Daily history

Good morning,


Quote of the day:

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools".

                       Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

There is a high cirrus, partly cloudy sky here in paradise. The wind has shifted more out of the north today and this mornings temperature is 52 degrees looking for a high of 75. All of this indicates a low pressure area and associated cold fronts are on the move north and/or west of us. I haven't looked at the forecast but I suspect rain in the next few days.

A public school chemistry teacher in the Mobile, Al. area has been indicted for misrepresenting her family income and using undeserved food stamps to the tune of about $12,000 worth. They showed a picture of this girl and I can assure you she has not missed many meals.

Warren Buffet and Hathaway-Berkshire investments has bought the Burlington Northern railroad for $34 billion. A while back ONE share of Hathaway-Berkshire was $78,000. Some of y'all might be able to buy a block or two of that stock but not this horse.

You guys at NS had better look out!

The California Church of Latter-Day Saints held a retreat in the San Bernadino mountains last weekend. Everything went well until a 60 year old counselor and a 30 year old woman had a disagreement in the convention center. The 30 year old pulled a pistol out of her purse and capped the counselor. No reason was given for this event in a very fastidious and tightly run religious organization.

John Allen Muhammad, the sniper that was the mastermind of 12 killings in the Washington, DC area, is scheduled for execution in Virginia next week. Muhammad has already said that he does not want the execution halted. But the damned vultures that call themselves lawyers for Muhammad have said that next week they will file a request for a stay of execution with the United States Supreme Court. They don't give a damn about Muhammad, they just want to stay billable a while longer. It is disgusting, y'all.

The New Orleans Saints are still undefeated in spite of a spirited attempt by the Atlanta Falcons. There is little argument that the Saints will be representing the NFC in the Super Bowl in Miami.

I was interviewed by a TV crew at lunch on Tuesday. They doing a special on a waitress named Fay who has worked at Jerry's Drive-in for FIFTY years, y'all, FIFTY years! Fay is 80 years old and just as agile as she ever was. The crew interviewed me also. I think they chose me because I was the oldest person in there and said that I had been knowing Fay since the mid 70's. When asked why she was still working Fay said that she needed the extra money to go to Biloxi and play blackjack. She has the right attitude, y'all.

Good news:

Four years ago a Harvard Kennedy School graduate named John Fetterman went to Braddock, Pa. on an AmeriCorps project. Braddock is a Pittsburgh suburb. This town was the location of the first steel mill established by Andrew Carnegie. As we all know the steel industry in America has all but disappeared and what is know as the "rust belt" emerged as more and more steel mills were abandoned. Braddock was one of these. Braddock had a population of 20,000 but now it is down to less than 3,000. After four years in Braddock with AmeriCorps, Fetterman decided to run for mayor. He won by a single vote. He is trying all he can to recover as much businesses that he can but it has been a slow and difficult process. In fact the only sizable business in the town, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, pulled up stakes and moved 6 miles up the road. Fetterman said that it was hard for him to not take that personally. He said that at one time there were 25 barbers and 52 restaurants and now they are none. But he is hopefull to the point that he had the towns zip code tattooed on his right forearm. He still brings in AmeriCorps teams to help clean up as repair the buildings that are left as much as possible. Fetterman said "There is no guarantee of success but I will not give up."

This date in history November 4

1801    US Patriot William Shippen dies in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was a member of the powerful Shippen family of Philadelphia that could trace their ancestry back to the earliest settlements in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. William went to medical school at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. William and his brother Edward were successful physicians in Philadelphia and were instrumental in the upbringing of their community. William was present at the founding of the Benjamin Franklin Public Academy that eventually became the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and served as a trustee for 24 years. He also was part and parcel of the founding of the College of New Jersey that became Princeton and served as a trustee there also. Now here is where the fun starts. Edward’s daughter Margaret (Peggy) Shippen flirted heavily with one John Andre and his close friend Benedict Arnold. But Peggy chose Benedict Arnold for a husband. Soon thereafter, Andre was captured at a road block and in his boot was a document detailing the surrender of West Point, New York to the British by US General Benedict Arnold for 20,000 pounds Sterling. When Arnold found out the Andre had been captured he and Peggy hightailed it to the British warship H.M.S Vulture for refuge. Arnold was made a commander of a British combat unit and fought against his countrymen for the remainder of the war. Andre was hanged as a spy, as well he should have. After the surrender of British General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, Arnold and Peggy fled to London where he died in 1801 in relative obscurity and poverty with Peggy at his side. There are those that believe that Arnold betrayed his country because he got his feeling hurt when a junior officer was promoted ahead of him, but in retrospect I think he needed the money to keep up the “high maintenance” Peggy in the lifestyle that she was accustomed. I have a niece that is “high maintenance” so I know what it means. I believe the small town in Pennsylvania named Shippensburg was named after William Shippen or another member of that family. I used to know a young lady that lived in Shippensburg but she has avoided contact for a long time now for reasons known only to her.

1928    The notorious gambler Arnold Rothstein is shot and killed at the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan. Arnold was found at a service entrance of the first floor bleeding heavily. He had been upstairs playing poker with his friends when the shooting occurred. One of the players was “Hump” McManus. A few weeks before, Arnold and Hump had been playing in a poker game and Arnold lost a cool $306,000 to Hump but refused to pay saying the game was rigged. It was Hump that invited Arnold to come and play in this game although the actual murderer was never determined. After Arnold was found bleeding, the police tracked the blood trail back upstairs to a room where four men were sitting around a table playing pinochle like nothing had happened. The cops went back down to Arnold and asked him who had done the shooting. Arnold just held a finger up to his lips and shook his head no and he was gone. Arnold was most famous for the “Black Sox Scandal” whereby Arnold financed the rigging of the 1919 World Series. There is no question that Arnold was involved, the actual players that took money and played badly will always be in question. One of those was a man from Greenville, SC named Joseph “Shoeless Joe” Jackson. He was banned from baseball for life by baseball commissioner Judge Kennesaw Landis. Joe played around in amateur leagues for a while but he eventually became too old and bought a liquor store. On one occasion Ty Cobb who was traveling from Detroit to his home near Royston, Georgia stopped by Joe’s liquor store to say hello. After Ty walked in Joe acted like he did not know him and Ty said “Joe, don’t you know who I am?” And Joe said “I know who you are Ty, but I didn’t think you would want to know me.” What a sad tale.

1995    Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated. Two years before Rabin and his lifelong foe, Yasser Arafat, had signed the so-called Camp David Accord under the tutelage of US President Jimmy Carter. The accord stipulated that both sides would seek peace and the PLO would recognize Israel’s right to exist. In 1994, Rabin, Arafat and Israeli Under Secretary Shimon Peres were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The murderer of Rabin was a 25 year old Jew that shot Rabin while he was walking to his car after a meeting discussing peace in the Middle East. He shot Rabin in the leg and then in the chest. He was arrested on the spot and said that he was glad he did it because Rabin was giving away Israel to the Arabs. Under Secretary Shimon Peres assumed the office of prime minister. I remember seeing Rabin speak several times and he seemed sincere in his search for peace and was a man of great dignity. His loss was hurtful to us all.

1948    T.S. Eliot was born to a privileged family in Saint Louis, Missouri on September 8, 1888. His family wanted him to become a lawyer or a doctor and sent him to the finest schools in the world including Harvard, Sorbonne and Oxford. He returned to Harvard to study the Indo-European language of Sanskrit. After all of this schooling he secured a job with Lloyds of London and moved there permanently. While there he met the American poet Ezra Pound. Eliot had begun writing essays and poetry and assembled them in treatise named “Criterion”. He and Ezra Pound fed off each other for ideas. He was soon recognized as the author of a new type of poetry that changed the way poetry was written thereafter and every renowned poet since then has been influenced by him. His first work was “The Love Story of J. Alfred Prufrock”. His masterpiece was “The Waste Land” published in 1922. He was recognized as the genius that he was when he received the Nobel Prize for literature on this date. Eliot died in 1965 but not before becoming one of the most influential poets in history.

Births and deaths:

1898    US writer Eugene Field dies. When critiquing a poem titled “Why do I live?” he wrote back to the author saying “Because you sent this poem by mail and are not here in person.”

1918    English soldier/writer Wilfred Owen dies. He said “No lips are so red…as those stones kissed by the English dead.” Owen was killed in combat during WWI just a few days before the Armistice.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow