If today is your birthday, “Happy Birthday!”
Writer – producer – director Amy Heckerling (Clueless, Look Who’s Talking series, National Lampoon’s European Vacation, Fast Times at Ridgemont High) is 58.
Actor Michael E. Knight (All My Children, Hexed, Date with an Angel) is 53.
Filed under Birthdays
1789 – The first Presidential Inaugural Ball was held in New York City.
1833 – Composer Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg, Germany.
1840 – Composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, Russia.
1901 – Actor Gary Cooper was born in Helena, MT.
1912 – Columbia University approved final plans for awarding the Pulitzer Prize in several categories.
1912 – The first airplane equipped with a machine gun flew over College Park, MD.
1915 – On its return trip from New York to Liverpool, England, the British ocean liner, Lusitania, was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 lives people.
1919 – Eva (Evita) Peron, Argentina’s spiritual leader and wife of former president Juan Peron, was born in Buenos Aires.
1960 – Leonid Brezhnev was selected president of the Soviet Union.
1994 – Almost 3 months after it was stolen from an Oslo museum, police recovered Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
Filed under History
Thanks to fellow blogger Guitarmonk for this one. It says a lot about the state of the world today.
Filed under News
I still can’t get over the beauty of the “Super Moon” this past weekend, so here are some more photos of it from various locations around the world.
Space Needle – Seattle, Washington
Manila, Philippines
Lisbon, Portugal
Loctudy, France
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Lotus Temple – New Delhi, India
Veszprem, Hungary
West Orange, New Jersey
Aalborg, Denmark
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Little Colorado River
The petition I started on April 4 to stop Senate Bill 2109 from being considered by the U.S. Senate has reached 8,963 signatures to date. The bill, which was proposed by Arizona Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain, will force the Navajo and Hopi nations to give up all water rights to the Peabody Coal Mining Company and the Salt River Project and other owners of the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) in exchange for no compensation. It also will prevent any litigation by the Navajo and Hopi nations should they incur future financial losses or physical harm as a result of water depletion and / or water contamination. Kyl and McCain created the bill as a way to honor the centennial of Arizona’s statehood. My first goal is to have the petition reach at least 10,000 signatures. As I stated before, the Hopi and Navajo nations aren’t comprised of the helpless uneducated Indians the state of Arizona and the rest of the nation knew a century ago. Thanks to all who have signed it and please keep this going. View the petition here.
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I reported last week about the tragic slaughter of a white buffalo calf on a ranch here in Texas. Lightning Medicine Cloud was just days away from his first birthday when proprietors of the Lakota Buffalo Ranch in Greenville, Texas, found him dead. The next day ranch owners found the calf’s mother dead, only adding to the shock and mystery. The initial $5,000 reward that ranch owner Arby Little Soldier offered for information leading to the capture and arrest of those responsible has increased to $45,000 as of today. People from across the state and the nation have reacted strongly to the animals’ brutal slayings. The Ranch still plans to proceed with a memorial this coming weekend to mark the first anniversary of Lightning Medicine Cloud’s birth.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Hunt County Sheriff’s Department at (903) 453-6800 and ask for either Sheriff Randy Meeks or Lt. Tommy Grandfield.
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Survivalist Tip: I know I’m late with this, but as before, it just proves how prepared we all must be by December 21. And, one thing we’ll need in our stockpile is sugar. Sugar canes are among the oldest crops. Humans have been cultivating them for thousands of years. Today, most sugar cane crops grow in tropical zones in the Southern Hemisphere.
Unfortunately, sugar has gained a bad reputation in recent decades, mainly because of its abuse in the processed food industry by people who were too quick to blame everything and everyone but themselves for getting fat and lazy. Saying something negative about sugar is like giving a beef-flavored treat to a dog: they’ll swallow it without giving it much thought. But, sugar is an essential element and is part of our biological makeup. It’s fuel for the body and brain and is present in almost every food or beverage humans and animals consume.
Sugar comes in 6 natural forms:
Be leery of processed sugars, such as packaged cookies and cereals, cheesecakes, muffins and Hollywood celebrities. They’re very bad for your health. Too much of these things can interfere with proper brain function, and you definitely don’t need your brain to go haywire as you struggle to survive in the aftermath of the apocalypse.
Filed under Mayan Calendar Countdown
If May 6 was your birthday, “Happy Birthday!” and sorry I missed it.
Baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays (NY Giants, SF Giants, NY Mets) is 81.
Singer – musician Bob Seger is 67.
Actor Ben Masters (Running Mates, Noble House, All that Jazz, Making Mr. Right) is 65.
Guitarist Davey Johnstone (for Elton John) is 61.
Actor George Clooney (Bodies of Evidence, ER, From Dusk Till Dawn, Batman & Robin, The Peacemaker, The Thin Red Line) is 51.
Filed under Birthdays
1851 – Dr. John Gorrie of Apalachicola FL, patented the mechanical refrigerator.
1851 – Linus Yale of Newport, NY became well known for his patent of the clock-type lock.
1856 – Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud was born in Frieberg, Germany.
1856 – Robert E. Peary, first person to reach the North Pole, was born in Cresson, PA.
1895 – Silent film screen star Rudolph Valentino was born Rodolfo Alfonso di Valentina D’Antonguolla in Puglia, Italy.
1933 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
1937 – The German airship Hindenburg, the largest dirigible ever built, exploded as it arrived at Lakehurst, NJ.
1940 – John Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath.
1941 – Joseph Stalin became the premier of Russia.
1942 – Lte. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright surrendered all American troops in the Philippines to the Japanese.
1954 – Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in Oxford, England with a time of 3:59.4 seconds.
1957 – Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Massachusetts was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book Profiles in Courage.
1959 – Pablo Picasso’s painting of a Dutch girl was sold for $154,000 in London, the highest price paid at the time for a painting by a living artist.
1994 – A rail tunnel beneath the English Channel joining Great Britain with France, called the “Chunnel,” officially opened.
Filed under History
Chief Writing Wolf 
Quote of the Day
“During the conversation, Ms. Brunstetter said her husband was the architect of Amendment 1, and one of the reasons he wrote it was to protect the Caucasian race. She said Caucasians or whites created this country. We wrote the Constitution. This is about protecting the Constitution. There already is a law on the books against same-sex marriage, but this protects the Constitution from activist judges.”
– Chad Nance, a freelance journalist in Winston-Salem, NC, paraphrasing a comment made by Jodi Brunstetter, wife of North Carolina State Sen. Peter Brunstetter, about North Carolina’s “Amendment One,” which would outlaw same-sex marriage in the state.
Jodi Brunstetter conceded using the word “Caucasian,” but now says she was misquoted. Wow – even the spouses of politicians have learned how to play the victim!
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Tagged as Amendment 1, bigotry, Jodi Brunstetter, North Carolina, Peter Brunstetter, same sex marriage, stupid comments