OUR MOST PRECIOUS ASSET

Throughout history, stories have been related over and over again about parents who died saving the lives of their children.  It's a pretty simple equation:  death is imminent for a youngster, that's a month old baby up to about twelve or fourteen years old, and the parent or parents thrust themselves into the way and die instead of the children. There are different results for this same scenario including one where they all die or they all survive. However, there is nothing far-fetched about a mother bear defending her cubs. The rule there is simple: get in the path leading from Mama Bear to Baby Bear and chances are Mama Bear is going to run over you, most likely with fatal results for you.  There is no question about this. If you live around bear habitat then chances are you have instructed some new comer to beware of this situation.    

But what happens when we turn the care of our children over to a baby sitter, or a nanny or a school?  Unless we are all escapees from retard schools, the expectations are the same: "You WILL defend my children up to and including sacrificing your own life as you try to protect theirs!"

It's my sincere belief that the parents of the children who were killed in the shooting at the school in Connecticut did not receive from the school authorities the type of protection to which they were entitled .  Details are sketchy when this is being written, five days after the shooting took place, but it appears only one person took their job of child caretaker seriously, the principal. That's certainly NOT the kind of example the passengers on Flight 93 made on September 11, 2001.

I strongly suggest that these bereaved parents band together and file a heavy-duty lawsuit against the school system that did not have anything in place, such as teachers with concealed weapon permits who could have stopped this insanity in its tracks. They need to take the same attitude that thousands people in California took many years ago about the status of playing cards.  They went to court and proved that certain poker games were NOT games of chance but games of skill.  These parents need to go to court and have the court adjudicate the fact that banning guns will NOT make the situation anything but worse. We might as well ban pencils for misspelling words, ban mountain bikes for killing people by throwing them off the bike when going down the mountain, ban cars for killing people. The list is endless and the method is lunacy.  We need a display of strength that renders swift and final retribution to anyone who has the temerity to threaten our most precious asset.

Fritz Owens

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

THE LATEST POLITICAL SCAM

The alien invader crooks just won't go away (see my blog: "Alien invader crooks": http://pianofritz2.blogspot.com/2007/06/alien-invader-crooks.html from 6/28/2007.

They are so attractive to the politicians because they represent so many votes. The gooney birds in Washington, D.C. want us to ignore the drug trade, the murders, the assaults, the rapes and the total disregard for American laws by these felons and "give them a break". The latest reprehensible plan states that if an alien invader crook has been living here for twenty years, has married and raised a family the deportation laws should be ignored and this non-citizen given a break simply because he or she eluded the law for twenty years. The green card is their reward for being smart enough to not get caught.

Now I've heard some stupid suggestions when it comes to these alien invader crooks but this just about tops them all. Recently, Hans Gruber, a German guard at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, was discovered hiding in Wisconsin where he had married, had children and had become a fine, upstanding member of the community. Don't you think that we should ignore the sixty thousand people he personally sent to the gas chambers during the Second World War? I mean, after all, he eluded the law for twenty-seven years so shouldn't he also get the same reward as proposed for all of the alien invader crooks? 

Then there's Melvin Florane. He escaped from an Arkansas prison in 1975 after he had served seven years of a sixty-year sentence for murdering his girlfriend and her daughter and unborn son.  He had taken up residence in Oregon, married, had several children and became another fine, upstanding member of the community. Really now, he eluded the law for over thirty-five years so shouldn't he get the same reward as the all the others? Seems only fair to me.  I'm sure that you don't need any help from me to come up with other significant examples.

These nut cases in the House and the Senate and the Oval Office seem to think they can get away with anything. Looks like they are proving it on a daily basis, doesn't it? Imagine now what life would be without the estimated twelve to thirty million alien invader crooks. The prison population would be reduced by an enormous amount since about thirty percent of them are alien invader crooks. The huge amount of pressure on the emergency rooms around the country that these bums are using as their health care center would suddenly be able to keep within their budget and treat true emergency cases on a reasonable basis.  Consider the fact that these crooks are sending billions of dollars a year out of the country. That would be sufficient to eventually balance the budget, particularly if there was no longer a huge strain on Medicare, Social Security and other social services that they are ruining.

If I ask you to commit a crime and you go out and do it with no assistance from me, am I guilty too? Obama is asking these dead heads in Congress to do just that and they are doing it. What makes you think that he's not responsible?  If you don't like the alien invader crooks taking over your country then write to your representatives in Washington, D.C. and tell them to do something about it or lose their next election. That ALWAYS gets results. Remember, the main problem is that the Federal Government is NOT enforcing the laws already on the books. We don't need more laws or regulations. All we need is ENFORCEMENT!

           

If you agree with this article, why don't you take the time to send it to like-minded friends and relatives? It could make a big difference in your future.

Rumors of my demise...

To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. Besides being sick in the head, (my normal state of being), in December of 2010 we had a humongous snowstorm up here in the Western North Carolina mountains. As the snow was just coming down lightly, I figured I could make it over to John and Virginia Dekker's house on the west side of Hendersonville and pick up Lynne before it got too bad. Bad choice.

I started to drive over there in our antique (1992) BMW and it seems like that was the trigger to cause the snow to immediately start falling at triple the rate. Lynne was baby-sitting the Dekker's three dogs while they were out of town. They usually reciprocate by watching our three cats when we go someplace. I got stuck in the snow about a half-mile from their house. Fortunately, I was able to maneuver the car over to the side of the road to keep it out of the way of other vehicles. Then the people next door to the Dekker's came to get me with Lynne in their 4-wheel drive vehicle. They drove us down to the entrance to the community and we waited for our youngest daughter to come pick us up in their 4-wheel drive vehicle.

By now you should be getting the idea that for where we live, a 4-wheel drive vehicle seems to be an awfully good idea. At this point in time, I realized that I could not drive back up the mountain where we live to get home again until either the snow melted or we acquired a 4-wheel drive vehicle. And if I didn't get a 4-wheel drive car, this could happen another dozen times that winter or any winter thereafter. Sort of a no-brainer situation: get a 4 wheel drive vehicle or move.

When we got here in 2005 we had no transportation at all and no money to get one. The situation was slightly different in 2010 simply because we had gotten a reverse mortgage and had a little money left to draw on. However, in looking through all the information on used 4-wheel drive vehicles, it became apparent right away that we'd be lucky to find one decent vehicle for less than $20,000. That was eighty Percent (80%) of the money we had left in the reverse mortgage. Tough call, huh? Keep in mind that I have no job, I have not worked since the heart attack eight weeks before Katrina and the 565 idiots in Congress have not exactly been our friends with their dipping into our Social Security and refusing us the cost of living increase for two years.

It was Melody's husband that found the car for us. He ran across it online and settled my nerves about it. "I had a Toyota 4 Runner for a couple of years when I lived in Colorado. A remarkable car - it was bulletproof!" That was not meant in the true sense of the word but used to give me an idea that the car was very hard to stop. We ended up buying the car and it has served us well for the last year and four months. Ended up costing us less than $9,000 which meant we only used up 37% of our reverse mortgage reserve.

What didn't go down so well was the situation at Melody and Tommy's house. I didn't know that they were all sick with some sort of respiratory illness and the doctor had all four of them on anti-biotics. Anyone that knows me knows the lifelong battle I've had with respiratory infections. This little sojourn at their house for three days with no way to escape, hardly any fresh air at all (it was in the 20's outside) and none of my vitamins or prescription medicine on hand really knocked the hell out of my already shaky immune system.

With such an assault on my health, particularly with all the other stuff that has been going on for the last couple of years with the added injustice of not being 22 anymore, I didn't really start to feel much better until the end of the summer, around the middle of October up here. Then Lynne went to New Orleans for ten days and when she came back she had a nasty gift for me: she was carrying some sort of infection donated by the bug network in Louisiana. Within a couple of weeks my sinuses were packed with a real doozy of an infection and I became the apparent local distributor of Grey Poupon Mustard, at least that's what the stuff coming out of my nose looked like. It was awful and my overall health started to get worse.

Eventually I ended up in the hospital emergency room a couple of times with what I call the "Seasickness Syndrome". That occurs when you get so sick, like seasickness, it's only the hope of dying that keeps you alive. Then my legs started to swell up. What an exciting time! Did you know that when the legs swell up and begin to make you look like the Michelin Tire Man, at a certain point the body starts to dump excess fluid through the skin? Wow! You walk across the linoleum floor in the kitchen like a giant slug leaving a trail that really resembles footprints by the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

At that point I ended up in the doctor's office and she told me I had to have some Home Health Care. I had open wounds on my left leg that seemed to have appeared from out of nowhere - sort of like the stigmata the Catholic Church keeps referring to when discussing various and sundry saints. No, I'm not suggesting by any stretch of the imagination that I might be a saint and I didn't have any marks on my hands or feet but the appearance of these wounds resembled the stories of how the stigmata would come out of nowhere. Seems as though the valves in my legs had gotten clogged up and the blood had no place to go. It's called venous insufficiency.

The name does not give you any idea of the severity of the treatment. From what I've heard, it's almost the exact same thing they do to burn victims. I'm certain that you have heard just how painful that procedure can be. When the new skin forms and becomes a scab it has to be removed in order to facilitate the healing process and prevent infection. Until you have experienced that treatment you have no idea just how painful it really is. Words cannot describe the agony of having healthy skin pulled away from an open wound. Essentially it seemed as though I was waiting for the home health care nurse to come by twice a week and attempt to amputate my leg without any anesthetic! There's that good old Chinese curse again: "May you live in interesting times!" No funnsie's whatsoever!

The treatment was completed about six weeks ago and of course I'm going to have to wear compression socks from now on - permanently. Just remember there are certain prices most of us have to pay simply because we've lived longer than others! Speaking of which, here's a good question for you. Dr. Wayne Dyer asks this in most of his motivational seminars: "Would you like to live to be 100 years old?" Most people have qualifications like "if I have enough money; or, if I'm in good health; or, if I don't have any dental problems". There's a whole list of things that people want if they are going to live to be 100 years old.

Let's face it folks, those qualifications don't apply. They have a very adverse effect on your ability to help the body survive into three figures. Basic cooperative attitude is simply to have no qualifications whatsoever. Then immediately people will jump on to "What if I'm paralyzed from the neck down?" and my answer to those people is my attitude. I have every intention of living past 100. Might trip on the stairs tomorrow, hit the ground like a sack of potatoes and end that pipe dream. However, if I do end up paralyzed from the neck down, I'll learn how to paint with a brush in my mouth or something equally as challenging.

In the meantime, as much as it may offend a few people, I am alive and kicking and intend to keep things that way as long as I have any control over the situation.

Your feedback is what keeps me going. All writers need encouragement from time to time. Feel free to leave any sort of comment after this article - it really is important.

Assassanation attempt in Tucson, AZ - 1/9/2011

Yesterday, the new House Speaker John Boehner expressed his displeasure with the events in Tucson Arizona yesterday by saying, "An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve". That's a two edged sword and he seems to be ignoring it. There is a definitive message in the whole event that points toward a real alienation of the American people towards the Federal Government. He could have easily said, "an attack on one who DOES NOT serve is an attack on all who DO NOT serve."

Ever since the Obama administration took over the White House I have watched as American's rights have been flushed down the toilet. These people "who serve" have not been serving their constituents. They have insisted on serving their own interests and greed and as a consequence, they have enraged a majority of the American people. A very pertinent example is their insistence on passing a health care bill that the majority of their constituents do not want. In spite of the overwhelming fact that the majority did NOT want this health bill passed, they passed it anyway. That was a move that can hardly be called serving the interests of the American people.

The accusations by former House Speaker Pelosi that members of the tea parties were a disgruntled minority inflamed people already angry about the trampling of their rights. Quite frankly, I am very surprised that there has been no real attempt to assassinate the President and a bunch of members of Congress. The entire Congress cannot be said to have been acting in the best interests of their country or their constituents. Their personal ideas and greed have been the idols they have been serving, not the American people.

When the Congress decides to deprive me of my legitimate cost of living increase for TWO years, my only source of income other than a small pension from the American Federation of Musicians, you cannot expect that I will be happy about it. When they turn around and earmark the money for their own health care you have to expect that a lot of seniors just like me will be extremely disgruntled. Are there any unstable ones in that bunch? I would not like to take a chance on saying "no" because right away some eighty-five year old WWII veteran would develop a brain tumor and go out and kill somebody in politics. The politicians are NOT serving their constituents. They are serving their interests and personal greed.

On December 15, 2008 I wrote the article "The solution to drunk driving". It was centered on my brother-in-law who was killed by a drunk driver 12 years ago. The solution was simple but after writing to every member of the Louisiana State legislature asking for assistance in getting this suggested law passed, I heard from just one legislator who dismissed the request as "not economically feasible". To me that is NOT serving the interests of your constituents. Later on, I wrote the same letter to North Carolina Congressman Heath Shuler and got a letter back from him explaining why fuel prices were so high. He didn't even read the letter. To me that is definitely NOT serving the interests of your constituents. Do you think I voted for Shuler? Not likely.

The elections in November of 2010 showed that a vast number of American citizens were very angry about the direction their representatives in Congress were taking and showed their displeasure by getting rid of a large number of them though the electoral process. You can expect similar results in 2012. Unfortunately the message did not seem to sink in with a lot of them, including Representative Giffords. Don't you think she should bear some of the responsibility for going out into a public place with a very agitated public without some sort of protection? Rep. John Boehner says such acts of violence have no place in our society. Saying that does NOT eliminate the risk of it happening. Ask any of our troops who are defending our country overseas if it's a good idea to go into a dangerous location unarmed! Would you go into the downtown area of a big city at 2:00 a.m. by yourself? Of course not - that's stupidity.

After the fact, everyone else in Congress started worrying about THEIR danger. They should have been worrying about it months ago and taken steps to make sure everyone had adequate protection. Exposing yourself unnecessarily in an area that has already generated a lot of hate mail and phone calls strikes me as acting in a fairly stupid manner if you don't have some sort of guard around you.

This is not a new story. Whackos have been assassinating public figures for centuries. President Reagan likely would have died from the assassination attempt on his life except for protection and a little bit of luck like the bullet following his rib instead of striking a vital part. In Roman times, someone would go off their rocker in a village and dash into the local trading mart and start slashing people with a sword. Eventually a Roman Centurion would be called to the scene, stick the madman with a spear and the whole thing would be over. Of course, the locals got killed and wounded. However, politicians and celebrities hardly ever got hurt by thugs or crazy people. They didn't go anywhere without a huge entourage of guards dedicated to preventing just this type of action from affecting their employer. What makes you think today is any different? How many guards do some of today's celebrities haul around with them? If our representatives are as important as they say they are, why aren't they being guarded in a similar manner?

Rep. John Boehner also said that public service is a high honor. Really? The average politician in Washington, D.C. treats public office like a pig struggling to get to the feeding trough and get his before anyone else can. When you treat your constituents with such impunity, the risk becomes grave. Not from your rational, stable, well-meaning citizens who will argue for many hours until the matter is settled and then mumble and grumble their way into the voting booth. All the politician risks there is his or her job. No, the real risk comes from the undiscovered nut cases that no one seems to notice until they smash about the national scene with one horrible tragedy after another. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who were injured in yesterday's affair and to all the families of those who are dead and injured. It's possible that someone may learn something from this event but it's not likely.

©2011 by fritz owens

GLOBAL WARMING?

I know I've been wondering about this for several years. Scientists who claim it's not true have been shouted down, insulted and in general embarrassed and made to feel like idiots for bringing it up. As Michael Crichton tells it, we are being subjected to the same kind of pressure politics about global warming as were generated by the eugenics movement in the early 1900's. See:

http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay8text.html

There is a vast amount of information about this hoax that eventually led to the Nazis belief in the theory enough to sterilize and gas millions of people.

I just recently finished the book by Michael Crichton, "State of Fear", ©2004. In his usual gripping style, he tells a very graphic tale of just why there ain't no such thing as "global warming". This is the second time that I have read this book. I keep really good books and go back to them after sufficient time has elapsed that I don't really remember the characters or much of the plot. To me it's like meeting an old friend and catching up with old times. Plus the fact that you gain so much more knowledge about the book and what the author is writing about than you did the first time.

This time, I was again intrigued enough by the plausibility of the tale he told to go back and start checking the footnotes. Author's license extends to creating phony footnotes to enhance the story but in this case I have come across extensive information that the footnotes are true and verified in many prestigious scientific journals.

Following is a brief list of the ones I have made from his book and they are doozies! If you have any doubts whatsoever, reading his book with the facts in mind make an overwhelming case, in my opinion, that the general public is being bamboozled to death by totally false information. Just to state a few of the facts, here are some quotes from the footnotes in the book:
=============================================
9/21/2010

Abstract

The Greenland coastal temperatures have followed the early 20th century global warming trend. Since 1940 however, coastal stations data have undergone predominantly a cooling trend. At the summit of the Greenland ice sheet the summer average temperature has decreased at the rate of 2.2 ºC per decade since the beginning of the measurements since 1987.

From Global Warming and the Greenland Ice Sheet by P. Chylek
=============================================
9/21/2010

"Natural and anthropogenic changes in atmospheric CO2 over the last 1,000 years from air in Antartica ice and firn" by D. M. Etheridge ("firn" is an archaic term for "old snow")
=============================================
9/21/2010

"Antarctic climate change and terrestrial ecosystem response" by P. T. Doran and eleven other scientists. Published in "Nature".

From 1986 to 2000 central Antarctic valleys cooled .7ºC per decade with serious ecosystem damage from cold. ¹

Both satellite data and ground stations show slight cooling over the last 20 years

Side- looking radar measurements show West Antarctic ice is increasing by 26.8 gigatons/yr. Reversing the melting trend of the last 6,000 years. ²

Antarctic peninsula has warmed several degrees while interior has cooled somewhat. Ice shelves have retreated but sea ice has increased.

During the last four interglacials, going back 420,000 years, the Earth was warmer than it is today. ³

Less Antarctic ice has melted today than occurred during the last interglacial.

Antarctic sea ice has increased since 1979.

Trend towards more sea ice may be accelerating.

The greater part of Antarctica experiences a longer sea-ice season, lasting 21 days longer than it did in 1979.
=============================================
9/21/2010

IPCC Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p 774:

"In climate research and modelling [sic], we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible".
=============================================
Notes:
1. 0.7ºC = approx. 1.26º Fahrenheit 2.2ºC = approx. 3.96º Fahrenheit

2. A "gigaton" is one BILLION tons

3. Interglacial
— adj
1. Occurring or formed between periods of glacial action

2. A period of comparatively warm climate between two glaciations, esp of the Pleistocene epoch
=============================================

All of this material and hundreds of other scientific papers from some of the best minds in the world are being castigated, made fun of and generally put down to serve the money making agenda of "global warming". It's very hard to find evidence unless you really hunt it up with searches on the Internet. Even then you have to cross check to make sure some dodo brain isn't making it up to make a name for himself or herself.

I welcome any comments and other knowledge about the problem.

LOW BODY TEMPERATURE

Around the beginning of 2010, I took notice of the fact that I was cold a great deal. My hands and feet were like ice much of the time and I seemed to have trouble getting warm in the winter. It really was unusual because my body temperature has been 98.6 degrees for years. When I start having trouble with my allergy to dust, I usually run a mild temperature of about 99.0 degrees, just four tenths of a degree. So when I had an allergic breakout and started feeling bum, I would take my temperature. To my surprise, my body temperature was in the 97-degree range. The next time I went to my doctor for a monthly check-up, I asked her about it and she said it wasn't normal. I chalked it up to the allergies and let it go for a few days.

In March of 2010 I started a search on the Internet for "Effects of Low Body Temperature". Right away a website came up entitled "Wilson's Temperature Syndrome". (From this point on I will refer to it as WTS.) I decided to read the Patient's Manual online and found a whole explanation of how this particular syndrome affects the thyroid SYSTEM. I capitalize this because there is no known medical test for finding out the condition of the thyroid system, just the thyroid gland. And there was a list of over 50 symptoms of WTS. At this point in time I started keeping track of my daily temperature. It became obvious in the first ten days that there was something abnormal going on as most of the temperature readings ranged from 96.6 degrees to 97.9 degrees. I also noticed that temperatures in the 98-degree range were usually associated with a sinus infection.

I then went through the list of symptoms and found that I had twenty (20) of them. This really rang a bell because since the 2005 heart attack followed eight weeks later by Hurricane Katrina, I've had a lot of weird health symptoms that come and go without too much of an explanation. I'm not one to complain so I didn't think too much about it but this WTS really intrigued me.

In cases like this, the patient mentions it to his or her doctor and the doctor says, "Sounds like a thyroid problem to me, let's run a thyroid test." Almost invariably the test comes back negative and the doctor makes noises about it being psychosomatic, not enough rest, too much stress, etc., etc., etc. In other words, it's all in your mind. The WTS patient's manual cleared all that up.

I ordered the Doctor's Manual. After it arrived, on the next visit to my primary physician, Dr. Rebekah Robinson, I discussed it with her. She agreed to read the manual because she knows that the thyroid is one of the most difficult glands in the body to understand. A couple of days later I went to her office and dropped off the manual. By the next visit in May she told me that she would be finished with the manual around the 18th of May and that she would then be ready to prescribe for me.

The prescription you have to have is a special, compounded prescription that is not covered by insurance. As a consequence, I have been paying full price for every one. They run somewhere between $40 and $50. I've had four prescribed for me so far. The protocol is simple but very demanding. You start taking two capsules a day twelve hours apart. They must be taken TO THE MINUTE! Sounds weird but you have to follow the instructions to get good results. The capsules start out at 7.5 micrograms (mcg) and increase every day by another 7.5 mcg. Since I get up early and have an alarm with two different settings, I set the alarms for 5:45 A.M. and 5:45 P.M. so that I could take one capsule at 6:00 A.M. and another at 6:00 P.M. You have to take your temperature three times a day so I did it at 9:00, 12:00 and 3:00 and graphed the average.

Now keep in mind that since March, my temperature had been running steadily in the 97.0 to 97.9 degree range for most of the time. As soon as I started this regimen on May 24, 2010 I kept track of the temperature every day. It was 97.5 on May 24, 98.1 on May 25, 98.2 on May 26, and 98.3 on May 27. I was amazed! It really was working! Then on the evening of May 27, I missed the 6:00 p.m. medication by NINE minutes. The next day the temperature average was back down to 97.3, very discouraging. But Dr. Rebekah encouraged me to continue saying it would probably come back up. She was right. By the tenth of June when I reached 75 mcg twice a day, the temperature was up to 98.6

Now the weaning process starts. You take the amount that you had reached when the temperature reached 98.6 and you continue that level for three weeks. At the end of three weeks you start reversing the procedure by lowering the dosage 7.5 mcg every three days until there are no more capsules. At that time you take a break for a couple of days and then start round two. This time I got to 98.6 on July 31 when I reached 60 mcg. Now I'm just finishing up the weaning process. The most astounding thing about this protocol is that the routine seems to reset the thyroid system and even when you stop the medication you temperature stays at 98.6! I'm three days away from finishing up round two and I don't think that I'll need another. Since August 2nd I've only had one temperature reading below 98.0 - most of them have been 98.6, a far cry from six months ago.

To me the most important thing about your temperature is the fact that enzymes do not digest properly and cannot be absorbed by the body correctly unless the body temperature is 98.6! I was amazed by that fact since it explains a lot of minor health issues I've had for several years. Considering what Dr. Wilson says in the manual about WTS being triggered off by severe trauma I think I qualify with a heart attack followed by a storm that wiped out 99% of our belongings in our home in New Orleans and forced us to move away. In addition, since there is no medical test for WTS the only way you can be sure you have it is if your temperature starts to go up when you start to take the medication. I would definitely say that under the present circumstances I have Wilson's Temperature Syndrome.

I urge anyone reading this who suspects that they might have a thyroid problem, go to http://www.wilsonstemperaturesyndrome.com and read the online patient's manual. It is well written and very easy to understand. Taking the self-administered test for symptoms associated with WTS is very easy. Then all you have to do is find a doctor that will cooperate with you. Dr. Rebekah is my hero! The icing on the cake? She communicates with me by e-mail when I need some info. That's First Class! I try very hard not to abuse the privilege, as she is such a great doctor she is extremely busy.

Note: If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to e-mail me or call.

How Shipbuilding Got Started

One morning Ogg, the caveman, came out of his cave, stretched and felt his knee.
"Good!" said Ogg. "No rain tomorrow!" (See http://pianofritz2.blogspot.com - How Religion got started - November 6, 2008)

He looked around then wandered down to the stream close by to sit on his favorite big rock and soak up the sun. As he was sitting there looking down at the stream, a large leaf that was curled up on all sides went floating by. In the middle was an ant getting a free ride down the stream to the river. This set off a light bulb in Ogg' s very creative brain. He thought that if an ant can ride a leaf then perhaps a man could ride a large stick or tree across the river.

He remembered the last time he struggled to get across the river and a large dead tree came by. He had grabbed hold of one of the branches on the tree and by dragging his feet one way or the other finally managed to maneuver the tree to the opposite side. He didn't like getting wet when it was cold so it had been a while since he had tried that.

Now he thought he could figure out a way to ride the river without getting wet. His people were starting to use carts with stone wheels so he decided that he would build a water cart. It was a very ambitious project but old Ogg had a way about him of convincing people that he knew what he was doing. After all, wasn't he now the village shaman who predicted the rain (most of the time)? So Ogg managed to get several hefty men interested in helping him simply by reminding them of the difficulties of getting to the other side of the river where the game was far more plentiful.

He started by cutting down four trees that were pretty good size, about six feet long and about a foot in diameter. He had his helpers drag them all down to a spot by the stream and laid them out beside each other. He then started to think about how he would keep them together. He remembered that his previous experience in floating down the river was very difficult because the tree kept rotating. How was he going to keep that from happening?

It occurred to Ogg that they had vines leading from one cave to another above or below it. The vines lasted a pretty long time and they would support a man's weight until they broke. If you were lucky, you spotted the vine rotting before it broke. If not, well, quite a few were crippled or dead because of it. He decided to go gather some strong vines and see if he could hold the logs together. Once they had a bunch of the vines they dragged them back to the cut up logs and Ogg tried to figure out how to attach them. He went back to the caves with vines in them to get down to the next level and found that someone had figured out how to tie a knot. He went back to the logs and started experimenting with tying them together.

By now his helpers are pretty tired out so he decided to come back the next morning and work it out. That night in his cave, Ogg picked up a stick that was burned and tried to draw a picture of what he was trying to do but he just couldn't get it right. One of his sons got wide eyed at what he was doing and after a while begged for a chance to do some drawing. Ogg was tired of fooling with it so he let the boy use the burnt stick while he went to get something to eat. The little kid immediately started drawing pictures of all of the animals that they saw regularly on hunting trips and he had a real talent for it.

When Ogg came back he was astounded to see the pictures his son had drawn on the walls of their cave. There was a bear, an elephant, a lion and of course the saber tooth tiger and they were all very recognizable. He told the boy that the pictures were really good and that maybe Ogg would take him to the river in the morning and Junior could help him out. The youngster was ecstatic. His father actually thought he was old enough to help out! Little did the boy know that his father was looking for someone to make pictures of the project out so that they could talk about it at night.

Early the next morning Ogg rolled out of his sleeping mat to find Junior up and ready to go. He thought to himself that it was a shame that all of that energy was wasted on a little kid. The boy was really excited. They grabbed some dinosaur meat for breakfast and started down towards the river. Along the way Ogg told his boy about seeing the ant floating down the stream in the middle of a leaf and asked him if he could draw a picture of something like that. Junior said he could do it. When they arrived at the stream, Ogg picked up a pointed stick and told Junior to draw a picture in the sand on the bank. The boy worked at it for a little while and Ogg saw that it really was a good representation of what he had told the kid. So he proceeded to tell Junior about his idea of tying logs together with vines and maybe he would be able to float across the river to the other side where the game was much more plentiful.

Junior started sketching in the sand and soon had the whole plan laid out exactly like Ogg had described. Just as the boy was finishing up the sketches, the men in the village that had agreed to help Ogg arrived and he showed them the pictures that Junior had drawn. A couple of them were petrified by the drawings and ran away but the others stuck around and began discussing the project. Soon a fairly reasonable raft was resting in a little inlet off the stream and Ogg decided to try it out. When he stepped on the raft it immediately sank under the water and Ogg was furious. He was about to rip it apart when his son asked if he could try it. Ogg relented and when the boy got on the raft it sank a little bit but kept most of Junior out of the water. The light dawned on Ogg that the if the raft was too small for him it certainly was too small for a party of hunters and any game they might kill on the other side of the river, much less bring it back. He would have to build one much bigger just to carry one person.

And that, my friends, is probably how the shipbuilding business got started.

SIGHT WITHOUT GLASSES

It was early summer of 1949 in Hawaii and I was sleeping like a hibernating bear when my Dad woke me up about 6:30 in the morning.

"Please come help me son," he said. "I've got several phone numbers I need to look up and you know I can't see them even with my glasses on."

He had just been examined, tested and fitted for bifocals and he was extremely annoyed with the whole thing. If there was ever anyone that really despised glasses it was Frank Owens, my father. Since we lived on Oahu and there were no factories to manufacture the glasses, there was about a ten-week wait ahead of him since the prescription had to be sent to the mainland to be filled. In the meantime he made do with the inadequate reading glasses and a large magnifying glass. Even those two items weren't sufficient because the print in the telephone book was so small.

So I reluctantly pulled myself out of bed and went into his little office in the back of the house. I read all the numbers to him and he wrote them down, got dressed and left for the studios downtown. I threw my shorts and a shirt on, grabbed my bike and headed on down to the Outrigger Canoe Club where I stored my surfboard. It was only four long blocks away so I got there in a very short time. I guess I spent a couple of hours surfing out in front of the Moana Hotel and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel where my uncle, Harry Owens, performed for so many years with his orchestra, "The Royal Hawaiians".

That night my Dad and Mom went out to play bridge with Bill and Peg Meyers in Kailua, on the other side of the island. The next day my Dad was so excited that even though he was only 49 I thought he was going to have a stroke. This is where the story gets really good.

Bill and Peg Meyers had four big six-foot sons who were the picture of health with one exception. David, the youngest, had one eye that was completely crossed. Other than that he was in fine shape being a champion swimmer. In those days since they had no operation or treatment that would reverse a crossed eye it was considered a permanent affliction.

During the course of the bridge game my Dad mentioned what a really annoying thing it was that he was going to have to use bifocals. After he got through with his mild tirade - he never did raise his voice very much - Bill told him that they had found an eye doctor in Chicago who had cured David's crossed eye. When my Dad really perked up and wanted to know the details Bill proceeded to tell him about their attempts to find an eye doctor for David that might be able to help him. Bill was a very successful stockbroker so had the money for them to travel around the country visiting different eye doctors. They went to the mainland every summer and had been doing so for several years.

In 1948 they had heard about a doctor in Chicago by the name of Harold M. Peppard, no relation to the movie star. So they had made an appointment and flew to Chicago to see him. That was no small task in the late 1940's as the Pan American amphibious Boeing Clipper took 17 hours to get from Honolulu to San Francisco Bay.

From there it was another day to get to Chicago. When Dr. Peppard examined David, the doctor said that there was nothing organically wrong with David's eye, it just had a very weak muscle. He then proceeded to tell them about the eye exercises he had developed and documented in his book "Sight Without Glasses". David was about 16 in 1948 so the doctor showed him how to do the exercises and told him that it would be about three months before he saw the final results. However, the eye should start straightening out within a couple of weeks.

By now my Dad was extremely suspicious because he and Bill were constantly pulling practical jokes on each other. My Dad said that was so far out there was no way Bill was telling the truth. "C'mon Bill, " said my Dad. "You're just pulling my leg!"

Bill didn't say anything, he just turned around and hollered "David, come here!" In the back of the house they heard David's voice saying he was coming. When David got into the living room Bill told him to go over to my Dad and show him the eye. My Dad was astounded and said "Good Heavens! It's not crossed any more!" and David smiled and said "Dr. Peppard's exercises really work. I still have to keep up with the exercises for another couple of months but then ordinary eye shift should keep it in shape".

My Dad turned to Bill Meyers and said "Bill, where can I get a copy of that book?" Bill went over to the bookshelf and looked for a minute or so and brought the book out and handed it to my Dad.

"Here Frank, you can have it. I don't think David needs it anymore".

The next day my Dad, knowing the value of daily exercise (practice) started doing the eye exercises. His eyes improved to the point that he never again had to wear glasses. The bifocals that he had ordered and paid for showed up at the house and he put them into the top drawer of his chest of drawers in their bedroom. They stayed there for the next 31 years and he never used them at all until the day he died.

In 1969 my Dad was 70 years old. When they came to visit us in New Orleans they stayed at the Monteleone Hotel. I happened to be in the room when my mother said to my Dad, "Pancho (his nickname), please look up the telephone numbers of the places we're going today." My dad picked up the phone book and looked up about a half dozen numbers that he rattled off to my mother who wrote them down. It was then twenty years since he had started doing the eye exercises. It was astounding to me to see my father actually read the telephone book when twenty years before I used to do it for him. My mother was wearing glasses and I was amazed. I asked her why she didn't do the exercises and she said she just couldn't be bothered.

My Dad trained me a little in the use of the exercises but the main thing he taught me was the fact that eyestrain comes mainly from lack of blinking and squinting. Squinting is the worst thing you can do to your eyes as it changes the shape of the eyeball and the muscles get weak making them worse. Relaxing the eyes and letting them get into focus really works - since it takes longer when you get older people don't realize that they are harming their eyes. If you just relax and blink a few times at what you want to see, you'll be surprised at the way the eye actually focuses.

I don't have anything against glasses. I use them for reading and can see pretty well at a distance as long as I don't force it. I still have a copy of Dr. Peppard's book. The original was destroyed by Katrina but fortunately one of my students wanted a copy and made three photocopies of the book. He took one and I kept the other two which just happened to be above the five foot flood line.

Of course, 75 is catching up and it takes longer for the eyes to focus but what else is new? I have a special pair of glasses for the computer - you can buy them cheap by holding a book at arms length and trying on glasses at the drug store or asking your eye doctor to give you some glasses with a focal length of about 20" - 22". Check it out. That's about where your computer monitor sits. Guess I'm like my mother - I just can't be bothered to do the exercises.

PEARL HARBOR - DECEMBER 7, 1941

So you think you know what war is like? I'm here to suggest that until you have actually been in combat or have suffered through a bombing by a foreign power you're just guessing. Follow along closely as you get a glimpse into the mind of a seven year old and see how the horrors of war influenced his thinking for many years.

It was another beautiful Sunday morning in Hawaii. My Dad, Mom and I were getting ready to go to Mass at St. Augustine's Catholic Church in Waikiki. We had been living in our new home on Ala Wai Blvd. in Honolulu, Hawaii for about five years. It was just two long blocks from Waikiki beach. Years later I can remember my Dad regaling us with stories about how everyone thought he was completely nuts for buying the property where the house was located because there was nothing around there except ponds with ducks and geese. He bought the house AND the 5,000 square feet of land for one dollar a square foot - $5,000.00. That was an enormous sum in the mid nineteen thirties but it proved to be another one of my Dad's really smart moves.

We had a Philco radio on the bedside table next to my parent's bed. It looked like a small brown archway and it had the usual Sunday morning claptrap going on about a host of inane activities for that day. My Dad was sitting in the yard using a Sunbeam electric "Shavemaster" that was hooked up to a long electrical extension that was plugged in inside the house. I kept hearing these explosions coming from the southwest side of the island but they sounded like noises we usually heard when there were maneuvers going on at the Army Air Force Base at Hickam Field. All of a sudden the radio announcer started yelling: "The Japs are bombing Pearl Harbor! The Japs are bombing Pearl Harbor!" I ran outside just in time to see a Japanese Zero drop a bomb two blocks from our house. It landed in the middle of Lewers Road and in addition to leaving a huge crater about twenty feet deep and completely across the street, it left shrapnel marks on all the buildings around which were there for years. Amazingly, no one was killed but a couple of people inside the apartment buildings were injured. Occasionally we would take tourists around the area and show them the shrapnel marks particularly on a pink building that had a stucco finish.

Here's a little side issue. Have you ever heard about the Mitsubishi Airplane factory? No? Just the automobile manufacturer you say? Well, guess what: The Mitsubishi A6M plane (nicknamed the "Zeke", the Allied code name, or the "Zero", the popular name) was manufactured by the Mitsubishi Airplane Factory in Japan with a design history starting in 1937. It was the first carrierborne fighter aircraft to supercede all other land based planes. Can you figure out why I don't want to own a vehicle with the brand name "Mitsubishi"?

The rest of the morning was pure shock. Since the adults were frightened all the kids were panic-stricken! We were glued to the radio in our front room. It was a big Philco console and was hooked up to an aerial on the roof that gave us very good short wave reception, even in the daytime. In front of our house was a canal (Ala Wai is "water way" in Hawaiian) that emptied all of the rainwater from the mountains into the Pacific Ocean. I remember standing in the front door clutching my mother's dress as we watched a house burning on the other side of the canal. It was a very big house and painted that dull red color just like the barns you see around the farmland countryside. It was burning and large billows of black smoke were pouring out of all the windows. You could see people running around the outside of the house. They looked like ants.

We didn't know it at the time but many years later we learned that most of the bombs dropped on civilian targets went there simply because the imperfect release mechanism on the Zero often got stuck and the pilot would fly around jerking frantically on the handle to get rid of the bomb. Not paying any attention to where he was flying except to keep the aircraft up in the air, many bombs were dropped by accident simply because the pilot knew he could never land on the carrier with the bomb hanging down as it would blow up the plane with him in it the moment he landed.

Later on that day we heard over the radio that martial law had been declared and anyone on the street after nine-o'clock at night would be shot. The entire island was forced into a complete blackout to prevent enemy planes from using the lights as markers for bombing. Soon after that my Dad was busy building covers for every one of the windows. They slanted out from the house wall above the windows and had to be painted black on the inside. They only came down halfway on each window so that you could leave the top half of the window open for ventilation. However, the glass on the bottom part of the windows had to be painted black so that no light could escape. You could open the windows anytime you wanted as long as no lights in the room were on. You also had to have covers put on your automobile headlights that kept the lights from shining up. This was enforced until the end of the war. We didn't get the black paint off of all of our windows for several months after the end of the war. I can remember how relieved I was to see the light streaming in the windows of my bedroom. It was like we had been let out of jail.

There was a reason for these rules. Everyone in the Hawaiian Islands was petrified for months that the Japanese were coming back with an invasion force. Many years later we learned how Admiral Yamamoto tried for many months to convince the politicians that the best time to invade the Islands would be while the bombing of Pearl Harbor was going on. He wanted to bring along three shiploads of troops, probably about seven thousand seasoned combat soldiers, with the carrier task force and land them on the beaches around the island of Oahu while the air raid took place. Fortunately, he was unsuccessful in his endeavors or I'd probably be speaking Japanese today if I was still alive.

From then on it was a life controlled by the war. Everyone was required by law to carry a gas mask. It was slung around your shoulders and carried wherever you went. You had a better chance of walking around with no clothes on and not being arrested as long as you were carrying your gas mask. Air Raid "Wardens" were appointed and each one took care of an area that included a number of blocks. Until Katrina destroyed all of our pictures, I had several photos of my best friend, Pat Dunn, and me when we made our first communion wearing the white shirt and pants and the ubiquitous gas mask. I also had a huge wooden box of the front page of the Honolulu Advertiser and the Star Bulletin newspapers from December 7, 1941 to August 31, 1945. One of my students and I were working on selling them and I had them in my studio.

For the duration of the war the air raid wardens walked around everyone's house at night checking to see if any light was escaping from the house, If it was, you got a ticket and had to go to court to prove that it was accident besides paying a big fine. If you broke the blackout law more than two times, supposedly you went to jail. Everything was enforced by a huge military presence wherever you went. Occasionally there would be a "practice" air raid and gas attack.

The wardens would put on their gas masks at a certain predetermined time and then start throwing tear gas grenades all around their area. If you didn't put on the gas mask it was pretty severe because it really did cause a lot of respiratory problems as well as a lot of tears coming from the eyes. This happened several times a year during the war.

We still went to the beach to go swimming but that was not allowed for several weeks until massive walls of barbed wire protected all the beaches. To get to the ocean you had to walk through ziz-zag corridors in the barbed wire. This condition was maintained until August of 1945 when the war with Japan ended. Everywhere you went on the island there were military police (M.P.'s) riding around in jeeps and doing their best to keep order, particularly with the huge influx of servicemen. As with most populations, the servicemen in general were despised because they disrupted your way of life. Very little thought was given to the fact that they were on their way to die to keep us free.

As a consequence, my Dad built up Frank Owens Studios to the point where by 1946, when I
started teaching piano in his studios, he had 15 instructors working Monday through Saturday
from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. In addition, he, my mother and I were teaching. For many years the
enrollment for the studios was over 500 a month. By the time I was ten I guess I was bugging
him so much that he started taking me to the store on Saturdays. Within a few weeks I was
working behind the counter packaging things that people bought and making change.

During the entire war and for another thirty years afterward, my Dad's music stores were
exceptionally busy. Servicemen from all over the country were coming into Honolulu because
they were going through Army basic training at Scofield Barracks. Once there, they knew that
they were going to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese military and there was a chance they
might not come back. So they tried to cram into three months all the things they had thought
about doing but hadn't. They took piano lessons, guitar lessons, they bought sheet music and
harmonicas and records and other things too numerous to mention.

In spite of trying to live a normal life, it just wasn't possible. Incessant reminders of the war were everywhere. One of the really bad things was probably the air raid sirens that went off once a week. They had to be tested regularly in case they were needed but it was frightening for a few moments until you realized it was the weekly test. Even worse than that was the nighttime air raids. Radar was in its infancy and at least two or three times a month, anytime the operators saw a flock of birds they were sure we were being attacked again and the sirens would go off and the sixteen-inch anti-aircraft guns would go off. Sixteen inch! That's a shell that's a regular twelve-inch ruler plus another half in diameter. It was HUGE. And it made a huge noise when it fired a 1.25 TON shell.

Since Fort Derussy was just two blocks away and the guns were on the corner closest to us, they literally shook the entire neighborhood every time they were fired. The whole house would shake, I would make a mad dash from my bedroom to my parents bedroom, crawl into their bed in between them and shake like a leaf wondering if we were being attacked again.

This would go on until finally the sirens would signal the all clear and the tension would melt out of you like perspiration running down your back. Often times, I would go back to sleep there and not get up until my Dad got up very early in the morning.

For many years the sound of a siren would send a chill up and down my back with the hair on the back of my neck rising up. I can remember hunting for rabbits with my beagle on the batture in Waggaman, LA around 1970. Suddenly an air raid siren went off. It was so startling and frightening that I was sure World War Three had started. Turns out it was a monthly test of the system to make sure it worked. Living in New Orleans, working at night and often times being asleep when the early morning test was going on I don't recall hearing it too many times. You can probably understand that I was one of the first to be highly in favor of the new sirens for all emergency vehicles except for the fire department. It was a long time coming as far as I was concerned and a very welcome change.

My thoughts of the war have never really left me as I have been continually reminded of them by the constant wars going on all around us. Right after World War Two ended the Korean War started - please remember that we're not supposed to call it a "war" because we never declared war on North Korea - it's the Korean "Conflict". Is that another sign of the long-term stupidity of everyone in Congress? Anyway, Wheeler Air Force Base, located on the west side of the island near the town of Wahiawa was where my high school girlfriend, Sonia Poland lived.

Her father, Captain Roger Poland was in the U.S. Air Force. It was called the Army Air Force at the beginning of the war. She had a twin sister named Sharon and an older sister named Patricia. Her mother was the secretary for an orthopedic surgeon at Tripler Army General Hospital that had 3,000 beds during WWII. It was upgraded to 4,000 beds during the Vietnam War. She was responsible for helping me volunteer to get in to entertain the troops just about every week during the Korean War. A couple of orderlies would move a piano on wheels into a ward and I would play a few tunes for the wounded soldiers and then the orderlies would move the piano to another ward and I would play again for a while. The sight of our troops with lost arms, legs and eyesight was pretty gruesome but I put up with it to try and give something back to the troops for what they have always done for us. The draft board chased me next and won then came the Cuban missile crisis, then Vietnam. My memories of war are made even more vivid as we battle terrorism and those who believe we all ought to be Islamic or dead. Unless you've been through it I doubt you can understand the whole matter. Needless to say, war IS hell and it leaves its mark on every human being subjected to the whole process. Like just about everyone else I've ever met, we all hope the wars will stop but there really isn't too much chance for that. Your chances of working hard to stop wars are much better if you have experienced something like the attack on Pearl Harbor. Otherwise it really doesn't mean much.

Homes for the Homeless

Homes for the homeless

Anyone ever considered how simple it would be to provide thousands of realistic homes for the homeless? Take a look around you at all the huge highway and Interstate construction projects with many of the overpasses being five to ten feet off the ground. It appears to the folks without a lot of information about how the homeless live that the homeless go about looking for places to stay that are out of the wind in the winter and out of the sun in the summer. Seems reasonable to me.

Can you visualize areas under all of these overpasses separated into rooms without doors that would be a great place for the homeless to crash? It really seems too simplistic but in real life, the homeless do NOT want to go "home". They want a little nook or cranny that they can call their own with a few "amenities" (like cardboard to help keep warm) that will see them through another night. They don't look very far ahead you know. They're just concerned about where they are going to sleep for the night, whether their stomach is going to growl at them because they haven't eaten today and where they are going to go to the bathroom. These appear to be the top priorities to a homeless person.

It seems as though well-meaning people like those associated with Habitat International and other organizations of the same type are bound and determined to fit the square-peg homeless person into their round-hole mentality. It's a direct failure of the whole procedure to think you can take someone who has abandoned your values and force them to accept it by moving into what YOU think is a nice house. You must forget this because they don't want a nice house - they want a place to crash for the night that is out of the wind, rain and cold, nothing more.

There have been numerous studies as to why there are so many homeless people. In 80 percent of the cases it's by choice folks! These people have dropped out of society and want nothing more than to be left alone. Numerous studies have apparently shown that when you take a homeless person and set them up in a decent apartment or home and provide them with enough food and utilities they'll take it and when everything runs out they go back on the street again.

Remember what it was like to be a kid? No responsibilities, no worries except those created by the authorities (mostly parents) about what the kids "have to do" tomorrow, next week, next year and so on. Many homeless find the life satisfying inasmuch as they don't have to obey anyone. As long as they are unobtrusive and don't break any major laws, they are generally left alone. The really creative ones end up making quite a lifestyle for themselves that doesn't cost very much but provides them and a few hangers on with an existence that is better than the rat race they abandoned when they quit society.

A series of small rooms constructed by volunteers using contributions of old used plywood under a highway overpass would go a long way to get the homeless off the street, get them out of the weather and provide a ready made roof over there heads. It would also provide a place where social services could be provided for them on a bare necessity level. For example, many illnesses that become an epidemic start in the world of the homeless. They don't seek medical help because they don't want to be thrust into society's limelight. Besides, they don't have the means. How easy would it be to provide drinking water from cisterns that caught rainwater? Where do you think they are getting drinking water now?

Keeping the crime down would be fairly simple as there would not be too many volunteers required to look out for one area suitable for a hundred people. The ones that migrate there could be examined for psychological problems without intruding on their idea of homeless "society" and some help could be provided for the ones that want it. The main thing to remember is that you cannot save them all! You'll be lucky if you can save a few. Isn't that worth the effort?

Consider the fact that a great number of people living the life of a responsible adult often yearn for the days when all they had to worry about was homework and whether another pimple was going to break out on their face. I realize that it was very important then but now, it seems almost idyllic that you should have so little to worry about. Have you considered the fact that this great country of ours was settled over many years by a lot of homeless people? Perhaps you can add your thoughts on this article to make it more of a reality. How about it?

Lincoln's Other Mary

One day in the mid-1980's, I got a phone call from a gentleman in Michigan who identified himself as David Owens. Turned out that not only was he a genealogist studying and documenting the Owens clan back into the 1700's, he was also a professional musician with a band of his own (the genes do show up, don't they?). He wanted to know what had happened to my Dad's father after he left Harvard. At that time, I had no earthly idea that my grandfather had attended, much less graduated from Harvard University.

Seems as though my grandfather, Jessie Vinyard Owens, wanted to be a school superintendent and went to Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska for that specific degree. That's where my father was born. I knew that they had moved to Butte, Montana where "Bapu", his nickname, took over the school system there. During this conversation David mentioned that my grandfather's aunt was once engaged to Abraham Lincoln. I remember saying "No way! You're pulling my leg!" and he said that it was true and was documented in the book "Lincoln's other Mary". I told him I would get the book and check it out. And he was right, the book exists and it does tell quite a story.

Seems as though my great-aunt, Mary Owens, lived on a big plantation in Lexington, Kentucky in the early 1800's along with her sister and brother and perhaps other siblings. Her father was very wealthy and owned hundreds of slaves, a mark of great wealth in those days. Her sister got married and moved to Springfield, Illinois. Her sister kept writing to Mary asking her to come visit since she missed her very much. Finally, Mary got the trip organized and took the long trip by horse and buggy to Springfield. While she was there she was introduced to this attorney who was poor as a church mouse but they hit it off immediately. Mary went home and made other trips to Springfield and on the last one, this attorney asked her to marry him. She told him that she was very fond of him but would have to think about it.

Mary went back to Lexington and pondered the whole deal for a few weeks and finally wrote to the attorney and turned him down. It was Abraham Lincoln. He finally married the "other" Mary. Mary Owens eventually married a man by the name of Jessie Vinyard. Her brother, Robert Owens, apparently thought so highly of Mary's husband that he named one of his boys Jessie Vinyard Owens, my grandfather.

So I have encouraged my children and grandchildren to always tell people that one of their relatives jilted Abraham Lincoln. It's a really good, true story for cocktail parties!

IMPROVISATION

I've had several inquiries from former students of mine about improvisation. Although I am retired from the teaching business and perform very seldom, I can still write about these things. So for you piano players and other instrumentalists out there, here's an article I wrote last week for the International Piano Teachers Group in response to an inquiry for help from a teacher in England.

Improvisation is always viewed as the boogey man, something that is extremely difficult and almost impossible to learn. In the words of one of my improvisational teachers about 60 years ago that's hogwash.

For example, Twinkle, Twinkle, little star, starting on the note C is played:

CHORDS: C F C
NOTES: Middle C C up G G up A A dn G
TIME: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Every teacher at one time or another struggles to devise a way to teach a song without manuscript notes. The example above is what I use. It's fairly easy to understand for a student with limited knowledge of the keyboard. It's also very useful in e-mail! In popular sheet music usage, above the first C would be the letter C indicating the C chord (CEG). Above the first A would be the letter F indicating the F chord (FAC). Above the last G would be the letter C indicating the C chord.

All improvisation in the modern sense is based on using the notes of the chord and what are called passing notes (non-members of the chord and melody) to embellish the melody. Of course the options are endless, only limited by the creativity of the performer. In the case of this simple melody we can very quickly construct an improvised melody by simply using additional notes of the chord and passing notes in between:

C dn B up C up D E F G dn E up F G A dn F up C dn A dn G
1 & 2 ee & a 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 4

In this example we have changed the first and second notes to eighth notes, the next four to sixteenth notes and the rest to eighth notes with the last note being the half note. Please notice that strong beats of one and three remain the same and the weaker beats of two and four sometimes occur in other places than the original melody. If this is unacceptable it is fairly easy to change it to the way you want it.

Let me give you fair warning. In sixty years of teaching popular music I have had a large number of students who wanted to learn how to improvise. Some of them take to it like ducklings to water. Others really have to struggle. The sad part is that there is a large percentage who never catch on and just give it up as a bad deal. Maybe there's a glitch in the way their brain works or perhaps they just give up too easily. My opinion is that it is their belief system. They've "known" for years that improvisation was extremely difficult and "knew" they were never going to be able to learn it. As Henry Ford once said, "If a man believes he can do it or believes that he can't do it, chances are he is right!"

Many years ago my father regaled me with stories of great pianists who put on concerts that were attended by large numbers of people. Most of the concertgoers would tolerate the pieces the pianist performed in the first half of the concert but what they really came for occurred in the second half. At that time, the pianist would begin by stating a theme and then the rest of the time he would play improvisations based on that theme. The interaction between the pianist and the audience brought us some of our greatest classical music, particularly Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff.

Unfortunately, to my knowledge, the marvelous blind pianist Alec Templeton was the last to do this. I was a member of the audience in Honolulu, Hawaii in about 1949 when he performed there. The last segment was when he asked for five notes from the audience and it was really an odd lot. That man sat up there and played those five notes interwoven into styles by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy and even John Philip Souza! It was one of the most remarkable concerts I've ever attended.

This venue does not lend itself well to placing the chords and the timing in the right spots. With a little bit of thought you should be able to figure it out. If not let me know and I'll tell you how it works.

Hope this helps.

Fritz

A RARE PLANT?

Most of the people I know are aware of the fact that I've been a fanatic about hunting and fishing my whole life. Actually, I've been tramping through the woods since I was nine years old. Hawaii, Indiana, California, Ohio, Florida were all states in which I hunted or camped out. Then came over 40 years in Louisiana. During a period of 20 years in Louisiana if there were 55 days of duck hunting and I didn't make 50 it was a bad year. I went every day. In all this time I was just like a kid - curious about everything and noticing things that most people never saw.

Last spring I went a ways down the mountain on our 2.6 acres in the back of our home and ran across what I considered an amazing plant. I have never run across a plant such as the one here in the Western North Carolina Mountains. I went back to the house and got my camera and took a fairly good image of the plant. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to get an identification from some biology and botany "experts in North Carolina but did not have any luck getting an ID on the plant.

I have posted this image above this article. You can click on the picture to see a larger image. Let me draw your attention to the fact that this plant has a stem growing out of the center of the large leaves and on the top of that stem which is over six inches long is another set of smaller leaves. I've never seen anything like it. There are at least two plants in the photograph.

If you can identify it or know someone who can do so, please let me know.


As usual if you have any comments they are welcome.

List of Articles

I've had some complaints from people that they are having difficulty finding specific articles I've written so this article is just a list of them all. This list will be edited and revised in the future as I add more articles to this blog.

As usual, your comments are always read and published unless anonymous. With those I reserve the right to withhold publication.

LIST OF ARTICLES

2006

1. Religious Slaves - 4/15/2006
2. Katrina ruins the life of a professional musician - 4/15/2006
3. The Last Straw, Easter Sunday - 4/16/2006
4. Hippy Dippy Bebop Progressive Jazz Junk - 4/19/2006
5. The Death Merchants - 4/21/2006
6. The Gouging Oil Companies - 4/21/2006
7. Sight Reading at the Piano - 4/28/2006
8. Surviving a Heart Attack by Yourself - 5/06/2006
9. Philosophy of Experience - 6/25/2006 (COUNTER)
10. Prison Reform - 12/23/2006

2007

1. Reliable Witnesses - 4/06/2007
2. The Mind Reader - 4/11/2007
3. Alien Invader Crooks - 6/28/ 2007

2008

1. Shaman Shame - 10/16/2008
2. How Religion Got Started - 11/05/2008
3. End of a Career? - 11/26/2008
4. Fed Up! - 11/06/2008
5. The Solution to Drunk Driving - 12/15/2008
6. Carnage in the Mid-East - 12/28/2008

2009

1. Anonymous Comments - 1/19/2009
2. Stopping the Pirates - 4/15/2009
3. Miracles or Magic? - 5/05/2009
4. List of Articles - 5/23/2009
5. Rare Plant? - 6/16/2009
6. Improvisation - 9/13/2009
7. Lincoln's Other Mary - 11/25/2009
8. Homes for the Homeless - 11/27/2009
9. Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 - 12/06/2009

2010

1. Sight Without Glasses - 1/12/2010
2. How Shipbuilding Got Started - 4/04/2010
3. Low Body Temperature - 9/10/2010
4. Global Warming? - 9/21/2010

2011

1. http://pianofritz2.blogspot.com/2011/01/assassanation-attempt-in-tucson-az.html

"Assassination attempt in Tucson, AZ" - 1/9/2011

2012

1. http://pianofritz2.blogspot.com/2012/04/rumors-of-my-demise.html

"Rumors of my demise" - 4/20/2012

2. http://pianofritz2.blogspot.com/2012_06_01_archive.html 

"The latest Political Scam" - 6/1/2012

3. http://pianofritz2.blogspot.com/2012_12_01_archive.html
"Our most precious asset" - 12/19/2012

MIRACLES OR MAGIC?

In several books about Harry Potter, there are several different ways that he can use magic. One of them is his invisibility cloak. Now that's a fine tool, very useful for the person who wants to accomplish things without people seeing what he is doing. The problem is that it is considered "magic" which is purportedly impossible.

On a daily basis, youngsters around the world are subjected to the story that an angel appeared to the "Virgin" Mary, told her she was going to become pregnant but that there would be no indication of any sexual act having taken place. The young children are forced to say over and over: "I believe! I believe!"

What is the difference? You expect me to believe that Harry Potter's invisibility cloak is impossible but that Mary had a child without losing her virginity? Doesn't that strike you as odd? I consider it the biggest case of child abuse ever perpetrated on the human race. What makes you think that children of all ages are too stupid to figure out, on their own, what a huge scam this is?

How about this one: the shaman (priest, minister, rabbi, whatever) presides over a funeral and says to the people gathered there that God "needed" little Miss Smith more than her parents or friends or relatives which is why she died. Do these sadistic people realize that they are teaching this gathering of mourners to hate God? Or how about the reaction of people when something really bad happens to Mr. X: "Well, he really must have done something exceptionally bad or God wouldn't have let this happen to him!"

That's on the same level with the performance my "converted" mother used to put on if the motor on my car blew up or a job fell through or the roof started to leak on our house: "You see? If you'd go to church more often this wouldn't happen to you!" She had to convert to Catholicism in order to marry my father. As the saying goes, the convert is the most rabid believer of all. On the other hand, my Dad went to Mass and communion every day and NEVER SAID A WORD about it! He never preached to me about it, he just did it. I call that living your religion.

I choose to believe what Dr. Harold Kushner preaches in his television special entitled "When Bad Things Happen to Good People". You can also get the book of the same name. Dr. Kushner is a rabbi whose son contracted progeria, the "old age" disease, (also known as "Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome") at age three and died when he was fourteen. His whole philosophy is that God is not sitting up there (or down there - take your choice) waiting for you to step out of line so that he can punish you. Dr. Kushner's description is very simple: "A falling rock has NO conscience! It was an ACCIDENT!"

Try concentrating on that the next time something goes awry. It makes any religion (your way of life) much easier to tolerate. The two quotes following might make it even easier!

“Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.”

"The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief."

Sigmund Freud - 1856-1939

Stopping the pirates

RE: shipping off the coast of Somali

I have watched the events concerning the Maersk Alabama and the hostage situation which ended so well thanks to our Navy Seals. I really don't care about the details of how they accomplished the task. It wouldn't bother me to learn they were hanging from a chandelier when the shots were fired. The Captain is free and three bad guys are dead. That's all that really counts.

Now a military expert says: "guarding that vast area is very tough". The news media is not interpreting that correctly. The word is not "tough" but "expensive". President Obama can spend billions bailing out worthless automobile companies and can't spare a few billion to protect American interests in the Indian Ocean?

Apparently, the entire administration and the military think the American people are really stupid. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to handle the problem. One nuclear powered aircraft carrier positions itself in the center of that "vast" area. A-10 "Warthogs" run patrols 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Helicopters create a corridor by dropping a few hundred sonar buoys that float below the surface. All shipping interests are warned to stay within the corridor when passing the coast of Somalia. Apache helicopters standby to intercept the pirate vessels that enter the corridor. Anyone fires at U. S. ships or planes and they get sunk. End of problem. Do you really think that we will believe that it's not a matter of money? Lives in Iraq and Afghanistan are at risk because of lack of money. Why is this situation any different?

It seems entirely possible that the insurance companies and the shipping companies would gladly pay a good part if not all of the expense of ending the pirate problem if it succeeded.

If you feel differently, kindly leave a comment. If you don't want to leave your name the comment will be read by me but it will NOT be posted

Anonymous Comments

On Sunday December 28, 2008 I posted an article I wrote on "Carnage in the Middle East". I have received an anonymous comment which I am reluctant to release on to my blog. I believe that anyone who doesn't have the guts to stand behind what they write should not be afforded a forum on which to rant.

In addition, this person seems to believe that since the body count of Hamas dead and injured is larger than that in Israel, more attention should be paid to the plight of Hamas. I consider that patently unfair since body count has never reflected how much people suffer during any war.

I will continue to post articles on what I think is unreasonable action particularly by the media. In the meantime Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, if you want to crawl out of the woodwork and discuss this on a reasonable basis I'm ready.

Fritz Owens

Carnage in the Mid-East

Copyright 2008 by fritz owens

What kind of news reporting do we have in the United States? It seems to be on the side of terrorism and against people who just want to be left alone. It seems fairly apparent that this religious war being conducted by Hamas from the Gaza Strip is aimed at killing Jewish citizens. Randomly aimed rockets at the countryside are certainly not militarily oriented. They are designed to terrorize people and get publicity. And contrary to all the ethics of good news reporting, we are getting a heavy dose of public "outcry" about the wicked Israel and the deaths and injuries from the aerial attacks.

Why don't we get a look at the Israeli people huddling in bomb shelters because of the fanatical religious beliefs of an organization that says this sector of the world does not have a right to exist? When's the last time you saw any pictures of Jewish people injured or killed in the rocket attacks from Hamas? Why are NBC, ABC and CBS devoting so much time to the cries of outrage about Israel and nothing about Hamas? There are two sides to this story!

I know what it is like to huddle in between your parents in the middle of the night with the air raid sirens going off and sixteen-inch anti-aircraft guns going off repeatedly less than three blocks from our house in Honolulu. That went on for almost four years from 1941 to 1945. Have you experienced this type of terror? How would you react if, while this was going on, you constantly heard about people around the world who said you were wrong to protect yourself?

It's a grim day when we cannot depend on the "news" to at least attempt to make a fair and equitable report of what is actually going on. How are we as citizens supposed to deal with the world community when we cannot even get a true picture of what is happening on a daily basis? Don't you think there should be some kind of control of these kinds of things? There is - it's called "ethics" and it appears as though it has disappeared down the toilet along with a lot of other important human issues. Seems like these news vultures will do anything to sell more ads.

The fanatical propaganda being promoted by the Arabic television Al-Jazeera should be aggressively countered with the truth promulgated by United States television stations. Anything less is a failure to live up to our obligations as a free country. NBC, CBS and ABC are failing the people of the United States as well as providing more propaganda for the crazies. There must be something we can do to stop it. Do YOU have any ideas that have any hope of working?

For many years I have been saying that a single low yield nuclear device dropped on Tehran and another on Pyongyang would go a long ways towards settling the entire world down. Imagine the thinking of these crazy dictators like Chavez when they find out we mean business. Don't you think they'd shut up and slink away into their hole, trembling with fear? How long would Mugabe last if his people knew we were after him? As the Japanese admiral said in 1941 "I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant". What is it going to take this time? Wasn't 9/11 enough?

The Solution to Drunk Driving

On December 12, 1998 about 8:30 in the morning, I answered the phone in our home in New Orleans. It was my sister-in- law who informed me that a couple of hours before, her husband, my wife's brother Frank, got the green light and entered the intersection on Veteran's Highway from Houma Blvd. A drunken teenager, going an estimated seventy miles an hour on Veteran's Highway, ran the red light and smashed into Frank's car killing him instantly. For about a half mile around people came running out of their homes and businesses because, as they described it, it sounded like a bomb going off. Frank had his seat belt on but the crash was so severe, the entire seat was torn off at the floor and went through the back window of the car with Frank, who was already dead, still in it.

This boy had already been arrested for drunken driving but his father, a very wealthy and prominent attorney who had left the legal profession to become a surgeon pulled a number of strings and the boy got off with a legal slap on the wrist. The agony that my wife and sister-in-law went through for months was indescribable. The machinations of this man refusing to allow the courts to make this young adult stand up and accept his responsibility was simply awful. It became quite clear what was going on when we received a "rumor" that the judge in the case was up for re-election and this wealthy man had contributed "substantial amounts" to his political campaign. No hard evidence unfortunately but no doubt true.

On the day of the trial my wife and I were astounded to see the wife of the deceased, our sister-in-law, get up on the stand and say she didn't want this boy to go to jail. It became clear later on that the prominent wealthy man had bought her off with a monthly payment for her disabled son. I imagine the "legal" papers stated that the payment was in lieu of any lawsuit against the perpetrator trying to recover any monetary payment for the death of her husband.

To add insult to injury, The judge sentences the boy to two years "house" arrest, no driving except to school and a requirement to attend regular AA meetings. Within less than a year, without any notification of our family, this prominent wealthy man was back in court requesting a re-hearing because the boy was "doing so well".

On the day of re-hearing we got a call about 8:00 a.m. from the prosecuting attorney's office that there was going to be a re-hearing and there was a good possibility the judge might reduce the boy's sentence. So, we notified the newspaper and M.A.D.D. (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) about the possibility of a reduction in sentence. In the courtroom we passed a note to the prosecuting attorney asking him to notify the judge that a Times Picayune reporter and the M.A.D.D. rep were in the courtroom. Strangely enough, when the judge came back to the bench, he said that he could not find any reason to reduce the sentence. Can you guess why?

Now think for a minute. If we hadn't gotten that call from a caring prosecutor and hadn't been able to contact M.A.D.D. and the reporter for the Times-Picayune, that kid would have gotten off with less than a year for the murder of my wife's brother. Call it what you want under any other name, it was murder in my book.

And there is such a simple solution to this problem. Anyone convicted of drunk driving (D.U.I., D.W.I. and other acronyms) should be ordered by the court to install a "breathalyzer" in the steering wheel of any vehicle they intend to drive. The technology has been available for several years now. They should be forbidden to drive any vehicle that does not have this machine installed. The cost of the installation is about $400.00 and the convicted felon must pay for the installation. If the convicted felon is apprehended while driving a vehicle under the influence or having disabled the machine in his vehicle, he automatically goes to jail for a minimum of one year. And once convicted, the felon can never again buy or own or use a vehicle without the "breathalyzer" installed in the steering wheel

Over a period of a few months, before Katrina drove us out of our home in New Orleans, I contacted every member of the Louisiana legislature with absolutely no results except for ONE reply from a state congressman who said the plan was not economically feasible. What an insult!

A letter to Congressman Heath Schuler in North Carolina last July outlining the case for installation of the "breathalyzer" brought an amazing response: "...Thank you for contacting me about the high price of gasoline..." as if that had something to do with my brother-in-law getting killed by a drunk driver. Guess how he fared in our election choices! Letters to Senators Dole and Burr brought no results at all.

Talk, rules, laws, sobriety checkpoints and all of the other so-called "solutions" to reduce drunken driving have had very little effect on the fifteen thousand alcohol-related fatalities recorded in the U.S. in 2006. The same can be said for the reduction of about 275,000 people injured and/or disfigured yearly by drunk drivers, one-third of whom are children. The CDC (Center for Disease Control) is recommending all of these things but refuse to address the issue when contacted.

Enforcing a "one-strike and you're out" law nationwide would soon have these devices installed in every automobile sold in our country and drunk driving would soon be reduced to almost nothing. If you are convicted of drunk driving, you will be forced to have this device installed in your vehicle and you will NEVER BE ABLE TO PURCHASE A VEHICLE AGAIN WITHOUT IT. If you can come up with anything simpler than that I sure would like to hear about it.

Fed Up!

Many months ago, someone sent me this article entitled "Fed Up". No, it's not the new merger of Federal Express and UPS. It's all about the alien invader crooks that I've written about in a previous article. (See Thursday, June 28, 2007 on this blog). I would like to credit the author but have been unable to find the original source. I think it happens to be very apropos right now since recent election results are pointing in the direction of legalizing all of these invaders that are ruining our society.

"To the 20 or 30 million illegal aliens squatting tax-free in America, a 'Cinco de Mayo' greeting:

The American public is FED UP with the invasion of our sovereign nation by third-world outlaws from Mexico.

We are FED UP with people who are here illegally and who cannot and/or will not speak English.

We are FED UP with illegals from Mexico who cost American taxpayers scores of billions of dollars every year in health care, education, incarceration, and welfare.

We are FED UP with taxpayer dollars being wasted to print documents in a foreign language (Spanish).

We are FED UP with illegals who dump their medical bills on the backs of US taxpayers and who still send $20-40 billion a year back to Mexico each year.

We are FED UP with our schools being invaded by non-English speaking children from Mexico who impede the learning process of students who genuinely belong here.

We are FED UP with the fact that federal, state and local penal systems are overrun by illegals from Mexico, again costing US taxpayers billions each year.

We are FED UP with the fact that the overwhelming majority of felony crimes being investigated in Los Angeles have been committed by illegals from Mexico.

We are FED UP with federal, state and local agencies that refuse to round up and deport millions of illegals that are destroying American culture and language.

We are FED UP with politicians, Hispanic and non-Hispanic, who coddle illegals with drivers licenses, lower college tuitions and similar benefits which only encourage more people to invade the US from Mexico.

We are FED UP with the attempted Mexicanization of America. Mexico is a third-world slum and we are FED UP with those who want America to be like Mexico!

So, Happy Cinco de Mayo and now get the HELL OUT!"

Comment?