Never Forget - Never...

Veteran's Day 2009

"It is, in a way, an odd thing to honor those who died in defense of our country ... in wars far away. The imagination plays a trick. We see these soldiers in our mind as old and wise. We see them as something like the Founding Fathers, grave and gray-haired. But most of them were boys when they died, and they gave up two lives -- the one they were living and the one they would have lived. When they died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave up everything for their country, for us. All we can do is remember."

Ronald Reagan

A Good Tyranny?

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."
C.S. Lewis

The Cocktail

The earliest definition of this type of drink comes from the May 13, 1806, edition of the Balance and Columbian Repository, a publication in Hudson, New York, where the paper provided an answer to the question, "What is a cocktail?".
It reads, "Cocktail is a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters - it is vulgarly called a bittered sling and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a Democratic candidate: because a person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow anything else."