Conestoga trip to the Air Force Museum, pt. 2

There's no way to describe how BIG the museum at Wright Patterson is; but here's an idea--there's an early years of air flight gallery, a WWII gallery (we toured 1934-1945 with a guide for 2 hours), a Korean War gallery; a Southeast Asian war gallery (being renovated); a Cold War gallery; a missile and space gallery; a presidential R&D gallery; middle east wars section (don't know if it's considered a gallery since much of that aircraft hasn't been retired); and various outdoor exhibits. The campus is 17 acres and includes nearly one million square feet of public exhibit space with more than 360 aerospace vehicles and missiles and thousands of historical artifacts on display.

I came away with a new respect for the way wars advance technology in all areas and change entire cultures almost overnight--at least in hind sight. The exhibits have been updated and expanded to bring more focus on people and events as well as the hardware of airplanes, military transport, jets and equipment. Many displays had full size mannequins to illustrate a particular event, like a training accident or Jimmy Doolittle.

It was also stunning to see by walking through these huge hangers that my entire lifetime the U.S. has been at war. When I was younger, I'd say, "When the war is over. . . " and now I know better. I knew that intellectually (I was born as Hitler marched into Poland), and even the era I think of as relatively peaceful was called The Cold War. I know our wars stretch from King Philip's War in the 1600s to Obama's War in Libya in 2011--wars with Indians, Mexicans, Muslims, British, Germans, Russians, Vietnamese--but I wish it weren't so. And if Americans weren't suffering and dying, many Russians and East Europeans and Germans were. Plus, the U.S. has bases all over the world--I think at least 662 in 38 foreign countries either owned or leased--for a total of 4,999 counting our home bases--with advisers, trainers, soldiers, mechanics, spies, librarians, etc. whose lives are constantly at risk.

Where is Martin Luther when you need him?

When I listen to our local Catholic radio (St. Gabriel's, 1580 am, which includes many programs from EWTN), I’m still hearing the 16th century abuses of the church about which Martin Luther spoke and wrote: purgatory (a special place of judgement and penance we Protestants know nothing about since it's not in the Bible), indulgences to reduce time in purgatory (out of favor after the reforms of the 1960s, but returning since 2000 and becoming more popular), merit dispensed by the church (tradition), transubstantiation (consuming the real physical body and blood of Jesus), special privileges, rights and positions of honor for ordained priests (one in particular who resides in Rome, called the Pope) rather than the priesthood of believers with a single high priest, Jesus Christ, worship (veneration) of Mary the Mother of Jesus and other saints and praying to them for protection and guidance, proving various miracles after death of some believers to achieve sainthood for them, complex doctrines and stories completely unfamiliar to me like visions and relics. And it's not hard to hear at least a reference to all of these in just a day or two, with only a nod or a few minutes for grace and trusting in nothing but the merits of Christ. But that's where the freedom is, and that's what changed the whole western world 400 years ago, and is creating revolutions today in Africa and Asia.

On the other hand, if I choose to listen to so-called "Christian radio," which is a hodge-podge of Baptist, Pentecostal, dispensational, non-denominational, and personal opinion groups bound together with syrupy praise songs and Vineyard tunes, I can practically starve, spiritually speaking.

Did You Know--marijuana's carbon footprint

Medical marajuana needs powerful indoor light. "Each cannabis joint produced indoors has a carbon footprint of about one whole kilogram."

The carbon footprint of indoor cannabis production | Asian Correspondent

We paid our dues, where's our change? song

“Dear Mr. President we honor you today sir
Each of us brought you $5,000
It takes a lot of Benjamins to run a campaign
I paid my dues, where's our change?

We'll vote for you in 2012, yes that's true
Look at the Republicans - what else can we do
Even though we don't know if we'll retain our liberties
In what you seem content to call a free society

Yes it's true that Terry Jones is legally free
To burn a people's holy book in shameful effigy
But at another location in this country
Alone in a 6x12 cell sits Bradley

23 hours a day is night
The 5th and 8th Amendments say
this kind of thing ain't right
We paid our dues, where's our change?”

ABC blog

Obama poor-mouths poorly

Barack Obama continued his 2012 presidential campaign first by complaining that Ryan's plan is "radical," and then by presenting himself to the Facebook audience as a poor boy who'd come up through the welfare system. Some how, even though Bush ran up the bill for social programs higher than anyone before it went through the roof with Obama, he's still trying to needle Republicans for being stingy with the poor.

And poor? That's odd. He lived with his grandparents, and his grandmother was a vice president of a bank in Hawaii. As a child in Hawaii he attended a private school. That his grandparents got social security and Medicare later in life, means they worked for living. If you don't work, you get different perks. His Muslim step-father, Lolo Soetero, went on to become an oil executive, although the family lived modestly when chubby little Barry lived in Indonesia.

His mother, he said to this audience of entrepreneurs and non-government employees, while getting her PhD briefly got food stamps (was this in his autobiography?). Why didn't she ask her own parents for money if she was short a little cash for a month or so? I did--then paid it back. Maybe transferring the wealth is considered acceptable in that family even if you don't need it? And Obama wasn't living with her then anyway. Lots of people are eligible for food stamps (now called SNAP) who never apply--the threshold is probably not far from what many students regularly live on and manage.

So he got scholarships for college? Just about everyone does. What does that have to do with Paul Ryan's proposal to cut government spending? And by the way, if he got scholarships, does that mean we will eventually see his school records, because those records are really scarce.

On the other hand, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. thinks Obama is giving Paul Ryan name recognition, something he really needs to be a presidential contender.

Last week when Obama asked Budget Committee Chairman Ryan to attend his "fiscal policy" speech, he put Ryan in the front row. There he astonished Ryan by exposing him one of the most partisanly abusive speeches I have ever heard from a president. He accused Ryan of being "un-American," among other enormities. Ryan was expecting some sort of "olive branch" to be extended to him. It would be, he thought, the start of serious negotiations between the two men. Instead he was put on display as the archenemy of all New Deal, New Frontier and Great Society programs -- as "un-American." Ryan was surprised, as he told Mark Levin on Levin's radio show.

The American Spectator : The Man Who Made Paul Ryan Famous

Ohio among top 15 for favorable tax climate for small business

I’m surprised that Ohio is #9 -- it doesn’t feel like we’re a good state to draw business, but then there are 18 measures, some of which I don’t know much about.

The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council’s (SBE Council’s) “Business Tax Index 2011” ranks the states from best to worst in terms of the costs of their tax systems on entrepreneurship and small business. The Index pulls together 18 different tax measures, and combines those into one tax score that allows the 50 states and District of Columbia to be compared and ranked.

The 15 best state tax systems are: 1) South Dakota, 2) Texas, 3) Nevada, 4) Wyoming, 5) Washington, 6) Florida, 7) Alabama, 8) Alaska, 9) Ohio, 10) Colorado, 11) South Carolina, 12) Mississippi, 13) Oklahoma, 14) Virginia, and 15) Missouri.

The 15 worst state tax systems are: 37) Illinois, 38) North Carolina, 39) Nebraska, 40) Connecticut, 41) Oregon, 42) Rhode Island, 43) Hawaii, 44) Vermont, 45) California, 46) Maine, 47) Iowa, 48) New York, 49) New Jersey, 50) Minnesota, and 51) District of Columbia.

Conestoga trip to the Wright Patterson Air Force Museum

On Wednesday, April 21, our Conestoga group (an organization that supports the Ohio Historical Society) toured the National Museum of the United States Airforce at Wright Patterson Air Force base near Dayton, Ohio. Although we'd been driving past the direction signs for 43 years and wondered about it, we'd never been there. It's our loss. This is a fabulous place, and it's free! If you live within a hundred miles, it's an easy trip with good roads, and you won't regret it. Our tour guide, Dan, suggested beginning our morning tour with the mid-1930s to see what military aircraft was before the war and closing with the ending of WWII at lunch, then either taking in an IMAX film or accompanying him with more touring. Those who'd visited several times chose to continue touring with Dan (he was an outstanding guide), but we chose the IMAX.

Our tour began with the Boeing P26-A, the Peashooter, which was the first all metal monoplane, and ended with the plane Bockscar, that dropped the bomb the Fat Man atomic bomb on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. The lighting was so dim inside the huge building, most of my photos really didn’t turn out well enough to post, but here is the Peashooter from a media photo (outside) and mine. What we saw was a reproduction, but they were used by the U.S. from 1933 to 1938, and then later by the Chinese and the Phillipines. It was really amazing to see how the technology changed so quickly in just 10 years--particularly when we saw the German made V-1 and 2 rockets.

Use of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still questioned by some, but I do believe it saved lives in the long run--particularly of Americans because the U.S. would have lost many more soldiers in an invasion. And I know it’s a controversial idea in these days of dithering about troup strength in old wars while rushing into no-fly zones in new wars with political negotiating only to kick the can down the road, but the point of war is to win (and that means killing people and destroying property and resources). But it probably also saved Japanese lives because incendiary bombs were used on 60 cities between November 1944 and July 1945 in Japan resulting in approximately 800,000 casualties and deaths. The use of the atomic bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually produced fewer casualties in each case than the 3-day bombing of Tokyo earlier in 1945. Considering how many Japanese gave their lives for 2 tiny islands, Iwo Jima and Okinawa (121,000), American leaders concluded, rightly I think, they would defend their homeland even more fiercely.

Photo from B-29 source

Obama's Likability Gap

Daniel Henninger of the WSJ thinks candidate Obama 2008 and President Obama 2011 are two different guys.

Obama.2008 was engaging, patient, open, optimistic and a self-identified conciliator.

Obama.2011 has been something else—testy, petulant, impatient, arrogant and increasingly a divider.

Not me. I always "heard between the lines"--sarcasm, dislike for us, and whining. The way he treated Joe the Plumber is not a lot different than his treatment of Paul Ryan. The way he supports today's union thugs looks pretty much like what he promised SEIU while campaigning in 2008. What was optimistic about hearing he wanted energy prices to go up so we'd become more willing to accept green myths and stories? Where's the hope in higher taxes for small business people earning more than $200,000? Didn't anyone else hear that?
Henninger: Obama's Likability Gap - WSJ.com

Question: What was your favorite book growing up?

Norma: Any book with horses. I loved the Marguerite Henry books--especially the illustrations by Wesley Dennis. I still have my King of the Wind, with the book cover intact. I could put myself right on those ponies or horses. However, for cuddling with mom in a big easy chair, it was Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House series) hands down. She was a great reader, and I could also picture myself in Laura's life. Like this author, I didn't own any Wilder books (used the public library in Forreston and Mt. Morris), nor was I a fan of the TV series. It was a wonderful surprise in the 1990s when I was doing my research for publication on women and farm journals to discover her life as a newspaper columnist.

Leave a comment or send an e-mail, and I'll add your favorite (without your name if you prefer).

Did You Know--the 1918 pandemic

The 1918-20 pandemic "killed more people in absolute numbers than any other sudden outbreak of disease in history. During the 1300’s, the Bubonic plague or Black death, a uniformly fatal bacterial infection caused by Yersinia pestis and spread by flea bites, killed a higher percentage, more than 25%, of the European population, but less in absolute numbers. In perspective, the 1918 pandemic influenza virus killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has so far killed in 24 years, and more people in a year than the Bubonic plague killed in a century." Book summary, "The great influenza" by John Barry.

Returning a good deed

A week ago Friday, our first day back from California, I was at my usual spot at Panera's, but a little later since I hadn't quite readjusted to the eastern time zone. Shortly before I got up to leave I noticed a five dollar bill on the floor. I vaguely remembered the woman who had walked past me a few minutes before, but she had already left the parking lot. The following Monday I was early--maybe the 2nd customer, and so was she. So I asked her if she had lost any money on Friday. Yes, she responded, five dollars, because she had gone to lunch with colleagues from work and had to borrow money to pay for her lunch. So I gave her the five dollar bill. She was so shocked; we paused to exchange names and a few details of our lives and I hadn't seen her since, until this morning.

Today she sat down at my table and said something about good deeds being passed along, and gave me a ten dollar gift card to Panera's! Now it was my turn to be surprised. That wasn't at all necessary, but don't ever turn down a kindness on that basis--just pass it along. That's what she was doing. Someday, I'll be in line with someone who has forgotten her wallet or purse, and I'll buy her coffee.

Did you know--travel warning for Mexico

The United States Consulates General in Matamoros, Nuevo Laredo, and Monterrey advise American citizens that the U.S. government has received uncorroborated information that Mexican criminal gangs may intend to attack U.S. law enforcement officers or U.S. citizens in the near future in Tamaulipas, Nuevo León and San Luis Potosi. This information is being distributed to all U.S. government employees in the three states.
Message

It's never enough, is it?

Although seven agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice devoted $11.9 million in grants for elder justice activities in fiscal year 2009, it's not enough. [This is just federal money, not state.] The GAO report of March 21 (corrected) says we need more federal action (aka tax dollars). With so many agencies and so much money, there's a lot of incentive to double count or over count, to empire build, and to expand your critical staffing levels.

You'll find the usual "abuse" participles--not of people, but grants. Soft, squishy words like facilitating, promoting, establishing and conducting. That should bump up government employment a few points.

A sketchy history of Title VII of the Older Americans Act which seems to be charged with handing out the money. Some of these grants, like the $10,000 ones, seem to be handed out like candy, but for the life of me I can't figure out what you could do with them other than buy stamps, envelopes and maybe get a new computer for the office. But collectively, passed around to hundreds of "collaborations" at the local level, they add up to read money.

Does GAO ever report on the federal government abuse of citizens through taxation, over regulation, disincentives, porous borders, poor energy policies which raise prices of everything, and other "fixes?"

Socialists aren't happy with Obama and the Democrats either

Although I think they're wrong to distrust the success of this President, whom they helped elect, it's nice to see that conservatives, libertarians, and the hard right aren't the only ones unhappy with Barack Obama.

"DON’T TRUST THE DEMOCRATS – NOT A ONE. Especially the progressive Democrats.

Millions believed Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to create a humane, affordable and inclusive health care system and rein in the copious abuses of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. On the campaign trail, Obama proclaimed these corporations were greedy and more concerned about profits and patents than the needs of patients. Some thought because Obama was a former supporter of a single-payer system, he might just enact it when he won the Whitehouse. How wrong they were.

No one could have predicted how much influence and control over health care reform President Obama would give to the very corporate interests killing and bankrupting the American people, and who just a few months earlier, had fiercely attacked and called out by name. No one could have predicted the scale and scope of the sell out. It is truly astounding given the soaring rhetoric of before and the cruel and sleazy reality of now."

Helen Redmond: Beware the Progressive Democrat

Did you know--the 2010 census

Of the 51 metropolitan areas that have more than 1 million residents, only three—Boston, Providence, and Oklahoma City—saw their core cities grow faster than their suburbs. City Journal

Three cups of BS

Our book club did this title--Three cups of tea--but I didn't attend that one. I really hate to see this type of scam--people donated to his schools in good faith. Why does no one blow the whistle on these groups?

Why do women let gay designers dress them like sexless rag dolls?

Not sure but I think this is Dree Hemingway. It certainly does nothing for the dress. That looks like a toilet stall pose by a woman who's had too much to drink. Is that toilet paper in her hand or a diploma?

Join the Tea Party, Murray sez

Both parties have failed us, according to Murray, a semi-regular contributor to this blog. Our only hope now is the Tea Party, he told me in an e-mail. He's even mad at Michelle Bachmann (I still have confidence in her).

It represents the only viable chance to stop the bleeding and institute real positive change for our country. I know it's tough to abandon the party of your choice but I think if you are honest with yourself when considering what's going on and listen to the deception and lies, you'll realize both the Democrats and Republicans have failed us miserably. It's so important to get involved now. Join or donate to your nearest Tea Party for the solutions. It will be tough to overcome the billion dollars that Obama will more than likely raise. He spent his first two years selling Obamacare and campaigning worldwide.He will be spending the next two years campaigning for re-election and ticking you off.
Of course there's the chance you want more of the same but I don't think so. But that's just what you will get if you keep playing the Democrat vs. Republican game. It's time to kick butt.

Maybe so, Murray, but remember third party Ross Perot who put Clinton in office by draining away almost 20 million Republican votes from Bush I? Obama intends to destroy the country by collapsing it from within--not so sure even a lily livered RINO wants that!

Monday Memories--Our wedding party

On the average, probably not too bad.

I was looking at this photo of our wedding party--a very low budget wedding, September 11, 1960. Our best man, Tom--married 50 years this June; our maid of honor, JoElla--48 years; our usher Dick, 50 years; the bride and groom, 50+ years; our usher, Scot--married 4 times, at least (we see him at class reunions); our mystery usher--don't remember his name nor what became of him (not sure we ever saw him after the wedding).

Update: Extensive research (reading the newspaper article about our wedding, and checking the Tech Cannon 1957) reveals the mystery guy is James Schafer, but I still know nothing about him.

Did you know--ACORN

"Senior ACORN executives Amy Adele Busefink and Christopher Howell Edwards were convicted of providing cash bonuses to voter-registration canvassers for exceeding daily registration quotas. Campaign workers received cash if they registered 21 voters or more. Fittingly, the Las Vegas-based program was called Blackjack." Matthew Vadum

Last year, ACORN settled a racketeering lawsuit in Ohio out of court and agreed to leave the state. In the settlement with the Buckeye Institute’s 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, ACORN agreed to “cease all Ohio activity” and surrender all its state business licenses.