Port Royal State Park - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I have visited this site with a very good historian working the site. It is part of the Trail of Tears and I was able to walk the bridge, see the flood impacts from May when the museum was an island, see the washed out old bridge, and get a history of a site where the Cherokee stayed on their trip. This was a settlement in the early days of using the rivers as superhighways and even back in Mississippian culture with trade routes all the way to Cahokia. Port Royal State Park - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

YouTube - poetryanimations's Channel

This is a very interesting channel blessed with actual sound recordings of some poets and using animation of photos to recreate the impact of a poet reading aloud his works. Thoreau, Dickens, Kipling etc. in their voice or a Ben Johnson or John Donne from an actor doing the reading. YouTube - poetryanimations's Channel

YouTube - Qigong: Eight Piece Brocades Chi Kung

This is an ancient art form of movement that helps Tai Chi and is also good for stretching out after a work out at the gym I find. YouTube - Qigong: Eight Piece Brocades Chi Kung

Cottingley Fairies - encyclopedia article about Cottingley Fairies.

As a student of Sherlock Holmes I have always been interested in how Conan Doyle a master of logic for his detective and who solved real mysteries was an advocate that these were real and I have always found it interesting that his father an artist who had mental issues advocated the reality of the fairy world. I have wondered for a spiritualist impacted by the death of his son in WWI, could this also been a son himself sticking up for his father? Cottingley Fairies - encyclopedia article about Cottingley Fairies.

Big hunks of carbonate rock on Mars at last - The Planetary Society Blog | The Planetary Society

Isn't science something that can be fun!Big hunks of carbonate rock on Mars at last - The Planetary Society Blog | The Planetary Society

Your Ultimate Brain-Power Workout

Tai chi is listed as a way to help folks over 40 retain their sense of touch and kinesics awareness which can help with fall prevention. Your Ultimate Brain-Power Workout

Picture Show: The 37 or so Ingredients in a Twinkie - Picture Show - GOOD

I found this a really good use of photographs to cover teaching how a Twinkie is made which I once saw on the Food Channel and found rather interesting. I had a friend tell me its used on the Iditorod race with sled dogs because the fat content kept it from freezing.Picture Show: The 37 or so Ingredients in a Twinkie - Picture Show - GOOD

The Drum Major Instinct - Martin Luther King

A selection being studied by my Great Books group tonight.The Drum Major Instinct - Martin Luther King

Remembering D-Day, 66 years ago - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Lest we forget what our grandparents, uncles, and parents did for us. Remembering D-Day, 66 years ago - The Big Picture - Boston.com

The Old Corral at b-westerns.com

This is one of my favorite webpages for relaxation and I constantly learn new things when reading it. I had missed that Pernell Roberts of Bonanza fame was the last Cartwright to go for example. The Old Corral at b-westerns.com

D-Day June 6, 1944

It is important to remember at Memorial Day and this time period the importance of D Day in all our lives. D-Day June 6, 1944

A sense of humor helps keep you healthy until retirement age

Since I regularly do things that require you to have a sense of humor, this may give me some hope! A sense of humor helps keep you healthy until retirement age

Frequently Asked Questions, Ask an Expert, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Birds that might be impacted by the Gulf oil spill of BP is an obvious topic now and this has good data on it.Frequently Asked Questions, Ask an Expert, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

YouTube - Zombieland Survival

I got the biggest laugh in weeks watching a Tn teacher called Hickok45 have a very serious discussion of zombie hunting in the woods and tactical training. It was so well done and so serious it got funnier the longer I watched it. He also seems to be as good a shot as my Uncle Marlin which is high praise. Zombies are no fun so keep an eye out for them in your defensive plan. I actually found on the net a gaming forum called Day of Defeat Source where zombie Nazi's attack WWII GI's who have to defend themselves with garands etc. in period costume and settings. Evidently the Zombie Apocolypse is more common than I knew! ;^) Sometimes its just good to have a sense of whimsy even in something like a shooting sport. As a teacher you can see he is a born communicator. YouTube - Zombieland Survival

What Causes “Eye Floaters”

I always enjoy biological what causes stories and this is a pretty good one common to humanity. Recently I was discussing with friends, the difficulty in reading a book where I know too much about the author's life and it can get in the way of the story on its own merits. Its similar to a human reaction I had with Starlight a mare that moved in the fence next door and began to pick on Leroy the donkey to the point I really had to work on myself to not actively put human motivations into an animal. I know better, but I struggled to like the mare. She seemed to be almost a bully to Leroy, then Dash the handsome gelding moved in and made my mare go into heat, Starlight bullied for three days and suddenly on the third day, she was number 2. Then I got on her to ride and found out she was insecure, herd bound, and when Dash was ridden out of site she was constantly screaming for Dash and not paying attention to her rider well. It opened up insight on her motivation, I began to feel a little more that it was due to insecurity that she over reacted towards the donkey, and I forgave her better. I have been reading a book with short stories from the Great Books series and one was a story called "11" which was written by a French author who was wounded in WWI three times and his health ruined. He became a pacifist which was not a great surprise after being in trench warfare, lungs impacted, and wounded that many times. What was a big barrier to me was he became in love with Stalin, moved to Moscow, and eventually died writing a biography of Stalin at a time the Gulag and purges were going on. Based upon what other writers were saying about him, he was not doing it to survive, but because he really was for the cult of personality that Stalin began. Now when I struggle with a concept, I read up on things, I think about it, I clean a stall and think about meanings, and I mow yards and think about literature multitasking. As I was mowing looking at the sky worried about a storm brewing on my Toro, I was thinking about how many authors I enjoyed for their craft and their life. I for example admire Isaac Asimov and have hundreds of his stories, I enjoy Allan Dean Foster novels and adaptions and Pip series but know not as much about the author. I really enjoy Ellery Queen and Nero Wolfe's Rex Stout who was a very interesting multifaceted person. I think Byron and Shelley were good writers, but I would have not wanted to hang around with them too much in an age before penicillin. I very much enjoy Sherlock Holmes, read a lot about Author Conan Doyle, and admire many of his traits while being fascinated that he could be so logical, and yet be fooled by photos faked showing faeries with little girls that should have been obvious that they were faked. It was almost as if the emotion of wanting to believe like Peter Pan could over ride the logic part of his brain and yet I think he would have been a fine fellow to have iced tea with on the veranda. One thing about thinking about literature, you can get insight into things the author does not intend. Shakespeare might have been a genius, but might also have been a practical minded man trying to come up with plays that would sell out too. Mark Twain once talked about the autobiography of Ben Franklin who was one of my childhood heroes and fussed about what a complex it could give a fellow reading it and thinking what have I done with my life compared to Ben's. Yet the one thing in Ben's book you never read is that Ben was a first class genius and might have had to struggle with the problem of what do you do when you are the smartest man in the room no matter where in France or England you go. Ben writes about all he does in a matter of fact way and never says, "Oh by the way I am a genius." Newton on the other hand was a flat out math genius that I will never be in the slightest and yet spent hours and hours in seclusion trying to find meanings in numerology such as how fate could be told by adding up the letters a person's name. I think its far more interesting that Mark Twain could be born and die on the return of Halley's Comet. I think its interesting to me that I studied history in school and learned things about WWII era listening to commercials for radio programs for Sherlock Holmes and the Shadow that had references to such things as having a program to have urban 16 year olds work in farmer's fields due to the shortage of labor due to the draft. I had never heard that in school. It is one of the reasons why I get nervous when history books get edited by modern readers with the prejudices of the moment. I think Teddy Roosevelt would have been one of those folks that would light up any room he was in and no one would be bored while he was around even at a dinner party. I read some of his stories of his life and found he was far more interesting the longer I read about him. Yet I had thought in school that some Presidents in the past were simple failures and not the ones you would remember, yet I found one president had a tumor at a time when the country was nervous and to keep things calm he had surgery on his boat at sea to hide the fact that he was gravely ill. Courage that puts country before self was a far more admirable trait than he had been given credit for in history books. Its very similar to those books that do What IF history, such as Hitler is successful as a painter and never gets into politics or America is not attacked in WWII, remains in isolation, and the Nazi army takes England and America is alone in the middle between two expanding cultures. What would happen? In some ways the old Star Trek story of going back in time and letting a woman get hit by a car who if she lived would delay entry into WWII allowing Germany to win is one of those stories. Its human to wonder what if, and its human to struggle to like an author whose work you do not like or to like a story when the author is a hard person to like. Yet something in me tries to see a story on its own merits even when its a struggle, but I have to be honest sometimes and question myself on whether I like the work on its story or in spite of what I know about the author. The opposite can be true in that I liked Annabelle Lee by Poe whose work I admire. Yet once I knew he was an artist at the bedside of a beloved wife dying of consumption and helpless to save her, I have always felt deeper about the poem and The Raven. I was once lucky enough to hear Vincent Price lecture at my university. The more I knew of him the more I followed up on his work like The Bat and being The Saint on the radio with Peter Lorre as a friend. Once I found his life interesting, I followed up on him more. I have seen on You Tube a video history channel in some ways his version of reading The Raven in that Price voice. And I have seen one where he was on the Muppet Show doing a Muppet version of the Raven and its just as good in its own way. Sometimes knowing more behind the scenes can add to a story and not subtract. But sometimes when a horse snakes its head to drive a donkey off from its feed, its still hard to not get irritated at a mare. Its just easier to understand when you know more about how that mare doesn't want to be number 1 and is insecure. In literature the more you know the better I think no matter where it leads you. Its one reason I don't burn books, or twist history to the whims of the moment. I once worked a spill where I knew what happened, who did it, how it happened, and was listening to the plant spokesman from the back of the room. Then when I read the story in the paper the next day, I could hardly recognize the incident as written with what I knew had happened. Since then when I hear news from a distant land with different cultures and languages, I take it with more than a grain of salt. You can edit a video or have a bad interpreter too easily confuse an issue. In a news cycle pressed for a deadline or a writer who never had a science course in a journalism major trying to explain what was happening, I have to also try and be understanding if someone struggles to get across to a reader a day later just what really happened. If you put yourself in the place of someone handed a hard job, and believe me writing a story from scratch that can sell can be hard work, then I try and give some slack to any story or author trying to do something creative. It may fail, and it may win, but there is a kind of good in trying to be good. When I read a story I bring all of my life story with me to the story. The best example I can give of the other side is when I read Harry Potter's second book I looked up at the clock when I got to the last page and realized I had read til 2 am straight through and I had to go to work the next day, but I was there so completely that the rest of the world had faded away and I had to turn the next page. That is why I think good writers in our era will still be read two hundred years later. It may not be a Mickey Spillane, but it might be. The tastes two hundred years from now might be similar or different. It may be that the Red Badge of Courage may be studied in school with Lord of the Flies, or it may be someone will study Perry Mason in a classic book series. Its hard to know in our age what will endure. Sometimes I go only by when I read the book, did I get immersed in it, escape troubles of the day, and have fun and learn something. If I liked it, the rest may not matter in my bookworm life. If I do not like it and someone else does, who is to say I am right. I can only know what I feel when I read a story. I am reading a book by Yang on Tai Chi Sword and how each sword is different and what you do with the hand not holding the sword can be as important as how you grip the sword in your fighting hand. Yet if you are trained in a police department to shoot one handed with a dominant eye, in WWII they taught you to have the empty hand tighten up and balance out the shooting hand to be more accurate in the OSS. Two cultures, two warrior moments in two different centuries using two weapons not a thing a like, and yet how the warrior internally manages body kinesics is still important. And some times I read a story about what makes shadows in your retina, and just find it kind of fun to read up on it. Reading technical stuff can simply be fun sometimes for its own sake. I have drifted around topics tonight free flowing, but what got me started on thinking about stories, authors, and works, can be a game in itself and I like gaming. In the story by the way of 11, a narrator has a patron that takes in 10 pheasants who are given at random the pleasures of luxury for the palace, they have no special merit, and when their time is over they can never come back, and you never find out how it changed them for the better or worse, since the story is really about the narrator having to shut the door in the next one in the line, the 11th, who varies, is sometimes not any worse than the ten in front or better, but who has to watch the door close in front of them. The story can be thought of as the effect of this decision on the narrator who eventually asks his master to let him have a different job. You never really know the master, you don't know what he gave the job to the narrator, or what the ten coming in for a brief time is really about, but the look in the 11th's eyes is what haunts the narrator. The story has merits, but when you also think about the author loving Stalin and what we know about Stalin now, it impacts me like Starlight snaking her head to the donkey. I struggle to understand how one can be in the other. In fact I wonder is the author in his mind, the master, the narrator, or could he think of himself as the 11th. In trench warfare you at random sometimes dodged the shell, and ate breakfast with a comrade killed by supper and had to wonder about why one dies and one lives. I wonder if that had an impact, or was the author blind to Stalin's purges, or petty enough to want to write a puff piece to a potential patron, or was he oblivious. I will never know, but thinking about books while mowing, can lead you to strange thoughts as lightening clouds gather at the horizon. What Causes “Eye Floaters”