A journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single call to the travel agent.

This afternoon I watched one of my favorite movies, “The Flight of the Intruder”. While Lt. Jake Grafton and his shipmates were fighting the Vietnamese war, I was on a carrier in the Mediterranean.

In that era, a deployed sailor (or soldier, airman or Marine) was essentially cut off from his family and friends. We didn’t have the internet, or email, or satellite telephones that would allow us to call home. I was aboard the FDR about 3-1/2 years. 16 months of this time we were deployed. A large portion of the remaining time was spent at sea in the Atlantic training for war, or in drydock in Philadelphia. (We were homeported in Mayport, near Jacksonville FL.)

For many sailors there is a love/hate relationship with the Navy, with his ship, with the sea. Ah, the sea, the sea! You hate it while you are at sea and miss it when you are ashore. Sea time separation can easily destroy family bonds

As I look back to that time (that was that was over 30 years ago!), there is a lot of nostalgia for the sea, for shipboard life, mixed with bitterness toward the sea, toward shipboard life.

I have been divorced for 20+ of that 30+ years. My wife and I grew in different directions and our relationship never had a true chance to grow (I was already in the Navy when we wed, and left almost immediately for Guantamo Bay, Cuba).

If you have a serviceman or servicewoman overseas, support them in prayer, with letters, email, and phone calls. When they are home, enjoy your time together. Don’t spoil it with complaints about your time apart.

Love your family, love your country, and most of all, love God.

A Violinist in the Metro

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

Fast and Easy Crab Cocktail

This one doesn’t use real crab, but uses steamed Alaskan pollack or whitefish flavored to taste like crab. Two brands of this “crab” are Louis Kemp and TransOcean’s Crab Classic. I prefer chunk style, but it’s also available in flake style and imitation crab legs.

Put the “crab” in a bowl, top with your favorite cocktail (red) sauce and voila, a crab cocktail!

Call for favorite stories.
 
I am looking for your favorite stories told by you, your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.
 
Please email the stories and short bios of the storytellers through the xanga TioZopilote blog or as either a wall entry or private message/email on Facebook.
 
Let me know whether I may attribute the story and bio to you or its source.
 
Thanks
 
Gerald Busby

Call for favorite story songs or songwriters.
 
I am looking for songs that tell a story, such as Red Sovine’s Teddy Bear or Phantom 309, or Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
 
They may be trucking, seafaring, railroading, or any other type of song, as long as it tells a story.
 
Please send me your favorite song titles (and songwriters if you know them) through this blog or through my Facebook page.
 
Gerald Busby

I awoke in the night to the sound of rain on the roof. The wind was playing in the eaves and the animals hunkered down whever they could find shelter. I turned over, adjusted the covers and drifted back into a fitful sleep, dreaming again of her.
 
Over twenty years have past since I lost her. Twenty years of living alone but not lonely, for my dreams are populated with the people of my past – childhood friends, family, shipmates and others visit me nightly. We talk, remember, laugh and cry together, contemplating things done and not done.
 
I hear the rain on my Grandfather’s tin roof, the low chuckle of his chickens in the background. Baseball games and playground pranks, sea stories and foreign ports of call return to me again and again. Times of adventure and of boredom, of missing family events and favorite places are all part of a sailor’s life.
 
Life is a collection of memories, each as real as today.
 
My life’s collection is rich, tasty to the tongue, pleasant to the ear, filled with the sights and aromas of the past.

A very interesting adaptation of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Director Tim Burton’s version of the story has Ichabod Crane, played by Johnny Depp, in the role of a New York City Police detective, investigating 3 murders in Sleepy Hollow. The cast of characters include

	Christina Ricci	…	Katrina Van Tassel
	Miranda Richardson	…	Lady Van Tassel / Crone
	Michael Gambon	…	Baltus Van Tassel
	Casper Van Dien	…	Brom Van Brunt
	Jeffrey Jones	…	Reverend Steenwyck
	Richard Griffiths	…	Magistrate Philipse
	Ian McDiarmid	…	Doctor Lancaster
	Michael Gough	…	Notary Hardenbrook
	Christopher Walken	…	Hessian Horseman
	Marc Pickering	…	Young Masbath

This movie is rated R for graphic horror violence and gore, and for a scene of sexuality. For more information, see the Internet Movie Data Base (imdb.com)

I am an American soldier. I began my term of service at Cleveland, Ohio. I ended my term of service in Normandy, France. I was fighting for my family, my friends, my neighbors, my fellow soldiers, for you. Remember me.

I am an American sailor. I began my term of service at Dallas, Texas. I ended my term of service aboard the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I was fighting for my family, my friends, my neighbors, my shipmates, for you. Remember me.

I am an American Marine. I began my term of service at San Diego, California. I ended my term of service in a small village in Viet Nam. I was fighting for my family, my friends, my neighbors, my fellow Marines, for you. Remember me.

I am an American airman. I began my term of service at Bangor, Maine. I ended my term of service over Pakistan. I was fighting for my family, my friends, my neighbors, my fellow airmen, for you. Remember me.

We are your sons, your daughters, your husbands, your wives. We began our terms of service in your home town. We ended our terms of service at Bunker Hill, at Appomattox, at Fort McHenry, at the Alamo, on San Juan Hill, in Europe, in the Pacific, in many unnamed and unknown places in the world. We were fighting for our family, our friends, our neighbors, our fellow service men and women, for you. Remember us.

We are buried in National Cemeteries, in home town cemeteries, in unknown and unmarked graves, in the Seven Seas. Remember us.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
                                                      John 15:13

(I Am An American Serviceman, by Gerald L Busby, for Memorial Day, 2009.)

WHEREAS, Athens, Texas, boasts a strong claim to being the original home of one of the nation’s favorite foods, the hamburger; and

WHEREAS, Although accounts differ as to the origins of this American classic, the staff at McDonald’s management training center has traced its beginnings back to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, where it was sold by a vendor on the midway; a reporter for the New York , writing about the fair, made note of the new sandwich in an article and commented that it was the vendor’s own creation; and

WHEREAS, The vendor, Fletcher Davis, had moved from Missouri to Athens in the 1880s to take a job at the Miller pottery works; Mr. Davis had a flair for preparing food and usually served as chef at his employer’s picnics; when the business slowed down in the late 1800s, he opened a lunch counter on the courthouse square, where he sold the sandwich that would become such a staple of the U.S. diet; and

WHEREAS, Although it was served with slices of fresh-baked bread instead of a bun, this early version of the hamburger was the much like it is today and contained ground beef, ground mustard mixed with mayonnaise, a large slice of Bermuda onion, and sliced cucumber pickles; customers could also enjoy fried potatoes, served with a thick tomato sauce; when the journalist from the was told that Mr. Davis had learned to fix potatoes in that manner from a friend in Paris, Texas, he misunderstood and described the item to his readers as french-fried potatoes; and

WHEREAS, According to a nephew of Mr. Davis’s, the new sandwich acquired its name during the potter’s sojourn in St. Louis; one theory holds that local residents of German descent may have named the sandwich after the city of Hamburg, whose citizens had a special affinity for ground meat; each June, residents of Athens celebrate the hamburger’s origins in their community with Uncle Fletch’s Burger and Bar-B-Q Cook-Off; and

WHEREAS, A century after the hamburger debuted on the national stage, it has become one of the best-loved foods in America; its economic impact is no less evident than its popularity: the immense volume of the burger business helps to drive the beef and grain industries and supports the employment of a substantial workforce; and

WHEREAS, The connection between Athens, Fletcher Davis, and the famed hamburger of the St. Louis World’s Fair has been well documented, and it is fitting that the town’s role in the history of that all-American sandwich be appropriately recognized; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the 80th Legislature of the State of Texas hereby formally designate Athens, Texas, as the Original Home of the Hamburger.
———-

TioZopilote’s note: All other representations of the source of the hamburger are just flat wrong!