Internet Story

I'm not going soft, but sometimes I like these heartwarming stories, and this one truly is amazing. Enjoy

1986, Dan Harrison ( see picture above ) was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University .

On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Dan approached it very carefully.

He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it.

As carefully and as gently as he could, Dan worked the wood out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot.

The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments.

Dan stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away.

Dan never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, Dan was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teen aged son.

As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Dan and his son Dan Jr. were standing.

The large bull elephant stared at Dan, lifted its front foot off the ground, and then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Dan couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant.

Dan summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Dan's legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.

Probably wasn't the same elephant.

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Sorry - I just love this joke.... Hee!

The Long & Not So Winding Road

Yesterday's adventure was a bike trek along the Western Rhode Island Bike Trail. A very nice jaunt (45 miles round trip) from my house to the far reaches of the state. These trails are built along extinct rail paths and, when completed, this one should reach out to the Connecticut border. I'm thinking that it will eventually lead directly to Foxwoods. The wonder of it all, hunh?

In the mean time, there are some pictures of the trip posted below, and the silent movie above is my low-budget version of a Universal Studios ride: E.T.Adventure. I am just too heavy to get off the ground....

A Nation Rejoices!!!

R.I.P Max Roach

What must it have been like to go to clubs in NY and see a band with Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk and Miles Davis ...

Max Roach basically created drums as we know it. Read below ...HE was the guy who assembled all the parts of a drum kit from the various rhythm types of the world, and who used them as a full instrument.

Music affects out lives from the moment we are born, and is a huge factor in our development, no matter who we are. Yet unless some teacher is "into" music history, most kids this week won't even hear about Max Roach.

You can't legislate a sense of history, and it's so very sad that no one teaches the appreciation of at any more.


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Pioneering Jazz Drummer Max Roach Dies at 83
by Neda Ulaby - From NPR Online


All Things Considered, August 16, 2007 · Max Roach was the hottest drummer in New York by the time he was 20 years old. By the time he died at age 83, he was truly one of the giants of jazz.
Roach died early Thursday morning in hospice care in New York after a long illness.
In addition to being a drummer, Roach was also a composer, a bandleader, an activist and a teacher.
He redefined what it meant to be a drummer. Before he arrived, the drum functioned basically as a timepiece. Roach says he made his drums sing solos.
"I felt that the instrument itself could be just as vital as any of the others I could think of," Roach said. "And by virtue of the fact that you deal with that instrument with all four limbs, you have four voices you deal with when you think like that."
In 1989, Roach described the drum kit as an American invention that combines cymbals from the Middle East, tom-toms from Africa and snares from Europe. His band mate Cecil Bridgewater says Roach's genius was in putting those parts together.
"Max doesn't play fundamental drumbeats behind you just to keep the time going," Bridgewater says. "He's making musical statements at all times."
Max Roach was born in a North Carolina town founded by freed slaves, and grew up in a rough Brooklyn neighborhood. His mom gave him drums to keep him off the street. But it was on Manhattan's 52nd Street that Roach started experimenting with harmony and melody alongside Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk and Charlie Parker.
"We hated to sleep," Roach said. "We'd work 9 'til 9 in two different clubs. We'd spend the day looking for places, working out arrangements on things like [Thelonius Monk's] 'Around Midnight.'"
Before his death in 1993, Dizzy Gillespie commented that Roach was a remarkable innovator.
"He had terrific ideas," Gillespie said. "And he developed them as we went along. He had the lick for the shtick."
Roach founded a seminal quintet in 1953 with trumpeter Clifford Brown. But after just three years, Brown was killed in a late-night car accident. He was only 25. Shocked and grieving, Max Roach buried himself in music, and in the blossoming civil rights movement.
In 1960, he recorded an album called "We Insist—The Freedom Now Suite" that featured, among others, singer Abbey Lincoln. It was Roach's answer to the turmoil of the time.
Roach continued to speak out for social justice and helped launch the field of jazz studies. His magnet for talent led him into lifelong collaborations with dancers, playwrights, filmmakers and musicians of practically every genre and every country.
What seemed to happen whenever Max Roach was around was fearlessness—on the bandstand, in the classroom, and on the streets.

Toonces ... You're the best!!!

OK, so this AP article appeared today everywhere... CNN, MSNBC, a ton of local papers, MAD Magazine ... everywhere. This facility is adjacent to Rhode Island Hospital, which is part of the corporation for which I work.

The incredible farce of the world we live in was never more evident than when I walked across the hospital campus this morning to attend a meeting. My trek brought my past this facility, The Steere House.

It looked like a "land-recreation" of the scene from JAWS where every hack boater on the planet was on a quest to catch the shark ... pure chaos. There were media trucks EVERYWHERE. Satellite dishes, cameras, cables, trucks rumbling, reporters standing on marked broadcast spots, speaking their drivel into the camera.

ARE.
THEY.
KIDDING???!!!!

THIS is what the media mobilizes for?

Fine... it's a quirky, fluff kind of story ... but to see the spectacle that was going on this morning was ridiculous. You mean to tell me that there is NO other news? No other story to investigate or report on? Of course there is...but this represents the Barnum & Baily side of the media world as it exists today.
Revolting.

And that brings me to a thought....
How incredible would it be if it turned out that little Oscar's wasn't super-sensitive or prescient.
Suppose that it was OSCAR that was infecting these people with some immediately terminal condition whenever he curled up so lovingly next to them?

I'm just askin' ...
How ironic.

In the mean time.... Send in the clowns.
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When death comes calling, so does Oscar the cat
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP)

Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours.

His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means the patient has less than four hours to live. "He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," Dr. David Dosa said in an interview. He describes the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one," said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.

The 2-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and other illnesses.

After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours. Dosa said Oscar seems to take his work seriously and is generally aloof. "This is not a cat that's friendly to people," he said.

Oscar is better at predicting death than the people who work there, said Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University, who treats patients at the nursing home and is an expert on care for the terminally ill She was convinced of Oscar's talent when he made his 13th correct call. While observing one patient, Teno said she noticed the woman wasn't eating, was breathing with difficulty and that her legs had a bluish tinge, signs that often mean death is near. Oscar wouldn't stay inside the room, though, so Teno thought his streak was broken. Instead, it turned out the doctor's prediction was roughly 10 hours too early. Sure enough, during the patient's final two hours, nurses told Teno that Oscar joined the woman at her bedside.

Doctors say most of the people who get a visit from the sweet-faced, gray-and-white cat are so ill they probably don't know he's there, so patients aren't aware he's a harbinger of death. Most families are grateful for the advance warning, although one wanted Oscar out of the room while a family member died. When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure.

No one's certain if Oscar's behavior is scientifically significant or points to a cause. Teno wonders if the

cat notices telltale scents or reads something into the behavior of the nurses who raised him.
Nicholas Dodman, who directs an animal behavioral clinic at the Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and has read Dosa's article, said the only way to know is to carefully document how Oscar divides his time between the living and dying.

If Oscar really is a furry grim reaper, it's also possible his behavior could be driven by self-centered pleasures like a heated blanket placed on a dying person, Dodman said. Nursing home staffers aren't concerned with explaining Oscar, so long as he gives families a better chance at saying goodbye to the dying. Oscar recently received a wall plaque publicly commending his "compassionate hospice care."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press

Zzzzzzzzzz......

Never is a person more in love with anything
than their bed at the very moment the alarm goes off....

TWISTED MISTER

I know it's been a while since I've posted anything, but I've been really busy.
No, really. Shut UP.
Hard to believe, I know.
And this post is not even remotely humorous, unless you find the idea of your intelligence being insulted by the Commander-in-Chief to be funny. Honestly, Sir... yeah, we're just sheep who will still accept verbatim whatever you say. Let's once again change your reasoning and approach to promote a failed agenda. Let's use hack political rhetoric and push-button scare
tactics to attempt to manipulate opinion.

Your credibility is non-existent to me, and it angers me almost beyond words that you treat the American people with such disregard.

Below is a US News & World Report synopsis of yesterday's NEW presidential approach.
It's a cross-section of the overall media response.

There have been 3 times in my lifetime where I have been outraged by the actions of my President and/or his administration ~ Nixon, Clinton & now. And this time just is more frustrating to me because the world seems different, more political, more media-driven (though that's probably not true), and the actions and statements appear to be such blantant attempts at manipulation. More importantly, they seem to be continuing unthwarted.

Please. Just stop this ridiculous and transparent farce. I beg you.


(Off on vacation next week.... will post more after...much funnier, I'm sure)
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POLITICAL BULLETIN - US NEWS & WORLD REPORT
All the Day's Political News From Newspapers, TV, Radio, and Magazines

SUBJECT: TODAY'S POLITICAL NEWS
DATE: WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2007
Washington News

Media Derides Bush Focus On Al Qaeda
To considerable skepticism from the media and Hill Democrats, President Bush yesterday made the case that Al Qaeda In Iraq and the terror network that attacked the US on 9/11 are closely connected. The State, of Columbia, SC, reports that in remarks at a Charleston military base, Bush said both groups "answer to terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden," and they both want "to destroy freedom." The Los Angeles Times notes Bush said it "would be news to Osama bin Laden" if al Qaeda in Iraq was "not part of the organization that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and is not intent on attacking" the US homeland. The Washington Times calls the speech Bush's "most direct effort to date to connect al Qaeda to the Iraq war," taking "direct aim at Democrats who charge the president has exaggerated the al Qaeda presence in Iraq." The AP says Bush presented his case "in broad strokes," and goes on to assert that despite Bush's argument, "Al Qaeda had no active cells in Iraq when the US invaded in March 2003, and its operation" in Iraq "is much larger now than before the war, US intelligence officers say." UPI runs a similar, brief dispatch on Bush's comments yesterday. MSNBC's Hardball called Bush's speech "one of the most provocative...of his presidency." He spoke "about al Qaeda, the terrorist organization that attacked America on 9/11. Today...Bush said that some group -- the same group, is making its stand not in Pakistan but in Iraq." The Washington Post also casts doubt on Bush's conclusions, noting "Democrats and others" instead believe "al-Qaeda is not running the war" in Iraq, "but is instead benefiting from it." Those same criticisms were echoed yesterday by Democratic lawmakers. Fox News' Special Report reported "top Democrats responded quickly, saying the president was again trying to scare the American people into continuing the war." The New York Times says Democrats "accused Mr. Bush of overstating" the ties between Bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Iraq "to provide a basis for continuing the American presence in Iraq." The Los Angeles Times notes Sen. John Kerry called Bush's case "a phony argument," and said that 'the principal threat' in Iraq is not Al Qaeda but a civil war that pits Sunni against Shiite and an Iraqi government that is not joining the fight." The El Paso Times notes Rep. Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, also criticized Bush's remarks, arguing "the US presence in Iraq could backfire when it comes to protecting the homeland against attack, because al Qaeda -- painting coalition troops as 'occupiers of the Holy Land' -- is able to raise money, recruit fighters and train against specific U.S. tactics and equipment." The Charleston Post And Courier (SC) says that "by stressing al-Qaida's burgeoning operation in Iraq, Bush aimed to frame the war in the public's mind as a matter of protecting the United States." Likewise, CNN noted Bush "mentioned al Qaeda 93 times in just 29 minutes, in an attempt to convince the American people US troops must stay in Iraq. The strategy is simple: emphasize al Qaeda's role in the violence, not the fighting between warring Iraqi groups." The CBS Evening News said the President used "a new rationale...clearly shifting from policing sectarian violence to targeting Al Qaeda." Bush "barely mentioned the Sunni-Shiite violence US troops constantly confront, using the phrase 'sectarian strife' just twice in a half-hour speech, explaining why US troops are in Iraq." Similarly, NBC Nightly News reported, "Critics argue the White House overlooks that Al Qaeda only gained a foothold in Iraq because of the US invasion, a point intelligence officials concede." USA Today describes Bush's remarks yesterday as part of an effort to sway public opinion in his direction with an eye on Gen. Petraeus September 14 Iraq report. "For the next seven weeks," says USA Today, "the commander in chief becomes salesman in chief." The New York Times also says the speech "reflected concern at the White House over criticism that he is focusing on the wrong terrorist threat."