Reflection by FXA

Taken at Seaside Farms, Mt. Pleasant, SC, 2009

The Debt Ceiling: Is It Constitutional?

Here we are only three days from financial Armageddon for our country and elements in the Congress are not willing to work out a bi-partisan compromise. Every thinking person from New York to Santa Monica, from Seattle to Miami and all points in between has an opinion (ignore the quality of thought likely in such a diverse group) and judging by reports are sending those opinions to the congress in growing numbers.

I wondered how all this got started and found at Young Lawyers Blog.com an explanation of how we (the United States of America) got started down this debt ceiling road. It is illuminating reading, especially for those who slept through civics 101. In short, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America prohibits anyone from questioning the national public debt. We have to pay our bills, regardless of what the Tea Party and any other "no tax pledge" signers think.

Last night Mary Matalin, CNN commentator, said these congress people were not interested in re-election, only in cutting federal spending. You show me a congress person who is not interested in re-election and I will show you either a senile congress person or one who knows an indictment is coming down.

The Young Lawyers Blog makes sense out of a complex topic. It is recommended reading.

Met a man from Lowell, MA, in South Africa

No trip to South Africa would be complete without looking in on Nelson Mandela's house in Soweto, Robben Island prison and the mainland prison where he was released to jubilant, cheering crowds. So in 2003, when my wife and I were on a two month self-conducted tour driving around South Africa we visited all three places.

All this comes back to mind as we approach July 18, 2011, and the 93rd birthday of Nelson Mandela, one of the most powerful, historical figures of the 20th Century.

Unless you have visited Soweto you cannot imagine the poverty that existed in that suburban black community outside of Johannesburg throughput the 20th century. I don't have any current knowledge of conditions there since my visit but if I had to guess I would say it is not much improved.


FXA outside Mandela's home in Soweto, Feb. 2003.

When we arrived at Mandela's single story, small brick house, down the street from the home of Archbishop Tutu, we were admitted by a guide who explained that the great man had lived there from about 1946 to 1962, when he was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. He served 27 years and was released in 1990 and the rest of the story needs no further telling here.

As we walked through the tiny rooms the guide detected an accent in my voice and asked where I was from originally. We had already told him we came from South Carolina. "Yours is not a South Carolina accent," he said, as my wife laughed. She said he came "from Lowell, Massachusetts."


Mary Archibald and guide at Mandela's home in Soweto,Feb. 2003.

"You know Kearney Square?, he asked excitedly." Yes, I said, "It was the center of life when I was a young man." With great relish he told us his remarkable story. He had been in the African National Congress fighting apartheid and was forced to flee South Africa or be arrested. He came to the United States and made his way to Lowell where he lived and worked for more almost fifteen years. We discussed favorite places, and neighborhoods. Despite all he had been through in his turbulent life he was so happy to meet someone from Lowell which held many good memories for him, he said. When Mandela was released, our guide returned to South Africa. He had been working at the home in Soweto for a couple of years.

I told him of our visit to Robben Island, seven miles out in the Atlantic ocean, where we were guided by a man who was imprisoned there with Mandela for 18 of his 29 years in prison and now worked as a guide in that infamous place, (which has become a tourist attraction and big money earner for South Africa.) The guide showed us Mandela's cell and shared stories about life there; we also visited the limestone quarry where Mandela worked.

It was obvious our guide, whose years in exile had been spent in the city where I was raised, loved and respected Mandela. My wife and I came away with a healthy respect for this man who had been a foot soldier in the fight to wipe out apartheid - segregation based solely on the color of one's skin and prejudice. (I regret that I have lost my notes made on that trip and have no current record of the man's name.)

Out for a Sunday stroll

What in Hell were grown men, stripped to the waist, sweating like fresh pork on a barbecue, doing in the middle of King Street lifting weights and 20 and 35 pound bags of sand when the real feel temperature was somewhere in the nineties on a sweltering, breeze-less Sunday afternoon?

It was all part of the latest effort by Charleston, SC, officials to lure more people downtown to experience the city. The city closes King Street from Calhoun to Queen to vehicular traffic on Sunday from 1 to 5 pm. Shops are open, light dining takes place in the street under massive umbrellas to block the sun. Musicians strum guitars and literally sing for their supper. Local artists set up easels and paint. Families and couples stroll in the middle of the street, although this day a majority favor the right hand sidewalk because it offers a bit of shade.

All of this and more took place with the real feel temperature approaching 97 degrees. An slow and easy stroll down the street left me with a shirt soaked in perspiration. A bottle of water from a street vendor was a necessity. Practically every police officer I saw at the multiple intersections was sipping from a large drink container. The combination of the heat and the humidity had everyone walking slow, wiping brows and breathing hard. And then there was an exhibition to defy all reason.

This was all part of a Crossfit exercise, an exercise program and competition that has gained momentum in the last few years and is used by some military special forces as a conditioning program. Suffice it to say, I considered it to border on insanity during the oppressive heat conditions on King Street, Charleston, SC, on July 10, 2011.

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Looking at good and bad

Mirror Image...
An image which is like a reflection in a mirror...everything is the same, except reversed.
Snapped this interesting picture in Seasides Farms, Mt. Pleasant, SC while on an exercise walk. (Click pictures to enlarge.)


And then there was this:



It is heartwarming that some Seaside Farms residents celebrated the birth of our Declaration of Independence with fireworks, but then they spoiled it by not cleaning up their explosive residue. I found this ugly trash scattered on the road at the end of Canyon Oaks Drive, while walking early in the morning of July 7. Someone ought to clean that up, I said to myself, and then I remembered: I was someone. I went home, returned with the box and a plastic glove, and cleaned up after these thoughtless celebrants.

An old fashioned parade

Brother and sister, Charlie Geilfuss and Joan Mills, with FXA, July 4, 2011, Franke @ Seaside, Mt Pleasant, SC (click on picture to enlarge.)

Over the 4th my third son, Patrick, journeyed to visit his brothers in the nation's capital and was on Constitution Avenue for the 4th of July parade. Patrick, an avid amateur photographer, took these pictures:
After linking up, click on Slideshow in the upper left corner to enlarge. Hope you enjoy!

A lighted faucet in your life?

Judith Martin, Miss Manners to the socially conscious, answered three questions in a recent newspaper column and began each answer with "Where were you...", as in Where were you during history class? Where were you doing civics class? and Where were you during posture class? My question is, Where was her editor when these three Q&As were being combined to form one column?

NBA owners followed the NFL owners and locked out the players. Will we be without professional football and basketball in 2911? I'm taking a peek at the Canadian Football League on TV. Don't know all the players yet but that's a small problem. I did see part of a game last Saturday night and uttered a big "WOW" at one spectacular pass play. I am betting the NFL lockout will end first. There is too much money on the table to be ignored.

Given inflation and the dwindling value of the dollar, I have not for several years bent over on the street to pickup anything less than a fifty cent piece, but just to cover all bets in case the national debt ceiling is not raised and the country goes broke, I bent over twice this week and picked up a penny and a quarter. I will miss that Social Security check but probably not as much as China and Japan who won't receive the interest payments on the American bonds they hold.

This is what America has been waiting for: "The VuPoint Temperature Sensitive LED Faucet Light (FL-IW1-VP) is a lighted aerator for your faucet that makes your water glow. When the water makes contact with the temperature-sensing metal pin in the unit, it will trigger the red LED light for hot water and the blue LED light for cold water. The intelligent sensor activates with hot or cold water, making it fun for all ages to watch the water change color. The light fits most standard faucets, and is easy to install."

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Ernest Hemingway - 50 years ago

Fifty years ago today, July 2, I picked up the Sunday News & Courier (name prior to merging with The Evening Post) and read that Ernest Hemingway had killed himself with his favorite shotgun in Ketchum, Idaho. I was shocked by the act of suicide. It was against God's law and against Catholic teaching. Back in those days I was probably more of a practicing Catholic than Hemingway, although he was also born into the faith.

I was shocked and felt let down that this bigger than life personality would take a "coward's" way out. Nothing could justify suicide, I thought. It was immaterial that I knew him only through a study of his life and reading his books and articles and watching movies based on his work. He was a young man's giant; he lived the kind of life lessor men only dreamed. The news of his suicide was just that; a story written less than 24 hours after he was found dead. No time for details. No time to explore why, although there were vague explanations: accident, cancer, money problems. Only in later years did we learn he suffered from terrible depression the last few years of his life.

He was laid to rest a couple of days after his suicide in a graveside service. No Mass in a Catholic church; he had too many wives it was said. It probably had more to do with the suicide than his wives.

And the world moved on. Something and someone else took center stage.

Over the years I have softened my views of Hemingway's suicide and the man. Somewhere along the line I recognized none of us really know what lies in the heart of another man or woman. We do not recognize the personal demons. Deep understanding is ever more difficult when our personal connection is remote to say the least. We regret the inadequacies years ago in treating depression. Even today it remains a challenge for the patient and the doctor.

Several years ago I went to Key West and toured Hemingway's house. It is a beautiful place stuffed with leather chairs made from the hides of big game he shot and full of memorabilia of a life well lived. Books abound. Those he wrote and those he collected. (Years after his death his wife Mary had to take his library to New York for controlled storage and chemical elimination of pests and insects that threatened to destroy the library.)

There is an elevated walkway from the house proper to his writing workshop. This overlooks the pool. There is a penny embedded in the concrete walk around the pool. Legend is that Hemingway put it there while the work was being done. He told the contractor "You have all the rest of my money. You might as well have this.

I went to Sloppy Joe's, Hemingway's favorite bar, a short walk from his house. Here I drank a beer in mid-morning as he might have done and sucked up the atmosphere and thought good thoughts about the man. I still have those thoughts.

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A moment in the life of a cat

This is not the cat I saw, only an example of the species.

On my morning exercise walk I met a woman walking two small dogs on long leashes. I don't know what kinds of dogs they were. I am not big on identifying dogs. I don't have anything against dogs. I just don't want one and don't care to know too much about them. I will tell you each dog could double for a lady's hand muff on a snowy day.

As the woman turned onto the concrete driveway from the road I saw a white (with a bit of black) cat near the point where a walkway to the house intersected the driveway. The cat was lying on the concrete, probably enjoying the cool feel on his tummy. He eyed the woman and the dogs as they approached and was slow to rise. What does a cat think in such situations?: No worry, this is the lady who runs this house and puts out a meal for me. I am bigger than those two dogs combined so they are not a real problem. But maybe I ought to get up anyway, just in case. Never know when a dog (and there are two of them) will go off his puppy chow. I can get back down again when they pass.

And he did.

(More blogs here.)

Where's the beef (crust)?

Bergen as seen from a mountain top lookout. (Click to expand.)


Once upon a time there was a fast food commercial that was co-opted into a political tag line: "Where's the beef?"
A similar question crust could be asked about "the crust" when ordering apple pie and ice cream in Norway. On a trip recently, my friend and I ordered this dessert and each time there was no crust. We were served stewed apples and ice cream, more of an apple dessert than the pie Grandma used to bake. The apples were tasty, being properly and correctly spiced but the lack of crust left us shaking our heads. After the second experience even seniors can learn a lesson so we chose alternate desserts.

(More blogs here.)

Car Fire in our Building

As if it wasn't hot enough this afternoon we had a car fire in the (Franke at Seaside, Mt. Pleasant, SC) Trailside Apartment house garage around 2 pm. The owner had filled her gas tank earlier today, according to gossip among the evacuated residents standing out on the lawn. Speculation is that a fuel line leak dropped gasoline on the hot engine block and this ignited the blaze. The fire started under the hood. These pictures show some of the results.
In the top photo the arm of a Mt. Pleasant fire inspector can be partially seen after the fire as he examined several points to determine where the fire started. The middle photo shows how intense was the fire. Part of the front side of the car is destroyed. The interior was also affected by the hot burn. The car is obviously totaled.
I was returning to the garage within minutes of the beginning of the incident, the garage was filled with black smoke and people were evacuating the building. I backed away and parked behind an adjacent building and walked to the scene. Some residents are experiencing smoke in their apartments but this is expected to dissipate this afternoon.
The Mt. Pleasant Fire Department responded, as did several Franke at Seaside workers to help residents.
(Excerpted from my blog which can be found by clicking here.)

FBI will lie to you and then arrest you

If you are engaged in any illegal, criminal action or activity likely to attract the serious attention of the FBI, let me give you a tip: Don't come downstairs or leave your residence just because a caller says someone broke into your storage locker or your parked car has been hit in an accident. It is probably the FBI lying to you and waiting to arrest you.
On Wednesday, June 22, the FBI ran such a scam on James "Whitey" Bulger, who the Bureau had been looking for for the last fifteen years. Bulger was called on the phone and told his storage locker had been broken into. Would he come and see what was missing? Who wouldn't? When he got outside in the open he was arrested. Bulger will be tried at a later day on a variety of charges.
This old, time-worn Bureau trick was used years ago to lure the retired Navy communications Warrant Officer turned Soviet spy John Walker out of his room in a Montgomery County, Maryland, motel known to be used by prostitutes. A call was placed to Walker's room in the early morning hours and he was told his car had been hit in an accident and would he come down and check it out. Walker shuffled outside and was nabbed by the FBI. He is in the federal prison in Terra Haute, Indian, working on his life sentence.

A remembrance - Charles Archibald

My brother Charlie (on the right) died on May 22, 2011, while I was on a trip overseas. He was the youngest of five children in our family and had battled throat cancer for about two years. I found it very difficult to talk with him on the phone a few weeks earlier. It seemed so heartless to talk about how good my life was to someone who I knew was facing the end of his life. Instead, I wrote him a loving e-mail remembering some of the special events in our lives and how he was a favorite of my late wife, Mary (Died - December 29, 2010). After my e-mail he called me from the hospital and we were able to talk on the phone. I reminded Charlie we came from poor and humble circumstances, but it was not how you started but how you ended up. By that standard Charlie did OK. My two oldest sons went to Massachusetts and represented my wing of the family at the graveside services. Charlie was a quixotic personality in many ways but he will be missed when the family gathers and reminisces.

May 8 - Major Event Day

Tomorrow we will celebrate Mother's Day in South Carolina and also observe the 66th anniversary of VE Day - the day the allies accepted the surrender of the German forces to end World War II. For many of us our mothers have died and we remember them with love and affection. We hope that those whose mothers are still alive will treasure them in their hearts and in the lives they lead. We also remember fondly those brave men and women who gave their lives to bring about the end the war in Europe, and we salute the veterans of that war who are still with us today.

Well Done! CIA kills bin Laden

A hearty "well done" to the Central Intelligence Agency and its dedicated men and women who found and killed Osama bin Laden,architect of the 9/11 bombings in New York and Washington almost ten years ago. President Obama confirmed the operation in a nine minute speech Sunday evening from the White House. The President said the United States developed a lead on bin Laden last August and had painstakingly run the thread out to the village and compound where bin Laden was hiding. The President authorized an attempt to capture bin Laden but he put up a fight and was killed in the action.

Born in the USA

As Ronald Reagan used to say,"Well," he finally did it. President Obama citing the totally unnecessary distraction from the country's real problems among TV talking heads, wannabe presidential contenders, and the simply stupid (my phrase, not the President's)put a copy of Certificate of Live Birth on the White House web site today. This certificate is certified by the State Registrar in Hawaii and shows the President being born on August 4, 1961, in a Honolulu hospital.

Light a candle in the fight against AZ

Please consider going to this web site and take Option 2 to light a candle in memory of someone who suffers from or died from Alzheimer's. Option 1 offers the opportunity to make a donation in the fight against AZ and light a candle. I am proud to have joined more than 4100 people who have lighted candles as of midnight 4/18/2011...a tribute to Mary C. Archibald is there. You can reach it by scrolling through the pages under the letter "A".
Thank you.

Tough Without a Gun - Review

Hanging on the wall at the end of the brown leather sofa in the living room of my small apartment in the active lifestyle community on the Franke at Seaside campus in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, is a black and white print of Rick Blaine seated at a table wearing a white dinner jacket and black bow tie holding a drink in his hands and muttering to no one in particular, “of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.”

This, of course, is the classic image of Humphrey Bogart, star of the still widely acclaimed greatest picture of all time, Casablanca. Bogart was in 75 movies and did his journeyman work on Broadway in dozens of plays, but he is best remembered in my mind for five films: The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen (he won the Oscar) and The Caine Mutiny.

Stefan Kanfer has written Tough Without a Gun, The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart, for people like me and millions of others around the world who remember the man The American Film Institute ranked as the greatest male star in cinema history. Entertainment Weekly designated Bogart the Number One Movie Legend of all Time and the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp bearing his likeness in 1997. In 2006, a portion of 103rd street and Amsterdam Avenue in New York City was designated Humphrey Bogart Place to commemorate his birth and early life in that city.

This biography is a taut telling of Bogart’s life and career. In his life, as in his films, Bogart was not one to kneel obsequiously to authority. He respected it in his own way but always there lingered the suspicion that man was not on this earth to be told what to do all the days of his life.

In Bogart’s life, there were two kinds of people who acted in Hollywood: the professionals, who came to the job every day, knew their lines and were ready to work. The rest were bums. He was the ultimate professional in the judgment of his peers.

Bogart was a somewhat of a straight moralist, despite four marriages. When he was married, he did not stray, and in his private and public life, he did not do drugs or lay on the psychiatrist couch. He consumed a lot of whiskey (the story is he, and director John Huston – another big imbiber, were the only members of the cast and crew making The African Queen on location in the Congo who did not get sick.)

Tough Without a Gun is replete with tidbits of information about the making of Humphrey Bogart’s greatest films, the ones he was proudest of, and the ones over which he despaired. This 239-page tribute lists all of his Broadway performances and movies and includes a collection of black and white photos designed to recall these classic moments in film history. It will resurrect memories of a golden era in American filmmaking. More than that, it will delight Bogie fans around the world.

(If you received this twice, please excuse. Computer and I having a bit of conflict tonight.)

A morning walk on the beach

I was on the beach at "Isle of Palms SC" at 5:35 this morning. It was a solid black morning. The sky was devoid of any clouds and it seemed there were thousands of stars. The tide was low and I walked up the beach for 35 minutes before I met anyone. I kept the same distance between the incoming tide and my path to stay on a straight line. I encountered a woman and her dog. We chatted for a few minutes and she used the light on her cell phone to let me read the time on my watch. I then turned and headed back the way I came. When I reached the point where I had entered the beach I stopped and looked back to the East. The sun was not visible but its rays were lighting the horizon and I knew it would be soon be daylight.

How to hook up a wireless router - 2nd time

Well, the first try didn't work too well, so let;'s give it a second shot on how to hook-up a wireless router.

As usual kick on the blue highlighted words and you will be taken to Youtube for a six minute video. Quite easy to understand.

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