Tuesday

                         Musings and History

Quote of the day:

If you are having trouble deciding who to vote for President imagine the worst case scenario. A nuclear war is likely and who do you want with their finger on the trigger of the United States arsenal?

                                              Al Campbell

I read where there is a movement to change the names of all the schools that were named after any Confederate leader. Here are some questions:

Assume you are a professional soldier in the United States army like Robert E. Lee (Va. Born), Stonewall Jackson (Va. Born), James Longstreet (SC born), D.H. Hill (SC born), A. P. Hill (Va. Born) and many others from the southern tier. You realize that one day soon your superiors are going order you to go into your home state, your home town and kill your family and friends, destroy their livestock and burn their houses, barns and crops. If you did not do these things as ordered you would be labeled a traitor. What would be your response? Would you resign, go home and and hide in the woods and watch an army come and totally destroy your family and friends...or would you try to defend them? Well, what?

Do you believe that a 17 year old boy from a small farm on the Pee Dee river area of South Carolina and many, many others like him would fight with a ferocity that is still legendary so that a plantation owner in Alabama could keep his slaves?

This is an event that was documented. A group of about 15 Confederate soldiers were surrounded by a Union Infantry unit. The Confederates fought bitterly until they were out of ammo. They then came from behind their cover swinging their rifles like baseball bats but eventually they were all subdued or killed. One of the surviving Confederates was asked why he fought so hard...he did NOT say it was so that those that have slaves can keep them...he DID say “Because y'all are down here.” He and most of the rank and file Confederate soldiers felt they were being invaded. After all, 95% of all battles were fought on southern soil. As usual it was the old that start wars, and the young that suffer and die to end them.

          This Date in History  May 17

1954 This date heralded the spotlighting of racial strife in the United States that is not really over to this day. Previously the school systems in the United States were based on the Plessy v Ferguson Supreme Court decision stating that racially separate but equal Pullman cars was Constitutional. The school boards of the time used that decision in fashioning their schools. On this date the Earl Warren led United States Supreme Court ruled on the Brown v The Board of Education case that separate but equal was inherently unequal, which in effect struck down the Plessy v Ferguson decision. What happened was this. In Topeka, Kansas a black family moved into a particular neighborhood where the closest school was three blocks away but it was a “white” school. The black family took their little girl there anyway and tried to enroll her. The school, backed by the Board of Education, would not accept the girl’s enrollment and told the black family that they would have to enroll their little girl in a “black” school that was over an hour away. The black family sued and had their case plead to the Supreme Court by a young lawyer from the NAACP named Thurgood Marshall. As we all know Marshall ended up as a Supreme Court Justice.

1970 On this date Norwegian ethnologist/adventurer Thor Heyerdahl set sail from Morocco on the way to proving that Mediterranean civilizations could have, and probably did, sail across the Atlantic and exchange information with the great civilizations that arose in Central and South America. Heyerdahl fashioned his boat the Ra II out of Egyptian papyrus reeds and in the shape of ships depicted on the walls of Egyptian tombs. 57 days later Heyerdahl and crew landed at Barbados in proving that it was indeed possible that such an exchange of information could have taken place. There is no doubt in this redneck’s mind that it happened. But I do not believe it was the Egyptians, I think it was the Phoenicians from present day Lebanon. The Phoenicians were the master traders in the ancient Mediterranean meaning that they saw everything from the pyramids to Greece to Crete to Carthage to Gibraltar. Everything they saw could be passed on to the knowledge of to the Maya, Olmecs, Aztecs and the Inca. The Maya crawled out of the Central American jungle about 800BC and built a civilization that was second only to the Egyptians, Greeks and Cretans at the time and it lasted 2,300 years. In fact, the largest pyramid in land area in the world is the Pyramid of the Moon at Chichen Itza in the Mexican Yucatan peninsula. How did the Maya come up with the idea of a building that is smaller at the top than it is at the bottom? They built all of this without draft animals and without the wheel. How did this happen without even the basic Archimedes ideas of leverage and pulleys? I think they had help. After all, 800 miles north, the North American Indians were living in hogans and tepees, and 1,000 miles south the Indians in the Amazon rain forests were eating each other. I went to the town of Coba in the Mexican Yucatan a few years ago. There was a pyramid there that had yet to be explored but you could walk right up to it through the jungle. There were several smaller pyramids beside the main one. The most amazing part was that Coba was on one end of a 60 mile long causeway that went from Coba to Yaxuna, a trading center. This road went through a jungle, y'all. It was so thick that you could not even see through it and the road was about 5 feet above the swamp. These people built this thing again without draft animals and the wheel. I am sorry y'all, someone had to have helped them. The second most amazing thing about Coba was that there was a Club Med there. I ate there, it was first class, meaning the waiters all spoke English and had on tuxedos and black ties.

1974 The day before a kid in a quiet neighborhood in Compton, California saw a bunch of guys in the living room in the house next door playing around with a bunch of automatic weapons and went and told Mama. Mama called the cops and the cops figured out that it is a safe house for members on the Symbionese Liberation Army. The SLA was a violent anti-governmental outfit. It was the SLA that supposedly kidnapped the super-rich spoiled child Patty Hearst and brainwashed her into a follower of the SLA led by Donald Defreeze. The police found out that there were six member of the SLA in the house including Defreeze. On this date, the cops surrounded the small house on Compton and ordered everyone out. That order was met with a barrage of gunfire from within. There were about 500 cops that had the house surrounded and they opened up themselves, killing everyone inside. The cops thought that Patty Hearst was inside, but she wasn’t. She was captured in the following September. Patty was photographed helping rob a bank and went to jail for two years then she was let loose at the direction of President Jimmy Carter. She later was pardoned by President Bill Clinton. I am not going to guess what Bill’s reward was.

Born today:

1873 English writer Dorothy Richardson. She said “All this misery will continue as long as women continue to bring men into this world.” Dorothy shut up, there was a man involved in your creation.

1935 English writer Dennis Potter. He said “I did not realize the meaning of “terminal illness” until I saw the Heathrow Airport for myself.” Been there, done that.

1965 US boxer Sugar Ray Leonard. He said “I consider myself blessed, you are blessed. We all have been blessed with God given talents. Mine just happens to be knocking dudes out.” His matches with Roberto Duran were some of the most vicious in boxing history.

            Thanks for listening  I can hardly wait until tomorrow