Guilty as charged

Scott Peterson is guilty.  And people are cheering?

Something is wrong here. This should be a solemn occasion.  The facts have been weighed, and God Help Us, the people have chosen as best they could to reconstruct the history of the sad event, death of two innocent folks.

We should be saying soberly, "Sorry, Scott, but as near as we can tell, you have done wrong.  We regret that we have to punish you, but in society's interest, we must."

But cheering?  Not me.  The cheering the verdict and the jeering of Scott's family makes me ill.

Justice is served but wallowing in revenge is inapropriate.

More

Uncle John Scalzi asks, if we could choose any singer past or present to sing us any song, what would we choose?

I'd ask John Gary to sing More.  (More than the stars could ever know)  It is the epitome of love songs. Never mind asking why, I was in l=o=v=e.

The doesn't explain my second choice: Frank Sinatra to sing The Music Stopped (but we went on dancing). All the teen-aged girls went nuts over Frank, but I was a soldier in uniform, for gosh sakes, but I almost fainted when I heard the first bars of that song in amovie at the base movie theater.  I feigned composure and told my buddies merely, "He's almost as good as Bing Crosby." I didn't want to get my ass whipped for being a sissy boy..

Veterans' Day 2002

I am not looking forward to the Veterans' Day ceremony at the old folks home this afternoon.  Here's what happened two years ago.

November 11 is the date that the World War, sometimes called World War I, ended. It was the date of Armistice Day, and until we had a few more wars, was worth celebrating. Now we would need a separate Armistice Day for World War II (August 14), Korean Conflict(), Viet Nam Debacle(), Desert Storm(), so we lump them all together and call them Veteran’s Day. Practically every male is a veteran of some war.

At our Veteran’s Day celebration we raised the new flag, sang the Star Spangled Banner, and then, horrors, asked the veterans to tell about their war experiences.

Asking a veteran to tell about his war experiences is like asking a grandmother if her grandchildren have done anything cute lately, or asking to see someone’s vacation slides. You might as well kick open the flood gates of Hoover Dam. There is going to be a gush that cannot be stemmed.

I was aware of this. I was called on first, and tried to set an example by boiling my war experience into ONE sentence. But no, I was followed by mumbling Bob.

Bob was at D-day. Bob was loaded. No Alzheimer’s here. He remembered everything and was going to tell us about it. He can only mumble, and mumble he did. Jacki (The Activites Director) had to interpret.

BOB; mumble mumble mumble.

JACKI: HE HAD TO WADE ASHORE

BOB; mumble mumble mumble.

JACKI; HE DIRECTED THE TANKS TO THE DEPLOYMENT AREA.

And on and on. Finally,

BOB; mumble mumble mumble.

JACKI; HE WAS ON DETACHED DUTY, THANK YOU, BOB.

Bob sat. John rose.

John remembered the war better even than Bob.

JOHN; mumble mumble mumble.

JACKI: JOHN WENT OVERSEAS ON THE QUEEN MARY ON THE VERY DAY THE NORMANDIE BURNED UP.

JOHN: mumble mumble mumble.

JACKI: JOHN’S BUNK WAS NUMBER 323 ON E DECK.

JOHN: mumble mumble mumble.

JACKI: JOHN’S DOG WAS NAMED KING. THANK YOU JOHN.

John sat down and Mark stood up.

Mark was born in America of Japanese descent. He was interned. He was interned in county fair grounds, right near I street. “If you wandered too near I street they shot at you.”

Then in spite of being interned, he was drafted. In spite of being considered a security risk, he was assigned to military intelligence. Mark was, and is, pretty bitter, but he admitted “This is a great country. They can admit their mistakes. After fifty years, they apologized and awarded us $20,000 each. The apology would have meant more if we hadn’t had to ask for it.”

The ceremony wound on until we came to Cas, the cook, who is still in the reserves, and expects to be called up to fight in Iraq. He does not expect Hussein to back down to UN demands. He expects there will be a war and he will be in it. He did not sound bitter.

Postscript: (today 2004) Cas' unit was called up, and I am not sure whether they went to Iraq or stayed stateside.

Seussical

Our community playhouse stages their own version of Broadway musicals.  It is a real community effort with volunteers from schools and colleges from several counties.  With a hired professional director and muscians they stage pretty exciting representations of what the originals were on Broadway.

It's one way we provincials far from the Great White Way can get a taste of culture. We've seen Joseph's Technicolor Coat, Little Shop of Horrors, Cabaret, Through the Woods, and Chorus Line. 

Today is was Suessical, the musical based o Dr. Suess characters.  The cat in the hat was emcee, and Horton, the elephant, and the Grinch were there too.  Fifty or sixty kids and adults dressed in colorful, outlandish, costumes and became story book characters and danced and sang, like Broadway troupers, and never forgot a line.

And today, the audience was kids from nearby schools.  They were entranced. 

A lady friend and I sat front row, center stage.  We were close to the action.  When Horton, the elephant, sat on Maizy's egg, faithful one hundred percent, it began to snow on Horton.  We were so close it snowed on us too.  In a few moments, the cat in the hat came with a rag and wiped the snow off Horton, and then he leaned over and wiped the snow off the lady and me. 

The kids in the audience went wild.

How're we gonna keep 'em down on the farm, now that they've seen Broadway?

 

 

Photo Scavenger Hunt: LOVE

A friend, Amanda, brought her son to work one day.  I snapped this shot in the hall.  It spells LOVE to me.

Geek Needed

Are any of you BLOGGERS in J-LAND also GEEKS?

I asked that a computer programmer tell me how to make a MACRO so I could post a link to my journal in comments and e-mail with one key stroke. 

Up until now, I have to pull down the "favorites" menu, select my journal, call it up for editing, copy the URL, close it, and then paste it on whatever I'm writing. 

Sepintx has told me how to do it.  Thank you Sepintx.  Read his answer in the comments below

 

Reclaim the airwaves as a National Resource

Scalzi’s weekly assignment: You’ve just been elected president. What one executive order would you like to give?

I asked that question of the residents of my Retirement Villa (Old folks home). They said (1) confiscate the world’s oil, (2) release national oil reserves, (3) declare a holiday, (4) close the borders to immigration, (5) bring back prohibition, (6) appoint another woman to the supreme court, and (7) order Tom Selleck to move to our town.

My own thought was to reclaim the airwaves as a national resource for the public good. Radio and television would be used, not as a huge billboard for advertising consumer goods, but as a forum for free expression ideas.

Imagine commercial free drama, music, talk. How about a free clear channel cell phone for everybody. How about wireless internet for every Middlesex, village, and farm?