Each year, millions of eyes from all over the world are focused on the sparkling Waterford Crystal Times Square New Year's Eve Ball. At 11:59 p.m., the Ball begins its descent as millions of voices unite to count down the final seconds of the year, and celebrate the beginning of a new year full of hopes, challenges, changes and dreams.

On November 11th, 2008, The co-organizers of New Year’s Eve in Times Square (Times Square Alliance, Countdown Entertainment) unveiled a new Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball at a press conference at Hudson Scenic Studio in Yonkers, New York.

The new Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball is a 12 foot geodesic sphere, double the size of previous Balls, and weighs 11,875 pounds. Covered in 2,668 Waterford Crystals and powered by 32,256 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDS, the new Ball is capable of creating a palette of more than 16 million vibrant colors and billions of patterns producing a spectacular kaleidoscope effect atop One Times Square.

The organizers also announced that the new Ball will become a year-round attraction above Times Square in full public view January through December.

“For one hundred years, the Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball has attracted millions of revelers to Times Square on December 31st to celebrate the beginning of the New Year” said Jeff Straus, president of Countdown Entertainment and co-organizer of Times Square New Year’s Eve. “The new Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball will be a bright sparkling jewel atop One Times Square entertaining New Yorkers and tourists from around the world not only on December 31, but throughout the year.”

“The New Year’s Eve ball is bigger, better and brighter than ever, just like Times Square itself,” said Times Square Alliance President Tim Tompkins. “And like Times Square, it’s not afraid to show off. That’s why we’re proudly putting it on display year-round so visitors to the neighborhood can enjoy a true Crossroads of the World icon.”

Check out article at Time Square Alliance.

I wish everyone a safe, happy and prosperous 2009!

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AT THE GREENWICH PRIME MERIDIAN, England (AP) -- Just a second, 2009. It's going to take a little longer to say goodbye to the worst economic year since the Great Depression, but all for good cause. The custodians of time will ring in the New Year by tacking a "leap second" onto the clock Wednesday to account for the minute slowing of the Earth's rotation. The leap second has been used sporadically at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich since 1972, an adjustment that has kept Greenwich Mean Time the internationally agreed time standard.

Some scientists now say GMT should be replaced by International Atomic Time - computed outside Paris - because new technologies have allowed atomic time to tick away with down-to-the-nanosecond accuracy.

But opponents say atomic time's very precision poses a problem.

A strict measurement, they say, would change our very notion of time forever, as atomic clocks would one day outpace the familiar cycle of sunrise and sunset.

The time warp wouldn't be noticeable for generations, but within a millennium, noon - the hour associated with the sun's highest point in the sky - would occur around 1 o'clock. In tens of thousands of years, the sun would be days behind the human calendar.

That bothers people like Steve Allen, an analyst at the University of California at Santa Cruz's Lick Observatory.

"I think (our descendants) will curse us less if we choose to keep the clock reading near 12:00 when the sun is highest in the sky," Allen said.

Atomic time advocates argue that leap seconds are onerous because they're unpredictable.

Since the exact speed of the Earth's rotation can't be plotted out in advance, they're added as needed. Sometimes, like this year, they're added on Dec. 31, sometimes they're inserted at the end of June 30.

Those willy-nilly fixes can trip up time-sensitive software, particularly in Asia, where the extra second is added in the middle of the day.

Critics say everything from satellite navigation to power transmission and cellular communication is vulnerable to problems stemming from programs ignoring the extra second or adding it at different times.

Although the time will pass in the blink of an eye, Judah Levine, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., predicts the change will make him a very busy man starting about 5 p.m. Mountain Time. As part of the institute's Time and Frequency Division, he'll be helping to work out the bugs that follow.

"There's always somebody who doesn't get it right," Levine said. "It never fails."

Britons seemed less concerned about the remote prospect of having tea at 3 a.m. than the notion of leaving a France-based body in control of the world's time.

"I think there's some kind of historical pride we might feel in Britain about Greenwich being the point around which time is measured," 50-year-old telecoms executive Stephen Mallinson said as he waited to board a Eurostar train for Paris at London's St. Pancras Station.

"But in practice, does it make a difference? No."

At the Royal Observatory, 53-year-old homemaker Susie Holt was adjusting her wristwatch to match the digital display above the meridian. She said it would be a pity if GMT were made obsolete. Her daughter, 15-year-old Kirsty, was more forthright.

"We don't want the French to control time," she said. "They might get it wrong or something."

Meanwhile, Elisa Felicitas Arias, a scientist at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, which computes atomic time at a facility outside Paris, has been busy lobbying to scrap the leap seconds that have given the 17th century Royal Observatory pride of place.

"GMT is out of date," she sniffed.

She said she has been garnering considerable support, with the International Telecommunications Union - the arbiter of international time standards - considering a vote on a switch as early as next year, with a 2018 target to implement it.

The U.S., France, Germany, Italy, and Japan were all on board, she said.

But David Rooney, the Royal Observatory's curator of time, defended leap seconds, saying they give everyone "the best of both worlds."

The arrangement, he said, allows satellites, physicists, and high-frequency traders to benefit from the accuracy of atomic time while keeping our clocks consistent with the position of the sun in the sky - and with GMT.

The American Astronomical Society is officially neutral on the proposal to switch to atomic time, which is calculated based on readings from more than 200 atomic clocks maintained across the world.

Perhaps predictably, Britain's Royal Astronomical Society has come out in favor of conserving leap seconds. While spokesman Robert Massey said star-watchers could cope no matter what happened, he urged caution on such an important change.

"It's not just a matter for the telecommunications industry to tell everybody to get rid of the leap second," Massey said. "It would be a big cultural change at the very least. Abandoning the connection between time and solar time is really a big shift."

Check out article at The Advocate.

I'm on the fence on this one... scientific accuracy is important, but I kinda like that time matches solar time. Guess we'll have to see how this argument plays out over the next few years.

Anyway... Please everyone remember to be safe and responsible tonight... and enjoy the celebrations!

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Christmas has had a long and varied history. It was been celebrated for centuries by different people, at different times, in different places, and in many different ways. Here you will find links to information about the different ways that the holiday we know as Christmas has been celebrated, or not celebrated, over the years.

Check out The Real Story of Christmas at History.com.

Regardless of the very interesting origins and history behind it, Christmas is a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. While we're enjoying all of our gifts and traditions, let us not forget the real reason for the season!

Merry Christmas!

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Who says Santa Claus doesn't exist?

The military personnel charged with being the eyes in the sky are certainly acting like he does — and they've been joined on the Internet by millions of believers.

Even doubters have reason to pause when they hear the North American Aerospace Defense Command — or NORAD, which monitors air and space threats against the U.S. and Canada — is in charge of the annual Christmas mission to keep children informed of Santa's worldwide journey to their homes.

"They challenge it, but only to a point," said Senior Master Sgt. Sharon Ryder-Platts, 49, who for five years has been a Santa tracker, taking calls from those wanting to know the location of jolly old St. Nick.

According to NORAD, Santa began his latest flight early Wednesday at the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean. Historically, Santa visits the South Pacific first, then New Zealand and Australia. NORAD points out that only Santa knows his route.

Last year, NORAD's Santa tracking center answered 94,000 calls and responded to 10,000 e-mails. About 10.6 million visitors went to the Web site, which can be viewed in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese and Chinese.

NORAD's holiday tradition can by traced to 1955, when a Colorado Springs newspaper printed a Sears, Roebuck & Co. ad telling children of a phone number to talk to Santa. The number was one digit off, and the first child to get through reached the Continental Air Defense Command, NORAD's predecessor.

Col. Harry W. Shoup answered.

Shoup's daughter, Terri Van Keuren, said her dad, now 91, was surprised to hear that the little voice on the other end thought he was Santa.

"Dad thought, `What the heck? This must be some kind of code,"' said Van Keuren, 59.

Shoup, described by his daughter as "just a nut about Christmas," didn't want to break the boy's heart, so he sounded a booming "Ho, ho, ho!" and pretended to be Santa Claus.

Enough calls followed that Shoup assigned an officer to answer them while the problem was fixed. But Shoup and the staff he was directing to "locate" Santa on radar ended up embracing the idea. NORAD picked up the tradition when it was formed 50 years ago.

"If we didn't do it, truly I don't know who else would track Santa," Maj. Stacia Reddish said.

The task that began with no computers and only a 60-by-80-foot glass map of North America now includes two big screens on a wall showing the world and information on each country Santa Claus visits. It took off with the Web site's 1997 launch, Reddish said.

Now, curious youngsters can follow Santa's path online with a Google two-dimensional map or in 3D using Google Earth, where he can be seen flying through different landscapes in his sleigh.

NORAD officials are hesitant to list all the potential sites Santa will visit with certainty.

"Historically, Santa has loved the Great Wall of China. He loves the (Space) Needle in Seattle. He of course loves the Eiffel Tower," Reddish said. "But his path is completely unpredictable, so we won't know."

Check out the article at Fox News.

This is a great service that NORAD is providing... the kids love to track Santa! Besides, with NORAD keeping watch over the skies, we can hopefully avoid any unwanted accidents... I'm sure Santa is grateful!

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One of New Orleans’ newest traditions, and one of the most colorful, is the annual “Miracle on Fulton Street” sponsored by Harrah’s Casino and Hotel. This free, seasonal event, which began in 2007, kicks off on Thanksgiving week and runs through the end of the year, celebrating the holidays in imaginative ways on the Fulton Street Mall, just outside the main Harrah’s Hotel.

Among the displays and attractions visitors can expect to see during the month-long event include the following:

• Two winter wonderland tunnels, complete with Santa and his reindeer
• A giant gingerbread house
• “Faux Snow” falling every hour on the hour, starting at noon
• Live entertainment with top local performers on weekends
• Holiday-themed dining at nearby participating restaurants
• Santa’s Shop, selling official “Miracle on Fulton Street” merchandise, including commemorative ornaments, apparel, bells, coffee mugs and more

Holiday drinks including Cajun egg nog, hot cocoa and hot toddies will also be on sale. Santa will be available for photos on Fulton Square.

Visitors can enter the fully decorated Mall at Poydras Street through a series of custom-built, faux wrought iron arches, accentuated by 12-foot-high Christmas trees and 3-foot-high fleur de lis ornaments. The arches will create a dramatic canopy illuminated by thousands of LED lights of various holiday colors.

Participating restaurants offering special holiday menu items include Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant, Grand Isle seafood restaurant and Ernst Café – all of which border on the Fulton Street Mall.

Harrah’s New Orleans is operated by a subsidiary of Harrah's Entertainment, Inc., the world's largest provider of branded casino entertainment. Since its beginning in Reno, Nevada nearly 70 years ago, Harrah's has grown through development of new properties, expansions and acquisitions. Harrah's Entertainment is focused on building loyalty and value with its customers through a unique combination of great service, excellent products, unsurpassed distribution, operational excellence and technology leadership.

Check out the article at New Orleans Online.

This is a very nice attraction to the riverfront area of Nola - we really enjoyed it! Check out my above photos!

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Need that perfect gift for the space buff in your life?
Got 129 million cu ft of spare hangar space?
Then has NASA got a deal for you: Once the space shuttle fleet retires,
probably by 2010, the shuttles will be ready for purchase.
But even for the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum,
the shuttles come at a hefty price—about $42 million each!

Earlier this week the space agency issued a Request for Information (RFI) to educational institutions, museums, and "other organizations" in an attempt to sell off the remaining space shuttles in 2010. The estimated total for tax, tags and freight is $42 million. According to NASA, the RFI will "gauge the level and scope of interest of U.S. organizations in acquiring … orbiters and other major flight hardware."

The agency hopes to find homes for two of the three orbiters; Discovery is already earmarked for the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. By law, the institution has something akin to a rights-of-first-refusal agreement with NASA that allows it first crack at space memorabilia once the government is done with it.

Discovery's long, active history makes it a logical choice for the Smithsonian. The third of NASA's winged spaceships and the oldest working orbiter, Discovery was deployed for the Hubble Space Telescope on mission STS-31 in April 1990, carried the 77-year-old John Glenn back into space in 1998, and was twice NASA's return-to-flight spacecraft—after the Challenger disaster in 1986 and the Columbia explosion five years ago. While Enterprise, the shuttle built for test flights, anchors the Smithsonian's space collection at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles airport in Virginia, the museum has long wanted to replace it with an operational orbiter. "To have any flown orbiter would be wonderful," says Valerie Neal, the Smithsonian's curator of the human spaceflight collection. "The Smithsonian tries to acquire the oldest or first-flown aircraft—so up until 2003, we'd hoped it would be Columbia. Now, of course, Discovery would be a perfect fit."

But that history comes with a hefty price tag—even for the internationally renowned Smithsonian. "We were in a different era then, where we had no eBay and people who were looking to make money off of artifacts," NASA spokesman Michael Curie told CollectSpace, a Web site devoted to space memorabilia. "So it was to everyone's advantage to try to provide them to those who might display them." NASA makes an important distinction: The $42 million isn't to buy an orbiter, but to prepare it for public presentation—nearly $30 million goes to "safeing" the craft (removing the fuel systems and other environmental hazards), approximately $8 million goes to display preparation and the final $6 million or so is spent on transportation and installation. Technically, the agency says, the cost is compensation for shipping and handling.

Industry observers also suggest that the cash-strapped space agency is grabbing every dollar it can find for the over-budget Constellation Program. In August, budget constraints forced NASA to scrap plans to have the shuttle's replacement, Orion, ready by 2013. The orbiters should be available Sept. 30, 2011, according to the RFI, and they should be ferried to their final destinations by May 31, 2012—where they will likely remain for a long time, since the agency is also decommissioning the 747 that is used to haul the spacecraft. "In the past, sometimes we have paid for this sort of 'shipping and handling,'" Neal says, "but this is unprecedented in terms of the cost involved. We're thrilled to have an orbiter designated for us, but we'll have to resolve the cost matter. Luckily, it's not like we have to come up with the money in 90 days."

Check out the article at Popular Mechanics.

Sweet... I want one!!! =)

Labels: History, Images, Space, Technology

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With schools and many businesses closed this morning, area residents took to the snow-covered streets to enjoy the rare weather.

Even as snow turned to sleet, sledders and even a snowboarder slid down the rolling white hills of City Park.

On the LSU campus, seniors Kirk Melancon and Cade Worsham ran around the snow-covered campus fairgrounds with a few-dozen other students.

The two roommates started with photos and snowballs, which eventually led to full-on snow wrestling.

“I have one more exam today at 5:30,” Melancon said. “But I had to come out here today. This is a one in 15-year snow.”

Meteorologist Danielle Manning with the National Weather Service in Slidell estimated that 3 inches of snow fell in East Baton Rouge Parish, 2 inches in West Baton Rouge Parish and 5 in Livingston Parish.

The average snowfall in greater Baton Rouge is 2 to 3 inches, she said.

When Chicago native Chris Horton looked out of his Baton Rouge window this morning, the winter scene reminded him of home.

“Straight up Chicago,” he said. “I couldn’t think of anything but being in the Windy City.”

Horton’s sister, Crystal Burk, called him before sunrise to tell him about the weather. A few hours of shoveling and sculpting later, the twins had a life-size snowman in front of her Old South Baton Rouge house.

Burk’s grandchildren, who helped briefly with the project, had gone inside.

“It got too cold for them,” said Horton, who had a wide smile as he shoveled the snow.

Check out the article at The Advocate.

Yeah, Snow Day!!! Now, before y'all from up nawth start laughing at us, you gotta realize that we haven't seen this much snow since 1988!!!

Check out the online photo galleries at LSU Sports and The Advocate!

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The heavens smiled down on Earth Monday in a rare celestial trifecta of Venus, Jupiter, and the moon.

The planets aligned—an event known as a conjunction—Sunday night, and were joined by a thin sliver of moon on Monday.

The rare planetary meeting was visible from all parts of the world, even from light-polluted cities such as Hong Kong and New York.

People in Asia witnessed a smiley face (above, photographed from Manila, Philippines), while skywatchers in the United States saw a frown.

The three brightest objects in the sky were so tightly gathered that one could eclipse them with a thumb, according to NASA's Web site.

The next visible Venus-Jupiter conjunction will be on the evening of March 14, 2012, but the two planets will appear farther apart in the sky.

Check out the article at National Geographic News.

Wish I could've seen the smiley face in the sky, but it was still an awesome viewing despite the frown! =)

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Nov. 26, 2008 -- It's not just families that are getting together this Thanksgiving week. The three brightest objects in the night sky -- Venus, Jupiter and a crescent moon -- will crowd around each other for an unusual group shot.

Starting Thanksgiving evening, Jupiter and Venus will begin moving closer so that by Sunday and Monday, they will appear 2 degrees apart, which is about a finger width held out at arm's length, said Alan MacRobert, senior editor at Sky and Telescope magazine. Then on Monday night, they will be joined by a crescent moon right next to them, he said.

Look in the southwestern sky around twilight -- no telescope or binoculars needed. The show will even be visible in cities if it's a clear night.

"It'll be a head-turner," MacRobert said. "This certainly is an unusual coincidence for the crescent moon to be right there in the days when they are going to be closest together."

The moon is the brightest, closest and smallest of the three and is 252,000 miles away. Venus, the second brightest, closest and smallest, is 94 million miles away. And big Jupiter is 540 million miles away.

The three celestial objects come together from time to time, but often they are too close to the sun or unite at a time when they aren't so visible. The next time the three will be as close and visible as this week will be Nov. 18, 2052, according to Jack Horkheimer, director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium.

But if you are willing to settle for two out of three -- Venus and the crescent moon only -- it will happen again on New Year's Eve, MacRobert said.

Check out the article at Discovery News.

Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy the viewing!

Labels: Images, Space

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LSU’s 1958 national champion football team will be honored at halftime of the LSU vs. Ole Miss game on Saturday. Also, 1959 Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon will be recognized for his election into the College Football Hall of Fame.

BATON ROUGE -- Nostalgia will be dripping from Tiger Stadium on Saturday when the 1958 LSU Tigers, the first consensus national championship team in school history and the only undefeated title holder in school annals, will be presented at halftime of the game as part of a weekend-long reunion celebration for the squad.

Also, LSU legend Billy Cannon will be honored during the break between the first and second quarters for his election to the College Football Hall of Fame. Cannon was elected earlier this year and will be inducted in ceremonies to be held at New York’s historic Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on December 9.

The 1958 team will start its reunion activities with a gathering at the Cox Communications Academic Center for Student-Athletes on Friday evening followed by a tour of the LSU Football Operations Center. On Saturday morning the team will tour the Andonie Museum and will be presented at the Tiger Athletic Foundation Pre-Game Party in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

At halftime of the LSU-Ole Miss game, the team will be introduced at mid-field.

Cannon becomes only the sixth player in the history of LSU football to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Cannon will be presented with a plaque by the National Football Foundation on Saturday to commemorate his election to the Hall.

Other former LSU players who have been elected to the College Football Hall of Fame are G.E. “Doc” Fenton (1904-09), Abe Mickal (1933-35), Gaynell “Gus” Tinsley (1934-36), Ken Kavanaugh (1937-39) and Tommy Casanova (1969-71).

Five former LSU coaches are in the College Football Hall of Fame. They are Mike Donahue who also coached at Auburn; Lawrence “Biff” Jones who also coached at Army, Oklahoma and Nebraska; Dana X. Bible who also coached at Mississippi College, Texas A&M, Nebraska and Texas; Bernie Moore who also coached at Mercer, and LSU’s all-time winningest coach, Charles McClendon, who coached only at LSU from 1962-79.

Check out the article at LSU Sports.

Congrats to Billy Cannon and the rest of the 1958 Championship Team, who had one helluva season back in the day and have been honored for their accomplishments ever since.

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The next two decades will see a world living with the daily threat of nuclear war, environmental catastrophe and the decline of America as the dominant global power, according to a frighteningly bleak assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.

"The world of the near future will be subject to an increased likelihood of conflict over resources, including food and water, and will be haunted by the persistence of rogue states and terrorist groups with greater access to nuclear weapons," said the report by the National Intelligence Council.

The analysts said that the report had been prepared in time for Barack Obama's entry into the Oval office on January 20, where he will be faced with some of the greatest challenges of any newly-elected president.

"The likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used will increase with expanded access to technology and a widening range of options for limited strikes," the 121-page assessment said.

The analysts draw attention to an already escalating nuclear arms race in the Middle East and anticipate that a growing number of rogue states will be prepared to share their destructive technology with terror groups.

"Over the next 15-20 years reactions to the decisions Iran makes about its nuclear program could cause a number of regional states to intensify these efforts and consider actively pursuing nuclear weapons," the report Global Trends 2025 said. "This will add a new and more dangerous dimension to what is likely to be increasing competition for influence within the region," it said.

The spread of nuclear capabilities will raise questions about the ability of weak states to safeguard them, it added. "If the number of nuclear-capable states increases, so will the number of countries potentially willing to provide nuclear assistance to other countries or to terrorists."

The report, a year in the making, said that global warming will aggravate the scarcity of water, food and energy resources. Citing a British study, it said that climate change could force up to 200 million people to migrate to more temperate zones. "Widening gaps in birth rates and wealth-to-poverty ratios, and the impact of climate change, could further exacerbate tensions," it said.

The report says the warming earth will extend Russia and Canada's growing season and ease their access to northern oil fields, strengthening their economies. But Russia's potential emergence as a world power may be clouded by lagging investment in its energy sector, persistent crime and government corruption, the report says.

"The international system will be almost unrecognizable by 2025, owing to the rise of emerging powers, a globalizing economy, a transfer of wealth from West to East, and the growing influence of non-state actors. Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor, the United States' relative strength -- even in the military realm -- will decline and US leverage will become more strained."

Global power will be multipolar with the rise of India and China, and the Korean peninsula will be unified in some form. Turning to the current financial situation, the analysts say that the financial crisis on Wall Street is the beginning of a global economic rebalancing.

The U.S. dollar's role as the major world currency will weaken to the point where it becomes a "first among equals."

"Strategic rivalries are most likely to revolve around trade, investments and technological innovation, but we cannot rule out a 19th-century-like scenario of arms races, territorial expansion and military rivalries." The report, based on a global survey of experts and trends, was more pessimistic about America's global status than previous outlooks prepared every four years. It said that outcomes will depend in part on the actions of political leaders. "The next 20 years of transition to a new system are fraught with risks," it said.

The analysts also give warning that the kind of organized crime plaguing Russia could eventually take over the government of an Eastern or Central European country, and that countries in Africa and South Asia may find themselves ungoverned, as states wither away under pressure from security threats and diminishing resources.

The intelligence community expects that terrorism would survive until 2025, but in slightly different form, suggesting that Al Qaeda's "terrorist wave" might be breaking up. "Al Qaeda's inability to attract broad-based support might cause it to decay sooner than people think," it said.

On a positive note it added that an alternative to oil might be in place by 2025.

Check out the article at Fox News.

This is not the best of news. So much for "Change We Need..."

Check out Another Version of the Truth and use your mouse to wipe away the lies.

Labels: History, Images, Military, Politics

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OPELOUSAS -- There’s more than superficial concern expressed by 90-year-old Paul Kimball Sr. when he contemplates the type of combat facing U.S. soldiers now fighting in Iraq.

“That’s urban warfare, it’s the worse kind,” says Kimball, while sitting in a quiet room of his secluded farmhouse several miles south of Opelousas.

If anyone knows the ferocity of house-to-house fighting, it’s Kimball, who served as a World War II ammunition and supply sergeant with the 75th Infantry Division in Europe from 1944 until May 1945.

Recently, just days before Veterans Day, Kimball took time to recall how just weeks after he arrived in France, he was rushed to Belgium near Bastogne, to help repulse the mid-December German counteroffensive launched through the Ardennes Forest.

Later he and members of his division moved into Holland, and then the Alsace-Lorraine area of France, fought along the Maginot Line, crossed the Rhine River and then finished the war in Germany, where they helped liberate a slave labor camp.

According to an official report compiled by the Army Office of the Theater Historian for the European Theater of Operations, the 75th Infantry Division was in combat for 94 days beginning Dec. 25, 1944.

During that time, the division suffered 3,954 combat casualties — killed, wounded and missing — and another 4,062 noncombat casualties.

Most of the fighting Kimball and his men experienced was in rural villages or in open countryside, where soldiers lived for days in foxholes. They faced machine gun fire, strafing from fighter planes and shelling from German artillery.

“The one thing the war did for me was make me a Christian. I say the rosary twice a day now and go to Mass every day. The old saying about no atheists in a foxhole is true,” he said.

Kimball said he never intended to serve in the Army. However, because it was difficult to find employment during the Great Depression in St. Landry Parish, Kimball said he and his brother, Pete, joined the Marine Corps in 1937.

Kimball served four years in the Corps but decided not to re-enlist. He also got a warning from a Marine officer which proved prophetic.

“He told me if I didn’t join up again, I’d be drafted into the Army,” Kimball said. Three months after being discharged from the Marines, Kimball was an Army staff sergeant in charge of an ammunition and pioneer platoon at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.

The 75th Infantry Division arrived at Le Harve, France, in November 1944 and moved on to nearby Rouen, in Normandy province, where Kimball once traded Army rations for a butchered cow.

By early December, Kimball went to Vise, Belgium, and then the nearby town of Liege, where he took cover in a barn during a concentrated rocket attack.

“The rockets were coming in so low, we shot at them with our rifles, but it didn’t stop them,” he said.

Three days later Kimball moved to Charleroi and then onto Ny, about 6 miles from Bastogne, where the Germans eventually surrounded the American infantry.

Kimble said he and his soldiers accidentally dug into the Belgian forest 5 miles behind German lines, where they supplied rifle companies with ammunition.

“We fought all Christmas day and the day afterward. We took a lot of casualties, killed or wounded,” he said.

Kimball remembered that Christmas night as being clear and extremely cold, with a vivid full moon.

Kimball said one of his saddest memories of that engagement was knowing that a good friend, a lieutenant, died a few days after the man received a letter saying said his wife had delivered a baby boy.

Another scene Kimball can’t forget is watching an American P-38 Lightning fighter plane get shot down during a dogfight with a German Messerschmitt over Belgium.

“When the P-38 crashed, we all cried,” he said.

On New Year’s Day, 1945, Kimball was summoned to the front line, a hill held by the Americans.

For close to an hour, Kimball was in an earthen dugout where German artillery fire toppled trees over his protection.

Kimball said his knowledge of French allowed him to ride at the head of troop convoys.

In Alsace, France, he said the 75th joined the First French Army and the Third U.S. Army to flush the Germans out of a mountainous region.

Kimball recalled dining on cheese and champagne before a German artillery round exploded and cut off the leg of a cook sitting near him.

“Nobody ate anything after that,” he said.

A few days later at Weckleshiem, Kimball said he “almost vomited my guts out” when he was assigned to organize the burial of 30 German bodies, which had been stored in a barn for several days.

Several days afterward, he took a Luger pistol off a dead German officer lying face down at the Maginot Line.

“This officer was dressed to kill and he got killed, too. He must have been important, because the holster had the German Order of the Iron Cross on it,” Kimball said.

While in Germany, Kimball and his men were under siege in Dortmund before heading to Wesel and then Hemer.

It was near Hemer where Kimball said the Germans had established a slave labor camp which included Russian prisoners.

“Most of them looked like skeletons when we got there. They were dying at a rate of 250 per day,” he said.

Kimball said he helped organize a 50-man civilian detail to help bury the camp’s dead until “the graves looked like a big levee.”

During the past 63 years Kimball said he contemplated revisiting Europe.

Over time that changed.

“I thought about it, but then I decided not to. The memories are not that good,” he said.

Check out the article at The Advocate.

What an impressive story! I have nothing but the utmost respect for what that man and all members of the greatest generation went through.

Always honor our veterans... they have fought for our freedom and deserve our respect at all times!

For some more very interesting history and personal accounts of WWII, I highly recommend Band of Brothers, Pegasus Bridge, D-Day June 6, 1944, and Citizen Soldiers by Stephen Ambrose

Be sure to check out the Patriotic Fact Sheet and 2008 Presidential Proclamation by George W. Bush at the Department of Veteran Affairs website.

Labels: History, Images, Military

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Around the Bowl and Down the Hole... Roll Tide Roll!

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Four bronze, larger-than-life statues look over Bryant-Denny Stadium’s front lawn, one for each man to win a national championship here.

From right to left, the statues stand chronologically: Wallace Wade, Frank Thomas, Bear Bryant and Gene Stallings. To the left of Stallings, there’s a lonely pedestal of grass, reserved for the next immortal.

It’s been considered that Nick Saban, who has Alabama at the head of the Bowl Championship Series title chase, could be the missing link.

“After we beat Georgia,” said David Jones, owner of the Alabama Express gift shop right off campus, “somebody actually went out there and put a mock statue of him in that spot.”

Such is the buzz absorbing Tuscaloosa these days. Sooner than anyone could have expected, Saban has awakened the 8,000-pound, crimson-clad elephant in the room.

Alabama football sleeps no more.

When the Crimson Tide face No. 15 LSU on Saturday afternoon in Tiger Stadium, it will take the field with a No. 1 ranking attached to its name for the first time since 1980, a year after Bryant won back-to-back national titles. It is the first time Alabama has had the ranking, period, since Stallings bronzed his status with a victory over Miami in the Sugar Bowl, following the 1992 season.

By beating the Tigers, the Tide can clinch a trip to the Southeastern Conference championship game. Alabama hasn’t done that since 1999, four coaches ago.

“Bama fans don’t really know what to do with ourselves right now,” said Jeremy Tuggle, a 2004 graduate from Birmingham. “We really thought it would be one or two more years before we were having these conversations.”

Saban, 57, might be the most popular man in town these days. Or it might be Mal Moore, the man who hired him.

One of the two.

It has been only 22 months, after all, since Moore, the Alabama athletic director, shocked football circles — NFL and college alike — by luring Saban from the Miami Dolphins, rushing him home on a private jet and introducing him as Alabama’s next coach at a news conference.

Across the nation, Saban was ripped for leaving Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga in a lurch. For investing only two years in Miami, then bolting. For famously announcing “I’m not going to be the Alabama coach” at a Dolphins news conference, only to reverse field.

Tuscaloosa never cared.

When Moore and Saban touched down, houndstooth-adorned fans — from the boosters to the coeds — rolled out the crimson carpet.

“You hear people talk about the Saban effect,” said Jones, who recalls Jan. 3, 2007, as a landmark day for sales. “I’ve thanked Mal Moore several times.”

Saban’s arrival was the big splash Bama craved. It promised the SEC’s most storied program a chance to end years of hit-and-miss and regain its traditional place as a consistent national player.

That’s what Moore wanted when he cast a line into the water after firing Mike Shula, like Moore a former Bama quarterback. For all the high marks he’d earned after directing a $125-million effort to enhance Alabama’s facilities, the A.D. knew he had to get this right.

Money wasn’t an issue. Neither was taking chances.

“I knew I wanted a proven coach who’d won a championship,” Moore said. “But I didn’t know that coach Saban was a real option for us. I’d only heard from different people that he might want back in the college game. When I flew down there, I didn’t even know if he’d talk to me.”

Moore left Tuscaloosa for south Florida the weekend of Miami’s final game, in Indianapolis. He returned a few days later with Saban, who had agreed to an eight-year, $32 million contract.

“I think it was a relief as much as anything,” said Kirk McNair, founder and editor of Bama Magazine. “Everybody was scared that Alabama wasn’t going to be able to get a (top-quality) coach.”

The one they got was one they knew. Saban, after all, had coached SEC West rival LSU to two conference titles and one national championship in five years.

He could do it here, too, couldn’t he?

The Tide had rolled through five coaches since Bryant retired after the 1982 season. Stallings, the third try, had been the only one worthy of a statue.

This would be different, Bama fans believed.

When the Saban story broke, its impact in Tuscaloosa could be measured in several ways, Web activity among them. McNair watched Bama Magazine’s message boards explode after he posted the news.

“It went berserk,” McNair said. “I’ve never seen the forums do anything like that.”Turning the Tide

Saban doesn’t seem to have changed much. He’s still not one to break out an oxford shirt or coat and tie very often. He’s still driven and competitive. He’s still impatient, for the most part, with anything — media functions included — that cuts into his time on the practice field or film room.

And his formula remains the same.

If you put this Alabama team in gold helmets and white jerseys, replaced its mascot with a live Bengal tiger and changed the lyrics of its fight song, you’d swear it was 2003 all over again. Saban has rebuilt in Tuscaloosa just as he did in Baton Rouge, carrying the same kit of tools.

He’s winning with defense. Solid, steady quarterback play. Preparation and discipline. He’s winning with the kind of team made for the long haul.

“It reminds us of a certain other coach,” said Ken Gaddy, director of the Bryant Museum, on the Alabama campus. “It’s what people think is Southern football.”

In other words, Bama isn’t flashy.Not yet.

Bama’s most recent recruiting class, however, was the best in the nation, according to Rivals.com, Scout.com and other recruiting services. It included the likes of Julio Jones, a tall, athletic receiver who has caught 33 passes and started every game as a freshman.“People know he’s stocking the pantry,” McNair said of Saban, who recruited equally well at LSU, where he landed a consensus Top 5 class three times, in ’01, ’03 and ’04.

The most encouraging thing — or, if you’re a Bama rival, discouraging thing — about this 9-0 start? The Tide has only nine scholarship seniors, a sign that more of the same could await.

Saban won the SEC championship in Year 2 at LSU, but that team’s best ranking was No. 7, reached after a victory over Illinois in the Sugar Bowl. He didn’t have the Tigers in the national championship conversation until Year 4, a season that ended with LSU winning the BCS title.

Who knows where November will take Alabama? But it seems a lock the Tide will enter Year 3 under Saban ahead of schedule.

“Right now,” said Tuggle, the Bama grad from Birmingham, “we’re playing with house money.”Feeding the monsterSaban may not have a statue in front of the football stadium. But like every other man who has coached a game at Alabama since Bryant’s retirement, he does have an exhibit at the Bear Bryant Museum.

For now, the Saban display, located an option toss from the gift shop, is fairly unspectacular. It features a couple of magazine covers, a football commemorating the coach’s 100th career victory (registered against Tulane in September), last year’s Independence Bowl trophy and a highlight video accompanied by “Sweet Home Alabama” music.

But Kathleen Page, a lifelong Tide fan, figures the exhibit will need a remake soon. Her excitement is evident, from the ring tone on her cell phone (Yeah Alabama, by the Million Dollar Band) to her Tide handbag. She is too caught up in the unbeaten start to ponder star-studded recruiting classes.

“It’s been a long time coming,” the 44-year-old said, as she scanned old newspaper articles, bowl-game programs and game-worn equipment inside the museum. “And I really think this is the year we’re going to take it all the way.”

Every team in the SEC has passionate, impatient fans, to be sure. But nowhere else has a scrimmage drawn 92,000 fans, as Saban’s first spring game did.

“Coach Saban has preached to us about not getting too far ahead of ourselves,” said Gaddy, who has 12 team portraits on the wall in his office at the museum, one for every recognized national champion. “But the goal, long-term, come January, is to be No. 1 at the end of the season.”

And yes, to provide some company for Wade, Thomas, Bryant and Stallings. To put another Tide coach on that kind of pedestal.

Check out the article at The Advocate.

Well, it's that time again... time for Saban Bowl II. Not sure how this one's gonna turn out, those guys are on fire! No matter what happens, I wish my Tigers a great finish to the season and a worthy bowl appearance. Best of luck to the Crimson Tide on their national title hunt!

In other news, it seems that Mike the Tiger doesn't want to attend the football game! I'm sure he'll get more used to the crowds soon enough. This probably won't be the best game to bring him out due to the expected crowd noise, but it's ultimitely Mike's decision. But, as the Herb Vincent says... “When it’s a 500-pound tiger, there’s only so much you can do!”

Geaux Tigers!!!

Labels: Entertainment, Images, Sports

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Obama a Uniter? Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Is Barack Obama a uniter? Since the beginning of the Democratic primaries, unity has been one of his major themes. It proved a strong lure compared to the polarizing Hillary Clinton. That theme has also helped Obama blunt the undeniably bipartisan record of John McCain.

But being a uniter takes some effort. It isn’t just about words. Republicans have pointed to Obama’s lack of bipartisan accomplishments in either state or federal government. And even Obama’s presidential campaign indicates that he has a tin ear when it comes to dealing with those he disagrees with. One of the surest ways to anger others is not giving them a chance to air their views.

Obama’s list of heavy-handed actions is growing:

• Last week the Obama campaign kicked reporters from the Dallas Morning News, the New York Post and the Washington Times off the campaign plane — making it difficult for their papers to cover Obama’s final campaign appearances. The reporters were replaced with writers from magazines such as Glamour. The editorial pages of all three papers had endorsed McCain.

The Obama campaign explained the decision as simply occurring from an excess demand for seats. But Washington Times Executive Editor John Solomon told radio show host Mark Levin on Friday evening that they had been covering the Obama campaign from the beginning of his run for the presidency, and that those endorsements were “the only one common thread among [the three newspapers].”

Kirsten Powers notes how times have changed — not even Richard Nixon kicked disagreeable reporters off campaign planes, not even his archenemies at the Washington Post.

• Democrats seemed determined to cut back on the few conservative voices in the mainstream media. Obama supports media-ownership caps, which will primarily affect News Corp, the company that owns Fox News and conservative newspapers such as the New York Post. His proposals to increase minority ownership of broadcasting are also designed to change content, no longer leaving it up to customers to decide what it is they want to listen to.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promise more direct regulations on content. They want to re-impose the “Fairness Doctrine,” mandating that private radio stations provide what the government determines to be “balanced” coverage and guaranteeing that conservative talk radio will be over. There is a reason why talk radio only really began after the “Fairness Doctrine” ended in the 1980s.

Congressman Mike Pence couldn’t get even one single Democratic member of Congress to oppose these regulations last year, and Obama hasn’t yet said whether he would veto a bill regulating radio show content.

• There has been what can only be described as thuggish activity. In late August, Milt Rosenberg — a Chicago institution, broadcasting on WGN radio since 1973 — interviewed Stanley Kurtz about the extremely extensive relationship between Obama and William Ayers. Milt, a mild mannered, middle-of-the-road person, tried to have both sides represented and had invited a representative of the Obama campaign. No one from the campaign agreed to appear. Instead, the campaign organized an immediate, massive call-in campaign to force WGN to cancel Kurtz’s appearance. When that failed, the campaign organized supporters to call in to the station and simply tie up the telephone lines so that other listeners couldn’t ask questions. Others threatened Federal Communication Commission action to revoke WGN’s license.

Rosenberg said that he had never seen anything similar to silence discussion during his years on radio.

• Obama has also gone to the extreme of threatening opponents and television stations with legal action for running ads. For example, when ads were run discussing Obama’s relationship to Ayers, Obama’s campaign demanded that the Department of Justice criminally investigate the group behind the ads. (What criminal charges that were justified by running an ad were never explained.) It is bad enough that a senator demands criminal charges against a political opponent, but Justice Department officials might take this seriously if the president of the United States asks them to press charges.

When the National Rifle Association started running ads warning that Obama had previously supported bans on handguns and massive taxes on bullets, the Obama campaign likewise used intimidation and sent cease-and-desist letters to television stations threatening legal action.

The list is long, but the media isn’t the only place that Obama promises to eliminate dissent. Campaign finance laws will surely be rewritten in ways that make it particularly difficult for Republicans to win races. Limits on total expenditures and public financing entrench incumbents, which in this case would be Democrats. For example, when an incumbent president doesn't face a serious challenge during the primaries, he can sit on the public funds obtained during the primaries until the nominee from the other party has been determined, and then use those primary funds to attack his general election opponent. The non-incumbent party's nominee must usually battle for the nomination and typically has reached the spending limit imposed by the taxpayer funding system by March. These challengers are then severely limited in their ability to campaign until their nominating conventions in August. Challengers Walter Mondale in 1984 and Bob Dole in 1996 were pummeled for months with little financial means to respond.

Or take unions, where secret ballots will be eliminated for union certification elections. What is next? Eliminating secret ballots for other elections? Presumably not, but if we care about preventing voter intimidation generally, why don’t we also care about that for workers? Don’t Democrats trust workers enough to make judgments on their own?

Stronger unions do mean one thing: more money for Democrats’ campaigns in future elections.

It is hard to put up with those who disagree. But will Democrats put up with criticism when they have the presidency and Congress and enough votes in the Senate to avoid a filibuster? This will be more power than any party has had for a long time, because even when the Democrats had over 60 votes in the Senate, many of those were conservative Southern Democrats, who no longer exist.

Some Republicans think that this election doesn’t matter. That in two years they will come back stronger than ever. Indeed, Republicans might be quite angry and inspired to take things back. But 2012 won’t be like 1980. The Democrats plan to tilt the playing field in their favor to ensure a long-term domination in politics.

Check out the article at Fox News.

Well, it's finally out of the media's hands and left for us to decide. About freakin' time!!! Everyone be sure to go vote!

Be sure that you take the issues into account and educate yourself before you pull a lever. I'm so tired of un-educated people voting for someone just because of how they look or because of their performance on-stage during a debate or speech.

I'm also tired of the liberal media propaganda and think that it's time for them to get back to honest journalism!

Be sure to check out The History of US Presidential Elections

Labels: History, Images, Politics

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A nearby star, visible with the unaided eye, is ringed with two rocky asteroid belts and an outer icy halo, making it a three-ring cosmic circus.

The inner asteroid belt appears to be a virtual twin to the belt in our solar system.

The presence of the separate rings of material around the nearby star, called Epsilon Eridani, suggests unseen planets lurk there, where they confine and shape the rings, say the researchers.

If there were in fact rocky planets within the inner gap between the star and asteroid belt, the worlds would likely reside within the star's habitable zone where temperatures would be such that life could survive.

Located 10.5 light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus, the star is the ninth closest to the sun.

Our sun's three nearest known stars are gravitationally bound in a system called Alpha Centauri, which is 4.36 light-years away. (A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, about 6 trillion miles or 10 trillion km.)

Epsilon Eridani is slightly smaller and cooler than the sun. And it's also younger. While the sun is an estimated 4.5 billion years old, Epsilon Eridani has been around for just 850 million years.

"Studying Epsilon Eridani is like having a time machine to look at our solar system when it was young," said researcher Massimo Marengo, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts.

Rocky rings

Astronomers had known about the star's outer icy ring, but they were surprised when NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope revealed two rocky rings between the icy halo and the star.

The inner asteroid belt looks identical to ours in terms of material, and it orbits at 3 astronomical units (AU) from Epsilon Eridani — the same distance between the sun and the rocky asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. (An astronomical unit equals the average Earth-sun distance of 93 million miles, or about 150 million km.)

Epsilon Eridani's second asteroid belt is 20 AU from the star, or about where Uranus is in relation to our sun, and it is crowded with as much mass as Earth's moon.

The outer icy ring, previously observed, extends about 35 AU to 100 AU from Epsilon Eridani and is similar in composition to our Kuiper Belt, a region of icy objects beyond Neptune. Eridani's outer ring holds about 100 times more material than ours, however.

New exoplanets?

The rings formed when the system was very young, likely when collisions between planets and other smaller bodies resulted in small bits and big chunks of debris that took shape as the asteroid belts and icy ring, the researchers suggest.

And the gaps between these rings were likely shaped by planets whose gravitational forces could remove any excess material flung from the belts, while also keeping the shape of the rings. Planets in our solar system exert similar shaping effects.

"The big planets that are now keeping those gaps are determining the geometry of the system of rings," Marengo told SPACE.com.

He and his colleagues propose that three planets with masses between those of Neptune and Jupiter could be in orbit about Epsilon Eridani.

A Jupiter-mass exoplanet was detected in 2000 by the radial velocity method in which astronomers look for wobbling motion of a star due to the gravitational tug of a planet. That planet is located near the edge of the innermost ring.

A second planet must lurk near the second asteroid belt, and a third at about 35 AU near the inner edge of Epsilon Eridani's Kuiper Belt, the researchers say.

Terrestrial planets could reside inside the innermost asteroid belt as well, though there currently is no clear indication of that, Marengo said.

The research will be detailed in the Jan. 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Check out the article at Fox News.

Cool! Maybe one day we'll develop the technology to travel there! Who knows, maybe it'll be soon enough that my kids or grandkids could go explore the planets there!

Labels: Images, Space

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CAMBRIDGE, England — Most clocks just tell time. Not the newly unveiled clock at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, which aims to disorient and dazzle, to remind people of their own mortality and to pay tribute to one of the most famous watchmakers of all time.

No wonder it cost more than 1 million pounds (US$1.8 million) to build and drew the attention of famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who formally unveiled the masterwork Friday.

This clock blasts away all preconceptions about timepieces. For one thing, it has no hands. And it is specially designed to run in erratic fashion, slowing down and speeding up from time to time.

The "Corpus clock" is the brainchild of inventor John Taylor, who used his own money to build it, in part to pay homage to the genius of John Harrison, the Englishman who in 1725 invented the "grasshopper" escapement — a mechanical device that helps regulate a clock's movement.

Making a visual pun on the grasshopper image, Taylor has designed a fantasy version of a grasshopper at the top of the clock face, and uses this beast — with its long needle teeth and barbed tail — as an integral part of the clockworks.

Its jaws begin to open halfway through a minute, then snap shut at 59 seconds. The creature's eyes, usually a dull green, occasionally flash bright yellow.

The oversize grasshopper is called a chronophage, or "time eater."

"Time is gone, he's eaten it," Taylor said. "My object was simply to turn a clock inside out so that the grasshopper became a reality."

At the unveiling, Hawking predicted the creature atop the clock would become "a much-loved, and possibly feared, addition to Cambridge's cityscape."

The chronophage stands atop the clock face, which is four feet in diameter. It displays time with light — a light races around the outer ring once every second, pausing briefly at the actual second. The next ring inside indicates the minute, and the inner ring shows the hour.

The lights are light-emitting diodes, or LEDS, which are constantly on. The apparent motion is regulated mechanically through slots in moving discs.

Weirdly, the pendulum slows down or speeds up. Sometimes it stops, the chronophage shakes a foot, and the pendulum moves again. Because of that, the time display may be as much as a minute off, although it swings back to the correct time every five minutes.

"There are so many expressions in everyday life about time going fast, time going slow and time standing still. Your life is not regular, it's relative to what's going on," Taylor said.

"This is the first clock in the world that does not set out to show accurate time," Taylor said.

He noted Albert Einstein's observation: "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity."

On Taylor's clock, the hour is tolled not by a bell or a cuckoo, but by the clanking of a chain that falls into a coffin, which then loudly bangs closed.

"I'm in my early 70s," Taylor told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "When you're a young person you think there is plenty of time. The sound was to remind me of my mortality."

The clock is the showpiece of Corpus Christi's new library, also a gift from Taylor. His wealth comes from inventing controls for electric tea kettles, inventions which he estimates are used 1 billion times a day around the globe.

Taylor is intrigued by making the ordinary interesting.

"Clocks are boring. They just tell the time, and people treat them as boring objects," he added. "This clock actually interacts with you."

Check out the article at Fox News.

Awesome concept! That is one cool clock!

For more info, check out the Corpus Clock Wiki Entry

Labels: Entertainment, History, Images, Technology

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JEAN LAFITTE, La. — After four big hurricanes in three years, residents of the Cajun towns along the fast-eroding coast of Louisiana are wondering just how much more they can take.

Hurricane Ike's floodwaters slowly gave way Thursday to muddy cleanup, and although the state's share of Ike's damage has been overshadowed by the devastation next door in Texas, the flooding across southern Louisiana was considerable _ tens of thousands of homes and businesses damaged or destroyed.

And that was only the latest stroke. Many of the same areas were inundated by Hurricane Gustav less than two weeks earlier, and rebuilt after Katrina and Rita did widespread damage to the Gulf Coast in 2005.

The home of the traditionally French-speaking Cajuns is a land under siege.

"This community is beaten," said Albert Creppel, the town constable in Jean Lafitte, about 25 miles south of New Orleans. His house, which he had finally repaired nearly three years after Rita, now had two feet of standing water.

"It's too much," he said, shaking his head. "My wife says she doesn't want to come back."

Of course, the cultural and environmental threats to the region are not new.

The cycle of storms and erosion has for decades stripped away the barrier wetlands that protect the inland settlements, while an increasingly homogenized America has been chiseling away at the Cajuns' unique linguistic and cultural traditions for almost as long.

With each storm, the threats grow.

"If it keeps on like this you're losing a whole culture, a whole way of life," said Tracy Kuhns, who lives in the bayou-side town of Barataria and is director of the conservation group Louisiana Bayoukeeper. "It's just going to wash away."

Nearly a week after the storm, state officials were still tallying the damage to the mainly rural coastal parishes, or counties, that lie just above sea level where the Mississippi and other rivers drain through alligator-filled bayous to the Gulf of Mexico.

Some residents were being allowed to visit their homes by boat to inspect the damage. Water had receded in some places, while others remained flooded, particularly in southwest Louisiana, near the Texas border.

"We've got places flooding that never flooded before," said Kuhns. "They need to do something about restoring our wetlands."

Tens of thousands remained without power, but the numbers had dwindled sharply in recent days.

More than 700 people who didn't heed warnings to get out had been rescued from floodwaters since Ike struck on Saturday. Authorities appeared to be winning a battle against collapsing coastal levees that still threatened some areas. At least six deaths in Louisiana were blamed on Ike.

Ike also uprooted the dead. An estimated 200 coffins were unearthed and swirled away by Ike's storm surge in two southwest parishes, forcing coroners to hunt for bodies.

"It's been a nightmare," said Annette Claverie, inside a flooded food store called Herb's in Jean Lafitte.

The town, named for the pirate and hero of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, is a resilient mix of oil field roughnecks, fishermen and those who like to live by water.

Ike flooded Claverie's store with more than two feet of water, destroying almost everything inside. By midweek, a cooling north wind was blowing water back into Bayou Barataria, but the damage had been done.

"We're just too low," said a tearful Claverie, who also lost her inventory during Gustav for a combined hit of $400,000. "Without our wetlands, which used to be our barrier, we do not have the protection we had in the past."

Over the past century, nearly 2,000 square miles of Louisiana wetlands have disappeared. Hurricanes, unstable soil and canals cut for shipping and oil exploration all have been blamed.

Environmental groups say that by 2050, another one-third of the 250-mile coast is expected to be lost.

"My family's story is the story of coastal Louisiana," said Windell Curole, 57, a biologist and levee board member in Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes. "But the land where we settled is all gone now. We have had to keep moving up, moving away."

Curole, a Cajun who says he was the first family member in seven generations to learn English before French, said wetlands loss is making even minor hurricanes dangerous.

"I first saw it in 1985, when Juan hit," Curole said. "It was a relatively weak hurricane, but it caused extensive flooding 40 to 50 miles in."

The long-term task of fixing the shattered coast is daunting. Wetlands restoration and extension of levee systems appear years distant, and will cost billions of dollars.

Whether the bayou communities can hold on until then is anyone's guess.

The fishing industry has taken the biggest hit, especially since Katrina and Rita. Federal officials this week declared a fisheries disaster, making commercial fishermen in Texas and Louisiana eligible for federal aid and opening the tap for loans for small fishing businesses.

But Claverie worries that Ike will still drive many of them out of business and out of town.

"Each storm knocks a hole in our community," she said. "They buy their groceries from us, and without them, it's a hole in our business."

But Ramona Guidry sounded defiant as she checked the damage to her childood home and began restocking the house for her 77-year-old mother. Standing on the porch as water sloshed across her lawn, Guidry said she will never part with her family home no matter how many hurricanes come.

"This is where I went to school. This is where I grew up," she said. "This is where we want to be."

Check out the article at Fox News.

It's very sad what is happening to our beautiful coastline. If we don't do something to stop the erosion, I'll have a view of the Gulf of Mexico from my own backyard!

On another sad note, Hurricane Gustav destroyed the famous Thomas Boyd Oak, which has stood for over 250 years!

Be sure to check out Remembering Hurricane Katrina.

Labels: History, Images

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