Good Morning All!
Here’s the hot culinary tip for the day:
Check out The Black Pearl Restaurant & Casino in the Spokane Valley! Judy & I stopped by last night for a drink and a little something to eat for dinner. We ordered off of their “Happy Hour” menu and were not disappointed. I had the three tacos special (pork tacos) and it was a meal unto itself and it was delicious….really hit the spot! Judy had the two sliders special and it was good too! Briana, our waitress was terrific and she showed us how to get on their app to save the cost of our appetizers….so we just paid for two drinks! The Black Pearl is owned by the former owner of OZ Fitness, one of my clients when I was an employee benefits consultant. It has great atmosphere (the lighting in the restaurant & bar is fantastic and they have plenty of large screen TVs to watch your favorite sporting event). I’ve always had a great experience there! You can even play poker & black jack if you’re so inclined! Not me though…I’d lose all my money if I tried to figure out those games of chance!
Speaking of watching sports events on the big screen…the NBA finals were on TV last night. While I like the Golden State Warriors, I must admit that the professional game has changed a lot from when I used to follow the NBA as a kid. Not anything like the college game that I now enjoy watching much more. Not much team play in professional basketball it seems. College basketball is much more fun and entertaining to watch because the game emphasizes the team effort…lots more passing, setting up plays, lots more “back doors” and other elements of team basketball that makes it fun to watch….what do you think? I just read this morning in “Trivia Today” on the internet that 60% of NBA players are broke within 5 years of retiring from the game…how about that? Pretty sad…they must not take the advice of reputable financial advisors. People like that need to heed the great advice of “pay yourself first”…sock money away for the future and don’t spend it all now. Unfortunately a lot of NBA players don’t have much to show for their efforts! Not a good example to set for their adoring fans, in my humble opinion….Judy just told me that one of my favorite professional players, Klay Thompson of WSU fame, injured his ACL last night. Let’s hope he makes a smooth and full recovery. I do like to watch him and Stephan Curry shoot those threes…two of the best shooters in NBA history, I think. Michael Jordan is still the best professional basketball player in history…again, in my humble opinion. I must admit that my favorite NBA team to watch was the Boston Celtics of the 1960s and Larry Bird with the Celtics in the 1980s. Well, enough about basketball! What do you think?
My Mom continues her recovery at home. She’s very weak right now, but hopefully will make steady progress in her recovery. We’ll just need to give her some TLC in the coming weeks…She never ceases to amaze me on her resilience and perseverance. I’ve been taking notes from her on how to “age well”…get up in the morning and dress like you are going somewhere, attend to your personal hygiene (make your bed, brush your death, wash your face, etc.), do as much as you can for yourself, take interest in hobbies, activities, etc. that you enjoy, stay engaged with others, look outward rather than inward and don’t become an old, grumpy person whose favorite saying is “get off my grass”…We’ll see how I do (Judy can keep score on that!).
Here’s some more from my World War II-related adventure with my friend Harold Voltz:
I really enjoyed our stay in Caen. Wouldn’t you know that our first night in France was spent at an Italian restaurant…too funny! The waitress there was really sweet and she tried her best to understand what we wanted for dinner. It was pretty funny, really. She was so sweet to us, but it was kind of hilarious how we tried to translate from English to French. While I can order things in a Latin country with my limited familiarity with the Spanish language (five to six years of Spanish in public schools in Olympia), I’m like a “fish out of water” with French. I was able to express my appreciation for her efforts…”merci”, so I guess it wasn’t a total loss! I had Atlantic salmon on a bed of salad and it was great! So I guess we didn’t do so bad after all! Fortunately, we tagged along with a father-son team from Chicago (they are podiatrists in practice together) and they knew of a great restaurant that was just around the corner from the one we visited the previous night. There the waitress could speak English and she made some great recommendations on dinner and wine. I had the grilled sea bass and it was some of the best fish I’ve ever eaten. The father-son team even sprung for dinner…how about that! It just goes to show how convivial a group we had on our “Beyond Band Of Brothers” tour!
Speaking of tours, you will want to check out ToursByLocals. That’s the group where Harold found our personal guide Roland Lebon. Go to www.toursbylocals.com for all the scoop on this great service. You’ll be glad you did!
When we arrived in Caen, the first thing I saw when I stepped off our bus was a great big (and I mean big) smiling stuffed animal on the balcony of one of the apartments that was across the street from our hotel. What a funny thing to see! Right off the bat I got a great first impression of Caen. There’s so much history in this city. On one of my early morning runs, I came across an old school building (Ecole) that remained from World War II days…you could see many bullet holes in the front of the building…I guess they had been left there as a reminder of what happened here in June & July of 1944. It’s one thing to read about the damage inflicted on this city in World War II, it’s another thing to see physical manifestations of it for yourself.
May 20, 2019
After a good night’s sleep at our hotel, we enjoyed a great continental breakfast. I must say, we were offered all kinds of fruit, French pastries, yogurt, eggs, bacon…you name it. It’s much better overall than the continental breakfast you get at American motels/hotels. A lot more attention to detail and variety of offerings at this hotel. And remember…we’re on the “budget tour” with Beyond Band Of Brothers tours!
As I may have mentioned before, our first full day on this tour led us to Utah Beach. The Brit who was our guide for the day had one of those melodious voices that one hears on the BBC…what a great command of the English language! I always love to listen to folks with a British and/or Australian accent. I seem to listen more intently to them…
Our bus went by one of the many military cemeteries in Normandy at the city of Bayeux…it was a British cemetery. All of the head stones in this particular cemetery were adorned with many varieties of flowers. It was really something to see.
The British guide we had, Alex, was personally connected to Normandy and D-Day, as his father was a British commando who landed at Gold Beach or Sword Beach on D-Day. Alex ended up living in the village that was his father’s unit’s objective on D-Day…a German fuel depot located there. There’s a superb museum located at Utah Beach. Come to find out a former Lt. Governor of Texas, someone by the last name of Dewhurst came to Utah Beach in 2007 and found out that his Dad was a decorated B-26 Maurader (sp?) pilot whose crew bombed the German airfield near Utah Beach just prior to D-Day. His father died in an automobile accident in 1947 and he and his brother knew little to next to nothing about his Dad’s service during the war. He found a picture of his Dad in the museum at Utah Beach during his visit in 2007 and asked about it and the museum was able to tell him about his Dad…remarkable, don’t you think? It ended up that when Lt. Gov. Dewhurst returned to Texas he raised a substantial amount of money to restore a B-26 and place it in a new wing of the museum that was built with the private funds that he raised after his visit….it’s something to see, for sure! This would never have happened had it not been for his chance sighting of his Dad’s picture at the museum in 2007!
The little villages just inland from Utah Beach are special…Sainte-Marie-du-Mont was a quaint little village with a church building as it’s focal point located next to the town square, surrounded by businesses and townhouses of various kinds…just as it was in 1944. I was taken with the little butcher shop there that is located just across from the church. The proprietor was roasting a number of chickens on an open spit just outside his shop with all the trimmings…potatoes, onions, carrots….it made me want to stay there and spend the day. But alas, we had to move on to other Utah Beach-Normandy related sites, including another little village called St. Mary Egliese, the site of the paratrooper who got caught up in the church spire that was featured in the epic movie “The Longest Day”. I really enjoyed this little village as well. Unfortunately, many of our paratroopers over shot their drop zone the night of the D-Day invasion and ended up landing in or near the town square. Many lost their lives here. The 101st Airborne Museum is located here and is a must see. Lots of interactive exhibits…including being able to enter a glider and go through a simulation of what it was like for members of the 101st Airborne to come in by glider. Many gliders crashed that night. It was something to experience…made you appreciate in some small way what these young men had to go through in their efforts to liberate Europe and protect our nation, our values, our way of life…I bought me and my friend Harold a gelato from a stand just off the town square. I had the hazel nut gelato and it was quite good!
One thing about St. Mary-Egliese that I’ll always remember was the beautiful, large stained glass window at the rear of the church that features the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus with two paratroopers descending from the sky just underneath them….it was extremely moving…showing eternal salvation through Jesus and earthly (temporal) salvation through the sacrifices of the paratroopers…really something to see!
Our guide Alex told us that St. Mary-Egliese with the primary cattle market town in this region of Normandy. Another thing that struck me about this village and all of Normandy, for that matter, was that many of the streets and country lanes bore the names of World War II leaders (military & civilian) and some soldiers. For example, there is a street in St. Mary-Egliese that is named after John Steele, the paratrooper who ended up stuck on the church spire when he parachuted into St. Mary-Egliese not long after midnight on June 6th. The street is named “Auberge Le John Steele.” And another thing this was extremely impactful to me was that each village in Normandy featured the pictures and names of American, British & French soldiers and/or military personnel (men & women) who participated in D-Day hung from light posts and street signs. It’s really something to travel down a road and see a picture of someone who served in the Normandy invasion. It reminded me of the pictures of service men & women who served in the military featured on sign & lamp posts that I saw a few years ago in the city of Torrance, California. A great way to remember those who serve and to be reminded of sacrifices made in defense of freedom and our way of life…
One last image from the area around St. Mary-Egliese that moved me was when we stopped at the Le Merderet Bridge. Here 254 of our young men with the 82nd Airborne (“the pride of our nation”) were killed trying to take and re-take this critical little bridge across a very narrow (but deep & steep) creek. 524 were wounded here. According to our guide, Alex, this was the scene of some the hottest action of World War II and I believe him. It’s hard to fathom how a little bridge over a narrow creek could result in so much death and tragedy. It was a bridge that had to be taken on a major causeway, as all of the fields were flooded around it and it was the only way for our troops and equipment to get to where they needed to be on D-Day and the days to follow. This is a must stop on your travels through Normandy…let us never forget the sacrifices made at this place…
It’s also interesting to note that on the day we visited this part of Normandy, the weather was much the same as it was on June 6th, 1944…cloudy, overcast with light drizzle from time to time…it turned out that June 6th was the only day the invasion could have taken place during that particular period, as the bad weather had let up enough to make it possible for the invasion to have some chance of success. It had been stormy weather up until that day…
To be continued…
Here is the fact for the day:
About one million pets are the primary beneficiary in their owners’ wills in the U.S..
Here’s the silly question for the day:
Q: Why did Shakespeare only write in ink?
A: Pencils confused him—2B or not 2B?
In looking over my 1969 Topps Football Cards the other day, I came across Fran Tarkenton’s card. I’ll never forget the Vikings-Seahawks game that Judy & I attended in the late 1970s when Fran Tarkenton scrambled and scrambled and gave the Seahawks defense fits. Jack Patera was the first Seahawks’ coach and he came up with a nifty fake field goal where Efren Herrera (the Seahawks field goal kicker) ran the ball in for a touchdown and I think that won the game for the Seahawks in the old Kingdome? Anybody remember that? Fran Tarkenton was, without a doubt (in my humble opinion) the best scrambling quarterback in NFL history—or maybe it’s Russell Wilson?. In any event, I always enjoyed watching Fran Tarkenton play quarterback….you never knew what to expect. Tarkenton was born in 1940 in Richmond, Virginia (his father, Dallas, was a Methodist minister) and grew up in Athens GA and played college football for the University of Georgia (they won the SEC championship in 1959). He was the 29th overall pick in the 1961 NFL draft. He played in the NFL for 18 seasons (remarkable!), mostly with the Minnesota Vikings. At the time of his retirement in 1978, he owned every major quarterback record. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1986. In addition to his football career, Tarkenton served as commentator on “Monday Night Football” and a co-host of “That’s Incredible.” He also founded Tarkenton Software, a computer-program generator company, and he toured the U.S. promoting CASE (computer-aided software engineering). Tarkenton Software later merged with KnowledgeWare, until selling the company to Sterling Software in 1994. Despite not winning a Super Bowl, he won six playoff games, and in 1999 he was ranked #59 on “The Sporting News” list of the 100 Greatest Football Players. He’s written a number of books, including “Better Scramble Than Lose”; “No Time For Losing”; “Broken Patterns: The Education Of A Quarterback”, & “Murder At The Super Bowl”, among other self-help, motivational books. In 1999, Tarkenton was fined by federal regulators as part of a securities fraud sweep. According to the LA Times, “In Tarkenton’s case, the Hall of Fame quarterback and 10 other former executives of his computer software and consulting firm, KnowledgeWare, Inc., were accused of inflating by millions of dollars the company’s earnings in reports for its fiscal year ended June 30, 1994. Tarkenton agreed to pay a $100,000 fine and $54,187 in restitution. He did not admit any wrongdoing.” Since then, Tarkenton has been promoting various products and services including Tony Robbins and 1-800-BAR-NONE. He also founded GoSmallBiz, a small-business consulting website. He also operates an annuity marketing firm called Tarkenton Financial. During the 2016 Republican National Convention, he gave a speech endorsing nominee Donald Trump…
Here are some thoughts for the day:
“If I get rejected for a part, I pick myself up and say, “O.K., not today…maybe tomorrow I’ll get this other part or something.”
—Liam Neeson, Irish actor of “Star Wars”, “Commuter”, “Taken” & “Rob Roy” movie fame
“For all of nature’s wonder and beauty, it is also hostile and unpredictable.”
—Liam Neeson
“Get out old Dan’s records, get out old Dan’s records
We will dance the whole night long…It’s fun to play the old time songs
If old Dan could see us now, I know he’d be so proud
Bring out old Dan’s records, bring out old Dan’s records
I remember my Aunt Bea…She’d dance with Dan till two or three
If old Dan could see her now, I know he’d shout out loud
Dig out old Dan’s records, bring out old Dan’s records
We’re all here, we’ve all got dates…We’ll dance all night to the seventy-eights
If old Dan was with us still, I know he’d come around
Get out old Dan’s records, dig out Dan’s records
Back to nineteen thirty-five…the foxtrot, jitterbug ‘n jive
If old Dan could see us now, I know he’d be so proud…”
—Gordon Lightfoot, “Old Dan’s Records”
Here’s to a great Friday and lots of love always!
Press on,
Papa ‘a (Dad, Uncle Mark, etc.)