Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Umm, heads up: Earth revolves around the sun

Nicolaus Copernicus is spinning in his grave.

This is not a matter of “may be spinning.” I’m convinced he’s actually doing it. Surely, wherever he is, the Renaissance mathematician and astronomer has heard the latest from National Public Radio, which is that 26 percent of Americans believe the sun revolves around Earth.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/14/277058739/1-in-4-americans-think-the-sun-goes-around-the-earth-survey-says

The National Science Foundation conducted a survey and discovered what — I believe at least — to be a shocking lack of knowledge about one of the basic foundations of our world.

Copernicus formulated the theory about Earth’s role in the solar system, dispelling what had been common “knowledge” for many previous centuries. The ancient Greeks — who had their own cadre of scientists and mathematicians — had thought the sun circled Earth. Along came the Romans, who bought into the Greeks’ notion of our solar system.

The Dark Ages settled in after the fall of the Roman Empire. Then came the Renaissance and the emergence of the likes of Copernicus, who hailed from what we know now as Poland.

It is utterly amazing that six centuries later, after Copernicus’s theory has been so well-established and taught in virtually every elementary, middle, junior high and high school in the nation, that slight more than a fourth of Americans apparently don’t get that the sun is the center of our solar system.

Isn’t it interesting that we call it the “solar system,” which carries by its very name the connotation that the sun is at the center?

As a friend of mine noted while sharing this tidbit on Facebook, “We have some work to do.”

 

Uncategorized

Maybe, just maybe, the genes aren't so pure

I blogged earlier today about my hyphenated heritage and how I like referring to myself as a Greek-American.

My parents were Greek. My grandparents, all four of them, were Greek. My grandparents came to this country in the early 20th century.

The object of the blog, actually, was a comment from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — an Indian-American — who’d said he disliked hyphenated ethic designations for Americans. That’s fine. He’s entitled to his view, I am to mine.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2015/04/19/proud-of-my-hyphenated-heritage/

Then the thought occurred to me. It’s really occurred to me many times over the course of my life, but I’ll share it here.

My mother’s parents came to the United States from Turkey. They were ethnic Greeks. My grandfather was a merchant sailor who traveled the world before settling in Portland, Ore. My grandmother joined him later, making the arduous journey from Turkey, through Athens, then on to New York. She boarded a train for the West Coast.

The thought? It’s this: Were Mom’s parents really and truly pure Greek?

They lived on a small island in the Sea of Marmara. It was a primitive place. I don’t know this for a fact, but my assumption has been that Turks populated the island as well as Greeks. Yes, Greeks and Turks loathed each other, but some comingling among people of rival ethnicities does occur.

The villages kept no record of births. For all I know, my grandparents’ parents, and their grandparents — and this dates back to, oh, the turn of the 18th century, might have quenched their desires with people of Turkish heritage.

It’s entirely possible.

I don’t dwell on this, given that I cannot prove any of it. Thus, I’ll continue to proclaim my Greek heritage until someone, somehow, in some fashion, can prove that my ethnicity isn’t as pure as I’ve been saying it is.

 

Uncategorized

OKC bombing memorial: That's how you do it

My wife and I have visited the Oklahoma City memorial to the April 19, 1995 bombing many times since its completion.

We come away each time with the same reaction: Anyone wishing to memorialize a tragic event needs to visit with the planners who executed this memorial to see how to do it correctly, in exquisite taste and decorum.

It’s on the edge of downtown OKC, where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building stood before Timothy McVeigh detonated the truck bomb that destroyed the structure and killed 168 innocent victims.

It has two outstanding features: a pool of still water and 168 chairs positioned to the side of the pool. Of the chairs, 19 of them are smaller than the rest. They honor the lives of the children McVeigh killed when the bomb went off. The children were attending a day care center inside the Murrah Building. McVeigh drew a figurative bead on those innocent, precious babies when he committed his heinous act.

One wall from the Murrah Building is preserved at the end of the pool. On another wall is an inscription, “9:03,” when the bomb exploded on that horrifying morning.

The good people of Oklahoma City did it right.

If you’re ever traveling through Oklahoma’s capital city, you owe it to yourself — and your children — to see this memorial.

It will move you in a way you might not expect.

national news, political news, Uncategorized

President, Congress head for rocky stretch run

There ought to be little doubt left that President Barack Obama’s final laps at the White House are going to be full of bitter quarrels with another “co-equal branch of government,” the U.S. Congress.

It didn’t need to come to this. But it has.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/barack-obama-delaying-loretta-lynch-vote-embarrassing-gop-117081.html?hp=b1_r1

The president took particular umbrage the other day at the Senate’s inexcusable delays in confirming Loretta Lynch to become the next attorney general.

“Nobody can describe a reason for it beyond political gamesmanship in the Senate,” Obama said during a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. “I have to say that there are times where the dysfunction in the Senate just goes too far. This is an example of it.”

As Politico reports, part of the reason for this dysfunction appears to be that the previous Congress opted out of deciding Lynch’s nomination, preferring to hand the job over to the current Congress. I’ll admit to supporting that view, given that the 113th Congress was leaving office. I put some measure of faith in the 114th Congress being able to do right by Lynch, the president and the cause of ensuring that we have a fully functioning Justice Department.

I guess I should have known better. My bad.

The delay now has nothing to do with her qualifications, which are superlative. It has everything to do with side issues that Senate Republicans have concocted as a pretext.

And the president calls it an “embarrassment.” Do you think? I do.

And get this, also from Politico: “Lynch was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 26, so her nomination has lingered on the Senate floor for 50 days. That is longer than the previous seven attorneys general had to wait from committee approval to floor confirmation vote — combined.”

No wonder the president is angry.

It’s not going to get any better, Mr. President. Bet on a rough ride until the end of your presidency.

 

media news, Uncategorized

When Brokaw says it's bad … it's bad

Overstatement isn’t my thing, so I say this with great care.

Tom Brokaw has become sort of today’s version of E.F. Hutton. Whenever he speaks of things relating to broadcast journalism, people tend to listen intently.

He’s been fairly quiet about the Brian Williams matter … you know, the NBC anchor who’s been suspended from his job without pay for embellishing his wartime experience in Iraq.

Brokaw, whom Williams replaced as anchor of NBC Nightly News, has weighed in. For my money, it doesn’t look good at all for Williams’s future.

Brokaw has acknowledged “this is a really, really serious case, obviously.”

Do you think?

Brokaw and Williams aren’t the best of friends. Brokaw said the two men have had a “cordial” relationship, which is more or less a diplomatic way of saying they smile when they see each other but in reality can’t stand to be around the other guy. We’ve all relationships like that, haven’t we?

It’s been reported of late that Williams might have hated succeeding Brokaw on the anchor desk because of the very high standard of excellence Brokaw set during his lengthy tenure. It reminds me a bit of the tension that existed between Walter Cronkite and his successor at CBS, Dan Rather, when Cronkite retired from the anchor job and was succeeded by Rather — who never quite measured up to Uncle Walter’s iconic stature.

Brokaw made his remarks recently in a talk at the University of Chicago. Check it out on this You Tube link. It’s at the 54-minute mark. Quite interesting, indeed.

 

 

 

International news, Uncategorized

Closer to home … how about Cuba?

Shifting our attention closer to home for a moment or two …

A new poll shows that most Cuban-Americans agree with the U.S. policy shift toward that fearsome foe of freedom, Cuba.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/poll-cuba-obama-cuban-americans-florida-116570.html?hp=l3_4

President Obama this past year announced plans to restore full diplomatic relations with the Marxist government in Havana. The United States has lifted many travel restrictions already. Our governments are now talking directly to each other. Before too terribly long there likely will be an exchange of ambassadors and the nations will have embassies in each other’s capital cities.

This policy change should have occurred decades ago. That it’s occurring now is a sign of the changing times.

The U.S.-led embargo against Cuba has needed to be lifted. Indeed, any possible threat Cuba posed to this country evaporated in 1991 when the Soviet Union disappeared. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis provided a scary two-week standoff that well could have brought about nuclear annihilation, but it ended well when President Kennedy forced the Big Bad Bear to “blink,” and remove those offensive missiles from the island nation.

Yes, the nation has human rights issues it needs to resolve. Then again, so do many other nations with which the United States already has full diplomatic relations.

Cuban-Americans, who hold considerable political sway in this country, now appear to be climbing aboard the U.S.-Cuba relationship restoration vehicle.

Let us proceed to make that restoration a reality.

 

Uncategorized

First big RV trip: a rousing success

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

We can declare our first-ever multi-state, multi-day trip in our recreational vehicle to be a success.

And a rousing one at that.

We shoved off from Amarillo the morning of March 21 and arrived back home just yesterday. Our travel took us to Mesa, Ariz., where we met up with my sister and brother-in-law, who had driven their RV from just north of Vancouver, Wash.

We had a serious blast with them, enjoying the sunshine, a bit of fellowship with fellow RV owners encamped at the park in Mesa and visiting with our aunt and uncle, who live about an hour’s drive south of the Phoenix area.

Except for a couple of mechanical issues we’re going to resolve with the folks who sold us our fifth wheel, our trip began and ended well for us.

But we did learn a valuable lesson while towing our 28-foot RV: Do not venture somewhere until you know for certain whether you can be comfortable getting there — and then coming back out.

We pulled out of the RV park Friday morning to start our trip home, but then we decided to take a gander at an attraction called Tortilla Flats, about 25 miles or so northeast of Mesa along an Arizona state highway. We looked at our map and assumed we could keep on going to a more significant highway once we finished visiting the attraction, which was billed as a replica of a ghost town.

You know what they say about assuming … yes?

Tortilla Flats sits along a very narrow road, with plenty of curves, switchbacks and, I should add, some seemingly harrowing areas. We hauled our fifth wheel through and along all of it en route to Tortilla Flats. For a bit of the trip in there, the road was bordered on side by rocky cliffs and the other side by, well, a serious drop-off into a bright blue lake full of boaters and kayakers.

I had a nightmare scenario of getting the fifth wheel too close to the edge and being pulled into the drink backward by the plummeting RV.

We got there just fine, but then learned that getting out would present a bit of a challenge. The paved road became an unpaved road once we got past Tortilla Flats. We were advised by a young restaurant waitress that we should just go back the way we came in.

Well, OK. But to get turned around, we had to take the RV up a dirt hill, onto a parking area and get it pointed in the right direction for the return trip back to Apache Junction. It required us to back the thing up.

We sized up our turning area and decided we could get the truck and the RV lined up to back up in a straight line enough to get it turned toward the right direction.

So … we did.

And out we came. Back to Apache Junction, back to the main highway and off toward Payson, Holbrook and then on to Gallup. N.M., for a night’s stay.

We breezed home along Interstate 40 the next day.

All is good. Our fifth wheel has been cleaned of the bugs that splattered it on the way to Mesa.

Once we get the mechanical issues resolved, we’ll be ready to ride.

 

Uncategorized

Puppy Tales, Part 12

Did you know dogs get car sick, the way people get car sick?

A member of my family has a large dog that gets sick while riding any distance in a motor vehicle. So my family member and his wife cannot travel far in their car with their pooch.

I am happy to report that Toby the Dog should be renamed Toby the Road Warrior.

We’ve just returned from a weeklong motor vehicle trip to Arizona, where we spent several fun- and  laugh-filled days with my sister, brother-in-law and my aunt and uncle.

And yes, Toby the Road Warrior was a big part of our fun-filled week on the road.

He’s not quite a year old. He’s been on the road with us on trips to the Dallas-Fort Worth area and to Oklahoma City. This trip to Phoenix-Mesa was a test of Toby’s stamina. He passed with an A-plus grade.

How did he do it? Well, he slept most of the way.

Toby also managed to, shall we say, hold it while we were traveling in our pickup. We’d go a few hours between stops. Then we’d get out, stretch our legs and then Toby the Road Warrior would, um, take care of his business.

He’d finish and he’d ready for the next non-stop segment of our cross-country adventure.

Toby the Road Warrior made us proud.

military news, Uncategorized

Code Talkers provided unique heroism

NAVAJO COUNTY, Ariz. — I guess it goes back to the first time I ever heard of the Code Talkers.

Every time I see the word “Navajo,” I think of those brave men.

We blazed through Navajo County today on our way home and the thought of the Code Talkers came pouring through.

Equally compelling, in my view, is thinking of the individual who conceived the mission our armed forces handed these brave Americans. Credit for employing the Navajo Code Talkers has gone to Philip Johnston, a civil engineer for the city of Los Angeles. He was raised on the Navajo reservation as the son of missionaries … and spoke the language fluently.

The Navajo weren’t the first Native Americans to answer the call to become Code Talkers. Their language is believed to be the only one the enemy never  decoded.

The mission handed to Navajo Indians was to devise a code that would baffle the Japanese in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

Someone in the War Department figured that the enemy couldn’t possibly understand what was being said between Americans who spoke a language that was as unique as any on the planet.

Japanese cryptographers were able to decipher some coded messages during the war. So, to get around their knowledge of how to break our codes, U.S. war planners devised a code using the Navajo language.

Imagine sitting in a Japanese communications monitoring station, listening to individuals speaking to each other in a language you’ve never heard. You cannot identify it as, say, French, Russian or Spanish — let alone English.

That was the work of the Code Talkers. They’re all gone now. They were heroes in the absolute truest sense of the word.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/06/04/r-i-p-heroic-american/

I’ve long honored them for the heroism they performed. I also have honored Philip Johnston, who concocted this crazy notion of employing a language the enemy couldn’t decipher.

Brilliant, I tell you. Brilliant.

 

Uncategorized

This 'forest' seems lacking of trees

TONTO NATIONAL FOREST, Ariz. — Can you call anything a forest, even when it lacks trees?

I think you can. My wife and I drove through a place today that is called “Tonto National Forest,” but to be candid, what we saw for much of our lengthy drive looked nothing like a forest as I understand the term.

The feds own a lot of land out West. Many states west of the Rockies comprise land that is owned by the federal government. So I guess the feds can call their land whatever they want.

National forest?

OK, not all of Tonto National Forest is as I’ve suggested. Much of it from the Phoenix-Mesa region is sprinkled with cactus plants. Yes, they are impressive specimens. They tower over the high desert landscape. And yes, there are many thousands of the cacti all across the hilly and even mountainous terrain.

As we traveled north, though, we did encounter trees that blanketed the mountainsides.

“There’s your forest,” I muttered to my wife. We chuckled.

I was a bit reminded of the time, in 1974, my wife and our very young sons and I drove south from our home in Portland, Ore., way south to visit my father-in-law just north of San Diego, Calif. As we came down out of the mountains north of Los Angeles, we noticed a sign: “Leaving Angeles National Forest.”

I asked my wife, “That was a national forest?” The land was even more barren than what we saw today.

I guess when you hail from the land of seriously tall timber, you expect to see “forests” that actually fit the description.