Earl Burton, the world's greatest weatherman, has passed away

Okay, maybe I'm more than a little biased.  But as long as I am on God's green earth I will never believe that there was ever a meteorologist who was as accurate and honest and entertaining as Earl Burton.

Earl Burton was born in Reidsville, North Carolina in 1940.  Two things happened in his young life that wound up spinning him into someone legendary: his love of broadcasting, and the volumes of weather records that he began keeping as a teenager.  Eventually he came to be an announcer on WREV AM-1220 out of Reidsville.

His flair for radio and his vast knowledge of local meteorology collided one fateful afternoon when Earl was about to relay a forecast from the National Weather Service to his listeners.  He was set to read the report calling for rain when he stopped, paused for a moment, and told the audience "Folks, I think that's wrong!  I think we are going to see snow!"

It indeed snowed.  Earl Burton was right on the money and the professional meteorologists were wrong.

From that point on, Earl was the person to get the weather forecast from if you were in the Reidsville/Eden/greater Rockingham County area.  And he had a style all his own when he was giving his prognostication.  With that velvety voice perfect for radio, what would take most weather people three or four minutes to share with the audience, Earl would turn that into a seemingly half-hour long masters thesis on atmosphere, humidity, pressure systems and how they were going to meet over the area.  And I would say that he was 95% accurate most of the time.  Earl had a way of explaining it all, making something as complicated as weather into something that everyone could grasp and appreciate.

I can't talk about Earl Burton without mentioning how beloved he was by the school children.

So many winter days there were when there were rumors of snow coming in.  I think every kid in the county would be tuned into 1220 AM and what Earl had to say.  It would sometimes take him ten to fifteen minutes to get to the point but if the situation was just right we would hear Earl say the magic words: "this are just the right conditions... for snow!"  When he said that, you could pretty much forget about going to school the next day.  It simply wasn't going to happen.  Earl Burton had said it, we believed it, and fifteen hours later we saw it with our own eyes.

Earl Burton was among the finest personalities in the field of radio.  And later on he complemented that with also being the weatherman for Reidsville's WAEU Channel 14 television station.  His forecasts on TV were a tad more in keeping with that medium's scheduling but they were no less effective, and for many people it was their very first time putting a face to the voice.

What makes small towns so special are their larger-than-usual percentages of personalities.  The people who give a place their true character.  Reidsville is fortunate (maybe) to have had many such people over the years.  Few of them had as much virtue and qualities as Earl Burton.  And to this day, whenever I see a weather forecast calling for snow in an area I happen to be in, I find myself wondering "What would Earl say?"

Earl Burton passed away on February 25th, 2026.  He leaves behind a grateful town and generations of school children who hung on his every word on so many winter afternoons.

Read More

Scouting America vows to Pentagon: No more transgenderism or DEI policies (EXCELLENT news!)

Finally, some sanity is returning to Scouting.

But is it too little, too late?

On My Honor, Norman Rockwell

 

A few hours ago it was announced that Scouting America, what was formerly Boy Scouts of America, is no longer allowing transgender members and it is abandoning "diversity, equity, and inclusion" policies.

It has made this vow to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has previously raised concerns about the "woke" tilt that Scouting has made in recent years.

This is a massive win for Scouting traditionalists, who have been against many of the changes that the organization has made over the past decade and a half or so.  The worst, in my belief as an Eagle Scout, was allowing homosexuals into the ranks.  Scouting's ideals are incompatible with any sexual behavior other than monogamous heterosexuality.  A Scout takes an oath to "Keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight": virtues that homosexuality cannot adhere to.

Neither have I been impressed by allowing Boy Scouts to allow girls into the ranks.  Look, boys and girls are complementary, but different.  They each have their own particular needs that their respective organizations are meant to address.  Unfortunately I think it started with Girl Scouts of America long ago turning "progressive" and failing in its mission to bring up young women of faith and virtue.  Girl Scouts began allowing homosexuals into its own ranks and from there it was only a matter of time before the organization deteriorate to the point where it's barely clinging to life.  No wonder that many young women wanted to belong to something with values and virtue.  They found it in the Boy Scouts of all places.  But they should have their own organization all the same.  Ideally Scouting America would separate young men from young women and indeed, this is what is making competing organizations thrive.  Scouting America has seen a significant decline while groups like Trail Life are growing substantially.  One must wonder why that is...

Still, today is a great victory for Scouting.  The organization has been given six months to get its act together before the United States military - long a partner in Scouting's mission of bringing up young people of sound mind and body - judges whether the changes are significant enough to warrant continuing their relationship.

Scouts have done far more than that with less time.  Look at it this way Scouts: just as what happened in 1985, the hurricane has blown through the jamboree.  You have half an hour to set all the tents back up.  You can do it!!

(Eagle Scout 1992)

Read More

Happy fortieth anniversary to The Legend of Zelda!

 

Released on this date in 1986.

I played the heck out of The Legend of Zelda when I got my Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas 1988.  It was so much fun exploring around, setting fire to every bush that was within reach.  To say nothing of always keeping bombs on hand to blow up possible hidden entrances to shops (or to caves with old men who make you pay for destroying the front door).

Now I have the Zelda theme playing in my head and it won't stop!  I don't have anything to play the original game with but I think in honor of the fortieth birthday of the start of the franchise I'll play The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on my Game Boy Advance.

Read More

It's the Fortieth Anniversary of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

 

The first issue of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns hit the stands on this date in 1986.

Four full decades later, it remains perhaps the most definitive tale of Batman's persona as a human being.  Watching an older Bruce Wayne turn his back on his age and embracing his heroic persona once more is nothing short of magnificent... and also engenders much reflection on the part of the reader.

I first read The Dark Knight Returns in June of 1989: the "Summer of Batman" when the Caped Crusader was seemingly everywhere.  It was unlike any comic book I had yet experienced.  It totally changed how I perceived Batman and his world and it forever raised my expectations on what graphic novels should deliver.

Frank Miller, thank you for bringing us this story.  It will always be my favorite Batman story and no doubt it is for many other fans too.

Read More

The object lesson of Jesse Jackson

 

Jesse Jackson passed away today at the age of 84.

I'm not the kind of person who speaks ill of the recently deceased.  That's something that I learned during my upbringing in rural North Carolina.

But in the case of Jesse Jackson, I am going to make an exception.  Because I believe that there is much to be learned from his life and the choices he made.

Jesse Jackson had been a very good man.  A great man even.  He preached a terrific message to young black people, encouraging them to rise above their circumstances and make something better for themselves.  Jackson was also - I was shocked to discover - VERY vehemently pro-life and spoke often about the evil of abortion.

The original brand Jesse Jackson was a real leader.  Someone who had earned respect from many, many people.

But then Jackson ran for President in the 1984 election.

What happened to Jesse Jackson is almost Shakespearean.  The man sold his soul to the Democratic Party in order to acquire more power and influence.  He abandoned his principles and the messages he had so eloquently spoken to people needing wisdom.  Jackson left all of that behind and instead became someone who embraced an ideology that stood against everything that made this a wonderful country for all of us.

The Jesse Jackson who had stood with giants in the civil rights movement - he was at Martin Luther King's side when he died - had gone away.  And in his place was someone altogether different.  Shallow.  Manipulative.  The furthest thing from a true statesman.

That Jesse Jackson - the "race hustler" - became responsible for engendering more racial division than most any other person in modern American history.  Jackson paved the way for others who exploited race and division: people like Al Sharpton and Barack Obama, and now the proponents of "critical race theory" and pushers of "diversity, equity, and inclusion" that drive wedges between us instead of bringing us together in a common American experience.

Yes, Jesse Jackson had been a good man.  But for more than forty years he had been someone else.  All because of selling out himself for a bigger seat at the table.

There is a great lesson to be learned from the example of Jesse Jackson.  All who would pursue power would do well to study his life.  To learn from the great mistake that he made.  They should be made to contemplate the true price of chasing after temporal affluence.  That is a grievous error that many have made, even in our more recent history.

Tonight I will try to bear in mind the good man that Jesse Jackson had once been.  Not the ruined soul who caused so much damage to our culture.  And who but God knows, maybe Jackson repented of some things before he passed.

I hope he did.

Read More

What clip to honor Robert Duvall's memory with?

Robert Duvall, one of my all time most favorite actors, passed away two days ago.  The news broke about it yesterday and ever since I've been struggling to come up with the best way for me to pay tribute to him.  The man did so much.  It's very hard to pick the movies and roles he had that I like the most.  I absolutely loved his portrayal of Augustus McRae in the epic television miniseries Lonesome Dove.  There were his appearances in The Godfather and Apocalypse Now.  I could say something about The Apostle: a film he not only starred in but directed and financed (no company believed in it enough to front the money, but it wound up winning a slew of awards).  There was his Academy Award winning role in Tender Mercies.  His very first film appearance in To Kill a Mockingbird where he played Boo Radley... the man was a force of nature on and off the screen!

I decided that in his memory I'm going to share one of my favorite clips of Duvall.  This is from the movie Secondhand Lions, which came out in 2003.  A very delightful film also starring Michael Caine.  Here is Robert Duvall as Hub McCann, laying it down on some young punks:

Read More

Me according to ChatGPT

Lately there's been a little bit of a fad on Facebook: where people are asking ChatGPT to make a caricature of them based on what the AI knows of them.  ChatGPT asks for a photo and some information and it chucks out a pretty neat likeness.

I joined in on the fun.  This is a rather accurate facsimile of my life right now (note the Vault Boy poster from the Fallout games behind me):

Of COURSE I had to include Tammy!  She is certainly a major component of the operations here at Knight Shift Headquarters.  Of my life in general actually, more than I've let on.

Read More

A message to the people - and candidates - of Rockingham County, North Carolina

I'm going to come out and say it:

It is absolutely shameful what is happening right now in Rockingham County politics.

Regardless of distance in its various measures, I have still been proud to be a son of Reidsville and the surrounding area.  But what I'm seeing lately from afar is utterly heartbreaking.

Twenty years ago I was a candidate for public office in Rockingham County.  I didn't win my race but it still became one of the greatest experiences of my life.  My campaign was an honest, sincere, and upbeat one.  It was FUN!  When the results came in, there was no bitterness at all for not getting a seat on the school board.  There had been too much enjoyment from coming to meet new people, hearing and talking about ideas, harnessing creativity to make signs and shirts and television ads.  I didn't run against anyone per se.  I merely ran as myself, being completely forthcoming with voters, and let the chips fall where they may.

Why can't it still be that simple?

I'm so damned sick and tired of people lusting for power and influence.  All it does is show that they are the LEAST worthy people to have power at all.

Some are going to interpret this as being a commentary on the state senate race between incumbent Phil Berger and challenger Sam Page.  But I'm not casting blame on anyone in particular.  It's just become a wholesale disgusting situation that is embarrassing even those of us who are expatriates of Rockingham County.  It has actually made the press here in the Upstate of South Carolina.  I remember the county's district attorney race of 2006 and that was disgusting.  What is happening now is far, far worse.  It's going to go down in history as one of the most bitter races in North Carolina history.  EVERYBODY needs to step back and refocus on pitching themselves to the voters, instead of trying to convince their would-be constituents why their opponents *shouldn't* be elected.

See?  THIS is why I'm so effin' SICK AND TIRED of the two-party con job that's been worked on over this country.  It's all about power and control and skimming  off the top whenever the chance comes.  The politics of the county has twisted and distorted real vision and principles.  When I ran I had a rule: I would never go negative.  EVER.  I vowed that I would never do something that I would regret later down the road.  There is nothing wrong with holding to that.  Be the best candidate you can be and be content to let the voters decide.  That's the way it's supposed to be.  But the candidates have become so fixated on destroying each other, they've lost grasp of WHY they're supposed to be running in the first place.  Why SHOULD any sane and rational person want to vote for anyone like THAT?!?  I sure as hell wouldn't.

(Please pardon the profanity.  I NEVER use that unless it's absolutely necessary to getting my point across, when polite language has failed.)

Come on Rockingham.  Do better.

As an entertaining aside, I'll close with this.  One of the candidates in 2006 started turning too negative for my tastes.  This is the ad that I created in response to that.  Not necessarily "against" him but I wanted there to be something happier/feel-good out there as a counterbalance.  Of the three ads that I made, this is my most favorite...

Read More

Final thoughts about this year's Super Bowl halftime show

It really shouldn't have been any surprise, that the Bad Bunny performance would be so ridden with vile content (in whatever language it was "sung" in).   Or there was one person who is now a bit more educated on matters than I had been before this morning.  I understand now, and I see that "entertainment" like what happened at the Super Bowl is just going to continue and grow increasingly worse.

It turns out that ever since 2020 or so the Super Bowl halftime shows have been produced by Jay-Z.  The guy who made an unconscionable amount of money rapping about gangs, drugs, sex, violence... you get the picture.  I will never understand why it is that some of the most negative aspects of the human condition are so commonly deemed to be high art to be praised by all.  But we are far from the glorious years of the Renaissance.

So of course the halftime shows are going to be vulgar.  They ultimately derive from vulgar minds.  Minds motivated by lots and lots of money, something the NFL as an entertainment powerhouse amply provides.

Yes, the Bad Bunny performance had audience numbers.  "Largest ever for a halftime show", it's being raved.  It was fifteen minutes that cost tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of man hours to construct and choreograph.  It was money well spent indeed, if the goal was to arrest the attention of moral misanthropes from sea to shining sea.

The Turning Point halftime program had much less lead time, involved far fewer people, did not have the bankrolling of a multimedia corporate monster, and still pulled in a sizable audience.  Yet this somehow "lost" to Bad Bunny.

It doesn't impress me at all.  In fact, the more I think about it, the more disappointed I am in my fellow man, that he has sold out his principles in defending an "entertainer" and system that denigrates human life instead of lifting it up.

But those are things for "mass men" to celebrate.  I am not a mass man.  For all my occasional dalliances with pop culture, my mind is still poised toward something higher.  It's why I wrote my book the way that I did.  It could have been something else, more "marketable".  But I knew who I intended my readers to be and so I wrote for them.  I feel like I'm going to be the least successful writer in human history sometimes.  For all of my talk of being a writer, I have never achieved anything remarkable.  But I can take pride in knowing what I have to offer is authentic.  Something that I didn't have to sell my soul to produce.  And that I will never attempt to insult the intelligence of my readers with.

Perhaps someday the National Football League will come to its senses, and again produce Super Bowl halftime entertainment that reflects the better of human nature.  But that is not going to be anytime soon.  Not while men of vulgarity are calling the shots and presenting THEIR perverse vision of American identity and culture.

It didn't happen on this occasion.  But give it time.  If the league continues catering to the least common denominator, eventually there will be a halftime special competing with the "official" one of the Super Bowl.  And it will be so wildly successful that there will be board members of the NFL turning in their resignations come Monday morning.

Until then, if I need entertainment while waiting for the second half of the game, I will do as I did this past weekend: watch the In Living Color halftime show from 1992.  A product of a much better and more innocent time, when we weren't expected to hate others without sound reason.

Read More

The Super Bowl halftime show that I watched tonight

I refused to watch the official Super Bowl halftime show featuring Bad Bunny.  Seeing a grown man in a dress who has burned the American flag on a number of occasions isn't anything I was interested in.

I did not watch the Turning Point halftime alternative either.  I was told that my doing so would be "supporting hate".  Even though those making such accusations are responsible for more hate than anyone else in America right now.  But I digress.

So what did I see instead?

I opened YouTube and started up the legendary In Living Color halftime special from 1992!

From a time when it wasn't demanded of us that we be angry enough to hate others without reason.  It was a better age.  More joyful and innocent.  In Living Color's halftime spectacular was a stroke of genius on the part of Fox Network and 34 years later it's still very entertaining and hilarious.

Watching this was my own little act of defiance against the bitterness suffusing our culture.  It may not have had the viewing numbers tonight, but it was all mine.

Read More

Weird items in the news: honey additive, expanding bread, and a World War I shell lodged in a man's buttocks

Lots of crazy stuff in the news this past week.  I've been sharing them with friends on Facebook, where they have engendered no small amount of mirth and merriment.  So I thought I'd post about them here too!

First up is this recall notice about a brand of honey that is being pulled off the shelves because somehow, somewhere along the manufacturing process, an active ingredient in erectile dysfunction medication made it into the finished product.

Next up is a story from Colorado about a man who is suing Walmart after claiming to be severely injured.  The man apparently bought raw bake-to-eat sourdough bread without first warming it up in an oven.  The bread expanded inside his stomach and allegedly brought on immense pain and suffering.

I saw that in an old episode of Emergency! awhile back.  Johnny and Roy got called to help a guy who ate unbaked bread dough and he had to get taken to Rampart.  So stupidity about this kind of thing goes back a fair bit. It seems.

And finally there comes this item from France, where a man was taken to the hospital, no doubt in severe pain.  That's where doctors found an eight-inch long unexploded artillery shell from World War I lodged in his rectum.

(Brings entirely new meaning to "fire in the hole!" does it not?)

I shared that last story with a friend who is a physician in Belgium.  She said that's it's hard to believe: the kinds of objects that people come in that are shoved up their, errr... rear.  Some people have even died from it.

What fascinated me most about that story though is that it was a live round from World War I.  That was over a hundred years ago.  Over the years there have been quite a few stories about still-live shells from that conflict being found.  So much of France and Belgium came under artillery fire during the Great War that it's possible there will still be undetonated shells found for the next one hundred years.

Maybe I should make "news of the weird" a regular feature on this blog.  What do y'all think?

Read More

When God speaks: Ten years later...

It occurred to me today, while at a school working with a group of special needs kids, that this week is an anniversary of sorts for me.

It was ten years ago on February 1st that "the voice" spoke to me.  The words that eventually propelled me to leave most of my life behind and go into the unknown.

The full account is in the last chapter of the longest section of my book, if anyone wants the complete tale.  The short version of it is that I was at a very low point in my life.  I had just had an argument with someone in my family.  Things were said that sent my mind spinning in confusion.  I felt alone, lost, abandoned... and completely hopeless.

And then, without warning, something spoke straight to my heart.  In words, that it was like I could almost hear with my ears.  They came so clearly, and of their own accord.  I know that I couldn't have whipped them out of my own mind.

This is what the voice said:

"Chris, what are you doing?  You know your father isn’t coming back.  He wouldn’t want you to be this way.  And you know that this isn’t where you want to be.  You have gone as far as you can in Reidsville.  You are a big fish in a small pond here. You know this isn’t where you want to fall in love and have a family.

"You know that you want more than this.  You’re not going to find it here.  You’re never going to become the man that your father knew you could be if you remain.  This house isn’t where you want to spend the rest of your life and you know that you aren’t the invalid your family believes you must be.

"So… go!  Just GO!  Pack up your car with Tammy and the bare essentials and leave.  Take your part of the sale of the house and head off.  Don’t plan it.  Just do it.  Let Me guide you.  Let Me show you where you need to be in the world.  Take a leap of faith, as you have never done so before.  Trust Me, Chris.  It will be hard.  You won’t find your happiness quickly.  But you will find it.  Keep the tryst, as you promised you would.  Leave and be free, as you could not be before.  This is your moment, Chris.  All you need to do is grasp it and follow Me.  Twenty years ago you committed to seeking after Me, and now you get to do that as you never have."

I really do, truly believe, that God spoke to me that night.  And for the first time I saw hope.  I saw promise.  I saw freedom.

It would be the most daring thing that I had ever attempted.  Much more daring than flying off to Europe on my own when I was nineteen, even.  It was a notion that might otherwise strike terror in someone's heart.  But I coudn't deny what I had heard spoken to me.  Those words thrilled and enthralled me.  It would be such an adventure.  Chris and Tammy: A boy and his dog, set off into the world beyond the horizon.  Tell me that doesn't entice you to want to see what would happen!

Well, it is now ten years since I heard those words.  And a lot has happened in that time.  Tammy and I did indeed get into my car and left Reidsville, one Sunday morning in mid June 2016.  We spent a year across America.  Then we spent a year and a half with friends who gave us a home while I was able to address my bipolar disorder as I'd never been able to before.  That in time led to a career, a real one, getting to help others who also have mental disorders.  Then I had to sadly leave that job because of external circumstances, and here I am today: still calling myself an artificial intelligence trainer but mostly clinging on as a substitute teacher.  All the while writing a book about my life up to this point.

Am I happy?  Am I really happy?  I would be lying if I said that I was.  The life that I thought would have come about by now, is as elusive as ever it seems.  If anything I'm hanging on by my fingernails more than ever.  There is no hope that I can see of being in a relationship with someone, and that's something that I very much had hoped and prayed for.

What good was it after all, to have left it all behind?  Some of my family wanted me to be confined to an assisted living environment.  They said that my manic depression made it impossible for me to have a normal life.  Were they right?

I don't think they were.  Because despite how things turned out... I think God kept His word.  And I have to think that He is still keeping His word.  He did warn me that happiness would not come soon.  That there would be some waiting for it.  I've had to be patient for that.  In the meantime though, since that night in 2016, there has been too much than to believe that it's been a complete waste.  It hasn't been that at all!  My bipolar disorder is much more under control than it ever has been, and I think my spending almost four years as a peer specialist was a big part of that recovery.  I've written and published a book that's over 500 pages long (but a lot of people who've read it have said that it reads REALLY fast 🙂 ).  Tammy and I are still together, and hopefully will be for years yet to come.  I may not have the best of cars but it's still running (but I'm knocking on wood all the same).  We have a roof over our heads.  I'm producing more material for my blog than I was ten years ago, so however much I feel like I've lost it as a writer there is still that much getting written...

Most of all, I've become closer to God than I ever have been before.  I'm at a place with Him that for a very long time I didn't think it would be possible.  That I could be here with Him, now, seemed so unreachable a point to come to.  And yet here I am.  And I hope that comes out in the book especially.  I've said before that Keeping the Tryst is many things.  Being a testimony is one of the most important.  If I was able to write that, well... I guess that has to mean something, right?

I hope there is going to be more still to come, of what God said would happen if I trusted Him enough to leave my old world behind me.  Maybe the past decade has been preparation for that.  I like to think so.  But all by itself, the past ten years have been an enormous journey across space and time and heart and soul.  Like Bilbo Baggins, I am not the same person as when I first set out.

That alone makes the past ten years worth it.

Read More

What if Andy Kaufman really did fake his own death?

I swear, the craziness that pops so seemingly randomly across my synapses sometimes...

For whatever reason, this afternoon I found myself thinking of Andy Kaufman, the "song and dance man" who entertained millions with his unique shticks.  Sadly, Kaufman passed away in 1984 at the much-too-young age of 35.

Or did he?

Andy Kaufman's sense of humor was notoriously eclectic, to put it mildly.  And among other things there were a few times when he did state a desire to fake his own death.  It would have been the biggest joke of his life, to make everyone believe he had passed only to show up ten or twenty or... maybe forty years later.

Now, I do not believe that Kaufman really faked his death.  His family has testified many times that he did indeed pass on in May of 1984.  There is no disputing that.  And yet, this is Andy Kaufman we're talking about here...

So the idea hit that maybe I could use artificial intelligence to create an image of what Kaufman would look like today, had he pulled off the ultimate prank and disappeared without a trace.  He would be 77 years old now, which is certainly within the realm of possibility for a person who successfully falls of the map in the mid-Eighties.

Here's the first rendering that I had generated, from ChatGPT:

ChatGPT went into some detail about what Kaufman's features would be like more than forty years later.  Comparisons were made with Steve Martin and Albert Brooks.

I guess, it kinda looks like Kaufman after four decades since his "disappearance", one way or another.  But I wanted to see what other AIs would deliver.  So I opened up Google's Gemini.

Here is where things started getting interesting.  This is what Gemini returned with when I submitted my prompt.  Click to enlarge:

Google Gemini had to think about it extra hard, then it gave up and declared that it's having technical problems... and further adds that this the same kind of thing that Andy Kaufman would have done!

Undeterred, I changed up the language of my query.  And this time Gemini produced something.

Here it is:

Holy cow, it looks just like a senior-ized Andy Kaufman!  He's got the right features, the mad-man sparkle in his eyes...

The image has a few telltale signs of it being created by artificial intelligence.  But otherwise that really could be a pic of Kaufman circa 2026.  Just... wow.

Well now, maybe we should pass this pic around.  And start asking people "HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?"  Maybe Kaufman himself will find this post.  If so, it's time Andy.  You've had your joke.  But the world needs you now, more than ever.  Come back to us and make us smile and laugh again.  The world is ready for you, in ways you can't imagine.

Read More

John Carpenter's The Thing has been added to the National Film Registry

 

This is great!!  One of my favorite movies of all time.  In fact, I watched it this past weekend as the ice was beginning to fall.  It's a tradition I have whenever there's a winter storm that's trapping me inside the house.  This film is such a favorite of mine, that it's one of a few that I always keep loaded on my iPad.

John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing is one of the new inductees on the National Film Registry.  This year's class also includes Inception, The Karate Kid, Glory, and The Incredibles.  The Truman Show and White Christmas made the list too.

In adding The Thing to the registry, the Library of Congress said this of the movie: "Moody, stark, often funny and always chilling, this science fiction horror classic follows Antarctic scientists who uncover a long-dormant, malevolent extraterrestrial presence.  The Thing revolutionized horror special effects and offers a brutally honest portrait of the results of paranoia and exhaustion when the unknown becomes inescapable."

It's now well over four full decades later, and The Thing is no less startling and engrossing than it was when it first came to theaters.  After more than forty years and we are still discussing and debating this movie.  Who was who, when, and where?  What happened to the blood?  That one is a particularly favorite mystery to ruminate on, one I cannot figure out at all (Palmer maybe?  When did he turn exactly anyway?).

There is another storm coming.  Starting tonight.  Current projections are that here in the Upstate of South Carolina we may get 5 to 8 inches of snow.  We're not going anywhere, again.  So I guess I'll be watching The Thing once more.  Maybe the answers will hit me this time...

Read More

Remembering STS-51-L: The final flight of the Challenger

Forty years ago today came the end of the childhood of my generation.

The space shuttle Challenger was blown to bits shortly after liftoff, taking with it the lives of seven of the best crew members that NASA has ever filled a mission with.

A few months earlier, I had read something fascinating: that those people who were old enough could remember where exactly they were when they heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor, and then when they heard about John F. Kennedy being assassinated.  And I wondered if there would ever be an event like that in my own life.

Challenger was such an event.  The first of too many.

Yes, I indeed remember that day forty years ago as clearly as if it were transpiring today.  I was eleven years old, going on twelve, in sixth grade at Community Baptist School in Reidsville, North Carolina.  I had just sat down at the table with my lunch when two classmates told me that the space shuttle had blown up.  I didn't believe them.  It was a cruel joke, I thought.  But they insisted that it happened.  And then I looked around at the other tables and overheard a lot of the other students saying "exploded" and "shuttle".

I looked down the length of our table, at our teacher.  I mouthed to her "Is it true?"  She quietly replied yes.

Every school then, it seemed, had its resident science geek.  At Community Baptist, that was me.  Everyone knew that I was a nut for science.  That I had a great interest in this space shuttle mission.  STS-51-L was the flight that was carrying Christa McAuliffe, the New Hampshire school teacher, into space.  There had been a lot of interested across the country and around the world in this mission.  January of 1986 was peak time for those of us with an astronomy/space exploration bent.  There was Halley's Comet come around on its every-76-years visit to the inner solar system.  And a few days before the launch of Challenger there was the Voyager 2 flyby of the planet Uranus.  Many students and teachers had been asking me what I thought about all of these events taking place.  The Challenger mission was going to be the finest of all.

When we got back to class after lunch, Miss Martin confirmed with us what most had already heard.  Our school had no television sets in the classrooms so I could only imagine what it looked like.  A few hours later Mom picked my sister and I up from school.  She had one stop to make before we got home and I was eager to see for myself.  When we did get back, the very first thing I saw on the television, turned to the CBS affiliate in Greensboro, was an image of McAuliffe.  That was followed by pictures of the other crew members.

And then Dan Rather played the footage.  And I finally got to see the fiery fate of Challenger with my own eyes.

A short while later, President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech live from the Oval Office.  His remarks to the people of America, and especially the school children, is easily the greatest address by a president that I have ever heard...

I watched the speech.  Dad asked if I'd like to help bring some firewood down into the basement.  I told him yes, I would like to do that.  Anything to get my mind off of the real world.

Tuesday, January 28th, 1986.  The day that the youth of Generation X came to an end in the skies over the Atlantic off the coast of Florida.

And that is my account of the day.

Read More

The first (and last?) winter storm of the season is behind us

I feel kind of foolish now.  In preparation for what was being declared a disaster of massive proportions, I stocked up on a dozen cans of deviled ham and jugs of water and got ready for the worst.  The storm was supposed to hit mid-day on Saturday (two days ago) with snow and sleet, then become freezing rain with 1-3 inches of ice on all the exposed surfaces.  We were told to get ready to be trapped inside for the next three or four days.

Instead, there was a nice bit of snowfall yesterday morning about 1 a.m.  With below freezing temperatures it did make travel a bit hazardous.  But the much-ballyhooed thick sheets of ice never came about.  There was some rain yesterday evening but the system moved out of the area sooner than expected.   It also began warming a bit.  About 2 this morning the temperature was at 33 degrees Fahrenheit (just a tad above zero degrees for our friends using Celsius).

Temperatures are going to be climbing the rest of today.  I'm going to chance a short trip out in a little while and get some real food.

Anyway, here are some pics I took from the front and back doors of my house.  Not as impressive a snowfall as my friends and neighbors back in North Carolina got, but it was still nice...

Read More