Archive for February, 2010

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Feed the Birds

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

When I was a child around eight years old I saw the movie Mary Poppins. It was a fantastic reverie with the magical nanny embarking on various adventures with her young child charges and they visited many places in London engaging the various characters they would encounter.

The movie includes a cameo role featuring an elderly beggar played by an Academy Award winning actress named Jane Darwell who is sitting on the steps of the Cathedral of Saint Paul selling bags of breadcrumbs to those who pass by for a tuppence apiece that they might feed the innumerable pigeons surrounding her.

This point in the film includes a song by Richard and Robert Sherman called “Feed the Birds”. The song was sung by the movie’s star Julie Andrews and the soft tones in conjunction with the kind elderly bird woman of the song gave the tone of the music almost that of a hymn.

I was reminded of this moment in time some 18 years later when I visited Trafalgar Square in London with Navy buddies Jerry Landry and Steven Tinge and we too fed the birds.

February is National Bird Feeding Month. I mention this on the last day because it is both important and one of those activities in which a person could engage year long. Urban birds are our companions and as such we should ensure that they have adequate food.

There is an organization called the National Bird Feeding Society which was formed around this notion that “bird feeding is not only for the birds, but also for the people who feed them” as an “entertaining and educational pastime which can be enjoyed by children and adults”.

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

My youthful forays into the world of literature included the epic poems Evangeline and The Song of Hiawatha as well as others such as The Children’s Hour and The Village Blacksmith by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

A fellow educator, I am sure his field of employment was appealing to those literature teachers predisposed to include him in their curricula — and I noted various inclusions of his work into many of the classes I took over the years.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882

American educator and poet. His works were many and include novels, poetry, translations, and anthologies.

His was the first American translation of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy.

He was also known as one of the five “Fireside Poets”, that group of 19th century New England poets who were said to write not for other poets, but for the common people.

Longfellow mostly wrote lyric poems known for their rhyme and meter as well as the presentation of mythology or stories and legends.

He rose to become the most popular poet of his day and was criticized for imitating European works and writing specifically to appeal to the masses.

This appeal is evident in the many English teachers with whom I studied his work over the years.

An April Day

When the warm sun, that brings
Seed-time and harvest, has returned again,
‘T is sweet to visit the still wood, where springs
The first flower of the plain.

I love the season well,
When forest glades are teeming with bright forms,
Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell
The coming-on of storms.

From the earth’s loosened mould
The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives;
Though stricken to the heart with winter’s cold,
The drooping tree revives.

The softly-warbled song
Comes from the pleasant woods, and colored wings
Glance quick in the bright sun, that moves along
The forest openings.

When the bright sunset fills
The silver woods with light, the green slope throws
Its shadows in the hollows of the hills,
And wide the upland glows.

And when the eve is born,
In the blue lake the sky, o’er-reaching far,
Is hollowed out and the moon dips her horn,
And twinkles many a star.

Inverted in the tide
Stand the gray rocks, and trembling shadows throw,
And the fair trees look over, side by side,
And see themselves below.

Sweet April! many a thought
Is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed;
Nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought,
Life’s golden fruit is shed.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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US Healthcare Reform is Dead

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Let’s face it. It was a false prophecy derailed by a legislative branch which simply cannot abandon their pork barrel earmark lobbyist owned business as usual. No one in their right mind would support that ridiculous monstrosity healthcare reform became before the voters taught the democrats a lesson in the pleasure of the voter in Massachusetts.

That other false prophecy which was the electorial battle cry of empowerment and change — which actually just turned out to be more empty rhetoric designed to sway the masses into thinking we really had something here … only to learn that the more things ‘change’ the more they ‘stay the same’.

When you incorporate some of the very scoundrels who are at the root of the biggest financial catastrophe enacted on the world in the name of personal profit into your cabinet — then have the audacity to flaunt the fact that ‘the election is over’ in the midst of all this sameole sameole sameole …

Let us be thankful for the fact that our lame duck in office now has a finite agenda limited by the fact that he and his cronies are on the way out. Consequences? What consequences. The crooks are still making a haul at the expense of the taxpayer.

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September 11 Prodrome … WTC Van Bomb in 1993

Friday, February 26th, 2010

In the beginning, there was the World Trade Center. So choice a terrorist target that when it was bombed on February 26, 1993 via detonation of a car bomb beneath the North Tower with a 1500 pound nitrate and hydrogen gas device we were all lulled into a false sense of security with the apparent technical ‘near miss’ of intent …

It was supposed to cause the North Tower to fall into the South Tower resulting in a leveling of both Tower One and Tower Two.

The intended result did not happen — but it did kill six and injure 1,042.

However, the worst was yet to come and it arrived on

September 11, 2001 …

 
 

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USS Ranger Launched this Day 77 Years Ago

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

On this day in 1933 the USS Ranger (CV-4) was launched. She holds the distinction of being the first ship built from the keel up as an aircraft carrier.

This ship was smaller and initially lacked some of the features of an aircraft carrier such as a flight deck island superstructure.

WWII found this ship in mostly non combatant roles still winning two battle stars for combat duty and being one of the only three carriers built prior to the war to survive it.

Ranger was decommissioned on October 18, 1946 the Naval Shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia.

She was removed from the Naval Vessel Register eleven days later then sold for scrap to Sun Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Chester, Pennsylvania on January 28, 1947.

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Death and Taxes

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Some of my earliest responsibility lectures surrounded the notions of social awareness, living within your means, not setting your goals too high to achieve, and the fact that civil society required you to pay taxes.

In more recent times I recall the humor of my niece complaining about FICA — wanting to know what that ‘tax’ was all about.

“Death and Taxes” are those two things that everyone must endure as people. While we all must eventually pay our due to death, only some of us are forced to pay our fair share of taxes.

Others invoke various loopholes by which they are allowed to pay less tax than that amount. The whole concept of equity becomes flawed by attorneys who manipulate the statutes for their clients who subsequently pay them fees.

It has even reached the point where attorneys broadcast commercials on television claiming to be able to reduce the owed amount to a small fraction … but they don’t mention the inevitable fee.

The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Permits Congress to levy income tax. It does not require apportioning it among the states require that it is based Census results.

This amendment superceded Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. of 1895, which limited the Congress’s authority to levy income tax.

The presidential election of 1912 was contested between three candidates who advocated the implementation of income tax.

Ratified on February 3, 1913, Secretary of State Philander Knox proclaimed that the amendment had been ratified by the necessary three-fourths of the states, and thus had become part of the Constitution February 25, 1913 leading the way for the Revenue Act of 1913.

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Remember the Alamo !

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

At intermittent times when I was a kid we studied the Alamo in Texas and I watched various movies by Disney and others from time to time which featured the battle.

I was always taken with the number of individuals who came to Texas only to die in the battle as Santa Anna overtook and massacred the entire contingent of defenders, inspiring the battle cry

“Remember the Alamo !”

I have often wondered if I would be so brave as to answer such a desperate cry for help then fight to the death for a noble cause.

The Battle of the Alamo
February 23 – March 6, 1836

A crucial battle in the Texas Revolution. After the 13-day siege, Mexican troops under the president of Mexico General Antonio López de Santa Anna launched an assault on the Alamo Mission in San Antonio.

All but two of the defenders of the Texas Mission-turned-Fort were killed.

The perception of extreme cruelty on the part of Santa Anna during the battle inspired many Texan settlers as well as others in the United States to join the Texan Army.

Motivated by a desire for revenge, the Texans defeated the Mexican Army at the Battle of San Jacinto, on April 21, 1836 thus ending the Texas Revolution.

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