New Show on Jim Baugh Outdoors. This week, Jim takes us Spanish and Cobia on the Top Dog out of the Oyster Farm at Kings Creek Cape Charles VA… PLUS Bash By The Bay with the Deloreans, an end of summer tradition that rocks the bayside every year.
Riverside conducts exercise to practice response to an active shooter scenario
Onancock, VA: Riverside Shore Memorial Hospital and the specialty physician offices at Riverside Medical Group teamed up with local first responders to conduct an active shooter exercise on the Riverside campus in Onancock on August 29.
In the Riverside exercise, the initial scenario called for team members to practice their skills de-escalating the anger of a domestic partner of a “patient.” Later on, role players portraying the domestic partner who was now a “shooter” and an accomplice came back to campus to seek revenge.
Different from many other types of disaster exercises, during an active shooter exercise, team members are trained to “Run, Hide, Fight.” “Run” means that the first line of defense is that team members help patients to exit the building, but only if it is safe to do so. “Hide” means that team members help patients to shelter in place if they do not have a safe means of exit, and “Fight” means that, if face to face with the assailant and only as a last resort, team members use any and all means available to disarm the assailant. In this exercise, several team members and role players who portrayed patients and visitors pretended to be injured or killed by the shooter.
Once law enforcement determined that the simulated danger was over, the final part of the exercise practiced having team members and EMS work together to handle a mass casualty scenario.
The drill touched on nearly every department on the campus. Team members, first responders and volunteers all participated in a post-exercise debriefing, and their observations will be incorporated in an after-action report. One early finding was the importance of clear communication before, during and after an event and among agencies. The twelve participating agencies worked together without boundaries with the ultimate goal of saving lives.
Riverside and all of its services remained open and available at all times during the exercise. Patients and visitors were alerted as they entered the buildings that an exercise was being conducted so that no one would be alarmed.
Participating agencies:
· Accomack County Public Safety Office
· Accomack County Sherriff’s Office
· Eastern Shore of Virginia 9-1-1 Communications Center
· Northampton County Sherriff’s Office
· Onancock Police Department
· Onancock Volunteer Fire Department
· Riverside Health System Emergency Management
· Riverside Medical Group – Shore
· Riverside Shore Memorial Hospital
· Town of Onley Police Department
· Virginia Department of Health and VDH Medical Reserve Corps
· Virginia State Police
Virginia Aquarium release Four Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtles
VIRGINIA BEACH — The Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center and its Stranding Response Team releasedd five rehabilitated turtles back into the Atlantic Ocean.
Four of the five (Wisteria, Honeysuckle, Captain, and Poppy) were Kemp’s ridley sea turtles and all four were inadvertently hooked by fishermen.
Also released was Drake, a Loggerhead who was found “cold-stunned” in the Chesapeake Bay on New Year’s Day.
The Mysterious Kemp’s ridley
The Kemp’s ridley is the most endangered of all sea turtle species. Efforts to save this turtle began in the 1960s and have continued to today. Since those efforts began, much has been learned about the Kemp’s ridley. Many more questions remain unanswered.
The Kemp’s ridley has always been a mystery. Sailors, explorers, and fishermen had seen other kinds of sea turtles coming up to nest on beaches in various places around the world but it seemed no one had seen a Kemp’s ridley nest. Some thought it might not even be a species. They suggested it was a hybrid, an infertile offspring of two other species. But when fishermen caught some Kemp’s ridley sea turtles with eggs inside them, the riddle deepened. If these turtles were a separate species, where did they nest?
In 1951, the first published record of a Kemp’s ridley nesting anywhere in the world was submitted by J.E. Werler. The turtle was seen nesting in 1948 on what would later be designated as Padre Island National Seashore.
But there were thousands of Kemp’s ridley turtles out in the Gulf of Mexico at that time. Where did the majority of them nest? Finally, in the early 1960s, Dr. Henry Hidebrand from Corpus Christi, Texas, came upon some home video footage that would solve the mystery and launch an international campaign to save a species.
Architect Andreas Herrera traveled between the U.S. and Mexico regularly in the 1940s. He had his own small plane and usually flew along the coast. He had heard rumors that hundreds of turtles sometimes crawled up onto one of the beaches he flew over. He was interested in seeing these turtles, and started taking a video camera with him on his trips in case he ever saw them.
One summer day in 1947, he looked down as he flew over an area in Mexico called Rancho Nuevo and saw a beach covered with turtles. Excited, he found a place to land his small plane, got his video camera, and captured the turtles on film.
That video footage wasn’t discovered by the scientific community until the early 1960s, when Dr. Hildebrand saw it. Scientists were amazed – nothing like it had ever been seen. Thousands of sea turtles were on the beach, digging holes and laying eggs. There were so many turtles, some even dug up the eggs of others as they laid their own. The scientists estimated that 40,000 female Kemp’s ridley sea turtles had come ashore to nest on that one day on the 16-mile stretch of beach at Rancho Nuevo (Hildebrand 1963).
Finally, the mystery was solved and the nesting grounds of the Kemp’s ridley became known to the scientific world. But with the good news came the bad: this species was and still is in serious trouble.
The 1947 film footage taken by Andreas Herrera showed the incredible mass nesting of tens of thousands of Kemp’s ridley sea turtles on the beach at Rancho Nuevo in Tamaulipas, Mexico. Unfortunately, it also showed mass destruction. Scientists reviewing the footage in the 1960s saw people taking the turtles’ eggs as they were laid and loading them by the millions into trucks. Some of the nesting females were also taken. The scientists estimated that 90% of the turtle nests were destroyed the same day they were laid.
If 90% of the nests laid were being destroyed, how long could the species survive? How long had this wholesale destruction been going on? Conservationists and scientists traveled to Rancho Nuevo and found the turtles were still nesting each year but had already declined dramatically since the film was taken years earlier. They appealed to the Mexican government to stop the wholesale destruction that was still taking place.
In 1966, the Mexican government took action. They passed legislation protecting the beach at Rancho Nuevo and brought in guards to stop the taking of eggs and turtles. Despite these protection efforts, the number of Kemp’s ridley nests found each year continued to drop. By 1985, only 702 nests were found worldwide the entire year.
In the 1970s, the U.S. joined efforts to save this species. At the time, almost all known nesting of Kemp’s ridley sea turtles was occurring at Rancho Nuevo. Nearly all Kemp’s ridley eggs were literally in one basket! What if a hurricane, oil spill, or other disaster wiped out that beach? The species was very vulnerable. The situation was dire.
In 1974, the National Park Service proposed re-establishing a nesting colony at Padre Island National Seashore (PINS). The seashore is part of the native nesting range of the Kemp’s ridley and offers long-term protection for the turtle, its nests, and its nesting habitat. Boosting nesting at PINS would help to re-establish a nesting colony at the northern end of the Kemp’s ridley historic nesting range at a protected area in the U.S. where nesting had previously occurred. It would also provide safeguards against species extinction.
In 1978, agency officials from Mexico and the U.S. and conservationists agreed to attempt to re-establish a secondary nesting colony at PINS to help save the species. They formed an international, multi-agency partnership and established the Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle Restoration and Enhancement Program (KRREP). The National Park Service led development of an action plan for the KRREP. The goals of th eplan were to re-establish a Kemp’s ridley nesting colony at PINS and to protect nesting turtles, eggs, and hatchlings at Rancho Nuevo (Caillouet et al. 2015, Shaver and Caillouet 2015).
This project was based on the theory that sea turtles imprint to their natal beach and that, as a result of this imprinting, adult females return to the beach where they hatched to lay their eggs. This theory was unproven at the time, and no project of this magnitude had been attempted before. But the Kemp’s ridley was on the verge of extinction, and bold actions were needed to save the species.
Conservation efforts to save and recover the Kemp’s ridley have continued and expanded over the years since the Imprinting and Headstarting Project ended in 1988. In Texas, organized patrols to find and protect Kemp’s ridley and other sea turtle nests are now conducted not only at PINS but also in many other areas along the Texas coast. Through these programs, conducted by the National Seashore and many partners, Texas beaches are monitored each summer and any nesting sea turtles or nests found are protected. In Mexico, nest detection and protection programs that began at Rancho Nuevo have also increased and expanded to include most of the species nesting range in Mexico.
Are Predatory Homosexuals Rotting the Catholic Church?
Even for non-practicing Catholics, Pope Francis’ tone-deaf refusal to comment even a “single word” on allegations that he personally covered up for a sexual predator makes it almost impossible to ignore the institutional rot and arrogance that has reached the highest levels of the church. Archbishop Carlo Vigano, the former chief Vatican diplomat in the United States issued a scathing indictment this week of the entire Roman Catholic hierarchy, accusing the church of effectively having been taken over by a mafia-like collection of high-ranking church officials who are determined to reverse church teaching on homosexuality and coddle predatory behavior amongst homosexual priests. The overall anti-homosexual theme of Vigano’s testimony explains why the media has paid less attention to it than the recent Pennsylvania grand jury report (recent headlines from the New York Times, “Vatican Power Struggle Bursts Into Open as Conservatives Pounce.”,“Francis Takes High Road As Conservatives Pounce, Taking Criticisms Public.”). Vigano’s letter also claims that Cardinal McCarrick “orchestrated” the installation of a cardinal named Blase Cupich over the archdiocese in Chicago. Cupich was alleged to be one of the Cardinals who was part of the pro-homosexual cabal in the Catholic hierarchy who was responsible for sheltering abusive priests. Over the course of June and July, the church took a number of disciplinary actions against McCarrick, after a church tribunal discovered credible evidence that McCarrick had engaged in sexual abuse of at least one teenage boy. Then, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago made the claim that Pope Francis shouldn’t comment on the scandal since he has “a bigger agenda. He’s got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the church. We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this.” Of course, there’s this…VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis wants concrete action to combat the “emergency” of plastics littering seas and oceans. Francis made the appeal in a message Saturday to galvanize Christians and others to work to save what he hails as the “marvelous,” God-given gift of the “great waters and all they contain.” He said efforts to fight plastics litter must be waged “as if everything depended on us.” Why not focus on cleaning up the garbage in your church first?
Reporting by the Boston Globe newspaper exposed widespread abuse and how paedophile priests were moved around by Church leaders instead of being held accountable. It prompted people to come forward across the US and around the world.
A Church-commissioned report in 2004 said more than 4,000 US Roman Catholic priests had faced sexual abuse allegations in the last 50 years, in cases involving more than 10,000 children – mostly boys.
A 2009 report found that sexual and psychological abuse was “endemic” in Catholic-run industrial schools and orphanages in Ireland for most of the 20th Century.
Now, a letter by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, alleges that Pope Francis himself had joined top Vatican officials in covering up the abuses and called for his resignation.
Archbishop Viganò, the former chief Vatican diplomat in the United States, worked with the reporter Marco Tosatti, who helped flush out the 7,000-word letter that called for the resignation of Pope Francis, accusing him of covering up sexual abuse and giving comfort to a “homosexual current” in the Vatican.
Archbishop Viganò claimed that the Vatican hierarchy was complicit in covering up accusations that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had sexually abused seminarians and that Pope Francis knew about the abuses years before they became public. Yet, the letter contended, Francis did not punish the cardinal but instead empowered him to help choose powerful American bishops. “He knew from at least June 23, 2013, that McCarrick was a serial predator,” Archbishop Viganò wrote.
Archbishop Viganò, who blames gays for the child abuse crisis that has destroyed the church’s standing in many countries, dedicated entire sections of the letter to outing cardinals who he claims belong to what he characterizes as a pernicious “homosexual current” within the Vatican.
“These homosexual networks,” he wrote in the letter, “which are now widespread in many dioceses, seminaries, religious orders, etc., act under the concealment of secrecy and lies with the power of octopus tentacles, and strangle innocent victims and priestly vocations, and are strangling the entire church.”
“Now that I have finished, I can leave, and leave Rome too,” Archbishop Viganò told Mr. Tosatti.
A victim of a pedophile priest in Chile has revealed he wrote to the Pope in 2015 about an alleged cover-up after Francis denied getting evidence. Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of cleric Fernando Karadima in the 1980s, accused fellow priest Juan Barros of witnessing the abuse and doing nothing.
A five-year inquiry into sexual abuse in Australia has released its final report, saying institutions had “seriously failed” to protect children. The royal commission, Australia’s highest form of public inquiry, heard more than 8,000 testimonies from victims of abuse. The accusations covered churches, schools and sports clubs over decades.
Among more than 400 recommendations, the report calls on the Catholic Church to overhaul its celibacy rules. “Tens of thousands of children have been sexually abused in many Australian institutions. We will never know the true number,” the report said. “It is not a case of a few ‘rotten apples’. Society’s major institutions have seriously failed.”
Since 2013, the royal commission has referred more than 2,500 allegations to authorities.
The media’s attempts to cover for Francis should be questioned: the mainstream media was more than happy to expose misconduct inside the Catholic Church when the Pope was a conservative; they surreptitiously facilitate a cover-up when the Pope is a liberal. As a Catholic, you must understand that if the members of the secular media are rabidly defending a papacy accused of sexual abuse cover-ups, it’s not out of love or a fairness for the Church. It’s out of a belief that traditionalist doctrine must be rooted out at any cost, even if that cost is the abuse of minors and the violation of basic canon law.
I left the church years ago, yet, at a deeper level, I wonder how can anyone still sit on the pews on Sunday understanding what the church has been doing. The Church is still a powerful entity, and it still has the ability to do much good in the world. But that cannot happen until it cleanses itself and replaces evil predators with true men, or woman of God.
How cray, cray are Democrats??
Two more things…Dude, give it a rest…
For rabid sports fans, the top story this year, just behind Alex Ovechkin hoisting the Stanley Cup, is the return of Tiger Woods. After a rough finish at the Northern Trust tournament, a reporter attempted to catch golf great Tiger Woods in controversy following his final round Sunday.
Woods was fielding questions from media, who typically ask about a golfer’s performance that weekend, when one reporter asked Woods to describe his relationship with the president both professionally and personally.
“Well, I’ve known Donald for a number of years. We’ve played golf together and, you know, we’ve had dinner together. And so yeah, I’ve known him pre-presidency and obviously during his presidency,” Woods responded.
Not satisfied, the reporter asked Woods what he would say to people who find his relationship with Trump “interesting,” considering Trump’s policies make “people of color and immigrants” feel “threatened.”
Woods responded: “Well, he’s the president of the United States and you have to respect the office. No matter who is in the office, you may like, dislike the personality or the politics, but we all must respect the office.”
However, Woods’ answer still did not quench the reporter’s thirst for controversy. He followed up with a question about “race relations,” asking Woods if he has anything “more broadly” to say, referring to Trump’s beefs with black sports stars like LeBron James and Stephen Curry.
Finally, Woods, told the reporter, “No. I just finished 72 holes and I’m really hungry.”
“Et tu In-N-Out?”
In-N-Out, the classic burger chain started in Baldwin Park, California in 1948, found itself on the hot seat after it was discovered it donated $25k to the California Republican Party. Even while the company “made equal contributions to both Democratic and Republican” political action committees in California in 2018, liberals were incensed. “Et tu In-N-Out?” California Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman said on Twitter. “Tens of thousands of dollars donated to the California Republican Party. It’s time to #BoycottInNOut – let Trump and his cronies support these creeps… perhaps animal style!”
How far does party loyalty or Trump hate go?
Left-leaning In-N-Out aficionados are feeling conflicted.
“In the age of @realDonaldTrump, we need joy in our lives,” Twitter user @DetAnsinn said. “Sometimes, that joy comes in red/white wrapper and a toasted bun.”
Virginia Department of Health Reports West Nile Virus Cases
(Richmond, Va.) – The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) advises citizens that the summer heat this week is a reminder that mosquito season is still here. VDH has received reports of WNV from multiple regions of the state for a combined total of 12 human cases in 2018.
These cases serve as a reminder that WNV is present throughout Virginia. The most effective way to avoid WNV and other mosquito-borne disease is to prevent mosquito bites.
Prevention strategies include the following:
Use Insect Repellent: When used as directed, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered insect repellents are proven safe and effective, even for pregnant and breastfeeding women. Use an EPA-registered insect repellent with one of the following active ingredients:
- DEET
- Picaridin
- IR3535
- Oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE)
- Para-menthane-diol (PMD)
- 2-undecanone
Cover up: Wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants.
Keep mosquitoes outside: Use air conditioning, or window and door screens. If you are not able to protect yourself from mosquitoes inside your home or hotel, sleep under a mosquito bed net.
Eliminate mosquito breeding habitats: Tip, toss, and cover items that hold water, such as tires, buckets, planters, toys, pools, birdbaths, flowerpots, or trash containers at least once a week.
History Notes this week of August 23rd
1346: Nine years into the Hundred Years War, British Longbowmen create a decisive victory for King Edward III and a shattering defeat for French King Philip VI at the Battle of Crecy, just south of Calais, in northern France. The battle confirmed the validity of massed longbow attacks against armored knights and is widely viewed as the beginning of the end of the period of classical chivalry since the 1500(+) French knights who fell were killed not in honorable hand-to-hand combat, but by randomly fired arrows puncturing their armor. After the battle, the British also dispatched, rather than captured and treated, wounded French knights, another violation of the knightly virtues. In modern terms of the battle, it was organization, tactics, and equipment that carried the day. Casualties (these are consensus numbers): British- 2 knights and approximately 300 soldiers killed. French- 11 noblemen (including King John of Bohemia), 1542 knights and 2300 Genoese crossbowmen killed, in addition to “several thousands” of infantry killed.
1498: Michelangelo receives a papal commission to carve the Pieta. The sculpture sits in the first gallery on the right on entering St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
1609(a): Italian mathematician, astronomer, physicist, and inventor Galileo Galilei presents his first telescope to the Doge of Venice. It was a 3x magnification model, with hand-ground lenses carefully placed in a stable brass tube to give an upright (i.e. not inverted) image to the viewer’s eye. The instruments became very popular for surveying and navigation, providing a steady stream of income that supported Galileo’s other studies. He, himself, used a 30x instrument to make his discovery of four of the moons of Jupiter. His continuing observations and predictions of their movements proved a core theory of orbital mechanics, and thus the validity of Copernican heliocentricity.
1609(b): Operating under contract to the Dutch East India Company, English explorer Henry Hudson discovers the Delaware Bay. The Company originally hired him to explore the route for the North-EAST passage to Asia, expecting he could find his way through the ice around the north of Russia to the riches of the Orient. After rounding the North Cape of Norway, the ice pack completely blocked his path. Operating on his own initiative, he then turned his ship Halve Mean (Half Moon) westward to search for the expected Northwest Passage. He made landfall in Nova Scotia in early July and worked his way as far south as Cape Charles. Turning north without exploring the mouth of the Chesapeake, he then began his survey, entering on this day the Delaware Bay. He continued northward up the coast, eventually exploring the river that now bears his name all the way up to the site of present-day Albany. His trade with the natives and his careful charting of the coastline secured the Dutch claim to the region.
1645: Death of the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (b.1583). A child prodigy who entered the University of Leiden at age 11, Grotius was one of the most influential thinkers who developed what we know now as the core principles of international law, including the law of war and the rights of belligerents on the high seas. His most important accomplishment from this Navy man’s perspective was the codification of the idea of Mare Liberum, the Free Sea, published in 1609, whereby all nations are free to use the high seas as a pathway for trade as they see fit, a concept which became the foundation of what we now know as the global commons. Concurrent with this consensus was the definition of territorial waters as being under the sovereignty of a coastal state only to the extent that the state can actually control it. Using the “the fall of cannon shot” as the measure, it led to the long-running (over 300 years) acceptance of the three-mile limit offshore as the boundary of a state’s territorial waters.
1748: Birth of Jacques-Louis David (d.1825), whose works defined the transition between 18th Century Rococo to the Neo-Classical composition and coloring of the Enlightenment movement. During the French Revolution, he became the de facto state artist, such as his Death of Marat work. When Napoleon came to power he led the next transition into what is known as the Empire style, continuing the classical tradition, but in a contemporary context. His work kept him at the top of the art world until his death, and even afterward, as his legions of students maintained his influence well into the 19th Century.
1768: Captain James Cook, in HMS Endeavour, departs Plymouth on his first voyage of discovery. The ostensible reason for the voyage is to observe for the Royal Society the Transit of Venus across the face of the sun. In Cook’s case, this will be from Tahiti, which is one of the dozens of pre-planned locations around the globe to observe and record the event, with the eventual goal of using the data to determine the exact distance between the sun and the earth. Once the observation was completed the following April, Cook opened his sealed Admiralty orders, which directed him to map the unknown regions of the South Pacific, in particular, to search for and claim for Great Britain the fabled Terra Australius, which had long been mapped but never seen
1776: General George Washington and the Continental Army suffered a strategic defeat at Brooklyn Heights when the British army under General William Howe outflanks his defenses and almost completely encircles the American forces as they retreat to a prepared position on the heights. By late afternoon Washington recognizes they cannot hold the ground at Brooklyn and orders a retreat across the East River to Manhattan Island. While Howe is carefully digging in for a siege of the American redoubts, Washington evacuates the American army without further loss of life. Between the excellence of the Howe’s forces and the strength of the British fleet that controls New York harbor, Washington eventually realizes he will have to completely evacuate New York. On the positive side, the successful evacuation from Brooklyn ensures that the entire Continental Army remains a viable force-in-being that the British will not be able to ignore as the war deepens.
1789: The French National Assembly, in an intentionally symbolic moment, approves and orders published The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It is designed around the principle of Natural Law, similar in concept to the preamble of our own Declaration of Independence, but focuses more on popular sovereignty as the antidote to the divine right of kings, and on individual rights and democracy. Although noble in intent, it nonetheless became associated with mob rule and many of the anarchistic and subversive movements of the 19th century.
1799: In a little-known episode from the continuing wars of the various anti-France coalitions (in this case, the Second Coalition), a British fleet under the command of Vice Admiral Andrew Mitchell captures an entire Batavian Dutch fleet of twelve ships under the command of Rear Admiral Samuel Story without firing a shot. The victory hinged on an outstanding intelligence estimate, the Brits’ timely and correct application of diplomacy, a credible threat of devastating force, and a civil-military “strategic communications” plan that played directly into the nationalistic sentiments of Dutch sailors who served under the French-ruled Batavian Republic. The action took place near present-day Den Helder at the mouth of the Zuider Zee: a British army had made a landing three days earlier on the North Sea side of the peninsula. The fleet then made its way into the Helder roadstead, flying the flag of the HereditaryStadtholder, the Prince of Orange. The knowledge of the British landing, combined with the sight of the British fleet and the knowledge that their actual sovereign was within range, triggered a spontaneous mutiny of the Dutch sailors and most of their officers against the hated French. Admiral Story offered to surrender his fleet to the Stadtholder and himself and his men to the British as Prisoners of War. Admiral Mitchell made a point of delaying the decision but then took it before the French had an opportunity to re-establish their control of the fleet. British prize crews sailed the best of the ships back to England, where they were inducted into the Royal Navy. This event became known as the Vlieter Incident. It was a singular success from an otherwise disastrous 1799 Anglo-Russian Campaign, which began to unravel almost immediately after this victory
1830: The first steam locomotive built in the United States, the Tom Thumb, performs a demonstration to convince investors of the viability of steam railroads.
1859: First commercial extraction of oil, from a well near Titusville, Pennsylvania. “Pennsylvania grade crude” and “Pennzoil” are a couple legacies of this event, as is Standard Oil & J.D. Rockefeller, among others.
1862: The Battle of Second Manassas (Second Bull Run)- after completely negating Union General George McLellan’s Peninsular Campaign, Confederate General Robert E. Lee takes the offensive against the Union Army of Virginia, now commanded by Major General John Pope, who has to react to Lee’s aggressive thrusts and parries in a northward campaign toward Washington, DC. When Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson captures a Union supply train at Manassas Junction, Pope believes he has trapped the Confederates. What Pope doesn’t know is that Jackson is holding a reinforced position behind an unfinished railroad berm and that James Longstreet has established his 25,000 men on Jackson’s right, completely unknown to Pope. The forces fought a mostly inconclusive battle on this day, but during the night Longstreet’s forces move into an attacking position. The fight that raged throughout the 30th forced the Union back along the same retreat route it had used 15 months earlier after the Battle of First Manassas.
1864: Union General William T. Sherman opens his assault on the strategic railroad crossroad of Atlanta, defended by Confederate General John Bell Hood. The Union force overwhelms Hood’s defenses, forcing them to evacuate on September 2nd. On entering Atlanta, Sherman orders all civilians to leave the city, an act that prompted the city council to appeal on behalf of the women, children, elderly, and those who had no bearing on the conduct of the war. Sherman’s response remains harsh, yet tempered:” “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war.[…] I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect and early success. But, my dear sirs, when peace does come, you may call on me for anything. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter.” In November, he ordered his troops to destroy every government and military building in the city.
1883: The Indonesian volcanic island of Krakatoa self-destructs in a paroxysm of explosions that caused the landmass to completely disappear beneath the waves of the Sunda Strait. The final explosion was heard distinctly in Perth, Australia (1,930 miles away) and on Rodrigues Island off the coast of Africa, over 3,000 miles across the Indian Ocean. The force of the detonation is nominally estimated at 200 Megatons, equivalent to about 13,000 “Little Boy” atomic bombs (Hiroshima). The explosion ejected into the atmosphere approximately 5 cubic MILES of pumice, rock and ash, creating beautiful sunsets around the world for several years. Since 1927 the volcano has been building a new island, named Anak Krakatau (Child of Krakatoa), which is growing about 5 meters a year.
1885: German engineer, designer and handyman Gottlieb Daimler patents the world’s first motorcycle, powered by one cylinder, one horsepower gasoline engine he nicknamed the “grandfather clock engine.” He went on to join forces with his fellow small-engine aficionado Wilhelm Maybach to form the motor company we now know as Mercedes-Benz.
1895: In Latrobe, Pennsylvania, kickoff for the nation’s first professional football game. The game was contested between the Latrobe YMCA team and a team from nearby Jeannette PA. Latrobe pays its quarterback John Brallier $10.00 for expenses. Latrobe won, 12-0, and claimed the offered prize money. Brailler prudently went on to a career in dentistry, but he was given lifetime passes for all National Football League games. He died in Latrobe in 1960 at age 83.
1896: The shortest war in history is fought between Great Britain and Zanzibar, a result of a dispute over the accession of the new Sultan of Zanzibar. With an ultimatum expiring to no effect at 0900, a British task force opened fire on the palace, setting it afire and destroying Zanzibar’s only artillery pieces, in addition to sinking a royal yacht. When the palace flag is finally hit and knocked down at 0940, the Brits cease-fire, and a complex diplomatic dance between Germany, Zanzibar and Great Britain ensues, with the British choice for sultan eventually taking the throne. Total time in combat: 40 minutes.
1897: Inventor Thomas Alva Edison patents the Kinetoscope, the world’s first movie projector.
1910: Birth of Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (d.1997), the Albanian nun better known as Mother Teresa, who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India in 1950. Her selfless work with the poor and destitute earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She died in September 1997 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
1911(a): Birth of North Vietnamese general Vo Nguyn Giap (d.2013), victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, who also completed the final roll-up of the South Vietnamese army in 1975 after the United States declined to honor its commitments to the Vietnamese government.
1911(b): Ishi, the last Native American to make contact with American civilization, steps out of the woods near Mount Lassen in northern California to meet his destiny. He immediately became a sensation in anthropological circles, providing demonstrations of a former life completely independent of European influence. He lived at the University of California, San Francisco, until his death from tuberculosis in 1915.
1914(a): Battle of Heligoland Bight- the first naval engagement of the Great War, where the Royal Navy made a surprise attack against patrolling cruisers and destroyers of the German Imperial High Seas Fleet, sinking three light cruisers, a destroyer and two torpedo boats, and severely damaging six other cruisers and destroyers, at a cost of heavy damage to one light cruiser. By their own admission, the Brits got lucky, but the battle so unnerved the Kaiser that he restricted the German fleet from any further chance at engagement for nearly three months, creating a rift between him and the naval command that never healed.
1914(b): Only four weeks into WWI, the Imperial German 8th Army of 166,000 under the command of Field Marshalls Paul von Hindenburg and Eric Ludendorf, decisively smashes the Russian 1st and 2nd Armies in the Battle of Tannenburg. The three-day fight in East Prussia saw Hindenburg take full advantage of the German railroad network to quickly move his forces to a position where Ludendorf could engage them as a singular unit against both Russian groups. Their adaptability and ability to concentrate against the Russian flanks* allowed them to completely dominate the battlefield, killing or wounding 78,000 and capturing 92,000 of the 416,000 total Russian force. Rather than report the loss to the Tsar, the Russian commander committed suicide. Over the next three years, Russia was never able to recoup from the shattering loss and eventually sued for a separate peace.
1928: the Kellog-Briand Pact is signed by the United States and 14 other nations. The treaty, negotiated outside the jurisdiction of the League of Nations, essentially outlaws war as a legitimate diplomatic tool, except for self-defense. It is no stretch to say the treaty (which is actually still in force) is honored only in the breach, but it was the basis for the “crimes against the peace” that underlay the post-WWII Nuremberg Trials.
1939: Opening night for The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland. The movie lost the Best Picture award to Gone With the Wind.
1944: After four years of German occupation, and two and a half months after the landings in Normandy, Allied armies liberate Paris.
1945: Death of Baptist missionary and OSS agent John Birch (b.1918), at the hands of communist Chinese forces. He is considered the first casualty of the Cold War, and 14 years after his death an anti-communist organization adopted his name as their own. It is too bad; during his years in China, Birch did great and honest work for his faith and his country and was disgusted by the depredations of the Chinese communists in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese occupation.
1948: The House Un-American Activities Committee holds its first televised Congressional hearing, the dramatic confrontation between former Communist Whittaker Chambers and not-former Communist Alger Hiss.
1949: The Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb. Despite a significant level of in-house development by Soviet scientists, the event was hastened by broad-based espionage from the Manhattan Project by Klaus Fuchs, who provided the Soviets significant details on gaseous diffusion of uranium isotopes, using plutonium instead of uranium in the fission device, techniques for extracting plutonium through a “uranium pipe,” confirmation of critical mass (determined after years of trial and error by the Manhattan Project), and a complete set of blueprints and schematics for our own atomic bomb.
1968: At the Democratic National Convention taking place in Chicago, ten thousand anti-war protesters are goaded into violent action by Tom Hayden, triggering a violent counter-action by Chicago police and Illinois National Guard. The riot is remembered in popular folklore as a “police riot” despite the left wing agitation* that threatened the convention in the first place. In a summer of race rioting and anti-war protests all around the country, this one stands out for the callousness of the neo-communist organizers and the ham-handedness of the Chicago political machine, all of which was broadcast “live, in living color” for the nation to see. Hayden, Alinski, Hoffman, Dorn…”Anti-fa” and “Occupy” movements are this generation’s attempts to echo the activities of these goons.
1974: Death of aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh.
1997: Death of Diana, Princess of Wales; from injuries sustained in a Paris tunnel automobile crash.
2005: Hurricane Katrina slams into the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama wreaking havoc.
Public invited to Chesapeake Bay Watershed Implementation Plan meeting
Input sought on watershed pollution reduction in Accomack and Northampton counties.
PAINTER—The public is invited to the next meeting for development of the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Phase III Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP) on Friday, Sept. 21, in Painter.
This meeting will focus on non-agricultural stormwater pollution recommendations for Accomack and Northampton counties’ bayside to meet water quality goals set by the US Environmental Protection Agency.
These goals establish a “pollution diet” to help restore clean water in the Chesapeake Bay and its local waterways, and the Phase III WIP is the roadmap for how Bay jurisdictions will achieve them.
As part of these regional meetings, local stakeholders will help identify gaps in capacity and funding, as well as necessary revisions to state code, regulations or guidance, and policy or programmatic recommendations to address these gaps. Local input in the development of the WIP can drive state policy and may influence future funding availability.
Everyone is invited to attend the meeting on Friday, Sept. 21, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. in the conference room at the Virginia Tech Agricultural Research and Extension Center, at 33446 Research Drive, in Painter.
Please contact Accomack-Northampton Planning District Commission at 757-787-2936 with any questions.
Food Lion Invests $168 Million in Southeast VA
The company made a significant $168 million capital investment southeast Virginia area stores this year, which includes remodeling the stores, hiring 4,000 additional associates and giving back to local communities, including the donation of two mobile food trucks to area food banks to feed local families in need. These new upgrades are being seen in our Cape Charles store.
Meg Ham, president of Food Lion said in press release, “We’ve created a new grocery shopping experience through the significant investments in our stores, customers, associates and communities. From our expanded variety and product assortment, newly reorganized stores, new signage to a more efficient check-out experience, every change we’ve made will make it easier for our customers to find fresh, quality products at affordable prices every day. And true to our heritage, we always offer everyday low prices along with weekly sales and promotions, making it easier for you to nourish your family on a budget. We invite our customers to come and experience the fresh, new changes at your neighborhood Food Lion.”
Some of the changes we are seeing in the new stores now, and in the future include:
Fully remodeled stores featuring new signage and groupings of like products, to make it easier to locate items faster;
A more efficient checkout process, making it easier to get in, out, and on your-way;
Improved quality and freshness of products throughout the store;
Low prices on thousands of items across all departments;
Expanded variety and assortment across all departments relevant to our customers in each store, such as more local produce in our “Local Goodness” section, an expanded variety of craft beer, limited reserve wines, and more local, natural, organic and gluten-free items;
An abundant selection of fresh produce and meat backed by Food Lion’s double-your-money-back guarantee and a larger selection of Nature’s Place beef, salads, fruit and other items;
Hand-battered chicken as well as a greater selection of easy and affordable complete meals for families and a wider variety of grab-and-go items and pre-sliced deli meats and cheeses, which are sliced fresh daily and available for customers to pick up without waiting in line;
A wing bar assortment for customers looking for hot, quick meal solutions.
“We not only invested in our stores, we also invested in promoting great associates and hiring promising new talent,” added Ham. “It’s also why, as part of our grand re-opening celebrations, we’re partnering with the Food Bank of the Eastern Shore to help end hunger in the towns and cities we serve. Giving back to our communities is something we’re just as passionate about as serving our customers every day in our stores.”
With the completion of this market, Food Lion has remodeled 649 of its 1,030 stores in the last four years. Food Lion will continue to make enhancements to create a better shopping experience for customers across all stores and remodel additional stores in other markets.
USDA Announces Details of Assistance for Farmers Impacted by Unjustified Retaliation
Washington DC-USDA Press Release – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue today announced details of actions the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will take to assist farmers in response to trade damage from unjustified retaliation by foreign nations. President Donald J. Trump directed Secretary Perdue to craft a short-term relief strategy to protect agricultural producers while the Administration works on free, fair, and reciprocal trade deals to open more markets in the long run to help American farmers compete globally. As announced last month, USDA will authorize up to $12 billion in programs, consistent with our World Trade Organization obligations.
“Early on, the President instructed me, as Secretary of Agriculture, to make sure our farmers did not bear the brunt of unfair retaliatory tariffs. After careful analysis by our team at USDA, we have formulated our strategy to mitigate the trade damages sustained by our farmers. Our farmers work hard, and are the most productive in the world, and we aim to protect them,” said Secretary Perdue.
These programs will assist agricultural producers to meet the costs of disrupted markets:
- USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) will administer the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) to provide payments to corn, cotton, dairy, hog, sorghum, soybean, and wheat producers starting September 4, 2018. An announcement about further payments will be made in the coming months, if warranted.
- USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) will administer a Food Purchase and Distribution Program to purchase up to $1.2 billion in commodities unfairly targeted by unjustified retaliation. USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) will distribute these commodities through nutrition assistance programs such as The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and child nutrition programs.
- Through the Foreign Agricultural Service’s (FAS) Agricultural Trade Promotion Program (ATP), $200 million will be made available to develop foreign markets for U.S. agricultural products. The program will help U.S. agricultural exporters identify and access new markets and help mitigate the adverse effects of other countries’ restrictions.
“President Trump has been standing up to China and other nations, sending the clear message that the United States will no longer tolerate their unfair trade practices, which include non-tariff trade barriers and the theft of intellectual property. In short, the President has taken action to benefit all sectors of the American economy – including agriculture – in the long run,” said Secretary Perdue. “It’s important to note all of this could go away tomorrow, if China and the other nations simply correct their behavior. But in the meantime, the programs we are announcing today buys time for the President to strike long-lasting trade deals to benefit our entire economy.”
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