lets assume that schizophrenia has been 
around a long  time - which isn't well documented, but assume it. 
It's pretty common, around 1% and seriously reduces reproduction.  
I suspect talking to invisible silver men living under the 
wallpaper always was a social handicap. By this argument it is 
very likely to be caused by some (undiscovered)  infection that 
damages the brain.  Same argument for ulcerative colitis, 
multiple sclerosis, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, 
various common kinds of infertility,   cancers that hit early and 
often ( cervical cancer for sure, Kaposis's sarcoma  in central 
Africa, stomach cancer from helicobacter pylori, childhood 
leukemia, Hodgkin's disease and probably breast,, ovarian, and 
colon  cancer) with the likely exception of lung cancer, which  
is a good example of a new environment disease,. And more! Any 
common condition that significantly reduces fitness and has been 
around for a long time  is likely to be infectious in origin.   
This applies to syndromes that  are behavioral.  For example, 
imagine a syndrome that greatly reduces reproduction via 
behavior.  Say that individuals with this syndrome have very low 
or zero interest in the opposite sex,  and exhibit some kind of 
substitute behavior that can't result in reproduction.  Suppose 
that this behavior has existed for a long time. Since classical 
Greece, say. This purely theoretical behavioral syndrome would 
then be almost certainly caused by an infectious agent.  One 
might also suspect that this unusual behavior might help transmit 
the infecting organism, as when rhinovirus makes us sneeze, 
further transmitting rhinovirus.  Some lovely, baroque examples 
of  this 'host manipulation' are known from the animal world.  If 
such an odd behavioral syndrome existed, people would suspect it 
was infectious, at least at the folk-wisdom level...   

Isn't it amazing where logic can take you?  Right now I'm working 
on an article about this evolutionary analysis of disease  with 
Paul Ewald, an evolutionary biologist who's done lots of work on 
the evolution of virulence.   I'm interested in the reaction of 
the intelligent layman. 

What do you think? 


ME: I have to admit that I'm generally disappointed with 
the response my articles generate in rmb.  Like in this case, out 
of thousands of Beatles fans, *nobody* has any dope on the 
Beatles VI cover? 

Anyhow, I remember Scott Muni answering this question from a listener 
on his syndicated "Ticket To Ride" radio series.  With great drama in 
his voice, he said something like, "I have seen the complete photo, 
and I can tell you it is a *knife* they are holding!"  
  
My buddy Hself speaks of a cake being cut.  We don't know the source 
of that theory, but even without a source, Hself is near infallible.  
For the life of me, I can't bring to mind ever seeing the uncropped 
picture.  


THEE: A knife! Yes, it certainly could be. That really explains the narrow 
silver "post" or "cord."  My impression is that the top of whatever it 
is was larger than a knife handle but that could just be the way they 
are holding their hands.  I also thought it looked like they were 
resting their hands on it rather than holding it up but that could be 
just the way they were posed.  I can easily imagine some cake cutting at 
some reception - but wasn't this a photo shoot?  The pictures of them 
around a Christmas tree were taken at the same time and were obviously 
done in a staged setting for photos.  Oh - did you notice that Ringo 
does not seem to have a hand on the knife? 

As for rmb not taking an interest, it doesn't surprise me.  My evidence 
that Paul was flashing us during the Fool on the Hill sequence has 
generated scarcely any discussion.  One would think such a thing would 
be hotly debated because it represents a whole new aspect to Paul's 
personality and the general state of the Beatles during the MMT time, 
but aside from a few comments that it was a ridiculous idea, no one 
picked up on it.  I think people refuse to consider that Paul would do 
such a thing and have a closed mind to the evidence. I really thought, 
like you, that of the legions of obsessed fans, someone, somewhere would 
have some knowledge of it or of where to find that elusive newspaper 
article in which Paul supposedly admitted to it. 


THEE: I sure did get your Pastor Bob [Harrington] site.  
Awesome!  Did you notice that he apparently fell into the 
clutches of Satan subsequent to the LP?  He's OK now.  My only 
complaint about the web site is that it doesn't offer a 
comprehensive discograpy, although you can order later sermons on 
audio (and video) cassette. 


ME: Did I mention that I am now newspaperless?  I guess I 
had some notion they would keep delivering for months after one's 
subscription runs out, but nope.  

  
ME: Have I ever directed you to my web page about 
snow in D.C.?  I think it's funny, even though it's my meanest 
page.  I even tracked down Robert B. Reich's email address and 
invited him to visit.  If he did, he forgot to sign my guestbook, haha.  

Still working on an aka for you.  Problem is, everything sounds 
so feeble compared to iz710.  *There's* a real headbanger.  


ME: The last Geocities community leader said (incorrectly) my 
lack of graphics disqualifies me!  My website is about *ideas* 
not cartoons. 

By the way, Netscape is *slow*!  Man o man.  And makes my tablature 
page look crummy!  The world is crackers!  Give me Lynx anyday! 


ME: I was trying my hand at Netscape at the library, but I could use a lesson 
from a pro.  It seemed I was spending all my time rolling the darn ball 
from the lower right [for scrolling] to the upper left corner [for 
going back a page] - back and forth.  There's got to be better solutions.  
  
They ask you to send the browser to home when you're finished, but for 
some reason my screen was showing "The human race is special" 
as I walked away.  


THEE: For fun, I called up my name, and the Blood chat was 
#28 out of 54 matches. BUTT..a search with YOUR NAME put your web 
at #1!!   and then, 1-5 were all parts of your web.  

Found this web too: 
------------ 
This is a poem I wrote back in the mid-1980's for Donald Sauter, a 
friend, fellow Beatles fan, and proud owner at the time of a 
not-quite-PC-compatible Sanyo 550 (or whatever the model number was). I 
was the proud owner of a Commodore 64, for which I had recently 
purchased a word processor called Paperback Writer. It was a very 
powerful and easy-to-use word processor and the company subsequently 
released companion spreadsheet and database programs that were of 
equally high quality. Later, the names were changed from "Paperback" to 
"Pocket", much to my regret. 

(Hunters and Collectors is a record album that Don won in a contest 
hosted by radio station WMUC at the University of Maryland.) 

  Ode to a Word Processor 
  
  You think you're hot, 
  you think you're cool, 
  but I've got something 
  that makes you the fool. 
  
  You've got your Sanyo, 
  your pseudo-PC. 
  The Commodore 64 
  is the one for me. 
  
  You've got your EDLIN 
  and your PC WRITE!, 
  but you're in the darkness - 
  you haven't seen the light. 
  
  You claim the Beatles 
  are the band for you, 
  but you listen to 
  Hunters and Collectors, too. 
  
  You shout, you boast, 
  but you'll get quieter. 
  My word processor's called 
  PAPERBACK WRITER. 
  
  You looked, you searched, 
  but you couldn't find 
  a word processor titled 
  as well as mine. 
  
  You're green with envy 
  for what you lack. 
  Your word processor is probably 
  called GET BACK! 


Your address was also on the Presidential Candidates for 1996 


THEE: Let's look at "Life"!  I'm hunkering down with the May 29, 1964, 
issue.  Anything essential?  Well, not really: 

Page 23:  Letters.  Two concerning a review in a previous issue of the 
novel "Candy."  Ho-hum. 

Page 39 features an article on my favorite entertainment sensation of 
the era.  (Note:  the word "ye" should be read with an accent ague over 
the "e.")  "Hooray for the Ye-Ye Girls:  What the Beatles are to 
England, the singing Ye-Ye girls are to France.  There are three of 
them--Sylvie, Francoise and Sheila--but they sing separately, not as a 
trio.  Any time any one of them does sing, her fans shout `Ye-Ye,' 
pronounced yeah-yeah."  Francoise of that trio is famous enough for us 
to guess her last name, right?  Here's a bit of the first photo 
caption:  "Sylvie Vartan, 19, is the most photographed of the Ye-Ye 
girls....She has since made a movie with her fiance, Johnny Halliday, 
who is the French-model Elvis Presley."  I must see this movie! 

Finally, some Significa, and I don't know the answer:  What came first, 
the Beatles invasion of the U.S.A. or the Anchorage earthquake? 


ME: Thanks for the last package.  What fun!  As soon a I opened the 
flap, I got a great whiff of... what turned out to be Vegeta.  Pretty 
funny.  

I put vegeta in my last batch of chowder and it helped.  Still, the trend 
for me is that everytime I make something I thought was pretty good, it 
seems to go further downhill.  And I can't figure what possible thing I 
did differently.  
  
Let me ask a master chef, how important is olive oil?  Pretty 
critical, huh?  Or can you get away with any old oil?  
  
I dug your Rocky Point true romance story.  Put it on the Web! 
  
A guitarist friend of Kevin (former WGS guitar society prez and publisher 
of the newsletter) visited Rocky Point as a kid.  But he says, "There's no 
train that goes there!"  I said, you weren't there at the turn of the 
century! 

By the way, what does "true swap Yankee" mean?  


ME: Did I ever tell you about 
the person who was tricked into coming to my site because I stuck 
in OFFICIAL FOOTBALL RULES a few times?  She ended up reading my 
UFO sightings, much to her own surprise.  
  
There is another "Donald Sauter" or two out there.  One is a local sort 
of politician in California, who got in some trouble I think.  The other 
was a high school baseball coach who had to cut off all his hair 
because he lost a bet with his team. 

Alex has a nice page where he transcribed his grandmother's 
memories as a young girl growing up on a farm near Baltimore.  
  
Netscape is painfully slow compared to my Lynx browser.


THEE: Yeah, Eddie Vedder did cross himself in Masters of War.  In a Bad Radio song (a group 
he was in before PJ), he has a falseto 'Jesus Loves me this I know' included. 
Whatever he believes--and I've heard an interview where he talks about 
Budda stuff--39 days of vacation before you're reincarnated or something... 
he KNOWS quite a bit about the basic Judeo/Christian stuff.  

In Push me Pull me, there is a line 'I'm like an opening band for the sun'... 
this lyric is written in the booklet with the Cd...but...what if they meant... 
'son' instead of 'sun'.  Pearl Jam as a Christian Rock Band...hmmm...


THEE: May I suggest that you have a look at Frank Drake and Dava Sobels' 
book "Is anyone out there". It is an excellent summary of the search for 
life in the Universe, the Drake equation and the technical issues 
involved. 

(ps. based on various considerations of planetary formation, size of 
habital zones etc, estimates of the number of intelligent, spacefaring 
species that exist right now range between 10,000 to 10. Even at the 
higher range, the average distance between species is about 1000 light 
years more or less, so it is unlikely that anyone out there knows of us 
yet). 


THEE: 
> I was curious about the Christmas tree photo you mentioned.  Where 
> is a copy of that?  Are the Beatles dressed the same as on Beatles VI? 

Yes, they are all wearing the same clothing for that shot so it 
was no doubt from the same photo session.  


THEE: As for your question about olive oil.....yes it does matter a 
great deal, at least to Italians like me anyway. We only use extra 
virgin olive oil. You can use vegetable or corn but it just does not 
taste as rich as olive oil. I buy it by the gallon... I know it can be 
expensive but there really is no getting around it. 

A true swamp Yankee let's see if I can explain this one. Do you remember 
the Pepperidge Farms commercial "you can't get there from here". 
Probably not since you don't have a TV huh? My Mom describes them as "a 
fiddle by the swamp" or a "Cajun New Englander". Most true swamp Yankees 
live out in the boonies, have 5 or 6 broken down cars in the front yard, 
luxury shopping is when they go to "the Walmart", they have a few 
missing teeth, slaughter their own meat, etc, etc. I'm trying hard to 
describe it, I guess they are kinda like a redneck, but only from New 
England. Does that help any??? 


ME: Did we all know that the main Seatrain guy, A. Kulberg, came from 
Blues Project?  My Irwin Stambler reference is not aware of the Seatrain 
record which preceded their "debut" on Capitol.  Why did I unload 
it???  Moral - *never* get rid of a record.  
  
Who was the first geezer in rock?  Do you know the guy who started 
Spirit, Ed Cassidy, was born ca. 1930?  He was drumming with big bands 
in the '40s.  The back of my one Spirit album does show one baldy.  
  
The latest Beatlefan is quite acceptable.  I read the 3 major 
interviews.  Biggest highlight is the very plausible *non*-
inconsistency between the Jurgen and Astrid versions of the hair 
story.  
  

THEE: Sounds like Ed Cassidy is the grand daddy.  I know that the 
guitarist for the Police may have been slightly older than the Fabs 
but certainly not a decade older.  It's funny that I didn't think it 
was possible for any '60s rockers to be born before 1940.  You know 
that Chuck Berry was born in 1926, of course. 


ME: Does Stephen Jay Gould's belief 
that the development the human species is incredibly unlikely 
affect that estimate of 10 to 10,000 intelligent alien races you 
mention?  And, as is beat to death in my web page, a 3 billion 
year old (or piddling 10,000-year-old) alien race doesn't *have to* 
know about us for us to know about them. 


ME: I could gab forever on why I like text-only.  
It's faster (even with my 286); you get *almost* everything of any 
value; you don't see all that miserable advertising; the porn is 
"out of mind"; and it is *cheap* - like totally free in the state 
of Maryland to anybody with a modem.  So with my $150 computer, I 
make my way around the net and web with the best of them (almost).  


THEE: What really caught my attention is your dumb "science" page.  (Oops!  I 
think I got the double quotes in the wrong place! :)  A few years ago, I 
read a book about the mitochondrial Eve controversy; the book really got my 
interest in genomics going.  The book moved along, discussing the original 
research (late 1980's?) as if it were fact and describing various people 
whose careers were laid waste by the zealous and somewhat arrogant 
researchers.  Towards the end of the book, however, you learned that the 
original research eventually collapsed.  (Looking back at your web page, I 
see that you have the dates there.) 

 => [H]ow do you trace something back 270,000 years when all you have 
 => to go on is the endpoint?  [From your web page] 

Are you questioning the 270,000-year figure or the tracing back itself? 
Plus, you don't have a single endpoint; remember, we're at the outer edges 
of the tree, not the root.  A similar approach is used in the textual 
analysis of ancient literature such as the Bible.  For example, deducing a 
common document as the basis of the first 3 gospels, with Mark apparently 
the closest to that common document.  (Although I'm currently reading a 
recent book that places Matthew back in the 50's A.D. based on some papyrus 
fragments.) 

Netscape is just as fast as, if not faster than, Lynx.  It's the library's 
internet connection that is slow. 

We finally got a decent computer at home - a 486 machine 
with a 200-MB hard drive and a 14" or 15" color monitor - for only $25. 
I don't have a (fast) modem for it yet. 

I gathered up my web pages on a floppy disk, took them home, and brought 
them up in Internet Explorer - an eye-opening experience that gave me a 
taste of what the average home viewer sees.  The fonts are huge, which 
means you can't see much on the screen, and I don't know how to make them 
smaller.  (They naturally show up smaller on a large monitor like I have at 
work.) 

Oh, well, as John Lennon used to say.  (And Peter Green, too.) 


THEE (witness to a plane crash at College Park Airport):

I was at the airport early one weekend day, preflighting my 
Cardinal, about to take two passengers over to Easton for the Opportunity 
Skyway shindig.  We turned when we heard a roaring engine and watched that 
big 'ole Piper Lance wallow along low to the ground.  He never gained any 
altitude and mushed into the earthen berm at the north end of the runway. A 
big fireball erupted and when it cleared there was no plane.  He had sheared 
off the right wing, then hopped across the train tracks, down into a deep 
narrow ravine.  Many people at the airport rushed to the scene.  I drove 
over to the north end, ran up the berm through the chain link fence, and 
looked over to the smoking ruins of that plane expecting the worst.  I saw 
six young guys (all in for the Promise Keepers rally that day) walking in a 
daze away from the wreck.  I don't know how they got out intact.  All were 
walking on their own, but three looked badly burned.  The pilots who had 
congregated to help could only direct the 6 along the tracks over to some 
shade and water of the creek.  The southbound Metro train made an appearance 
about this time, but prudently stopped 200 yards away from the burning 
wreckage (the plane had left a wheel, and a wing on the Metro tracks). 
Metro quickly turned off the third rail in our section.  We had to wait a 
few minutes (felt like eternity) for the ambulances and fire trucks to 
arrive and bridge over the obstacles to the 6 people.  The six were trapped 
by a 10 foot concrete wall at my position south of them on the Metro tracks 
(dropped down to the Rail lines) and a vegetation covered chain link fence 
blocking access from the fire academy to the north.  They probably didn't 
even know where the airport was - they couldn't see it from the place where 
they were trapped.  The fire crews put out the burning plane and opened up 
access for the ambulance crews.  We helped a little there and I learned a 
new phrase - "please pass me another 4x4" - which was asking for a 4" square 
sterile dressing used to cover the burns.  One guy had pieces of skin 
peeling of his hands and face and was going into shock.  The fire crews 
removed three of the six by Stokes litter - had to walk north in the creek 
to get out to the fire academy grounds.  Each victim was treated by 
ambulance crews in the fire academy parking lot and at least two were 
MediVaced from there to local hospitals.  Based upon what I saw, these six 
guys were living right 'cuz that accident could have gone much worse.  all 
six survived as far as I know. 

Stop by College Park Airport (CGS) late 
this spring, they are opening up a new, very large museum on the field.  It 
has an Ercoupe (built there in Riverdale at the old ARCO plant), a Berliner 
helicopter, a J2 (predecessor of the Piper Cub), and other old planes. They 
will have a replica of the Wright Flyer B model when Ken Hyde finishes it 
later this year.  The Wright brothers gave instruction to the US Army in 
1909 or so in the B model at CGS. 

  
ME: Do you remember a letter from 
John Lennon popping up in the newspapers in 1996, I would guess? 
It was a rant, directly mostly at Linda McCartney.  Maybe it had 
just been auctioned.  Sound familiar? 


ME: I was kidding about iz710, even though I have grown attached to it.  
You're right - it was just something assigned to me by the Cleveland 
Freenet administrators.  I coincidentally met iv710 once.  Small eworld, 
isn't it? 


ME: Did you know 30 years ago this month (nominally speaking), 
there was a review of the Magical Mystery Tour album in some magazine? 

I saw Jose Feliciano in concert at Constitution Hall today.  He 
played Rain.  (That doesn't trip you up for a moment, does it?) 

If you're reading this on Monday, Bill Doggett is 82 today.  
  
Have we reached closure on the Francoise issue?  


ME: Looking forward to Scrabble.  How about bringing a bunch 
of players?  C'mon, you know lots of people.  There's a 10-point 
bonus (one time) for every new player somebody lugs along.  
(The newcomer gets 50 points.)  


ME: After I went to the trouble writing a dissertation for posting 
to rec.music.beatles concerning Beatles/PJ/Rain, I searched 
the archives and found the following posting.  Drat.  Not only 
was I pipped, but it sheds doubt on my whole darn theory about 
Rain being so influential on Pearl Jam.  Beans beans beans.  
  
I rarely get to any sort of pop concert, but I saw Jose Feliciano 
today at Constitution Hall with the Marine Band.  It was nice.  
Very touching throughout, and some exciting moments.  I saw him 
once before, in the first ever pop/rock concert I attended.  It 
was 1971 in Philadelphia and he stole the show from headliners the 
Guess Who.  Fanny opened.  (Remember Fanny?  haha) 


THEE: Subject: Pearl Jam sings "Rain" in the rain 

Saw the Rolling Stones last night at the Oakland Coliseum.  As 
Keith Richards commented, it was "a hell of a night to come see 
anything"--it drizzled all through the opening set by Pearl Jam, 
and continued to rain through the ensuing intermission.  Pearl 
Jam responded to the weather by doing a version of the Fabs' 
"Rain." 

(Amazingly, the rain let up when the Stones took the stage-- 
though there were still sporadic sprinkles--and returned with 
a vengeance as soon as the show was over.  When Keef looked up 
to the sky and said, "We have a deal, right?" I thought he was 
*kidding*...) 


ME: Of course, the Bach Andante is a violin version!  You know I would 
never do anything to embarrass the WGS!  I was intentionally 
vague, because it's a really neat edition I found at LC.  I was 
really excited.  
  
Good luck with Sketches with Children and PBS!


THEE: Do you need my "Ye-Ye Girls" issue of "Life"?  I'm trying to slim 
down, you know. 


THEE: I had a last minute surprise 
invitation to a dinner-dance.  When I got there, the dinner turned out 
to be a table full of chocolates.  I nibbled a few, but went home 
starving and wound up sick the next day and was out of work till 
Wednesday.  I'm still sniffling.  Moral:  Don't skip meals during the 
cold season.  


ME: The Mideast Unhinged Life was June 16 1967.  Why do you ask?  
Your head's the one that has random and instant access to those 
sorts of dates.  If it weren't for you, I'm sure I wouldn't know 
anything about the intended Beatles cover for that issue. 

One bingo at scrabble last night.  Added 7 letters to a D in a corner 
spot to hit 3-word score with DRIFTERS. 


ME: You may now send graphic cards with wild abdomen - I 
can go down the local library now and poke around the web on 
Netscape.  

I'm not a doctor, but...  Last time I felt what I *thought* was 
a cold coming on, I squelched it with some serious hydrogen peroxide 
gargling.  Another amazing thing, I kept a budding fever blister to 
the least damage ever by dabbing it with hydrogen peroxide.  Don't know 
if these are coincidences - I will certainly continue using it until 
it starts failing me.  
  
All I really need to make cyberlife complete is a 9600 baud 
modem.  I'm sure they're filling trashcans the world over.  


THEE: I asked about that "Life" for an important reason.  As you may have 
remembered, I was crowing some months ago about having found an image 
on the web that purported to be an Asian edition of "Life" with the 
Beatles on the cover, from 1967.  I found it on "Life's" homepage, so 
I took it to be genuine.  I assumed that the Fabs' cover photo was 
yanked everywhere in the world except Asia to make room for the Six 
Day War cover.  I was looking at the image the other day and I noticed 
the cover date--July 24, 1967!!!  Thats six or more weeks later!  What 
gives? 

 


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Helpful keywords not in the main text: Hself = generic name, male or female (Himself, Herself). LC = LOC = Library of Congress. WGS = Washington Guitar Society.

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