Have I caused the downfall of the music industry? Probably..... not. Have you and i together created a huge vacuum where their bank balances used to be? Highly unlikely.
They lived together in the same gray with green trim Victorian house for sixty-some odd years; he carried her over the threshold after their wedding reception. Money was too tight for an actual honeymoon, but both were thankful to have their own place, more so because all they really felt they needed was each other. The beautiful house was just gravy (though Mrs. Deal kept that house like it was Imperial jade, turning carpets, washing walls, changing drapes for each season and polishing all the wood with beeswax).
The town grew around them, cars became more prevalent. Eventually, the street was paved, and actual stop signs — and a traffic light! — were erected. They drove the same perfectly-maintained-by-the-Mister beige Packard that he had bought with his Army muster-out pay in the late fifties.Read the complete, moving, story here
When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning…. Uphill… Barefoot… BOTH ways… yadda, yadda, yadda....
And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don’t know how good you’ve got it! ....
There were no MP3’s or Napsters or iTunes! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!...
Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning...
Four White Cops, One Angry Black Man
… and the angry black man was high on drugs and emotionally despondent over the inability to kick his addiction.
And the incident ended not with gunfire, or with the black man writhing on the ground at the end of a Taser, but with the angry black man walking to the ambulance and climbing aboard, of his own free will. The EMTs bandaged the man’s lacerated wrists as he sobbed brokenly, and the cops quietly assured him that they were there to help, not arrest, and that they’d do whatever it took to get the angry black man the help he needed.
And when the angry black man thanked one of the white cops for treating him like a man and a fellow human being, and begged him to accompany him to the hospital, the white cop promised that he’d follow right behind the ambulance, and he’d be there with him in the ER as he went through what was undoubtedly a very frightening time for the angry black man.
He delivered on his promise, too.
That’s how the majority of these encounters go, you know. Doesn’t matter if the cops are white and the angry man is black, or vice versa. With a little compassion and a lot of communication, the vast majority of such incidents end without harm or bloodshed. I see them play out this way every day.
I tell you this story not because it is unusual, but because it isn’t.
You know, just in case you got the opposite impression from what you always see in the news.
The father of a Marine slain in Iraq has been ordered to pay the court costs of the odious Phelps clan:
Lawyers for the father of a Marine who died in Iraq and whose funeral was picketed by anti-gay protesters say a court has ordered him to pay the protesters’ appeal costs.I guess he hadn’t given enough.
On Friday, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered that Albert Snyder of York, Pa., pay costs associated with Fred Phelps’ appeal. Phelps is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, which conducted protests at the funeral of Snyder’s son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, in Westminster in 2006.
Lawyers for Snyder say the Court of Appeals has ordered him to pay $16,510.80 to Phelps for costs relating to the appeal, despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the Court of Appeals’ decision.
The ingenious use of Google Earth and the iPhone applications themselves to find the thief just blew me away!
A total of 276 British troops have died in the Afghan conflict since operations began in 2001.
The bodies of two soldiers killed in Afghanistan last week will be brought back to the UK on Tuesday.
L/Cpl Scott Hardy and Private James Grigg, both from the 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment, died last Tuesday north of Musa Qalah.
The cortege will pass through Wootton Bassett after arriving at RAF Lyneham.
A U.S. Marine squad was marching north of Fallujah when they came upon an Iraqi terrorist who was badly injured and unconscious. On the opposite side of the road was an American Marine in a similar but less serious state.
I understand that 'Pacific' is based very loosely on Eugene Sledge's book With the Old Breed At Peleliu and Okinawa. This is a masterpiece of a book which I have read, and reread often. It really brings war on the Japanese front alive in a way that few other books have been able to do.
But I digress. "Pacific" doesn't follow the same format as Band of Brothers which is a bit of a shame as we don't go through training with the 'team'. We don't know their names, we don't know their ranks or place in the hierarchy of the unit. So all we get to see are a few Marines going to war.
Remember, "It's for the Children™"...JayG ends with what I think is a very inciteful line:
‘Border’ struggle erupts over name
Three years ago, after decades of performing volunteer operations worldwide, George Whitelaw decided he wanted to do something that would have a broader impact.The orthopedic surgeon from Milton started a small nonprofit organization to provide primary care to children in Central America. He called his organization Children Without Borders, because “our treatment is without borders, and our patients are without borders,’’ he said.Seems pretty straightforward, right? Except that some didn't see it that way:
The operation was running smoothly - it had grown to have a $60,000 annual budget and three clinics in Costa Rica - until last summer, when Whitelaw received a cease-and-desist letter from a similar but vastly larger organization, Doctors Without Borders. The Geneva-based organization, which employs 27,000 people and has an annual budget of more than $800 million, said the group was infringing on its trademark and threatened legal action if Whitelaw did not change its name.
I mean, I'll admit to being suspicious man by nature, but when a Google search on "Doctors Without Borders" brings up 4 out of 10 hits for donations...Go to MArooned to read the full article:Idi Amin Was a Humanitarian, Too...Remember, "It's for the Children™"...
