Tuesday

                   Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“To achieve total enlightenment you must forget everything you know or have ever learned and just 'be'.”

                         Musashi (legendary Samurai warrior)

Up in Hendersonville, N.C. a man walked into a convenience store, covered his face with his jacket and demanded money from the clerk. No, he did not produce a weapon but suggested that he did have one. He did not see the customer that was in the store that happened to be a biker about the size of Montana. The biker confronted the robber and suggested that the robber try to rob him. The robber left immediately waving for an accomplice to come and pick him up post haste. That is a good example of poor reconnaissance, my friend.

A couple of weeks ago I told y’all about a fight that broke out at a football game involving Garinger High School in Charlotte. It took a SWAT team to break up the fight that began again in the parking lot and the SWAT team had to used more aggressive measures to calm things down. A couple of days ago a fight erupted on the Garinger high school grounds before school started. It took the cops to break this one up too. The cops said that some of those that were involved in the fight were not students. They also said that they arrested a number of the participants and they believed the fight was gang related. They arrested who they thought was the gang leader but could not publish his name because he was a juvenile…a juvenile. Where the hell are his parents/guardians? They are the ones that need to spent time in the joint.

Some of y’all may have read this before but here it is again: There was a street gang in Boston that had a leader nicknamed “Yummy” because he always had Oreo cookies close by. This gang was exceptionally vicious under his leadership. One day a rival gang kidnapped Yummy and tortured him for a couple of days before strangling him. Yummy was 12 years old.

           This Date in History   November 22

1783 John Hanson died in his Maryland home. Hanson was the first president of the Continental Congress after the signing of the Articles of Confederation. It is believed by some that he was our first president but that is incorrect. The president of the Continental Congress was similar to England’s Prime Minister. The office of president of the United States did come into being with the formation of the three main branches of out government, Judicial, Legislative and Executive in 1789. Hanson was a fiery Patriot and advocated the removal of British authority in 1773. He served in the Maryland Legislature for many years before joining the Confederation. At the age of 25 he married the 16 years old Jane Contee. They had issued of 9 children of which 5 lived to adulthood. However, his oldest son Peter was a Continental soldier and was killed at the Battle of Fort Washington, New York. As with many of our ancestors, we should be grateful that people with character and dedication of John Hanson were there for us or we would still be under the umbrella of Great Britain.

1963 About 11:00a CST the car in which the sitting president of the United States John F. Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connolly and President Kennedy’s wife Jackie are riding in turned onto Dealy Plaza in Dallas, Texas as part of a motorcade. Soon thereafter three shots ring out two of which strike President Kennedy in the neck and the back of his head. One of the bullets passes through Kennedy and struck Governor Connolly in the back and left wrist. Both Connolly and Kennedy are rushed to Parkland Hospital where Kennedy succumbed to his wounds. Connolly survived. The assassin had fired from the fifth floor of the Texas Book Depository. He had used a mail order .308 caliber Manlicher-Carcano rifle. A short time later the Dallas PD went into a movie theater to arrest a suspect named Lee Harvey Oswald. There were shots fired and one Dallas policeman is killed but Oswald is finally arrested and charged with the slaying of Kennedy. Two days later Oswald is assassinated by a strip club owner name Jack Ruby in the basement of the Dallas Court House, if you can believe that. Kennedy was the fourth United States President to be assassinated. Much controversy arose from this event, so much so that the United States Congress assembled a committee to investigate. After all is said and done, in spite of overwhelming evidence otherwise, the committee determined that there was no conspiracy and Oswald had acted alone. They came to this conclusion in spite of many witnesses that hit the ground and looked up toward a grassy knoll rather than the Texas Book Depository because they heard a shot coming from that direction. The controversy continues to this day and I suppose that we will never be made privy as to who killed John. There is no doubt in this writer’s mind that Oswald did not act alone and was the patsy in a monstrous conspiracy and I know that I am not alone in this belief.

1718 In 1713 a wannabe pirate named Edward Teach joined with the pirate sloop crew headed by Ben Hornigold. Teach was probably English but that is not known for sure. Shortly after he joined the crew, Hornigold was offered amnesty if he would retire from piracy and he accepted. Teach assumed command of the crew and soon captured a 26 gun French man-of-war and renamed it “Queen Anne’s Revenge” which became the flagship in his fleet of four pirate ships manned by over 200 men. It was during this time that Teach was given the sobriquet of “Blackbeard”. He was indeed black bearded and when entering battle he would tie fuses into his beard and light them and the resulting smoke would wreath his head and face which scared the crap out of his opponents. His crews were able to loot over 30 ships and were known to be exceptionally cruel. In May of 1718, two of his ships were shipwrecked including his flagship. He chose to abandon one of the remaining ships and sailed into Bath, North Carolina with the remaining ship. He had a conference with North Carolina governor Charles Eden and promised the good governor a part of his booty if he would allow Teach to use Bath as his headquarters and Eden agreed. At the behest of a group of Virginia planters, the Governor of Virginia, John Spotswood, sent a fleet of British men-of-war led by Lieutenant Robert Maynard to hunt down and eliminate this threat to shipping in the Chesapeake and the coast of Virginia. The British cornered Blackbeard off the Coast of Okracoke Island, North Carolina and a bloody battle ensued. Maynard prevailed and Blackbeard was killed. What happened was a Scottish Highlander with one of those terrible two handed swords jumped in front of Blackbeard and engaged in a duel. He struck Blackbeard on the shoulder and he complimented the Scotsman on his skill. The Scotsman said “If you liked that one, here is another” and with a backhanded move beheaded Blackbeard with one stroke.

1942 Earlier Adolph Hitler had ordered the launch of Operation Barbarossa which was the invasion of Russia. There were three German armies involved and were traveling in parallel courses. The center army surrounded the Russian city of Stalingrad and set about a siege. Millions of Russians died of disease and starvation. On this date the Russian army completed the encirclement of the Germans at Stalingrad which cut off the supplies to them. It was just a matter of time before the German commander surrendered his army of 250,000 troops and hundreds of tanks, artillery and various other tools of war. No more than 6,000 German soldiers from that army made back home. War is hell.

Born today:

1958 US actress Jamie Lee Curtis. When asked about her acting in the nude she said “I think while they are up and firm, I should use them to my benefit.”

        Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow