Here in the United States we are celebrating Columbus Day, but in France, the anniversary of a turning point in the history of Europe is noted.  The Battle of Tours happened on October 10, 732.  In that battle, a seemingly beaten Frankish army defeated an unbeaten Muslim army from the Andulusian caliphate, now known as Spain.

I’d read several accounts of the battle, but in glancing at the Wikipedia page I noticed something:  Tours is in the northwest corner of France, almost in Normandy.  Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi had marched across the Pyrenees and deep into Frankish territory before being turned back by Charles Martel and his Christian army.  To me, it was reminiscent of the penetrations the German army made in 1914 before being stopped by the Allies.

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Coincidentally, the king and queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, who financed Columbus’ expedition, also forced the last of the Muslim rulers of Andulusia off of the Iberian peninsula in 1492.

So while we enjoy a day off to celebrate a European discovering the Caribbean Islands, let’s take our hats off and drink a bit of wine to remember a battle that helped to stop the conversion by the sword of Europe over 700 years earlier.

I don’t have much witty to say tonight.  This evening I voted to convict a fellow citizen of a crime that ‘s going to put him in prison for a very long time.

Yeah, I know, he did the crime, he can do the time.  But it’s sobering to think that I judged his guilt and tomorrow I will be part of the decision as to how long his children will be without a father, his wife without a husband, and his parents without a son.  No matter what we decide on this man’s fate, it’s going to be a blow to the lives of so many people.

Luckily, Boo was still up when I got home, so I got to hug my son and talk to him for a few minutes.  That and a couple fingers worth of Kentucky’s finest in a tumbler seem to be doing the trick.

We’ll return to our normal content tomorrow.  I’m going to go off the net tonight because I’m afraid anything I have to say will be too maudlin.

Weer’d, Robb, and Jay are a triple threat on responses to the “Occupy Wall Street” twits that have become media darlings.  Personally, I’m hoping for the miracle of small, but surprisingly violent hailstorms to happen directly over their heads, but I digress.

I entered the adult world with exactly the clothes on my back, an old knapsack, a Stephen King novel, and a toothbrush.  I traded the “hang out and get stoned in the dorm” years for skills, a paycheck, and a roof over my head.  Yeah, I was suckling at the government teet, but I was definitely giving full value for my paycheck.

I went from wearing a uniform on a Friday to working a job on Monday. I’ve worked long hours in bad situations in order to put a roof over my families heads and food on our table.  I put myself through school using GI Bill money and my own paycheck.  And if you think that using the GI Bill to educate myself was welfare, I can show you the DD214 that shows the years of my life I traded for that check.  When I got the statement every month, I would remember long nights spent shivering to stay warm, or hot dusty days fantasizing about snowdrifts, or months of my life I spent away from the family that was my motivation to keep doing it.

My wife and I both work so that we can afford to live in the home we can afford.  We do without the latest video game console, trips to the beach, and just about everything else we can get away with so that we can provide for ourselves and not depend on anyone else.  We’re making sure our kids learn the meaning of work, value, and responsibility before we send them out into a world populated by jerkoffs who think that taking their second breath entitled them to someone else footing the bill for the rest of their lives.

I’m not a millionaire, but I hope to be one someday.  And you know what?  That’s OK.  It’s called a goal.  It’s called ambition.  No-one ever gave me anything I didn’t earn, and no-one owes me anything I haven’t worked for.  If you think your continued conversion of oxygen into carbon dioxide entitles you to diddly over squat, then you’re a fool and should be treated as such.  Finish out your education, get a job, do something meaningful with your life, and then come back and tell me just exactly how unfair it is that people don’t get free stuff from the government after the government pays for it with money it took from me.  Maybe then I’ll give you a moment and listen before I laugh in your face.

A “Munchkin” cat in California has been declared the shortest housecat in the world.  Fizz Girl measures only 6 inches tall.

It never fails to amaze me what people will do to animals through breeding in order to fit some niche.  Maybe they’ll breed a line of labradors for a certain build and color combination that they want, or they’ll breed basset hounds for long ears to the point where the things look really cute as they trip over them.  Race horses have gone from normal horses that happen to be able to run a given distance really well to being specialized animals that are basically a huge set of lungs attached to really thin, yet very muscular legs.

In this case, cats have been bred to have short legs.  My guess is that a litter threw a couple with really short legs some time in the past, which the breeder or owner thought that was really neat, and then they bred for that trait until it became common enough to market.  Same thing with miniature dogs, or horses, or cows, or whatever.

As for me, I like a nice mutt of either the feline or canine persuasion.  Yes, I’ve had a Siamese cat as a pet as often as I can, but if anyone were to tell me that Koshka was a purebred, I’d laugh in their face.  Maybe it’s a subconscious offshoot of me being such a mischling myself, or maybe it’s because my mother had fantasies of being a breeder of Yorkshire terriers when I was a kid and I was scarred by that experience for life.  I’ll just stay with the mixed breeds.

Just remember, that little yap dog some lady is carrying around in her purse is the descendant of a Eurasian timber wolf from a few thousand years ago.  Along the way, a line of people decided to twist, compress, and fluff up that wolf into Mr. Sparkles.

A man, along with an accomplice, has been charged with a string of robberies, mostly of barbershops in Louisville.

Something tells me his list of places to rob didn’t include my barber:

 “We are the safest barber shop in town, cause everybody here has a conceal carry permit,”

There’s something really nice about a barbershop with deer and boar heads on the walls, a haircut finished up with hot lather and a straight razor, advertisements for gun manufacturers and shooting ranges next to the door and cash register, a display of gun belts and leather holsters, and knowing that each and every barber in the place is carrying something that goes bang.  Plus, every so often they give away a gun, which is always nice.

Researchers at the University of Alabama have reported that overzealous adults do a lot to ruin the experience of sports for children.  They suggest that kids need unstructured play at young ages, and shouldn’t specialize in one sport until age 15. 

They aren’t telling me much that I didn’t already know.  Little Bear wanted to play teeball in the spring of first grade, so his mother and I signed him up for the league near her home.  This was the year after a local team had won the Little League World Series, so every coach had championships in their eyes as they worked with their teams.*  The head coach and assistants on Little Bear’s team were absolute jerks. All but two of the kids on the team hadn’t done much but play catch before, but they were expecting them to know when to throw to first base.  The other two were coaches kids, who had obviously been worked aggressively since the time they could pick up a ball.  Little Bear was the smallest and youngest member of the team, and the coach was continually screaming at him from the dugout to pay attention and stop playing with the grass, or kicking up the dirt, or whatever it is that young boys like to do when they’re bored by the frenetic pace of teeball.  Little Bear wanted to quit after the third game, but I got him to stay through the entire six week season. That was the last time he wanted anything to do with sports.

Coaches and parents have to walk a fine line between pushing young kids to help them excel and being too harsh.  Kids in sports need to be taught discipline, but making 1st graders take a lap because they forget to throw the ball home when there’s a runner on third base is a bit too much.

I’ve also seen parents who put so much emphasis on sports in order to position their child for a scholarship and possibly a professional career.  That’s all well and good if a young man or lady is in high school, but some start the lectures in grade school.  Pressuring kids to perform and excel at a level so much above their age almost always backfires.  

Sports at that age should be about fun, learning, and exercise.  Adults who make it about winning and nothing else need to get a grip and join an adult league.

*This isn’t an exaggeration.  I overheard a meeting of several coaches where they discussed specific players of all ages that they wanted to groom in order to create a new superteam.

Dear NFL Players,

Look, you’re not soldiers, and I don’t expect you to stand at attention and render a hand salute when the national anthem is being played.  If you want to put your hand over your heart, or sing along, or just stand respectfully for a few minutes while the nice lady sings, that’s just great.

But do us all a favor:  While someone’s singing the Star Spangled Banner, please lay off with the head shaking, shrugging, rolling of the eyes, and mugging for the camera.  It’s just trashy, and I expect better of men who are being paid small/large fortunes to play a child’s game.  If your mama didn’t raise you right and you don’t know how to show a little respect, I am always available for a little remedial training.

Thank you,

Daddy J. Bear
Devoted Football Fan

This afternoon, we went over to Irish Woman’s aunt’s house to retrieve a piece of her mother and father’s estate.  You see, when they died in the late 1960’s, their household got spread across the extended family, and their bedroom furniture went to this particular aunt and uncle.  They have passed away now, and their kids asked Irish Woman if she’d like the furniture.

Since she became an adult, Irish Woman’s been able to find and reclaim a few things that belonged to her parents.  She’s found some jewelry, her mother’s wedding ring, the family china, a few pictures, and today she got back some of the furniture that her parents bought for each other when they got married.

It’s a fine old hardwood set, and it’s going to need a little TLC.  That being said, it’s in remarkable shape for being almost 50 years old.  We got it home, and set to work giving it a good scrub with Murphy’s Oil Soap and elbow grease.  Irish Woman remarked on how dark the finish was, when her memory of it was that it was lighter.  Then we started scrubbing.

Before:

 After:

That’s one of five bar towels we used to clean up the furniture, along with two buckets of Murphy’s and hot water.  This is the accumulated tar and ash from five decades of smoking in bed.  Another reason I don’t care for smoking – it gets into everything.  The more we scrubbed, the more we smelled Lucky Strikes and Parliaments.

We let the woodwork dry after cleaning it, then wiped it down with a healthy dose of lemon oil.  We’ll keep doing that for a while, but our long term plan is to strip it down to the bare wood and refinish it.

You don’t see craftsmanship like this anymore without paying through the nose for it.  These things are solid wood, and are held together with joinery and some screws.  No plywood, veneer, or particle board in this stuff.  Accordingly, it weighed a ton.

The good news is that if we take care of it, it will be there for Boo when we either decide to pass it on or we decide to start taking advantage of that time share I have on the Lake of Fire.

Here are the two dressers.  The bed is still disassembled, but it’s just as pretty.

Gentlemen, telling your lovely wife that if she wanted a quiet and delicate child, then she shouldn’t have mated with Sasquatch, while funny, does not go a long way in promoting marital bliss.

This little fellow is a detail at the bottom of a bronze column on what Irish Woman tells me used to be the main passenger train terminal in Louisville.  The verdigris on him is bright green, but I adjusted the saturation a bit to bring out all of the details on him.  This isn’t an integral part of the structure, it’s a minor part of decoration that had a lot of time and effort put into it.  You don’t see craftsmanship like this on a steel and glass tower.