Friday

                        Musing and History

Quote of the day:

“We are born wet, naked and hungry and then things get worse.”

                                        George Carlin

Yesterday I neglected to mention that it was “Cinco de Mayo” the translation being “the fifth of May.” Here is what is being celebrated. After getting their ass handed to them by the French army for years, the Mexican army overcame a siege by the French army on the Mexican city of Puebla. The French withdrew from Puebla on the fifth of May. The French eventually came back and re-took Puebla. After a number years and different French Monarchs as the kings of Mexico, the Mexicans eventually kicked out them out. It is beyond me why Americans want to celebrate an event that has nothing to do with the formation of this nation and concerns the heritage of a very small minority of our citizens. Is Cinco de Mayo celebrated in Canada, Brazil, Argentina, etc? Of course it isn’t. But let’s think about celebrating the Battle of Waterloo. This event was the death knell for Napoleon and people from Belgium, France, England, Scotland, Ireland Germany and Austria were involved. We have a hell of lot more ancestors from western Europe than we do from Mexico. I will never put any importance on May 5. By the way, the actual date for Mexican independence is September 21, 1821.

A while back ago the Asheville, NC police department notified the Anderson, South Carolina police to be on the lookout for forty year old Charles Bennett, Jr. of Anderson. This jackass had been in an internet chat room and solicited sex from what he thought was an 11 year old girl. The Anderson cops went on the chat room, found Bennett, pretended to be the 11 year old girl and the cops set up a meet and Bennett agreed. Bennett went to the meet only it wasn’t an 11 year old girl, it was a couple of Anderson’s finest. Bennett is looking at 20 years of hard time. I like it.

This Date in History May 6

1775 On this date William Franklin sends a note to William Legge, the 2^nd Earl of Dartmouth, that any further engagements like those at Lexington and Concord would do nothing but never making it possible for the reconciliation of the British and the Colonists. William Franklin was the illegitimate son of Patriot Benjamin Franklin and also was the Royal Governor of New Jersey. When Ben went to England in 1757 he took little William with him and sent him to Oxford where he studied law. Ben studied social climbing and chasing women, primarily. When William was a child he went everywhere with Benjamin and was with him when he conducted many of his experiments. When it was apparent that the colonies were going to rebel and seek independence, Ben went home to provide his assistance to his homeland. William decided to stay loyal to the British who, after all, had taken this candle makers son and educate him to the point of a Master of Arts degree from Oxford. Later on he was named as Royal Governor of New Jersey. Neither Ben nor William ever changed their stripes and Ben remained a colonist hell-bent of Independence and his son stayed loyal to the crown. Benjamin and William grew further and further apart and in 1782 after the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown, William sailed to England never to return. Ben saw him once after that when he stopped by for a visit on the way home from France. Ben wrote William out of his will saying that had England had won the war he would not have had anything left anyway. What a great man Benjamin Franklin was and we were very fortunate to have him on our side.

1940 On this date John Steinbeck is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his book The Grapes of Wrath. This book was about a family of poor dirt farmers from Oklahoma that were caught up in the Great Depression along with the worst drought in hundred years and were forced to pull up stakes and head for California to find work. The book was about the trial and tribulations of this family on the trip west and what happened to them once they arrived. The book was a tremendous exercise in imagination. This was not the only well acknowledged book written by this master. He gave us Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, Travels With Charlie among several others. In his younger years he lived in the Salinas Valley, California but was determined to be a writer and moved to New York where he became a laborer and a part time journalist. While there he wrote two unsuccessful novels. His father gave him a small house and income back in Salinas County so he moved back home. His first book after coming home was Tannery Row which was a critical and financial success. After this Steinbeck delivered one successful novel after another. He wrote two successful movies in Viva Zapata and Forgotten Village. He became very interested in marine biology and wrote The Sea of Cortez to wide acclaim from marine naturalists and biologists. His book Travels with Charlie was about him traveling around America in company of his poodle named Charlie and the people he met during his travels. This book earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He died in New York in 1968 leaving a gap in American literature that has yet to be filled. Larry McMurtry came close until he was the screen writer for the movie Brokeback Mountain. In my opinion any writer that was able to give us a saga like Lonesome Dove and then writes Brokeback Mountain has sold out. There are so many literary gems that he has written that there are too many to mention here. I will dedicate a column to him in the future. This one is about Steinbeck.

1937 On this date the German zeppelin Hindenburg after a successful trans-Atlantic crossing from Germany, approached the landing mast at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The zeppelin had to delay its landing earlier because of a thunderstorm in the area. As the gigantic ship approached the mooring mast, it all of a sudden burst into flame and fell to the ground destroyed killing several people on the ground and aboard the ship. The ship used flammable hydrogen rather than non-burning helium, a serious error.

Born today:

1853 US Senator Philander Knox. When speaking to President Theodore Roosevelt about the Panama Canal he said “Mr. President, do not let so great an achievement suffer any taint of legality.”

1856 Moravian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. He said “I have found little that is good about human beings. Most of them are trash.” I wonder if Will Rogers ever met Sig.

          Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow