Happy Valentine's Day

We will celebrate Valentine's Day this year on Wednesday and always on Feb. 14. Valentine's Day was probably imported into North America in the 19th century by British settlers.

In the United States, the first mass-produced valentines of embossed paper lace were produced and sold shortly after 1847 by Esther Howland (1828-1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts. Her father operated a large book and stationery store, and she took her inspiration from an English valentine she had received. Since 2001, the Greeting Card Association has been giving an annual "Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary".

In the second half of the 20th century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to all manners of gifts in the United States, usually from a man to a woman. Such gifts typically include roses and chocolates. In the 1980s, the diamond industry began to promote Valentine's Day as an occasion for giving jewelry.

The day has come to be associated with a generic platonic greeting of "Happy Valentine's Day."

In some American elementary schools, students are asked to give a Valentine card or small gift to everyone in the class. The greeting cards of these students often mention what they appreciate about each other.

On Valentine Day in 1960, a special woman came into my life, and she loved me with all her heart. After she received a Valentine card from me it was easy to see
her reaction that I caught her hook, line, and sinker.
~Noah

Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865
Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it."

Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun.

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party's nomination for President, he sketched his life:

"I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My father ... removed from Kentucky to ... Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.... Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher ... but that was all."

Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping store at New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years. His law partner said of him, "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest."

He married Mary Todd, and they had four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860.

As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.

Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion.

The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.... "

On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln's death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died.

First Super Bowl Game
Not many of us can claim to be the first of anything. However, I filmed the TV commercial at Lake Placid, N.Y. for the 'first' Super Bowl football game in late December 1966 for the game to be played at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, Calif. on Jan. 15, 1967 between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Green Bay Packers. The commercial featured a Ford automobile being driving off a snowy Ski jump and drove away undamaged at the bottom of the jump.

NFL Head Coach Vince Lombardi and his quarterback Bart Starr of the Green Bay Packers won the game over AFL Head Coach Hank Stram with quarterback Len Dawson, by a score of 35 to 10. Bart Starr was voted the most valuable player of the game.

This Sunday, Feb. 4, the XLI (41) super bowl game will be played in Miami. It will be between the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears. I pick the Colts to win. ~Noah
The Belew/Belue Clan
There he stood. Age unknown. The date was 1735. The location was the Carolina Territory. From whence did this man come? That is not known. Many of us have theories. Some believe he emigrated from France. I also believe he came to America from France because he was considered a French Huguenot. At that time, if you had a different religion than Catholic, you were an outcast in France. Renny Belue was his name.

Renny found a wife and became parents of several children. The oldest was named Zachariah, who was born on April 21, 1758. Between the years of 1775 and 1783, Zachariah and father Renny, fought in The American Revolutionary War aka America War of Independence. Renny must have had an education as he was promoted to Lieutenant. Zachariah’s rank was Private. Someway and somehow, Zachariah last name got changed from Belue to Belew. My theory, it was changed by mistake since I believe Zack was unable to read or write.

Renny died in Union County, South Carolina of old age in 1797, however, his burial site has never been found. I looked in all the cemeteries in that area, and was unable to find it. Many times during those years, a field rock was left by the grave as a maker in place of a tombstone.

Where am I going with this story? It’s leading up to my life, beginning in 1926.

After the war, the Carolina Territory had no money to offer soldiers as a bonus for their war effort, but they offered free land, which they had plenty. After Renny died, Zachariah packed up his family and headed to Lawrence County, Tennessee, to accept this bonus free land. It’s difficult to imagine the hardship of traveling from South Carolina to Middle Tennessee, hundreds of miles through the uncharted trail by wagon, mules, horses, or walking, and avoiding the American Indians.

Zachariah Belew and his family arrived in the Leoma area, Lawrence County, in early 1800s. The free land was located east of Leoma. Farm life was about the only way of surviving in those days. A son William was born in 1816. Zachariah’s name is listed on a DAR plaque on the outside wall of the Lawrence County Tennessee Courthouse (near the flagpole) for his war effort. I, Noah H. Belew, was accepted as a member of SAR through Zacharish’s name. Zachariah died on February 9, 1845. He is buried at the Second Creek Cemetery in Lawrence County, Tenn.

William Belew, born in Lawrence County, on July 13, 1816 <> son of Zachariah. He lived and farmed his land east of Leoma. William got married and had a family. They named one of their sons, Jonathan. William died on September 8, 1884, and is buried in a cemetery east of Leoma.

Jonathan Belew, born on June 14, 1841 in Lawrence County, Tenn. He became a farmer on land east of Leoma. He and his wife had a son in 1867 named Robert H. Belew. This was my grandfather. Robert and his wife (my grandmother Matilda ‘Cottrell’ Belew) lived and farmed on land east of Leoma. They had a family and one of their sons was named George Lonnie (Lon) Belew. This was my father.

George Lonnie (Lon) Belew, born on June 22, 1892 married Rettie Mae ‘Hickman’ Belew (my mother), born December 30, 1896. They had six children – four males and two females. I, Noah H. Belew, was the youngest son, born on August 11, 1926. Lon and his family lived on a rocky/hilly farm in the village of Barnesville, Lawrence County. During the Great Depression, it was touch and go in order to survive. This was before tractors. Farming was accomplished with a strong back, mules and hoes.

Rettie Mae ‘Hickman’ Belew was born in Lawrence County, Tenn. She was a mother and housewife and doing a lot of farm work, including milking the cows. She lived to be 90 and died from a stroke on Flag Day, June 14, 1987.

Alonzo Junior Belew was the oldest son. Born to Lon and Rettie on April 18, 1917. Alonzo left home for greener pasture around 1935. He found work in Detroit, Michigan, with an automobile manufacture. He joined the US Army when World War II started. Alonzo died and was buried in Benton, Kentucky on April 7, 1974.

Loyd Virgil Belew, second son of Lon and Rettie. Born on September 21, 1918. Loyd was a farmhand on his daddy’s farm until 1938, when he joined the US Army. After the war, Loyd became a farmer and pursued other jobs until he died in Hohenwald, Tenn. on December 1995. He is buried in Napier, Tenn.

Freda Mae Belew was the first daughter of Lon and Rettie. She was born on May 7, 1921 and died on September 8, 1928. Her death caused from burst appendixes. Freda is buried at the Barnesville Cemetery, Lawrence County.

Claude Monroe Belew, third son of Lon and Rettie. He was born on February 20, 1923. He was a helper on the farm until he went to Michigan in 1940 to find better work. He joined the US Navy when World War II started. He retired from the Navy in 1962. Claude was successful as a self employee until he died on June 10, 2003. Claude is buried in the Barnesville Cemetery, Lawrence County.

Opal ‘Belew’ Scott, second and last daughter of Lon and Rettie. Opal was born on August 3, 1929 and died on June 11, 1991. She is buried in the Barnesville Cemetery, Lawrence County.
Noah H. Belew (that’s me) is the fourth and last son of Lon and Rettie. Born on August 11, 1926 in Lawrence County. My working life: Served 20 years in the USMC and 20 years as a motion picture filmmaker. I am still living at age 80.

History of Tennessee

Hello Folks,
I'm back and I have changed the format of my Web site. I hope you enjoyed the Christmas and New Year holidays. I had no luck fishing, but I had a good time trying to catch them. I changed my Web site to make it easier for me to post my material on Friday of each week. Most of what I had previously reported is still there, just in a different location of the page. It is now so easy to post that even a caveman man can do it. This week I bring your attention to the history of Tennessee <> my birth state. Please visit my site http://www.semperfidelisnoah.com/ every week and sign my Guest Book and let me know your thoughts. ~Noah

History of Tennessee
The Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville has been the site of much of the State's history.
Tennessee is an American state and a constitutent part of the United States of America. It was admitted to the Union on June 1, 1796.

Ancient history
The area now known as Tennessee was first settled by Paleo-Indians nearly 11,000 years ago. The names of the cultural groups that inhabited the area between first settlement and the time of European contact are unknown, but several distinct cultural phases have been named by archaeologists, including Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian whose chiefdoms were the cultural predecessors of the Muscogee people who inhabited the Tennessee River Valley prior to Cherokee migration into the river's headwaters.

European exploration and settlement
Discovery and interaction with native peoples

Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto was the first European explorer to visit Tennessee. When Spanish explorers first visited the area, led by Hernando de Soto in 1539–43, it was inhabited by tribes of Muscogee and Yuchi people. Possibly because of European diseases devastating the Native tribes, which would have left a population vacuum, and also from expanding European settlement in the north, the Cherokee moved south from the area now called Virginia. As European colonists spread into the area, the native populations were forcibly displaced to the south and west, including all Muscogee and Yuchi peoples, including the Chickasaw and Choctaw. From 1838 to 1839, nearly 17,000 Cherokees were forced to march from Eastern Tennessee to Indian Territory west of Arkansas. This came to be known as the Trail of Tears, as an estimated 4,000 Cherokees died along the way.

Government under North Carolina
In the days before statehood, Tennesseans struggled to gain a political voice and suffered for lack of the protection afforded by organized government. Six counties—Washington, Sullivan and Greene in East Tennessee and Davidson, Sumner, and Tennessee in Middle Tennessee—had been formed as western counties of North Carolina between 1777 and 1788. After the American Revolution, however, North Carolina did not want the trouble and expense of maintaining such distant settlements, embroiled as they were with hostile tribesmen and needing roads, forts and open waterways. Nor could the far-flung settlers look to the national government, for under the weak, loosely constituted Articles of Confederation, it was a government in name only.

State of Franklin

The westerners' two main demands—protection from the Indians and the right to navigate the Mississippi River—went mainly unheeded during the 1780s. North Carolina’s insensitivity led frustrated East Tennesseans in 1784 to form the breakaway State of Franklin. John Sevier was named governor, and the fledgling state began operating as an independent, though unrecognized, government. At the same time, leaders of the Cumberland settlements made overtures for an alliance with Spain, which controlled the lower Mississippi River and was held responsible for inciting the Indian raids. In drawing up the Watauga and Cumberland Compacts, early Tennesseans had already exercised some of the rights of self-government and were prepared to take political matters into their own hands. Such stirrings of independence caught the attention of North Carolina, which quietly began to reassert control over its western counties. These policies and internal divisions among East Tennesseans doomed the short-lived State of Franklin, which passed out of existence in 1788.

Southwest Territory
When North Carolina finally ratified the Constitution of the United States in 1789, it also ceded its western lands, the Tennessee country, to the Federal government. North Carolina had used these lands as a means of rewarding its Revolutionary soldiers, and in the Cession Act of 1789, it reserved the right to satisfy further land claims in Tennessee. Congress designated the area as the Territory of the United States, South of the River Ohio, more commonly known as the Southwest Territory. The territory was divided into three districts—two for East Tennessee and one for the Mero District on the Cumberland—each with its own courts, militia and officeholders.
President George Washington appointed William Blount as territorial governor. He was a prominent North Carolina politician with extensive holdings in western lands.

Admission to the Union
In 1795, a territorial census revealed a sufficient population for statehood, and a referendum showed a three-to-one majority in favor of joining the Union. Governor Blount called for a constitutional convention to meet in Knoxville, where delegates from all the counties drew up a model state constitution and democratic bill of rights. The voters chose Sevier as governor, and the newly elected legislature voted for Blount and William Cocke as Senators, and Andrew Jackson as Representative. Tennessee leaders thereby converted the territory into a new state, with organized government and constitution, before applying to Congress for admission. Since the Southwest Territory was the first Federal territory to present itself for admission to the Union, there was some uncertainty about how to proceed, and Congress was divided on the issue. Nonetheless, in a close vote on June 1, 1796, Congress approved the admission of Tennessee as the sixteenth state of the Union. Its borders were drawn by extending the northern and southern borders of North Carolina, with a few deviations, to the Mississippi River, Tennessee's western boundary.

Civil War
The American Civil War, to a large extent, was fought in cities and farms of Tennessee—only Virginia had more battles.

Secession

Most Tennesseans initially showed little enthusiasm for breaking away from a nation whose struggles it had shared for so long. In 1860, they had voted by a slim margin for the Constitutional Unionist John Bell, a native son and moderate who continued to search for a way out of the crisis.
In February 1861, fifty-four percent of the state’s voters voted against sending delegates to a secession convention. With the attack on Fort Sumter in April, however, followed by President Abraham Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers to coerce the seceded states back into line, public sentiment turned dramatically against the Union.

Thus historian Daniel Crofts reports:

Unionists of all descriptions, both those who became Confederates and those who did not, considered the proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand troops "disastrous." Having consulted personally with Lincoln in March, Congressman Horace Maynard, the unconditional Unionist and future Republican from East Tennessee, felt assured that the administration would pursue a peaceful policy. Soon after April 15, a dismayed Maynard reported that "the President's extraordinary proclamation" had unleashed "a tornado of excitement that seems likely to sweep us all away." Men who had "heretofore been cool, firm and Union loving" had become "perfectly wild" and were "aroused to a phrenzy of passion." For what purpose, they asked, could such an army be wanted "but to invade, overrun and subjugate the Southern states." The growing war spirit in the North further convinced southerners that they would have to "fight for our hearthstones and the security of home. Governor Isham Harris began military mobilization, submitted an ordinance of secession to the General Assembly, and made direct overtures to the Confederate government. In a June 8, 1861, referendum, East Tennessee held firm against separation, while West Tennessee returned an equally heavy majority in favor. The deciding vote came in Middle Tennessee, which went from 51 percent against secession in February to 88 percent in favor in June. Having ratified by popular vote its connection with the fledgling Confederacy, Tennessee became the last state to withdraw from the Union.

Battles

Many battles were fought in the state—most of them Union victories. Ulysses S. Grant and the United States Navy captured control of the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers in February 1862 and held off the Confederate counterattack at Shiloh in April of the same year. Capture of Memphis and Nashville gave the Union control of the Western and Middle sections. Control was confirmed at the battle of Murfreesboro in early January 1863.
After Nashville was captured (the first Confederate state capital to fall) Andrew Johnson, an East Tennessean from Greeneville, was appointed military governor of the state by Lincoln. During this time, the military government abolished slavery. The Confederates continued to hold East Tennessee despite the strength of Unionist sentiment there, with the exception of pro-Confederate Sullivan County.
The Confederates besieged Chattanooga in early fall 1863 but were driven off by Grant in November. Many of the Confederate defeats can be attributed to the poor strategic vision of General Braxton Bragg, who led the Army of Tennessee from Shiloh to Confederate defeat at Chattanooga. The last major battles came when the Confederates invaded in November 1864 and were checked at Franklin, then totally destroyed by George Thomas at Nashville in December.

Reconstruction
After the war, Tennessee adopted a new constitution that abolished slavery on February 22, 1865; ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on July 18, 1866; and was the first state readmitted to the Union on July 24, 1866. Because it ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, Tennessee was the only state that seceded from the Union that did not have a military governor during Reconstruction. The Nashville Republican Bannerb on January 4, 1868, published an editorial calling for a revolutionary movement of white Southerners to unseat the one-party state rule of the Republican Party and restore the racial subjugation of the region's blacks. "In this State," the paper argued, "reconstruction has perfected itself and done its worst. It has organized a government which is as complete a closed corporation as may be found; it has placed the black man over the white as the agent and prime-move of domination; it has constructed a system of machinery by which all free guarantees, privileges and opportunities are removed from the people.... The impossibility of casting a free vote in Tennessee short of a revolutionary movement ... is an undoubted fact." The Banner urged readers to ignore the presidential election and instead put energies into building "a local movement here at home" that would end Republican rule. [cited in Harcourt 2005]

Centennial

In 1897, the state celebrated its centennial of statehood (albeit one year late) with a great exposition in Nashville. The Tennessee Centennial Exposition was the ultimate expression of the Gilded Age in the Upper South—a showcase of industrial technology and exotic papier-mвchй versions of the world’s wonders. During its six-month run at Centennial Park, the Exposition drew nearly two million visitors to see its dazzling monuments to the South’s recovery. Governor Robert Taylor observed, “Some of them who saw our ruined country thirty years ago will certainly appreciate the fact that we have wrought miracles.”

Alvin C. York

Tennessee provided the most celebrated American soldier of the First World War: Alvin C. York of Fentress County, Tennessee. York was a former conscientious objector who, in October 1918, subdued an entire German machine gun regiment in the Argonne Forest. Besides receiving the Medal of Honor and assorted French decorations, York became a powerful symbol of patriotism in the press and Hollywood film.

Women's rights
Tennessee became the focus of national attention during the campaign for women’s voting rights. Women?s suffrage, like the temperance movement, was an issue with its roots in middle-class reform efforts of the late 1800s.
The organized movement came of age with the founding of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association in 1906. Despite a determined (and mostly female) opposition, Tennessee suffragists were moderate in their tactics and gained limited voting rights before the national question arose. In 1920, Governor Albert Roberts called a special session of the General Assembly to consider ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Leaders of the rival groups flooded into Nashville to lobby the General Assembly. In a close House vote, the suffrage amendment won passage when an East Tennessee legislator, Harry Burn, switched sides after receiving a telegram from his mother encouraging him to support ratification. Tennessee thereby became the pivotal state that in approving the Nineteenth Amendment. Women immediately made their presence felt by swinging Tennessee to Warren Harding in the 1920 presidential election—the first time the state had voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1868.

Monkey Trial
Further national attention came Tennessee’s way during the trial of John T. Scopes, the so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial.”
In 1925, the General Assembly, as part of a general education bill, passed a law that forbade the teaching of evolution in the public schools. Some local boosters in Dayton, Tennessee concocted a scheme to have Scopes, a high school biology teacher, violate the law and stand trial as a way of drawing publicity and visitors to the town. Their plan worked all too well, as the Rhea County Courthouse was turned into a circus of national and even international media coverage. Thousands flocked to Dayton to witness the high-powered legal counsel (William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution, and Clarence Darrow for the defense, argue their case. Tennessee was ridiculed in the northeast and West Coast press as the “Monkey State,” even as a wave of revivals defending religious fundamentalism swept the state. The legal outcome of the trial was inconsequential: Scopes was convicted and fined $100, a penalty later rescinded by the state court of appeals (although the law itself remained on the books until 1967). More important was the law’s symbolic importance: it was an expression of the anxiety felt by Tennessee’s rural people over the threat to their traditional religious culture posed by modern science.

Country music birthplace
Ironically, at the very time that Tennessee’s rural culture was under attack by sophisticated, urban critics, its music found a national audience. In 1925, WSM, a powerful Nashville radio station, began broadcasting a weekly program of live music which soon was dubbed the “Grand Ole Opry.” Such music came in diverse forms: banjo-and-fiddle string bands of Appalachia, family gospel singing groups, and country vaudeville acts like that of Murfreesboro native Uncle Dave Macon. Still the longest-running radio program in American history, the Opry used the new technology of radio to tap into a huge market for “old time” or “hillbilly” music. Two years after the Opry’s opening, in a series of landmark sessions at Bristol, Tennessee, field scouts of the Victor Company recorded Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family to produce the first nationally popular rural records. Tennessee thus emerged as the heartland of traditional country music—home to many of the performers as well as the place from which it was broadcast to the nation.

The Great Depression and TVA

The need to create work for the unemployed during the Great Depression, the desire for rural electrification, and the desire to control the annual spring floods on the Tennessee River drove the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public utility, in 1933.
TVA had an impact on the lives of nearly all Tennesseans. The

agency was created mainly through the persistence of a Nebraska Senator George Norris. Headquartered in Knoxville, it was charged with the task of planning the total development of the Tennessee River Valley. TVA sought to do this primarily by building hydroelectric dams (twenty between 1933 and 1951) and coal-fired power plants to produce electricity. Inexpensive and abundant electrical power was the main benefit that TVA brought to Tennessee, particularly to rural areas that previously did not have electrical service. TVA brought electricity to about 60,000 farm households across the state. By 1945, TVA was the largest electrical utility in the nation, a supplier of vast amounts of power whose presence in Tennessee attracted large industries to relocate near one of its dams or steam plants.

World War II
World War II brought relief to Tennessee by employing ten percent of the state’s populace (308,199 men and women) in the armed services. Most of those who remained on farms and in cities worked on war-related production, since Tennessee received war orders amounting to $1.25 billion. Tennessee military personnel served with distinction from Pearl Harbor to the final, bloody assaults at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and 7,000 died in combat during the war. In 1942-43, Middle Tennessee residents played host to 28 Army divisions that swarmed over the countryside on maneuvers preparing for the D-Day invasion. Tennesseans participated in all phases of the war—from combat to civilian administration to military research. Cordell Hull served twelve years as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of State and became one of the chief architects of the United Nations, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Industrial expansion
War-based industries hummed with the labor of a greatly enlarged workforce. A giant shell-loading plant was built at Milan, as well as the Vultee Aircraft works in Nashville; TVA projects also expanded in East Tennessee. Approximately 33% of the state’s workers were female by the end of the war. Especially significant for the war effort was Tennessee’s role in the Manhattan Project, the military’s top secret project to build an atomic weapon. Research and production work for the first A-bombs were conducted at the huge scientific/industrial installation at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The Oak Ridge community was entirely a creation of the war: it grew from empty woods in 1941 to a city of 70,000 (Tennessee’s fifth largest) four years later.

Happy New Year - 2007

Democrats control US Congress
(SPECIAL NOTE:) Adios Amigos! This will be my last update for awhile. As you've seen during the past year, the quality of my posts have been going down hill. I love my Web site and those that know me will agree that I try to be a professional in everything I do. I still have it within me to say what the public need to hear, but the failing of my eyesight prevents the weekly transfer of my words of wisdom to my Web site. I now will go fishing in the Great Smoky Mountains of my home state of Tennessee with my two Yorkshire terriers, Sir Winston of Churchill V, and his half brother, Baron von Dieter. I will not terminate my Web site and I will return after I catch a mess of fish. I will have my LAPTOP for those who would like to maintain contact with me via email noahbelew@earthlink.net I am not sure if my Web site is read. I never hear from you. Please sign my "guest book".



It is traditional in the United States of America for all citizens to join hands and attend parties on New Year's Eve to welcome the New Year. Times Square in New York City has a ball drop hosted by the television celebrity. This is broadcast all over the United States. At the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve people will kiss or honk car horns. Paper blowers and whistles are blown. A soul food of black-eyed peas and rice called Hoppin' John is eaten by some. Other foods that are
eaten at New Year are cake and champagne. In the United States some believe that black-eyed beans are lucky. On Time Square they watch for the moment when a giant bright colored apple is lowered to the ground at which time they start saying Happy New Year
Later in the day many watch the Championship football games in stadiums or on their televisions. It has always been my policy to have a few cocktails at the New Year party of my choice, but I do not drive home after the celebration. It is my SOP Standing Operation Procedure to make a room reservation near the party location. If the distance is greater than I can walk from the party location, I call a taxi. The year of 2006 was not a good year until Nov. 7, nor were the years since 2003. On election day of this year, the majority of the American people voted to give Congress back to the Democratic Party. George W. Bush and the Republican Congress have made America a Third World country and he has made the free nations of the world hate us. In the six years that Bush has squatted in the White House, he has managed to start a war in Iraq that he can't stop. Since he ordered the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, about 3,000 young Americans have been killed. About 26,000 Americans have been wounded, many for life with no arms, legs and eyes. Iraq played no part in 9/11. What Bush did on 3/30/03 is what Japan did to us on 12/7/41 - the invasion of Pearl Harbor. So far, the Bush's Iraq War has cost the American taxpayers almost $400 billion. The American military is the worlds best, but at the present time Bush still has American troops fighting his Iraq War that was lost years ago. More young Americans have now been killed in Iraq then were killed on 9/11/01, and the mastermind of 9/11 is still running free. He has never been in Iraq and Bush says, "I don't think of him often." I will be disappointed if the Democratic controlled House of Representatives doesn't impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and do it no later than July 4, 2007. They both have lied many times and they were aware of it at the time. As a Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces, Bush is not. A caveman could do better.

Black-eyed peas
Ingredients:1 pound dried black-eyed peas2 quarts water,3 cups water1 medium onion -- finely chopped3 cloves garlic -- minced1 (7 oz) can diced green chiles2 teaspoons ground cumin 1/4 teaspoon pepper1/4 teaspoon baking soda1 dried or canned chipotle chile1/2 cup short-grain brown rice3 large tomatoes -- peeled & choppedsalt to taste Directions: Rinse and sort through peas. In a deep 3 1/2 to 4 quart pan, bring 2 quarts of the water to a boil over high heat. Add peas. Let water return to a boil; then boil, uncovered, for 2 minutes. Remove pan from heat, cover, and let stand for 1 hour. Drain and rise peas, discarding cooking water. In a 3 1/2 quart or larger slow cooker, combine onion, garlic, green chiles, cumin, pepper, baking soda, and chipotle chile. Stir in peas; pour in remaining 3 cups water. Cover and cook at low setting until peas are tender and to bite (9 to 10 hours). Remove and discard chipotle chile; stir in rice and tomatoes. Increase cooker setting to high; cover and cook until rice is tender to bite (45 to 55 more minutes). Season to taste with salt. Serve in wide shallow bowls. Serves/makes 8