=Happy Halloween=

..................SCARE SOMEONE TONIGHT....

=1927= Charlie Poole & the NC Ramblers

Charlie Poole – a bodacious itinerant musician who transcended his Piedmont roots as he drifted around the sweet sunny South with his North Carolina Ramblers. But if his only claim to fame was playing barn dances, harvest balls, radio programs, and men’s club smokers – not to mention street corners for spare change, or as "shills" at fiddle contests they won handily – his colorful yet star-crossed life might never have passed into the realm of legend.

=Hero of 1927=

Charles Lindbergh standing next to "his" 1927 LaSalle roadster in St. Louis in August 1927. From newspaper accounts, I understand that he was picked up in "his roadster" by the manager of Lambert Field upon his arrival on August 15, 1927.
Source; Richard Stanley

1924 Budweiser Car and Adverstisement

Remember, this was during Prohibition, so the beverages promoted were not what you might surmise !

=True Choice=

Television channel 9, WSOC, has a poll today and the subject is who one wants to vote for and if the choice of president has changed or not. Here is the poll:

"Have you changed your mind on who you're voting for since the presidential campaigns began?
()Yes, I'm now voting for McCain.
()Yes, I'm now voting for Obama.
()No, I'm still voting for McCain.
()No, I'm still voting for Obama."

Such a sad state the journalists and the related occupations do not even THINK other parties exist in this country.
To them, it seems, there are no other choices.

The picture here to the left asks us to rebel.
Pick a rebel.

There are more to choose from than only Democrat or Republican.

When will we realize ?
How long will it take for us to exercise our TRUE Freedom?

SAVE the "Delta Queen"

Letter From The Chairman | Save The Delta Queen Whitepaper | Save The Delta Queen News

Dear Delta Queen Supporter:

As we have discussed, saving the Delta Queen is a non-partisan issue - she is a U.S. flag vessel, with an all-American crew, she is U.S. owned and pays U.S. taxes. She is a registered historic treasure of the Department of the Interior and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, she is a National Historic Landmark and also a member of the National Maritime Hall of Fame. Since 1968 her operating exemption acknowledging her wood super structure has been granted 9 consecutive times by both democrats and republicans, she was good enough and safe enough to host three presidents and a princess. Despite all this, the Chairman of the Senate Commerce and Transportation Committee and the Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee won't even let the Delta Queen extension go to a vote. However, Congress did find the time to exempt a foreign owned cruise line, with foreign built ships from the Jones Act, passed in 1886, which protects American maritime jobs. Due to Congress' exemption, the United States Coast Guard estimated that 900 - 1,200 foreign workers will be employed by that cruise line in 2008. In contrast, if nothing is done for the Queen then on November 1, 2008 more than 120 American jobs will be lost (directly and not including the revenue she brings to many small towns in a dozen states) and we will all lose a little bit of our cultural heritage.

I have personally walked the halls of Congress to gain support. The company has hired consultants and lobbyists to gain support. Thousands of Delta Queen loyalists have sent e-mails to Congress to garner support. To date, all to no avail.

As we are hearing from our Presidential candidates in speeches across the country, "Washington is broken and the country requires a real change." When we look at the circumstances surrounding the Delta Queen, it symbolizes what is wrong in America. I ask myself, what has America come to when unions are actively fighting against American jobs? What has America become when our politicians are not fighting to protect our history and traditions? What has our Congress evolved to when committee chairs are so powerful that they, at their sole discretion, will not let legislation that has passed 9 times even reach the floor for a vote?

At the same time, I know that in America, when enough people care, we can overcome great odds, right wrongs, and act in the best interest of the people and the generations to follow. I also know that the Delta Queen is worth fighting for and that there are so many people that are passionate about protecting her ability to operate for future generations. It has become obvious that we need our fight to "Save the Queen," to elevate her cause into the national discussion and there is nothing as powerful as talk radio in order to achieve this end. In order to save the Queen we need a voice that can be heard in Washington. It is my sincere hope that the power of talk radio can make our Presidential candidates take a position on this issue, bring change in Washington, and preserve a national treasure for future generations as well as its American jobs.

What you can do!

We need a strong, immediate, focused grassroots effort to do the following:
1) E-mail the radio shows below and tell them how important saving the Queen is to you.
2) E-mail the candidates urging them to take a position on saving the Queen.
3) Pass on the White Paper attached to friends and fans of the Queen and ask them to do the same 3 steps.

Thank you for your support.

Joe Ueberroth
President, Majestic America Line
Chairman and CEO, Ambassadors International, Inc.

In addition, I will be starting the campaign by being on the Jason Lewis show, Thursday, January 31, 2008 at 6:30 CST on Minneapolis FM 100.3 KTLK

The following are the targeted radio talk shows programs:

* Glenn Beck - 818.377.5300 me@glennbeck.com
* Neal Boortz - 404.897.7500 go to www.boortz.com
* Alan Colmes - 212.301.3000 colmes@foxnews.com
* Mike Gallagher - 972.831.1920 go to www.mikeonline.com
* Bill Handel - 818.559.2252 bill@kfi640.com
* Sean Hannity - 212.613.3800 seanshow@abc.com
* Rush Limbaugh - 212.445.3900 rush@eibnet.com
* Bill O'Reilly - 212.641.2000 oreilly@foxnews.com
* Michael Savage - 541.664.8827 michaelsavage@paulrevere.com
* Ed Schulz - 701.237.5246 vern@edschultzshow.com
* National Public Radio - go to www.npr.org/contact/

Send your comments and the attached whitepaper to each of the presidential campaigns:

Mike Huckabee (800) 781-6302
Pressroom@explorehuckabee.com
Contacts: Kristen Fedewa (202) 365-6936
Alice Stewart (501) 324-2008 or (501) 658-1654

John McCain
Mscholz@mccain08hq.com
Contacts: Brooke Buchanan (703) 650-5550
Meg Schultz (703) 650-5578

Mitt Romney
Contacts: Kevin Madden or Alex Burgos (857) 288-6390

Hillary Clinton
Press@hillaryclinton.com |(703) 875-1271
Contact: Mark Daley (515) 491-8703 or mdaley@hillaryclinton.com

Barack Obama
Contacts: Jen Psaka (312) 819-2423 media@barackobama.com
Katie Hogan (312) 819-2423

Ron Paul
Contact: (703) 248-9115
volunteers@ronpaul2008.com

Our Past Image of Ourselves

Future Spending in America

The era of big spending, large houses, long commutes and giant SUVs and trucks are over. Sure, the contraction back into tightly packed cities and small modest houses, budgeted spending and compact cars will not come over night and it is equally sure that the indebted and breaking US consumer will fight it every step of the way, but it is over.
But there will be massive problems in the cities. Over crowding is the most obvious one. But with little industry, little money and only the service economy to rely on, the cities will be poor, angry and dangerous, as well as over crowded. The country side will become once again lonely and manageable and small towns and villages a lot more inviting. A return to America circa 1920s is more likely.
One final issue must be faced, the one issue that could easily launch those over packed cities into full scale revolt: veterans. Yes, with bankruptcy of the great big world wide empire, some one million well trained and often enough, well armed, veterans will be returning to the cities where their chances of jobs are slim at best. If they take arms, things in the America of the 2010s will be rather interesting and lively indeed.

A Historian's Perspective

Anna Schwartz
From the Wall Street Journal:

Most people now living have never seen a credit crunch like the one we are currently enduring. Ms. Schwartz, 92 years old, is one of the exceptions. She's not only old enough to remember the period from 1929 to 1933, she may know more about monetary history and banking than anyone alive. She co-authored, with Milton Friedman, "A Monetary History of the United States" (1963). It's the definitive account of how misguided monetary policy turned the stock-market crash of 1929 into the Great Depression.

Ms. Schwartz does not agree with the government's actions to date.

To understand why, one first has to understand the nature of the current "credit market disturbance," as Ms. Schwartz delicately calls it. We now hear almost every day that banks will not lend to each other, or will do so only at punitive interest rates. Credit spreads -- the difference between what it costs the government to borrow and what private-sector borrowers must pay -- are at historic highs.

This is not due to a lack of money available to lend, Ms. Schwartz says, but to a lack of faith in the ability of borrowers to repay their debts. "The Fed," she argues, "has gone about as if the problem is a shortage of liquidity. That is not the basic problem. The basic problem for the markets is that [uncertainty] that the balance sheets of financial firms are credible."

"...firms that made wrong decisions should fail," she says bluntly. "You shouldn't rescue them. And once that's established as a principle, I think the market recognizes that it makes sense. Everything works much better when wrong decisions are punished and good decisions make you rich." The trouble is, "that's not the way the world has been going in recent years."

=Somewhere Over the=

A Red Baloon in a Camellia Bush

I was on my way to the newly opened Trader Joe's grocery store when right at my side in a camellia bush, two blocks up from my house, was an entangled red balloon on a light blue ribbon that had still enough helium in it to be upright, but no longer enough to float the sky.
I very easily untangled the ribbon and took it away with me for my walk.
Flabby and dispirited, the balloon had so little left in it and all I could imagine is the mile or two it had flown from the slipping-grasped child somewhere across the city.
Freedom and a dying red balloon;
I handed it to a passing little boy with his mother.

"Give this its last bit of happiness...."
The kid grinned widely like the Cheshire Cat.

=Early Voting Day= 2008=

Here I am SECOND in line just diagonally across the street from my house, ready to vote.
I am the guy wearing the 1922 original straw hat.

I wrote-in my choice: Ralph Nader, along with quite a few other positions for local and state political persons.
I never would vote a straight ticket.
I feel that is not the "thinking man's" fashion of voting and it betrays humanity and the future.

My prediction: Barack Obama will Win on November 4th.

"Hide & Seek" Howard Jones Composed 1983

There was a time when there was nothing at all
Nothing at all, just a distant hum
There was a being and he lived on his own
He had no one to talk to, and nothing to do
He drew up the plans, learned to work with his hands
A million years passed by and his work was done
And his words were these...

"Hope you find it in everything, everything that you see
Hope you find it in everything, everything that you see
Hope you find it, hope you find it
Hope you find me in you..."

So she had built her elaborate home
With its ups and its downs, its rains and its sun
She decided that her work was done, time to have fun
And she found a game to play

Then as part of the game
She completely forgot where she'd hidden herself
And she spent the rest of her time
Trying to find the parts

"Hope you find it in everything, everything that you see
Hope you find it in everything, everything that you see
Hope you find it, hope you find it
Hope you find me in you..."

There was a time when there was nothing at all, nothing at all
Just a distant hum...

Columbus Day

The perfection of now.

A local man would have had his 75th birthday today, but he had wandered from his assisted living care facility ten days ago.
He had dementia and had fallen into the creek well behind the home.
His body was found late yesterday and he would have had his birthday today, if he had lived.
His last moments may have been pleasant and calm--enjoying the fall warmth and leafy sunlight that fell at the travelling water beside. A few rocks for a footrest as well as possibly a nice log and tree crook for a place to put his head.

Some pets have been known to leave the comforting home and wander into the woods to die; we humans must have this instinct very deep inside us--to be alone and to be unencumbered by by anything except the fully natural.
Then, to rest and then to die.
Buddhist monks of a certain few are known to have sit and meditate before and into death to be then always in the position of that meditation pose. Forever restful and without burdens.
Let the man at the creek side be always be burden less and calm.
Have him combine his essence with the nature that he knew was his comfort.
Create the newness of his being as one with the all of existence.

The breath that flows through life.
That last breeze of southern autumn
At the creek side.

=The Week=

This is the week that I predicted a few months ago.
I am at last hearing people mention the real ghosts of 1929 and the horrors of economic collapse and decline.
It is just three weeks until "we" Americans (actually the electoral college) choose our new President for 2009 and the beginning of the next decade of the century. This current first Decade of Chaos, many will be very happy to see gone, and I am certainly one of those also.

1999 began auspiciously with such excitement about the turn of the Millennium, and slight, although real, worries about the Y2K problems with computers that would possibly happen.The excitement and fireworks passed and much was calm. There was a certain golden feeling of accomplishment and contentment most everywhere.

Then came 2000 and 2001.
Hanging "chads" and Bush, the Gore messiness and Dale Earnhardt died (Charlotte had a Hero for a while).
Then September 11th. The date no longer gets a year after the simpler statement that is that.
9-11.
The Decade of Chaos had started.

I remember looking out my apartment door that I lived at that time,
"Now, they ALL will understand...."
I closed that door and was not seen for three weeks.
I was so visible and out to be seen during the heated and unfair presidential race of 1999-2000, 9-11 changed it all. Death was everywhere.
America changed after that and many Americans' collective mood was really never at the level of the happier fireworks and millennium days; all seemed so diminished by September 11th.

Now it is over seven years later and we have experienced the financial equivalent of 9-11.
Truly not in 79 years, since 1929, has this much crisis happened in the financial world.
Just like 9-11, this is a World crisis also and we have much more to get through for the final "sword of the play" to fall and the footlights go out.
I have one more time gone to my apartment door, looked out and said,
"Now, they ALL will understand...."
This time there is nothing else to comprehend, we are in a real social time of alteration.
Change.
This is a loaded word: change can be anywhere, the good as well as the bad. The different; how may of us would have ever thought we would see times like these?

In three weeks we will know our new President who will begin his work in January.
My solid prediction is a win by Barack Obama.

I wonder what George W. Bush will do for those last three months in Washington, while sitting in the Oval Office...

I really expect he may become quite the very private and erratic party animal.

A mild version of a 21st Century Caligula, as the Decade of Chaos turns over to the next uncertain ten years.

What a Wonderful Day

A quite drunk woman on Sunday saw me in my front yard with a large cup of coffee and she came into the very very small grass area that we call a front yard and told me that she was the Angel of Death.
I was instructed immediately to see her wings and realize the message that she had for me.

At that early word from her--I gestured down to a hand-dug culvert that we have created in the grass for water run-off, that she was about to fall right into it and tumble right to the ground. I writing this now, recall that I thought: "My, just my strange luck, the Angel of Death shows up and I have to warn that it will fall into a ditch."
It was sunny and very bright---I was not hallucinating in any way and it was 10:30 AM so I was most assuredly very awake.
She drunkenly steadied herself, and asked, "Do you see my wings yet?" with a grab to my arm keeping me there.
"What are you worried about ?" she asked persistently.
"...Ah, the winter, the cold---making sure we are all ok in the house with leaky windows and cold..."

She did not expect this answer and retorted, "Nothing else, you don't want anything else...???"
All the time she was talking to me, she would only slightly sway, being now besotted, yet mindful of the drainage canal that had been constructed, she would splash her hands towards me and say, "Poof !...Poof."

I saw a page of the Charlotte Observer blow by in the street in the breeze.

"Poooof !!"
The woman was an odd person, but I have had a colorful life and I am also one to play on the side of caution and take her wish-grantings.
"...And NOW, you SEE my wings??"
"No,not at all, I do not,"I answered her.
She did not expect this answer from me either.
This is a very southern city, and a vast number would have their faith in their throats, and would hope and believe the woman that she was actually the Angel of Death.

Hawks made their screechy noises from afar just a bit, up into the sunny and breezy park, across the road next to my house.

"Poof...poof !"
I sipped almost totally cooled down coffee and really wanted more. The lady clamped down on my arm.
"When you see me next time---you will SEE my wings, and you will know."
"Know what?" I asked her.
"That I am the Angel to come for you and help you. You are a very good man. Because you have not seen my wings, you will live a long long life; a lot longer than you think you will."

"Wow," I gasped a little, "I always sort-of wanted to live to be 143 before I die."
This she had hardly expected from me, like the other surprises she had heard from me.
"You will live a very very long life." she tipped somewhat to a very uncomfortable looking angle.

"Whoosh...POOF !! You will be healed..."
I quickly noted to her that I had an nasty stomach and digestive condition that I wish were gone.
Lots of hand gestures later, I at last was able to wrest myself of her to go inside and make a second and newly hot cup of coffee.

As the Angel of Death left for a NFL football game across town I heard her shout towards my direction,
"When you see me next time and you see my wings, I will help you through it--It will be your time to go."

Two spring-stepped squirrels ran through the front yard, chasing each other attempting to get the last of the pecans that have fallen from the tree.

143 years.
That means I have 92 left to live, and I wonder if the Angel of Death's wings are white--
Or are some other color.

}A Senate Passes a Vote{

The Home seems solid, everyone agrees, there are changes that are to be added, altered and made right for the people that will live there. Life with this will be easier and should go on as before but with so many additions and responsibilities for the new aspect of how things have changed.
We will build the house, we hope for the best.

It will take time--many more opinions will have to be considered before any door or hinge will be allowed to swing.

Our rooms will be cold for a while--1925 and 2008 are SO much the same story.
Our room is America
our Parlor view is
Our Lives.

+) ONE Stock of Positivity (+

When Wall Street stocks were plummeting ONE stock shone above the fray, ONE Icon of our country ONE comfort in a Storm...

ONE of simple ease and healthy attitudes...

I say Chicken Noodle tonight.