Call of the Hills

When you get stuck it is no use banging your head with a rock; rather call from help.

 My call brought old Rip down yesterday and we will be off at the first crack of dawn; two pack mules will get us to the cave before sunrise and this time I am not going to rush it.  Laptop and technology is left behind; the call of nature has dictated that I shall do so.

 Lots of things on the computer will just have to wait; maybe I will be back by Tuesday, Feb 1^st or even later but definitely I hope by Friday the 4^th.

 America of the 50 States will survive without me; the one of the 57 States is beyond redemption and I have given up on them.

 Ole Rip and I will be having breakfast in the hills by the time you guys go to bed.

To the judge’s “whims.”

Shucks, I got me a great little Post here.

 Only from America; from Chicago to boot; we even have African connections and Dreams from my Father thrown in with crooked politicians; no. no no-no that’s not Rahm I am referring to [Rahm is a good guy]; what I am referring to is his opponent for the vacancy as Mayor of Chicago.

 “In a stunning setback, an Illinois appellate court tossed Rahm Emanuel off the ballot for next month’s Chicago mayoral race at”the judge’s “whims.”  One guy comments “Obama should just issue and executive order declaring Rahm elegible.” [Spelling verbatim, no editing].  But Obama, I am told, is a Constitutional Law Professor; he surely won’t do that.

 Read it all in The whim of the judges

A Tale from Africa

This Post is the third and last one of a trilogy and I want to ask the reader to be patient and first read the other two.  The three Posts have to be read in conjunction with each other for the overall picture of the theme.  The first and second have just been published and you will find them at Mark the Twain and A Long Walk to Freedom

 This one is about our children.

We have a daughter almost at the very top of her profession in England; she will get to the top step of the ladder with her next move and is abiding her time and enjoys traveling all over after years of studying.  She has not decided to marry yet.

Then there is our son.  He is in his late thirties and his life is [and has been] the basis of this story and Africa today.

He is as he calls it “at the top of the heap” in his profession and when I spoke to him a few years ago about relocating to America where I once upon a time wanted to send him he said that there “he would have to start again at the bottom of the heap” and that he is happy here.

He married a lady a good few years older than himself; she has a son not much younger than he is and there probably won’t be any children from the marriage.

But I am the adopted Grandfather of four children of Africa and their mother.  I am going to give them other names than their real ones but these names like their real ones are standard in much of South Africa today, not fully but much indeed.

I am tired now and need some sleep.  So I shall leave you with just a little teaser before I have to retire and continue the tale tomorrow or another day.

The mother, Susan is what would be called here a brown woman in her early forties, barely educated but a real nice human being; too much fun but mostly always a smile or the hearty natural laugh of her kind; and I should hasten to add, that though scholastic education lacked she was not stupid; in fact I would say if I have to summarize that Susan needed just a small opportunity; she also needed the right one and found it with our son.  Susan grabbed it with both hands heart and soul and is proudly holding on with determination as you have rarely seen.

If things unforeseen do not interfere this countrywoman will in ten years from now have at least two, or maybe three, of her children with University degrees and the oldest daughter will be a much sought after young managerial executive in the leisure industry.

I have to get some sleep now but will be back momentarily.

A Long Walk to Freedom

Some of you may recognize the headline as the title of the autobiography of Nelson Mandela.  I did not get my headline from his book; this is my story of my Life.

 Yet indeed, we have both been on our long walks; we shared the same side of the road for a long time once but my walk was not influenced by him; he didn’t know about me and I am sure that I had no influence on his walks.

 But I may mention him again in this Post.  I don’t know at this stage; we will see about it.

 Not much in literature was written from Africa until a hundred years ago; writing was mostly confined to government recordings of events.  The people of Africa didn’t write anything for the simple reason that the written language did not exist in Africa or its many languages.  What was written was hardly ever read by Africa for the equally simple reason that Africa could not read either and unfortunately that is only now beginning to change.  If any reader takes the previous sentence as disparaging I cannot help it; it is not intended to be; if you don’t understand that you will never understand Africa.

 I now wish to refer you to my previous Post that will be submitted together with this one and another one to follow.  There will be a common thread between the three Posts but you will find other threads depending on how you wish to interpret it.

The first one has just been submitted and you will find it when you click on Mark the Twain right here.

It is necessary to give you an example of a recent experience.

 More of it will be in the third Post that will be called ‘A Tale from Africa’ and you will soon see how it develops but I merely want to refer to a small incident that frightened and saddened me.

 Early June last year I visited our son in Johannesburg.  He and his wife have an “extended” family of four black children; they call him Dad because the mother work for him [she also calls him Dad and I am the “adopted” Grandfather] though the mother is actually a little older than our son.

 The oldest of the children matriculated in 2009 and is on her way to a career.  The two in the middle have just started attending the top English High school in the Johannesburg area and the youngest one is still in the nearby Primary school in standard three, or form five as it is sometimes called [he is about 11 now] and all four of them speak, read and write a good standard of modern English and the South African version of Dutch called Afrikaans.  All four children are reasonably bright and the two in the middle are brilliant students.

 They all bring their exam tests home for their mother and for Mom and Dad and that is how old Grandfather got to see how they are doing in the June exams of 2010.

I went through it day after day, greatly impressed, but had not seen any History papers by the end of the week and I asked them [one had brought a little friend to meet Granddad on that day and I was now surrounded by five young brains of the nation, all very intelligent as I said] and the answer nearly shocked me off my chair.

 The rest of the story will appear in ‘A Tale from Africa” and the link will come in here as soon as all three Posts have been submitted.

 All I want to say now is that the answer about History made me do a fast check because I was so astonished by their answers.  I thought of some quick test and asked them all who could tell me how far Russia is from China.

 The answer from each of five brilliant young brains of five likeable young teenager children was a shy “No. I don’t know” and a little later “They don’t teach us anything about that at school.”  That is the reason for this Post.

 They were all born after Mandela’s release from captivity and, except for the oldest one, all after Freedom had finally arrived.

 This may be a test for each one of you.  Ask a few children or as many as you can in your neighborhood school to tell you how far China is from Russia.  Please do it and let me know your comments in here.

 To be continued

Mark the Twain

To mark the twain is an expression used on the Mississippi River boats to measure the depth of the water under the bout.  The captain who knew his stuff would know about most of the sandbanks but even he would have to shout “Mark the Twain” at times and a young deckhand would use a pole or a rope with a weight at the one end to lower into the water and measure the depth.  Two fathoms would be about OK; less would mean trouble or even disaster

Those of you who have had the good fortune of becoming on good reading terms with Samuel Langhorne Clemens will know that Clemens adopted Mark Twain as his penname; they wrote with pens and pencils in those days; computers and keyboards were unheard of then.

The Journey of Life on which I have often written can also be compared with or even called Life on the River because you have to watch the currents and the flows; it is necessary to mark the twains and to change course at times; life or the river isn’t there for me only; others must share it; caring for life and the river must also be the responsibility of all who are on it; all who benefit from it must share to protect it.

I have just changed my course and will be writing about it in this Post and two others that I will call ‘A Long Walk to Freedom’ and the other one ‘A Tale from Africa’ and publish them at the same time.  When they are all in I intend to insert the links of the others in each one to form a kind of trilogy but I cannot tell you exactly how long each will be because I don’t know that right now.  They will all develop afterwards; you will see additional inserts because Life and the River are flowing all the time; you may comment whenever you wish and share your views with others.

While I get the links ready when they have all been published you may page to anyone with the aid of the arrows that WordPress provide at the top of the Post right above the heading; it takes but one click but the links are A Long Walk to Freedom and A Tale from Africa

That is all for now, Folks.

Joe, the Mind reader and his Pal

Maybe I should say Joe the Magnificent but that will give him a bigger head.  But he is a mind reader, for sure.

 

Reading the mind of a nine year old girl

 

“She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.”

 

In another Post he covers everybody.

 

Reading the minds of All Americans

“On this night, finally, he became President of all the people. It was a privilege to behold.”

What I don’t get is why Joe gives his Pal Obama only 1 out of 10 for mindreading.  OK fair enough, he gives Miss Sarah 0 out of ten which I presume is because Miss Sarah is not a suitable candidate for the Presidency; in Joe’s eyes she is just to terrible for words and can’t even read minds.  But he does the comparison anyway.

Obama 1 Miss Sarah 0 out of ten

Other Media informants have described the Tucson mindreading affair as a dog and pony show; some snidely called it the Great Mind Reader One’s first stump speech for 2012.

Mindreading is not my cup of tea but others excel in the art; in Reading the mind of The One  Kate Pickert has already read His mind by saying that even though Congress passed the repeal of Obamacare yesterday, and even if the Senate should pass it too it is of no use because The One will simply veto the bill when it gets to his desk.

That’s all for the day, Folks; from me anyway.

Israel finds huge natural gas reserve

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=86865

 Top official hails ‘historic moment’ that could transform nation’s future

 Posted: January 23, 2009 12:25 am Eastern

By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

 I hope the above is sufficient acknowledgement of copyright because I just stumbled onto it in Google but I have not seen it reported or discussed elsewhere before.

 The article reads as follows:

 “NEW YORK – A huge deep-water natural gas find off the coast of Israel promises to be a boon to the Jewish state’s economy as well as a stimulus to other developers searching for offshore oil and natural gas in the Mediterranean.

Noble Energy, a New York Stock Exchange-listed company, has discovered an estimated more than 3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in three high-quality reservoirs drilled in the company’s Tamar No. 1 well in the Mediterranean Sea, about 56 miles off the Israeli northern port of Haifa.

Noble Energy drilled the Tamar No. 1 well to a depth of about three miles, beneath 5,500 feet of water.

The find is significant for those who believe the Bible indicates Israel is sitting on a massive oil reserve that would reshape the geopolitical structure of the Middle East.

The find also lends support to the abiotic theory of the origin of oil that holds oil is created naturally within the mantle of the earth, not by biological origins.

“We are the only company producing natural gas off the Israeli shore,” Noble Energy spokesman Brad Whitmarsh told WND. “We also drill for gas in the Mari-B field, offshore closer to southern tip of Israel in shallower water.”

The Tomar site is estimated to be three times as large as the Mari-B natural gas field off Israel’s southern shore that analysts estimate may reach depletion within five years, according to a report published by Israel12c.org.

“We have built a considerable acreage position offshore Israel and have been working this area for years,” he said. “The area around the Tomar has been largely undrilled and unexplored. Tamar was the first we have drilled, and when we started, we estimated we only had about a 35 percent chance of success.”

“Tamar represents our first exploratory well offshore Israel in more than five years, and we are extremely excited by the results,” Charles D. Davidson, Noble Energy’s chairman, president and CEO said in a press release published on the company’s website.

“This is one of the most significant prospects that we have ever tested and appears to be the largest discovery in the company’s history,” he continued.

“We are witnessing an historic moment in Israel’s energy market,” Israel’s National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer told Reuters. “If it turns out in a few weeks that the indicators received in recent days are true, then we are talking about the biggest find in Israel’s history.”

Israel’s Petroleum Commissioner Yaakov Mimran told Reuters that if early finds are validated the site would meet Israel’s demand for 15 years.

“If the Tamar site opposite the Haifa coast succeeds in producing the significant quantities of natural gas predicted, we are talking about a revolution which will have an impact on the Israeli economy for the coming generations,” Dan Halman, CEO of Halman-Aldubi Group told the Jerusalem Post.

“The vast reservoir is poised to bring down electricity prices, reduce the country’s dependence on gas from foreign countries, in particular from Egypt, and thereby turn Israel from a gas importer into a gas exporter,” Halman said.

Analysts told Reuters the natural gas find at Tamar No. 1 was worth an estimated $26 billion and would be available for market starting in 2013.

Nobel Energy holds a 36 percent working interest in the Tamar No. 1, with other owners including the following: Isramco Negev 2 with 28.75 percent; Delek Drilling with 15.625 percent; Avner Oil Exploration with 15.625 percent; and Dor Gas Exploration with the remaining 4 percent.

The Tamar No. 1 site was named after the granddaughter of Israeli geologist Yossi Langotsky, who played a key role in locating the site.

Noble Energy stock closed Thursday at 48.03, down 1.63.

The 52-week range for the stock, according to Yahoo! Finance, is 30.89 to 105.11.”

It is certainly not necessary to add anything to the article because it is sufficiently comprehensive but it is dated almost two years ago to the day.  Does anyone know more about it?  Is it for real?

 Anything related to crude oil prices is relevant to every consumer in the World.

The Post Turtle Story

I first read this story way back then.

“While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old Texas rancher, whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man.

Eventually the topic got around to politics and then they discussed some new guy who was far too big for his shoes as a politician.

The old rancher said, ‘Well, ya know, he is a post turtle’. Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a ‘post turtle’ was.

The old rancher said, ‘When you’re driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a ‘post turtle’.

The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor’s face, so he continued to explain. ‘You know he didn’t get up there by himself, he doesn’t belong up there, he doesn’t know what to do while he is up there, and you just wonder what kind of a dumb ass put him up there in the first place.’ “

Insert Sunday, January 16, 2011 1:19 AM.  Another friend just sent me this picture of an actual post turtle.

An actual post turtle

I remembered the story and actually had to go into my archives when a friend emailed me to say they have had a post turtle making a speech somewhere in Arizona a few days ago, in a town named Twosun or somepin’ like that.  This friend is a nice guy but he is also a practical joker, so I voice mailed and asked him.

“What did the post turtle say?”

“Naaw, you heard me wrong, Ike,” he said and paused a while before he went on, “I didn’t say that the post turtle said anything.  They said that he had made a speech and spoke a lot of funny words but he didn’t actually say anything.  In fact a friend of mine who went there told me that it was the usual post turtle mumbo jumbo that didn’t mean anything.”

That’s post turtle speech; as they say in Texas “ALL HAT, NO CATTLE.”

 Before we hung up my friend said, “We are all fixin’ on getting us some cat-fish at Doc’s place this weekend; you wanna come along, huh?’

 I declined but smiled.  He is from Newtie’s country; they will tell you over and over “his Mama always called him Newtie.”  They love Newtie down there and whatever they are fixin’ on doing most of the time involves either cat-fishing or hunting.  It’s good to be there.

Will America Survive

If the question is as simple as in the headline the answer is probably NO.

America has long not been the America of 50 years ago when Kennedy took over and has changed a lot since.  Many people started referring to Two America’s; even Time Magazine has now joined that school of thought.

Clinton came, and Barrack followed after a brief interlude by President George W, the latter who tried but failed to stop the slide.  President W Bush has been blamed for so much but if he failed in anything his biggest failure was in his efforts to prevent America sliding into a decadent Society and from there on into disgrace.

What caused this?

The answer is more complicated than the question; and part of the answer can be found in the definitions of Freedom, Liberty and Liberalism.  There is but a fine line between modern Liberalism and Anarchy; very few countries where they “experimented” with total uncontrolled Freedom managed to survive.

The masses cannot handle all the Freedom to destroy what they want to destroy.  Liberalism for all its good original intentions has been taken over by the evil of Liberanarchism.  Kennedy started it; William Jefferson Clinton perfected it and Barack Obama obviously intends to make sure that he leaves a broken America behind as his legacy.

Liberanarchism destroys mores of responsible behavior; it is only a final thin line that separates it from total moral anarchy and America has stepped into 2011 on the wrong side of that line.  The signs are in the obscene public display of wealth by the neo-rich; an ever growing government that falls into the category of that same neo-rich; a media that benefits from this and gleefully participates; and lastly there is the Internet of the past twenty years that confounds reality by actually convincing the voter that what is taking place is in his best interests.

When the voter has lost his adherence to the tried and tested system of taking responsibility for his vote the battle has been lost.

This year will be the watershed; unless the voter comes to his senses America will take the final enthusiastic plunge into decadence and disappear as a World Power.  Americans may as well take hands with Africa and become part of the Third World at that time

China and Russia may have to save America but I doubt that they will care.

 You may now kill the messenger that brings the bad news but that won’t change the outcome.

The neo-taciturn One

Do we have a neo-taciturn Obama in the White House?

Americans often refer to Former President Calvin Coolidge as “the taciturn one” because he spoke so rarely.

All the States normally want the incumbent President to spend a summer vacation with them and South Dakota was hoping to get him but the President wasn’t saying until he asked an aide one day whether they have mosquitoes in South Dakota.  He was reassured about that and went there with the 1928 Election looming close by but he remained silent on that too until he called a Press Conference at his “lodgings” and everyone scrambled to be there.

One report stated that “The President walked into the huge room filled with reporters and said in one short sentence that he had decided not to run for re-election in 1928” and walked out of the room with everyone gaping after him when he was in and out in thirty seconds flat.

What’s up with Obama with Arizona, Wheeler and what not?  He is known for having been Kennedy, Lincoln, Roosevelt and sometimes even George Washington.  Does he now want to be Coolidge in 2012?

 Don’t call me dumb, please.  The Democrats have been doing the dumbest of dumb things but they are not stupid, no Sir.  There must be many of them knowing perfectly well that they need Obama 2012 as much as they need a hole in the head.

 Meantime Obama remains as quiet as Coolidge about Arizona, Wheeler et al or as some would put it, as quiet on these pressing concerns as about his “long-form” birth certificate and his mother and father’s attendance records at some school or college in Hawaii in August 1961.

 Watch this space!