The Worth- while

The last couple of days, the news has either been more depressing or my reserve of emotion for handling it is not up to par after three nights of OT, etc. Every news story tonight made me want to go grab my big beating stick a little more- the rising price of gas, brought on mainly because of speculators who have a vested self-interest in driving up the prices,; empty headed enviro-terrorists (who count our beloved POTUS among them) who keep us tied to foreign oil instead of drilling the reserves we have right here; Sirhan Sirhan's lawyer, who is "disappointed" that his client was denied parole yet again, despite his opinion that " he met every one of the criteria for suitability to be released" (except, perhaps for the fact that he's a murdering whackjob.); having to put up with Westboro "baptist church's" free speech win at the Supreme court because if we don't allow them their malignancy, the ACLU will have grounds to silence legitimate Christians from every public intercourse, and AARRRRRRGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!



So when I got home tonight, I checked the e-mail and got my daily letter from Chuck Swindoll. Appropriate to the topic, it included this:



Yesterday we read Jesus's parable of the king who forgave his servant---who then refused to forgive a fellow-servant. (You may want to read it again from Matthew 18:23-35.) From this parable, we learned that to refuse to forgive is hypocritical.
But there's a second lesson: to refuse to forgive inflicts inner torment upon us. Remember how the story ends? It is exceedingly significant. "And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him" (Matthew 18:34).
"Well," you say, "that was just a parable. We can't press every point and say each little detail applies to us." Granted, but in this case, it's not a little detail. It's the punch line, the climax of the whole story. How can I say that? Because verse 35 is not part of the parable. It is a statement Jesus makes after the story ends. It is His penetrating application of the whole parable on forgiving others:
"My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart." (Matthew 18:35)



So I shouldn't rant about them, the AWOL dems in Indiana and Wisconsin, the brain-unused armed robber of NE Ft. Wayne, or any of the million other things I want to take the big beating stick to, at least not to the point of wishing them harm. (yeah, I realize that ain't the whole story, but bear with me.) So how does one get back into a frame of mind that allows forgiveness to those the mind tells you desperately need a beating instead? Well, starting off, get home safely. Follow with a brisk man-and-dog trip to Scrappy's Landing and environs. Get a hot meal. Interrupt Jeopardy by tickle-attacking Laurie until Scrappy joins in (NEVER on MY side, mind you). Get a hot shower. Crack open a Pepsi, and commit yourself to the attempt to forgive the unlovable. At least in print. And save yourself one news item to laugh at. To wit:



WASHINGTON --Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi has lost legitimacy to lead and he must leave, President Obama said Thursday as the Pentagon confirmed the Libyan "mad dog" was using air power to strike rebel forces who refuse to settle for less than his ouster.
"Let me just be very unambiguous about this: Col. Qaddafi needs to step down from power and leave. That is good for his country that is good for his people that is the right thing to do," the president said during remarks to reporters alongside Mexican President Felipe Calderon.


But Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez may throw a wrinkle in U.S. and international ambitions offering to negotiate a way to salvage Qaddafi's regime through mediation between the Libyan dictator and the rebel National Libyan Council.



Venezuela's Information Minister Andres Izzara told Reuters that Libya had accepted a proposal "to work for a negotiated end to the conflict accompanied by an international commission." Izzara said Venezuela will discuss "formulas for peace in Libya" with Arab allies.
Rebel forces say no way.
"No one has told us a thing about it and we are not interested anyway. We will never negotiate with him," rebel spokesman Abdul Hafif Goga told The Guardian.
(Courtesy FoxNews.)


Does anyone else see this as a contest between Laurel and Hardy (Obama and li'l buddy Calderon) and Bevis and Butt-head (Qaddaffyduck and Hugo Fudd)? Chavez helping Qaddaffyduck out would be like, say, Castro teaching Stalin the fine arts of public oppression. Obama and Li'l Buddy stepping in to settle things would be like... well, like Obama and Li'l Buddy stepping in to settle things.

All right, I feel better for one more evening.

As you know, my heroes have always been newsmen. And this year, we lost the best of them all.

Edwin Newman, Journalist, Dies at 91

By MARGALIT FOX
Published: September 15, 2010
Mr. Newman, a genially grumpy NBC newsman, was equally famous as a defender of the English language. Edwin Newman, the genteelly rumpled, genially grumpy NBC newsman who was equally famous as a stalwart defender of the honor of English, has died in Oxford, England. He was 91.
Edwin Newman moderated the first Ford-Carter debate in 1976.
He died of pneumonia on Aug. 13, but the announcement was delayed until Wednesday so that the family could spend time grieving privately, his lawyer, Rupert Mead, said. He said Mr. Newman and his wife had moved to England in 2007 to live closer to their daughter.
Mr. Newman, recognizable for his balding head and fierce dark eyebrows, was known to three decades of postwar television viewers for his erudition, droll wit and seemingly limitless penchant for puns. (There was, for example, the one about the man who blotted his wet shoes with newspapers, explaining, “These are The Times that dry men’s soles.”) He began his association with NBC in the early 1950s and was variously a correspondent, anchor and critic there before retiring in 1984.
An anchor on the “Today” show in the early 1960s and a familiar presence on the program for many years afterward, Mr. Newman also appeared regularly on “Meet the Press.” He won seven New York Emmy Awards for his work in the 1960s and ’70s with NBC’s local affiliate, WNBC-TV, on which he was a drama critic and the host of the interview program “Speaking Freely.”
He also moderated two presidential debates — the first Ford-Carter debate in 1976 and the second Reagan-Mondale debate in 1984 — and covered some of the signal events of the 20th century, from the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Mr. Newman’s best-known books, both published by Bobbs-Merrill, are “Strictly Speaking: Will America Be the Death of English?” (1974) and “A Civil Tongue” (1976). In them he declared what he called “a protective interest in the English language,” which, he warned, was falling prey to windiness, witlessness, ungrammaticality, obfuscation and other depredations.
But Mr. Newman “was never preachy or pedantic,” Brian Williams, the anchor and managing editor of the NBC “Nightly News,” said in a statement.
“To those of us watching at home,” Mr. Williams added, “he made us feel like we had a very smart, classy friend in the broadcast news business.”
Edwin Harold Newman was born in New York City on Jan. 25, 1919, the second of three children of Myron Newman and the former Rose Parker.
He graduated from George Washington High School in Washington Heights in Manhattan and in 1940 earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin, where he worked on the campus newspaper. In 1947 Mr. Newman joined the Washington bureau of CBS News, where he helped the commentator Eric Sevareid prepare his nightly radio broadcasts. Two years later he moved to London to work as a freelance journalist, joining NBC as a correspondent there in 1952. He went on to become the network’s bureau chief in London, Rome and Paris before settling in New York in 1961.
Mr. Newman was fond of saying that he had “a spotless record of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” as he told Newsweek in 1961. There was the time in 1952, for instance, that he left London for Morocco, only to learn on arriving that King George VI of England had just died.
But in fact Mr. Newman helped cover numerous historic events, among them the shootings of Robert F. Kennedy, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., George Wallace and Ronald Reagan. He announced the death of President John F. Kennedy on NBC radio.
He also narrated many well-received NBC television documentaries, including “Japan: East Is West” (1961) and “Politics: The Outer Fringe” (1966), about extremism.
His role as a moderator for presidential debates seemed only fitting, for it was the dense thicket of political discourse, Mr. Newman often said, that helped spur him to become a public guardian of grammar and usage.
Among the sins that set Mr. Newman’s teeth articulately on edge were these: all jargon; idiosyncratic spellings like “Amtrak”; the non-adverbial use of “hopefully” (he was said to have had a sign in his office reading, “Abandon ‘Hopefully’ All Ye Who Enter Here”); “y’know” as a conversational stopgap; a passel of prefixes and suffixes (“de-,” “non-,” “un-,” “-ize,” “-wise” and “-ee”); and using a preposition to end a sentence with.
His survivors include his wife, the former Rigel Grell; a daughter, Nancy Drucker; and a sister, Evelyn Newman Lee.
Despite his acclaim, Mr. Newman’s constitutional waggishness kept him from taking himself too seriously. In 1984, the year he retired from NBC, he appeared on the network as a host of “Saturday Night Live.” (One of the show’s sketches portrayed a distraught woman phoning a suicide hot line. Mr. Newman answers — and corrects her grammar.) A few years before that he delivered the news, in front of a studio audience, on David Letterman’s NBC morning show. He was also a guest on the game show “Hollywood Squares.”“Apparently it is thought that my presence lends some authority,” Mr. Newman told The Washington Post that year. He added, “If I’m leading into a story about a couple with a poltergeist in their lavatory, I have to do it soberly.”

I read one story about how, in the course of his news update during the Letterman morning show, his desk caught on fire- and he went on as if nothing had happened. I remember a time they cut over to him early- and he had a finger up his nose. Needless to say, his reaction was less than a happy one, and I'd be less than surprised if Letterman set him up on it. But the main thing I remember about Edwin is the same thing Brian Williams said in the quote I boldened above. As correct, precise, and 'sober' as he was, you could sense the fun in him- the ability to not take himself seriously that led to 4 Saturday Night Live appearances. SNL viewers back then could sniff a phony a mile away, and they loved him. He was genuine, interesting, and a bit naughty behind the prim and proper facade.

Godspeed, my friend, my teacher. They never made another one like you back then- and they'll sure never do it now.

a little news, a little fun, a little hockey, a little love.

First the news:

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the Eyjafjallajokull ( Iceland)volcano, but a state of emergency was declared and scientists feared the eruption could trigger a larger and potentially more dangerous eruption at the Katla volcano.
Saturday's eruption, which occurred just before midnight (2000 EDT, 8 p.m. EDT), came weeks after a series of small earthquakes. Television footage showed lava flows along the fissure.
"This was a rather small and peaceful eruption but we are concerned that it could trigger an eruption at the nearby Katla volcano, a vicious volcano that could cause both local and global damage," said Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland's Institute of Earth Science.

Could this be the harbinger of our March disaster? Stay tuned.

Next, the fun.

Former President Bill Clinton poked fun at his ex-veep Saturday, telling the Gridiron Club's annual dinner that he was speaking on the night before the start of spring, "otherwise known to Al Gore as proof of global warming."
Clinton also made fun of Republicans, his White House successors, his own health and his audience of reporters, saying he was there because "I really didn't have anything much better to do tonight."
Clinton, who stood in for President Obama, said Democrats are going to pass health care.
"It may not happen in my lifetime, or Dick Cheney's, but hopefully by Easter," he said referring to his and the former vice president's heart ailments.
Obama, who's preparing for Sunday's probable House vote on health care reform, spoke to the dinner via videotape, saying that when he called Clinton to stand in for him, the former president said, "Let me clear my schedule for the next three years."
Clinton said Obama told him he was busy in the White House "polishing up his Nobel Peace Prize." Obama, he joked, asked: "You've got one of these, don't you?" -- a joke rooted in reports Clinton is unhappy that the current president got a Nobel Prize after only months in office while Clinton failed to be awarded one after long efforts to bring peace to the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East.
The dinner marked the 125th annual gathering of the Gridiron Club, whose members include Washington-based reporters.
In another reference to his health, Clinton said his favorite cocktail now was "Lipitor on the rocks," referring to the widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering medicine.
He said that when Obama appeared recently on Fox News the president was "keeping his word about meeting with hostile leaders without preconditions."
In a poke at Obama's combative chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, the former president said, "I found Rahm. I created him. I made him what he is today. I am so sorry."
In the 1990s, Emanuel worked in Clinton's White House.

I always knew Bill was a comedian. I just never found him funny before. Thanks to FoxNews for those stories.

And , the hockey. Maxim Yakutsenya got his 4th goal of the playoffs at 0:19 of the second OT to give Neftekhimik a series-tying 2-1 win over Salavat Yulaev in a game that saw the goalies make a combined 83 saves. And Ak Bars sneaks out a 3-2 win to take a 2-0 lead on Metallurg. Stanislav Chistov had tied the back-and-forth game for Magnitogorsk with 6 minutes left; But along came Alexi Morozov, unsatisfied with his hat trick yesterday, scoring with 1:48 left to win it for the Snow Leopards.

Finally, a shout out to my (current) favorite nephew, Andy Schible, who sent me this:

Thx Uncle Chris! love you blog btw

See? One out of 5 nephews love this blog! We'll work on doctors and pharmacists next.