Police Work, Politics and World Affairs, Football and the ongoing search for great Scotch Whiskey!

Friday, July 30, 2021

Have Mercy!

 It's been a rough month for music. 

Last week I posted on the passing of Robby Steinhardt of Kansas. Two days ago music got a another kick. 

Dusty Hill, ZZ Top bassist with a legendary beard, dies at 72

Bassist Dusty Hill, left, and guitarist Billy Gibbons perform at a 2008 ZZ Top concert in Bonn, Germany. (Henning Kaiser/DDP/AFP/Getty Images)

Dusty Hill, the bearded, understated bassist who helped make ZZ Top one of the biggest rock acts of the late 1970s and ’80s, anchoring songs including the shuffle boogie “La Grange” and showcasing his singing on the sultry Top 40 hit “Tush,” died July 28 at his home in Houston. He was 72.

Bob Merlis, the band’s publicist, confirmed the death but did not give a cause. ZZ Top was in the middle of a tour when they announced last week that Mr. Hill was “on a short detour back to Texas, to address a hip issue.” They added that the band’s guitar tech, Elwood Francis, would be stepping in for Mr. Hill.

“Per Dusty’s request,” they said, “‘The show must go on!’ ”

Formed in Houston in 1969, ZZ Top was one of rock’s most durable bands, with a lineup that remained the same for more than 50 years. Mr. Hill was joined onstage by lead singer and guitarist Billy Gibbons, whose boogie-style blues riffs established him as one of his generation’s finest rock guitarists, and drummer Frank Beard, who despite his name was the only band member not to have a foot-long beard that rivaled Rip Van Winkle’s...

A group I was hoping to see live (I am trying of hearing that ), and as down to earth as they get. A local talk show host dedicated his Thursday show to Hill, and one man mentioned how he was in a restaurant when Hill and his agent sat down to eat one table over. The man walked up, introduced himself, and mentioned how he and friends played many ZZ Top songs in their band. Dusty was so happy he asked the man and his wife to join them, and they spent a long lunch (and several beers) just talking. 

Many "artist" of today don't like to speak with their fans. Dusty loved his fans. 

I can't think of a better song to send Dusty Hill up to the Pearly Gates than this. Have Mercy.


Rest easy Dusty, and thank you. Have a great weekend. 

Officer Down

 

 




Deputy Sheriff Claude Winston Guillory
Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff's Office, Louisiana
End of Watch Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Age 63
Tour 32 years
Badge 592
Cause COVID19
Incident Date Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Deputy Sheriff Claude Guillory died from complications as the result of contracting COVID-19 in a presumed exposure while on duty.

Deputy Guillory had served with the Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff's Office for one year and had 32 years of law enforcement service. He had previously served with the Jennings Police Department, Lake Arthur Police Department, and Coushatta Tribal Police Department. He is survived by his wife, two children, seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Rest in Peace Bro…We Got The Watch


<i>Nemo me impune lacessit</I> 


<i><a href="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/docs/14taps.mp3">Day is done, Gone the sun, From the lake, From the hills, From the sky. All is well, Safely rest, God is nigh.</a> </i>


Officer Down, Officer Safety, Police, Police Training 





 




 

Thursday, July 29, 2021

Officer Down


 














Chief Probation Officer Leslie Dale Allen Athens-Clarke County Probation Services, Georgia
End of Watch Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Age 62
Tour 40 years
Cause COVID19

Chief Probation Officer Dale Allen died after contracting COVID-19 as the result of an exposure while on duty.

Chief Allen was a U.S. Army veteran where he served as a military police officer. He had served with the Athens-Clarke County Probation Services for 10 years and had previously served with the Clarke County Sheriff's Office. He is survived by his wife, son, and two siblings.

Beginning in early 2020, due to the requirements of their job, thousands of law enforcement officers and other first responders throughout the United States contracted COVID-19 during the worldwide pandemic. Hundreds of law enforcement officers died from medical complications as a result of contracting the virus while remaining on duty and interacting with the community.

Rest in Peace Bro…We Got The Watch

Nemo me impune lacessit

Day is done, Gone the sun, From the lake, From the hills, From the sky. All is well, Safely rest, God is nigh. 

Monday, July 26, 2021

RIP Bob Moses

This morning I was reading the local leftist rag, the Houston Chronicle, and I caught this article on the passing of a civil rights activist. Back when the “civil rights” movement actually worried about civil rights, not just being a means to support the radical left in this nation. But his method was interesting, I must say:

 



Bob Moses, 1960s civil rights leader who saw math as road to equality, dies at 86

Bespectacled, owlish and bearing a master’s degree in philosophy from Harvard, Mr. Moses was an unlikely front-line activist — much less an obvious candidate to quit his comfortable prep-school teaching job in the Bronx in 1960 and immerse himself in the most violently segregationist precincts of Mississippi.


A janitor’s son raised in New York public housing, he showed precocious talent for academic fields involving logic, especially mathematics and philosophy. He found kinship with Quaker friends in college, and he submerged himself in the writings of Albert Camus, the French-Algerian Nobel laureate whose books explored universal questions of human existence and justice.


As the civil rights movement gained momentum, Mr. Moses felt at a certain intellectual remove. “Words are more powerful than munitions,” his early intellectual lodestar, Camus, once wrote. But a turning point for the 25-year-old Mr. Moses was reading news accounts of the nascent sit-in protests in the South. He studied the newspaper dispatches for weeks, mesmerized and finally ready to engage.


“Before, the Negro in the South had always looked on the defensive, cringing,” he once said. “This time they were taking the initiative. They were kids my age, and I knew this had something to do with my own life.”


Mentored by civil rights veterans Bayard Rustin and Ella Baker, he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), sidestepped the sit-ins and initiated voter-registration drives instead as a more direct way to gain political power for Black Americans.


He chose rural southwest Mississippi, the most intransigent region of the state, as his target. There, in “freedom schools,” he taught African Americans how to register and pass the stringent voter literacy tests. Often working alone or with one or two SNCC organizers, he was repeatedly threatened by White mobs and law enforcement officials as he accompanied Black people to courthouse registration offices…


In all honestly, I did not know of the man until this article. In full disclosure, I did not know of Medgar Evers until I saw Ghost of Mississippi. Like Evers, Moses of one of countless men and women who protested for civil rights against real segregation and oppression over this nation. But I find his actions after the great civil rights movements very interesting:

 

 … He also spent years as a teacher in Africa with his wife before returning in 1977 after President Jimmy Carter granted amnesty to draft evaders. Mr. Moses soon began building his second enduring legacy, the Algebra Project.


Though less dramatic and harrowing than getting Black voters to the polls in Mississippi, the Algebra Project marked a pivotal shift in his civil rights vision from political to economic equality.


The project has instructed thousands of middle school students in what Mr. Moses called “math literacy” as a crucial steppingstone to college and employment, an often difficult process among underserved students.


Low math achievement among minority students is “the nation’s dirty secret,” he often told educators. He urged them to avoid the tendency to neglect the subject and instead help students escape their “serf-like communities” within high-tech society, just as sharecroppers earlier sought release from the serfdom of the plantation.

“Math literacy,” he said, “is a civil right. Just as Black people in Mississippi saw the vote as a tool to elevate them into the first class politically, math is the tool to elevate the young into the first class economically…”


In my high school years and first college years, I had issues with math. In my second misguided college yute, I did something radical. I applied myself, studied, practiced equations, and guess what? I was making A’s and B’s in calculus, where before I could barley get a C in algebra. Not tooting my own horn, I just wanted to give an example of what happens when you try. 


Well, this shows how low the “civil rights” movement has sunk in recent years:


Profs help push program that claims math is ‘racist’ because it requires a ‘right answer’


An Oregon Department of Education newsletter from February promoted an online course designed to “dismantle” instances of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom.” One example of “white supremacy” highlighted by the course was “the concept of mathematics being purely objective,” an idea which the resource stated is “is unequivocally false.”


The program, known as “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction,” describes itself as “an integrated approach to mathematics that centers Black, Latinx, and Multilingual students” that provides “opportunities for ongoing self-reflection as they seek to develop an anti-racist math practice.”


The “feedback advisors” for a portion of the program include William Zahner, who is an associate professor at San Diego State University; Melissa Navarro Martell, who is an assistant professor at San Diego State University, and Elvira Armas, who is the Director of Programs and Partnerships for the Center for Equity for English Learners at Loyola Marymount University in California.


“White supremacy culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions,” the guide states. “Coupled with the beliefs that underlie these actions, they perpetuate educational harm on Black, Latinx, and multilingual students, denying them full access to the world of mathematics…”


This is what is teaching our next generation. A group of racists (speculation, likely white liberals), tenured professor telling minorities they are too stupid to learn math. Back to my comments above, math is an art, and a science. And to conquer its challenges, it needs commitment. Unfortunately, this generation is being indoctrinated into stupidity at our institutions of higher learning

 

I need some more whiskey in my coffee.

 

Mr. Moses, I never met you sir, and until this morning, never knew your name. But thank you for all the work you did to elevate kids who had challenges, helped them overcome, and improve their futures, and their kids futures. God bless, and Rest in Peace sir. You will be missed.

Friday, July 23, 2021

Nothing last forever but the earth and sky…

I've been looking for Kansas's tour dates, yes, they were still touring. Unfortunately, the full band is no longer.


Robby Steinhardt — Whose Group Kansas Notched Hits Like 'Dust In The Wind' — Has Died

His wife, Cindy Steinhardt, said he died Saturday at a hospital in Tampa, Florida. She announced on Facebook Monday that he had just recorded his first solo album, and had been looking forward to being back on stage and going on tour.

Steinhardt, a native of Lawrence, Kansas, was an original member of the band, teaming up with Topeka West High School graduates Kerry Livgren, Rich Williams, Phil Ehart and Dave Hope and with Steve Walsh, who grew up in St. Joseph, Missouri. Steinhardt performed with Kansas from 1973 to 1982 and 1997 to 2006, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported.

The band sold more than 15 million records and notched up seven top 40 hits, including "Dust in the Wind" and "Carry on Wayward Son…"

The violin is an excruciatingly difficult instrument instrument to learn. I remember my nephew tried it during his high school years, and after one try, my sister told him to practice in the back yard, out of ear shot. 

And Steinhardt was a master of it. I remember listening to this song in my 12th year, and Dust in the Wind is a masterpiece. A haunting background with lyrics that make you contemplate life, and your time there.  

Hopefully Beth and I can see Kansas at some point. But it will be missing a big piece. RIP Robby Steinhardt, gone far too soon. A life well lived, you will be missed.

Here is the classic from Kansas, Dust in the Wind. Have a great weekend. 


Monday, July 19, 2021

Officer Down

 





Police Officer Tracy Allen Gaines
 Rockwall Police Department, Texas 
End of Watch Monday, August 3, 2020
Tour 15 years
Military Veteran
Cause COVID19
Incident Date Saturday, July 11, 2020

Police Officer Tracy Gaines died from complications as the result of contracting COVID-19 in the line of duty while assigned as the SRO at Rockwall High School.

Officer Gaines was a U.S. Air Force veteran and had served with the Rockwall Police Department for 15 years. He is survived by his wife and two sons.

Beginning in early 2020, thousands of law enforcement officers and other first responders throughout the country contracted COVID-19 during the worldwide pandemic due to requirements of their job. Many of these first responders have died as a result of COVID-19, and continue to do so as the virus spreads across the United States.
Rest in Peace Bro…We Got The Watch

Nemo me impune lacessit

Day is done,
Gone the sun,
From the lake,
From the hills,
From the sky.
All is well,
Safely rest,
God is nigh.
 

Friday, July 16, 2021

Roll Me Away!

One of my all time favorite musical artist, Bob Seger, and his classic on getting out. As I'm approaching retirement, I look forward to more time on my Harley, riding out and exploring this great county. One of my bucket list items is to ride in all 50 states, and all 10 provinces in Canada. 

I'll cut this short. Gotta get some work done before I get to real work.


 

 Have a great weekend! 

Sunday, July 4, 2021

Happy Independence Day.

I will only have a few hours at home, then back to work. Oh, joy.


In a more serious tone, it is a good day to read the document that led to the founding of the greatest, most exceptional nation on the face of the Earth.

Have a great day and weekend!

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. 
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. 
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. 

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. 

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. 
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. 
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. 
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. 
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. 
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. 
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. 
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. 
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: 
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: 
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: 
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: 
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: 

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: 
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: 
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: 
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. 
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. 
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. 

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. 
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. 

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock

Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple

Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

Friday, July 2, 2021

Independence Day Weekend

Coming into this weekend, I can think of no other song to post on this Friday. Whitney Houston preforming the Star Spangle Banner in 1991. She knocked it out the park!


Have a great long weekend!