McNuggets, Leslie, Fellow Human Month

No update on BORN or my cats. I promise.

If I got bored out of my wits and drove a Toyota from Austin to the Grand Canyon and measured the smog created by my car, it appears it would be the same amount created by someone working a gas fueled leaf blower over a very large lawn for about an hour. I guess you know what’s next - California’s Air Resources Board has banned gas powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers! Too much pollution from them not to mention the sonic assault on our delicate ears. Don’t laugh. It’s true.

The anti-universe of sonic pollution is mellifluous utopia, where Hema Mangeshkar ruled supreme. She was an Indian artist, whose name was later changed to Lata, after a character in play her father wrote. This nightingale recorded 50,000 songs in 18 languages holding the Guinness World Records as the most recorded artist in history for 39 years. She died recently and a nation of 1.2B people mourned her passing. A great talent, a voice that I will always remember because my mother would listen to the radio every afternoon when she "chilled out" with me some 50 years ago. Ah ... memories. Thinking of the good old days takes me back 39 laps around the sun to 1983!

That year was a quiet one which saw the birth of the McNugget! McDonalds has sold millions of these things. The idea was conceived by a supplier of meat to McDonalds - Keystone Foods (now Tyson) way back in the 70s. The McNugget comes in 4 shapes – the bow tie, bell, boot, and ball! Why 4 shapes and not 6? Don’t ask. Some article surfaced saying that McNuggets contained dimethylpolysiloxane which is used in silly putty. But McDonalds addressed all these issues and the dizygotic?quadruplets are still a bestseller. You see, McDonalds does not take a toss that easily. Unlike Leslie.

In 1975, Leslie Lynch King tripped when coming off a plane in Austria and was parodied by Chevy Chase in an SNL broadcast. 4.7m people seem to have watched the AP clip on YouTube. Poor chap. When Biden took a similar toss in 2021, 9.8m You Tube viewers were amused. Why do we laugh when people fall!? We are such a perverse lot. I must confess, I stand at the front of the guilty line.

Coming back to Leslie, he was the only person to serve the highest office in the US government yet not be elected. He became President of the United States when Nixon resigned in the wake of Watergate. Okay, okay, I will use the name he took in memory of his stepfather – Gerald Ford. What Gerald is not commonly known for is that he was the one to make Black History Month official in 1976 (celebrated all through the month of February, picked from 12 options, because Aquarian born, Abraham Lincoln, whose lasting legacy is the Emancipation Proclamation that abolished slavery, and pioneering abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the orator and statesman, were born in that month).

In 1990, George Bush made November Native American Month. The Hispanic Heritage month goes from mid Sept to mid Oct and the Asia Pacific Heritage Month is in May. When Brigadier General Charles McGee, a veteran Tuskegee airman who flew over 400 sorties quietly slipped into the rainbow slipstream, no one even noticed. When native American, Clyde Bellecourt, who campaigned to remove mascot logos used by sport teams that could be interpreted as insensitive or even derogatory names, died there was hardly a whisper. So, these day-and-month long dedications are designed to make people remember their fellow humans who have not always had it easy in their journeys and learn more about the person next to you that looks different. I think the endeavor is worth it. Sometimes I wish every day was dedicated to the discovery of a fellow human. We have to remember. That's what makes us the most special animal on this beautiful earth.

Discovery of yourself and your fellow traveler in this one life is the most precious gift of all. Discover within and without, and each day will be better.

Happy Black History Month.

Onwards. Upwards.

Your fearless follower.?