The Brattleboro Plan

Let June 17, 2011 be the inaugural of the Brattleboro Plan to clean out the corruption and dishonesty prevalent and well known world wide in the political scene in Washington, DC. Just as definitions of the words, honesty and integrity do not involve political affiliation so the Brattleboro Plan does not involve political affiliation and is open to all interested in honesty and integrity. Perhaps High School Students will be leaders in numbers of the free membership of the Ass Kickers (AK) of America as mentioned in a previous Blog. As Victor Hugo once stated, "An idea whose time has come is more powerful than any army." If the Brattleboro Plan's time has come we shall soon find out if you, the reader joins the action. George Whitney,AK

Corruption in Congress

How many readers agree with me that among our Senators and Representatives in Washington, DC there is like a rat's nest of corruption? Am I wrong or wouldn't you have to be deaf and blind not to be aware of the corruption? If we permit it to continue without an attempt to correct it aren't we in effect telling our youth that dishonesty is acceptable?
I do a lot of reading and viewing of free University videos and note that in England in the 1800s Their Parliament was apparently as corrupt as our Congress is now. It was agreed there was nothing that could be done as the majority of members were guilty but a small group decided to put a bill in Parliament to correct the problem that everyone assumed had no chance of passing. Strangely the bill got 60 votes. The numbers were so unexpected another similar bill passed Parliament and the corruption was corrected.
In my reading and viewing I constantly read about the bind we are in in our economy. That theme is repeated until most publications have nothing to offer as an attempt to solve the problem.
Someone must suggest a plan of action and after thinking about it here is an obvious plan that, if it could stand a possibility of success requires you the reader to join in the effort. It is an obvious approach that requires those who want to do something about it to join together in a "Peoples movement" to be successful. There should be no cost for any one to join and to join all that is necessary is to write something and after your name place the letters,"AK." Like those professionals who advertise with all sorts of letters. AK stands for "Ass Kickers."
So I am not pleading with anyone , I am merely attempting to offer a gathering point for you to join others in ass kicking Congress to pass legislation to take the corporations out of the people's, and that is our Government. If you join you are telling everyone you want the Congress to clean house and pass legislation. That is all and if I am wrong so be it and nothing will come of this effort. But if I am right You and I will accomplish what our Legislators know should be done but are sitting on their hands. Who am I to attempt to do something about the corruption? I am George Whitney AK.
P.S. Some friends and relatives think the AK is inappropriate for some of the public so I have established SUABC- stand up and be counted as with the author's thinking of the attitude in the youth of the United States not wanting to inherit the Corporation control of our Government as it exists today

Our Aferican Ancestors

There are many to speculate about the future but here I choose to speculate about that part of the past between the time our ancestors came out of the African jungle and just after they emerged to populate the earth. Some call the 50 thousand years conservative but we do have some archeological information and the earliest Greek evidence of their polis, the forerunners of our city-state development of about the seventh century BC. I suggest that along with developing the spoken word what may be called tribal groups developed all over the African Continent. Perhaps the gatherings were similar to those we see there today where they have over 150 languages and a second language many tribes are familiar with. That second language would be that of the people of the European countries that visited the continent to civilize the people and help them by carving the area up and putting names on each country and to pay for the natural resources they removed like slavery. In the early days and undoubtedly prior to it the trait of fear was part of survival and of course hunger, pain, sex impulses and the ability to run that I have mentioned in previous blogs. When those early ancestors ran animals to exhaustion some of then did not run that far. Like the horse it would run and, experiencing no danger would stop until the hunter could dispatch it. However some hunters might throw a vine improvised noose around the horses neck and lead it back to the tribal area. If human food was plentiful the animal could be saved until needed. during that time perhaps some horses were tame enough to be ridden, a forerunner of the race track industry. Perhaps bovines could have been led home with nursing calves. After the calves were butchered for veil cutlets it was noticed the cow had milk to spare and thus started the dairy industry. Some of the tribes may have used dogs to bring in birds for the hunter to bring home for food and some of the birds were not killed because there were enough dead ones and the live birds might have laid eggs that were valuable and so started the chicken soup and the poultry industries. The retrievers with soft mouths would be desired to fetch uninjured birds and thus began the retrievers used by the hunting industry today. Remember we are talking about a long period of time during which those ancestors survived only if they had the ability to find the food for survival in disastrous times. Also not having any concept about science they grew to wonder about facts of nature that had no reason. Lightening, floods earthquakes and diseases that could have destroyed huge numbers in spite of the health industry of those days. So the survivors had to have remarkable immune systems and they had to have reasons for so much mystery. That was the beginning of the religious industry. There became answers to every question most of which were wrong but satisfying to many and that industry is still with us today. Then our ancestors came out of Africa with their 50 thousand years of knowledge to populate the whole earth. Many scientists believe that in the next few years scientists will make living cells that can replicate themselves and we then may say the wheel has made a full turn. It seems we have the knowledge for the survival of our species but the will to utilizing it is a frightening question.

Dogs and Humans, an Archeological Contribution

After reading a report by archeologists that at one time humans and dogs seemed to have been carrion eaters. I will add what I learned in a lecture series on Africa given by a Malboro College professor and what I know about dogs and have a possible contribution to archeology. It may have been soon after our human-like ancestors came out of an African jungle to survive as a land animal that the early ancestors of the wolf learned that by following humans on a hunt they could benefit by the left overs of the hunt. Gradually over thousands of years a few of the wolves became involved with the actual hunt and may have become the difference between a successful hunt and an unsuccessful one. Finally the human recognized the usefulness of the dog-like creature and accepted it into the campfire. There is at least one other necessity of humans than food, water and shelter and that is sleep. The dog creature could announce danger approaching by the bark to awaken the deep sleeping human. Further consideration concerns the info from the African lecture series. Today in Africa there are perhaps 150 small villages scattered over the continent each with its own language. The geography of Africa is varied with rivers and mountains and the open Savannah. With such a variety of landscape the wolf-dog had to adapt to hunting in open space and in forests. It is possible that those immigrants with dogs that helped with the open space hunting might favor a greyhound-like hunter that could run down an animal such as a rabbit and the hound could trail one specimen for over a day until the prey was exhausted and the hunter could dispatch it. The inherited traits useful for hunting in our breeds of today include the ruthless killers such as present day fighting dogs as the pit bull. The bird dogs who could have located game in brushy areas for a hunter to approach close enough to kill. Some breeds may have survived as ornaments and alarms as we know the early Romans had dogs and signs, "Beware of the dog." That warning was to prevent visitors from stepping on small house dogs. It seems reasonable to suggest that neither you nor I nor the dogs we know would have survived without coming out of Africa together.

All Metal Station Wagon and a Ram

It was shortly after WWII my father had collected the first of its kind, an all metal station wagon from a car agency he had ordered a year previously. It was a Plymouth and the second of it's model to be sold in our area. Being proud of it and wanting to show it off he drove into our sheep pasture where he knew I would be. He had tome to get out of the car before our ram saw his reflection in the shiny new paint job, put hes head down he rammed his reflection. Furious, my father ran to chase the ram away. The ram ran to escape to the other side and rammed that side, too. It was less than an hour passed when my father drove into the dealership with a request to have the dents corrected. The injured vehicle drew a crowd and gales of laughter.

Chiropractic Ram

It was early on a nice spring day that I had fed my flock of sheep and was walking slowly toward my garden thinking of not being able to garden because of my injured back. Shoveling wet manure from a pit to a trailer I felt the sudden stress resulting pain in my lower back. It would be a piercing pain as I suspect being stabbed in my back would feel. It was over two weeks of suffering after this incident occurred. I had not realized my ram had come out of the flock, followed me and suddenly charged and butted me at the base of my spine. Up in the air and down in a heap at which time I experienced a hot flash of pain in that anatomy. Assuming my back was half broken that the ram had finished the job I got to my feet and slowly returned home where I relaxed on a couch until my wife called me to lunch. It had not entered my mind that my back could be anything other than worse than before that butting but I walked with ease up a staircase to dine. It seemed incomprehensible that my condition could be other than worse. The ram had in large part corrected in my back. Previously I had contacted an orthopedic specialist friend at the Yale School of Medicine for advice. He was Dr. Ned Shutkin. Ned had explained that such an injury as I had could be compared to tying a shoelace until it was broken or creasing a paper until it separated. "George, go to bed for six weeks and see what happens." After the episode with the ram I realized no butting of a ram could "heal" my injured tissue and composed and mailed a letter explaining my situation and in the last paragraph offered to let Dr. Shutkin send a few of his better patients through my sheep pasture for a nominal fee. Dr. Shutkin liked my letter and posted it on a bulletin board at the Medical School. The reason for the letter was to suggest that not all back pain was due to tissue being injured as a shoelace breaking. Ned Shutkin is gone by now but was a dear friend.