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750 guys, armed with a few handguns, some home-made grenades, rifles, and handful of automatic weapons stunned the Nazi troops, forcing the Germans to retreat beyond the ghetto wall. Unfortunately, 60,000 unarmed people are no match for a well trained army, and it was only a matter of weeks before the entire ghetto was destroyed and the inhabitants forced into concentration camps. History might have taken a different course if the people were armed like we Americans are. At least they would have had more than a snowball's chance in hell.
We increasingly miss out on the important moments of our lives as we pass the hours with our noses buried in our iPhones and BlackBerry’s, chronicling our every move through Facebook and Twitter and shielding ourselves from the outside world with the bubble of “silence” that our earphones create.
If you recognize that in yourself – or your friends, families or colleagues— join us for the National Day of Unplugging, sign the Unplug pledge and start living a different life: connect with the people in your street, neighborhood and city, have an uninterrupted meal or read a book to your child.
The National Day of Unplugging is a 24 hour period – running from sunset to sunset – and starts on the first Friday in March. The project is an outgrowth of The Sabbath Manifesto, an adaption of our ancestors’ ritual of carving out one day per week to unwind, unplug, relax, reflect, get outdoors, and connect with loved ones.
Shutting down my grid? What about books, work, play, research, letters (email) to my aunt and my mother? How is unplugging beneficial to me? And, if it is the cat's pajamas to pull the plug at sunset and take the day off, why only one day? How is that the start of a different life?
Besides, I walked out in the hills with the dogs for an hour this morning, sat and read with my son last night, had breakfast with my kids this morning, and when the coals are hot, I'm throwing a steak on the grill while Mrs TWC whips up a salad.
Last week I butt dialed Glen's wife at 1:00 AM her time. Guess that sometimes what goes around comes around.
Rang four times, too. Mrs TWC got up to check my phone, just to make sure nobody died. Hey, we both know that those calls always come in the middle of the night.
My dad was twelve when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He and the family gathered around the radio in the living room on McLean Avenue in St Paul, listening in awe and horror, as the Day of Infamy unfolded.
The USS West Virginia suffered extensive damage from the
bombing at Pearl Harbor. 106 Sailors died in the attack, including her
Captain. The ship was repaired and three years later took part in the
last
Battleship-to-Battleship battle ever fought, sinking the Yamashiro with a broad side from
her radar guided 16 inch guns, thus avenging Pearl Harbor.
TWC
has a Samurai sword, a Japanese officer's sword, and an Arisaka Type 38
carbine; all came home to the US as souvenirs after the Big War.
Almost cut my dang hand off with the Samurai sword, too. As I picked the dam thing up to show it to my friend Stevie Crown of the Dark Side,
it tipped toward the floor and slid out of the
scabbard (because the ancient locking mechanism doesn't work right).
I
reflexively grabbed this HEAVY, STEEL, SHARP-EDGED, MOVING OBJECT with my
bare hand. It was an instant in time where you realize immediately that you've
miscalculated. My brain was on it: DON'T GRAB THAT! Too late
because my automated reflex overrode the message...... Lisa said I
had a big OH-Oh look on my face.
The traffic was jacked up on El Cerrito after I dumped the House Blond at school, so I zipped up the onramp and ended up behind a tractor trailer rig hauling decomposing bodies. The unbearable stench set up a roiling in my nether regions that took hard work to keep down. No place to go, neither, I was hemmed in and mine was the next exit anyway. Worse, there was body fluids leaking from the ass end of the trailer that threw a fine mist onto the front end of Mrs TWC's freshly laundered Hamster Car.
Dude, I was half way up the hill, with all four windows down, before I could breath normally again. I'm tellin' you what.....it was a ghastly, cookie-tossing, rotting corpse kind of smell. Anyone who has ever caught a whiff of a dead body after three days in the desert heat knows exactly what I mean. I guess you figured out by now that the car got the second bath of the week this morning.
In Other News:
The heat wave evaporated and the temps dropped twenty degrees since I hiked out to this ridge with the dogs early Wednesday morning.
Those familiar with So Cal might recognize the back (east) side of Saddleback. At an elevation cloes to 5,700 feet, it is the highest peak in Orange County. The civilization at the base of the mountains is, from right to left, Eagle Glen, Dos Lagos, Trilogy, and Sycamore Creek.
Daisy was baked when we got back and she simply clumb* right into the 100 gallon water trough I keep the animals. That dog loves her some water.
The 4X6 is for the cats to stand on when they get a drink.
Tip of the glass to 
