Tuesday

                    Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“Letting go has never been easy, but holding on can be as difficult. Yet strength is measured not by holding on, but by letting go.”

                                           Len Santos

Last week I was reading about a 19 year old girl who was arrested in Spartanburg, SC for shoplifting. This girl took three vibrators into the ladies room in a K-Mart and stuffed them in her purse. Then she went to the cheap jewelry counter and did the same thing with three pair of earrings. All of sudden an image flashed across my mind involving the vibrators and the earrings…it was not a pretty sight.

A few days ago the MacArthur Foundation ‘Genius Fund’ made selections for this year’s “geniuses”. The award is $500,000 each distributed over a five year period. Included were a stone carver, an astrophysicist, a jazz pianist, a high school physics teacher, a theater director, a marble sculptor and an entomologist working on stopping the decline of the honey bee, etc. I wonder if there is an award for just being a good guy.

It has been determined that the “fattest” city in American is Vicksburg. Mississippi. Recently a gym owner has been trying to change all of that. She offered free gym time, persuaded several weight loss companies to offer free diet food and recipes, etc. So far that city has lost a combined total of over 15,000 pounds. This effort was strongly objected to by the makers of Twinkies, Krispie Kreme, Uncle Ben’s instant grits, Budweiser, among many others.

A while back the Pensacola, Florida city police were called by a family of a man they thought was in trouble. The cops tracked the man to a Motel 6 on the north side of town. Two city cops (1 male and 1 female) showed up at the motel and went to the room to investigate. A shootout erupted and the male cop was shot in the thigh. The bullet went clean through and exited the back of his leg. The female cop returned fire and the 21 year old shooter was killed instantly. A meth lab was found in the room along with two other people. They cooled their heels in the County lockup. To my knowledge no one has ever won a shootout with US law enforcement. They have nearly everyone out-gunned and out-trained.

This past Wednesday the US Marshals arrested 30 year old Santo Mendez at a Greyhound Bus Station in Austin, Texas. Santo has been charged with sexually assaulting 4 and 5 year old girls in Charleston, SC. This dumb ass told the arresting officers that he was now in Texas and they had no control over him. Do you think this jackass is an illegal alien? Anyway, the way he was found was the cops in Charleston contacted the US Marshals and told them what the charges were and that Santo had fled, probably to Texas. The US Marshals in Texas were notified and they tracked Santo to members of his family near Austin along with his description. A surveillance network was established at the airport, train station, bus station, etc. It worked. The last thing that Santo wants is to be extradited to South Carolina and convicted of sexual conduct with a minor. If he is his days will be be numbered once he is jailed.  Child molesters are targeted by prison inmates, especially here in SC.

Multi-zillionaire basketball player Lebron James is complaining that people hate him because he is black. He is wrong. People hate him because he is a whiner and his insufferable arrogance. I don’t hate Colin Powell, David Robinson, Michael Jordan, George Rogers and Barry Sanders among many, many others and I certainly am not alone. All of these men have honor and class, but not you Lebron.

            This Date in History  October 4

1777 The battle of Germantown, Pennsylvania happened on this day. Germantown was just a few miles north of British occupied Philadelphia. It was George Washington’s 11,000 ill-fed, ill-clothed and ill trained troops but Washington thought they were ready for a fight. He was opposed by British General Charles Cornwallis and his 9,000 well-fed, well-clothed and well trained troops. Washington had his troops to put a small piece of white paper in their hats so they could be seen in the early morning darkness. Washington chose to attack in four columns. The only problem here was that two of the columns got lost in the early morning fog and the army lost cohesion and were being chopped to pieces a few at a time and Washington retreated to the Whitemarsh area of New Jersey. The battle was over by ten o’clock with heavy casualties on both sides. In early December Washington fenced with Cornwallis until he established his winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. A few days before Christmas Prussian officer Frederick Von Stueben joined Washington. Washington assigned Von Stueben the task of whipping his troops into a well trained fighting unit rather than the rag-tag undisciplined army they were. Von Stueben immediately began a hard disciplined training program and eventually did complete his assignment of creating a fighting machine that proved its worth at the victory at Saratoga, New York. It was the victory at Saratoga that persuaded France to give their support to the fledgling United States and began giving the colonies much needed arms and money. When I was working near Reading , Pa. I wanted to go to most of these battle sites and asked the local about them. Nearly all of them had never been to any of them including Valley Forge. It was disappointing but in all honesty I don't know if any of my friends here in South Carolina have ever been Fort Thicketty, Kings Mountain or Eutaw Springs.

1970 On this date Rock singer Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose in the Landmark Hotel in Hollywood, California. Janis was born in Port Arthur, Texas in 1943 and was in the same class as ex-coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Jimmy Johnson. She led a troubled life up until she was 17 when she left home and began singing in clubs in Houston and other cities in Texas. In the early 60’s she moved to San Francisco and began singing with a group called Big Brother and the Holding Company. In 1968 the band issued an album called Cheap Tricks. One of the songs on that album was Janis singing the song Piece of my Heart. It gives me chill bumps to think Janis doing this song to this day. This song brought Janis into the world spotlight. She left that band and formed her own band The Kosmic Blues Band. This band was immensely popular and brought Janis even more fame and fortune. During all this rush at fast living Janis had developed two addictions. One was Southern Comfort and the other was heroin. Her final band was The Full Tilt Boogie Band. It was with this band that Janis gave us the immortal Me and Bobbie Magee. It was only a few weeks after recording this song that she killed herself by injecting sh-t into her veins. By the way, Me and Bobbie Magee was written by Kris Kristofferson.

Births and deaths:

1970 US rock singer Janis Joplin died. She said “I would rather live 10 years of super-hypermost than to live 70 years sitting in a god-damned chair in front of a TV.” Janis lived her 27 years on this planet in exactly that fashion.

Quotable quotes:

“I have as much authority as the Pope. I just do not have as many people that believe it”

                                         George Carlin

                    Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow