Bob Beckwith, fireman sharing Dubya's 9/14/2001 bullhorn moment, 90

[[e-mail]]

I realize there's TONS of George Walker Bush haters in these cyber-parts, YET:

No one can legitimately dispute that the image of POTUS Dubya atop the rubbled-buried fire truck--backed up by the ever-genial and now late Beckwith--on Friday, September 14th is one of the greatest Presidential moments EVER...and yeah, that's stretching all the way back to when ANOTHER President George took that first-ever Presidential oath of office in 1789*.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
===================
* Few non-historians know that over in Paris after some earlier fits and starts, the French Revolution was finally heating up BIG-TIME for good [Or bad? You decide.] that very same week. Nor do most recall that that first POTUS oath-of-office was recited on that now-historic final Thursday** of April, on Manhattan's Wall Street where his statue now stately stands...at least until Black Lies*** Matter-inspired thugs topple it sometime later this wretched decade.
** And a mere two days prior (but on the opposite side of the planet, in both the Eastern and Southern Hemispheres) on that very same week's Tuesday, Captain Bligh**** learned Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers had finally had enough (and within hours was set adrift with loyalists in a large dinghy).
*** Not a typographical error.
**** A naval commander not only wasn't strictly speaking a captain--I believe his actual admiralty rank was lieutenant--but in fact MANY YEARS or even DECADES younger at age 32 than were EITHER Charles Laughton or Trevor Howard when they each famously portrayed him onscreen.
============
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Beckwith

[Louis Epstein]

Post by ***@gmail.com
No one can legitimately dispute that the image of POTUS Dubya atop the rubbled-buried fire truck--backed up by the ever-genial and now late Beckwith--on Friday, September 14th is one of the greatest Presidential moments EVER...and yeah, that's stretching all the way back to when ANOTHER President George took that first-ever Presidential oath of office in 1789*.
BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
===================
* Few non-historians know that over in Paris after some earlier fits and
starts, the French Revolution was finally heating up BIG-TIME for good [Or
bad? You decide.] that very same week.

Hmmm,the storming of the Bastille was in July,
what revolting things happened in April?

Though coincidences of events do fascinate,as with the fact
that the famous Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was in fact not
the worst fire in terms of loss of life or property
ON THE SHORES OF LAKE MICHIGAN THAT NIGHT.
(Look up "Peshtigo").

Post by ***@gmail.com
Nor do most recall that that first POTUS oath-of-office was recited on that
now-historic final Thursday** of April, on Manhattan's Wall Street where his
statue now stately stands...at least until Black Lies*** Matter-inspired
thugs topple it sometime later this wretched decade.
** And a mere two days prior (but on the opposite side of the planet, in
both the Eastern and Southern Hemispheres) on that very same week's Tuesday,
Captain Bligh**** learned Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers had
finally had enough (and within hours was set adrift with loyalists in a large
dinghy).
*** Not a typographical error.
**** A naval commander not only wasn't strictly speaking a captain--I
believe his actual admiralty rank was lieutenant--but in fact MANY YEARS or
even DECADES younger at age 32 than were EITHER Charles Laughton or Trevor
Howard when they each famously portrayed him onscreen.

To be clear,Bligh did rise to and past the rank of Captain in
the fullness of time...after being Governor of New South Wales as
a Captain,he died a Vice Admiral.

Post by ***@gmail.com
============
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Beckwith

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

[[e-mail]]

Referencing the massive Pestego forest fire up in Wisconsin on Sunday, October 8, 1871 whilst a blameless cow was supposedly (AND fictively) knocking over that lantern in Mrs. O'Leary's barn on Chicago's North Side:

Quite right you are, Louis (as you almost invariably are factually), about how while EVERYONE knows about the Chicago fire, just about no one talks about Pestigo.

Though it's hard to quantify these things from the perspective of succeeding centuries--both the famed Chicago fire and the still-obscure Pestigo one started were in 1871, for Heaven's sake--by SOME historians' metrics, the disaster up in Wisconsin was actually MORE costly than the Chicago blaze! (Of course, the Wisconsin catastrophe was rural--even TODAY that area is still sparsely populated--so the toll in human lives was dwarfed by the Chi-town blaze, of course.) By the way--one late 20th Century theory, FAR from ever proven but fascinating nontheless, is that a streaking meteor--not sure if it was going from over Illinois up to Wisconsin, or vice versa--dropped smouldering remnants over Chicago AND the Wisconsin forest, thus sparking BOTH fires!

Now while I first heard about the Chicago fire prior even to kindergarten--my older brother AND parents talked about such things from time to time, and I was a good listener even before I turned 6 in 1960--I didn't first learn about the Pestego blaze until an odd headline caught my eye as I paged though a book while in 3rd Grade. The headline: "The Night of the Great Fires". My desk was at the rear of Mrs. Bibee's 3rd grade class at Kennerly Elementary in late February 1964--while I was still mentally processing what I had witnessed on CBS Television on Sunday night, February 9th and then also the two following Sunday nights, to wit, that fortnight of the three Beatles initial Sullivan show appearances. But teacher Bibee was talking to the class about something else, and I was tuning her out with my nose in the book.

Even 60 years later, I remember being STARTLED that I'd never heard of this second, SAME-NIGHT fire only a couple hundred miles north of the Chicago fire, which as I said above, had for years been part of my own body of collected knowledge, if only fragmentary. I distinctly recall thinking to myself, "Why oh why isn't this mentioned EVERY TIME people cite the Great Chicago fire?!?" (Mrs. Bibee never noticed I was tuning out whatever she was saying to the rest of the class.)

As you might imagine, that day after school when I got home, I went straight to the World Book Encyclopedia entry on the Chicago fire, and found only fleeting mention of the Pestigo blaze.

BUT: this remarkable incident in my young life taught me a VITAL lesson: EVEN IF it's a reliable source (big "if" THERE, even back then), you simply can't count on what you're reading to always tell you the complete story. (I'm NOT saying that the numerous previous times I'd heard about the Chicago fire from other sources--print, TV or just some talkative adult--that they were SUPPRESSING the vital Pestigo fire story; they were probably ignorant about it THEMSELVES, but SOMEBODY I'd previously heard about the Chicago fire from probably DID know about it, but just assumed a 1st or 2nd grade kid didn't NEED or even WANT to know about it, so it never came up.

Well, THIS kid ever since late 1957 or so at age 3 ALWAYS had a thirst for factual knowledge (even if I didn't know the word "factual" yet), even if I couldn't understand the nuances of it. Everyone I encountered in those days seems to have sold me intellectually short, and I'm STILL annoyed by that in 2024. Of course, I WAS short then --about 4'6" in those days, far from my 5'11" topping out height (long before old age shrunk me to my current 5"9")--but they still for some inexcusable reason always underestimated my even-in-childhood ability to grasp AND retain supposedly "adult" information.

NOW, and in answer, Louis, to your French Revolution question:

That week when Captain Bligh was mutinied and Washington was inaugurated at the end of April 1789 was ALSO the week the so-called Estates General legislature was closing in on Paris, from the hinterlands all over France, after having been called (for the first time in well over a century, if memory serves) QUITE reluctantly by Louis XVI, on the persistent advice of his advisors. By the time Washington raised his hand on Wall Street across the Atlantic, they were already mostly in town, many even already at the Versailles palace about 15 miles to the southwest of Notre Dame.

Then on Tuesday, May 5th (exactly a week after the mayhem aboard The Bounty in the South Pacific), the Estates General officially convened. Again, there was much starting and stopping over these weeks, but on Saturday, June 20th the die was finally cast and there was no turning back...for that's the day the commoners locked out the nobles inside the Royal tennis [indoor] tennis court and declared themselves to be the REAL power in France. And of course on the first Bastille Day (Tuesday, July 14, 1789), after several days of low-level rioting through and beyond the weekend, they stormed prison of The Bastille (only to learn to their dismay that all but six prisoners had already been spirited out during the preceding weeks!).

And it must always be emphasized: when the tennis court was commandeered by "the people", EVEN THE MOST RADICAL, revolution-minded participants were NOT just then intending to overthrow Louis XVI, much less ever execute him--rather, there were all about just reforming everything about the monarchy. (The dismissal of detested Finance Minister Necker would ease things a bit on Saturday, July 11th, but not for long.) For sure, most of them despised pocket-watch-tinkerer hobbiest [!] King Louis and all he and his numerous Court cronies so royally stood for, yet NO one was just then even dreaming that by Monday, January 21, 1793, they'd be chopping off his head. (Meanwhile, cake-eating-recommender-NOT [her most infamous quote is one of history's greatest myths]) Queen Marie Antoinette wouldn't lose HER head until Wednesday, October 16, 1793. (And after many months in an 18th Century prison cell, she hardly looked very regal by that bloody day, as contemporary witnesses confirm.)

Yep, the French Revolution--WHATEVER modern folk think of it now--happened in FITS and STARTS, and not AT ALL in a non-stop, straight-line steamrolling sort of fashion. JUST LIKE (by zero coincidence in my increasingly-cynical view), the neo-Maoist revolution we're CURRENTLY witnessing in our OWN crumbling republic-not-democracy here in the good ol' USA has been happening. The corresponding timeline for us stateside in the 21st Century:

(1) neighborhood vigilante George Zimmerman dispatched aspiring rapper punk Travon Martin over in Orlando in February 2012, on the rainy night the NBA All-Star Game was being contested downtown in the O-Rena stadium; then
(2) policeman's-gun-grabber Michael Brown caused his own well-earned death, putting hardscrabble St. Louis suburb Ferguson forever on the national map; and
(3) St. George of Floyd's final vigorous arrest-resistance on Memorial Day 2020 (after a career of criminality and an abortive porn video career) made Minneapolis more nationally famous at the outset of this decadent decade than Dylan ever did back in the early '60s.

Point is, these revolutions don't happen all at once--Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin took SEVERAL years to fully accomplish their revolution, after all. Nor is it a straight-line toward "Hello, New Order!" (Remember Alexander Karinsky's brief regime in the middle of the decade or so it took the Russian revolution to solidify? Few people do, because it didn't last long--though Karinsky himself DID, not dying until 1970, believe it or not, decades after Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were at tomb temperature.)

Yep, these horrific sequences TAKE TIME, but all serious Marxists UNDERSTAND that, as of course did Marx himself...IF you read him, which few non-Marxists I talk to about these things to ever get around to doing, it seems.

Now, those Black Lies Matter clowns (and all their various Marxist allies) calling the Democrat Party shots nowadays--ALWAYS behind the scenes, and seldom in front of TV cameras--still have a long way to go, thank Heavens. But ALSO understand they're in it for the long haul, perhaps having to ultimately wait for all us Baby Boomers to die off.

But by now, it's frighteningly clear they WILL ultimately succeed in following how Antonio Gramsci--the imprisoned Italian Marxist--so famously charted this all out in his "Prison Notebooks" tome, quite astutely advising all Marxists in his wake here in The West to (1) relentlessly engineer all this Marxist agitating via the CULTURE rather than the governmental structure as the Bolsheviks did in St. Petersburg-then-Leningrad; and (2) apply the greatest pressure on the young, doing so via their schools and universities.

I'd imagine by the early 2030s (or certainly by the latter part of that decade), this slow-motion neo-Maoist transformation shall be solidly (and probably permanently) in place. For my own inconsequential part, over the last year or so, I've abandoned my herein-stated quite-quixotic goal of seeing 100 in 2054; but if still alive, I'll be in my 80s to sadly witness this new Orwellian America then sometime in the 2030s, should my predicted timeline end up being more or less on the mark.)

SO: that's my "future history" rumination, Louis...unasked for by you or anyone else herein, granted...but I hope worth your reading time nonetheless. (I realize as a good-hearted liberal and loyal Democrat vote, you'll dismiss a lot of the above as overheated rhetoric, or perhaps just simply nonsense, but I hope not...as I'm HARDLY the only guy out there saying all this.) Meanwhile, sure hope your winter is going well, Louis, as all us alt-obits-posting folk slowly but surely transition to that RockSolid guy's obituaries website.

And I sure hope you never end up like that OTHER Louis [the XVI] did. But you (and especially little ol' ME) each just MAY, because WHITE lives sure don't matter much at all anymore in 2024 America, and these modern Marxist types I'm discussing here sound just as shrill and rabid as Lenin did in 1917, don't they? I mean, when was the last time you saw anything but a clueless white-guy buffoon in a TV commercial? And anything but a wise, condescending black guy showing that dumb white guy how to properly use the product/service being advertised on NBC or CNN?

So sorry to get all political on you here...but you DID ask about the French Revolution, and that's 2024 America for you, Louis; as the New Left used to say in during the late '60s: The Personal is Now Political.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

[Louis Epstein]

Post by ***@gmail.com
Referencing the massive Pestego forest fire up in Wisconsin on
Sunday, October 8, 1871 whilst a blameless cow was supposedly (AND fictively)
Quite right you are, Louis (as you almost invariably are factually), about
how while EVERYONE knows about the Chicago fire, just about no one talks
about Pestigo.
Though it's hard to quantify these things from the perspective of succeeding
centuries--both the famed Chicago fire and the still-obscure Pestigo one
started were in 1871, for Heaven's sake--by SOME historians' metrics, the
disaster up in Wisconsin was actually MORE costly than the Chicago blaze!
(Of course, the Wisconsin catastrophe was rural--even TODAY that area is
still sparsely populated--so the toll in human lives was dwarfed by the
Chi-town blaze, of course.)

By what odd mathematics do the 250 deaths in Chicago "dwarf"
the 1,182 deaths resulting from the Peshtigo fire?

I said worst in life OR property,and I meant it.
(These figures are from the World Almanac)

Post by ***@gmail.com
By the way--one late 20th Century theory, FAR from ever proven but
fascinating nontheless, is that a streaking meteor--not sure if it was going
from over Illinois up to Wisconsin, or vice versa--dropped smouldering
remnants over Chicago AND the Wisconsin forest, thus sparking BOTH fires!
Now while I first heard about the Chicago fire prior even to
kindergarten--my older brother AND parents talked about such things from time
to time, and I was a good listener even before I turned 6 in 1960--I didn't
first learn about the Pestego blaze until an odd headline caught my eye as I
paged though a book while in 3rd Grade. The headline: "The Night of the
Great Fires". My desk was at the rear of Mrs. Bibee's 3rd grade class at

In my case,it was an Old Farmer's Almanac article in the 1970s.

Post by ***@gmail.com
Kennerly Elementary in late February 1964--while I was still mentally
processing what I had witnessed on CBS Television on Sunday night, February
9th and then also the two following Sunday nights, to wit, that fortnight of
the three Beatles initial Sullivan show appearances. But teacher Bibee was
talking to the class about something else, and I was tuning her out with my
nose in the book.
Even 60 years later, I remember being STARTLED that I'd never heard of this
second, SAME-NIGHT fire only a couple hundred miles north of the Chicago
fire, which as I said above, had for years been part of my own body of
collected knowledge, if only fragmentary. I distinctly recall thinking to
myself, "Why oh why isn't this mentioned EVERY TIME people cite the Great
Chicago fire?!?" (Mrs. Bibee never noticed I was tuning out whatever she was
saying to the rest of the class.)

I also had heard of the Chicago fire years before.

Post by ***@gmail.com
As you might imagine, that day after school when I got home, I went straight
to the World Book Encyclopedia entry on the Chicago fire, and found only
fleeting mention of the Pestigo blaze.
EVEN IF it's a reliable source (big "if" THERE, even back then), you simply
can't count on what you're reading to always tell you the complete story.
(I'm NOT saying that the numerous previous times I'd heard about the Chicago
fire from other sources--print, TV or just some talkative adult--that they
were SUPPRESSING the vital Pestigo fire story; they were probably ignorant
about it THEMSELVES, but SOMEBODY I'd previously heard about the Chicago fire
from probably DID know about it, but just assumed a 1st or 2nd grade kid
didn't NEED or even WANT to know about it, so it never came up.
Well, THIS kid ever since late 1957 or so at age 3 ALWAYS had a thirst for factual knowledge (even if I didn't know the word "factual" yet), even if I couldn't understand the nuances of it. Everyone I encountered in those days seems to have sold me intellectually short, and I'm STILL annoyed by that in 2024. Of course, I WAS short then --about 4'6" in those days, far from my 5'11" topping out height (long before old age shrunk me to my current 5"9")--but they still for some inexcusable reason always underestimated my even-in-childhood ability to grasp AND retain supposedly "adult" information.
That week when Captain Bligh was mutinied and Washington was inaugurated at the end of April 1789 was ALSO the week the so-called Estates General legislature was closing in on Paris, from the hinterlands all over France, after having been called (for the first time in well over a century, if memory serves) QUITE reluctantly by Louis XVI, on the persistent advice of his advisors. By the time Washington raised his hand on Wall Street across the Atlantic, they were already mostly in town, many even already at the Versailles palace about 15 miles to the southwest of Notre Dame.
Then on Tuesday, May 5th (exactly a week after the mayhem aboard The Bounty in the South Pacific), the Estates General officially convened. Again, there was much starting and stopping over these weeks, but on Saturday, June 20th the die was finally cast and there was no turning back...for that's the day the commoners locked out the nobles inside the Royal tennis [indoor] tennis court and declared themselves to be the REAL power in France. And of course on the first Bastille Day (Tuesday, July 14, 1789), after several days of low-level rioting through and beyond the weekend, they stormed prison of The Bastille (only to learn to their dismay that all but six prisoners had already been spirited out during the preceding weeks!).
And it must always be emphasized: when the tennis court was commandeered by
"the people", EVEN THE MOST RADICAL, revolution-minded participants were NOT
just then intending to overthrow Louis XVI, much less ever execute
him--rather, there were all about just reforming everything about the
monarchy. (The dismissal of detested Finance Minister Necker would ease
things a bit on Saturday, July 11th, but not for long.) For sure, most of
them despised pocket-watch-tinkerer hobbiest [!] King Louis and all he and
his numerous Court cronies so royally stood for, yet NO one was just then
even dreaming that by Monday, January 21, 1793, they'd be chopping off his
head. (Meanwhile, cake-eating-recommender-NOT [her most infamous quote is
one of history's greatest myths]) Queen Marie Antoinette wouldn't lose HER
head until Wednesday, October 16, 1793. (And after many months in an 18th
Century prison cell, she hardly looked very regal by that bloody day, as
contemporary witnesses confirm.)
Yep, the French Revolution--WHATEVER modern folk think of it now--happened
in FITS and STARTS, and not AT ALL in a non-stop, straight-line steamrolling
sort of fashion. JUST LIKE (by zero coincidence in my increasingly-cynical
view), the neo-Maoist revolution we're CURRENTLY witnessing in our OWN
crumbling republic-not-democracy here in the good ol' USA has been happening.

But the Revolution in the USA began with the Battle of Lexington,
not the Boston Massacre or the Boston Tea Party.

Post by ***@gmail.com
(1) neighborhood vigilante George Zimmerman dispatched aspiring rapper punk
Travon Martin over in Orlando in February 2012, on the rainy night the NBA
All-Star Game was being contested downtown in the O-Rena stadium; then
(2) policeman's-gun-grabber Michael Brown caused his own well-earned death,
putting hardscrabble St. Louis suburb Ferguson forever on the national map;
and
(3) St. George of Floyd's final vigorous arrest-resistance on Memorial Day
2020 (after a career of criminality and an abortive porn video career) made
Minneapolis more nationally famous at the outset of this decadent decade than
Dylan ever did back in the early '60s.
Point is, these revolutions don't happen all at once--Lenin, Trotsky and
Stalin took SEVERAL years to fully accomplish their revolution, after all.
Nor is it a straight-line toward "Hello, New Order!" (Remember Alexander
Karinsky's brief regime in the middle of the decade or so it took the Russian
revolution to solidify? Few people do, because it didn't last long--though
Karinsky himself DID, not dying until 1970, believe it or not,

I know (it's usually rendered "Kerensky" in our alphabet,
but "correct" spellings of things natively written in
different alphabets are a myth).

Post by ***@gmail.com
decades after Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were at tomb temperature.)

Stalin had died less than 2 decades before (March 1953).

Post by ***@gmail.com
Yep, these horrific sequences TAKE TIME, but all serious Marxists UNDERSTAND
that, as of course did Marx himself...IF you read him, which few non-Marxists
I talk to about these things to ever get around to doing, it seems.

See Marx below...

Post by ***@gmail.com
Now, those Black Lies Matter clowns (and all their various Marxist allies)
calling the Democrat Party shots nowadays--ALWAYS behind the scenes, and
seldom in front of TV cameras--still have a long way to go, thank Heavens.
But ALSO understand they're in it for the long haul, perhaps having to
ultimately wait for all us Baby Boomers to die off.

Don't forget the hijackers who wanted to focus the Oppression Olympics
and altered slogans to "Black Trans Lives Matter",though the fact is
that "trans" lies (transgender identities being a subcategory of lies)
CAN'T matter.

Post by ***@gmail.com
But by now, it's frighteningly clear they WILL ultimately succeed in
following how Antonio Gramsci--the imprisoned Italian Marxist--so famously
charted this all out in his "Prison Notebooks" tome, quite astutely advising
all Marxists in his wake here in The West to (1) relentlessly engineer all
this Marxist agitating via the CULTURE rather than the governmental structure
as the Bolsheviks did in St. Petersburg-then-Leningrad; and (2) apply the
greatest pressure on the young, doing so via their schools and universities.
I'd imagine by the early 2030s (or certainly by the latter part of that
decade), this slow-motion neo-Maoist transformation shall be solidly (and
probably permanently) in place. For my own inconsequential part, over the
last year or so, I've abandoned my herein-stated quite-quixotic goal of
seeing 100 in 2054; but if still alive, I'll be in my 80s to sadly witness
this new Orwellian America then sometime in the 2030s, should my predicted
timeline end up being more or less on the mark.)

The one way to lose is to convince oneself that one has
already lost.
So never do!

Post by ***@gmail.com
SO: that's my "future history" rumination, Louis...unasked for by you or
anyone else herein, granted...but I hope worth your reading time nonetheless.
(I realize as a good-hearted liberal and loyal Democrat vote, you'll dismiss
a lot of the above as overheated rhetoric, or perhaps just simply nonsense,
but I hope not...as I'm HARDLY the only guy out there saying all this.)

Here of course is MARX HIMSELF laying out the Republican Party's
basic strategy for Congress (either house) when confronted with
any legislation supported by President Biden,even though he made
this speech before Biden was even born:

Post by ***@gmail.com
Meanwhile, sure hope your winter is going well, Louis, as all us
alt-obits-posting folk slowly but surely transition to that RockSolid guy's
obituaries website.

Never heard of it,certainly won't leave here for it.

Post by ***@gmail.com
And I sure hope you never end up like that OTHER Louis [the XVI] did. But
you (and especially little ol' ME) each just MAY, because WHITE lives sure
don't matter much at all anymore in 2024 America, and these modern Marxist
types I'm discussing here sound just as shrill and rabid as Lenin did in
1917, don't they? I mean, when was the last time you saw anything but a
clueless white-guy buffoon in a TV commercial? And anything but a wise,
condescending black guy showing that dumb white guy how to properly use the
product/service being advertised on NBC or CNN?
So sorry to get all political on you here...but you DID ask about the French
Revolution, and that's 2024 America for you, Louis; as the New Left used to
say in during the late '60s: The Personal is Now Political.
BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

[[e-mail]]

Here you go, Louis:

Regarding the Chicago-v.-Pestigo body count, you were correct and I was thoroughly mis-remembering the numbers. (Pretty sure many claim the dollar cost was worse in Wisconsin, though.)

Didn't know a thing about the Nazi protection of Holland of the exiled Kaiser; wonder what Hitler's motivation was behind suspending it. As a further point about the Wilhelm II/Hitler long-distance relationship, however strong or weak it was, it's important to remember that though long out of power and out of geographical reach, the forceably-retired monarch was hardly a non-entity then. Wilhelm II was out of power, but NOT out of influence. Thus it's important to know whether he wielded his behind-the-scenes influence to bolster, or undermine Hitler's activities in his homeland all those years.

Regarding Marx: Thanks for that Groucho clip; I find too much of his '20s, '30s and '40s film work overworked, but NOT this song or performance; this one is a classic, and I'd not seen it in decades. (And speaking again of Marx--Karl, Groucho, Gummo or otherwise: while AOC, Tlibe and that Somali turban-lady elect to collectively term themselves The Squad, a HUGELY more appropriate term for this quartet of harridans is The Marx Sisters.)

Now, regarding Google's impending usenet posting closure:

That "RockSolid" site--I'm informed, via this e-helpful "Marco Moock" fellow (in a thread above dated February 2nd and headlined "REMINDER". Many if not most alt-obits folk are (after a somewhat frustratingly-designed registration) moving there, Louis (in anticipation of Google's impending late February next-posting shutdown).

"MOOCK" WROTE:
--------------------------
Those who want to continue in their web browser, can simply use
https://www.novabbs.com/computers/thread.php?group=alt.obituaries

=========================
I'm told this is the way to go, Louis, though I do remember something you saying about preferring that "Thunderbird" browser. This Moock gentleman DOES mention that in fact, but down the e-road I still want to be able to regularly read your material on RockSolid. That site seems to my unsophisticated eye a good alternative from here on out. Indeed, already many alt-obit postings (but not all, I gather) are making it onto RockSolid.

Again, thanks for setting me straight regarding Pestigo's death count. (And I wonder if anyone ever recovered the cow-kicked lantern from the smouldering O'Learey barn? Quite a collectable.)

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

[[e-mail]]

Wikipedia and Yahoo! now agree that the late fireman and 9/11 icon Bob Beckwith died at age 91, not originally mis-reported age 90.

STYBLE/Florida

[A Friend]

Post by ***@gmail.com
That "RockSolid" site--I'm informed, via this e-helpful "Marco Moock" fellow
(in a thread above dated February 2nd and headlined "REMINDER". Many if not
most alt-obits folk are (after a somewhat frustratingly-designed
registration) moving there, Louis (in anticipation of Google's impending late
February next-posting shutdown).

You're welcome to move anywhere you like, of course, but alt.obits was
here long before Google, and it'll be here long after Google is gone.
I've been on here since 1996.

This is usenet. It's not Google. I don't know what "many if not most"
people here will be doing (I wouldn't presume to speak for anyone
else), but I'll still be participating in alt.obits, and I've never
used Google to do so.

My advice is to get and learn how to use proper usenet-dedicated
software. On a Mac, that's Thoth.

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by ***@gmail.com
. . .
That "RockSolid" site--I'm informed, via this e-helpful "Marco Moock"
fellow (in a thread above dated February 2nd and headlined "REMINDER".
Many if not most alt-obits folk are (after a somewhat
frustratingly-designed registration) moving there, Louis (in
anticipation of Google's impending late February next-posting shutdown).
--------------------------
Those who want to continue in their web browser, can simply use
https://www.novabbs.com/computers/thread.php?group=alt.obituaries
=========================
I'm told this is the way to go, Louis, though I do remember something
you saying about preferring that "Thunderbird" browser. This Moock
gentleman DOES mention that in fact, but down the e-road I still want to
be able to regularly read your material on RockSolid. That site seems
to my unsophisticated eye a good alternative from here on out. Indeed,
already many alt-obit postings (but not all, I gather) are making it
onto RockSolid.

Usenet is not shutting down. Google Groups will no longer be a Usenet
site.

Rocksolid is a Web interface to Usenet on the novabbs site, so you'd
still use your browser. If you care to, the Rocksolid Light software
could be downloaded and used on your local computer but that's not a
requirement to use the Usenet site.

At some point, you should really consider using a newsreader for a
better Usenet experience.

If you noticed several articles were missing, and it was due to
filtering, he's quite willing to adjust his filters as they catch false
positives. Let me know what's missing and I'll ask about it. Or you can
ask directly in rocksolid.shared.general.

[Louis Epstein]

Post by ***@gmail.com
Regarding the Chicago-v.-Pestigo body count, you were correct and I was
thoroughly mis-remembering the numbers. (Pretty sure many claim the dollar
cost was worse in Wisconsin, though.)

That's the point...Wisconsin was worse in bodies AND dollars,
but Chicago (where I am sure more were made homeless) sucked
up over 96% of the fame.

Post by ***@gmail.com
Didn't know a thing about the Nazi protection of Holland of the exiled
Kaiser; wonder what Hitler's motivation was behind suspending it.

Not wanting anyone but himself treated with reverence.

Post by ***@gmail.com
As a further point about the Wilhelm II/Hitler long-distance relationship,
however strong or weak it was, it's important to remember that though long out
of power and out of geographical reach, the forceably-retired monarch was hardly
a non-entity then. Wilhelm II was out of power, but NOT out of influence.
Thus it's important to know whether he wielded his behind-the-scenes
influence to bolster, or undermine Hitler's activities in his homeland all
those years.
Regarding Marx: Thanks for that Groucho clip; I find too much of his '20s,
'30s and '40s film work overworked, but NOT this song or performance; this
one is a classic, and I'd not seen it in decades. (And speaking again of
Marx--Karl, Groucho, Gummo or otherwise: while AOC, Tlibe and that Somali
turban-lady elect to collectively term themselves The Squad, a HUGELY more
appropriate term for this quartet of harridans is The Marx Sisters.)
That "RockSolid" site--I'm informed, via this e-helpful "Marco Moock" fellow
(in a thread above dated February 2nd and headlined "REMINDER". Many if not
most alt-obits folk are (after a somewhat frustratingly-designed registration)
moving there, Louis (in anticipation of Google's impending late February
next-posting shutdown).
--------------------------
Those who want to continue in their web browser, can simply use
https://www.novabbs.com/computers/thread.php?group=alt.obituaries
=========================
I'm told this is the way to go, Louis, though I do remember something you
saying about preferring that "Thunderbird" browser. This Moock gentleman

I use Lynx,Seamonkey,and Firefox to browse the web,
tin to deal with newsgroups and alpine for email.
Thunderbird is a mail program I don't use,as Seamonkey has
bundled mail for things pine/alpine can't display...the
Mozilla people decided to unbundle the old Netscape-turned-Mozilla
suite and intended to have a "bird" for each application,
but someone had a trademark for "Firebird" and thus Thunderbird's
web counterpart became "Firefox".

Post by ***@gmail.com
DOES mention that in fact, but down the e-road I still want to be able to
regularly read your material on RockSolid. That site seems to my
unsophisticated eye a good alternative from here on out. Indeed, already
many alt-obit postings (but not all, I gather) are making it onto RockSolid.

How is it different from narkive?

I will continue to post to NNTP servers and not care what
HTML servers harvest the content...but what you post on
some local BBS site won't make it back to netnews.

Post by ***@gmail.com
Again, thanks for setting me straight regarding Pestigo's death count. (And
I wonder if anyone ever recovered the cow-kicked lantern from the smouldering
O'Learey barn? Quite a collectable.)
BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by Louis Epstein

. . .
That "RockSolid" site-- . . .

How is it different from narkive?

narkive doesn't allow posting.

Post by Louis Epstein
. . .

[Louis Epstein]

Post by Adam H. Kerman

Post by Louis Epstein

. . .
That "RockSolid" site-- . . .

How is it different from narkive?

narkive doesn't allow posting.

Post by Louis Epstein
. . .

So the site intends to harvest posts to newsgroups
and allow readers to comment about them on the site?

I guess that makes its users newsgroup-groupies.

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by Louis Epstein

Post by Adam H. Kerman

Post by Louis Epstein

. . .
That "RockSolid" site-- . . .

How is it different from narkive?

narkive doesn't allow posting.

Post by Louis Epstein
. . .

So the site intends to harvest posts to newsgroups
and allow readers to comment about them on the site?
I guess that makes its users newsgroup-groupies.

I looked again. Perhaps it does allow posting. I was looking for a test
group but there doesn't seem to be one created on narkive.

[Kenny McCormack]

In article <upu4ma$rbl$***@reader1.panix.com>,
Louis Epstein <***@main.lekno.ws> wrote:
...

Post by Louis Epstein

Post by ***@gmail.com
DOES mention that in fact, but down the e-road I still want to be able to
regularly read your material on RockSolid. That site seems to my
unsophisticated eye a good alternative from here on out. Indeed, already
many alt-obit postings (but not all, I gather) are making it onto RockSolid.

How is it different from narkive?
I will continue to post to NNTP servers and not care what
HTML servers harvest the content...but what you post on
some local BBS site won't make it back to netnews.

I absolutely *love* (not!) how this thread is currently and simultaneously
about (at least) 3 different (and unrelated) things:

1) Somebody named Bob Beckwith (with a little bit of Dubya hagiography
thrown in)
2) The Chicago and Peshtigo fires.
3) The continuing technical failings of Mr. BS.

Truly, and art form, this.