Five years ago yesterday I started this little website and today’s post is about the 14,598th. I say ‘about’ because I’ve deleted some over the years for one reason or another but that’s the number that appears on the counter when I log in, so there.
Sometimes this blog is a hassle, but other times it’s a bit therapeutic for me and I’ve really enjoyed the relationships I’ve made over the years. I’ve been happy to get to know a pastor in NYC, a woman who sends me postcards from Europe from all her adventures, a manager of a Starbucks in Oklahoma, some lawyer dude and commercial contractor in Wise County, a few dudes with a voice for a sports radio AM station in Dallas, another DJ in Kansas City, a PR/ad man in Canada, college women in Denver and Boston, as well as many, many great readers I know consider as friends.
I just so happen to make that first ever post on my mother’s birthday, and like I have done for the last several years, it’s more important for me to honor my mother than it is to brag about this website. So in stead of me making my daily posts, all I ask of you is to take the time you would normally spend on this website and take on my mother’s favorite hobby of reading. Feel free to read for yourself, or read to your kids or grandkids, heck, read to your dog. But please do me the favor of honoring my mother and take some time to read.
I thank you so very much for stopping by here everyday, taking the time to comment, caring about my silly random thoughts that really are just a bag full of nothing, and honoring my mother.
Feel free to leave a suggestion or link for something y0u think is worth a read.
If you can’t find anything worth a read, below is a Popular Science magazine from the year and month of my birth.
Two good books, one I've just read and the other I'm about a quarter of the way through: "Carrying the Fire" by Michael Collins and " The Dark Side" by Jane Mayer. Michael Collins was the third astronaut on Apollo 11 and his book, written in 1974, describes his professional and personal life in the early astronaut corps including how they were selected, a chronology of Apollo and Gemini training and flights, all of the engineering problems encountered and how they overcame them. It's always considered the best of the books by an astronaut. A lot of inside dope on NASA and the other astronauts. It's very pertinent now that the shuttle program is closing down and manned space travel may be coming to an end.
"The Dark Side" describes how Dick Cheney and his executive advisor, David Addington, were able to subvert the Constitution and Geneva Convention by authorizing the torture of American prisoners, something that we have never done during any war in our country's history. The author, Jane Mayer, describes a number incidents in which innocent individuals were arrested by mistake, rendered to other countries, and tortured for months or years. She describes examples of prisoners killed during the sessions and notes that the Generals Counsel for all the branches of the military opposed the policy as unconstitutional, while professional interrogators for the FBI and the U.S. Army argued that, in addition to being morally wrong, it produced false information. Some of the intelligence obtained was later determined to be bogus but was used, nonetheless,to justify the War in Iraq. Because of the manner in which Cheney operated, it took years to overturn his torture program.
Thanks for reminding that I needed to read again. Last night was something that I had been missing.