My latest solo offering, No Frills, is now available at - No Frills
(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)
(from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/05/0501_river5.html)
On April 27, 1865, the steamboat Sultana, some seven miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, carrying 2,300 just-released Union prisoners of war, plus crew and civilian passengers, exploded and sank. Some 1,700 people died.
It was the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history, more costly than even the April 14, 1912 sinking of the Titanic, when 1,517 people were lost. But because the Sultana went down when it did, the disaster was not well covered in the newspapers or magazines, and was soon forgotten. It is scarcely remembered today.
April 1865 was a busy month; On April 9, at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, General Robert E. Lee surrendered. Five days later President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. On April 26 his assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was caught and killed. That same day General Joseph Johnson surrendered the last large Confederate army. Shortly thereafter Union troops captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The Civil War was over. Northern newspapers rejoiced.
News of a terrible steamboat tragedy was relegated to the newspaper's back pages. In a nation desensitized to death, 1,700 more did not seem such an enormous tragedy that it does today.
The accident happened at 2 a.m., when three of the steamship's four boilers exploded. The reason the death toll was almost exactly equal to the number of Union troops killed at the battle of Shiloh (1,758) was gross government incompetence. The Sultana was legally registered to carry 376 people. She had six times more than that on board, due to the bribery of army officers and the extreme desire of the former POWs to get home.
With yesterday's anniversary of the "killing" of Osama Bin Laden, I was reminded of what I learned, or at least what I read, not long after that occasion. Turns out there has been a lot written about it.
When Barack Obama declared the terrorist mastermind dead on TV in May 2011, he was actually the ninth high-profile person to make the same announcement.
December 26, 2001, Fox News reported on a Pakistan Observer story that the Afghan Taliban had officially pronounced Osama Bin Laden dead earlier that month. According to the report, he was buried less than 24 hours later in an unmarked grave in accordance with Wahabbist Sunni practices. Living in caves without benefit of dialysis equipment had taken its toll.
January 18, 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced quite bluntly in reference to Bin Laden: “I think now, frankly, he is dead.”
July 17, 2002, the then-head of counterterrorism at the FBI, Dale Watson, told a conference of law enforcement officials, "I personally think he [Bin Laden] is probably not with us anymore,” but “I have no evidence to support that.”
October 2002, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told CNN that “I would come to believe that [Bin Laden] probably is dead.”
November 2005, Senator Harry Reid revealed that he was told Osama may have died in the Pakistani earthquake of October that year.
September 2006, French intelligence leaked a report suggesting Osama had died in Pakistan.
November 2, 2007, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto told Al-Jazeera’s David Frost that Omar Sheikh had killed Osama Bin Laden.
March 2009, former US foreign intelligence officer and professor of international relations at Boston University Angelo Codevilla stated: “All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama Bin Laden.”
May 2009, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari confirmed that his “counterparts in the American intelligence agencies” hadn’t heard anything from Bin Laden in seven years and confirmed “I don’t think he’s alive.”
May 2011, President Obama has added himself to the list. Osama’s body was buried at sea less than 12 hours after his death with no opportunity for any independent corroboration of his identity, the same question of credibility can be leveled at ALL of the above.
But given that an informed consensus has formed around the opinion that Bin Laden died long ago due to kidney failure, will the people of America hold their President to the highest standard in presenting evidence that the person killed was actually Osama Bin Laden, and that he actually died in the way described, or will this pronouncement go unquestioned like so many other deaths in the never ending war of terror?
(Source: James Corbett, The Corbett Report, 2 May, 2011)
The greatness of the"26 Acts of Kindness," idea, in honor of the students and faculty who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School, cannot be underestimated. This is truly a wonderful effort that unites those involved in a common, elevating, human endeavor that transcends self and serves the greater good.
But I believe we owe ourselves and future generations, a new, personal commitment to change the face of humanity, as we know it, and significantly improve our existence. I propose we adopt an “Acts of Kindness” philosophy all day, every day and ALWAYS. The things that we could accomplish through such a philosophy simply boggle the mind. Limiting our kind acts to 26 is all too like the rear-auto window signs that proclaim “Baby On Board”. In other words, we need not limit our acts of kindness to a mere total of 26 any more than we should limit our cautious driving only to situations where we know the person ahead of us has a baby ‘on board’, as though the life of individuals in cars that are alone, have a parent, friend or sibling on board are less valuable (than that of a baby) and therefore deserve less caution on our part when driving.
In order to achieve this impressive height of human potential we will have to dispense with a multitude of pre-existing baggage and self-serving paradigms. This, needless to say, will be more difficult for some than for others.
We must take great care to prevent these ‘Acts’ from becoming rote ceremony or hollow lip service, like some of us have encountered in our church experience. By this I mean such as the good Catholic who piously bestows a hearty ‘peace be with you’ upon his pew-mate then blows his car horn furiously while flipping the bird to the parishioner in the proceeding vehicle who doesn’t exit the church parking lot as swiftly as the saintly one would like.
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
(Excerpt from The Israel Lobby,” by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago
and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage_New.aspx?isbn=9780374531508)
". . . John Edwards, the Democratic party’s 2004 vice presidential candidate, told his Israeli listeners that “your future is our future” and said that the bond between the United States and Israel “will never be broken.” Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney spoke of being “in a country I love with people I love” and, aware of Israel’s deep concern about a possible nuclear Iran, proclaimed that “it is time for the world to speak three truths: (1) Iran must be stopped; (2) Iran can be stopped; (3) Iran will be stopped!” Senator John McCain (R-AZ) declared that “when it comes to the defense of Israel, we simply cannot compromise,” while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) told the audience that “Israel is facing the greatest danger for [sic] its survival since the 1967 victory.” Shortly thereafter, in early February, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) spoke in New York before the local chapter of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where she said that in this “moment of great difficulty for Israel and great peril for Israel . . . what is vital is that we stand by our friend and our ally and we stand by our own values. Israel is a beacon of what’s right in a neighborhood overshadowed by the wrongs of radicalism, extremism, despotism and terrorism.” One of her rivals for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), spoke a month later before an AIPAC audience in Chicago. Obama, who has expressed some sympathy for the Palestinians’ plight in the past and made a brief reference to Palestinian “suffering” at a campaign appearance in March 2007, was unequivocal in his praise for Israel and made it manifestly clear that he would do nothing to change the U.S.-Israeli relationship. . . "
(from http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12821-elites-will-make-gazans-of-us-all)
". . . Because it has the power to do so, Israel—as does the United States—flouts international law to keep a subject population in misery. The continued presence of Israeli occupation forces defies nearly a hundred U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for them to withdraw. The Israeli blockade of Gaza, established in June 2007, is a brutal form of collective punishment that violates Article 33 of the Fourth 1949 Geneva Convention, which set up rules for the "Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War." The blockade has turned Gaza into a sliver of hell, an Israeli-administered ghetto where thousands have died, including the 1,400 civilians killed in the Israeli incursion of 2008. With 95 percent of factories shut down, Palestinian industry has virtually ceased functioning. The remaining 5 percent operate at 25 to 50 percent capacity. Even the fishing industry is moribund. Israel refuses to let fishermen travel more than three miles from the coastline, and within the fishing zone boats frequently come under Israeli fire. The Israeli border patrols have seized 35 percent of the agricultural land in Gaza for a buffer zone. The collapsing infrastructure and Israeli seizure of aquifers mean that in many refugee camps, such as Khan Yunis, there is no running water. UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) estimates that 80 percent of all Gazans now rely on food aid. And the claim of Israeli self-defense belies the fact that it is Israel that maintains an illegal occupation and violates international law by carrying out collective punishment of Palestinians. It is Israel that chose to escalate the violence when during an incursion into Gaza earlier this month its forces fatally shot a 13-year-old boy. As the world breaks down, this becomes the new paradigm—modern warlords awash in terrifying technologies and weapons murdering whole peoples. . . "
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
(from msnbc.com staff and news service reports Msnbc.com staff, KCCI.com, and the Times-Republican contributed to this report. updated 10/19/2011) "An Iowa couple married for 72 years died holding hands in a Des Moines hospital within 70 minutes of each other last week after a car accident that also injured another couple.
"They're very old-fashioned. They believed in marriage 'til death do you part," Dennis Yeager, the son of Gordon and Norma Yeager, told KCCI.com. The accident that claimed Gordon, 94, and Norma Yeager, 90, happened Oct. 12, when the couple left their State Center home for a drive shortly after 8 a.m. At the intersection of Highway 30 and Jessup Avenue, just west of Marshalltown, Gordon pulled "away from the stop sign and failed to yield to a westbound vehicle," according to Sgt. Joel Ehler of the Iowa State Patrol. The driver of the other car, Charles Clapsaddle, 64, of Marshalltown, was unable to stop to avoid a collision, Ehler said.
Yeager was facing pending action by the Iowa Department of Transportation to have his license removed, but citing privacy concerns, said he could release no additional details on what prompted that action. The Yeagers' children told KCCI.com that their parents never liked being apart ever since Norma Stock married Gordon Yeager on May 26, 1939, in State Center. And they were relieved that the couple was able to spend their last moments together at the intensive care unit of the Marshalltown hospital. "They brought them in the same room in intensive care and put them together — and they were holding hands in ICU. They were not really responsive," Dennis Yeager told KCCI.com.
Gordon died at 3:38 p.m. surrounded by their family and holding hands with Norma. "It was really strange, they were holding hands, and dad stopped breathing but I couldn't figure out what was going on because the heart monitor was still going," said Dennis Yeager. "But we were like, he isn't breathing. How does he still have a heart beat? The nurse checked and said that's because they were holding hands and it's going through them. Her heart was beating through him and picking it up."
Norma died at 4:48 p.m., according to KCCI.com. "Neither one of them would've wanted to be without each other. I couldn't figure out how it was going to work," the Yeagers' daughter Donna Sheets told KCCI.com. "We were very blessed, honestly, that they went this way."
The Yeager’s children said the couple complemented each other. "Anybody come over — she was the hostess with the mostess. ... The more she did, the more she smiled," Dennis Yeager told KCCI.com. "Dad would be the center of attention, like, 'Wheee look at me,' and mom was like 'get him away from me!' You know we even got a picture like that." And even though they argued every now and them, "They just loved being together," he said. "He said 'I have to stick around. I can't go until she does because I have to stay here for her and she would say the same thing,'" he said. The couple reportedly were holding hands Tuesday at their funeral in their casket. Their family said the plan was to cremate them together and mix their ashes."
What do YOU think? http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
Download your very own copy of ANOTHER SHOT by Ray Jozwiak
