http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/12/bravery_outshines_public_humil.html
Sphere: Related ContentSunday, December 30, 2007
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
Hero or homicidal?
http://www.idahostatesman.com/apusnews/story/221511.html
Texan kills thieves burglarizing neighbors house
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Woody Guthrie
"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing.
Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.
I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built.
I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work."
Woody on Songwriting
Monday, October 15, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Retired generals rising up against Iraq war
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/266638_solarosub16.html
In one sense, this "revolt" is the last act of the Vietnam War. The current generation of generals served as junior officers during Vietnam, where they swore that, when they held the senior positions, they would never collapse before civilian delusion and zealotry, as had so many of that era's leaders. They sensed, back then, a moral rot at the top. Zinni took to heart the day he was shot three times in Vietnam, and promised that if he lived, he would always say what he thought was right. He has. An early opponent of the Iraq war, he was called a "traitor" by the White House. Now Newbold, who served as director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff until October 2002, cites an old anti-Vietnam song, "Won't Get Fooled Again" and concludes: We were.
Sphere: Related ContentFriday, September 21, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Saturday, September 8, 2007
William Kathan Jr.
http://mrbillydf.com/about.html
"Cheaters can't be beaters."
Friday, September 7, 2007
Heroic Raven's Save the Day
RICHARD COCKLE
The Oregonian
BAKER CITY -- Baker County sheriff's Deputy Travis Ash and Oregon State Police Trooper Chris Hawkins had Thursday off, so they decided to take their ATVs and go looking for a 76-year-old Sandy woman who had been missing for more than two weeks in the rugged Wallowa Mountains.
Thirty miles northeast of Baker City, they left a rough Forest Service road and headed down a steep, brushy canyon because Ash felt they had not searched it well enough before.
That's when they heard a soft, childlike voice and spotted ravens circling overhead.
Fourteen days after she became separated from her husband on a bow hunting expedition and after weeks of searching by dozens of others, Ash and Hawkins found Doris Anderson lying at the bottom of a narrow canyon a mile off the road.
"What alerted us was birds; we heard ravens," Ash said. "We could hear her talking to herself; it sounded real faint, like a child."
Click on link for complete story:
http://www.oregonlive.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news/1189146473256860.xml&coll=7
It seems that I've heard of several cases in the last few years of searches of these types being suspended earlier than they should have. Can't help but wonder if we didn't have so many of our capable men based overseas for dubious purposes, that our 'homeland security' wouldn't be short-staffed, resulting in these short-lived searches.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Michael D. Mori
From Unknown News:
"The United States can be very proud of Major Mori. He stands for those "American" values that George Bush and his cronies trumpet long and loud, but rarely seem to uphold. He is proof that there are still people of integrity in the United States. And as an Australian, I am grateful to Major Mori, for reminding the public at large in Australia of our concept that everyone deserves a fair go. Thank you, Major Mori, for restoring my faith in the sheer decency (of most) of my fellow human beings."
Sphere: Related Content
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Rod Langway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Langway
Back in the 80's, my father was in the position to provide the Washington Capital's hockey team with some courtesy loaner Volvo cars. In exchange for this, the team management provided the car dealership with four sets of season tickets, together in a good seating area.
Meanwhile, dad also became involved with the Big Brothers organization and started mentoring Billy. Several years before, a farmer with a shotgun, angered by a broken windshield on his car, around near where Billy’s brother and some friends had been partying, killed Billy’s biological big brother.
Dad took Billy out in the evenings to quite a few games, helping the situation so that Billy felt like a real hotshot and could bear life again. Occasionally, after winning hockey games, they went down together into the locker room to visit the players. After meeting the savior of the Washington Capitals, Rod Langway, shaking his hand and briefly conversing with him, Billy was in awe. Mr. Langway's should know his brief minutes of kindness left a lasting impression.
Occasionally, Billy would call dad at the showroom; and if Dave Dando or I happened to be walking by, Dad would quickly hand us the phone after saying to Billy, "Hey Billy, your hero Rod Langway just stopped here by to say hello.” Suddenly saddled with this impromptu test, Dave or I would speak to Billy in our deepest voice, while impersonating Mr. Langway, “Thanks for coming to our game last week. I looked up in the stands and saw you there clapping for us" -and things of that nature.
These heroic phone impersonations probably occurred a dozen times. It felt like the right thing to do, enthusiastically perpetuating this hero myth - as Billy certainly needed a boost at the time.
Thinking back on it now, we weren’t steering a myth at all, but reality. Certainly, Mr. Langway would have not minded that we were speaking kind words of encouragement on his behalf to a young troubled boy.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Joe Darby
"His decision to hand them over rather than keep quiet changed his life forever."
"I had a raincoat hanging up for a door. Like I said to my room mate, they could reach their hand in the door - because I slept right by the door - and cut my throat without making a noise, or anybody knowing what was going on, and I was scared of that."
When the accused soldiers were finally removed from the base, he thought his troubles were over.
And then he was sitting in a crowded Iraqi canteen with hundreds of soldiers and Donald Rumsfeld came on the television to thank Joe Darby by name for handing in the photographs.
"I don't think it was an accident because those things are pretty much scripted," Mr Darby says.
"But I did receive a letter from him which said he had no malicious intent, he was only doing it to praise me and he had no idea about my anonymity.
"I really find it hard to believe that the secretary of defence of the United States has no idea about the star witness for a criminal case being anonymous."
Rather than turn on him for betraying colleagues, most of the soldiers in his unit shook his hand. It was at home where the real trouble started."
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Poet Ferlinghetti chased subs in WW2
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/11/11/MNGE4MATPT1.DTL
Sphere: Related Content
"But while serving aboard the troop transport Selinur, he had his most transformative experience of the war. Originally, the Selinur was supposed to deliver attack troops. But after atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan surrendered, the men aboard were reassigned to occupation duty. They arrived in Sasebo on the Japanese island of Kyushu in September 1945, not far from Nagasaki.
With two friends, Ferlinghetti secured enough leave to take a train up to Nagasaki to see the devastated area just six weeks after the atom bomb had exploded.
"I saw a giant field of scorched mulch. It sprawled out to the horizon, 3 square miles looking like someone had worked it over with a huge blowtorch. A few sticks from buildings jutted up like black arms," Ferlinghetti says. "I found a teacup that seemed like it had human flesh fused into it, just melted into the porcelain.
"In that instant," says Ferlinghetti, "I became a total pacifist."
It's long been argued that using atomic bombs to compel Japan's unconditional surrender actually saved millions of lives that would have been lost on both sides had the Allies been forced to invade.
Ferlinghetti disagrees.
"It was a monstrous, racist act, the worst the U.S. ever committed," he says. "Had the Japanese been white-skinned, those bombs would not have dropped.""
Sunday, July 29, 2007
True Champions
http://www.californiacommunity.com/business2/truewinners.htm
| TRUE WINNERS... | ||
A few years ago, at the Seattle Special Olympics, nine contestants, all physically or mentally disabled, assembled at the starting line for the 100-yard dash. | ||
Charles Kearney
"Imagination is what got me through this blindness."
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/07/blinded_by_acid_now_he_gives_s.html?hpid=news-col-blogs
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Friday, July 27, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Tim Quietly Conquers Idaho
-Reminisces of an amazing bicycling savant
In 1998, Tim visited me here in Idaho to triumph over some great mountains. This was the same summer that Roger Maris’s fabled home run record was finally surpassed. Days after work, my friends begin asking; “How many homers did Sosa and McGuire slug out over the fence, and what high mountain peak or ultra-marathon feat did Tim accomplish today?”
This was Tim’s third visit to Idaho. We had been close friends since 1969, when in fourth grade we used to construct elaborate mazes for each other in Mrs. Adams’s class. Tim was probably the quietest boy there. We were both shy on our outsides and would regressively mirror our quietude into each other, with these evermore-challenging paper traps -trying so hard to stump one another. Though we were mostly silent boys, our constant Tom-Sawyer-foolery, did not make us the apples of Mrs. Adam’s eye. When I wrote about this before, in a memoir called “Solid Oak View Memories”, which ended up published on our alumni website, Tim strongly defended himself, by saying that other children back then also partook of the Huck-Finn-Foolery and were constructing elaborate mazes during instructional periods.
It only occurred to me later, that Tim was defending himself, because, now in his forties, he still lived with his mother and that when she got wind of this newest paper trap, that she might still say, “Tim what was it that you and Jim meant to do by constructing baffling mazes in class?” Especially now that Tim had struggled at Virginia Tech, withdrawing from school there the year after his fathers agonizing defeat by cancer.
Upon Tim’s non-victorious return from college, it was easy to see the burden manifest in his pinkish face -and now with his dad not around for emotional and financial support. Out of our high school group, Tim and I were the only stragglers left, apparently destined to scrabble through life with a series of underpaid janitorial and maintenance man jobs.
And I with my own far-fetched emotional trauma recovery plan from Pluto, Idaho.
Perhaps we became closer friends through default. Nonetheless, our friendship grew and besides often working together, we begin training for elaborate athletic events. Together we would construct intricate bike routes traveling through the hilly labyrinths of Virginia suburbia, often bicycling in fifty-mile neighborhood loops all the way down to George Washington’s Home at Mount Vernon. Tim would usually draft me, letting the pull of my wind drag him along, as back then I was the stronger rider, probably from all those basketball years.
When I first moved to Idaho, It was another big blow to Tim as he only had sisters and now I- his brother from another mother was essentially gone. When he came out here, we essentially jumped back to where we had left off with our friendship. Allowing little time for altitude adjustment Tim started pumping up hills his first week out here. Evidently, after I left Virginia, the bicycling hobby we enjoyed together grew into an all-consuming passion for Tim. He would take weekend trips; in one-day ride all the way from Boston to Rhode Island, and back alongside busy highways –unless of course for his magical mystery tour, he could predetermine some elaborate backdoor blue-jay-way labyrinth. He looked good too. Healthier than I had ever seen him. This bicycling Zen of his had even allowed him to break whatever barrier it was that was holding in his shyness and people discovered that once you scratched the surface with Tim that he was filled with unlimited intelligence and richly humorous insights.
Compared to conditions back east, chugging up to Galena Summit from Hailey was a cakewalk for Tim, with its elements of good road surface, steady grade and sparse traffic.
The second week of his trip, he decided to go for broke and do the fabled Dollarhide Summit loop on an old mountain bike. Exactly, what some people might consider ninety-eight miles of agony was something Tim embraced. The bike he rode didn’t even have shocks. He started out from Hailey around ten. I was hoisting rocks with Gene Olson for some chimneys in Lane Ranch and told Tim that I would drive out Warm Springs around seven –until I could find him.
Tim had gone straight out Croy Canyon, over Richardson Summit and that back ways towards Fairfield. Unfamiliar with the area, he became temporarily bewildered, but soon figured out the answer to the maze with his oversized map. He took the correct turn at that inviting sign below Soldier that says “Ketchum 55 miles”. A sign that every spring some Fairfield cowboy gets his gander up and tries to romanticizingly wahoo over the pass; only to get quagmired in mud, and then has to wander back unprepared to town with blister boots and tail between legs. Then call Dick York and with a ticked off gaze, ride shotgun in the retrieval tow truck never establishing eye contact with the fellow travelors in the area, who all know he’s the durn fool that tipped it this year.
Tim pedaled up that long rocky dirt grade. He passed a few campers, but being the middle of the week and not yet hunting season, there weren’t many folks around. He noticed the ninety-foot tall Indian face chiseled in stone by mother nature, which guards over one of Idaho’s perpetually best hot springs, but even though nobody was soaking today he didn’t take time to temporarily sooth his legs.
Tim had bigger fish to fry than what Warswick Hot Springs could provide.
The steeper grade leading to Dollarhide summit remained to rise over as Tim continued pumping and grinding furiously to defeat everything that stood in his path. As he weighed up the hill, he wrestled with bumpy ‘warshboards’ and rocks that could throw you, which twinged his arms to sleep with their constant pounding. Dust filled the chain rings, but the little two hundred-dollar bike held up amazingly with only one flat.
He made it to the summit around 5:30. To loosen up he took a few victory hops. Later on, I took a photograph of him standing there with his bike and believe that this depiction deserves placement on a pedestal next to a shimmering waterfall birdbath.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
At 7:30 I came around Frenchman’s bend, discovering Tim halfway between there and Rook’s Creek. His arms were sore, he was a mite dusty and the headlamp burned out from the bumps. But he was in high spirits. I duct taped a flashlight to his handlebars and insisted (forced?) him to drink a cool Budweiser. He started to speak about the trip and some of its tedium, but insisted that he would try to complete the full loop. I went back to Baldy View Apts., where in darkness, around ten o’clock -exactly twelve hours after he had begun, Tim triumphantly returned.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Marine's won't kick out Vet
Marines may come out to be the ultimate heroes in this situation:
http://www.journalnet.com/articles/2007/06/29/news/local/news01.txt
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Heavy Water and the Norwegians
Another gem from DamnInteresting.com http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=848#more-848
Sphere: Related Content
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Marine Corps Wants America's Favorite Marine To Shut Up
And while right-wingers had no problem mocking the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, they have a tougher time mocking an actual living Marine male veteran who actually fought in the war they just write about on their blogs. Plus, you get the feeling he wouldn’t mind beating the shit out of, say, the entire staff of National Review Online … and that they’d probably enjoy it, too.
http://wonkette.com/politics/dept'-of-we-could-be-heroes/marine-corps-wants-americas-favorite-marine-to-shut-up-264911.phpSphere: Related Content
Selfless Service
Private James Banholzer
Fighting in the First World War was scheduled to cease at 11 A.M. on 11 November 1918, and all American troops in France hoped to be alive and unwounded when the shooting stopped that morning.
Private James Banholzer was a medic serving with the 128th Infantry Regiment, 32nd Infantry Division as a final flurry of fighting took place near Ecurey at approximately 0900. Banholzer had remarked to a comrade that morning that:
“If I were to get killed on the last day of the war, I would never get over it.”
As his unit suffered casualties Banholzer never hesitated in leaving cover to go to their aid. He was killed in action while tending the last Americans to be wounded in World War I. He was also the last of 2257 medical corpsmen to be killed in action during that conflict.
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