Random Thinking

Today is the 40th anniversary of a lesser known incident that occurred on another college campus just 10 days after the murders at Kent State.

At Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi students were protesting the war and against the racism that students had to endure from motorists who passed through the center of the campus. National Guardsmen were sent to the campus when reports of rioting were called in to the police. The Guardsmen were issued weapons but no ammunition. However, 75 city and state policemen armed with carbines, sub machine guns, shotguns, service revolvers and some personal weapons, were also called to the campus.

At some point the police opened fire into the the campus dormitory firing at least 460 shots over a period of at least 30 seconds. One student, Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, 21, a junior pre-law major and father of an 18-month-old son, was killed. Also, James Earl Green, 17, a high school senior who had stopped to watch what was happening and was standing behind the line of police officers was also killed. Twelve other Jackson State students were wounded but no ambulances were called until the police removed their shell casings and then left the scene.

Although police claimed they had been fired upon, no evidence was found to support this allegation. None of the police who fired into the crowd were ever arrested or charged with a crime.

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, Jeff Miller, one of the four students killed at Kent State, graduated from the same high school that Beth is attending. The school put up a memorial to Jeff. I took a couple of pictures of it so you could see what it looks like. Click on the images for the full size image.

Why do people visit my blog? That is the question. There are some people who are friends and they drop by to see how Mikey is doing or to see what nonsense I am writing. But there are other people who do a search on a topic and end up on my blog. So what are the most common Google searches that find their way here?

In no particular order:

Shiny Toy Guns Major Tom: Apparently a lot of people have heard the version of the song, “Major Tom” by Shiny Toy Guns and like it. I get a few hits each week looking for this song but I’m not sure if they are interested in reading about the song or are looking for the song itself. The link to the song that is on the site is to a 30 second commercial. At the time I blogged about it there was no entry on Youtube but maybe there is one now.

Is Benjamin Burnley married? – Two years ago, the song “The Diary of Jane” by Breaking Benjamin was a song of the week. Ever since then I get regular hits from searchers wondering if the lead singer, Benjamin Burnley, is married. Unfortunately, people stopping by for this vital piece of information always leave unfulfilled because the blog entry does not mention whether he is married or not. So for those of you who are in desperate need of this bit of info, Mr. Burnley is indeed married to Ashlie Levi Burnley. Update: Mr. Burnley is not married but is in a very serious relationship with Rhiannon Napier.

Sparknotes Under a Cruel Star – Almost 3 years ago I wrote a review of “Under A Cruel Star” by Heda Margolius Kovaly. The book is an autobiography of a woman from Czechoslovakia covering the period right before she was sent to a Nazi concentration camp through the period when her husband was executed by the communists in the early 1950′s to when she fled Czechoslovakia in 1968. But the book is not particularly popular or well known so why are people searching for it? It appears to be that there is a school somewhere that requires students to read this book and the students are looking for a Cliff Notes/ Spark Notes version. I would say to those students, go ahead and read it. It’s short and a good read.

Pictures of witches – Last year I blogged about my daughter being a witch because she put a hex on a boy in her school and he got hit by a car, although he wasn’t seriously injured. As an image to perk up the entry, I found a drawing of the three witches from Macbeth and added it to the entry. For some reason that image has become a popular search on the web. At least twice a week I get a hit from a google search for that image.

Most of the other searches are various music groups that happen to match a song of the week. I have noticed that a recent blog of a song by The Donnas has suddenly started generating searches. Perhaps they will soon join my popular search list.

How Rome Fell
by Adrian Keith

Adrian Keith has written a detailed account of the end of the Roman Empire that makes a good argument for why the Empire fell. The book starts from the high point of the Empire in 150AD and works its way to the end of the Empire in the West in 476AD and beyond. Keith shows us how the Empire ultimately had a weak base simply because the man with the biggest army could make a claim to be Emperor. This meant that any general with a strong army could claim to be Emperor which meant that letting any general have a strong army was risky for an Emperor.

The main problem with the book is simply that so little information is available for this period. Keith explains that information such as the population of Rome or the number of soldiers in the army or the number of dead from a plague are simply not available. The information that is available was often written 100 years after the event or was written by biased authors (Christian authors writing about pagan emperors, for example). This means that there are a lot of blank spaces in the story. What was it like to live in Rome when the power of the Emperor had moved to other cities? What was it like to be a citizen of the Empire when civil wars (60 in the third century) were the normal condition of life? What was it like in the Empire during the transition from paganism to Christianity? But are all of these questions left unanswered because of lack of information or is it that Keith simply failed to discuss them? Surely some information must be available.

For me though, the main problem is the last 75 years of the story. Things didn’t seem too bad in 375AD but then a short time later the house of cards collapses. The Goths are defeated by Theodosius and yet 15 years later they are sacking Rome. I felt that Keith didn’t make it clear as to exactly why this happened. Why the Roman army ended up disappearing to the point where barbarians make up a good deal of the army is not made clear. But perhaps this is unknowable at this point. Was it plague? Was it the effect of civil wars? The effect of the splitting of the empire? All of these things? Keith doesn’t discuss this question in any detail leaving it mostly for the reader to guess.

But all in all I did enjoy this book and found Keith’s theories of why the empire fell to make sense and be presented in a way that makes them understandable. I finished the book feeling that I know a lot more about the fall of the Roman Empire and what replaced it. This is a tough subject for a writer because of the lack of first person narrative available for huge chunks of it but Keith does a good job with the information that is available.

Mikey had a blood test a little while ago and the result was that his ammonia levels were through the roof. This is very bad as it means his liver is unhappy. Why are his ammonia levels up? Probably because of the Depakote which means he has to come off of it. The problem is that the Depakote had been helping with his behavior.

We started a new medication (Zyprexa) but that increased his appetite to the point where he was eating everything in sight and his weight was jumping. So we switched to another medication but that medication has to be slowly weaned up so that he doesn’t get bad side effects (or so we can see if side effects start). His only other medication (Clonidine) had been decreased because he had been sleeping in class. The end result is that he has nothing at a therapeutic level. That means he is now hitting himself constantly, hitting the other kids in his class (and since one of the kids he hits is bigger than him he is getting beaten up), throwing desks and chairs, running out of the class, etc. In other words he can’t control himself. We say the psychiatrist today so we are now increasing the Clonidine (better to take a nap than to start a fight) and slowly increasing the new medication until we get to a therapeutic dose.

Yes, we are going crazy. Yesterday we went to my brother-in-law’s house for Mother’s Day and Mikey was actually pretty good. We had given him his bedtime dose of the Clonidine which is a higher dose before we went over there and he watched a little of the Mets game, with us, ate a few chips, and then he played nicely for a couple of hours with some of the girls. Finally he was getting too sleepy so we took him home. All in all it wasn’t a bad day though.

At this point we will see how things go in class, watch for side effects, and hope we can get him to a therapeutic dose of the new medication soon. With a little luck, no one will go insane in the meantime.

The Czechs
by Hugh Agnew

Being half Czech, I was hoping that this book would give me an interesting history of the Czech people. Unfortunately the book is far from interesting and although it does cover the history it does it in a way that can only be described as boring at best. It is apparent (at least it seems that way) that the author did not do much research into the early history of Bohemia or at least didn’t care to spend much time writing about it.

The first half of the book bounces from ruler to ruler without making it clear what is going on and how it is effecting the Czech people. Rulers capture or marry to get this territory or that but the author just moves on without making it clear exactly what is going on. Bohemia was part of the Holy Roman Empire but the author fails to describe what is going on there or what is going on in Europe in general. For example, the events leading up to Second Defenestration of Prague that started the Thirty Years War is so poorly described that the reader is left wondering why exactly the three gentlemen were tossed out the window.

The reason for this seems to be that the author’s main interest is the 20th century especially the most recent period starting with the 1990′s. The events starting with World War I are described in detail while the period prior to that is mostly skimmed through. This is not necessarily a bad thing but the book does make the claim to be a history of the Czechs and the land of the Bohemian Crown. If the author had a more interesting writing style I would have given the book 4 stars but I found it mostly a struggle to get through. Writing a history that covers 1,000 years does require the ability to make your subject interesting. Unfortunately the author mostly lacks that ability.

Here is this week’s song off my iPod.

3 Doors Down is hard rock band from Escatawpa, Mississippi formed in 1996. The band consists of Brad Arnold (vocals), Matt Roberts (guitars), Todd Harrell (bass), Chris Henderson (guitar), and Greg Upchurch (drums/percussion). The band toured extensively throughout Mississippi and the neighboring states before releasing their first album. While touring in Alabama, the band made up their name when they saw a sign with missing letters that read, “Doors Down.” Since at the time they only had three members, they named the group 3 Doors Down.

The band rose to national fame with their first single, Kryptonite, from their first album in 2000. The band tours extensively, doing as many as 300 shows in a year, and has sold 16 million albums since forming. The band’s most recent album, released in 2008, debuted at number 1 on the Billboard charts. A new album is expected to be released this year.

Kryptonite
I took a walk around the world to
Ease my troubled mind
I left my body laying somewhere
In the sands of time
I watched the world float to the dark
Side of the moon
I feel there is nothing I can do, yeah

I watched the world float to the
Dark side of the moon
After all I knew it had to be something
To do with you
I really don’t mind what happens now and then
As long as you’ll be my friend at the end

If I go crazy then will you still
Call me Superman
If I’m alive and well, will you be
There holding my hand
I’ll keep you by my side with
My superhuman might
Kryptonite

You called me strong, you called me weak
But your secrets I will keep
You took for granted all the times I
Never let you down
You stumbled in and bumped your head, if
Not for me then you would be dead
I picked you up and put you back
On solid ground

If I go crazy then will you still
Call me Superman
If I’m alive and well will you be
There holding my hand
I’ll keep you by my side with my
Superhuman might
Kryptonite

Waiting for Mikey at the hospital I finished the book. So here is the end.

C17: 450AD. Attila the Hun is bad news. Drives Goths into Western Empire. Kicks butt in East & West. Emperors too busy fighting each other.

C18: 450AD. Britain first to go. West too weak to support. Local leaders form local kingdoms. Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Picts all invade.

C19: Goths strongest army in West. 455:Vandals plunder Rome. 476: Last Emperor deposed. 489:Ostrogoths conquer Italy. West is done.

C20: 500AD.West split among Franks, Burgundians, and Visigoths. King Theodoric and Ostrogoths rule Italy. East survives for 700 more years.

C21: Emperor Justinian wins back Italy but Lombards retake in 568. 600′s, Muslims take Middle East. But East survives until 15th century.

Conclusion: Why? Senate lost power. Emperors gained by power through army. More civil wars. Emperors worried about selves, not Empire.

Epilogue: US can’t compare to Rome. Decline starts when leaders care more about themselves than country. And “People are kinda stoopid.”

Mikey got into a bit of a scrape with another boy (at least we assume it was a boy) in his class. This other student pushed Mikey and he came home with a bandage on his chin. What the nurse at his school didn’t notice was that Mikey also broke a tooth. So yesterday we took Mikey to the dental clinic at the local hospital to have it examined. We had to go to the dental clinic because there is no way in heaven or Earth that Mikey would sit to let anyone examine his tooth. The idea was that since the dental clinic is at the hospital they could give him something to knock him out and then examine the tooth.

So we got him to the pediatric ER and they decided to give him a little Ativan to relax him. There was a very nice gentleman from the clinic and he brought Mikey a DVD player with a Tom & Jerry DVD, which is Mikey’s favorite. So they managed to give Mikey a shot of Ativan and we sat and watched Tom & Jerry for an hour. He was yawning a bit and shaking his head but he didn’t show any signs of sleeping. So they added on a little Benadryl but still no signs of sleeping. Finally, they decided to bring him in for the examination.

Since he was still very active and awake they decided to papoose him. So we picked him up and put him on the table and they wrapped him with the papoose and locked it with the Velcro locks. He cried and moaned but basically he wasn’t too bad and they were able to get an X-Ray and do an examination. The result… the tooth was broken and the nerve was exposed. They had no choice but to pull the tooth. So Mikey is now missing one of his bottom front teeth. We will figure out how to replace it later when his behavior is more under control.

As to the Ativan… Mikey was up until 1AM. It didn’t quite have the effect they expected since Mikey is normally asleep by 9PM every night.

I’ll take a picture of Gappy, as Michel is now calling Mikey, and his lovely smile later.

Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’.
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin’.
Four dead in Ohio.
— Neil Young

Today is the 40th anniversary of the killings at Kent State. National guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis. No one was ever prosecuted for the shootings.

The victims were:

* Jeffrey Glenn Miller; 20, shot through the mouth – killed instantly
* Allison B. Krause; 19, fatal left chest wound – died later that day
* William Knox Schroeder; 19, fatal chest wound – died almost an hour later in hospital while waiting for surgery
* Sandra Lee Scheuer; 20, fatal neck wound – died a few minutes later from loss of blood

Jeffrey Miller was from my home town of Plainview, NY. A memorial was erected at Beth’s high school in his memory. The picture above shows Mary Ann Vecchio, a fourteen-year-old runaway, kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller after he was shot dead by the Ohio National Guard.

You can read all about the murders here.
And even more information is available here.