Maggie's Farm

In Philly, at a restaurant called Chickie & Pete's, which happens to service all the Philly teams at their venues, has Old Bay Fries.

Oh
My
God.
They are amazing. To the point that my kids, when we head down to Philly for a game (we live closer to NY), insist on getting not only a genuine cheesesteak, but also the Old Bay Fries.

Yes, they are the best.

I was not a hippie, but I met plenty. My older stepsisters WERE hippies. I was very scared of hippies when I was growing up, until about the age of 10, when my stepsisters made it "cool".
I had been taught they were frightening counter-culture society dregs.

Which, of course, they were.

Until they went mainstream. Which is pretty much how all this stuff goes. As I grew up, I joined the Punk/New Wave movement. The Punk movement, after it came to the US and matured, lost its real flavor. Just like the hippies did. They went mainstream. I caught the tail end, enough to dovetail nicely into New Wave. The hippies did the same thing, basically. The dregs of society "started" the movement(Haight Ashbury, etc.), until society joined in and made it OK, and THEN the barriers fell as being "outside the lines" actually became "inside the lines".

Happens every time. Look at hip-hop today. Rap, and gangsta rap in particular, was all about being low class and rough. Hip-hop took that theme, toned it a bit, made it acceptable, and now it's mainstream. It's still the "same thing", just made commercially acceptable.

Hippies were no different.

As for the war part - I recently got into a massive argument with a flaming liberal who is about 10 years older than me (and was most likely a hippie), who is now a media consultant. He was busy bashing Nixon's "escalation" of the war in Vietnam.
I kindly pointed out to him that, from the moment he entered office, troops and aid to Vietnam began to fall. He escalated the bombing, and extended the war beyond the Vietnam borders - but those were both necessary to withdraw in an orderly fashion and draw the other side to the negotiating table.
He looked it up, got pissed off, and then lit up a joint.

For what it's worth, I'm from central/northeastern PA. Kind've on the border, the western edge of the Poconos.

The term I'm familiar with is "Cunnerman" for all the "Okies". We had quite a few in our town. It was originally a derogatory term. They grew to embrace it.

LOL. As absurd a concept as this seems....I think I'd have to say yes. I'm not sure the completion of the climb has to be sequential. If he completed the task he set out to, then he gets credit.

I am guessing this goes back to your Sir Francis Drake discussion. During this, I brought up the 3 different transatlantic crossings and how each one was unique in its own right, but only Lindbergh really gets credit for crossing.
One was done with stops, by 2 men.
One was solo, with stops.
One was solo, nonstop.

Sure, Lindbergh's was toughest, but he wasn't the first. Nor was Glenn the first to orbit the earth (ask any person and most will say he was the first IN SPACE).
In the end, it came down to the "more powerful country makes the rules" rule.

By the way, you never responded to my Burke and Wills comparison to Magellan. I've been curious to see how you'd handle that one. They, too, died and did not finish their trip. But they get the credit, just like Magellan (I mention them because you said he was the ONLY one. He isn't).

My response didn't take....or it didn't and hasn't shown up yet.

I suppose we're all entitled to our beliefs (well I don't suppose - I KNOW we are), but it's my feeling you're picking at nits.
You asked for one name of another expedition, like Magellan's, where the leaders got credit and didn't finish. Twice, in your original post, I mentioned Burke and Wills. I'm sure they aren't the only others out there.


BTW, your response kind've falls in line with what I wrote about the dominant guys making the rules. That you didn't know about them isn't surprising...but they ARE considered the Lewis and Clark of Australia.

It seems the British (or those of very close British extract) love the glorious failure. Shackleton, Scott, Burke and Wills, Mawson, etc. Fact is, I do too. I'm very much the Anglophile.

The peak year for US deaths was 1968 - 16,000+. The year prior and the year after, it was just under 12,000. No other year comes remotely close to these 3 years.
WWII AVERAGED 10,000 soldiers dead per month. So for many people, it was a question of scale. Vietnam started as a slow burn. Deaths were relatively low. But in 1967, they doubled. In 1968, up 50%.
There were many people (typically older) who had a different outlook on the scale of the losses - it just didn't seem horrible (I know my stepfather, who served in Italy during WWII had no issues with it).
But the rapid increase in deaths over a 3 year period from 1965-1968 was what grabbed people's attention - the fact that we were in a country where nobody could tell who the enemy really was at times - and were committing more and more troops to actually engage in real combat!
Then the best thing the NVA could hope for happened. The Tet Offensive and Khe Sanh happened in a very short period of time. While both were disasters for North Vietnam, it was critically important because these events were not too dissimilar to Doolittle's Raid on Tokyo. They highlighted the vulnerability of US troops. The fact that US troops and leadership reacted well, and overcame adversity is and was overlooked by the press.

There are very few events similar to those of 1968 in the history of US warfare. Where operational successes were deemed massive failures by the media - a media that (since its empowerment in post WWII) has never understood combat, and doesn't care to. I might add they don't understand politics or economics and don't care to....but that's stating the obvious.