Summer Southern gardens, Gee-Gaws and the Queen

We had a relatively mild Spring, and it has been hot the last couple of weeks.

Everything green is simply exploding, and we are in full bloom.

The Queen lives up to her name, which means "Greenbough" in Greek.

Gardening is her passion, and if I don't watch her, we'd have no lawn left at all, and palm trees would be growing in our driveway!

Here are some random images of her many projects, and The Queen Of The Manse herself, in all of her feminine glory.

Enjoy!

Not the best Saturday

As all of you must know by now, yesterday (16 April) we were bombarded by the storm system that spawned tornados from Alabama to North Carolina.

Our local weather guys were admittedly speechless when the severity of the system became apparent.

It's not a comforting thought to see concern bordering on panic on the faces of professional TV sorts.

God blessed us. We were right in the middle of two severe Tornados, and came out virtually unscathed.

One went to the east of us over our county seat and caused severe damage before heading on it's destructive way towards Virginia. Another was further east, passing over Greensboro, and Seymour Johnston AFB before hitting Greenville and heading North.

And one went just to the west of us.

All we had was vertical rain. Not a branch came down at our place.

The Western one followed US 1 all the way through the middle of the State and into downtown Raleigh, leaving a trail of death and destruction in it's wake.

People lost everything they had in some cases.

And the poor and lower class suffered the most.

Many lived in mobile home parks, which looked like bombs wiped them out.

A lot of these folks had no insurance to replace their losses.

Saturday night, almost 200,000 had no power, including 19,000 here in Johnston County.

My heart went out in particular to one man about my age in the county.

He had lost a beautiful farm that I had viewed many times while driving up I40 not far from here.

Every one of his 11 Turkey buildings were destroyed, and the roof of his home was pretty much gone.

He had yet to even find his horses, as their barn was blown away.

Ditto his pigs and their enclosures.

Neighbors said "He's the hardest working man in Johnston County. He built that farm up from nothing over decades."

I saw the face of a broken man, whose soul had been crushed in the span of 10 minutes.

I put myself in his place, and my soul ached for him.

He and his wife were alive, and they were thankful.

As most Americans do, I know he will pick himself up, dust himself off, and like a true Southerner probably cuss a bit.

Then he will go back to work.

I also so a marked departure from some of the images I remember after Hurricane Katrina hit.

As they interviewed people who had suffered, their neighbors were in the background stretching covers over the holes in their roof.

They were going door to door making certain everyone was OK.

They were already clearing fallen trees off of driveways and roads.

Those that had power were asking in those that had none.

Supplies were on the way while the winds were still swirling.

Our pastor told us this morning that the North Carolina Baptist Men were already on the scene with tools and strong arms to help.

They were also the first in New Orleans from outside, and one of the first groups in Haiti and Japan.

This one was at home, and their appearance was immediate.

The absence of people screaming for FEMA and the Federal Government was noticeable.

Before the storm even hit, I got a call from FRG (Family Resource Group) from Ariel's unit, Delta Company of the Second Battalion.

They assured me that "Your soldier is OK. But there was an incident yesterday." A young Specialist, 25 was lost, and two more soldiers were severely wounded.

We knew that he was OK, but the call was still terrifying.

It's the kind of call every parent of a combat Soldier or Marine dreads.

Ariel was able to call us today, after they lifted the Comm block.

He was lifting weights after his duty day, and heard the firefight.

It was an ambush very close to the FOB on another platoon's patrol outside the wire.

One soldier is so seriously wounded he will be sent home. The other will probably be back at the FOB in a month or so to resume his duties.

He kind of knew the young man that we all lost, but in a company of almost 200 men you don't know everyone personally.

But they are truly a Band of Brothers, and each and every loss affects all of them.

If our politicians won't let them fight, then we all need to start a relentless fight to bring them home and out of Afghanistan.

We are in yet another Vietnam, with no political will to win, no distinct military objective, and no strategic reason to be there that affects our National Security or interests.

We also have no plan, and no exit strategy.

Ten years is enough!

Please pray for the young man's family that gave his all for his country and for those who bled for it.

And pray for the poor souls here in the Southeast who were devastated by the Tornado's of yesterday.

Who is steering the ship?

I refer of course, to the ship of state.
Ours being the United States of America.
Emergencies and drastic situations are all in the job description of President of The United States, regardless of who he or she may be.

I remember now Secretary of State and former Senator and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton airing a particularly effective campaign ad when she ran in the Democrat primaries against then Senator Obama.
The gist of this was, when the phone rings at 3:00 AM, will my opponent be able to answer it?

Lately it seems that his response now that he is President is to let the answering machine catch the call. Or perhaps he tells Michelle "Ah, tell them I'm not here! I'm walking the dog!"

So far this year, we've had Egypt in turmoil, now with a military government that is somewhat friendly to the U.S.
According to CNN and other media outlets, President Obama learned of former Egyptian President/dictator for life Hosni Mubarak fleeing Egypt while he watched TV in the Oval Office.

During the same time period, Algeria, Yemen and Tunisia were both caught in uprisings of their own.
We had a chance, with some skillful and direct leadership from the top to insure that all of these aggrieved people were protected from violence.
We also needed to insure that Islamic militants like the Muslim Brotherhood or some Iranian front didn't turn these nations into a Sharia state.

Our response from the White House was to sit and wait, and let events unfold.
The results were the results, we had virtually no input to shepherd these people in the direction of peace and democracy on some level.

And now we have Libya. Her poor people have been terrorized for decades by one of the worst lunatic tyrants in modern history, "Colonel" Mohamar Quadafy.
A man who also has the blood of many Americans on his hands through his direct and overt terrorist activity over the last thirty years.
Ronald Reagan dealt with him rather harshly , but every other President has been content to keep him penned up, instead of dealing with his crazed treatment of his own people, and his continued threats to the rest of the world.

Had we a strong leader, he could have been "coaxed" into leaving the country and going into exile very early on in this crisis. A live idiot with several millions of his peoples oil money in France beats having him committing genocide on his subjects in revolt.
Chances are strong assurance from the U.S. that we would bring down the wrath of God on his miserable head (and that of his son) ala' Ronald Reagan if he did not vamoose would have accomplished his removal without bloodshed.

Instead, we waited.
Depending on the ineffective and perennially weak U.N. to finally act in the Security Council was a disaster.
After placating the tyrannical Chinese government for over two weeks, the council finally passed a resolution last night for a no fly zone. 10-4 for, 5 nations too spineless to vote that abstained.
Yes, the same Chinese government that locks up Nobel Prize winners, and places his family under house arrest rather than let them attend the award ceremony for fear of world humiliation.

No one will ever know how many innocent Libyans were slaughtered by this madman and his supporters because we dithered and did nothing.
And it is now likely that the insane Colonel will be in power until he dies.
Then, just as it will be in North Korea his spawn of Satan son will succeed him.
After the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein stayed in power in similar circumstances.
He slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his own people, using Bio weapons against the Kurds.
George W. Bush finally had him removed, after 17 toothless U.N. resolutions over a 12 year period.

Word is leaking out that Secretary of State Clinton is furious with her boss for his inaction.
She saw the potential to get rid of this nut job with little risk.
It seems she was right about the phone call.

And now we have the natural disaster in Japan, with a Tsunami following a series of devastating earthquakes and nuclear meltdown potential.
Word from the White House "the fallout will have little potency if it hits the U.S. West Coast"
If, how much potency, who cares I don't have to go there etc etc.

Our Commander in Chiefs answer to all of this?
Raise money for his reelection campaign, play golf and fly to Rio for one of his patented political/luxury vacation trips abroad.
Were he to come back from Brazil with a new treaty agreement with them to buy their oil I would think it money well spent.
Their current number one trading partner is Communist China.
It should be us.
They have a booming economy, and are now ranked number seven in the world in that respect.

Heaven forbid, if we give this man four more years in the White House, they will surpass us.

We need someone else available to answer the Red Phone in January of 2013.

The Family Tree

My sister sent me a link to a new website for the State of West Virginia.
"Thanks, now I won't get anything of real value done for the rest of the day!" I told her.
There was a wealth of historical information to be found there.

In just over an hour, I downloaded Marriage "Contracts" and licenses all the way back to my
ggg Grandfather and Grandmother, in 1808.
The listings by the county clerk in the registers for that year were also there.

I learned that in olden days, it was indeed a contract between the groom to be, and his father in law, or the eldest living brother. The contract was with the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the name of the current governor.
The price of said contract? $150.00, serious money in that day.
Instead of receiving a Dowry, as it was in the old country the young husband had to do this in order to show that he was financially stable enough to support the woman.
If he hadn't been working long enough to save the cash, he didn't walk the man's little girl down the aisle, so to speak.

The ages listed on the license normally reflected that.
My ggg grandfather Joshua Harvey was 23, Sarah Swope, the matriarch of my direct line was only sixteen.
Their son James S. Harvey (my fathers name sake) was 22, his bride Eliza Cummins was
only 17. It took a young man that long to save that amount of money in order to marry.

As time marched on, and the contract was now only a marriage license the age of the woman advanced.
In fact, my grandmother Ollie Pearl Garten was 23, and my Pa Pa was only 22!
My great grandmother Louisa Baumgardner Harvey was very young at marriage though.
She was only 30 when she died after a difficult child birth. The child did not survive either.
My great Aunt Liza was only twelve at the time, and she helped with my granddad, who was six, and with his little brother Hobart who was one until she herself married at the age of seventeen.
My great grandfather never remarried, which tells me a lot about his love for his young wife.
It was commonplace for a man to quickly remarry in that day, especially when he had young children.
He raised the boys with the help of his married daughter, and later served as Sheriff in Monroe County. He died just before my father was born in 1921, living to see most of his grandchildren.

Seeing the flowing, formal cursive handwriting on these documents, with the names, ages and witnesses from the family of people I've heard about, and in some cases known as elderly was awesome.
I know the exact dates now of all of their nuptials.
One can easily imagine them as hopeful, excited youngsters, eager to set out on their own, much as we all have done.

Sarah and Joshua had seventeen children who survived to adult hood.
There were several sets of twins.
Most of them lived through the Civil War. Indeed, the men fought in it.
They were both blessed with a long life, even by today's standards.

I once met an elderly gentleman when I was in High School in 1970.
His name was Richard Harvey, and he and my Grandfather were third cousins.
He was a veritable wealth of information, lucid, articulate and engaging.
He remembers as a child meeting James S. Harvey, he knew my ggrandfather John S. Harvey well, and also knew several of his great Aunts and Uncles as very elderly people.
Joshua and Sarah's children and grandchildren!
Some of them were still living early in the twentieth century.
My dad told me later that he was 99 years old when I talked to him!

I have since confirmed everything he told me in his oral family history.
These recent documents added to my paper trail of documentation too.

Ah, but I love family detective work!

Ft Knox two

We'll see you soon, son.

There are too many memories to elucidate here from our week in "E-Town" KY.
We went out to help our son prepare for deployment, and to see he and his fellow soldiers off.
They are now in Afghanistan, after a week long process of travel.

Pictures tell the story better than I can.

Mom sewing his scripture hanky before we left home.
Fun at Big Boy. We don't have them back home.
Packing 0ver 400# of gear and personals, in four rucks made for around 300.
Last drive in his car for awhile.
Oh, by the way soldier, you also carry your rifle and this 30# SatCom radio with you!
Loading the BM'r.
Stacking the gear for loading in the vans.
Drawing weapons, and wait wait wait!
Sad goodbyes from many families.
Attention to orders!
Let's get on with the mission.
Loading the bus.
A mom waits until the bus is out of sight.
What it's all about.