Friday OYSTERS

                      Musing and History

Quote of the day:

“One of the best cures for pride is seasickness. A man that wants to vomit will not put on airs.”

                                        Josh Billings

Here is a recent conversation I had with a Democratic lady from Killeen, Tx and is a long time friend.

“Donald is coming.”

“Oh s—t...my daughter thinks he is the anti-christ.”

“He is too old to be the anti-christ”.

“I did not know there was an age limit.”

“In my mental image he is too old...but Hillary is about right.”

A couple of days ago my 6 year old HP laptop slowed down to an intolerable crawl and kept freezing up. Rather than buy another laptop I chose to do this. This computer has a program that once initiated will take the computer back to where it was when it came out of the factory. I did this and when it finally stopped whining and flashing, sure enough it was back to basic. But it did save all the programs that had been deleted and all I had to do was reload what I wanted. I had one problem, I accidentally deleted about 550 items that I had written and saved. Thank God that a good friend had given me a “thumb” drive for Christmas and I had downloaded all of my writings on it. I downloaded all of this back aboard the laptop. I did lose all I had written since the initial download but this is a hell of lot better than losing it all.

          This Date in History  February 26

1813 Robert R. (R.R.) Livingston dies on this date. Livingston was one of those people in the history of our country that played a major role but was not well known. Robert was the eldest of nine children to a powerful judge also named Robert R. who owned vast stretches of land along with two major estates in the Hudson River Valley in upstate New York. The main estate where the family lived was Clermont the other was Belvedere. In 1766 the elder Livingston tried to impose restrictive leases onto his tenant farmers which resulted in a tenant farmer uprising who threatened to kill the elder Livingston and burn down his estates. The British army came to his rescue and his estates remained. After this, young Robert is sent to Kings College (Now Columbia University) where he graduated with a law degree. In 1777 after the elder and younger Livingstons has declared their allegiance to the Patriots, the British Army burned down Clermont and Belvedere. The younger Robert represented the Provincial New York Congress to the Continental Congress. He was selected to be the United States Secretary of Foreign Affairs and engineered the sale of the French holdings in North America to the United States. This was known as The Louisiana Purchase. This addition to the United States nearly doubled the size of our country. He was named as “chancellor” of New York. I do not know the equivalent of this office today. But from then on his nickname was “The Chancellor”. It was he that swore in our first President George Washington. There are statues of him in New York City and in the United States Capitol building.

1862 On this date Elisha Hunt Rhodes is in camp in Washington, DC. Rhodes is a soldier in the 2^nd Rhode Island Regiment attached to The Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War. Rhodes was a gifted writer and kept a detailed diary for the entire four years he was in the army. The resulting book made from his diary gives us a seldom seen insight into the day-in, day-out existence to the average infantryman. There are hours of sheer boredom intermixed with moments of heart stopping terror and views of horrible after-battle carnage. On this particular day he and his friend Isaac Cooper go to hear a speech by Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson and then the go to a fair in a Methodist church. Elisha and Isaac meet two girls at the fair and walk them home. I suppose even Yankees can get lucky from time to time. Just joking.

1993 On this cold and snowy morning in New York City a thunderously powerful explosion happened in the parking garage under the North Tower of the World Trade Center. There were six people killed and over 1,000 injured. The police had no choice but to evacuate both the North and South towers. The initial investigation indicated that it was a band of Serb that had done the deed but it was later found that this group was simply jewel thieves. From this the FBI was able to dissolve a large diamond theft organization. But the investigation continued into the bastards that were responsible for the explosion. Investigators found a piece of a van that carried the explosives that still had the serial number visible. From this they tracked the van back to a rental agency in Jersey City, New Jersey where a contract showed the van was rented to one Mohammed Salaamed. This jackass had reported the van as stolen on February 25 and told the agency that he was coming to get his $400 deposit back. There is no need for me to tell you that the FBI was waiting and arrested this jackass. A search of Salaamed’s apartment and records implicated two other jackasses. They also found a video tape on how to build bombs and are able to identify a fourth person in the video. An owner of a storage facility came forth and said that he had seen four men loading something into a rental van in one of his rental garages. The FBI investigated this site and found enough nitro-glycerin to build another gigantic bomb. Also one of the four had went to the AGL Welding Service and purchased steel hydrogen tanks. In the debris from the blast the investigators found a piece of a tank that still had the AGL logo on it. All four of these lunatics went on trial and were convicted. They all received sentences of 240 years each. I can only hope that all of them are taken under the wing of a 6’-9”, 375 lb. sex pervert that has a penchant for middle-eastern men.

1942 On this date US actress Joan Fontaine won the Oscar for best actress for her performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Suspicion. Right after this gossip columnist Louella Parsons wrote in her column that Joan did not get the Oscar for her performances on stage but for her performances in bed with every producer west of the Rockies.

By accident Louella and Joan met in the bar at the famous Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles and the verbal exchange between these two women went down in sailor history as a benchmark in the delivery of profanity.

1564 On this date poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe is christened in the Church at Canterbury, England. Two months later William Shakespeare was christened. Marlowe was recognized and being a bright person and was given a scholarship to Cambridge where he earned a B.A. degree. It was believed that he was a spy for Queen Elizabeth while at Cambridge and was nearly denied his masters degree until a representative of the Queen dropped by and suggested that Marlowe had better get his degree ”for services rendered.” Marlowe did indeed receive his master’s degree. During a search of the apartment that he and Thomas Kyd shared, some literature was found that smacked of treason and Kyd was taken to the Tower and tortured. Kyd finally said the literature was Marlowe’s. Marlowe was arrested but made bail and was free. Soon after Marlowe got into a fight with a bartender over his tab and the bartender put a knife into Marlowe’s liver and it is adios Christopher. The moral here is when hammered do not argue with an armed bartender, just pay the freaking tab and go to the house.

       Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow