I know TDE is a reward in itself: the witticisms, whimsy, erudition, humility. But once in awhile, I like to give TDE a tangle benefit. Today is that day. I learned about the vodka pictured above from a friend who used to distill and sell his own vodka. His vodka

"The Bushies and their courtiers, who know as little of our history as Janet Jackson knows of Jane Austen, haven't the faintest idea that Republicans have often been the party of peace and non-interference in foreign wars. As President Benjamin Harrison once remarked, 'We have

Ah, so it's not unique to me: "Thief, hypocrite, lacking in hospitality, charity, and brotherly love, lazy, a malingerer, expecting others to do all the work while I went traveling around the country, a liar, cheat, deceiver, perverter of Peter's teaching. People have so trembled

Miscellaneous Rambling A page of my life will come to a close this week. After ten seasons as a dugout coach (actually, nine as dugout coach, one as head coach), my last regular season little league game is this Friday. I admit: I'm greatly looking forward to it.

Miscellaneous Rambling Whew. Fifty dead. Unbelievable. I have nothing to add, except the obvious: America and Islam are incompatible. That doesn't mean the majority of Muslims cannot live here peaceably, but I'm not sure how we separate the good ones from the bad, so I'

> In 1980 there were only 101 breweries in the United States. Today there are over 4000. #Progress [https://twitter.com/hashtag/Progress?src=hash] #beer [https://twitter.com/hashtag/beer?src=hash] #Murica [https://twitter.com/hashtag/Murica?src=hash] > — Drunken History (@DrunkenHistory) June 5, 2016 [https://twitter.

BYCU My small town had a stroke of good fortune this month: a new Meijer store opened up here. It's the third biggest in Michigan. I took my daughters there for our first visit Wednesday night and was greatly impressed. I don't care much for shopping,

Caddyshack, one of my all-time favorite comedies, turned 35 yesterday. Mental Floss has published 15 interesting facts about the movie [http://mentalfloss.com/article/56693/15-things-you-might-not-know-about-caddyshack] . Excerpt: > At first, Murray's appearance as oafish groundskeeper Carl Spackler was planned as

Truth in advertising: "While there are no key details about what the filmmaker's next film will be, he will be on producing duties for a new Western that is set to shoot in Los Angeles later this month - and it's already generated vitriol through its

Miscellaneous Rambling Versatile Gardening Tool of the Year 2016: The plastic fork. I bought a big batch of them a few years ago. Our cat was ravishing my pots and I read that, if you line the pots with plastic forks, they deter felines. It worked (though, this year, they