Whipped Cream Difficulties

The NYT obit for Chester Nez clarifies a point I was confused on:

Mr. Nez was the last surviving member of the 29 original Navajo code talkers [emphasis added – DB], who at the urgent behest of the federal government devised an encrypted version of their language for wartime use. They and the hundreds of Navajos who followed them into battle used that code, with unparalleled success, throughout the Pacific theater.

…

About 400 Navajos followed the original 29 to war; of that later group, about 35 are still living, The Navajo Times, a tribal newspaper, reported this week.

This should not be taken as an attempt to diminish the accomplishments of Mr. Nez, the other 28 original code talkers, or the ones who followed the first 29; I’m just trying to make sure the historical record is clear. (I felt some of the other media coverage confused this point.)

This goes out to our great and good friend RoadRich: Whiskey 7 made it back to Normandy. Briefly: Whiskey 7 is a restored C-47 transport that originally dropped troops over Normandy. It was in a museum in New York, but was invited back to Normandy for the 70th anniversary. So a crew from the museum flew it across the Atlantic…

(One of these days, I want to ride in a C-47. Or a DC-3. I’m not picky.)

Fun feature piece by John Marchese in the NYT:

Maybe it was the 50th anniversary of “Hello, Dolly” having knocked the Beatles off the top of the pop charts (May 9, 1964), but it occurred to me recently that with a little advance work, I could spend an entire day in New York with Louis Armstrong.

Things I didn’t know:

• I was not aware of the Louis Armstrong House Museum.
• “The archive is housed in the library of Queens College in Flushing and is open to anyone who calls ahead to arrange an appointment. And if you bring your own mouthpiece, you can play one of five Armstrong trumpets kept there.” Not that I would ever do that, since I can’t carry a tune in a bucket (much less play the trumpet), but I can imagine this would be incredibly cool if you were a trumpet player.
• “… he spent much of his time in his wood-paneled second-floor den, making mixtapes on his two reel-to-reel recorders and decorating the tape boxes with elaborate and often humorous collages.”
• The Armstrong red beans and rice recipe.