Tuesday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“You know those shows where people call in and vote on different issues? Did you ever notice that there is about 18% that say, ‘I don’t know’? It costs $.90 to make the call and vote. They’re voting ‘I don’t know’. Imagine it: ‘Honey, I feel strongly about this. Give me the phone. Sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe you are not sure about.’ This guy probably calls the phone sex girls for $2.95 a minute and says ‘I am not in the mood.’”

Andy Rooney

I felt romantic yesterday and decided to watch romantic movies out of my library. I chose “The Outlaw Josie Wales”. What a great movie. It inspired me so that I watch “Silence of the Lambs”.

Some recent events have been a relief from the continuing bad news we all have experienced and here they are:

There is a young lady living near Canton, North Carolina that started singing on stage when she was about 11...her name is McKayla Reece. Keep her name in mind, she will be a country music superstar. McKayla traveled near and far performing wherever she could, polishing her skills all the while. She especially performed for our Veterans both disabled and otherwise and was named an Ambassador for the DAV. She was guided and mentored by one of my good friends. She is now about 16 years old and attended the CMA awards a short while ago. Apparently, she had been observed by the members of the recording industry and during the CMA awards was approached by a gigantic music management company for a contract which she apparently agreed to. On top of all of that she is a stunning beauty. Remember that friend I mentioned? She lives in the Asheville, NC area and has enormous musical talent as a songwriter/singer/poet/guitarist (her flattop licks are to be remembered) and I have several of her songs and poems. I have given her the nickname of “The Bard of the Blue Ridge”. She has two daughters that also are great singers...and they sing a lot of “what Mama wrote”. This woman has been through a hell of a lot of turmoil in the last few years. Both The Bard and I need a hug.

A good friend and fellow fan of the lineage of English royalty has decided to escape from Purgatory and return to The Big Apple to continue the sowing of even more wild oats. Before he left he gave me two books that could not have been more perfect . One of the books traces the lineage of English royalty in the minutest detail and the second book was even better as far as I am concerned. The book has a short bio on nearly every mover and shaker for the last 5,000 years. I begins with Gilgamesh. There is a legend about this person called “The Epic of Gilgamesh”. He was the king of city-state that existed in ancient Mesopotamia about 3,000 BC and the ends with Princess Diana...what a delightlfull smorgasbord awaits me.

Addio amico mio...rimani aggiornato...it is “Goodbye my friend, stay in touch” in Italian...I was thinking of Sophia Loren also.

Down in Mobile, Alabama an irate female parent walked into a classroom in Faith Academy High School and began a profanity laced tirade at the teacher with 26 students present. The teacher was able to herd this beast out into the hallway where the parent struck the teacher on the left cheek. That act in a school is an automatic felony and a charge of 2^nd degree assault and battery and disturbing the peace. She is out on bail but I can assure you she will rue the day that she made that indiscretion. Being a convicted felon brings with it a lot of benefits, both Federal and State, being denied.

Over in Greer, S.C. there is a small outreach church that caters to those people that feel disenfranchised by other churches. The pastor of this small church has three jobs. He is in the real estate business, a pastor and owns a tattoo parlor. The local bible-thumpers are raising hell calling him representative of the devil because of the tattoos. I do not get it. What has a mark on your skin have to do with what is in your heart and mind? The ones that I think are advocates of the devil are those televangelists and their wives that put on obvious bleeding-heart drama. What really turns me off is those evangelists that have hairstyles that are reminiscent of The Monkees, a really bad comb-over, hair made by DuPont or a wife that has cotton candy hair and a weeks worth of Maybelline on her eyes. I know, what does a hair style have to do with what’s in your heart and mind? Nothing. But I think they would be better accepted if they had a tattoo of an iguana on their neck. I would like to see those “people's” houses and cars as compared to the rest of us. I can't help it, y'all...I think it is scam...and that includes that woman that we all are familiar with...Joyce Meyer. This person does not offer guidance, she stands up there and pontificates about herself. When she delivers what she thinks is an original thought of her own, she wants reassurance by saying “Amen?” and when the gigantic audience responds with an “Amen” it inflates her ego that is already the size of New Zealand. Perhaps I am being too pragmatic, but I just cannot justify it any differently. “The ministry” provides Joyce and her husband a 4,700 square foot house worth about $1 million not to mention FOUR OTHER HOUSES FOR HER MARRIED KIDS worth about $550,000 each. The ministry also pays the expenses of all involved including the taxes. I invite y'all to read about John the Baptist. This man was the true evangelist. He went throughout the countryside delivering a message of salvation. He wore animal skins for clothing and lived in caves. He sacrificed everything for what he believed...including his head. Do we see that kind of dedication today including the rejection of worldly goods? I think not...except for Billy Graham.

This Date in History November 18

1978 In the 1950’s a man named Jim Jones organized a church in Indianapolis and named it The People’s Temple. It was a Christian church and Jones preached heavily about racial equality and therefore the greatest majority of the church members were black even though Jones was Caucasian. In 1965 Jones moved the church to Ukiah, California. In 1971 he again moved the church to San Francisco, California. The local newspaper in San Francisco began researching Jones and the church and accused him of financial fraud, physical abuse and mistreatment of children. The resulting turmoil attracted the attention of the Justice department and the IRS and in 1977 Jones moved the church to a remote part of Guyana, South America. A year later former members of the church implored US Representative Leo Ryan to look into the mistreatment of children in Jones’ church and Ryan flew into an airport close to church compound and paid Jones a visit. Things went pretty well until some of the members present grabbed Ryan’s arm and begged him to get them out of there. It seemed that Jones saw fit to have rifle toting guards around the perimeter of the compound to keep everybody inside. At this point one of Jones’ guards attacked Ryan with a knife but was unsuccessful in getting to him. Ryan and the four others that had accompanied Ryan went back to the airport and were getting aboard the charter plane when three of Jones guards burst out of the jungle and shot and killed Ryan and the others that were with him. At this point Jones knew that there would be hell to pay for the killing of a member of Congress and ordered everyone in the compound to commit suicide and offered up some cyanide laced Kool-Aid. Those that refused to drink were shot and killed. A very few escaped into the jungle and hid and witnessed the mass suicide. On this date, members of the Guyana National Police showed up looking for the missing Rep. Ryan at the behest of the US State Department. They found Ryan’s corpse at the airport and when they went to the compound, they found 913 bodies including 276 children. Jones had chosen to blow his own brains out with a pistol. It was one of the largest mass suicides in recorded history.

1996 Earlier a recognized authority on endangered animals, Andrew Silva, had been put on trial for capturing and attempting to sell 14 hyacinth Macaws. These beautiful birds are among the rarest in the world. It is estimated that there were only 2,000 existing. Silva had made many speeches and held seminars on preserving endangered species. But he was convicted primarily because of photos of some of the Macaws that had died during transport to the United States. The photos were taken by law enforcement at Silva’s home. On this date Silva was sentenced by an outraged judge who threw the book at Silva. He sentenced Silva to seven years in prison without the possibility of early release, fined him $100,000 and two years of supervised probation at the end of the prison sentence and 200 hours of community service. The flabbergasted Silva was speechless while the courtroom exploded into wild applause. Silva could have profited more than a million dollars had he been able to sell the birds. It just goes to show you that almost anyone’s commitment has a price tag.

1940 Earlier the president of Italy, Benito Mussolini, after having joined with Hitler in a non-aggression pact, decided to invade and capture the country of Greece. The signing of the pact with Hitler made them allies in the now increasing World War II. On this date the attack on Greece begins. Mussolini was an idiot. Even his chief of staff did not know of the attack until it was already underway. Mussolini believed that Greece could be conquered in a matter of days. Hitler had warned Mussolini against invading Greece because, as with most countries, the native Greeks will fight as hard as they can to protect their home land and it would give the English a reason to invade Greece and drive out the Italians. If Great Britain gained an airfield in Greece, it would be only a hop, ship and a jump to the Romanian oil fields near Ploesti where Hitler was getting most of his petroleum to fight the war. Needless to say, Hitler was furious and sure enough the Greeks got together and ran the Italians out of Greece in short order and had them cornered and it looked like annihilation. But Hitler sent in some paratroopers and bailed them out.

1863 On this date Abraham Lincoln boarded a train to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He is going there to make “a few appropriate remarks” the next day at the dedication of the National Cemetery in Gettysburg (been there) where the Union dead were buried after the great battle in July of that year. The previous speaker at the ceremony ranted for an hour and fifteen minutes. Lincoln got up and delivered one of the most electrifying speeches ever uttered using only 226 words. Here it is:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate ...we cannot consecrate…we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us...from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom…and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

If that does not bring a tear to your eye, you don’t have a heart.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow