OUR MOST PRECIOUS ASSET

Throughout history, stories have been related over and over again about parents who died saving the lives of their children.  It's a pretty simple equation:  death is imminent for a youngster, that's a month old baby up to about twelve or fourteen years old, and the parent or parents thrust themselves into the way and die instead of the children. There are different results for this same scenario including one where they all die or they all survive. However, there is nothing far-fetched about a mother bear defending her cubs. The rule there is simple: get in the path leading from Mama Bear to Baby Bear and chances are Mama Bear is going to run over you, most likely with fatal results for you.  There is no question about this. If you live around bear habitat then chances are you have instructed some new comer to beware of this situation.    

But what happens when we turn the care of our children over to a baby sitter, or a nanny or a school?  Unless we are all escapees from retard schools, the expectations are the same: "You WILL defend my children up to and including sacrificing your own life as you try to protect theirs!"

It's my sincere belief that the parents of the children who were killed in the shooting at the school in Connecticut did not receive from the school authorities the type of protection to which they were entitled .  Details are sketchy when this is being written, five days after the shooting took place, but it appears only one person took their job of child caretaker seriously, the principal. That's certainly NOT the kind of example the passengers on Flight 93 made on September 11, 2001.

I strongly suggest that these bereaved parents band together and file a heavy-duty lawsuit against the school system that did not have anything in place, such as teachers with concealed weapon permits who could have stopped this insanity in its tracks. They need to take the same attitude that thousands people in California took many years ago about the status of playing cards.  They went to court and proved that certain poker games were NOT games of chance but games of skill.  These parents need to go to court and have the court adjudicate the fact that banning guns will NOT make the situation anything but worse. We might as well ban pencils for misspelling words, ban mountain bikes for killing people by throwing them off the bike when going down the mountain, ban cars for killing people. The list is endless and the method is lunacy.  We need a display of strength that renders swift and final retribution to anyone who has the temerity to threaten our most precious asset.

Fritz Owens

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

THE LATEST POLITICAL SCAM

The alien invader crooks just won't go away (see my blog: "Alien invader crooks": http://pianofritz2.blogspot.com/2007/06/alien-invader-crooks.html from 6/28/2007.

They are so attractive to the politicians because they represent so many votes. The gooney birds in Washington, D.C. want us to ignore the drug trade, the murders, the assaults, the rapes and the total disregard for American laws by these felons and "give them a break". The latest reprehensible plan states that if an alien invader crook has been living here for twenty years, has married and raised a family the deportation laws should be ignored and this non-citizen given a break simply because he or she eluded the law for twenty years. The green card is their reward for being smart enough to not get caught.

Now I've heard some stupid suggestions when it comes to these alien invader crooks but this just about tops them all. Recently, Hans Gruber, a German guard at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, was discovered hiding in Wisconsin where he had married, had children and had become a fine, upstanding member of the community. Don't you think that we should ignore the sixty thousand people he personally sent to the gas chambers during the Second World War? I mean, after all, he eluded the law for twenty-seven years so shouldn't he also get the same reward as proposed for all of the alien invader crooks? 

Then there's Melvin Florane. He escaped from an Arkansas prison in 1975 after he had served seven years of a sixty-year sentence for murdering his girlfriend and her daughter and unborn son.  He had taken up residence in Oregon, married, had several children and became another fine, upstanding member of the community. Really now, he eluded the law for over thirty-five years so shouldn't he get the same reward as the all the others? Seems only fair to me.  I'm sure that you don't need any help from me to come up with other significant examples.

These nut cases in the House and the Senate and the Oval Office seem to think they can get away with anything. Looks like they are proving it on a daily basis, doesn't it? Imagine now what life would be without the estimated twelve to thirty million alien invader crooks. The prison population would be reduced by an enormous amount since about thirty percent of them are alien invader crooks. The huge amount of pressure on the emergency rooms around the country that these bums are using as their health care center would suddenly be able to keep within their budget and treat true emergency cases on a reasonable basis.  Consider the fact that these crooks are sending billions of dollars a year out of the country. That would be sufficient to eventually balance the budget, particularly if there was no longer a huge strain on Medicare, Social Security and other social services that they are ruining.

If I ask you to commit a crime and you go out and do it with no assistance from me, am I guilty too? Obama is asking these dead heads in Congress to do just that and they are doing it. What makes you think that he's not responsible?  If you don't like the alien invader crooks taking over your country then write to your representatives in Washington, D.C. and tell them to do something about it or lose their next election. That ALWAYS gets results. Remember, the main problem is that the Federal Government is NOT enforcing the laws already on the books. We don't need more laws or regulations. All we need is ENFORCEMENT!

           

If you agree with this article, why don't you take the time to send it to like-minded friends and relatives? It could make a big difference in your future.

Rumors of my demise...

To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. Besides being sick in the head, (my normal state of being), in December of 2010 we had a humongous snowstorm up here in the Western North Carolina mountains. As the snow was just coming down lightly, I figured I could make it over to John and Virginia Dekker's house on the west side of Hendersonville and pick up Lynne before it got too bad. Bad choice.

I started to drive over there in our antique (1992) BMW and it seems like that was the trigger to cause the snow to immediately start falling at triple the rate. Lynne was baby-sitting the Dekker's three dogs while they were out of town. They usually reciprocate by watching our three cats when we go someplace. I got stuck in the snow about a half-mile from their house. Fortunately, I was able to maneuver the car over to the side of the road to keep it out of the way of other vehicles. Then the people next door to the Dekker's came to get me with Lynne in their 4-wheel drive vehicle. They drove us down to the entrance to the community and we waited for our youngest daughter to come pick us up in their 4-wheel drive vehicle.

By now you should be getting the idea that for where we live, a 4-wheel drive vehicle seems to be an awfully good idea. At this point in time, I realized that I could not drive back up the mountain where we live to get home again until either the snow melted or we acquired a 4-wheel drive vehicle. And if I didn't get a 4-wheel drive car, this could happen another dozen times that winter or any winter thereafter. Sort of a no-brainer situation: get a 4 wheel drive vehicle or move.

When we got here in 2005 we had no transportation at all and no money to get one. The situation was slightly different in 2010 simply because we had gotten a reverse mortgage and had a little money left to draw on. However, in looking through all the information on used 4-wheel drive vehicles, it became apparent right away that we'd be lucky to find one decent vehicle for less than $20,000. That was eighty Percent (80%) of the money we had left in the reverse mortgage. Tough call, huh? Keep in mind that I have no job, I have not worked since the heart attack eight weeks before Katrina and the 565 idiots in Congress have not exactly been our friends with their dipping into our Social Security and refusing us the cost of living increase for two years.

It was Melody's husband that found the car for us. He ran across it online and settled my nerves about it. "I had a Toyota 4 Runner for a couple of years when I lived in Colorado. A remarkable car - it was bulletproof!" That was not meant in the true sense of the word but used to give me an idea that the car was very hard to stop. We ended up buying the car and it has served us well for the last year and four months. Ended up costing us less than $9,000 which meant we only used up 37% of our reverse mortgage reserve.

What didn't go down so well was the situation at Melody and Tommy's house. I didn't know that they were all sick with some sort of respiratory illness and the doctor had all four of them on anti-biotics. Anyone that knows me knows the lifelong battle I've had with respiratory infections. This little sojourn at their house for three days with no way to escape, hardly any fresh air at all (it was in the 20's outside) and none of my vitamins or prescription medicine on hand really knocked the hell out of my already shaky immune system.

With such an assault on my health, particularly with all the other stuff that has been going on for the last couple of years with the added injustice of not being 22 anymore, I didn't really start to feel much better until the end of the summer, around the middle of October up here. Then Lynne went to New Orleans for ten days and when she came back she had a nasty gift for me: she was carrying some sort of infection donated by the bug network in Louisiana. Within a couple of weeks my sinuses were packed with a real doozy of an infection and I became the apparent local distributor of Grey Poupon Mustard, at least that's what the stuff coming out of my nose looked like. It was awful and my overall health started to get worse.

Eventually I ended up in the hospital emergency room a couple of times with what I call the "Seasickness Syndrome". That occurs when you get so sick, like seasickness, it's only the hope of dying that keeps you alive. Then my legs started to swell up. What an exciting time! Did you know that when the legs swell up and begin to make you look like the Michelin Tire Man, at a certain point the body starts to dump excess fluid through the skin? Wow! You walk across the linoleum floor in the kitchen like a giant slug leaving a trail that really resembles footprints by the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

At that point I ended up in the doctor's office and she told me I had to have some Home Health Care. I had open wounds on my left leg that seemed to have appeared from out of nowhere - sort of like the stigmata the Catholic Church keeps referring to when discussing various and sundry saints. No, I'm not suggesting by any stretch of the imagination that I might be a saint and I didn't have any marks on my hands or feet but the appearance of these wounds resembled the stories of how the stigmata would come out of nowhere. Seems as though the valves in my legs had gotten clogged up and the blood had no place to go. It's called venous insufficiency.

The name does not give you any idea of the severity of the treatment. From what I've heard, it's almost the exact same thing they do to burn victims. I'm certain that you have heard just how painful that procedure can be. When the new skin forms and becomes a scab it has to be removed in order to facilitate the healing process and prevent infection. Until you have experienced that treatment you have no idea just how painful it really is. Words cannot describe the agony of having healthy skin pulled away from an open wound. Essentially it seemed as though I was waiting for the home health care nurse to come by twice a week and attempt to amputate my leg without any anesthetic! There's that good old Chinese curse again: "May you live in interesting times!" No funnsie's whatsoever!

The treatment was completed about six weeks ago and of course I'm going to have to wear compression socks from now on - permanently. Just remember there are certain prices most of us have to pay simply because we've lived longer than others! Speaking of which, here's a good question for you. Dr. Wayne Dyer asks this in most of his motivational seminars: "Would you like to live to be 100 years old?" Most people have qualifications like "if I have enough money; or, if I'm in good health; or, if I don't have any dental problems". There's a whole list of things that people want if they are going to live to be 100 years old.

Let's face it folks, those qualifications don't apply. They have a very adverse effect on your ability to help the body survive into three figures. Basic cooperative attitude is simply to have no qualifications whatsoever. Then immediately people will jump on to "What if I'm paralyzed from the neck down?" and my answer to those people is my attitude. I have every intention of living past 100. Might trip on the stairs tomorrow, hit the ground like a sack of potatoes and end that pipe dream. However, if I do end up paralyzed from the neck down, I'll learn how to paint with a brush in my mouth or something equally as challenging.

In the meantime, as much as it may offend a few people, I am alive and kicking and intend to keep things that way as long as I have any control over the situation.

Your feedback is what keeps me going. All writers need encouragement from time to time. Feel free to leave any sort of comment after this article - it really is important.

Assassanation attempt in Tucson, AZ - 1/9/2011

Yesterday, the new House Speaker John Boehner expressed his displeasure with the events in Tucson Arizona yesterday by saying, "An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve". That's a two edged sword and he seems to be ignoring it. There is a definitive message in the whole event that points toward a real alienation of the American people towards the Federal Government. He could have easily said, "an attack on one who DOES NOT serve is an attack on all who DO NOT serve."

Ever since the Obama administration took over the White House I have watched as American's rights have been flushed down the toilet. These people "who serve" have not been serving their constituents. They have insisted on serving their own interests and greed and as a consequence, they have enraged a majority of the American people. A very pertinent example is their insistence on passing a health care bill that the majority of their constituents do not want. In spite of the overwhelming fact that the majority did NOT want this health bill passed, they passed it anyway. That was a move that can hardly be called serving the interests of the American people.

The accusations by former House Speaker Pelosi that members of the tea parties were a disgruntled minority inflamed people already angry about the trampling of their rights. Quite frankly, I am very surprised that there has been no real attempt to assassinate the President and a bunch of members of Congress. The entire Congress cannot be said to have been acting in the best interests of their country or their constituents. Their personal ideas and greed have been the idols they have been serving, not the American people.

When the Congress decides to deprive me of my legitimate cost of living increase for TWO years, my only source of income other than a small pension from the American Federation of Musicians, you cannot expect that I will be happy about it. When they turn around and earmark the money for their own health care you have to expect that a lot of seniors just like me will be extremely disgruntled. Are there any unstable ones in that bunch? I would not like to take a chance on saying "no" because right away some eighty-five year old WWII veteran would develop a brain tumor and go out and kill somebody in politics. The politicians are NOT serving their constituents. They are serving their interests and personal greed.

On December 15, 2008 I wrote the article "The solution to drunk driving". It was centered on my brother-in-law who was killed by a drunk driver 12 years ago. The solution was simple but after writing to every member of the Louisiana State legislature asking for assistance in getting this suggested law passed, I heard from just one legislator who dismissed the request as "not economically feasible". To me that is NOT serving the interests of your constituents. Later on, I wrote the same letter to North Carolina Congressman Heath Shuler and got a letter back from him explaining why fuel prices were so high. He didn't even read the letter. To me that is definitely NOT serving the interests of your constituents. Do you think I voted for Shuler? Not likely.

The elections in November of 2010 showed that a vast number of American citizens were very angry about the direction their representatives in Congress were taking and showed their displeasure by getting rid of a large number of them though the electoral process. You can expect similar results in 2012. Unfortunately the message did not seem to sink in with a lot of them, including Representative Giffords. Don't you think she should bear some of the responsibility for going out into a public place with a very agitated public without some sort of protection? Rep. John Boehner says such acts of violence have no place in our society. Saying that does NOT eliminate the risk of it happening. Ask any of our troops who are defending our country overseas if it's a good idea to go into a dangerous location unarmed! Would you go into the downtown area of a big city at 2:00 a.m. by yourself? Of course not - that's stupidity.

After the fact, everyone else in Congress started worrying about THEIR danger. They should have been worrying about it months ago and taken steps to make sure everyone had adequate protection. Exposing yourself unnecessarily in an area that has already generated a lot of hate mail and phone calls strikes me as acting in a fairly stupid manner if you don't have some sort of guard around you.

This is not a new story. Whackos have been assassinating public figures for centuries. President Reagan likely would have died from the assassination attempt on his life except for protection and a little bit of luck like the bullet following his rib instead of striking a vital part. In Roman times, someone would go off their rocker in a village and dash into the local trading mart and start slashing people with a sword. Eventually a Roman Centurion would be called to the scene, stick the madman with a spear and the whole thing would be over. Of course, the locals got killed and wounded. However, politicians and celebrities hardly ever got hurt by thugs or crazy people. They didn't go anywhere without a huge entourage of guards dedicated to preventing just this type of action from affecting their employer. What makes you think today is any different? How many guards do some of today's celebrities haul around with them? If our representatives are as important as they say they are, why aren't they being guarded in a similar manner?

Rep. John Boehner also said that public service is a high honor. Really? The average politician in Washington, D.C. treats public office like a pig struggling to get to the feeding trough and get his before anyone else can. When you treat your constituents with such impunity, the risk becomes grave. Not from your rational, stable, well-meaning citizens who will argue for many hours until the matter is settled and then mumble and grumble their way into the voting booth. All the politician risks there is his or her job. No, the real risk comes from the undiscovered nut cases that no one seems to notice until they smash about the national scene with one horrible tragedy after another. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who were injured in yesterday's affair and to all the families of those who are dead and injured. It's possible that someone may learn something from this event but it's not likely.

©2011 by fritz owens

GLOBAL WARMING?

I know I've been wondering about this for several years. Scientists who claim it's not true have been shouted down, insulted and in general embarrassed and made to feel like idiots for bringing it up. As Michael Crichton tells it, we are being subjected to the same kind of pressure politics about global warming as were generated by the eugenics movement in the early 1900's. See:

http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay8text.html

There is a vast amount of information about this hoax that eventually led to the Nazis belief in the theory enough to sterilize and gas millions of people.

I just recently finished the book by Michael Crichton, "State of Fear", ©2004. In his usual gripping style, he tells a very graphic tale of just why there ain't no such thing as "global warming". This is the second time that I have read this book. I keep really good books and go back to them after sufficient time has elapsed that I don't really remember the characters or much of the plot. To me it's like meeting an old friend and catching up with old times. Plus the fact that you gain so much more knowledge about the book and what the author is writing about than you did the first time.

This time, I was again intrigued enough by the plausibility of the tale he told to go back and start checking the footnotes. Author's license extends to creating phony footnotes to enhance the story but in this case I have come across extensive information that the footnotes are true and verified in many prestigious scientific journals.

Following is a brief list of the ones I have made from his book and they are doozies! If you have any doubts whatsoever, reading his book with the facts in mind make an overwhelming case, in my opinion, that the general public is being bamboozled to death by totally false information. Just to state a few of the facts, here are some quotes from the footnotes in the book:
=============================================
9/21/2010

Abstract

The Greenland coastal temperatures have followed the early 20th century global warming trend. Since 1940 however, coastal stations data have undergone predominantly a cooling trend. At the summit of the Greenland ice sheet the summer average temperature has decreased at the rate of 2.2 ºC per decade since the beginning of the measurements since 1987.

From Global Warming and the Greenland Ice Sheet by P. Chylek
=============================================
9/21/2010

"Natural and anthropogenic changes in atmospheric CO2 over the last 1,000 years from air in Antartica ice and firn" by D. M. Etheridge ("firn" is an archaic term for "old snow")
=============================================
9/21/2010

"Antarctic climate change and terrestrial ecosystem response" by P. T. Doran and eleven other scientists. Published in "Nature".

From 1986 to 2000 central Antarctic valleys cooled .7ºC per decade with serious ecosystem damage from cold. ¹

Both satellite data and ground stations show slight cooling over the last 20 years

Side- looking radar measurements show West Antarctic ice is increasing by 26.8 gigatons/yr. Reversing the melting trend of the last 6,000 years. ²

Antarctic peninsula has warmed several degrees while interior has cooled somewhat. Ice shelves have retreated but sea ice has increased.

During the last four interglacials, going back 420,000 years, the Earth was warmer than it is today. ³

Less Antarctic ice has melted today than occurred during the last interglacial.

Antarctic sea ice has increased since 1979.

Trend towards more sea ice may be accelerating.

The greater part of Antarctica experiences a longer sea-ice season, lasting 21 days longer than it did in 1979.
=============================================
9/21/2010

IPCC Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p 774:

"In climate research and modelling [sic], we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible".
=============================================
Notes:
1. 0.7ºC = approx. 1.26º Fahrenheit 2.2ºC = approx. 3.96º Fahrenheit

2. A "gigaton" is one BILLION tons

3. Interglacial
— adj
1. Occurring or formed between periods of glacial action

2. A period of comparatively warm climate between two glaciations, esp of the Pleistocene epoch
=============================================

All of this material and hundreds of other scientific papers from some of the best minds in the world are being castigated, made fun of and generally put down to serve the money making agenda of "global warming". It's very hard to find evidence unless you really hunt it up with searches on the Internet. Even then you have to cross check to make sure some dodo brain isn't making it up to make a name for himself or herself.

I welcome any comments and other knowledge about the problem.

LOW BODY TEMPERATURE

Around the beginning of 2010, I took notice of the fact that I was cold a great deal. My hands and feet were like ice much of the time and I seemed to have trouble getting warm in the winter. It really was unusual because my body temperature has been 98.6 degrees for years. When I start having trouble with my allergy to dust, I usually run a mild temperature of about 99.0 degrees, just four tenths of a degree. So when I had an allergic breakout and started feeling bum, I would take my temperature. To my surprise, my body temperature was in the 97-degree range. The next time I went to my doctor for a monthly check-up, I asked her about it and she said it wasn't normal. I chalked it up to the allergies and let it go for a few days.

In March of 2010 I started a search on the Internet for "Effects of Low Body Temperature". Right away a website came up entitled "Wilson's Temperature Syndrome". (From this point on I will refer to it as WTS.) I decided to read the Patient's Manual online and found a whole explanation of how this particular syndrome affects the thyroid SYSTEM. I capitalize this because there is no known medical test for finding out the condition of the thyroid system, just the thyroid gland. And there was a list of over 50 symptoms of WTS. At this point in time I started keeping track of my daily temperature. It became obvious in the first ten days that there was something abnormal going on as most of the temperature readings ranged from 96.6 degrees to 97.9 degrees. I also noticed that temperatures in the 98-degree range were usually associated with a sinus infection.

I then went through the list of symptoms and found that I had twenty (20) of them. This really rang a bell because since the 2005 heart attack followed eight weeks later by Hurricane Katrina, I've had a lot of weird health symptoms that come and go without too much of an explanation. I'm not one to complain so I didn't think too much about it but this WTS really intrigued me.

In cases like this, the patient mentions it to his or her doctor and the doctor says, "Sounds like a thyroid problem to me, let's run a thyroid test." Almost invariably the test comes back negative and the doctor makes noises about it being psychosomatic, not enough rest, too much stress, etc., etc., etc. In other words, it's all in your mind. The WTS patient's manual cleared all that up.

I ordered the Doctor's Manual. After it arrived, on the next visit to my primary physician, Dr. Rebekah Robinson, I discussed it with her. She agreed to read the manual because she knows that the thyroid is one of the most difficult glands in the body to understand. A couple of days later I went to her office and dropped off the manual. By the next visit in May she told me that she would be finished with the manual around the 18th of May and that she would then be ready to prescribe for me.

The prescription you have to have is a special, compounded prescription that is not covered by insurance. As a consequence, I have been paying full price for every one. They run somewhere between $40 and $50. I've had four prescribed for me so far. The protocol is simple but very demanding. You start taking two capsules a day twelve hours apart. They must be taken TO THE MINUTE! Sounds weird but you have to follow the instructions to get good results. The capsules start out at 7.5 micrograms (mcg) and increase every day by another 7.5 mcg. Since I get up early and have an alarm with two different settings, I set the alarms for 5:45 A.M. and 5:45 P.M. so that I could take one capsule at 6:00 A.M. and another at 6:00 P.M. You have to take your temperature three times a day so I did it at 9:00, 12:00 and 3:00 and graphed the average.

Now keep in mind that since March, my temperature had been running steadily in the 97.0 to 97.9 degree range for most of the time. As soon as I started this regimen on May 24, 2010 I kept track of the temperature every day. It was 97.5 on May 24, 98.1 on May 25, 98.2 on May 26, and 98.3 on May 27. I was amazed! It really was working! Then on the evening of May 27, I missed the 6:00 p.m. medication by NINE minutes. The next day the temperature average was back down to 97.3, very discouraging. But Dr. Rebekah encouraged me to continue saying it would probably come back up. She was right. By the tenth of June when I reached 75 mcg twice a day, the temperature was up to 98.6

Now the weaning process starts. You take the amount that you had reached when the temperature reached 98.6 and you continue that level for three weeks. At the end of three weeks you start reversing the procedure by lowering the dosage 7.5 mcg every three days until there are no more capsules. At that time you take a break for a couple of days and then start round two. This time I got to 98.6 on July 31 when I reached 60 mcg. Now I'm just finishing up the weaning process. The most astounding thing about this protocol is that the routine seems to reset the thyroid system and even when you stop the medication you temperature stays at 98.6! I'm three days away from finishing up round two and I don't think that I'll need another. Since August 2nd I've only had one temperature reading below 98.0 - most of them have been 98.6, a far cry from six months ago.

To me the most important thing about your temperature is the fact that enzymes do not digest properly and cannot be absorbed by the body correctly unless the body temperature is 98.6! I was amazed by that fact since it explains a lot of minor health issues I've had for several years. Considering what Dr. Wilson says in the manual about WTS being triggered off by severe trauma I think I qualify with a heart attack followed by a storm that wiped out 99% of our belongings in our home in New Orleans and forced us to move away. In addition, since there is no medical test for WTS the only way you can be sure you have it is if your temperature starts to go up when you start to take the medication. I would definitely say that under the present circumstances I have Wilson's Temperature Syndrome.

I urge anyone reading this who suspects that they might have a thyroid problem, go to http://www.wilsonstemperaturesyndrome.com and read the online patient's manual. It is well written and very easy to understand. Taking the self-administered test for symptoms associated with WTS is very easy. Then all you have to do is find a doctor that will cooperate with you. Dr. Rebekah is my hero! The icing on the cake? She communicates with me by e-mail when I need some info. That's First Class! I try very hard not to abuse the privilege, as she is such a great doctor she is extremely busy.

Note: If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to e-mail me or call.

How Shipbuilding Got Started

One morning Ogg, the caveman, came out of his cave, stretched and felt his knee.
"Good!" said Ogg. "No rain tomorrow!" (See http://pianofritz2.blogspot.com - How Religion got started - November 6, 2008)

He looked around then wandered down to the stream close by to sit on his favorite big rock and soak up the sun. As he was sitting there looking down at the stream, a large leaf that was curled up on all sides went floating by. In the middle was an ant getting a free ride down the stream to the river. This set off a light bulb in Ogg' s very creative brain. He thought that if an ant can ride a leaf then perhaps a man could ride a large stick or tree across the river.

He remembered the last time he struggled to get across the river and a large dead tree came by. He had grabbed hold of one of the branches on the tree and by dragging his feet one way or the other finally managed to maneuver the tree to the opposite side. He didn't like getting wet when it was cold so it had been a while since he had tried that.

Now he thought he could figure out a way to ride the river without getting wet. His people were starting to use carts with stone wheels so he decided that he would build a water cart. It was a very ambitious project but old Ogg had a way about him of convincing people that he knew what he was doing. After all, wasn't he now the village shaman who predicted the rain (most of the time)? So Ogg managed to get several hefty men interested in helping him simply by reminding them of the difficulties of getting to the other side of the river where the game was far more plentiful.

He started by cutting down four trees that were pretty good size, about six feet long and about a foot in diameter. He had his helpers drag them all down to a spot by the stream and laid them out beside each other. He then started to think about how he would keep them together. He remembered that his previous experience in floating down the river was very difficult because the tree kept rotating. How was he going to keep that from happening?

It occurred to Ogg that they had vines leading from one cave to another above or below it. The vines lasted a pretty long time and they would support a man's weight until they broke. If you were lucky, you spotted the vine rotting before it broke. If not, well, quite a few were crippled or dead because of it. He decided to go gather some strong vines and see if he could hold the logs together. Once they had a bunch of the vines they dragged them back to the cut up logs and Ogg tried to figure out how to attach them. He went back to the caves with vines in them to get down to the next level and found that someone had figured out how to tie a knot. He went back to the logs and started experimenting with tying them together.

By now his helpers are pretty tired out so he decided to come back the next morning and work it out. That night in his cave, Ogg picked up a stick that was burned and tried to draw a picture of what he was trying to do but he just couldn't get it right. One of his sons got wide eyed at what he was doing and after a while begged for a chance to do some drawing. Ogg was tired of fooling with it so he let the boy use the burnt stick while he went to get something to eat. The little kid immediately started drawing pictures of all of the animals that they saw regularly on hunting trips and he had a real talent for it.

When Ogg came back he was astounded to see the pictures his son had drawn on the walls of their cave. There was a bear, an elephant, a lion and of course the saber tooth tiger and they were all very recognizable. He told the boy that the pictures were really good and that maybe Ogg would take him to the river in the morning and Junior could help him out. The youngster was ecstatic. His father actually thought he was old enough to help out! Little did the boy know that his father was looking for someone to make pictures of the project out so that they could talk about it at night.

Early the next morning Ogg rolled out of his sleeping mat to find Junior up and ready to go. He thought to himself that it was a shame that all of that energy was wasted on a little kid. The boy was really excited. They grabbed some dinosaur meat for breakfast and started down towards the river. Along the way Ogg told his boy about seeing the ant floating down the stream in the middle of a leaf and asked him if he could draw a picture of something like that. Junior said he could do it. When they arrived at the stream, Ogg picked up a pointed stick and told Junior to draw a picture in the sand on the bank. The boy worked at it for a little while and Ogg saw that it really was a good representation of what he had told the kid. So he proceeded to tell Junior about his idea of tying logs together with vines and maybe he would be able to float across the river to the other side where the game was much more plentiful.

Junior started sketching in the sand and soon had the whole plan laid out exactly like Ogg had described. Just as the boy was finishing up the sketches, the men in the village that had agreed to help Ogg arrived and he showed them the pictures that Junior had drawn. A couple of them were petrified by the drawings and ran away but the others stuck around and began discussing the project. Soon a fairly reasonable raft was resting in a little inlet off the stream and Ogg decided to try it out. When he stepped on the raft it immediately sank under the water and Ogg was furious. He was about to rip it apart when his son asked if he could try it. Ogg relented and when the boy got on the raft it sank a little bit but kept most of Junior out of the water. The light dawned on Ogg that the if the raft was too small for him it certainly was too small for a party of hunters and any game they might kill on the other side of the river, much less bring it back. He would have to build one much bigger just to carry one person.

And that, my friends, is probably how the shipbuilding business got started.