He is what you would be

 

“Talented and well-practiced in every vice, a stranger to compassion or empathy, a liar and a cheat so complete in perfidy that he has elevated his dishonesty to hold it up as an ersatz moral principle. Violent, so long as he can order someone else to do the dirty work. Grotesque in body, graceless in action, in possession of a wounded self-regard so colossal as to smother any spark of grace. Treasonous, not only to country, but to every ally he has ever had, the poisoned fruit and rankest flower of racism and contempt for women, and utterly devoid of shame for his moral and spiritual bankruptcy. That is your leader. That is to whom you give your money. That is who you follow and laud. That is whose banner you willingly carry. Why? Because he is a mirror, not a lighthouse. You see yourselves in him. He is what you would be, if you had inherited money and could shed the last vestiges of conscience and shame. No, I do not “respect your choices,” nor do I admire your loyalty and dedication to this miserific, demoniac vision. You have demonstrated not only a lack of civic virtue, loyalty to the Republic and to the rule of law, but a willingness to engage in violence and sedition at his slightest expressed wish. And you will never, ever admit you were wrong. Because you see your dark, twisted, resentful dreams in him. And to renounce him is to renounce yourselves.”

~ Advocatus Peregrini

Drawing: "Stable Genius"

by Siegfried Woldhek

pen & ink

October 12, 2019

Voyager 1

 In 1964 Gary Flandro of JPL noted that an alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune would occur in the late 1970s. This alignment happens once every 175 years. A single spacecraft could visit all of the outer planets by using gravity assists. President Nixon gave White House support to the concept in a statement released on March 7, 1970. Budget cuts and funding altered the trajectory of two spacecraft to complete the explorations. 

Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977. It began photographing Jupiter in January 1979 and encountered Saturn in November 1980. Voyager 1's mission included a flyby of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. After leaving Saturn Voyager 1 continued on to intersteller space. She reported scientific data to JPL until November 2023. Now over fifteen billion miles from Earth an evaluation was made and alternate solutions were used to "fix" it five months later. Traveling at about 38,000mph, 17 km/s (11 mi/s), Voyager is still on its way OUT of our solar system. A radio signal takes 22 hours each way. Read how JPL got it to work again:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voyager-1-resumes-sending-engineering-updates-to-earth

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/

Ancestry

 My family has been in Central Virginia for 366 years!

Little Johnny

When I worked in television I met many "stars" and historical figures. I am proud to have met "Little Johnny" in the last few years of his life. 

Johnny Roventini, the diminutive bellboy known by generations for his advertising slogan, “Cal-l-l-l for-r-r Phil-lip Mor-ray-iisss,” - “little Johnny,” 4 feet tall, was a living trademark for Philip Morris cigarettes. I first met him in 1971 at WTVR-TV during the Richmond Tobacco Festival dressed in his signature red usher’s jacket, striped trousers, black pillbox hat and white gloves. He made his famous call more than 1 million times, intoning it officially for the last time in 1974 to open the new Phillip Morris operations center in Richmond, Va. He died in 1998 at the age of 88.

The Tobacco Festival was still a major city event having started in 1948 and continued until 1984.

I also met James Arness, Parade Marshall many times. 

Ironically, I left Richmond to work in the Cigar City.