Thursday

                            Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“I don’t want to hear that we are ‘holding our position’. We are not holding anything. We will let the “Hun” do that. We are advancing constantly and not hold on to anything except the Germans. We are going to hold him by the nose and kick him in the ass.”

                                                 

US General George S. Pattonli lll

At one time there was a Lebanese immigrant as part of my social group. He had immigrated to escape the civil war that was taking place between the Muslims and the Christians in the early and mid 1980's. He was a soldier in the Christian Militia. He and I had many long conversations about the middle east and the problems involved. He said the problem is the Shia Muslims wanting to take over the world by force if necessary. I asked him what is the solution and he said the Christian Militia had the answer...kill them all, man, women and child. But the world media began showing what was going on over there and their covert funding dried up.

A friend of mine said that one of her acquaintances was a Marine in Lebanon in that time period. He was introduced to a Russian soldier and in their conversation the Russian pointed at himself and said “We are not your problem, they are your problem” pointing to a group of Muslim children playing nearby.

I finished two books this past weekend. One of them was “Picked By the King” and the other was “Teaching the Pig to Dance”. I met the author of “Picked By the King” (Frieda Stroble) when she had a table set up in the lobby of my favorite watering hole which is a pretty fancy-schmantzy sushi restaurant with a small bar. She and I talked a while and I took one of her books home. It was not what I had expected. This woman is a half Lumbee Indian from the cotton and tobacco belt of South Carolina. She and her family suffered incredible racial intimidation and discrimination most of her formative years. They were denied many things simply because they were dark skinned. Before the tenet of “separate but equal” was struck down by the Supreme Court, there were signs everywhere in the Dillon, South Carolina (the closest city to their farm) area say “White Only” and that included Indians as well as blacks. She finally was able to go to a “white” high school and essentially was ostracized for the entire time and it scarred her forever. The book was about her time as a hair dresser in a “retirement home”. My Mom and Dad spent a time in a retirement home and it was not a happy time for either them or the rest of the family, especially me. The author wrote a series of vignettes about her trying to make those men and women in the home happier. The title of the book “Picked by the King” is the author’s belief that God had picked her to be a hair dresser for the elderly making their lives more enjoyable. She is very religious and almost every page made reference to her religion and even included verses from the Bible. In my opinion this distracted from the ebb and flow of the sequence of events and it hinted the she felt herself an evangelist and can read the mind of God. When I spoke with her in person she was very amiable and charming, pretty too. But as most writers know, your soul shows itself when you write. The book was not the type of book that I normally read but I read it in one sitting. I am sorry Frieda, but I must call them the way I see them.

“Teaching the Pig to Dance” was written by former presidential candidate and actor, Fred Thompson. It is the history of Fred’s youth in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. Fred’s father was a truck driver/used car dealer and the book was again a series of vignettes about his youth and the association with his father and the rest of his family. Frankly, even though I am a fan of Fred Thompson, this book appeared to be written as an afterthought or to fulfill a contract with a publisher. It was very frothy and without a lot of substance. The title came from a quote Fred made about learning Latin in high school. He said “Trying to teach me Latin would be like teaching a pig to dance. It would be exasperating for the teacher and irritating to the pig.” Stay to acting and politics, Fred…Literature ain’t your bag.

This Date in History June 22

1609 Two years earlier English navigator Henry Hudson had set sail from England aboard his ship Discovery having been tasked by Dutch merchants with finding a northwest passage to the Pacific ocean and the Orient without having to sail around the toe of South America known as Cape Horn. A passage around this headland was a major undertaking in any season. It was always stormy and very dangerous. Hudson sailed into New York, Delaware and the Chesapeake bays seeking a passage west. It was Hudson that was the first European that sailed up the river that bears his name to this day. No passage was found and when he tried the present day Hudson Bay in Canada he realized that he could not stay in this environment through the winter. His exit from the river back into the Atlantic became blocked with ice so he did the next best thing and anchored his boat as far south as he could and prepared to wait for spring. Henry and his crew were on the cusp of freezing and starving to death all winter long. As you might suspect the crew got really pissed and decided to mutiny when it got warmer and the ice began to melt. They set Henry, his son and seven loyal crew members adrift in a small boat none of which were ever seen or heard from again. It was Henry’s voyage up the present day Hudson River that gave the Dutch claim to that part of the New World and the English a claim to Hudson Bay. Once the crew reached England they were captured and tried for mutiny but were not executed because their knowledge of the New World was immeasurable.

2006 On this date the second trial of Andrea Yates began. Yates was the mother that drowned her three children in the bathtub of her Texas home. She had drowned her two sons aged 7 and 5 plus her 6 year old daughter. At her trial in 2001 she had given a not guilty plea by reason of insanity. During this trial the prosecution had gotten a conviction for 1^st degree murder and had presented a psychiatrist as an “expert witness” and later it was discovered that his credentials were false and her conviction was thrown out. In this trial there was no doubt that his bitch was crazy as a loon. She had been taking many types of psychiatric drugs and even had attempted suicide three times in the past. How could this lunatic be allowed to be a caretaker of little children? In this trial she was acquitted of first degree murder but convicted of murder but not aware of the consequences of her acts. In other word, she was crazy as a shit house mouse. With this conviction she could not be given a life sentence in a correctional facility but there is no doubt in any Texan’s mind that this beast will be is a nut house for the rest of her days. I read a little about her first trial and she said that the 7 year old by fought hard but she overpowered him and he went underwater screaming “No, Moma, no!” Yates claimed that the Devil was inside her and she was afraid he would get into her children. She was partially right.

                Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow