Today marks the 62nd anniversary of the end of America as it might have been and the beginning of the America that is.
On this date in 1963, Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as the new president of this not-as-bad-as-other-places country of ours.
Do you remember where you were on this date?
DT remembers …
submitted by ghostsniper via Comments
I went into Circle K last evening.
As I was looking around I noticed this older gentleman kept looking at me.
He was a customer also.
I was waiting for the coffee to finish brewing as he walked up.
He had a tear in his eye and he proceeded to tell me that I looked like his son that was killed in Vietnam.
I told him that I was sorry to hear that.
He talked to me for about 5 minutes.
He told me how he and his son were fighting before he shipped out.
And that he never did say good-bye to him.
I felt bad for the guy.
He asked me if I would say good-bye to him as he left the store.
I said I would.
As he was going out he yelled “Good-bye son”, I yelled back “Good Bye Dad”.
Well the coffee had just finished and I went up to the counter to pay for it.
The clerk told me the total was $58.65.
I said for a cup of coffee? I think you made a mistake.
She said “No a carton of Marlboro’s and a 6-pack of Bud, your dad said you were getting his”.
NOW my blood is boiling.
I rip out of the store, the old man is just starting to get into his car.
I grabbed him by the arm and tried to lead him back to the store.
He fell to the ground and I got a hold of him and started pulling on his leg.
Kinda like what I am doing to yours right now. 🙂
originally posted by Jean on April 07, 2008
I will not
love you
this time.
Go away.
Stay away.
Come again
no other day.
Down in SW Wyoming and into Utah not far from where Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado come together is the lesser-known Flaming Gorge Reservoir and National Recreation Area. Named by John Wesley Powell during his 1869 expedition down the Green River, the reservoir was formed in 1964 when the river was dammed.
Sneffels Range in the background
One would not be far off to declare this region among the most beautiful on the planet. Property prices seem to suggest many think the same way.
The Divide is the 9000 ft pass on CO62 west of Ridgway which separates the San Juan Mtns on the south and the Uncompahgre Plateau to the north.
There was once a town within this view down in the valley; a toll road had been built in 1880, a railroad came through in 1890. The town’s post office closed in 1910; there is nothing left of the town.
The railroad ran along the faint line across the bottom with the line of trees to the right; Hwy62 is barely discernible in the trees just above the midline.
This view was captured from a friend’s home on the north side of the pass.
Cheney’s funeral is today – maybe right now as I write this. I hope they remember to shove a silver stake through where his heart should have been before they plant him (it’s not his heart; they had to give him one via transplant).
I hope no one gets the impression I don’t think he was one of the most evil people in the history of the US government.
The longest (known) cave system in the world is in south-central Kentucky. The Mammoth Cave – some 425 known miles of connected caverns – is now a national park. New passages are continuously discovered. Evidence of human activity within the cave goes back at least 5000 years. (37°11’13.0″N 86°06’04.0″W)
A body crushed by a large rock was discovered in 1935; the victim was a pre-Columbian miner. The cave environment appears to have been stable for thousands of years. The cave contains many ancient human remains and artifacts – most being hidden from the public.
The first Europeans visited the cave in 1797 when a hunter chased a wounded bear to the site. A saltpeter mine (potassium nitrate, a gunpowder component) was established in the early 1800s. The mining activity ended after the War of 1812 and became a tourist attraction using the owner’s slaves as tourist guides. Viewing the mine workings are still part of the visitor’s experience.
A tuberculosis center operated for a short while before the war; the thought being the cave atmosphere had curative effects.
Photos of the cave were produced after the war, increasing tourist interest. As the region is pockmarked with smaller caves, a “war” for tourists broke out in the early 1900s, increasing with the advent of auto traffic.
Land ownership was a contentious subject until the last of the majority land owners died off in the 1920s. Interested parties became interested in forming a park in 1924; the Mammoth Cave National Park Association was formed and led to the forced removal of a variety of land owners in the area under eminent domain. CCC camps were set up in the ’30s and ’40s; the government declared the formation of a national park in 1941.
The park is so popular that advance reservations to enter the cave are highly recommended.
One thing that sticks in my memory from the almost 40 years since I visited was southern-style Coca Cola in the 6oz bottles for 5¢. Tasted far better than the usual Coke. Doubt those are available anymore.
are karens with robes (including that most karen of judges, Boasberg)
“Judge Blocks Trump From Power-Washing Office Building Near White House“
“Judge Dabney L. Friedrich ordered Trump not to power wash the filthy Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) next to the White House.“
How is this even a judge’s business? Can’t clean the grime of the city off a government building? Granted the inside perhaps needs more cleaning than the outside, but still …
As an article asks: “we have to ask why we had an election a year ago to pick a president when judges can simply prevent him from doing anything they don’t approve of?“
My civics class suggested only the Supreme Court has jurisdiction with the Executive branch. The captains are telling the generals what they can and can’t do.
There’s no fixing the problems of this country without extreme measures of some sort.
“You might not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you“
Behind what were American lines at Yorktown in 1781 is an earthen dam (37.2168N, -76.4919W) across Wormley Creek over which American troops travelled to and from the siege lines. At one time, a grist mill operated by Augustine Moore was located here. It was at Mr Moore’s home nearby that the British surrender was given and accepted.
The same battlefields and ramparts of the Revolutionary War were used during the Civil War with the Confederates holding Yorktown as did the British and the Yankee armies laying siege where the French and Americans had done so 80 years earlier. There is a Union cemetery on the grounds but most of the region focuses on the Revolutionary War.
This was the same area where McClellan’s forces were held back in 1862 by Confederate General Magruder and where 2nd Lt George Custer first came to prominence. Today’s Colonial Parkway roughly follows what was the Warwick Line of 1862.
Now part of the Colonial National Historic Park and surrounded by a Navy ammo depot and Coast Guard training center, the dam is now crossed by the “Historical Tour Road”. The road is one way and just off the main tourist area of the battlefield. Because the road is one way leading away from the main area along the York River, there is less traffic here even though it does lead to “Surrender Field”.
When I lived in Williamsburg, I spent a lot of time between Jamestown at one end of Colonial Parkway and Yorktown at the other. If I were ever to go back east – not likely but never say never – this would be one area I’d return to.
One evening, I caught this swan swimming by on Warwick Pond …
A sample of some obscure – and maybe not obscure – tunes from my strange and off-the-wall collection.
Today’s selection: Jane – “Jane Session” – 1974
German “kraut rock”.
Jane was formed in 1970. This cut is off their third album, Jane III – “a scorching guitar blowout“
Wiki describes Jane as “Playing a melodious synthesis of symphonic hard rock, that has occasionally been compared to Pink Floyd“
Not sure I agree with that description, particularly “compared to Pink Floyd” but I like a fair amount of their stuff.
This cut is a dual-guitar instrumental.