History of Cereal

During the early 19^th century most Americans subsisted on a diet of pork, whiskey and coffee. Christian fundamentalists considered the diet to be bad on the soul and worse on the colon. They believed that constipation was God's punishment for eating meat. The diet was also blamed for fueling laziness and lust. To rid America of these vices, religious zealots spearheaded the country's first vegetarian movement. In 1863, one member of this group, Dr. James Johnson invented Granula, America's first ready-to-eat, grain-based breakfast product. Better known as cereal, Jackson's rock-hard breakfast bricks offered consumers a sin-free meat alternative that aimed to clear the conscience and the bowels.

 

Jackson's innovation failed to appeal to the masses, but it caught the attention of Dr. John Kellogg. A renowned surgeon and health guru, Kellogg had transformed the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan into one of America's hottest retreats. Socialites such as the Rockefellers to the Roosevelts flocked to "The San" to receive Kellogg's unorthodox treatments. But shock-therapy sessions (picture John D.) and machine powered enemas (no picture required) were the only items on the agenda. Kellogg also stressed such newfangled ideas as exercise and proper nutrition. It wasn't long before he started serving bran biscuits similar to those of Dr. Jackson---only with the Kellogg name on them. To avoid a law suit, Kellogg changed the name of the cereal by one letter, dubbing it Granola.

 

By 1889, The San was selling 2 tons of granola a week, despite the fact that it was barely edible. The success inspired Dr Kellogg and his brother W. K. to produce more-palatable fare. After six years of experimentation, a kitchen mishap by W. K. yielded the breakfast staple known as cereal flakes.

 

In many ways, the cereal flake is the perfect consumer product. It is easy to produce; easy to sell, and even to this day has a profit margin of 50 percent. And this is where Post comes in.

 

Charles Post marketed Grape-Nuts as curing appendicitis, improving one's IQ, and even "making red blood redder." By 1903 he was clearing $1 million a year.

Regards,
John Jenkins

865-803-8179 cell

Gatlinburg, TN
Email: jrjenki@yahoo.com 

Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com 
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

Hyperbole is the Best Thing Ever.

Amazing Fact Generator

From amazingfactgenerator.com. Check it out and you too can know:

The longest jellyfish on record measured 260 feet and Pope John Paul II was the first Papal Harlem Globetrotter. The team made him an honorary member in 2000 when they visited the Vatican and Elvis Presley's hair was naturally a dirty blond color. He dyed it to look like his idol, Tony Curtis and Technically speaking a male ballet dancer is a ballerino. Now how could you have made it today without those bits of trivia?

Regards,
John Jenkins

865-803-8179 cell

Gatlinburg, TN
Email: jrjenki@yahoo.com

Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com/
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

Hyperbole is the Best Thing Ever.

Regulations

Did you know it takes 20 years to build a landing strip in an airport? Our clean environment regulations and our safety regulations are destroying the United States. No pulp mills, no steel mills, protecting snails, no air strips. We're killing ourselves.

Regards,
John Jenkins

865-803-8179 cell

Gatlinburg, TN
Email: jrjenki@yahoo.com 

Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com 
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

Hyperbole is the Best Thing Ever.

Gang Signs

Players who show gang signs while in uniform must be banished from any league. Forever.

Regards,
John Jenkins

865-803-8179 cell

Gatlinburg, TN
Email: jrjenki@yahoo.com 

Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com 
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

Hyperbole is the Best Thing Ever.

Report not Make News

If the following is true, the media has lost sight of their place in society. Report not make news.

 

My niece, Katelyn, stationed at Baluud , Iraq was assigned, with others of her detachment, to be escort/guard/ watcher for Martha Raddatz of ABC News as she covered John McCain's recent trip to Iraq . Katelyn and her Captain stood directly behind Raddatz as she queried GI's walking past. They kept count of the GI's and you should remember these numbers. Sh e asked 60 GI's who they planned to vote for in November. 54 said John McCain, 4 for Obama and 2 for Hillary. Katelyn called home and told her Mom and Dad to watch ABC news the next night because she was standing directly behind Raddatz and maybe they'd see her on TV. Mom and Dad of course, called and emailed all the kinfolk to watch the newscast and maybe see Katelyn. Well, of course, we all watched and what we saw wasn't a glimpse of Katelyn, but got a hell'uva view of skewed news. After a dissertation on McCain's trip and speech, ABC showed 5 GI's being asked by Raddatz how they w ere going to vote in November; 3 for Obama and 2 for Clinton . No mention of the 54 for McCain

Regards,
John Jenkins

865-803-8179 cell

Gatlinburg, TN
Email: jrjenki@yahoo.com 

Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com 
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

Hyperbole is the Best Thing Ever.

You can't believe anything Obama and McCain say...

You must remember the public cannot believe anything Obama or McCain say. You can only look at what they do. Go back and look at what George Bush said while he was campaigning and look at what he DID as president. 

 

How do you know a politician is lying; their lips are moving.

Regards,
John Jenkins

865-803-8179 cell

Gatlinburg, TN
Email: jrjenki@yahoo.com 

Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com 
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

Hyperbole is the Best Thing Ever.

Double Standard

Double standard.

 

Recently our local paper had one of those inserts on the subject of entertainment. You know the ones, television schedules and the like. There was a story, no author identified, praising the television show Family Guy. I do not watch the show but the description in the article read a lot like "high school" humor. As the unidentified author described it "humor about bodily emissions." 

 

The anonymous author wrote about an episode that purported to show God as a bearded, white-robed ladies man hitting on a girl at a bar. He lights her cigarette with a bolt of lightening. "Magic fingers," he purrs. But then, to his chagrin an independent second bolt of lightning incinerates her. He summons his son Jesus ("Get the Escalade, we're outta here!") and makes a fast exit.

 

Unless the show's developers, networks broadcasting the show, print media et al are willing to illustrate and write about  Muhammad in similar situations and therefore endure the rioting, property damage, and accompanying death threats by our Muslim friends, I suggest God and Jesus be left out of cartoons and articles.

Regards,
John Jenkins

865-803-8179 cell

Gatlinburg, TN
Email: jrjenki@yahoo.com 

Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com 
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

Hyperbole is the Best Thing Ever.

Republic vs Democracy

The United States is a Republic, not a Democracy.

A republic is a government having a chief of state who is in modern times a president and in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law.

A democracy is government by the people; especially: rule of the majority: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.

Death Penalty

The problem with applying the death penalty is human error. In Tennessee we have just sent home a criminal who has spent 22 years on death row. He will be given another trial. Look at all of the death penalty cases that are overturned. Because of judge error, prosecutor error, defense attorney error, police error, et al.

 

Our justice system is set up to convict the people we want to convict and to release those we want released. Guilt and innocence have little to do with the process.

 

If we are to use the death penalty it should be enforced within three months of conviction. If it is not carried out within three months, life without parole should be the default.

Regards,
John Jenkins

865-803-8179 cell

Gatlinburg, TN
Email: jrjenki@yahoo.com 

Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com 
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

Hyperbole is the Best Thing Ever.

Shall Not Be Infringed

With the latest decision on gun ownership based on party lines instead of the Constitution concerns about the right to an abortion being overturned. Have you ever considered how Congress will word a law prohibiting abortion?

The woman who was the claimant in the Roe vs Wade did not have an abortion. The court's decision came to late for her.

The court decided a woman has a "constitutional right" to an abortion for any reason during the first trimester, a "constitutional right" to an abortion for health of the mother during the second trimester and NO "constitutional right" to an abortion for any reason during the last trimester. As you can see it is not a Constitutional issue.

The courts have "made laws" instead of interpreting the Constitution. As you can see by the resulting court decisions it is not a constitutional issue making it a state issue not federal. If Congress ever writes a law imagine how miscarriages will be treated. The ex-mother-to-be could be liable for manslaughter or depraved indifference.

30 years ago, Ohio, approved a law to keep vehicles with wheels larger than a pre-define circumfrance off the sidewalks. The result was kindergarten age kids had to ride their big-wheels in the streets. We have to keep congress out of trying to make decisions. They are not mentally fit for the challenge.

Barack has Rev Wright and Hillary has Bill. Must be frustrating.

Who Permitted the Cole to be Bombed?

Has anyone considered charging the commanding officer of the Cole with incompetence allowing the murder of some of the men under his command who trusted him? In a foreign port he did not have a perimeter established to keep unknown people away from his ship? How stupid can a commander be?

Imagine

Think abut the more than 3/4ths of a trillion dollars spent in Afghanistan and Iraq , that we do not have. Imagine what it could of the positive things we could have done with it. AND more than 4,000 of our military would still be alive and multiple thousands would still have all of the body parts.

Look on the bright side. Our amputee Olympic team will be the best ever.

Qualified to be President?

I heard Clark's comments concerning John McCain. With all of the disagreement maybe someone should explain just what part of being shot down in an airplane qualifies one to be president? What part of being a fighter pilot qualifies one to be president? What part of being a POW and tortured qualifies one to be president.

On the other hand what part of being 1/2 white and 1/2 black qualifies one to be president?

As with ALL retired generals Clark is bored and lonesome. As a general the people around him treated him as if he were a god and he loved it. Today, no one cares if he lives or dies. Must be lonesome. But in this case he is right.

Obama is not qualified to be president and neither is McCain. See what our political parties have stooped to.

But don't forget Harry. No one liked him either.

Could Hillary Possibly Be Right About Iraq?

Sen Clinton said the Iraqi government has not met any benchmarks required of them at least not on time and she believes they will continue to fail until they are convinced we are leaving. She just may be right...

Civil War, Viet Nam, Korea

What is the difference between the United States, during the Civil War, and Viet Nam and Korea?

We fought to keep the United States one nation and we fight or fought to keep Viet Nam and Korea split. Does that make sense?

Immigrants and Benjamin Franklin

As we look at how immigrants are changing our country today it might be interesting to look back and see how it was. Recently I read a book about the Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. You might be interested to know he was not nearly as esteemed during his lifetime as he is today. Apparently it is easier to esteem someone we never met.

Pennsylvania was founded in 1681 by William Penn as a refuge for his fellow Quakers. It was a fast-growing colony continually beset by factionalism and conflict between its legislature and its Penn family---controlled executive. Its population, in 1750, was around 120,000 making Pennsylvania the fourth largest colony after Virginia, Massachusetts, and Maryland. Twenty years later it was the second largest colony. The lack of any established church and the Quakers’ reputation for religious toleration attracted a most varied mixture of religious groups. By mid-century the Quakers had become a minority in their own colony at just below 1/4th the population. (I bet they wished they could have closed their borders.) Scotch-Irish Presbyterians made up another quarter and Germans, composed of a wide assortment of religious sects totaled about 40 percent. Favoring the Quaker policies of pacifism, no militia, and low taxes the Germans tacitly agreed to let a Quaker oligarchy run the assembly. Indian problems on the frontier where most of the Scotch-Irish were settled, and that fact that the Penn family, which had converted to Anglicanism, refused to pay what many though was its fair share of taxes, meant that politics in the colony was contentious and turbulent. The bulk of the population of Pennsylvania thought the Penns should do more to pay for the costs of supporting the colony. Above all they should permit the assembly to tax the hundreds of thousands of acres of proprietary lands the Penn family had not yet granted or sold to settlers.

The massive immigration of Germans into Pennsylvania was considered a major problem. “Why should the Germans be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours?” The early settlers wanted to exclude all Germans and black people from the New World. They thought the country should belong to only the English and the Indians, the white and the red.

Not much has changed other than the invaders.

Benjamin Franklin thought the Pennsylvania government neglected the defense of the colony against America’s French and Indian enemies. When the Legislature did not act to defend the colony in 1747, Benjamin Franklin almost single-handedly raised 10,000 armed men in the Militia Association and organized lotteries to raise funds to purchase weapons and ammunition and to build defenses on the Delaware River.

Imagine if someone would do that today.

Some things don't change.

Lately the FLDS vs. Texas has been the news. Police, using what they say was a telephone plea for help, raided a compound, removing over 400 children. The court jumped at the chance to get involved and has arranged for the children to be separated from their mothers.

Most states set the minimum age to marry between and including 14-18 with New Hampshire setting the minimum age for girls at 13. In Utah for those 15 years old, parental consent must be obtained, approval from Juvenile Court is necessary with the court concluding the marriage is voluntary and in the best interests of the minor. In the best interests of the minor; I wonder what that includes and I wonder if the judge is a member of FLDS? Is that the fox watching the chickens? It is law is it right?

Throughout most of the 19th century, the minimum age of consent for sexual intercourse in many of the states was 10 years old. In Delaware it was seven; as late as 1930 twelve states allowed boys as young as 14 and girls as young as 12 to marry with parental consent.

Governments have problems regulating things:

• The Oregon legislature barred marriages between white people and anyone more than one-quarter black in 1859, just three years after statehood. (It also imposed a $5 tax on black, Chinese, Hawaiian and “mulatto” people.) A few years later, the legislature extended the ban to marriage between whites and “any Negro, Chinese, or any person having one fourth or more Negro, Chinese, or Kanaka (native Hawaiian) blood, or any person having more than one-half Indian blood.” No other state referenced Kanakas, and Nevada was the only other state to mention Chinese.
• Married women were not allowed to make legal contracts in twelve states until 1940.
• The sale of birth control devices to married couples was forbidden until 1965. In the early half of the 1900s contraception was charged with “perversion of natural function,” morality” and “fostering egotism and enervating self-indulgence.”
• Interracial marriage was forbidden and punishable by prison in 13 states until 1967.

If the state can decide what is best for the FLDS when do you suppose they will decide what is best for the Church of Christ and what do you suppose that might be?

If the state decides that marriage at 7 years is OK does that make it right? If the state decides that marriage at 7 years is not OK does it make it wrong. Who is to decide these matters and how do they decide? The courts have shown they are not capable of such decisions.

Imagine how it will be for our great-grandchildren

On the subject of adolescence a couple of stories recently in The Mountain Press. One, we have Miley Cyrus, I believe she is 15 years old, embarrassed over photographs she had taken of her by a professional photographer. Photographs approved by her parents. Photographs that have been called “risqué.” Second, we have a singing group, the Naked Brothers, 10 and 13 years old respectively appearing at Wal-Mart promoting their latest DVD “I Don’t Want to Go to School.”

Miley appears on the Disney Channel and the Naked Brothers appear on the Nicolodean channel. Both considered to be “kid friendly and family oriented.” Not so recently we have Jamie Spears, 16-years old, unmarried, pregnant on the Nicolodean channel's most popular show.

The world has changed. The transition between childhood and adulthood is much longer today than it was less than one hundred years ago, when a boy proved himself a man when he could shoulder and share adult hardships, risks, and responsibility working side by side with his father in the fields. By the time he was a seasoned seventeen or eighteen, he was ready to start his own family. A girl became a woman by the time she reached childbearing age; fourteen or fifteen was often considered old enough to marry. The transition from childhood to adulthood was so short that adolescence---at least as the distinct stage of life we now consider it---hardly existed.

Today the traditional determinations of adulthood---the establishment of occupation and family---are routinely postponed until after college. With the period of childhood innocence seeming shorter and shorter, we’ve created a new ten-or-twelve-or-more-years-long designation, a no-man’s land (or no-woman’s land) we term adolescence. Over the past fifty-years or so, this new limbo-land life stage has become an extended period of awkward uncertainty.

We have stretched adolescence further than anytime in history. Any child of any age, with the click of a mouse, can see naked people performing sexual activities of all persuasions, “meet” complete strangers while in their own homes while their parents cross their fingers and hope for the best.

Imagine how it will be for our great-grandchildren.

Politicians Do What Politicians Do Best

Letter to local columnist...........

Reference your column in The Mountain Press, Monday April 28th.

I have a simple but pessimistic philosophy but it makes situations like this one understandable and tolerable. My premise is: Politicians are unethical, dishonest, and immoral. They take care of themselves first, those who give them money second, and last and least, if it is convenient, those who vote for them. I look only at what a politician does. Many politicians say things I disagree with while doing very little I disagree with. On the other hand many politicians say things I agree with while doing things I disagree with.

To paraphrase Obama's preacher, a politician says what politicians have to say.

Question: How do you know a politician is lying? Answer: Their mouth is moving.
Oh yes, one other point to my philosophy. When a politician accuses another politician of doing something dishonest, immoral or unethical, the accuser does the same thing and may be worse.

Look only at what a politician does.

In Commissioner Whaley’s situation he has shown himself a poster boy of my premise but we must look at who voted for him AND who benefits by his actions in addition to himself? Something stinketh in Denmark. Sevier County being a poor county closes the door on opportunities to hold elected office to all but those who have already stolen their share and now want more.

I believe Will Rogers said something about sending the town thief up to rob Washington DC. Sevier County politicians do not have to go that far.

Attempted Suicide or Munchausen Syndrome?

In 2006 a local man drove his car into a tree in an apparent attempt at suicide. He missed. His vehicle ricocheted into the nearby house, killing an occupant sleeping on the couch. The man has been convicted and sentenced to one year in the county jail and 2 years probation.

I seem to remember The Mountain Press reported sometime back that Dr Smith had attempted suicide several times and now we have another attempt. He is either a most inept doctor or just maybe there is another reason. Have you ever wondered why Dr Smith waited until his trial was over, he had been convicted and had his hand slapped by the court to try again? Have you wondered if maybe none of these attempts were meant to kill him? Maybe he just wants the attention.

Munchausen syndrome (named for Baron von Munchausen, an 18th century German officer who was known for embellishing the stories of his life and experiences) is a psychiatric disorder in which a person repeatedly acts as if he or she has a physical or mental disorder when, in truth, they have caused the symptoms. The person acts this way in order to draw attention or sympathy to themselves. They are even willing to undergo painful or risky tests and operations in order to get the sympathy and special attention given to people who are truly ill. Munchausen syndrome is a mental illness associated with severe emotional difficulties.

Is it possible Mr. Finchum died as a result of Dr Smith seeking attention?

You must admit it makes one wonder.