I really enjoyed reading a post by Les Jones about his Mom’s First Brush with Electricity.

Once the family had a place with electricity her dad bought her mom an electric clothes washer. There was room in the kitchen for the washer, but her mother didn’t want it there. She wanted it on the porch so that everyone could see that she owned a washing machine. I used to wonder why people around here used to have washing machines on their front porches and I guess that’s why. If you had never owned an electric appliance in your life you’d be mighty proud of it and you’d want to show it off.

So now if we see a washer on the porch - or a couch - maybe we should be proud that we have electricity and a nearby furniture store!

In all seriousness, we sure take things for granted these days, but it hasn’t really been that long since our modern conveniences came on the scene. We have the nice LCD panel TV sets where things are brighter, clearer, crisper, but I vividly remember the day I stepped off my school bus when I lived in Arkansas. My 10-year old legs ran all the way home so I could see our brand spanking new COLOR television! No more black and white! We didn’t have a remote control then … had to wait a few years for the mute button (the best part of the TV remote). When I met my husband, his grandmother still lived in a home with no indoor plumbing and heated by a coal stove. The trips to the outhouse were not fun in the heat of summer nor during frigid winters.

Given oil prices and water shortages, I wonder if it’ll take just 50 to 100 years to come full circle in the way we live.

Today is 49th anniversary of the Day the Music Died.

KF Raizor has a wonderful post regarding the impact the tragic plane crash had on music as a whole.

I tend to think of Buddy Holly, J. P “The Big Bopper” Richardson and Ritchie Valens as being way older than they were. It’s kinda startling to think that Buddy was 22, J.P was 28 and Ritchie…a kid of 17 when they lost their lives in that frozen Iowa cornfield on February 3, 1959. They were kids.

The late Waylon Jennings was supposed to have been a passenger on that plane. He gave his seat up to J. P. Richardson. Waylon was haunted for the rest of his life by the final conversation he had with his then boss…Buddy was teasing Waylon about how he hoped they would freeze on the bus and Waylon threw back at him “Yeah, and I hope your plane crashes.” No wonder Waylon seemed a bit, well, crabby.

Guitarist Tommy Alsup, who has been Nashville-based forever, was first thought to have been one of the people that died on the plane. He had flipped a coin with Ritchie Valens to see who would take the seat. He had asked Buddy to pick up a registered letter for him in North Dakota (their next stop on the “Winter Dance Party” tour) and he gave him his billfold so he could have some identification. Can you imagine how freaked out his family was to hear that he was dead and then that he wasn’t?

Fate is weird…you wonder what these three men would’ve accomplished had they not gotten on that plane? How would music have been different? How would Country Music have been different if Waylon had been on the plane? Questions we’ll never have answers to in this life.

H/T: Sharon Cobb

Music City Oracle has posted a very nice entry into the debate that started here about whether or not the United States Constitution explicitly contains the right to vote. In his post, he links to AC Kleinheider, and R Neal. It should be noted that SayUncle has also posted on this subject.

To MCO’s credit, his post is very informative. Here is an excerpt.

As it happens, the question of whether one has a right to vote is tied to who is being elected and is largely left to the states, with amendments to the Constitution protecting certain groups against discrimination.

Voting is not administered by the federal government, but by state and local authorities. In fact, there really is no such thing as a national election in this country since the President is elected by the electoral college. The Constitution does however restrict states from discriminating on the basis of sex and race, and it does define the legal voting age. But other than that, states are allowed to disenfranchise for a number of reasons.

FairVote, an organizations that supports a “right to vote” amendment, would like to change that.

Because there is no right to vote clearly stated in the U.S. Constitution, individual states set their own electoral policies and procedures in areas such as ballot design, polling hours, voting equipment, voter registration requirements and ex-felon voting rights. As a result, our electoral system is divided into 50 states, more than 3000 counties and approximately 13,000 voting districts, all separate and unequal.

How do you feel about that? Should voting and elections be taken over by the Federal Government? Would that really be a good thing? Being one who is not fond of power being centralized in Washington, you can pretty easily guess how I feel about the issue.

There are three kinds of blog posts that bore me:
1. Where people talk about the s888t they just bought
2. Where people talk about all the weight they are planning to lose in the future
3. Where people talk about their new years’ resolutions for the upcoming year.

On the other hand, I totally groove on the posts where people talk about how their last years’ resolutions turned out in the long run.

2. I will be thriftier.
This year:
I haven’t used enough coupons to justify buying the newspaper to clip them out of. But I have made an effort to buy things like books used instead of new.

Shelbyville Times-Gazette blogger Bo Melson, a retired long-time sports and police editor for the newspaper, is following the proposal to turn the old state prison into office space:

My interest in the old prison is because I’ve been in there, not as an inmate, but to play baseball.

Read the whole story.

(Apologies for linking to my own paper’s blogs, but I thought it was too good to pass up.)

In the way that only he can, Sarcastro pays tribute to a recently-deceased historical figure.

nstead of the focusing on the death of Paul Tibbets, the fourth estate decided that the passing of Robert Goulet and Porter Wagoner were more worthy of the news hole.

For those of you who don’t live in Nashville, Wagoner’s funeral was carried LIVE on one of the local stations. This is a man whose greatest contribution to posterity is the discovery of Dolly Parton. Which is like saying you discovered, say, gravity or the Pacific Ocean.

Meanwhile, Paul Tibbets dropped the first atomic weapon on Hiroshima. The case could suitably be made that it was the defining moment of the 20th Century.

Bec indulges in some Martin Luther blogging.

I thought I’d post a picture of the door of Wittenberg instead of the face. Martin Luther was *really quite an ugly man - a sentiment expressed in quite a few other theologians (or perhaps they were just rude to the artists?)… nicely though now. Good on him for whacking his disgruntlements about indulgences up for the world to see.

You just never know what you’ll find on the internet.

*Title quote is attributed to Martin Luther. I couldn’t decide between that and “Be thou comforted, little dog, Thou too in Resurrection shall have a little golden tail.” I figured all the political debate junkies would make hay out of the “blood alone” quote, and the other one looked like I was calling Bec a dog. Which I wasn’t.

Josh Tinley has some thoughts on the Armenian Genocide.

[I]f the Ottoman Turks were guilty of genocide, then they were guilty of genocide. (Several other countries and organizations have already formally declared that they were.) We can’t pretend otherwise just because we have a strategic alliance with the guilty parties’ great-great grandchildren.

I took notice of this post because my adoptive grandmother’s family came here to flee the persecution of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. As impolitic as it is to say, the Beshgetoorians were Christians and the Ottoman Turks who imprisoned them were Muslim. Although I’m not sure if the root of the genocide was religious or political in nature. I just remember hearing stories about my great-grandfather Vahan Beshgetoorian being jailed as an intellectual and “thought criminal” by the Turks. Luckily they were able to come to America before 24 April, 1915.

I had no idea until reading Josh’s post that there was even any question at all about whether or not this was Genocide.

Chuck Yeager officially broke the sound barrier in the X-1 Aircraft by Bell Aircraft.

Seems a lot of people are upset by things that are dramatised depictions of actual events.

First, Southern Beale has a bit of info about this picture.

This photo turns up all over the right-wing media, but the ’stoning’ actually takes place in a 1994 Dutch indie film called De Steen, directed by Mahnaz Tamizi. The ‘teenage girl’ is actress Smadar Monsinos.

She has gotten her information from Sadly, No.

However, the story deepens somewhat from here. Several commenters at her place assert that

This is NO actress… This was a woman in her 20’s in the city of Arok in Iran and the photo was taken in 1992 and the photographer GAVE IT to Tamizi.

I of course believe it is entirely possible that the movie was based on a photograph given to Tamizi, so that both groups are partially right. I’ve been trying to find Tamizi’s story about the creation of the film, but I’ve not yet been able to find it.

UPDATE:

The picture in question is shown in a FrontPage Magazine article dated 27 January 2005 with the caption “(This picture, smuggled out of Iran, was taken in 1992 in the town of Arak)”

It appears in more than 22 (I stopped counting at that point) different websites accompanying articles (including one in The Daily Mail) about the practice of stoning. In the 22 articles it accompanies, there are at least four different sources given for the photo–if a source is given at all.

The photo most often appears in anti-death penalty advocacy sites, as well as various “Stop Stoning” sites. Only one Anti-death penalty site that I could find actually credited the photo to Tamizi.

I desperately want to know the whole story behind this picture. If it is a still from a move, as I believe it is, then what inspired the director to make that movie? Was it a picture like this one? Was it a narrative of an actual stoning? Trust me, there’s a story there.

What I do find interesting is that the use of the photo is being maligned by prominent left-wing sites (including Daily Kos) when it appears in a FrontPage Magazine (right wing) article, but has been unquestioned by those same left-wing sites for years when used in anti-capital punishment sites.

Update #2:  Comments Closed ON This Post  10/2/07 11:53am

I noticed last night that the Tennessean was asking for opinions about reviving the illuminated messages that used to appear on the Tennessee Tower back when it was the NLT building. ThinkTrain noticed, too, and looks at the issue with both nostalgia and responsibility:

I would like to see the state consider alternatives for using the Tennessee Tower as a message board that use less energy than in the past.

Ginger’s got a good rant going on over at her place. Here’s a snippet:

When did it suddenly become “uncool” to commemorate 9/11? I read a ton of comments and posts this week practically stating that if you are commemorating it, you’re a shameful voyeur of the networks’ and administration’s exploitation of the tragedy.

WTF, people? This event scared the hell out of some of us. It was one of the most frightening days of my life. For a period of time, nobody knew if this attack was going to happen in every major city in the country. I feared for my husband (at the time) on that day who was a FedEx courier at the Federal Building and many of the tallest high-rises downtown, etc. I had a 1-year-old to think of in case some kind of worse (i.e., nuclear or biological) attack happened. Nobody had ever seen such a day like that in our lifetime!

That’s true. Sadly, no matter how big an event is, people eventually stop placing so much importance on it. Sure, we still “Remember the Alamo” (I guess. I’d hazard a guess that very few high school students know what the Alamo was) and we remember the attack on Pearl Harbor, and pretty much everyone that was alive for when President Kennedy was shot remembers what they were doing when they found out. (Half of me was chilling in my mom’s ovary while she attended junior high school. The other half was twinkling in my daddy’s eye or something like that)

I think it’s important not to forget 9/11.

Sarcastro has a post about the days following 9/11 and how much really has changed since the attacks:

The world we live in isn’t very different from how it was on September 10, 2001. A lot of good people have died between then and now. Not just in the attacks, but in the far off fields of Afghanistan and the Fertile Crescent. Good people were dying before then. The folks in our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania didn’t have to wait until the World Trade Center crumbled into dust to know that the world is full of bad people. The soldiers who survived Khobar Towers weren’t shocked by terrorists interrupting their lives that day six years ago. The world hadn’t changed a bit for them.

In the days following the attacks, I observed some behavior that on the surface showed a growing feeling of national unity, but really betrayed the shallow and self-serving nature of our “Post 9-11″ world.

Go ahead and read what behaviors he’s talking about (includes alcohol, microcosms, and junior leaguers, if that doesn’t make you want to check it out I don’t know what could.)

Klinde’s been a bit blue lately. But with things like this going on, who can blame her?
She recounts a family tragedy in the most poignant way.

I made my way to the TV and turned it on. Flipping channels, I finally landed on CNN. After a few minutes there was a story on about an Air Force C-141 that had not returned to its McGuire, NJ base from a humanitarian mission to Windhoek, Namibia delivering land mine removal equipment. There were photos of those who were missing. The second one was identical to the photo on the table right beside me. I tapped the ex on the shoulder and then pointed. We quickly called his parents again to get more information. All they told us this time was to get to their house as soon as we could.

You have written many wonderful posts today. I tried to read as many as I could and take a small excerpt to share here. Please forgive me if I missed you, and feel free to leave a link to yours in the comments.
*

Mark A. Rose

We must never forget.

Michael Bell

It was a wake up call not seen since Pearl Harbor. America has been reawakened and now knows that we are on several countries hit list. Sad to say the worst is yet to come.

Terry Frank

I’m sure we all remember where we were, what we were doing, the emotions we first felt. But true to our American character, we all picked up, pitched in, and carried on with a resolve that exemplifies the best of the human spirit.

SayUncle

I do like reader blackfork’s suggestion that I set up a fake security checkpoint in my front yard and confiscate tiny bottles of liquids and toenail clippers from my neighbors. You know, in a show of solidarity for security theater.

…I suppose I’m still too damn cynical.

As you were.

Chip Talks

Today, I ask everyone that reads to stand and take a moment of silence and remember that day 6 years ago. When our lives were so interrupted, when we thought we were under attack, when we thought how dare them. And remember all those men who have died giving us the right to stand for freedom.

Bill Hobbs

I remember watching the towers fall on TV, and the instant realization that we were at war and, most likely, would be for many years to come. I remember calling my dad and asking him if this is what it felt like to wake up and hear the radio announce the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. (Yes, just the same.)

…I remember the bright, beautiful day, the blue sky and the eerie lack of jet vapor trails. I remember thinking how everything looked like nothing had changed, even though everything had.

Ron (about his friend who died in the Towers)

I think about him every day. I miss him every day. I can only imagine how hard things like this are on his family, if they’re this tough on his friends. I hope that wherever he is, he’s enjoying himself with a stack of comic books, NYC hardcore, and a good ol’ barbed wire match on the TV.

Lean Left

The best you can hope for after every tragedy, after the funerals and the shock, is for justice and improvement. If the tragedy was the result of people, those people need to be held accountable. Lessons have to be learned, to make sure that every failure has been identified, every weakness addressed, every assumption and pre-conceived notion re-evaluated, every problem and process has been corrected and tested. Six years after 9/11, the country has neither.

The people in the Pentagon, in the towers, in the planes, and the men and women who risked their lives and health to try and save them deserve better than that.

Jonathan Hickman (about his little boy)

Since he was three, I’m sure he doesn’t really have any memories of that day, although because of the tv he probably thinks he does. But what does he know? And what should I say? And what if he starts asking questions?

mDave

Everything that has happened since then feels so screwed up. Looking back the common thing I remember was seeing that there was no color, no race everything and everybody was gray. Wish it would have stayed that way symbolically.

jc

I dont really have much to say. I dont like this day. I remember exactly where I was 6 years ago today. It sucks, I didnt loose anyone. I did fight in the first Gulf War, so I feel a bit tied to all of this mess. I dont understand why there is a National Day of Mourning? Why do we just press on and work. This society is so easy to forget, put aside, not remember. That day was the single most worst day in US history, no I didnt forget Pearl Harbor.

Music City Miracles

We are reminded every single day by the way it has changed our lives. I do think that we should all take the time today to think about the men and women who are currently fighting for our country. It doesn’t matter where you come down on the validity of the war the people that are fighting are to be commended.

Gavin Richardson

as seems to be my nature, i would ask myself, why were people so angry with us that they would do this? who have we forgotten that they would do such a thing? is there something we could have done to better tend to the angst that brought on this attack? what is my response?

Sarcastro

We aren’t going to be watching any national tragedy-porn today, thank you. It’s still pretty fresh. I’m in no hurry to relive the experience with Katie, Matt, Al and Carlos the Janitor.

If they really want to make a meaningful statement, how about going off the air from 8:46 am until 10:28 am? Too bad NBC can’t sell boner pills and sub-prime loans to mouth breathers without some vicarious pathos and suffering by proxy to reel them in.

Sharon Cobb

And On This Dubious Anniversary…We need to get back to believing in peace and working toward peace and loving each other.

Glen Dean

If you really want to defeat those responsible, then live life to the fullest. I love America and I love Americans, every single one of them. That goes for left/right/middle, black/white/yellow, native or nationalized. God bless all of us!

R. Neal

Where is Osama bin Laden?

… that Philo T. Farnsworth taught the world how to play….television.Yes, kids, it’s true. So, before we all settle back this evening in front of our wide-screen, High Definition, flat-panel video display to watch the latest in blockbusting home entertainment — or before we cozy up to our computers to witness the world’s latest hi-jinks via YouTube — it might be instructive to remember how it all began.

In a makeshift laboratory in San Francisco, on September 7, 1927, a young genius named Philo T. Farnsworth transmitted the image of a simple straight line from the bottom of one empty bottle to the bottom of another. That was the beginning of ALL the video now before us — including whatever computer screen you are looking at now.

To get a sense of how far it has all come, check out this video of the actual breakthrough, as it was recreated for the 50th Anniversary of that event in 1977.

And the rest of the story is here.

2 years after Katrina and the Gulf Coast is still a disaster. Cuppa Joe has news about the area. When disasters like this hit, I tend to get a little bit more libertarian- obviously we cannot count on the government to help, perhaps we should leave this to private organizations. I read fairly recently that most of the work that has been done in the Lower Ninth Ward *has* been done by private groups and private citizens.

This is something that I’ve changed my mind about over the years, largely due to the gross mishandling by the government. Should the government serve to protect us and help us rebuild? I always thought part of the point of even having a government was to help protect us, but the government failed to protect the citizens in New Orleans on every level from local to state to federal.

100 years.

That’s a lot of years, if you ask me. You didn’t, but I still think that’s impressive.

Sylvan Park School (4801 Utah Avenue) turns 100 years old this year, and the school is hosting a parade on Friday, August 31, at 10 a.m. to celebrate its centennial. A program entitled, “Sylvan Park School: Past & Present,” will be held in the school’s historic auditorium following the parade from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. All parents, alumni and community members are welcome, and refreshments will be served in the library. Mark your calendars and plan to be there to celebrate this historic event.

I find this absolutely charming and wonderful.

It’s free. It’s community.

Pretty groovy. (I used to live back there when I lived in Nashville. It’s wonderful.)

Shaun Groves is appalled by the decision to publish the private papers of Mother Theresa.

Mother Teresa didn’t want her private letters and prayers to be published. She wanted them burned, afraid people might make much of her and, in the process, make less of Jesus. But they’re being published. You may have heard the buzz: Mother Teresa was human.

And now there is a discussion in the comments of that post as to whether or not she was an actual Christian.

Don’t tell anyone! You might disappear….

There was an interesting speech last week to the American Psychological Association from Roy Beaumeister which was featured in this NYTimes column (and links to the speech itself). The speech was titled “Is There Anything Good About Men?” Provocative to say the least:

“The ’single most underappreciated fact about gender,’ he said, is the ratio of our male to female ancestors. While it’s true that about half of all the people who ever lived were men, the typical male was much more likely than the typical woman to die without reproducing. Citing recent DNA research, Dr. Baumeister explained that today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men. Maybe 80 percent of women reproduced, whereas only 40 percent of men did.”

snip

“Men go to extremes more than women, and this fits in well with culture using them to try out lots of different things, rewarding the winners and crushing the losers.

Culture is not about men against women. By and large, cultural progress emerged from groups of men working with and against other men. While women concentrated on the close relationships that enabled the species to survive, men created the bigger networks of shallow relationships, less necessary for survival but eventually enabling culture to flourish. The gradual creation of wealth, knowledge, and power in the men’s sphere was the source of gender inequality. Men created the big social structures that comprise society, and men still are mainly responsible for this, even though we now see that women can perform perfectly well in these large systems.

What seems to have worked best for cultures is to play off the men against each other, competing for respect and other rewards that end up distributed very unequally. Men have to prove themselves by producing things the society values. They have to prevail over rivals and enemies in cultural competitions, which is probably why they aren’t as lovable as women.”

I like this proposal that whatever individual or community-wide gender roles exist, we live in a culture which uses both men and women to fulfill it’s own ambitions above all else. Is his argument sound or just sound-and-fury?

(okay. Before we go any further, allow me to say that figure in the title is a “does not equal” sign. If for some reason this did not translate in your browser, please don’t send me hate mail. Tx!)

Sharon Cobb has a bone to pick with Christiane Amanpour.

In a three part series called ‘God’s Warriors,’ Amanpour examines the extremists in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This in itself is a flawed concept because the extremists in Judaism and Christianity are widely condemned within the Jewish and Christian communities, and acts of terror by Jews and Christians are almost non existent. It is Muslim extremists who are the threat to the world, not the (relatively) few wackos in Judaism and Christianity. Therefore, any comparison between the three religions’ right wingers is flawed from the beginning.

Amanpour’s analysis seriously lacked context as well. For the casual viewer, or even a viewer more involved in world affairs, he/she could have easily thought what was shown last night represented the majority of Jews and Israelis. Orthodox Jews only make up about 10 percent of the Jewish population, and ultra Orthodox extremists are relatively rare. And even among the ultra Orthodox, I am not familiar with any who think killing an innocent person is justified.

Sharon has much more to say on the topic. I’d like to agree with her, except that I haven’t been watching the program. Why? Because it’s been my experience that much of the modern news doesn’t portray Jews, Israelis and Zionists in a fair light. I’ve had arguments with others on this very subject.

There’s not often a lot of friendly-feeling toward Jews, Israelis and Zionists. If I have any disagreement with Sharon on this topic, it’s merely that she seemed to expect more from Amanpour than she should have done.

Malia and DB Carden are both contributing authors to Music City Bloggers. And they are both graduates from Virginia Tech. When the VTech stuff happened, they were the first people I thought of. Now they’re both talking about the pros and cons memorialising violence. It’s a captivating discussion.

DB says

There are three issues that I see that are a problem when it comes to memorializing violence like Virginia Tech is doing: 1) heinous acts and those that perpetrate them are given a permanent voice and are remembered, 2) there is a sense of glorifying vicitimization in the memorials, and 3) a permanent, altered perception of Virginia Tech accompanies any memorial.

Malia says

I wanted to see, with my own eyes, the outpourings of sympathy and love that came from all over the world. The temporary memorial in front of Burruss Hall of thirty-two Hokie stones which was set up by a student group. Posters, books, letters, pictures, stuffed animals, personal artifacts, etc., that were being temporarily housed in one of the dining halls. And community remembrances like the 32 flags representing the countries of the victims in front of a church on Main Street.

For me it was part of a healing process.

What do you think? Do memorials prolong or heal the pain of tragedy?

Phil Wilson talks about the H-bomb and drops the J-bomb.

I’ve stated before that I don’t believe America is a Christian nation or ever has been, mainly because I don’t believe that nations can be Christians. They can be largely comprised of Christians or even led by Christians, but nations are largely about self preservation and protection of its citizens. Whatever the cost. Basically nations believe that the lives of their citizens are inherently more valuable than the lives of people of other non-allied nations.

And that’s what Harry Truman and his advisers decided in 1945. They decided that the lives of the American soldiers were of greater worth than the lives of the Japanese civilians, and so they felt that dropping two atomic weapons were the proper way to end the war.

Now from strictly a nationalistic perspective, this was the right maneuver. And it should have been an easy call for the Americans. Particularly because they felt that the Germans would have done the same thing given similar circumstances.

What it can’t be called is Christian. Plain and simple. Doing something that takes the life of your enemy (especially noncombatants) is not how Christ enjoined us to follow him