Landmine Hopscotch | Hopes and Dreams

Landmine Hopscotch
solo dissent and trained Gambian Pouched Rats

On Re-Writing & Movie Review
Solo In The Theater

May 29, 2018

We were the only people in the theater when we saw Solo: A Star Wars Story recently. It wasn't a promising way for Disney to get back the quarter of a billion dollars they sunk in the movie (plus marketing and distribution).

The movie was OK... not great... not bad...

I like Star Wars and Star Trek and Ringo Starr, but I'm not the biggest fan of any one of them. There's good, and there's bad of each.

The main problem with Solo (and Rogue One) is that Disney feels obligated to connect every single dot of Han Solo (or Star Wars: A New Hope), as if nudging and winking at us throughout the movie to say “See what we did there?” Except Disney wasn't there with us, nobody was. We were all alone. (See what I did there?!?)

It made me want to write the sequel, -Spoiler Alert- which would start out with a different guy looking like Han Solo and being told “I've heard about you.” This guy would ask what was said about him and would be told the plot of Solo: A Star Wars Story. He would laugh and reply, “I don't know where you heard that, but that wasn't me.” And then a completely different movie -- less formula, less simplified backstory -- would begin.

Music Association: John Lennon - Starting Over

Solo - A Star Wars Story - 3 stars

On Re-Writing
Time Of Great Dissent
May 28, 2018

There are times for acceptance
I remember those times vaguely
prior to the smartphone era
and its first presiding Twit

There are times for activism
when people of all categories
talk, vote, demonstrate, and march
without foreign influences

God, grant me courage to change what can change,
patience and timing to change things I cannot change now,
serenity to accept what may never change,
and wisdom to know the differences.

- paraphrasing Reinhold Niebuhr for 2018

Music Associations: John Waite - Change & Eric Clapton - Change The World

Hopes and Dreams

Landmine Hopscotch continues
The Good Rats
May 19, 2018

With yesterday's Texas school shooting, more students and teachers have been killed by guns in U.S. schools than active duty military deaths this year. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims' friends and families. And it continues to be past time for real courage and real leadership to stop more school massacres from ever happening.

Tests should be the worst things that can happen at schools.

I'll say that again.

Tests should be the Worst things that happen at Schools

Rats.

Rats are the good news. Not for school shootings... no, Americans like gun owners more than school children or teachers. Rats are helpful for sniffing out landmines.

Trained Gambian Pouched Rats (HeroRats) have found thousands of unexploded, buried landmines. In Tanzania, rats have found 1,500 buried landmines. In Mozambique, rats have found 6,693 landmines, 1,087 bombs, and 26,934 small arms and ammunitions. Gambian Pouched Rats are also working in Angola, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. They can sniff out tuberculosis and poached animal remains.

Gambian Pouched Rats are giant (up to 3 feet long) but too light (2-3 lbs.) to set off landmines. Their pouches are in their cheeks for food storage, like hamsters (or Tupperware).

Their schooling only takes 9 months and costs $7,300. And yes, all they have to worry about are the tests.

Music Associations: Ratt - Round and Round & John Mayer - Waiting On The World To Change

Hopes and Dreams

Landmine Hopscotch
May 8, 2018

There are more than 100 million landmines in 68 countries around the world. Another 100 million are stockpiled and waiting to be planted.

Each month 2000 innocent people are killed or maimed by landmines. About 30 to 40% of those are children.

Join the campaign to rid the world of landmines.

UNICEF www.unicef.org

Music Association: Edwin Starr - War

Hopes and Dreams