February 7, 2013

It was very cool indeed. He brought OUTTAKES from TOS to a World Future

Society conference I attended. I happened to be in charge of the the "media" room on the day Roddenberry attended and he offered to let me screen a half hour video of BLOOPERS of Spock,Kirk, Uhura, and others flubbing lines, slipping on the set (they ALWAYS seemed to be running thru caves in those early episodes!) and laughing about some mistake... Well, you can imagine people were utterly astonished! The show was, the actors always seemed...so...serious. And here they were appearing like happy, normal humans -and Vulcans!

When Mr Roddenberry handed me the video, I said I would be sure to find him and return it right after the screening. "Oh, no" he said, "I think I'll stay here with it." So, for one fantastic half hour I got to chat with Gene while it played.

January 25, 2013

I am surprised by some of the comments here considering the 'progressive' leanings of

DU members.

Some of the posters use phrases or arguments that echo ones used to resist previous civil rights progress.

Maybe folks should spend some time actually reading up on Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall, Title IX, and the disability rights movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Disability_rights_movement ) and THEN reflect on which group they STILL do not believe should have the same rights they enjoy.

I'm guessing most here would say that (especially) public money should not be spent to benefit only the well-off, white, straight, male, able-bodied citizens.

These were long fought struggles by progressives of their eras. Let's not stop moving towards a 'more perfect union' in our era.

We can all do better.

-FTC

December 5, 2012

My father also...as a chaplain. And he knew Dole, supported his efforts in Congress on

behalf of disability rights.

For his lifetime of civil rights advocacy Dad was asked to speak at the ADA signing and received the pen.

The 'greatest generation's legacy is being tarnished by these entitled chicken hawk zealots...

It's appalling.

I also am relieved my father is no longer around to see this betrayal.

October 15, 2012

Friday's Boston Globe: " ‘Served’ in Afghanistan? Scott Brown? "

‘Served’ in Afghanistan? Scott Brown?

http://articles.boston.com/2012-10-12/politics/34386883_1_scott-brown-afghanistan-senate-debate

Many heads were doing a 'Scooby Doo' when Brown said in the Warren/Brown debate that he had "served in Afghanistan". Turns out he had REQUESTED the brief deployment -putting real soldiers guarding the Senator at risk- and was on the ground in Afghanistan only seven days! His time there included meetings with officials and military brass (Brown pulls some purse strings for them as "a ranking member of the Arms Services Committee&quot

Another article in the same Globe edition goes into much greater detail of his self aggrandizing "military service" and his new ties to the Pentagon:

"For Brown, politics and military entwine" -Boston Globe

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2012/10/11/brown-guard-service-has-taken-political-patina-since-joined-senate/tGB08DEjELGZmgR271qOlN/story.html

Brown has tried to make this campaign hinge on the trustworthiness of Elizabeth Warren. Brown is the one with THAT problem!!

September 2, 2012

“We didn’t ask to be born this way.”

Grünenthal, shaken from a half century of denial by a class-action lawsuit in Australia, had made “some kind of statement that they are emotionally connected to our suffering. They’ve had 50 years to make billions of dollars while we struggled and our parents committed suicide. And now, they’re apologizing for not saying anything. How dare they do that and think it’s going to be enough?”
--Berrisford Boothe, 51, an associate professor of art at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA

As someone who saw many of these families, and heard their struggles to have their children try to adapt to a shocked community, I can only add my anger about the years gone, and the compensation never given to the thousands of victims. Grünenthal is just another greedy corporation that turned its back on the tragedy it had created.

Once again props to Dr Frances Kelsey of the Food and Drug Admin. for keeping thalidomide out of the US at that time

August 30, 2012

"Well...some men you just can't reach."

Paul Newman passed away about the same time I joined DU. His role in "Cool Hand Luke" had always been a favorite of mine and seemed to sum up a lot about the pointless but dogged attempts to flee the shackles of the Bush years...

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As Luke shows us, we can try to make the best of what often is a lousy situation.
DU is THE place I come to for news, and solace.
Thanks Bertha for the thread.
And thanks as always to Skinner, Earl and the whole DU crew!

July 11, 2012

Used to listen to that tune a lot... on these:

May 15, 2012

Perhaps you don't fly much? One doesn't push grandpa in his wheelchair onto the plane...

...the farthest you might get is to the end of the skyway before having to transfer to the airline's narrow aisle chair to your seat. You, your grandpa and his chair would have been scanned and checked and the chair, if it's his, goes elsewhere.

My old mother was thoroughly frisked and her power chair taken mostly apart before she got thru security at different times. She didn't ever seem the terrorist type to me - I'm her son and may have been biased - but the TSA folks clearly didn't want to take any chances on this elderly disabled grandma.


I am no fan of the TSA. I think it is expensive security theatre. Another time my wife and I were detained for nearly 30 minutes -and nearly missed our flight- because they "found" a pair of blunt plastic child scissors in the art travel kit we had along (traveling with two little kids)

On the other hand, I lost two good friends "that day". And I had traveled several times thru the Portland airport (pre 9/11) "security" where Mohammed Atta had slipped past. So we clearly needed some better system...

May 4, 2012

Happy Birthday Pete! I feel lucky to have sung with him -as millions have-

starting around early Newports, but also to have sung FOR him (at a songwriters workshop) and to have 'worked' with him (at Clearwater... trying to keep up with him on litter patrols)

A great human being who still is still going strong like the Energizer Bunny.





thanks for the thread

April 27, 2012

The Last Days of Osama Bin Laden -TIME (NYTimes nearly blew it!)

"The Last Days of Osama Bin Laden" TIME Cover Story (May 7 2012) by Graham Allison and Peter Bergen

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2113156,00.html

Must read forthcoming TIME cover story of the lead-up to finding and taking out bin Laden. Allison's reporting is a particularly compelling narrative of President Obama's agonizing decision process and the desperate means to keep the plans secret to insure success.

This passage was eyeopening, regarding the timing of the release of the WikiLeaks documents. That COULD have ruined the chances of getting bin Laden in his compound in Abbottabad a year ago:

"Less than a week before D-Day, on April 25, WikiLeaks' Guantanamo files appeared on the front page of the NewYork Times, citing thousands of pages of classified material it had put up on the Web. One of the documents came from the interrigation of the individuals from whom the CIA had learned the identity of bin Laden's courier and pointed to Abbottabad as a likely refuge for al-Qaeda.
(snip)
"Had bin Laden's protectors read the Times closely, and thus inferred that the U.S. had learned the identity of the courier, the house could have been empty when the Seals arrived"