Author: Dick

Would Lincoln have lived if he had worn his big hat to the Ford Theater?

Although I love history, I am not one of those persons who walk around knowing what historical event happened on every day of the year. So it was quite interesting that I began reading my book club’s monthly choice — “Assassination Vacation” by Sarah Vowell — at this particular time. The book takes an irreverent look at the first three presidential assassinations and links them to our wacky culture at large. I guess that is how I would describe it. After all, I’ve just started reading it.

The reason it was interesting to be reading this book now is because tomorrow, April 14, was the day in 1865 on which President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the balcony of the Ford Theater while watching the play “Our American Cousin.” Lincoln died the next morning. If I had ever known April 14 was the date Lincoln was shot I had forgotten it. I associate April 14 with two major events in my life, the latest taking place April 14, 2005.

My daughter was born on April 14, 1979. I got an e-mail from her today saying that she was going to New York for the weekend as a birthday present to herself. I told her I thought that sounds like fun.

April 14 of last year was the date I left my last full-time job and headed down the path to becoming a freelance writer (and blogger). Right at this moment, I am butt-deep in the ever-tedious work of tech writing but I can see light at the end of the tunnel. I can say with no hesitation that I absolutely have no regrets about having left my job. That is despite how I left all went down, a subject I am forbidden to talk about because of a confidential agreement I signed. Sound mysterious? It’s really not, trust me.

I probably should have written this tomorrow when it will be April 14, but as buried as I am in work, I don’t know if I will even have time to post something tomorrow. In the meantime, if you go to a play tomorrow evening be sure to watch your back. And, have a very happy birthday, Lisa!

Officials in St. Bernard Parish, a suburban area of New Orleans, are considering former FEMA director Michael Brown as a consultant. The officials think Brown might use his expertise to guide the parish through federal red tape in the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort.

We all remember Michael Brown don’t we? Heck-of-a-job-Brownie? The man who got his emergency management experience running a horse breeder’s organization? All I can say to those of St. Bernard Parish is lots of luck. I’m sure Brownie will do you a heck of a job. Just ask George W.

Xena: You can’t get to here from there.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has found the “tenth planet” which is being called “Xena,” for the warrior princess, no doubt. NASA says that Xena is only slightly larger than Pluto, has a longer tail than Mickey Mouse and talks only slightly more intelligible than Donald Duck. The space agency is not speaking about what they found up in Uranus.

Seriously though, Hubble showed Xena as having a diameter of 1,490 miles, give or take 60 miles, which is about 70-some-odd miles more than Pluto. Xena, according to NASA, is about 10 billion miles from Earth with its diameter being about half the width of the United States. It is bright and thought by scientists to be one of the most reflective objects in the solar system. NASA said the bright reflectivity of Xena could be because of “fresh methane frost on its surface.” And you know what that means? Yep, cows have been there breaking wind. Which could have caused an ice age. Don’t ask me how because I just made that up.

Other interesting facts about Xena include:

On May 6, 1997, according to Wikipedia, Lucy Lawless who played Xena Warrior Princess exposed her breasts (resulting from a wardrobe malfunction–yeah, we’ve heard that one before) while singing the U.S. national anthem at a National Hockey League game in Anaheim, Calif. between the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and the Detroit Red Wings. Lawless later said in “Newsweek:” “I was mortified … It was quite a bit more exposure than I want.”

Speaking of interesting Xena facts, a nice woman I dated once named Marilyn Rucker has a great song called: “If I could be like Xena.”

“If I could be like Xena
A feisty warrior princess
I’d scream my ululations
While I slice and dice and minces”

When I say I dated her once, I mean one time. We were in Addison, Texas, and we went to see “Enemy Mine” at the movies. A summary of the 1985 movie starring Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett Jr.:

“A soldier from Earth crash-lands on an alien world after sustaining battle damage. Eventually he encounters another survivor, but from the enemy species he was fighting; they band together to survive on this hostile world. In the end the human finds himself caring for his enemy in a completely unexpected way.”

I can’t remember if they landed on Xena.

Marilyn, who now lives in Austin, reminded me by e-mail that we went to see some sci-fi movie. Then I later regained some of my memory and recalled it was “Enemy Mine.” As I was writing this, I was having trouble accessing Marilyn’s Web site. I have provided the link with the hope that you can check it out. She really writes some hysterically funny songs.

A former colleague once told me of a theory he heard about President George W. Bush. That theory was that perhaps Bush’s religious beliefs had led him to start the war in Iraq in order to hasten the apocalypse and, thus, the return of Christ. While it would not surprise me that some hold the view that should happen, I just couldn’t see GW harboring such a belief. But that was then and this is now.

It seems like every day another piece of the White House comes flying off in what seems like a never-ending s**tstorm surrounding George W. Bush. He reminds me of the “Peanuts” character Pigpen, except turmoil and potential disaster hovers around Bush instead of grime.

The latest revelations include Bush’s declassifying of intelligence documents which may have set the stage for outing undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. Scooter Libby, formerly the vice president’s chief of staff, stands indicted in connection with this outing. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has filed documents that indicate what has been repeatedly conjectured in the media, which is that the purposeful leaks from those intelligence documents were used for political purposes to get back at war critic Amb. Joe Wilson, Plame’s husband.

Then there is Seymour Hersh’s story in “The New Yorker” that says the Bush administration, over the objections of Pentagon leaders, has a war plan for Iran that includes deploying nuclear bunker-busting bombs.

Combine all of that with invading Iraq on shaky premises as well as allowing the government to spy on its own citizens without a warrant and you have one scary-ass goober in the White House.

Many pundits say the mid-term congressional elections will be a referendum on the Iraq war. Perhaps it should be a referendum on whether the congressional member seeking office has the spine to vote on articles of impeachment should they be drawn up. I still say impeachment of Bush sounds far-fetched. It’s just not as far as it once seemed. It’s like Nixon was reincarnated into a much more pleasant shell but one that is twice as sinister. Like John Fogerty said: “I see a bad moon a-rising.”

It had looked as if I could hit the snooze button all the way through tomorrow’s runoff elections here in Beaumont, Texas. But alas, something happened over the weekend to breathe life into the sole local campaign on the ballot and it happened right under my nose.

Around noon on Saturday I walked the three blocks down to the ATM machine on Broadway and found a flock of fire trucks on the next block. (What is it with fires in my neighborhood lately?) A long, thick, yellow hose, called a “supply line” by firefighters, lay in the street. I walked over to the next block, which is Liberty Avenue. I could see that a building — I thought it was a house — had received some damage from fire and smoke.

It wasn’t until I watched the news that evening that I learned the structure that burned was the office of attorney Marsha Normand. Normand is in the Democratic runoff election with former federal prosecutor John Stevens for Criminal District Court judge in Jefferson County. What’s more, even though arson had not been cited as a cause for the fire, Normand said she believes the fire is politically motivated. How exciting if that was the case! How embarrassing if it was not!