Guernica imitation grafitti

On this day (April 27) in 1937,  the German air force bombed the Basque city of Guernica, an event memorialized in Pablo Picasso‘s painting Guernica.

This video is my official entry in the Ford ‘Fiesta Movement’ contest. Ford is looking for 100 agents to test drive the new Fiesta for 6 months. The 100 winners will get FREE use of the Fiesta, plus gas and insurance for 6 months.

I filmed the video in Dearborn, Michigan on location at Henry Ford’s home, my home, Ford world headquarters and the Henry Ford Centenial Library (also in Dearborn).  Various members of my family show up in the video.

Please repost this link ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOkDx7NLaNo ) on your blog or Twitter it to all your friends.  I need your help to create a lot of excitement with this video by March 23rd, 2009.

When I reach my goal (driving the Fiesta for 6 months and making more cool videos), I’ll be posting more fun, fun, fun, fun Fiesta videos on another new website I’ve created:  FiestaFreedomRide.com

Mystery - Secret Treasure

What is this? Do you know where it’s from?

St. Augustine of Hippo

St. Augustine was born on this day, November 13th, in the year 354 AD.  Augustine wrote many great writings (including City of God), but most revealing of his personal views (his blog about life), is his Confessions, which is an  account of his earlier life.

There are many online editions of Augustine’s Confessions, including the versions offered by Bartleby,  CCEL, Fordham University, and Google books. What follows is a brief excerpt from St. Augustine’s Confessions, the second book.

I WILL now call to mind my past foulness, and the carnal corruptions of my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my God. For love of Thy love I do it; reviewing my most wicked ways in the very bitterness of my remembrance, that Thou mayest grow sweet unto me (Thou sweetness never failing, Thou blissful and assured sweetness); and gathering me again out of that my dissipation, wherein I was torn piecemeal, while turned from Thee, the One Good, I lost myself among a multiplicity of things. For I even burnt in my youth heretofore, to be satiated in things below; and I dared to grow wild again, with these various and shadowy loves; my beauty consumed away, and I stank in Thine eyes; pleasing myself, and desirous to please in the eyes of men.

And what was it that I delighted in, but to love, and be beloved? but I kept not the measure of love, of mind to mind, friendship’s bright boundary: but out of the muddy concupiscene of the flesh, and the bubblings of youth, mists fumed up which beclouded and overcast my heart, that I could not discern the clear brightness of love from the fog of lustfulness. Both did confusedly boil in me, and hurried my unstayed youth over the precipice of unholy desires, and sunk me in a gulf of flagitiousness. Thy wrath had gathered over me, and I knew it not. I was grown deaf by the clanking of the chain of my mortality, the punishment of the pride of my soul, and I strayed further from Thee, and Thou lettest me alone, and I was tossed about, and wasted, and dissipated, and I boiled over in my fornications, and Thou heldest Thy peace, O Thou my tardy joy! Thou then heldest Thy peace, and I wandered further and further from Thee, into more and more fruitless seed-plots of sorrows, with a proud dejectedness, and a restless weariness.

Pablo Picasso 1907 Self Portrait

Here is a section from Pablo Picasso’s 1907 self portrait. Picasso was  born on October 25, 1881. Picasso grew up in a middle class family in Malaga, Spain. His father was an art instructer and curator of an art museum. According to Picasso’s mother, his first words were “piz, piz” – short for lápiz, the Spanish word for “pencil”.  Picasso is one of the most famous 20th century artists and is best known for Cubist style paintings.

“You might imagine that somewhere in a back room at conferences the old hands at microprocessor architecture get together over dinner and a few bottles of wine–the sort that must be concealed in expense reports–lean back in their chairs, and talk long into the night about lessons learned and lessons repeated.”

Setting the tone, Nick Tredennick characterized the industry has having been “fooled by randomness.” Architecture is not a science, he argued, because it has only self-validation. “An architect creates a new architecture, and then we let him tell us about all its advantages and conceal all its problems.”

“When people of this caliber get together, some profound thoughts precipitated out of the levity. And given the diversity of experience on the panel, their observations were remarkably consistent. Taken together, they could almost form a little handbook of how to, and not to, do a CPU architecture.”

“Jason Ellenburg is making it very big in politics. He is managing the re-election campaign of Sen. Carl Levin.”

Jason is helping Carl Levin gather more slaves for Uncle Sam’s Plantation.  Why would he be so proud of that?

The Michigan Grapevine says: “Carl Levin has been in the senate way too long.”

Carl Levin has been very helpful to the citizens of Michigan for the past 30 years. We can thank Carl Levin for the high price of oil, loss of jobs, destruction of business opportunities, and 30 years of nothing but empty promises filled with hot air.

Carl Levin has done so many great things for Michigan in the past 30 years, we can be thankful for all these benefits:

• Every time you fill your truck up with fuel it costs $300 to $500. Thanks Carl Levin.
• When you fill up your car or mini-van with gas, it costs $50, $75, or $100. Thanks Carl Levin.
• Every time you turn around in Michigan, another manufacturing plant closes. Thanks Carl Levin.
• Every time someone tries to start a new business in Michigan, Carl Levin is there to help shut it down with empty promises, higher taxes, more red-tape, failed energy policies, government waste, and more promises full of hot air. Thanks-again Carl Levin
• Carl Levin is very good at something. Carl Levin is very good at raising taxes.
• Oh that’s right — Carl Levin is good at another thing too — breaking promises.

Jack Hoogendyk makes a lot of sense.  It’s time for real change in Michigan. It’s time to return to core principles. Jack has great ideas for bringing business opportunities back to Michigan. Jack understands that less government means more business opportunities, faster economic growth for Michigan, and more jobs in Michigan. Jack understands that lower taxes — means we will have more money to invest in Michigan business, and the creation of Michigan jobs. That’s why I’m voting for Jack Hoogendyk for US Senate in 2008. We need a new leader — a leader who will serve the people of Michigan.

There is only one winner who will make everyone a winner in Michigan in 2008. His name is Jack Hoogendyk.

Here’s a few highlights:

• Leonard Butler was born the day the Titanic sank, in 1912.
• The only thing his father was ever quoted as having said to his mother was: “You’re pregnant. I’m gone.”
• There were only 2 books in his home (growing up),  The Swiss Family Robinson and John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, which he read hungrily.
• He quit school at 14 and took a job as a wagon-repair apprentice.
• A year later, his mother died of pneumonia.
• He left England and went to Canada.
• After working as a farm hand, he went to college and earned a PhD in genetics.
• In 1946, Dr. Butler accepted a position for a year as assistant professor in the genetics department at McGill University.
• Dr. Butler retired (from teaching) in 1977 and became a consultant with the Upjohn pharmaceutical firm, where he bred diabetic Chinese hamsters in Kalamazoo, Mich.
• He died suddenly on June 30, 2008 at 96 years of age.

I would have loved to ask Dr. Butler how reading Pilgrim’s Progress prepared him for his journey.

Journal of Heredity - 1953

Several of Dr. Butler’s scholarly articles are available on the internet, including this interesting article entitled: A New Eye Abnormality in the House Mouse. I might have called it “Three Blind Mice”, but that’s a song for another day.

I never met Dr. Leonard Butler, but I admire his courage, tenacity, skill, and accomplishments.

“I am going to my Father’s, and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it…. When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the Riverside, into which as he went he said, Death, where is thy sting? And as he went down deeper he said, Grave, where is  thy victory?  So he passed over, and all the Trumpets sounded for him on the other side. ” – from Pilgrim’s Progress