TODAY in 2018, MORE THAN EVER, WE MUST COMBAT RACISM, BIGOTRY, ANTI-SEMITISM & HATE EVERYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD!
BOYCOTT RFDTV, The Cowboy Channel, Rural Radio and Rural Media Group, Inc.
We are going to boycott your network and your advertisers. Paula Deen does not belong on television or in any public forum. She is an admitted racist and your network can really do much better. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THIS OK? We will not be watching or buying from your advertisers for as long as she is on your network. THAT IS ALL.
TODAY in 2018, MORE THAN EVER, WE MUST COMBAT RACISM, BIGOTRY, ANTI-SEMITISM & HATE EVERYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD!
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“Nothing in the world is more dangerous
than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968
“Man of the Year” TIME magazine 1963 (How Time has changed…)
Yes! There is a BLACK BEAR DINER in the San Fernando Valley!
The Black Bear Diner in Tarzana, California
We were tired, hungry and driving down Ventura Boulevard last week, when much to our surprise and amazement, there was a Black Bear Diner in Tarzana!
Located in the space previously occupied by CoCo’s, Season’s and Bob’s Big Boy in Tarzana Square on Ventura Blvd just east of Reseda Blvd, we have a Black Bear Diner!
CLICK ON ANY SMALL PIC TO SEE A LARGER PIC AND VIEW THE GALLERY AND THEN CLICK AGAIN TO VIEW THE PIC AT FULL SIZE!
We are a big fan of the Black Bear Diner and enjoy eating at the restaurant in Medford, Oregon when we are visiting in Ashland. They are located in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and there’s also one in Midwest City, Oklahoma. They are currently adding new locations and will soon be opening in Katy, Texas (according to their website).
CLICK ON ANY SMALL PIC TO SEE A LARGER PIC AND VIEW THE GALLERY AND THEN CLICK AGAIN TO VIEW THE PIC AT FULL SIZE!
We were so happy to see a Black Bear Dinner in the Valley and to have an easy decision on where to eat dinner. We pulled right into the parking lot and started taking pictures for this Blog Post. It was late and after the dinner rush and not very crowded at all. There were people at about 40% of the tables and they were mostly finishing up. The counter was empty and we chose to sit at a table at the back of the main dining room where it was quiet and there wasn’t any waiter traffic.
We were seated immediately by a young host/cashier and greeted promptly by our waitress (or female server if you’re particular about the job title). When we asked how long they had been open they told us almost three weeks. Our waitress had worked at the previous restaurant CoCo’s in the same location, which had closed long ago.
Everything was new and “fresh” with the familiar decor that is part of their brand and a constant throughout the chain. A large WELCOME sign and statues of Black Bears greet you out front and there’s a beautiful vintage-style jukebox available in the lobby for patrons to play classic American music of their choosing. They have a merchandise display and food products available for sale at the register too.
The board-of-fare is All-American “stick to your ribs” Food, and it’s breakfast, lunch and dinner all day. We decided to keep it simple and test the American cheeseburger basket.
On The Menu: American Cheeseburger with Fries (in a basket)
As you can see, the burger and cheese were presented on the basket, not on the paper, which may sound particular (and it is) but it’s important for some customers (like us). We ordered it with lettuce only, but there was no lettuce on the burger and we didn’t want to wait for a server to come, get the lettuce and then bring it back, before eating….
The cheeseburger was fine, but not great and a little bland. The fries were great and served very hot. We only had water to drink and ate the food quickly because we were really hungry. We finished and paid at the register and we were happy and no longer hungry. The service was fast and aside from the food presentation and missing lettuce everything was fine and we will return again.
NOTE: Our waitress left after putting the order in and bringing us barbecue sauce and mustard, and another server brought us our food, but the lettuce was ordered and missing from the meal.
We didn’t have dessert, but they do have a great dessert menu (with pics):
CLICK ON ANY SMALL PIC TO SEE A LARGER PIC AND VIEW THE GALLERY AND THEN CLICK AGAIN TO VIEW THE PIC AT FULL SIZE!
Desserts Under Glass!
Black Bear Diner – 18355 Ventura Blvd, Tarzana, CA 91356 “Down-home chain serving all-day American comfort food & desserts in a woodsy setting.” OPEN 6AM-10PM everyday of the week
We also asked if they were going to have late-night hours, but they didn’t know yet…
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“Kilroy Was Here” engraved on the WWII Memorial in Washington D.C.
“Maybe you’ve bumped into Kilroy. He’s a bald (or balding) gentleman with a big nose, drawn peeking over a wall. Next to him is usually the phrase “Kilroy was here.” He can be found all over the world, and went viral long before social media or the Internet were around, finding his way through the theaters of war with American troops during World War II. (One of his most daring appearances may have been at the Potsdam Conference in 1945. During the summit, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin had exclusive use of a VIP bathroom. One day, Stalin reportedly used the facilities, and came out demanding to know from one of his aides who Kilroy was, having found the drawing on one of the walls.)”
“Kilroy Was Here” is a WWII slogan and graffiti by the American Army, the drawing based on the British “Mr Chad”, and sometimes coupled with images of pregnant women.
“Kilroy doesn’t appear to have originated entirely with U.S. servicemen, though. A similar doodle, known as Mr. Chad, was scrawled throughout Britain as a comment on shortages and rations during the war. Chad was similar in appearance to Kilroy, but was accompanied by a different message: “Wot? No tea?” (or whatever other goods were in short supply at the moment). Chad predates Kilroy by a few years, and may have been the created by British cartoonist George Chatterton in the late 1930s. As best as anyone can tell, at some point during the war, American soldiers borrowed Mr. Chad’s image and married it to their own name and phrase, ‘Kilroy was here.'”
Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had already been wherever American soldiers went. It became a challenge for the troops to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (on top of Mt. Everest and the Statue of Liberty, on the underside of the Arch De Triumphe and even scrawled in the dust on the moon)
Wisconsin Historical Markers: The Highground WWII Tribute: Kilroy Was Here
“If the man in the drawing was a variation of Mr. Chad, then where did the name Kilroy come from? While the Oxford English Dictionary writes Kilroy off as a mythical person, dozen of real people claimed to be the doodle’s namesake in 1946, when the American Transit Association (ATA) held a radio contest to establish the origin of the phrase. One of them was James J. Kilroy, who worked as at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts during the war inspecting the work done by others on the tanks and hulls of warships. As Kilroy explained to the ATA:
I started my new job with enthusiasm, carefully surveying every inner bottom and tank before issuing a contract. I was thoroughly upset to find that practically every test leader [the head of a work crew] I met wanted me to go down and look over his job with him, and, when I explained to him that I had already checked the job and could not spare the time to crawl through one of those tanks again, he would accuse me of not having looked the job over. I was getting sick of of being accused of not looking the jobs over and one day as I came through the manhole of a tank i had just surveyed, I angrily marked with yellow crayon on the tank top, where the tester could see it, ‘Kilroy was here.’ The following day, a test gang leader approached me with a grin on his face and said, ‘I see you looked my job over.’ I nodded in agreement.
Kilroy provided the ATA with corroborating statements from men he worked with at the shipyard, and said that he assumed that shipyard workers who had seen his mark and then joined the military took the phrase with them and began writing it in Europe. He won the contest and the grand prize, a full-size trolley street car. Just a few days before Christmas, the 12-ton car was delivered to Kilroy’s home in Halifax, MA, where it was attached to the house and used as living space for six of his nine children.”
The “Kilroy Trolley Car” photo from the Boston American, December 23, 1946. Thanks to Brian Fitzgerald (James Kilroy’s grandson)
“Kilroy Was Here” is written in two locations on the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.
“Clap my hands and jump for joy; I was here before Kilroy. Sorry to spoil your little joke; I was here, but my pencil broke.” ~Kilroy
(from A Diller, a Dollar: Rhymes and Sayings For the Ten O’clock Scholar 1955)
Kilroy can also be seen at the end of my favorite WWII film “Kelly’s Heroes”>
Spoiler Alert! Kilroy Was Here in “Kelly’s Heroes”
The 1983 Styx album titled “Kilroy Was Here” was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The song, “Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto” ends with the line “I’m Kilroy.”
NOTE: sometimes we answer questions in the groups we are in on facebookand sometimes they become Blog Posts. We have insomnia and cannot sleep again. HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018!
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HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018! The Year of “The Fool”? The Rider-Waite image of The Fool as an innocent soul before his fall, untainted by contact with society and all its ills. He is shown as a young man walking toward the edge of a cliff (his next step will send him tumbling into the unknown) with a small dog. The Fool holds a white rose, a symbol of freedom from base desires in one hand, and in the other a small bundle of possessions representing untapped collective knowledge.
Let go of preconceived ideas and remain open to change.
Release any demands.
Pay attention to events as they are occurring in the present.
Let go of expectations and trust your instincts.
The Fool is unnumbered in the Major Arcana, sometimes represented as 0 (the first) or XXII (the last) in most tarot decks and is typically made up as a jester or bard (and a future Joker in a deck of playing cards).
“The Madman” or “The Beggar” wears ragged clothes and stockings without shoes, and carries a bundle of his belongings on a stick called a bindle slung over his back and he is leaning on a staff. He is being chased away by a dog that has torn his pants.
Early versions of “The Fool” card portray a person driven by base needs and urges who has fallen into a state of poverty and deprivation. The Fool is a carnival entertainer or a huckster. He is decrepit vagabond and vulnerable, the cumulative result of his delusions and failures. He represents fallen humanity, over-identified with the material plane of existence, and beginning a pilgrimage toward self-knowledge and wisdom.
“The Fool reminds us to recognize the path of personal development within ourselves and the stage upon that path where we find ourselves in order to energize our movement toward deeper self-realization.”
Lighten up and be spontaneous enough to stretch beyond the realm of logic…
and Just be happy!
JoshWillTravel eclipses the Sun!
“What we call the beginning is often the end.
And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”
~ T. S. Eliot (we love this quote)
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018 from JoshWillTravel!
“Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if you look at it right.”
2017 – Our Year in Review:
THE PUPPIES and THE BIG BOY! They are truly “man’s best friend”.
“The day after tomorrow, yes, only the day after tomorrow … Tomorrow I’ll start thinking about the day after tomorrow” – Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa
Procrastination (noun)
-the action of delaying or postponing something
-the avoidance of doing a task that needs to be accomplished
-the practice of doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones
-carrying out less urgent tasks instead of more urgent ones
-putting off impending tasks to a later time
For there’s a change in the weather There’s a change in the sea So from now on there’ll be in change in me My walk will be different, my talk and my name Nothin’ about me is going to be the same
I’m goin’ to change my way of livin’
If that ain’t enough
Then I’ll change the way I strut my stuff
Nobody wants you when you’re old and gray
There’ll be some changes made!
Renaissance Faire Reunion in March 2017 (another Blog Post coming soon)
A mighty oak tree A reminder of the past Standing tall and strong
Paramount Ranch – Agoura, California
Our June Father Day’s midnight Emergency Room visit was memorable and very expensive even with health insurance.
(as detailed in a previous Blog Post = fear, anger, denial, bargaining, depression….)
That take a black & white pic thing is happening! Happy New Year! Party like it’s 2099!
We saw the TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN in Madras, Oregon
(and we camped in Prineville Reservoir State Park)
We also “vacationed” in Ashland, Oregon in August
(and drove through the Crater Lake fire zone after a 10 hour traffic jam)
We CRUSHED our iPhone…… Oh, the technology!
We went to Burning Man!* (and survived 9 days in Black Rock City/Desert)
Reno, Nevada
We went to Reno, Nevada
We visited Manzanar Relocation Center National Monument at sunset.
We saw Pete Townshend’s Classical Quadrophenia at The Greek Theatre.
We went to the L.A. Auto Show and the Los Angeles County Fair.
We got a New Car too!
The Denver Broncos sucked this year and didn’t even make the NFL playoffs.
The Boycott of the Los Angeles Dodgers continues… WE ARE STILL BOYCOTTING THE DODGERS AND TIME-WARNER/SPECTRUM!
and this year they went all the way to the World Series and CHOKED AGAIN!
Many fun birthday and holiday dinner parties! Good Friends! Many great meals!
^^^^^This End Up!^^^^^ Happy New Year 2018!
We usually make our Grandma’s Cherry Cheesecake for the Thanksgiving Feast. Last year we didn’t. So everyone asked about cheesecake and they were sadly disappointed… and then we got some good Jewish guilt for the holiday. This year, by “royal decree” we were instructed that there had to be cheesecake and we did some “midnight baking” without big mixing bowls (because they were all in use for meal prep). And so there was Grandma’s Cherry Cheesecake for dessert, and it was a Big Hit and everyone was very happy!
Grandma’s Cherry Cheesecake Thanksgiving 2017
And sadly, the sudden deaths of 2 old friends (now of blessed memory) in March.
One Year Ago, New Year’s Eve 2017 – Mario V. RIP
Annie RIP – “And the spiderman is always hungry…”
“Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time…..”
One Year! 12 Months – 52 Weeks – 365 Days (366 in a Leap Year)
8760 Hours (8784 in a Leap Year) – 525,600 Minutes – 31,536,000 Seconds Tempus fugit! (Time flies)
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018!
And we just reached 49000 Hits (unsolicited, never paid for) here on our Blog! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
Wolf full moon at midnight – Happy New Year 2018!
34 years ago!
The Grateful Dead LIVE at the San Francisco (now the Bill Graham) Civic Auditorium on December 28th, 1983 (2nd show of the magic New Year’s Run) for ThrowbackThursday:
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“I have traveled long and far, to be with you here and now.”– JoshWillTravel
*Our full Burning Man Road Trip story has not been told yet….
there is a Blog Post in the “unfinished draft” stage that will soon be completed and published with many unseen pictures and even some artwork, so FOLLOW our Blog!
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018!
“Everybody’s building ships and boats Some are building monuments, others are jotting down notes Everybody’s in despair, every girl and boy But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, everybody’s gonna jump for joy”
– Grateful Dead Oakland Coliseum 1985
127th Tournament of Roses Parade Bass Drum Head “Find You Adventure With Music”
“In New York, people are buried in the snow. Here our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear. Let’s hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise.” ~Professor Charles F. Holder, 1890
The Rider-Waite image of The Fool as an innocent soul before his fall, untainted by contact with society and all its ills. He is shown as a young man walking toward the edge of a cliff (his next step will send him tumbling into the unknown) with a small dog. The Fool holds a white rose, a symbol of freedom from base desires in one hand, and in the other a small bundle of possessions representing untapped collective knowledge.
JoshWillTravel 