I am reading The Last Coach, a life of Paul "Bear" Bryant by Allen Barra. An interesting book by a very good writer. Bryant has been everyone’s image of who is a great football coach and his life story confirms why. Here a few stories from the book that I thought were worth repeating. Bryant grew up dirt poor in Arkansas and he remembered all his life when he was able to afford to have cleats attached to the shoes…
Do you remember the 1969 Woody Allen classic movie Take the Money and Run? Allen plays such a total loser that he even fails at trying to rob a bank because his handwriting is so bad on the hold up note the bank teller can’t read it. They argue about what the note says and Allen finally just gives up. That scene from the movie came to mind while reading the Spokesman Review newspaper in Spokane the other day. Lita…
The Associated Press recently carried an article by Jill Lawless about Alan Turing who was the genius who contributed so much to breaking the Nazi Germany’s World War II code. This was no small feat and much has been written about the history of this British project. See, for example, Enigma: The Battle for the Code by Hugh Seabag-Montefiorie. Historically military codes have played an important part of warfare. Armies and ships at sea must be in communication with military…
What follows are some rambling thoughts that originate from scripture and religion. They aren’t profound, but since this is my blog I’m going to share them anyway. The first deals with the familiar saying "practice what you preach." It’s very good advice and a modern expression of this is "if you are going talk the talk, you have to walk the walk." This has been expressed as "walk it like you talk it" or the traditional "actions speak louder then words." I was…
Seattle attorney Tom Frey’s dad died on Sunday September 13, 2009 at 99 years of age. Over the years I had heard Tom talk about his dad’s baseball career, but I never realized he played in the majors nor what a great player he was until I saw a picture of his dad, in a baseball uniform, published in the obituaries and begin to read about his career. Linus R "Lonny" Frey was born on August 23, 1910 in St Louis…
Benjamin Tillman was governor of South Carolina from 1890 to 1894. He was responsible for doing everything possible to prevent blacks from voting. He proudly said that he "had done his level best [to prevent blacks from voting]…We have scratched our heads to find out how we could eliminate the last one of them…" He served in the Senate and was censured after assaulting another Senator. He was also barred from the white house. He became known as "Pitchfork Ben" after…
I am reading The Last Coach, a life of Paul "Bear" Bryant by Allen Barra. An interesting book by a very good writer. Bryant has been everyone’s image of who is a great football coach and his life story confirms why. Here a few stories from the book that I thought were worth repeating. Bryant grew up dirt poor in Arkansas and he remembered all his life when he was able to afford to have cleats attached to the shoes…
By now everyone knows the disgraceful conduct of a little known Republican Congressman from South Carolina, Joe Wilson, during the President of the United States speech to a joint session of Congress. Heckling the President of the United States during a speech to the joint sessions of Congress is unprecedented in the history of Congress. Worse then the shouted interruption, calling the President a liar, during such a speech, is rude, insolent and discourteous. When it is done by a…
The internet is a marvelous thing. I was pleased to find that there are many websites that offer free recordings and videos of famous people and historical figures giving speeches. Some offer a text of the speech or in the case of Clarence Darrow the text of his arguments and trials. One of my favorite sources is American Rhetoric http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html At this site you can see a video of Abbott and Costello doing their famous "Who's on First" routine that is still very…
I was captivated by Ken Burns wonderful documentary The War shown on Public Televison http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=2784344=. What really impressed me, however was Al McIntosh who was the editor of the Rock County Star-Herald in Luverne, Minnesota. (For more on Mr. Burns see Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_McIntosh) There is also a book Amazon sells of his writings Selected Chaff: The Wartime Columns of Al McIntosh, 1941-1945 His writing was simple, clear and moving. I published about him in this blog https://paulluverajournalonline.com/weblog/2008/04/if-you-watched.html. I also was curious about…
