Tag: Culture

MAY 16, 1988: ONE MAN’S TRASH

Posted on by Richard Daybell

trashcan

In 1984, the Laguna Beach Police Department learned from unnamed sources that one Billy Greenwood had a little home-based business selling illegal drugs. An investigator asked the neighborhood’s regular trash collector to turn over to police the plastic garbage bags he collected from the front of Greenwood’s house. In the garbage, the investigator found tell-tale signs of drug use. Using that information, police obtained a warrant to search Greenwood’s home. Lo and behold, when officers searched the house, they found cocaine and marijuana along with dirty dishes and other signs of poor housekeeping. Greenwood was promptly arrested.

 

California courts ruled that searching the trash was a no-no under both federal and state law. The matter found its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  On May 16, 1988, the Court reversed lower courts and ruled by a 6–2 vote that no warrant was necessary to search the trash because Greenwood had no reasonable expectation of privacy having put it right out on the curb like that.  No matter that he had put the trash in opaque plastic bags whose contents could not be seen without opening and that he expected it to be on the street only a short time before being taken to the dump.  The Court said it was “common knowledge” that garbage at the side of the street is “readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public,” none of whom might have search warrants. Not only that, Greenwood had left the trash there expressly so that the trash collector, a perfect stranger, could take it, and do with it as he pleased.

 

In dissent, Justice Brennan reasoned that the possibility the police or other “unwelcome meddlers” might rummage through the trash bags “does not negate the expectation of privacy in their contents any more than the possibility of a burglary negates an expectation of privacy in the home.”  Under existing law, the bags could not have been searched without a warrant if Greenwood had been carrying them around in public. Merely leaving them on the curb for the garbage man to collect, Brennan argued, should not be found to remove that expectation of privacy any more than leaving an unattended bag in an airport terminal would. “Scrutiny of another’s trash is contrary to commonly accepted notions of civilized behavior.”

 

And one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.

SEPTEMBER 15, 1907: IT WAS BEAUTY KILLED THE BEAST

Posted on by Richard Daybell

W.C. Fields cautioned against working with children or animals because they’re sure to steal the scene. You might say the same about a 50-foot gorilla. But scream queen Fay Wray had the big guy eating out of the palm of her hand (actually she spent quite a few scenes in the palm of faywrayhis hand). Born Vina Fay Wray on September 15, 1907, she became well-known for her roles in a series of horror movies, spanning the evolution from silent to talkie. But it was her role as the love of King Kong’s life that remained her primary claim to fame throughout a 57-year career in both movies and television.

In 2004, Peter Jackson approached her for a cameo in his remake of King Kong. She turned down the role, saying that the first Kong was the true King (Long live the King). Fay Wray died in her sleep that same year, before filming of the remake had begun.

Two days later, the Empire State Building went dark for 15 minutes in her memory.

King Kong had more than its share of “you’re going to regret saying that” lines, such as:

“Yeah, but what’s on the other side of that wall; that’s what I wanna find out.”

“He’s always been king of his world, but we’ll teach him fear.”

“Suppose it doesn’t like having its picture taken?”

Working the Little Gray Cells

In 1920, a new detective appeared upon the literary scene.– a former Belgian police officer with twirly “magnificent moustaches” and an egg-shaped head. Hercule Poirot debuted in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the first novel by Dame Agatha Christie, “the Queen of Crime,”agatha born on September 15, 1890. It is one of 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections featuring the Belgian detective and several other characters, most notably Miss Marple.

Christie’s career was full of superlatives. She is the best-selling novelist of all time, over 2 billion copies of her books having been sold. Her books are the third most widely-published in the world, trailing only Shakespeare and the Bible. And Then There Were None is the best-selling mystery ever — 100albert_finney_plays_poirot million copies thus far. The Mousetrap is the longest running stage play with more than 25,000 performances and still running. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was named the best crime novel ever by the 600-member Crime Writers’ Association.

Hercule Poirot appeared in half of Christie’s novel and in 54 short stories. By midway through her career, she was finding him “insufferable.” And by the 1960s she described him as an “egocentric creep.” Finally in the 1975 novel Curtain, she disposed of him (although the book was written many years earlier and stored in a bank vault for publication at the end of her life). Most of her books and stories have been adapted for television, radio and movies.

Agatha Christie died in 1976.

 

It is the brain, the little gray cells on which one must rely. One must seek the truth within–not without. ~ Hercule Poirot

SEPTEMBER 12, 1970: TURN ON, TUNE IN, DROP OUT

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Richard Nixon called him the most dangerous man in America, an honor usually reserved by Republicans for figures such as Charles Darwin and Barack Obama. Timothy Leary wasn’t always so “dangerous.” He had a distinguished military service and academic psychology career timothy-leary-until he started thinking way outside the box, promoting the therapeutic use of psychedelic substances. It was your basic slippery slope, as he quickly evolved during the wild and woolly 60’s to a self-described performing philosopher and hippie guru. He used LSD himself and developed a philosophy of mind expansion and personal truth through LSD with such heady concepts as space migration and intelligence increase. Eventually, it was all about turning on, tuning in, and dropping out.

As a result, Leary also came to spend more time in jail than out of it, becoming intimate with 36 prisons throughout the world. In January 1970, he received a 20-year prison sentence for a pair of earlier transgressions. Upon his reporting for prison duty, Leary was given a series of psychological tests meant to help determine what work duties he was suited to. Having himself designed such tests, he found it quite easy to manipulate the results so that they would show him to be a model citizen with an interest in forestry and gardening, pursuits that would conveniently keep him out of doors.

Leary was assigned to work as a gardener in a minimum security prison. On September 12, 1970, leaving a farewell note, he climbed over the prison wall along a telephone wire to a waiting pickup truck supplied by the Weather Underground. For $25,000 (paid by the Brotherhood of Eternal Love), the weathermen smuggled Leary and his wife out of the United States and into Algeria. From there, they traveled to Switzerland, Vienna and Beirut. In 1972, they headed for Afghanistan which had no extradition policy with the U.S. Unfortunately, they traveled aboard an American airline, and were arrested before they could deplane.

Leary was returned to prison where he remained until his release in 1976. He died in 1996.

Come Together

“Come Together,” written by John Lennon, became a big hit for the Beatles and an anti-war anthem. It was originally written as a campaign song for Timothy Leary’s aborted run for governor against Ronald Reagan.

Said Lennon: “The thing was created in the studio. It’s gobbledygook; “Come Together” was an expression that Leary had come up with for his attempt at being president or whatever he wanted to be, and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t come up with one. But I came up with this, “Come Together,” which would’ve been no good to him—you couldn’t have a campaign song like that, right?”

Murray Middlebury Has an Affair, Part 1: Healthy, Wealthy and Wise

Murray Middlebury downed the last of his daily bran flakes as his wife Lenora looked on approvingly. “Good fiber,” she would frequently intone, giving blessing to their morning ritual of oat bread, bran flakes, and decaffeinated coffee. “To our health,” Murray would often quip in reply as they clinked together their glasses of V-8.

Bacon never found itself on the Middlebury table, for the Middleburys, a classic 21st century health-conscious couple, had forsaken all things animal in their quest for immortality or whatever it is that is the holy grail of 21st century health consciousness. Beef was banished, pork proscribed; even chicken was cast off.

Murray sometimes jokingly referred to Lenora as the bean queen for the innovative ways she could feature the lowly legume. To their credit, their diet and program of daily exercise did leave them fit and trim. Murray’s position as an actuary and Lenora’s as a CPA gave them a good household income. And the Middleburys exercised their minds as well as their bodies, reading the right books and associating with the likes of Bach, Brahms, and Mahler.

In short, the Middleburys were healthy, wealthy, and wise – sure candidates for living happily ever after. But Murray had a dirty little secret. He was about to have an affair.

“You’re remembering, dear,” said the imperfect half of the perfect pair, “that my men’s discussion group is having its first meeting tonight.”

“And you won’t be home for dinner,” said Lenora, showing obvious concern for his well-being.

“No, but I’ll take a couple of extra apples with me,” said Murray. “We’re discussing Pilgrim’s Progress.”

“How lucky for you that you read it just last year.”

“Yes,” Murray agreed, with a smile.

continued

 

This story originally appeared in Hemispheres, the United Airlines magazine. It is included in Naughty Marietta and Other Stories.

 

SEPTEMBER 6, 1899: Is Your Cow Really Happy?

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Elbridge Amos Stuart was a man who knew his cows. He learned cows on his father’s farm in North Carolina and carried that knowledge into his own adult enterprises. Eventually he went west, young man, finding his way to the state of Washington where on September 6, 1899, he founded a company that was all about cows and a new process that evaporated the milk from those cows and canning it, thus creating a sanitary milk product that required no refrigeration.

The business grew, and he gave it a new identity, the Carnation Evaporated Milk Company (the name taken from a box of cigars he had seen in a tobacco shop window).  Then in 1907 he introduced the promotional slogan that would from then on be the company’s mantra: “Carnation, the milk from contented cows.”

And were those cows contented. Stuart’s conviction that the best milk came from cows that were healthy, wealthy and wise was the company’s guiding principle. And Stuart didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. Those happy cows were also the most productive. Carnation cows led world milk production for over 30 years. One really contented cow, Segis Pietertje Prospect (Possum Sweetheart to friends), delivered a record 37,381 pints during one year. A statue in Tolt, Washington (now Carnation, Washington) commemorated this achievement.

That’s Some Cow

Possum Sweetheart, a Holstein, achieved her record output in 1920. She was born in 1913 at the Carnation Milk Farms, sired by a bull known as Old Buckshot. The first time her milker (contented cows evidently have personal milkers) milked her, she produced twice as much milk as any of the other less contented cows. And she did it again and again, producing her own weight in milk every three weeks.

Her fame spread. Officials from agricultural colleges throughout the world came to see her. Reporters and photographers reported and photographed. Celebrities and politicians dropped by.

Possum Sweetheart died at the age of 12, five years after her record output. Her offspring were sold to breeders throughout the world, and many of her heifers’ offspring became productive Carnation cows themselves.

Then There’s Elsie

What Contented Cows Listen To

Known throughout his career as the Texas Troubadour, Ernest Tubb was a pioneer of country music who helped to popularize the honky tonk style with his major 1941 hit “Walking the Floor Over You.” His career went on to span another four decades. He died on September 6, 1984.

 

Sept 5, 1786: Watch it with that Thing, You’ll Poke Someone’s Eye Out

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Jonas Hanway who died on September 5, 1786, was well-know in several British spheres — a vice president of the Foundling Hospital, founder of Magdalen Hospital, revolutionizing London birth registration and in charge of “victuallizing” the Navy. On the other hand, he was also known for tirades against tipping and tea-drinking and his support for the concept of solitary confinement.

But what he is most remembered for is bringing the umbrella to Britain. Now the umbrella had been around for a long time. It was invented in China back in the 11th century B.C. It was popular in Greece and Egypt as a sunshade. It was also used in Rome, but when the empire declined and fell, so did use of the umbrella. It was finally reintroduced in the 15th century, and by the 17th century had become quite popular among sophisticated women in France and even some British women. But a man?

Hanway is credited with being the first male Londoner to carry an umbrella, much to the chagrin of hackney coachmen who thought it their proprietary right to protect Londoners from rainfall. For years, they jeered at him with vigor as being a feminine sissy and even worse, a French sissy. But by the time of his death, umbrellas were commonplace throughout London.

Brolliology is of course the study of umbrellas. Of course. Does anyone actually know a brolliologist? What inspires someone to become one? What are their conventions like? We will study the umbrella a little further on September 7, the date of another noted umbrella in history.

Taxi Dancers and Tango Pirates

As America roared through the 20s, Hollywood’s fledgling film industry was itself roaring, the screen filled with stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph_ValentinoDouglas Fairbanks, Greta Garbo, and the roaring MGM lion. Come 1926, a new star would jump to the top of the heap, blazing a trail of sex and seduction. It almost didn’t happen.

Italian born Rodolfo Alfonso Rafaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina D’Antonguolla arrived at Ellis Island in 1913, at the age of 18. The young man who would eventually be known as the Latin Lover Rudolph Valentino took up residence in Central Park and on the streets of New York City. He found work as a taxi dancer (think “ten cents a dance”)at Maxim’s and became a”tango pirate,” a gigolo who sought out wealthy women at dances who were willing to pay for the company of handsome young men.

Valentino developed a relationship with a Chilean heiress who was unhappily married to a wealthy businessman. When she sued for divorce in 1915, Valentino testified that he had evidence of the husband’s having had multiple affairs. The ex-husband didn’t let bygones be bygones and on September 5, 1916, at his instigation, Valentino was arrested and charged with luring a young man into a whorehouse for white slavery. Valentino was jailed for several days before being cleared and released. A short time later the heiress shot her husband, and Valentino thought it wise to exit the scene. He headed to the opposite coast and began his meteoric rise to stardom.

 

Speaking of Tangoing Pirates

Another devilishly clever segue.

And it only takes one to tango here.

September 4, 1992: They’ll Never Replace Fart Jokes

Posted on by Richard Daybell

You’ve got this great idea. Take all those funny home videos people sent you that were too risqué for the TV program Funniest Home Videos and use them to create a brand new TV program called Naughtiest Home Videos. Better still call it Australia’s naughtiestNaughtiest Home Videos because that’s where the racy adult program aired on September 4, 1992.

How racy? Well, there were shots of various animals’ private parts, both animals and humans humorously having sex (which not only begs the question how do you have sex humorously but also blurs the line between human and animal), people losing their clothing in unusual ways, an elderly woman removing an envelope from a male stripper’s skivvies using her dentures, two men lifting a barbell without using their hands . . . well, one could continue listing these hilarious bits but one would be in danger of laughing so hard one would pee one’s pants.

“I’d like to sincerely say that if we’ve offended just one of you, we’ve failed,” said the show’s host returning from the first commercial break. “We were hoping for half a million offended viewers by now.”

It took an agonizing 34 minutes for the network owner, who was enjoying a quiet dinner out with friends, to hear about the program and call the studio to cancel the program or, in his words, “get that shit off the air.” Almost immediately, a network announcer said: “We apologize for this interruption. Unfortunately, a technical problem prevents us continuing our scheduled program for the moment ” and the show made history, being the shortest running television series ever.

The following morning was not a pleasant one for anyone who had had anything to do with airing the program. They were berated loudly and had their careers cut just as short as Australia’s Naughtiest Home Videos.

Rabbits Behaving Badly?

As far as we know, there were no racy bits featuring anthropomorphic rabbits scheduled for the unseen portion of Naughtiest Videos. A much tamer depiction of the same had it’s beginnings a century earlier in a letter written on September 4, 1893, peterrabthat included an illustrated story about a rabbit named Peter. The letter was written by Beatrix Potter to the five-year-old son of her former governess, Annie Moore. Moore suggested that the story be made into a book.

Potter further developed the storyline, added additional illustrations, and in 1901, self-published 250 copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Today with 45 million copies sold it remains one of the most popular children’s books of all time.

You Are So Rare

Howie Morris, born September 4, 1919, ( died 2005) was best known for his portrayal of Ernest T. Bass on the Andy Griffith Show and numerous characters on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows.

 

SEPTEMBER 3, 1967: Swedish Switcheroo

Posted on by Richard Daybell

The countdown to Dagen H (shorthand for Högertrafikomläggningen) had begun some four years earlier when the Swedish parliament passed the enabling legislation that would impact every Swede down in Swedenville. A commission (Statens Högertrafikkommission) would implement a major re-education program under the guidance of a team of psychologists.

On H Day, Sunday, September 3, 1967, at 1 a.m, all nonessential traffic was banned from roads throughout the country and at exactly 4:50, all remaining vehicles would come to a complete stop then carefully move from the traditional left side of the road to the right and stop again, taking care to avoid vehicles on this side moving to their right. At 5, traffic movement would resume with all drivers now (and forevermore) driving on the right side of the road.

The people of Sweden didn’t really want to switch to the right side of the road. They were perfectly happy of the left (being the liberals they are, perhaps) even though many of them drove vehicles with steering wheels on the left, a contributor to many accidents. And their nearest neighbors, Norway and Finland drove on the right. Five million vehicles crossed those borders every year and had to switch sides in the process.

Perhaps that explains the psychologists and all the commemorative items and the Dagen H logos on everything from milk cartons to underwear. There was even a popular song to celebrate the switch –“Håll dig till höger, Svensson” (‘Keep to the right, Svensson’).

And Svensson and all his or her fellow Swedes kept to the right and still do.

Heading South (Driving on the Right, Of Course)

It’s fortunate that the people of San Marino drive on the right, what with it being the only country with more automobiles than people. Not that there are all that many of either. Nestled high in the Apennine Mountains, the Most Serene Republic of San Marino is the world’s fifth smallest country and one of only three surrounded entirely by another country (Italy).

San Marino was founded as a monastic community by Saint Marinus, a Roman stonemason, on September 3, 301, making it the oldest sovereign state still in existence. It is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, with a stable economy, low unemployment, no national debt and a budget surplus. And all those cars.

Infinite Monkeys

Back to Sweden: In Stockholm, the newspaper Expressen gave five stock analysts and a chimpanzee the equivalent of $1,250 each to make as much money as they could on the stock market in one month.

Mats Jonnerhag, publisher of the newsletter Bourse Insight, turned in a nice performance. His stock portfolio gained $130. Not good enough. The stock-picking chimp (who went by the name Ola) saw the value of his portfolio climb by $190 for an easy victory.

While the stock experts carefully assembled their portfolios using a variety of analytical tools, Ola put aside such things as price/earnings ratios, volatility measures and technical factors in favor of darts, which he tossed at the Stockholm Stock Exchange listings.

Naysayers will no doubt bring up the infinite monkey theorem: that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time could eventually write the works of Shakespeare. Or the lesser quoted corollary that seven monkeys with seven typewriters in seven weeks could write the Republican Party Platform.

In a reported real-life attempt to prove either of these theories, two chimpanzees and an orangutan were put in a room with three typewriters. By the end of just 24 hours, they had written “jid;lwer fivcjfdoske flfjwlsjfpos p3mzds[sk,43l;cv kdid,ewodkdjss;djelldsd kdjhdps ddodlsps psvvspap39djk3^jh& jfioermcjd,ud3$m kidelqqwerty” Even more amazing: They had used exactly 140 characters which they tweeted (using the orangutan’s twitter account). It went viral.

 

You wouldn’t believe how many monkeys on how many beaches it took to create the stories in Calypso: Stories of the Caribbean.  Why not procure a copy and figure it out.

SEPTEMBER 1, 1422: WHO’S GOING TO BURP THE KING?

Posted on by Richard Daybell

On September 1, 1422, young Henry VI crawled (or perhaps toddled) onto the throne of England, succeeding his father Henry V. Little Henry was nine months old, a rather tender age to be an English monarch and, a few months later, King of France as well. A regency council ran the kingdoms until Henry hit 16 and was considered old enough to rule.

Kinging two countries isn’t a piece of cake. First off, its a killer commute, usually undertaken only by one country to invade the other. The French were not overjoyed at being ruled by an Englishman.  And one of them, Joan of Arc, was making a real nuisance of herself. Eventually Henry lost France and fell into a deep funk followed by an “inertia.” To use a more scientific description, he went wacko. (Observant readers will notice the inescapable connection between this incident and the Pat Boone hit song: When I lost France, I almost lost my mind.)

When Henry recovered 18 months later, he was surprised to discover he had a toddler of his own and that the toddler was named Edward, not Henry. Oh, and the War of the Roses was getting underway, during which Henry would lose the throne, regain it, lose it again, and end up murdered.

Henry VI remains the youngest king to ascend to the British throne and the only monarch to be both King of England and King of France.

TARZAN WOULDN’T LOSE FRANCE

Tarzan_of_the_Apes_1918Born on September 1, 1875, Edgar Rice Burroughs enjoyed a successful career as a pencil sharpener salesman. An honest occupation, but what do you do when you’re on the road, stuck in some cheesy motel with a bunch of sharp pencils? You either see how many you can fit into your ears or you write. Burroughs wrote. Prodigiously. In 1912, his most famous creation swung through a jungle near you in Tarzan of the Apes. And he kept on swinging through the decades, in two dozen books, including a few released after Burroughs’ death in 1953.

Tarzan was born with the rather ho-hum name, John Clayton. It was the apes who gave him the name we know him by. In their language (yes, they speak) tar means white, and zan means skin: Tarzan, clever, what? And Tarzan didn’t just swing around the jungle, as a short list of Tarzan adventures will demonstrate: Tarzan at the Earth’s Core, Tarzan and the Huns, Tarzan and the Foreign Legion, Back to the Stone Age, and Tarzan Rescues the Moon.

Tarzan became the star of radio, television, comics, stage, video and computer games, action figures and over 200 movies. Elmo Lincoln was the first of a whole gaggle of Tarzans which included Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Crabbe, and Lex Barker.  Burroughs didn’t like any of them.  And he didn’t like Enid Markey, the original Jane.  In fact, he disliked her performance so much that he killed Jane off in his next story.

tar4

Me Tarzan, you Jane.

This famous quote did not appear in either the original books or any of the movies.  Johnny Weissmuller uttered the words as a joke in an interview.

Me Paul, you Huey

If only I’d known it was available

Pencil it in to your copy wherever it seems appropriate.  Don’t have a copy?  Fix that here.

AUGUST 28, 1963: I HAVE A DREAM

Posted on by Richard Daybell

In Washington DC, on  August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to a crowd stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument.

“Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back King_Jr_Martin_Luther_093.jpgto Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.”

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’ I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”

“When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'”

 

Part of that is when they try and demean me unfairly, because we had a massive crowd of people. We had a crowd… I looked over that sea of people, and I said to myself, ‘wow’, and I’ve seen crowds before. Big, big crowds. That was some crowd. — Donald Trump

AUGUST 14, 1619: THOU SHALT NOT

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Those folks who think they have it pretty rough in Virginia these days should thank their reactionary stars things are not as they were back in 1619. The very first general assembly got together in Jamestown that year to pass laws that pretty much told everyone how they could and could not behave. The burgesses, as members of the assembly were called, were 30 old white men determined to dictate morality to everybody else, a tradition that hasn’t changed much over the years.

     Nor has the politics. The burgesses passed laws requiring all colonists to attend two religious services every Sunday and to bear arms (pieces, swords, powder and shot) while doing so – just in case religious fervor pushed someone over the edge.  Even those bearing arms were forbidden from gambling, drinking, idleness and “excesses in apparel,” (which probably didn’t mean too much clothing).  Not wishing to overlook any sin they hadn’t thought of, the burgesses also approved a stern enactment against immorality in general. In the eyes of the burgesses, one can imagine, that might cover a lot of territory (and the colonies had lots of territory). The planting of mulberry trees, grapes and hemp was also proscribed, for we all know that that seemingly innocuous flora is the first step on the road to degradation (spelled with a ‘d’ and that rhymes with ‘p’).

     The burgesses had only nice things to say about tobacco however. Colonists were urged to dedicate the times they were not in church to the growing of said crop. The colonists responded with enthusiasm, even to the point of growing tobacco in the streets of Jamestown – 20,000 pounds a year – despite His Royal Stick in the Mud King James calling it “dangerous to the lungs.”

♥

“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.” ― Mark Twain