^“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

The turmoil in the Middle East leaves us all worried and bewildered. On one hand the events are new and frightening, yet on the other hand, the hostages being held . . . the leader’s meetings . . . and armed men gathering in the deserts, the seas, and now the air, are old, old stories.

In fact ever since the beginning of recorded history, that area has been the site of violence, with the first recorded murder, Cain killing Abel, taking place right there.

Then go on through the Old Testament.  From beginning to end, and in the same places, those books tell of little else but of wars, arguments, intrigue, adulteries, terror, killings and every other manner of man’s inhumanity to man.

Today, we cringe as the Moslems cold-heartedly take lives of those who do not ‘believe as they do’, justifying their acts, with their belief that Allah guides them. And in our outrage, we forget.

Yes, we forget that when Moses gave us the Ten Commandments, which included telling us not to kill, that at the very same time, the Old Testament tells us that God also instructed them to make war upon the Philistines, the people of Canaan, the worshipers of Ashtoreth, and on and on.

Throughout time, there have been mixed messages, and when those ancient people were told not to kill, that injunction was evidently only for those of their own tribes. In the name and words of Allah, their God, all those of other tribes were ‘fair game’, and is repetitious of what we hear today.

Then I make a big leap to the Middle Ages when the Middle East was invaded by Christian armies from Europe, calling themselves The Crusaders . But, whatever their name, they killed and pillaged wherever they went, in their efforts to wrest the land from the hands of those they labeled ‘infidels’.

During the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, even children were recruited, and thousands of those 10, 11, and 12 years olds, were called by God, so that in their innocence, they could make ‘right’ what the adults could not do. But they died as the ships carrying them were lost in stormy seas. History named them The Children’s Crusade.

We also read of when the city of Altamont, which was under siege (blockaded) with neither food or water. The inhabitants finally died by voluntarily throwing themselves off the high cliffs rather than surrender to the enemy whom they knew would torture them before the kindness of death was given.

The Middle East has not changed, nor perhaps, have we.  Yes, the weapons, motives and methods are different, but the violence is the same, and, according to many, still in the name of Allah. Or God. Depending entirely upon which group you give your allegiance to.

It seems the motive has been and still is, almost unimportant.  It’s as if it’s inherent within the people of that area to differ from the rest of the world. And for us to differ from them. And the only thing that has changed from Biblical times, are the weapons, the methods, and the motives, which today of course, is oil.

The Egyptians made slaves of the Hebrew people for over 400 years. To free them, Moses’ God sent plagues upon the Arab people, and later on, Joshua, in the name of his God, laid siege (blockage) upon the city of Jericho, killed the inhabitants, took over the city and now, who even knows the motives of any of it.

But there will never be a way of ‘righting all the wrongs’ and errors, of both sides, that have occurred in that Middle Eastern crucible of war and terror, but it all began ‘way back, as recorded in Genesis, when the ‘sons of men’ and the ‘sons of God’ contended against each other,

Yes, over and over, we must go right back to the Garden of Eden to even begin to figure out the ‘why and how’ of it all. And are left with our guesses and pondering.

The entire world has and still does send Peace Envoys there to search for some understanding upon which to build a true Peace, but it’s as if that place, that place where Jesus, our Prince of Peace was born and crucified, has never been meant for Peace.

But within us, there still remains the undying urge to seek that hidden, elusive Peace that through the millennia, has, up till now, remained beyond our reach and prayers.

IFO is the new UFO . . .

We’ve all thought that in time, the UFO’s which have been observed for centuries, would ‘someday’ be found, identified, tamed and that we would be making them for our own use. (Use? What use?) And that day has arrived, according to many high-positioned men in our Military Services. And has not been an overnight accomplishment, either.

And so, UFOs are no longer Unidentified Flying Objects, but are Identified Flying Objects, and a world of our Planetary exploration will no doubt eventually be the result. One of the Officers on the Internet says that the stupendous effect Airplanes made upon the world a century ago, will be tiny in comparison. So, where will this take us? What are their plans? Whose plans?  Yours?  Mine?

Anyway, what I do say today, is real information first released at a Washington DC National Press Meeting on May 9, 2001, fifteen years ago, (Clinton left office on Jan. 1, 2001 and George W. Bush then took office) and so the USA’s entry into Space Travel is not new, but has been a hush-hush activity. The same as was the 1935-1945, Atomic Bomb research. Also silent and secret.

The USA is calling our IFOs Free Energy Fluxliner Space Craft, which travel at 1,000 miles per hour. And it is our own Military people who have explored, experimented and are now speaking of their work.

Just search the youtube or google and you will see and perhaps recognize the USA Military men, in their uniforms, telling about their connection with these new IDENTIFIED Flying Objects. And, it might be that some of the sightings we’ve had for quite a few years,  have been Fluxliners of our own.

As Will Rogers, the sage of the 1920-30-40’s said, “All I know is what I read in the Newspapers”, and I say, “All I know is what the Internet tells me,” and for some reason, the ‘lid’ on Space Craft experiments is being loosened, telling us that a giant leap in Space Travel has been taken by our nation. Further than most of us even dreamed of happening.

It is all far beyond my understanding. Such as when they tell of being able to ‘lift off’ without the rush of wind that we feel when helicopters, or planes leave the earth’s surface.   And, they use absolutely no gas, electricity or any other source of fuel that I could recognize or understand.

This blog today should and could be longer and reveal more information, and if I, Ethel, were more knowledgeable in this field it would be. But I’m not, and, dang it, I am what I am.

But what I do recognize is that our own Military Leaders are opening up and revealing in a roundabout manner, a lot of information about what they have accomplished.   And the fact that they have and will continue to work in secret, planning God knows what, it is plain common sense for both their and our protection to keep it quiet.  Who know what other stuff is going on . . .

Please tell me what I’ve missed. Which will be plenty. Good luck. And I mean for all of us. And perhaps YOU can find if they tell us where the money for such activity comes from. Did I ever vote for Fluxliners? Did you? Yeah, just as I didn’t vote for the Atomic Bomb and that stuff either.

Know your First Ladies?

Everyone has a favorite quiz, and I thank Gene from Kansas City, and inasmuch as I like them, too, put on your thinking cap, It’s all about our First Ladies. Here goes. and thanks again to Gene. And I can’t help but wonder how he ran onto my blog. Welcome, Gene, keep it up.

1. Who was the wife of one President and the mother of another?

2. Which First Lady was ‘President’ when her husband became incapacitated?

3. Which one lived the longest?

4. Jackie Kennedy re-married, who was the other to do so?

5. Who was the niece of one President and the cousin and wife of another?

6. Which one suffered epileptic seizures?

7. Which was the first college graduate?

8. Which two First Ladies were divorcees?

9. Can you name the one who was both a geologist and a linguist? Yeah, the wife of a president.

10. Which one taught her husband to read and write?

11. Three were widows before marrying the future President. Name them.

12. Which First Lady never set foot in the White House?

13. Nancy Reagan was the second to act in films. Name the other.

14. Which one was committed to a mental institution?

15. Can you name the First Lady who was cross-eyed?

16. Who was the only one born on foreign soil?

17. When she first laid eyes on her husband-to-be he was in his underwear. Who was she?   And he?

18. Two were proposed to on their first dates, and said, NO, at first. Name them.

We’ve had a colorful set of First Ladies, and some of these are easy and some are not. I don’t know when these were gathered, but Lyndon Johnson is the most recent one mentioned. Take a chance with them all. It’s fun.

1. Abigail Smith, wife of John Adams and mother of John Quincy Adams.

2. Edith Galt Wilson. When Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke, she went through official papers and alone decided which were ‘important’.

3. Bess (Mrs. Harry Truman) died at age 97 in 1982.

4. Mrs. Grover Cleveland. Both she and Mrs. Kennedy waited five years after their husband’s deaths before remarrying.

5. Eleanor Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt, her uncle, ‘gave the bride away’ when she wed her fifth cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

6. Ida Saxton, (Mrs. William) McKinley).

7. Lucy Webb (Mrs. Rutherford) Hayes, graduated from Wesleyan Female College.

8. Florence (Mrs. Warren) Harding and Betty (Mrs. Gerald) Ford.

9. Lou Henry (Mrs. Herbert) Hoover was the first woman to take a degree in geology, at Stanford, helped translate a 16th century test from Latin to English, and also spoke Chinese. (Wow)

10. Eliza McCardle (Mrs. Andrew) Jackson. He could neither read or write when they married.

11. Martha Washington, widow of Daniel Park Custis; Dolley Madsin, widow of John Todd; and Edith Wilson widow of Norman Galt.

12. Anna Symmes (Mrs. Wm. Henry) Harrison. She planned to join her husband, but he died afer only one month in office.

13. Pat (Mrs. Richard) Nixon, appeared in pictures, but never a speaking part .

14. Mary Todd Lincoln. The sorrow of loved ones fighting on both sides in the Civil War, the assassination of her husband; and the deaths of two sons were all too much for her already unstable mind. She was committed for three months.

15, Julie Dent (Mrs. Ulysses S, ) Grant.

16. Louisa Johnson (Mrs. John Quincy) Adams was born in London, the child of an American father and an English mother.

17. While watering her flower garden one day, Grace Goodhue glanced up at the window of a boarding house next door, and saw 31 year old Calvin Coolidge shaving, wearing long-johns and a hat!

18. Lady Bird Taylor said “NO” to the first-date proposal by Lyndon Johnson, and Pat Ryan thought Richard Nixon was ‘crazy’ when he proposed two hours after meeting her.

What wonderful questions. I doubt if many of them could have ‘survived’ in today’s relentless and often cruel media coverage. Maybe publicity was more understanding in the former days. Who now knows????

All right, next week back to serious stuff.  ethelbrad@comcast.net

Editor’s note . . .    Marie sent this in and we loved it so much, the Boss decided to make a special edition  . . .

Would you believe the email spell checker did not recognize the word murgatroyd?

Lost Words from our childhood

Words gone as fast as the buggy whip! Sad really! The other day a not so elderly (65) lady said something to her son about driving a Jalopy and he looked at her quizzically and said what the heck is a Jalopy? OMG (new phrase!) he never heard of the word jalopy!!
So they went to the computer and pulled up a picture from the movie “The Grapes of Wrath.” Now that was a Jalopy! She knew she was old but not that old…
I hope you are Hunky dory after you read this and chuckle…

About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology. These phrases included “Don’t touch that dial,” “Carbon copy,” “You sound like a broken record” and “Hung out to dry.” A bevy of readers have asked me to shine light on more faded words and expressions, and I am happy to oblige:
Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We’d put on our best bib and tucker and straighten up and fly right. Hubba-hubba! We’d cut a rug in some juke joint and then go necking and petting and smooching and spooning and billing and cooing and pitching woo in hot rods and jalopies in some passion pit or lovers lane. Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumping Jehoshaphat! Holy moley!

We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley, and even a regular guy couldn’t accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for all the tea in China !

Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when’s the last time anything was swell? Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers. Oh, my aching back. Kilroy was here, but he isn’t anymore. Like Washington Irving ‘s Rip Van Winkle and Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, we have become unstuck in time.

We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle! or This is a fine kettle of fish! we discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof, poof, poof go the words of our youth, the words we’ve left behind. We blink, and they’re gone, evanescence from the landscape and words-cape of our perception, like Mickey Mouse wristwatches, hula hoops, skate keys, candy cigarettes, little wax bottles of colored sugar water and an organ grinders monkey.

Where have all those phrases gone? Long time passing. Where have all those phrases gone? Long time ago: Pshaw. The milkman did it. Think about the starving Armenians. Bigger than a bread box. Banned in Boston . The very idea! It’s your nickel. Don’t forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a grasshopper. Turn-of-the-century. Iron curtain. Domino theory. Fail safe. Civil defense.

Fiddlesticks! You look like the wreck of the Hesperus. Cooties. Going like sixty. I’ll see you in the funny papers. Don’t take any wooden nickels. Heavens to Murgatroyd! And awa-a-ay we go!

Oh, my stars and garters! It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter had liver pills. This can be disturbing stuff, this winking out of the words of our youth, these words that lodge in our heart’s deep core.

But just as one never steps into the same river twice, one cannot step into the same language twice. Even as one enters, words are swept downstream into the past, forever making a different river.

We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeful times. For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory. It’s one of the greatest advantages of aging. We can have archaic and eat it, too.

See ya later, alligator!

Thanks Marie,  Ethel

Yes, I like quizzes and hope you do, too.

I pass all the good ones along and so far have received no violent threats because of them.   This one is tricky, however, and so when you try them on your kids, or for yourself, don’t answer too quickly. Take your time.

1. The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776.
2, Cleopatra was a pure-blooded Egyptian.
3. Frankenstein was a fictional monster created by a mad doctor.

4. The 21st century started on January the first, 2000.
5. Where ever you may be, you only need to locate the North Star to find your direction.
6. Cream is heavier than milk.

7. It is illegal to deface coins.
8. In 1927 Charles Lindbergh made the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
9. The liner Lusitania was torpedoed in 1915 on her maiden voyage.

10. The kilt originated in Scotland.
11. The porcupine has the ability to shoot its quills to fight off enemies.
12. Diamonds will not burn.
13. A pound of feathers and a pound of gold are the same weight.

So, how simple could questions be? On first reading they all seemed stupidly simple to me, but here are the answers. Ho, ho, ho.

1. The Declaration was voted on July 2, 1776. ordered printed on the Fourth, and signed, for the most part, on August 2nd.
2. Cleopatra was of the Ptolemaic dynasty, which was Macedonian.
3, Frankenstein was the name of the medical student who created the Monster. “It” had no name.

4. The 21st century started Jan. 1, 2001. The 20th Century was from 1901 to and including the year 2000.
5, The North Star works wonderfully well in the Northern Hemisphere, but can’t even be seen south of the equator. Their constellation to observe for directional orientation is the Southern Cross.
6. Cream is lighter. Remember how it rose to the top of the old milk bottles?

7. Only if badly enough to cheat the recipient. Using it for jewelry is not considered defacement.
8. Others had flown non-stop. Lindbergh was the first to do it solo.
9. The Lusitania first sailed in 1907, and had made many voyages before being sunk.

10. The kilt was worn by both Roman and Greek soldiers in ancient times. Remember the  sketches in our history books?
11. The quills fall out easily, but only on contact. They can’t be ‘ shot’  at anything.
12. Being Carbon, diamonds will burn, but only in temperatures over 1,400
Fahrenheit.

13. Technically, a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold. Surprised??? Me, too, but feathers are weighed by avoirdupois system (7,000 grains to a pound) and gold is weighed by the Troy system (only 5,700 grains to a pound).

See what I mean by tricks??? Oh well, quizzes wouldn’t be fun if there weren’t a bit of trickery involved. But, anyway, now you have been humbled, try   this stuff on your spouse and let them grovel. Okay?

Depends on how high the office . . .

I was once asked to ‘run’ for a political office here in Murray City, and the request was so unexpected and also beyond my realm of experience, that in shock,  I asked for time to think it over. To begin with I had no training for such a position, and secondly if I did ‘run’ and then win (??) how would it affect me, my life, family and job?

I told no one, but just the same, somehow others knew, for within the next three days, I received four phone calls from CEO’s of businesses I recognized, and, surprise, each one told me how much money they would donate, AND also that they had qualified people to assist and advise me.

Well, I told them the same thing, that I hadn’t made up my mind if I would go that Course, but I also quickly knew that some ‘group’ had decided they wanted someone in the City government, with qualifications they felt would be amenable to their needs, and I must have come close to what they needed.

Of course, I knew that first of all, and most important, they knew that I worked at the Murray Eagle, the great ole local Green Sheet newspapers, and that I had a good personal readership.   I’d also been there long enough to see a bit of how politicians work. People in the local government, coming and going and behind closed doors, talk to Jim Cornwell, our Owner and/or Don Robinson, our  Editor.

So I knew that those who were reaching out to me, were the ‘silent brains’ behind some group which had decided that Ethel, and her job with the newspaper,  would be a good one to sponsor.

Anyway, within a day or to, I called the one who had asked me, and sincerely thanked him for his invitation and offers made, but No, Ethel wasn’t the one they needed, but their offer had been a wonderful compliment. And thanks, again.

I suppose the owners of the Green Sheets, James M. Cornwell, and his wife, Bette Vogeltanz Cornwell, could have known of the plan, and perhaps I should have spoken to them, but I didn’t. It had to be my decision for it would also be me, Ethel, who would be the group’s ‘voice’. I didn’t want to have to ask, or wait to be told which issues to support. Just wasn’t then, and still isn’t, my style.

You know the old adage, “The least said, the quickest mended”, and within a week the whole thing was over and nothing more ever said about it. By anyone.

But, I learned a lot from that incident. If, so far in advance of an election, that a middle-size City such as mine, was so organized, then how organized large Cities and States, and Federal offices must be?   I shivered to even contemplate the plans and maneuvering that must occur so far ahead in their ‘games’.

And I still shiver. Deciding who might be a good candidate, before any names are publicly mentioned, and the money involved. Yeah, the money offered me, shook me. Fortunes? No, no, but the dollar figures surprised me, for they were far more than I would have ever considered for my City.

‘Twas no slim pickings. And, of course the offered money was not for Ethel, personally, but I suppose for publicity, handbills, radio and  TV time, as well as someone to help me present the ‘right’ image. Yes, all that was mentioned. There was a lot to it. and makes me quell when I think of someone running for President of the United States and the offers made and the pressures that must occur.

Why do they want to choose the candidate? Their purpose? How much money is spent? Who gets that money?? Who makes up and writes the posters?  takes the pix? creates the image? Staggering, and I think I have touched only the far edges of what happens in creating the image the ‘backers’ needed.  Wanted.   First to get YOU to the  polls and then for YOU to vote for THEIR candidate.  And the pressure put upon the Candidate if elected???

My eyes were really ‘opened’ during those days, and widen more and more with every election. I cross my fingers and think of our 52 United States which make up the wishes, hopes, and dreams of people the world over.  And someone is paying the price to try to control those wishes, those hopes, those life-changing dreams.  Where does the money come from?

There are no boundaries I know of,  to stop money secretly moving from country to country. Who is paying the unbelievable billions to Buy and Control, the President of the United States of America? Not me. You? I think not, but I also think that billions of dollars change hands trying to get that control.  Hopes, wishes and dreams are powerful weapons to control.

Worth thinking about and perhaps changing some of our election laws. If it’s not already too late.