[Rhodes22-list] Swiss Hippos

Sun Oct 8 07:33:55 EDT 2006

Philip,

Actually, that incident happened in Bad Hamburg where we stayed outside of
Frankfurt.  We used to stay downtown in the InterContinental Hotel and hung
out across the street at an airline dive (every international city has at
least one) with the PanAm crews and flight attendants.  Late one night, or
perhaps early one morning, the S/O and I were partying at another joint.  I
was into bicycling at the time and was having a boisterous conversation with
an Italian kid we'd just met about bicycles. The bartender came over and
yelled at us, "you will leave, now"!

"Yea, Yea, we'll drink-up and we're outa here."

 He returned with a stick the size of a baseball bat and smacked the table,
"Nein, you will leave now!"

We all jumped from our seats and the S/O, a former SR-71 Blackbird pilot,
said in the calmest voice, "having a little trouble with your accent there
at first buddy but I think I understand what you're trying to say."

That's been 15 years ago and we still laugh about it when we see each other.

Brad

On 10/7/06, Philip <3drecon at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Brad,
>     That's Frankfurt, Germany (the spelling).  I think Frankfort is in
> Kentucky.  Was it Frankfurt am Main or Frankfurt am Oder?
>
> Philip
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:   rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org
> [mailto:rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org]  On Behalf Of Brad Haslett
> Sent:   Saturday, October 07, 2006 6:03 AM
> To:     The Rhodes 22 mail list
> Subject:        Re: [Rhodes22-list] Swiss Hippos
>
> Slim,
>
> When I was assigned the trip I was thinking the same thing, "what the hell
> are hippos doing in Basel, Switzerland"?  The best answer I could get was
> that was where the money changed hands.  Disney bought excess animals from
> European zoos, or so they say.  We had three adults and one baby hippo on
> board that were ensconced in steel cages lined with plywood.  The "baby"
> weighed about 2500 pounds.  They ordered her cage a couple of months in
> advance and no one took into account that she put on about 200 pounds per
> month.  The poor thing was wedged into her box but she had a window.  You
> could put your hand up to the window and a tongue about two feet wide
> would
> lick you.  After seven hours of flying with hippos I had to send my
> uniform
> off to the drycleaners.
>
> I did see a hippo in disco in Frankfort, Germany one time, but my buddies
> grabbed me and drug me back to the hotel before I could ask her out!
>
> Brad
>
>
>
>
> On 10/7/06, Slim <salm at mn.rr.com> wrote:
> >
> > Brad,
> >
> > Ah yes, the Swiss hippo--sometimes called the mountain hippo--roams the
> > snow-capped peaks.   Their armor looks just like lederhosen and their
> > mating
> > call faintly resembles Alpen yodeling.
> >
> > I got a link to the article here somewhere....
> >
> > Slim
> >
> > On 10/6/06 9:21 PM, "Brad Haslett" <flybrad at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Elle,
> > >
> > > Look on the bright side, at least you were there.  I haven't had the
> > > pleasure of meeting Elton but a day with Stan is a rare pleasure.  I'd
> > love
> > > to make the sail show. A few years back, I was visiting my son at Fork
> > Union
> > > Military Academy for parents weekend and we did a Civil War tour,
> which
> > > included the power boat show at Annapolis (both sides had boats,
> > right?). I
> > > used the good weather today to move topsoil with a wheelbarrow while
> my
> > > daughter slept, and, spent a great deal of time on the phone with my
> > brother
> > > discussing moving topsoil with equipment other than
> wheelbarrows.  We're
> > > leaving for Orlando on Tuesday to visit Disney World - thought I was
> > through
> > > with all that.  Actually, I'm looking forward to visiting the 'Disney
> > animal
> > > thing' to see how the hippos I hauled from Switzerland to Orlando in
> 98'
> > are
> > > doing.  Then, off to Gulfport for bidniss.
> > >
> > > Sailing will have to wait until November, but November is a good month
> > for
> > > sailing here!
> > >
> > > Brad
> > >
> > >
> > > On 10/6/06, L. Sailor <watermusic38 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Brad,
> > >> Thank you for that enviable weather report...in
> > >> contrast to that, up here  and in Annapolis (at the
> > >> Boat Show) we had @2" of rain, blustery (winds to
> > >> 20k), chilly. Not so many people...but a goodly
> > >> number, many in flipflops & shorts.. (?).
> > >> Elton & Stan were soaked & huddled in the cabin w/the
> > >> pop-top cover on...but cheery as usual .
> > >>
> > >> elle
> > >>
> > >> --- Brad Haslett <flybrad at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> Bill,
> > >>>
> > >>> Let me be the one to break the silence.  Today is an
> > >>> absolutely beautiful
> > >>> day in Tennessee, a perfect day for sailing.  The
> > >>> sun is shining, the wind
> > >>> is blowing, and the temps are in the 70's, but alas,
> > >>> I'm playing Mr. Mom.
> > >>> Since when did Fall Break start?  I don't remember
> > >>> that one as a kid.
> > >>>
> > >>> Here is something from the morning's reading that
> > >>> summarizes my thoughts
> > >>> quite well (from the WSJ) about this whole Foley
> > >>> mess.  Why should anything
> > >>> shock anyone anymore?
> > >>>
> > >>> I feel so sorry for those Amish parents.  A long
> > >>> time ago when I was into
> > >>> raising Haflingers (an Austrian draft pony) I met a
> > >>> lot of Amish at the
> > >>> national shows.  Good People!
> > >>>
> > >>> Brad
> > >>>
> > >>> ---------------------
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>> Return to the
> > >>>
> > >> Article<
> > >>
> >
>
> http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/10/tides_of_confusion_have_wa
> s
> > >> hed.html
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>> October 06, 2006 Is This Mark Foley Thing Really
> > >>> Happening?*By* *Daniel
> > >>>
> > >> Henninger*<
> > >> http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/author/daniel_henninger/>
> > >>>
> > >>> <http://www.opinionjournal.com/>Is this Mark Foley
> > >>> thing really happening?
> > >>>
> > >>> I woke up early the other morning after a bad dream
> > >>> about Muslims routinely
> > >>> blowing up and torturing other innocent Muslims. You
> > >>> know the world has
> > >>> turned upside down when your dreams spill over with
> > >>> real problems and your
> > >>> working hours are filled with the most fantastic
> > >>> stories.
> > >>>
> > >>> It's hard to believe that the Foley/instant
> > >>> message/congressional-page/GOP
> > >>> meltdown story has run for a week. Other than the
> > >>> slaughter in Amish
> > >>> country, is anyone aware of anything else of note in
> > >>> the world that happened
> > >>> the past seven days? Dive deep enough beneath the
> > >>> Foley flotsam and you
> > >>> discover reports that North Korea may be preparing
> > >>> to conduct an underground
> > >>> nuclear test. China and South Korea are at this hour
> > >>> trying to forestall the
> > >>> Hermit Kingdom's nuke test and no doubt could use an
> > >>> expression of support
> > >>> and outrage from the American political
> > >>> establishment. Sorry, they're busy
> > >>> reading Congressman Foley's 1995 email traffic.
> > >>>
> > >>> We see also where Europe's envoy to Iran, Javier
> > >>> Solana, threw in the towel
> > >>> after "endless hours" of talks with Iranian
> > >>> President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
> > >>> who on Wednesday told a crowd screaming "Death to
> > >>> America" that sanctions
> > >>> wouldn't stop Iran from enriching uranium. Whatever.
> > >>> The big news in
> > >>> Washington yesterday morning was that the House
> > >>> Ethics Committee sat down
> > >>> "behind closed doors" to think about Mark Foley.
> > >>>
> > >>> We know when we're beaten. Bowing to the gods of the
> > >>> news cycle, let us
> > >>> undertake the great questions of the moment. Where
> > >>> does post-modern American
> > >>> ethics place Mark Foley's homosexuality on a scale
> > >>> of 1 to 10--a 1 being
> > >>> just another gay guy and a 10 being a compulsive,
> > >>> predatory sex offender?
> > >>> What might fall in between seems to have confused
> > >>> Denny Hastert, two
> > >>> newspapers, one TV network and the FBI. In the
> > >>> event, Mr. Hastert, as the
> > >>> point man, is being driven from office for having
> > >>> failed, in hindsight, to
> > >>> recognize the obvious.
> > >>>
> > >>> On this score, Mr. Hastert has our sympathy. There
> > >>> is much in American life
> > >>> that doesn't seem "obvious" anymore. Call it the
> > >>> transgendering of reality.
> > >>>
> > >>> This compulsion to ambiguity is the reason that both
> > >>> the politicians and the
> > >>> reporters writing about the Foley affair have been
> > >>> describing what the
> > >>> congressman did as "inappropriate." Inappropriate is
> > >>> the word you use when
> > >>> describing behavior that falls on the scale between
> > >>> 3 to 7. Mark Foley seems
> > >>> to be the kind of guy who runs up a high phone bill
> > >>> calling 1-800-SEX-GUYS.
> > >>> That might have qualified as a 10 some 50 years, but
> > >>> not anymore. Former
> > >>> Congressman Gerry Studds had sex in 1973 with a
> > >>> House page. He said it was
> > >>> consensual. Even now, this is a 10. In Florida,
> > >>> doing a 10 probably earns
> > >>> you a johnboat trip to the swamps. But in Mr.
> > >>> Studds's Massachusetts
> > >>> district, it earned him five more trips to Congress.
> > >>>
> > >>> Mark Foley is on his way to oblivion after his 15
> > >>> minutes of infamy. As luck
> > >>> would have it, the originator of the increasingly
> > >>> true prediction that in
> > >>> the future everyone would be famous for 15 minutes,
> > >>> Andy Warhol, was the
> > >>> subject of an excellent American Masters documentary
> > >>> a few weeks ago. It was
> > >>> impossible to watch this unsparingly honest account
> > >>> of Warhol's career and
> > >>> the era spawned from the 1960s onward without
> > >>> thinking about the culture we
> > >>> inhabit today.
> > >>>
> > >>> Andy Warhol didn't create the culture we have today.
> > >>> He was merely among the
> > >>> first to recognize that the magic carpets were
> > >>> arriving, and always a fast
> > >>> learner, he knew how to ride them. Whatever older,
> > >>> earthly restraints on
> > >>> personal behavior existed, they were falling away
> > >>> fast back then. You could
> > >>> get away with things. So you did. And did. And did.
> > >>>
> > >>> As a result, we live now in an era awash in cultural
> > >>> confusions. The tides
> > >>> bring in weird phenomena, like the Mark Foley story,
> > >>> leave them on the beach
> > >>> overnight, then drag them back out to sea before
> > >>> there's time to make much
> > >>> sense of what we saw. As often as not, we don't even
> > >>> try. The Web and
> > >>> digital technology have ramped up the cultural
> > >>> velocity to warp speed.
> > >>> MySpace, YouTube--the once-bright line between the
> > >>> private and public
> > >>> spheres has evaporated.
> > >>>
> > >>> This has had an effect on the way we think, or
> > >>> don't. Clarity--thinking
> > >>> clearly--is harder than ever to achieve, because
> > >>> clarity assumes a degree of
> > >>> general social agreement about things. For instance,
> > >>> time was that most
> > >>> people would agree that putting a crucifix in urine
> > >>> and calling it art
> > >>> doesn't qualify as anything but bad thinking. But
> > >>> no, we had to have a big
> > >>> argument over that. At the end of her current stage
> > >>> act, Madonna makes
> > >>> herself the central figure in a crucifixion scene.
> > >>> No problem. Most
> > >>> reviewers simply describe it, and move on.
> > >>>
> > >>> Challenge over the past 40 years became a more
> > >>> powerful social value than
> > >>> clarity. One of the byproducts of challenge is that
> > >>> you don't have to think
> > >>> very much--about the point or the consequences. Just
> > >>> do it. The act of
> > >>> challenge is its own justification. And one of the
> > >>> byproducts of constant
> > >>> challenge is aggressive confusion. Another seer of
> > >>> the Sixties, Bob Dylan,
> > >>> saw what was happening by 1967: "There's too much
> > >>> confusion here, I can't
> > >>> get no relief." Denny Hastert, meet the joker.
> > >>>
> > >>> Looking back again at Ric Burns's Warhol
> > >>> documentary, it is hard not to see
> > >>> in retrospect the inexorable dominance over time of
> > >>> the cultural
> > >>> frivolousness that emerged in those years. Politics
> > >>> is especially
> > >>> vulnerable. A political culture--the politicians and
> > >>> their attendant
> > >>> media--that would allow itself to set aside
> > >>> everything else to spend a week
> > >>> with the Mark Foley "scandal" is frivolous. They
> > >>> look like dupes.
> > >>>
> > >>> So the Foley comet hurtles forward, no doubt into
> > >>> the weekend, like some
> > >>>
> > >> === message truncated ===
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> __________________________________________________
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> > >> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > >> http://mail.yahoo.com
> > >> __________________________________________________
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> > >>
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