Not Sasquatch, but sasquish

Years ago there was a curmudgeon’s curmudgeon by the name of Henry Louis (HL) Mencken. Way back in the days when you didn’t necessarily need a college education to get a job writing for a big time newspaper, Mencken got his first newspaper job as a part timer at the Baltimore Morning Herald in February, 1899. By June, he was hired as a full time reporter.

He really came to fame about five years later when he started working at the Baltimore Sun, where he became a fixture as a columnist/satirist and was called the Sage of Baltimore.

Mencken was renowned for his wry wit, and he called the American public the boobousie, a play on the French term Bourgeoisie, which is defined as the upper ruling class in a capitalistic society.  But for Mencken, it had a far more reaching meaning as it basically was associated with the public at large.

Despite all the changes in the world since 1899, it’s nice to note that the American general public has held its ground as the boobousie. The only difference, perhaps, is that the term needs a bit of updating; that piece of the public zeitgeist today ought to be called homo simpleton.  As the term suggests, it refers to the evolutionary chain of progression from homo erectus to homo sapiens to homo simpleton.

A case in point to support that statement occurred recently in Montana, where a certain subject in trying to promote Bigfoot attempted to perpetrate a hoax. In truth, we mourn for the family of this individual, as we would for any family who lost a son under such circumstances.  But at times you have to scratch your head and wonder what the heck people are thinking.

This is one such time, Randy Lee Tenley, obviously a huge Bigfoot enthusiast, decided, hopefully all on his own, that he could create his own hoax by dressing in camouflage that resembled heavy foliage. A great idea, no doubt.

The camouflage worked probably even better than Mr Tenley might have hoped. The next step in the master plan was to step out on Highway 93 on a Sunday night, and just sort of freak out a few drivers who would report having seen Bigfoot and thereby create the opportunity for one of those History Channel specials to come to town. While I am not so sure that was his ultimate goal, it certainly seems credible given the amount of air time such shows get nowadays, along with other shows like UFOs, alien visits, and the myriad of other craziness that passes as TV fare today.

The only problem Tenley ran into was that, according to Jim Schneider, the Montana State Trooper who responded to the call and who spoke with CNN affiliate KECI, “He probably would not have been very easy to see at all.”

Tenley got well into the driving lane, according to reports, and was attempting to incite his Bigfoot sighting. He wanted to make people think they saw a sasquatch.

But the state police never got a call about a Bigfoot sighting. Tenley’s capering about on the highway came to an abrupt halt when a 15-year old driver hit him with her car, another car was forced to swerve to keep from hitting him, and a third car, driven by a 17-year old driver, flat ran him over.

Not so much Sasquatch as sasquish.

While we as human beings rue the wasteful loss of human life, it’s pretty hard not to think that Tenley set himself up for his own demise.  Playing in traffic is not something most people would do in the light of day, but to do so at night?  Incredible.  And then, to do so with extensive camouflage gear on simply boggles the mind.

You have to feel for his family, having lost one of their own in such a way. But Tenley really ought to head the list of Darwin Award winners for 2012.  What are Darwin Awards, you ask? They are fictional awards handed out to people who, through their own actions, remove their DNA from the gene pool.

Anything you say will be used against you, but not in a court of law

There is, I think, a fine line between freedom of speech and public endangerment. No doubt the civil authorities in the United States bent toward the public endangerment side when they hauled Brandon J. Raub off to John Randolph Medical Center Saturday for a psychiatric evaluation.

I suppose Raub’s commentary on FaceBook could be construed in some context as public endangerment, but really how far away from a police state are we now anyway?  Raub, a Marine Corps veteran, certainly has a right to his opinion of the state of the state, so to speak. He is far from the first or last person to voice concerns about what the government did, does, or is about to do.

We have learned over the years, of course, that the U.S. government is completely trustworthy. Do you need me to cite the examples? How about we start with Richard Milhous Nixon? Sure, there are a lot of things that the government does that smack of situational ethics, or maybe just doing what they want to do despite laws, ethics, or even to some extent morals. The government per se is not above doing things that may seem reprehensible to those of us lowly citizens who hunker down in our homes and hope that no one has said anything that might invite a visit from the FBI or the super-Cops out of DC.

I suppose the recent incidents in Colorado, and even before that the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, puts the Feds on edge a bit. But hauling someone off because of statements on FaceBook? FaceBook is a place where everyone airs their complaints. Take a look; most of the stuff out there is malarkey.

That’s not to say that Raub isn’t serious. But the likelihood of him starting an American Spring is pretty low. One of the great things about America is that we have freedom of speech. Raub fought for it; and all of you veterans out there ought to support it. We put in time serving our country to preserve someone’s right to say what they think, whether that be burning the flag or popping off on FaceBook.

And now, no one wants to take credit for hauling Raub off to John Randolph. The Chesterfield PD admits to transporting him, but they say it was at the request of the super-cops, FBI and Secret Service. But those groups don’t seem to want to get involved.

So maybe it’s just a tad bit of overreaction on the part of these do-gooders, trying to keep us safe from FaceBook comments. And if that’s the case, I guess they need to start cracking down on the bullies on FB too.  After all, bullies have arguably resulted in more deaths than someone blowing off steam about our government.

Talk is talk. And perhaps some of it requires due diligence in terms of tracking people. I am not saying Raub should have been ignored. Not by any means, it takes a bit of chutzpah to post anarchic commentary.  But what did the man do?

Nothing.

The response at most should have been to monitor him. Maybe try to find out what the dude is all about. But locking him up in the Looney bin is a bit much. Those tactics are straight out of Soviet Russia and other quasi dictatorships. You know, places like Iran where any potential uprising or potential leaders are squashed like the bugs they are.

It’s stuff like this that makes people wonder about where our country is heading.  As the ship of state tacks more and more to the socialist side, is it really surprising that the Feds would crack down on someone calling for an American Spring?

Soon to be Penn-iless State University

Certainly, the NCAA sanctions against the Penn State Football Team are harsh and well deserved, but pushing things into the academics arena is a bit too much.  I have said, and I still say, that any and all of the people at Penn State who allowed Jerry Sandusky to perpetuate his child molesting ways should all be charged, tried, and thrown in jail.

The NCAA pulling scholarships, fining the school $60 million, and keeping them from post-season play was harsh, but didn’t go as far as the so-called Death Penalty, which would have put an end to Penn State’s football program for some time.  That the school has accepted the penalties and not attempted to get them reduced speaks volumes that all those naysayers ought to pay attention to. Even the school believes there was some wrong doing on their part.

But, now they are faced with even more punishment. And, I believe in this instance, it is undeserved.

Recently, Penn State was notified by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education that their academic accreditation may be withdrawn. What that does to the school, in essence, is put them out of business. Penn State could face the loss of federal student aid program eligibility, guaranteed student loans, federal research grants, and eligibility for state aid. Basically, that pulls the plug on all the ways in which students can generate the kind of money they need to attend a college or university.

At what point do we allow the university to clean up its issues?

No one, not even the university itself, has denied that things were handled improperly. But it wasn’t the school per se, just a few people. It really only comes down to one man, Sandusky, and a bunch of cronies who thought they could handle the matter internally and not have it become public fodder.

Now just how dumb an idea that was I won’t take the time to conjecture. But I do know that when you deal with things like this, it’s always best to get everything out as quickly as possible. Otherwise, it tends to fester. It never really gets better. Even with cancer and tumors, the first best option is to remove the offending part, in this case Jerry should have been thrown under the nearest Penn State campus bus.

But taking away the school’s accreditation is just as bad as allowing Jerry to continue his sadistic behavior.  It’s not just punishing the school; it’s punishing thousands of innocent students who have attended the school on good faith.  They may well be supporters of the school football team, but who wouldn’t be, really?

It’s a gross miscarriage of justice to pursue removing the school’s accreditation due to issues with the football team and a select group of administrators who are now gone.  The school doesn’t deserve it, the staff doesn’t deserve it, and most of all the students don’t deserve it.

It seems to me that the Nittany Lions are being treated like a piñata at this point. Having been hung out to dry, everyone passing by is taking a whack at them. The problem, first and foremost, was with Sandusky. He is a bonafide creep and boogeyman and deserving of everything that he has coming his way. The second layer is those who were in the know and who allowed him to continue to despoil those kids, and many more, without considering the extent of the damage he caused.

As far as the football team is concerned, the NCAA has taken care of that punishment. The courts have started the process of taking care of Sandusky.  They need to address the other culprits in the case and give them what they deserve.  The rest of what is going to happen at Penn State will revolve around the Civil Suits that are bound to be on the way.  And those lawsuits in particular, both the number and the amount of money they represent, may in fact accomplish what the whole idea about revoking the school’s accreditation would result in: to wit, the end of Penn State University.

A few minutes time could save a little boys' life

When we take the time to look back at the things that happened in our lives, we can all pretty easily spot those moments when it seemed like our worlds were falling apart all around us. Some of them are easily overcome by a little diligence, some hard work, and a bit of regrouping. But some things cannot be so easily overcome.

For some old friends of mine, Joe and Dianne Waldron and their family, there is no tougher time than now.  Their 20-month old grandson Quinlan Thomas was recently diagnosed with leukemia and his chances of survival are growing less and less every day.

According to Joe, it was only a short time ago when Quinlan was a happy go lucky 20 month old, riding around his back yard in an electric car. Then in short order the lad found himself locked up in a hospital with tubes and needles and nurses and doctors hovering around. It got to the point where he would start crying the minute a doctor or nurse came through the door, because he was relating that experience to another round of poking, prodding and needle sticks.

It’s hard to imagine the change, and impossible to digest. What Quinlan is going through would be tough on an adult, but on a child who isn’t even two yet there has to be a sense of unreality.

For Joe and Dianne, and Quinlan’s mom Caroline Thomas and the Thomas family, it’s beyond a difficult time. This isn’t the kind of thing that hard work, or just being good people can get you past. There is little they can do short of prayer and hoping that the doctors can come up with something.

“It’s a feeling of helplessness, there’s just nothing we can do,” Joe said. “I’m not the kind of person who cries about things, but this has had me crying and sobbing.”

At this point, Quinlan’s best chance to survive leukemia is to have a bone marrow transplant.  In order to try to help Quinlan and other leukemia patients, there will be a bone marrow donor registration Saturday between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. at the Colonial Heights Optimist Club, 916 Meridian Ave. in Colonial Heights.

Registering as a bone marrow donor is relatively easy. They use a swab to acquire a DNA sample, and then keep the resulting tissue type in a thing called the Be the Match Registry®, operated by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP). It’s painless.

If you’re a match, you must be willing to consider donating to any patient who needs your marrow type.  If you do, there are two ways to donate:  peripheral blood stem cells and bone marrow.

While the odds of finding a bone marrow donor Saturday may be low, they are even lower if you don’t take the time to stop by the Optimist Club Saturday.  It’s a five minute side trip while you’re out yard sailing, but for Quinlan it is a matter of life or death.

Biting the hand that feeds you, literally!

I guess not everybody is an aficionado of the History Channels Swamp People show. It would seem to me that it would be required viewing for anyone who hangs around the swamps, whether it be the one in Mississippi or the Everglades in Florida.

While it doesn’t take but a few minutes to realize just how dangerous catching alligators can be, some people seem to come up short on the common sense principle. It’s best not to provoke a wild animal, and especially one that is as dangerous as an alligator.

Take for instance the case of 63-year-old Wallace Weatherholt. Weatherholt is an airboat captain who makes his living by taking tourists out into the Everglades for the Grand Tour, swamp-style.  Flora and fauna abound. The airboat whisks along gliding over the swamp at incredible speed.

But just the idea of the sites to see and the animals to check out isn’t always enough. In Weatherholt’s case, his Indiana clients had an additional need. They needed to see an American Alligator, up close and personal.

Well, they got what they were looking for on their June 12^th tour.  Weatherholt decided to get an alligator to come up close to the airboat by holding out a fish. His hand, according to reports, was just above the water.  A 9-foot alligator, which typically weighs over 500 pounds, slipped up out of the depths and snatched the fish and took Weatherholt’s hand along with it.

He didn’t even have time to yell, “Shoot him, shoot him,” as they do in Swamp People. Now the Indiana family really has something to talk about when they recounted their Everglades adventure.

But really, how foolish can someone be who makes a living in a swamp?  These are wild animals, not trained seals or dogs. We can’t even get captive Orcas to behave properly, and here we have a man enticing an alligator? That’s just plain crazy.

So, the State of Florida recently added to the man’s injury by charging him with a misdemeanor for feeding the alligators, which is forbidden by Florida law.  Seems to me the man has paid a big enough price for feeding gators; I am sure a hand is more than Shylock’s pound of flesh.

Still, gators can be dangerous. I find it best to stay out of their way when possible, although it is kind of cool to check them out. Two years ago, we travelled around on the Gator Gau, a huge airboat on Myakka Lake, a Florida state park just east of Sarasota. We saw a handful of gators, but none in the nine-foot range.  Still, sitting in the boat was about as close as I wanted to get to one.

Gator incidents abound in Florida, as I am sure they do in Mississippi and anywhere else the prehistoric-looking critters live. One time about 30-years ago, I was fishing in a canoe with a couple friends.  A typical Florida storm churned up, and we headed for the Interstate bridge to get out of the rain. We continued to fish, but at one point one of my buddies started taking off his shoes and rolling up his pants legs. I watched him get into the river, and circle around toward a point on the shore just a short way upstream.

Suddenly, he reached down and grabbed a small gator under the front legs. It had been wounded—shot in the head—but it wasn’t quite dead yet. We dispatched the poor critter to put him out of his misery and tossed the carcass into the bottom of the canoe.

Does anyone sense this story going awry, or is it just me?

Well, the three of us climbed back into the canoe and started our trek back to the cabin where we started. About halfway back, the gator decided not to be dead and started snapping at fishing equipment, boots, paddles, basically anything we threw its way. Fortunately for us, the gator had a broken jaw and could not chomp down on anything. In short order, we finished paddling back to the cabin, did in the remaining gator essence, and had enough tail meat for a small cook out.  And that’s my gator tale that easily could have ended up much worse.

And now comes my final gator tale of the day.  While perusing the Bradenton Herald a few years ago, I came across a story with the following headline: Man Attacked by Gator.”

Hmm, I thought at the time, that’s unusual. Let’s run my eyes over this story and find out what it’s all about.

Turns out, the gator really wasn’t after the man. He was after the man’s dog. Other than marshmallows, there’s nothing a gator would rather eat than good old American canine.

It seems this fellow had his house on a pond in Florida, as many people do.  In the morning, he had gotten into the habit of letting his little dog out to do his business across the street, near the pond. Apparently, a gator decided to move into the pond, and thought that the dog was merely someone providing a nice little breakfast.

Hearing a commotion and his dog barking outside, the man opened his front door to let his dog escape the gator’s gnashing jaws. Unfortunately for him, while the jaws missed the dog they didn’t miss his arm. So, in the end, the gator really wasn’t after the man.  He was after man’s best friend.

It doesn’t take much to realize how dangerous a gator can be. I can’t imagine having one chomp on my hand, and I know from experience that they can be very quarrelsome. Still, when Weatherholt faces a judge in his case later this month, the judge should show him some pity.  The man has already paid a handsome price.