The Message Forum is an ongoing dialogue among classmates. The goal is to encourage friendly interaction, including interaction among classmates who really didn't know each other. Experience on the site has revealed that certain topics tend to cause friction and hard feelings, especially politics and religion. 

Although politics and religion are not completely off-limits, classmates are asked to be positive in their posts and not to be too repetitive or allow a dialog to degenerate into an argument. 

Forums work when people participate - so don't be bashful! Click the "Post Response" button to add your entry to the forum.

David Cordell

Many times during our marriage my wife has stated that John Wilkes Booth was the worst thing to happen to the South -- that the South would have recovered more quickly and with less resentment under Lincoln.

Similarly, it seems to me that this low-life Crooks who tried to kill Trump is having the exact opposite effect that he had hoped. Trump emerges as strong and (semi-) bulletproof.

We watched the seven(?)-part TV series called Manhunt on Apple+ last week. It is about the Lincoln assassination and the hunt for Booth, along with ancillary events. Pretty good.

Ron Knight

Jan,

Yes we have a love for the weird culinary delights of chicken livers. The French dress it up with duck livers and call it pate!!! 

David

I applaud the VP candidate. Think back on Kennedy's choice of LBJ. 

Ron Knight

Sandra

So sorry to here of your continued health issues and glad to hear that it is beginning to work out for you! I always think of you and Danny and your health issues and always keep you guys in my thoughts!!

Jim Bedwell

Probably a lot of people never heard this one - Duane Allman was an ACE!

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Jan,

I like chicken livers too, especially when fried and served with cream gravy.

No one at my house likes them except me.  My husband doesn't like them, nor does he like calves liver; hates the smell of both of them!

I really like French pate too.  There is a restaurant in Austin that serves pate (fois gras) on top of their supurb ribeyesl  Fantastic!  I get to go there on special occasions, sometimes.

David Cordell

It is unfortunate if there are classmates who feel that it is unfair for me to kick people off this site, but that's what I will do if I believe their posts are detrimental to it or too insulting of other classmates, including me. I have grown weary of dealing with two particular people who regularly post on this website, and I am unwilling to let them diminish my enjoyment of life. I established this site for the benefit of the class, but not to make myself a punching bag.

I will be sure to forward any Reunion notices to anyone who gets kicked off this site.

David Cordell

As I noted, I will forward all Reunion notices directly to anyone I kick off this site.

Wayne Gary

Back in 1969 I remember going to The Dallas Theator Center and seeing McBeth (corrected with the help od Hiolis).  They added 6 non speaking paers. JFK, Lincoln, MLK and yheir assins.  When assinations wew discusses by the cast the assins were listning.  Very good at relating the play to today.

Jan Alexander

Gov. Whitmer talking about the plot against her to kidnap and kill her .

Janalu,  My grandmother introduced me to chicken livers and calves liver and onions... Yes, no one likes this stuff but a few wonderful human beings..

David Cordell

My mother used to serve (force us to eat) liver and onions once a month. I was able to tolerate it. My wife hates liver. We have never had it in our 50 years of marriage.

Bob Davidson

There was a restaurant by the old HPD and current municipal courts building outside downtown Houston, the Houston Avenue Grill.  I enjoyed eating there, liked the old-school waitresses and the Greek owner.  They had some things for daily specials I like that no one in my family could abide:  fried chicken livers, stuffed cabbage, calf liver, various kinds of okra, collard greens, and others.  It was a mini-cafeteria setup with a customer base of cops, courthouse workers, lawyers, and people from the neighborhood.

I was talking to the owner once and mentioned the fact that they had some interesting items mixed in with the standards, like roast chicken, smothered porkchops, pot roast, etc.  He told me that I was like a lot of his cutomers -- getting things that the rest of my family didn't like.

The place was killed by the COVID lockdown -- after a jillion years in business.

Lowell Tuttle

I worked as a phlebotomist for the Wadley Blood Bank next to Baylor Hospital in 1971 to 1972.   My duties included sticking patients and taking the sample back to the lab for typing and cross matching, as well as delviering blood packets to the Hospital units.;..and on the expiration date of the unused blood, taking the units back to the Blood Bank for whatever they did to the packets.

Baylor's second floor was the GI floor.   

It smelled.   Never could I eat liver after having worked for those 9 months and having to cover that floor.

Lowell Tuttle

 Bob, the Houston Chronicle had an articluate editorial today from a UH professor likening the issues of Houstonians recently to those of Job.   It is pretty funny.   I posted it OTOS>

Sandra Spieker (Ringo)

David,

At last something we can totally agree on - - hate for liver, chicken liver, calf liver, any kind of liver!  I have not served it either, ever! 

My mother used to cook it and insisted I eat it when I was a kid, which further cemented my hatred for it.

Danny likes chinese food style chicken liver, which is roasted and wrapped in bacon.    I have tried it and can swallow it due to the bacon.  He will order it if it is on the menu, that and squid.  Yuk.  Squid is like eating rubber bands.  I don't like that either.

Hollis Carolyn Heyn

Wayne Gary

Holis,

You are correct.  It was McBeth.  I had the two confused.  

Sandra Spieker (Ringo)

I am curious.  I found an itneresting article on ProPublica about a Right wing group, a charity, that is trying to influence the 2024 election.  Here is a link to the article.  Read it and comment your opinions.  I am interested to know what the "average" conservative thinks of this:

Inside Ziklag, The Secret Organization of Wealthy Christians Trying to Sway the Election and Change the Country

Jim Bedwell

I LOVE any kind of liver plus okra (even slimy) but not collard greens.

By the way, liver is very high in Vitamin A. So are spinach & watermelon. Don't know the effects of combining those, but it might be wise not to have liver & spinach for dinner, topped off with a HUGE chunk of watermelon.

Jan Alexander

Lowell Tuttle

When I'm making roux for my gumbo, I have a bag or two of frozen cut okra.   I stir and stir and stir the roux until just before it turns to smoke spoil, then, I throw in the frozen okra and it stops the cookin.   It also makes a fantastic muddy mess...which forms the basis of the gumbo...

It's been since winter that I did that.   I love love gumbo...

I had a friend of mine in Galvest who grows his own collards...Huge leaves...when he harvests it, he runs it through his clothes washer to clean it before cooking...

You really need to chop that stuff or it'll choke you...but I like collard greens too, with the correct accompaniment...and that yellow pepper stuff, whatever that is, I forget...

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Sandra,

I skimmed that article by ProPublica, as I didn't have time to read it in depth, this afternoon.  I DID read the first part of it more carefully, as I had not heard of the Christian organization before.

In just a cursory first introduction, It sound like the mission of the Christian effort, is to deter what George Soros and his group of followers are trying to accomplish in our country, and also to have an equal and opposite effort to compete with what Zuckerberg's money did, when he gave millions of dollars to mainly Democrat voting offices, in the last presidential election.  What Zuckerberg did WAS interference; interference with our established voting offices' rules and regulations.  Ziklag's efforts would be to compete and counteract with the Zuckerbucks, but to stay within the bounds of US laws.  Zuckerbucks were given to beat the Republicans, using money as an aimed weapon of choice.

But to say that this organization, Ziklag, is a Christian Nationalist effort is incorrect, as well as it is incorrect to say  the organization is trying to interfere with established US laws concerning our democratic election rules and regulations.  It seems to me that these Christians simply want to try return our nation to the original Chistian practices in belief, that we once had in much higher numbers of citizens enjoying their religion of choice, but NOT to insist that Christianity is our national religion, which of course, we definitely DO NOT want here, as per se the goals of our Founders.

I'm not a regular reader of ProPublica, and I'm wondering what their concern is with Ziklag, when it appears that the Christian organization is trying to obey US laws in every way they can.  It seems that these Christians are well-educated people, so I would assume that they would go to extra efforts to obey US laws, not circumvent them.

I'll have to read your article again later, to better understand all of it.

David Cordell

Fried okra? Yes!

Fried calamari? Yes!

Fried shrimp? Yes!

Fried oysters? Yes!

French fries? Yes!

Martha's family had a maid who started working for them in 1948. That woman could fry! They lived along the Gulf Coast, and seafood was plentiful, unlike where we grew up. Every time we would visit Martha's mother, Christine would "fry me up" some shrimp and oysters. She actually killed her husband in the early fifties, but was not charged. We have Christine's photo on the cabinet next to our fireplace, and we bought a gravestone for her. Great lady. Great cook!

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Are you saying that Christine's husband died of clogged arteries, due to eating too much fried foods?

He may have died young, but I'll bet he died a happy guy, with much love in his heart for his Southern cookin' lady love.

Fried okra is a MUST on a Southern dining table of soul food, which is a table laden with scrumptious yummies!

When I was in college, I had a roommate named Susan, who had a mother born and raised in New York.

Susan told me that her mother told her, "Okra is for the livestock!"

I laughed and told Susan that "Well, I guess then, that my mother has thought for many years that her children were livestock, 'cause we have eaten a whole lot of okra......and she has eaten right alongside us!"  My Granddad Jeanes used to call it 'okrey!'  Ha!

Moo-o-o-o-o-o!

Jan Alexander

OK, now you got me going... , nothing like a dozen oysters on the half shell and an ice cold beer ,sitting on a deck looking over the ocean . 

 will see if picture disappears. 

Kurt Fischer

Sandra:

Speaking of chicken parts which should not be eaten, have you ever tried fried chicken feet?  My traveling buddy really wanted to try these in Hong Kong, so we did.  It turns out a chicken foot is all gristle.  I'm not sure why anyone would want to eat those things.