Timmons Scattershoots From the Hip

Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Dan . . . 

IN JUST five days it’ll be another Memorial Day, a day that goes all the way back to our country’s Civil War — or as they like to call it down south, the war of northern aggression. Three years after the war officially ended, John Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic proclaimed the holiday Decoration Day to honor Union soldiers killed in battle, But it was a southern belle, a Mary Ann Williams of Georgia, who came up with the idea of decorating the graves of all Civil War veterans with flowers.

Just about a hundred years later, Congress turned it into an official holiday. If you think about it, the U.S. was involved in almost a dozen armed conflicts since the Civil War ended and 1968. So changing it from a holiday to honor Civil War vets to one that honors all vets who had fallen in the service of their country made sense. 

Sadly.

I hope you will join the thousands and thousands across this great land Monday and pay respects to those who so very dearly deserve it.

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IS IT JUST me or does it seem like there’s been an increase in earthquakes of late? Particularly around Yellowstone’s giant volcano? How about sightings of UFOs? (Hey, I’m an old newspaper guy — I LOVE these kinds of stories.) I have a pal who is a scientist and so I figured he’d not only know the answer but since he doesn’t work for the government (or any entity that owns black helicopters), he’d shoot me straight.

He did.

The answer to both is no.

He also pointed out that we have much better detection methods for earthquakes so we know when even little tiny ones happen now. And he pointed out that there are drones everywhere and that has accounted for an increase in UFO (I refuse to call them UAPs) sightings.

Then he sighed and hung up.

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YES, I AM not nearly as big a fan of our president as I once was. The grade-school name calling and the egomania on display aside, I do not believe he is doing a good job on so many fronts. To be fair though, this doesn’t mean I’m trading in the red sweatshirt for a blue one. I’ve always worn that has a third color in it, white.

I’m just so stinking tired of politics and if you are a Republican, all Democrats are idiots. And if you are a Democrat, all Republicans are fascists. Could we just stop? I won’t get off this soapbox until we have political parties that start looking for and finding common ground. That, my dear friends, is where the best answers are.

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SPEAKING OF Mr. Trump, anyone else unimpressed with his last visit to China? Hate to say this but he looked like the second fiddle to China’s president, Xi Jinping. Trump performed much better on his first visit in 2012. This time was likely the worst visit of any of the eight U.S. presidents who have gone there — except Barack Obama’s disasters. The best? I would argue Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton. Nixon opened the door by being the first sitting U.S. president to go way back in 1972. And Clinton went in ’98 and very correctly called spoke about the awful legacy of Tiananmen Square. That took some courage.

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WONDERING WHO Dan is? Why it’s Daniel Hale David, who we all know much better as TV’s Dan Rowan. He was half of Rowan & Martin’s hit TV show Laugh-In. Most Boomers will well remember Rowan as the straight man to funnyman Dick Martin. And they’ll remember Laugh-In — a name that seemed to fit the times with sit-ins and all sorts of 1960s protests. Laugh-In ran from 1968 to 1973. Rowan passed away at the age of 65 from lymphoma. Oh, want to know something else that’s kind of neat? He was born on a carnival train as it passed through Oklahoma. He toured with his parents who had a song-and-dance routine as he grew up.

Two cents, which is about how much Timmons said his columns are worth, appears periodically on Wednesdays in The Paper. Timmons is the publisher of The Paper and can be contacted at ttimmons@thepaper24-7.com.