Kids - Deo Gratias for Father Solanus Casey

One of my greatest heroes is Father Solanus Casey. I was four years old when he died on July 31, 1957 at the age of 86. What inspires me most about Father Solanus was his simple but powerful faith and belief in the goodness of God. Father Solanus described atheists or anyone who doubted the existence of a higher power as “spiritually insane”. Carved around his grave are the words “Blessed Be God In All His Designs.” He is in the process of becoming a saint but probably not in my lifetime.



Solanus could never become a Catholic priest today. He would be deemed intellectually and academically unqualified and a failure by most standards. Having spent ten years studying to become a priest he barely completed and performed so poorly his superiors made him a “simplex” or mass priest. Considered intellectually deficient he was barred and prevented from hearing confessions, instruct classes in religion, or deliver doctrinal sermons. He became a sacristan who basically took care of the church linens, usually a role for a lay person and something of a put down for a priest. After several years of being a sacristan he received a big promotion to doorkeeper. It seemed he had a whole lot of time on his hands and he used it to strengthen his relationship with God.

To make a long story short he personally knew God. Perhaps as many as 1,000,000+ people have asked Solanus to talk to God on their behalf. Me included. Maybe a quarter of a million people met and spoke with Solanus during his lifetime. Solanus never worked a miracle. He asked God and people to perform miracles. Other times he would tell people not to expect any miracle such as my grandmother Pearl Paultanis.

When Solanus grew old the Capuchins tried to shield him from people seeking his prayers by retiring and transferring him to Huntington, Indiana. My grandmother Paultanis developed diabetes resulting in blindness. My Uncle Vince drove my grandmother from Detroit to see Solanus. Even though in retirement, he met with her immediately. My impression is that my grandmother was friends with Solanus. Solanus told her the blindness was God’s will and accept the blindness which she did with great solace.

He is associated with thousands of miracles, most undocumented and untold. I was once speaking with one of my physicians about Solanus. He told me when he was a little boy he had a terrible ear ache problem which the doctors could not cure. In desperation his mother took him to St. Bonaventure’s to meet Father Solanus. Solanus blessed his ear and the pain ceased. The doctored looked at me in amazement and said, “Now that I think about it, I have never ever had an ear ache in my life since that blessing.”



For the first time in years we have missed the Father Solanus Anniversary of this Death mass held at St. Bonaventure in Detroit now that we are in Houston. But Solanus is always in our hearts and minds wherever we are.

Father Solanus Guild

[Photo of Solanus tomb by Ottenbreit, Solanus portrait by Solanus.org]

Kids - Because of Winn Dixie

Summer reading requirement for entering Anthony’s new grade at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton is “Because of Winn Dixie” by Kate DiCamillo. I saw Anthony reading it at the end of the last school year and he claimed to have read it after we recently checked a copy out of the local public library. In Texas we are on Central Standard Time. I didn’t see Anthony read it this summer but he is on Vampire Standard Time and stays up sometimes until 4 am so he may have read it

I just finished reading it and gave him a pop quiz to make sure he remembered the main characters, plot and incidents and he did very well. I also rented the movie from Blockbuster. Anthony and I watched it today. The movie screen play took artistic liberty with many scenes created from thin air. Something of a modern version of Pollyanna.

For some reason it triggered a memory of an incident when I was in the 7th grade. I had to do an oral book report and I had chosen a book called “The Wooden Horse” by Eric Williams. It was a true World War II story about British aviators set in the German Stalag Luft III POW camp who used a exercise work horse to conceal their tunnel digging to escape the camp. Three officers escaped the camp and found freedom in neutral Sweden.


I received an “A” on my oral book report but never read the book. The Sunday night before the oral book report was due the 1950 movie “The Wooden Horse” was on television so I watched the movie. Boys prefer to watch and visualize three dimensional things rather than read which is why video games are so popular.

I wish I had the Internet when I was young and below is a great World War II blog that notes this escape and a host of weaponry.

Wooden Horse

[Image credit of Winn Dixie to franklincollege.edu and Wooden Horse to anonymous-generaltopic.blogspot]

Biz - Standard Oil saved the Sperm Whales?

I’ve been very slowly reading “The Prize” by Daniel Yergin which chronicles the development of oil. In the 19th century, lighting was provided by whale oil and not petroleum. There was no electricity at this point. Sperm Whales were being hunted to extinction.



Specifically, “Abraham Gesner saved more whales than Green Peace ever will. In 1849, Gesner devised a method to distill kerosene from petroleum. In 1846 there were 735 ships in the whaling fleet. Thirty years later, in 1876, the fleet was down to 39 ships. Kerosene had taken over the whale oil market.” (See the link below.)

Abraham Gesner

But kerosene was far more dangerous than whale oil. It was prone to be as explosive as gunpowder and was responsible for many injuries and fires. John D. Rockefeller addressed this problem by developing a standardized from of kerosene that was safe and reliable. Hence, the name “Standard” Oil. Consumers knew it was safe. Rockefeller made a fortune on kerosene. That pesky by-product, gasoline was discarded or sold as a lubricant.

Rockefeller developed the refining and distribution systems both domestically and internationally. He was so efficient and ruthless he created a monopoly which was eventually broken up by the United States Government.

Thomas Edison developed electricity that replaced kerosene for lighting but Henry Ford mass produced automobiles that began an insatiable thirst for gasoline.

[Picture credit to itsnature.org]

Kids - Bonnie's Sargassum Mess

Today was the second week we visited the Galveston Island State Park. Last Friday we visited the historic Strand distinct in Houston before we went swimming at the State Park. Unknown to us, almost all the structures and the sand dunes at Galveston Island State Park were destroyed by Hurricane Ike in 2008.

We were well aware of the damage caused by Ike when we visited Houston in January 2009. We drove through the Crystal Beach area east of Galveston when we visited Houston during Christmas Vacation 2008 and saw the incredible devastation.

Last Friday when we visited the beach I was amazed how clean the beach and water were even though the water color was a sandy brown. There are several geological reasons for this . Part of this brown color is runoff from the Mississippi River carried by strong Gulf currents plus nearby rivers. The Galveston area is very shallow water and the wave action churns up sand and sediment. Apparently, shallow water in the Galveston area has been brownish for several thousand years. Once you go out several hundred yards into deeper water, the water color is as blue as Florida or California.

This Friday was totally different and disappointing. The brewing tropical storm “Bonnie” seemed to blow in brown Sargassum seaweed from the open ocean. It was everywhere on the beach and in the water. The waves were much larger than the week before but with the seaweed in the water it wasn’t the same as the prior week.

Below are comparison photos of the beach looking eastward from last Friday and today.


Last week, ever so clean.


This week, so much seaweed.

Even still, the boys managed to have fun digging in the sand which they enjoy most of all and playing on rafts in rough water. Notice the level of wave action from the two different weeks.


Last week.


This week.

Kids - First Moon Landing 41th Anniversary

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." – John F. Kennedy in 1961

I was a teenager on July 20, 1969 when the Eagle lunar module from Apollo 11 touched down on the Sea of Tranquility on the lunar surface. It seemed there was nothing we could not accomplish. The spinoff of technology from the space program was enormous whose benefits we enjoy today.



[Credit video post to NASAexplorer]

Kids - We are blind in a sea of light

Steven asked me why there are rainbows around water. I told him it was a natural phenomena that displays the visible spectrum of light.

In high school my physics professor would tell us “We are Blind in a Sea of Light” when beginning to discuss electromagnetic radiation (light). We can only visually see a very small portion of light that exists in the Universe. We cannot see television, radio, cell phone, or internet signals all around us yet we are aware of their existence because we use devices which depend upon this light for information.

In the video below, visible light is represented by only 1 inch on an electromagnetic scale of over 2,000 miles.



The video below is a song about the electromagnetic spectrum which can be used to torture children. Actually an informative video from the Physics is Fun channel on You Tube. Given their singing they should not quit their day jobs. There are numerous physics experiments on the Physics is Fun channel.



[Credit to sparkleystitch for the scale video and “The Electromagnetic Spectrum Song” by Emerson & Wong Yann (Singapore) posted by phyisfun]

Kids – Schlitterbahn Water Park

Last week we visited Galveston and went to the Schlitterbahn Water Park. We’ve been to a lot of water parks.

In Houston we visited Splash Town in June before the public school finished as it was not so crowded. I refer to it as Cash Town because we laid out a lot of cash for little value. The boys are not too keen on water slides and prefer waves and sand. The wave pool wasn’t always working and no one was allowed in the deep portion of the pool. At Cash Town it seems you have to pay for everything.

Schlitterbahn had more bang for the buck, was cleaner and they didn’t nickel and dime you to death like Splash (Cash) Town. The wave pool was not too good but they had the best lazy river we have ever seen. In addition, they had a rapids river which was very cool. Steven was a little under the weather but we still managed to go down a few slides.


Anthony down a slide.


My niece Laura down a slide.


Dad down a slide.

Kids - Gun Myths

My sons do a lot of things revolving around guns via video games, YouTube videos or play guns. They have numerous Nerf guns including but not limited to the Nerf N-Strike Vulcan EBF-25 Blaster. They also have numerous low velocity air guns for use only in the garage shooting range.



Steven and Anthony in the garage shooting range.

They are taught to respect and always be careful with guns. They are taught in real life there are no reset buttons when someone is killed. They are taught what they see in movies is make believe.

The humor site Cracked.com recently had an article on ridiculous gun myths from Hollywood.

For example, a M4 Carbine holds 30 bullets in its magazine. Some fully automatic weapons fire 700 round per minute so it doesn’t take long to empty the magazine. In the movies, it seems as if there are infinite bullets in the magazines. Watch how fast the magazine empties.



Below is video of an AK-47 with a 75 round magazine.



In video games and in movies you can fire forever but in real life there are limits to how often you can fire a weapon.

[Credit to video posts of Killerofdoom1012 and 1964hmc]

Kids - The Detroit Symphony Orchestra

In 2008 we attended the July 4th Detroit Symphony Orchestra outdoor performance of Salute to America at Greenfield Village. The photo below was taken before the performance showing boys being boys. We have work to do in the fine arts culture department.



Steven and Anthony

It featured real cannons firing during the playing of Tchaikovsky’s Overture of 1812. Below is video footage of the actual performance.



Better footage of the Overture of 1812.



[Credit Greenfield Village to Nrutas74 and VovaDanilov]

Kids - "Ich bin ein Berliner"

We attached the movie “The Lives of Others” produced in Germany which won an academy award for best foreign language film in 2006. It was a political thriller and human drama.

The setting is just before the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent unification of East and West Germany. It showed the oppression of communism and various tactics used by the East German State Secret Police or Stasi to monitor the population via informants, wire tapping homes, intimidation and control of the media and arts.

I explained to my sons about the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. How the economic and social conditions were so poor under communism/socialism that communist leaders sealed off the free part of Berlin in August 1961 to prevent people fleeing communism. They built a wall and barbed wire fencing and shot anyone trying to escape to the West.

“I am a Berliner” was one of John F. Kennedy’s greatest speeches in 1963.



I had thought I would never see the Berlin Wall fall in my lifetime until Ronald Reagan become president.



[Credit video post by thehistoricalarchieve for JFK and forguigon or RR]

TX-MI Universities of Michigan & Texas, A Whale of a Connection

The other weekend we visited the Texas Natural Science Center at the University of Texas in Austin. In Michigan, we would often visit the Exhibit Museum of Natural History at the University of Michigan usually after visiting the Ann Arbor Hands on Science Museum.

In the late 1990’s we made a modest contribution to Dr. Philip D. Gingerich’s whale evolution exhibit at the University of Michigan. We were surprised to see a whale evolution exhibit based upon on Dr. Gingerich’s work at the University of Texas.

Dr. Gingerich’s Website

There is also a flying dinosaur connection. In the Great Hall at the Texas Natural Science is the largest animal to ever fly, the Texas Ptersaur with a wing span of about forty feet discovered in West Texas in 1971. A few months after Steven was born we made a modest contribution to the Exhibit Museum for its Pterodactyl exhibit in 1998. Below is Steven’s certificate of appreciation.



Unfortunately, we didn’t see any Mastodon’s at the University of Texas Natural Science Center. Below is Anthony’s certificate of appreciation for the modest contributions we made for the Exhibit Museum Mastodon exhibit.

Kids - Gettysburg Address

Gettysburg Address

All school children should be required to memorize this greatest speech of all time.

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as spoken by Jeff Daniels:



[Credit video posted by SkylineProductions]

Kids - Pickett's Charge, The March to Mortality

“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Luke 23:46

General Lewis “Lo” Armistead understood on July 4,1863, this would be his last charge. He knew there was little chance of survival marching more than a mile over an open field against the Union in a defensive position behind a stone wall. Below is a picture of Anthony and Steven at the tree line before we walked retraced General Armistead’s march over the field to the stone wall at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania.



Below is a video of Pickett’s division prior to their march from the movie “Gettysburg”. The Army of Northern Virginia would never fully recover from the slaughter of Pickett’s Charge suffering 50% casualties and devastating the officer corps. General Armistead’s best friend, Winfield Hancock was commanding the Union forces on the other side of the field.



This is the ending sequence of the march. The gentleman who yells “Let’s go Boys!” after General Armistead sticks his saber through his hat was Ted Turner in a cameo role who financed the production of “Gettysburg”.



We found the marker at the stone wall where General Armistead was mortally wounded, who died two days later in a Union field hospital. He was eventually buried in Maryland, next to his uncle George Armistead, the commander of the garrison at Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore (War of 1812 against the British) which inspired the Star Spangled Banner.

The actor who portrayed General Armistead, Richard Jordon, died of a brain tumor before in the movie Gettysburg was released.

[Credit to Turner Pictures, “Gettysburg” and the video posts from madhess1 and rob9641]

Boys The Colonel Who Saved the United States

Some American Civil War historians credit Colonel Joshua Chamberlain who led the 20th of Maine in the battle for Little Round Top on July 2, 1963, as saving the United States from defeat at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.


(Steven, Mom, Dad, Anthony)

General Robert E. Lee invaded the North with the intention of destroying the Army of the Potomac, possibly seizing Washington D.C. and ending the Civil War firmly establishing the Confederate States of America as a sovereign country.

The 20th of Maine rushed up Little Round Top on the afternoon of July 2nd to protect the extreme left of the Union lines and were given orders to hold the hill at all costs. Failure to do so would have resulted in the Confederates attacking Union lines from the rear. Given the prior battle performance experiences of the North this could have resulted complete panic and defeat for the Union at Gettysburg.

The 20th of Main held the hill after numerous charges from the 15th Alabama but ran out of ammunition. Colonel Chamberlain knew he could not withdraw or the whole Union line would collapse. He was a professor of Grammar from Bowdoin College and ordered a text-book bayonet charge flanking maneuver with his left wing to swing down as a closing door on the Rebels. This maneuver took the Rebels completely by surprise who broke and ran thus protecting the Union lines.

Below is a scene from the movie “Gettysburg” of the charge.




[Credit video post from madhess1]

Biz - The Dow Jones Industrial Average

The other day I attended a presentation by Dan Sanders who is the CEO of Executive Wealth Management on general economic conditions. Mr. Sander had very insightful comments.

How do you explain the Dow Jones Industrial Average to ten and twelve year olds?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is a general psychological statistical indicator of wealth in the United States. It’s a tracking scorecard of the of what people believe will be the future monetary value of thirty prominent companies. Some of these prominent companies include Walt Disney, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola and Caterpillar. The Dow Jones Industrial Average measures their wealth by the daily common stock price value of these companies which trade every business day in the stock markets. When you hear people talk about the stock market they are usually referring to the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Common stock is where a person owns a financial interest in a company similar to owning a video game. For example, you can trade your ownership or your financial interest in a video game at GameStop by buying or selling a particular game. The market demand for a video game will determine how much money you pay or receive. Notice how the newest and innovative games are much more expensive as people are willing to pay more for these games rather than for older games where people don’t see much playing value. Game values are always changing depending how people perceive the value of the game.

You may hear people talk about bulls and bears. A person who is a bull or bullish believes stock prices will rise. A person who is a bear or bearish believes stock prices will fall. The stock market goes through cycles. When prices rise it is called a bull market. When prices decline it is called a bear market. Below is a graph showing the value of the Dow from 1900 through 2004 similar to the one presented by Dan Sanders. The red indicates bear market conditions and the green indicates a bull market. Notice how the price value increases and remember our discussions on money supply growth.



Dad believes the policies, vision and optimism of Ronald Reagan led to the greatest bull market sometimes referred to as the Reagan Bull market from 1982 until 2000 when stock values increased 1,214%. This period saw the greatest economic, technological and productivity expansion in human history. It was achieved by limiting government, cutting taxes, and allowing individuals freedom to create. This period taught us there is no limit to what we can achieve.

Below is a short video clip of President Reagan who is not often spoken about in your classes talking about government..





[Credit on graph to http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2005/12/100-year-dow-jones-industrials-chart/, video post by ThePoliticalEagle]