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Chris Knight's avatar

Remember that parachute that was found in the state of Washington last week, that many were speculating might have belonged to notorious skyjacker Dan Cooper (more often known as D.B. Cooper, but I’ve always called him by the name he used for his ticket)? The discovery aroused a lot of memories about the guy and spawned even more theories about what might have happened to him. Now the FBI is saying that the parachute is NOT Cooper’s. It’s not the right material or design, and the feds are now saying that it was from a military plane crash in 1945 and that the 1946 date stamped on the ‘chute is the “repacking date”.

So the question is raised anew: What did happen to the parachute that Cooper used in his 1971 caper?

I will admit: I’m kinda glad that last week’s find is not Cooper’s, because it just ...

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It was Thanksgiving eve
Back in 1971
He had on a pair of sunglasses
There wasn’t any sun
He used the name Dan Cooper
When he paid for the flight
That was going to Seattle
On that cold and nasty night

— “The Ballad of D.B. Cooper”
by Chuck Brodsky

More than 36 years after Dan Cooper bailed out of the back of a 727 into stormy night and American folklore, a parachute has been found in Washington state that the FBI is speculating could have been used by the legendary skyjacker.

It was on the night before Thanksgiving in 1971 that a man calling himself “Dan Cooper” (more often erroneously called “D.B. Cooper”) boarded a Northwest Orient flight in Portland, Oregon bound for Seattle. Shortly after takeoff Cooper told a stewardess that he had a bomb, and gave instructions to have $200,000 in unmarked bills and four parachutes ready ...

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Snowfall in Asheville, North Carolina from The Storm of the Century,
March 12-14 1993

The meteorologists saw it coming five days ahead. A high-pressure Arctic system was heading south across the Midwest states, brought down low by a jet stream from Canada. It was set to converge with intense low pressure over the Gulf of Mexico, and was then projected to head north and east… bringing massive amounts of moisture and cold temperature with it.

But for most of us here in north-central North Carolina at the time, this meant nothing. It had been at least three years since we had seen any decent snowfall. There were many young children who couldn’t even remember what snow looked like: they had no concept of the stuff. After three years without snow, it was beginning to seem like a mythic substance that one only found in exotic locales.

Nobody that I knew ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Okay, maybe “new church” isn’t the right way to put it. We are not out to start an “organized congregation” per se and I am definitely not a pastor!

Today was the first coming-together of… well, truth be known we don’t have a name for ourselves. It’s just a group of fellow Christians who came together mostly through Facebook after talking about our spiritual needs and the realization that we needed something more than “traditional” churches can provide. It hasn’t been that we’ve wanted to “forsake the assembly” as Hebrews 10:25 exhorts against. Christians need others to edify them and hold them accountable, and we sell ourselves short when we deny the gifts that God has given us to help our fellow believers also.

That’s one of the things that led us to consider taking this step: that we need to be part of an active, vibrant group of believers....

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There’s a very fascinating article in today’s News & Record about what Greensboro went through in April 1865, as the American Civil War drew to a close. Upon reading the story, one would easily get the impression that the spring of that year was the moment that forever defined Greensboro, as a relatively small town became a crossroads of military and political activity. Greensboro is where Jefferson Davis and his remaining cabinet fled to after abandoning the last officially recognized Confederate capital in Danville, and it was here that Davis received word that Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse. Thousands of soldiers filled makeshift hospitals throughout the town (including First Presbyterian Church, shown in the photo). The town also suffered an immense amount of looting and rioting as resources became scarce. Well worth reading if you’re into Civil War or local history....

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Chris Knight's avatar

Someday, there will be a need to give the times in which we currently live an appropriate moniker. A few days ago, while driving through snow on U.S. 29 back from Greensboro, the idea for one crossed my mind.

I’ve already started calling our present American era “the Hell Époque”.

Obviously this is a pun on “the Belle Époque“, which was the last real “golden time” that Europe had before World War I escorted us all into the modern world.

A future history book or Wikipedia entry might describe our own time thusly…

Hell Époque

The era of United States history that stretched from the early 1990s until the end of the first decade of the 21st century, that has come to be regarded as the final years of America’s long-time domination of the world’s culture and economy.

Although noted for considerable achievements in computers and telecommunications

...
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… the first news in what became known as “the Monica Lewinsky scandal” came out, when Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report broke the word that Newsweek was sitting on a story about a sexual affair between President Bill Clinton and a 23-year old White House intern.

Those were very crazy days. Can’t believe it’s been ten years already. I still remember watching Clinton on live television wagging his finger at everyone and claiming that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky!”

I have a friend who teaches history, who predicted all the way back in 1992 that Bill Clinton would be the first in a long series of presidencies that lacked honor and ability and real sense of duty. When the Lewinsky scandal came out, I couldn’t help but think back to what he said. And now ten years later, in the closing months of ...

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So the past 72 hours here have been… interesting. I’ll be able to talk about it more in the next couple of days. Just wanna say for the record though, that I’ve been a busy dude toward the end of this past week. And I’m about to head out to create some more mischief.

But before I do, I wanna do a bit of a write-up about what happened yesterday, ‘cuz it was full of some cool stuff that you’ve probably still got time to check out if you like.

Yesterday morning, my sister Anita arrived around 9:30. Lisa got in Anita’s RAV4 and I followed in my new Camry and we headed out to Raleigh, to see The Polar Express in 3-D on the IMAX screen there (or as I call it, “The Big-Ass Screen”).

This was something that Lisa had been wanting to see especially, so I got ...

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I’ll do it.

Meaning: I am going to run for the United States House of Representatives from North Carolina’s 13th District. As a lot of people have been suggesting over the past year. And it will be as a Republican.

I am absolutely serious about this.

But I’m not entirely happy with what I’m going to have to do in order for this to be a legitimate thing. You see, per the twisted myriad of Catch-22s that is federal election law, it’s not feasible to have that amount of signatures on a petition just to see if you “should” run. Because in order to seriously consider running at all, you have to say that you are running… even though you don’t count as a real candidate until you’ve raised enough money.

I need to make that clear: I’m going to run but at the present time I am not...

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Since I’ve commented on what happened at the deposition yesterday, I might as well throw in my two cents on something else regarding disgraced Rockingham County Board of Education member Ron Price. It has to do with something that he wrote on his own blog last week…

“It should be acknowledged that public education is not a right but a privilege given to the youth of today to secure the future. Over 75% of the public paying for public education do not have students in the public schools but all pay for public education to provide a means of securing the blessings of liberty and prosperity for ourselves and our posterity.”

So now Ron Price, school board member, is telling us that our children have no right to public education.

Funny that he didn’t mind telling us that during last year’s school board race.

Ron Price has obviously ...

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