September 8, 2016 Ridley's Believe It Or Not International Literacy Day

Ridley’s Believe It Or Not For September 8, 2016 Only 62 waning days to go until the only polls that matter close for Trump to pivot before we elect a new president and in an era where politicians really need to be transparent after 278 days of hiding Hillary held a mini press conference on the tarmac and answered six softball questions; cracks are finally appearing in the coronation ship as Matt Lauer (certainly not a Trump fan) of NBC is being excoriated for his treatment of Hillary in a town hall in which veterans slammed her on the issue of trustworthiness; Lauer is not alone in being a target of the Clinton campaign as an NBC reporter who reported on Hillary’s recent coughing attacks was also vilified (lingering questions are still unanswered about her health but time to focus on her record or lack thereof and her dishonesty and carelessness in terms of national security); Hillary is being slammed for allegedly wearing an ear mike at the town hall which her campaign denies (you be the judge as it sure looks like a mike to me and if not she must have a maggot living in her ear;

                                               

just when you might have thought that Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party might be a refreshing alternative to Trump or Clinton, he demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the chaos in the Middle East when he responded to a question with “What is Aleppo?”; in yet another example of America’s fading influence in the Middle East thanks to Obama’s feckless lack of leadership, Palestinian and Israeli leaders will be meeting not at Camp David but in Moscow while the Taliban is close to seizing control of a province in Afghanistan; on the sports front in a career change effort Tebow has inked a minor league deal with the New York Mets; and on the Zika front a Florida Republican Congressman brought a jar of 100 Zika mosquito larvae to protest the Blues blocking of Zika funding bill in the Senate.

          As Trump is trying to become more presidential, going to www.lyingcrookedhillary.com is a great way to start your day along of course with www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com and reading Clinton Cash would be a great read to understand the quid pro quo mentality of the Clintons.

             As always, I hope  you enjoy today’s holidays and observances, a music link to Los del Rio,  factoids of interest for this day in history, a relevant quote from Leonard Matlovich, while looking forward to enjoying a slice or two of date nut bread (killer recipe below),  blessed with a positive attitude and  secure in  the knowledge that if you want to find a gift for any memorable events like birthdays, weddings, or  anniversaries, you know that the Alaskanpoet can provide you with a unique customized poem  at a great price  tailored to the event and the recipient. You need only contact me for details.

1. International Literacy Day—an observance created by UNESCO in 1965 to promote the need for literacy and to promote awareness of the link between illiteracy and poverty. Hard to believe but close to one billion people on this planet are illiterate, a significant portion of whom are women.                                                                    

2. World Physical Therapy Day—honoring since 1996 the contributions of physical therapists to the mobility and well being  of our population, especially those aging with arthritis’s.                   

3. 1996 Number One Song—celebrating the number one song in 1996 on a long, long run of fourteen weeks in that position “Macarena” by Los Del Rio. Here is a link to Los Del Rio performing the song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiBYM6g8Tck

4. National Date Nut Bread Day—celebrating the epitome of a really tasty bread; here is a recipe to make it if you want to go beyond the supermarkets and bake your own. http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/breadstuffs/date-nut-bread-recipe.asp
5. If Only I Would Have Cared About Emails—observing the birthday on this day in 1941 of Bernie Sanders whose feel the Berne excitement came so close to knocking Hillary Clinton off her coronation path but made the fatal mistake of not attacking her on her private email server.

On this day in:

a. 1892 the Pledge of Allegiance written by Socialist Minister Francis Bellamy was recited for the first time (the phrase “under God” was not added until 1954).               

b. 1900 Galveston, Texas was hit by a powerful hurricane that caused some 8,000 deaths.

c. 1923 in what has to be one of the Navy’s less than stellar navigation performances, nine destroyers ran aground off of Honda Point in California; seven ships are lost and twenty-three sailors are killed.     

d. 1930 to the joy of gift wrappers everywhere, 3M began marketing its transparent Scotch tape.                                                                       

e. 1975 decorated Air Force Tech Sergeant Leonard Matlovich came out of the closet and appeared in uniform on the cover of Time Magazine; he was discharged and at age 44 died of AIDS. The military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy was abandoned in September of 2011 and gay and lesbian members of the armed forces can now serve.  

Reflections on human relations by Leonard Matlovich: “And I want you to look at the flag, our rainbow flag, and I want you to look at it with pride in your heart, because we too have a dream. And what is our dream? Ours is more than an American dream. It's a universal dream. Because in South Africa, we’re black and white and in Northern Ireland we’re Protestant and Catholic and in Israel we’re Jew and Muslim. And our mission is to reach out and teach people to love, and not to hate. And you know the reality of the situation is that before we as an individual meet, the only thing we have in common is our sexuality. And in the AIDS crisis - and I have AIDS - and in the AIDS crisis, if there is any one word that describes our community's reaction to AIDS, that word is love, love, love.” Matlovich’s last public speech delivered on the steps of the Caliornia State Assembly Building on May 7, 1988, six weeks before his death Please enjoy the poems on events of interest on my twitter account below (if you like them, retweet and follow me) and follow my blogs. Always good, incisive and entertaining poems on my blogs—click on the links below. Go to www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com for Ridley’s Believe It Or Not—This Day In History, poems to inspire, touch, emote, elate and enjoy and poems on breaking news items of importance or go to Ridley's Believe It Or Not for just This Day in History.

© September 8, 2016, Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet
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