Wednesday

                         Musing and History

Quote of the day:

“The easiest job in the world has to be a coroner. Doing surgery on dead people. What is the worst that could happen?”

                                                 Dennis Miller

I have a friend whose house was destroyed in the flooding in Louisiana, Baton Rouge in particular. He is rebuilding for the second time in 10 years. His house was also destroyed courtesy of Hurricane Gustav in 2008. The homeowners were given rules to go by when cleaning out their destroyed household goods. They want the debris is six different piles primarily to protect the environment and for safety. They want those flammable products like paint, paint thinner, turpentine, etc. in a separate pile, electronics in a separate pile...I suspect because the the lead bearing solder and the gold, silver and platinum in the circuit boards. They want appliances in a separate pile I suspect because many of them have mercury switches. Mercury is deadly if ingested. Then it is regular household goods.

My friend sent me a photo of one of his neighbors that had a sign on his debris piles saying “No looting or I start shooting.” I would hope that they were not talking about their trash being protected by firearms, that stuff is going to end up in a landfill somewhere anyway. My friend assured me that the sign was indeed about protecting their trash piles even from those people that have nothing and come looking for anything to help. How can anyone be that shallow, protecting their garbage so no one else can have it and willing to kill for it? They are out there, folks. As I have said before “Crises brings out the best...and the worst in human nature.”

Here are words of a Patriot:

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”

Teddy Roosevelt...1907 

           This Date in History   September 6

1916 The first successful tracked military vehicle rolled out of an assembly plant in Great Britain. Because this vehicle was made in secret in a plant that made water tanks, the vehicle was called a “tank”. The British chose this plant site so they could bring in a lot of metal plates and not arouse suspicion. Most of the countries involved in WW1 were desperately trying to find a way to overcome trench warfare and a tracked vehicle that could cross over the trenches was the answer. England started making tanks at a furious pace and soon trench warfare was a thing of the past.

1948 Germany finally got back on it feet when the allies release all of the former Nazi regime’s assets. This was prompted by the recovery and successful operation of the VW plant in Wolfsburg. The VW beetle was the largest selling automobile in Europe.

1863 Confederate soldiers abandoned Fort Wagner located on the southern rim of Charleston harbor. In January the US navy had been given the task of capturing Charleston, S.C. US Admiral Samuel I. DuPont tried to enter the harbor with 8 warships and had his ass handed to him by the batteries on Fort Wagner. DuPont ordered his ships to turn around and go back to sea out of range of Fort Wagner’s guns. The US military knew that Fort Wagner had to be neutralized before the capture of Charleston was possible. The famous 54^th Mass. Regiment tried a land assault and was repulsed with many, many casualties. The 54^th, by the way, was the first all black unit in the US army. Later on CSA Gen. Beauregard saw that the continued defense of Fort Wagner was not possible and ordered it abandoned. The capture of Charleston came much later.

1847 Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau moved out of his shack on Walden Pond and moved in with the Ralph Waldo Emerson family. Emerson had been a close friend of Thoreau’s for several years he being a transcendentalist also. Thoreau was a Harvard graduate and he and his brother opened a school. Henry, while on a canoe trip, decides that teaching ain’t his bag and chooses to write essays and poetry like Emerson. Wonder what happened on that canoe trip that made him change his mind? He is successful with his books On Walden Pond and Civil Disobedience among others. It is interesting to note that Mohandas Ghandi, the architect of India’s separation and independence from Great Britain admittedly used Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience almost as a guide book in his search for independence. Thoreau was also an avid abolitionist also and was active in the “underground railroad”. He died in 1882.

1901 President William McKinley is shot by an anarchist assassin named Czolgosz, the pronunciation of this name is discretionary. McKinley was the first president to have body guards around him but these guys did not stop the assassin when he walked up to the President with his right hand out and a handkerchief covering his left hand and the gun. They did, however, beat the shit out of the assassin after he had put 2 rounds into the McKinley. It was McKinley that stopped the body guards from killing him. McKinley died of gangrene a week later.

1844 Explorer/cartographer John C. Fremont saw the Great Salt Lake and mapped it. Fremont was not the first honky to see this sight. Mountain men had been coming back east and talking about the lake since the 1820’s. Fremont’s maps of the western lands were critical to those pioneers and settlers that followed. Had it not been for these maps the settling of the west would have come much later and a much higher price. Fremont was not a person that knew how to live off the land, he hired mountain men and people like Kit Carson to guide and advise him. Fremont was also made a US General during the War Between the States. It was soon apparent that being a field commander in combat was not his calling and he resigned and went back to exploring. He died in 1890.

Born today:

1757 French adventurer Marquis de Lafayette. He said “If the liberties of America are ever lost, it will be at the hands of the clergy.” I hope those are not the words of the future but the actions of the evangelicals are worrisome.

1964 US actress Rosie Perez. She said “Yes, they are real and they are mine.” It doesn’t matter to me Rosie; I am an ass and leg man.

             Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow