31st January 2017 - Another Month Gone !

Thought for the day:"I'm trying to sell my old 42" TV on eBay. I've got 74 people watching it. Cheeky lot!"

Begining of the week - time for a change of scenery ...

 And a change of face...

Off on an adventure tonight - traveling to Edinburgh fo rhte Royal Order of Scotland Grand Lodge - should be fun ... I hope !

Cheers

30th January 2017 - Self - Made People...

Thought for the day:"I saw a microbiologist today, He was bigger than I imagined."

Don't often do these things but this one caught my eye....

About sums some things up ... 
Cheers...

29th January 2017 - I don't like Mondays

Thought for the day:"I fell backward through a window earlier - Pane in the bum."

Today is the anniversary of the Cleveland Elementary School shooting which took place on this date in 1979. Brenda Ann Spencer still sits in Jail, some say correctly..

Brenda Spencer (born April 3, 1962) lived in the San Carlos neighborhood of San Diego, California, in a house across the street from Grover Cleveland Elementary School, San Diego Unified School District.

Aged 16, she was 5'2" (157 cm) and had bright red hair. She is said to have self-identified as "having been gay from birth." After her parents separated, she lived with her father, Wallace Spencer, in virtual poverty; they slept on a single mattress on the living room floor, with empty alcohol bottles throughout the house.

Acquaintances said Spencer expressed hostility toward policemen, had talked about shooting one, and had talked of doing something big to get on TV.

Although Spencer showed exceptional ability in photography, winning first prize in a Humane Society competition, she was generally uninterested in school; one teacher recalled frequently inquiring if she was awake in class. Later, during tests while she was in custody, it was discovered Spencer had an injury to the temporal lobe of her brain.

It was attributed to an accident on her bicycle. In early 1978, staff at a facility for problem pupils, to which Spencer had been referred for truancy, informed her parents that she was suicidal.

That summer, Spencer, who was known to hunt birds in the neighborhood, was arrested for shooting out the windows of Cleveland Elementary with a BB gun, and burglary.

In December, a psychiatric evaluation arranged by her probation officer recommended Spencer be admitted to a mental hospital for depression, but her father refused to give permission.

For Christmas 1978, he gave her a Ruger 10/22 semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle with a telescopic sight and 500 rounds of ammunition.

Spencer later said, "I asked for a radio and he bought me a gun." When asked why he might have done that, she answered, "I felt like he wanted me to kill myself."

Brenda Ann Spencer

 “With every school shooting, I feel I’m partially responsible,” Brenda Ann Spencer told the parole board back in 2001. “What if they got the idea from what I did?”

Spencer was 16 on Jan. 29, 1979, when she opened fire with a .22 rifle on Grover Cleveland Elementary School across from her home in San Diego, killing the principal and the custodian while wounding eight youngsters and a police officer.

“I don’t like Mondays,” she famously replied when asked her motive.

Spencer has since said she does not remember making the remark that inspired a song by the Boomtown Rats and became a kind of anthem for many of the school shooters who followed. She has said she also does not recall telling a cop, “It was a lot of fun seeing children shot.”

During a 2009 parole hearing, her most recent, she insisted that she had not intended to shoot anybody.

 “So, why did you commit this crime?” the head parole commissioner asked.

“Because I wanted to die,” she said. “I was trying to commit suicide.”

“Why pick the school across the street?” the commissioner asked.

“Because I knew that if I fired on the school the police would show up, and they would shoot me and kill me,” she said. “And every time I had tried suicide in the previous year I had screwed it up.”

“Why did you have to shoot the people at the school?” the commissioner asked.

“I wasn’t specifically aiming at people,” she said. “I was shooting into the parking lot.”

The commissioner inquired how many rounds she had fired, and she said she did not recall.

“Well, that’s pretty good shooting to hit as many folks as you did if you’re not trying to hit anybody from across the street,” the commissioner noted.

“I don’t remember aiming at anybody,” Spencer insisted.

“Do you remember them taking cover?” the commissioner asked.

“Vaguely,” she said.  

The commissioner asked if she remembered the police coming, and she said she did.

 “You hit one of those fellows, too,” the commissioner noted.

“Uh-hmm,” Spencer said.

The commissioner reminded her that she had eventually surrendered.

“[You] put your gun down,” the commissioner observed. “You didn’t follow through with your plan.”

“No, I had gotten scared,” she said.

“This gun was a gift?”

“Yes,” she responded.

“From whom?”

“My father.”

The commissioner observed that Spencer had described a dark side to her father, while others described him as a decent man.

“He liked to keep appearances up, that everything was fine in the house,” Spencer now said.

“What about your mother?” the commissioner asked.

“She just wasn’t there,” Spencer said.

“But your father was always there.”

“Yeah.”

“And apparently you two slept in the same bed?”

“Yes.”

She had submitted a written statement in which she alleged that her father had begun fondling her when she was 9 and had sexually assaulted her virtually every night.

The commissioner said they would get back to all that. He returned to the shooting.

“You didn’t go to school that day?” the commissioner asked.

“No, I wasn’t feeling good,” she replied.

She said she had been under the influence of alcohol, pot, and downers.

“They made me numb so I didn’t feel anything,” she said.

She confirmed that she had heard the kids in the school across the street.

“A lot of kids laughing and doing their thing?” the commissioner asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Did that upset you?”

“No.”

“It didn’t upset you that they seemed to have happier lives?”

“No,” she said. “I was just set on committing suicide.”

“I am sorry you had to go through everything you went through, but what I’m trying to do is find out why you would open fire and kill two people and hurt so many others,” the commissioner said. “You indicate you weren’t really trying to hit anybody—but you did a heck of a job of hitting a lot of people.”

“The only thing I was concentrating on was getting the police there so that they could shoot me,” she said.

“Well, you could have shot out one window of the school and the police would have come.”

“I didn’t think that.”

“You didn’t have any anger at the children?”

“No.”

“You weren’t trying to hit anybody?”

“Not that I remember.”

The commissioner asked if she recalled saying she had fired on the schoolyard because “I don’t like Mondays.”

“I might have said that,” she replied. “It would have been the drugs and the alcohol talking.”

The commissioner quoted the police negotiator’s report, which said she had told him, ”It was fun to watch the children that had red and blue ski jackets on, as they made perfect targets.” The negotiator added that she told him she “liked to watch them squirm around after they had been shot.”

“It’s entirely possible I said that,” Spencer told the parole board.

“Do you have any idea why you’d go out of your way to harm so many innocent people?” the commissioner asked

“I didn’t consider that other people would get hurt,” she said. “I didn’t think it all the way through”

“Several children were injured by gunshot wounds. The principal of the elementary school, Burton Wragg, age 53, had gone to the aid of the students and was subsequently shot himself,” the commissioner said. “Michael Suchar, age 56, school custodian, went to the aid of Mr. Wragg and was also shot.”

“Uh-hmm,” Spencer said.

“You’re shooting people as they come to the aid of others,” he said. “You’re shooting these people as they become targets, and yet you told me that you didn’t intend to hit anyone.”

“No,” she said.

“Are you pretty good with a rifle?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I guess.”

She was asked if any adults had seen danger signs before the shooting.

“A month before I was arrested, my [high school] counselor took me to see a psychiatrist,” she reported.

She said the psychiatrist had recommended she be hospitalized as a danger to herself and to others.

“My dad told them that nothing was wrong with me and everything was fine, and leave us alone,” she recalled.

That had been just before Christmas. She had asked her father for a radio.

“I don’t know why he bought me a gun,” she said.

The San Diego District Attorney’s Office sent a representative to the hearing. He informed the board that on the Saturday before the shooting Spencer had told another teen that something big was going to happen on Monday that would be on TV and radio.

“On Monday morning, January 29th, she asked her father if she could stay home from school because she didn’t feel well,” the deputy district attorney reported. “Her father left home for work around 7 o’clock in the morning. Then the inmate proceeded to commit one of the most notorious crimes in the history of this nation.”

He went on: “At 8:30 a.m., the children were lining up to enter Cleveland Elementary School… She picked up her .22 caliber, semiautomatic scoped rifle and began shooting children. Principal Burton Wragg heard the shooting and ran out to get the children out of harm’s way, and the inmate shot him in the chest and killed him. The head custodian, Michael Suchar, known as ‘Mr. Mike’ to the children, ran to Mr. Wragg’s aid, and the inmate shot him in the chest and killed him. She shot eight children, and she shot a responding police officer, Robert Robb, in the neck. But for the heroic efforts of a police officer who risked his life to drive a trash truck in front of her residence to block her field of fire, no doubt further children would have been shot.”

The D.A. representative added that Spencer had complained to the police negotiator that the custodian had tried to get everybody off the school grounds.

“She shot him because, by her own words, he was making it more difficult for her to shoot the kids,” the representative said. “The number of shots fired and the number of vital hits speaks of incredibly accurate, directed shooting, and these were moving targets.”

The representative further reported that blood and urine samples taken after Spencer’s arrest tested clean. He concluded that no drugs or alcohol had been talking when she said she just didn’t like Mondays.

“Basically, what she’s telling this board are a series of untruths,” the representative concluded.

A lawyer representing Spencer spoke next. He suggested that the testing of the time may have simply failed to detect the intoxicants. He allowed that Spencer’s father had never “owned up” to sexually abusing her. But the lawyer also noted that while visiting Spencer at a juvenile-detention facility after her arrest, the father had met a girl who resembled his daughter, but was younger.

“[The father] then went on and had a sexual relationship with her and married her,” the lawyer alleged.

The commissioner read into the record several victim-impact statements. One was from Wilfred Suchar, son of the murdered custodian, Michael Suchar. He said his wife had heard on the radio of a shooting at the school and called him at work. He had gone to his parent’s home to tell his mother, Valentina.

“We found her singing as she gardened in the backyard,” the son recalled. “We were all very upset and shocked on the way to the hospital, because no one would tell us Michael’s condition. When we arrived, we found him not in the hospital room, but down in the basement, dead. He had died trying to help the children and Principal Wragg, killed by Ms. Spencer trying to liven up her Monday.”

He said that his mother never recovered.

“She was lonely and scared, and became more and more depressed,” he said. “There didn’t seem much I or the rest of the family could do to help her.”

He went on to say that his father “had gotten out alive from some rough times in the Pacific during World War II. He was then a part of the Allied occupying forces in northern Germany. Here he met his wife-to-be, Valentina. She, because of the language and cultural differences in the United States, always counted on him to manage their affairs. Suddenly, he was gone. I think her premature death in 1991 was at least partly the result of this traumatic experience.”

He ended by saying on behalf of his deceased parents and the surviving members of the family that they opposed parole for Spencer.

“My question is, will there be another boring Monday for her?” he asked.

The custodian’s brother, Andrew Suchar also submitted a statement, noting that Michael had survived two ship sinkings during the war only to be killed by a 16-year-old in a schoolyard. The brother said that although his widowed sister-in-law lived until 1991, “her life actually ended in January 1979. The victims are not only those killed, but the survivors who live the tragedy for the rest of their lives.”

And then there was a statement by Steve Wragg, son of Principal Burton Wragg.

“My dad and Mike were the only two to die that day,” he said, “The kids that they were trying to save all lived. Some of them were seriously injured, but all survived. I hope that somehow my dad and Mike know this.”

There was also a statement from the principal’s daughter.

“People have told me that I look like him, act like him, that my kids are the spitting image of him,” she said. “When the kids hear this, they can’t possibly relate to such statements, because they have never met their grandfather, and they know they never will, because I’ve told them over and over again that he is dead, that he was murdered by Brenda Spencer.”

The daughter spoke of scattering her father’s ashes in the desert.

“The place he loved the most. The small ceremony solidified my understanding of love and eternity, and of our ties to one another as human beings. Yet, while it was all happening, so beautiful, so serene, I couldn’t get over the perverse violence associated with my dad’s passing. I still can’t.”

She described going to the school to collect her father’s personal effects.

“The blood hadn’t been scrubbed from where he had fallen on the concrete. I walked around this place, not stepping on the splotches and the puddles, and didn’t want to be hugged by anyone. Nothing can console me ever.”

She then spoke words that have gained ever more truth after ever more mass shootings.

“A person can be attending school and be gunned down.”

She added, “It happened here first.”

Other statements came from children now grown.

“My name is Crystal Hardy,” one began. “I was 10 years old when I was shot by Brenda Spencer.”

She described arriving at school and hearing shots and seeing the principal and the custodian lying dead. A teacher had called for her to duck.

“But I wasn’t able to run from the bullet Brenda had for me,” Hardy said.

She recalled lying in the nurse’s office, bleeding as bullets crashed through the window.

“I was greatly comforted when the policemen arrived to carry me away. I can still remember the pool of blood on the nurse’s bed, and the terror didn’t end there. Later, of course, I had nightmares, and to this day I fear that someone is pointing a gun at me when I’m walking in open places.”

“And recently, my boyfriend wanted me to go to a shooting range with him because it’s a sport he enjoys, and although I was hesitant, I thought, ‘Well, it’s been a long time, I’ll probably be OK.’ And I sat there as he shot the silhouette, but he had to stop because I started frantically crying. It was completely uncontrollable.”

There was also a statement by a parent, Francis Stile, whose two daughters attended the school. He recalled “the phone call from the neighbor who said there had been a shooting at Cleveland, the frustration of not being able to get near the school because the incident was still going on, the terror in my wife’s eyes, her screams of anguish at not knowing whether our girls were involved, the phone call from the hospital telling us that one of them had been wounded, looking at the bullet hole in her right elbow and the bullet burns on the inside if each thigh where a bullet had passed between her legs.”

The other daughter had been saved from harm when a notebook with a pouch of pens stopped a bullet. Both girls had witnessed the death of the principal and the custodian.

“They still speak of hearing the gurgle in Mr. Wragg as he lay there dying… If such evil can occur in such a benign and tranquil setting, then it can happen anywhere and probably will.”

A former student named Cam Miller attended the hearing in person and offered the last statement.

“I was 9 years old when I was shot,” he began.

He recalled that his mother had just dropped him at school directly opposite Spencer’s home and he had been starting up the sidewalk when he saw the bodies of the principal and the custodian. He had then blacked out as a bullet passed within an inch of his heart, exiting his chest.  He survived but remained terrorized.

“I would have to call to my mother two or three times each night to walk me around the inside of my house, just so I knew that Brenda Spencer was not inside my house,” he recalled.

He had been called to testify against her.

“I walked into court and saw this monster glaring at me,” he remembered. “The look at Brenda Foster gave me was enough to scare any young child to death.”

Thirty years later, Miller beheld her in another proceeding and asked the board not to parole her. The board denied her and she will not be eligible for another hearing until 2019.

In the meantime, she will sit as inmate W14944 in the California Women’s Institution, seeming to see no irony in having used heated metal to brand the words “Courage” and “Pride” across her chest.

In 2009, the board again refused her application for parole, and ruled it would be 10 years before she would be considered again

As of December 2016 she remains in prison and is housed at the California Institution for Women in Chino, California.

And so ... to finish of course we must have the Boomtown Rats ..

And a thought ...

28th January 2017 - Just a thought

Thought for the day : "First Coffee - then Swords"


Off at event - Element LARP ...   just discovered that I have a story in the Legends section - Cool !!!

But as I am away ..
Cheers

27th January 2017 - Burning up the road again

Thought for the day :"I saw a chameleon that could not change colour - it had reptile disfunction"

Had a Burns Night last night
Just time to add a few pictures..

Cheers

26th January 2017 - After Burns

Thought for the day:"He didn't want to eat the haggis…  He thinks it's offal."


Just a thought - busy setting up the Buirns Night for tonight at St Teilo..

 I lift a wee dram

Wednesday 25th January 2017 - Diwrnod Santes Dwynwen Hapus

Thought for the day: "I thought I would go for broke - I have mainly managed that …."

Diwrnod Santes Dwynwen Hapus... Happy St Dwynwen's Day!

St Dwynwen's Day is considered to be the Welsh equivalent to Valentine's Day and is celebrated on 25 January every year. It celebrates Dwynwen: the Welsh saint of lovers.

In the 5th Century Dwynwen fell in love with Maelon Dafodrill. Maelon returned her feelings but for an undetermined reason, they could not be together. Three hypotheses are that a) Maelon raped Dwynwen despite her wish to remain celibate until after marriage, b) her father forbade the marriage, or c) her father had already promised her to someone else. Dwynwen, distraught by her love for Maelon, prays to fall out of love with him.

After falling asleep, or possibly while still awake in a woods she had run to in her distress, Dwynwen was visited by an angel, who appeared carrying a sweet potion designed to erase all memory of Maelon and turn him into a block of ice. God then gave three wishes to Dwynwen. First she wished that Maelon be thawed, second that God meet the hopes and dreams of true lovers and third that she should never marry. All three were fulfilled, and as a mark of her thanks, Dwynwen devoted herself to God's service for the rest of her life
Dwynwen became a nun, fulfilling her wish to never marry. She left for the island of Anglesey and built a Church, which became known as Llanddwyn, literally meaning "Church of Dwynwen". Its remains can still be seen today on the island of Llanddwyn, off the coast of Anglesey. The smaller island also contains Dwynwen's well, where, allegedly, a sacred fish swims, whose movements predict the future fortunes and relationships of various couples.

Another tradition claims that if the water boils while visitors are present, then love and good luck will surely follow

Children's Version
This version of the story is generally told to younger children, usually in primary school or nursery as it is generally considered the most appropriate for children.

Dwynwen was the beautiful daughter of Brychan Brycheiniog, who was said to have had eleven sons and twenty-four daughters (although these figures vary greatly, to the extent of suggesting he had over fifty children). She met and fell madly in love with a man called Maelon, and he reciprocated her feelings. She asked her father if she could marry Maelon but Brychan disliked Maelon and refused to give his permission. Maelon begged, as did Dwynwen, but Brychan would not relent and Maelon was forced to leave.
Dwynwen was so upset that she ran into the forest. There, she met an angel in a dream who granted her the position of the Saint of Love


This could be fun....
Cheers

Tuesday 24th January 2017 - Ont he subject of Breeding

Thought for the day:"Indecisive people are under the whether ."

On the subject of collared doves...

When a pair of doves started mating on my mother's balcony - we were interested, and watched in fascination - mainly because at first they decided that the unstable top of the open window would be a good place for a nest - not a good idea really. Then in mid winter - they seemed to be at it again...  What a silly time to start raising a family !

And the nest did not really look as though it had any expertise. A couple of twigs laid out - with no style at all. But they seemed to manage and in due time two eggs appeared and a dove was incubating night and day - or so it seemed ..

Then the babies grew - but did not seem to want to disperse much...   and they got to be a bit of a size.

But in due time they flew - but came back on a regular basis.

And the parents started again - and this time a bit of research shows that it is the male that does most of the nest making and incubates during the day....  And today the young birds were sitting watching and one seems to have a few twigs in his mouth as thought he wants to help...

Well - we can't see how many eggs are there - but we are watching for another brood...

So - the wiki says...

Collared doves typically breed close to human habitation wherever food resources are abundant and there are trees for nesting; almost all nests are within half a mile of inhabited buildings. The female lays two white eggs in a stick nest, which she incubates during the night and which the male incubates during the day. Incubation lasts between 14 and 18 days, with the young fledging after 15 to 19 days.

Breeding occurs throughout the year when abundant food is available, though only rarely in winter in areas with cold winters such as northeastern Europe. Three to four broods per year is common, although up to six broods in a year has been recorded. Eurasian Collared Doves are a monogamous species, and share parental duties when caring for young.

The male's mating display is a ritual flight, which, as with many other pigeons, consists of a rapid, near-vertical climb to height followed by a long glide downward in a circle, with the wings held below the body in an inverted "V" shape. At all other times, flight is typically direct using fast and clipped wing beats and without use of gliding.

The collared dove is not wary and often feeds very close to human habitation, including visiting bird tables; the largest populations are typically found around farms where spilt grain is frequent around grain stores or where livestock are fed. It is a gregarious species and sizeable winter flocks will form where there are food supplies such as grain (its main food) as well as seeds, shoots and insects. Flocks most commonly number between ten and fifty, but flocks of up to ten thousand have been recorded.

The song is a coo-COO-coo. The collared dove also makes a harsh loud screeching call lasting about two seconds, particularly in flight just before landing. A rough way to describe the screeching sound is a hah-hah.

Collared doves cooing in early spring are sometimes mistakenly reported as the calls of early-arriving cuckoos and, as such, a mistaken sign of spring's return.

The collared dove is not migratory, but is strongly dispersive.

Over the last century, it has been one of the great colonisers of the bird world. Its original range at the end of the 19th century was warm temperate and subtropical Asia from Turkey east to southern China and south through India to Sri Lanka.

In 1838 it was reported in Bulgaria, but not until the 20th century did it expand across Europe, appearing in parts of the Balkans between 1900–1920, and then spreading rapidly northwest, reaching Germany in 1945, Great Britain by 1953 (breeding for the first time in 1956), Ireland in 1959, and the Faroe Islands in the early 1970s.

Subsequent spread was 'sideways' from this fast northwest spread, reaching northeast to north of the Arctic Circle in Norway and east to the Ural Mountains in Russia, and southwest to the Canary Islands and northern Africa from Morocco to Egypt, by the end of the 20th century. In the east of its range, it has also spread northeast to most of central and northern China, and locally (probably introduced) in Japan. It has also reached Iceland as a vagrant (41 records up to 2006), but has not colonised successfully there.

So - it seems that these birds have only been in the country for 60 years - but seem to be doing well...

We will watch with interest..
I lift my glass to winter birds!!
Cheers

23rd January 2017 - Monday - All Change

Thought for the day:" I Just ordered a Chicken and an Egg from Amazon - I'll let you know"

Crimson Moon - ready for the Weekend Event

Vollsanger - Weekly image

in a a bubble - or maybe a crystal ball

Achieved some clearing up today - at least moved things form one side of the desk to the other - gives a feeling of achievement ...


And so - tip for the day...

22nd January 2017 - Of Pirates and Summers

Thought for the day:"I had an argument with my calendar - but its days are numbered"

So, current politics and Trump has managed his first days despite mass demonstrations...

I will leave this here ..

Meanwhile - looking back - I found some old pictures of pirate weekends to think about in the midst of winter - thoughts of spring and summer are always fine at this time of year ..

Cheers

21st January 2017 - A Bit of learning to do ...

Thought for the day:"My pet mouse Elvis died last night  - He was caught in a trap."

Order of Athelstan today - and installation so I will have little time - but I will share the sentiments here as once again they sum up a set of maxims that seem worthy to me...

Our Ancient Charges, having subsisted since time immemorial, form the basis for our conduct as members of this Order. Still, as Freemasons there are other excellencies of character to which our attention must also be forcefully directed.

Let us never fail to:

Quietly and modestly move in the sphere of life; without blemish,
Fulfil our duties as men, and as loyal subjects.
Be pious without hypocrisy, benevolent without ostentation, and aid our fellow man without self-interest.
Let our heart beat warm for friendship, be serene and full of enjoyment.
In adversity do not despair, in fortune avoid presumption. Be resolute in the hour of danger.
Free ourselves from superstition and infidelity; and joyfully acknowledge the hand of the Eternal Master in all Nature.
Be careful to feel and adore the higher destination of Men, and to preserve our Faith, our Hope, and our Charity as not mere words without any meaning.
Remember our property, even life itself, is not too dear for the protection of true innocents, the virtuous, our society and the defence of truth.
If you wish severity, then judge yourself first. Range yourself against lawless violence.
Be tolerant with the debilities of your neighbour; oppose error with firmness but without arrogance.
Promote intelligence and aid learning without impatience for others.
Work diligently.
Honour Virtue, though it may be in the most humble garment. Do not favour Vice, though it may be clad in the finest purple;
Administer Justice to Merit whether it should dwell in the highest palace or in the lowest cottage.
 
Do not proclaim what you have done, can do, or will do, but where need is, to the best of your ability, lay hold with dispassionate courage, circumspect resolution, indefatigable exertion and the rarest power of mind, and pledge yourself not cease until the work is accomplished. Then, without pretension, retire into the multitude because the good act is done - not for acknowledgement, fame or fortune, but for the cause of the good itself, to the glory of God.

Once more into the breach my friends...

20th January 2017 - Just a Thought

Thought for the day:"Neighbour knocked on my door at 2:30 this morning. Luckily, I was still up playing my drums."

Just a thought today... Cheers

19th January 2017 - Pre - Inauguration Day

Thought for the day:"I learned two little words that will open almost every door in life - push and pull"

So - tomorrow is Inauguration day - I will just leave this one here

Enough said I think..

18th January 2017 - Awesome just saying

Thought for the day:"Awesome ends in "Me" - Not a coincidence I think !"



Cheers!