"No Larger Nation"– A Tribute to Ireland

On the occurrence of St Patrick's day just past, I offer this tribute to Ireland. President Kennedy gave this speech to the Irish Parlaiment (Dail) in 1963. It's almost 50 years old, but it still rings true. It's worth the 25-min it takes to listen, or just read the text. Two excerpts:

The 13th day of September, 1862, will be a day long remembered in American history. At Fredericksburg, Maryland, thousands of men fought and died on one of the bloodiest battlefields of the American Civil War. One of the most brilliant stories of that day was written by a band of 1200 men who went into battle wearing a green sprig in their hats. They bore a proud heritage and a special courage, given to those who had long fought for the cause of freedom. I am referring, of course, to the Irish Brigade. General Robert E. Lee, the great military leader of the Southern Confederate Forces, said of this group of men after the battle, "The gallant stand which this bold brigade made on the heights of Fredericksburg is well known. Never were men so brave. They ennobled their race by their splendid gallantry on that desperate occasion. Their brilliant though hopeless assaults on our lines excited the hearty applause of our officers and soldiers."

and

"All the world owes much to the little 'five feet high' nations. The greatest art of the world was the work of little nations. The most enduring literature of the world came from little nations. The heroic deeds that thrill humanity through generations were the deeds of little nations fighting for their freedom. And oh, yes, the salvation of mankind came through a little nation."

Ireland has already set an example and a standard for other small nations to follow.

This has never been a rich or powerful country, and yet, since earliest times, its influence on the world has been rich and powerful. No larger nation did more to keep Christianity and Western culture alive in their darkest centuries. No larger nation did more to spark the cause of independence in America, indeed, around the world. And no larger nation has ever provided the world with more literary and artistic genius.

This is an extraordinary country. George Bernard Shaw, speaking as an Irishman, summed up an approach to life: Other people, he said "see things and say 'Why?' . . . But I dream things that never were -- and I say: 'Why not?'"

When Is a Basketball Lead Safe?

See Here.

I have never personally seen a game in which a team lost after having a safe lead. In February 1994, LSU led Kentucky by 31 with 15:30 left to play, only to see Kentucky rally for a 99-95 victory. That was impressive, but a 31-point lead without the ball is safe for 12:36. The lead was 81 percent safe. And then this year, LSU blew a 15-point lead to Villanova with 2:59 to go—which, again, is close but no kewpie doll. With 179 seconds to play you need a 13.5-point margin, which means a 16-point lead with the ball or 17 without. The curse of Dale Brown. Actually, I would guess Dale was cursing up a storm when that happened.

My editor, doing his due diligence, found one game in which a team lost after holding a safe lead. On March 2, 1974, North Carolina trailed Duke, 86-78, with 17 seconds to play—a safe lead for Duke. Duke had repeated misadventures in in-bounding the basketball and wound up losing the game in overtime. That was before the human typo was hired to coach Duke, but ... does anybody know where I could get a tape of that game?

Nathanael Greene and the Cat That Started the Civil War

Ed Cone reminds us today is the 228th anniversary of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Most of us don't know much about General Greene's life and even less about his legacy, particularly his tie to the Civil War. The Georgia Encyclopedia tells us some of his later life.

Greene willingly gave much of his personal wealth to help support the war, even sacrificing his Rhode Island home. To thank him for his service during the war, the Georgia government gave Greene a plantation named Mulberry Grove, outside Savannah in Chatham County. He lived on the Mulberry Grove estate for less than a year, troubled by insecure finances; the plantation did not become profitable. Greene died unexpectedly of sunstroke in 1786, at the age of forty-four. Greene's remains and those of his son, George Washington Greene, lie beneath a monument in Johnson Square in Savannah.

After Greene's death, a young Yale University graduate, Eli Whitney, came to Savannah to take a tutoring job. Whitney began working for Greene's widow, Catharine, and it was at Mulberry Grove that Whitney invented the cotton gin, the machine that revolutionized the production of cotton.

In fact, Whitney met Mrs. Greene on a ship from Rhode Island to Georgia when he was moving to take the teaching job and she was going to remarry. They struck up a friendship, and when he discovered that the pay for the teaching job was half what he had been promised, she offered to let him live at Mulberry Plantation while he decided what to do next.

At Mulberry Grove, much of the evening conversation was about the difficult economic situation plantation owners faced. At that point in US history, slavery was a dying enterprise. Slaves were expensive to keep and there was little profitable work for them to do. The market for local crops, indigo and rice, would not support large plantations, and though growing cotton was a possibility, it was too expensive separating the cotton seeds from the fiber to make the crop profitable.

A few days later, Whitney was in the plantation barnyard watching a cat try to catch a chicken through a wire fence. Each time the cat would reach through the fence for the chicken, all he would bring back was a paw-full of feathers. This lit the bulb in Whitney's imagination and he realized that folks were trying to solve the wrong problem with cotton. The solution wasn't separating the seeds from the cotton fiber, it was separating the fibers from the seeds. He devised a screen-wire basket in which a roller with small picks would pull the fibers through the screen leaving the seeds on the other side. This became his Cotton Engine and was an immediate success throughout the cotton-growing regions of the south. This drove a huge demand for field labor in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi and lead to a great transfer of slaves from Virginia and the Carolinas, greatly upsetting slave families and leading to the upheaval that lead to the Civil War some sixth years later.

Had Whitney not seen that cat, who knows what would have happened in American history. This is why a cat should be credited with starting the Civil War.

I Miss W.

From the Blogfather

“From Election Day 2000 to Election Day 2008, the S&P 500 fell 29.8%. From Election Day 2008 til this afternoon, it’s down 33.3%.”

Bumper sticker here.

A Modest Proposal for The Real ACC Tournament

Next week we will celebrate the basketball tournament between the all-but-professional athletes representing the 12 schools of the ACC. I think we should have a chance to see which school has the best student basketball players. I propose The Real ACC Tournament!

• Let's plan it for April, after the big dance.

• Let's invite each school to send its 12 best student basketball players: students who are not receiving any athletic scholarship money.

• Each team should be coached by the school's regular basketball coach. We can see who might be the best coach, as opposed to the best recruiter.

• Let them play real rules, with real officials, etc. to keep everything on the up-and-up.

• To save money, we don't need fancy uniforms or anything like that. Let them play in whatever shorts the players prefer, and distinguish the sides by playing shirts-vs-skins. If this tournament is successful and leads to a women's version, this part alone would assure a sell-out in any arena in the area.

• The tournament could be concluded in three days, since the games, without the interruption of TV timeouts, etc., would only take 90-min or so to complete.

• Surely we can find the money required to fund this in the $700.000.000 the government wants to spend on stimulus. I know it would stimulate me.

After Mitch Johnson, What Next?

I wrote about my thoughts on the Greensboro city management situation here, and offered thoughts as to what the council should do. Last night the council ran right through steps One and Two and landed us directly at step Three. After Mitch, the council must now work to get the city back on track. I offer these further thoughts:

1. We need a strong, professional city manager. I don't know Roger Cotton. Maybe he is the right person for the job. In today's economic climate there must be many professional managers available, even if they do not come from a governmental management background. The city should cast a wide net to find the best candidate. Whoever is chosen should have some sort of employment contract beyond a month-to-month 5-4 vote of confidence from the City Council.

2. We need a strong mayor. Yvonne Johnson isn't it. She seems a competent consensus builder, but she seems unable to lead the council in any direction it needs to go. The Council would do better with her as a member, not as the Mayor.

3. We need a better, less racially-oriented council. Surely there are better candidates in Districts One and Two than we've seen in the past several elections. To TDB Small, everything seems to have a strong racial overtone, whether it is the city manager's performance, the state of sidewalks and curb-and-gutters. or the entrance to City Gardens. The district and the city deserve better.

4. I'm thinking experience may be an over-rated attribute on Council. I have a lot of respect for Robbie Perkins, but it is disconcerting that as late as last night he could not see how poor Mitch was as a manger. If Robbie is bought-and-paid-for by special interests in town, we need better. I have been very impressed with Bill Knight and his approach to city problems over the past couple of years. His perspective as a "numbers guy" is badly needed on council, and he seems to have the proper temperament as a civic leader. I hope he will again seek a council spot in the next election.

5. I don't know that it was necessarily a bad thing that two members of the Pulpit Forum chose to speak in support of Mitch last night, but it is worrisome if Mitch's departure is seen only in a racial light. IMHO, Mitch committed several firing offenses. He improperly painted the "black book" issue in racial terms to "get" David Wray. He badly mismanaged the termination of Wray. He badly mismanaged the Taping of Black Leaders issue. He allowed the witch hunt that resulted in Scott Sanders trial. At the meeting last night, there was a little discussion of the city staff not following the Council's directions (on the Jordan Lake rules). What the staff does is Mitch's responsibility. If he won't get them to follow council policies, he shouldn't be City Manager. It doesn't have to be Racial.

6. We must get beyond the black/white victim/oppressor mindset. Not every injustice and inequity is rooted in racial issues. Sometimes it's bad luck, bad precedence, and incompetence. Thinking all problems are racial is counter-productive.

First-Ladies Gone Wild

There has been some buzz among fashionistas about Michelle Obama's recent sleeveless stylings. I've seen pieces about this on the Today Show last week and Good Morning America this morning. Both features made an issue of her work-out regime contributing to her toned arms. There is even a blog post on the subject.

All this reminds me of an important exercise principle I learned some time ago: Fat doesn't belong to the muscles around it. You can't lose belly fat by doing sit-ups or lose arm fat by doing arm exercises. You have to lose fat overall to lose fat in any particular spot on your body. Fat comes off sort of in reverse order of how it went on. Arm exercises are good, but they won't cause arm fat to go away.

The Crappiest Generation

of spoiled idiots