Tuesday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

Confucius

Yesterday in a segment about the Magna Carta I wrote that both King John and Richard the Lionhearted was sons of Elizabeth I. That was wrong. They both were sons of Eleanor of Aquitane who became queen of England when married to Henry II. I will try to do better.

What $1 Billion will get you:

The Chicago Cubs.

The Hannah Montana franchise.

The Los Angeles Lakers.

A small down payment on the restoration of the Gulf of Mexico.

I will never understand people. I send out my thoughts via the electronic media or verbally nearly every day but it is rare that I receive others thoughts. Either I am too outgoing and open or everybody else thinks those paranoids are out to get them and withhold their feelings. To quote a Japanese holy man “To achieve perfect peace forget everything you know or have ever known and just 'be'” That is a tall order for most of us because most of the time a piece of our heart and soul is in the possession of others.

Recently there have been two mass murders using knives, one was in Calgary, Canada, the other was in Santa Barbara, Cal. I wonder if the US Government is going to try to levy a limit on the length, width, keenness and number of knives that can owned by one individual. Why is there no more an intense attack on automobiles that cause untold death, injury and destruction? After all, the automobile is the instrument used...like a knife or a firearm. There is no comparison as to the number of people killed by vehicular homicide compared to all others combined. All I can think of is there are more voters that do not own firearms than drive cars. The safety of the general public is not the issue. The number of firearms in the US was known by the leader of the Japanese Navy before WWII. Admiral Yamamoto was schooled at Harvard and knew the manufacturing might of the US and that the masses were armed and an invasion would be met with millions of firearms and millions of deaths for his troops.

This Date in History June 16

1567 Earlier Mary, Queen of Scots returned from France where she had been married to the Dauphin (apparent heir to the French throne) and later he did indeed become the King of France with Mary as the Queen Consort. The King died and Mary could not assume the throne because she was not of a French royal blood line. She returned to Scotland looking to take the throne of Scotland. While she was gone to France Scotland had been ruled by a group of Scottish regents. Mary was notorious for being a promoter of Catholics and the rock-ribbed Presbyterian Scotsmen would have none of it. Mary raised an army (all Catholic) and attempted to take Scotland by force but a Scottish Army beat the crap out of Mary's army and on this date she was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle. Mary escaped and fled to England where her cousin Elizabeth I was queen and Mary was given sanctuary. Later on it was found that there was a cabal afoot to assassinate Elizabeth so Mary could take the throne and she promised to stack the English hierarchy with Catholics. Mary indeed was in line to be crowned Queen after the passing of Elizabeth because they were both descendants of Henry VIII. When Elizabeth found this out Mary was imprisoned in a variety of castles and manor houses. Elizabeth let her cool her heels for 18 ½ years but Mary finally had a rendezvous with a big guy with a big axe and a black hood on the lawn of Fotheringhay castle and went to meet her maker in two pieces.

1822 A man named Denmark Vessy was planning a slave rebellion in South Carolina. Vessy was an ex-slave who had bought his freedom when he won $1,500 in a lottery. He tried and tried to buy his wife's freedom to no avail so he started planning a slave uprising hoping this would lead to his wife's emancipation. The planning was discovered and on this day Vessy was arrested in Charleston, SC. Two weeks later Vessy was hanged from a tree on “Oyster Point” which is now know as “The Battery.”

1829 A child is born in a Mescalero Apache campsite in New Mexico. His name in English was Jerome but in Apache his name was Geronimo. I suppose all of you have heard of this great warrior. His first wife and two children were murdered by the Mexican army and that set the tone for the rest of Geronimo's life. He led his people from capture by the United States cavalry for many years. It was said that under his leadership it was very rare that any American trooper even caught sight of one of his warriors much less Geronimo himself. Finally after many of his horses were found and destroyed by the US Cavalry and his people were starving, Geronimo surrendered. He spent the next 20 years as a prisoner of war. But there was one famous person that admired him. Theodore Roosevelt had Geronimo in his inauguration parade. Geronimo went to the Happy Hunting Ground in 1909 at the age of 79...but his legacy continues.

1909 On this day many who consider to be the greatest athlete of all time pitched a 4-2 win playing for Rocky Mount, NC of the East Carolina Baseball League. It was Jim Thorpe. Later on Jim went to the Olympics as a track and field star and won more medals than any of the others by far. The Olympic committee found out about his playing in a minor league baseball game and demanded all the Olympic medals back. Back then the participants had to be undeniable amateurs to be in the Olympics and that game made Jim a professional. A lot of people including myself think that Jim was targeted because he was a full blooded Native American and that did not sit well for the race conscious jackasses of the day.

1913 On this day the South African Parliament passed a law that no blacks could own land in South Africa. Help me understand this. The natives have been on that land for at least 3 million years and now they can't own land? This abomination was corrected later on but the English and Dutch domination allowed the creation of the greatest empire the world has ever seen regardless of the cost to others. But on the other hand, we Americans did almost the same thing to the native Americans here. The only difference is that as far as we know the native Americans have only been in North America for about 14,000 years...like that would make a difference.

1943 Beaumont, Texas was a hub of shipbuilding during WWII, as was the case in many areas of America, there was much racial tension in the Houston/Beaumont area. On this day a race riot erupted in Beaumont involving many that worked in the shipyards. One African/American and one white man were killed and 50 injured. A large crowd of whites moved toward a jail with the intention of lynching what blacks were in there. Sheriff Bill Richardson holding a Thompson sub-machine gun met the crowd in the middle of the street and order them to disperse...or else. He ended this fiasco by telling them that we need ships for the war effort and that is only thing that should be on their minds. Thank you Sheriff Richardson...and the Tommy gun.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow