9/11: What I saw from Asheville

Yesterday I shared an excerpt from my memoir Keeping the Tryst, from the end of chapter 37.  That excerpt dealt with my life on September 10th, 2001.  And the last thing that I did before falling asleep late that night was to thank God for all of the good that He had brought into my life.  If the previous several months could have been that good, I had no doubt that the rest of my life could be just as amazing.  I was 27 years old, with everything ahead of him.  I was in love, I had a good job, I was writing for publication on a daily basis.  And on the night of September 10th I had started writing the script for my very first movie.

My eyes closed, and I was looking forward to another day of being grateful.

Here is another excerpt.  The final part of chapter 37 and all of chapter 38.

---------------

The phone rang sometime later during the morning.

I picked it up, and it was Mom.

“Are you watching the TV?”

I told her I was just waking up.  I asked her what was going on.

“A plane hit the World Trade Center!”

The first thought that went through my bleary head was that a plane had once crashed into the Empire State Building.  Maybe this was pilot error, like that had been.

“Yeah and a few minutes later another plane hit the other tower!”

~

Within minutes of turning on the television to see the World Trade Center, I called Lisa and made sure she was okay.  Then I went online and went to the news forum I frequented.  There was the shock and terror, giving rise to rawest anger, now being immortalized in real time as an online monument to the evil that men do and their victims.

I cranked up AOL Instant Messenger and found Ed was on.  Everyone in his office was watching the live coverage.

I was in the middle of replying to his previous message when the first tower fell.

~

What was supposed to have been a wonderful day for TheForce.net turned into a real-time reflection of the horror.  Josh posted a prayer.  The site’s forums within hours became a clearinghouse of information for those in the New York and D.C. areas, as users reported that they were okay while others were looking for fellow fans who had been in the vicinity of the towers and Washington.

We couldn’t locate some members of our staff who had been in New York.  Lisa and I had dinner with one of them the first night of Dragon Con, a week and a half before.  When we finally located Alena she told us that she had been on the street in front of the north tower, directly below where the first plane hit.  Alena saw it all happen.  She had then run for cover into a subway entrance and heard the debris crashing onto the street above her.

~

Maggi and Helen were enraged.  Maggi said things that one dares not share in polite company.  In her words were well reflected the wrath inflaming all good people of conscience.

~

I watched the coverage all day, up to being time to go to work.  I arrived at 4.  Only five potential customers came into the Best Buy that evening.  They shuffled in, looked around, and walked out.  Each of them had that “thousand-yard stare” in his eyes.  They appeared dazed and confused.  Like they had only come in to keep their minds off the wretchedness of the outside world.

Not a single item was sold in our store all night.

~

I returned home a little after 9.  Lisa and I talked for a long time.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had been so thankful to hear the voice of a loved one.

~

Chad was at his desk in the CNN Building.  There was nothing to post to the Sports Illustrated site that night.  Up until almost 1 A.M., it was Chad and I over Instant Messenger talking about what had happened.  We shared a lot of images we had found.  Like the San Francisco Examiner special edition headline that screamed out “BASTARDS!"

"I love you, brother," Chad said as he signed out for the night.

"I love you too, man."

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My latest article at American Thinker: Kids, don't play with communism

This morning the website American Thinker has published my latest essay.  "Young People, Listen to Your Gen-X Elders: Communism Sucks!" is something that's been percolating for awhile and  I suppose recent events in the American political realm made it time to deploy.  This article is a few things: history lesson (has it really been thirty-five years since I was a high school senior watching the attempted coup against Gorbechev?), recap of the rise of extreme socialism in this country, and finishing off with a stark warning to the young people of this land.  Take it from someone who was there during the height of the Cold War: communism is NOT something we should want to entertain notions of accommodating, much less adopting (or having it forced upon us).

From the article...

The ad begins with a poor Russian peon, bundled up for the harsh winter, cautiously asking a stern sentry about what he is guarding.

“Is toilet paper.”

“Is good?”

“Is cheap,” replies the soldier.

The word spreads down the ranks of the people standing in line at the store. “Cheap toilet paper!” they say in astonished turn. One gets his hands on some: it bends and folds, as if it’s not toilet “paper” at all but lengths of semi-raw wood pulp.

For some reason that television commercial from the mid-’80s has come to mind quite a lot lately. It was played for laughs. But it was based in a very tragic reality, one that most people in the free world readily grasped. The Soviet citizenry, for all of the power that their government boasted of having, were utterly miserable. Toilet paper and nearly every comfort enjoyed by their Western counterparts were in dire shortage. Including food in its usually sumptuous variety.

How we laughed at the sight of all those people, in lines stretching out the building and down the block, waiting to get inside GUM—Moscow’s biggest department store—because rumor had hit the street that a shipment of canned potatoes or new stockings had come in. 

For all of the fear of World War III that many of us in America harbored, we also understood fully well that “they” were in fact quite a pathetic lot. The Soviet people wanted for canned goods and toilet paper, but it was an open secret that their leadership abounded in such luxuries and more. They were a people who nobody in their right mind would ever dare dream of emulating. How did the Russians get into such dire straits to begin with, anyway?

Mash down here for the rest of the essay.  And welcome to everyone who's visiting this blog from the link on the essay's page!

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Ten years ago today in Dallas, Texas...

...Tammy and I found ourselves at Dealey Plaza.

The original plan was to blog all along the trek that the two of us had going across America, just as I've blogged about seemingly everything and anything since 2004.  But I discovered about this point of our odyssey that journeys of self-discovery lose something when you're also documenting it for public viewing as you venture forth.  It was in Dallas that I went on a respite for awhile, that lasted almost two years.  But in the end I came back, none the worse for wear, and filled with lots of stories to tell.

Such as August 1st, 2016.  Now, I had come to Dealey Plaza the day before, on Sunday morning.  There was very little traffic in the area.  And I had to drive through it twice before I realized where we were.  Dealey Plaza is much smaller than I had expected.  This is the most analyzed, scrutinized, discussed, debated, and bitterly argued about patch of land in modern history.  This is the focal point.  This is where all the theories of the past sixty years and more converge upon.  Dealey Plaza is where it all comes together at.

I thought it would be far bigger.

I really wanted to have a picture taken of us, but no one else was around. So we came back the next day about noon when there were more tourists about.  That's when the above picture was taken.  If you click and enlarge the photo and look at Elm Street  behind where we're standing, you can see a small white X on the road, noting the position of the car when President John F. Kennedy received the fatal blow.

There's a parking lot near the old Texas School Book Depository building (now a museum).  And it just so happened that there was an empty spot precisely at the picket fence atop the grassy knoll, where depending on what you choose to believe is where the second (or is that only?) gunman was who fired from in front of and toward the right of the Lincoln Continental carrying President Kennedy, Texas governor John Connally, and their wives.

So here's me and Tammy atop the grassy knoll:

Dealey Plaza is well worth a visit if you're ever in Dallas.  The city has done a terrific job making it easy for people who find all the notable spots of that day, such as where Abraham Zapruder was standing when he shot the footage - the most studied length of film in history - with his camera.

This was a place I had long wanted to see with my own eyes.  The assassination of John F. Kennedy is something that I still haven't come to any resolute conclusion in my own mind about.  As I've gotten older I find myself increasingly believing that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, but I've also come to maintain an open mind about what happened on November 22nd, 1963.  This is the grandest mystery in American history, and we are not likely to ever have any solid finality about it.

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Happy 250th Birthday America! And a recommitment...

---

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

---

From the excellent HBO miniseries John Adams...

And with that, a new nation - one unlike any other in the history of the world - was born.

To the Founders: It hasn't been easy.  We've made mistakes in the past two and a half centuries.  But a lot of us still regard with precious sentiment that you pledged your lives, your fortunes, and your sacred honor.

I have tried to uphold the duties imparted unto me as a citizen of this land.  In reflecting upon the occasion, I am impressed with the conviction that my efforts have been found lacking.  Few of us, it must be said, have so thoroughly dedicated ourselves to uphold the responsibilities that come with the qualities that you announced for all time were of full rights to be bestowed upon every man and woman.

So it is that on this occasion, the two hundredth and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of our nation, that I resolve to devote however many years are within my lifetime to serving my native land with all the strength, and wisdom, and temerity that are mine to command.

I challenge every citizen of these United States to do likewise.

We are not yet the perfect Union.  But we have come to be a more perfect Union.  This is a process, lumps and all.  And for all of the sins of the Founders that have become fashionable to condemn, it must be stated with all due confidence that those men, the greatest of their generation, gave us the means to draw closer to the ideals of freedom.  America is and always has been a work in progress.  We lift up what works and we take down what doesn't.  It's gotten us this far, despite our faults and foibles.  Maybe it can get us a little further.

I think a lot of harm has been done to our republic over the years.  Especially in the past century.  Too many of us have come to see this country as something to exploit and take from without having to contribute to it.  Many people have done things that in a sane world would be deemed outright treasonous.  Those will be dealt with in due time.  Nobody ever got away with it forever, and so it will be with our republic.

But for all of that, America is still that shining city upon the hill.  It is a sacred trust for her citizens, and an inspiration for those in distant lands who may not yet fully know freedom.  It is still something that we can be thankful that we are a part of.

So I'm committing to be a better citizen of this great land.  It's what an Eagle Scout, no matter his age, should do.  And I call upon ever other American who is reading these words to do that also.

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Popcorn Sutton: The last one

Earlier today Pam Sutton, the widow of legendary moonshiner and American icon Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton, shared the following photograph on the official Facebook page for the annual Popcorn Sutton Jam.

This is the very last photograph that was taken of Popcorn.  It was made the morning before his passing...

 

Pam Sutton elaborates: "This is one of the pictures that I don't like to share very much. You see, this was taken the day he left this world. This was my last image of him. I loved him so. If you look at his feet, you will see the jars that would become his first legal run. He was the first moonshiner to go legal in East Tennessee."

I will forever be lamenting that I never got to meet Popcorn Sutton in person.  Having come to meet and know several people who were in his life, I can't help but feel that it would have been a true honor to have gotten to know him also.

But his legend endures.  Every time I see his face show up in a meme on social media, or occasionally spot someone wearing a Popcorn Sutton t-shirt, I have to smile.  He was larger than life when he was with us and he casts a seemingly bigger penumbra since his departure.

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Artemis II has launched and is on its way to the Moon!

 

Godspeed Artemis II.

Or as Walter Cronkite would have said:

"Go Baby, GO!!!"

Watching Artemis II launch, I felt like a seven-year-old kid all over again.  It was 45 years ago this month that the Columbia launched on the very first mission for the space shuttle system.  I had wanted to finally watch real astronauts go up into space.  The mission had been delayed a few times already and I didn't want to miss it.  Finally, about ten minutes before time to head out to school at 8:30 in the morning, Columbia ignited and began its ascent.  I couldn't tear my eyes off the screen but Dad said "Okay, it's up.  NOW can we go?!"

I truly hope this will be a successful mission.  I've harbored a lot of concerns about Artemis II.  It would be such a shot in the arm for national morale... and the feelings of the world in general... if those four astronauts return safely.

History happened tonight.  May this be only the beginning of the next adventure of man's journey into the cosmos.

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Fifty years ago today, Star Wars began filming

It was about 6:30 a.m. local time in the desert of Tunisia, on March 22, 1976, that the first scenes for George Lucas's film Star Wars were filmed.  Shot that day: the Jawas "droid auction" and the scene between Luke and Threepio as they are standing outside the homestead looking for Artoo.

Here is Mark Hamill in costume, in the first behind-the-scenes pic from the production of a Star Wars movie:

One has to wonder, what were the cast and crew thinking as that first torturous day unfolded (the Artoo-Detoo's front leg refused to deploy, and Anthony Daniels's Threepio costume didn't fit).  Did they have any notion at all just how special their project would become to not only millions but arguably billions of people over the course of the next half-century?  How it would be endlessly discussed and debated, and so beloved even five full decades later?

It all started that spring morning in Tunisia: nine movies, numerous television series (not including the holiday special), dozens of books, countless toys and games, music that has become a cornerstone of modern pop culture...

It all began fifty years ago today.

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Happy 50th Showbiz Anniversary to "Weird Al" Yankovic!

It was fifty years ago tonight, on March 14th, 1976, that radio personality Doctor Demento played a song that had been submitted by one of his listeners.  "Belvedere Cruisin'" was composed and performed by a sixteen-year-old young man with an accordion from Lynwood, California.  His name was Alfred Yankovic.

Doctor Demento could not have known it then, but he was premiering the music of one of the greatest artists that has ever come in the history of pop culture.

Happy fiftieth anniversary to "Weird Al" Yankovic!

Here is the recording of that fateful evening:

There is another Weird Al anniversary this week.  March 12th marked the thirtieth anniversary of the release of the album Bad Hair Day.  For a number of reasons that is one of my favorite albums by Yankovic.

Here's looking forward to many more years of Weird Al music!

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Weird items in the news: honey additive, expanding bread, and a World War I shell lodged in a man's buttocks

Lots of crazy stuff in the news this past week.  I've been sharing them with friends on Facebook, where they have engendered no small amount of mirth and merriment.  So I thought I'd post about them here too!

First up is this recall notice about a brand of honey that is being pulled off the shelves because somehow, somewhere along the manufacturing process, an active ingredient in erectile dysfunction medication made it into the finished product.

Next up is a story from Colorado about a man who is suing Walmart after claiming to be severely injured.  The man apparently bought raw bake-to-eat sourdough bread without first warming it up in an oven.  The bread expanded inside his stomach and allegedly brought on immense pain and suffering.

I saw that in an old episode of Emergency! awhile back.  Johnny and Roy got called to help a guy who ate unbaked bread dough and he had to get taken to Rampart.  So stupidity about this kind of thing goes back a fair bit. It seems.

And finally there comes this item from France, where a man was taken to the hospital, no doubt in severe pain.  That's where doctors found an eight-inch long unexploded artillery shell from World War I lodged in his rectum.

(Brings entirely new meaning to "fire in the hole!" does it not?)

I shared that last story with a friend who is a physician in Belgium.  She said that's it's hard to believe: the kinds of objects that people come in that are shoved up their, errr... rear.  Some people have even died from it.

What fascinated me most about that story though is that it was a live round from World War I.  That was over a hundred years ago.  Over the years there have been quite a few stories about still-live shells from that conflict being found.  So much of France and Belgium came under artillery fire during the Great War that it's possible there will still be undetonated shells found for the next one hundred years.

Maybe I should make "news of the weird" a regular feature on this blog.  What do y'all think?

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Remembering STS-51-L: The final flight of the Challenger

Forty years ago today came the end of the childhood of my generation.

The space shuttle Challenger was blown to bits shortly after liftoff, taking with it the lives of seven of the best crew members that NASA has ever filled a mission with.

A few months earlier, I had read something fascinating: that those people who were old enough could remember where exactly they were when they heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor, and then when they heard about John F. Kennedy being assassinated.  And I wondered if there would ever be an event like that in my own life.

Challenger was such an event.  The first of too many.

Yes, I indeed remember that day forty years ago as clearly as if it were transpiring today.  I was eleven years old, going on twelve, in sixth grade at Community Baptist School in Reidsville, North Carolina.  I had just sat down at the table with my lunch when two classmates told me that the space shuttle had blown up.  I didn't believe them.  It was a cruel joke, I thought.  But they insisted that it happened.  And then I looked around at the other tables and overheard a lot of the other students saying "exploded" and "shuttle".

I looked down the length of our table, at our teacher.  I mouthed to her "Is it true?"  She quietly replied yes.

Every school then, it seemed, had its resident science geek.  At Community Baptist, that was me.  Everyone knew that I was a nut for science.  That I had a great interest in this space shuttle mission.  STS-51-L was the flight that was carrying Christa McAuliffe, the New Hampshire school teacher, into space.  There had been a lot of interested across the country and around the world in this mission.  January of 1986 was peak time for those of us with an astronomy/space exploration bent.  There was Halley's Comet come around on its every-76-years visit to the inner solar system.  And a few days before the launch of Challenger there was the Voyager 2 flyby of the planet Uranus.  Many students and teachers had been asking me what I thought about all of these events taking place.  The Challenger mission was going to be the finest of all.

When we got back to class after lunch, Miss Martin confirmed with us what most had already heard.  Our school had no television sets in the classrooms so I could only imagine what it looked like.  A few hours later Mom picked my sister and I up from school.  She had one stop to make before we got home and I was eager to see for myself.  When we did get back, the very first thing I saw on the television, turned to the CBS affiliate in Greensboro, was an image of McAuliffe.  That was followed by pictures of the other crew members.

And then Dan Rather played the footage.  And I finally got to see the fiery fate of Challenger with my own eyes.

A short while later, President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech live from the Oval Office.  His remarks to the people of America, and especially the school children, is easily the greatest address by a president that I have ever heard...

I watched the speech.  Dad asked if I'd like to help bring some firewood down into the basement.  I told him yes, I would like to do that.  Anything to get my mind off of the real world.

Tuesday, January 28th, 1986.  The day that the youth of Generation X came to an end in the skies over the Atlantic off the coast of Florida.

And that is my account of the day.

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Why churches using the Nativity to protest immigration enforcement are wrong.

I'm reading a number of stories regarding churches turning their nativity scenes into political statements about immigration agents enforcing the laws.  Namely, these churches are replacing Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus with signs saying "ICE was here".  At least one church went all the way and has ICE agents surrounding the crèche with zip ties and weapons drawn.

Photo credit: Matthew McDonald

I would not want to visit these churches, because they are demonstrating that they have no grasp of scripture at all.

Here's the truth of the matter: Jesus and his parents were never refugees or immigrants.  Joseph took his wife to Bethlehem because that was their hometown, and they had to take part in a census that had been ordered by Caesar.  They may not have been fully citizens of Rome (few in Roman territory were) but they were certainly 100% legal residents of the empire.  There was nothing wrong about that at all.

So already, to depict Mary, Joseph and Jesus hauled off by immigration enforcement is ridiculous.  More  than that, it's blasphemous.

And so far as the holy family being in Egypt to escape from Herod goes, Egypt had fully been a part of the Roman Empire since the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty a few decades earlier.  Joseph brought his family there to escape from Herod, a puppet king ruling Judea on behalf of Rome.  The family of Joseph were escaping a wicked provincial ruler who Rome pretty much let do whatever he wanted so long as he kept the local Jews in line.  But Herod's jurisdiction went no further than that.  People were still free to travel within the empire, across provincial boundaries.  So it is that to go from Judea to Egypt was no more big a deal than if I were to drive a car from the upstate of South Carolina across the border and into Georgia.  To claim that Joseph and his family were going to a foreign land and that made them refugees is... well... dumb.

This hatred of all things Donald Trump is begetting some truly mad behavior.  It says more about the people hating, than it does about the man they are targeting with their spite and bitterness.  For a church to ignore basic scripture, as these places of worship are doing, absolutely reeks of ignorance.  And they need to be called out about it.

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Fifty years ago tonight: "We are holding our own."

Those were the last words radioed out by the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald.

It was fifty years ago tonight, November 10th, 1975, that the Edmund Fitzgerald  - at one time the largest vessel plying the Great Lakes - vanished off of the radar of the other ships in the area.  She went down in the storm, taking twenty-nine men with her to the bottom of Lake Superior.

I've written about "The Fitz" on a few other occasions, like for the thirtieth anniversary (has it really been twenty years ago tonight that I posted that?).  There's really not much more that I could write this afternoon that hasn't been said already.

I can share this though, as I have a few other times before.  The year after the tragedy, Canadian musician Gordon Lightfoot recorded and released his moving and haunting ballad about the ship and her crew.  "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" has the distinction of being the very first song that I can clearly remember listening to.  Dad bought Lightfoot's album on 8-track and he must have played that a hundred times, it got ingrained into me so much.  And November has become a rather melancholy month of the calendar for me.  It wasn't until I was reviewing over the manuscript of my book that I realized so much bad has happened to me during November of various years.  This song dovetails with that sense of loss and mortality.  And maybe now that I'm writing that, have gotten it out in the open, maybe it won't haunt me as much as it has before.

There are a few videos on YouTube featuring this song, but this is my favorite.  Here is "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald".

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What President Trumps REALLY needs to add to the White House

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth this past week about the latest antics of President Donald Trump.  The East Wing of the White House has been effectively destroyed, to make way for a new ball room.

Here's the way the White House complex looked prior to the demolition of the East Wing:

The East Wing only dates back to the 1940s.  It really hasn't done too terribly much, to be honest.  It's become more or less the province of the first lady, though that's never been a designated official capacity.  The East Wing can't honestly be said to be part of the truly historic and traditional White House grounds.  And the White House has never been a static location anyway.  It's been added to, remodeled and renovated almost since its beginnings more than two centuries ago.  America has grown and evolved (ideally for the better) and the White House has evolved with it.  And it probably always will be, for as long as America is a republic (if we can keep that).

The East Room of the White House has always been a relatively small setting for formal and especially diplomatic functions.  A spacious environment for such affairs is something that pretty much every other modern state has.  The United States does not.  We've had to do with the tiny East Room.  And I'm wondering what Ronald Reagan would have done about adding a ball room.  He would have probably been all for it, though I think that at that moment in American history he would have been more fixated on ending the Cold War.  Still, a ball room for state occasions would have been right up his alley.  It would have been quite an elegant and versatile addition to the White House.  One that would doubtless bear witness to much history for generations to come.

So count me as someone who believes there's nothing inordinately inappropriate about what Trump is doing with the East Wing.  The plans were already announced months ago that this would be happening.  It's not like this is suddenly out of nowhere.

But personally, I think that President Trump isn't going far enough in his design for the presidential residence...

One of the things that was demolished this past week, along with the rest of the East Wing, was the White House movie theater.  Originally a cloak room that was converted on Franklin Roosevelt's orders in 1942, the movie theater has since been enjoyed by every president and his family .  Reagan was particularly fond of it.  I've heard from a few sources that the White House will sooner than later have a new movie theater, one that's much more modern and high-tech.

Well, here's my idea: if Trump wants to go all out for the White House, it can't get much bigger than installing its own IMAX screen:

For less than a million dollars IMAX will install your own private movie screen.  That's less than peanuts to a man like Donald Trump.  Or he can really make his mark on the Washington D.C. landscape by constructing an adjoining IMAX building like the one in Branson, Missouri.  Heh-heh... can you imagine the sight of something like THAT next to the core White House mansion?  It could have the big IMAX logo and everything.

I'm only trying to think a little forward, is all!

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Eighty years ago today: A false sun over Trinity

Eighty years ago today, in the early morning at a place called Trinity in the desert outside Alamagordo in the New Mexico desert, a new star arose from the landscape.

It was not a natural phenomenon.  This unprecedented display of light and heat, brighter than two suns as one observer said, was a thing engineered by the minds of men.   It was seen for hundreds of miles in every direction.

"I am become death, destroyer of worlds," project lead Robert Oppenheimer uttered when he beheld the culmination of years of research.  Physicist Kenneth Bainbridge perhaps summed it up better: "Now we are all sons of bitches."

Man had at last seized the power of God in the palm of his hand.  The atomic age was upon us.  And nothing would ever be the same again...

Remembering the first nuclear explosion, July 16th 1945.

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Forty years ago this week: New Coke officially bombed

Depending on who you listen to this was either legitimate corporate bungling on an unprecedented scale, or it was the greatest ever conspiracy by an American company against its customers.  There is no denying though: whatever it was, it worked.

It began in April of 1985.  Soft drink mega company Coca-Cola ehhh... "changed" the formula of its flagship product. "New Coke" was claimed to be much better than the original product  That is what all the advertising told us anyway.  I mean, even Bill Cosby swore and declared to us that Coke had been improved upon.  "The impossible has become a reality," he assured us.

Bill Cosby wouldn't lie to us, right?  Right?!?!?

People tried New Coke.  And the vast majority of them said that it tasted nowhere as good as the original product.  I remember it also.  It tasted more like Pepsi Cola.  In fact, if I had done a blind taste test with New Coke and Pepsi I probably wouldn't have been able to tell a difference between the two.

There is no telling how many letters and phone calls the Coca-Cola Company.  But it was a lot of them.  And the company wisely took notice of the outrage.  Less than three months later Coca-Cola CEO Roberto Goizueta went before a nationwide audience and admitted that the reaction to New Coke had, ehhhh... not been what the company calculated it would be.  So the original drink was going to be coming back, as Coca-Cola Classic.  This was a MASSIVELY big deal.  I think all the network news broadcasts that night opened with the Coke story.

So within a week or so we got Coca-Cola Classic on our shelves and vending machines, and they sold so fast that distributors could barely keep up.  Sales of the original Coke in the early weeks and months of its return eclipsed those of its competitors.  Which makes some wonder... and I am one of them... if the whole thing was an orchestrated stunt from the very beginning.  It was brilliant psychology at work, if truly it was.

Ultimate Classic Rock remembers the fortieth anniversary of the return of the original Coca-Cola formula.  Something that one had to have been there to really appreciate the enormity of.

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Donald Trump, the Confederacy, and Honor

Over the weekend I watched Gettysburg, the 1993 Civil War epic film about the Battle of Gettysburg.  It's one of my most favorite historical films, although at more than four hours long it's really not one I can afford enough time to watch often.  But for some reason or another I felt led to see it again.

Maybe I sensed that I was needing to watch it anew.  That the time was coming soon to bring it up in conversation.  That opportunity comes tonight, after reading how President Donald Trump is restoring the name of seven military bases back to their original names that honored Confederate officers from the Civil War.  The bases had been re-named by the Biden administration to be more "neutral" or "politically correct".  The venerated Fort Bragg became the vacuous-sounding "Fort Liberty", f'rinstance.

Now, to be accurate about it, the Trump Administration is not directly restoring the original Confederate namesakes.  Fort Bragg was originally named after General Braxton Bragg.  Fort Bragg 2.0 gets its monicker from Army Pfc. Ronald Bragg, who earned a Silver Star for his actions during the Battle of the Bulge.  It's a clever way to re-brand the forts to their first identities.  And I think it's a magnificent end-run around an ideology that cares not for the things that matter, like history and heritage.

And honor.

Something that has struck me every time I've watched Gettysburg, which was based on Michael Shaara's richly-researched 1974 novel The Killer Angels.  It's how the men of the Union and the Confederacy respected each other.  That, despite how they were on opposing sides of a bitter conflict.  The Civil War was ultimately founded in the few errors made by the Constitutional Convention: namely the issue of slavery.  That manifested itself in time into the issue of states versus federal government, but I greatly digress...

The Civil War was going to happen.  It's a wonder it didn't break out thirty years earlier during the Nullification Crisis.  But there is not a doubt in my mind that conflict would break out eventually.

But that isn't what the men, and women, on either sides of the fighting wanted.  They each wanted the right thing to be done.  Unfortunately it took a violent thrashing-out to decide who would determine that.  It was an unenviable situation that truly pitted brother against brother, literally and figuratively.

Back to Gettysburg, the film and what it depicts.  The officers of each side, and on down to the basic soldiers, don't necessarily hate each other.  They didn't in real life either.  As I said, they respected each other.  How could they not? They had too much nobility.  They had too much honor.

If those men could honor each other, I don't see how I can't honor them all, either.

I've heard the screeds: "they were a foreign country fighting America!"  "They were traitors!"  "They were the losers and we don't pay tribute to losers!"  Ad nauseam.

Those things are said by people who have no concept whatsoever of honor.  They couldn't care less what honor means.  They barely ever use the word at all.  "Honor" is a thing almost dying.  It seems more fitted for an earlier time, somewhen that doesn't factor in to a world of thoughtless replies and cruel memes.

The men and women of the Confederacy and Union alike, they didn't ask to be drawn into war against one another.  They were doing the best that they could with the hand that was dealt them.  It was their lot to participate in the very worst of family disagreements.  And the men of the Confederacy loved their countrymen no less than the Union loved theirs.

They were admirable, every one of them (okay, except for those like the ones in charge of the prison at Andersonville).  They played the parts given them.  And after the war, they reconciled.  They embraced again.  Decades later at the reunion at Gettysburg battlefield, the survivors of Pickett's charge went up the ridge to meet the Union defenders, only this time they met and shook hands and hugged one another.

I really can't see that kind of thing possible among people today.  The people of today like bitterness.  They thrive on hate.  They despise all vestige of honor.

The people who tore down the Confederate monuments in recent years have acted like animals of base instinct.  They have no notion of respect for those who came before us in generations past.   How could they?  Honor is an alien notion to them.

I have no problem whatsoever with a fort being named for a Confederate officer.  Or having a Confederate statue erected.  Or something like a school named after Robert E. Lee, arguably the most beloved general in America's long and illustrious history.  There can be monuments for North and South alike.  If the United States federal government came to reward pensions to veterans of both sides, we can still abide by that.

Union and Confederate.  Billy Yank and Johnny Reb.  The blue and the gray.  They both fought with honor.  And we can honor them both.

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The John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection has been released

President Donald Trump is making good on his promise to release all the documents pertaining to the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963.  This has been a LONG time coming for many, many people.  It bothered me in high school when I realized how much my government was holding back and it made a lot of my classmates mad too (this was right at the time the movie JFK was out).

But after sixty-two years since this collection began to coalesce, we're finally getting a look at it all.

Here's the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection's main page at the National Archives.  A lot of stuff had been made public already.  But what you're probably most interested in is what has been released because of Trump's executive order.  That stuff started getting dumped a few days ago: more than thirty-three thousand pages across nearly twelve hundred PDF documents.  Here's the link to that newly-released material, and word on the street is that there's more still to come.

What do I think so far?  I've only had time to peruse a little bit of it but there is some interesting stuff in there, a lot of it having to do with anti-communist activities on the part of the American government in the early Sixties, especially in regard to Cuba.  I found one document describing how a ballerina dancer was actually a communist agent.

But most people are going to want to home in on the meaty stuff pertaining to the assassination.  And they are finding some interesting things.  Among the more fascinating come upon so far: Gary Underhill, a CIA agent who stated the day after the killing that there was a clique within the agency that was responsible for carrying it out.  A few months later Underhill was found dead, it was ruled a suicide.  Just one more mystery among the pile of the biggest enigma in American history.

Back in 2016 when I was traveling across America with my dog Tammy, we spent a few weeks in Texas and during that time I got to visit Dealey Plaza in Dallas.  This was it: the most analyzed patch of land in the annals of man.  This is where all the theories span out from and where many more converge again.  And after a lifetime of wanting to see it for myself I was finally there.

Here are some of the pictures that were taken...

Behind the picket fence atop the grassy knoll.  This is the spot that several witnesses said they heard the sound of gunshots coming from.

Tammy and me atop the grassy knoll.

The spot where Kennedy was when the fatal shot hit is marked by a small white X on the road (click to enlarge)

The former Texas School Book Depository, from a window on the sixth floor of which is where Lee Harvey Oswald presumably fired the shots as the presidential motorcade passed by on the street below.

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Joe Biden is gone today (thank the Lord!)

The infamous "red speech" in Philadelphia, September 2022

Before I render a final grade for Joseph Robinette Biden's term as president, let's wind the clock back four years ago on this blog.  I predicted then that come January 2025 the United States of America would be in the worst condition it had been in, in half a century.

A bold forecast.  I swore then that if I was wrong, I would eat my fedora.  And I would have.  With A1 steak sauce.

I knew there was no chance of me getting it wrong.  Biden has certainly not let me down in that regard.

To everyone who voted for this fool: please don't do that again.  Because of Biden and his disastrous policies I had to leave a job that I loved.  That's my own particular tale of woe that came about.

And a few hours ago Biden "pre-emptively pardoned" Anthony Fauci, Mark Miley, and the members of the "January 6 committee".  Stevie Wonder could have seen that coming.

Joe Biden is leaving politics as he has always lived it for more than fifty years: corrupt, craven, and criminal-minded.

So how does Biden rate with his peers, in the estimation of this trained historian?

In keeping with my history education, I am thus grading most of the Presidents of my lifetime...

Reagan: A

GHW Bush: C

Clinton: D

GW Bush: D-

Obama: F

Trump: B+

Biden: F

Indeed, Joe Biden is the F-iest president I've ever studied.  Not even James Buchanan caused as much destruction to America as Biden and Harris did.

Reagan is the gold standard by which I measure the presidents of my lifetime, but he wasn't perfect.  The first Bush never really wanted to be president but even if he did, reneging on his "no new taxes" promise consigned him to being just average.  Clinton damaged the rule of law in this country, immeasurably.  The second Bush was a terrible little man who made the rest of us suffer for his personal frailties (while also exploding the size and power of government).  Obama was truly "One Big A-- Mistake America", he vowed to change the country and that's what he did in all the wrong ways.  Trump's first term was the most proactive and positive since Reagan, but it suffered from a poor choice of staff and also the incessant chicanery and "lawfare" by Trump's opponents.  Perhaps he will have learned from this and his second administration will be far better.

As for Biden, there is no redeeming the past four years.  This very incompetent and corrupt man, who has done absolutely nothing virtuous in his half a century of political life, is leaving America in a MUCH worse place than when he became president.  I don't even know if it can honestly be said that we've had a president these last four years at all.

Biden and Harris and everyone associated with them will be remembered only for being the worst gang of freaks and thugs and criminals in the history of American politics.  May we NEVER tolerate such immaturity and fraud and corruption again!

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