Archive for January 31st, 2025

Quick preview of coming attractions (also relevant to Lawrence’s interests).

Friday, January 31st, 2025

I do intend to resume gun book blogging (and random gun crankery) soon.

Right now, I’m trying to finish the updates to the list of Texas congressional representatives. I’m about 1/3rd of the way through, and hope to have that done by the end of the weekend.

In the meantime, I thought I’d put up a quick post that’s sort of gun book related. Lawrence gets a fair number of possums in his yard. Or maybe just one possum, over and over again, that his dog keeps cornering. I don’t know for sure. I haven’t checked the serial numbers on his possums.

Anyway, I thought I’d throw this up as a preview from a forthcoming book: a recipe for “possum sausages”. I do think my use of this limited excerpt from How Wild Things Are by Analiese Gregory counts as “fair use”.

(Click to embiggen.)

One thing I do want to point out, though: Lawrence’s possums are the “Virginia opossum” (order Didelphimorphia). The possums the author is describing here are the “common brushtail possum” (order Diprotodontia), which are considered invasive in Tasmania. I suspect with enough pork back fat stuffed in, either one tastes good. Especially if you follow the recommended process of caging your possum for two weeks and feeding it fruit and veggies to reduce the “gamey” taste.

I do not know if the differences between Didelphimorphia and Diprotodontia make a difference to the cooking time or the taste of the possum sausage. I have not tried this recipe yet. (We don’t have a sausage/meat grinder. We do have a Kitchenaid stand mixer, but I would never buy the sausage stuffer attachment for it, as reliable sources say that is a POS.)

Obit watch: January 31, 2025.

Friday, January 31st, 2025

Dick Button, figure skating guy. I’ve never been a big skating fan, but I remember Mr. Button from when I was young and actually watched some of the Olympics.

An Emmy winner, Button taught generations of TV audiences the nuances of triple toe loops, lutzes and axels and how judges assess a skater’s performance. But many fans might not have known that he was a two-time Olympic gold medalist himself, advancing modern figure skating in the late 1940s and early ’50s with his dazzling leaps and spins, including the first triple jump in competition.

Marianne Faithfull. THR.

Iris Cummings Critchell. She was 104.

She competed as a swimmer in the 1936 Summer Olympics, and was the last surviving member of the American team.

While Iris didn’t win a medal at the 1936 Olympics, she went on to capture three national 200-meter breaststroke titles. But after the 1940 Olympics in wartime Tokyo were canceled, she put competitive swimming aside in favor of another passion that would hold her interest for the rest of her life: flying.

She flew with the Woman’s Air Force Service Pilots, ferrying planes across the country for shipping overseas.

After the war, Ms. Critchell received a bachelor’s degree with a concentration in science and mathematics from the University of Southern California, where she went on to teach aviation — an uncommon accomplishment for a woman at the time.

In 1962, she and Mr. [Howard] Critchell [her husband – DB], who was working as a commercial pilot for Western Airlines, began teaching in the Bates Foundation Aeronautics Program at Harvey Mudd College, where their students included the future astronauts George Nelson and Stanley G. Love. Ms. Critchell ran the program on her own after Mr. Critchell retired from teaching in 1979. When the program was shut down in 1990, she remained affiliated with the college, lecturing and working as a librarian there.

In addition to her work at Harvey Mudd College, Ms. Critchell created aviation outreach programs for public high schools, developed manuals for the Federal Aviation Administration and worked as a pilot examiner there for more than 20 years. She was a longtime member of the Ninety-Nines, a nonprofit organization supporting female pilots.
She also competed in women’s transcontinental air races, known informally as the Powder Puff Derby, a term coined by Will Rogers. In 1957, she finished first in a race to Philadelphia from San Mateo, Calif., sharing an $800 prize with her co-pilot, Alice Roberts.