Good Eating

      More Letters From Paradise
            Good Eating

The Sunday New York Times (February 26, 2017) carried a story I thought you readers of my blog would enjoy. "Cannilbalism, A Perfectly Natural History," by Bill Schutt.

His research has revealed that people have long been eating other people. And it  is often whom you choose to eat.

I am sure that some of you remember the story of the ill-fated Donner party, snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains for five months in 1846. And after eating the family dogs,hides and twigs,resorted to cannibalism.

In more recent times there was the case of the soccer team whose plane crashed in the Andes Mountains, and they too were forced to cannibalism in order to survive.

The author who is a biologist, drew upon ancient texts,interviews with anthropologists, and scholarly journals to provide him with fact that cannibalism has long been practiced and accepted.

In China during the Yuan or Mongol dynasty (1271-1368), royalty and upper-class citizens dined on people. So much so that the various methods of preparing human flesh-baking, roasting, broiling and smoke drying are careful noted. Children were considered the tastiest, followed by women and men.

Here in Hawaii it is a  well-known fact that the English Captain Cook was killed and eaten by the Hawaiians. The event took place on Kealakekua Bay on February 14, 1779, on the Big Island of Hawaii. A parcel was returned to his ship" Resolution," contain  a portion of partly burned flesh from one of Cook's hips.

Now skipping many years, back to China again during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960's, when the practice was widespread.

Hawaiians today no longer eat people, and the practice of cremation followed by scattering of ashes in the sea, is much more common.
 
     Aloha
     Grant  

Zero

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                Zero
One of the little-known stories about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is the following.

A Zero fighter plane piloted by Naval Airman 1st Class Shigenori Nishikaichi, crash landed on the island of Niihau. He had been told that in case of an emergency, one of the attack submarines was assigned to rescue downed pilots. It  never arrived.

He had already shot down an American plane,  and he had six holes in his plane and was leaking gas.

The island he chose to land on is privately owned by the Robinson family. An ancestor had purchased the island in 1863,from King Kamehameha IV for $10,000 in gold.The island is eighteen miles long and six miles wide.   Sheep and cattle had been brought to the island from New Zealand. At the time of purchase there were only 600 natives on the island. None of whom knew English. The Robinson family guarded their fief from the rest of the Hawaiian Islands then, and do so to this day. The only way to visit the island is by invitation only. All the tourists know about the island is that it is private, and that beautiful very tiny expensive shell leis come from Niihau.

Nishikaichi's plane struck a fence and landed on its nose. He was pulled from the plane by Howard Kaleohano, who  managed the island, as the Robinson family had moved to the nearby island of Kauai. The pilot was given food, and the inhabitants learned that Pearl Harbor had been bombed by the Japanese.

Another person in the story is Yoshio Harada, whose family had been brought to the island keep bees. The story now becomes too complicated to cite here, but simply put, Harada and the pilot as Japanese, and thinking that the Japanese would invade, began to terrorize the natives. Another important figure enters the picture. He is Ben Kanahele. When the pilot pulled his pistol from his boot and fired three times at Ben, and though wounded, Ben picked the pilot up and dashed him against a stone wall. The pilot was dazed, Ben's wife beat in his head with a rock, and Ben drew his hunting knife, and cut Ishikaichi's throat. Harada, seeing that all was lost, shot himself in the stomach. And so ended the affair which had begun when the Zero landed.

To make a long story short, the bodies were later removed from their graves and cremated. It was some time before the pilot's fate was known. In Japan a memorial in his name had been erected. His parents later learned of his fate. Ben Kanahele survived his wounds, and received two citations by President  Roosevelt.

The national press picked up the story and was printed in Reader's Digest and a book  "Remember Pearl Harbor" by Blake Clark. Life magazine also wrote the story but it remained unpublished as the war ran on. There was also a song "They Couldn't Take Niihau Nohow."

What I have written here is a poor account of what happend on the island. There is so much more to the story. The information I used is from the excellent book "The Niihau Incident" by Allan Beekman.

     Aloha
     Grant

Some Odds and Ends

      More Letters From Paradise
          Some Odds and Ends
Randy, who has been known to tip a few, until he was at last fired from his job with the airline, where he worked as a mechanic. He is happy, now as he can draw Social Security and his pension. And nothing is required of him.

But he was not always a drinker. Take for instance the following.

Randy was was wearing a coat and tie while seated in the tourist class of a plane waiting to take-off. Seated next to him was a woman who was upset as the plane had failed to take off as promised. The plane's door opened and two men made their way up to the pilot of the plane. Some discussion took place and they left, followed by Randy. The woman passenger looked out the window to see Randy standing on the wing of the plane with a a dipstick in his hand measuring the gas in the wing. When he came back, the woman said, "I just asked you what was wrong with the plane, not fix it!"

Gene, who had been a fighter pilot and later flew for Pan American Airlines, was flying to a reunion of his fighter squadron. Seated next to him was a good-looking woman with a child. She noticed the insignia on his hat, and asked if he was going to a reunion. He replied that he was. She then said that she was also a fighter pilot, flying F15 fighter jets. She was returning from maternity leave. She told him that in war games she was the aggressor, and that visiting Asian pilots, when learning that they had been shot down by a woman, became very upset.

     Aloha
     Grant

Some Odds and Ends

      More Letters From Paradise
          Some Odds and Ends
Randy, who has been known to tip a few, until he was at last fired from his job with the airline, where he worked as a mechanic. He is happy, now as he can draw Social Security and his pension. And nothing is required of him.

But he was not always a drinker. Take for instance the following.

Randy was was wearing a coat and tie while seated in the tourist class of a plane waiting to take-off. Seated next to him was a woman who was upset as the plane had failed to take off as promised. The plane's door opened and two men made their way up to the pilot of the plane. Some discussion took place and they left, followed by Randy. The woman passenger looked out the window to see Randy standing on the wing of the plane with a a dipstick in his hand measuring the gas in the wing. When he came back, the woman said, "I just asked you what was wrong with the plane, not fix it!"

Gene, who had been a fighter pilot and later flew for Pan American Airlines, was flying to a reunion of his fighter squadron. Seated next to him was a good-looking woman with a child. She noticed the insignia on his hat, and asked if he was going to a reunion. He replied that he was. She then said that she was also a fighter pilot, flying F15 fighter jets. She was returning from maternity leave. She told him that in war games she was the aggressor, and that visiting Asian pilots, when learning that they had been shot down by a woman, became very upset.

     Aloha
     Grant

Dear Mr. President

       More Letters From Paradise
          Dear Mr. President
The President of the United States receives a ton of letters each day. It all began when Washington received just five letters a day, and he answered them all. And as time went on, later Presidents began to receive more and more letters. When McKinley became President he was being sent one hundred letters a day. It was just too much. And so the mailroom was born.

Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to Americans on his radio "Fireside Chats" during the Great Depression. He urged people to write to him with their troubles. A half-million letters arrived the first week after his talk. The White House mail room became a fire hazard.

The Office of Presidential Correspondence called "O.P.C." by those who work there.
It consists of 50 staff members,36 interns and a rotating roster of 300 volunteers to keep up with about 10,000 letters and messages every day.

In the White House mailroom 10 young well-dressed young men and women interns would reach into the pile of letters and begin to read. Choosing which letters made it to President Obama. When President Obama came into office he wanted to read his mail. He said he would like to read 10 letters a day. These final 10 letters were put in a purple folder and added to the back of the briefing book he took with him to the residence on the second floor of the White House each night. He liked to read them after dinner. "Back from the OVAL" was what the stamp said on the letters Obama had read. They were returned in batches to O.P.C., and most had some kind of notation in the margins. Some letters he stewed over. Some letters he answered with his own hand.

Nixon refused to read anything bad said about him. Reagan answered dozens of letters on weekends. He enjoyed reading letters from kids. Clinton wanted to see a representative stack every few weeks. George W. Bush liked to get a pile of 10 already-answered letters on occasion.The question now is, what will President Trump do about the White House mail?
I am deeply in debt to Jeanne Marie Laskas  for her wonderful article "The Mailroom," in the New York times Magazine, January 22,2017

      Aloha
      Grant

Circus Era Ends

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              Circus Era Ends
This Spring will see the end of an era, with the closing of Ringling Brothers Circus. For 146 years, millions of Americans thrilled to the events of this circus, but times change and people's tastes change. In its heyday wire walkers, elephants, trapeze artists, were unique forms of entertainment. But not so today. Also, there are critics of animal treatment and housing.

The closing of the circus will put five hundred people out of work, and will require housing for them. Also, homes have to be found for all the animals. There is already a retirement home in Florida for the elephants. But what about the railroad cars that used to occupy over a mile of track? Homes on wheels, animal pens, not to mention foodstuffs for both people and animals. Maybe some European circus will buy these specialized cars.

I remember going to the Ringling Brothers
Circus when I was a kid living in Texas. The huge tent with something going on in  each of the three rings at the same time.It's a good memory.

There also were small carnivals to be found in the 1950's. One was located outside of my town for a week. Kids rushed to help unroll the heavy canvas tent and do other jobs in hopes of getting a free ticket. The carnival boss  also employed a few high school kids to work ticket booths. My job was at the ride called the "Loop a Plane." It consisted of a tall tower with an arm and a cab at each end,that would whirl the riders around  vertical at high speed. When there were no customers, a search of the area under the ride would often turn up a number of coins lost by riders.

One of the carnival workers used to hide his whiskey bottle in my booth, and he warned me to watch out for "spotters," men who would tell the boss. He taught me a couple of tricks.  First, when the customer, handed him his ticket he would make like he was tearing the ticket up and then return it to me to be resold. I don't remember if I participated in this activity or not. But I don't think I did. One other thing I learned was to slide the customer's change just slightly back under the booth's thick wood window which blocked the customer"s view of some coins.

Many years ago I read in a part of a book by John Steinbeck, in which  the character is also taught the same tricks I was taught. l

The era of the Ringling Brothers Circus is now history, and has been replaced by many small carnivals which travel across America. We have these carnivals even here in Hawaii.
    Aloha
    Grant

   

Packers

      More Letters From Paradise
              Packers
I never played football in school, because of a heart condition. But, I always was at   every game. Later, at the University of Michigan, there were some great football games. And now living here in Hawaii, due to the time difference,we can watch games at breakfast, and have the rest of the day to do other things. But, don't get me wrong,we watch only important games. I am not a fanatic, and neither is my wife. This brings me to some football fanatics, the Green Bay Packers.

If you are a football fanatic, you may want to skip all the following information about the Green Bay Packers. You probably know about all this anyway. But for people who are only mildly interested in football, you will find this information very interesting.

The Packers were founded in 1919. Curly Lambeau, an outstanding player for Notre Dame, and George W. Calhoun, the sports editor of the Green Bay Press-Gazette, decided to form a football team. Lambda worked as a shipping clerk at the Indian Packing Company-hence the name of the new team. The Packers won ten games that first year. But it was difficult to find funds to keep the team solvent. In the end, aid came from stock sales, the first stock sale came in 1923. Shares were sold for $5.00 each, and required shareholders to buy six season tickets in order to see the bleachers filled.

Today the Packers are the only professional sports team in the United States that is owned by shareholders-363,948 of them representing 5,020,523 shares. I met a woman who was able to buy a single share for her husband's Christmas gift. It cost $250.  There are no dividends for shares, only bragging rights and a framed certificate proving that he is one of the team's 363,948 owners.

The only way to get tickets to a game at Lambeau Field is to inherit them. Tickets could not be transferred to anybody outside the ticket holder's immediate family. Nowadays, however, you can put your name on a waiting list-which currently numbers more than 81,000. The wait to get tickets is estimated to be around thirty years. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote that the wait would be more like 955 years. Some couples, on having a baby, put the child's name on the list.

A couple of other facts about the Packers. When  a Packer scores a touchdown, it is expected that he will jump into the stands.  In this way, the leap is a symbolic embrace of the team with the crowd. Also, the Packer fans travel, and are to be found everywhere. We have them here in Honolulu at Snapper's bar, which is always filled to over-flowing for a Packer game.

All of the information for this brief story of the Packers came from a most wonderful essay by Austin Smith, in Harper's magazine.

     Aloha
     Grant