mjhawkeye: Musings From Dublin Ohio

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Musings From Dublin Ohio

Charlie and I went out for his morning constitutional. It was a forty-five minute walk through the neighborhood. Considering our pooch hasn't yet learned to speak English all that well I was left with think time.

As long as we're on the subject of a constitutional my son's family came up with a couple of words to better describe urination and bowel movement. They refer to them as 'piddle' and 'poodle' Make sense to me and it doesn't sound quite so crass. In case you're wondering Charlie did poodle. Which beings me to another subject.

Everyone has heard the phrase, "Invention is the mother of necessity". I wanted to know it's origins and the answer is still hidden in time. It was first used in English writings in 1519. Some same it started with Plato but he didn't leave written records. So, I'll tell you it came from me.

In regard to necessity I started thinking about inventions or improvements on inventions to make our lives easier. Waiting for Chaz to poodle I held in my hand a Mutt Mitt. It's a foot in length with a reinforced bottom about four inches in length. It sort of has the consistency of a leaf bag. The Mitt is used to pick up poodle then it's turned inside out. Heck, I grew up using newspaper, sandwich bags, paper sacks. If I was in a hurry I'd walk away. Inventions are with us forever. I think I once mentioned this but around 1798 the US Office of Patents was going to be shut down because our then leaders felt everything that could be invented had. Silly government. Obviously, they never considered things like the Popeil Pocket Fisherman.

Do you recall when a former president stated, "You didn't build that". The statement was in reference to inventions and how they could never have come into existence without the help of the government.

In this regard I like to bring up the story of the Wright Bros., bicycler builders out of Dayton, Ohio. When they first started on their quest for flight they were clueless about aeronautics, 100%. Over time they learned. They and they alone came up with $1,600 to build their plane. In the meantime the government granted $50,000 to a number of others to build airplanes. These all failed. So, Orville and Wilbur could rightly say, "We did build that".

My former boss and an honest to goodness hero to me invented a product without government assistance. It was put on all kinds of rotating equipment to protect bearings. He hated the government and their intrusion on capitalism. When I retired ten years ago his product, invented in the 80's, controlled 70% of the world market even though we had 13 competitors who stole parts of his design. He and he alone built it.

Her Majesty is off to Scotland next week for the 500th celebration of the building of the MacRae Castle. She received an email from United today saying she could upgrade her flight to 1st class for only 5K. Huh?

I read a story this week, might be bogus, that 25% of the people in the world have some percentage of Ghengis Khan's blood coursing through their veins.

Every day I'll hear the name of some community in the country and wonder where it is located. This takes place when I have time on my hands. I'll go to Wikipedia and look up the place then scroll to the bottom to see what famous people were born there. I know, it's a time killer but it does provide me with some of that Cliff Clavan knowledge which is on good in sports bars.

Speaking of towns, every so often I'll put in a plug for my place of birth, Boone, Iowa. It's home to 12,000; been that way for over 100 years. So, the way I figure when a baby is born some poor sap is going to bite the bullet.

I've copied a list of notable folks who came from the town or surrounding area. Someone must have messed up because the name of MJ Hawkeye is missing.

Mamie Geneva Doud, First Lady of the United States, wife of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was born here; Mamie Eisenhower Avenue, one of the main east-west streets in Boone, is named in her honor