Wednesday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return, but the hurt is much worse when you love someone and do not have the courage to tell them how you feel.”

                                               Charles Swindoll

I know what you mean Charlie, I have tried for years without success to tell Dolly Parton how much I care.

Here is another adventure while I was an air traffic controller in Greenville, SC. I was contacted by the control tower in Asheville, NC (about 40 miles north) about a plane that was “caught on top” and since we had radar and they didn't they sent the plane to my frequency. Caught on top means a non-instrument rated pilot on top of an overcast. The pilot contacted me and I quickly identified him as being about 5 miles east of Hendersonville, NC. I checked the weather in Greenville, SC and it was only scattered clouds. He and I agreed would be safer descending in a scattered cloud environment and out of mountainous terrain. He agreed then he hit me with a scary thing. He only had about 40 minutes of fuel left but thankfully he was at a pretty high altitude. I got him headed toward Greenville and we agreed that he should begin a slow descent with the engine at idle to save fuel. My radar told when he was clear of the mountains and the pilot said he could see the ground. Keeping an eye on the clock, his altitude and rate of descent, when I felt he could make the airport without going to full power I lined him up with runway 36 at Greenville Downtown Airport. By then it was dark and I asked the control tower at the airport to turn the runway lights up bright and asked the pilot if he had the runway in sight and he said that he did. I told him how far he was from the runway and sent him over to tower frequency. The tower said that he landed without incident but on the way to the ramp he ran out fuel and had to be towed to parking. God works in mysterious ways.

I have been reading the tales of arguably the greatest writer of all time and that being Homer. This great man was born somewhere on an island in the Aegean Sea in the 8^th Century BC. Homer is most famous for giving is The Iliad and The Odyssey. The Iliad is about The Trojan War. This war erupted when an entourage from the city of Troy (in present day Turkey) came to visit king Menelaus the king of Sparta, Greece. Included in the Trojans was a prince named Paris. Menelaus was married to a stone fox named Helen who was supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world. During the visit Paris and Helen dug each other and had several trysts. When it came time for Paris to sail back to Troy, he persuaded Helen to go with him. Menelaus was insulted but was leaning toward finding another beauty to replace Helen but his brother Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae, saw it another way. He was extremely incensed at this insult of his brother that he began gathering a navy and soldiers to invade Troy. What happened during this war Homer mixed real things and events with mythology. There was mention of Achilles, Ajax and Hector among others that reside in Greek mythology, however there was indeed a city of Troy in southwest Turkey. A German archaeologist uncovered the ruins of this city including a layer thick with ashes where it had been burned to the ground. This event was also mentioned by Homer in The Iliad. The Greeks besieged Troy for 10 years with no success until a plan was hatched by the Greek king of Ithaca named Odysseus (Ulysses in Roman mythology). It was Odysseus that conceived the large wooden horse with troops hidden inside and left the horse outside the gates of Troy. Then the Greeks sailed their ships out of sight over the horizon (about 16 miles) to convince the Trojans that they had given up and sailed for home. The Trojans bought the ruse and pulled the horse inside the gates. That night the Greeks sailed back to the shores of Troy and deployed their infantry. The troops inside the horse crawled out and opened the gates allowing their infantry inside. It was all over after that. What a stupendous feat of Homer's imagination is this tale. I will approach The Odyssey at a later date, it is richer in pure imagination than The Iliad .

Origins of our language:

Here is the roots of a word we use every day. In Greek mythology Hercules (strongest man in the world) went mad one night and murdered his entire family. His atonement for this atrocity was 12 “labors” or superhuman tasks. One of these was the slaying of the Hydra. This was a sea creature with nine gigantic poisonous snakes for a head. After a series of adventures Hercules found the Hydra. He began cutting off the heads of this beast but a new head would grow back in its place. Hercules retreated an made an enormous torch and resumed the attack. This time when he cut off the head he would immediately cauterize the stump and no new head came forth. It was well known that the blood of the Hydra was the most potent poison known. Hercules had a bow and a quiver of arrows with him and he dipped the point of his arrows in the blood. Hercules had a name for his gigantic bow...it was Toxus. It is from this word that we get toxin, toxic, etc. The English language is a montage of words we absorbed from many sources.

                   This Date in History July 29

1588 A few years earlier Queen Elizabeth I of England had sent her most able sea captain in Sir Francis Drake out to harass Spain, England’s worst enemy at the time. Drake did not disappoint. He caught the Spanish fleet at anchor in Cadiz, Spain and sent in ships that were on fire into the fleet and bombarded them with long range artillery. This attack delayed by one year King Phillip of Spain’s attempt at the control of the English Channel and therefore controlling England’s commerce. Drake’s attack also alerted England to Spain’s intentions. Queen Elizabeth had sent monetary aid and supplies to some of the Dutch colonies that were rebelling against Spain’s attempt to occupy those lands. Eventually, King Phillip of Spain got his fleet together to the tune of 130 ships containing 8,000 guns manned by 2,000 sailors and 20,000 infantry. This fleet was known as the “Great Armada” but later it was known as the Spanish Armada. Anyway, the fleet left Spain headed for the English Channel in a line of ships eight miles long. The delay had allowed the English fleet almost a year to prepare and when the Spanish Armada arrived in the English Channel the English were ready. The English ships were not a fast as the Spanish ships but they were a lot more rugged, especially in rough seas, and had cannon with a lot longer range. As you might suspect, the English ships stood off out of range of the Spanish ships and bombarded the hell out them. Then the worst possible thing happened for the Spanish Armada. A typical English Channel storm arrived unexpectedly and the mighty Spanish Armada was forced to seek shelter in a small bay near Calais, France where they anchored down to ride out the storm. The English fleet, Sir Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake commanding, waited until the storm abated and on this date they sealed off the mouth of the bay the Spanish Fleet had occupied and again bombarded the hell out of them and sent in, you guessed it, fire ships meant to set fire to the Armada. After that it was every Spanish ship for himself and the ships left that bay the best way they could. Most of the ships did escape from the bay but they were not in formation and disorganized, the English were waiting and picked them off one at a time. Not only that the wind shifted and the Spanish Fleet had no chance to sail back to Spain and many of them crashed on the shores of Scotland with the English fleet in hot pursuit. The English fleet turned back at the north end of Scotland. Finally, the survivors of the “Great Armada” arrived back in Spain less than half strength. This is one of the most important military events in history in stopping Spain from invading England.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow