Time Machine week 65.

It's April 25th, 1971. And it's raining in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.  In fact, in this 24-hour period 15 inches will descend from the heavens, washing away 100 lives, the health of 2,000 more, and the homes of 11,000.



Welcome to this week's Time Machine!  If you were here hoping for the Tiny Tim covers I promised last week, well, that was a joke, and you may need to contact your local mental health helpline.  What I actually have is some pretty good features, including a six degrees that Laurie suggested that will connect Pebbles Flintstone and Tony the Tiger, John Wayne and Billy Graham, Rosemary Clooney and the Grinch that stole Christmas!  Also, the amazing connection between Kenny Rogers and Tim Taylor, the incredible story of the man called "Piano Roll", and a band called the Joy Of Cooking!  One thing we won't have this week, though, is a video.  My feelings were hurt by a spam e-mail last week:

Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the
video to make your point. You clearly know what youre talking about, why waste your intelligence on just
posting videos to your blog when you could be giving us something informative to read?
Guess ya can't please everyone.
Grab a seat and let's go!

We have 14 debut tunes this week, 5 of which get a special mention.  The Stones (You know, that geriatric rock band charging $65 for the cheap seats at the United Center this summer?) come in at 53 with Brown Sugar.  Ringo Starr comes in at 64 with It Don't Come Easy; Jerry Reed at 84 with When You're Hot, You're Hot; and Carly Simon at 93 with That's The Way I Always Heard It Should Be.

Oh, and at 100, I was curious about the song Brownsville.  It was performed by a 2-girl, three guy folk-rock outfit with the unusual name of The Joy Of Cooking.  Led by ladies Toni Brown and Terry Garthwaite, the wiki article said that they were big on feminist themes, but Brownsville I don't believe was one of those.  Just a nice music out on the front porch song that Billboard peaked at 66 on the pop charts and 27 on AC.  (That's adult contemporary, not air conditioning.)

Terry on the left, Toni on the right- but what WERE they cooking?

The birthday bunch is a bit smaller than the last few weeks, but we do have one big one.  The 30-years olds after this week include Eddy Grant's Electric Avenue, Kajagoogoo's Too Shy, and for those like me who own Golden Earring's Greatest Hits, their song The Devil Made Me Do It.  Turning 35, Rod Stewart's I Was Only Joking and another one of those "only Chris remembers it" tunes, Beach Boy Mike Love and his band Celebration with Almost Summer.  Turning 45 is Ohio Express' Yummy Yummy Yummy- oh and that big one I mentioned:  Simon and Garfunkel with Mrs. Robinson.  Blow Out The Candles...


Remember last week I said third times the charm for Murray Head and the Trinidad Singers?  Well, DO YOU?  Anyway, their title theme from Jesus Christ Superstar gets the big jumper award this week, leaping 17 spots to #69.  The big dropper is Proud Mary plunging from the top 40 24 places to 43.

And that brings us to #50 and the Where Are They Now victim du jour- Someone Who Cares by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition.  You basically know the story here- young and restless musicians feeling stifled by their tenure in the New Christy Minstrels, form their own band and delve into country pop (Ruby Don't Take Your Love To Town) and psychedelic (Just Dropped In), but the voice of the band becomes bigger and bigger and band breaks up.  The early incarnations of the band were built around Rogers, Terry Williams, and Mickey Jones.  Mike Settle joined for a while, replaced later by Kin Vassey, as did opera-trained Thelma Camacho.  When Thelma left, Mary Arnold won the audition, beating out a young singer named Karen Carpenter.  Mary would go on to become Mrs. Roger Miller, and has run his estate since his death.  Thelma runs a jewelry store in California, Mike retired from music and a career in journalism.  Terry is mostly retired, but continues to compose Contemporary Christian music, Vassey passed away in 1994.  And Mickey Jones?  Well, he might just be one of the boys from K&B Construction...

That would be me, Tim!

That's right, Mickey is Pete from K&B on Home Improvement!


And now we enter the top 40, with the following new debuts.  Moving up 3 spots to #40 are Sugarloaf with Tongue In Cheek (sorry, it's no Green Eyed Lady); up ten spots to 39, Lobo with Me And You And A Dog Named Boo; climbing 12 to #35 is Aretha Franklin with her gospel-tinged take on Bridge Over Troubled Waters; The Doors open to #33, also up 12, with Love Her Madly; and climbing 10 spots to 32, the fancy sounding Ray Charles Orchestra (you can guess where this is going can't you?) with the lovely strains of their tune, Booty Butt. 

This week's lookback saw me back in 1950, and the big mover this week leapt from 37 to 11.  And the story behind this one is best told from the beginning.  In 1889, the Reverend Jacob Lincoln Cook and his second wife had a son.  Dad, the founder of the First United Presbyterian Church of Athens, Tennessee, wanted him to also be Jacob Lincoln, but mom didn't like either name.  As a compromise, they named him J.L.  (This was from the dude's own autobiography, I ain't making it up!)  With some relations calling him Jake and some calling him Larry, he became J. Lawrence Cook.  He was orphaned fairly soon on, his birth mom died when he was one, and his father and his third wife- the only mother he really knew, died when he was 14- his dad was only 33.  Eventually the law needed a first name, and knowing that his birth mom had liked the French name Jean but was leery of its feminine seeming, he finally became Jean Lawrence Cook.  But when he found his calling in life, he received yet another name- "Piano Roll".  A piano roll is the music roll that a player piano plays.  And Cook was the master of piano rolls- he recorded between 10 and 20 THOUSAND of them.  In fact, one site claims that almost all of the piano rolls recorded between 1931 and 1961 were by Lawrence "Piano Roll" Cook.  However, he wasn't a big mainstream recording star, not recording on vinyl until he hit the charts with that song that stared this whole thing, The Old Piano Roll Blues, with vocals by the Jim Dandys ( who were Artie Malvin and some OTHER guy named Ray Charles), and again the next year with Down Yonder.

Last week we had 5 new top ten songs; this week, NOBODY falls out.  However, I do have an almost but not quite shoutout- Cat Stevens stopped at 18 with Wild World last week; it falls to 34 this week.

Due to the rarified nature of Laurie's contribution to the six degrees feature, I'm going to run with it right now.  The whole thing started with Laurie bringing up wondering where the guys on This Old House lived.  And this reminded her of an old song.  Or maybe it starts with radio's first singing cowboy.  Yeah, let's start there.

Stuart Hamblen was the first of the airwaves' singing cowboys, starting way back in 1926.  Now Stuart wasn't exactly able to handle the fame he received, and he began to struggle with alcohol.  That ended in 1949 when an up-and-coming preacher named Billy Graham led him to salvation.  This led his fame in a new direction.  Gone were the spots for beer (and his radio job), but he began running his own gospel show and went on crusade with Graham, raising the audiences by the thousands as he sang his trademark It Is No Secret What God Can Do.

No, that's not the song. 

Later on he did a song called I Won't Go Huntin' With You Jake (But I'll Go Chasin' Wimmin) which hit #3 on the country charts ( and I bring up because this was the flip side of Jimmy Dean's Big John and Laurie knows it very well).  Another song he wrote, he recorded with his wife, his two daughters, and two of their friends.  He recorded it at 33 rpm speed and put it on a 45, named them the "Cowboy Church Sunday School"; the name of the song was Open Up Your Heart And Let The Sunshine In, and it became famous again 11 years later when Pebbles Flintstone and Bam-Bam Rubble did it on the Flintstones. ( a side note here, Bam-Bam was a singer we've hit on six degrees before- Ricky Page, and Pebbles was her mother Rebecca).  Neither of these were the song in question, either.

That song begins with a hunting trip in 1954 that Stuart went on with fellow cowboy John Wayne.  The two of them found a tumble-down shack way up in the mountains and went inside.  There they found an old man, dead for a while, and his half starved dog guarding him.  The scene caused Stuart to come up with the song This Ole House.

 Ain't they gonna need this house no longer
Ain't they gonna need this house no more
Ain't got time to fix the shingles
Ain't got time to fix the floor
Ain't got time to oil the hinges
Nor to mend the windowpane
Ain't gonna need this house no longer
He's a gettin' ready to meet the saints 

Rosemary Clooney recorded this as an upbeat tune rather than the dirge that Stuart intended, and hit #1.  But the story doesn't end there.  She was joined on the record by the deep baritone voice of  Thurl Ravenscroft.  And who, pray tell, was Thurl Ravenscroft?  Why, he was the uncredited singer of the song "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" that everyone just assumed was narrator Boris Karloff.  He was a baritone on a lot of other movie songs as well, along with one particular voice that was his job for 50-some years....

That's right, Thurl was Tony The Tiger!!!

And there is one more little wrinkle to the story... but I'm going to save it for next time.

And that at last brings us to this week's top ten.


Andy Williams holds at 10 with the Love Story Theme.

Dropping a quick 7 notches to #9, The Temptations with Just My Imagination.

Brewer and Shipley climbs a notch to #8 with One Toke Over The Line.

Paul McCartney shifts out of neutral, climbing a notch to #7 with Another Day.

Tom Jones slips a pair to #6 with She's A Lady.

So does Marvin Gaye with What's Going On at # 5.  That makes three former #1s in the top ten.

Neil Diamond nudges up to #4, a one-place climb with I Am... I Said.

The Jackson Five, frequent tenants of this area of the countdown, shoot from 7 to 3 with Never Can Say Goodbye.

Ocean rises 4 spots to #2 with Put Your Hand In The Hand.

And this week's #1 song... again...

.... Three Dog Night, for the second week, with Joy To The World!!!!!

See, it was worth all that rain, wasn't it?

What I see on the news page

Today I really didn't have enough for a full fledged Lotsa Little Bits post, unless I throw in some "Damn weather, stinkin' snow" and some "guess what the engineer messed up at work today".  Yesterday I was not in my right intestines and only a bit better today, but I did see some things I found amusing or interesting on the news.

First, how about the lady in Salinas, Kansas, who was taking a pee break at the Shrine circus, opened the ladies room door and came face to face with an escaped tiger.  The cat was caught soon after, the lady's three year old asked if the tiger had washed its hands when done, and no word on whether she still needed to pee afterwards.  I don't think I would, though a change of underwear would sure be refreshing...

Next up, let's suppose you are a stalker, hiding in your intended's carport.  She comes out, you tackle her, grab her keys, try to get in her house.  She goes running down the street calling for help.  You catch up and tackle her.  Suddenly you look up to see a Mormon Bishop wielding a 29-inch Samurai sword and telling you to get down.  What do you do?  Well, Mill Creek, Utah's Grant Eggersten took off running, made it to his car before losing any important parts, and lit out.  Moments later, though, visions of sword-wielding LDS missionaries with the Book of Mormon in one hand and Katana blades in the other coming to his door proved too much, and he surrendered himself at the local police station.  Now mind you, several neighbors came out to assist the beleaguered woman-  it's just that Bishop Kent Hendrix came armed.

"No reason to get excited,"
The thief, he kindly spoke
"There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late"
Oops, wrong Hendrix.

Next up, I was perusing an article from the science pages wherein a researcher from the Univ. of Adelaide (that's Australia to you ugly Americans) postulates that the hunter-gatherer population of ancient Europe underwent a sudden, unexplained replacement by farmers with different DNA.  Here's the part that caught my eye:

The researchers found that the earliest farmers in Germany were closely related to Near Eastern and Anatolian people, suggesting that the agricultural revolution did indeed bring migrations of people into Europe who replaced early hunter-gatherers.
But that initial influx isn't a major part of Europe's genetic heritage today.
Instead, about 5,000 to 4,000 years ago, the genetic profile changes radically, suggesting that some mysterious event led to a huge turnover in the population that made up Europe.


Now I don't pretend to be some high-tech, free-thinking scientist, but I find it interesting that most Biblically minded scholars would say, "Hmmm... that would be about the time we calculate for Noah's Flood."  In fact if you bop around the Googlenet, you'll find estimates from 4990 to 4285 BC, which isn't all that far off, depending on the gap between the first population and the second.  Just sayin'.

Finally, we have our last three European Hockey champions.  Former NHL star Martin Straka scored 16 minutes into OT to give Plzen a 4-3 win and a 4-3 series triumph over Zlin and the Czech championship.  This was the very first championship for Plzen, best known for giving the world one of its greatest gifts- Pilsener beer, invented here in October 1842.  Cheers!  Or as they say in Plzen, Na Zdravi!

Also Sunday, I learned that the German final was also best of five, so that 4-1 Berlin lead, which became a 4-1 win, gave the Ice Bears their seventh DEL championship and third in a row.

And today, Assat  knocked off Tappara 3-2 to take the Finland championship.  Assat, which is Finnish for Aces ( and something else here with a little imagination) are from the town of Pori, best known for an annual jazz festival- and a bit less known for a "jazzcore" band from the city called Deep Turtle.  (I just listened to a little of these guys- imagine your kid is on one floor of your house with hardcore metal playing as loud as he dares, the cat is on the next floor screaming to be let out of the clothes dryer, and your on the stairs midway between- that would about cover it.)  This is Assat's third S-M Liiga title.

Guess who's back- and who moved in!

So we went to the woods Monday afternoon after work.  The first worthwhile pic I took was what I thought was an unusual bird...  I just didn't know HOW unusual!

I looked and looked on the net for this bird- and one looked just like her.  A female red-flanked bluetail.  Absolute perfect match.  Problem was, the experts say this bird is not in the New World.  So I found a site that was a deal where you can e-mail them a pic and they'll identify it (or try to).  I swiftly got this response:

Colors are not true but maybe an Eastern Phoebe

 

So I looked up eastern phoebe:

 

Yeah, right.

I continued looking and found that they've recently been sighted in Canada and California, but not many and not around here.  But unless someone wants to give me a CONVINCING other choice, I'm saying I got a pic of the current rarest bird in Indiana.

 

So we moved on, and suddenly Laurie said, "Look at that!"

Not only deer, but deer that posed for pictures- and not only that, but I spotted the doe with the lame leg- our family from last summer is BACK!!

We counted six of them all told, with a couple of young'uns.

This is the lame-legged mama.

I was and am so excited!  It's like family who spent the winter in Florida returning in the spring!

We also saw the first chipmunk I've seen in the woods so far, got smacked in the face by a miller (the little moth, not the beer), and then we got another excellent example of why Purdue is a good school if you are mentally-challenged to start (because you will be when you're done.  Imagine if you will a group of thick brush bushes on the side of a flowing stream.  Imagine an old, not in good shape tree nestled in the middle of them.  Imagine Purdue, who owns the wood, decides to cut out all the brush EVERYWHERE along the trail, including this one grouping by the stream.  Without the living brush to hold things together, what do you suppose happens to the not-in-good-shape tree, which they left in place, all alone?

That's right, class- it falls into the formerly-flowing stream!  This from the same people who decided to put in a new gravel trail and two soccer fields into a watershed area without running drainage tile.  I can't wait until they actually try to use the former meadow-come-soccer fields (if they ever do- they sat unused all last year).  I can see the sign now- "Soccer fields 20 and 21- use only during drought conditions"!

NOTE: I wanted to find a picture linking "Purdue" and "stupidity" (thinking it couldn't be THAT hard), but all I got was various Purdue sports teams and their coaches (makes sense), along with a smattering of bikini clad Purdue "girls of the Big Ten" contestants, and, curiously enough, a handful of scenes involving the University of Michigan (insert your U of M joke here).


Before I go (or am assassinated by terrorists from IPFW), I have a couple of other photos to share with you.

From our Saturday walk- a goose trying to take a nap in all that wind...

This here is Joseph- he lives near my son's back door.  He's the one who keeps having territorial spats with the neighborhood 'munks.

And off they go in Australia

I learned many things about Australian hockey yesterday.  For example, they only play the weekends; they just got a brand new TV deal for a game of the week on Saturdays; they play a 50-minute game rather than sixty; the individual players are sponsored (for the most part); and the league website had the devil's own time getting the scores of games up, with the stats to the last game Saturday morning (my time) not going up till Sunday morning (my time).  Also, they only gave attendance for half the games (or else nobody showed up at 2 of them).

First, let me set the stage.  This is an 8-team league with two divisions.  One features two teams from Sydney- the Ice Dogs and the Bears- along with Newcastle's North Stars and Canberra's Knights.  The other features two teams from Melbourne- the Ice and the Mustangs- along with Adelaide's Adrenaline and Perth's Thunder, a team almost 1,700 miles from the nearest other team (roughly the distance from NYC to Rapid City, South Dakota.  Thus, they only play on weekends they can get two games in- and did not play this week.

Saturday, there were three games.  The battle of Melbourne began with the Ice blasting the Mustangs 7-2 Behind 4th-year man Matt Armstrong, who tallied 2 goals and 4 assists.  Like most of the players who actually accomplished something noteworthy, Matt was a Canadian expat.  Newcastle took down the Ice Dogs 6-2 behind a hat trick and an assist by Jeff Martens, a guy who's bounced around the CHL and just got back from playing the winter season in Friesland of the Dutch League.  Rounding out the first slate, Canberra topped Adelaide 3-2 despite Britt Ouellette scoring twice in the last 2:44 of the game.  The Adrenaline had finally hit after falling behind with a 21-shot third period which was for the most part held off by Knight goalie Chris Slauenwhite, who was the backup on the Bears last year.

Sunday the Adrenaline picked up where they left off, blasting the Bears 9-2 (giving Sydney an 0-for-the weekend.  Britt again struck, as did his brother Travis.  Britt had 2 goals (one of four on the team) and 2 assists for 4 points (also one of four), while Travis, fresh from Ferris  State University (Britt and little brother Chad went to Dartmouth) had a goal and 3 assists, to give the family an 11 point weekend (Travis had an assist in Saturday's game as well).

Elsewhere, Sonderjyske got a goal from defenseman Tyler Gotto 16 minutes into OT to give SonderjyskE the Danish title with a 1-0 win Friday.  SonderjyskE is a multi-sport umbrella group who runs the team out of tiny Vojens (pop. 7,600) since 2004.  They've won 4 titles now with SonderjyskE, and 3 more before that.

In games yet to play today, Zlin and Plzen face off for the Czech Extraliga title in game seven.  Yesterday, Assat downed Tappara 4-0 to tie the Finland finals at 2 games apiece.  And as I type,  Julian Talbot (whose brother Joe was a star in the UK's Sheffield Steelers before retiring this year after 130 goals there in 4 seasons) has scored twice to give Eisbaren Berlin a 4-1 lead on Kolner in game 4 of the German finals with about 8 minutes left.

Sunday Message

There are a lot of ways that we need Christ to come into our lives.  And most of them have to do with the way we will allow Him in.  I think God crated a LOT of different people, and had to allow for a lot of different ways to reach them.  Thus, many denominations, among other things.  Yes, that's right, something that non-believers usually term a failing is actually a strength.  God works like that too.  For example...

Monday's reading was Paul's discussion of his conversion in Galatians 1.  Here was a man zealous but for the wrong beliefs.  In his actions, he was a lot more like the Boston bombers than, say Mohammed.  Because he was an "I am right and disagreement means death" type- although perhaps not with the innate homicidal bent those whackjobs had.  Still, a whackjob is a whackjob, and Paul had to be, as he put it, called through grace, which in his case meant being jabbed in the proverbial butt by the goads.  In this case, Jesus came to him in the only way he would receive Him- a direct visit.  How direct your visit might be depends on how zealous you are in getting away.

Tuesday brought me to the other pillar of faith, Simon Peter, in John 21.  He was elated to know his Savior yet lived; but he wasn't getting anywhere with the knowledge because he couldn't forgive himself for the three denials.  For those not up on the story, as Jesus was tried by the Sanhedrin and Pilate, Peter denied he knew Jesus three times- "Before the cock crowed twice," just as Jesus had predicted.  So Jesus asked him three times, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?"  After the third one, the light went on in his head that Jesus was helping him to forgive himself.  Because just like when Elijah was down because of his despair, He gave Peter a task- "Feed My sheep."  Our tendency is to allow our sin to separate us from what God wants us doing (which is just why Satan tempts us in the first place).  Jesus comes to us and says, "Never mind that, we've work to do."  In other words, He reaches us in this situation by taking us past the sin, which He has already forgiven.  And if He has, we should as well.

Wednesday takes us to the dedication of the Second Temple in Ezra 2 and 3.  The people had sinned, and God had allowed everything to be destroyed- just as He promised.  But also, just as He promised, He brought back the remnant.  They sang in worship of why God allowed them to return:

"For He is good,
For His mercy endures forever towards Israel".

But you know what, there was a caveat- a subtle one- to that.  Just because He had forgiven them, it didn't make it all the same as it was...

¹² But many of the priests and Levites and heads of the fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first temple, wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this temple was laid before their eyes. Yet many shouted aloud for joy, ¹³ so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people, for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the sound was heard afar off.

The old and wise realized that their sin had caused something to be lost.  Sure, they had been forgiven- but sin had cost them.  Sin always costs us, despite Christ's atoning blood.  That cost, though, varies significantly.

Thursday brings us to Luke 13 and the woman crippled for eighteen years.  It was her infirmity that brought her to Him, and His healing that linked them together.    Jesus, in fending off the Pharisees who objected to His healing on the Sabbath (because that was "work"), described what He did as loosing her from Satan's bonds.  These days, we see Satan's bounds as more spiritual than physical, but still expect healing to be just physical.  Jesus sees both the bonds and the healing as physical AND spiritual, and heals what brings you out of Satan's hold. Not necessarily what we think needs healed.

Friday Takes us to Luke 24 and the pilgrims walking to Emmaus.  Jesus walked with them- though they didn't see it was Him- and moaned to Him about the death of their messiah and the rumours about His resurrection.

²⁵ Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! ²⁶ Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” ²⁷ And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

A friend of mine posted a couple days ago about how we are getting lost in simplifying the Gospel to make it easier to understand, rather than teaching it as is until it is understood.  Using programs, and music, and meetings, and crosses, and a million other things to feed the world (and ourselves) on something less than the "solid food" of the Bible.  Jesus, on the other hand, took these men right to the source and MADE them understand.

So we have seen that Jesus reaches us through direct means, forgiveness through a call to work, pure mercy, healing, and Scriptural knowledge.  But Saturday took me to Hosea 13-14.  Here, the prophet moans the coming destruction of Israel for its sins.  Here, the sin was explained simply in verse 6: "they were filled and their hearts were exalted; therefore they forgot Me."  Where Paul hadn't exactly forgotten Him, but was on the wrong path to Him, Israel had flat out went their own way without Him.  Therefore the "direct" approach was handled a different way- Assyria became the hammer by which God destroyed them.  Even then, though, as you read on, this wasn't the end; look at verse 9:

O Israel, you are destroyed;
But your help is from Me.

This total disregard of God forced Him to use all these methods to bring them around:  direct intervention, forgiveness, mercy, healing ( "I shall heal their backsliding", 14:4), a job to work on (14:8, "Ephraim shall say... I am like a green Cyprus tree; Your fruit is found on me"), and knowledge ("Who is wise, let him understand these things", 14:9).

Point being, how God reaches us depends on how we let Him in (didn't I say that once?)  The unfortunately, the usual way we let Him in is through our failings.  The fortunate part is, that He'll come in that way, too.

A weekend walk

...but first, I have to say I am SICK of sneezing.  I don't know what's up, but since about 11 I've sneezed about three dozen times.  And I'm SICK of snow, which we woke up to see in the yard, this morning, though it was gone after about an hour of sunlight.  Both were absent from the walk, but we quickly saw the results of 3 inches of rain a couple days ago...

Before you question this picture, let me just say this is about the third time in four years that I've seen water in this ditch.

The Green Hole at about double usual capacity.

No river bank here- just woods and water!

So we moved on for a quick trip through the woods...

He started in giving us grief right off.

First flowers out, as usual- Dutchman's Britches.

My dad's family would be out with knives and buckets hunting dandelion greens.  Never got the taste for them myself.

 Truly, my dad would mix a mess of greens seared in vinegar, fried potatoes, and egg.  Looked like he was eating sea monster.

This is Scrappy being disappointed when I wouldn't let him tear through butt-deep mud to chase Mr. Fox, who we saw on the back trail again.  Sorry no pics- he moves so quick I couldn't have caught him if all I had to do was wiggle my nose.

See that nice rusty log?  Imagine it with pointy ears and a tail and it would look just like Mr. Fox.

More cute little flowers.

I don't understand them

The last thing I want to do, as I have said before, is to give any more fame to the two wasted young men who were taken down today after the five day manhunt.  What I mean by wasted will soon become apparent.  The thing is, one thing about Friday's events keeps playing in my head, the words of the one who now stands before God saying, "Does this mean I don't get my virgins?"

“I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them.”
You don't understand them.  I said to myself, I wonder what it is that he didn't understand.

Is it that we love and value- and for the most part, enjoy- our lives?  I can see where people who place no value on life might be confused.

Is it where this country's people believe, despite what atheists might want to claim, that faith should not be forced at the edge of a sword?  Or that we have little interest in slavishly worshipping a "god" that commands such butchery?

Was it the willingness of this nation and its people, over and over, to shower the men and their family kindness- refuge from ethnic persecution, the best of our education, even to the point of helping pay for schooling in one of the nation's finest schools?  They probably thought us fools for helping them, but between the man that gives with an open hand and the man who spits in his face, which one is the fool?

Did they not understand about how we may look soft and easy to cow on the outside, but are strong and hard as steel when wounded?  They certainly learned that- from the runners who aided in triage, to the first responders who rushed in, to the fans who sang the national anthem in the Garden Wednesday night, I think they had ample opportunity to learn THAT lesson.

I don't think they ever really tried to understand.  Even when that first one fell, the other one swore vengeance for his death, never stopping to reason that perhaps if they hadn't killed so many, he would still be alive.

Before the followers of Allah come out saying, "True Islam is not like that,"  I say, "Fine.  But the variety of Islam they practiced is not what you are defending."  Atheists like to whine about Christians "infringing on their rights", but these people would put you to death for your beliefs.  They would kill you, and take your children and indoctrinate them as modern day Janissaries.  If you weren't so disingenuous in what you say you believe, you'd be worrying less about those praying for you and more about those plotting against you.  These are people who robotically follow an ideology- I wouldn't grant them the courtesy of actually having any kind of faith- and will kill you if you refuse.  The human race's version of "You will be assimilated".

And the most important thing they didn't understand is, we are Americans.  We won't be beaten by them.  Nothing they can ever think to do will defeat us.  In the end, we may well bring ourselves down.  But will defend to the death our right to destroy ourselves.

And their own cause?  We never even knew for sure what it was.  It may have been nothing other than mass murder for the sheer joy of it.  If they had a cause, they brought nothing to it.  Anyone who paid attention to 9-11 should have been able to figure out that this kind of thing only makes us stronger.  I mean, think about it.  Before 9-11 they had a filthy rich leader, several uncaring governments to hide under, and a complacent US of A to work around.  Afterwards, the filthy rich leader is fish food, the governments that shielded them have either been tromped on or are busy ducking drones, and the words "Let's Roll" make them run and hide.  Now, we have a new meaning attached to Patriots Day, a whole group of new heroes, and a reason to stop being so nice to their fellows if we so choose.  Good job.

Wasted?  Yes, wasted.  These were potentially brilliant young men, who could have made a true difference to their people, their faith, their world.  But in the end, all they had is hate, and hate just makes you stupid.