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Beautiful morning here. One of those three spring days we are alloted every year. I went out at lunchtime and it was just lovely, in the 70s. But a front has now moved in and the temperature has dropped by twenty degrees in the past hour, and I can hear the building creaking from the wind.
I am preparing for a client visit up in the Boston area tomorrow. Like Columbus, it is one of those trips that requires an oh-dark-hundred arrival at the airport and a return somewhere post-sunset - an All-Day Sucker. The people are very nice, but it just feels so wrong to spend the entire day getting to and from a two-hour meeting.
[Oh well.]
Ya know, you can lead a cow out of the slaughter-house but you can't make her march in a parade.
About a month ago, I wrote about a cow that escaped from a slaughter-house in Ohio, eluding capture for ten days. Since then the cow - now named "Cinci Freedom" - has been offered asylum by a number of animal-rights groups, Marge Schott and now artist Peter Max. Cinci was also invited to appear in a parade celebrating the start of baseball season in Cincinatti, and received a key to the city as part of the festivities.
Unfortunately, all of this attention appeared to be too much for the cow, who became agitated by the marching bands and parade noise. It was decided that it would be too stressful for her to be in the parade, so they loaded the ungrateful wretch into the trailer and sent her back to the meat-packing plant.
[I'm kidding - they're sending her to Peter Max's farm in upstate NY, where she can show off her key to the city to the other animal refugees.]
Airport Screeners are taken on by Satirewire.com:
Washington, D.C. (SatireWire.com) — In a troubling sign that investigators may be getting bored with their success smuggling guns and knives onto airplanes, the U.S. Department of Transportation today disclosed that its agents have recently cleared airport security checkpoints with an M1 tank, a beluga whale, and a fully active South American volcano.
DOT investigators also boasted that they have repeatedly slipped past screeners with a six-burner Viking stove, the Field Museum of Natural History, and actor Sidney Poitier, whom they had gagged and, for some reason, painted bright blue."
[Love it.]
From the "Answer to Everything is a Lawsuit" file, the McCoys are now suing the Hatfields.
The Associated Press - Bo McCoy and his cousin, Ron McCoy, filed suit Friday against John and Barbara Vance, seeking access to a cemetery where three McCoy boys were buried after being tied to pawpaw trees and executed by the Hatfields in 1882.
John Vance, a Hatfield descendant, has posted "no trespassing" signs to keep people out of the cemetery.
"We've been put in this position where, as family members, we have been told we cannot have access to this cemetery," said Bo McCoy of Waycross, Ga., one of the organizers of the annual Hatfield-McCoy Reunion Festival in Pikeville. "We had no choice but to file suit. We regret that it was necessary."
It's not clear what exactly initiated the gunfire, but competition over timber resources and a trial over a stolen pig escalated tensions between the two families. The feud left 12 dead.
The McCoys, of Kentucky, and the Hatfields, of West Virginia, have tried to make amends in recent years by holding the reunion.
Curious about this, I did a search and turned up the official Hatfield & McCoy Reunion Festival, June 6-9 2002 in Pikeville, Kentucky. The website gives dining options in Pikeville, including: Applebees, Arbys, Mcdonalds, KFC, Peking Chinese Food, Shoneys, Wendys, and El Potro Mexican Food. [Uh huh.] It's a three day event and while it includes the expected Hatfield-McCoy Family Bar-B-Q, Genealogy seminars, a Hatfield wedding, Feud Site Interpretive Tours, the Hatfield-McCoy Battle of the Bands, and [my favorite] "Tennis Tourney, Horseshoe Tourney & Coon Hunt", I have to say it really doesn't hold a candle to the Punxsutawney Phil Festival Machine. I mean, the merchandising for the Reunion consists of a book, "McCoys Thier [sic] Story", by Truda Williams McCoy, and a videotape of last year's Reunion Highlights.
Where are the Hatfield Coffee Mugs, the McCoy-On-A-Stick Chocolates, the Grow Your Own Paw-Paw Tree saplings? The black velvet paintings of Floyd Hatfield's stolen razorback hog?
[With Elvis.]
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Quote du jour:
"If you don't believe in ghosts,
you've never been to a family reunion."
Ashleigh Brilliant (1933 - ____) English-US writer, cartoonist, columnist
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