I know it’s not Monday yet, but I am about finished with a book loaned to me that tells a remarkable story worth passing along.

Consider the connections between a pending two ocean war, a small navy, old time craftsmen, a man with incredible foresight and perseverance, and a location far from the ocean that took on a challenge and did fine by the men who sailed into harm’s way.

Some of you may know of the story, but I’m going enjoy sharing what I found out, thanks to a WWII veteran’s widow, kind enough to share some family items with me.

Come back Monday the 7th to find out what I’m talking about.The Alamo movies

Not my story, and not a “sea story,” but a military one for your reading pleasure.

A story of disaster, survival, rumor, and, finally truth:

54 days before July 1st, 1957, Lt David Steeves, USAF had to bail out of his T-33 over the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

He walked (and hobbled and crawled) to safety, after the Air Force called off the search and notified his wife he had died…

And then the press ran amok, making assumptions and publically questioned the man. No one stood up for him, as they accused him, without any evidence, of selling his aircraft to our adversaries…

But…the happy ending comes 50 years later, with someone randomly surfing satellite pics on the net….

Read the incredible story.

Defenders of the crescent design for the Flight 93 memorial describe the landform around the crash site as a bowl shape that fairly dictates the use of a crescent design. On the Mike and Juliet Morning Show, Memorial Project Chairman John Reynolds was asked by host Mike Jerrick: “Why couldn’t you just use some other shape?”Reynolds cupped his hands together for the audience and insisted that the design had to be a crescent:

Because, if you do this with you hands, this is the land there. This bowl is America holding its heroes.

But in fact, the site is not a bowl shape at all, as one can tell by looking at the topo lines on the site plan. The land slopes continually from north-northwest to south-southeast:

The Sacred Ground Plaza that marks the crash site sits between the crescent tips (above the 4).

Instead of following the rim of a bowl, the crescent starts on a ridgeline above the crash site and circles around to well below it, passing across the middle of a wetland that sits about 70 vertical feet below the crash site.

Not only is the crash site not a bowl, but the crescent actually does not fit the natural landform at all. Of all the designs entered in the design competition, Paul Murdoch’s Crescent of Embrace is the only one that that fails to meet the Memorial Project’s single stated physical requirement: that design entries should “respect the rural landscape.” (Scroll down to
“purpose.”)

To create the full arc of the crescent, a raised causeway will have to be filled in across the wetlands that collect about half-way out the lower crescent arm:

This filling in of the wetlands would never be allowed in a private project. There are environmental laws against it.

To sneak his design past the requirement to leave the landscape undisturbed, Murdoch played a very clever trick. His preliminary Crescent of Embrace design did not build a causeway across the wetlands. It only showed a quarter circle of red maple walkway, with a natural footpath skirting around the bottom of the wetlands area instead of crossing it:

This original crescent design already had the flight path breaking the circle, turning it into what was called from the start the Crescent of Embrace, so it seems that Murdoch had in mind from the beginning to memorialize the terrorists’ circle-breaking/crescent-creating feat. He could well have had the basic geometry of his full terrorist memorial mosque already worked out, but he knew that he would never make the first cut if he broke the competition’s one rule and violated the wetlands, so he only showed a little bit of crescent, and had his innocuous looking footpath skirt the wetlands.

To turn his preliminary design into a full Islamic crescent, Murdoch needed to build his causeway. How did he justify this violation of the wetlands? With typical brass, declaring that the causeway created a “healing landscape”:

Here visitors will be most aware of continuously connected living systems as the circular path literally bridges the hydrology of the Bowl. [“Wetlands,” p. 5.]

The highway department should hire this guy for P.R.. He could sell the environmentalists on how close a new road will bring them tonature. Why, they will be “literally bridging it!” What could be better? Good pitch. The Memorial Project bought it.

Most remarkable is Patrick White, vice president of Families of Flight 93. In private conversation at the Memorial Project’s July 2007 meeting, White told one of Alec Rawls’s compatriots that an expensive drainage system had been developed for the crescent design and that no other design could work on the site because this elaborate drainage system would only work with the crescent design.

Duh. The crescent design is the only design out of all thousand submitted that needs a drainage system. Every other design left the wetland untouched, as the Memorial Project had asked. Yet these people all really seem to mean it when they insist that this is the only design that fits the land.

Didn’t they notice that not one of the other thousand designs was a crescent? How could that be, if the landform really dictated a crescent? How did they get so wrapped in the emotion of the crescent’s “healing embrace” that they can’t see anything else?

Because Paul Murdoch is an artistic genius who had these grieving people in the palms of his hands. The man is diabolical!

Stop the Memorial Blogburst
1389 Blog – Antijihadist Tech
A Defending Crusader
A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever
And Rightly So
Big Dog’s Weblog
Big Sibling
Cao2’s Weblog
Cao’s Blog
Chaotic Synaptic Activity
Error Theory
Faultline USA
Flanders Fields
Flopping Aces
Four Pointer
Freedom’s Enemies
Ft. Hard Knox
GM’s Corner
Hoosier Army Mom
Ironic Surrealism II
Jack Lewis
Kender’s Musings
My Own Thoughts
Nice Deb
Ogre’s Politics and Views
Part-Time Pundit
Right on the Right
Right Truth
Stix Blog
Stop the ACLU
The Renaissance Biologist
The View From the Turret
The Wide Awakes
Thunder Run

If you want to join the blogroll/blogburst for the Crescent of Betrayal blogburst, email Cao at caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com, with your blog’s url address. The blogburst will be sent out once a week to the participants, for simultaneous publication on this issue on Wednesdays.

For those who just can’t “go” anywhere without their iPods…

Click the pic to get to the websiteSpecial holiday pricing of ONLY $8.99 from ATechFlash.

If you still haven’t gotten that gift for your someone special, you’re welcome!

Me like….

Can you guess? Well, I’ll tell you, since you don’t know how tall she is: 205 INCHES! of viewing experience. From Luxio in Italy.

Have a spare $610K (and the cost of shipping and installation, too)? I hope so, because until enough of the well off buy these, you can bet the prices aren’t going to get any cheaper.

If you’re on a budget, you can get these fine TV screens in 90″, 120″, 150″ and 180″ sizes, too.

And in case you’re one of those engineer types, you’ll need to support the 1041 lbs of weight to go along with the 1500 nit contract and 10,000:1 brightness.

For you XBox gamers, I’d wait: The resolution is only 1344×768. Stuff there will look kinda chunky at that setting…

Note: When you’re done here, don’t forget Sunday Ship History – The AF at Sea and the massive compendium at Frey Fry International Maritime Monday 91!

Bandidas release

History Note: Today is the day ADM Nimitz assumed command of the Pacific Fleet in 1941.
———————————————–

LCDR Jackson Pharris, USN

Photo Credit: HOWARD LIPIN / Union-TribuneBorn in Colombus, GA June 26th, 1912, he is another hero of the attack on Pearl Harbor, LCDR Pharris was passing the ammunition anyway he could get it to the anti-aircraft gun crews, and conducting damage control and life saving work at the same time aboard the USS CALIFORNIA on December 7th.From the Arlington National Cemetery site:

Citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while attached to the U.S.S. California during the surprise enemy Japanese aerial attack on Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, 7 December 1941.

In charge of the ordnance repair party on the third deck when the first Japanese torpedo struck almost directly under his station, Lieutenant (then Gunner) Pharris was stunned and severely injured by the concussion which hurled him to the overhead and back to the deck. Quickly recovering, he acted on his own initiative to set up a hand-supply ammunition train for the antiaircraft guns. With water and oil rushing in where the port bulkhead had been torn up from the deck, with many of the remaining crewmembers overcome by oil fumes, and the ship without power and listing heavily to port as a result of a second torpedo hit, Lieutenant Pharris ordered the shipfitters to counterflood. Twice rendered unconscious by the nauseous fumes and handicapped by his painful injuries, he persisted in his desperate efforts to speed up the supply of ammunition and at the same time repeatedly risked his life to enter flooding compartments and drag to safety unconscious shipmates who were gradually being submerged in oil.

By his inspiring leadership, his valiant efforts and his extreme loyalty to his ship and her crew, he saved many of his shipmates from death and was largely responsible for keeping the California in action during the attack. His heroic conduct throughout this first eventful engagement of World War 11 reflects the highest credit upon Lieutenant Pharris and enhances the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

Jackson Pharris joined the Navy in 1933 and was stationed aboard the USS MISSISSiPPI (BB-41), serving in the Gunnery Department until 1940, when he transferred to USS CALIFORNIA (BB-44).

From Wikipedia, more on Jackson Pharris’ military career:

Due to the injuries he received, Pharris was hospitalized at Naval Hospital, Pearl Harbor until March 1942. After being released from the hospital, he returned to the USS California. On July 17, 1942, Pharris earned his commission. In January 1943 he was admitted again to the US Naval Hospital after collapsing because of lack of oxygen due to oil still in his lungs. He returned to duty in June.

In October 1944 Pharris moved to Boston, Massachusetts where he reported aboard the USS Saint Paul (CA-73), a newly commissioned heavy cruiser. The ship left for Japan to participate in bombardments of the Japanese mainland. In September 1945, just five days after the surrender proclamation, Lt. Pharris was on deck when a Japanese kamikaze dove at the ship. He ordered the crew to take cover and he directed the firing of the guns and shot it down. His back was broken from the impact of the guns.

Lt. Pharris was transported to US Naval Hospital Oakland, California. In October 1945 he was transferred to US Naval Hospital Long Beach, California. After discharge from the hospital in April 1946 he was temporarily assigned to Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, Terminal Island, Long Beach Naval Shipyard and Port Hueneme. He was medically retired in May 1948 as a Lieutenant Commander. His Congressional Medal of Honor was presented by President Harry S. Truman on June 25, 1948.

LCDR Jackson died Oct 16th, 1966 and is buried at the Arlington National Cemetery.

His Medal of Honor (which is the one pictured above) has a story of it’s own, only recently revealed. The report below also provides some insight into the character of the man who was awarded the Medal of Honor, from what he told his children. From the San Diego Union story:

WWII Medal of Honor winner’s family finally regains decoration

By Alex Roth
STAFF WRITER

October 3, 2007

The strange tale of Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jackson Pharris’ Medal of Honor begins as many old-timers’ war stories do: with the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

His heroic actions on that infamous day earned him the nation’s highest military award for valor. The medal’s subsequent travels – from Pharris’ possession to a bank vault to the bowels of a government office building – provide a case study in what happens when the state of California seizes unclaimed property.

Unlike many other stories of noble battles waged against foreign enemies and Sacramento bureaucrats, this one has a happy ending. At a Navy base in Coronado yesterday, the medal was returned to Pharris’ family during a posthumous ceremony that served as a reminder of how brave he was.
[…]
After his death, his wife took possession of his medals. When she became ill, one of his daughters, Janet Pharris, placed them in a safe-deposit box at a bank in San Pedro. Then, in 2002, Janet Pharris died of a heart attack, and a few months later her mother died of a stroke.

Jackson Pharris’ three living children went through their mother’s and sister’s possessions and quickly realized their father’s war medals were missing.

The medals, of course, meant the world to them. Pharris’ youngest son, Jeff, recalls giving a report about his father to his sixth-grade class and realizing for the first time what his father had done to earn the Medal of Honor.

“I can remember as a little boy putting it around my neck and wearing it and thinking it was pretty cool,” said Jeff Pharris, 48, who manages a Home Depot in Oceanside.

After Janet Pharris died, the medals sat in the safe-deposit box for three years until the bank, by law, turned the items over to the state as unclaimed property. Several years passed, and Pharris’ children tried to find the medals, with no success.

“By the time we tracked down the bank, it had already been turned over to the state, and it kind of went into a black hole,” said one of his sons, Jack Pharris II, 63, a Rancho Palos Verdes real estate agent.
[…]
Meanwhile, California officials passed a law eliminating some of the red tape that was making it difficult for state officials to find the owners of seized property. State Controller John Chiang, who took office last year, announced in August that he was stepping up efforts to return seized property to its rightful owners.

During the news conference, Chiang mentioned some of the odd items the state has seized over the years. He specifically mentioned a Medal of Honor.

Later that month, Chiang’s staff tracked down Pharris’ children, who were thrilled.

“We’d been looking for the medal for a long time,” Jack Pharris said.

A dozen Pearl Harbor survivors were present for yesterday’s ceremony in the Medal of Honor courtyard at Coronado Naval Amphibious Base. So was Vice Adm. Terrance Etnyre, commander of Naval Surface Forces.

In a brief address to those in attendance, Jack Pharris described his father as “a modest guy” and a “normal dad” who felt sheepish about having received such a prestigious honor. The elder Pharris always believed that plenty of other sailors were every bit as brave as he was that day, his son recalled.

Whenever his children would ask him about the medal, Jackson Pharris would reply, “This is what you did in a crisis situation.”
[..]

On Jan 26th, 1974, the USS PHARRIS (DE-1094) (later FF-1094) of the KNOX Class, was commissioned.The PHARRIS was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet and I can track down two specific deployments of UNITAS XXI (Summer/Fall 1982), and a Mediterranean deployment in 1987-88, when she escorted the MV Mighty Servant while that ship carried the USS SAMUEL B ROBERTS (FFG-58) home after hitting the mine in the Persian Gulf.

IN 1992, the USS PHARRIS was decommissioned and transferred to Mexico and renamed the ARM Victoria (F-213), one of four KNOX frigates serving in the Mexican Navy today..

Found in my comments:

Air Force Together We Served is now fully online.

Loyde Mcillwain
TWS Senior Administrator/Consultant

OK, you light blue suiters: Get to work building your networks!

I’m sure the site is as polished as the Navy one, so I expect you’ll find a great place to catch up with your former AF friends. Geez…we have “shipmates.” What do you AF type call the people you served with?

Dec 26th, 1783. Louis-Sébastien Lenormand was the man who did the deed. From Wikipedia:

After making a jump from a tree with the help of two modified umbrellas Lenormand refined his contraption and on December 26, 1783 jumped from the tower of the Montpellier observatory in front of a crowd that included Joseph Montgolfier, using a 14 foot parachute with a rigid wooden frame. His intended use for the parachute was to help entrapped occupants of a burning building to escape unharmed. Lenormand was succeeded by André-Jacques Garnerin who made the first jump from high altitude with the help of a non-rigid parachute.

BASE jump? It stands for someone who jumps from Bridge, Antenna, Structure (building), Earth.

qaBut a different kind. Today is a day to pay tribute to the Son of God, part of the trinity who hung the stars in the heavens.Technology you ask? Yep, It’s about the Creator of the Universe and all that is in it. Just contemplate the picture of the Tadpole galaxy above for a moment. Consider going to either this or this link to see more pictures from NASA of the universe, or, if that’s too expansive for the moment, our solar system.How did it all get here, from the Black Holes, to the comets, to the atomic interactions of the star’s inner cores, to the wonder of the “universal acid” that fuels life here on Earth and is sought out elsewhere in the Universe by out scientists, as a signal that life maybe accompanied by the presence of water…

What about photosynthesis? Hydrogen bonding? Brownian motion? asexual replication? Gravity? Lift? Hemoglobin? Gold? The things on the Periodic Chart? The brain, in each and every form?

Consider this: Cosmologists/physicists tell us the Universe formed from an incredibly dense ball of matter. Consider this, too: Black holes, as defined in our understood science are balls of matter, held together so tightly, that even photons cannot escape their grasp. We speculate on their existence be derived observations, where light isn’t coming from. Now, I have heard said “the Bible is not a book of science, but when it speaks to it, it is correct.” Take that how you may, but I’ll reference Genesis 1:3:

And God said “Let there be light” and there was light.

Could that have been the unleashing of the very elemental waves/particles we study as light, from the single core of the only black hole in existence? The “Big Bang” as it were? I attribute it to that, aided by the millenia of understanding mankind has determined, to God Himself. My question to those who aren’t sure: How the heck did that large pile of matter end up being assembled in the center of the universe? Makes you wonder, huh? Now, one I don’t think I have encountered: Who placed the large expanse of nothingness around the place we try to reckon as the center of the Universe? Someone had to clear the lot before a house gets built, right?

Psalm 19:

¹The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
²Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.
³There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
⁴Their voice goes out into all the earth; their words to the end of the world.

My question now for you: Doesn’t a look skyward, in day or night, give you a reason to wonder? I would hope so. And when you wonder, who do you say did it all?

Take a few minutes to read Job 38 to 41 for a compendium of some of the things God has done to create the Universe and life. It can give one a greater appreciation of the effort it took to do that. Amazingly, it took a man complaining to God about what he wasn’t doing for us to get the Lord’s “resume” for the record, in much greater detail that presented in Genesis.

Having spent a lot of years observing my physical surrounding and the body of (ever changing) science, I have come to a point, about a decade ago, where I let God get the glory for the creation of it all. We, in my humble opinion, are allowed to discover how it works, like kids peering through the dusty garage windows of that seemingly nutty neighbor down the block who has a workshop full of inventions. Sometimes, while looking in, we even figure out a piece of how something works, but we never will know it all, yet we will be happy to use the outcome to our benefit.

He not only took care of the macro level, He spent time designing everything else. King David remarked thusly in Psalm 139:

¹³For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

Remember the high school biology classes about DNA, RNA, transfer RNA, and the 4 proteins that make up DNA? One could certainly describe that process as “knitting.”

Scientists, on a daily basis, ask us to take their understanding on faith and act on it. Even much of what they know is derived from what they can observe, to help the determine what must have been, so that the circumstances they are studying make sense to them first. Faith, is therefore not an unknown thing, and responsible people use it regularly to operate in life.

This day, picked for some reason as a day in the year to celebrate the giving of a gift to us may not be the actual day of the year that Jesus the Christ was born, but a large portion of humanity has picked December 25th as the day, and the business acumen of some of the rest of the world’s inhabitants have made it a great commercial endeavor. It’s not like parents of adopted children haven’t had to sometimes do the same type of thing, let alone the numerous pet owners happy to also make up a birth date. So why argue over the date, when it’s about the issue.

All in all, it is a day to consider that the Creator of the entire Universe, and all that is in it, cared enough to send His Son so we could look forward to a day when all our pain was gone, all our sadness behind us and a life everlasting stands before us, but also so we might understand ourselves and our fellow travelers on this planet, so that we might enjoy life more abundantly here and now. All you have to do is accept that gift. Even more amazing is that He doesn’t force you at all in the decision. He who created gravity to allow us to sit and type our thoughts to one another on the internet, with out the desk, chair and keyboard floating away. If He could do that, why does He let us decide if we will accept His love? Once I got passed my individual arrogance regarding MY view of MY presence and purpose here and now, I understand how awesome that situation is.

You know, even the Koran said God filled the virgin Mary with God’s spirit in the 66th Sura, regarding the birth of Jesus as something special. It even labels Jesus as the Christ in 2:136, “Christ” being Greek for “Messiah.”

So, in closing, Merry Christmas to all.

Army National Guard Captain adopts an Iraqi orphan, From AOL News:

By CARRIE ANTLFINGER,
Posted: 2007-12-24 10:16:48
Filed Under: Nation News
MAUSTON, Wis. (Dec. 23) – Capt. Scott Southworth knew he’d face violence, political strife and blistering heat when he was deployed to one of Baghdad’s most dangerous areas. But he didn’t expect Ala’a Eddeen.

Scott Southworth makes dinner as his adopted son, Ala’a, watches TV in their Mauston, Wis., home in November. Southworth first met Ala’a, who has cerebral palsy, at a Baghdad orphanage in 2003 while serving in Iraq.
1 of 7
Ala’a was 9 years old, strong of will but weak of body — he suffered from cerebral palsy and weighed just 55 pounds. He lived among about 20 kids with physical or mental disabilities at the Mother Teresa orphanage, under the care of nuns who preserved this small oasis in a dangerous place.

On Sept. 6, 2003, halfway through his 13-month deployment, Southworth and his military police unit paid a visit to the orphanage. They played and chatted with the children; Southworth was talking with one little girl when Ala’a dragged his body to the soldier’s side.
[…]

Quite a Christmas present for a young man.  Go and refresh your soul with this story of an incredible act of kindness.