The Man Who Saw Lincoln Get Shot

Okay, not exactly, but he was there and saw Booth break his leg jumping from the balcony. He was five years old at the time and it really scared him seeing a man break his leg. Apparently Booth must have broken it badly.

Tiny Houses For The Poor

Love him or hate him, everybody in St. Louis knows who Pastor Larry Rice is. He owns a couple of public access television stations and some large homeless shelters. Whether or not you agree with his message, his politics, or his methods, few would argue against the fact that he's done more for the poor and homeless than any human being in the state of Missouri, if not the country.

One of his TV stations, Channel 24.2, features 24-hour per day broadcasts that focus on alternative energy, getting people off the gas/electrical grid, and helping the homeless. We have a lot of homeless people in St. Louis. People tend to think of the homeless as degenerates, bums who don't want to work, drug addicts, schizophrenics, and general idiots too stupid to employ. All of these are true at times, but quite often it's just people down on their luck. Jobs are very hard to come by these days. We've had a government for the past 25-years that has encouraged banking and loan institutions to give credit to anyone no matter what their standard of living. Many people took out home loans for houses much too expensive for them (trying to keep up with the Jones) and applied for credit cards they thought they could pay off based on the rate of pay from a job that they no longer have. Now many of those same people have lost their jobs and their homes, and are caught in a compound credit card debt that they will never be able to pay off. It happens much more often than you think. And not everybody has a relative they can go and live with.

Near the Mississippi Riverfront there was an assemblage of homeless people living in tents communally known as Hopeville.

 

 

It existed for nearly a year and a half before the city finally made them leave and bulldozed their encampment earlier this year. After that they tried to rebuild in a different area, but it only lasted a day before they were again booted out. Here is footage of Larry rice and two other gentlemen being arrested at the event:



But of course it doesn't stop with St. Louis. There are 700,000 homeless people in the USA currently. That number goes up about 7% per year. Nearly every major city has a homeless village in tents and cardboard boxes. You'd think an island out in the Pacific where the rich and famous live would be immune to this epidemic. Not so. Hawaii in fact has the biggest segment of the homeless per capita. This tiny island state has more than 24,000 homeless people, half of them in Oahu. And it's mostly mainlanders who are the homeless there—not the indigenous peoples. The homeless flock there because it's always warm and because there are so many special provisions for the homeless. They receive free healthcare and a shelter to sleep in for $3 per day that includes three meals. They also get food stamps. There's no better place on Earth to live if you're homelss.

 

 

And here are some pics from a former tent city in New Jersey. Like the one in St. Louis, it was also torn down by city officials. Some of these people were very creative at doing the best they could with very little. You've got to take your hat off to them. To have it all just taken away seems incredibly cruel to me.

 

 

 

 

They even had an outdoor chapple area.

The most frustrating thing about helping the homeless is finding shelters that the city will approve of, and that's really the heart of this post. Nearly every major city has a ton of codes, regulations, and zoning laws that make it impossible for anyone who is NOT a professional contractor to build any kind of housing. It's one thing to throw up a shed, but quite another if you want to live in it. If you want a simple one or two room Daniel Boone style cabin with an outhouse and a wood stove, in most cities you're out of luck. This is one area where I side with the Libertarians. We have too darn many laws that prohibit what a person can and cannot do on his or her own property! How on earth did we ever get to this point?

There's a growing crusade in the world called the Tiny House Movement. They have websites, YouTube videos, and magazines that are meant to promote a more simple lifestyle that's realistic and affordable. Sure you have your "green" folks involved too, but I've found in my research that it isn't about environmental concerns with most folks in the movement. They're tired of wasting money on things they don't need and paying for boats and swimming pools for a bunch of fat cats running the cities and the utility companies. They're all about conserving resources, and living within reason. And they can be very creative in their lodgings. Take a look at a few of the tiny houses that are springing up in the USA, Canada, and Great Britain:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following is a straw bale house. Lots of luck getting your city to allow one even though they make great houses with good insulation.

 

 

 

 

It houses a family of four quite well.

Some people try to skirt laws by putting their tiny houses on trailer beds. If your house is on wheels it isn't considered a permanent structure, so most of the building codes don't pertain to it in some cities.

 

 

And take a look at this house & movie by a guy named Jay. Okay, he's a weird environmentalist type, but dig the inside of his house.

 

 

 

 

 

A growing trend in this tiny house movement is to convert storage sheds into homes. You may have noticed the past couple of years that a lot of very cool looking storage sheds have come on the market, many of which already look quite a bit like a tiny house. Here are a few.

 

 

 

 

Some of the larger ones even have enough ceiling height to put in a sleeping loft.

All of these sheds sell for less than $5,000, and most are under $3,000. You'd have to add insulation and then cover it with drywall or paneling, but that's cheap to do. Put down some cinder or concrete blocks for a base, add an old fashioned wood stove that serves as both something to cook on and a fireplace to keep you warm, and you've got a cabin Daniel Boone would be proud to live in. You could run a water line in for a bathroom and sink, or if you live in the country you could also dig a well and put up an outhouse. For electricity you could go solar. Solar panels are very cheap right now.

TINY HOUSES FOR THE HOMELESS. We could build tiny homes for the homeless using these sheds for around $5,000 that would be permanent structures they could live in for life if necessary. I bet your church or other civic organization would be willing to build one or two. Doesn't every city have a little bit of land that isn't being used that could be donated as well? How about we house the homeless in these tiny houses and let them pay us back a little at a time? Even $50 per month would pay off one of these dwellings in just five years! Anybody with a part-time job could own one of these. But we've got to get the city(s) to ease up on these housing codes to do it. Having to put a house on wheels to skirt laws is ridiculous. Wouldn't this be better than the constant cycle of people throwing up tents and boxes just to be torn down and having to start over in another part of town? Plus this would give them a regular residence with a mailbox and possibly a phone (cell anyway), and that would go a long way toward helping them find a job.

Beyond that, aren't you just a little bit sick of the government telling you how to live and what you can or can't do on your own property?

Ideas anyone?

Charles Laughton - I, Claudius (Must See)

You may have heard that back in 1937 Charles Laughton and Merle Oberon were to have the starring roles in a production of Robert Graves novel—I, Claudius. Claudius, the 4^th emperor of Rome, suffered from a nervous condition that caused his head to shake, and he stuttered badly. He also was described as having weak knees that would sometimes buckle on him. Oh, and he drooled when he got excited or nervous. The royal family kept him out of the public eye as much as possible, so great was their embarrassment of him. While they considered Claudius to be a bit of a dolt because of his nervous habits, he was actually somewhat bright and ended up being one of the few halfway decent human beings Rome ever had as emperor. He built the aqueducts and canals that are still there today and wrote his own autobiography among other achievements.

The film halted production after only a few weeks due to Oberon having been injured in a car crash. There are those who claim that Laughton was happy to use this as an excuse to get out of the movie because he didn't like the way he played the role of Claudius, and no doubt it must have been difficult to get the stutter right. (Actually he stammered in it rather than stutter, though he still did a fine job.) Other sources say that he had finally gotten the characterization down correctly and was happy with it after the first couple of weeks.

All of the original footage is still around, and a documentary in 1962 called The Epic That Never Was shows most of the footage. Here's a scene from it where Caligula has been murdered and now the senate must decide whether to allow this buffoon, Claudius (the last adult survivor of the royal family), to become their emperor. As far as I'm concerned this is one of the greatest scenes ever filmed. Surely this would have been the role of Charles Laughton's life, even more so than that of Captain Bligh in Mutiny On The Bounty two years earlier

Great Photos of Baseball's Greats

I think that some people have the idea that baseball a hundred years ago was very primitive and that the players wouldn't be great by today's standards. However, ask people from previous generations who really know the game and they'll generally tell you that baseball players were actually better the farther back you go. I know my dad always felt that way, but he was always quick to acknowledge a great modern day player too. He grew-up watching Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial with the Cardinals and would say unequivocally that the 40s Cards were considerably better than any team they've ever fielded since.

I think there's something about seeing really high quality photographs from the early days of baseball that makes you somehow appreciate the great calibre of play they had back then. I don't know why, it just does. So many of the photos you see from the turn of the 20th century are grainy and just plain poor overall, and I think this somehow causes people to believe this reflects on their play when this really couldn't be further from the truth. So here are some great photos from the golden days of baseball. You can click on most of them to enlarge them considerably.

Stan Musial as a roookie - 1941

 

Enos Slaughter - 1938

 

The Cardinals were a great team long before Musial ever joined them though. In fact, Stan came to the club as a regular in 1942, the year after the great Johnny Mize left for new York.

 

Johnny Mize - 1939

The Cardinals are known for big power hitting 1st basemen, and long before McGwire and Pujols was Johnny Mize. He and Slaughter were great together although the Card's never one a world series with them. (Slaughter did win several alongside of Musial later though.)

And of course before any of them was the old Gashouse Gang of 1934 with the likes of Dizzy Dean (probably the best pitcher of the decade and one of the best ever), Pepper Martin, Frankie Frisch, and of course Joe Medwick. That team had five starting players batting over 300 and won the world series that year. The Cards won five world championships between 1926 and 1934 with many of the players in that lineup. They may have been even better than the 1940s Cardinals. The Cardinals didn't win any championships before 1926, but they still had some great teams and terrific players like Jim Bottomley, Jack Fournier, and Rogers Hornsby.

Rogers Hornsby - 1925

Hornsby was almost certainly the greatest right-handed hitter who ever lived and maybe the best period. He was also one of the best 2^nd basemen. He hit over 400 three times and once hit for a 401 average and 40 home runs in the same season—a feat that will likely never be repeated. You might recall that the 1926 world series between the Cardinals and the Yankees was among the best ever recorded. It went the full 7-games and the Cards took game seven by one run. Babe Ruth hit three home runs in one game and hit the longest fly ball ever recorded at the old park. Actually, he kind of blew the series though. He walked in the 9^th inning and tried to steal second with two outs but didn't make it, and that was that. He hit two home runs recorded to be over 500 feet in the series though. I would have loved to have lived back then, but this was even before my dad was born.

I found some footage of that series. It's grainy, but it's very cool to see Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig play against (and lose to) Hornsby, Bottomley and the Cards in a world series.


Here are some other nice photos of some early ball players mostly from the dead ball era:

Babe Ruth in 1914 when he was still a pitcher.

Ty Cobb sliding into 3rd - 1914

Shoeless Joe Jackson -1920

Joe hit 408 as a rookie in 1911. Babe Ruth said he more or less copied Jackson's swing.

Tris Speaker - 1911

What a great stance Tris Speaker had! And what a great hitter. He would be in the top 10 or 20 at least on anybody's list.

Fielder Jones - 1904 with the White Sox

 

Just How Old Is Uncle Martin?

In light of the recent Mars landing I thought it might be time to reveal something I'm sure everyone is dying to know. Just how old is Uncle Martin--Really?

If you grew-up watching My Favorite Martian then you already know that Uncle Martin is 450 years old since he cited his age several times on the show; however, what you may not realize is that this is his age in Martian years. During episode #19 during the first season he said that there were 300 weeks in a Martian year and 8672 days in each Martian week. So I did the math. (You won't learn this from NASA.)

Uncle Martin is 3,207,452 Earth years old! He was here visiting before the first humanoid. File under Cool Martian Facts.

The Pope's Butler Is No Hero

Leaked documents, most of them confidential letters between various clergymen in the Catholic Church, and many to and from the Pope himself, have found their way into the media since last January. The biggest bombshells came by way of a book written by investigative journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi called Sua Santità. This is just one of six books Nuzzi has written since 2009 concerning the inner workings of the Vatican. Nuzzi refuses to name his sources. Nor do we know what, if anything, he paid for the leaked documents.

We learned a couple of weeks ago that the Pope's butler/personal assistant, Paolo Gabriele, admitted to leaking the documents. And we learned in the past couple of days that he had help by way of another Vatican employee—computer analyst Claudio Sciarpelletti. Gabriele claims that he leaked these documents as "an agent of the Holy Spirit" for the good of the Church and to "help" the Pope. He denies having been paid for the leaked documents.

However, after raiding Gabriele's apartment in May, not only were more stolen letters and other documents found, but also a stolen a check for 100,000 Euros ($124,000), a gold nugget and a valuable 16th century book all belonging to the Church.

Does this sound like a do-gooder? I'm sure there's plenty of corruption in the Catholic Church. After all, they've never denied the content of any of these letters. But I don't think this butler is any kind of a hero for a minute. He's now been indicted on aggravated theft and his co-conspirator, Sciarpelletti, will face charges for complicity. I believe that if Nuzzi and other media persons involved with the leaks are pressed by the Italian police to reveal their sources we'll find that, not only did they come from the Pope's butler, but that a good deal of money was paid for them.

The American media needs to quit portraying this thieving butler as a great servant of the people.

Heat Killing Fish by the Millions in the Midwest

This is something I don't think any of us counted on. The intense heat and drought has caused water temps in shallower lakes, ponds, and streams to reach as high as 100%. this is a photo of hundreds of dead fish at a pond in Rock Port, MO.

Possibly a million or more fish have recently been found floating dead in Illinois waters. Some 40,000 shovelnose sturgeon alone were found dead in Iowa last week. These sturgeon were valued at $10,000,000 because their eggs are prized for caviar.

Dan Stephenson, a biologist with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, said, "We're talking hundreds of thousands (killed), maybe millions by now," Stephenson said. "If you're only talking about game fish, it's probably in the thousands. But for all fish, it's probably in the millions if you look statewide."

High levels of bacteria have also been found in lakes lately. Carp at Lewis & Clark Lake in Missouri have been found with lesions on them indicated bacteria. This is typical when water gets hot. This includes flesh eating bacteria which is often found in water. There's also a brain eating bacteria that enters through the nose. Not a good time to be on the jet-ski.