From politics (moderates who lean to the right) to Pogo (drools during poker stare) to rants (Whatcha expect from savvy, sassy sexagenarians?) to raves (Have you had your kudo today?) -- we never take ourselves too seriously.
We do, however, reserve the right to slaughter an occasional sacred cow. And in case we fail to mention it -- we will never forget....
Two months ago, I volunteered to participate in the 2,996 Project initiated by D. C. (Dale) Roe, to write a tribute to one randomly assigned victim of the 9-11 tragedy. I was assigned to write a tribute to Lynn C. Goodchild.
At 9:04 am on September 11, 2001, I watched in utter disbelief as Flight 175 struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center. A bright, successful, effervescent 25-year-old woman -- Lynn C. Goodchild -- was on that flight.
There are no official reports of what transpired on Flight 175. One unofficial telephone call recounts passenger discord and -- because of erratic flight maneuvers -- considerable air sickness among passengers before impact ....
Have or will I watch re-enactments of the 9-11 tragedy? No. No, thanks.
Reading approximately 5-600 tributes to victims of the 9-11 tragedy has been enough.
Dear God -- some of the tributes, especially those which detailed the final moments of victims' telephone calls to loved ones ... of conversations with 911 operators .... of testimonies by survivors -- have more than met my vicarious interests.
It has been the other tributes -- the profiles of warm, gentle, caring, every-day-type people .... neighbors ... friends ... people with young children, new wives, interests and nuances, problems and ambitions -- no different from yours or mine .... people who died horrendous and needless deaths. How moved have I been? How touched by the tributes?
I started a blog roll for the 2,996 bloggers who wrote tributes for D. C. (Dale) Roe's project. It was the most I could do, I felt. It will take a while to record all the names and links, but it will be another worthwhile project.
Why?
To extend an association -- beyond political, social and geographic barriers, beyond the memorial services. An association of individuals who, in essence, are connected -- i.e., who empathize with the tragic devastation of lives -- both lost and surviving. To promote a connection -- to capture and preserve the essence of humanity that was lost that day -- as collected by total strangers. To maintain the realization that the individuals in those airplanes and in those buildings were real people -- not just names etched in marble or photos on a wall. We must not forget. We will not forget. We must remember the individuals -- the moms, dads, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, the young, the elderly -- who died in that horrific tragedy.
Flocks of paper flying Faces bent from crying Traces of a skyline On a morning that will never die
Smoky silence burning Broken sky returning Echoes in a stairwell On a morning that will never die
Missing voices whisper through the broken sky Live your life and we will never die...
Lynn Catherine Goodchild May 27, 1976 - September 11, 2001
On 9-11-01, at 8:14 am, Lynn Goodchild and her fiancéShawn Nassaney departed Boston's Logan International Airport on United Airlines Flight 175.
Described by family and friends as "inseparable travelers," Lynn and Shawn were avid sportsmen who shared a contagious zest for life, a devotion to families and friends, a love of adventure and travel.
Known for whirl-wind vacations around the world, Lynn and her best friend were indeed inseparable travelers. On this fateful day, they were en route to a four-day vacation in Maui, Hawaii.
At 9:02:54 am, Flight 175 impacted the south side of the South Tower between the 78th and 84th floors.
A native of Attleboro, MA, Lynn worked as a program administrator with Putnam Investments. Testimonies by co-workers and friends refer to her compassion, her grace and dignity, her professional competence, her warm and gentle spirit, her beauty, her infectious smile, her love for Shawn ....
Actually -- it is difficult to garner a complete tribute to Lynn or Shawn without thinking of them as consummate soul-mates, kindred spirits .....
One of the qualities that made Shawn M. Nassaney and Lynn Catherine Goodchild such an enviable couple was that they shared the same attitude toward their young adulthood, one that could be summed up as: work hard, play hard.
It was like that at Bryant College, where they met. Both stood out in sports, Lynn in karate and Shawn in cross country, and both found lots of time to party, too. By 25, they were excelling in the business world.
They loved to travel. In 2000, they'd lived briefly in Sydney .... In 2001 they pulled off several whirlwind trips, usually just three or four days long - Florida in January for a college friend's party, London for Valentine's Day, Disney World in July for Shawn's 25th birthday.
On this trip, on Sept. 11, they were supposed to catch a connection in Los Angeles from United 175 to a flight bound for Maui, Hawaii. It was going to be their last splurge for a while, as they had decided it was time to save money for graduate school and for marriage.
They were always cramming in every last bit of fun.
''It was almost as if he had a feeling that he wasn't going to be here long,'' said Shawn's mother, Margaret Nassaney.
Shawn's older brother, Ryan, remembers the end of a trip to New York, when they had only 45 minutes left before their bus was leaving. Ryan wanted to go to the bus stop and wait, but Shawn and Lynn insisted on a few spins around the ice skating rink at Rockefeller Center. Ryan whined that it freezing cold and that the line would be endless. Lynn and Shawn dragged him anyway. ''The line was too long and it was freezing cold, but we had the best time in the world,'' Ryan recalls. -- Boston.com
Buh-bye Summer daze. I hope. Summer in my part of the world has been hotter and more humid than in years past. Or maybe it's my age and work-load .... And speaking of work --
We can thank the Central Labor Union in NYC for organizing the first Labor Day parade and picnic wayyyy back in 1882. It was a day to honor the American worker. The idea spread quickly. Twelve years later, Congress got the message and made Labor Day a national holiday.
For most Americans -- Labor Day marks the end of summer, the last day before school starts, the beginning of Fall Festivals and Fairs, EOY flea markets, home improvement sales, closing the summer cottage, family BBQ's, the last major holiday before Thanksgiving, and for the fashion-conscious: the last day to wear summer white (i.e., shoes, shorts, slacks, suits, skirts, etc.).
Oh yeah. And for most workers (like moi), it also means working overtime the rest of the week to complete work not done on Monday.
I do it quasi-religiously because it's in muh blood (betcha every graduate of a US public school has read at least one of a distant relative's books).
My first "blog" was a photo-journal done back in the late 90's .... I write for fun and profit -- ghost-write for others and two for myself. I don't blog because I have anything earth-shattering to say. Beyond family and friends, my readership is relatively low. Most prefer to send email --- they don't want to "disagree" with me in public. It's a Southern thang, I'm told. It could also be because those who know me also know my disposition .... pffffth. Liver-lillied chickens.
I love to read blogs a tad more than I enjoy writing my own (4). Hence, the long list of favs in the sidebar. Yep, I surf through them daily. For all our differences in opinion(s) -- bloggers share one common thread: To interact, to communicate with others -- to speak and to listen.
I particularly appreciate those who do so with humor. Hence, my favorite of favorites is probably Lucianne.com. And today (taaaaaaaa daaaaaaaaa) I received notification that I will be allowed to post on her site.
Gosh. What an honor. I mean it. Insignificant me. Posting on Lucianne.com. Allowed to contribute links and comments on Lucianne.com. Wow.
Like .... her blog is THE tops. Upper-echelon in what's REALLY happenin' babe news-type stuff. She's head-over-heels better than those who claim to be the tops .... Her blurbs and summaries bespeak the relevance of the times -- within a moderate to conservative context, of course. And with humor. Who could ask for anything more? Like, really.
Of course, I'll likely be ultra-shy and will probably never contribute a link, but I sure as heck will post comments. When I feel compelled. Or brave enough.
Forgive my exuberance.
I was just thinking about inviting my far-left extremist moonbat kos-kussin' AND my far-right skeers-the-heebie-bejeebie-outta-me neighbors over for day-old coffee. Served in my L-dotter Lucianne mugs.
I'm not referring to one of the most brilliant American guerilla strategist ever -- an Apache medicine man (not a chief) and his small band of warriors (including women) who eluded over five thousand soldiers (one quarter of the entire U.S. military) and Spanish forces during the early 1800's.
I'm referring to the land for which he and his warriors fought in Arizona and New Mexico.
Geronimo was never captured, by the way. On this day, September 4, 1886 -- tired and with his nation decimated -- the last major Native American military leader to fight against the U.S., surrendered.
The land for which he fought? The land on which the blood of thousands of Native Americans was needlessly shed?
It's still relatively uninhabited.
Uninhabited. UNINHABITED.
Accessed by the Geronimo Scenic Trail, it's now called The Gila Wilderness -- one of America's great wildernesses. Historians describe its significance as the largest wilderness in New Mexico -- the first area anywhere in the world set aside solely to protect its character as a wilderness.
A reality not celebrated, however, is that this wilderness was homeland to Geronimo and tribes of the Apache nation.
And that is a legacy -- THE LEGACY -- worth commemorating.
Currently, Geronimo's decendents are asking the US Government to allow them to return his remains from Oklahoma (or Yale University, as the story goes ....) and inter them in his homeland. FDR denied Geronimo's request to return to his homeland to die. Hopefully, GWB will see cause to allow his remains to be returned ....
Claudia Rosett suggests sanctions against the United Nations. If you are as dismayed as I was on first-read, you will want to re-read this article also .... Now, more than ever before -- there must be a new international consortium, free of graft and corruption.
Despite today's United Nations deadline for Iran to give up its nuclear bomb program, Iran has done no such thing. The next diplomatic move is supposed to be for the U.N. to impose sanctions on Iran. That won't work, either.
Certainly Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not seem deeply worried about the prospect of U.N. sanctions. Apart from some throwaway lines about his government's peace-loving ways, he has rejected U.N. demands, blocked U.N. inspectors, brandished samples of enriched uranium, and last week inaugurated an Iranian heavy water plant that could be used to produce plutonium. Nor did a series of extant U.N. resolutions prevent Tehran's A-team terrorist affiliate in Lebanon, Hezbollah, from launching a war this summer while Mr. Ahmadinejad pondered his options.
Some of Mr. Ahmadinejad's behavior can be discounted on grounds that he is a messianic crackpot. But there is plenty of evidence that he is making a highly rational calculation about the ease with which the U.N. can be corrupted, divided, delayed and defied -- without serious penalty.
U.N. sanctions programs depend on the agreement and cooperation of member states under a set of rules dictated not by the interests of the modern free world, but by the decayed, despot-infested collective that is the contemporary U.N. And, as prefigured under U.N. sanctions on Saddam Hussein's Iraq, major players, like Russia and China, will almost certainly cheat. Iran, with 10% of the world's known oil reserves, and the world's second largest proven reserves of natural gas, has enough resources to grease the way.
Indeed, the general greasing of Iran's important U.N. connections is already well advanced. Much as Saddam fought sanctions by dangling fat oil development deals and doling out lucrative Oil for Food contracts to win friends and influence politicians, Tehran has already cultivated a global web of current and prospective business partners. Were Iran a more benign energy-rich state, such activity might pass for nothing more than normal enterprise. But under U.N. sanctions, this setup would translate into a constant fount of pro-Iranian lobbying pressure, and incentives to cheat, within a slew of U.N. member states.
A new country survey of Iran from the U.S. Department of Energy helps illustrate the problem. Along with Iran's $100 billion, 25-year bargain with China to develop natural gas, there are deals either signed or in the offing with the following list of countries: France, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Greece, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Ukraine, Armenia, Norway, Kuwait, Turkmenistan and Iraq. Projects on the table range from huge oil and gas field investments, to pipelines, oil swaps and Indian service contracts. And for the blame-America-first crowd, the survey even mentions that "a foreign subsidiary of Halliburton Co. reportedly reached agreement," along with an Iranian partner, to help develop some of Iran's natural gas fields.
Tallied against the findings of congressional inquiries, and of the U.N.'s own probe into Oil for Food, Iran's current and would-be business partners include some of the most seasoned smugglers and veteran cheats of the Iraq sanctions experience. To be sure, democracies such as India, Australia, the U.S. and France have investigated at least some of the officially documented allegations of Iraq sanctions-busting among their own citizens. Many of the chart-topping violators, notably Russia and China, have done no such thing. Damascus -- Tehran's chief terror partner -- served as a thruway for billions of dollars worth of Saddam's U.N.-prohibited traffic in oil, military imports and cash. Significantly, Iran itself enjoyed a bustling trade in forbidden Iraqi oil during the era of U.N. sanctions on Saddam -- with Iranian smuggling boats plying the coastlines of the Gulf. There is no reason to expect Iran's smugglers would do any less on behalf of their own country.
Who at the U.N., exactly, would stop violations of its sanctions, should these be imposed? On the Security Council, veto-wielding Russia -- now counseling "patience" -- has already stressed its opposition to sanctions on Iran, with China slipstreaming along. Let's just pass by France without further comment. And among those now angling for one of the 10 rotating seats on the Security Council is Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez. In his recent tours of the world's thugocracies Mr. Chavez has reportedly garnered a boost from China for his U.N. bid, as well as a medal and the promise of a $4 billion investment in Venezuela's oil fields -- from Iran.
As for the U.N. Secretariat, which would be involved in administering any U.N. sanctions, if staffers have learned anything from the multibillion dollar Oil for Food scandal, it is that inside the U.N.'s opaque and diplomatically immune bubble, there are no real penalties for dereliction, duplicity or even graft. Not a single U.N. staffer has been fired, let alone charged with a crime. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is due to step down at the end of this year; but his would be the presiding presence during the shaping of any U.N. sanctions on Iran, and his successor will inherit both the same bureaucracy and a General Assembly which -- if you believe Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown -- shot down an administrative reform package earlier this year mainly for the perverse pleasure of sticking a thumb in the eye of the U.S.
It is quite possible that -- after years of delay and dithering by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, the European Union and the U.S. itself -- there is no initiative that will by now stop Iran short of direct military force. But whatever the solution, it is clearly the U.S. that will have to do the bulk of the cajoling, prodding and backroom bargaining to put together any coalition both able and willing, in whatever way necessary, to get the job done. That is a challenge urgent and daunting enough, without trying to drag along the entire baggage of the U.N.
Ms. Rosett is a journalist in residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
"There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as The Dark Ages." - Ruth Hurmence Green
I don't have much time to consider the seemingly futile challenge in integrating religious-based cultures into a national or global culture.
Nor do too many others. They're busy fighting. Or threatening to totally destroy all non-believers.
But I digress.
After all -- A religious-based culture by its nature isn't amenable to integration, assimilation or cooperation. It's strength lies in suppressing knowledge, education and annihilating those it labels infidels.
Religious-based cultures and technology don't complement each other either: technology is a tool of power. To hold power, religion must suppress knowledge and education. And annihilate infidels.
American culture seems to have had the most success. Our neighbors in Canada have sorta-kinda fronted, then retreated from the issue. Great Britain is making progress .... After Muslim youth scorched their highways and byways this year, France totally wimped out.
Meanwhile, Hizbullah and other Islamic fanatics continue to recruit thousands of pubescents to train as jihadists.
Prime Minister John Howard laid the ground-rules in Australia last week.
It's interesting that his remarks were directed toward "a small group of Muslim migrants" and not the Australian-Muslim culture as a whole. It remains to be seen if the Muslim leadership in Australia (probably looking for any excuse to call for jihad, anyway) will again wake its seething core of Islamic youth.
The head of Australia's Muslim advisory committee, Ameer Ali, said on Friday that Howard's comments could fuel race riots like those at Sydney's Cronulla beach last December.
"We have already witnessed one incident in Sydney recently in Cronulla, I don't want these scenes to be repeated because when you antagonize the younger generation ... they are bound to react," Ali told local Sydney radio.
Uh huh. God forbid that someone antagonize youth. No telling what those unemployed, uneducated, disrespectful youth might do. Especially youth armed with guns, knives and the prospect of willing virgins should they die while antagonized.
Prime Minister John Howard says he has no need to apologise for telling Muslims they need to embrace Australian values.
Mr Howard sparked controversy [last week] by saying on talk-back radio a small group of Muslim migrants had refused to accept their adopted country's values and had not learned English.
He told Macquarie Radio Australia had benefited greatly from immigration, but “there is a section, a small section, of the Islamic population ... which is very resistant to integration”.
"What I want to do is to reinforce the need for everybody who comes to this country to fully integrate," Mr Howard said yesterday. "Fully integrating means accepting Australian values, it means learning as rapidly as you can the English language if you don't already speak it.
"And it means understanding that in certain areas, such as the equality of men and women, the societies that some people have left were not as contemporary and as progressive as ours.
"People who come from societies where women are treated in an inferior fashion have got to learn very quickly that that is not the case in Australia."
I'm not sure I'd want be standing between a small group of Muslim youth and a not-so-small group of Australian youth. I'd much prefer that a larger group of Muslim adults stand between them and tell their youth what is expected of them.
But don't count on it.
More later. Maybe.
And this is NOT a pretense for endorsing Newt Gingrich for President.
San Francisco authorities have described the Muslim driver who ran-down multiple pedestrians near a Jewish Community Center in a Jewish neighborhood as mentally ill -- not a terrorist.
No matter that two witnesses heard the man call himself a terrorist.
-- Like if this "mentally ill" Muslim had run down gay men in front of an AIDS clinic, he would have been charged with a hate crime.
Maybe.
Unless the ACLU volunteered to defend him as being victimized by religious rage (road rage with a spiritual twist) -- a confused latent homo striking out at society because he was forced into marriage by religious/cultural credo.
-- Like McVeigh was a frustrated fertilizer collector.
-- Like disgruntled wanna-be pilots who hijack planes suffer from projectile envy.
-- Like fanatics who enter crowded restaurants with bombs strapped to their bodies only want(ed) to complain about the onion rings.
-- Like anyone who wears a bag over his head and carries an assault rifle suffers from severe dermatitis-related inferiority complex.
-- Like combatants who use women and children as human shields actually suffer from an inability to "cut the apron strings."
-- Like male militants who dress as women and mingle with crowds are nothing more than cruising transvestites.
Code name for Muslim transvestite in drag: Burka Butch.
MoveOn.org Political Action attacks three Republican House members in TV ads saying they were "caught red-handed" supporting money spent on Halliburton contracts and wasteful Iraq projects. But a majority of Democrats voted the same way on most of the same measures, usually overwhelmingly. MoveOn endorses one Democratic House member who voted the same way 10 out of 14 times, and two senators who voted for the same measures every time they reached a recorded vote in the Senate.
Another ad says the same three Republicans were "caught red-handed" taking donations from military contractors while failing to support penalties for contractors who overcharge. In fact the donations were relatively small and MoveOn offers no evidence the votes were influenced by money. Furthermore severe penalties already exist for fraud against the Pentagon. What the targeted Republicans opposed were Democratic proposals to increase penalties. -- from factcheck.org
I absolutely love it when one extremist group gets caught "red-handed" doing what they accuse others of doing .....
I'm still experiencing emotional over-load. 
Buh-bye Summer daze. I hope. Summer in my part of the world has been hotter and more humid than in years past. Or maybe it's my age and work-load .... And speaking of work --
I love to blog. 
To 
San Francisco authorities have described the Muslim driver who ran-down multiple pedestrians near a Jewish Community Center in a Jewish neighborhood as mentally ill -- not a terrorist.
: