What Was The World Coming To?!!

Lest we forget the moral visionaries that came before us, I offer this editorial from an 1890 edition of the New York Sun:

"The habit has reached such a stage now that makes it impossible for a New Yorker to go to the theater or the church, or enter the street cars or the railway train, or walk on a fashionable promenade without meeting men and women whose jaws are working with the activity of the gum chewing victim. And the spectacle is maintained in the face of frequent reminders that gum-chewing, especially in public, is an essentially vulgar indulgence that not only shows bad breeding, but spoils a pretty countenance and detracts from the dignity of those who practice the habit."

There must a huge number ironic closing statements I could insert here, but none that I can think of truly captures the gut-level response I want to elicit. Let me chew on it awhile.

Lost Luggage

Since I plan to be on an airplane in about a week, I found this March 28, 2006 article particularly disturbing:

"A report by SITA Inc., an air transportation telecommunications and technology company, found the airline industry lost an estimated 30 million bags worldwide last year. Two hundred thousand of those were never found. U.S. Airlines alone lost 10,000 bags a day in 2005.
So, what happens to all that lost luggage? A lot of it ends up at Scottsboro, Alabama, at the Unclaimed Baggage Center, where complete strangers can buy your stuff, everything from lost artwork to lost underwear."

I don't know about you, but that really pisses me off!

How can the airlines be so totally incompetent, and get away with it, 10,000 times a day, then sell the evidence to a private retailer?!!

I'm going to write a letter to the Attorney General's office and my two Senators and ask why they aren't prosecuting or, at least investigating, the airlines. I'll let you know what, if any, response I get. Most likely, I'll only manage to get my name on a threat profile. Sheesh.

Movies that made me cry.

In the course of emailing a friend today, I mentioned that I recently watched Disney's 1946 sequel to "Fantasia" called "Make Mine Music". I haven't seen it since I was about 6 years old.
Something I remembered from watching both Fantasia and Make Mine Music was that each had moved me to tears when I was a kid. In fact, four of the five films that EVER brought me to tears were produced by Walt Disney!
In Fantasia, it was the 5th and final segment of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. Do you remember it? Here's a description I found on the internet: "(5) Peace and Sunset: After the storm, tranquility returns, and Iris streaks across the sky, trailing a rainbow of colors. The mythological creatures play in the rainbow's colors. As the sun shines brightly, symbolized by Apollo riding a fiery chariot driven by three horses in the sky, the creatures wave and admire its reddish glow, thankful for the lovely day. Sunset approaches and Morpheus covers the land with a cloak of darkness. Night falls, and Diana, goddess of the moon, appears in the sky to shoot a fiery arrow-comet from the bow of light formed by the crescent of the new moon. The comet creates sparkling stars that scatter and fall into their proper places in the night sky. All is at peace under the moon and stars in the Elysian Fields setting."
Gee, just reading the description takes me back to that beautiful combination of art and music.
In Make Mine Music, it was the closing scene from the cartoon segment titled, "The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met". After the whale was harpooned and killed, he was still singing in heaven - and I was weeping in the balcony. It may have been the first time I heard Nelson Eddy sing. I've been a fan of his ever since.
Speaking of heaven: 'Remember the clouds morphing into apple blossoms in the closing scene from Johnny Appleseed? That is another on my list of adolescent tear jerkers.
And then there's Bambi. His mother gets KILLED, for cryin' out loud! That's not supposed to happen in cartoons! Damn you Walt Disney!
When I was 8 years-old, my grandmother took me to a matinee showing of Barbara Stanwick and Clifton Webb in "Titanic". I was doing okay until the scene when the ship is sinking and all the women have rowed a safe distance away into the dark stillness of the ocean. The only people left on board were the men and Clifton Webb's little boy (he gave up his seat in a lifeboat to die with the men). The ship's orchestra started playing "Nearer My God to Thee" and all the men, assembled on deck, started singing. The music drifted across the water and the scene closed from the perspective of the life boats as the ship went under. I never forgave my grandma for that! How's a guy supposed to walk out of a theater in the middle of the afternoon and keep everybody from noticing his red eyes?! Now I always take a pair of sunglasses with me, just in case.
After I started writing this, I remembered more scenes from other movies that made me cry. So I guess the total is greater than 5. But no more than 10. I'm sure of that. For the time being.

Dances With Coyotes

Here’s another Sam Hurst editorial for your edification, elucidation, and education. Damn, he’s good:

“A curious story appeared on network evening news broadcasts last Wednesday night. A coyote was discovered roaming through Manhattan.
Can you imagine, a lost coyote is a national news story? Not a dancing coyote, or a flying coyote, just a lost coyote. After an hour of chasing the terrified mutt through Central Park, wildlife officials tranquilized it and carted it off to a refuge, where it would presumably return to more typical coyote behavior, like munching on suburban family pets.
The choice of New York officials to spend thousands of dollars and dozens of man-hours to "relocate" this traumatized scrap of wildlife stands in stark contrast to the reception a coyote would receive in western South Dakota. We would, of course, shoot it and hang it from a fence post.
It got me thinking about why two such dramatically different cultures would respond in such drastically different ways, and I came to a simple conclusion: Wilderness is valued in direct proportion to its scarcity.
In New York, they think they are saving something rare. They don't want to kill the last coyote. In South Dakota we don't ever think we're killing the last remnant of wilderness. There's always more.
For a century the struggle of "forward looking" settlers has been to tame the wilderness, not protect it. Square it up. Plow it. Graze it. Pave it. Poison it. Mine it. Fence it. We have built an economy that celebrates our obsession with domesticity, and now, we are lost in the wilderness.
The campaign of ranchers, hunters and conservationists to secure the wilderness character of a few hidden corners of the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands has floundered on the alter of "multiple use," a mid-20th century philosophy of democratic utilitarianism that asserts the equal right of every American to use the public lands any way they want. It's an entitlement. First come, first served.
The irrationality of this philosophy can be seen on any summer weekend at Railroad Buttes, 30 miles east of Rapid City, a few miles south of Farmingdale. Cattlemen lease the pasture. Hunters use the walls of deep gullies to sight their rifles. Rock hounds stumble over the eroding badlands, eyes to the ground, looking for agates. And, perched squarely atop the pyramid of self-indulgence, motorcycle riders burn across the pastures, cutting new trails, grinding up and over the buttes in spectacular displays of immortality, with broken arms and twisted axles laying confidently in wait on the other side of each daredevil leap.
The Forest Service has set aside over 5,000 acres (5,000!) for the motorcycles and four-wheelers. Trails have been posted at the boundaries, where an effort is being made to protect scenic views, or sensitive erosion areas, or wildlife, or cattle pastures. But there's something powerful about sitting on top of an engine. To hell with the signs. Puffed up with their "right" to use the grasslands, the riders simply keep going. Who's going to stop them? The Forest Service has no law enforcement.
Someday, I imagine, an unsuspecting tourist family from New York, hoping to catch a glimpse of a coyote, will be driving along the gravel road and hit a nine-year-old on a speeding motorcycle trying to jump the road. He will fly through the air and be shot by a stray bullet from a rifle that has been in the closet all winter and drifted out of registration.
The tumbling motorcycle will land on the head of an 83-year-old agate hunter in a wheelchair, who has driven his motor home into the pasture and set up camp at the eroding edge of a cattle trail. Everyone will blame the Forest Service.
There was a time when the philosophers of our young nation believed that wilderness made Americans unique. These were immigrants from the polluted and strife-ridden slums of European cities. Wilderness tested us, molded our character, not because we had tamed it, but precisely because we did not control it. Wilderness gave us humility, a deep knowledge that we were part of nature, not masters. God lived in the wilderness.
There is no going back from Railroad Buttes. It is on the fast track to sterility. But 20 miles down the road, on the banks of the Cheyenne River, we still have a chance to ante up.
Let the Indian Creek wilderness be governed by a different ethic. Let it be a nursery for wildlife. Let it be a place where young people can be tested and shaped by nature. Let it be quiet. Let it be a place where we walk. Let it be God's home.
This week Indian Creek is under a foot of snow. Buffalo are grazing the prairie dog town on Zebell Table. The first migrations of bluebirds and meadowlarks have arrived from the tropics. Their blues and yellows flit against the white glare.
In a month it will be lush green - the fleeting summer seductress of a poor Irish homesteader. The horizontal bands of yellow and red badland sediment will leap out against the blue sky.
If you doubt the value of wilderness, if you suspect that it is worthless, call me, and we'll take a walk. I can promise you we will see the footprints of coyote.”

Cabooses & Cabbages

I miss cabooses! My 6 year-old granddaughter has never seen and will never see a real train with a caboose. If it weren't for children's books like "The Caboose That Got Loose" and "The Little Engine That Could", she probably wouldn't even know what a caboose looks like! I'm guessing that the word "caboose" will be dropped from our vocabulary by the time she's in her 20's. (Yikes! It's happening already! The spell checker on this program is telling me "caboose" should be replaced with "cabbage"!)
Cabooses were cool. After waiting and waiting and waiting for a slow-moving freight to clear a crossing, I always enjoyed waving to the guys in the caboose as they rumbled by at the end train. More often than not, they waved back. I always wondered what it was like inside a caboose and how it felt to ride in the cupola on top.
Trains without cabooses look truncated, like an arm without a hand. That little red box they stick on the back of the last car is a sorry substitute for a jaunty red caboose.

Baghdad, Vietnam

I've been watching "Vietnam: A Television History". It is an excellent 13-hour documentary on 5 DVDs. I wish PBS would run it again RIGHT NOW. The country needs to see how much the Iraq debacle resembles Vietnam. The lies told in 1967 by the Johnson administration to bolster support are being repeated almost word-for-word by Bush and his boys today.
There are lots of similarities between the two conflicts but there is one glaring difference: Soldiers returning from Iraq are welcomed home, invited to speak at Rotary meetings and honored by local churches. Returning Vietnam soldiers were the targets of anti-war activists. Some were spat upon or called baby killers but most of us were just politely ignored.
It reminds me of my own homecoming in 1968. Our military transport landed at Travis AFB. My connecting flight to Omaha didn't leave for 24 hours so I caught a taxi to San Francisco and checked in to a downtown hotel. I was excited to be back in "the world" again. As I was signing in, I asked the hotel clerk if he could recommend any place nearby where a guy could go for a beer. His response stunned me. He said, "If the only thing you have to wear is a uniform, I don't recommend that you leave the hotel."
He was right, of course. San Francisco in 1968 was NOT a safe place for a guy in uniform to walk around alone. I took his advice. I stayed in my room and looked out the window. It still felt good to be home because, for the first time in over a year, I didn't worry about waking up in the middle of a rocket attack.

Juanie

When I was a kid, it seemed like all the other kids I knew had an "ie" or "y" at the end of their names. For instance: Johnny, Jeanie, Charlie, Gwennie, Debbie, Billy, Sandy, Tommy, and Patty. If parents didn't put an "ie" or "y" on the end, they frequently came up with nic-names like: Skip or Junior. Why was that?
Then we grew up and so did our names. Charlie became Chuck. Debbie became Debra. Jimmy is James. Gwennie is Gwendolyn. Billy is William. Patty is Patricia. Skip is Clarence and Junior is Fred.
After all these years, I'm still not comfortable with the grownup names. On the rare opportunities when I see them again, I still call them by their kid names. I can't help it. In my mind, it's who they are.
I wonder if the same holds true for kids around the world. Was Slobodan Milosovic once called Slobie or Danny or Skip? Was Juan Valdez once Juanie? "How I love ya, how I love ya, my dear old Juanie".

Sunshine Gardens

Something I saw on TV reminded me of my first job. It was the fall of 1959. I was 15 years old and I had just started my Sophomore year in high school. One day, my Biology teacher, Mr. Tenneboe, asked me if I would be interested in delivering flowers for one of the local florists. (Apparently, the manager had contacted the high school Biology department looking for a reliable candidate.) I had just learned to drive the previous spring so I was feeling pretty confident in my driving skills. I told Mr. Tenneboe that I was interested and we set up an interview. I went to Sunshine Gardens after school and spoke with the manager. He said my duties would be to make daily deliveries to the two city hospitals, then to stop by the Post Office and pick up the mail on my way back to the store. That sounded fine to me. The next step was for him to accompany me on the first trip so he could see how I drove, show me the procedure for leaving flowers at the hospital and show me where the Post Office box was located. Easy, yes? Well, I thought so... right up to the point when I sat down in the driver's seat of the 1949 Plymouth station wagon that they used for deliveries.
IT WAS A STICK SHIFT! GULP! I learned to drive our family car that was an automatic! I had no idea how to drive a stick.
A normal, rational, intelligent person would, at that point, tell the manager, "I'm sorry, I don't know how to drive a stick shift. May I come back in a week or so after I learn how? But not me. I just pushed in the clutch, turned on the ignition, put it in first, and AWAY WE WENT! We lurched and jerked and bucked and swerved but eventually I got through all three forward gears. Every time we came to a stop sign or red light I repeated the bucking bronco routine. Somehow we made it to the hospital and dropped off the flowers. Then we lurched our way over to the Post Office. All around the Post Office was diagonal parking. That meant I'd have to back up. Oh well. We picked up the mail, got in the station wagon, and I started to back up. The old wagon jerked and stalled and slowly rolled back to the curb. I tried again. It died again. The third time, I gave it more gas... a lot more gas. The tires squeeled and the station wagon shot out of the parking spot. I had to slam on the brakes to keep us from backing all the way into the opposite direction traffic. When we got back to Sunshine Gardens the manager asked me to come in his office. He said that he wanted me to work in the greenhouse instead of delivering flowers. Really? Okay! The next day I reported for duty in the greenhouse. The manager took me out back where a dump truck had left a HUGE pile dry sheep manure. Next to the pile were several 55 gallon drums that had the tops cut off. On top of one drum was a screen with a wooden frame around it. The manager said my job was to shovel manure on the screen then shake it to sift the fine particles into the drum. The sifted manure was a key ingredient in their starter fertilizer. I shoveled several scoops of manure onto the screen and started shaking. Interestingly, the process of sifting dry sheep manure creates a cloud of fine green particles that stick to your hair, clothes, shoes, and any exposed skin. A couple of hours later, it was time to close the store and my first day in the greenhouse was done. I'm not sure what I looked like with my coating of sheep manure. My mom made me undress in the garage.
I spent an entire week sifting sheep manure before I cross trained on painting starter boxes with linseed oil. WhooHoo! Eventually, the manager ran out of greenhouse chores and he let me go. My bad. It was nice of him to employ me for a couple of months considering I couldn't do the job I was originally hired for.
My next job was cooking hamburgers at McDonald's. But I've always been proud to tell folks that my first job was sheep shit sifting at Sunshine Gardens!

Magnificent Magazines

I don't know why anyone who lives near a library would ever need to purchase a magazine subscription. Even the small library in my small town maintains a huge collection of magazines (over 120 different publications)! And what could be more pleasant than to spend an hour or two at the library reading magazines? Past issues are stored behind the racks and are available for check out. So, if you're like me, and you find a specialty magazine that you like, you can check out several back issues to read over breakfast or just before falling asleep. What's not to like about that?
One of the magazines that has my current interest is called "Reminisce". It is entirely subscriber-written. There are no ads, no editorials, no current event reports and no negative stories. The stories are all fond, funny, and frequently sentimental first-person accounts of days gone by. The stories often include photos submitted by the authors. I think they are surprisingly interesting and entertaining. Probably that's because many of those stories stir up memories of my own.
Here are my personal prescriptions for stress and/or the blues:
For stress: Go to the library, grab a handful of interesting magazines and zone out for a couple of hours or check out a few past issues and read them at home with a cup or class of your favorite beverage.
For the blues: Go to the card store and browse the funny birthday cards. They will lift your spirits.
Gee, this is beginning to sound like a story in Reminisce.

'Tis Almost St. Patty's Day!

Ohhhhh, I may not come from Ireland.
My name is not O'Leary.
But tomorrow I'll be wearin' green.
And drinkin' lots of beery!

Yes, it's that time of year again. Time to splurge on a six-pack of Heineken (because it has a geen label and comes in a green bottle), wear my green underoos, and dye my hair green.
No. Wait. I dyed my hair green once already and it didn't turn out well.
I was in third grade and still had a full crop of blonde hair on my wee head. I asked my mom to dye my hair green for St. Partick's Day. For reasons known but to her, she agreed! She coated my hair with green food coloring and sent me on my way to Walnut Hill Elementary decked out in bright green hair, my favorite orange jacket, and blue jeans. I must have looked like a walking popsicle.
When I got to the playground, all the kids gathered around to ooh and ahh over my daring 'do. Too soon, the bell rang to signal the start of classes. My five minutes of fame were over. We lined up in an orderly fashion and paraded into the building.
I hadn't gone very far before one of the teachers took me by the arm and led me unceremoniously to the principal's office. I don't recall exactly what the principal said but it must have been something like this: "Young man, you march right back home and don't come back until your hair is its natural color. And no more funny business!"
Uh oh. That was the first time I'd ever been in trouble and I thought being sent home was pretty severe punishment for a first time offense!
I wish I could end this story with an accurate description of what happened next. But I can't. I don't remember! You can't simply wash green food coloring out of your hair can you? I know I didn't stay home until my hair grew long enough to cut all the green parts off. I imagine my scalp was green too! Unfortunately, I no longer have enough hair to repeat the process - for scientific purposes. Besides, the principal already warned me, "No more funny business!"

A Bit of Good News

Here's an update from the R.C. Journal's blog site that holds a sliver of promise:

"This will be all over everywhere Wednesday with more context, but here are some highlights from a release from a group, Focus South Dakota, that is working to refer the abortion ban bill, HB1215, to a vote in November.
–72% want HB1215 referred to the ballot
–”HB1215 is in conflict with the personal abortion beliefs of 62% of South Dakota voters who see it as too extreme a ban.” -This is direct language from the press release, and it must be noted that these poll results depend heavily on the language used and the order in which questions are asked.
–”… 57% saying they are committed to voting to overturn and only 35% saying they will vote to keep the ban” *see above caviat
–”All parties support overturning the bill with Democrats at 71% to 22%, Independents at 60% to 26% and Republicans at 47% to 46%.” *see above caviat
–”All regions of the state will vote to overturn the law with the Southeast (does not include Minnehaha/Lincoln counties) the lowest vote to overturn at 47% to 44% and the Black Hills the highest vote to overturn at 67% to 24%.”
Focus South Dakota’s press release says that an out-of-state group has “filed a petition” to refer HB1215. The group is asking them to withdraw that petition so that a group of South Dakota organizations can do the job.
“We and the other organizations involved want this to clearly be seen as a battle by South Dakotans to determine our own destiny and laws,” reads the press release. "

Personally, I'm glad to see the Black Hills has the highest vote to overturn. All is not lost.

To be or not to be...a solid

Did you know that glass is a liquid?
Not was a liquid, like molten metal before it's steel, but is a liquid, like water!
I didn't. But I do now!
I knew glass could be heated and melted and blown and twisted into strange shapes. But I didn't realize that glass remains viscous even after it cools! In other words, at room temperature, your expensive Steuben glass centerpiece is melting, albeit at a tremendously slow rate, into a puddle.
Furthermore, the fact that glass is a liquid explains why it is clear - like water. Its molecular structure is not the regular crystalline latticework of a solid. It's random and loosely spaced - like water. That's why light passes through it without being reflected or absorbed.
Just remember: Glass may be a liquid, but I don't recommend washing your face with it.

Right on the button!

I decided to rent a suit for my son's wedding in April. I don't wear one often enough to justify buying one. Suit styles change more often than I wear suits. I got measured here in my home town, then called the measurements down to a dealer in Arizona. The suit, shirt, and tie will be waiting for me when I get there.

Speaking of suit styles, there is one feature that has had me stumped for a number of years: Why are there buttons on the outside of suit jacket sleeves?

I've seen as many as four buttons on some suit jacket sleeves. It doesn't seem like a very practical place for spare buttons. Suit sleeves don't button at the cuff like shirt sleeves. So... why put buttons there?

Well, I found an answer in a book called "The Straight Dope". I say it's "an answer" not "the answer" because it still sounds bizarre to me. Here is what I found: Frederick the Great, of Prussia, loved the spectacle of seeing his troops lined up for inspection in their natty uniforms. Unfortunately, many of the Prussian soldiers had a nasty habit of wiping their sweaty brows, runny noses, dirty hands, and seeping wounds on the sleeves of their natty uniforms. So, Frederick decreed that buttons be sewn on the sleeves in the general vicinity of nose/brow/wound/hand wiping to discourage such practice. Hence, the uniforms stayed natty to the max. As uniforms morphed into dress attire for men, the buttons migrated from mid-sleeve to their present location at the cuff.

Now that the buttons are out of the way, I can wipe my nose on my suit sleeve without fear of "button-rash". That'll be great! Besides, it's only a rental.

One Last Stab at South Dakota

Here is another excellent editorial by Sam Hurst on the abortion issue in South Dakota. It will be the last one I publish on this subject. I promise.

For the second time in as many years, Mike Rounds has proven himself to be a good Catholic and a bad governor. It's a shame. On a variety of issues regarding education and economic development the governor has shown himself to be quite creative and forward thinking. But when it comes to a good old-fashioned religious crusade, he has a whopping big blind spot.
Last year Gov. Rounds received a letter from the Catholic bishop of Sioux Falls demanding that the State Library Web site remove a link to Planned Parenthood. Keep the link to a Catholic Web site, but dump Planned Parenthood.
The governor did his duty to the bishop, with no apparent pause to consider obscure little problems like, say, the Constitution. To their credit, the State Library Board voted twice to affirm the link to Planned Parenthood. His response was to shut down the entire Web site.
Now the governor has signed the most vicious anti-women's health legislation in the nation. As a general rule, I am opposed to the use of the veto by governors who simply disagree with the intent of duly elected legislators. But events of the last week have led me to wonder if Gov. Rounds, once again, has gotten wrapped up in the hysteria of a religious crusade, while neglecting to ask simple questions about just how the law will work. After all, when the chorus of righteous prayer has fallen to a whisper, the women and men, parents and priests, physicians and insurance companies of South Dakota will have to figure out how to live with the new law.
The governor's lack of curiosity about the mechanics of the law is a failure of leadership, and a reflection of his blind spot for religious and medical values that differ from his own.
Consider the theory of embryonic development articulated in the law. It is based on a narrow interpretation of Christian values, but it has nothing to do with science, or medicine, or the values of the larger society. Gov. Rounds seems to believe that since the law reflects his values, there are no others. That's his blind spot.
The law prohibits a woman from getting an abortion to protect her health. But it allows an abortion to protect her life. Think about that. It is a remarkably idiotic piece of legislative craftsmanship. Where is the line between "health" and "life"? Who will make the decision? The law is mute on these problems. That's the way it is with religious crusades - big on symbolism, lousy when it comes to the lives of real people.
Can we agree that a woman and her physician should make the decision about the invisible, fleeting line between health and life? No! The whole point of the new law is to take these judgments away from the woman and her physician and put them in the hands of ... whom? Lawyers? Christian elders? A church tribunal? Ah ... an Inquisition.
I asked a local obstetrician: If a woman has been raped and impregnated and is in poor health, he cannot, under the new law, recommend an abortion in the first trimester, when it could be done safely. Instead, he told me, he must wait until death is imminent, when the risk to both the woman and the fetus is at its highest.
Even if the wording of the law is hopeless, Gov. Rounds might reasonably have looked at "legislative intent." Sen. Bill Napoli was eager to weigh in during an interview on "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer." He was asked to describe a situation in which an abortion would be allowed to protect the life of a pregnant woman.
My thoughts turned to problems like chronic heart disease or complications from diabetes. But Sen. Napoli, having given the matter serious consideration for several months, went in another direction entirely. "A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life."
Despite the fact that the law does not make an exception for rape or incest, Sen. Napoli has carved out his own "virgin Christian sodomy" exception.
I can imagine the hospital operating room now - an obstetrician, a pediatrician, a surgeon, a few nurses, the hospital lawyer, a priest, in deference to Sen. Napoli, a psychologist. And oh, lest we forget ... the woman.
"Shall we abort?"
"Well, doctor, she was brutally raped and sodomized, but do we know whether she was a Christian?"
"Was she a virgin? Was she saving herself?"
Of course, Sen. Napoli's comments are bigoted and absurd, but they speak to the intent of many legislators to hoist the banner of a religious crusade rather than actually making law to reduce the need for abortions in South Dakota.
At the very moment when we needed Mike Rounds to look at the law rather than the cause, he could not see beyond his blind spot.The problem with blind spots is that you don't know you've got one until you're in a wreck, and you never know when a wreck might happen ... like next November, or 2008.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my new blog site. I'm making this entry because the host requires something to start the program. Stand by for news!