When Buildings Collapse....

Here's a shot of a building that collapsed in Shanghai just recently.
Nota bene that it did NOT collapse into it's own footprint through the path of GREATEST resistance.
Compare and contrast with the WTC collapses on Sept 11. 2001.

To learn more about fire, explosions and building collapses, have a look at NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) 921 "Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations." It's the national standard.

sj

You Only Get One Shot at Freedom

On April 14, 1775, when British General Thomas Gage, military governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from Secretary of State William Legge, the Earl of Dartmouth and dispatched Lt. Col Francis Smith and 700 British regulars to the Lexington-Concord area, the mission was simple: disarm the rebels, and imprison their leaders, Samuel Adams and John Hancock in particular.

Though out-numbered, the colonists’ superior intelligence and tactical decisions resulted in forcing the British to withdraw all the way to Charlestown, suffering heavy losses along the way.

This was the famous “shot heard around the world,” and the beginning of the American Revolution, as the subsequent war is commonly known.
We don’t know who fired that shot.
But we do know one thing for sure: the issue was “gun control,” and the colonist’s considered it important enough to fight over.
They weren’t fighting for a right to hunt, or to partake in shooting sports, or even for the right to carry a gun to protect themselves or their homes from criminals.
They knew what everyone ought to know by now: a person has that amount of freedom he or she can protect and defend, and not one bit more.

If the colonists had “obeyed the law” and given up their guns, we wouldn’t have a 2nd amendment -- because we wouldn’t have a United States at all.

Millions and millions of innocent people, in a variety of times and places, have been murdered by governments who had previously managed to disarm those people.

You might just want to remember that.


sj

Friendship

To share one heart, one soul.
To see the world through the same eyes.
There's nothing quite as sweet
As time spent with a Friend.


sj





photo by Tamara

Never Trust Anyone.....

....Who wants to deprive you of the capacity to defend yourself.

- sj

image by raftergoblin

Like the Wind

You’ve heard the expression, “run like the wind?”

My partner’s an older horse.
He’s not in his best condition, got a touch of arthritis here and there.
We go out for a little ride, he’s in no particular hurry.
Takes his time.
No urgency.
No Pavlovian work ethic.
Just strolling along, whistling a tune.

But every once in a while, he gets in a mood.
Most often it’s on a cool, cloudy day when the wind is up, tugging at his mane, tiny whirlwinds dancing up dust as they spin across the paddock like valkyrie, teasing and taunting…

He gets in this mood where he can’t keep still, paws the ground, paces, tosses his head, like a boxer getting ready to answer the opening bell.
He gets in this mood where he just wants to run.
And when he does, I just turn him loose and let him fly.

His gallop eats up ground the way an alcoholic going off the wagon tosses down tequila.
The world becomes a blur, and I lean forward, feel the powerful beat of his hooves under me, each one lighting on the ground just long enough to spark off of it again.

When he gets in this mood, he could run forever and just might, except there is no such thing as time. Just being. And I believe that when the Creator thought “horse,” this is what he had in mind.

When he’s satisfied himself, he slows to a trot, a prancing trot, then finally down to a walk that’s about 80 proof strut.
We pause to look behind us, and way, way back there, choking on our dust, we can just make out The Wind, bent-over by the side of the road, puking, swearing and gasping for breath.

And we laugh about it all the way home.


sj

A White Rose for Sophie

She died 8 years before I was born.
Had she lived, she’d be 88 years old now.

Our lives were separated by time, space and events, yet I don’t think I’ve ever felt more of a connection to anyone.
Would we have been friends, I wonder.
More than friends?
What integrity she had.
What courage.
Could I have matched her courage?
I don’t know.


I can’t think of her without tears coming to my eyes. Not the kind of tears you shed for a young girl’s life brutally cut short.
But the kind of tears you might shed when you listen to King speak about his dream, or when you hear beautiful music beautifully played; when an underdog wins the title; when a firefighter makes a daring rescue; when somebody stands up unafraid and tells the truth; whenever somebody, somewhere stands up for what’s right and strikes a blow against what’s wrong in this world
It’s pride.
Not in what people are.
But in what they sometimes rise to be.
And it’s humility, too. I ask myself, what have I done, what will I do, that would put me in the same league as this young woman.
Our battle is the same battle.

Sophie Scholl joined her brother and a few friends, calling themselves “The White Rose,” to produce and distribute a series of anti-Hitler leaflets right under the nose of the SS in Munich.
She was only 22 years old in 1943 when she was executed for high treason only a few hours after a quick trial.
No appeals in a Nazi court.
No habeus corpus.

Witness say she went valiantly to the guillotine with these last words:

"How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?"

I wonder, sometimes what she was feeling when this photo was taken.
Sometimes, I think I feel it, too.

sj



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YEAH, and EVERYbody KNOWS it...

“Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”

-- US Army Field Manual 34-52

It also happens to be against the law.

But what do we expect, what with the police tasering 72-year old grandmothers, and children?

Land of Greed.
Home of the Depraved.
America the Brutal.

What was that dream we once had?
Seemed like it was a good one.
Maybe a great one.
I'm pretty sure that when I was a kid, I was proud of it, not because it had come true, but because we kept dreaming it and kept trying to make it come true.

I can't recall, anymore, what that feeling was like.
And I wonder if I'll ever feel it again.

I miss it.


sj