The Sun, She Shines, at Least in Kansas!

 

by Pa Rock

Road Warrior

Rosie and I are back at the home of the Macys of Roeland Park, Kansas, after an absence of a couple of months.   We are in town to see a production of "Little Shop of Horrors" at the KC Rep with Tim and Erin and the kids tomorrow night.  I've seen the movie multiple times, and the extremely funny material should translate well to a live stage production.

"Feed me, Seymour!"

The drive to the Kansas City area was relatively quick today - I must have gotten behind faster pace cars than I normally do.  We didn't encounter much worthy of comment on the drive up - one dead deer and one dead black cow along the roadway.  One very large SUV roared past us, and I saw a sign on its door the said "FREEDOM" in big letters and then something below that I couldn't read in smaller print - and it had a plain "Trump" sticker on the back bumper.   It's been quite a while since I've seen a "Trump / Pence" bumper sticker or a yard sign.  A couple of months ago, somewhere down around Mountain Home, Arkansas, I saw a 'Trump" bumper sticker on a truck and could tell that the "Pence" part had been cut off.  Waste not, want not!

Today, a few miles south of Clinton, Missouri, I came upon and passed an old pickup truck with a camper shell.  The back window of the camper shell had been hand-painted in white lettering with three messages:  "Love My Country," "Read Your History," and "Fear the Govt!"  I stared into the vehicle's cab as I passed to gain a full appreciation of the messenger.   He was an old man, about my age, with long, stringy hair and wearing sunglasses.  He looked as though he might have good reason to fear the government!

Tim and Erin's neighbors have a large sign attached to the front of his house that says "Veterans Against Trump."  I know that he is a former marine, and their son is a current member of the US Marine Corps.  

I'm thinking about getting a bumper sticker to promote a poignant message on my drive west at the end of June, but haven't found one yet that is important - yet won't cause me to disappear along some North Dakota backroad. Suggestions are being solicited with his blog-posting.

It is a beautiful day in the Kansas City suburbs of Kansas, blue skies, trees already heavy with leaves of green, and yards that are lush and green.  It's been raining for several days, but today this area is catching a break - and hopefully will tomorrow as well.  We had been having a very dry spring in southern Missouri, but it began raining last Thursday and has been coming down fairly steadily for the last four days, with more rain expected this week!   Next weekend should be a busy one for me and the monster mower!

But for today I am just going to kick back and enjoy watching other people's grass grow - and occasionally smile at the neighbor's sign!

Semper Fi!

Bloodbath in South Dakota

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Cruelty seems to be a big part of the DNA structure of Republican politicians.  They use their power in government to actively interfere with women's most basic health care needs and place lives at risk, they defund schools and make it much more difficult for minorities and children of lesser means to get a decent education, they fight to curtail programs that feed, clothe, and house people in need, they complain about programs that feed children at school, they ban books and work to suppress free speech,  they fight against unions and oppose a livable minimum wage, they place public health at risk by actively ignoring or denying science, they ridicule and fight efforts to promote clean energy alternatives and deny climate change, they strive to tell people who they can and cannot love, they hustle immigrants onto buses and planes and ship them to remote parts of the country, they string razor wire along public waterways and encourage vigilantism to combat situations they personally do not like, they write and pass legislation to get more guns into the hands of more people,  and now, it would seem, they also kill puppies and pet goats.

South Dakota's Governor Kristi Noem, a 52-year-old Republican with a pretty face who thought she had a chance to be Donald Trump's running mate this year, has stumbled and fallen over her own words.  Noem, whose second autobiography, a book entitled "No Going Back," is scheduled to be published in May, gave an interview to "The Guardian" newspaper in which she went into detail over some of the things she had written about in her new book.

One of the stories Kristi Noem, a wife and mother of three, told was of "Cricket," a fourteen-month-old dog, a "wire-haired pointer," that she had bought to use for hunting pheasants.  Poor Cricket, whom the press has been referring to as a "puppy," proved to be too exuberant for hunting pheasants, so Kristi Noem took the sensible step of shooting the bouncy puppy dead and burying her in a gravel pit.   Apparently some construction workers witnessed the assassination, and that may be why the politician and author felt compelled to mention it in her book -  better to bring it up herself, in her own words, than have some scurrilous reporter dig it up and report it in a way that would make Noem appear to be cold and brutal while she was busy running for Vice President.

(Is a fourteen-month-old dog a puppy?  I have a thirteen-month-old dog at my house, and she is definitely a puppy!  The answer is yes.  They quit chewing things and begin to settle down at about two years - if you are lucky!)

The same day that Noem whacked her puppy, she went on to shoot the family's pet goat whom she described as "nasty and mean" - and foul smelling.  While sitting with the reporter from "The Guardian" recounting that day of unbridled bloodlust, the South Dakota governor also mentioned that "we"just had to put down three horses a few weeks before the interview that had been in "our" family for twenty-five years.

(Are there grandparents in the family that somebody should be checking on?)

It is unclear why Kristi Noem chose to mention the killings of the puppy and the goat in her memoir because stories like that tend to put most people off, but one reporter speculated that she may have been encouraged to include them by her very close personal friend, Corey Lewandowski, a political operative and Donald Trump's first campaign manager, who might have convinced the South Dakota governor that appearing tough would make her more attractive to Trump as a potential running mate.

Cricket would probably beg to differ.

Campus Protests are Rapidly Spreading

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The student protests which originated on the campus of Columbia University in New York City two weeks ago has been rapidly spreading across the United States and even beyond the country's borders and are now in evidence in literally dozens of universities and colleges.   The protests have been. controversial, especially among politicians seeking to use the turmoil for their own advancement, but for the most part they have also been relatively peaceful with most focused on calls for their own schools to withdraw their investments from companies that are supporting Israel's war effort and the on-going genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Republicans in the US House of Representatives seem particularly distressed that the demonstrations and encampments have not resulted in more turmoil and violence.  Several Republican members of the House went to Columbia and spoke in what seemed to be efforts to convince Jewish students that they are victims on-going antisemitism.  And as those politicians try to stir up disorder and commotion on the one hand, with the other they are demanding that President Biden call up the National Guard to quell the conflict which they are trying to create.  That would make for some great visuals which they could then use in their campaigns as evidence that America is so off-the-rails that it takes the military to keep the peace on campus.

Sweet.

House Speaker Mike Johnson went to Columbia on Wednesday, again trying to stir some rage, and he was mildly successful with the student protesters turning on him personally and shouting down much of what he was droning on about.  "Mike, you suck!"  seemed to be the most popular chant of the day!

Donald Trump, a man who does not have the self-control to stay quiet even when it would be to his advantage, has, of course, weighed in on the campus protests.  Trump compared them to the major white nationalist rally that happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 while he was in the White House.  Trump said that major gathering of racists and extremists in Charlottesville was "peanuts" compared to today's college demonstrations.  (One peaceful counter-protester in Charlottesville was killed and others injured when one of the participating white nationalists drove his car into a group of people carrying signs supporting racial justice.)   Trump also regards the rioters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as "patriots," and has vowed to officially pardon them if he is again elected to the presidency.    The actions the January 6th rioters and insurrectionists resulted in the deaths of uniformed Capitol policemen - but Trump will pardon the rioters who harmed and caused the deaths of policemen.  It's the college kids that he regards as dangerous!

I skimmed several on-line publications this morning to get some idea of how far the campus protest movement over the horror that is happening in Gaza has spread.  Some of the schools have reacted more severely than others.    Some have called in police and arrests have been made - and in some places students have behaved worse than in others with things like graffiti, abusive signs, and taunts between groups.    But for the most part, things are staying peaceful.

What follows is a list of some of the schools where encampments and student protests over the war on Gaza are taking place.  They are in no particular order - just the order in which I came across them on the internet:

Columbia, Barnard, University of Pennsylvania, University of Illinois, New York University, Princeton, University of Southern California, University of Colorado (Denver), Emory University, George Washington University, Ohio State University, University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), University of Texas (Austin), Virginia Tech, Yale, Arizona State, Brown, University of Michigan, MIT, UCLA, Northwestern, University of Virginia, Fordham, Purdue, Stanford, City University of New York, Emerson College, University of Massachusetts (Amherst), and the University of Florida.

There is also a student encampment and protest occurring at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

The student encampment and protest movement is not a one-off thing that will disappear in relative obscurity.  It is here, it is big, and it is spreading.  Some politicians are trying to control it, guide it, and use it to their political advantage - and other politicians are trying to ignore it to death.  Both groups are very likely misjudging the determination and commitment of the young people who are literally putting their futures on the line to stand up for the rights of an oppressed and critically endangered people half-a-world away.

Fighting oppression and advocating for humanity is not antisemitism, it is basic human  decency.

If we want to battle antisemitism in America, and I definitely believe we should, let's go right to the heart of the matter and take on the Neo-Nazis.  

Student idealism helped to end the war in Vietnam, and it very likely may draw down the suffering and carnage that the Palestinians are experiencing in Gaza today.  Politicians would be well advised to pay attention, but if they won't, they should stand aside and make room for people who will.  

The students are articulating their message well, coast-to-coast and border-to-border (and beyond), and we all need to be listening!

Salute!

Fishing with Magnets

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

On the rare occasion when this blog drifts over into the fine art (or is it a "life skill"?) of fishing, it usually involves something penned by Ranger Bob. the consummate angler who has a special affinity for trout-fishing and tying his own flies.  This past week my personal knowledge of the diverse nature of fishing expanded greatly when I came across an article on an internet news site (CBS.com) which highlighted a true crime - a double murder - that is now closer to being resolved because of a recent discovery made by a fisherman who was fishing a backwoods river in rural Georgia.

(Cue the soundtrack to "Dueling Banjos!")

The fishing enthusiast wasn't trolling the river depths with baited hooks or even hand-tied flies, rather he was using what was undoubtedly a very stout line that was dragging a magnet through the water and across the river bottom.  He was magnet-fishing and pulling in objects containing metal.

The fisherman, whose name was not given in the news story, was fishing Horse Creek in very rural Telfair County, Georgia, on April 14th,  when he pulled up a .22-caliber rifle and a bag containing a cell phone and some personal identification belonging to a couple who had been shot and killed in the area - with .22-caliber ammunition - in 2015.

The couple, who had lived more than three hours from Telfair County, had advertised trying to find a classic Ford Mustang to restore, and a local man from Telfair County answered the ad stating that he had a 1966 Mustang for sale - which he actually did not.   The man and wife drove to the remote county to look at the car, and their bodies were found in two separate locations a couple of days later.  A local man was arrested a few days after that, but due to a legal issue and the pandemic, he is still awaiting trial.  It is now anticipated that he will go on trial in August of this year, and prosecutors say that the new evidence provided by the magnet fisherman will be very useful in the trial.  Georgia is seeking the death penalty for the defendant.

The article at CBS.com also talked doubt some other catches by magnet fishermen in other areas of the United States, everything from unexploded ordinance to knives to historical artifacts.   One magnet fisherman even caught a motorcycle!

I find the concept of fishing with magnets instead of baited hooks appealing for several reasons.  First, perhaps most obviously, is the fact that, regardless of your level of success, you don't have to mess with gutting and cleaning fish.  Second, you might actually catch evidence and help to solve a crime like the fisherman in Telfair County, Georgia, did,  Third, you might come up with something of value which you could then peddle on eBay or at a local flea market.  And, finally, just removing metal from the rivers and lakes is of environmental benefit and makes the waterways safer for public and wildlife use.

This tired old typist would like to know more about the mechanics of the process and how it actually works.

(A practical challenge:  Randy Wayne Leach of Linwood, Kansas, disappeared on April 16th, 1988, after a party during his senior year of high school in an area known for deep rivers, big lakes, and large farm ponds. His mother's car, which Randy had driven to the party, also went missing that night and has never been found.  Could a few ambitious magnet fishermen finally put that mystery and family tragedy to rest?)

The Most Important Republicans of the Past Century?

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

George Will is a well-known conservative commentator who at one time was a regular panelist on “This Week with David Brinkley” where he would spar with the host as well as with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts every Sunday on ABC.  He is currently an opinion columnist with the Washington Post.  There was a quote by George Will in Politico yesterday which captured my attention.  It read:
 

“Tuesday’s Senate ratification of Ukrainian aid proves that Dwight Eisenhower’s baton of Republican internationalism was passed, via Ronald Reagan, to Mitch McConnell.  They are the three most important Republicans of the past 100 years.”

 
Eisenhower?  Probably.  The man who planned and executed the D-Day invasion of Europe certainly knew many of the international leaders, was familiar with the world stage, and managed to get us to a peace agreement in Korea.  Reagan barked a good game, such as when he was demanding that Gorbachev tear down the Berlin Wall, but he was also easily duped and led around by self-serving underlings like Ollie North who saddled him with the Iran-Contra mess.   

But Mitch McConnell?  Seriously, George?  Mitch, the court-packing weasel who has warmed his hands inside of the pockets of every lobbyist in the Free World?   Some of Mitch’s push for US aid to Ukraine is possibly rooted in a desire to maintain US strength on the international stage, but Mitch McConnell is a vindictive, political creature, and he was certainly also motivated to get even with the Trump loyalists in the Senate who pushed him out of his comfy and lucrative GOP leader’s post.    Mitch’s top priority is to take care of Mitch.
 
Surely Richard Nixon who “opened the door to China” would feel slighted by being left off George Will’s list.  
 
But, considering the list of notables that George Will had to draw from, perhaps he did as well as could be expected.  If the Republican Party suddenly came up with a way to rid itself of its Nazis, racists, homophobes, religious fanatics, sexual predators, serial liars, wannabe social media stars, criminals, and other human cockroaches, the leftover pickings would be damned thin.
 
Maybe George Will is right, and Mitch is the cream of the Republican crop.   Even if he is, that’s certainly not much to brag about.

Cher Finally Recognized as Rock and Roll Royalty

 

by Pa Rock

Cher Fan

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, has finally, just this past week, moved to correct and egregious and long-standing error by announcing that recording artist and film star Cher will be included in its next class of inductees.   Cher's full-throated and and unique singing voice has been captivating fans around the world ever since the mid-1960's when she was belting out songs with her then husband, Sonny Bono, that quickly became rock classics.

I had the opportunity to see Cher at a very large concert venue in Kansas City ten years ago next month, and one of the things that I remember from the concert was that she bore a bit of resentment toward some of her fellow artists for what she saw as their inability to accept her a a member of their elite society.  She said that as a singer she was often not recognized by other singers as being a legitimate artist, and she was an actress whom other actors did not readily accept as one of their own.

(Cher has won a Grammy, four Billboard awards, an Emmy, three Golden Globes, and the Best Actress Oscar in 1988 for "Moonstruck," as well as countless other awards and recognitions.)

Last year while appearing on a national talk show, Cher bemoaned the fact that she has continuously been overlooked for inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and said at this point not only would she not accept membership even if she was offered a million dollars to join the group, she also stated that the promoters of the enterprise could go have sex with themselves - but she put it a bit more colorfully, of course.

Well, it's happened.  Cher was nominated and was finally selected for membership in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.   Will she accept the honor, late though it is?  I hope so.

Cher, we are all getting older, and this honor is more than just about you - it is about your legacy, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is one more important place where that should be preserved.   You should allow the group to graciously turn back time and allow you in.   Claim your place in the pantheon of rock and roll royalty by grabbing your well-earned spot in Cleveland.

Do it for your fans, Cher, and do it for you.

Make Cleveland rock!

Cotton and Hawley Seek to Send Military to Campus

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

US Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, both Republicans, are calling on President Biden to federalize the National Guard under the Insurrection Act and send those troops to Columbia University in New York City to deal with student unrest.   Tom Cotton, a senator from Arkansas, tweeted on X:

"If Eric Adams (the mayor of New York City) won't send the NYPD and Kathy Hochul (the governor of New York) won't send the National Guard, Joe Biden has a duty to take charge and break up these mobs."

"Mobs," Tom?  So far it's all been peaceful, including the one hundred student arrests that happened when the NYPD were already called in earlier this week.  If you want to see what an actual mob looks like, Tom, visit the Springdale (Arkansas) Walmart on Black Friday!

Using military force to control peaceful demonstrators is not a good idea, Tom.  It was also a bad idea four years ago when you suggested the same thing in a New York Times editorial as a means of dealing with people who were demonstrating against the police execution of George Floyd.  Is your answer to all domestic discord to bring in the military?  Are you a one-trick pony, Tom?  A flagrant fascist?

Josh Hawley, a senator from Missouri who pays his property taxes to Virginia - and is also known for being a world-class sprinter - harkened back to the days of Eisenhower with his own tweet on X:

"Eisenhower sent the 101st to Little Rock.  It's time for Biden to call out the National Guard at our universities to protect Jewish Americans."

Josh, you do know that there are Jewish groups and Jewish students actually supporting the current wave of student protests, don't you?  And they are all protesting in a peaceful manner.  Do we really need - or want - a military response to peaceful demonstrations?

A better and far more appropriate use of the military would have been for Trump to have called them in to quell the havoc, destruction, injury, and death that the insurrectionists and anarchists loosed on the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021.  Of course, Josh, you might have had a problem with the military responding to that non-peaceful demonstration - since you were outside with your fist in the air egging  the rioters on!  Your hypocrisy is matched only by your abject cowardice!

Run, Josh, run!

How would a military intervention impact what is happening on American campuses?  History would suggest that the result could be tragic.

Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes, a Republican, called in the National Guard in early May of 1970 to deal with demonstrators at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, after the ROTC building had been set on fire.  (Tensions had recently escalated when Nixon announced that he had expanded the Vietnam War into Cambodia.)  Many of the guardsmen who were brought in to contain the demonstrators were no older than the students they were trying to face down, and the young guardsmen were undoubtedly scared and not emotionally prepared for the situation into which they had been thrust.  On May 4th, 1970, national guardsmen fired into a student demonstration and panic ensued.  Four students were shot and killed and nine others wounded.

That's history, that happened.  We do not need or want it repeated at Columbia, NYU, Yale, MIT, Harvard, Berkley, or Missouri State.  We've been there and done that.    Never again!

If students are protesting and demonstrating, let's figure out why and address that.  If the  demonstrations are spreading from campus to campus, as these appear to be doing, then their causes should be a matter for national attention and discussion.  That would probably get the demonstrators back in their classrooms quicker and more safely than any police or military action ever could.

There are some very bright young people who are trying to tell us something - and we need to be listening!

Putin Bootlickers Fail to Stop Ukraine Aid

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The US House of Representatives put in a rare weekend session this past Saturday to pass a trio of foreign aid bills - one each to benefit the military needs of Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine.   All three passed, but aid for Ukraine proved to be the most problematic with 112 members of the House, all Republicans, voting against the measure.   Supporters of the bill argued that aid to Ukraine is critical to repulse the continuing Russian invasion of that nation, and ultimately for the preservation of democracy and a free Europe.  But former President Donald Trump is an ardent admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and there has been pushback against US aid to Ukraine in Congress from Republican members who are ardent admirers of Trump.

American politicians making critical spending decisions with an eye toward helping Russia grab territory in Europe.  What's the world coming to?  

The aid bill for Ukraine passed 311-112 with one member voting "present" and seven not voting.  It was a good day for democracy.

One of the negative votes on the Ukraine bill was from my own congressman, Jason Smith, a Republican from Missouri's 8th congressional district.  In his weekly email newsletter which came out this morning, Congressman Smith noted his negative vote without explanation, to wit:

H.R. 8035, Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations  Act, 2024: totals $60.84 billion to address the conflict in Ukraine  and assist our regional partners as they counter Russia. PASSED, REP. SMITH VOTED NO

What Jason did not mention in his weekly newsletter was that his district is one of 88 (out of 435) across the United States that will benefit economically from that aid package to Ukraine.  In an opinion piece earlier this week in the Washington Post, columnist Marc A. Thiessen identified two congressional districts in Missouri (the 3rd and the 8th) which will receive a portion of that aid money for the production of:  

"MIM-104 Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target (Patriot) Missiles"

That sounds important, and expensive, and if Jason Smith had his way the money associated with it wouldn't be headed here to his own state and district - and Vlad Putin would have that much more of an advantage over the freedom fighters in Ukraine.

I admit to being old, perhaps a dinosaur even, but I still see regard democracy as vital to the world functioning in a humane and just manner.  I want leaders who operate with the consent of the governed and who don't stifle dissent through brute force and dropping people out of skyscraper windows.  Democracy is far more important than building a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Thank you to the members of Congress who stood up for Ukraine in its on-going struggle to stem the Russian invasion of that peaceful nation, along with strong appreciation to the 101 Republicans who had the courage to buck those in their own party who would abandon a democratic nation in order to appease a politican who is promoting his own self-interests over those of humanity.   

Those brave souls - 212 Democrats and 101 Republicans - did the right thing in voting to aid Ukraine.

Salute!

Life in the Wild

 

by Pa Rock

Farmer in Spring

It was a relatively mild winter and the spring rains have so far been largely non-existent, all of which seems to have led to an uptick in ticks, and my little patch of the Earth has an abundance of them this year.    I went to the local pharmacy earlier this week to buy a tube of overpriced ointment to dislodge and kill ticks, but when I stepped up to the counter and asked where that product was located, the nice lady told me that there was no such thing.  Sensing my disappointment, and not being swamped with customers that late in the day, she whipped out her cellphone and did some research for the pathetic, tick-addled, old coot, and quickly told me that the two "cures" for ticks were fingernail polish or petroleum jelly.  "Or,' she added helpfully, "When I have one I just grab a pair of tweezers and pull it out."

I explained to her that the ticks who find me always head to places that I can neither see nor reach.  When she didn't volunteer to grab her tweezers and help me out, I left.   I take ticks seriously because one of the little bloodsucking buggers sent me to the hospital a couple of years ago - and, as everyone knows, hospitals WILL kill you!

I managed to get half of the yard mowed yesterday, the second mowing of the year, and I will finish this afternoon.  The mowing won't kill the ticks, but it does keep them stirred up and undoubtedly pisses them off.  I don't understand how the grass keeps growing without rain, but it does, and in just two weeks since the first mowing some of it was already nearly knee-high.

Gypsy took me for a pull the other morning, and while we were out near the old chicken coop she suddenly went into hunting mode.  Her nose went to the ground and she was quickly vacuuming about a ten-foot square, hot on the trail of some varmint that I couldn't see - but Gypsy knew it was there.  Finally she lunged her snout deep into the grass and came up with a large field mouse in her mouth.  By the time I got the poor thing away from her it was dead.  The goofy dog is a mouser!  Great.  (Gypsy gets absolutely crazy when she spots ground hogs - which are also rodents - so perhaps she was a cat in a past life!)

Speaking of wildlife in my big yard jungle:  yesterday afternoon while mowing I stirred up a nest of little brown bunnies.  They were apparently in an open burrow that I failed to see.  I spotted one running toward the fence in an absolute panic, and a few minutes later I saw a second heading out in the same general direction.  Then I found an injured one on the ground that had been caught by my monster mower.  He was dying and I placed him in a sheltered area.  The final one, the fourth, was disoriented and ran in several directions before finally making to the safety of the brush in the fence row.  I never did see the mama rabbit, but she had to be close by.

And there's more . . . 

This morning while standing at the back door and looking out at all of the mowing that I have left to do this afternoon, I spotted three beautiful wild turkeys walking across the width of the backyard.  Fortunately Gypsy and Rosie were both inside, and the big, regal birds were able to enjoy their morning walk in relative peace.

All of that and the dogwoods are still in bloom and so are the pawpaws!

Eat your hearts out, city slickers!

Schickelgruber's Birthday and Related Thoughts

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Adolf Schickelgruber, who would later change his name to Adolf Hitler, was born on this day in the Corinthian Province of Austria in the year 1889.  If he was sill alive and living on a ventilator somewhere down in the wilds of Brazil or Uruguay as a few fantasist conspiracy theorists probably still believe, today Adolf is celebrating his 135th birthday.

I knew that today was Hitler's birthday without having to look it up when I heard a news story on the radio this morning saying that this was the 25th anniversary of the infamous school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and I remembered that Hitler's birthday was at least part of the reason that the two student shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, had chosen that particular day for their heinous crime.   Harris and Klebold both fancied themselves to be admirers of Nazis and white supremacists.  They killed twelve of their classmates and a teacher before killing themselves.

And I bring all of that up in response to the royal fit that some GOP members of Congress are currently pitching as they demonize college students who are speaking out against the genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli government and armed forces against the Palestinian people of Gaza.  When college students carry signs or use other peaceful measures to draw public attention to the on-going extermination of an entire race of human beings, some members of God's Own Party in Congress clutch their pearls and declare that certain institutions of higher learning in America are condoning and fostering anti-semitic dissent among their students.   Those politicians use their outrage at school policies which protect free speech as a cudgel to threaten the loss of government aid to the schools.

Dissent and free speech be damned, right Elise?

Just because people worry and even demonstrate about others - often families with children - who are forced to scurry about in bombed-out rubble like rats while digging through garbage hoping to find enough scraps to live on for another day, that does not make them anti-semitic, but it does prove they are human.

But do you know who are anti-semites?  Nazis, that's who.   The members of the Nazi (National Socialist) Party in Germany in World War II and others who blindly followed the insane ravings of Adolf Hitler and stood by and watched in guilt and silence as six million Jews were gassed and killed on the direct orders of a madman.  Those people were and are anti-semitic.    And today's Neo-Nazis who admire the Nazi "culture" and history, and adorn themselves in the fascist paraphernalia while carrying their tiki torches down American streets shouting racial slurs are no better - and certainly not friends to Israel or the Jewish people.

Dry those crocodile tears you bloviating congressional hypocrites.    Don't worry about what the kids on America's campuses are saying until you have purged your own house of its anti-semitic elements.  If your house is still standing after you're run all of the rats away,  then come back and share your sanctimony.

Shades of the Sixties

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Students at Columbia University in New York City made national and international news in April of 1968 when they swarmed the campus and took over five buildings including the president's office as a protest against US involvement in the war in Vietnam.  The students were also protesting the university's work in military research, racism and discrimination on campus, and the proposed expansion of the university into a local park with the construction of a new gym.   There were some injuries to both students and police during the protests and campus takeover, but it ended peacefully after several days.   The event was a defining moment of the times which helped to galvanize public opposition to the Vietnam War.

Fifty-six years later and once again in the cruel month of April, Columbia University is back in the news with another student protest, the focus this time being the on-going genocide in Gaza.

This Wednesday morning while the President of Columbia University, Nemat "Minouche" Shafik, was in Washington, DC, testifying before Congress regarding congressional concerns over anti-semitism on campus, students and faculty members were busy setting up an encampment of tents and signs on the university grounds.   Some of those involved in the protest were from Columbia's sister school, Barnard College, a women's liberal arts school that is adjacent to Columbia.

According to an article on CNN.com this morning, the "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" was focused on Columbia University's investment in "corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and military occupation of Palestine."   The protest was organized by a student-led coalition of over 120 campus organizations.  A competing group in support of Israel also gathered at the scene.

It was a formidable protest, so significant, in fact, that the university felt compelled to call in the New York Police Department yesterday to break it up - and more than one hundred arrests were made, mostly on a preliminary charge of criminal trespass with Columbia University being named as the complainant.

Shades of the sixties.

There was a news story yesterday stating that three Barnard students had been suspended for their involvement in the encampment and protest, and one of the three was Isra Hirsi, a 21-year-old junior at Barnard who happens to be the daughter of US Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, one of three Muslim members of Congress.  That should certainly give the conservative extremists in Congress something tangible to chew on for a few weeks.

This old hillbilly retiree actually knows a Barnard student, one of my grand-nieces who is finishing her first year at that exceptionally fine academic institution.  I'm sure she is keenly aware of all that is happening around her and learning from the experience.  A major portion of a college education happens outside of the classroom.  Grab it all, Lauren, grab it all!

And damn it, Joe, either rein Bibi in or cut him loose.  I don't want my tax dollars being used for the extermination of a race of people!

Don Snoreleone

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Donald John Trump, the elderly politician who is presumptive Republican nominee for President in 2024, once reportedly paid a porn star to spank him with a copy of Forbes Magazine.  Now he has again been spanked with a major publication, only this time assault on his dignity was more figurative than it was literal.

Trump's first criminal trial began this past Monday morning in New York City, and the consummate performer showed up where he predictably played the victim for the press before going inside and making history as the first former US President to ever be prosecuted in a criminal trial, this one alleging that he used his business accounts to hide hush money payments to a porn star (the same one who claims to have spanked him with the magazine) to keep her from revealing their months-long sexual relationship to the press and possibly cost him votes in the 2016 presidential election.  

The first day of the trial centered on hearing instructions from the judge and getting the jury selection process started.   It must have been tedious because, according to Maggie Haberman, a reporter for The New York Times, Trump fell asleep during the process.   Haberman, who is obviously not one of Trump's favorite reporters, shared a fairly graphic description of Trump zonking out while sitting at the defense table.  She noted that he "appeared to nod off a few times" with "his mouth going slack and his head drooping onto his chest."   Haberman's description ended with this jewel:  "Trump has apparently jolted back awake, noticing the notes his lawyer passed him several minutes ago."

Maggie Haberman's unflattering description of Trump was already being read by the general public by the time the trial recessed, and it was certainly not helpful to an aging politician who routinely refers to his opponent as "Sleepy Joe."

"Drowsy, Don," anyone?

One internet hitman even went so far as to refer to the GOP political boss as "Don Snoreleone!"  

Priceless!

Now instead of just being able to brag about having his butt beaten with a copy of Forbes, Trump can also boast about the spanking he just took from The New York Times!

Savor the moment, Don.

Glory days!

Pa Rock's Plan to Save the U.S. Postal Service

 

by Pa Rock

Man with a Plan

With the advent of "forever" stamps seventeen years ago, many people no longer have any idea how much money they spend to send a letter.  We used to know, when the price of first-class postage was printed right on the stamps that we would affix to our letters, but those days are long gone, and now we are forced to use a mail system whose rates are cloaked in government subterfuge.

In 1948 when I was born, the cost of mailing an ordinary first-class letter from any place in the United States to anyplace else in the United States was three cents.  Three damned pennies!  It had been that way since 1932 when it was raised from two cents for a first-class letter stamp, and the two-cent price had been in effect since 1885 - with a one-year exception during World War I when it had skyrocketed to three cents.

And it wasn't the occasion of my birth that started the out-of-control rise in the cost of postage.  I was several months past my tenth birthday when the price of a first-class stamp went to four cents, an event that caused a national howl that was almost as loud as the one five years after that when the mail service introduced zip codes.

I was getting ready to go into fifth grade when postage went to four cents, and I was in high school less than five years later when it was bumped to five cents.  Postage was kicked up to six cents per first-class letter while I was in college.  The cost of mailing an ordinary letter was eight cents when my oldest son was born in 1973, thirteen cents when my daughter was born in 1976, and fifteen cents when my youngest son arrived in 1979.  Postage was literally increasing faster than the size of my family!

And since then, of course, it has gotten even crazier.

Postage rose from fifteen cents to twenty-five cents during the 1980's, twenty-five cents to thirty-three cents in the 1990's, thirty-three cents to forty-four cents in the 2000's, and forty-four cents to fifty-five cents in the 2010's.  

The price of a first-class stamp did not rise again until August of 2021 when it went to fifty-eight cents.  Postage for an ordinary letter jumped to sixty cents in July of 2022, sixty-three cents in January of 2023,  and on to sixty-six cents less than six months after that in early July of 2023.

This year, 2024, the cost of mailing an ordinary letter went up two more cents in January to sixty-eight cents and the postal service has already announced plans to bump it another nickel in July.  In less than three months Americans will be paying seventy-three cents to mail a first-class letter, whether they realize it or not.

Party hearty, Louie!

The United States Postal Service struck gold on April 12th, 2007, when it launched the concept of "forever" stamps.  The price was removed from the stamps so consumers were often  unaware of how much they were spending to send individual letters, and instead the stamp, once printed and sold, was good "forever" even if the price of postage went up before it was used.  It was a short-term bargain and a long-term clandestine operation.  If the price of a stamp suddenly jumps a nickel, no one is the wiser unless they happen to notice  something in a newspaper or on-line - and then it isn't an immediate concern because they have a sheet of forever stamps in a drawer at home.

The rising cost of "forever" stamps is obviously a postal racket, but it could also be an income stream for wise investors because clearly the cost of postage stamps is rising faster than the interest rates that banks pay on savings' accounts.   People could conceivably buy "forever" stamps en masse, secure them someplace safe, and in a few years offload their stamps for a nice profit - if they could find a ready buyer.  The US Postal Service currently WILL NOT buy them back - I checked!)

But how about this for an option:

The government has already been talking about the notion of returning to some form of postal banking where people could do their general banking right at the post office.  What if the post office could be used for investing as well?  Instead of just selling stamps at the going "forever" rate,  What if Congress passed a law directing the post office to sell stamp stocks at the same rate, one stamp (or one hundred stamps) equals one share, and then have the post office buy those shares back at the new going rate whenever a stockholder wants to sell.  The post office could continue to make their revenue off of its stamp sales, and savvy investors could get in on the action as well while providing the postal service with another revenue stream for running its day-to-day operations.  Win, win!

In the end  '"Pa Rock's Plan to Save the Postal Service"  might even help to tamp down the exorbitant cost of postage - and that would certainly be an unexpected helping of gravy!

Gettysburg. Wow.

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The original Gettysburg Address, one of the most famous speeches in American history, was penned by President Abraham Lincoln on the back of an envelope and delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 19th, 1863, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.  Lincoln's speech that day was known for its brevity and eloquence, and it was such a masterpiece of writing and oration that school students for generations were tasked with memorizing and reciting it.

Ninety-eight years later there was a second Gettysburg address connected to the American presidency, a physical location, when Ike and Mamie Eisenhower left the White House in January of 1961 and moved to the small farm that they had purchased which was situated on a Gettysburg rural route.

And now, sixty-three years further on, another American President has chosen to return the nation's focus to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  Donald Trump went off in a wandering diatribe about the Civil War battle at Gettysburg last Saturday while he was attempting to give a political speech in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania.  I had seen his basically incoherent remarks not long after they fell from his mouth, and chose to disregard them, but today a favorite cousin in California emailed them to me (thanks, Susanna!), and I decided that they were of such a unique nature that they should be preserved in The Ramble.  It is very doubtful, however, that any remarks of Donald Trump's will ever merit being memorized and recited by school children.

You might want to tighten your seat belt because Donald John tends to swerve while he talks, but here is what the former President had to say about Gettysburg:

"Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was.  The Battle of Gettysburg.  What an unbelievable - I mean it was so much and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways.  It represented such a big portion of the success of this country.

"Gettysburg.  Wow.   I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to look and to watch.   And the statement of Robert E. Lee - who's no longer in favor - did you ever notice that?  No longer in favor - 'Never fight uphill, me boys,  never fight uphill.'    They were fighting uphill.  He said, 'Wow, that was a big mistake.'  He lost his big general, and they were fighting.  'Never fight uphill, me boys!'  But it was too late."

Mondo bizarro!

Do the parents of America's young men and women really want their sons and daughters fighting in a military that is under the control of someone with such an amorphous mind?  Shouldn't all people who work in the White House, and especially the President, have the ability to speak in complete sentences that make sense?  Is it too much to expect a President of the United States to at least have the equivalent of a third-grader's knowledge of American history?

Three former United States Presidents (all Republicans) have connections to a Gettysburg address.  Two were recognized dynamic leaders who worked tirelessly to bring our nation together and make it stronger and better, and the third was Trump.

Gettysburg.  Wow.

Gypsy Goes on Another Walk-About

by Pa Rock

Dogsitter

Two days ago I had a really good morning with Gypsy, our large, playful pup who loves the Great Outdoors.  I could not find her leash, and consequently let her run free outside twice, and both times she did her business promptly and returned to the house.  Sometimes Gypsy has selective hearing issues and cannot hear commands or pleas to return home, but Saturday morning was not one of those times.

Sunday morning, however, was a different story.  

Yesterday I did have access to Gypsy's leash, but since I don't like being pulled around the yard by an eighty-pound dog any more than she enjoys pulling me,  I let her out at 6:00 a.m. without the leash.  Rosie and I walked with her, and Gyspy behaved - for a while.  Gypsy had disappeared by the time Rosie and I were ready to go in, so I brought the little dog into the house and went back outside, leash-in-hand, to look for the truant canine.

I couldn't find "the Traveler," as I've taken to calling her, and eventually came back in the house to deal with other domestic chores.  At 10:00 in the morning when Gypsy was still not home, I got in the car and drove a couple of miles in three directions looking for her.  One of my stops was a Galloway Park where she had spent a morning on a previous walk-about playing with people in the park.  Gypsy is especially fond of kids, of which we have none at our house.  At Galloway I drove along the edge of the park for about a half-mile, and drove into the facility's parking lot and turned around, but did not see the runaway anywhere.  

I came home without the dog, and for the rest of the day would occasionally go outside and walk the property line calling her name.  But no luck.  By the end of the day I had convinced myself that she had probably hopped in a car with strangers and gone to live somewhere else.  I had caught her hopping in a car with strangers one other time, but they did not want her and threw her out.

Later, at around 7:00 p.m., I heard a light tapping on the front door and knew before I ever up to open the door that the missing canine had probably found a ride home.  Two high school students were standing on the front porch with along with Gypsy.  "Is this your dog, mister?" the boy asked. "We've been to several houses and nobody knows her."  

"I know her," I admitted.  "This is her home."  

The kids told me that Gypsy had spent the day playing with them at Galloway Park and that she had eaten well all day long.  (She is on a diet when she is at home.). As we were talking, the very tired Gypsy stepped out into the yard and fell asleep in the grass.  When I finally got her into the house, she promptly ate Rosie's dinner and then fell asleep for the night.  She arose for an hour or so this morning and is now back asleep.  Playing all day must be really hard work!

I still suspect that Gypsy is preparing to live up to her name and move on down the road, which is a shame because she has had a really good run here whether she realizes it or not.  She has had her shots and been spayed while living at our house, and she has a new bed.  She also has an abundance of yard to run and play in, something which once was plenty but now seems to be too confining.  But, alas, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

This is real life, and we'll just have to see how it plays out.  I hope Gypsy decides to stick around.   We are just now getting used to each other's obstinate behaviors.

War! What Is It Good For?

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Late yesterday evening the country of Iran launched a drone and missile attack against the country of Israel in retaliation for Israel's strike against an Iranian consular building in Damascus, Syria, earlier this month.   The Israeli attack had killed members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps including two senior commanders.  It was widely assumed in the international community that Iran would retaliate, and US President Joe Biden had been saying for days that an attack by Iran against Israel was imminent.

To the surprise of literally no one, that attack occurred last night.

Israel has a supposedly "impenetrable" air defense system which they call the "Iron Dome," but even with that they were glad to have US and British assistance in warding off the attack.   Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones toward Israel and all but a few were shot down before they reached Israeli air space.  One ten-year-old Israeli girl was reportedly seriously injured in the attack, and thirty-one other Israelis were given medical treatment for anxiety or injuries received while rushing to shelter.

Israel, of course, has promised to retaliate for the retaliatory attack.  That's the way war goes.

Clearly the only winners in last night's flare-up in the Middle East were the world's arms' manufacturers and weapons' dealers.    War has always been, and apparently always will be, good business, and it trades well on the stock market.

And what politician isn't pleased to pocket political donations from these merchants of death?

The 1960's were a lot of fun, but obviously nothing got fixed.

Being the Wild Goose

 

by Pa Rock

Road Warrior

When you see an old person driving down the road, chances are fairly good that they are heading to or from a doctor's office, pharmacy, or the grocery store.  Our lives are steeped in excitement.

Yesterday I was up and out of the house well before daylight in order to be at a medical appointment in Springfield (101 miles from my house) by 7:20 a.m.   The first part of the appointment was a "fasting" lab, which meant that I made the nearly two-hour drive without benefit of breakfast or caffeine stimulant.  But the drive was quiet, peaceful, in fact, and when I arrived I was in a good frame of mind for discussing my medical concerns with the doctor.  The drive home was also pleasant and uneventful, and provided plenty of time for thinking.

One of the things I thought about was how much I was enjoying the solitude of rolling down the road on my own.  I also thought about my annual trip to Oregon to see three of my grandchildren and how much I hate the airport experience associated with flying.   There are two primary options for going to Oregon:  flying is the quickest, cheapest and most aggravating infuriating, and driving takes far longer with numerous restaurant and motel or camping stops along the way.  (Going by bus or train are also options, but both are exceedingly complicated, expensive, and take several days.)

I have driven to Oregon three times, once from Phoenix and twice from Missouri, and enjoyed all three  of those expeditions enormously.  My last drive there was with my grandson, Boone, in 2014.  I have threatened to drive the past couple of years, but things always came up that interfered with those plans. Last summer, for instance, proved to be the summer of "stents," when much of my time was focused on keeping my tired old body repaired and functioning.

But by the time I got home yesterday I had made up my mind to drive to Oregon one more time - within the next couple of months.   I am going to do it by myself so that I can enjoy the peace and solitude and not worry about meeting other people's needs.  I'll stop where I want, stay where I want, and drive off on spur-of-the-moment detours whenever the spirit moves me.

This morning, while I was out taking Rosie on her constitutional, I heard a wild goose honking in the distance.  I looked to the skies expecting to see a ragged "vee" of geese heading north for the summer, but instead was surprised to see one lone goose flying low and heading southwest.  

"Wrong way, Corrigan,"

I shouted to the sky.

"Honk, honk,"

Came his reply.

Maybe when I leave for Oregon I will head off in the wrong direction, too, but if I stay on the road long enough I should eventually get someplace other than a doctor's office, pharmacy, or the grocery store.  It will be a nice break from my routine - which is getting very, very old.

Taking Down a School Shooter's Enablers

 

by Pa Rock

Former Principal

There were a couple of significant court actions over the past week regarding America’s ongoing lack of success in stopping, or even slowing, incidents of school shootings.
 
The first involved the case of Ethan Crumbley, who was a fifteen-year-old when he brought an automatic pistol that his parents had purchased for him to his Michigan high school on November 30, 2021, and killed four teenage students while seriously wounding several others.  This past December a Michigan court found Ethan Crumbley guilty of murder and a judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
 
There was a lot of neglect and bad parenting at play in that boy’s situation, and it is hard, for me at least, to feel good about the judicial result.  The father had purchased the 9mm automatic handgun and he and the boy’s mother gave it to their son as a gift for his fifteenth birthday.  The parents had ignored signs of mental health distress in their son and even his own pleadings for help with his emotional issues.  They had even met with school officials on the day of the shooting (before it happened) and had declined the school’s request that Ethan be taken home for the remainder of the day.  

At one point Ethan had told his parents that he was hearing voices, to which his father replied "Suck it up."   At another point the boy texted a friend and said that he felt like he was "mentally and physically dying."  Clearly he was seeking help, but none was forthcoming.
 
Guns were glorified in the home by both parents, and if they had any type of parenting plan, it was fatally flawed.   But, nevertheless, the kid is going to prison for the rest of his natural life with no chance of parole.
 
This past week James and Jennifer Crumbley, Ethan’s parents who immediately went into hiding after the shooting and have been incarcerated for most of the two years since the shooting, were each sentenced to ten-to-fifteen years in prison for manslaughter as a result of their actions in purchasing the murder weapon for their son, failing to supervise his access to the weapon, and failing to act on his mental distress and seek appropriate treatment.
 
I am uncomfortable with the sentence imposed on Ethan Crumbley because of the extenuating circumstances and sad way that he was raised, all of which helped to turn him into such a damaged adolescent – but I have no qualms at all about the sentences given to his parents, other than a strong feeling that they should have been sent down for an even longer period of time.  Perhaps there are other parents out there who will view the Crumbleys' situation as a wake-up call and suddenly start paying closer attention to the behaviors of their own children – particularly if those behaviors could lead to lethal results.
 
Let parents reap a portion of what they have sown.
 
The second case is more near and dear to my heart because it involves a school principal, and I served as a school principal for more than a dozen years.  It is a high-pressure and very hard job.  
 
An old joke that used to go around the principal community went something like this:
 

A mother goes into her son’s bedroom to wake him for school, but he pretends to be sick and says that he doesn’t want to go.  The mother, knowing that her son is not physically ill, questions him as to why he doesn’t want to go to school.  “Because,” the son replies, “everybody hates me.  The kids hate me, the teachers hate me, the cooks and the bus drivers hate me, the secretary hates me, and even the superintendent hates me.”
 
“But son,” his mother pleads, “you can’t stay home.  You must go to school.  You’re the principal!”

 
In January of 2023 a first-grade teacher was shot in the stomach and gravely wounded by a six-year-old in her classroom at an elementary school in Newport News, Virginia.   This week the Commonwealth of Virginia announced that it was bringing eight counts of felony child abuse against the young lady who was the assistant principal of the school at the time the teacher was shot.  The Commonwealth contends that the assistant principal ignored three warnings from individual teachers that the child might be carrying a gun, and that when a school counselor suggested that the administrator check his backpack for a gun, she declined to do so.  The negligent assistant principal resigned shortly after the shooting.  The teacher is suing the school for $40 million. 
 
(The mother in this case is also doing time.  Last summer she was sentenced to 21 months in prison on federal charges of using marijuana while owning a gun and of lying about her drug use on her application to purchase a weapon.)
 
Even as someone who knows firsthand how beat-down, unappreciated, and vulnerable principals can feel, I am still of a mind that teachers and administrators, like parents, also bear some responsibility regarding some actions of some students, and their culpability should not be automatically ignored in the wake of a school shooting.
 
Taking a serious look at the extenuating circumstances at play in a school shooting and then holding negligent party’s accountable sounds like a commonsense approach that could help to decrease the incidents of tragedy and bloodshed.  I’m glad to see this week’s court actions.  

The Alice

 

by Pa Rock

TV Junkie

I am seventy-six now and have been for almost a month, and one thing I have learned during my seventy-six orbits around the sun is that each passing year goes by a little faster.  I now suspect that my time to travel, especially great distances, is coming to an end, or perhaps it is already over, and my biggest regret on that front is that I never made it south of the equator to see the "Southern Cross."  If I had somehow managed to sail into the Southern Hemisphere, I would have liked to have landed in Australia, the land down under, and spent a few months exploring all that unique continent has to offer.

I would have enjoyed being shuttled through all of the tourist stuff like the Sydney Opera House and the iconic bridge that crosses Sydney Harbor, Bondi Beach, and the Great Barrier Reef, as well as seeing the koala bears, kangaroos, and other unique life forms that inhabit the enormous island continent.

Australia has five cities whose populations exceed a million individuals:  Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide, as well as several others whose residents number in the hundreds of thousands, and I am sure each of those would  be worth a couple of days of exploration, but there is one other, very out of the way Australian community, that has always held my interest:  Alice Springs (in the desert Outback) with a population of around 30,000 hardy souls.  Alice Springs, or "The Alice" as some of the locals refer to it, is in the Northern Territory and far removed from the tourist meccas of the south.  It is not a standard stop on many tourist itineraries.

I became aware of Alice Springs - whose population totals about two-and-a-half times that of the small Missouri city near which I reside - through a couple of college geography courses, but did not have a feel for the town or the rugged terrain in which it is ensconced until I saw the film "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," in the late 1990's.  In that movie three drag queens - two gay males and one transgendered female - drive south to north across Australia from Sydney to Alice Springs - in a large pink tourbus, and have several colorful misadventures along the way.   It was filmed on location with much of the action taking place in the red desert of the Outback.

Alice Springs had the look and feel of a place that would be very interesting to visit.

A few weeks ago while program surfing on Prime, I came across a 22-episode mini-series that had been filmed in Alice Springs in 2005-2006.  The show was called "The Alice," and it featured a large and very talented cast of Australian actors, none of with whom I was familiar.  So I watched one episode and immediately became hooked.  Last night I finished the series, and I have nothing but high praise for the show, its clever writers, and its many fine actors.

The teaser on "The Alice's" IMDB page on the internet reads:  "The show follows the lives of the locals, wrapped in the mystical veil of Aboriginal legends."  It is a comedy, of sorts, with strong dramatic undertones.  The characters are quirky without becoming tiresomely so, and the settings are reminiscent of the rough edges of small town America fifty years or so ago.  There are plenty of dirt roads and lots of local color including a bar where quite a bit of the action takes place, local versions of basketball and football, a camel race, love triangles, an omni-present ghost who only one of the characters can see, and even a pair of tour guides who, as they explain the unique town and area attractions to the tourists on the show, are also educating the viewing public at home.

If you feel restless and confined, but are getting too old to travel, "The Alice" might be just the break you need.  It even offers a couple of nice views of the "Southern Cross!"

Jason Smith Plays Political Games with Easter

 

by Pa Rock

Missouri Voter

My congressman, Republican Jason Smith of southeast Missouri, is a forty-three-year-old bachelor politician who sleeps in his office at the Capitol (a government complex dubbed by some as a "homeless shelter" for congressmen).  Smith regards himself as a mover and shaker in Congress and is, in fact, the current chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, a fact that he brings up ad nauseam in his weekly email newsletter to a few of his constituents.

I somehow made it onto Smith's email newsletter list a few years ago, and, so far, have not been removed.  It comes out on Mondays, and I always make reading it a priority.  I also take and read newsletters from Rep. Debbie Lesko  and Rep. Paul Gosar, both of Arizona.  Lesko's is fairly balanced and informative, even for a conservative from a strong conservative area, and Gosar's, as you might expect, is steeped in crazy, but always funny.  

Jason Smith's newsletter, on the other hand, is dry and formulaic.  The first third-to-half of the missive is always an attack on Joe Biden and/or his family and/or administration.  Jason rushes around during the week trying to secure speaking spots on right-wing sewage disposal outlets like Fox, Breitbart, and Newsmax, and then scatters links to those brushes with fame throughout the political portion of his newsletter.  The remainder of his newsletter is focused on news from back in the district:  area residents, and especially students, who are in the news for noteworthy achievements, as well as occasional congressional visits to area farms.  The newsletters begin with a good dose of political drivel, but are saved by the far more friendly and respectful local section.

This week's newsletter from Jason Smith began with a standard shot at the President.  This time Smith chose to lead with the false charge that Biden had declared "Easter Sunday as Transgender Visibility Day,"  a claim that had been completely debunked a full week before.   But it contained a couple of elements sure to rile Jason's voters back home, and he just could not help himself.   Even though it was not true, it was just too good politically not to print!

The International Day of Transgender Visibility has been celebrated on the same day - March 31st - for the past fifteen years.  Easter Sunday, as any practicing Christian knows, falls on a different day every year - but always on a Sunday.  This year the events happened to occur on the same day, purely a calendrical coincidence and not some nefarious Biden plot.    Jason Smith knew that, and the fact that he chose to make Easter a political issue by tying it International Transgender Visibility Day says more about Smith's disregard for the intelligence of his voters than it does about any supposed affront to Christianity.

Easter is a holy day celebrated by Christians around the globe.  It should be focused on love and acceptance, not acrimony and efforts to keep us divided.

Easter was marked with the ugly stain of politics this year, but Joe Biden wasn't the one who stained it.

Mowing, Mowing, Mown

 

by Pa Rock

Cutter of Grass

The mowing season at Rock's Roost officially got underway last Saturday when I climbed aboard my monster mower well before the noon hour and mowed for nearly six hours with only one brief break.  The weather forecast has been for lots of rain, though it hasn't happened yet, and once I started the mowing I wanted to get it all done - and not leave the yard partially completed like some mullet of a lawnscape.  It was in nice shape for our visitors yesterday, and today the dogwoods are bursting through in all their glory, so the yard still looks extra special.

But now that I have started, it will require continuous mowings about every two weeks until about November.  It's so nice to have a purpose in life!

I always think of my dad when I begin the mowing season.  I send my mower in for a complete refurbishment every winter, and when I hop on in the spring it is ready to go.  My dad, however, who grew up in the Great Depression, did not believe in paying anyone to do anything that he could do himself, (even if it wasn't cost efficient), and he spent many years trying to teach me a variety of maintenance arts.  One of those was how to take proper care of a lawnmower.

If, God forbid, I ever needed to borrow my dad's dependable push mower, it was never just a simple borrow it, use it, and return it.  No, my dad could not go anywhere near a mower without putting on a full-scale production.  He had a grinding wheel on his workbench which he loved, and always insisted on taking the mower blade off and sharpening it, regardless of how many times he had sharpened it in the past couple of weeks.  He would spend thirty minutes or so adjusting the carburetor to insure that the machine was operating optimally, and he would scrub the body down thoroughly and make sure there was no no old grass underneath the mower frame to interfere with the rotation of the blade.

I've even seen him rotate the wheels!

Dad would also change the mower's oil about every time he used it, and every bolt, lever, sprocket, or part that could possibly move got a good dose of WD-40 before the mower rolled out of the garage.

Preparing the lawnmower for a couple of hours work was a ceremony to my father.  I've never had time for ceremonies - I just want to get the damned yard mowed!

Last Saturday I was able to get the yard mowed, instead of spending the entire day pretending that I was part of a NASCAR pit crew - and today my yard looks great!

The moral of this story is do what you like to do.  If working on lawnmowers is your thing, do that - maybe even open a shop, but if that's not your thing, let someone do it who wants to be doing it.  It's good for your nerves - and the economy!

Dad would have been one hundred later this year, and he would have still been fixing and maintaining his own stuff.   Rest well, old man, and know that your oldest is still mowing, and mowing, and mowing!

Eclipse Comes and Goes

 

by Pa Rock

Stargazer Geezer

The City of West Plains, Missouri, has been planning an Eclipse Party for more than two years, and the big celestial event finally came to pass early this afternoon - for a couple of minutes - and then the sun came back out, as the educated world knew that it would.  

My good friends, Ranger Bob and Sandy Randall, arrived around 9:30 this morning, giving us time for a delicious and healthy brunch which Sandy brought, a good visit, and a tour of the town.   There was lots of traffic in town, much more so than yesterday, but we didn't encounter any traffic blockages, snarls, or wrecks.    Bob said that the Missouri State Highway Patrol had been well represented along Highway 60 between Springfield and West Plains.  

This Modern World:  Although I know for a fact that my old college roommate is an exceedingly cautious driver, he did say that he has a phone app which successfully alerted them to speed trap on the road to West Plains this morning.  I guess "fuzz busters" are now a thing of the past.

We had lunch while sitting in the backyard as the sky slowly darkened.  Our meal consisted of wonderful chicken salad sandwiches on croissants followed by delicious homemade chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies, all of which Sandy brought,   It had been a bird-chirpy spring day when the event started, but Sandy noticed that as the darkness came on, most of the birds became silent.   Gypsy, who was outside on a leash, just sat through the brief darkness and looked curious, but it scared Rosie who went and hid behind Nick's truck.  (She loved having company, but did not appreciate them turning off the sun!)

Nick and Ranger Bob seemed to hit it off very well.  Nick told of a mountain lion encounter that he had experienced, and Bob shared a story about when he and another park ranger in Louisiana had captured and bound a large alligator and then relocated him.  My friend still has both hands and feet, so he obviously knew what he was doing!

Our company is headed home now, but they left us with many good memories - and Sandy left enough food to last Nick and I most of the week!  

Old friends are the best, and sharing an eclipse with them was extra special.  I can hardly wait for the next one!

Nothing But Blue Skies Do I See

 

by Pa Rock

Stargazer Geezer

Eclipse day is finally here and the skies over West Plains, Missouri, are delightfully clear and blue, but soon, of course, they will be black as darkness settles in.  But for the time being the skies are sunny and the day is beautiful!

Alexa has been telling me for several days that it would be "partly sunny" on Monday, but she was wrong, as she often is, because it is now Monday and it is "plenty sunny."    (I need to so some research and try to ascertain just what the difference is between "partly sunny" and "partly cloudy.")

I have company headed this way to view the big celestial event.   Ranger Bob and his lovely wife, Sandy, are driving over from Springfield.  I haven't seen them since Bob and I went on a big treasure hunt to McDonald County last November when I tried and failed to find the time capsule that I had buried sixty years ago.  Maybe we can give it another shot this fall after all of the tourists go home.

I live about a mile north of West Plains, and yesterday I drove into town to see all of the crowds who had supposedly shown up for the four-day eclipse "Party in the Path."   I diligently searched every part of town where I would expect crowds to be gathered - and came up with zilch.  There appeared to be fewer people in town than would have been there on a normal Sunday afternoon.  I heard later that some were at the fairgrounds where hot air balloons were putting on a show.  (I hadn't thought to check the fairgrounds, which are about a mile due west of my home.  Last night there were fireworks at the fairgrounds, but I was already in bed reading, so I just listened to the noise.)

One extraneous thought:  I wonder if some enterprising insurance salesman in Georgia thought to sell Marge Greene a rider on her homeowner's policy that would cover eclipses?  You can never have too much protection, Marge!

Darkness beckons!