Thursday

                         Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“I never gave them hell, I just told the truth and they thought it was hell”

                                            Harry S. Truman

I was just reading about the Revolutionary War and the account of an army of 8,000 redcoats led by General Burgoyne that headed south from Canada into upstate New York. They were guided by 400 American Indians that sided with England hoping they would be able to keep their hereditary lands. A band of 500 Patriot sharpshooters led by Daniel Morgan harassed this army every step of the way. They did not stand shoulder to shoulder and fire from an exposed position, they sniped at them. The first target was the native guides and after a few hundred were killed, the rest disappeared and the redcoats had no one to get them through the endless forests. Morgan then ordered his men to take out the officers which left the army with no leadership. Burgoyne surrendered to Patriot General Horatio Gates and soon thereafter France declared war on England which meant that England had to fight a war on two continents. It was all downhill after that.

               This Date in History   May 18

1980 Two weeks before geologist set up sophisticated monitoring equipment around the Cascade Range volcano Mount Saint Helens because of ominous rumblings and small earthquakes nearby. Park Rangers had been warned by the geologists that there would be an eruption very, very soon and the Rangers went throughout the countryside warning campers and loggers that they had better get the hell out. I remember one resident on the north side of the volcano named Harry Truman, believe it or not, who said that he is not going to leave his home on a small lake at the base of the mountain no matter what. The Rangers asked him who was his next of kin and old Harry just blew them off. On this date the entire north flank Mount Saint Helens collapsed with a thunderous roar and ash and pumice are blown 80,000 feet into the air not to mention a pyroplastic flow of white hot ash throughout the countryside. If I recall correctly there were 26 deaths primarily to suffocation from the ash piling up to several feet thick and it being scalding hot also. There are always some people who do not get the message or choose to ignore it. Later on the Park Rangers went to try and find Harry Truman and not a scrap of Harry nor was any part of his house was ever found. Not only that, the pond filled up with ash and is meadow now. Harry is under there somewhere defiant to the end.

1783 On this date the so-called United Loyalists land near Parrtown, Nova Scotia (now New Brunswick) to establish new residences. These jackasses were residents of the United States but chose to stay loyal to the English crown during the Revolutionary War and many of them fought with the British army and navy. Now that the Treaty of Paris had been signed meaning that Great Britain had granted independence to the United States and that put the Loyalists between a rock and a hard place because the Americans considered them to be traitors and treated them accordingly. The Loyalists rightly decided it would be to their advantage and get the hell out of Dodge. England offered the Loyalist a small parcel of land in Canada if they immigrated. For several years their life was not an easy one because the land was occupied by a French speaking population who resented and anglophile squatters. England had given the Loyalists 200 acres each which was not really arable lands. But they made their bed, let them lay in it.

1926 On this date the Billy Graham of her day, evangelist Aimee Simple McPherson disappeared from her very popular Angelus Cathedral in Los Angeles. Almost from the time that she opened the church in 1923, she preached to overflow crowds. But now she was nowhere to be found. Hundreds of searchers scoured the countryside and the bays and rivers to no avail. About the same time a radio announcer named Kenneth Ormiston also disappeared. About two weeks later Aimee showed up in a small town in New Mexico saying that she had been kidnapped. But the truth finally came out that she and Kenneth Ormiston had spent the entire two weeks together contemplating the meaning of life. They finally figured out that the meaning of life was to experience all the pleasure life had to offer in the shortest period of time. Needless to say that Aimee’s evangelism and church went down the toilet. The religious zealots of then and now do not cut anybody any slack when it comes to worldly pleasures. An interesting bit of trivia is that it was Aimee that baptized Marilyn Monroe in spite of her over sized flotation devices.

1593 Two well know and talented playwrights named Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd were roommates in London. On occasion the church would inspect writer’s productions to see if they were writing anything adverse to church doctrine. This bullshit is also one of the main reasons that America came into being. Anyway, the church was not pleased with what they found and accused Thomas Kyd of heresy but Kyd told the churchmen that what they read was written by Christopher Marlowe. So they went an found Marlowe and arrested him for heresy. The difference was that Marlowe was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I and had probably spied for her on occasion. She ordered Marlowe to be released. That night Christopher went out to the local tavern to celebrate his release. I think he got half in the bag and decided to argue about his tab with the bartender. He got into a fight with the bartender and he inserted a knife into Marlowe’s liver and he was gone in a matter of minutes. Moral: Pay your freaking bar tab.

1943 On this date Adolph Hitler initiated Operation Alaric. This came about because Hitler had been watching with interest the ineptness of the Italian army even to defending their own country. Hitler knew that the Allies were coming to invade Sicily and eventually Italy and Hitler did not want to see Italy collapse without a fight or repulse of the Allies. Operation Alaric was to move a well-oiled German army under the command of General Alfred Kesselring into Italy and Sicily at the first sign of the Italian army getting their ass beat. He did not have to wait long. The Italian were smashed in North Africa by a British army half its size. After that Kesselring and his army moved into Italy and began building formidable defenses for which the Allies paid in blood to cross over, but they got the job done and the Germans were eventually kicked out of Italy.

                 Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow