Koalatee ePistle

 Famous First Words: Parish, monster, at our hands. --The Three Ladies Mozart The Magic Flute

It's Save The Koala Day ! Kathy Koala is really cute, but she can be unbearable. / Kevin Koala said, “What do you mean I'm not a bear? I have all the koalifications.”

..........Then peace will guide the planets and love will rule the stars.........Marilyn McCoo …..Let The Sunshine In

There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for. --Albert Camus

It is a perfect Friday morning. The sky is a beautiful blue with only light streaks of jet trails and a couple of small, puffy white clouds. The temperature is 57°F with a very, very light wind that only moves the willow branches and shakes cottonwood leaves to see if it can send them to the ground to drain into shades of tan and buttermilk. The crows are in the neighborhood bouncing their conversation off the trees and housetops. Shadows flow over the street as they fly about. Other birds are holding other conversations and the air is filled with a cacophony of tweets and chirps. Our lack of rain is beginning to show; lawns are ragged and traces of brown are woven among the green grasses. Down the block a large dog in a neckerchief is barking at the squirrels in his tree and Puck wants to join in the “hunt”, but we return home instead. Home to the smell of brewing coffee. Home that sounds like television cartoons in the next room. Home where I can sit down at my computer, take long sips of sweetened, creamy coffee and write to you. See – perfect?

Hope your weekend is the bee's knees, ePistliers.

First Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Congratulations! We've really become the people who tell younger folk, “I remember when all of this was just woods.”

Koral Koala ate all the eucalyptus because she couldn't leaf it alone. / I'm not short; I'm koala sized.

..........I know how it feels to have wings on your heels.........Deborah Kerr …..Hello, Young Lovers (The King and I)

Trivia Questions: So long, Howdy Doody! What do we know about the first ever televised American children's television show?

• ^ How often did Howdy Doody air – per week?
• ^^ What were Clarabell's only spoken words?
• ^^^ Can you name any other marionettes from the show?
• ^^^^ Chief Thunderthud was a member of what fictitious Indian tribe?
• ^^^^^ What was the princess' name?

Big Hello: Aluu – Greenlandic https://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/hello.htm

Second Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Pretty sure I only need one more bad decision and I'll have the whole set. --Submitted by INRITH

Image of the Week: I had a lovely picture of David Booth Memorial Stadium filled...filled up. But it had a prior copyright commitment, so here's a last minute replacement of Puck rolling on this back.

Fake Library Statistics of the Week: At any given moment 27% of librarians are cursing to themselves. https://www.facebook.com/FakeLibStats/?fref=ts

With parachute pants and aviator glasses, Kory looks so kool-ala. / What's small, furry and slightly purple? Kolma Koala holding her breath

..........Sunshine, Sunshine is all you see now.........Freddie King …..Same Old Blues

Moonbeam: Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act. --Truman Capote

Meditation of the Week: Which is easier – to love or be loved?

Puzzle of the Week: ...challenge comes from listener Theodore Regan, of Scituate, MA. If you squish the lowercase letters "r" and "n" together, they look like an "m." Think of a word that ends in the consecutive letters "r-n." Squish them together to get a homophone of a synonym of the first word. What words are these? --NPR Sunday Puzzle 9/25/22

Next Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: After a book was banned at my high school, I went directly to the public library and read it. It was the first time I realized books had the power to make parents completely lose their shit. It made me want to be a writer. --Jamie Ford

Kassandra Koala always predicted bad news. She was the bear of bad tidings./ Before he makes any appointments, he checks his koalander.

..........Why do birds sing so gay.........Frankie Lymon …..Why Do Fools Fall in Love

^ Howdy Doody was the first NBC show to air five days a week.

Almanac: It is Friday, September 30, 2022. The moon will be in the first quarter on Sunday (10/2) and is in Sagittarius. It is Blasphemy Day, International Translation Day, and National Mulled Cider Day. Because it is the last Friday, it is also Hug a Vegetarian Day, Save the Koala Day, Support Purple for Platelets Day, and Vegan Baking Day.

Among those born on this day were Robinson Crusoe (1627), Jean Perrin (1870), Kenny Baker (1912), Lester Maddox (1915), Deborah Kerr (1921), Truman Capote (1924), Elie Wiesel (1928), Angie Dickinson (1931), Freddie King (1934), Johnny Mathis (1935), Frankie Lymon (1942), Marilyn McCoo (1943), Rula Lenska (1947), Deborah Allen (1953), and Dave Magadan (1962).

On September thirtieth Guttenberg published his first book (Bible, 1452), The Magic Flute premiered (Vienna, 1791), the US claimed Midway Islands (1867), Bechuanaland became a British protectorate (1885), the city of New York was established (1898), the first manned rocket plane took flight (1929), Hoover Dam was dedicated (1934), Porgy and Bess premiered (1935), the first Congress of International Astronautical Federation opened (Paris, 1950), the first atomic-powered submarine was launched (1954), the last episode of Howdy Doody aired (1960), San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts reopened (1967), the first automatic docking in took place in space (Kosmos 186 & 188, 1967), the summer Olympics opened in Seoul, South Korea (1981), and Haitian president, Jean-Bertand Aristide was ousted (1991).

Night Sky, 9/30: The waxing Moon hangs in the southwest as twilight fades to darkness. Use binoculars to look 10° below the Moon and perhaps a bit left for what will probably be your last sighting this year of the Cat's Eyes, the pair of stars in the tail of Scorpius. At this late date the Cat's Eyes are tilted even more than usual, with the fainter one lower right of the brighter one. They're 0.6° apart. http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/sky-at-a-glance/

Fraternal Picture of the Week: The Brotherhood of Pallet Pirates.

This Week: Saturday, October 1 – International Coffee Day & National Black Dog Day & National Play Outside Day

Sunday, October 2 – Audiophile Day & Name Your Car Day & National Custodial Workers Day

Night Sky, 10/2: The starry W of Cassiopeia stands high in the northeast after dark. The right-hand side of the W (the brightest side) is tilted way up. Look at the second segment of the W counting down from the top. Notice the dim naked-eye stars along that segment (not counting its two ends). The brightest of these, on the right, is Eta Cassiopeiae, magnitude 3.4. It's a remarkably Sun-like star just 19 light-years away, but it has an orange-dwarf companion, magnitude 7.3, separation 13 arcseconds — a lovely binary in a telescope. Left of Eta, and fainter, is a naked-eye pair in a dark sky: Upsilon1 and Upsilon2 Cassiopeiae, 0.3° apart. They're yellow-orange giants unrelated to each other, 200 and 400 light-years distant from us. Upsilon2 is slightly the brighter of the pair. It's also the closer one.

Monday, October 3 – Child Health Day & World Habitat Day

Tuesday, October 4 – Duck Tracy Day & National Taco Day & Vodka Day

Wednesday, October 5 – Coffee With A Cop Day & Get Funky Day & World Teachers Day

Night Sky, 10/5: Venus is getting almost unobservably low in very bright dawn. Mercury is on its way up to replacing it there.

Thursday, October 6 – National Badger Day & National Noodle Day & National Orange Wine Day

Kristopher Koala was in the church choir. He sings bearitone. / Kit Koala went on a diet and switched from eucalyptus to koalaflower.

..........I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree.........Johnny Mathis …..Misty

^^ Clarabell the Clown never spoke on camera until the very last episode. While large amounts of money were offered by advertisers to have him say the sponsor's name or product, all offers were refused. After the closing credits of the very last episode, a drumroll was played, and Clarabell, holding back tears, softly said, "Goodbye, kids."

Preantepenultimate Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: At a weed store you can say “I want something to help me sleep that won't make me wonder if my back door is unlocked”. They will take you seriously, think hard about it, and then say something like, “Have you tried Ooga Booga Skywalker Cake?” --Submitted by MMS ~~This came as one sentence with 5 commas. I cleaned it up.

Moonbeam: Why would we have different races if God meant us to be alike and associate with each other? --Lester Maddox

Video of the Week: The Howdy Doody theme song (:33) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1USHuud5i8

Not So Late Night Snacks of the Week: The Royal Flush - True of False: A British supermarket responded to the queen's death by closing for one entire month? False....they responded by solemnly turning down the volume of their check-out beep. --Peter Sagal Wait Wait Don't Tell Me 9/24/22

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. --Albert Camus

Krystal Koala was waiting tables at Outback when she fell and dropped a whole tray of food. She was so embearassed. / Little known fact, Koalas settle legal matters in a kangaroo court.

..........A fleeting glance can say so many lovely things.........Johnny Mathis …..A Certain Smile

^^^ In addition to Howdy Doody, the cast of marionettes included: Flub-a-Dub, a creature made up of seven animals in one, whose favorite food was meatballs and spaghetti; Dilly Dally, a baseball-capped boy who could wiggle his ears; Mister Bluster, villainous mayor of Doodyville (the fictional location of the show); Inspector Fadoozle, forever peering through his magnifying glass, who billed himself as "America's number one private eye".

Antepenultimate Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Roadside sobriety tests are getting ridiculous. Last night I had to fold a fitted sheet. --Submitted by jm or ks

Weird Word of the Week: Hooplehead – foolish, ridiculous, or worthless person. Likely from Major Hoople in the comic strip. Our Boarding House. http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-hoo3.htm

Dragon of the Week: In honor of the Sand Sculpting Competition, A Sand Dragon of Grand Haven, MI

Wacky Uses for Common Products: Cure hiccups. To put a stop to the hiccups, eat one tablespoon Aunt Jemima Original Syrup. The act of swallowing and clearing the mouth of this sticky syrup interrupts breathing patterns, realigning the diaphragm, and the fructose in the corn syrup seems to stop the nerve impulses in the mouth from instructing the muscles in the diaphragm to spasm. https://www.wackyuses.com/wacky/auntjemima.html

Kory Koala threw a big party that got out of hand and the neighbors koalaed the cops. / Kadi got kicked off of the New Zealand Olympic team for cheating. She was diskoalafied.

...........Jungle drums were badly beating.........Johnny Mathis …..Babalu

^^^^ Chief Thunderthud was Chief of the Ooragnak tribe. "Ooragnak" is "kangaroo" spelled backwards.

Penultimate Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: If we can crash something into an asteroid to see what happens why can't we invest in housing everyone and see what happens? --L Joy Williams

Science Fiction Convention of the Week: Capclave (9/30-10/2, Rockville MD) -Where reading is not extinct https://www.capclave.org/capclave/capclave22/

Actual Science Conference of the Week: K-INBRE (IdeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence, 9/30, Oklahoma City, OK) ...science, technology, engineering, and math https://okinbre.ouhsc.edu/Conferences-and-Events

Answer to Puzzle of the Week: Darn → Damn

Kaci's favorite drink is Pina Koala while Kacey's is Koala tea / I love you, Calyptus.

..........As far as I can see, this is heaven.........Johnny Mathis …..It's Not For Me To Say

^^^^^ Judy Tyler appeared as Princess Winterspring Summerfall. She later appeared as Peggy Van Alden In "Jailhouse Rock" with Elvis Presley.

My Own Writing of the Week: I love husbands, you have a little afternoon delight and then they go home and drive someone else crazy.

I really tried to avoid men with entanglements out of fairness to them and to women I may or may not have met. I have no reason to hurt any of them. Of course, in the 60s everyone was sleeping around because we were hippies. At least I think that was the excuse. (In the 20s the excuse was they were flappers and in the 40s there was war on.) We had four person marriages, open marriages, common law marriages, and communes. Free Love was the ideal.

I never cared for that scene, it seemed artificial. I found it easy to believe that somehow organically people could get together in a variety of combinations of numbers and genders; but I never experienced it. All of the ménage à trois I was involved with were well planned.

I picked up a guy in a bar one night; he was married. It was certainly a one-night stand and we both knew that at the time. But I did that bar bit only once - yuk!! The worst thing about picking up partners in bars is that you have to spend all that time in bars actually drinking.

Pooh Bear, my first husband, and I had a weekend with a couple who were into group sex - because no one really likes the word orgy. It was one of the low lights of my hippie years. {I am always flattered to be thought of as an old hippy. I'm older than that; I'm an aging beatnik.} But the male of this couple thought it was fun to put drugs in people's tea and not tell them. The weekend turned into a long, trippy nightmare, basically. Lots of back rubs...good, long, sensual back rubs and subconscious crap.

One of the Young Apollos really was living with a lady; they weren't married but they were pretty solidly together. Jeez, I do not remember having a single qualm. We played Dungeon and Dragons with a group of people and I do not remember now who started the flirting that led to the affair. We were certainly playing in the dirt and we both knew it. That was part of the appeal, the titillation. I suspect that he had other women too. And while being one of a crowd is not morally different from being the only one, it can save one from a little guilt if applied carefully.

My first Husband

Whenever I am in a conversation where someone says, “I'm a Libra.” I say, “My first husband was a Libra.” And I never elaborate.

We were married in 1965, just a few years before the summer of love. We had an "open" marriage. Which meant that we could sleep with anyone we wanted to. We then preceded to make sex so uninviting to each other that the option became the default. We did group sex, spouse swapping, side affairs.

Pooh Bear was a wonderful father. I had friends who dreaded leaving their children with their exes over a weekend. Afraid. Pooh Bear was a much better father than I was a mother. When our first was crawling and climbing and learning, Pooh would sit on the staircase while he studied with one hand on the kid's butt. He had that kind of patience. He wasn't the perfect father; but I was never worried about the children.

I have no anger over our sexual exploits during this marriage. We were looking for new ways to relate, new ways to run the world, ways that were more egalitarian and shared the pains and pleasures of life among us all. We were bright and both learned a lot. We both went on to have productive lives. It was an interesting first act.

For a while Pooh Bear worked as a zookeeper at Topeka's Gage Park and Colorado Springs' Cheyenne Mountain. On a couple of occasions I was there when it was feeding time in the Big Cat House. Everyone knew it was dinner time. The male lion was pacing the cage roaring, pacing over to the little interior window and growling at the staff, and the pacing and roaring. A crowd gathered. The female lion was lying on her shelf looking really, really bored. When dinner finally arrived as a huge plastic dishpan full of huge hunks of raw meat. The female got up walked, leisurely, over to the male tiger and whacked him on the ear with her paw. He then went to his shelf and mama ate. When I got to the other end of the building the male tiger was lying on his shelf looking really, really hungry. Enough said.

At some point in this mess I had a meeting with a friend of mine, perhaps acquaintance is a better adjective for what we were at that time. She and I knew each other from C.O.R.E. meetings. I don't know why we were together talking about this except that part of the hippie experience was to talk about stuff, endlessly. Weather underground talked endlessly about bourgeois privatism.

She and Pooh had slept together. She seemed kind of afraid of me. It felt dreadful and I never wanted anyone to be afraid of me, ever again (at least, until I had teenagers and dogs). I wasn't jealous and I didn't feel anger or anything like it. I'm not sure why. Perhaps, I didn't really love him even then or perhaps I realized that he was a free individual and didn't need my permission to live his life. There were moments when I would have paid a fortune for some woman to steal him away. That husband has been ex since 1971 but that lady was a wonderful and faithful friend till the day she died.

It was during a wife swap with another couple that I bedded the Unreadable Writer. All I remember of the encounter was that I was embarrassed and self-conscious and awkward. It seemed so artificial. I also have a vague sense that he was as incomprehensible as his novels.

On the other hand, when Pooh's second wife left him and drove halfway across the country to show up - unannounced - at my door one Saturday morning, she was apparently ready to sit down to "roast bear". Fortunately, a friend of mine was at my house when she showed up and did not leave my side until we had gotten rid of her. Whew! Eternally thankful to that friend. I was not and am not into beating up on old loves.

And in the end he moved away, first to the west coast and then to Africa. --From: Always Surrender: Memories, observations, micro-stories, and lies from my life as an insurgent in the sexual revolution

Quote of the Week: Your proportions look funny especially when you're naked. --GQ Magazine. There is a boom in $75,000 leg lengthening surgery among men.

Final Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: So Ozzy is moving out of America to England because he thinks the USA is “getting too crazy”. Let that sink in. Ozzy Osbourne thinks America is too crazy. We are doomed. --Submitted by bgc of tx

Today's Peace of History, September 30, 2004: The U.S. Navy announced the shutdown of Project ELF.

Kyle Koala fell in love with Keira Koala because she was beary pretty. / Bear with me, I'll think of a pun in a minute.

..........In the magic moonlight when I sigh.........Johnny Mathis …..Chances Are

Masthead of the Week: Friday ePistle September 30, 2022, Koalatee ePistle. Online at: http://fridayepistle.blogspot.com/ Exclusive editor: Christine Smith. Lawrence, KS

Moonbeam: Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing. --Elie Wiesel

Cost of War:

• As of 9/29/22 State Department War Costs since 2001: $188,881,017,214.
• As of 9/22/22 State Department War Costs since 2001: $188,322,818,349.
• As of 9/022/22 Interest on War Debt since 2001: $1,086,667,754,190.
• As of 9/22/22 Interest on War Debt since 2001: $1,085,108,696,224.
• As of 9/29/22 Homeland Security since 2001: $1,116,870,851,877.
• As of 9/22/22 Homeland Security since 2001: $1,116,264,547,311.
• As of 9/29/22 Veterans Care since 2001: $2,662,483,540,927.
• As of 9/22/22 Veterans Care since 2001: $2,650,665,333,871.
• As of 9/29/22 Military Costs since 2001: $2,984,748,020,701.
• As of 9/22/22 Military Costs since 2001: $2,983,564,318,311.
• As of 9/29/22 Total Cost of Wars since 2001: $8,039,653,559,321.
• As of 9/22/22 Total Cost of Wars since 2001: $8,023,930,283,965.

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. --Albert Camus

Famous Last Words: 'Cause we're leavin' for the lan', Oh. Chorus Porgy and Bess

..........Saying good-bye.........Deborah Allen …..Baby, I Lied

Peace Keeper Kobin Koala fights for ekolatry. / Admit it, these were Koalaty puns.

May Peace attend your garden

And Joy mingle with your flowers

prairie mama

christine

Last Laugh: DART not only made history by crashing into an asteroid, but it also avenged the dinosaurs. --Bob DiPalol