Tuesday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“Either do or not do, there is no try”.

                         Yoda

Up in a Boone, North Carolina high school there is an award winning high school English teacher that specified a book titled The House of Spirits for the purpose of a book report to be written by a sophomore class. This makes her students about 15 years old. The book included instances of torture and rape. There was a move by some of the parents to have the book removed from the curriculum but kept in the library. This effort failed. The book was approved by 90% of the parents but an alternate book was made available to those that objected. The objecting parents did not give up and continued their assault on the teacher (several death threats) and the book. What we have here is some people that object to a book and don't want anyone else to read it. Who the hell do they think they are? Everyone has their own conscience and it is not for someone else to force their thoughts and opinions onto others. This is once again an attempt at censorship. If you don't like the book and object to your kids reading it...OK, don't read the son-of-a bitch and don't let your snot nosed kids read it either, there is an alternative. The last book burning was by the Nazis in 1938. I can assure you that your kids already know what torture and rape is all about. Mankind's history is full of it from before recorded history to present day. My suggestion to the parents is to read about how the kings of those city-states in the Mesopotamia (Ur, Mari and Babylon for instance) at the dawn of the written word dealt with those in rebellion...then read about present day Congo, Sierra Leone, Darfur, the Tutsis and the Hutus, Zanzibar and many more of those small nations up and down the center of Africa. Human slavery involving torture and rape is alive and well here and many other places on this Earth. But I suppose if you do not read about it and object to anyone else reading about it then it does not exist.  I am assuming you can read in the first place. I have read books and seen movies that disturbed me (Deer Hunter and Full Metal Jacket for instance) but I certainly will not object to others from reading about them or seeing them. You and I should be able to make our own choices...that is what freedom is all about. It has not been long ago that a large church over in a small town west of Greenville objected to the local library having the book A Catcher in the Rye being on the shelves of the library and wanted them kept under the counters out of sight of the youths of the community. This book is fiction and about a teenager named Holden Caulfield written by J. D. Salinger in 1951. In the book Holden in 16 years old and being treated for a mental illness. He is writing about his trials and tribulations especially the mystery of his own feelings while maturing into an adult. Holden describes his experimentation with masturbation and this is what the faithful objected to. This, my friends, is the epitome of hypocrisy. The library was picketed by the sign-carrying faithful. I suppose they were terrified of the horrible evils of masturbation. I would like to see a show hands of those that have ever......never mind. By the way, A Catcher in the Rye is one of the top most published books of all time and it certainly is not because of the masturbation.  By the way, that church did not have a problem with the depictions of the slaughter of over 640,000 Americans during the American Civil War or the horrors of the Holocaust. Evidently masturbation is more horrible than all of this. I sounds to me like they are worried about their sexuality.

     This Date in History    March 3

1776 On this date United States emissary Silas Deane departed Boston on a secret mission to France. He is going to meet with French Foreign minister Charles Gravier to convince him that the United States is indeed on the road to independence and military tools of war from France is needed to assist in this endeavor. He is successful to some degree in that France offers 200 brass cannon, gunpowder and shot to match. Silas Deane also reminded the American Congress that that he had offered the Marquis de Lafayette the rank of Major General if he would come over to the United States and join with George Washington and use his considerable military expertise in our behalf. The confirmation of this rank for Lafayette had to come from Congress. Deane also complained that he was given not enough instructions so the American Congress sent three more emissaries to France to assist Deane. One of these was a man named Arthur Lee who accused Deane of lining his pockets with the gold that America had sent to pay for the French military hardware. This never happened. Deane was a dedicated Patriot but the accusation stuck and Deane was forever branded as a greedy and unpatriotic man. Thirty years after the death of Deane, Congress donated a considerable amount to Deane’s granddaughter for the wrong her grandfather had suffered unnecessarily.

1974 About two years before a McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 departed Toronto, Ontario and upon reaching 12,000 feet a hatch blew of the side of the aircraft and knocked a gaping hole in the side and rapid decompression occurred. Gratefully there were not at a very high altitude. The debris and pieces of sheet metal flew throughout the aircraft and several important hydraulic lines were cut and the inside deck collapsed. The pilot was able to maintain enough control to make a safe landing at Detroit. The NTSB faulted McDonnell-Douglas for installing an improper latch on the hatch that had blown off. McDonnell-Douglas issued a bulletin to all to install an updated latch on all of their DC-10’s. McDonnell-Douglas sold one of their DC-10’s to a Turkish airline with the old latch but with a bulletin to update the latch on this particular hatch. The bulletin went unheeded and on this day a Turkish DC-10 departed Paris, France with 364 passengers and crew. Upon reaching 11,000 feet, the hatch in question blew off and ripped a gaping hole in the side. The six passengers in the rear seats were sucked out of the aircraft and were killed instantly when they landed in a field not far from the airport. The pilot was unable to maintain control and the gigantic aircraft crashed headed straight down at over 500 MPH. The crash was so destructive and powerful that all aboard were killed and only 40 bodies were found intact. McDonnell-Douglas pointed at the ground crew at the Paris Airport as not closing the hatch correctly. The ground crews responded with refusing to service or load baggage on any DC-10. McDonnell-Douglas was finally faulted for selling a DC-10 knowing it to have an unsatisfactory latch, bulletin not withstanding.

Born today:

1756 English writer Robert Godwin. He said “He that loves reading has everything within his reach.” Indeed it does, Robert, indeed it does

1847 Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell. He said “When one door closes another opens; but we so often look regretfully at the closed one that we do not see what is open for us.” Sound wisdom.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow