It is not the first steps but the last ones that are most difficult. – Jean-Francois Steiner, Treblinka
Jean-Francois Steiner is French writer whose father died in a German concentration camp and Treblinka is a historical novel about the Nazi concentration camp located in Poland, a bit north of Warsaw. It based on the testimony of 40 survivors of the death camp and is a moving and profound book. We give it the highest possible recommendation, although it should be noted this book has not met universal acclaim, including some scorn by a Czech survivor of Treblinka. Today’s Thought concerns an armed revolt whose final stages were proving difficult.
There are three elements to success: wisdom, courage and patience. Our experience has shown that each step is progressively more difficult than the previous one.
We must have the wisdom to know that what we are attempting is what we should be doing with our life. Usually, this is easy: you look inside yourself and decide what your talents and ambitions are. Usually, this is what you went to bed at night dreaming about as a kid.
Then we must muster the courage to go and do it, to go and live the life we were meant to live. This is a bit tougher. It means leaving our comfort zone for the uncertainties of tomorrow. It means confronting the specter of both success and failure. Mustering this courage is no small matter and our experience is that not everyone finds it.
It is not the first steps but the last ones that are most difficult…
It is easy to get a good start to an endeavor and the attendant enthusiasm can provide sufficient momentum to keep you going past the inevitable early reverses. Success, however, seldom comes quickly and not everyone has the patience to see things through to the end.
One of life’s great lessons is that good things take time. It’s easy to get distracted. It’s tempting to look at the meager returns for your early efforts, to look at the long road still to be tread and choose an easier path.
This is where patience comes in. For most, success is one long road of trial and error and it’s hard to go all those miles without seeing the success we are looking for. However, if we had the wisdom to find our path and the courage to go and follow it, patience is usually there for the taking. All we have to do is look.
Those who abandon a plan will never know how to close to success they were. Patience combines wisdom and courage to allow us to take those final steps.
The Thought for the Day runs regularly. Quotes are from Gaylon’s private stock.
MORE WAR! YAY!: President Trump – President Trump! – announced Monday that the United States will increase the number of troops we are sending to this nation’s longest war, the 16-year-old war in Afghanistan.
Gaylon For Congress…Vote Early, Vote Often: We said this every hour on the hour while campaigning for the United States Senate (2014) and House of Representatives (2016):
We are not going to have a peaceful world without a peaceful America.
It’s difficult to argue with this statement. The only dividend an America constantly at war has produced is more war because if war produced peace it would already have done so. We’ve been fighting in Afghanistan for 16 years without result and we can spend another 16 years there doing nothing more than wasting American lives.
Stop Us If You’ve Heard This Before: Continuing to meddle in other nation’s affairs will not bring peace, it will only continue to produce more violence. Our meddling in the Middle East is why 9/11 happened and why ISIS exists. Had America been at peace instead of war every day since 1989 the Twin Towers would still be standing and ISIS would be a comic book hero.
USA! USA! During his speech, Trump said we are killing terrorists. Yeah, well, maybe we are. We are also killing innocent civilians but few seem to care about that right now. We are also creating more terrorists because all American interference does is annoy people, inspiring them to do whatever they can to destroy us. It’s what caused 9/11.
Fly In The Ointment: Not only does an America at war produce a violent world, it produces a violent America, too. We don’t think it is reasonable to dismiss the proposition that an America at war every day since 1989 has produced a violent country. It’s all we know. An entire generation of Americans has some zero clue what an America at peace is. It is no different than violent homes producing violent children because all violence begets is more violence, both abroad and at home.
The Bottom Line: Perpetual war is not sustainable and, eventually, it will tag team with our mindless debt and utterly fractured social fabric to bring about the collapse of our once-proud nation. There will come a time when we will run out of people willing to fight our wars and when we will no longer be able to afford to fight them.
ON THIS DATE! ON THIS DATE! Several counties in western North Carolina declare themselves the independent state of Franklin on this date in 1784. The eight counties had originally been offered to the United States government as payment for Revolutionary War debts, however, the Continental Congress declined this offer, leading to the counties secession.
Franklin’s application to become the 14th state in the Union was approved by only seven states in the Continental Congress, two less than required for statehood and the counties now form eastern Tennessee.
Great Moments In Executing Italians: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed for murder in Massachusetts on this date in 1927. They had been convicted in 1921 of murdering two people during an April 1920 armed robbery of a shoe company.
Sacco and Vanzetti biggest crimes were being Italian immigrants and anarchists and they were convicted despite the utter lack of evidence. Protests against their conviction were held around the world, though all appeals and clemency requests would be denied. The pair declared their innocence to the very end.
Whoops, Our Bad: In 1977, on the 50th anniversary of the executions, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation declaring Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted.
More Hot On This Date Action: What History refers to as the Salad Bowl Strike begins in California’s Central Valley on this date in 1970.
The strike was as much against the Teamsters as it was against any particular grower, as the UFW and the Teamsters had been bickering about who had the right to organize farm workers for months. The strike would involve upwards of 8,000 farm workers and remains the largest strike by farm workers in American history. The strike was bitter and violent and ended the following March.
Great Moments In Downloading Porn: The World Wide Web opens to the public on this date in 1991, with the release of the first web page. The first web page had actually been released earlier in the month, but it had only been available to those working on the project.
The Internet was the brainchild of Tim Berners-Lee, who had been working towards establishing an Internet-based information system since the mid-1980’s. The first web page, which is still active if you know where to look, contains information and instructions on exactly what the hell was going on, plus pics of Berners-Lee’s cat.
Quotebook:Either the people would overthrow the government or, more likely, the government would overthrow the people. – Gore Vidal, Empire
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: There wasn’t a trivia question last time, silly!
Today’s Stumper: How many American have died in the war in Afghanistan? – Answer next time!
The Bottom Ten/Opening Week Q and A By Gaylon Kent
Bottom Ten pollsters are nothing if not adaptable, both with their bar tabs and the weekly Bottom Ten surveys.
The NFL season begins two weeks after the Week 1 survey? No problem. The NFL Week 2 Interregnum Poll has become an American classic, combining the awarding of The Jim Hanifan Medallion – symbolic of NFL preseason lousiness – with the witless social commentary you’ve come to know and love.
The Army/Navy game is moved the week after the conference championship games? B-10 pollsters were in step with that, too, tossing in yet another goddamned Interregnum Poll in December, before the final NCAA poll is released.
Now college football is starting two weeks before the NFL?
No problemo. After fretting over the matter for a matter of minutes, the Bottom Ten is pleased to kick off 2017 with the Top 10 questions facing Bottom Ten fan(s) this season.
1. Will the service academies return to mediocrity? You guys sure missed them last year. Your lack of material was evident. No kidding. Air Force, Army and Navy combined for a 27-12 record in 2017 forcing B-10 pollsters to look elsewhere – hi there VMI! – for military football material. Still, though, B-10 pollsters are optimistic and have their trusty, usual “Black Knights of Confusion” and “Army hindered by pregame Army Secretary ruling…” lines ready to go.
2. Does Bottom Ten staff have trouble keeping track of all the awards you guys hand out? Between Tostitos Plaques and Sgt Bilko Trophies and Continental Cups, there sure are a lot of them. You bet we do! While B-10 pollsters are good at regularly passing out the stalwarts – Sgt Bilko Trophy, Tostitos Plaque, Jim Hanifan Medallion, et all – they do tend to forget some of the lesser awards they’ve issued and make others up as they go along, with B-10 pollsters “pretty sure” they’ve issued no less than 7,235 awards over the years.
3. How are the Week 1 matchups shaping up? Oh, the season gets off to an exciting start, with 2017 medal stand laureate UMess, #9 finisher Rice – part of the hilarious Trilateral Commission entry with Vanderbilt and Duke – and past B-10 champion San Jose State all in action Saturday. Oregon State, 6-18 the past two (2) seasons will be looking to make an early-season splash with a big road loss at Colorado State.
4. Do the Jacksonville Jaguars have what it takes to win their first B-10 title? The question for the ages. Sure, the Jaguars have significant B-10 street cred. They have a demanding owner and opening up their quarterback job two weeks into the exhibition season shows the lack of judgment and foresight that usually leads straight to the B-10 glory. But Jaguar fan(s) are still awaiting their first Dan Henning Trophy, symbolic of NFL Bottom Ten supremacy. Still though, with Tom Coughlin there to keep everybody toeing the line, veteran B-10 watchers know you ignore the Jaguars at your peril.
5. Why does LA have both the Chargers and the Rams? Did LA’s application to be a nuclear dump site get turned down? Despite the fact this arrangement didn’t work in the Kennedy Administration, both Rams and Chargers back for another go-round sharing Los Angeles. In 2020 they will share a stadium. Between now and then they’ll fight for the two dozen or so LA sports fans that aren’t following the Dodgers or USC or even the resurgent Los Angeles High School Romans football team
6. Is the Continental Cup returning? Do you guys ever tire of making fun of small college teams that can’t win a game? Of course the Continental Cup – issued to the team with the longest all-division losing streak in NATO – is returning and is currently held by Division III Earlham College in Indiana with 33 straight losses. And no, we don’t ever get tired of making fun of losing small college football programs. It’s what we do.
7. We miss Duke. Will they ever return to form? The B-10 Team of the Decade for the Double Aughts will always have a hold on the hearts of B-10 fans everywhere. While they were ranked in the final survey last year as part of the hilarious Trilateral Commission entry, the Bleu Devils haven’t made the final B-10 survey on their own since 2011. Duke finished 2017 strong, however, losing five (5) of their last six (6) to finish 4-8 and B-10 fans everywhere are hopeful this nonsense of going to bowl games regularly is over.
8. Cleveland Browns = Bottom Ten dynasty? Who knows? The week in, week out sucking of hind tit required to ascend the B-10 throne is immense. We would have thought Jacksonville would be looking back on multiple B-10 titles, but sometimes they’re not even the worst team in the brutal AFC South. The Browns, though, still do not have a quarterback and they are only slightly older than a Pop Warner team, so their 2016 B-10 title could be the start of a long run of Cleveland B-10 glory.
9. Will the NFL exist in 20 years? Probably not. Between fans tuning out because of national anthem protests and players no longer playing the game, we are watching the beginning of the end for the NFL. The threats are real. The whites that watch NFL games don’t want to watch black athletes make valid points about their country by protesting the national anthem and parents will stop letting their kids play football. B-10 pollsters starting the long process of familiarizing themselves with lacrosse for the debut of National Lacrosse League Bottom Ten in 2037.
10. Will over half the NCAA still qualify for bowl games this year? Not quite. In fact, there’s one less bowl from last year as the revered Poinsettia Bowl rolled over and called it a day. Still, though, there are 40 bowl games this season and they’re still going to be played in baseball stadiums, the freezing cold and, of all the silly places, the Bahamas. B-10 pollsters currently placing the over/under on number of bowl teams without a winning record this year at 4.5.
…taking in a sight he might never see again… MacKinlay Kantor, Andersonville
MacKinlay Kantor was an American writer and Andersonville was a novel that earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1956. Andersonville was the name of a Confederate prison camp in the Civil War. Located in Georgia, it became infamous for the squalid, miserable conditions its prisoners were obliged to endure. Andersonville was not only our introduction to what has turned out to be one of our favorite genres, the historical novel, but it also produced the very first quotes in our personal quotebook, started in 1988. As we recall, today’s Thought concerns someone leaving Andersonville for the final time, though it may well have been some seeing Andersonville for the first time.
This quote came to mind while we were watching Monday’s eclipse. Where we lived in northwest Colorado was going to get about 90 percent totality, but a remote part of Wyoming about three hours away offered one minute and 18 seconds of totality. We had never seen a total eclipse before, so we went. A few minutes before totality it started getting darker and cooler and right on schedule the moon was completely blocking out the sun.
There was nothing to do but watch and enjoy a moment long waited for. The technologies of the second decade of the 21st century were set aside because they would only distract. There are times that are best preserved by your mind’s eye because no memory is sweeter than that captured by your complete and undivided attention.
It doesn’t matter what that memory is, either. Whether it’s an eclipse, the view from the summit of a long-desired achievement or leaving the nursing home after seeing your father for the last time, sights you will never see again are rare and we don’t always get advance notice of them. They should be savored, poignant, perhaps, in the moment, but splendid in the memory.
The Thought for the Day runs regularly. Quotes are from Gaylon’s private stock.
CAPSULE ECLIPSE REVIEW: Total Solar Eclipse, August 21, 2017, Intersection of Wyoming State Highway 220 and Natrona County Road 321, Natrona County, Wyoming: We’re not the most exciting people on the planet here at The Daily Dose, but we had never seen a total eclipse before and with one there for the taking a mere three or so hours away, we decided to go.
Our chosen spot is not too far from the middle of nowhere, which is good because there weren’t a whole lot of people there. On the drive up there probably more cars on the road than there would be tomorrow, but not too many people were heading to the middle of nowhere. We got to the designated intersection at 11am, 42 minutes before totality began, after a drive of a bit more than three hours.
Parked nearby was an older gentleman who turned out to be named Larry. Larry had eclipse glasses. I didn’t. A friendly sort, he came up and said hi and I offered to exchange a view of the eclipse with his glasses for a view of its progress with my lousy, homemade pinhole camera.
Thank You Carl Sagan: I remembered our pinhole camera from the 1979 partial eclipse in grade school and they are so easy to make even we can do it: You take a piece of cardboard, cut a hole in the center, put some tin foil over it and poke a small hole in the center. When the time comes, you hold the cardboard up to the sun so the shadow shows up on the piece of white cardstock you brought with you. It actually shows up rather well. Not as good as looking through eclipse glasses, but still a satisfactory way to follow the moon’s progress.
Larry was very generous with his glass and good company for the 45 minutes or so we spent together, one of those supremely rare and good moments when you share a once-in-a-lifetime experience with someone you will see once in your life. Larry had driven about five hours to the middle of nowhere and this was his first total eclipse, too.
Dry, Technical Matter: A few minutes before totality you could notice it getting darker and cooler which caused Larry to put on a sweater against the arctic cold that was about to blow in. We then shared his glasses for one last look before totality.
Larry: Two minutes…Long time coming. Me: Yeah…Worth the wait, though…
It got noticeably darker one final time – Larry would note is seemed like 7pm – and there it was, a moment you hoped might happen with no guarantee it ever would: a total eclipse. The atmospheric conditions weren’t conducive to spectacular corona but no matter. The black disc surrounded by a white ring was satisfactory.
We had one minute and 18 seconds of totality, 78 seconds in a lifetime with billions of them. Larry muttered some words of wonderment under his breath, but other than that we kept quiet, content with how we were taking in a sight we might never see again.
And then it was done. A white ball was the first sign Mr Moon was continuing its journey and after that we stood there dumbly for a few seconds as light returned and the temperature warmed up, though Larry kept his sweater on. There wasn’t much reason to stick around after that, so Larry and I shook hands and parted, two explorers whose paths briefly crossed before diverging.
Some Philosophy Crap: Watching a total eclipse is a great way to make you feel insignificant. What struck us was the fact the moon has been getting in the way of the sun like this for billions of years and will probably do so for billions more. This eclipse looked just like the ones before us humans were around to see them and bore a striking the resemblance to the ones that will happen long after we’re gone. Ponder that and then go home and admire the blue ribbon your artichokes won you at last week’s county fair and try to feel important.
Final Ranking: We’re giving this an A, our highest rating, both circumstantially because we were there and intrinsically, because of the show Mother Nature put on for us. A day worth waiting for.
Editor’s Note: the On This Date feature will return.
Quotebook:That is always best which gives me to myself. – Emerson, address at Harvard Divinity School, 7/15/1838
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1913, established the popular election of US Senators.
Whether we remain ash or become the phoenix is up to us.– Deng Ming Dao, 365 Tao
365 Tao, a book of daily spiritual meditations grounded in the Tao spiritual discipline, is a regular contributor to The Thought for the Day. Regardless of what your spiritual path is, or even if you don’t have one at all, 365 Tao is highly recommended, deserving of the time and consideration of anyone, from a serious reader to a newcomer, an experienced adherent or a novitiate.
Sometimes we do not have control over what happens to us. This can be frustrating, however, there are billions of people on this planet all leading random lives and, of course, Mother Nature acts on her own whims. All of this sometimes adds up to events we may have had nothing to do with but which nonetheless leave an indelible and sometimes permanent imprint on our lives.
What we do have control over is how we respond to any given situation. When calamity strikes, we can let it define us, or we can take control and put the experience to whatever good use we can mine from it. We can drown in the depths or we can ascend to new heights.
This is also true when good fortune strikes. We can wallow in our success, forgetting the dreams and efforts that inspired us to strive in the first place, or we can use success – failure’s cousin – as the impetus for further gains.
Choosing how to respond to a given situation is no different than choosing how we spend our life. We can remain as we are, or we can rise and become the phoenix, living a life that shows others, but more importantly ourselves, that we were put here for a reason and that we are determined to find that reason.
This is not easy. It takes courage to become the phoenix, to rise above everyday wants and prejudices, to veer from the path others are taking and to have the patience to see where that path ultimately leads.
The Thought for the Day runs regularly. Quotes are from Gaylon’s private stock.
THIS IS DEFINITELY A VIOLATION OF REGULATIONS: What in theeee hell is going on here? For the second time in two months a United States Navy ship has been rammed by a civilian vessel. This time it was the USS John McCain (DDG-56) colliding with a Liberian-flagged chemical tanker off the coast of Singapore Monday morning.
Ten sailors are missing and five more are injured. This follows the ramming of the USS Fitzgerald by a civilian ship in June where seven sailors died. This is sad because the only reason ships collide at sea is when sailors aren’t doing what they should be doing.
Dry, Technical Matter: Singapore is a city-state located at the southern tip of Malaysia, which it was a part of until it gained independence in 1965. It is just north Indonesia, and a bit north of the equator. Its port is frequently visited by US Navy ships and the McCain was heading there after some routine ops in the western Pacific.
Back On Message: Why the McCain and the Alnic MC were in the same place at the same time Monday morning wasn’t immediately clear, and the Navy is opening their usual investigation into the matter. The cause of Fitzgerald collision is still under investigation, too, and if you expect either investigation to show the crew of either ship was acting in accordance with Navy regulations you are high. They weren’t.
Now Hear This: This should not be happening. We have significant street cred in this matter, having stood many a watch on the bridge of a US Navy ship and we know from experience it is supremely difficult for a Navy bridge properly staffed by trained sailors standing a proper watch to collide with another ship. Contacts would be visible from miles off with binoculars and even farther off via radar and sonar.
People were not paying attention. People were not following standard procedures. All it would have taken was one pimply faced seaman apprentice with some binoculars and common sense to make a visual sweep of the area and say “Uh, officer of the deck, there’s a ship over there…” or a radar operator or sonar operator noticing a contact getting a little too close.
Uh, Gaylon, You’re Equivocating. Could You Tell Us What You Really Mean? Thank You In Advance: The only reason a ship runs into another ship is that the crew – led by the commanding officer – is screwing up. Maybe the ship’s spades tournament was going on or something. But either watch stations weren’t being manned or, if they were, no one was doing their job properly.
The Bottom Line: Whatever culpability the Alnic MC might have is of no consequence, either. A ship must be proactive in avoiding collisions. The Alnic MC could have been doing figure eights at flank speed and any US Navy ship should have been able to avoid her.
ON THIS DATE! ON THIS DATE! Slave Nat Turner leads a slave revolt in southern Virginia on this date in 1831. Turner was also a minister and believed he had been chosen by God to lead the rebellion. The rebellion was ended by whites two days later.
The death toll was high. Turner and his slaves killed between 55 and 65 whites and afterward Virginia executed 56 blacks and Virginia whites did their part, too, killing 120 blacks just for funsies.
Talk About Your Speedy Trial: Turner himself never left the area and eluded capture until October 30. He was tried and convicted on November 5 and executed on November 11.
Great Moments In Lincoln/Douglas Debates: Abraham Lincoln, then a lawyer, and United States Senator Stephen Douglas hold the first of their seven debates in their race for the US Senate in Ottawa, Illinois on this date in 1858.
Is This Dry, Technical Matter?: US senators were elected by state legislatures back then, so Lincoln and Douglas were actually vying for control of the Illinois General Assembly.
I ‘ll Pack A Lunch: You had to have endurance to attend debates back then. The format called for the first speaker – Douglas and Lincoln alternated this honor – to talk for an hour, then the second candidate to talk for an hour-and-a-half with the first candidate getting another 30 minutes. Though Douglas would win the election, Lincoln edited and then published his speeches from the debates which, along with the intense media coverage the debates garnered, played no small part in his being nominated for president by the Republicans in 1860.
Well, OK, One More Item, Then It’s Bedtime: The Mona Lisa, one of our species seminal paintings, is stolen from the Louvre, a Paris art museum, on this date in 1911.
The thief got a couple of breaks. First, the theft wasn’t discovered until the following day, the genius head of security thought the painting had been removed so it could be photographed, which led to a delay of a few more hours before the theft was reported to the police.
Who never did solve the crime. The thief, a Louvre employee who hid in a broom closet and walked out with the painting after closing, only gave himself away when he got bored hiding the painting in his apartment and tried to sell it to an Italian art gallery couple of years later.
Quotebook:What lots and lots I could tell you of this journey….but oh what a price to pay – to forfeit the sight of your dear face. – Robert Falcon Scott, final letter to wife, written from Antarctica, 1912
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: On the Origin of Species was published in 1859.
Today’s Stumper: When did United States Senators start being elected by popular vote, instead of by their respective state legislatures? – Answer next time!
On the most obvious level, he represents the Herculean task the artist has set for himself, one in which he expects to emerge victorious…. – Miles Unger, Michelangelo, A Life In Six Masterpieces
Miles Unger is an American writer who tends to write about ancient Italians. His book on Michelangelo is one of the best biographies we have read, an excellent accounting of the life of man who will be talked about as long as there are humans around to chat about him. Both Mr Unger and Michelangelo have appeared in this feature before.
On the most obvious level, he represents the Herculean task the artist has set for himself…
Michelangelo’s Herculean task was to bend the world into the shape he wanted, not to bend to humanity’s wind. Michelangelo did this not only by creating the masterpieces allowed by his vision and supreme talent but also in changing how the public perceived and artist and his genius. Michelangelo flouted accepted norms of the time, making the world accept him as an artist with a vision and not just a craftsman for hire.
Every artist must do this, regardless of medium or vision. Our example is when we sit down to write something for you, we do it so you will remember it the rest of your life. Now, we write an awful lot and it is not reasonable to expect you to remember all of it, but if we do not set out with that goal we are not writing, we are merely typing and our efforts would not be worth your time or ours.
…one in which he expects to emerge victorious.
Michelangelo, as both a sculptor and painter, is one of the very few to reach the highest levels in separate forms of human endeavor. He did this because he was determined to lead a groundbreaking life and get the most out of the talents he was issued at birth. He expected to emerge victorious.
We should be equally determined to live a groundbreaking life. Like Michelangelo, we are artists, too, and our lives are our canvasses. We may not live down the ages like Michelangelo – or, then again, we might – but we can make our time on this planet serve us. When we do this, regardless of our talents, we emerge victorious.
The Thought for the Day runs regularly. Quotes are from Gaylon’s private stock.
OLD HABITS DIE HARD: We said this during the tail end of the Obama Administration: between Bush and Obama, this nation was enduring the worst consecutive presidential administrations in its history. We are still fighting wars that one, were not declared by Congress and, two, are not against nations that represent legitimate threats to our liberty. We are mindlessly in debt and saddled with an economy mired in high taxes and excess regulation that still does not work for everybody. Presidents Bush and Obama exacerbated these problems. They are worse than ever.
The Holy Trinity: It is not, frankly, the Upset of the Year to see President Trump making it a presidential triumvirate of lousy leadership. Our expectation were low going in and, in fact, Trump is taking this to the next level, his first seven months showing the potential for the absolute worst Administration this country has ever seen, no small feat in a lineup that includes Nixon and Harding, among others.
Fly In The Ointment Presuming he finishes his term, Trump is on track to make it 20 consecutive years – two complete decades, 20 percent of a century – the American government has been subjected to lousy executive leadership.
F*ck This Noise: We are not, however, ready to concede that Trump will finish his term. We put it at 70/30 he will, but if the Democrats win control of Congress next November Trump is likely to be impeached and Trump is such a wildcard he is capable at any time of saying eff this noise and resigning.
If Trump Is Inevitable…: Trump, of course, is supremely divisive, but there are few situations that cannot be turned to advantage. If we stop thinking in terms of actual leadership and start looking at the Trump White House solely in terms of entertainment value, we have an entirely different animal. Instead of whining about it, we can sit back and enjoy it, marveling and laughing at the very worst presidential leadership this country has inflicted on itself.
Those Zany Republicans: If we do this, immediately Trump goes from being a lightning rod to a source of laughter. Everything from governing by tweet to his witless and insensitive public statements to his complete inability to lead a Congress controlled by his party to do anything more substantive than adjourn becomes comic relief.
While we are on record as saying our nation will not make it out of this half century if we don’t do something, we will probably survive Trump’s term, unless we all end up shooting each other, and we are pleased to present our Trump As Entertainment option to you for your review.
The Bottom Line: This is all our fault. Every two years we have federal elections in this country and every two years we keep electing lousy government. Nobody anointed Trump or Congress – we elected everyone there. Nothing will change until we demand changes at the ballot box.
ON THIS DATE! ON THIS DATE! Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection is published for the first time on this date in 1858. It was published in an English journal alongside an almost identical theory by Alfred Russell Wallace. Wallace had arrived at his conclusions independently of Darwin, and Wallace’s work spurred Darwin to later publish his seminal work On The Origin of Species.
Though not particularly well known today, Wallace was, as he should have been, highly regarded in his day and was cited extensively by Darwin. The Darwin-Wallace Award for major advances in evolutionary biology is named for both of them.
Dry, Technical Matter: The Darwin-Wallace Award was first issued in 1908, then every 50 years until 2008. Since 2010 it has been awarded annually.
Take That, Dammit: Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky – in exile in Mexico – is attacked with an ice hammer at his home on this date in 1940. He would die the next day.
A complete review of Trotsky’s life is, thankfully, beyond the scope of this column, but after doing battle with and losing to Joseph Stalin, Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party in 1927, kicked out of Russia in 1929 and ended up in Mexico in 1937.
Trotsky’s attacker, Ramon Mercader, a Mexican communist working for the Soviets, was severely beaten by Trotsky’s body guards, who bravely had been in another room at the time of the attack. He would survive to spend 20 years in prison, after which he moved to Cuba.
Great Moments In US Mass Shootings: Part-time letter carrier Patrick Sherrill goes on a shooting rampage at a post office in Edmond, Oklahoma on this date in 1986. Though not the first post office employee to do so – Sherrill was at least the fifth – his attack introduced the phrase ‘going postal’ to the American lexicon.
Sherrill killed 14 people and injured five others before killing himself.
Missed It By That Much: Sherrill’s shooting spree came one day after two supervisors had reprimanded him for his job performance. While one of the supervisors died, the other had overslept that morning and missed out on dying.
Quotebook:The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them. – Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Mary, Queen of Scots only child, James Charles Stuart, was King James VI of Scotland and King James I of England and Ireland.
Today’s Stumper: When was On the Origin of Species first published? – Answer next time!
The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win. – Roger Bannister
Roger Bannister is an English distance runner who will live down the ages as the first man to run the mile in under four minutes, doing so in 1954. Regular readers of ours will recognize today’s Thought as also the quotebook selection in today’s Daily Dose feature. Bannister, a retired doctor, is now 88 and has suffered from Parkinson’s Disease for several years.
Bannister’s record mile came at a time when the sub-four minute mile was clearly in the crosshairs, with several other world-class runners coming close and if Bannister hadn’t done it someone else would have, which is illustrated by the fact Bannister’s new world record only lasted a few weeks.
In making history before someone else did, Bannister gave a clinic in how to succeed in any enterprise, great or small.
First, he identified what he wanted to do. When he came in fourth place in the 1,500 meters at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Bannister took a couple of months off to reflect and then decided he wanted to be the first to run the mile in under four minutes. He had the wisdom to know what he was meant to do.
Then he had the courage to go out and do it. He increased the intensity level of his training program, taking himself places he had never been before. He had the patience to stick with his program, even when – especially when – the going got painful.
Through it all, he never lost sight of his goal: running the mile in under four minutes before anybody else did. In May 1953 he ran the mile in 4:03:6, relatively far from his goal, but it was a new British record and convinced Bannister that a sub-four minute mile was doable in general and by him specifically. When the fates presented him the opportunity to be great, Bannister was there to take advantage of the opportunity.
Bannister’s effort still inspires today. It begs us to ask ourselves what we are willing to continue doing once the effort gets painful. When we find what that is, when we look inside ourselves to find what we are meant to do and when we drive ourselves farther than we’ve gone to get there, then we will find ourselves setting our own records.
The Thought for the Day runs regularly. Quotes are from Gaylon’s private stock.
