New Orleans

Over Halloween I decided to spend a few days using my travel benefits.  After a conference in Dallas, I drove down to New Orleans, Louisiana, to see how the city had changed since my college days, and to do my small part to help boost the returning economy.  I cruised into the area late in the day,  and was amazed to see how beautiful the swamps and highways were.  I could tell I was in the South when the Spanish Moss began to drip from the roadside trees.  The bridge over Lake Pontchartrain was the longest I’d ever driven, and the light bouncing off the little houses on the shore was dazzling.  Hurricane Katrina devastation was apparent still, but only rarely in the city.  Mostly you could see it in the outlying areas, near the swamps where tourists don’t spend as much time.

 Everywhere I went people were friendly and happy to see me.  Tourist dollars comprise up to 30% of the city’s income, so I’m sure that’s part of it. But even folks on the bus who didn’t really know if I was a tourist or local were super nice.

I spent Halloween night on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter.  It was as expected, raunchy and lots of drinking, but no trouble and again, super friendly folks. 

 The next day I went to the cemetery and on a walking tour of the French Quarter to learn of the local history.  I love that kind of thing. The day after was the swamp tour where you could see the waterline 18′ above the street. Wow

 The food, everywhere, was fantastic, and the sights amazing.  I can’t wait to go back.

 For anyone who’s interested, there are some photos of my stay with way too many of the swamp.

 http://picasaweb.google.com/gaylemichel/NewOrleans?authkey=fbXVMu4dGHY

Sputnik

 

Fifty years ago today that my father, a research scientist caught up in space and rocketry, took his kids to the lake for a better view of the spot of light that passed overhead. Tuned into NASA on the radio, Sputnik emitted a weird sci-fi static-and-ping; telemetry as it passed overhead.

Our dad made sure we understood the significance of the moment. 

Since then I’ve gone on to other things. Space has faded into the background of work days, school, travel, family, and daily life. The excitement I once felt for all things scientific sits dormant in a closet of my youth. And I wonder why. What happened to the wide-eyed amazement that everything unknown brought? It’s now often passed over by a glazed look, and a reach for another cup of coffee.  

Today, on Sputnik’s anniversary, I continue my search for the lost happiness (read “excitement!”) of a simpler day. It’s time to chase some stars.

Speed

Okay.  I have to admit it.  I’m one of those people who always looked longingly at the tanned, perfectly coiffed and sunglassed Newport Beach women in their convertible Porsches and wished I was sitting in that seat.  Of course, it was a kind of fantasy because I didn’t really think I’d ever buy something so unnecessary and extravagant.  I had enough money.  That wasn’t the problem.  It’s just that while I am not cheap I’ve never been what I’d consider wasteful.  Plus, I was in a four person family, and saving my money for a future.  But that wound up disintegrating with my (ex)boyfriend’s change of heart. 

So here I am, a few months later, in my own 2002 Porsche Boxter S, and feeling a bit like Marie Antoinette waiting for the villagers to come get me for the opulent and extravagant lifestyle I’m living.  But, “What the hell” I think. “You only live once, and not for too long at that, right?” 

 So I’m driving up Oak Creek Canyon last night with the top down, full moon shining through the clouds, and the smell of pending rain and fireplaces burning aromatic wood and suddenly thought, “This is as good as it gets”.

I smiled happily, mentally checked the Boxter off my “100 Things To Do Before I Die” list, and realized that it’s time I started checking off things instead of always adding them.  Later this week I’ll be working on ”Drive Route 66″. 

March Across America

How many times have you heard a teenager complain “I’m so bored!”? Well, if Ashley Casale, 19, of Clinton Corners, N.Y., and Michael Israel, 18, of Jackson, Calif. were ever bored, at least now they have something to write home about. On May 21st the pair began a cross country walk from San Francisco to Washington D.C. to protest the war in Iraq and to cultivate peace. 

 While they had hoped that their journey would snowball, gathering other like minded people along the way, so far it’s just the two of them. They are not discouraged, however. Through blisters and sunburns the two, who met each other 10 minutes before they set out, have not been dissuaded. They hope to reach Washington by September 11th.

Go to Not in Our Name: http://www.notinourname.net for more.

Mohammad Zahir Shah Dies at 92

MSNBC reported that Mohammad Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, has died. He ruled for forty years before being ousted by in a palace coup and exiled for thirty. Many considered his reign to be a golden age for Afghanistan, not because of the wealth of the country but because of the relative peace. And now that he is gone, the last of the monarchy has passed into Afghanistan’s history. Now anti-Taliban President Karzai faces new challenges as opium fields yield record crops, fueling what some say will finance the Taliban’s return.

And history marches on…

Slick Willie’s

While preparing for a visit with some old friends I met in a gaming community - a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away - I went online to locate and get directions to Slick Willie’s pool hall in OKC.  What comes up can be hysterical when you take a chance on a .com name!    http://www.slickwillies.com.

Think About It

I get lots of e-mail from friends who like to pass along their jokes, touching stories, funny videos, urban legends, and insightful motivations. In any given day, I must receive an average of fifty. Most of these I delete before ever opening them.

Tonight, however, I read the one I copied below, and it struck me that too many Americans are among the silent majority, too, believing that we are being good citizens by going about our day, recycling, being concerned about world affairs, going to work, surfing the Internet, being good to our families, paying our taxes, and generally not being ‘part of the problem’.

However, we *are* part of the problem if we are silent, exactly like everyone else. Unlike this e-mail, it is not just “them” who threatens our way of life, it’s us. It’s us for not doing anything to stop our part in the madness.

So read this message. Think about it. Then go find ways to be a vocal part of the solution.

 =================================== 

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.  “Very few people were true Nazis “he said,” but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care.  I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools.  So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen.  Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come My family lost everything.  I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.” We are told again and again by “experts” and “talking heads” that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority  of Muslims just want to live in peace.Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.  The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.It is the fanatics who march.
It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide.
It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal
groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire
continent in an Islamic wave.
It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill.
It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque.
It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals.
The hard quantifiable fact is that the “peaceful majority” the “silent majority” is cowed and extraneous.Communist Russia comprised Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. 
     
China’s huge population, it was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to  kill a staggering 70 million people.The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist.  Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East  Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel and bayonet.And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not  be said that the majority of Rwandans were “peace loving”?History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of  points:
  
Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
  
Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs,  Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others  have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to the only  group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, can contribute to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. 

So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on!!  Let us hope that thousands, world wide, read this – think about it – and send it on. 

Synthetic Life

Don’t we already have enough trouble with ‘real’ life?

 Last week, Craig Venter grabbed headlines with the announcement that he was close to creating a synthetic genome, housed within a bacterial cell and constructed chemically from the building blocks of DNA.  Other scientists, however, are already taking even more ambitious steps by devising a blueprint for a completely synthetic cell. (Countdown to a synthetic lifeform)

 So, when will this hit the big headlines?  It could be mere months, or it could be years.  It’s just as dependent upon the almight buck as it is the talents of the scientists. 

America the Beautiful

 

In 1931 Congress chose The Star Spangled Banner as our national anthem. Here’s an interesting bit of triva by Colleen Kelly from Knowledge News about how our *almost* national anthem, America the Beautiful, came to be.

“America the Beautiful”

This Fourth of July, crown your good
with brotherhood.

When Katharine Lee Bates traveled across the United States, she wrote more than postcards home. Before the trip was over, the Massachusetts educator had composed most of a poem that would become a secular hymn and beloved patriotic song: “America the Beautiful.”

Purple Mountain Majesties

Bates, a professor at Wellesley College, journeyed to Colorado in 1893 to teach. She had been jotting down impressions about the landscape since she left Boston. But her poem really came together after ascending Pike’s Peak in a wagon emblazoned “Pike’s Peak or Bust.”

The experience at the top of the 14,110-foot mountain literally knocked her friends off their feet. Bates later said she had one “brief ecstatic glimpse” of the panorama before two other teachers fainted from the change in altitude and guides rushed the whole party down the mountain.

That evening, she wrote the opening lines of the song we know today. She composed more verses that incorporated her impressions from earlier in the trip. But her poem isn’t just about scenery. Bates told friends that other “great” nations had failed chiefly because they weren’t “good.” Unless America crowned its greatness with goodness–with brotherhood–its magnificence as a land would be for naught.

Heartening Hymn

Upon her return home, Bates looked over the verses she wrote on her trip and pronounced them “disheartening.” Yet when she pulled them out again after two years, she made some revisions and sent the poem to a magazine called The Congregationalist, where it was published in the July 4 issue of 1895. “The hymn attracted an unexpected amount of attention,” Bates would write years later. She revised the poem several times, and it grew more popular as time passed.

The meter of the verse let it be sung to several well-known melodies of the day. Most often, people used a tune called “Materna,” written by Samuel Augustus Ward in 1882 for a hymn called “O Mother Dear, Jerusalem.” In 1926, the National Federation of Music Clubs held a contest to put “America the Beautiful” to original music, but none of the hundreds of entries was deemed as good as Ward’s tune.

National Anthem?

That same year, the song’s supporters made a push to have “America the Beautiful” declared the country’s national anthem. In 1931, Congress chose “The Star-Spangled Banner” instead. Still, the song’s popularity remains strong. It’s been recorded hundreds of times, by everyone from Alvin and the Chipmunks to Boxcar Willie. Elvis even used to belt it out as the finale of his Las Vegas show in the early 1970s.

Bates herself, an early advocate for the education of women, led a remarkably emancipated life for a woman of her time. She headed the English department as Wellesley, traveled through Europe and the Middle East, and studied at Oxford in England. But her most popular and enduring work is this poem that envisions a nation with ideals as great as its landscape.

–Colleen Kelly

America the Beautiful

By 19th-century educator
Katharine Lee Bates

// O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassion’d stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine ev’ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev’ry gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimm’d by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

–Katharine Lee Bates

Equal Opportunity

 It looks like ex-madame Heidi Fleiss is making a comeback of sorts. She’s opened a laundromat in Pahrump Nevada, west of Las Vegas, called Dirty Laundry.

But she’s not stopping there. 

It seems Ms. Fleiss is planning to open a legal bordello catering exclusively to women, which would make “Heidi’s Stud Farm” the first of its kind in the state. While she hasn’t actually submitted the application to the Nye County Liquor and Licensing Board, she claims men are already applying for the 20 man operation, and over 400 women are ready to buy memberships.  Apparently, however,  she’s been planning this for over three years, and it seems like things have not progressed much since it was first announced. This time the delay is reportedly due to a federal trial involving brothel owner Joe Richards, which has been postponed until November.

Hmm… January seems like a good month to visit Las Vegas, doesn’t it?