What I Heard This Week! 07-11-2019
A Jim Beam warehouse in Clermont, Kentucky caught fire with approximately 45,000 barrels of spirits.Oh, no.One standard bourbon barrel usually holds about 53 gallons of bourbon that eventually turns into around 150 to 200 750-milliliter bottles. If all the barrels held bourbon, that would be a loss of at least 6.75 million bottles.Their warehouses are all about the same size as a football field and six to seven stories high. The fire was believed to have been caused by a lightning strike and was so hot that it melted the lights on the firetrucks. Last month, O.Z. Distillery in Owensboro, Kentucky, had a portion of a rickhouse (see below) collapse during a storm and they lost about 4,000 bottles. What is our world coming to!
Rickhouses and rackhouses refer to the same thing: whiskey aging warehouses where barrels are stored in “ricks,” or racks that stack barrels three high and store them on their sides during the aging process. Heat rises;therefore, temperatures are warmer and drier in the upper levels of the space and those barrels age faster and produce a higher proof spirit.
Two Kentucky lawmakers plan for the bluegrass state to,”adopt daylight saving time as the year-round standard time for the entire state and all of its political subdivisions.” They believe that the move could lower crime rates due to more daylight hours in the evening and lead to health benefits behind a more consistent schedule. I think we should all do this.
A woman in Tennessee says that a zebra living on a private farm behind a fence that is not open to the public, has been biting people. Huh? Private farm behind a fence. One 22-year-old woman said that she had seen people pet the zebra and feed the other animals at the Brookhaven Animal Farm but the zebra nipped at her when she got too close, so she came back in about 30 minutes to pose for a picture, standing about five feet away from the fence, when the zebra just latched on to her then picked her up off the ground then slammed back down again several times. She said she couldn’t believe it and that she thought she was going to die. Well, you already know what I think. Wild animal. Fence. Advance warning. Good Zebra! Another stupid selfie moment.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that we have broken records for the wettest 12-month period…for the 3rd time this year. There have been six $1 billion weather and climate disasters so far in 2019. Since 1980, there have been 250 weather disasters – an average of six a year.
In the King Lake Subdivision in the Kingwood area, a barefoot burglar shimmied under a gate and into a backyard (not his own) where he was met by the not so friendly family dog, Hank Williams, who chased him into the pool for a long swim, at least according to the surveillance video. Then finally after 40 minutes, the young man jumped out of the pool and into the garage where he entered the home and stole four rifles while a woman and two children slept. Hmmm.
A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck about 150 miles northeast of LA on July 4th, causing multiple injuries, house fires, cracked roads, gas leaks, fires and a swarm of aftershocks have followed. It was the strongest earthquake in 20 years for southern California and parts of Nevada. THEN, a day later, a 7.1 magnitude occurred. These quakes were so powerful that they could be seen from space and was felt 450 miles away in Scottsdale, Arizona.
“Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite. Or waiting around for Friday night or waiting perhaps for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a better break or a string of pearls or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or another chance. Everyone is just waiting.”Dr. Seuss
RECENT BIRTHDAYS: Actress Eva Marie Saint is 95. Actress Gina Lollobrigida is 92. Folk-soul singer Bill Withers is 81. Ain’t No Sunshine. Tabloid talk show host, reporter, attorney and author Geraldo Rivera is 76. Comedian movie director Mel Brooks is 93. Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs, Young Frankenstein.Fashion designer Vera Wang is 70. Country singer Lorrie Morgan is 60. Actor Tobey Maguire is 44. Actor Matthew Lewis is 30. He was Neville Longbottom in Harry Potter.
Actress Karolyn Grimes is 79. In 1946, at age 6, she played the role of Zuzu Bailey in the holiday film It’s a Wonderful Life. Her childhood film career spanned 16 movies, but she is best remembered for playing the daughter of Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. Actress Alice Kringe is 65. Borg Queen in the film Star Trek: First Contact. Jazz musician-film composer Dave Grusin is 85. The Graduate and Tootsie.
Singer John Waite is 67. The Baby’s (Missing You, I Ain’t Missing You at All). Former child-actress singer Danielle Brisebois is 50. Best known for her role as Stephanie Mills on All in the Family and isnow an Oscar-nominated songwriter. Actor Bruce Davison is 73. Well known for his starring role as Willard Stiles in the cult horror films Willard (1971) Ben (1972)and Willard (2003). Retired MLB All-Star Derek Jeter is 45. Former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn are celebrating their 73rd wedding anniversary. They married in 1946 in their hometown of Plains, Georgia, when he was 21 and she was 18.
Henry Ross Perot died this week at age 89. His father was a cotton broker and his mother a secretary. As a child, he delivered newspapers from the back of his pony, Miss Bee. In 1962, Perot and his wife, along with $1000 of her money, founded Electronic Data Systems and in 1984, the company sold to General Motors Corp. for $2.5 billion. His second company, Perot Systems Corp., sold to Dell Inc. for $3.9 billion. Perot received 19% of the vote when he ran for president in 1992.During the campaign, Perot spent $63.5 million of his own money and bought 30-minute television spots. He used charts and graphs to make his points, summarizing them with a line that became a national catchphrase: “It’s just that simple.”Perot continued to speak out about federal spending for many years. In 2008, he launched a website to highlight the nation’s debt with a ticker that tracked the rising total, a blog and a chart presentation. He financed a private commando raid in 1979 to free two EDS employees who were being held in a prison in Iran. The tale was turned into a book and a movie, “On Wings of Eagles.”
Arte Johnson died at age 90. Remember Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In? He was the cigarette-smoking German soldier whose comment was always, “Verrry interesting.”There was Tyrone F. Horneigh, the white-haired, trench coat-wearing “dirty old man” who repeatedly sought to seduce spinster character Ruth Buzzi, on a park bench. She would hit him with her purse, and he would fall off the bench.😊
Animal shelters in the very “diverse” greater Houston area say that many animals don’t respond to English, but do respond to Spanish, Vietnamese, French, German, even Hungarian, since there are approximately 145 different languages spoken in our area. Verrry Interesting. Never thought about this.
Gosh, I’m sitting here at my desk working on this column and I’ve started thinking about chocolate. I don’t eat a lot of chocolate, but I do enjoy ‘good’ chocolate. My problem today (if you can call it a problem) is that my thoughts ran to Ding Dongs. Ding Dongs?!? Remember them from a million years ago? Yummy, soft chocolate cake with creamy white filling and a really thin coating of chocolate glaze that covered the little hockey-puck-sized delight, which was wrapped in very thin aluminum foil that was fun to peel off. Yes, I enjoyed eating these in my 20’s, which was a very LONG time ago. Why was I thinking about them today? I Googled it and guess what, they still make them. Thank you, Hostess. Hello, H-E-B.
In the backyard of my office, I have one lonely tomato plant that came up in the compost, but it is blooming like crazy and has produced about 20-25 sweet, shapely little cherry tomatoes.When I took out the trash on Friday, I saw the dreaded, nasty, ugly, Tomato Hornworm on one plant. So, I picked it off and threw it in the alley so the birds could eat it. Then I started feeling bad so I Googled it, and this caterpillar will later morph into a beautiful Sphinx Moth. You know the huge ones that are mistaken for hummingbirds when they fly and hover helicopter style to feast on nectar, which is why they are also called Hummingbird or Hawk Moths. Like butterflies, moths perform necessary pollination tasks and serve as keyfood for bats, birds, even small mammals. So, we need them desperately. According to one study, Sphinx Moths are a primary pollinators of agave plants in the Arizona desert, which in some fashion makes tequila possible. Now, I have your attention.July 24th IS National Tequila Day.
228 pounds of marijuana and 70 pounds of THC gummies, four guns and $42,625 in cash were found during a traffic stop on the Gulf Freeway. They must have been on their way to Taco Bell.😊
The 18-year-old suspect in the road rage shooting that ignited fireworks in the bed of a truck carrying a family of four has been taken into custody and charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and two counts of aggravated assault. Investigators recovered an AR-15 in the suspect’s vehicle. Reportedly, both the suspect and the father driving the other vehicle, each had an opportunity to drive away from the conflict, but harsh, hateful words were exchanged by both parties…now one man is in jail and four other people including two children suffered serious injuries, burns and hospitalization.
For a long time, it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. Father Alfred D’ Souza
‘Big Little Lies’ – Anne-Elisabeth and I binge-watched and caught up. It’s a really, good, all-star cast, but it’s also so VERY foul-mouthed. Somehow ‘those’ words don’t look right or sound intelligent coming out the mouths of Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, and Zoe Kravitz, but it’s toned down with Shailene Woodley and Meryl Streep who just joined Season 2. These ladies are outstanding actors but the use of the *F* word doesn’t add one single thing to the story line, which is exceptional.
Ga Ram Kang was a 6-year-old child that drowned in a pool at King’s Crossing subdivision on Cinco De Mayo this year. His family is now ‘suing a teenage lifeguard, the homeowner’s association and a third party for negligence’ and asking for more than $1 million for ‘failing to exercise safety precautions.’ The mom (who is a Harris County Precinct 7 deputy constable) said, “When I see these lifeguards, they’re just playing. They’re on their phones. Surely not taking their jobs seriously because to them it’s a job. It’s not a career.” Yes, I agree that they shouldn’t be on their phones BUT as a mom, you knew they were on their phones instead of watching. The truth is…you and I are our child’s head lifeguard, not just at the pool, but every day of the week, wherever you are and whatever you are doing…our job is to watch our children.LIFE-guard. You can’t take your eyes off a child for one moment. Ever. To put the blame and a dollar amount on this baby’s life is painful. It can’t always be someone else’s fault.
Three NY police officers were waiting in line for some cake-batter ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. In walked a 33-year-old man tugging on his denim shorts when, oops, a pistol fell out and on to the floor. He was arrested because his robbery record prohibited him from having a firearm. I wonder if the officers ever got their ice cream.
Have a great weekend and thanks again for reading this. Lisa Baker
