Old King Coal

Since we’re very close to Christmas, I’d have to confess that it’s OK to wish me a Merry Christmas, since the phrase does not offend me in the least. I’ll also be quick to add that I’m not offended by the phrase “happy holidays” either, since numerous other holidays are also celebrated around December 25.

Atheists celebrate the Winter Solstice, Buddhists celebrate Bodhi Day, Jews celebrate Hanukkah, Nova Romans celebrate Saturnalia, Wiccans and Neopagans celebrate Yule, folks of African descent celebrate Kwanzaa, and Zoroastrians celebrate observe Zartusht-no-diso, so it’s clear that the end of December is a special time of the year for an awful lot of people.

By the time that Christmas finally arrives, we’re all a little burned out by all the Christmas music that’s been playing for the last month, and even the beloved “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” has started to get on my nerves.

One song that gets occasional play this time of the year is “Old King Cole”. Although it was first performed n 1708, the poem itself actually dates much further than that . If your memory is a bit short, the complete poem is listed below:

Old King Cole was a merry old soul

And a merry old soul was he;

He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl

And he called for his fiddlers three.

Every fiddler he had a fiddle,

And a very fine fiddle had he;

Oh there's none so rare, as can compare

With King Cole and his fiddlers three.

Although “Old King Cole” has a long history, it pales in comparison to Old King Coal, which has been around MUCH longer. The first use of coal as a fuel goes back about 3000 years ago. Like many things in common use today, it was originally discovered by the ancient Chinese people.

Coal has been in the news again lately, and for a couple of different reasons.

1) A jury in West Virginia recently charged Donald Blankenship (former chief of Massey Energy Company) with widespread safety violations and deceit of federal inspectors, and a judge in Kentucky just issued a scathing judgment in a Frasure Creek Mining settlement that involved a thousand violations of the Clean Water Act.

2) John Grisham just released his newest novel, Gray Mountain, which highlights the nefarious acts of Big Coal in Appalachia. I’m in the process of working my way through it, but also couldn’t help but notice his mention of the Martin Country coal slurry spill, which somehow managed to not get noticed by most of us.

(Like many of his books, his most recent novel relies heavily on facts and current events. His sources for this book include information that he obtained from the Appalachian Citizen's Law Center and Appalachian Voices.)

The Exxon Valdez oil spill was VERY big news when it occurred, since the ship spilled someplace between 12,000,000 and 32,000,000 gallons of oil in Price William Sound in 1989. Both Exxon and the ship’s captain, Joseph Hazelwood, escaped the incident with very little cost. An even bigger spill occurred in April of 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded and sank. It is easily the largest accidental marine spill in the history of the oil industry, and it resulted in an estimated total discharge of 210 million gallons of sludge into the Gulf of Mexico.

In contrast, the Martin County coal slurry spill released 306,000,000 gallons of coal slurry into two tributaries of the Tug Fork River in October of 2000. Since the spill was anywhere from 10 to 30 times worse than the Exxon spill, you’d think that the general public would be outraged.

Nope.

I don’t remember the spill being in the news at all, and the company responsible for the spill, Massey Energy (whose chairman is mentioned above) escaped with virtually no punishment at all. Officially, the company WAS fined, but the fine was less than the price of a well worn used car. Coincidentally, Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao was in charge of the Labor Department at the time of the spill. In her position as Labor Secretary, she also oversaw the Mine Safety and Health Administration. In 2002, she imposed a fine of $5600 against Massey for the spill.

Although Elaine Chao is a very smart lady, she didn’t do any of the rest of us any favors when she was Labor Secretary. During her first 4 years as Labor Secretary, her department did not promulgate ANY significant health standards. It has also been alleged that both she and other Bush White House officials campaigned for Republican candidates at taxpayer expense, which is a violation of the Hatch acto of 1939. No action was taken against her or any other officials by any entity responsible for enforcing the Hatch Act.

It’s hard to imagine any disaster worst than over 300,000,000 gallons of junk spilling into our navigable waters, but one DID occur (in Tennessee) 8 years later.

On December 22, 2008, the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill released an incredible 1.1 billion gallons of sludge into local waterways. Six months after the spill, only 3% of the affected area had been cleaned up, The plant responsible for the spill continues to operate today. Unlike the Martin County spill, the guilty party (the TVA) agreed to pay $27,000,000 in restitution to property owners.

In response to the Martin County and the Kingston Fossil Plant spills, Lisa P. Jackson, Barack Obama's choice to head the EPA under his administration, stated her intention to immediately review coal ash disposal sites across the country during her Senate confirmation hearing. On January 14, 2009, Nick J. Rahall, a U.S. Representative from West Virginia and the chairman of the United States House Committee on Natural Resources, introduced a bill to regulate coal ash disposal sites across the United States.

The EPA regulations finally took effect in December of 2014 nearly 6 years later, and were prompted by a lawsuit filed by environmental groups and a Native American tribe. Also spurring the regulations along were recent spills in Tennessee and elsewhere. The most recent spill occurred in February of 2014, when a coal ash pond in Eden, North Carolina ruptured, releasing between 50,000 and 82,000 tons of coal ash, and 27,000,000 gallons of contaminated water, into the Dan River. Legal liability will be a little complicated due to the fact that North Carolina’s governor, Pat McCrory, worked for the company responsible for the spill, Duke Energy, for 28 years, and has gone on record as being reluctant to punish his former employer. Duke Energy has the distinction of being the largest electric holding company in the United States, and the company also has holdings in Canada and Latin America.

Since coal slurry spills are an obvious public safety issue, you’d probably assume that Congress would allow the EPA to have all the funds it needs to enforce the environmental laws that have been on the books for decades.

Nope.

It’s no secret that the 113th Congress is one of the worst that our country has ever had. Since 2010, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has cut funding to the EPA by 21%, and that situation is unlikely to change during the 114th Congress, which will have an INCREASE of Republicans in the House, and a Republican majority in the Senate.

Incredibly, coal slurry storage has increased dramatically since the Martin Country spill in 2000. Most recently, piles of coal slurry have appeared on the Calumet River near Chicago. Not surprisingly, the company responsible for the piles is Koch Carbon, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, which is led by David and Charles Koch.

Koch Carbon also has numerous coal slurry sites in Detroit, including one that is immediately adjacent to the Detroit River. Including the sites near Detroit that are owned by Koch Carbon, there are 29 coal slurry storage facilities in Michigan, and 19 of them are within a five mile radius of the shores of the Great Lakes. In addition, a Canadian refinery owned by Koch Industries (and directly across from Detroit) recently started to refine tar sands oil, the stuff that the Koch brothers would LOVE to start sending through the Keystone XL pipeline. So far, the results have not been pretty.

Although the Koch brothers sell a significant amount of coal slurry to China for use as fuel, they aren’t the largest petroleum coke (petcoke) dealer in the world, Their brother, William (who owns Oxbow Corporation) has that distinction.

Big Coal has a very ugly history when it comes to labor relations , including the 1969 murder of Jock Yablonski and his family in 1969, but that’s a topic that could easily be a story in itself.

In addition to the environmental hazards created by coal mining, three other areas of concern related to coal mining are:

1) Black lung disease

Black lung disease (officially, progressive massive fibrosis) was virtually eliminated 15 years ago, but has skyrocketed again in recent years. Today, roughly 1000 miners a year die from the disease. The problem is FAR worse in China, where an estimated SIX MILLION people suffer from the disease.

2) Global warming

The United States currently obtains 37% of its electric power from coal-fired power plants, which are the nation’s leading source of carbon pollution, and a significant contributor to global warming. In contrast, China gets 69% ot its electricity from coal plants. Again, the results aren’t pretty:

3) Mine collapses

Although coal companies are shifting towards strip mining to reduce labor costs, there is still a lot of coal mining done underground. In America, the worst coal mining disaster occurred in Monongah, West Virginia in 1907. An explosion and mine collapse in that town killed an estimated 367 miners, many of whom were recent immigrants from Italy.

The worst mine disaster in the entire world occurred in the Liaoning province of China in 1942. An explosion in the underground there killed a total of 1549 Chinese laborers.

China has ample coal reserves, and currently produces nearly half of the world’s coal production. However, it also has a far higher death rate from coal mining than any other country in the world.

America is the 2nd largest producer of coal in the world, but we are a net exporter of the stuff, with the vast majority of our exports going to China. The Appalachian region still contributes a lot to our total output, but Wyoming is, by far, the largest producer of coal currently.

The United States has the largest coal reserves in the world, but Russia is close behind. At current rates of consumption, the world’s coal reserves would last for another 112 years, so it will continue to be a reliable and economical fuel source for a number of decades.

There is no particular problem continuing to use coal as an energy source AS LONG AS the coal plants adhere to strict environmental standards. For some reason, some members of Congress have trouble understanding that concept, and consider the regulation of power plants to be a “war on coal”. Currently, the coal plant in Homer, Pennsylvania is one of the dirtiest in the country, but recent pollution mitigation devices will reduce pollution from the plant by 80% within a few years, with no loss of jobs, or increase in electricity rates.

For the folks in Congress who still “don’t get it”, my suggestion is to send them an appropriate Christmas gift - a lump of coal.

At this point, you’ve waded through a lot of information about Old King Coal, so it’s time for the pipe, the bowl and the fiddlers three. In closing, here’s my final message to you:

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night

You say salami, I say salame

On average, I’ll go to one (or more) grocery stores somewhere between 15 and 20 times per month, generally just to pick up a few items. I’ll rarely go to the store on a Saturday, and my work schedule allows me to go shopping mid afternoon, which helps to avoid the usual crowds.

On a recent trip to one of the stores, I happened to walk past a display of “Italian Dry Salame” , which was manufactured by a company called Galileo Foods in San Lorenzo, California. A link to their website is shown below:

Gallosalame

The company was founded in 1910 in San Francisco by a man named Louis Gabiati, who brought a centuries-old salame recipe from his native Italy. Naturally, the stuff that I bought was delicious, and it went very well with crackers, smoked gouda cheese, and a nice red wine.

However, the experience got me to wondering what exactly IS salame, and why is it spelled with an “e” at the end instead of an “I“?.

Salami is the plural form of the Italian word salame. By definition, salami is (are?) cured sausage, fermented and air-dried meat, originating from a variety of animals. Although the most common base is pork, salami is also made with beef, veal, venison, poultry, goose, donkey or horse. There are at least 18 different variations of salami, one of which is pepperoni.

The main difference between salami and pepperoni is that pepperoni is a mixture of pork and beef, and the name itself is a corruption of the Italian word peperoni, which is used to describe bell peppers. Pepperoni is a VERY popular dish in America, since 36% of all pizzas sold in this country contain pepperoni. If you add all that pepperoni up, it would total in excess of 250,000,000 pounds.

Another version of salami is bologna, which was originally produced in the Italian town of Bologna. Like salami, it’s usually made from pork, but can also be made from chicken, beef, venison or soy.

I know for a fact that there are people who talk to their plants, and it’s probable that there are chefs who talk to their food while preparing it, but here’s an interesting twist for you. If you’d like to hear Salami sing to you, just click on the link below:

listen to your Salami sing

Nightmare on Elm Street

When Flagstaff was still a young town, the early pioneers who succumbed to disease or old age were buried in a place known simply as “City Cemetery”. One of the handful of early settlers who was buried there was a decorated Civil War veteran named Frederic James Krueger.

As the city continued to spread to the west, the leaders of the community came to the realization that the cemetery on the west side needed to be moved to another location in order to facilitate the growth of the town. As a result, the Catholic Calvary Cemetery was established in 1892, and Citizens cemetery was established a few years later.

The vast majority of the burial sites at City Cemetery were transferred to either Calvary or Citizens, but (inexplicably) the grave of Frederic James Krueger never made the journey, As a result, it’s entirely possible that his unmarked grave still lies undisturbed in the part of the town that has since become known as Thorpe Park, which is located less than a mile from the current location of Flagstaff High School.

Calvary Cemetery was built close to an area that was known as “Shantytown”, which was populated by a largely Hispanic (and pious) population. “Shantytown” incorporated a statue of the Sacred Heart at its core in order to ward off the spirit of the “weeping woman”, who is known as “La Llorano” in Hispanic communities. After the establishment of Calvary Cemetery, the statue was moved to the entranceway of the cemetery, Although Calvary has had no record of ghostly apparitions, at least 2 residence halls at Northern Arizona University continue to have numerous reports of strange sights and sounds within their walls, which would lead credence to the fact that La Llorano may actually be more than an urban legend.

One of the bodies buried at Calvary Cemetery was a young boy who died of mysterious causes a few days after being born in the early days of 1962. Due to the brevity of his life, his gravestone is simply marked “baby boy Krueger”, and the name Krueger slipped into obscurity - until Halloween of 1982.

Prior to 1924, students who wanted to attend high school attended the former Emerson school for grades 1 through 9, and attended grades 10 through 12 at the college that was then known as NANS.

In the 1960’s, Emerson School achieved more than bit of notoriety when the school janitor hung himself in the 2nd floor janitor’s office shortly after killing his wife and child at their home a few blocks away. Although Emerson School was ultimately torn down and replaced by the Flagstaff Library , visitors to the library (even to the present day) frequently report seeing visions of a shadowy figure walking up the stairs to the 2nd floor of the one story structure.

Ultimately, the town came to the realization that it needed a more permanent location for their high school, and construction of Flagstaff High School started in 1923. The first graduation class was the class of 1924.

By the 1950’s, Flag High had outgrown its original building, so construction was started on a new building that was located at the same location, 400 W. Elm Street. The first class to graduate from that location was the class of 1955. One of the young men who played on the varsity football teams of 1980 and 1981 was named Tony Cullen. After graduating from Flag High, he ultimately earned both bachelors and advanced degrees in Education before returning to Flagstaff, where he became a prominent local figure. Today, he can frequently be seen in areas in, and around, Flagstaff High School.

One of the more unusual architectural features of the new high school is a subterranean corridor that was built beneath the library. Officially, it’s called the “700 wing”, and it’s composed of a mere 11 rooms. Two of those rooms are numbered 716, but only one of them is used as a classroom. The other room, known as “the dungeon”, has NEVER been used as a classroom, and it’s not hard to imagine why.

On Halloween Day of 1982, 3 local teenagers (Tina, Rod, and Glen) were slashed to death in their homes, and one adult (Marge) later disappears under very unusual circumstances. The killer was never apprehended, and the case remains open today. Fortunately, no further deadly incidents have occurred, so it appears that the danger has passed, at least for now.

One of the teenagers lived at 218 W. Elm Street, an eerie looking (and vacant) residence that is directly east of the high school. Few people pay much attention to the structure today, but I’ve always gotten an uncomfortable feeling in my bones whenever I’ve walked past it.


https://www.google.com/maps/place/218+W+Elm+Ave,+Flagstaff,+AZ+86001/@35.2031884,-111.6501683,3a,75y,24.48h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1suVW7wshMoGv5nMXW0MFwZw!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DuVW7wshMoGv5nMXW0MFwZw%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D24.484364%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x872d8f458958d861:0x9ca1104744697422!8m2!3d35.2033385!4d-111.6500726

When director Wes Craven heard about the slayings in Flagstaff, he wrote a movie script that incorporated the events of that evening. In order to protect the identity of the town, he created the fictional town of Springwood, Ohio. In order to give a name to the evil spirit that briefly terrorized the town, he randomly chose the name “Freddy Krueger”, and the same character re-emerged in 2010, when a remake of the original film was released.

“Nightmare on Elm Street” was a huge commercial success, and is considered to be one of the best films of 1984. Released a week after Halloween in 1984, it earned enough in the first week after its release to cover nearly 100% of its production costs.

“Nightmare on Elm Street” today is largely an historical footnote, but its legacy lives on today at Flagstaff High School, in particular for those student and faculty members who remain in the building after the close of the school day. If those students or faculty members happen to be in the area of “the dungeon", and they hear strange sounds coming from that room, they should be very, very afraid - and leave the building as soon as possible.

And now, it's time for a little Halloween music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqVyois9mp4

Those darn immigrants

Four mornings a week, my wife and I drive through the campus of Northern Arizona University so that I can drop her off at one of the local elementary schools. One of the buildings that we pass on our journey is the Raul H. Castro College of Social and Behavioral Sciences building, which caused me to wonder why NAU would name one of their buildings for Fidel’s brother.

After a bit of research, I discovered that Raul H. Castro (who was born on June 12, 1916) was the 14th governor of Arizona, but left his post after Jimmy Carter appointed him to be ambassador to Argentina in 1977. He previously had been appointed as ambassador to El Salvador by Lyndon Johnson in 1964. He also happens to be a graduate of NAU, which was formerly known as Arizona State Teacher’s College.

He was born in Mexico, but moved with his family to Arizona when he was 10 years old. He was the first (as well as the only) Mexican-American to serve as Governor of Arizona. He is now 98 years old, and now holds the title of the oldest living former governor in the United States.

Fidel’s brother, meanwhile, has been President of the Council of State of Cuba and the President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba since 2008. He’s now 83 years old, but does not plan to seek re-election when his current term ends in 2018. Much to the surprise of a lot of people, it’s entirely possible that we will have normal diplomatic relations with Cuba by the time that Raul’s current term of office ends.

Our country has had a long and torturous relationship with immigrants ever since the first immigrants arrived at Jamestown in 1607, and immigrants are still a source of concern today. In fact, “securing the border” seems to be one of the main talking points for most Republican candidates for office in this election cycle, even though we currently spend $12 billion a year on border security, and the NET migration from Mexico has been ZERO since 2005. Few Republican candidates are as extreme as Ted Cruz of Texas, who wants to “secure the border and stop illegal amnesty”. Ironically, Ted was born in Canada, and his Cuban-born father did not become a United States citizen until 2005. The only reason that he technically would be eligible to run for the Presidency (oh, the horror) is that he’s an “anchor baby” (his mother was born in the United States.)

Eventually, the immigration reform program designed by “the gang of 8” may actually get passed by Congress, but the Democrats wisely chose not to pursue it too aggressively before the election in order to retain their narrow (and critical) majority in the Senate.

As a country, we desperately NEED talented immigrants to help our economy grow, and the best example of WHY is Google, which was deemed the second most valuable brand in the world (behind Apple) by Interbrand ranking in 2014. One of the founders of the company, Sergey Brin,, who was born in Moscow in 1973. He’s now worth $30 billion personally.

We’re always going to have people in America who will decry “those darn immigrants”, and we’re not going to be able to change their minds. However, we CAN prevent them from getting elected to office, and that would be an important first step towards restoring at least a little sanity to our country.

Put it where the sun don’t shine

The title page shown above is a somewhat crude phrase that can describe where you’d put ideas or concepts that you don’t agree with. However, there is also a gentler meaning for the phrase, and it was alluded to in a story in the New York Times on the morning of September 14.

In the near future, Germany will be getting 30% of its electrical power from renewable energy sources, which is twice the amount that the United States currently achieves. Some of that electric power comes from huge windmills in the North Sea, but a sizable amount also comes from solar panels. Today, Germany gets 7% of its power from solar panels, and 10% of its power from wind turbines.

Germany currently gets roughly 20% of its electrical power from nuclear sources, but after the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, the country has made a determined effort to rid itself of nuclear power within the next decade. Although America gets 19% of its electrical power from nuclear (far less than France’s 75%) the fact that we consume much more electricity means that America is by far the largest nuclear producer in the world, with a total capacity of 102 gigawatts.

Both Germany and the United States currently get about 40% of their power from coal, but that percentage will decrease as renewable source energy production increases. In some circles, that would be considered a “war on coal”, but it’s also a big step towards improving the air that we breath. China currently receives 69% of its electricity from coal, and the results aren’t pretty.

The surprising part about Germany’s solar industry is that the country as a whole gets significantly less sunshine than the United States. The only places in the United States that get less sunshine than Germany are Seattle and Alaska. Naturally, you’re not going to hear that fact on FOX “news”, which has stated on air that Germany gets a lot more sunshine than the United States. The short FOX video in the link below is worth watching.

your brain is about to turn into mush

The sunniest spot in America is Yuma, Arizona, which receives 90% of available sunlight. Phoenix and Tucson are close behind, at 85%, and my home town of Flagstaff receives 78% of available sunlight. Yuma also leads the nation in the number of clear days a year, with 242 days.

In contrast, my home state of Minnesota receives only slightly more than 50% of available sunlight (Duluth receives 52%, and Minneapolis/St. Paul receives 58%). That fact, however, hasn’t prevented a large solar installation that will soon start on the Fond du Lac reservation. When completed, it will generate 1.0 megawatts of power, enough to generate 10% of the power for the Black Bear casino Resort. Somewhat surprisingly, Minnesota Power (which makes money be selling electricity), will contribute $2,000,000 towards the project.

Since Arizona receives lots of sunshine, you would assume that the state would lead the nation in solar power. It actually takes a distant second to California, which produces 2745.9 megawatts of power, and 50% of that capacity was added in 2013. Arizona produces 700.7 megawatts, which puts it far ahead of 3rd place North Carolina.

Strangely enough, sunny Arizona is the site of the largest NUCLEAR power plant in the country. Located about 45 miles west of downtown Phoenix, the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station produces 3.3 getaways of power, and serves about 4,000,000 people.

As the New York Times articles points out, expanding the use of renewable energy is a complicated process, since regulators are charged with protecting the interests of the general public, while simultaneously keeping the utility companies happy. In recent years, some of the regulators on the Arizona Corporation Commission (the regulating body in Arizona) have had close ties to power producing companies, who often work AGAINST the solar and wind industries.

Sadly, we have far too many politicians who don’t want stricter environmental regulations on coal plants, or who want to use fracking to produce natural gas, or who want to allow uranium mining near the Grand Canyon (uranium is used in nuclear power plants) or who want to allow mining in sensitive environmental areas. To those politicians, I have a few words of advice.

Please refer to my title.

Spread the word

Rosemary Kennedy was the first sister of former President John F. Kennedy. Although physically attractive, she was considered to be psychologically unstable by her family, and she became subject to violent mood swings as she grew older. When she was 23 years old, her father (Joseph Kennedy) asked doctors to perform a new procedure on her called a frontal lobotomy in order to calm her mood swings. The surgery was not successful, but it diminished the mental capacity of Kennedy to that of a 2 year old child. She lived the rest of her life in various mental institutions, and died of natural causes at the age of 86.

Inspired, at least in part, by the experience of her sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver started the first Special Olympics in 1968, so that individuals with mental and/or physical disabilities would have the ability to compete in athletic competitions on somewhat the same basis as “normal kids”. The organization has grown substantially since its inception, and now provides training and competitions to more than 4.2 million athletes in 170 countries.

Even though the Special Olympics helped to create a more favorable image for persons with disabilities, it wasn’t until the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1989 that formal programs for persons with disabilities were established, and a few years later, the “inclusion” of disabled students within “normal” classrooms started to become more common.

There are a variety of conditions that would be considered “disabilities”, but the most common ones are Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and autism. Regardless of the specific malady, though, individuals with mental (and sometimes physical) disabilities were considered “retarded” in the past, and some still are today.

The word (fortunately) has become politically incorrect, but it hasn’t stopped people like extreme right wing conservatives Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh from freely using it in conversation. Their lack of compassion, unfortunately, is becoming more common in the Grand Old Party, and the recent protests of immigrant children in Murietta, California is just one example of how some members of our society are straying a bit too far from the Biblical principals of compassion and justice.

In an effort to stop the use of the term “retarded”, the Special Olympics of 2013 developed a simple phrase called “spread the word - end the word”. In order to facilitate the message, the organization also started a website to allow people to share their stories about working with disabled children:

the r-word

The “mission statement” of the r-word campaign can be summed up as follows:

“Recognizing that our choice of language frames how we think of others, we, the undersigned, pledge and support the elimination of the derogatory use of the r-word from everyday speech, and promote the acceptance and inclusion of of people with intellectual disabilities. “

Today’s treatment of persons with disabilities is significantly more humane than the practices that existed during the period of time when eugenics was more popular in our country, and other countries in the world. The core philosophy of eugenics was the promotion of higher reproduction rates of people with desired traits, and reduced reproduction of people with less-desired or undesired traits. Eventually, the philosophy resulted in the establishment of the Mother’s Cross in Germany in 1938, which honored German women who gave birth to at least 5 children, but it also led to compulsory sterilizations of those considered to be less desirable.

In its most extreme form, the practice of eugenics became the Nazi T4 program, which began as the systematic killing of children deemed “mentally defective”. Public outrage killed the program in Germany on August 18, 1941, but it was later revived in occupied Poland.

All of us see people with disabilities on a fairly regular basis, and my wife and I (due to the fact that we work for the local school district) have daily exposure to students with “disabilities”. As a result of that exposure, we consider ourselves to be blessed, due to the fact that we work with truly unique individuals, and (in our limited capacities) make a difference in their lives.

If you're interested in making a financial contribution to the Special Olympics, local Safeway stores allow you to make a contribution on the key pad used to pay your grocery bill. The "grand daddy" of all charitable fund raising events, though, is the Labor Day Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy, which Jerry Lewis hosted from 1952 through 2010. As of 2014, MDA telethons had raised $2.6 billion for the organization. Although you can make a contribution to the organization on line, local fire departments also do fund raising on Labor Day weekend.

The bridges of Madison County

Flagstaff, Arizona is a LONG way from Winterset, Iowa (the birthplace of Marion Morrison/John Wayne), so it’s always a little startling to see references to his home town in the area where I live. If you took the most direct route from Winterset, your trip would total 1336 miles, a good solid 2 day drive.

At lease half a dozen times a year, I’ll see a semi-truck/trailer combination parked in the village where I live. Emblazoned on the back door is a sign promoting the covered bridge festival in Madison Country (Winterset is the county seat) which is held the 2nd weekend in October every year.

34 of our 50 states still have some of their original covered bridges still standing, and the list of their locations can be viewed at the link below:

covered.bridges.map

Indiana, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Vermont seem to have a preponderance of them, but even my home state of Minnesota still has ONE standing. If you include non-authentic (replica) bridges, then every state in the Union has at least one.

After we saw Clint Eastwood’s 1995 movie depicting the brief affair between Francesca Johnson (Meryl Streep) and Robert Kincaid (Clint Eastwood) , Sharon and I decided that it would be fun to take a side trip to Winterset on our way back from Minnesota to Illinois.

Winterset is roughly 30 miles south east of Des Moines, and wasn’t difficult to find. Once we had found Roseman bridge, we then managed to find Francesca’s farmhouse, which still stands today, and is open for tours.

The kitchen still looks like it did when we took our own tour in the late 1990’s, and so does the bathtub that Francesca and Robert sat in together. If I looked hard enough, I could probably find the picture of ME sitting in the bathtub (fully clothed) but that‘s a project best saved for full retirement.

Most of the locations used in the movie are still standing, and can be viewed at the link below:

walk in the footsteps of Clint Eastwood

It’s unlikely that Sharon and I will ever get back to Madison County, or to the Covered Bridge festival, but I’ve got a feeling that some of our friends and relatives living in Minnesota might make a trip there at some point in the future.

One of the most memorable lines in the movie (involving eggs and linoleum) briefly earned the movie an “R” rating, which was later reduced to PG-13. However, another one of the lines in the movie is a good life lesson for all of us:

“The old dreams were good dreams; they didn’t work out, but I’m glad I had them.”