Today is Memorial Day. Remember


We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us
 
American Revolution (1775-1783)
Total Servicemembers 217,000
Battle Deaths 4,435
Non-mortal Woundings 6,188
Last Veteran, Daniel F. Bakeman,
died 4/5/1869, age 109
Last Widow, Catherine S. Damon,
died 11/11/06, age 92

Last Dependent, Phoebe M. Palmeter,
died 4/25/11, age 90

War of 1812 (1812-1815)
Total Servicemembers 286,730
Battle Deaths 2,260
Non-mortal Woundings 4,505
Last Veteran, Hiram Cronk,
died 5/13/05, age 105
Last Widow, Carolina King,
died 6/28/36, age unknown

Last Dependent, Esther A.H. Morgan,
died 3/12/46, age 89


Indian Wars (approx. 1817-1898)
Total Servicemembers 106,000*
Battle Deaths 1,000*
Last Veteran, Fredrak Fraske,
died 6/18/73, age 101


Mexican War (1846-1848)
Total Servicemembers 78,718
Battle Deaths 1,733
Other Deaths in Service 11,550
Non-mortal Woundings 4,152
Last Veteran, Owen Thomas Edgar,
died 9/3/29, age 98

Last Widow, Lena James Theobald,
died 6/20/63, age 89

Last Dependent, Jesse G. Bivens,
died 11/1/62, age 94


Civil War (1861-1865)
Total Servicemembers (Union) 2,213,363
Battle Deaths (Union) 140,414
Other Deaths in Service (Union) 224,097
Non-mortal Woundings (Union) 281,881
Total Servicemembers (Conf.) 1,050,000
Battle Deaths (Confederate)
74,524
Other Deaths in Service (Confederate) 59,297**
Non-mortal Woundings (Confederate) Unknown
Last Union Veteran, Albert Woolson
died 8/2/56, age 109

Last Confederate Veteran, John Salling
died 3/16/58, age 112


Spanish-American War (1898-1902)
Total Servicemembers (Worldwide) 306,760
Battle Deaths 385
Other Deaths in Service (Non-Theater) 2,061
Non-mortal Woundings 1,662
Last veteran, Nathan E. Cook,
died 9/10/92, age 106


World War I (1917-1918)
Total Servicemembers (Worldwide) 4,734,991
Battle Deaths 53,402
Other Deaths in Service (Non-Theater) 63,114
Non-mortal Woundings 204,002
Living Veterans 2,503*

World War II (1940 ?1945)
Total Servicemembers (Worldwide) 16,112,566
Battle Deaths 291,557
Other Deaths in Service (Non-Theater) 113,842
Non-mortal Woundings 671,846
Living Veterans 5,451,378*

Korean War (1950-1953)
Total Servicemenbers (Worldwide) 5,720,000
Battle Deaths 33,686
Other Deaths (In Theater) 2,830
Other Deaths in Service (Non-Theater) 17,730
Non-mortal Woundings 103,284
Living Veterans 3,913,749*

Vietnam War (1964-1975)
Total Servicemembers (Worldwide) 9,200,000
Deployed to Southeast Asia 3,100,000
Battle Deaths 47,410
Other Deaths (In Theater) 10,788
Other Deaths in Service (Non-Theater) est. 32,000
Non-mortal Woundings 153,303
Living Veterans 8,300,106*

Gulf War (1990-1991)
Total Servicemembers (Worldwide) 2,322,332
Deployed to Gulf 1,136,658
Battle Deaths 148
Other Deaths (In Theater) 235
Other Deaths in Service (Non-Theater) 914
Non-mortal Woundings 467
Living Veteran 1,753,530

America's Wars Total
Military Service During War 42,348,460
Battle Deaths 650,954
Other Deaths in Service (In Theater) 13,853
Other Deaths in Service (Non-Theater)
229,661
Non-mortal Woundings 1,431,290
Living War Veterans 19,421,266*
Living Veterans 25,497,691*

* * *


Veterans and Dependents on the
Compensation and Pension Rolls as of

May, 2001

VETERANS CHILDREN PARENTS SURVIVING
SPOUSES

Civil War - 12 - 1
Indian Wars - 1 - -
Spanish-American War - 245 - 386
Mexican Border 9 25 - 181
World War I 144 5,810 1 25,573
World War II 647,205 18,707 1,388 272,793
Korean Conflict 249,515 4,110 1,496 63,579
Vietnam Era 851,143 13,465 6,118 114,514
Gulf War*** 344,174 8,508 338 6,261
TOTAL WARTIME 2,092,190 50,883 9,341 483,288
Nonservice-connected 352,761 27,221 - 230,194
Service-connected 2,306,731 30,757 11,650 288,661
TOTAL 2,659,492 57,978 11,650 518,855


* * * * *

>NOTE: Figures on the number of living veterans are projected from the final 1990 Census data and include only veterans living in the U.S and Puerto Rico. Periods of service used in Census data may differ slightly from those of DoD. Although Gulf War figures are shown for the peak 1990-1991 period, the Gulf War period has not yet been officially terminated.

Source: Department of Defense, unless otherwise indicated.

"Other deaths in Service" is the number of servicemembers who died while on active duty, other than those attributable to combat, regardless of the location or cause of death.

* VA estimate

** An estimated figure does not include 26,000 to 31,000 who died in Union prisons.

***For VA benefits purposes, the Gulf War period of service remains open-ended and also includes those discharged from 1991 to date.

* * *

It is estimated that the number of living World War I veterans will be:

9/30/01............ 2,212 9/30/07.................. 171 9/30/13.................... 12

9/30/02............ 1,452 9/30/08.................. 110 9/30/14..................... 7

9/30/03............... 952 9/30/09................... 71 9/30/15..................... 4

9/30/04............... 623 9/30/10................... 46 9/30/16..................... 3

9/30/05................ 407 9/30/11................... 29 9/30/17..................... 2

9/30/06................ 265 9/30/12................... 19 9/30/18..................... 1



It is estimated that the number of living World War II veterans will be:

9/30/01............. 5,032,591 9/30/08................ 2,383,578 9/30/15................. 724,947

9/30/02............. 4,618,560 9/30/09................ 2,074,699 9/30/16................. 583,410

9/30/03............. 4,211,991 9/30/10................ 1,788,795 9/30/17................. 463,088

9/30/04............. 3,815,644 9/30/11................ 1,526,903 9/30/18................. 362,282

9/30/05............. 3,432,216 9/30/12................ 1,289,627 9/30/19................. 279,113

9/30/06............. 3,064,236 9/30/13................ 1,077,141 9/30/20................. 211,584

9/30/07............. 2,714,009 9/30/14................... 889,152

Here rests in honored Glory an American Soldier known but to God 

Accessing over 100,000 academic reference and research sites recommended by teachers and librarians, The Academic Index was created and is maintained by Dr. Michael Bell, former chair, Texas Association of School Librarians.

AntWeb provides tools for exploring the diversity and identification of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Currently AntWeb contains information on the ant faunas of California and Madagascar, and global coverage of all ant genera.

Z's in trouble 

The Institutional Archives Registry is a list of archives.
Lots of information about collections of information.
What's not to love?

The City University of New York has assembled tons of information about D-Day, entitled Government Views of D-Day 1944

Information included:
Air Operations
Allied Commanders
Art & D-Day Photographs
The Beaches Medal of Honor Preparations
Canada Mulberry Harbors President Roosevelt
The Coast Guard Museums Prime Minister Churchill
General Eisenhower Naval Operations Quartermasters
German View of D-Day Newspapers & Radio Tanks
History Operation Bodyguard War Graves & Cemeteries
Lesson Plans
Meaning of the Term D-Day
Maps
Oral/Personal Histories
Participants
On June 6, 2004 America Remembers D - Day, when Western Allies landed in northern France, opening the long-awaited 'Second Front' against Adolf Hitler's Germany. ... Commanded by U.S. Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Normandy assault phase, code-named "Neptune" (the entire operation was "Overlord"), was launched when weather reports predicted satisfactory conditions on 6 June.
Thank you, CUNY, for a fitting tribute to America's finest hour.

Omaha beach, 0700 hours, 6 Jun 44 

From DefenseLINK News: "Teenager, Country Music Star Team Up to Thank Troops
When high-school freshman Shauna Fleming launched her campaign, 'A Million Thanks,' to collect and distribute letters for the troops as part of National Military Appreciation Month, she could not have imagined where it would lead.
She and country music star John Michael Montgomery teamed up to promote Shauna's project, 'A Million Thanks,' on the nationally syndicated radio show, 'After Midnite With Blair Garner,' in Nashville, Tenn., last week. Montgomery will sing his current hit, 'Letters from Home,' while Shauna hands out letters to a group of invited service members during the opening ceremonies of the Cocoa-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte, N.C., May 30.
Earlier this month, Shauna set up shop under NASCAR racecar driver Matt Kenseth's tent at the Auto Club 500 in Fontana, Calif., to spread the word about 'A Million Thanks.'
Shauna said when she heard Montgomery's 'Letters from Home,' which talks about a deployed soldier receiving letters from his mother, girl and father, sshe knew it was a perfect fit for her project. "It's sort of the theme song," she said.

If you're going to be in Washington, D.C., try and get to some of the four-day Tribute to a Generation dedication celebration planned by the American Battle Monuments Commission. There are events planned from May 27 through May 30, highlighted by the memorial's formal dedication ceremony on Saturday, May 29.
Events will celebrate the memorial and its placement on the National Mall and pay tribute to the service and sacrifice of America's World War II generation, many of whom are making plans to be in Washington to see their memorial dedicated.
Activities include wartime reminiscences, reunions, big band and swing music, WWII memorabilia and equipment displays, a religious service, military ceremonial units, and educational opportunities for all ages.
On May 31 there will be A Parade Salute to World War II Veterans
For more information, check out the Memorial's Web Site

Always remember 

Librarians Are Not Search Engines
So writes Joseph Janes in the ALA's American Libraries OnLine.
Some librarians, writes Janes, not without justification, might see search engines as competition. It?s not at all difficult to look at the rise of free and easy Internet searching and the simultaneous and sometimes precipitous drop in reference statistics and put two and two together. And that may well be a big part of what?s going on. So why not portray ourselves as the preferred alternative, in the same ballpark?
... But, he writes, "If {librarians] we see search engines as our competition and try to beat them at their own game, we can?t possibly win. They will always be faster and cheaper and easier to use, in almost any circumstance, than any library. Why in the world would we want to try to compete with them?
"Surely we can do better than this. We can recognize that what we are, and what we do, are superior to search engines: We help people know what they really want, we know lots of ways of searching for it, we know how to evaluate stuff, we care about quality, we know about and have access to lots of other kinds of resources beyond the free Web, we know when to stop searching, and so on."

Accept no substitutes 

Books For Soldiers is a soldier support site that ships books, DVDs and supplies to deployed soliders and soldiers in VA hospitals, via our large volunteer network.
If you have old, but usuable paperback books sitting around, collecting dust, why not send them to a solider for a big morale boost?
Many of our volunteers have received email and letters from the soldiers they have adopted.
Help us out, help the troops out, mail them your books.
If you can't take your old books to a nearby VA Hospital, as I do, this is a great idea.

From Refdesk.com
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The Food Guide Pyramid
The Pyramid illustrates the research-based food guidance system developed by US Dept of Agriculture and supported by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It goes beyond the "basic four food groups" to help you put the Dietary Guidelines into action. The Pyramid is based on USDA's research on what foods Americans eat, what nutrients are in these foods, and how to make the best food choices.
I couldn't find Fritos®!

The Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern
Renowned historian Peter N. Stearns and thirty prominent historians have combined their expertise over the past ten years to perfect this comprehensive chronology of more than 20,000 entries that span the millennia from prehistoric times to the year 2000.

From the SBC Knowledge Network Center, comes Blue Web'n
Blue Web'n is a searchable library of 1800+ outstanding Internet learning sites categorized by subject area, audience, and type (lessons, activities, projects, resources, references, & tools).
Search Blue Web'n and Filamentality here

Stymied by a fear of punctuation and grammar? There's no need to fear - Punctuation Made Simple is here. You'll learn about the most useful punctuation marks
Instead of listing many rules, as a grammar book does, the site examines these various marks in general so that you can get a sense of how to use them in your own prose.

A punctuation parable
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

I Hear America Singing
"I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear," wrote Walt Whitman in a poem celebrating the American spirit -- adventuresome, strong, and inclusive. This Web site invites visitors to experience the diversity of American performing arts through the Library of Congress's unsurpassed collections of scores, sheet music, audio recordings, films, photographs, maps, and other materials.
Check out the Collections of greats like Gerry Mulligan and Dolly Parton

Walt Whitman 

The Worst "Combined Reporting" Ever

Housekeeper killed in Houston area home owned by Shaq
SUGAR LAND, Texas (AP) A housekeeper was stabbed to death Friday at a suburban Houston home owned by Los Angeles Lakers star Shaquille O'Neal, and the woman's son was charged with murder.

* * *

O'Neal was in Minneapolis, where Los Angeles beat the Timberwolves 97-88 on Friday night in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals. He declined after the game to answer questions about the stabbing.
Suggested edit: "where he was playing in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals".

This morning's Government Links from
Ed Zuckerman's Gov't News & Info

Fire Ants Under Attack By Decapitating Flies


The prey 

The permanent establishment of a new species of phorid fly is bad news for the red imported fire ant, according to the USDA's Agricultural Research Service scientists who are working to control the aggressive ant that has spread across the southern United States.


The predator 
Phorid fly maggots live in the head capsules of their fire ant hosts, eventually decapitating them and pupating inside their heads. Phorid flies attack only fire ants.
P. curvatus is one more natural enemy of fire ants that scientists can add to their arsenal of biological control agents.
Who knew?

Heard about "phishing" ?
The Justice Department recently announced the sentencing of Zachary Keith Hill, of Houston, Texas, to almost four years in prison (46 months) for orchestrating a scheme to defraud consumers of personal financial information via spam email.
Hill plead guilty to two felonies: possessing credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and other access devices with intent to defraud and using those access devices to defraud others of nearly $50,000.
As part of the scheme, Hill would send out spam email to consumers leading them to believe that the email was actually from America Online or Paypal. This technique is a commonly-used online identity theft scheme, also referred to as phishing. The from line identified the sender as billing center, or account department and the subject line carried warnings such as "AOL Billing Error Please Read Enclosed Email," and "Please Update Account Information Urgent!" The text of the message contained a warning that if the consumers did not respond to the e-mail, their account would be cancelled.
Be careful out there!
And check out antiphishing.org/

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today announced the launch of a 9-month pilot project with WebMD Health to make HHS consumer health information (HealthFinder.com) more widely and more rapidly available to the public on a new HHS "channel" on WebMD. The partnership will also accelerate the ability of HHS to disseminate life-saving information to the public in the event of a major public health emergency. The new HHS channel on WebMD is available at http://hhs.webmd.com

Armed Forces Day:

The heritage of freedom must be guarded as carefully in peace as it was in war. Faith, not suspicion, must be the key to our relationships. Sacrifice, not selfishness, must be the eternal price of liberty. Vigilance, not appeasement, is the byword of living freedoms
General Omar N. Bradley, Armed Forced Day, 1950.

Saturday, 15 May, was Armed Forces Day -- that day first set aside in 1949 by President Harry Truman to recognize the unification of the Armed Forces under the Department of Defense and to acknowledge the extraordinary dedication of Americans in uniform standing ready in harm's way at home and around the world. In the words
of President Dwight Eisenhower

"It is fitting and proper that we devote one day each year to paying special tribute to those whose constancy and courage constitute one of the bulwarks guarding the freedom of this nation and the peace of the free world.

To all our fellow Patriots in uniform, we offer our heartfelt gratitude for your sacrifice and prayers for your safety.

Please take a moment to thank our men and women in uniform!
Sign an Open Letter in Support of America's Armed Forces.
Click on http://PatriotPetitions.US/USMIL

No internet? Please send a blank e-mail to:
sign-USMIL@PatriotPetitions.US


All gave some; some gave all 

The Science Channel is featuring TV Science Classic Weekend. If you haven't been watching, or you don't get the Science Channel, there are plenty of websites for you to check out.

You can revisit Don Herbert's Watch Mr. Wizard [and see here]; Walter Cronkite's The Twenty-First Century; James Burke's Connections; Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man [and see here]; and Tim Hunkin's The Secret Life of Machines

Much more here.

Fabulous stuff!

Mr. Wizard - The original 

Really bad album covers from Pork Tornado via Stone

My pick for #1

The Winnah! 

These Links are from Charles Kessler's Cool Tricks and Trinkets Newletter

Subscribe here

Interested in writing and alphabets? I am, too.
Here's Omniglot, a language guide to over 200 writing systems. The site derives its name the Latin for "all" and the Greek for "tongue."
There's an alphabetical index, an A to Z of written language - from abkhaz, spoken by 300,000 Turks and Russians, to zhuyin zimu, a phonetic writing system of sounds in Mandarin.
With links to obscure fonts, online dictionaries and language courses, Omniglot focuses on visible symbols that represent units of language and the rules governing each.

I love collecting Teachers' Resources. Here are Dr. Labush's Links To Learning, a site that's packed with links that are helpful to students, parents and teachers.
Go play!

Historians often have to rely on accounts that are difficult if not impossible to verify. It's always best to go directly to the source.
Introducing American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement, a site devoted to eyewitness accounts of early American exploration.
With a collection ranging from 1000 to 1844 AD, visitors can take in the words of Indians, missionaries, traders and settlers as they witnessed the defining moments in American history. The collection is searchable by expedition, geographic region, or U.S. state or province. Don't miss the Images section, for a visual account of Daily Life, Climate, Science & Technology, Politics, and more.

The Official Site of Jackie Robinson visits all aspects of his life including his baseball stats, achievements, quotes, photos and awards.
Jackie Robinson is best known as the first Afro-American to play Major League Baseball. But sports was only one aspect of his life. He was also a business man, a community leader, an early supporter of Martin Luther King Jr., with a strong commitment to the civil rights movement.
He was an associate of many presidents and public figures including Eisenhower, Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey,
Barry Goldwater, Nelson Rockefeller, and Malcolm X.
It is a fine tribute to a very unique life.

Slide, Jackie, slide! 

Reel Classics bills itself as the Internet's most comprehensive site dedicated exclusively to Classic Movies. Originally founded in 1997 as
"Elizabeth's Classic Movie Homepage" it now includes over 2400 pages and 3 Gigs of data, including pictures, biographies, Audio/Video gallery, as well as lots of classic movie-related articles, both new and vintage, covering subjects ranging from specific films to the classic Hollywood era.
Search Reel Classics here

Whether you're interested in television or politics, you'll love The Living Room Candidate. Brought to you by the American Museum of the Moving Image, you can click on any year to see the Democratic and Republican candidates for that year. There's more: campaign commercials, clips from important debates, and a brief description of how that particular election went down. With six or more commercials for each candidate, some full of song and rhyme, the slogans and catch phrases, the site is educational and enlightening. Certainly full of cultural artifacts.


C-SPAN celebrates its 25th Anniversary by opening a new branch of its web site with information about C-SPAN activities, a special press area, and an overview of the many and impressive C-SPAN milestones.
Visitors to the site can watch the first coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives, televised on March 19, 1979.
Billing itself as "Cable's Gift to America," it is hard to envision
American news coverage without CSPAN, and yet it's been just 25 years. My favorite show is the weekend's Booknotes.

If you need advice but aren't certain who to go to, head on over to Help Me, Bubby! She's an 88-year old-grandmother of two grandaughters, who have set her up with her own weblog so that everyone could share her good old-fashioned wisdom that's so hard to find these days.

In the true spirit of the Internet, Turning the Pages enables museums and libraries to 'virtually' bring their exhibits to the online community.
The British Library originally developed this award-winning interactive
service for its own use, but it is now available on a limited basis to everybody.
Using highly digitized images, touch-screen technology and interactive
animation, the service allows visitors to realistically scroll through otherwise 'untouchable' ancient manuscripts page by page. Once you open a document, you can use the "magnify" feature on the lower righthand corner of the viewer to get a close-up of the document.
Some of the highlights include Leonardo Da Vinci's famous notebooks, Vesalius' Anatomy and many more.

Read Print is essentially an online library where readers will find some of the greatest works of fiction of all time at their disposal, free of charge!
A wonderful example of how the virtual world and the real world
merge harmoniously.

Art meets charcoal at The Museum of Burnt Food, a website dedicated to 'Celebrating the Art of Culinary Disaster'. Deborah Henson-Conant takes us on a light-hearted tour of her overcooked artwork.


Whole wheat toast? 

The URL wire has been successfully announcing and linking new websites to the online community for over nine years. The Wire is a valuable tool for people looking to draw attention and traffic to their new websites, or who regularly create new content on existing sites.
I highly recommend it.

Anyone interested in the most famous painting of all time should definitely check out The Mona Lisa: Exposed. The site profiles La Giaconda ('Mona Lisa' in Italian), offering a virtual biography of her six hundred year rule as the darling of the art world.


La Gioconda 

Remember when people answered the telephone, instead of "telephone trees"? Here's a whole site dedicated to what was once known as the monolithic Bell
System, Remembering Ma Bell recalls more than one might ever want to nor
certainly ever need to know about the now ubiquitous telephones.


Nothing beats the sound of a needle scratching through carefully engineered grooves of a record. Old Time Music from 78s provides a sound so raw, so true, so nostalgic. A special treat in this digitally re-mastered sound age. And check out honkingduck.com/


Playing With Time is an exciting, new project that looks at how the world around you is changing over many different time periods.


Welcome to The Renaissance Connection, the Allentown Art Museum's interactive educational web site. Travel 500 years into the past to discover many Renaissance innovations.


Virtual Hospital is a digital health sciences library created in 1992 at the University of Iowa to help meet the information needs of health care providers and patients.

Being a Chile-Head is a serious business. It means expressing a devotion to all things Chile pepper related; not just 'how hot?', but the length of the 'burn', the after-taste, the growing, harvesting and cooking of chiles.

This morning's posts are from Joel Comm's Internet Tourbus

This is Joel Comm's weblog



Abundant Finoculousity 

Looking for family-friendly web sites? FamilyFirst has reviewed
hundreds of sites over the years, featuring a new site each and every day.

How Much Is Inside?
Betcha didn''t know that there were 2,049.5 inches of noodle, more than 170 feet, in a bag of Ramen.

Useless Information
Yesss!

From our Astronomy Domine Department:

The Astronomy Picture of the Day features a high quality image with a description of its significance, written by a professional astronomer in clear, easy to understand terms.

The Hawaiian Astronomical Society has created a apectacular
astronomical Web site called Views of the Solar System. The site
tells you evereything you could ever want to know about most of the astronomical objects in our solar system, gives information about the history of astronomy and space travel, and offers stunning pictures and movies from around the Solar System.

The Nine Planets is an overview of the history, mythology and current scientific knowledge of each of the planets and moons in our solar system. Each page has text and images, some have sounds and movies, and links to related information.

Welcome to Factory Tours USA: 455 tours and counting! This site celebrates American imagination and industry. What better way to appreciate those qualities than to visit and tour America at work.

Sites to try when other engines fail you

Admit it. You have a Google habit. Or a Yahoo habit. Every time you need to find something on the Internet, you click over to one of those big search powerhouses.
Well, search fans, Michael Bazeley, with the help of "Search Giants" like Tara Calishain (ResearchBuzz), and Gary Price (ResourceShelf) is here to tell you that there's a whole big world of Internet searching out there, and Google and Yahoo are just a part of it.
My name is Frank, and I'm powerless over Google.

Aaah! Food

Presenting the Web's Most Boring Page


Today on Worth1000's photoshopping contest: hybrid fruit

Kiwiberry by ElBorbah for Hybrid Produce

From the Hartford Courant

Naming Of The Dead

It will take another 11 years to finish this quest to bring a measure of dignity to those buried in Connecticut Valley Hospital's cemetery, to put a face on 1,670 faceless dead from decades past, 100 names at a time.
As they have each May since 1999, the Rev. John C. Hall and nine other Middletown clergy members gathered Wednesday for a memorial service at the old cemetery off a gravel road on the grounds of CVH, the state's first and only remaining public psychiatric hospital.
On this day, the names of the dead in graves 500-599 - the markers bear only a number that corresponds with a death registry - were read one by one, each followed by a blessing. The clergy moved from marker to marker, their progress matched by a couple of dozen onlookers.
Bob Byrnie stooped and placed a white rose at each marker. His grandfather, a carriage painter named James Byrnie who suffered from lead-poisoning dementia, is buried here.
Although his grandfather died in 1906, it was not until 1997 that James Byrnie's fate was learned.
"To put a face on those buried here - it's just a wonderful concept. I look forward to coming each year," Byrnie said.
Unused since 1955, this is the place of the unclaimed dead, the indigent who died while at CVH. The oldest markers date to 1878.
Wednesday, each name was read in the same steady, somber cadence.
"Grave 500, Annie Sincolitch, died Sept. 4, 1910, at the age of 31," intoned the Rev. Greg Perry, chaplain at CVH. "Annie belongs to you, oh God, for you are the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end."
"Your mercy endures forever," came the response from the onlookers.
At this rate, notes Hall, it will be 2015 before the task is done.
Until the mid-1950s, the dead at CVH and at many of the state hospitals across the country were buried under small, numbered markers. The stigma of mental illness was that great.
But the names surfaced: In the late 1990s, Wesleyan graduate student Ben Holder found a list of the dead at Russell Library.
Three granite directories bearing the names, corresponding numbers and date of death stand at the edge of the cemetery. It will be three more years before all the names are etched into the granite. Money to fund the engravings comes from the patient-run Valley View Cafe at CVH.


John Hall [center], senior minister of the First Church of Christ, Congregational, Middletown, was among those who read the names of the former patients in graves 500 to 599 at the Connecticut Valley Hospital.
Rick Hartford

2015 until they find eternal rest ... And that's just one hospital.

From DefenseLINK News

Shop Owner Turns Bad Luck into Good Luck for Troops:

When tragedy struck Ruth Ann Young of Kirkland, WA, during the summer of 2003, she turned her bad luck into good luck for more than 6,000 service members on the battlefields of Iraq.
On Father's Day, June 15, 2003, fire ravaged a business next door to Young's 'Spirit of Christmas' store and caused substantial smoke damage to her little shop. Young owns and operates a year-round shop devoted to selling Christmas items. Smoke damage to her merchandise was so bad that she wasn't able to open her shop for the rest of that year.

Ruth Ann Young holds a "daddy pillow" from "Operation Kid Comfort" Her husband, Robert Young, hold the plaque she won for creating "Operation Iraq: Spirit of Christmas"

Though she was deeply saddened, she wanted to do something positive in the community in which she and her husband had lived for eight years.
"I wanted to touch the hearts of my service people overseas, and that's what I chose to do," said Young.

Telling everybody she wanted to send at least 1,000 Christmas boxes to soldiers in Iraq; she secretly set her goal at 5,000 boxes. And to her delight, she got a lot more: reading material, compact discs, lip balm, beef jerky, peanuts, trail mix, eye drops, "And," she asked with a laugh, "would you believe 30,000 bags of apple chips?"
More than $200,000 in merchandise was donated, and nearly 21,000 volunteer hours were logged in support of the project.
Young's only request was that the boxes go to the service members on the front lines. She wanted commanders to ensure that everyone who didn't get anything for Christmas received a gift.
After getting thousands of boxes of gifts for the troops ready, "How do I get them there?" was the daunting question Young asked herself.

"Them" was more than 6,000 boxes weighing more than 6 pounds each; "there" was more than 1,800 miles from Kirkland to the Junction City KS Family YMCA that serves Fort Riley, KS.
A local gentleman named John Trygg, who owns Konza Construction in Junction City, provided trucks to go to Kirkland to transport the items.
Reportedly, soldiers and several generals unloaded the big rigs in just an hour and 20 minutes. They then loaded the boxes onto pallets, wrapped them and put them on an Air Force cargo plane headed for Iraq.


Making their lives a little easier 

This Post contains stories and links from Randy Cassingham's This is True

The Oregon Humane Society was flooded with calls after the news broke on a Portland's KEX radio: a new state law went into effect April 1 that requires pet dogs, cats and ferrets to wear seatbelts when riding in cars, or the driver will be subject to a $150 fine. No warnings, either: the state had already collected more than $89,000. Then the station put "listeners" on the air to say how they had been caught by the law, including one man who said his Seeing Eye dog "was taken into custody" for not being belted in. "You'd think people would realize it's April Fools when we said a blind person was driving a car," said host Dave Anderson, but the Humane Society reported that one of the calls was from the local sheriff's office, who wanted to know if the report was true. "There are a lot of people very upset and angry," said co-host Mark Mason.
From the Portland Oregonian

Official U.S. Time. You can see what the time is in any U.S. time zone, and there's more: there are Time Exhibits, which outline the "history of time" and humanity's attempts to measure it more and more accurately. And, of course, the history of Daylight Saving Time [While you're there, check out WebExhibits.]
Also, NIST's "Time Exhibits" links to Britannica.com, the University of Wisconsin's Why Files, and the Smithsonian

Head on over to the Wacky Warning Labels site. You'll see a real label on a 5" fishing hook with three huge barbs that warns, "Harmful if swallowed", and a drain cleaner which warns: "If you do not understand, or cannot read, all directions, cautions and warnings, do not use this product." But this site has a serious intent: prooduced by Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, it also helps bring attention to the idiocy generated by the persistent threat of lawsuits: the ridiculous warnings dictated by attorneys trying to shield clients from frivolous lawsuits.


Harmful if swallowed - D'oh! 

While on routine patrol, Lt. Brent Rumfelt of the McDowell County (N.C.) Sheriff's Office stopped a vehicle. When the driver asked why he had been stopped, Rumfelt told him, "Because you're driving my car." The white Honda, normally driven by Rumfelt's sister, had been stolen earlier in the week. The driver and passenger were arrested. Rumfelt said the car was in "good condition".
From the McDowell News

Note: An Honorary Unsubscribe refers to the report of a notable figure whose death, for some reason, went virtually unnoticed. Here are two.

Julia Compton Moore
The wife of an Army colonel during the Vietnam era, Moore was appalled by the way the military notified families of soldiers' deaths: by sending a telegram to the family via taxi. She demanded of the base commander a list of families who would get telegrams, and followed the taxi around so no one would be alone when they got a notice. Her successful campaign to change the notification method was chronicled in a 2002 movie "We Were Soldiers", based on a book {and here} she wrote with her husband. She died April 18 from cancer. She was 75.
From the 7th Cavalry (Airborne) Forum:
Born at Fort Sill, Oklahoma on February 10th 1929, Julia ("Julie") Compton Moore was the only child of Army Colonel Louis J. Compton and Elizabeth Boon Compton ... Her early and lifelong experience with separation and the risk of loss in war provided her a unique empathy with, and understanding of, the lives of families in war.
In 2002, Mrs. Moore wrote:

I was a stay-at-home Mom, volunteering with the Red Cross and Army Community Service. My main love and focus has always been the Army family and especially our Child Care Centers. Not very exciting when I write it down but I have loved every minute (well maybe not every minute, like when the dog throws up on your carpet just as the doorbell rings with the General arriving for dinner, or a child falls out of the tree and breaks his arm minutes before you are due at a reception in your honor, or the movers lose all the trousers to your husbands uniforms etc. etc.) and wouldn't trade with the wife of any other profession.

In lieu of flowers, donations should be sent to the Ia Drang Scholarship Fund, 302 N. Main Street, Copperas Cove, Texas 76522.
This Viet Nam veteran has a tear in his eye .

Richard Lynn Varco
On Sept. 2, 1952, Dr. Varco's team, led by Dr. C. Walton Lillehei (and here) and Dr. F. John Lewis,performed the first successful operation on a beating human heart, saving a 5-year-old girl who had been born with a heart murmur.
In 1954, Dr. Varco took part in the first cross-circulation heart operation: in a single circulating system, a heart-lung machine did the work of the patient's heart while a living donor supplied blood.
Dr. Varco was an innovator throughout his career. He performed the university's first organ transplant in 1963 and was a co-founder of its bioengineering department. With Dr. Buchwald, he created the first implantable drug-infusion pump, a predecessor of a device that is used today to deliver insulin to diabetics and pain medication to the spinal cord.
He died May 3 at a hospital near his home in Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia. He was 91.
© 2004 This is True,
reprinted with permission.

Things to do with Vaseline while hanging out in a Motel room
Binghamton, N.Y. Roger Chamberlain may have thought he managed to slide by police when he switched motels.
But when he was allegedly found a short while later glimmering from head to toe in petroleum jelly, authorities believed they had their man.
Chamberlain, 44, of McLean, Va., is accused of coating nearly every available surface in his room at the Motel 6 near Binghamton with the unctuous substance.
Then, after checking out, a cleaning crew discovered the gooey mess -- one that included mattresses, bedding, a television set, furniture, carpeting and towels all slathered with petroleum jelly.
Damage to the room and its contents was estimated at more than $1,000, and once police arrived, they found 14 empty petroleum jelly containers ...
A short time later, a sheriff's deputy found Chamberlain in a room at another motel, his body smeared entirely in the greasy stuff, authorities said.
Chamberlain was charged May 9 with felony criminal mischief and ordered held in Broome County Jail. He was released May 11, Corrections Officer Anthony Rando said.
Meanwhile, back at the Motel 6, the manager said Chamberlain's old room remains unusable.
An attempt to reach Chamberlain in Virginia was not immediately successful"
I'm sure he was taking a long, long shower


Does this look like a deadly weapon to you? 

Links from Spartacus Educational

Install ShockWave Player {while you're there, install Flash Player}, and check out Doctor over Time

Created by The Nemours Foundation's Center for Children's Health Media, the award-winning KidsHealth provides families with accurate, up-to-date, and jargon-free health information they can use. KidsHealth has been on the Web since 1995.

Stalk the Mysterious Microbe.

Learn a language, learn about language and culture at Parlo.com

Google has released its own official blog promising "insight into the news, technology and culture of Google" and "the latest word direct from the Googleplex about new technology, hot issues, and the wide world of search."

Google's got groups

From Search Engine Lowdown: Microsoft plans to unveil its own Internet search technology this year after seeing what MSN director Lisa Gurry termed the 'amazing' consumer demand and the moneymaking potential."
And I thought they were going to do it because they liked us.

This afternoon's posts are from Refdesk.com. Subscribe here

The Electronic Embassy Web site will turn nine years old on May 1, 2004. When the site was launched, only two of Washington's foreign embassies were on the Web. Now, most of the embassies have homes on the Internet to complement their addresses on Embassy Row.

FirstGov.gov is the U.S. Government's Official Web Portal. It's the official U.S. gateway to all government information. On FirstGov.gov, you can search more than 186 million web pages from federal and state governments, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.
Special Tip: To use Google to search for government information, go to http://www.google.com/unclesam.

Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories provides the opportunity to listen to former slaves describe their lives. These interviews, conducted between 1932 and 1975, capture the recollections of twenty-three identifiable people born between 1823 and the early 1860s and known to have been former slaves. Several of the people interviewed were centenarians, the oldest being 130 (!) at the time of the interview.
There are more recollections of all kinds at the Library of Congress' American Memory web page.

A Title VI-funded project, the Portal to Asian Internet Resources (PAIR) offers scholars, students and the interested public more than six thousand professionally selected, cataloged and annotated online resources.

Geographical area covered by Portal to Asian Internet Resources (PAIR) 

Here's something interesting: The OneLook Reverse Dictionary
OneLook's reverse dictionary lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word. Just type it into the box above and hit the 'Find words' button.
Cool

Ex-Bush spokesman wins $50K on 'Jeopardy!': "Answering questions on 'Jeopardy!' was nothing compared to the daily grillings Ari Fleischer got as White House press secretary. 'The questions were a whole lot easier, and the rewards for answering correctly were a whole lot better,' Fleischer said about his game-show appearance, which was televised last night. Fleischer, who resigned last year as President Bush's chief spokesman, won $50,000 playing for the March of Dimes charity as part of the show's 'Power Players Week.' He competed against cable news personalities Ashleigh Banfield and Aaron Brown."
And you thought he was just another pretty face.

Now that's a mensch! 

PREMIERE celebrates the most memorable movie characters and talks to some of the actors who brought them to life.
There are plenty of things we go to the movies for: spectacle, an escape from our workaday lives, a portal into a different world, a laugh, an artistic epiphany. And then there are the people ... The people in the movies, conjured by an actor speaking a writer's words, guided by a director, locked onto celluloid by a cinematographer, projected onto the screen by a beam of light ...
Here are The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
Enjoy!

Some Cool Stuff I Almost Understand
"Oak Ridge National Laboratory's High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR), one of the world's most powerful research reactors, is marking a milestone this month -- its 400th fuel cycle since it began operation in 1966.
A fuel cycle represents the time -- about 25 days -- it takes for the reactor's uranium fuel to become depleted. During operation, HFIR uses the nuclear fission process to produce the world's most intense neutron beams for materials research and isotope production."


Basic Nuclear Fission 

Justice Department To Investigate 1955 Emmett Till Murder
The Department of Justice and the Mississippi District Attorney's office for the 4th District today announced the opening of an investigation into the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year old African-American Chicago resident who was kidnaped and murdered in August 1955 while visiting family in Money, Mississippi.
"The Emmett Till case stands at the heart of the American civil rights movement," said R. Alexander Acosta, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. "This brutal murder and grotesque miscarriage of justice outraged a nation and helped galvanize support for the modern American civil rights movement. We owe it to Emmett Till, and we owe it to ourselves, to see whether after all these years, some additional measure of justice remains possible."
And check out Heroism.org

FAA Headquarters Buildings Named After Wright Brothers
Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, following legislation signed into law by President George W. Bush on Friday, April 30, today announced that the two downtown office buildings that house the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will be named after the inventors of powered, sustained, controlled flight, Orville and Wilbur Wright [see also here and here]."

It's Time For Uncle Url!

Does this look familiar? I hope not.

For you word buffs, trivia nuts, and Scrabble pros, here's a list of Old Fashioned Names for Real Diseases.

I'm sure we've all felt like this, at some time or another.

Want to tour a Pyramid?

Here is a bunch of Text Messaging Shortcuts

Go download Flash, if you haven't already, and check this out.

Do you say "pop" or "soda". If you live in the USA, here's what everybody else says.

If you have any idea what this means, please let me know.

The Interactive $50 bill

and the Interactive $20 bill

While you're at it, check out the the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing's (BEP) web site.

Try Word Association. I'm not exactly sure what's going on, but when the "computer 'passes'", I yell, "I won!"

Animated engines. Cool

Signs of life. Really

From the University of New Mexico Daily Lobo: "Students are hot under the collar over what they see as a cold misrepresentation of Latinas.Tecate advertisements placed on billboards throughout Albuquerque feature a slanted Tecate bottle with the words, 'Finally, a cold Latina,' written across them."

This billboard in Albuquerque sparked protest from Robert F. Kennedy charter school students and the campus organization El Centro de la Raza. My wife, herself a hot (Puerto Rican) Latina, was not amused.