June 2004
Horsing Around
One of the most memorable birthday presents of my life was ten horseback
riding lessons when I was ten years old. The local riding stable had a small
Arab stallion…just my size. My instructor was great, so I quickly learned
how to communicate with the horse and even got good at jumping.
Then we moved to New York, where I got interested in amateur radio. That
took over my spare time for the next few years. Between college and four
years in the Navy during WWII, and jobs in radio and television broadcasting,
I didn’t get back on a horse until I was thirty. Then I took lessons and
more lessons. I bought my own Arab and had a wonderful time schooling him.
I have a certificate out in the barn proving I’m a Professor of Horsemanship.
Outside of my usual bragging, so what? If you have any kids please get them
riding lessons. English saddle, by the way. Oh, I’ve ridden Western, even
cut cattle in Texas with a cutting horse. But English is like the sports
car version of riding and Western is the truck. Take riding lessons.
Riding is great exercise and you’re right out there in the middle of gorgeous
scenery on the riding trails. When you travel it’s a great way to see things.
I’ve rented horses all around the country. I’ve even had great vacations
at dude ranches where we went riding all day. What a fantastic way to see
the Pyramids in Egypt! And exercise the king’s Arabs in Jordan. In Sarasota,
Florida the Ringling Brothers stable let me exercise their top show horse,
Starlight Night. That’s an experience I’ll never forget.
We’ve got riding stables all around New Hampshire, so get your whole family
out there for lessons and trail rides. Riding is a skill you’ll never forget
and a thrill that the English language has no word for. But do take lessons,
don’t just sit there bouncing. A horse knows immediately how good a rider
you are and responds appropriately.
I was forty when I moved back to New Hampshire from New York. I soon bought
an Arab colt and had the fun of training him. One nice thing about living
here…it’s not that difficult to keep a horse.
Another Energy Source
There’s another energy source which isn’t being tapped: the oceans. Actually,
there are three oceanic sources of energy which could be tapped, all pollution-free.
One, of course, is the tides, which in some areas rise and fall as much as
ten feet or more a day. Here, with some damming, we’d have water pressure
to turn generators, and without the cries of alarm from ecological groups
worried about fish spawning grounds, or wild life areas being flooded.
Another is the ocean currents, which in some places run at over 25 mph! These
could be used to generate electricity to separate hydrogen, which could then
be used as a non-polluting fuel for almost anything. Well, yes, hydrogen
is difficult to store, and thus expensive. But when it does leak out it doesn’t
poison the water table.
Then there’s the action of the waves, which can move levers up and down (or
vice-versa) to generate electricity.
Since hydrogen is a medium for storing a lot of energy, generating stations
could be set up anywhere in the world and let run, stopping by to pick up
the generated hydrogen every so often. In the more windy areas we could use
windmills—perhaps floating on large rafts in the oceans, out where tropical
storms are generated, or on Antarctica.
Let’s get our imaginations going. Step two will be the most difficult: to
get past the strangle-hold our fossil fuel industries have on the Administration,
Congress and government agencies. And that, of course, is the biggest step.
Clean energy is out there—in the oceans, the winds, geothermal, cold fusion,
and so on. Let me know when you think the Saudi royal family has enough money
so we can change.
Gun Control
I can tell you three things about gun control advocates. (1) They are absolutely
sure they are right. (2) They have done little reading on the subject. (3)
They will flatly refuse to listen to the facts. The fact is that the more
people are allowed to carry concealed guns, the less crime. Fewer armed robberies,
murders, rapes and so on. Far fewer. John Lott has done a thorough job researching
the statistics and he lays them out in his More Guns, Less Crime…225 pages,
University of Chicago Press, ISBN0-226-49363-6, $23, 1998. In every country,
efforts at gun control have resulted in more crime. Would you put a sign
on your front lawn saying, “There Are No Guns In This House?”
Puzzling
The first thing I do when I get on a plane is turn to the crossword puzzle
in the airline magazine. The bigger and more difficult, the better. Jerry
Rockwell, a fan of mine in Santa Rosa CA, sends me bundles of NY Times cross
words and cryptograms. I love it.
Back in the 1930s Womrath’s, then a national chain of bookstores, rented
jig-saw puzzles. The wooden ones, with no picture to help, not today’s stamped-out
cardboard affairs, complete with a picture on the box. My dad would bring
one home every weekend and we’d lay the pieces out on the dining room table
and put a 500-piece puzzle together. A thousand-piece puzzle was a real challenge,
and they even went to 1,500 pieces!
My research work today is much like putting together those jig-saw puzzles
when I was a kid—only finding the pieces of the puzzle is more difficult.
But what satisfaction there is for me when suddenly the pieces fit together.
Wow! Then I can hardly wait to share the picture—through my essays, books,
and radio talk show programs.
If you have any kids, or grand-kids, you’ll help their minds to develop by
bringing home an occasional jig-saw puzzle. And hide that darned picture
on the box.
The wooden puzzles are still available, but now you have to find a company
who makes ’em and send away to buy ’em. Take a look at the website wooden-jigsaws.com
to get started. Makes a nice gift, too.
Another good thing my parents did, back before TV, was to sit down at the
dining room table and play games after dinner. This was great for me. Of
course, in those days, they’d have friends in for dinner and a game afterward.
When’s the last time you had friends over for dinner and a game? Or didya
ever? As an only child I was brought up in the company of adults, so I never
got the hang of dealing with kids, thus I wasn’t influenced much by kid peer
pressure. I learned to play games and discuss things on an adult basis. We
played wonderful games—Liar Dice, Michigan Rummy, Pounce, Russian Bank, Lazy-Eights,
Up and Down the River, Cribbage, Acey-Deucy, Backgammon, Hearts, Gin-Rummy,
Casino and Pitch. I got to be very good at games.
Later, aboard the submarine during WWII, they had Acey-Deucy, Cribbage and
Pinochle tournaments during each patrol run. After winning the Cribbage and
Acey-Deucy tournaments for three patrol runs in a row, I decided to learn
how to play Pinochle—and won that tournament too. That was the end of the
tournaments.
Games are great training for kids, and the earlier the better. It helps their
brains develop and will pay off for them later in life in many ways. Games,
crosswords, cryptograms, all keep our minds growing—unlike passively watching
TV. Most TV, anyway. What a terrible waste of time and minds the soaps, TV
talk shows, and Judge Judy are. They’ll turn your brain to oatmeal almost
as fast as a cell phone.
Researchers confirm that brain activity like playing games and doing crosswords
can help stave off Alzheimer’s. It’s your brain—use it or lose it.
Fair Enough
The NHToDo Team will be having a booth at many of the fairs and events listed
last month. Heck, I might even be there, so make sure to stop by and say
hello. Oh, say hello, too, to Boris…he’s the guy with the old time photo
tent and playing ragtime music. I love the photo he took of me in a sheriff’s
costume. I use it on my business cards, billing myself as a Fighter For Truth!
My card says to ask me about health, Planet-X, the Moon landings, Flight
800, fluoride, dental amalgam, 911, Oklahoma City, jobs, milk, beef, vaccinations,
UFOs, aspartame, cold fusion, college, Social Security, Super-Organic food,
and improving education.
If your group would be interested in hearing about any of those subjects,
I’m available as a guest to speak to any business, fraternal or veteran’s
group. Oh, and I also love to talk about the 44 ways I’ve proposed to Governor
Benson to make New Hampshire a better place to live.