BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


superfluous.....Every superfluous man wants to keep on living. And all men are superfluous.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

SPECIAL EXTRA REPORT FROM FT. LAUDERDALE:


This morning I walked the entire building using the fire stairs, and I discovered that amazingly the entire thirteenth floor was apparently forced out of the building by the Divine Power of the Hurricane. (at least in the South Tower, which was the one that I toured).

I live on the twelfth floor and walked up to the twenty-fifth, penthouse floor, walking most of the corridors, inspecting the damage.

On my way back down I noticed that the number of each floor was painted onto the doors that lead from the fire stairs to the interior corridors.

As I came down the stairs I noted each floor number clearly painted onto the appropriate doors, but when I was on the fourteenth floor and continued down there was no thirteenth floor! One door said "14" and the next said "12."

What had happened to "13?"

I went back up to make sure that I had not missed it. I cannot tell you how carefully I checked. Believe me, I was careful. The thirteenth floor is missing. No doubt about it.

It's gone.

M

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

From Gross to me:

WE ARE STANDING BY FOR NEWS FROM YOU. gross

From me to Gross et al:

Okay, I replayed my initial report for each of you, though I can't imagine having forgotten to send it, but who knows? And if it is desired I hereby submit a follow-up.

My building was hit much harder than I originally thought. Our lobby, which is a separate structure about 150 feet long that joins the bases of the North Tower and the South Tower, was blown apart by what may have been a mini-tornado*.

In my last report I described the automobile which was tossed over a ten foot wall onto our tennis courts. Now, in the building a few amateur meteorologists (this is Florida, meteorology is very much "in" ) theorize that there may have been three separate tornadoes which swirled around our buildings perhaps trapped by the towers themselves which may have multiplied the forces of the wind. The apartments which face the court between the buildings suffered a lot of damage, most likely from the debris which was thrown about by the tornadoes or hurricane, whichever it may have been.

I have made a jerrybuilt repair to our broken window using a roll of duct tape and some heavy plastic trash bags which I had on hand ever since we moved from Great Neck, several years ago. It looks as though it will withstand a rainstorm or two, though, Homeland Security notwithstanding, I am not sure that it would withstand a chemical or gas attack.

Out of nowhere a firm called J. B. Hunt Disaster Restoration appeared on the property, and has begun to clean up the debris. Apparently they had cleaned up the buildings when we had a serious fire-explosion related to our sauna about ten years ago. Someone in our Management must have remembered them and they arrived with a few huge trucks, several smaller trucks which contained all kinds of tools for plumbing, electrical and other repairs, generators, a crew of uniformed experienced men (and one woman) who got right to it.


The pool has already been cleaned out, the lobby debris hasbeen removed (leaving only a marble floor and a rickety, holed roof which I imagine must come down), a truckload of sand has been removed from the garages, fallen trees sawed up and removed, the remaining landscaping, has been re-planted and the lawns raked, and temporary plywood barriers nhave been installed in each broken window or door. (one hundred sixteen windows and twenty-two doors leading to terraces.) In this building there were also apartment doors leading to the corridors which "exploded?" or burst open due to the wind or air pressure. I have seen two which were actually broken in half and one which broke away from hinges. Many of the walls in the interior corridors were burst along the seams between the 3/4" dry-wall.

As far as I know here were no injuries in either of the buildings. Our employees were completely overwhelmed by the extent of the work, and had Hunt not come in, I think that our Maintenance Manager and Chief of Security might have had breakdowns.

As far as I know here were no injuries in either of the buildings. Our employees were completely overwhelmed by the extent of the work, and had Hunt not come in, I think that our Maintenance Manager and Chief of Security might have had breakdowns.

M


*Beef Tornadoes. Twin 5 oz. Filet Mignon, Served on a bed of mashed potatoes,Topped with béarnaise sauce and Portobello mushroom sauce.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com Here's my hurricane report:

Here's what happened at my house:

A window facing south on the beach burst, sounding like a cannon ball, an inside wall that bellied out due to the air pressure, breaking a wall sized bathroom mirror and some tiling. --- a bathtub that had been filled to the rim with water for washing and making the toilet flush in which the water roiled as though in a winter storm on the high seas, chandeliers swinging, the building swaying, a nearby parking lot at which a car was tossed over a ten foot wall on to our tennis courts, a row of cars all pushed together to the West end of the lot, many apartments all around us had many windows broken.

Maria praying -- I admit it-- I was having the time of my life. Well, one of the times of my life.

Much water forced under the window sills of hurricane "proof" windows by the air pressure, Doors were impossible to open and walls buckled, due to the air pressure.

Water came into our apartment under the closed window sills, but, luckily due to the many hotels that Maria and I have visited during the last thirty or forty years we had enough towels to sop up the water.

Now, until 7:00 PM tonight (two days? three?) there has been no running water nor electricity, no elevators, no stores open, no gas.

However, boy scout that I am we were prepared and had plenty of batteries, cases of water, and trawlers filled with cans of tuna fish, and full tanks of gas in our cars. The Madam took advantage of the gas and went to Orlando to visit Mickey while I stayed behind waiting for the glazier to replace our window. Electric and water back now. I'll wait until the Madam returns to take a shower.

The two evenings following the hurricane there was not a light lit in Ft. Lauderdale. I saw the real starry sky in all its glory, the glory that God meant it to have, for the first time since camp some 60 years ago.




M.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Thanks! To Lenny Lambert who came through with the judge's name: Samuel Liebowitz, a great trial lawyer who was a Democrat in Brooklyn when he was asked by the Communist Party to defend the Scottsboro Boys.

In over fifteen years of criminal defense work, Liebowitz had represented seventy-eight persons charged with first-degree murder. His remarkable record over that period was seventy-seven acquittals, one hung jury, and no convictions.

He worked without pay for four years. His efforts won him many death threats and the removal of four of the Scottsboro boys from the trial. One of them said, "I love Sam Liebowitz more than my own mother."

Thanks Lenny! mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

I am looking for the name of very tough Judge in Brooklyn, who had been one of the great defense atty's of his day and who MAY have defended the scottsboro boys, or perhaps some other important trial of that day.... two gold stars to the person or people who deliver me his name. It may have been Sam ______________.

thanks,

mike

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Sometime in the seventies, ninetween, that is, as we drove down Johnson Avenue, along the border of Maspath and Brooklyn, we passed the Arctic diner, the middle of a section of junkyards and factories, and a large steel wharehouse named____________. We passed the Arctic Diner, and Dad mentioned that in the early 1900's there had been a baseball field there and that the name of the its team was the Artics.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

First please read the article: then my comment below:

PAKISTAN'S DIRTY LAUNDERINGBy Jeff JacobyThe Boston Globe

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/19/pakistans_dirty_laundering/

"Pakistan on Saturday welcomed an offer of earthquake assistance from Israel," the Associated Press reported on Oct. 15, "but said it would have to be channeled through the United Nations, the Red Cross, or donated to a relief fund."

On the surface, an unremarkable detail amid the devastation in Kashmir. But this is a story worth pausing over. For between the lines, it speaks volumes about the real stakes in the war between the civilized world and radical Islam.

The magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck on Oct. 8 triggered, in the words of Pakistan's prime minister, "a disaster of unprecedented proportions in Pakistan's history." In one terrible upheaval, it killed tens of thousands of people, trapped or injured thousands more, and left an estimated 2 million homeless.

Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, went on television with an urgent plea for international help. Among the offers of humanitarian aid that began streaming into Islamabad was one from Israel, which is all too experienced in disaster rescue and relief. When a natural calamity strikes, Israel is often among the first nations to offer help; within 48 hours of the tsunami last December, for example, Israel had airlifted teams of medical and emergency workers, as well as 80 tons of supplies, to the stricken countries.

But as days went by and the Pakistani death toll mounted, there was no reply to Israel's offer of assistance. The Jerusalem Post recalled the 2003 earthquake in Iran, when the Tehran theocracy announced that it would welcome "all kinds of humanitarian aid from all countries and international organizations, with the exception of the Zionist regime." Pakistan, the world's second-most-populous Muslim nation, had never established diplomatic relations with Israel, but, unlike Iran, its attitude was supposed to be changing. In Istanbul on Sept. 1, the Israeli and Pakistani foreign ministers had met publicly for the first time; two weeks later Musharraf had shaken Ariel Sharon's hand at a United Nations reception in New York. Equally dramatic was Musharraf's conciliatory speech to the American Jewish Congress on Sept. 17, the first time a Pakistani ruler had ever addressed an audience of American Jews.

Yet it was not until Oct. 14, six days after Israel had communicated its willingness to help the earthquake victims "in any way possible," that it finally received a formal response. Yes, aid from Israel would be welcome, provided it was laundered through a third party. "We have established the president's relief fund, and everyone is free to contribute to it," a government spokeswoman coolly acknowledged. "If Israel was to contribute -- that's fine, we would accept it." Israel could help save Pakistani lives, in other words, as long as it wasn't too public about doing so. There mustn't be any embarrassing images of planes with Israeli markings offloading relief supplies at Islamabad's airport.

And no one should imagine that Israel's generosity toward a nation that has long been among its harshest critics and in which antisemitism is rampant would have any effect on Islamabad's thinking. According to the Daily Times, a Pakistani newspaper, the spokeswoman insisted that "accepting an indirect donation from Israel did not mean that Pakistan had planned to recognize it" or to alter its stance toward Israel, "which was unchangeable."

Israel will not criticize Pakistan's insulting behavior, preferring to understand it as a reality of Pakistani domestic politics. For Musharraf, a diplomat in the Israeli Foreign Ministry told me, "the number one priority is regime survival" -- and any regime that failed to treat the Jewish state with the appropriate level of contempt would outrage Pakistani public opinion.

But that loathing of Israel and Jews is not just a quirk of Pakistani politics. It is a hallmark of the radical Islamists whose terrorism worldwide has shed so much blood -- and who hold sway over more than 70 percent of Pakistan, according to Tashbih Sayyed, editor of the weekly newspaper Pakistan Today. An outspoken Muslim moderate, Sayyed sees Musharraf's recent overtures toward Israel as a feint -- an insincere tactic intended to impress Washington.

"That is why he has done nothing to challenge the way Jews and Israel are portrayed by the Islamists -- as demons, as an evil force," he argues. Many Pakistanis would welcome a genuine effort from the top to combat the radicals' hatred and lies but are not brave enough to fight them on their own. And so the Islamists go on spreading their lethal ideology.

And that, writ large, is the problem at the core of the war on terrorism. "The Muslim world is plunged into an abyss of darkness, antimodernity, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism," Sayyed says. Only a minority of Muslims are personally hateful or fanatic. But a minority can wreak enormous damage when the majority is unwilling to act.

Buster's Comment

Can you imagine Israel accepting assistance from the Iranians, or the Fatah, or the Palestinians, or the Saudis?

This is just another self-righteous attack on a Muslim nation that proves nothing. What would be wrong with Israel making a cash donation to The Red Cross -- or an anonymous donation to the Red Crescent--if Israel truly wanted to be charitable?

It's too bad that politics prevents acts of good will, but don't think for a moment that Israel wouldn't act the same way.

In fact, don't you remember that Castro offered Cuban Doctors during the Katrina debacle and President Bush turned him down, rather than take the opportunity to begin to establish relations?

It's just a sad political reality. And it proves nothing.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Is there ever an end to the world; or is there only an and to the word?

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

In 1944 I was a six year old sitting beside my Dad in his Oldsmobile as we drove down Ingraham Street in Brooklyn. A few weeks before I had asked him about the Gold Star banners that were hung, like shades, in many of the windows of the tenements that we passed. He explained what they meant, but promised me that Brother Joe would be okay.

But now, as we passed them again, two weeks later, I realized for the first time the overwhelming enormity that they signified for the mothers and dads who sat behind them; and I doubted my father for the first time. I wondered how could he promise me that nothing would happen to Brother Joe?

I hoped that nothing would happen to him -- but I knew that even my Dad couldn't protect him.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

The meaning of our life is not within the material things that we leave to our heirs.
M. Gross

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.

Antonio Gramsci