Good morning,
Quote of the day:
"We must be willing to let go the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us."
Joseph Campbell
A few days ago a 25 year old man and his girlfriend were searching for their car on the third floor of a parking garage here in downtown Greenville. Evidently they could not find it and decided they needed to go down to the second floor. For reasons known only to the man, he chose to try and slide down the handrail. His girlfriend tried to get him to stop but the man continued saying the she was not his mother. He no more than got the words out of his mouth when he tipped over backward and fell through the stairwell to the bottom floor head first. His girl friend called 911 immediately and the paramedics were on the scene in very short order and found the man bleeding from the mouth and ears. He lived about 24 hours and then died of his injuries. What can we learn from this other than try not to do something stupid? It is a life wasted for the sake of bravado.
It has been confirmed by fishermen off the coast of Alabama near Bayou Le Batre that some of the residue from the oil spill is covering the seabed. They have been pulling their shrimp trawls on the bottom and getting oil residue covered shrimp. Shrimp are totally bottom feeders. What a freaking nightmare.
A group of teenagers near Charleston, SC have offered to donate their time this summer in the protection of Loggerhead turtle nesting sites. The program is known as “Learning through Loggerheads.” Just days before the program was to get underway the proposed donor of an ATV backed out and said he did not have the money. The kids got on the internet looking for donations to buy their own. Word of this got back to former James Island, South Carolina native and now comedian, Stephen Colbert, and he donated an ATV. I watch his show on occasion. He does not have an iota of a southern accent but his charitable attitude is intact.
A Korean firm has chosen a site near Greenville to build totally electric cars. They claim that their car will travel for 70 minutes at 35 miles per hour on a 10 minute charge. They acknowledge that the car cannot compete with the high speed traffic on our major thoroughfares but it would be perfect for intercity commuting. They will employ about 370 personnel initially plus all the peripheral business they will generate. The site they chose is almost rock throwing distance from the massive BMW assembly complex across the street. By the way, BMW has announced an expansion in that plant that will require an additional 500 workers. Maybe the economy is loosening up somewhat. But on second thought………
Thursday morning a 52 year old fisherman departed Shallotte, NC inlet into the Atlantic to do a little fishing. Several hours later his boat washed ashore 30 miles away on Myrtle Beach, SC with the engines running and no one aboard. It was reported that it was common for him to go out alone. There is no telling what happened to him. At one point in my life I went fishing in the Gulf of Mexico alone and I did not even have a life jacket on. There was life jackets aboard but I just did not wear one as stupid as that sounds. I will wear one from now on.
I have been reading about the history of the Comanches. For some reason before the beginning of the 17 century they were considered the “trailer trash” of the plains Indians. Then all of sudden they were a power to be dealt with. What happened was the discovery of Spanish mustang ponies that they found running loose and were able to capture and break them. After this they quickly developed into the most formidiable cavalry in North America. They took out their wrath on the other plains Indians for centuries of abuse, especially the Apaches, and systematically removed them from the southern plains where there were millions of bison. The Comanche had no permanent settlements and just followed the bison. The other tribes were partly an agrarian society and therefore had settlements and villages which the Comanches were able to find and destroy. The Comanche did not want any competition for the bison. The Apache became desperate and went to the mission in San Antonio and said that they wanted to become good little Catholics and contribute their efforts to the enhancement of the king of Spain. The priests about peed their pants and asked them what they wanted. The Apache said they wanted a mission (church) and presidio (fort) of their own on the San Sabo River near present day Menard, Texas. The priests gathered up some slave labor and set to building said church and fort at the designated location. What the Apache failed to tell the priests was that the specified location was in the very center of Comanche territory and they knew they would not stand for an encroachment. The Comanche did not disappoint and after the building was completed and the church and fort were fully staffed, the Comanche struck. The results were 40 Spaniards dead and they had been severely tortured and mutilated which was common practice for the Comanche. The Spanish were outraged and sent out a 600 man army looking to punish the Comanche. This is what the Apache had in mind from the first, someone else to kill the Comanche. They never attended one service before the San Sabo River Massacre, it was a scam.
This date in history July 6
1864 In his attempt to take some of the pressure off his troops around Petersburg, CSA General Robert E. Lee orders CSA General Jubal Early to threaten Washington so as to force US General U.S. Grant to send troops to counter the threat. Earlier, Lee had sent Early to cut off US General David Hunter in the Shenandoah Valley to keep him from joining with Grant. Early soundly defeated Hunter and on this date, Early crossed the Potomac River and occupied Hagerstown, Maryland. Early sent Major John McCausland to the Hagerstown leaders and told him to demand $200,000 from them in reparation for the damage US General David Hunter had done to the Shenandoah Valley. McCausland wrote a note to that effect and handed it to the city leaders. The only thing was that McCausland had placed a decimal point in the wrong place and the city leaders handed him a bag containing $20,000. Anyway, soon thereafter Early heads for Washington and sure enough Grant had to send troops to stop him. Early engaged in a short but sharp engagement and withdrew. He had succeeded in his mission. Jubal Early remained unreconstructed (loyal to the Confederacy) for the rest of his life.
1946 Charles “Bugs” Moran, along with his companions Virgil Summers and Albert Fouts, are arrested in Kentucky. Back in the 1920’s and 30’s Moran was in the hierarchy of organized crime in Chicago. His main problem was that his main competitor was Al “Scarface” Capone. These two had been sniping at each other for a long time with no serious problem; that is until Moran put out a contract on one of Capone’s henchmen named Dion “Deanie” O’Bannion. Soon after O’Bannion was killed, seven of Moran’s men were machine gunned in a warehouse in Chicago on Valentine’s Day. It was obvious that the massacre was ordered by Capone but Al was at his house in Palm Beach, Florida at the time. After this Moran’s stock went down and he resorted to knocking over a bank once in a while. After being arrested Moran died of lung cancer in Leavenworth 11 years later.
1944 Ringling Brothers& Barnum and Bailey open their circus in Hartford, Connecticut. In those days the circus was under the “big top” or a gigantic tent. About half way through the first performance a fire breaks out and very quickly the tent was totally involved and flaming pieces of flaming canvas fall into the crowd. Soon the support ropes burn in two and the center of the tent falls to the ground trapping many people. As you might expect, the crowd became panicky and chaos prevailed. Later an investigation revealed that the tent had been treated recently with flammable paraffin to make it waterproof. But the worst thing was that the fire was arson. Some jackass set that fire in which 167 people died and 682 were injured. 2/3rd of those that died were children. Ringling Brothers agreed to a settlement of $5,000,000 in a law suit. The arsonist was sentenced to two terms of 22 years, the maximum at the time.
1976 Elizabeth Ann Rowe is accepted and joins the Corp of Midshipmen at the US Naval Academy, she being the first female to do so and graduate. It was only four years after Elizabeth graduated that Kristine Holtereid graduated at the top of her class. I used to have misgivings about this, getting an academy education and not having to go into combat. But nowadays women fly combat fighters and helicopters, etc. But, to my knowledge, they have yet to have a woman as a member, much less a leader of a Marine Recon team, a Delta Team, a SEAL team, a Green Beret team, an Air Commando team or any other hunter/killer unit. If anyone knows of a woman that is, I am all ears, Demi Moore in “G.I. Jane” not withstanding.
1935 Tenzin Gyatso is born in Tibet to a poor working class family. Two years later he is proclaimed the reincarnation of Buddha making him the next Dalai Lama. I do not have a clue as to how this selection is made. He was given the finest education and sure enough, he turned out to be a giant among those spiritually inclined. Not only that, he wrote two best sellers in The Art of Happiness and Ethics for the New Millennium. He is revered and respected by the entire world.
1862 Mark Twain begins working for the newspaper Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada. Samuel Clemens took the name of Mark Twain while working for a San Francisco newspaper earlier. Twain wrote about the happening in the gold and silver mines in and around the territories but gained a great reputation when he wrote The Great Jumping Frog of Calevares County. After this he moved to Buffalo, New York and then to Hartford, Connecticut where he settled. He wrote Tom Sawyer and later Huckleberry Finn with great success. He became a globe traveler and wrote successful books about his adventures the best of which was Innocents Abroad. When asked as to why Ton Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn became so popular, he said that the books made fun of the pretentious easterners which pleases the average person. He was an immense talent but his writings, being still brilliant, became darker after the death of his wife. It is difficult for anyone to write and essay without his thoughts and writings coming to mind, mine at least.
Birth and deaths:
1747 US Naval hero John Paul Jones is born. When told that British Admiral Richard Pearson had been knighted even after getting an ass-whipping by Jones, Jones replied “If I have the good fortune of meeting him again, I will make him a Lord.” There is a Marine honor guard at his crypt when it is opened. It is at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland
1907 Mexican artist and mistress of muralist Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo is born. She said “I drink to drown my pain, but the damned pain learned to swim.” True words, ya’ll.
1886 French writer Aneurin Bevan is born. He said “Virtue is its own punishment.”
Quotable quotes:
“When I was a boy of 14 my father was so ignorant that I could hardly stand to be around him, but when I got to be 21 I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years”.
Mark Twain
Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow
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