WPD Activity on a Warm Day

Beautiful warm weather the past few days. I broke a drought of several weeks and jogged outside on Friday and again yesterday (Sunday). Last night I then took my first hot bath since last Spring.

At the start of Sunday School class yesterday, Jim Juhnke asked if the chapter we were studying, on gender issues, belonged in the book (we are studying "The Missing Peace"). I said it seemed out of place. He mentioned it was written by his co-author, Carol Hunter. After the discussion it was more obvious to us why it did belong, although the famous exchange between John and Abigail Adams still seems to be mostly tongue-in-cheek.

In the 70's again today, but colder weather on the way in the next few days.

An odd day of running into police cars today. On the way to work, I had to detour because many streets just South of my office were blocked off. It was obviously more than just a routine fire or accident, and sure enough, I discovered from the receptionist that there had been a shooting and the police thought the perpetrator was holed up in an apartment building in the block South of my office, and had called out the SWAT team. Just found out on the 5:00 news that the person holed up was someone who had run when he saw the police, because he had 5 city warrants. He is now not believed to have anything to do with the shooting.

Then this afternoon, my daughter and I come home from the library, and notice a police car blocking the alley behind my apartment builoding. I asked another tenant here what was going on and he said "how many Wichita police officers does it take to deal with a drunk White chick". When I got to the alley I saw what he meant, as there were a bunch of police cars in the alley, not just the one I originally saw blocking the West end of it. A woman was sitting in her car in the alley drunk, and the someone had called the police thinking she was in some kind of trouble. A lady officer explained to me and a couple others as they left that she had given up her 8-month-old baby for adoption this morning, and was feeling down and started drinking vodka. She told the three of us to not let her drive this evening (the police had gotten her into her apartment), as it would take till tomorrow for her to sleep it off.

As I write this I heard a noise outside and noticed the woman was being arrested. Not sure what led up to this arrest.

While waiting for my daughter at the library, I had the thought that reading a book is like watching a baseball game. A book, in contrast to the other more frenetic forms of entertainment so prevalent these days, is to be savored, pondered over, and appreciated long after being read. Same with a baseball game, it is designed to be savored, discussed, and the good ones remain in the memory long after they occur.

A real treat for me from 7-9 A.M. yesterday. I had just discovered the week before that Bob Costas had a radio show on at that time on Sundays. I tuned in and the whole two hours was spent with Tommy Lasorda, who has a new book out. What a wonderful two hours! Of course Costas is great to listen to, and his love of baseball is 100% genuine, and to listen to him draw out Tommy Lasorda on his life in baseball was a real treat.

This brings up what has been one of my pet peeves for many years--the lack of radio listings in the daily newspaper. Why in the world does the paper devote most of a page a day and a whole section on Sundays to TV listings, and not one word about radio!!! The local paper calls me every so often about subscribing, and when they ask about why I don't I always mention the problem with the lack of radio listings. The latest caller finally said, ""Well, you're talking to the wrong person, I can't really do anything about it." Then why the bleep are you asking me about my problems with the paper? It seems like such a simple thing to list the special programs on the radio, yet the paper refuses to do it.

*****

Daily trivia question: What is the origin of the phrase "smoking gun"?

This, in a different form, was the final jeopardy question today. In an 1894 Sherlock Holmes story, Doyle writes "The chaplain stood with a smoking pistol in his hand." This is thought to be the origin of the phrase "smoking gun", a phrase made famous in the Watergate era when everyone was looking for the "smoking gun" that would implicate President Nixon in the conspiracy.