WASHINGTON (AP) — As gruesome videos and photos of bodies emerge from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Kremlin-backed media are denouncing them as an elaborate hoax — a narrative that journalists in Ukraine have shown to be false.
One November evening in 1978, Dan White, a supervisor for San Francisco, climbed through a basement window at City Hall and murdered Mayor George Moscone and peer Supervisor Harvey Milk by gunshot. White, a former fireman, and a police officer, was later found guilty by a jury of his peers for voluntary manslaughter; rather than premeditated first-degree murder, which would have allowed the death penalty. White served only five of a seven-year prison term due to an early release for good behavior (Solnick). The announcement of White receiving the lightest possible sentence set the city in an uproar and sparked several nights of riots, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damages and injuring over 140 law enforcement officers and civilians (Twinkie).
It isn’t as if we no longer stop for a bag of ice at the convenience store. We still do. It is just less frequently that we stop to get enough to keep our cooler cold for a long afternoon at a picnic, with enough extra to keep the huge container of ice tea cold too. Air conditioning seems to have practically eliminated the wonderful picnics I remember from my youth.
It took almost two hours to get out of Pratt County last Saturday. On a fat tire bicycle and into a stiff south wind, that is.
Have any of you readers seen the quote on the capstone of the Washington Monument? If you have not, it says Laus Deo in Latin. In English this is translated, Praise be to God! This was so thoughtful of the planners to use this quote. For as the sun rises in the very east of our United States and orbits to the west, we have this knowledge proclaiming that God’s glory and protection is moving across our great land from east to west at the rising of our God’s sun every day. What a proclamation of God’s glory over America. The aluminum capstone was placed on top of the monument on the breezy December day in 1884. It made the monument the tallest building in the world at that time.
My last couple of columns have been about practice and routine. The more you do something repetitively, the more it becomes a habit. We are creatures of habit. For example, I sit on the back pew of the church, monitoring the temperature. If someone is fanning themselves, I will turn the heat down or crank up the AC. If they keep sweating, the preacher must be doing a good job.
TOPEKA, Kansas — One of the largest residential facilities in Kansas for boys who need more help than most foster care homes can offer looks to be spared from closure. Sequel of Kansas LLC signed the original lease for the Lakeside Academy in Wichita around 2008 and recently told the Department for Children and Families it would no longer operate the facility.
On what we call Palm Sunday from Christian scriptures and history, the author of the Gospel according to Luke wrote, “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ He [Jesus] answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’”
I remember the day we brought Teddy our English Bulldog puppy into our home. The breeder told us he was eight weeks old but after receiving his papers, we noticed he was actually only six weeks old at the time. He was a healthy little bruiser and we would laugh at his stumbling and being uncoordinated, but now we realize it was because he was such a baby. My wife and I would sit on the porch in the evenings and watch him explore around in the front yard. He was so happy as he would jump and roll in the grass and investigate his new surroundings but when he would hear a loud commotion like a noisy car passing by, it would scare him and he would come running to us. After a while, he gradually became more used to the traffic sounds and the lawn mowers, and eventually it did not bother him.
Let’s take a trip back in time. How far? Let’s say, a couple of thousand years. That’s the premise of a play that one rural Kansas community performs live on Easter Sunday, using a remarkable stone outcropping as a natural stage.