Courtesy of NASA, and you don’t need a boarding pass:

I think I’ll pass on this rather odd undertaking, mainly because I would sink faster than a fifteen-inch rim with a cement block wired to it.  But skinny folks who have a hankerin’ for a sprint on Lake Loudon… have at it !

My thanks to master blogger Glenn Reynolds for the heads-up on a new Michael Yon piece.  I opined some time ago that Mexico would eventually be the scene of our next war.  It seems our former Drug Czar and a retired four-star general, who earned three Purple Hearts.  He has some things to say about our relations with Mexico, and our border.  Click here to check it out.

I hope the stores did well this season.  The people who work in those stores need the trade.  The folks who make the stuff… especially the American made stuff that we bought also need the work.  By the way, did you remember to make the effort to buy American made items whenever you could?  Our economy needs a good kick.  That would be a great gift to us all.

Sometimes, all you have left are memories and family.

I hope you weren’t one of those folks fighting over sneakers in the mall yesterday. Instead, I hope you were one of the many people who paid lay-away bills for people standing in line. 

I hope when your family gathers this weekend, there will be peace, and good will between family members.  Every time I have worked on holidays, I’d hear the police calls to homes where the will wasn’t too good, and folks had to be separated. 

I hope if you know someone in a nursing home… or if you have a family in a nursing home, that the person will not be forgotten at Christmas.  Sometimes, all you have left are memories and family. 

I hope you’ll pause for a moment Christmas Eve, and say a prayer for those who are hospitalized, and their family members.

There are a lot of people who work on Christmas.  Public safety folks, utility workers, broadcasters, a lot of people.  I hope if you dine out this weekend, you will be generous with a tip. 

I hope this is a good Christmas for you.

I hope for another good year behind the microphone.  I’m a blessed man because I have been able to do what I love for a long time.  And I’m not.. by a long shot.. ready to quit doing it anytime soon.  Because of that, I hope my industry will continue to seek to find its voice in a changing world where digital, social media and Internet information play an important role.  

I hope our nation chooses wisely, carefully, thoughtfully, and with peace and dignity that defines this great land.

I hope I can learn more about my God, and my Jesus this year.  I have fallen short of my self-expectations.  If I were on trial, accused of being a Christian, I’m not sure there would be enough evidence for a conviction.  Thankfully, there is no trial.  That’s already been taken care of.  

I hope this is a good Christmas for you.  Not so much for more, but enough, and  peace … and family. 

And hope.

She is beautiful.  She’s the best America has ever produced.  Her skin glistens as a quickening sky begins to illuminate Lavenham, England. 

Soon, though.. this beautiful machine named Tru Love will make the ground shake as she rolls onto the runway with ten men inside.  The sound is unlike anything ever heard..a combination of whine of propellers and countless explosions of aviation fuel inside massive cylinders. 

And when she takes to the sky, the beauty of Tru Love is overtaken by the purpose of the machine.  Soon- the B-17′s skin will turn a kind-of bluish sheen as the aircraft claws its way through increasingly thin air… hostile air… where Germans both on the ground and in the air will try to knock Tru Love and her crew out of the sky. 

Ken Drinnon will crawl into a small globe- the ball turret in the belly of the plane, chamber the first rounds into his twin machine guns, and do his part to defend the ship until she returns to safe skies.

Some of Tru Love’s partners in the deadly business will succumb to the iron hurled at them…and explode into a thousand pieces of metal and flesh.  Others will have a wing or a stabilizer knocked away and spiral to the earth…their crew trapped by centrifugal force and unable to bail out.

It was a day on the job for this Hancock County boy who found himself a world away, fighting his part of World War Two inside the ball turret of a B-17 with the 487th Bomb Group.

My father-in law has written a book detailing his life and times in combat with the 487th, and I hope you will buy a copy. I have always been amazed by aircraft, and long before Dena and I married, I watched films detailing how these mighty machines won the air war for America, and brought German industry and will to a crippling pace.

Papa’s book is already place in the Eighth Air Force Museum in Savannah.  Now, it’s available to the public.  You can click on the previous hyperlink to order your copy.  Papa went on to become an electrical engineer, and an extremely patient man.  He designed controls for nuclear plants.  I am a Liberal Arts graduate and I’m lucky to remember that the red wire is the hot wire.  

Many years ago, when I learned that Papa had been a crew member on a B-17, I started urging him to chronicle his life.  He’s a modest man, and it took more than three decades to get this book from him.  It was worth the wait to see the story told in simple terms, and from a perspective of a young Christian, who happened to have a good shooting eye, and a kid who wanted to serve his nation.

The only man I have love more in my life is my father, so this book is important to me in many ways.  A book is forever.  Memories, thoughts, prayers, feelings, experiences will last through time.

He’s a hero.   Of course. I already knew that.  

I got a lesson from my dad one Christmastime that is coming back this evening.   As rain and sleet pelt the roof and chicken soup tastes pretty good, I remembered some pretty good snacks my father used to get from a Depression-era  Salvation Army post here in Knoxville.

Daddy would tell me that he and his brothers would sometimes endure the message, so they could carry away some greasy donuts as a treat,  I‘m sure some of the evangelical message soaked in while those boys were waiting on donuts.  My dad would in later years say his family was poor…but they didn’t know it.  There were others worse off…others helped by

the men and women of The Salvation Army.  Even overseas there were packages, sometimes.  The older images have now been  replaced by a unified: 

But who they are and what they do are still aimed at fixing a person’s relationship with God, but not before you make sure they have the basics of life, 

So don’t just walk past that red kettle bell ringer in the coming days. Slip a $5, $10, or $20 in the their kettle.  You will never see the results of what they money will do.  But I know it will be good.           (Dedicated to the memory of Bill Foulk 1925-1996)

I saw this one coming.  I told my colleagues this morning that I expected Judge Blackwood would have no other choice than to order new trials for those convicted in the Christian-Newsom kidnap, rape, torture, and murder trials.  I want to name every thing that happened to the two young people, and let me add another count of torture for the family and our community. 
Now the question is where do those two families go to reclaim the weeks and weeks of torture they endured.  I can’t find anywhere for them right now. 

Testimony was obvious that the trial judge was blasted on drugs during the proceedings.   I believe evidence proved the prosecution’s case beyond a reasonable doubt.  My personal opinion is that we will never know exactly how many other people participated, or at least knew of the crimes.  As one seasoned Atlanta homicide detective once said,  ”Knowin’ it and provin’ it are two different things.”

Couldn’t someone have taken their concerns to a higher authority?

But for a moment, let me take you on a mental excursion- one where circumstances place you in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you are arrested, indicted, and put on trial for a crime you did not commit. Your attorney is working hard to prove your innocence, but the judge in the case is so pilled up that he can hardly stay awake during the trial.  He puts his head on his arms, slumps, and can barely speak a coherent sentence. If you were convicted, your lawyer would have no choice but to ask for another trial- because the judge was blasted. 

Now, let’s take that scenario one more step.  Let’s say the prosecutors in your case even saw the judge nearly wreck his car on the Interstate, medical professionals suspected the judge of doing dope or providing pills to someone inside their hospital… a patient, no less.  And even colleagues were concerned that the judge in your case was abusing, and addicted to drugs. 

Kinda spooky, when you think about it.  You could be railroaded into jail because a pillhead judge ruled to exclude evidence that would have proved your innocence, or include evidence a jury needed to hear. 

I don’t have to apologize for the judge’s ruling.  But I do say he had no choice. The decision was made for him when a long string of people, starting with the judge on the bench, called “JB” by some of his drug abusing colleagues failed to act properly. 

What bothers me as much as a narcotized judge, is the fact that nobody complained loud enough or long enough to get the man off the case, to get him into rehab, and get a clean and sober judge in front of the prosecution and the defense.  There’s no suggestion box outside courtrooms.  But for the love of Pete… was there no where somebody in that chain of witnesses cited today could go?  Couldn’t someone have taken their concerns to a higher authority?

Our community paid a high price in emotional turmoil over these trials.  And here we go again. God love those parents who will likely see all of the autopsy photos and hear the same stories about the inhuman, sadistic, unspeakable agonizing deaths of their children.

And I am sure there are other defense lawyers in other cases looking at today’s ruling, and wondering if their client might benefit.

If you think you or someone you love could never become addicted to narcotics, you are wrong.  Opiates are a wonderful thing.  They soothe the ravaging pain of cancer, make life livable for people with intractable orthopedic pain, and even dull the pain of a root canal or two.  But you can start liking them too much. Or, you might even like narcotics because they dull another kind of pain- a heartache, or the pain of being alone, or a million other things.  But they can also wreck your life if you let them. 

And they sure can wreck the lives of other folks, too.

This shark was off Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. The captain of the boat says this critter slapped his boat with its tail..and his whole boat shuddered. It was an estimated 18 feet long !