Wordless Wednesday
Boats
I got to reminiscing about our first boat when I was a kid.
My dad worked for Scott Paper all the time I was growing up. His first office was in the Export Sales Department’s little brick building in the parking lot of the Chester plant. He was working there the day he bought a little 21′ cabin cruiser which has about as much cabin space as a walk-in closet and the ambiance of a gym locker. Campers and boats were so much simpler then.
I think of that boat as pretty old but she wasn’t all that old when we got her in about 1956.
Much, much later, we discovered it was a Chris Craft kit boat. The pictured 21′ 1953 Day Cruiser is pretty similar in layout but much nicer in finish. My almost-60-year-old memory is that our boat was all plywood, not planked, and all painted, no brightwork, and I remember her having either a Willys or a Gray Marine 60HP 4-cylinder inboard.
Looking in the cabin door in photo #3, you can see a half-wall bulkhead on the starboard side and most of the port v-berth. What you can’t see is the alcohol fueled stove and the 5-gallon water jug abaft the port bunk nor the red, steel-sided Coleman cooler my mom sat on while cooking.
I still have and use that wonderful cooler.
No standing headroom for us and you had to get up to go, since the head was actually a waxed paper bag in a porcelain bucket that lived under the port bunk. That was a fire drill since my folks slept on the bunks and I slept on an air mattress on the deck between them.
Chris Craft claimed that between 1950 and 1958 they shipped 93,000 boat kits (!), in 13 different models from 8-31 feet long.
Ours was the first “MARCHA,” a contraction of my folks’ names, Mary and Chan. Some years later, in the second MARCHA, we met a couple living aboard a boat named “CHAMAR.” That was a contraction of their names, Chan and Mary. Still, she has always been the “little boat” in the family.
This story is less about the boat and more about how little info and how few photos Google was able to find about those wonderful Chris Craft kit boats. If any loyal reader has photos of a 21-foot plywood Chris from about 1953, send them along!
The little boat lived in the Delaware River at a boatyard in Essington because it was close to his office. He could run down there and putter on his lunch break. That was before I had glasses, so I didn’t see much of our travels but I do remember running out of gas in the shipping lane one summer evening. My dad flagged down the Chester-Bridgeport Ferry and they actually towed us in!
She was a good first boat. We kept her for a couple of years until my mom got tired of sitting on the cooler or standing in the companionway to cook. Truth, I figured she was tired of rousting everyone so she could pee in a paper bag.
I hope that little boat fared even better than this project I found on the Interwebs:
Wordless Wednesday
Sum Oblitus
I told SWMBO yesterday, “I’ll write about a new Alzheimer’s drug test on an old, old drug on the Ides of August.” If I remember.
As an aside, Shakespear taught us that the Scottish king Duncan died on this day in 1040, and the namesake of the Scottish play died exactly 17 years in 1057. That has absolutely nothing to do with mice nor men nor memory other than the fact that I am very glad to have remembered it.
Memory is not easy for some of us as we age.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, a general term for memory loss and other intellectual abilities serious enough to interfere with daily life. Alzheimer’s disease accounts for 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases. It’s a progressive disease, where dementia symptoms gradually worsen over a number of years. In its early stages, memory loss is mild, but with late-stage Alzheimer’s, individuals lose the ability to carry on a conversation and respond to their environment. Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. Those with Alzheimer’s live an average of eight years after their symptoms become noticeable to others, but survival can range from four to 20 years, depending on age and other health conditions.
It’s not just our memories it kills. It kills us. The advanced dementia impairs immune function and causes an inability to ambulate as well as incontinence and aspiration so many individuals with advanced AD contract deadly “intercurrent infections,” usually pneumonia.
Alzheimer’s Research Finds an Old, Old NSAID Reverses Memory Problems in Mice
Researchers at the University of Manchester have found that giving mice mefenamic acid totally reverses memory loss within a month. Their data suggests that the fenamate non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) could be relabelled as Alzheimer’s Disease therapeutics. They published the study in the journal Nature Communications last week.
Scientists at Parke-Davis invented mefenamic acid in 1961. The U.S. patent was issued in 1964. The drug is long since generic and is available worldwide under many brand names including “Ponstel.” Doctors generally use it to treat moderate pain and it is well tolerated for post-surgical pain but it is not widely prescribed.
Oh. One might think that a widely available generic drug would be affordable!
According to goodRX.com, a month’s worth of brand-name Ponstel sells for $819.57 at Walgreens and $777.26 at Rite-Aid but the generic sells for $203.72 at Walgreens and $216.45 at Rite-Aid. With a coupon. Wikipedia reports that, in the USA, wholesale price of a week’s supply of generic mefenamic acid was quoted as $426.90 in 2014. Ponstel cost $571.70. In contrast, in the UK, a week’s supply is £1.66, or £8.17 for the branded Ponstan. In the Philippines, 10 tablets of 500 mg generic mefenamic acid cost PHP39.00 (or the equivalent of $0.88USD) as of October 25, 2014.
And therein lies the rub. Mefenamic acid costs practically nothing to manufacture but price gouging here means that, if it does prove out as an Alzheimer’s drug, we won’t be able to afford it.
I think we should march on Washington about this pricing. We’ll meet a million-strong at the National Mall on Tuesday at noon. If we remember.
Put A Cork In It
Moo.
Everyone poops. And burps. And farts.
Cows do it more than you or even I do.
The California Air Resources Board wants to slash cow methane emissions by 40%. The CARB strategy plans to regulate improved manure management practices, new diets for cattle, and what they call “gut microbial interventions.” California legislators are currently considering a bill to enforce these suggested regs.
I’ve heard of cow “tipping” but never of exploding cow balloons.
These political “scientists” have too much time on their hands. I’m thinking they don’t like farms very much.
I like Argentina’s idea better. That cattle-based economy would strap large collectors onto cows to trap methane. Bleed it off. Burn it for energy. Maybe California legislators plan to sell all their cows to Argentina.
I suspect the cows would rather wear a backpack than a butt plug, too.