So I was taking this picture at the recent firefighter memorial service here in Shelby. On the way to my car, Chief Carter of the Shelby PD asked me about the issue of whether shooting through glass spoiled clarity. We didn�t have time to chat long, but here�s what was going through my head for this shot�.

When I got to the scene one of the first things I noticed was the way the room was set up. Inside the bays of the firestation, there were three aisles to the front, where things would be happening and where I�d need to get to for good shots. And I�d want to be able to move around some to get different shots.

But the aisle on one side was blocked by chairs. If I started at the front there I�d be stranded, not wanting to walk in front of people during the event to get out. And I wouldn�t want to move up the center - I try not to be visually obtrusive during such a ceremony. I wear soft-soled shoes and try to stalk quietly.

That left one aisle inside the building. Donna from TV33 was there, but I could work around her.

But before the ceremony started I�d noticed that outside the bay was a really interesting shot. Seeing on the schedule that Delane Davis, first fire marshal of Cleveland County, would be ringing the memorial bell, I saw where I could get him, the bell the interior of the bay, reflections of sky, trees, and a fire truck, and see straight on through the bay to some more emergency vehicles - an overall shot of the scene that would also be very artistic (photojournalists eat this fancy stuff up).

But for this shot to make sense it would have to run in color. So right before the ceremony I wound up on the cell phone with Margarita, my managing editor, to see if this was slated to run in color.

She said it was, but you never come back with just one shot - I needed to get plenty of other art that could run in black and white if the photo got bumped from a color page by breaking news or something. I also don�t return from the office with just creative stuff - in case the person editing it doesn�t go for panning, creative lighting, silhouettes, wild cropping�.

So I made the decision to shoot some from the open aisle - getting plenty of �safeties� that weren�t exactly what I wanted, but would do in a pinch.

Then I moved outside the bay. I could take some standard shots though the glass without showing reflections, but it was tricky.

Have you noticed that at night you can see thru glass into a lighted room easier than you can see out into the darkness? Well it was light outside and dark in the bay. That could make things tricky. But my putting my lens against the window I can create the shadow that allows me to see in.

But when I try to shoot at an angle to the glass, looking at someone at the podium, for example part of the glass I�m shooting thru is in the shadow of the lens and part is receiving light that ruins the shot. That�s where I have to cup my hand around the lens to block out the light. True some of my hand gets in the side of the shot, but that gets cropped out.

To address Chief Carter�s question, the glass I was shooting through was relatively clean, so there wasn�t too great an impact on clarity. And since the quality of paper newspaper use is so crummy, there is room for a degree of imperfection to hide that wouldn�t be possible with some glossy publications.

So now when saw Mr. Davis approaching the bell I squatted (this job involves a lot of squatting) into the position I�d already rehearsed before the ceremony began. I quickly shot off plenty of frames, in case he blinked or something else happened - don�t put all your eggs in one basket.

I also had to make sure that I wasn�t in the reflection. And remember what I was saying about light and dark and reflections? Do you see in the picture how where the trees are reflected you can see Mr. Davis� face? But where the sky is you can�t see the back of his head? I had to choose and frame what would be visible in the bay (under the dark reflection of the trees), or obscured by the light reflection of the sky.

Then to get some more conventional shots of the bell ringing I quickly had to move to get a through the glass shot without the reflection.

Later that day, back at the office, folks liked my creative shot and it showed up in the paper the next day� in color.

And that�s some of what was going through my head at the time. A lot of it�s a thinking game, like diamond sports such as baseball and softball.

But that�s another rant.
 

So here is a bird feeder of mine. Scroll down for some directions on how to make one.... 

Making this birdfeeder is really very simple. I got the idea of using soda bottle a few years back on the internet, and have been boiling down the design since then. This feeder is not in itself squirrel-proof, though it can be hung from a squirrel-proof pole. But a beauty of this design is that it�s cheap and easy enough to make that you can build them faster than squirrels can destroy them - the Liberty ship of bird feeders.

So here you go.

Take two empty plastic soda bottles, I prefer two liters. Wash them out and take any labels off.

Cut the first bottle�s top off, as shown in the diagram.

Cut four evenly spaced slits on that bottle from the top rim down to where it starts narrowing towards the bottom. Cut out two of the opposing sections you�ve just created.

Punch some holes in the bottom to allow water to drain and put a hole in the bottle�s cap.

Take the cap off the second bottle. Drill/burn/punch a hole in the center of the bottom. Punch small holes in the bulges that form the bottle�s �legs� and cut a pretty big hole in one of these supports. You�ll be able to fill the feeder through this hole.

Knot/twist into a secure ball one end of the wire. Run it up inside the second bottle, through the hole in the center and in through the top of the first bottle. You can form the wire into a hook or loop to hang the feeder by.

Place the second bottle in the sectioned bottom of the first bottle far enough that the opening is about the height of the first bottle�s rim and tape the two to secure them.

To fill the device, just slide the �lid� up the wire and pour in some feed. A third bottle can be used as a funnel.

 

Here you go with some simple paintbrush work showing the birdfeeder in construction.... 

"Recalling Life on Memorial Day"

I read this years ago and found it again online recently. It’s by a columnist for Raleigh’s News and Observer.

Recalling Life on Memorial Day
By Dennis Rogers

I think they would understand the way it turned out. Memorial Day is their day, isn’t it?

It is supposed to be the day a grateful nation pauses to quietly thank the more than one million men and women who have died in military service to their country since the Revolutionary War.

Or is it the day the beach resorts kick into high gear for the summer season, the day the strand is covered by fish-belly white people basting themselves in coconut oil, the day the off-season rates end and the weekend you can’t get into a seaside seafood restaurant with anything less than a one-hour wait.

Or is it one of the biggest shopping center sales days of the year, a day when hunting for a parking place is the prime sport for the holiday stay-at-homers.

I think the men and women who died for us would understand what we do with their day. I hope they would, because if they wouldn’t, if they would have insisted that it be a somber, respectful day of remembrance, then we have blown it and dishonored their sacrifice.

I knew some of those who died, and the guys I knew would have understood. They liked a sunny beach and a cold beer and a hot babe in a black bikini, too. They would have enjoyed packing the kids, the inflatable rafts, the coolers and the suntan lotion in the car and heading for the lake. They would have enjoyed staying at home and cutting the grass and getting together with some friends and cooking some steaks on the grill, too.

But they didn’t get the chance. They were in the Marine Barracks in Beirut and died in the oily waters of the Persian Gulf. They caught theirs at the airstrip in Grenada in the little war everybody laughed at. They bought the farm in the I Drang Valley and on Heartbreak Ridge and at Hue. They froze at the Chosin Reservoir and were shot at the Pusan perimeter. They drowned in the surf at Omaha Beach or fell in the fetid jungles of Guadalcanal. They were at the Soame and at San Juan Hill and at Gettysburg and at Cerro Gordo and at Valley Forge.

They couldn’t be here with us this weekend, but I think they would understand that we don’t spend the day in tears and heart-wrenching memorials. They wouldn’t want that. Grief is not why the died. They died so that we could go fishing. They died so that another father could hold his laughing little girl over the waves. They died so another father could toss a baseball to his son in the backyard while the charcoal is getting white. They died so another buddy could drink a beer on his day off. They died so a family could get in the station wagon and go shopping and maybe get some ice cream on the way home.

They won’t mind that we have chosen their day to have our first big outdoor party of the year. But they wouldn’t mind, either, if we took just a second and thought about them. Some will think of them formally, of course. Wreaths will be laid in small, sparsely attended ceremonies in military cemeteries and at monuments at state capitals and in small town squares. Flags will fly over the graves, patriotic words will be spoken and the few people there probably will feel a little anger that no more people showed up. They’ll think no one else remembers.

But we do remember. We remember Carlton and Chico and Davey and the guys who died. We remember the deal we made: If we buy it, we said, drink a beer for me.

I’ll do it for you, guys. I’ll drink that beer for you today, and I’ll sit on that beach for you, and I’ll check out the girls for you and, just briefly, I’ll think of you. I won’t let your memory spoil the trip, but you’ll be on that sunny beach with me today. I will not mourn your deaths this Memorial Day, my friends. Rather I’ll celebrate the life you gave me.

This Bud’s for you.

Cycling across US, against cancer….

I don’t want to give away the whole article, which appears in The Star this Weekend, but this past week I got to hang out some with a couple guys (and accompanying support staff) who are riding bikes across the US to raise funds for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Pretty cool. Check back later for photos….

Here you go with an Appalachian Trail shelter, as per this week's column, http://www.shelbystar.com/portal/ASP/article.asp?ID=16400 

And here you go with mine. 

OK, here's the fifth and final flamingo photo illustration. If you can tell me where it is, shoot me an email at john_derrick@link.freedom.com. Scroll on down for the other four shots and answer their accompanying questions via email to win your own flock of five. Who gets the most correct answers, wins. I'll give it till Wednesday. 

Here, followed by two other shots, is me getting over my fear of heights as described in my column. These shots were taken by Tommy Forney, who seems to crop up everywhere in all sorts of civic groups.
And here's the column: http://www.shelbystar.com/portal/ASP/article.asp?ID=16243

Here's a closeup 

And here's the resulting shot.... 

That would explain why the devil never calls me back….

www.religionnewsblog.com/11134
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/....

Believe it or not, the devil’s number, 666, has been revalued to 616 after some ancient papyrus documents have been read by scientists for the first time using new technological techniques, giving us “new” work by Sophocles and showing us this Biblical typo.
This makes me glad I didn’t get that tattoo (just kidding) and reminds me of an old joke about strict verbatim literal interpretation:

www.technologyinvestor.com/login/2004/Nov30-04.php

A new young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old canons and law of the church, by hand. He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head Abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up. In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk, says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son." So, he goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery, where the original manuscript is held as archives in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go by and nobody sees the old Abbot. So, the young monk gets worried and goes downstairs to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall, and wailing "We forgot the 'R', we forgot the 'R'." His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably.

The young monk asks the old Abbot, "What's wrong, father?

"With a choking voice, the old abbot replies, "Celebrate, the word is Celebrate!"

"... the communications department. I wouldn’t trust them with a hypodermic, but I bet they’re fun at parties."

I’m not sure who enjoyed Saturday’s GWU graduation more – the grads or myself. To be honest, spending two and a half hours constantly ducking, squatting, climbing and crawling while wearing thirty pounds of camera gear is physically demanding, but I had a good time.
I think my high point was shooting reaction shots as students walked across the stage to get their diplomas. I was hoping for some “Rocky”esque victory poses, and I certainly got them.
One of the nice things about GWU is that everybody knows everybody else. I was squatting on the floor in front of the stage with Kaylin, the photo editor for the student paper. As the graduates came up the steps, she could predict which ones would thrust up their hands with a “Braveheart” attitude, bow to the crowd…. I even got to see the student body treasurer do a split in front of President Campbell – GO SHAWN!
As the nursing candidates approached the stage, Kaylin warned me that they might not be the most excitable – rather crossing the stage in a more sedate, mature fashion. I guess that’s the sort of person you want taking care of you in the hospital.
But don’t worry, she said, the Batchelor of Arts candidates are next.
Up walked the folks from the communications department. I wouldn’t trust them with a hypodermic, but I bet they’re fun at parties.
Anyway, I always “overshoot”. We only used one of my photos from the event, but I kept hopping for the whole time, going on the thought that as long as you have to stay the whole time, it’s better to have waaaaaay too many good photos than not enough.
So here on my blog you can find some of folks I know who graduated. You can also find some other shots on The Star’s website at: http://shelbystar.com/GWU_05_graduation/gwuGraduation05.htm.
Enjoy!

Scott seems pretty happy to have graduated. 

Here's the Great Scott crossing the stage 

Here's Shawn, student body treasuerer, doing a split in front of the Pres. 

Here's Shawn, cross country runner who does like 70 miles a week. Nut 

And one of the folks from my Church who teaches at GWU 

Here's Joel going across the stage 

Here's Joel coming off the stage 

And here's Kaylin hard at work 

"... covered in mud. And chicken."

When you’re four miles beyond Casar you’re eight miles into, um... the beautiful, scenic countryside.
We’re doing a story on the unusual street names of Cleveland County. So last week I got an email rattling off Sugar Bear Lane, Zelda Drive, Bythe Way, Real Street….
So I thought I’d ride to some of them on my bike.
What drew me to the suburbs of Casar? Dirty Ankle Road. And if you have the strength and courage to ride along it a ways, you come to the two places it intersects Ankle Road itself.
It’s the ankle-est place in Cleveland County. Have an ankle? Have a dirty ankle? Either way we’ve got the road for you. You can get the complete story and explanation of the unusual names in Joy’s article this Saturday, but I’ll give you a hint – it involves dirt. And ankles.
Anyway, Alan, one of our reporters, had driven me upcounty and dropped me off for the 27-mile ride. I could have ridden up on my own, but I wanted to start in Casar and work my way back to Shelby to take advantage of the North to South downhill slope.
It’s obvious – just look at any map hanging on a wall. That’s why the North won the Civil War/War of Northern Aggression/War of “Yous Guys Eat a Pig’s WHAT!?!” – downhill advantage.
After a while I realized I was riding by the site of a chicken truck accident several months ago. There had been dead chickens everywhere. And live ones. Screaming. I found it rather traumatic (“Tell me, Clarice, have the [chickens] stopped screaming”). I imagine the chickens did too.
And these things always seem to happen on soggy days. In retrospect, it’s a good thing it was raining. It helped keep the dirt washed off my ankles. Aside from the natural shower I might have come back covered in mud. And chicken.
I became a much better (quasi)-vegetarian that day.
Anyway, I rode on, passing a field of cows. There was a great deal of mooing. And the cows looked at me as if to say – “why are you mooing, you silly biped”.
At one point I stopped to get my camera out. I’ve got special pedals and shoes that clip together for a more efficient transfer of power from my legs to the bike. But you have to unclip before you can use your feet to do something like keep from falling over when you stop.
I’ve got to remember to unclip.
Embarrassed, I quickly looked around to make sure no motorists had seen my graceless, knee-skinning experience. The cows were watching, but that’s it. Then I wrote a column about it. I dunno.
I rode on back to Shelby and the next morning continued my search. By the way, I’ve now been by Bythe Way five times. I’ve found what I believe to be the road, but there is no street sign.
However, I did find Thisa Way.

Hinton James was a wussy.

It took Hinton James untold days and weeks to walk to Chapel Hill from his home, becoming the legendary first student at UNC.
It took me only about eight hours.
Admittedly, James lived 150 miles away in Wilmington, not 33 miles distant in Wake Forest, but by those numbers his renowned trek should still have taken only around 38 hours.
Wussy. And he showed up late for classes, too.
Still, to this day the dorm farthest from campus bears his name.
I lived right next door for two of my four years at UNC. During that time I spent a lot of time walking to campus and driving to Chapel Hill from Wake Forest. After graduation I rode my bike there.
A little bit later I walked. And I ran some along the way.
I started out using online maps to plan my route. I bet Hinton James didn’t do that. Slacker. I then drove the route in both directions multiple times, noting turns and landmarks on a cassette recorder.
Yet again my expedition planning skills are clearly superior to James’.
So I made my map, complete with mileages between roads, churches… and gas stations.
Now if James had been bright, he would have known about the Great American Gas Station. Need some food? Need something to drink? Need a phone, a toilet, a slushy? They’ve got everything a road weary walker might want.
So I set out, calling my dad on a cell phone (James is dumb) every hour, wearing my cycling jersey (James is evil) and running shoes (James eats puppies).
(Actually I have great respect for James and all people who walk insane distances, like Lewis and Clark, the Apostle Paul….)
Now the last mile or so to campus you’re going up the hill that gives the town its name. So I had to run it on in and do the “Rocky” thing, charging up steps to the Pit, a central area of campus.
So with my water pack on my back and “33 miles” written on my leg in black magic marker I finished a long day. I ran into some college buddies. Relating my tale, they hardly batted an eye.
I guess they’re used to me by now.

I am not sure the wingspan of a coelacanth.

How about that ivory-billed woodpecker?
For 60-odd years we thought they were extinct in the United States (www.audubon.org) and then even in the world. But they’ve resurfaced in Arkansas – the birds, with wingspans more than 30 inches, were just hiding. Probably wisely.
I am not sure the wingspan of a coelacanth.
Truth be known, I’m a casual birder. I’m not as hardcore as my Aunt Betty, who goes traipsing across the globe with her binoculars, but thanks to her I’m a member of the Audubon society and know a thing or two about birdhouses.
Carolina chickadee houses. I’ve made bunches of them and have the design linked from my blog, www.shelbystar.com/blogs.asp . For a while I was using them instead of greeting and sympathy cards. I remember a great fellow I knew. He dad was passing away, so I made a birdhouse for him. But then his dad just kept hanging on.
I carried that birdhouse around for a long time, waiting.
I actually emailed some folks down at the NC General Assembly to get the Carolina chickadee (not the flamingo) designated as the state bird (they haven’t emailed me back). Seven states have the cardinal – where’s our originality in that? The perfect candidate would have been the colorful Carolina parakeet, but we killed those off in the 1920s.
Anyway, chickadees are rather small (just how big and intimidating does that name really sound? Scarier than the tufted titmouse?). When I wanted a real challenge, I made a nesting platform for a great horned owl (grunt when you say that – their wingspan can stretch more than five feet).
Is that a way to take care of a neighbor’s yappy little dog? Invite some large, silent predators to the neighborhood and just let nature take its course?
Relax – we never put the platform up.
There are other ways of attracting large birds. Like using small birds.
I had a birdfeeder hanging outside my college dorm window, attracting plenty of little sparrows and squirrels (the entertaining nemesis of birdfeeders everywhere).
One day I looked out my window and saw a healthy-looking red-tailed hawk sitting on a nearby branch.
I worry that just as the little birds had learned to come to my window for food, the bigger bird had as well – but not for sunflower seeds.
Occasionally the hawks went after bigger prey, zapping a squirrel on the quad to the horror of students on their way to biology class.
I personally thought such disembowelments added a touch of realism to offset the ongoing campus debates of how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Quote: “Mary gave birth to Jesus, at least in some misogynistic interpretations.”
Hey, whether you think He was the Christ or not, it’s pretty well historically established that there was a Jesus of Nazareth.
And I’m pretty sure (and I don’t think I’m sexist for saying this) that it probably wasn’t Joseph as done the birthin’.
I should know. I took biology.
I know all about birth n’ babies.

But how will I get the veggie burger to burn? Napalm?

Here you go with an old column, relatively unedited....

“Hey John, have you ever built a trebuchet?”
A large medieval siege catapult? Sign me up!
Nate was an Army ROTC cadet at UNC-Chapel Hill at the time. I’d been disqualified from the program due to poor eyesight but still hung around, helped out and did fun Army stuff: ride a Blackhawk helicopter, rappel from the UNC belltower… and talk about large wooden weapons with Nate.
I’d come over to Nate and Josh’s room to hang out. Nate, something of a military historian, has since been commissioned as an infantry officer and graduated from Ranger school. Hooaah!
Josh, also a cadet then, has been promoted to 1st Lieutenant and is the senior platoon leader in his Stryker light armored vehicle company in Iraq. Take care, guys.
Anyway, trebuchets didn’t seem all that far out of my woodsy area of experience. In scouts we called lashing pieces of wood together to make things “pioneering”, and I was pretty good at it. We even had a camporee organized around catapults, I recall.
A while later I was mulling over the idea with some other buddies. We reached a consensus that there was never a bad time for building siege engines. But what to fling? Large rocks and diseased corpses didn’t really catch our fancy.
But cows?
Nah. It may have been clever in Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail but now it had grown passé. As they said on Northern Exposure, the cow has already been flung.
Then someone proposed a compromise (and smaller) livestock.
A chicken.
I think it was Ryan who suggested the chicken ought to be on fire.
By now you probably have some ideas of the eclectic group of folks I call friends. And you’re probably right. It can it make for some interesting parties.
So now I’ve got to build a trebuchet for to fling a flaming chicken. This produces some problems. I’m a quasi-vegetarian (I’m German-American. Sometimes bratwurst just can’t be avoided). Even assuming the chicken is already dead, maybe even frozen and packaged in plastic wrap, I’m not sure how I feel about wasting it.
But how will I get the veggie burger to burn? Napalm? I think Ryan had suggested some variety of shaving lotion. Canola oil should work. That’s what I use for candles. I should probably do this near or in water.
And making the weapon itself won’t be easy. I should probably think small – at least start off conservatively with a household-sized siege engine.
I hear there’s one in Texas that can fling a Buick a quarter-mile. I guess everything’s bigger in Texas.
So where am I on this idea so far? Standing in a shallow body of water flinging a burning Boca burger with a fair-to-middling-sized medieval siege weapon?
I’ll keep you posted.

He's not gay -- he just has sex with men

An anti-gay crusader, family values mayor busted trolling on gay websites using government jobs as bait, admitting having sex with other men but still denying being gay?

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/jimwest/

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/09/spokane.mayor.ap/

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/10/politics/main694210.shtml

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/05092005_nw_spokanemayor.html

When are we going to learn that it’s not just Democrats who do things they shouldn’t be proud of (Bill Clinton). I don’t know for sure, but have reason to believe that Republicans have [hormones] too (Strom Thurmond, http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/12/15/thurmond..paternity; Jack Ryan, http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/25/il.ryan/).

Now he’s knocking the paper that discovered the scandal and outed him as cruel and vicious. I’m rather glad to seen investigative journalism still alive and kicking.

This week's column.....

A gasoline powered, portable margarita mixer.
I’ve been doing the outdoors thing for quite a while. I’ve seen my share of camp stove espresso makers, but this takes the gadget cake. I think that’s what the designers were going for.
Just how much of a boozer do you have to be for this thing, with almost as much horsepower as my boat, to make sense? Apparently I just don’t drink enough.
The TailGator is billed on the Web site, www.totallygross.com, as a companion for tailgating, picnics and “camping, kayaking, cross country skiing….”
A picture being worth a thousand words, the site shows a photo of some happy men (men – can you believe it) with a mountain, a lake, a glacier and a kayak in the background and a used handle of tequila in front of them.
Because as everybody knows, you don’t carry cans of beer into the mountains. They’re heavy, inefficient and can explode at high altitudes (or so I hear).
But in backcountry exploits where every ounce matters, why carry this 10-pound contraption (though it does get a reported 6,500 mpg, margaritas per gallon – I’ll bet even more in the hybrid model) when an ice-filled bag beaten by a rock will do the same thing?
This comes from the same minds that gave us hot dogs that come injected with cheese. Getting cheese used to involve a cow. Then the process was simplified to just going to the store. But when slicing your own cheese became too laborious, we developed processed, packaged, pre-cut cheese.
Now you can buy hot dogs already shot up with cheese (you don’t want to see how they had to crossbreed the pigs to make this happen) – because sometimes even reaching for the Cheez Whiz is too much work.
Cure for cancer? No. Cheese-filled mystery meat? Yeehaa! Isn’t Western civilization great?
But really, what can you do when, while traipsing through the backcountry, miles from the nearest Mexican restaurant, you decide you really, really need a margarita, or a pink flamingo #2 or a monkey’s gland (yes, that is a real drink).
I started my Amish-tech margarita-making experiment with a run to the alphabet store (I’d like a fifth of Cyrillic, please) for some tequila. I don’t believe I’ll be able to write this off on my monthly expense report.
Then our graphics guru and former bartender, Lindsay, gave me some tips on making margaritas and I asked our managing editor, Margarita, for some advice.
But by the same name rational I, John, ought to know a lot about toilets and my friend Peter should just keep his mouth shut.
I later asked a copy editor, Janet, about whether the drink’s name should be capitalized because it’s derived from a woman’s name. It remains lowercase.
Back at my apartment, I proved that is doesn’t take a two-stroke, 2 ¼ horsepower, 24cc engine to make a margarita. And the age-old, low-tech, non-internal combustion hammer doesn’t cost $369.95 (including carrying case). It was free because it came out of my Dad’s toolbox.
True to form, it took me a while to find my long-lost shaker of salt (I don’t use it often – trying to eat healthy). But Alan, one of our reporters, agreed that I’d made some pretty good margaritas, even if I did need input from a cast of thousands.
It takes a village, really.

Marines need friends too….

www.wral.com/irresistible/4447560/detail.html

C’mon, folks. Tough folks with shaved heads – sounds like Marines to me. Did nobody think to try talking to these guys before calling the cops?

So apparently these three tough-looking guys with shaved heads came to church the first time and nobody even introduced themselves to find out who these men were. They came a second time (repeat offenders) and folks called the cops on the hoods.

But they weren’t hoods – they were Marines just back from Iraq. Of course they’re tough-looking. That’s because they are tough – they’re freakin’ Marines. And of course they’ve got shaved heads. They’re freakin’ Marines. That’s the way they come.

Hey, I did the Army ROTC thing until I got dropped for bad eyesight. I’m not sure how tough-looking I was (I think my Mom used the phrase “cute”) but I had the shaved head. A close-cropped haircut doesn’t necessarily mean thug. For millions of American servicemen over hundreds of years it has meant WORKING TO PROTECT YOUR CRUMMY CIVILIAN TAIL.

How about some Christian charity or acceptance of newcomers or something. When the deputies got to the scene, the men were apparently very polite and explained they were just looking for friends.

They’re just been through hell. Can they go to church?

I’m not the most religious, and you won’t get this out of me often, but “What Would Jesus Do?” Call the freakin’ cops?