Another School Shooting

Another school mass shooting happened this week. This time it was a young girl shooting her classmates. Apparently only 3% of mass shooters in America are female. But here again there was a troubled teenager with access to guns. 

This shooting was at a Christian school. Makes the thoughts and prayers mantra sound particularly sick. The shooter also shot herself in the head following the attack on the other students in the school.

There have been 488 mass shooting cases in the United States in 2024 according to the database of the anti-gun violence group Gun Violence America (GVA). 

Shots have been fired in schools This was the 323rd school shooting this year according to the national K-12 School Shooting Database. This is our sick American society. Nowhere in the world is there another country with the gun violence of America. Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children in the USA. 

Dinner at Romeo & Juliet's

We had another wonderful dinner tonight at one of our favorite nearby restaurants... Romeo & Juliet's Cafe on Hertel. Started off with some nice Italian wine and then we shared a Picasso Panini which they describe as an artwork of prosciutto crudo, soppressata, capicolla, salami and mozzarella. We also shared an oven baked Margherita pizza. Delicious as always and a nice way to spend some quality time enjoying ourselves after a busy day getting ready for the holidays.

Rebop Kwaku Baah

The other night Becky and I were watching some music concert clips on YouTube and one of them I put on was Traffic performing The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys from a concert in 1972. She asked about the African percussionist playing with them and did know who he was or when he played with them. I always remembered Rebop as he was known from the early 70's until the band broke up in 1974. The African percussion was an important part of their second band sound. He was not with them in their earlier 1967 to 1969 period.

I saw Traffic in concert in Norfolk in early 1973 and Rebop was playing with them at that time. I had also seen them in 1969 but of course that was a somewhat different band at the time with Steve Winwood, Dave Mason, Chris Wood and Jim Capaldi. 

So today I looked up Traffic and their history because I was interested in the backstory of Rebop. I saw that he was Ghanian from the Ivory Coast. He played on five Traffic albums and also on Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert album which has always been one of my favorite live records. After Traffic broke up he joined the band Can and played with them until they broke up in 1979.

Sadly I read of his death in January 1983 from a ruptured brain aneurysm that occurred on stage while performing on a tour with Jimmy Cliff. Another brain aneurysm connection that kind of freaked me out. 

Chicken and Sweet Potatos

I should say chicken cutlets and big sweet potatoes. Really big sweet potatoes. Or should we call them yams. Whatever we call them they were delicious for dinner tonight along with a nice salad. Those sweet potatoes were amazing just cut in half with salt and butter.

Becky had brought home a large number of sweet potatoes from the market to prepare a side dish for Thanksgiving dinner at Dave and Donna's house. Then she got a call from Dave asking her to bring something other than sweet potatoes because they were trying out some new recipe. So Becky put the very big yams/sweet potatoes in the freezer for later use and made something else.

Today was a day of later use. She put two of the yams in the microwave to thaw out and then to bake. It took quite a long time to soften up and then to heat up properly. Meanwhile the chicken cutlets were getting ready.

Everything turned out great and we had a very nice Monday night dinner.

Bills Score 48 Pts.

Tonight was another entertaining Bills game and they scored 48 points. They also gave up 42 points to the Detroit Lions. That's two weeks in a row they scored over 40 points and gave up over 40 points. In the two weeks they scored 90 points and were 1 - 1. Last week I wrote about that entertaining loss. It's going to be an interesting playoff time. The game set the record for most points scored in a game this season and beat the record set last week when the Rams beat the Bills 44-42. 

Josh Allen was amazing once again but there were a lot of injuries to the Bills defense.

Those Drones

There has been a lot of stories in the news recently about the numbers of drones people are seeing flying above their homes. This has been especially reported in New Jersey and other areas of the Northeast. Nobody seems to know where they are coming from and who is operating them. Some airports have even had to close for a while because of these drones. The state governments are starting to make some waves like they are going to do something about the issue because nothing has been done by the Federal government including releasing any information about the drones.

Of course some people claim they are UFOs and others say they are foreign country's spy drones. Some of these drones are very large too. It seems like every day there is a new story every day on the news channels.

This morning I woke up very early around 5:30 am and walked over to the window and looked out at the sky. I saw a drone flying. It was a clear night sky and I could definitely see the drone flying back and forth with blinking lights. Some were white and some were red. It was off to the west which to me meant that it was probably a traffic drone flying over the expressways where the 198 comes together with the interstate 190. That intersection is about 4 miles away and I had no doubt that I was seeing a drone but it was probably an official one that was monitoring traffic. I later saw that there was an accident on the highway in that area but it was weird to experience a drone this morning.

I looked again later when I got up but I could not see any more of them.

PM with Dave

Dave and I went down to the PM tonight. We walked over together after meeting at the corner of Crescent and Russell as usual. This is our fourth time going down there together for a couple of beers and a lot of talk. 

It was another crazy crowded Friday night even at 6:45 pm. The bar was full and most of the dining room tables were full too. We parked ourselves at the waitress station after asking the staff. That station is a high top table with a couple of stools where we sat for awhile. A little later a couple of seats opened up at the bar and we moved over.

As usual we talked with a few other folks at the bar and I ran into several people I knew including a couple of neighbors on our block... just like last time but different neighbors. Dave and I talked a lot and we also talked with the neighbors. We ended up having three beers because those neighbors bought us a round when they were leaving. We had one IPA and a couple of lagers for the night.

We walked home. It was cold and there was a lot of ice on the sidewalks but we were careful. I had a flashlight too. We were home a little before 9 pm. Also didn't realize it was Friday the 13th. I had an NA beer when I got home.

The Flynn Wake

Earlier this evening Becky and I went over to a funeral home in Kenmore to attend the wake of Suzanne Flynn, the mother of John, Patrick, Kevin and Maureen. She had just turned 99 last month. Their mother was a wonderful person and one of the first people I met in Buffalo back when Ii moved here in 1979. We attended a party hosted by one of the Flynn brothers and their mother Suzanne was there. We had a long conversation as she welcomed me to Buffalo. It really helped too that I was Irish because she loved being Irish. We would run into her throughout the next few decades at the many Flynn parties we attended over the years although we probably hadn't seen her for nearly ten years but we remembered her fondly.

We talked with a lot of people at the wake. I was especially glad to talk with John who I haven't seen in a while. He and Patrick were part of our Men's Club group that met regularly over the years but not recently. It's a little weird that I had just run into Bob, another member of our group, at physical therapy where he has been recovering from a stroke. I thought I might have seen him at the wake too but we were there for about 45 minutes during a three hour wake.

Hum... a novel

Hum by Helen Phillips, 2024. I just finished reading this novel today and I'm not sure of my impressions yet. It is still sinking in. I don't remember where I first saw this book but I did put an e-book hold on it at the library right away. It took about two months waiting when suddenly it was available. I was reading a couple of other books so at first I thought of sending it back and waiting but who knows now long it would take. Already I saw that there were six people waiting for my copy so I jumped in. That was December 3rd.

It was a slim novel and it took me just under a week to read it. There were times when I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue. There were many interesting aspects to the story but it didn't really grab me overall in the way I was expecting. Something was missing or just so different and I'm still not sure what it was. The story was rather dystopian and in a way it was a social media horror tale or a good reason to never pick up a cell phone again. It was really scary. 

It takes place in a near future city overcome with climate change and full of intelligent robots called "hums". It really was a very serious critique of our current technology and what could happen in the very near future it we're not careful. It felt like that dystopian society was actually really happening today and even more so under the current threat of the magat control of the government. A very chilling world of capitalism run amok. This novel would also be an example of a story exploring the new world of "brain rot" caused by excessive social media use that some in the medical field have been warning about. Reading this made me fear for my grandchildren and the influence of their devices.

Bills Highly Entertaining Loss

The Bills were 10-2 going into the game with a 7 game winning streak and the Rams were 6-6 so I was not a bad assumption that the Bills were going to win. But... LA won the game 44-42 and it went down to the last seconds. The Bills were losing the entire game and were down 17 points for awhile. 

Josh Allen was amazing and scored 6 touchdowns making NFL history. He threw 3 touchdowns and ran for 3 more but what the hell happened to their defense to let the opposition score 44 points. Apparently the Rams wanted the game more because if they had lost they would have been out of the playoff hunt. The Bills have already clinched their playoff spot as the conference winner.

The way the season has been going Bills fans will be satisfied with nothing less than a trip to the Super Bowl. For me I just want entertaining games.