The Witch of November: Edmund Fitzgerald Edition

Each year, those of us who live surrounded by the Great Lakes commemorate the sinking of the The SS Edmund Fitzgerald in a hellacious Lake Superior storm on November 10, 1975 resulting in the loss of the entire crew of 29. The early wicked cold bearing down on the Great Lakes this year is very much like it was that fateful November 44 years ago. Dewey from Detroit began our annual commemoration night back in 2009, a bleak period in America so we didn’t find the somewhat maudlin memorializing of another tragedy so strange; it was more like singing the blues.

I try to continue the tradition each year because Great Lake shipping is about as American as a job can get, and the men who worked the freighters are a special breed – the Mike Rowe dirty jobs kind of men that have built and maintained American greatness for generations.

From the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum:

The S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald was conceived as a business enterprise of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Northwestern Mutual contracted with Great Lakes Engineering Works of Ecorse, Michigan to construct a “maximum sized” Great Lakes bulk carrier. Her keel was laid on August 7, 1957 as Hull No. 301.

At 729 feet and 13,632 gross tons she was the largest ship on the Great Lakes, for thirteen years, until 1971.

If you’re wondering how a ship so massive can be destroyed by a lake, here are a few facts about Lake Superior where the Fitzgerald went down:

1.  Lake Superior is, by surface area, the world's largest freshwater lake.
2.  The surface area of Lake Superior (31,700 square miles or 82,170 square kilometers) is greater than the combined areas of Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. 
3.  Lake Superior contains as much water as all the other Great Lakes combined, even if you throw in two extra Lake Eries. 
4.  Lake Superior contains 10% of all the earth's fresh surface water.
5.  There is enough water in Lake Superior (3 quadrillion gallons) to flood all of North and South America to a depth of one foot.
6.  The deepest point in Lake Superior (about 40 miles north of Munising, Michigan) is 1,300 feet (400 meters) below the surface.
7.  The Lake Superior shoreline, if straightened out, could connect Duluth and the Bahama Islands.
8. The lake is about 350 miles (563 km) in length and 160 miles (257 km) in width.
9.  In the summer, the sun sets more than 35 minutes later on the western shore of Lake Superior than at its southeastern edge.
10.  Lake Superior has over 400 islands, the largest of which is Isle Royale, with a size of 207 square miles.
11.  Waves of over 40 feet in height have been recorded on Lake Superior.
12.  Travel by car around Lake Superior covers a distance of about 1,300 miles.

They don’t call them inland oceans for naught.

Click the image to see the interactive version

As the evening is dedicated to the memory of sea-faring men there’s really only one drink on offer:

The Dark ‘N Stormy®:

So the story goes sometime after World War 1, the Dark ‘n Stormy was born. It has its origins in a Ginger Beer factory that was run by the Royal Naval Officer’s Club. The sailors soon discovered that a hefty splash of the local Gosling’s Black Seal rum was a great addition to the Ginger Beer.

As for the name the Dark ‘n Stormy, it was coined by a sailor who, while enjoying the cocktail, commented that it was the color of a cloud only a fool or a dead man would sail under.

As you can’t patent a drink recipe, you can trademark a name and that’s what Goslings did with the Dark ‘n Stormy. Kind of like what Pusser’s Rum did with their Painkiller cocktail. So if you make a Dark ‘n Stormy with anything other than Gosling’s dark rum, you’re breaking the law.

Unmixed you can see where the drink’s name came from

Ingredients

• 1.5 oz Gosling’s Black Seal Rum
• Gosling’s Stormy Ginger Beer

Method

In a tall glass filled with ice add 4 – 5 oz of Gosling’s Stormy Ginger Beer and top with Gosling’s Black Seal Rum. Garnish with a lime wedge (optional).

The Gales of November®:

Not wanting to “break the law,” Dewey From Detroit trademarked the name “Gales of November®” to commemorate the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald with a modified recipe, replacing the Bermuda ginger beer with Vernors Ginger Ale – because that’s what we drink around here.

Although honestly, it has gotten sweeter over the years so if you prefer Fever Tree or Bundaberg feel free; but please - no spiced rum. That’s for pirates.

Our memorial begins with a delicious Gales of November© or if you, like VSGPDJT, don’t imbibe, just enjoy a glass of Vernors on the rocks.  Because it’s what we drink…well, you know.

 

Now, beverage in hand, sit back and listen to the best sea shanty ever composed:

Gordon Lightfoot: “The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald”

Bonus footage:

OK BOOMER

You know, the Statue of Liberty is so 19th century.

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

I see the Golden Warrior from Massachusetts has seized the day and embraced not just her Native American roots, but her nonbinary African roots as well: Elizabeth Warren: ‘Black trans and cis women, gender-nonconforming and nonbinary people’ are the ‘backbone of our democracy.’

White males need not apply. So it looks like we’ll need to redo that poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty after all:

"Give me your black trans, cis women, gender-nonconforming and non binary people,
Your huddled asses yearning to take a pee,
The wretched ruse of your scheming civil war
Send these, the homeless, densest-dossed to me,
I lift my lamp to your golden whore!"

We’re probably going to need a new Lady Liberty as well. Someone more enlightened, more 21st century; someone a little more, well, black. And tranny.**

So thanks Lizzy, for focusing us on what’s really important in America today: the war between the sexes, no matter how you count them. I guess once you’ve been woke you will never be dossed again.

Or as Glenn Reynolds so succinctly put it: OK BOOMER!

**Sorry crew, Lady M is not available for the gig.

Eventually It Will Stop

“Truth is not that which is demonstrable but that which is unavoidable.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

But alas, the Left has found a way to avoid it. They simply create “their truth” which is to say not truth. And therein they dwell.

Ergo, they can never deal effectively with reality.

Of course when the truth does not comport with your truth you will need to change the rules. 

Democratic truthkeepers keep changing the rules to protect their truth

But don’t try to stop them, let them get nuttier and nuttier…

Eventually it will stop.

Throwback Thursday: Rewind Edition

It’s open line Throwback Thursday.

In keeping with yesterday’s theme I submit this:

Not to mention rewinding them.

Keep history alive!

And don’t even get me started on vinyl.

Now do your part.

The World Is Your Oyster But the Irritants Form the Pearls

Despite being “better educated” than Boomers…

Thirty-nine percent of millennials have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to about a quarter of baby boomers when they were the same age.

Millennials find themselves falling behind in the Game of Life. That seems, well, unfair. But nevertheless, there it is.

Millennials are earning 20% less than baby boomers at the same age — despite being better educated, a new study has found.

Research published in a report by the nonprofit New America found that the Great Recession, which began in 2007, was largely to blame in the generational wealth divide.

Lack of solid income has also affected other aspects of millennial life — the median age for a first marriage is currently five years older than it was in the 1960s and more millennials are choosing to live at home than previous generations, the study said. - NYP

Naturally they blame us, the Baby Boomers, for everything.

Millennials (and to some extent their Gen-X and Gen-Z brethren) hate their elders with a ferocity never before seen in our culture. Egged on by the media-savvy likes of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, they blame prolonged heat waves on boomers who supposedly stood by and cheered as the Earth went up in flames. The phrase “OK BOOMER” has now become young people’s “repeated retort to the problem of older people who just don’t get it,”

I understand they blame the Boomers who took everything, used it all up and left them nothing. What other explanation could there possibly be? Because bad policies, bad management and bad juju have never aligned to hit the fan before. Oh wait, except for that time it did and resulted in the Great Depression – which was like the Great Recession, only much, much worse. Still, Boomers were never made to suffer through the horrors the Millennials have endured through the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, until Trump came along to fix it. Boomers were never unable to find a job because the unemployment rate hovered between 3.9 and 9.9% for the 10 years between 2008 and 2018.  Well, except for that time between 1975 and 1985 when it hovered between 6 and 10.8%, mostly around the high end, when many of us Boomers were just getting in the labor market. And to be fair, what we lacked in magnitude of recession we made up in volume. We had the recession of 1970, 1980 and 1990, along with 1987’s Black Monday stock market drop when everyone thought the financial world was about to fall apart but didn’t; even without any major government intervention.

And don’t even get Millennials started about not being able to buy a house! How unfair that Boomers are staying in their homes longer and not making that reasonably priced housing stock available to them. Could be that their parents are holding on to their homes in order to have a place for their Millennials to live when they decide to move back, again. True, housing stock wasn’t the major issue facing Boomers who wished to buy a home and start a family. No, the real issue was interest rates which hovered around 9% in the 70s but shot into the double digits during the 80’s and stayed there through the early 90s. The 30 year fixed rate peaked at 16.1% in 1981. I bet most Millennials couldn’t even guess what that rate would do to their monthly payment, even though they complain incessantly about the burden of their student loans exacerbated by interest.

Speaking of which, it’s beginning to look increasingly like the “I’ll gladly pay you tomorrow (with interest) for a college degree today” plan is a fool’s mission for the young unless they’ve gotten adequate counselling along the way. A LOT of degrees that end in “studies” do not make you any more marketable than you were before. Unless accompanied by teaching credentials even some of the classic disciplines, like English and history, only qualify you for a job at a more upscale restaurant.

Perhaps this article contains another reason why that is: 

For the third time in a row since Common Core was fully phased in nationwide, U.S. student test scores on the nation’s broadest and most respected test have dropped, a reversal of an upward trend between 1990 and 2015. Further, the class of 2019, the first to experience all four high school years under Common Core, is the worst-prepared for college in 15 years, according to a new report.

And that’s really saying something. But as some old Boomer first noted back in the olden days: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Just remember, everybody’s story begins the same way:

You write the rest. The world is indeed your oyster but it is the irritants that form into pearls.

DISCLAIMER: As I’ve written on this subject often enough to know, I need to post this. This criticism does not apply to all Millennials. Indeed, there are some real movers and shakers out there who have, despite all odds, grabbed the bull by its horns and turned the world into their oyster. Hooray for them! There just seems a smaller percentage of movers and shakers these days and for that I blame the media-education complex and the cesspool of Hollywood.

And while I readily admit that stereotyping can be inherently unfair, it does – as somebody pointed out just the other day – save time.

You’re Gonna Need a Better Whistleblower

I'm beginning to think Adam Schiff was duped by Brennan loyalist Eric Ciaramella. He was promised a quid pro quo--then Trump released the transcript. They got nothing. Now Schiff is left holding the bag on the dumbest hoax since Jussie Smollett mugged himself w a Subway Sandwich.

— thebradfordfile™ (@thebradfordfile) November 4, 2019

Poor, poor Adam; you can’t trust anybody. He, of all people, should know that.

If you truly seek Quid Pro Quo, you’re gonna need a different Joe Blow. And  a better whistle blower.

Try Quid Pro Joe, he seems quite capable of blowing a mean whistle.

Help! I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Shut Up!

I see that it’s Will Roger’s birthday today. He would have been 140. His timeless quotes are a tribute to the constancy of human nature. Of course if he were alive today they’d be Tweeted or Instagrammed and likely lost to posterity, buried under the morass of crap floating around out there. Here is my curated list of some his best:

• Always drink upstream from the herd.

Which is timeless advice.

Then there’s this, which at one time might have been a good thing…

• Tilt this country on end and everything loose will slide into Los Angeles.

but as you can see it hasn’t turned out that well.

• Don't let yesterday use up too much of today. (see above for example of what can happen if you don’t heed this advice)
  

• Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.
  

Of course today you have even more to worry about: your parrot might order stuff using your Alexa account. Make sure it isn’t something embarrassing.

The parrot situation reminds me of perhaps Mr. Roger’s most sage advice:

• Never miss a good chance to shut up.

Happy birthday Mr. Rogers; rest assured that Washington hasn’t actually changed all that much since you were around. It’s just more so.

• I was born on election day but never was able to get elected to anything. I am going to jump out some day and be indefinite enough about everything that they will call me a politician, then run on a platform of question marks, and be elected unanimously.

I will only note that Will Rogers was a Democrat. Of course Democrats then were not at all like Democrats today, so he can be forgiven.

Beto: Just Beat It

Beat It Beto:

As it turned out, this wasn’t the silver bullet he’d hoped for. It didn’t prove to be any more compelling than his other “ideas.”

O'Rourke started his campaign on a strong note with more than $6 million raised on the first day, but he was never able to consistently poll above more than 1% or 2%, leaning heavily on proposals for stricter gun control, more liberal abortion laws, and punitive taxes for churches that do not endorse gay marriage. – WE

There’s a winning platform that will rally the heartland.

So reluctantly Beto the very White Hispanic announced last week he was abandoning his bid for President. Hard to believe, as he was such hot stuff just 6 months ago.

“Beto O'Rourke emerges as the most electable Democrat in poll that shows he would beat Trump by 10 points – and the only front-runner the president would beat is Elizabeth Warren.” – Daily Mail, May, 2019

I realize voters are fickle, but so are campaigns. When fake news is combined with biased polls your staff could easily be talked in to ordering a lot of inventory that’s going to be tough to dump when the wind shifts.

Fire Sale Special!

Maybe Beto could use them to revive his musical career.

I’ll bet if he tried he could set his discarded cheer sheets from the Iowa campaign to music.

A reporter disseminated a picture of abandoned fliers that gave crowd instructions for Beto O'Rourke supporters at an Iowa conference center. Sad.

Or he could wear the red hoodies and just do Michael Jackson cover songs, like Beat It – a music video that Michael recorded during his Hispanic period too, and featuring a red jacket.

 

You better run, you better do what you can
Don't want to see no blood, don't be a macho man
You want to be tough, better do what you can
So beat it, but you want to be bad

 

Just beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it
No one wants to be defeated

Showin' how funky and strong is your fight
It doesn't matter who's wrong or right
Just beat it, beat it
Just beat it, beat it
Just beat it, beat it
Just beat it, beat it

Normally I'd suggest Beto just get a real job but I suspect they've got all the goats they need for chomping scrub at the Reagan Library…

and I don’t know what else he's qualified for. So I’m going to say just beat it.