California officials dumped two male mountain lions that had been captured in the mountains of California, to the waterless, desolate Mojave Desert, 210 miles away, where they died of starvation trying to make their way back to their home range. “In hindsight, it wasn’t a good place to release those lions,” said Tom Stephenson, a senior environmental scientist at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, “and we’re not moving them to that environment anymore.” Hmmm. I guess education and common sense just don’t always go hand in hand.
Do things for people not because of who they are or what they do in return, but because of who you are. Harold S. Kushner
A neurosurgeon in Australia pulled an 8cm long (over three inches) roundworm usually found in pythons, from the brain of a woman. It’s the first known case of this parasite being found in humans (but maybe it has happened, and they just didn’t understand the cause!). The patient resides near a lake area inhabited by carpet pythons, where she often collected native grasses, including Warrigal greens (New Zealand spinach) from around the lake to use in her cooking. The 64-year-old woman was first admitted to the hospital after suffering three weeks of abdominal pain and diarrhea, dry cough, fever, and night sweats. Then months later, forgetfulness and depression prompted an MRI which showed abnormalities requiring surgery. But no one expected to find a wiggly worm inside her brain during surgery. Hmmm. One for the textbooks. I’ll need to cook my sushi now.
What are sharks’ two most favorite words? Man overboard.
Do you know what the best snack is in Texas? Tortilla chips and salsa. North Carolina is Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Massachusetts has fried clams. Louisiana is Zapp’s potato chips. California is guacamole and Oklahoma is fried okra. Don’t you feel smarter now! And hungry.
Did you know that in the heart of Texas, which just happens to be Waco, there is one of the largest inland surfing and water sports facilities in the country? Yes, Surfing! Waco Surf and Wetlands Waterpark. It has state-of-the-arts artificial wave makers that make 120 waves an hour, plus you can customize your own waves. There are private surfing sessions, a water park with water slides, a beach and a really long Lazy River, beach cabanas, Waco Surf Hotel, and a cable park. info@wacosurf.com
Ways to kill weeds since that’s all we seem to have still living in this heat. Vinegar (above 11% at the hardware store) mixed with Dawn dishwashing liquid in spray bottle on sunny day. Rubbing alcohol and water (2 tablespoons to 1 quart water) in spray bottle on a sunny day, boiling hot water (my electric kettle is great for this because of the small pouring spout gets it directly to the weed), or a propane torch. I don’t recommend the torch right now because of our dry conditions, recent winds, and burn ban.
New rules at my house: Do not overbuy food, then let it spoil before I can eat it. It’s hard, because I still forget and cook family size; I’m getting better but have not perfected small dishes at this time. Anyway, I was out of milk last week, but I wasn’t ready to go grocery shopping so I opened a can of Nestle Carnation Evaporated Milk for my morning coffee. I opened it with an old-fashioned metal, pointy, bottle opener where one side is for cans and a flat squared-off beer/pop opener on the other side. I wondered to myself as I looked at the can, “would my kids know why you should open a larger hole on one side of the can and just a smidgen tiny hole on the other side?” If you only have one hole, liquid will flow out slower because air will need to replace the liquid inside the can, and the same hole the liquid flows out of is where air will go in. If you have two holes, the milk can continuously flow out one hole while air continuously goes into the other hole.
RECENT BIRTHDAYS: Singer Kathy Lennon of The Lennon Sisters is 80. Actor Joanna Cassidy is 78. Actor Butch Patrick aka Eddie of The Munster’s is 70. Today Show meteorologist Dylan Dreyer is 42. Actor Martin Sheen is 83. Lifestyle guru Martha Stewart is 82. Actor Jay North of Dennis the Menace is 72. Actor Billy Bob Thornton is 68. Actor-director Greta Gerwig of the new Barbie Movie is 40. Actor Loni Anderson is 78. Actor Erica Slezak of One Life to Live is 77. News anchor Connie Chung is 77. Trombone player Jimmy Pankow of Chicago is 76. Singer Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin is 75. Singer Rudy Gatlin of the Gatlin Brothers is 71. Today show weatherman Al Roker is 69. Guitarist James Burton of Elvis Presley fame is 84. (If Elvis were alive, he would be 82.) Newsman Harry Smith is 72. Actor Barbara Eden of I Dream of Jeannie is 92. Keyboardist Garth Hudson of The Band is 86. Singer-actor Rick Springfield is 74.
The world’s greatest game show host, legendary Bob Barker of The Price is Right, died at 99. He had the longest-running game show in U.S. history which turned Barker into the longest-tenured game show host. Fans often waited hours outside the CBS studio in LA just to hear Barker utter his famous phrase, “And the actual retail price is….” Mexican-American singer-songwriter Sixto Diaz Rodriguez died at 81. He and his music were rediscovered after the 2012 Oscar-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man, a documentary telling his story from the perspective of South African fans who kept his music alive even when urban legend said he was dead. Influential music executive Clarence Avant, known as The Black Godfather of the recording industry, died at 92. “DJ” Casper, creator of the popular dance floor Cha Cha Slide (that he developed for his nephew who worked as a personal trainer at Bally Total Fitness), died at 58.
The first 10 prescription drugs that will be subject to price negotiations with Medicare are Eliquis, Jardiance, Xarelto, Januvia, Farxiga, Entresto, Enbrel, Imbruvica, Stelara and Fiasp/NovoLog insulin products. The negotiations with the drug companies will happen this year and next, with new pricing not effective until 2026. It’s about time someone did something about drug companies.
Hurricane Franklin in the Atlantic did his thing this week, and Tropical Depression Eleven is way out in the Atlantic. Hurricane Idalia hit Florida (as we go to print) as a dangerous Category 3 and is heading up the East Coast with significant uncertainty on where it’s going, with some models showing a possibility of it looping around and coming back, but as a weaker storm.
As I sat at this computer on Monday around lunch time, I received a text message from my daughter in college in NC, letting me know that there was an active shooter at the University of North Carolina, but that her roommate who attends UNC was okay, but was under lockdown at that moment. I don’t even know how to tell you what I felt at that moment. Our children should not have to go to school in fear. Those 31,000 students at UNC had to hide in bathrooms, classrooms, and dorms for many hours. This closely follows three people shot with an AR-style rifle at a Dollar Store in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday. The shooter was seen putting on a tactical vest in a parking lot at Edward Waters University as campus security pulled into the same parking lot. In Oklahoma, a 16-year-old boy was killed, and four others injured in a shooting at a high school football game. A 20-year-old University of SC student was accidently shot to death on the front porch of the house he thought was his, where he had moved just last week… where all the houses look alike. Sigh.
It’s Labor Day weekend, and good hungry American humans tend to stuff themselves with hamburgers and hotdogs. Texan Harman Dobson started out in 1950 with a tiny burger stand in Corpus Christi wanting to make a burger so hefty you had to hold it with two hands, and so good that customers would exclaim, “What a burger!” Texas’ favorite Whataburger has now been owned by a Chicago-based company ☹ since 2019, but I guess it’s still Texas’ favorite burger. Have you tried their Dr. Pepper milkshakes? In New York at the new Mischa restaurant, they have a hot dog made with dry-aged brisket in a smoked casing from the butcher, it weighs eight ounces, is nine inches long and comes snuggly placed in a house-made potato roll after being gently warmed in rendered beef fat and seared on the griddle. The dog is accompanied by dry-aged chili, pimento cheese, bacon-habanero chili crisp, cucumber relish, kimchi, and mustard that is stained yellow using marigold flowers. Pretty fancy! You can ask for Heinz if you think you need it. Price tag: $29. After looking at the beautiful picture of this work of food art, I am convinced it’s well-worth $29. To each of you who wake up every day and work hard for your dreams, Happy Labor Day. Now you have time to mow the lawn, clean the house, pull weeds, and reflect on all we failed to accomplish this summer because of the extreme heat. (If you are reading this by email on Wednesday afternoon, be sure to see the rare Super Moon tonight – it will be the last one for over a decade.) Thanks for reading us.
😊 LISA
Send comments to Lisa Baker at lisa@thesourceweekly.com
