Sweet Tea and Old Habits

Sixty-five years ago this week 1,300 heavy bombers of the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force dropped more that 3,900 tons of heavy explosive bombs and incendiary devices on Dresden, , the Baroque capital of the German state of Saxony. The resulting firestorm destroyed 15 sq mi of the city centre and killed between 50,000 and 150,00 civilians. Bombing cities was popular in WWII. The Germans did it, the Japanese did it, the Allies did it...... nominally it was all to destroy 'military targets'..... like old men, women and children. Some of the cities destroyed or partially destroyed during the war are well known, like Coventry, London, Hamburg, Tokyo and Dresden. There were others.

Aomori · Augsburg · Baedeker Raids · Bahrain · Barrow-in-Furness · Belfast · Belgrade · Berlin · Birmingham · Braunschweig · Bremen · Breslau · Brighton · Bristol · Bucharest · Budapest · Caen · Calcutta · Cardiff · Chemnitz · Chişinău · Chongqing · Clydebank · Cologne · Coventry · Danzig · Darmstadt · Darwin · Dresden · Dublin · Duisburg · Düsseldorf · Essen · Frampol · Frankfurt · Frascati · Fukui · Fukuoka · Fukuyama · Gelsenkirchen · Gibraltar · Gifu · Greenock · Guangzhou · Haifa · Hamamatsu · Hamburg · Hamm · Hanau · Heilbronn · Helsinki · Hildesheim · Hiratsuka · Hiroshima · Hull · Innsbruck · Kaiserslautern · Kassel · Kobe · Königsberg · Kure · Liverpool · London · Lübeck · Mainz · Malta · Manchester · Manila · Mannheim · Minsk · Mito · Munich · Nagaoka · Nagasaki · Nagoya · Naha · Nanjing · Naples · Narva · Nottingham · Numazu · Nuremberg · Omuta · Osaka · Pforzheim · Ploiesti · Plymouth · Podgorica · Prague · Rabaul · Remscheid · Rome · Rothenburg ob der Tauber · Rotterdam · Saarbrücken · Salzburg · Schaffhausen · Schwäbisch Hall · Schweinfurt · Sendai · Shanghai · Sheffield · Shizuoka · Sofia · Southampton · Stalingrad · Stettin · Stuttgart · Swansea · Taipei · Tallinn · Tel Aviv · Thessaloníki · Tokyo · Toyama · Treviso · Tsu · Ujiyamada · Ulm · Vienna · Warsaw · Wesel · Wieluń · Wuppertal · Würzburg · Yokohama · Zadar · Zagreb

Which just goes to show that blowing things up is a very popular thing. Lately, or not so lately if you are a purist, America blew up stuff in Iraq.

Now I am sure that the only things bombed were military targets.... Military old men, military women and no doubt some military children.

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." Ann Coulter

I mentioned the civilian casualties to a guy in the car pool the other day... how deplorable it was. His reply was

"if they were that stupid as to live next to a military target...it's their own fault"

"You know, we all have our inner demons. I, for one – I can't speak for you, but I'm on the verge of moral collapse at any time. It can happen by the end of the show."

–"The Glenn Beck Program"

I am kinda worried about the tea-baggers.

An acquaintence of mine was very dismissive of them; that they were merely scared, confused, and upset people and the whole movement should dissolve in the near future.

"The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them." Rush Limbaugh

Klingers birthday !

ooops.... wrong Klinger !

Max Klinger, 1857.

just a thought

Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness.

And they live by what they hear.

Such people become crazy... or they become legend.

Jim Harrison

All About Iowa

OK. This is Iowa. The only state in the union that was created at an Amish Quilting Bee. True. You can look it up. Iowa is also famous for being south of Minnesota. It is the only state right smack dab below Minnesota. Yuppers. See! In just a short time you have learned so much about Iowa that I really need to tell more!

Radar O'Reilly is from Ottumwa Iowa.

The Iowa State Fair sells Pork chops on a stick.

People in Iowa also make baseball diamonds in cornfields. True fact. Almost every farm in Iowa has a baseball diamond in a cornfield. They even made a movie about it.

But one of the nicest things about Iowa is Sherry who blogs at Feather Adrift. Nice thoughts, even if some are a little 'Churchy' for me.

But then, any place that doesn't serve beer is a bit Churchy to me and the fact is, if they did serve beer at churches, I might consider christianity one more time.

But they don't. And that settles that pretty much.

But here's the real deal. It seems that Iowa, or at least Sherry's part of it, has had an inordinate amount of snow this winter. A lot. Kinda like a shit load. They are up to their Hawkeyes in the stuff. Ok. And good ol' Sherry and her side-kick, the Masked Contraian, must live by one of them baseball cornfields out in the middle of no where because all winter long they have been sliding off the road, getting stuck in the snow, getting housebound... ohhhh all sorts of stuff. Why.... Sherry has even been writting things like, "There is a certain grouchy grumbling going on here." and "Winter has sucked," and "I look out the window and I see the sea of white" I think it has gotten so bad that she thinks she " lives in a paradox." Not good. I lived in a paradox for a while. Real drafty and shook real bad when the train went by.

S0 just to be a regular guy and try to help out a friend.... I gotz really busy in the OK Workshop and whipped up just the thing for Sherry.....

a 454 cubic inch big block Chevrolet V 8 that produces 412 horsepower, 430 foot pounds of torque and can throw snow 50 feet at just 3500 rpm!

sorry, Sherry, you gotz to pick it up. I don't deliver.