Old Sparky Still Operational

MoonHowler

The State of Virginia executed Larry ‘Bill’ Elliot tonight around 9 pm.  Elliot was the oldest person on death row in Virginia.  He was convicted of killing 25-year-old Dana Thrall and 30-year-old Robert Finch in a capital murder charge. Both victims were killed inside Thrall’s Woodbridge townhouse on Jan. 2, 2001.

Elliot chose to die by electrocution, which is still an option in Virginia.  The U. S. Supreme Court refused to consider his appeal and Governor Tim Kaine refused to intervene. 

Elliot killed Finch and Finch’s girlfriend Dana Thrall over a custody dispute between Finch and Elliot’s girl friend named Rebecca Gragg.   Click for the story.

Prince William County has had 2 executions in a week.  Last Tuesday, Beltway sniper  John Allen Muhammad was executed by lethal injection, again convicted in Prince William County.  The execution chambers are at the Greensville Correctional Center in Waverly, Virginia.

So, as they say, Elliot got to ride the lightning bolt.  One less killer.  For those who defend the death penalty, justice has been served.  For those who do not, I suppose it hasn’t been a very good month.

No Official State Song

MoonHowler

Virginia has no official state song.  It has a Virginia Official Song Emeritus.  Ok.  So what’s the problem?  No one would be caught singing the  Virginia Official Song Emeritus, Carry Me Back to Old Virginny, written by an African American man named James Allen Bland who was born in 1854 in New York. 
 

Some history:

James “Jimmy” Allen Bland was born on October 22, 1854 in Flushing, Long Island, New York. When he was 12 and living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he saw an old black man playing a banjo and singing spirituals. He fell in love with the banjo and tried to make one using bailing wire for strings. This didn’t work very well and, besides, a big kid took it and broke it into pieces. Jimmy’s father bought him a real banjo for $8.00 and Jimmy taught himself to play… very well.

Later, the family moved to Washington, D.C., where Jimmy finished high school and enrolled in Howard University. He was so talented and had become so proficient with the banjo that he was entertaining professionally at private parties and in hotels and restaurants from the time he was 14.

At Howard University, he met a young lady named Mannie Friend. On a trip with Mannie to her birthplace in Tidewater, Virginia, Alan Bland composed “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny”. Sitting on the banks of the James River, Mannie wrote the words down on paper while Jimmy played and sang to her.

 

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ADL in Concert Against Hate

Alanna

I had the privilege of attending a SPECTACULAR event last evening at the Kennedy Center – ADL’s 15th Annual Concert Against Hate.

The Masters of Ceremonies included Liev Schreiber and Gabriel Byrne.  Their presentation was flawless and the introductions of the different honorees was beyond touching.

In between recognizing the honorees, the National Symphony Orchestra played under the direction of Emil de Cou, who appeared larger than life as he commanded the performance.

This Year’s Honorees included:

  • Tom Self – A newspaper photographer in Birmingham, Alabama at the Birmingham News  who photographed the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church that killed four African-American girls.
  • Mindy Finkelstein – A counselor who survived an attack at North Valley Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles, where a neo-Nazi opened fire.
  • Joseph Ileto – A postal service employee gunned down by the same neo-Nazi responsible for the shooting at the Jewish Community Center for looking ‘Asian or Hispanic’.
  • Ilsa & Lisa Klinghoffer – The daughters of Leon Klinghoffer, who in 1985 was murdered aboard the Archille Lauro by the Palestinian Liberation Organization(PLO) because he was Jewish.

A preview of the event can be found at http://www.adlconcert.org/Preview-09.html.

Sarah Goes Rogue

MoonHowler

Sarah Palin’s new book, Going Rogue, has received more publicity than most authors could ever hope or wish for. It should hit the shelves running, so to speak, Tuesday morning. Much has been leaked about of the book, either intentionally or unintentionally. In the book Sarah Palin talks about the McCain campaign, her difficulties with his campaign staff, her family, Alaska, her resignation as governor of Alaska, her near miss son-in-law, Levi Johnson, and an assortment of other things Americans seem to find fascinating. 

Sarah Palin appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show on Monday. I sat up extra late to see the rerun. Sarah Palin was gracious and scripted. Oprah didn’t have a prayer of catching her off-guard. Sarah Palin is likable. She is practiced. She appeared to want to leave no trail of words that might need explaining later. For example, she didn’t badmouth that pos Levi Johnson. That must have been tough considering Levi has gone everywhere trashing the entire family. She said he was the father of her grandchild and that would never change. Pretty smart of the lady, both politically and as the matriarch of the family.

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