Kids - Why we speak English today, The Battle of Britain

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” -Winston Churchill

Seventy years ago in August 1940, civilization as we know it almost ended. In late August 1940 the British Royal Air force (RAF) was about to collapse from the onslaught from the Nazi Luftwaffe who were attacking their RAF airfields, radar centers, and support installations. The Luftwaffe sought air superiority over England so they could provide air cover for a Germany invasion of England, the last free country in Europe standing against the Nazi war machine. August 30th and 31st were among the worst attacks of the battle.

Below is the trailer for the movie “The Battle of Britain” which shows the RAF air fields being pounded by the Luftwaffe.



Few individuals realize that one in eight of the fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain were Polish. The Polish pilots helped England fight Germany after the collapse of Poland. The Polish fighter pilots had a 6:1 kill ratio against the Nazis compared to 3:1 of the British.



On August 24th, 1940 a German bomber accidently dropped its bomb payload on the city of London. It was an accident and everyone knew it. But Winston Churchill saw an opportunity to goad the Nazis into changing their attack strategy and ordered the RAF to bomb Berlin at night continually after August 24th.

By September 4th, an enraged Adolf Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to focus their attacks on London rather than on attacking RAF installations, a fatal error. This gave the RAF just enough time to recover to continue fighting. The Nazi’s did not realize how close they came to destroying the RAF and England herself.

[Credit to video posts from Soundtrackcollector and Henryvkeiper]

TX-MI Houston and Detroit Zoos

The Detroit Zoo was one of the first in the United States to be cageless designed after the Tierpark Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg Germany. There are few cages in the Detroit Zoo animal exhibits. Anything that may resemble a cage is usually glass enclosed. Even most of the birds fly free in the Matilda Free Flight Avery and penguins swim free in the Penguinarium.

The great exhibits in the Detroit Zoo include the Great Apes of Harambee, Amphibiville, the Holden Museum of Living Reptiles and the River Otter Exhibit. The crown jewel is The Arctic Ring of Life with free swimming polar bears and seals above your head as you walk through an underwater tunnel.



We visited the Houston Zoo last week but noticed they have many cages. We still have a lot to learn about the Houston Zoo and we became members. Important to any zoo visit for the boys is food. Below is feeding time at the zoo for Steven and Anthony eating their core food source: pizza.

[Photo credit of The Arctic Ring of Life to http://blog.mlive.com]

Kids - Blues Brothers on a mission from God

It’s probably been a year since we’ve watched the Blues Brothers starting John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. Hard to believe it’s been thirty years since they first released the movie in 1980.

So many “old” actors made appearances in this film such as John Candy, Carrie Fisher, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Ray Charles, Cab Calloway, Henry Gibson and even Twiggy. My sons didn't recognize any of these actors, even Carrie Fisher who played Princess Leia in Star Wars.

Steve asked me how do I knew all these people. Dad’s been around the block.

One of our favorite scenes below, the mall chase.



[Video post by battaginemon.]

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]

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]

Kids - The American Revolution

It’s that time of the year that we watch our video set of “The American Revolution” produced by the History Channel and A&E Home Video I purchased many years ago. There are six videos in the collection each being approximately fifty minutes in length. The Revolution was an eight year struggle from 1775 through 1783. It was incited by America’s original bloggers, the Sons of Liberty comprised of individuals such as Samuel Adams.

Volume One: The Conflict Ignites
Volume Two: 1776
Volume Three: Washington and Arnold (Kelsey Grammer as Benedict Arnold)
Volume Four: The World At War
Volume Five: England’s Last Chance
Volume Six: Birth of the Republic

Below is a video glimpse of the Series:




[Credit video post from USSRman45]

Kids - Men of Honor

“It’s not a sin to get knocked down. It’s a sin to stay down.” - Carl Brashear

We watched a excellent movie this weekend called “Men of Honor” starring Robert De Niro and Cuba Gooding Jr. inspired by the true story of Master Chief Petty Officer, Carl Brashear who was the first African-American master diver in the United States Navy.

In 1948 President Harry Truman issued an executive order ending the segregation of race in the United States Military in effect rescinding the segregation order of President Woodward Wilson in 1917. Carl Brashear enlisted in the Navy in 1948 but soon learned that racial hatred and bigotry is not easily erased with presidential executive orders. The movie displayed the ugliness of the Jim Crow laws but much more importantly the greatness of the human spirit.

"The Navy Diver is not a fighting man, he is a salvage expert. If it is lost underwater, he finds it. If it's sunk, he brings it up. If it's in the way, he moves it. If he's lucky, he will die young, 200 feet beneath the waves, for that is the closest he'll ever get to being a hero." – Billy Sunday

Below is the video clip of the theatrical trailer for “Men of Honor.”



Part of the movie involved a “Broken Arrow” incident. A “Broken Arrow” is defined as an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that result in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft or loss of the weapon.

On January 17, 1966, a United States Air Force bomber collided midair with a refueling aircraft resulting in thermonuclear hydrogen bomb becoming lost in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain near the town of Palomares. It took eighty days to find and retrieve the bomb at a depth of about 2,800 feet. Thirty three ships and Carl Brashear was very involved in the search and recovery operation.

Below is a link to a website dedicated to Carl Brashear who died in July 2006.
Carl Brashear Site

[Credit to 20th Century Fox and videopost DFKDFK11 ]

Kids - The Sun never sets on our family

At its zenith it was said the sun never sets on the British Empire because the sun was always shinning somewhere on British territory.

In 1821, a Scottish newspaper called the Caledonian Mercury wrote, “On her dominions the sun never sets; before his evening rays leave the sires of Quebec, his morning beams have shone three hours on Port Jackson [Australia] and while sinking from the waters of Lake Superior [Ontario], his eye opens upon the Mouth of the Ganges [India].”



My American grandfather Andrew Haggerty was of Irish ancestry who had a different opinion of the bloody English as he would describe them saying the truth is the sun never sets on the British Empire because God wouldn't trust the British in the dark.

Yet his great grandparents Thyne were English and his wife Rose’s grandparents the McKay’s Scottish. My father’s parents were and Polish and my father told me his great grandfather was part of the Russian Cossacks. On the other side of the world my wife was born and raised in the Philippines and has Spanish heritage in her family. She is American citizen.

So the sun never sets on our family as we have relatives on different sides of the world and the sun is always shinning upon our relatives somewhere in the world.




[credit: video “The Might of the British Empire!! Posted by 97Coats; US/Philippine flag from cia.gov ]

Kids - Follow or Don't Follow Military Orders

Not too long ago, I was watching a Special Victims Unit (NBC) episode titled “Authority” guest starring Robin Williams as an engineer with authority issues. Steven began watching the program and I was explaining to him a famous psychology experiment they referred to in the episode I viewed on film when I was in college. It dawned on me we live in 2010 so I found the experiment on You Tube.

The Milgram experiment examined people willing to perform acts for authority figures in conflict with their conscience. This experiment was in response to the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi war criminal who was a key architect of the Holocaust. The experiment raises issues why people follow orders to commit violent acts such as the murder innocent people.

This led to a discussion of the Prussian General Friedrich Von Steuben who trained the soldiers of the American Revolutionary War in military drill and discipline beginning at Valley Forge. In the History Channel’s series “America, the Story of Us” they described how Von Steuben was impressed that while training German and French soldiers to do something they did it but with the Americans he had to explain why they should do something. The American soldiers were independent thinkers.



Americans are radical people in human history because we have formed a government not based upon the authority of one leader, kings or emperors or dictators such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin or Mao Tse Tung. Our government was formed upon Judeo-Christian values in the belief that our rights come from the Creator. Below is a passage from the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness”

A Nazi solider swore personal allegiance to Adolf Hitler. An American soldier swore allegiance to the United States Constitution which is our system of law of the people, by the people and for the people.

Below is a video clip of the Milgram experiment which is part of a series and quite long but interesting.



[Credits: Von Steuben image www.nps.gov, Milgram experiment video posted by GriefTourist (BBC TV May 2009)]