Most all of us know the tale of Robin Hood.  He’s a man (or a fox, if you know the cartoon version better) who lives in the forest with his friends, none of which has any money.  Outside the forest are some very unlikeable, greedy, rich people who love to hoard their wealth and never share it with anyone.  Robin’s job is “wealth redistribution”, which is code for taking that money from the rich and giving it to the poor.

At this point, I could go all kinds of directions.  I could discuss how Robin and his men, with all their good intentions and good deeds, are little more than thieves.  Maybe I would talk about how we warp the minds the little children when we tell them stories that glorify criminal behavior as long as it’s done for a noble reason.  Many might expect a transition to politics, as some think the government, on a grand scale, plays the role of the story’s hero, taking money from wealthy people (while making them feel guilty) and giving it to others.

But I’m not doing any of those things.  I’m going to talk about The Dukes of Hazzard.

Any kid from my generation (I was a teen in the 1980s) that had a television watched at least one episode of The Dukes of Hazzard.  I think it was on Friday nights at 7:00pm (right before Dallas maybe?) and the first episode aired on January 26, 1979.  The intro featured scenes from the show and a song by Waylon Jennings that we can all sing in our sleep.  The last line in the song indicates that the good ole’ boys that didn’t mean any harm were “Fightin’ the system like a true modern-day Robin Hood.”

The good ole’ boys were Bo and Luke Duke and, along with Uncle Jesse and cousin Daisy Duke, they took on the law (just like the opening song said they did).  Of course, the show really didn’t follow Robin Hood at all.  As you know, Robin Hood was about the “hero” stealing from the rich while the authorities tried to catch him.  With the Dukes, Bo and Luke were good guys that were constantly chased by the corrupt authorities (led by Hazzard Country strongman Boss Hogg) for crimes they didn’t commit.  Got that?

But the central character was a bright-orange Dodge Charger with a Confederate Flag on the top and “01″ on the doors.  It was called “The General Lee” and that car could pretty much do anything, whether it be jumping a river, jumping a police car, stopping off at the always-empty Boar’s Nest for some countrified dialogue, ripping over Hazzard County’s gravel roads, running Aunt Bea to Mount Pilot, or…wait, one of those things is not like the others.  It whistled Dixie when you pushed the horn button, and was truly the most entertaining character…if you don’t count Flash (Sheriff Coltrane’s hound).

Actually, I kid a little.  As hour-long television shows in the 80s went, it was actually alright.  And for a teenager just preparing to drive, the show was a hoot, what with all the car chases and wild driving and jumps and stuff.  And while it didn’t really fit the “Robin Hood” mold very well, the General Lee rocked!!

I love to eat fish, and being on the Gulf meant there was plenty to be had…all of it was great.  But then we found The Gondolier, an East Coast chain that specializes in pizza.  Their food was outstanding…so good in fact that on our last evening, we simply went back there a second time.  Had we tried that place first, we may have eaten every meal there.  If we go back to Clearwater (and that’s a pretty serious possibility), we may do just that.

The long and short of it is that the laptop stayed mostly parked on the dresser.  But now we’re back to reality (and single-digit temperatures), so I’m hoping to get going this year.  Last year averaged fewer than eight pieces per month, so I’d like to improve on that.

“On January 20, 1791, a bill to charter the Bank of the United States for twenty years virtually breezed through the Senate.”

It’s a pretty simple statement taken from Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, and one that’s easy to just gloss over because we’re so used to banks in the 21st century.  We have banks of every shape and size on nearly every corner.  We can bank online, at the teller window, in the lobby, at an ATM machine, or on a smartphone.  Banks are as common as grocery stores.

In the 18th century, that was not the case.  And while there are people today that don’t trust banks and bankers, 18th-century opinions against the banking system was almost violent.  For Founders like James Madison and John Adams, their political differences found common ground in their opposition to banks.  Jefferson wrote, “I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural…”  He would describe banks as “an infinity of successive felonious larcenies.”

For those against, banks were seedbeds of corruption and vice, turning honest men into money-hungry, money-grabbing monsters.  I think of a bank as a place to store our money safely and earn a bit of interest.  Men like our third President, through the lens of the 1780s, saw it as an oppressor of the poor and a creator of a class-based society…somewhat ironic considering Jefferson’s adherence to slavery despite his vocal abhorrence of the practice.

Some would say that Jefferson and Madison and Adams and those on their side were somewhat backwards in their stance.  Sure, America was largely agrarian now.  But was agriculture the only industry with a future in brand-new America?  Manufacturing and heavy industry, while not a major force at the time, would certainly increase in importance.  They required large amounts of capital to get started…the kind of capital only a bank could hold.  Furthermore, a national bank would help establish credit with other countries as well as manage and reduce the nation’s outstanding debt.

But for James Madison, it went beyond class and oppression and ended at the Constitution.  Alexander Hamilton had authored the idea of the bank using that most famous little piece of our founding charter…Article 1, Section 8.  We know it best as the “necessary and proper” clause.  It gave (and still gives) Congress the power to pass legislation “necessary and proper” to exercise its delegated duties.  Madison didn’t see a bank as “necessary”.  Nice?…maybe.  Convenient?…maybe.  Necessary?…absolutely not.

Madison had argued for the Constitution’s elasticity when writing pieces for The Federalist, but he believed a national bank pushed that elasticity beyond the breaking point.  Many agreed with him.  Hamilton had also argued for flexibility in the Constitution and believed the bank fit nicely under that clause.  And more Senators agreed with him than with Madison, so the bill passed the Senate.

Curious about the bank’s ultimate claim to fame?  How about the party system we enjoy (or loathe, depending on your bent) today?  Yep, it was along the banks of the “banking river” that political parties were born.

I spent an afternoon at the Grand Canyon in the summer of 1986 and it was pretty awesome.  Of course, that’s akin to saying that I spent an afternoon in the Smithsonian.  Or maybe it’s like saying that I read the first five pages of The Lord of the Rings.  Or I flew over the Himalayas.

Not that I’ve done all those things…I’ve only done two of them.  It’s just that a half day was only a fleeting glance at one of the most incredible natural wonders, and that can’t possibly have allowed me to absorb all that is the Grand Canyon.  Even the name “grand” comes off as woefully inadequate.  “Stupendous” might be better, or maybe “phenomenal”, or maybe “awe-inspiring”.  But mentioning the Awe-Inspiring Canyon still wouldn’t give it the justice it deserves.

Then again, maybe just calling it “grand” is purposely meant to be an understatement.  You know, the whole “under-promise and over-deliver” thing.  It’s named “grand” so when you get there, you’re blown away by the unbelievable, indescribable, awesome incredibleness of the place.

President Theodore Roosevelt, a naturalist at heart who ventured all over the world and saw hundreds of examples of nature’s magnificent beauty, visited the Grand Canyon and was quoted as saying, “The Grand Canyon fills me with awe. It is beyond comparison—beyond description; absolutely unparalleled throughout the wide world…”

That’s pretty much my sentiment, too.  It is beyond description.  There is no way to, in human language, tell someone what the place is like.  There are millions of photos you could look at (I posted a reasonably nice example above), but no photograph, no matter how big or how many megapixels, could possibly capture the spectacle.  You simply have to go visit and be thankful for the two eyes that God gave you, so you can take it in visually.

It’s been a quarter century for me, and that’s a long time.  We’re planning on visiting our son again sometime in the spring (he lives in a Phoenix suburb), and we’ve talked about driving down.  If we do, a stop at the Grand Canyon will not only be suggested, it’s probably required.  It’s just a remarkable place.

Oh, by the way, the Grand Canyon National Monument came into being on January 11, 1908.  I, for one, am grateful for that.  I think there are millions of people who, every year, discover they agree with me.

Maybe you’re a fan of Rowan Atkinson because he’s a car nut that has owned a McLaren F1 (one of the world’s rarest and fastest cars).  It could be that you know the man or grew up with him in England.  Or did one of the television shows in which he starred, like The Thin Blue Line or the darker Black Adder series, grab your attention?  He’s been in the movies Rat Race and Johnny English – and maybe others as well – so that might be your hook.  He’s published articles in Car and Evo, two well-known British car magazines (and ones which I always seem to leaf through at the Barnes and Noble magazine stand), maybe that’s your thing.

And maybe you still have no idea who Rowan Atkinson is.  Ok…he was born on January 6, 1955 and if you like birthdays, there’s always that.

But that’s you.  What about me?  Well, it could be a couple of those.  I’ve seen a couple episodes of The Thin Blue Line and Black Adder.  I love cars.  I own the movie Johnny English.  For me, however, it pretty much comes down to two words.

Mr. Bean.

Now maybe you know what I’m talking about.

Mr. Bean is sort of a one-man sketch comedy created and played by Atkinson.  He plays all kinds of characters, but generally it’s a socially inept guy, a kid in a grown-up’s body, who continually gets himself into zany situations, and then tries to extricate himself in the most oddball fashion.  The sketches feature little or no dialogue – and what little there is comes in a goofy low-register voice – but it would be completely superfluous anyways.  Atkinson is a master of facial gestures and his different looks and gazes pretty much tell the story.

And I think the stories are simply hilarious.

There’s one where he goes to the beach and has to put on his swimming trunks.  But he’s not alone and doesn’t want to go all the way back to his car.  His solution left me in stitches.  Speaking of swimming trunks, another sketch has him at the pool, trying to garner enough bravery to jump off the high diving board.  Yet another has him with his girlfriend at a slasher movie…that’s not how you eat popcorn!!

And throughout the sketches, there are these returning idiosyncrasies.  Mr. Bean walks with hands slightly askew, doing a little dance of their own.  There’s that blue three-wheeled car that often shows up, only to be turned on its side.  And of course, Mr. Bean himself always drives a Mini…and drives it very poorly.  There’s the girlfriend that makes occasional appearances, but Mr. Bean just doesn’t know how to act properly with a lady.  And there’s his stuffed teddy bear.

I have to say that the “beach” sketch is one of the better 3-minute escapes you’ll find, and all of them are really funny in their own fashion.  But my favorites are Mr. Bean’s lunch break when he makes a sandwich (“just popped out for lunch!”) and the Christmas episode.  The latter features a hysterical “play time” scene in the store, and another with him conducting the Salvation Army band in God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen…that alone is worth the purchase of the video.

I could go on and on, but suffice to say that you should watch a couple of sketches and see for yourself.

Happy Birthday, Mr. B…uh…Rowan Atkinson!!

Recommended Viewing:  Watch Mr. Bean in action.
Our son just bought a new TV…so did Mr. Bean. Watch him set it up.
Mr. Bean at the beach.
The funniest lunch break.
Christmas, Mr. Bean style.

Happy New Year!!

I hope you all had a relaxing time between the holidays and will head back to work refreshed.  I ate way more than I should have, but fortunately for me, the weather remains relatively warm…30s and 40s.  That means I can ride my bike to work and burn off some of the extra calories I packed on.

If we had been around Nuremberg, Germany on January 2, 1945, New Year’s celebrations would not have been in order.  It was on this evening that more than 500 British Lancasters flew overhead and plastered the medieval city back to, well, the Middle Ages.

The attack itself wasn’t a huge surprise to the city’s population had experienced bombing before.  During the Second World War, Nuremberg was the headquarters of one of Germany’s military districts, which alone made it an allied target of some value.  Furthermore, there was some military production going on there, particularly aircraft and tank engines.

But Nuremberg was also something of a spiritual center of National Socialism.  The Nuremberg rallies of the 20s and 30s were a pretty big deal, and numerous other Nazi Party gatherings had been held there over the years.  Like Adolf Hitler’s desire to crush Leningrad (named after the first Bolshevist leader) and Stalingrad (named after the current leader), it’s at least plausible that Allied planners might consider making Nuremberg a target for more than just strictly military reasons.

Nuremberg, already damaged by previous attacks, was devastated.  The pathfinders were very accurate in marking their targets with the aid of a full moon, and the Lancasters (though not speedy, could carry a significant bombload) did their job with fiery efficiency.  Nuremberg’s center was almost completely destroyed.  Thousands of buildings were reduced to smoldering rubble, including age-old churches, homes, museums, and the like.  More than 100,000 townspeople were left homeless, and another 1,800 were left lifeless.

This was the age of area bombing, so discrimination between military and civilian targets was pretty badly blurred.  And for many other German cities, like Hamburg before and Dresden just a month later, this is how their wars would end.

Well, I said I might be back.  But as we roll into Christmas, I will probably keep this really brief.

Silent Night is probably one of the more famous Christmas carols.  It’s been covered by hundreds of singers, from Annie Lennox (from the Eurythmics, that 1980s pop duo) to country songwriter Skip Ewing.  It’s probably been sung in every possible way, whether it be with a massive orchestra, a towering pipe organ, a single acoustic guitar, or simply acapella.  And it’s been sung in tons of places, like the Vatican, and Jerusalem, and on a street corner, in front of a church Nativity scene, and in your house.

Everyone may not know the entire song, but most folks could sing the first verse in their sleep.  Ok, I take it back…Silent Night is the most famous of Christmas carols.

It was penned in the small village of Oberndorf dei Salzburg, Austria by Father Joseph Mohr in 1816.  But without a melody, it was just poetry on a page.  It remained that way for two years until, as the story goes, Mohr’s church faced a Christmas Eve crisis.  The church’s pipe organ, which had provided music each Mass for time out of mind, suddenly ceased to work.

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace

I suppose that, for Mohr, this caused a bit of panic.  The service needed music, and drums and guitars and synthesizers and “church bands” were still 150 years in the future.  So he turned to Franz Gruber, who lived nearby in the village of Arnsdorf and was a school teacher and the organ player at the church.  He trudged through the snow to Gruber’s home, showing him the lyrics and requesting music that someone could play on the guitar.

Silent night, holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight
Glories stream from heaven afar
Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ, the Saviour is born
Christ, the Saviour is born 

The two men sat down and Gruber put together the tune and the song Silent Night was born.  And that evening…Christmas Eve…December 24, 1818, the song was sung for the first time at the late Christmas Eve Mass.

Silent night, holy night
Son of God, love’s pure light
Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth

I hope you all have a wonderful, and very safe, Christmas!

It contains more than 30,000,000 books.  It has more than 100,000,000 items from various collections.  Are you bilingual?  Good, this place has materials written in 460 different languages.  It houses invaluable music collections, including some of the first recorded sounds in existance.  It has one of the original Gutenberg Bibles.

Yep, the Library of Congress has just about anything you could want to read, watch, or listen to, and thousands of items swell the inventory every day.  In fact, a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the Library of Congress had struck a deal with Twitter, allowing it to keep a digital record of Tweets.  Um…yay?  It spans four buildings, three of which are dedicated to our second, third, and fourth Presidents.

But in 1851, the Library didn’t have four buildings.  It had just one.  There were no Tweets.  And apparently, that building didn’t have a sprinkler system…or maybe it did, and it hadn’t been tested.  Regardless, on December 24, 1851, the Library of Congress caught fire.  Before the flames could be extinguished, more than 35,000 books had been destroyed.  By today’s standards, that’s a mighty small percentage of the total collection.  But 160 years ago, the Library contained just 55,000 books.

What makes the loss more painful to take is that much of Thomas Jefferson’s personal collection was among the charred remains.  If you recall, after the Library was burned for the first time (when the British sacked the capital during the War of 1812), Jefferson sold his books to the government to seed the new library.

Today, you can see what’s left of Jefferson’s collection somewhere on the Library of Congress’ 800+ miles of shelves (a few are shown above).  And I bet if you look up at the ceiling, you’ll see a bunch of sprinkler heads.

I may be back this evening, but if not, have a safe, wonderful Christmas Eve.

Joachim Peiper was getting a bit frustrated, because he was getting further and further behind schedule.  Operation Watch on the Rhine (which we know so well as the Battle of the Bulge) had gotten off to a good start for him and his German compatriots.  Having achieved complete surprise with a 30-division offensive in the dead of winter in the Ardennes Forest, the Allied forces (comprised mostly of American troops in this area) were forced to retreat in the face of the onslaught.

The German objectives were simple.  Reach Antwerp, create a divide in the British and American forces, and hope for a peace deal.  Once that was accomplished, the German High Command could move all its arms and men eastward and try to slow down the Russians.

But the American troops hung in desperately, in many places fighting with a tenacity that surpassed even that of the desperate Germans.  And Peiper was seeing the results of that first-hand.  The offensive was just two days old, and already he was running late.  His final objective, the Meuse River, was taking too long to reach.

Peiper had lost time as he neared the village of Malmedy.  The next town on the road, Stavelot, had seen resistance slow him even more.  On December 18, 1944, he arrived at the village of Trois Ponts, which presented him with a chance to make up some lost time.  If he could cross the Ambleve River using the town’s three bridges (hence the name…Trois Ponts), there was good road ahead, which would allow his tanks to rip through the Belgium countryside and reach the Meuse in a just a couple of hours.

The Americans, however, had other plans.

As Peiper’s lead tanks rolled toward the bridges, they were met by opposing tanks.  The two enemies had barely begun their engagement when, to Peiper’s dismay, the sound of a blast and the rumble of a bridge falling into the Ambleve was heard.  Shortly after, the second major bridge at Trois Ponts was detonated.

This was disastrous.  The German commander now had to move his charges north to the bridge at Cheneux (a tiny village near La Gleize), which meant yet another delay and more precious fuel wasted.

An exasperated Peiper finally reached Cheneux in the last light of day.  He rounded the bend and watched in horror as, just two hundred yards away, the bridge (this time crossing the Lienne River) disappeared in a flash and a crash.

Joachim Peiper’s advance to the Meuse had been stopped.

The Battle of the Bulge, from a German perspective, was all about advancing and covering tons of ground in a very short time.  The German war machine had precious little fuel to use, so rapid movement and the capture of enemy depots was vital before the weather cleared and the Allies’ unbelievable advantage in the air could be used to its fullest.

The dedication of American engineers and sappers, like the ones Peiper faced, played a key role in blunting the German advance and eventually turning the German advance into a retreat and rout.

Recommended Reading: The Longest Winter

The other night we watched yet another of those “disasters of the Apocalypse” shows that seem to pop up with almost absurd frequency these days.  It’s usually the Discovery Channel, or the History Channel, or the Learning Channel, but they’re on all the time.  I suppose it has something to do with the ominous approach of 2012, the year the Mayan calendar ends and a bunch of people believe “the big one” is going to go up.

Didn’t the Mayans live a thousand years ago?  Their calendar probably ended in 2012 simply because they found more entertaining ways to occupy their time.  Hopefully the weight that lots of people give to this nonsense is mostly just a figment of my imagination, because if it’s not, then there are a lot of people that haven’t (unlike the Mayans) found more entertaining ways to occupy their time.

But I digress.  Anyways, this show was one we hadn’t seen before and was narrated by Samuel Jackson.  It was sort of a countdown of the various ways lots of people could get killed by disasters.  There was a big rainstorm over California at Number 5.  Number 4 I can’t remember, but I’m sure it was worse than a container of duck toys spilling into the Pacific.  Numbers 2 and 1 were completely predictable.  Two was a massive tsunami caused by a volcanic eruption and landslide at La Palma island in the Azores…this has been described on a dozen different “what-if” shows.  And of course, Numero Uno was the mega-volcano erupting in Yellowstone, which would lay waste to most of the American existance.  Again, we are not surprised, as this potential disaster is also well-known.

It was Number 3 that most caught my attention…an earthquake.  To be more specific, an earthquake in the Midwest.  Earthquakes in this area aren’t nearly as famous as those occurring around the Pacific Rim and the corresponding Ring of Fire, because they’re so rare.  But when the bigger ones hit, they pack a powerful wallop.

The most famous of the “Midwest” quakes on record was a series of temblors that culminated in a tremendous quake in February of 1812.  Centered over southeast Missouri, northeast Arkansas, and western Tennessee, the biggest ones were felt over a 1,000,000 square miles and damage was recorded as far away as Maine.

But it all began 200 years ago today…December 16, 1811.

At 2:15 in the morning, people along the New Madrid Fault were thrown from their beds by a tremendous rumbling.  They scrambled out of their crumbling homes and got a night-time view of the apocalypse, as the landscape heaved and bucked like a drunken man, under the influence of a quake that would have registered close to 8.0 on the Richter Scale.  There were sand blows and landslides, soil liquifaction and, to hear the locals tell it, a brief reversal of the mighty Mississippi River.

Six hours later, another quake similar in scope struck the region again.  Too large to be an aftershock, it classifies as its own separate quake.  People all over the region were terrified, looking heaven-ward and awaiting the arrival of the Four Horsemen.  Damage was extensive, but deaths relatively light because the population was sparse.

For many years, scientists believed that major earthquakes struck along the New Madrid Fault every couple of hundred years.  And guess what?…we’re at exactly 200 years today.  But seismic activity along the fault has dwindled to a relative handful of very small shakers each year.  I read somewhere that geologists think the fault might be seizing up to a point where quakes no longer occur.

But for the millions of residents that live in St. Louis, Kansas City, Memphis, Chicago, and other large cities in the region, there is that small concern.  I live in central Iowa, several hundred miles from the fault, but I think about it all the time.  Homes in the Midwest are built with tornadoes (and in recent years, flooding) in mind, not earthquakes.

A repeat of the quakes that began two centuries ago would be cataclysmic.

Ususally, when we’re faced with a crisis, our first reaction is some degree of shock.  In a figurative (or maybe even literal) sense, we stand there, staring blankly and not really focusing on anything, with our arms hanging at our sides, not really knowing what to do.  Eventually, our wits return, and we can begin assessing our situation and reacting to it.

That’s kind of how things work.

At the time of the Japanese attacks in December of 1941, many in the U.S. military did much the same.  There was the initial surprise.  It was followed by the “thousand-yard stare”, as the Japanese rolled over objective after objective all over the South Pacific.  And then came the chance to respond, which really didn’t get underway until Doolittle and Midway several months later.

But during that time, there were many instances where soldiers in harm’s way put forth a super-human effort.  Over the years, we’ve discussed Bataan and Corregidor as places where our military men, facing terrible odds and no real hope of rescue, gave an incredible accounting for themselves.

The garrison at Wake Island is another example.

For the men stationed there, it must have been a pretty lonely existence.  The island measured a couple of square miles, so there wasn’t much to see.  It was situated in the middle of nowhere, about 1,500 miles from anything, so there wasn’t anywhere to go.

And as for defenses, well, they were pretty pathetic as well.  Some 5-inch guns from a deceased battleship comprised the big iron.  There were a couple of ancient 3-inch guns that didn’t fully function, some heavy machine guns, a handful of anti-aircraft weapons, and whatever small arms the 450 men (a Marine Defense Battalion and a smattering of others) carried on their hips.  Oh, and there was a Marine fighter squadron with a dozen F4F Wildcats.

Just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Wake was targeted by Japanese bombers.  They concentrated on the air defenses, destroying eight of the twelve aircraft (the other four were flying defense).  There were some subsequent attacks, but all of this was the prelude to the main action.

On December 11, 1941, a Japanese landing force arrived to take over.  It included three cruisers, a half-dozen destroyers, and a pair of troop transports carrying the invasion sortie of 450 soldiers.  The expectation was one of a fairly easy landing and occupation.

Wake’s defenders, however, had different ideas.  They met their unwelcome visitors with all the firepower they could muster.  The men manning the five-inchers succeeded in sinking a destroyer and heavily damaging a cruiser.  In the air, the remaining Wildcats dropped bombs and successfully blew the tail off another Japanese destroyer, sending her to the bottom with all hands.

All of a sudden, this little skirmish had turned into a crisis for the Japanese, and they were the ones staring in shock.  Hopelessly out-gunned, this little garrison was putting a pasting on a much larger invasion force.  And for the first time in the war, the Japanese withdrew from an objective to regroup.

For the men at Wake, it was an awesome sight to see a Japanese force falling below the horizon in retreat.  Commander Winfield Cunningham, when ordering a long list of supplies, humorously included more enemy soldiers to fight.  But as we know, the small atoll was under siege, and no supplies or reinforcements would arrive.  The Pacific belonged to the Japanese, so Wake was on its own.

But Wake would manage to hold out for another two weeks against overwhelming pressure…a pretty remarkable feat considering the circumstances.