Memorial...

Pop Culture deaths drive the tragedy in Iran and the sorry story of the South Carolina governor from the headlines.

I can put my life in perspective when reviewing how and when I connected with each of them (I still maintain Fawcett's "Burning Bed" and Jacko's "Captain Eo" are still brilliant in my mind).

Now if the press could just let them Rest. In. Peace.

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Life is a fragile affair.

We are all dancing

on the edge of a precipice,

a dizzying cliff so high

we can't see the bottom.

~Mark Rickerby

Blogthing Sunday

What's Your Gift?

Your Gift is Sensitivity

You are easily moved, and you have a strong emotional reaction to almost everything. Your sensitivity helps you get a lot out of life. You appreciate every moment more. It's hard for you to divorce yourself from your feelings. You notice every little thing around you. You're the type of person who finds empathy and compassion easy. Hmmm. Empathy. Could I be a judge? Let me know your gift by clicking the link below.

What's" Your Gift?

In fear for the people of Iran

Today will be a day of violence. It will resonate throughout the world.

Updated: 5:57 EDT

This just in from the NYT's Roger Cohen. A riveting account of today in Tehran:

TEHRAN — The Iranian police commander, in green uniform, walked up Komak Hospital Alley with arms raised and his small unit at his side. “I swear to God,” he shouted at the protesters facing him, “I have children, I have a wife, I don’t want to beat people. Please go home.”

A man at my side threw a rock at him. The commander, unflinching, continued to plead. There were chants of “Join us! Join us!” The unit retreated toward Revolution Street, where vast crowds eddied back and forth confronted by baton-wielding Basij militia and black-clad riot police officers on motorbikes.
Dark smoke billowed over this vast city in the late afternoon. Motorbikes were set on fire, sending bursts of bright flame skyward. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, had used his Friday sermon to declare high noon in Tehran, warning of “bloodshed and chaos” if protests over a disputed election persisted.
He got both on Saturday — and saw the hitherto sacrosanct authority of his office challenged as never before since the 1979 revolution birthed the Islamic Republic and conceived for it a leadership post standing at the very flank of the Prophet. A multitude of Iranians took their fight through a holy breach on Saturday from which there appears to be scant turning back.
Khamenei has taken a radical risk. He has factionalized himself, so losing the arbiter’s lofty garb, by aligning himself with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against both Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a founding father of the revolution.


He has taunted millions of Iranians by praising their unprecedented participation in an election many now view as a ballot-box putsch. He has ridiculed the notion that an official inquiry into the vote might yield a different result. He has tried pathos and he has tried pounding his lectern. In short, he has lost his aura.
The taboo-breaking response was unequivocal. It’s funny how people’s obsessions come back to bite them. I’ve been hearing about Khamenei’s fear of “velvet revolutions” for months now. There was nothing velvet about Saturday’s clashes. In fact, the initial quest to have Moussavi’s votes properly counted and Ahmadinejad unseated has shifted to a broader confrontation with the regime itself.
Garbage burned. Crowds bayed. Smoke from tear gas swirled. Hurled bricks sent phalanxes of police, some with automatic rifles, into retreat to the accompaniment of cheers. Early afternoon rumors that the rally for Moussavi had been canceled yielded to the reality of violent confrontation.
I don’t know where this uprising is leading. I do know some police units are wavering. That commander talking about his family was not alone. There were other policemen complaining about the unruly Basij. Some security forces just stood and watched. “All together, all together, don’t be scared,” the crowd shouted.
I also know that Iran’s women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I’ve seen them urging less courageous men on. I’ve seen them get beaten and return to the fray. “Why are you sitting there?” one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. “Get up! Get up!”
Another green-eyed woman, Mahin, aged 52, staggered into an alley clutching her face and in tears. Then, against the urging of those around her, she limped back into the crowd moving west toward Freedom Square. Cries of “Death to the dictator!” and “We want liberty!” accompanied her.
There were people of all ages. I saw an old man on crutches, middle-aged office workers and bands of teenagers. Unlike the student revolts of 2003 and 1999, this movement is broad.
“Can’t the United Nations help us?” one woman asked me. I said I doubted that very much. “So,” she said, “we are on our own.”
The world is watching, and technology is connecting, and the West is sending what signals it can, but in the end that is true. Iranians have fought this lonely fight for a long time: to be free, to have a measure of democracy.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution, understood that, weaving a little plurality into an authoritarian system. That pluralism has ebbed and flowed since 1979 — mainly the former — but last week it was crushed with blunt brutality. That is why a whole new generation of Iranians, their intelligence insulted, has risen.
I’d say the momentum is with them for now. At moments on Saturday, Khamenei’s authority, which is that of the Islamic Republic itself, seemed fragile. The revolutionary authorities have always mocked the cancer-ridden Shah ceding before an uprising, and vowed never to bend in the same way. Their firepower remains formidable, but they are facing a swelling test.
Just off Revolution Street, I walked into a pall of tear gas. I’d lit a cigarette minutes before — not a habit but a need — and a young man collapsed into me shouting: “Blow smoke in my face.” Smoke dispels the effects of the gas to some degree.
I did what I could and he said, “We are with you” in English and with my colleague we tumbled into a dead end — Tehran is full of them — running from the searing gas and police. I gasped and fell through a door into an apartment building where somebody had lit a small fire in a dish to relieve the stinging.
There were about 20 of us gathered there, eyes running, hearts racing. A 19-year-old student was nursing his left leg, struck by a militiaman with an electric-shock-delivering baton. “No way we are turning back,” said a friend of his as he massaged that wounded leg.
Later, we moved north, tentatively, watching police lash out from time to time, reaching Victory Square where a pitched battle was in progress. Young men were breaking bricks and stones to the right size for hurling. Crowds gathered on overpasses, filming and cheering the protesters. A car burst into flames. Back and forth the crowd surged, confronted by less-than-convincing police units.
I looked up through the smoke and saw a poster of the stern visage of Khomeini above the words, “Islam is the religion of freedom.”
Later, as night fell over the tumultuous capital, gunfire could be heard in the distance. And from rooftops across the city, the defiant sound of “Allah-u-Akbar” — “God is Great” — went up yet again, as it has every night since the fraudulent election. But on Saturday it seemed stronger. The same cry was heard in 1979, only for one form of absolutism to yield to another. Iran has waited long enough to be free.

In greater numbers than ever before, Iranians had bought in to the sliver of democracy offered by an autocratic system whose ultimate loyalty is to the will of God rather than the will of the people. Almost 40 million voted. Now, their votes flouted, many have crossed over from reluctant acquiescence to the Islamic Republic into opposition. That’s a fundamental shift.
The Islamic Republic has lost legitimacy. It is fissured. It will not be the same again.

~Roger Cohen

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From the Shahnameh, Iran's national epic poem, written in the 10th century:

"Explain yourself! Plead your case

before us now. Bring some sense

to why my son, from among

all your subjects, must satisfy those serpents

with his brains. Submit your words to the world

and let the world judge your worth!”

Stealing a Meme from the Delightful Serena....

Serena


is much better looking


than


these broads

MEME BY FIVES



1. My 5 favorite things to eat are:

Thai, popcorn (I'm currently into garlic popcorn and black pepper popcorn), quesadillas, ribs, cinnamon rolls



2. My 5 best childhood friends were:

Margaret, Mary Kay, Kathy, Angela, Marilyn



3. My 5 favorite non-alcoholic beverages are:

Coffee, iced coffee, flavored water, Diet Mt. Dew, Diet Coke with lime



4. My 5 high school boy/girlfriends were:

Julie, Leanne, Karen, Fud and Ted



5. My 5 most annoying traits are:

Procrastination, forgetfulness... can't remember the other 3



6. If you ask me, my 5 best qualities are:

Sense of humor, great hair, sense of humor, empathy, sense of humor



7. The names of 5 pets I've owned in my life are:

Gage, Mike, Misty, Brandy and Malone



8. The 5 things I like best about my job are:

Bebe, my East side office, the pace, recruiting, my staff



9.My 5 favorite TV shows are:

The Closer, In Plain Sight, Bones, So You Think You Can Dance, The Mentalist, (what else....) Law and Order



10. My 5 favorite authors are:

Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, Michael Connelly, Margaret Maron, Cormac McCarthy



11. The 5 things I'm most scared of :

Deep water; cats (yes, it is true); being stung by a swarm of wasps; the concept of grandchildren;

losing a loved one



12. My 5 most annoying habits are:

Calling people by the wrong name...but I always get the first letter right (my sister friends Pat and Kathy will love that); going to sleep with the TV on; being careless when texting and not deleting the wrong letters I punch; sigh...snoring

13. The 5 primary reasons why I answered this Meme:

Because I wanted to see your 5, because I finished my book and it's too early for bed, because, because, because, because, because.....(that's 7)

Quotations from the Palin....how I've missed her

"Reagan knew that real change and real change requiring shaking things up and maybe takin’ off the entrenched interest thwarting the will of the people with their ignoring of our concerns about future peril caused by selfish short-sighted advocacy for growing government and digging more debt, and taking away individual and state’s rights and hampering opportunity to responsibly develop our resources, and coddling those who would seek to harm America and her allies."

From a recent speech where she borrowed from Newt and Craig Shirley. A succinct, almost musical potpourri of words. But what the hell does it mean?

Can It Really Be This Simple?

Excerpted from articles by Bradford Plumer....

Bust Out The White Paint!

British reporters (and Matt Drudge) have been having gentle fun with Energy Secretary Steven Chu's recent remarks that we should paint our roofs white to slow the pace of global warming. But Chu's totally right! The science on this is clear: Replacing black asphalt on roofs, parking lots, and sidewalks with brighter material would reflect more of the sun's rays and do quite a bit to cool the planet.

To give an easy example, just refitting the 30 billion or so square feet of commercial roof space in the United States would be the equivalent of taking roughly 75 million cars off the road for a year. And, as a bonus, buildings with white roofs tend to stay 30 percent cooler than their black-topped counterparts during the summer, which curtails energy use. Obviously this wouldn't stop global warming, but on the list of pain-free measures that would make a fair bit of inroads on the problem, this has to rank very high up there.

Are White Roofs A Big Deal?

Is there a quick and handy way to cool down the planet? Maybe—and it might just take a few buckets of white paint and a little extra concrete. Fine, more than a few buckets, but still: The Los Angeles Times reports that Hashem Akbari, a physicist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has crunched the numbers and estimated that if the 100 biggest cities in the world simply turned all of their roofs white and used more reflective material for the pavement in their sidwalks, parking lots, and roads—concrete instead of asphalt, say—the cooling effects would be tremendous:

Globally, roofs account for 25% of the surface of most cities, and pavement accounts for about 35%. If all were switched to reflective material in 100 major urban areas, it would offset 44 metric gigatons of greenhouse gases, which have been trapping heat in the atmosphere and altering the climate on a potentially dangerous scale.

That is more than all the countries on Earth emit in a single year. And, with global climate negotiators focused on limiting a rapid increase in emissions, installing cool roofs and pavements would offset more than 10 years of emissions growth, even without slashing industrial pollution.

Keith Johnson of the Wall Street Journal pours a healthy bit of cold water on the idea, noting that "[t]he scale and cost of any program that would re-top all the roofs and paved surfaces in cities the size of Los Angeles, Mexico City, New Delhi, and Tokyo simultaneously" might well dwarf anything Al Gore's proposing. True. On the other hand, roughly three-quarters of all the buildings that will exist in the United States in 2035 either haven't even been built yet or will soon be renovated, so that's one easy place to start. (Presumably the figures are even higher for China and India.)

One side-benefit of painting roofs a blinding white—or installing vegetation-heavy green roofs—is that it can cut down on the need for air-conditioning in the summer: Buildings with green roofs are typically 30 percent cooler than their blacktopped counterparts. California, for one, has already revamped its building codes to require white roofs on all commercial buildings. Using more reflective material on roads and highways sounds more contentious, though the concrete industry is certainly keen on the idea.

A Memorial Gets Me Thinking

The 65th Anniversary at the Normandy American Cemetery in France put me in mind of my dad talking about what hearing about Normandy meant to the American troops serving in the Pacific Theater. He described hearing about the successful landing (despite the enormous loss of life) after he had arrived back in New Guinea. He said that nothing quite uplifted the discouraged troops, who wondered if they'd be fighting the Japanese for years and years...more than knowing that we were succeeding in the drive against Nazi Germany. The landing inspired the troops in the Pacific to believe that someday, someday, it would all be over and they could go back to their normal lives again.

My dad served with the army in New Guinea... largely the war there has been described as a "knock down drag out battle between two tired heavyweights". The Japanese and the American/Australian forces cohabitated on New Guinea for over three years of the war effort..struggling to knock each other off the island.

My dad didn't share a lot of details -- how I wish I had probed for more of his story today. I have recently sent away for his Army record, so that I can leave that for my own children, to honor his service. Their other grandfather was in the European theater, and landed at Anzio.

Dad's unit operated jointly with the Australians under Douglas MacArthur. He was felled by severe malaria (along with 27,000 other Allied troops) in New Guinea, and spent some of his service time recovering at a hospital in Australia. When he went back, he narrowly survived an attack at night by an island tribe which was operating in conjunction with the Japanese. His military blanket bore the marks of a spear that narrowly missed him while he was sleeping one night in camp.

I know that the hardships in the jungle were difficult for a kid from Minnesota. Dad was 22 when he enlisted in 1941. Two other brothers were in the Navy, and one in the Army. All were deployed in the Pacific theater. Luckily, all came home. The memorial above that was featured in this weeks news is a testament to some that did not. Mostly, bodies in the Pacific theater were not recovered, or were shipped to Australia or back to the states for internment. My dad's family was lucky. All 4 boys came back home.

Here's what service in New Guinea - where rain and monsoons were a daily way of life, looked like for American soldiers:

The Nuts are All Out There

With all the pleasant chatter about Sonia Sotomayer being racist, and the epithets regarding Dr. Tiller, that beat a path to his assassination, after everything that comes out of Michelle Bachman's mouth, and oh, yeah, let's not forget the no good for nothing Obama going to New York for a Broadway show (where does that guy get off, anyway?), you might enjoy the tuneful lyrics of the "American Patriot Tea Party".

"The group's chief organizer, Cheryl Brooks, advocates making being Chistian a requirement for governmental service, and a return to the laws of 1788, which would eliminate women's, minorities,' Jewish and others' civil rights. Apparently, she wants all amendments to the constitution eliminated (which would, I assume eliminate the Bill of Rights)."......



This, reported in the Progressive Alaska Blog. This lady clearly has it all together. She's just full of good ideas. Here she is in her garden. She looks harmless enough.

Where's she from? Oh, Yeah. Wasilla. Go figure. :)





“When I was losing, they called me nuts. When I was winning they called me eccentric.”

~ Al McGuire

“There's a very fine line between a groove and a rut; a fine line between eccentrics and people who are just plain nuts.”

~Christine Lavin

“I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.”

~John Steinbeck

Time for a Blogthing!

The Watercolor Test You Are Highly Colorful

You are intensely alive and very passionate. You are optimistic about the world and about people. You feel very connected to others, and you tend to be a harmonizing force. You are vibrant and receptive. You are ready for whatever the world has to offer you.

See for yourself!

The Watercolor Test

Change in the Weather

After 15 straight days of rain, our last 3 in a row have been a little slice of heaven here on Florida's gulf coast. I think it's raised people's expectations and moods. Today, looking at the blue blue sky, you forget that it's the first day of hurricane season!