September 13th

Weather is brighter today but still a lot cooler than it has been.   I am hopeful that autumn is on the way.

This sad cat is becoming a problem. And hasn't it perfected that sad cat 'look' it's what I get every time I open the front door.  She is camped on my front porch day and night.  The only time she leaves is to go home and eat.   I will have to speak to Donna.   The problem is that Bubbles likes to sit outside on the porch too, watch the world go by, or the fireflies if it's dark - and she's entitled to - but every time she puts her nose out of the door and spots the cat she stalks straight back inside again.   There just isn't room for the two of them, this cat has got to be disabused of the notion that it lives here.

 

This war that is not-a-war is ratcheting up.   Obama is still saying it will be confined to air attacks, there will be no ground forces, or 'boots on the ground', as he puts it, but all the retired generals and military analysts have said that to have air attacks there has to be ground forces too, in order to direct them to the targets, among other things.   So Obama will have to snap out of his denial and call it what it is.

 

And it is beginning to worry me.  It has been revealed that all the sub stations - or whatever they are that provide electricity to the National Grid - are undefended and vulnerable to attack.   And Al Qaeda took out the Grid in Yemen, so I am sure ISIS know how to do it 

 

I can't begin to imagine an indefinite loss of power.   Without radio, television or the internet one is virtually cut off.

 

This day in history................

On September 13, 1814, while witnessing the British bombard Fort McHenry in an attempt to capture Baltimore during the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

 

It was originally called "The Defence of Fort McHenry,"  and Key was inspired by the sight of a lone U.S. flag still flying over Fort McHenry at daybreak, as reflected in the now-famous words of the "Star-Spangled Banner".    And for those of you who don't know it - which is most of you reading this - this is the first verse, so you can understand why I - who has to listen to everyone singing it every Thursday morning - had no idea what it was supposed to be about.

 

Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

In 1931, the United States adopted the song as its national anthem.