Sunday, June 15, 2014

Father's Day

I father vicariously, in tiny ways.  Over the years I've tried to be a positive, male presence in the lives of the students I've come in contact with.  I did a stint as a "Big Brother" for a young boy whose father had never been present in his life.  But I know that there is no chance I'll ever be a real father.  I'm alright with that.  I'm just too old now.  It would be cruel to father a child in my mid 50s, knowing I can't do the things my father did with me.  Walk them all over Disneyland.  Play catch.  Teach them how to bowl.  Chess and poker I could probably manage.

My father died on November 16, 2008.  He taught me how to play poker and made sure I turned out to be better at it than he.  He loved to bowl, but never managed to toss a game over 200.  But he taught me and encouraged me, and I managed to average over 200 for an entire season.  More than once.  He was quite proud when I informed him I was part of the team that won the Worldwide Military Bowling Championships in 1986. 

He taught me a lot of lessons and I won't bore you with all of them, but there is one I want to share.  He had lots of sayings.  One of which was a question:  "why is it that there is never enough time to do it right and always enough time to do it over?"  It is a very valuable lesson.

We tend to romanticize our memories and recollections of our loved ones, and downplay the negatives.  I do that in most of my relationships but not when it comes to Dad.  The wounds run deep.  However, when all is said and done, I miss my dad and wish he were still with us.  If he were, I'd have called him today and wished him a Happy Father's Day.

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Casey Kasem has died at the age of 82.  The above Youtube video is his final signoff from American Top 40, which he left in 2004.  The iconic program that he created (along with Don Bustany, Ron Jacobs and Tom Rounds) has been going on since it first aired on July of 1970.  That week's #1 song was "Mama Told Me Not to Come" by Three Dog Night.  I was listening to AT 40 as a pre-teen in Los Angeles and fell even further in love with radio.  The week's best songs counted down in order.

Later when I went into radio I was shocked to discover that AT40 was distributed to the radio stations that aired in on vinyl LPs.  A box would arrive each week with the new discs.  My job was to sit in the studio, start and stop the turntable and play the commercials where appropriate.  Kasem was one of my idols.

The first time I got married was 1982.  My wife was also in the military and she was assigned to a base on Oahu.  I was stationed in Mississippi and working to get myself reassigned to Hawaii.  One day she called me in the barracks and told me to make sure that I was listening to AT40 that afternoon when it aired on my local station.  Turned out she'd sent in a long distance dedication and it would be airing on that day's program.  So I listened.  She chose one of our favorite songs by Air Supply.  Anyone who is morbidly curious enough to know which song, drop me an email.  I got to hear Casey Kasem read my name aloud, to millions of listeners around the world.  99.99% of whom forgot it immediately after he finished reading it.

RIP Casey.

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Chelsea Manning broke her silence and accused the United States of complicity in the corruption of the election of current Iraq Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to power.  In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, she also raised the ugly specter of the military's "control" of the press by choosing which journalists get to be "embedded" with military units.

It's a valid concern.  Once vetted and allowed to be embedded, journalists who write stories that paint any military activity or individual in an unflattering light risk losing access.  Once lost, that access is nearly impossible to regain.  Michael Hastings found this out the hard way when he published comments from General Stanley McChrystal that were less than flattering concerning the Obama Administration.  One journalist actually sued to try to stop the limitation of press access and the courts ruled there is no constitutional right to be an embedded journalist.

Press coverage of military operations is a delicate balancing act.  Advance notice of military operations disseminated by the media will almost certainly doom those operations to failure.  The public's right to know has to be balanced by concerns for the safety of our military personnel.  It is not an easy thing.  We need to error on the side of protecting the troops as a more important concern than public knowledge of military operations.  But that is not an excuse to hide things that go wrong.

Like any large organization, the U. S. military does not like to see its failures shown in the media, only their successes.  They will gladly talk about the raid to get Osama bin Laden, but are loathe to discuss the disaster in the desert back in 1980 when eight men died in the aborted attempt to rescue the U. S. hostages in Iran.  They talk about what a big success the invasion of Grenada was, but try to pretend that it wasn't bad planning and/or intelligence that led to the needless drowning of four Navy SEALs. 

In the end, perhaps the simplest way to try to fix this problem is to set up civilian oversight of the embedding process while ensuring that time-sensitive information be embargoed until well after it can no longer be used by the "enemy."

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Random Ponderings:

Refusing to reappoint a member of an oversight group that monitors the LAUSD's spending of funds raised by bonds is not good.

I feel the pain that Melanie Griffith is going through at the moment, as she and her estranged husband appear to be battling over custody of their dogs.  That was an issue in my second divorce.

I have not seen the "bikini photo" that Kris Kardashian posted of herself, but I may download a copy and paste it to my refrigerator door.  I'm sure it will ruin my appetite anytime I see it.  Then again, any photo of her will do that.

Someone at the KFC where a 3 year old was made to leave because her scarred face was "disrupting other customers" better be unemployed soon.

I still think Gal Gadot is the wrong choice to be Wonder Woman in the upcoming "Batman vs Superman" but then again I am not sure who would be better in the role. Maybe Jessica Chastain?

More than likely, "23 Jump Street" got green-lit over the weekend, after "22 Jump Street" brought home $60 million to win the weekend box office battle.  I highly recommend "Obvious Child" which did well in its second week of release. 

Mitt Romney calling Hillary Clinton "clueless" is more than mildly amusing.

If it really was an FAA regulation that forced a Jet Blue flight attendant to make a three year old girl urinate in her seat, then that's a regulation that is in need of change.

There are lots of forms of discrimination out there that are real, and need to be stopped.  Not promoting employees who have lots of visible tattoos is not one of those problems.  If a company wants to present a certain image, that's the right of that company.

It may sound cool, but I'm sick and tired of hearing that singing noise when samurai swords are drawn from their scabbard (saya in Japanese). 

Some Spaniard won $135,000 worth of free gasoline for being the only one to correctly guess the score of Spain's World Cup soccer match against Holland.  At current prices, that's nearly 17,000 gallons of gas.  That's going to last awhile.

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June 15th in History:

763 BC – Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.
923 – Battle of Soissons: King Robert I of France is killed and King Charles the Simple is arrested by the supporters of Duke Rudolph of Burgundy.
1184 – King Magnus V of Norway is killed at the Battle of Fimreite.
1215 – King John of England puts his seal to the Magna Carta.
1219 – Northern Crusades: Danish victory at the Battle of Lyndanisse (modern-day Tallinn) establishes the Danish Duchy of Estonia. According to legend, this battle also marks the first use of the Dannebrog, the world's first national flag still in use, as the national flag of Denmark.
1246 – With the death of Duke Frederick II, the Babenberg dynasty ends in Austria.
1300 – The city of Bilbao is founded.
1389 – Battle of Kosovo: The Ottoman Empire defeats Serbs and Bosnians.
1410 – In a decisive battle at Onon River, the Mongol forces of Oljei Temur were decimated by the Chinese armies of the Yongle Emperor.
1502 – Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Martinique on his fourth voyage.
1520 – Pope Leo X threatens to excommunicate Martin Luther in papal bull Exsurge Domine.
1580 – Philip II of Spain declares William the Silent to be an outlaw.
1648 – Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft in the first such execution for the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1667 – The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys.
1752 – Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity (traditional date, the exact date is unknown).
1775 – American Revolutionary War: George Washington is appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.
1776 – Delaware Separation Day: Delaware votes to suspend government under the British Crown and separate officially from Pennsylvania.
1785 – Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, co-pilot of the first-ever manned flight (1783), and his companion, Pierre Romain, become the first-ever casualties of an air crash when their hot air balloon explodes during their attempt to cross the English Channel.
1804 – New Hampshire approves the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratifying the document.
1808 – Joseph Bonaparte becomes King of Spain.
1836 – Arkansas is admitted as the 25th U.S. state.
1844 – Charles Goodyear receives a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber.
1846 – The Oregon Treaty establishes the 49th parallel as the border between the United States and Canada, from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
1859 – Pig War: Ambiguity in the Oregon Treaty leads to the "Northwestern Boundary Dispute" between United States and British/Canadian settlers.
1864 – American Civil War: The Second Battle of Petersburg begins.
1864 – Arlington National Cemetery is established when 200 acres (0.81 km2) around Arlington Mansion (formerly owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee) are officially set aside as a military cemetery by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.
1867 – Atlantic Cable Quartz Lode gold mine located in Montana.
1877 – Henry Ossian Flipper becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy.
1878 – Eadweard Muybridge takes a series of photographs to prove that all four feet of a horse leave the ground when it runs; the study becomes the basis of motion pictures.
1888 – Crown Prince Wilhelm becomes Kaiser Wilhelm II; he will be the last Emperor of the German Empire. Due to the death of his predecessors Wilhelm I and Frederick III, 1888 is the Year of the Three Emperors.
1896 – The deadliest tsunami in Japan's history kills more than 22,000 people.
1904 – A fire aboard the steamboat SS General Slocum in New York City's East River kills 1,000.
1905 – Princess Margaret of Connaught marries Gustaf, Crown Prince of Sweden.
1909 – Representatives from England, Australia and South Africa meet at Lord's and form the Imperial Cricket Conference.
1913 – The Battle of Bud Bagsak in the Philippines ends.
1916 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America, making them the only American youth organization with a federal charter.
1919 – John Alcock and Arthur Brown complete the first nonstop transatlantic flight when they reach Clifden, County Galway, Ireland.
1920 – Duluth lynchings in Minnesota.
1920 – A new border treaty between Germany and Denmark gives northern Schleswig to Denmark.
1934 – The U.S. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is founded.
1936 – First flight of the Vickers Wellington bomber.
1937 – A German expedition led by Karl Wien loses sixteen members in an avalanche on Nanga Parbat. It is the worst single disaster to occur on an 8000m peak.
1940 – World War II: Operation Ariel begins – Allied troops start to evacuate France, following Germany's takeover of Paris and most of the nation.
1944 – World War II: Battle of Saipan: The United States invade Japanese-occupied Saipan.
1944 – In the Saskatchewan general election, the CCF, led by Tommy Douglas, is elected and forms the first socialist government in North America.
1945 – The General Dutch Youth League (ANJV) is founded in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
1954 – UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) is formed in Basel, Switzerland.
1970 – Charles Manson goes on trial for the Sharon Tate murders.
1972 – Red Army Faction co-founder Ulrike Meinhof is captured by police in Langenhagen.
1978 – King Hussein of Jordan marries American Lisa Halaby, who takes the name Queen Noor.
1985 – Rembrandt's painting Danaë is attacked by a man (later judged insane) who throws sulfuric acid on the canvas and cuts it twice with a knife.
1991 – In the Philippines, Mount Pinatubo erupts in the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th Century. In the end, over 800 people die.
1992 – The United States Supreme Court rules in United States v. Álvarez-Machaín that it is permissible for the United States to forcibly extradite suspects in foreign countries and bring them to the USA for trial, without approval from those other countries.
1994 – Israel and Vatican City establish full diplomatic relations.
1996 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army explodes a large bomb in the middle of Manchester, England, United Kingdom.
2001 – Leaders of the People's Republic of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
2012 – Nik Wallenda becomes the first person to successfully tightrope walk over Niagara Falls.

Famous Folk Born on June 15th:

Edward, the Black Prince
Kobayashi Issa
William B. Ogden
Sam Giancana
Yuri Andropov
Lash LaRue
Mario Cuomo
Waylon Jennings
Ward Connerly
Harry Nilsson
Xaviera Hollander
Lee Shallat-Chemel
Muff Winwood
Lee Purcell
Russell Hitchcock
Jim Varney
Steve Walsh
Jim Belushi
Julie Hagerty

Robin Curtis
Polly Draper
Lance Parrish
Brad Gillis
Wade Boggs
Brad Armstrong
Helen Hunt
Courtney Cox
Ice Cube
Jeff Neal
Leah Remini
Jake Busey
Neil Patrick Harris