August 21, 2018 Ridley's Believe It Or Not Poetry Day

Ridley’s Believe It Or Not For August 21, 2018 Sad but probably expected news-- after a month of being missing the body of Mollie Tibbetts has been found; Ocasio-Cortez continues to make a fool of herself for equating our National Park System as an example of Democratic Socialism and is drawing fire for excluding  the press from her town hall meeting (attractive lady but totally out of touch with reality);  in Portland, Oregon at a protest and counter protest, a counter protestor who voted for Bernie Sanders was attacked viciously by 4 masked antifa thugs who felt the American flag he was carrying was a “fascist” symbol (when does the FBI label this ISIS-like clad in black group of thugs a domestic terrorist group, infiltrate them and start arresting these thugs and where is the outrage from the Blues on their violence?); on the reptilian brain front actress Asia Argento, who was one of the first to level sexual abuse charges against Harvey Weinstein, has denied vehemently sexual abuse charges reported  against her in The New York Times by actor Richard Bennet for an alleged encounter when he was 17 and she was 37; on the how crazy can it get on the political front Republican House candidate Aquilera who has claimed she was abducted by aliens when she was 7 has been endorsed by The Miami Herald; on the witch-hunt front, best selling author of The Russia Hoax, Gregg Jarrett stated that Mueller has given up on the Russian collusion front and is now working on an obstruction of justice (Mueller has proven himself to be incapable of being fair and unbiased and worse surrounded by a team of biased anti-Trump investigators); the jury in the Manafort trial has revealed they are stuck on finding consensus on at least one count as they enter the fourth day of deliberations (if they find Manafort not guilty or a hung jury is found the witch-hunter in chief is going to have serious problems in continuing his witch-hunt); Sister Mary Jo who threw a perfect strike first pitch at a Chicago White Sox game put Fox commentator Ainsley Earhardt into the dunk tank on Fox and Friends today; in Chicago while Rahm Emanuel continues to  imitate Nero playing the fiddle and Chicago’s top cop lays the blame directly on prosecutors and lenient judges not sending armed thugs to jail, through August 20, 2018 1983 people mostly of color have been shot by mostly people of color, of whom 317 have died (when will Chicago get serious about this carnage or is this the case of true racism as a Blue run city turns a deaf ear and a blind eye to the slaughter of mostly people of color by mostly people of color and when will Emanuel who has been MIA resign or be voted out of office?).

        As always, I hope you enjoy today’s holidays and observances, a music link to the Bobbie Gentry,
factoids of interest for this day in history, the fact that hopefully your present is free of any serious mortmains and a relevant quote from T.S. Eliot on poetry, secure in the knowledge that if you want to find a gift for any memorable events like college graduations, 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. Poets’ Day—celebrating the art form of poetry that has been around since the time of the Sumerians and expressed in many languages. To observe the day read a book of poems or go to my blog www.alsakanpoet.blogspot.com 2.  National Senior Citizen’s Day—created by President Ronald Reagan on this day in 1988 to honor the contributions of seniors and to promote awareness of the issues confronting them in their golden years.

3. 1967 Number One Song— the number one song in 1967 on a run of 4 weeks in that position was “Ode to Billie Joe” by  Bobbie Gentry. Here is a recording of the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZt5Q-u4crc Now retired she lives two miles away from the Tallahatchie Bridge memorialized in her “Ode to Billie Joe.”

4. Word of the Day—today’s word of the day is “mortmain” which means restrictive effects of the past on the present which describes the effects of the disastrous deficits of Bush and especially Obama on present fiscal policies.

5. No Harm No Foul—celebrating the birthday on this day in 1936 of Wilt “the Stilt” Chamberlain who averaged over 30  points per game although he was a lousy free throw shooter and set the single game scoring record of 100 points; a lifelong bachelor who never fouled out of a professional game, he claimed to have slept with over 20,000 women before passing away from a heart attack at age 63.

 On this day in: 

a. 1957 the world became a much more dangerous place with the successful test by the Soviet Union of the R-7 Semyorka, the world’s first intercontinental missile with the ability to carry a nuclear warhead some 3,400 miles.

 b. 1961 Motown Records released its first number one recording “Please Mr. Postman” by the Marvelettes.

c. 1968 James Anderson, Jr. was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at Cam Lo, South Vietnam on February 28, 1967 when he rolled on top of an enemy grenade that had landed near him to protect those fellow Marines near him; he became the first African-American Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor.

 d. 2000 Tiger Woods won the PGA Open becoming the first golfer since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win three major tournaments in a single season.

e. 2017 a solar eclipse coming ashore in Oregon traversed the continental United States and was witnessed in Salem, Oregon by the Alaskanpoet.

    Reflections on poetry as we celebrate Poet’s Day:  “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.” T.S. Eliot
    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 www.Alaskanpoethistory.blogspot.com for just This Day in History.

© August 21, 2018 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet

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