Reflections from WW II: ‘Hemp For Victory’ - view entire film by U.S. government

HEMP FOR VICTORY

Produced by the US Government in 1942.

You may be Interesting to learn that Dupont Chemical funded the anti- hemp / marijuana effort. This is because they had patents on new synthetic fibers and Hemp had a new machine that would put them out of business if hemp were to be used for clothes. Dupont also sold - and still does many of the chemicals to wood pulp producers... so we continue to cut down forests... when Hemp could save millions of trees, be used as an alternative bio fuel and the US could easily grow enough hemp to eliminate the need for oil... so Big oil does not want hemp legal either. Neither do the drug companies... they can't patent it. They would rather keep selling you their drugs. By keeping it illegal the lawyers, courts etc... also make a buck.

You can only get high from the female flower - nobody has ever died from smoking a joint. Of course the alcohol and tobacco companies would prefer to keep their monopoly as well. So we have all the BIG Corporate players... against legalizing it. Yet if it were legalized - we would solve many issues and have a multi billion dollar hemp economy as it can be used for 1000's of products.

Strange Geographies: the forgotten High School of Goldfield, Neveda

                Good Day Humboldt County!

  I felt like exploring the past today, and found this story. My father and I were touring Nevada back in 2000, looking for remnants of the Old West when we came upon this old high school.

  It was in pretty bad shape. At the time we weren’t aware of it’s history and knew little about Goldfield’s colorful history.

  Goldfield High School, was built during the boom years in 1907. It graduated its last class in 1952, and has stood proud but shuttered ever since, impressive on the outside, decaying within.

Over the past few years, a small team of dedicated volunteers has begun trying to save the high school, but restoring it to its former glory is a gargantuan task. Vandals and the elements have had their way with the building for many years, and it will take many more to lift it from the beautiful state of decay it’s in today.

Photo - The teacher’s writing on this board is still readable. Looks like a pop quiz: 5. What is the most important country in the Western hemisphere? Anyone care to take a guess?

by Ransom Riggs/writer for Mental Floss

“At the turn of the last century, Goldfield was a mining boomtown — prospectors were pulling millions of dollars worth of ore out of the ground each year, and with a population that ballooned to more than 30,000 by 1904, it was the largest town in the state of Nevada. It was a classic Old West success story: gun-slinging heroes like Wyatt Earp trod its wooden sidewalks, and in a society where the real measure of a town’s worth was its bar-and-whorehouse scene, Goldfield had the rest beat: Tex Rickard’s Northern Saloon had a bar so long it required 80 bartenders to run it. Of course, I wouldn’t be writing about Goldfield if everything had kept going like gangbusters.

By 1920s, the gold mines had started to peter out, and in 1923 a moonshine still exploded and started a fire that took most of the town’s wooden buildings with it. Today about 400 people remain in Goldfield, a semi-ghost town set among the barren wastes of Nevada’s high desert, surrounded by ghost stories and empty buildings — many of which are impressive stone and brick structures that survived the 1923 fire.” (More photos here)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

As It Stands: What happened to the real meaning of Memorial Day?

                                        

                   By Dave Stancliff/For The Times-Standard
 Tomorrow is Memorial Day. I’d like to talk about how it has been transformed into something else, and what it means to most Americans.
Barbecues and beer. Getting into vehicles and traveling for fun. A three-day weekend. A time to go to the beach and burn ourselves to a crisp. A day off from school. A break in the work week. All of these activities and more go through the average American’s head regarding a holiday originally designed to mourn our military dead.
What a bizarre twist for Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day. Once it was a day of remembrance for those who died in our nation's service. Now, it’s a time to hope that gas prices don’t get too high for travel.
While Waterloo N.Y. was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, it's difficult to prove the origins of the day. Historians think the day had many separate beginnings as towns held spontaneous gatherings to honor the Civil War dead in the 1860s.

  Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on May 5th 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on May 30th, 1868. Flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.
It’s not important what was the very first town to honor the war dead. It is important  that Memorial Day was established. Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all.

 Were you aware of this history? Are your children aware of this history?  Did you know the first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873? By 1890 it was recognized by all the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I when the holiday changed from honoring those who died in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in all of our wars.
Traditional observance of Memorial Day has faded over the years. Many Americans  have forgotten its meaning and traditions. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember to fly the flag at half-mast for the day.
While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, not just those fallen in service to our country. What happened? How did this day turn into a free-for-all three-day vacation? Many feel when Congress made the day into a three-day weekend with the National Holiday Act of 1971, it made it easier for people to be distracted from the spirit and meaning of the day.’

 As the VFW stated in its 2002 Memorial Day address: "Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial Day."
To help re-educate and remind Americans of the true meaning of Memorial Day, the “National Moment of Remembrance" resolution was passed in Dec. 2000 which asks that at 3 p.m. local time, all Americans "Voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to Taps."

  What we need is a full return to the original day of observance. On January 19, 1999 Senator Inouye introduced bill S 189 which proposed to restore the traditional day of observance of Memorial Day to May 30th instead of "the last Monday in May." To date, there have been no further developments on the bill. Go to Http://www.usmemorialday.org/act.html if you think that we should restore the traditional day of observance.
  Meanwhile, if someone wants to start a new three-day holiday at the end of May, I say go for it. Call it “Barbecue Day and Travel Too,” a day of escape from drudgery.
  As It Stands, the true meaning of Memorial Day is rapidly becoming a trivia question!

Frog man gets his kicks at the Jumping Frog Jubilee in Calaveras

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               “Wow! I didn’t know frogs could fly!”

That’s what Brent Bloom looks like he’s saying while urging on his frog, Jumping Bob, at the Jumping Frog Jubilee, May 20, in Calaveras County, California.

photo source - Chris Weeks / AP

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Repressed but Rediscovered: World War II Army film dealt with returning veterans having PTSD (they didn’t call it that back then)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

After watching this video do you think it’s still relevant today?

              Good Day Humboldt County!

  Sometimes we have to undergo painful journeys in our lives and we’re forever affected by them. As a combat Vietnam veteran I have had my share.

  I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). So you can see my interest in sharing this article with you. This being Memorial Day Weekend and all, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to remember those old warriors from WW II and how they dealt with PTSD, or what they called it back then… “Shell Shock.”

The original film “Let There Be Light,” was considered too controversial and was suppressed. It broke ground by showing both black and white soldiers freely mixing at the hospital, sharing both group therapy sessions and playing sports together.

"The guns are quiet now," is the first line in John Huston's 1946 short film, "Let There Be Light," which focuses on World War II veterans dealing with what we'd today call post-traumatic stress disorder.

A fully restored version of Huston's original film is available for free online viewing for three months on the National Film Preservation Foundation's website. And in a time when modern veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are dealing with similiar issues, many believe that the 65-year-old footage can still be relevant.

"We don't know what combination it was that (the Army) didn't like," said Annette Melville, director of the National Film Preservation Foundation, which funded the film's restoration.

Not only was the film suppressed, but in 1947, the Army released "Shades of Gray," a film that's essentially a remake of Huston's work, even lifting dialogue from "Let There Be Light" and putting it into the mouths of actors -- all of them white.” (source)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

From The Nuts File: To raise ‘awareness’ man serves up his genitals for dinner

Awwwww nuts! They’re everywhere. Crazy people who do crazy things. Like lopping of their “special parts” to make a point about something.

I’ve heard stories about people giving their all for certain causes, but this one has to be the ultimate sacrifice – short of death. 

“You know what they say: Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you feel like cooking your nuts and serving them to paying customers. Japanese artist Mao Sugiyama had his penis and testicles surgically removed, prepared them under a chef's supervision and presented them on plates to five customers who paid $250 for the, uh, privilege. Sugiyama, who says he is "asexual" (or at least he is now), hosted the stunt to "raise awareness about sexual minorities, x-gender [and asexual] people."

The high cost of the meal will apparently go toward his hospital bills. Despite the massive "ick" factor, everything Sugiyama did was legal.We also sincerely hope he offered the diners an after-dinner mint. Or 50.”   (source)

Last chance to see two major Egyptian exhibits before they return and never come back again

    Good Day Humboldt County!

Walk like an Egyptian…

I’ve got vacations on my mind lately. Been thinking about going to Southern California to visit relatives and when I read about how the Cleopatra exhibit is at the California Science Center in Los Angeles right now, I’m even more motivated to get down there.

I’ve always been fascinated with Egyptian History. I got to see the Tutankhamun exhibit a few years ago and was very impressed. As a history buff who particularly enjoys the great civilizations like the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, this is an opportunity that can’t be passed up. Especially as how these artifacts may never come back to this country again. 

“Two major exhibits of ancient artifacts relating to the best-known figures from ancient Egypt, King Tut and Cleopatra, are in the last stages of their U.S. tours — and their departure could signal the end of an era.

"Cleopatra: The Exhibition" opened at the California Science Center in Los Angeles on Wednesday, while "Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs" began its run at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle yesterday. By the end of next year, the more than 250 artifacts from the two exhibitions will be back in Egypt, possibly for good.” (Source)

Time for me to walk on down the road….

Going on vacation? Like wild rides? Here’s some new ‘screamers’

        Good Day Humboldt County!

 With summer looming and schools letting out, many people’s thought’s are turning to entertainment parks.

Thrill-seekers are in for a treat with a coaster crop of six new rides designed to make make them scream like they never screamed before! 

From outstretched wings to water elements, ride designers and theme park operators are upping the thrill factor through design and technology rather than vying for new records for height or speed.

Manta (above), at SeaWorld San Diego, opens May 26, features 20-seat, manta ray-shaped trains that skim the water. This launch coaster won’t be the tallest (highest drop: 54 feet) or fastest (top speed: 43 mph) ride when it opens on May 26 but it may be the most unusual. Sitting in 20-seat, ray-shaped trains, riders are launched out of a tunnel enhanced with oversized projections of rays and put through more than a dozen turns, including one in which the train’s wings skim through the water. “It doesn’t have a big vertical span,” said Slade, “but when you’re that close to the ground, it can really heighten the sense of speed.”

You can check out the other five rides here.

Time for me to head on down the road….

 

Under ‘They’ll Never Forget It’ stories: Pooping Camper Attacked by a Bear!

 This guy leaves the outhouse door open to “enjoy the view” and has it ruined by a bruin!

A 65-year-old Canadian man had a trip to the outhouse that he’ll never forget. Gord Shurvell of Winnipeg says he was doing his business when a black bear barged in and attacked him, leaving him with scratches and a head puncture wound, before his friend shot the animal. Shurvell recounted his tale of survival  to CBC News on Wednesday.

For the record: I couldn’t find a photo of a black bear breaking into an outhouse, but was able to come close with a brown bear. Points right?

What are you looking at? Haven’t you ever seen a zebra and a parrot in the parking lot of a bar?

Here’s a variation of the popular movies “Hangover 1 and 2” where three guys wake up and find out what happened to them the night before after a raging drunk.

Here’s the difference: the main character here is drunk, but quite aware that he’s towing around a baby zebra and a parrot.

An Iowa man was arrested for drunk driving after he left a bar, and it appears his "kids" are to blame -- a baby zebra and parrot that were with him and his girlfriend.

It’s Alive! Scientists turn skin cells into beating heart muscle

                      Good Day Humboldt County!

                                    It’s alive!

Frankenstein is a horror classic about an obsessed scientist who assembles a living being from parts of exhumed corpses. There’s this great line when the monster opens his eyes and Dr. Frankenstein loudly gloats….It’s alive!

                                  Cut to today:

Scientists have for the first time succeeded in taking skin cells from patients with heart failure and transforming them into healthy, beating heart tissue that could one day be used to treat the condition. The researchers, based in Haifa, Israel, said there were still many years of testing and refining ahead. But the results meant they might eventually be able to reprogram patients' cells to repair their own damaged hearts.

Researchers have been studying stem cells from various sources for more than a decade, hoping to capitalize on their ability to transform into a wide variety of other kinds of cell to treat a range of health conditions. We’re entering a new age of medical miracles, I read about these fantastic advances in medicine and wonder if someday mankind will achieve near immortality though science?

It’s an interesting thought. Would we then become gods and go out into space and colonize other planets with our breakthroughs in science?

Time for me to walk on down the road….