Saturday, August 13, 2005
MORE “11TH” ON THE 13TH. It was on this day in 2005 that additional materials concerned with the events of September 11, 2001 were published. Much of the information was, of course, known, and widely so, but it had not yet been suitably codified and properly positioned in the complex sequence of events which took place on that day - now “a long time ago” to many people today. I was surprised yesterday, while talking with a young man ready for college next fall just after we had both heard a TV bulletin let us know that Home Defense authorities had officially lowered our national alert from “Orange” to a less threatening “Yellow”. The young man's response was negative. “That;s all so much super-foolishness,!” he commented.”I used to believe all that stuff they hand out. They said we would have more like the planes flying into the high buildings in New York, and I believed them but it hasn't happened that way at all. I kept wondering when and where it would happen again, but I didn't and I think they just made up a lot of that stuff....” The young man's viewpoint - expressed in stumbling words and parroted phrases troubled me all day. What did we really retain from our experiences of 9-11-01? Are we aware of the dangers which lied ahead? Or, have we hear the “Cry wolf!” type warnings too often? I find adults who feel the same way and this is really disturbing. Far too many people have filed the 9-11 towers scenes away along with their memories of the film showing the burning of the “Hindenburg” at Lakehurst, New Jersey many years ago. Both actually happened but they are difficult to accept. What is your current feeling about home defense alerts? Have we overdone any of it to the point where the very people who need to know and seeing it all as a foolish undertaking? I know one young man who thinks: “They keep saying something bad is going to happen. It never does. I don't think they know what they are talking about.” Check it out at your own level. A.L.M. August 13, 2005 [c372 wds]
Friday, August 12, 2005
NEVER SURE You never know who owns what today, in seems. It could work to our advantage in some ways, such as giving us ready and economical access to certain products or services which we might find prohibitive if we depended solely on our own ability to acquire them. We are puzzled - even amazed at times when we read of various business transaction in which companies we have know all our lives are being “sold”, “enlarged”, “downsized” or “saved” by another firm. Very often one or both of the better known firms is suddenly supplanted by a foreign company which is the first we knew either one of them was not a local business. Many people are surprised, even shocked, when they find that the diamond business in world-wide sense - is pretty much under the control one European family. They rule from the moment of mining – the very first awareness that such stones exist and that control by the de Beers family ruled that facet of the world's business to be its own. Many Americans are rather shocked to find their American firms by foreign interests. Many American firms which have been said to have “merged with”,”added to,”“enlarge or “enhanced by” “absorbed into” are not what they used to be at all. Far too often it has meant the American firm has been swallowed up by the foreign firm. The first proof will be seen when operating officers lists non-Americans running the business and selling under the European product names rather than the American one. The names on the Board of Directors page complete the story. We have, in recent years become accustomed to finding that our clothing is made all over the world. To find an item that is Made in U.S.A. is a rarity. I checked my shorts recently and found them to be made in at least eight different nations, of course, with two from Nepal, one Bangladesh, Honduras, Taiwan and one pair from India, a set from Mexico, some from China and Vet Nam. Shirts are a rainbow of nations. Footwear: India and China This quality of closer interdependence on other nations has seeped over into other aspects of our living. I find it to be the supreme irony of our generation that the main holding in estate left by Asher Arafat was that of large amounts of holdings in the stock in the world's largest and most profitable bowling alley operation. Their stellar New York location is largely dependent the regular attendance at play by citizens of the preponderantly Jewish communities around it. Yasher Arafat, always the Clown Prince of the Arabic world, must have grinned happily as he fondled or simply thought of those certificates in his personal folio. A.L.M. August 12 , 2005 [c468wds]
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
IT WAS NOT EASY If you are thinking you have a bit more trouble than a most other people in your daily life, think for a moment about those people – your forebears – who started all of it. When those self-styled settlers who intended to start a colony in the New World in the early years of the 1600's, and start a new colony early in the sixteen hundreds did not anticipate most of the difficult conditions they either created, met with, or discovered. What they had chosen to do was not easy. They did not know what faced them, and when they had gathered at Southeastern ports, they set forth into the channel between France and England they found poor weather conditions existed. It was a delay of six months, and many, at that time, felt it was was all over and longed to return go England. Seasickness prevailed on the choppy channel waters and many settlers wanted to give up. The sole minister present the Rev. Robert Hunt convinced them go stay the course. Some say he convinced them by pointing out there was no sense in being sick a second time if they made another try. In time they came to ”the Fortunate Islands” - words which must have sounded very welcome – a and which later was changed to “The Canary Islands.” There they took on supplies of water, fruits and vegetables but there is no indication they were even aware of the harsh fact hat they had used six months of their essential survival supplies which could not be replaced. The three ships spent several weeks visiting eight or ten of the islands and took their time entering the bay area by way of the James between two capes they named Henry and Charles. There was dissent ion and disagreement among the settlers and records plainly indicate that the one man who was destined to lead the strange group in so many unheard of conditions - a five-foot-two inch man (at best) ,a bull-necked, swarthy twenty-year-old man named John Smith – officially named by a parchment opened at this time to be one of three councilors who had been named to lead the colony was confined to a prisoner's cell charged with ”treason”. Once the official word from the founding London Company had been read, nothing more was heard of any such charges. The colony at Jamestown started off with plenty of deep troubles in desperate need of solutions, it seems. We do it the other way around today, perhaps when we, allow our executive-types to become what we did not expect them to before accusing them of any wrongdoing. Jamestown's troubles were plentiful and complex. Don't ever get the infantile idea that they did not face worries and cares equal to, and even exceeding those we face today. The first permanent Colony in the western hemisphere was, from the very start, beset with hard times, worries and cares. Let's all start thinking of such hard times headaches in this way: If they licked it - so can we! A.L.M. August 9, 2005 [c523wds]
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
THE WAY OUT? Do we ever find a clear way to truly “leave” a place such as Iraq? I rather doubt that it can be done if our original commitment was honest and sincere in doing what we might to help the people therein. One does not simply revoke such a pledge. Now, with the total of Americans dead in Iraq now at the eighteen hundred with the promise of more casualties we can expect more agitation to “Bring the boys home.” it is a phase which is common to all such conflicts and it has held off a bit longer than usual due to the nature of the actual conflict without established “fronts”. Americans are not .as yet, used to the concept which has been very real for us ever since 9-11. We seem to be at the stage right now when certain people who have been generally supportive of our war effort, having suffered personal loss, are changing their attitudes. The middle-aged lady who was pictured standing in the hot streets of Crawford, Texas yesterday pleading tearfully for a talk with President George W. Bush to demand that all troops be brought home. The caption did not say that she has already met with him once this past week. She like, many others, has never quite grasp the idea that we are, and have been at war, with an enemy of no mean consequence who can do us real harm. Grandstanding exhibits such as this one are common and they usually do well in the media area but, on the whole, they harm the “dialog” said to be taking nation idea. Far too often the so-called “dialogs” are more akin to talk-a-thons by narrow-minded interests intent on personal advantages. We are in this conflict to win. We have not become so engaged just to make points with friends or simply to pester often obscure opposition forces. The nature of the war itself dictates strict attention to detail which area which are far removed from usual classifications. There are no quick, easy ways to get out of Iraq. Please-everyone ways do not exist and “protectors” who march in opposition are subversive in a fundamental sense. We elect leaders and, in so doing, promise to support them as they make decision on our behalf. You can't have it both ways. A.L.M. August 1, 2005 [c405wds]
Monday, August 08, 2005
GOING SOMEWHERE? Yes, now that you mention it, I have, indeed, had people ask me - point blank and, I think with genuine concern in some cases: “Tell, me Andy, are you leaving the church?” I have had a set reply which I have used to respond to what I consider to be a rather nosy query into private areas of our lives; private holdings and not to be noised about “in public”. One's religious sentiments are, I have long felt, rather intimate items of individual ownership and not, usually, materials lightly cast before the questing prods and inquiring discussion in search engines of the public forum. It is quite true that I have been said, in recent years, when people have asked me if I am leaving the protestant denomination into which I was born and have been nurtured all my life. I have – perhaps - appeared to be a bit disturbed by the overt action of someone daring to voice such a thought – and I admit I have done so often to determine if the inquiring individual has a personal concern of his own as the main reason for his or her asking. This is what I have been saying, when asked: “No. I am not leaving my church, but I do feel - and very strongly at times, that my church is leaving me!” Until recently I had considered it a problem future generations of pew warmers but, recently, when I read stats on the subject I learned that our denomination - not among the large ones - is losing an average of about fifty-thousand members each year. You don't have to be a rocket-scientist-accountant to realize that such shrinkage cannot continue for any appreciable length of time. So, that which seemed to be of the future is of real concern for tomorrow is urgent for today – now! Those members who are aware of the problem tell me a major cause of our problem is “pluralism”- an eagerness to be all things to all people and a tendency to come to agreement with opposition by not stressing basic beliefs and practices one's faith. Heterosexual marriage relationships are of prime concern; and under the pluralistic view the concept is that religious and philosophical aspects of living are of human origin. In truth, they are but trial-and-error human attempts to comprehend the fundamental and control of the divine. All religious systems are not the same. I have purposely withheld any mention of a specific mention of a specific protestant denomination. Do the above points concern you in any way? A.L.M. August 7, 2005 [c439wds]
Sunday, August 07, 2005
AVALANCHE One of most fearful aspects of, living in a mountainous section of the world is the avalanche. One finds it difficult to comprehend that which we have always considered to be firm, steady and unmoved - the very Earth we stand upon - becomes a flowing, movable, crushing monster in movement and beyond our control. Few people survive when an avalanche strikes. Man, himself, has managed to develop tediousness's devices which can make living a fearful time for all, but Mother Nature retains the title for having the most insidious. The avalanche is among her worst. I read about, and remember such disasters and those which took place in Peru 1996 and 1970 prove to be of special interest in several ways. Both originated at a place called :”Nevados de Huascaran” , Andes Mountains, Peru, South America. Hugh slab of granite rock, debris of all kinds and glacial ice fell suddenly without any apparent triggering mechanism. You may have noticed that geologists of our time use the name “Mass Wasting Events”, when speaking of “landslides” and it applies aptly to the two Peruvian examples. On January 10, 1962 a huge slab of granite and glacial ice fell, with no apparent triggering. It all moved into the valley below and destroyed the town of Ranrahirca, killing its four thousand inhabitants. Peruvian air force planes flew supplies into the area and dropped to victims who managed to evade the erratic sic path of the killer wave. Some fifty people are said to have survived in the entire area. Then, on, May 3l, 1970 a 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit the same mountain peak and shook it for forty-five seconds. A mass of granite crashed down the mountainside on the town of five hundred people who had re-established as a small community there. All were killed and their village erased forever. The new avalanche, said to have been the largest South America has ever known roared down the canyon-like gorges of the wildly torn valley and,this time it did not stop at the hill which the previous one had found to be a barrier. Instead, it took the slope as a jump-off spot and hydroplaned into the air as house-sized blocks to fall on the houses on some eighteen thousand residents of the town of Youngay, with little, if any, warning and no hope of being able to out run the oncoming wall of death. The speed at the original fall was estimated too have been over three hundred m.p.h. and the churning walls must have averaged sixty-five m.p.h. for the rest of the trip roaring down the crooked, narrow gorges of the Valley, jumping over the side walls at times. There is much wisdom in calling avalanches by the new name. They are, indeed, “Mass Wasting Events”. A.L.M. August 7, 2005 [c477wds]
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