Pick of the Pickers
There was a strong thread over at Eschaton the other day in which a number of us were knocking about the idea of "Who is the best acoustic guitar player?"

Naturally the idea of a "best" in this area is very subjective but we did come up with a pretty good list. We (okay, I) limited the to living players to avoid getting into long lists of deceased bluesmen.As a result Robert Johnson, Jerry Garcia, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Django Reinhart and other luminaries are not included.

The list we came up with, in no particular order:
Tony Rice
Leo Kottke
Kelly Joe Phelps
Jorma Kaukonen
Doc Watson
John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola & Paco De Lucia
David Grier
David Bromberg
Pat Metheny
John Hammond
Ry Cooder

others I would add upon reflection

Taj Mahal
Bruce Cockburn
Kotaro Oshio

Add your comments, complaints and further suggestions below

The witless wisdom of the American Taliban
See all a collection of charming sentiments and pithy quotes here but I've lifted a few of my favorites


"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
-George Herbert Walker Bush



“George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States, he was appointed by God.”

-Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, U.S. Army

"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good...Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism."

-Randall Terry, Operation Rescue

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
The Observer | International | Revealed: grim world of new Iraqi torture camps

you get tar, I'll get the feathers
Fox newscreep John Gibson wonders why there is so much anti-Americanism in Canada, and why we feel so "smugly superior" to the Americans. Could it be because jackasses like him write essays likeMacleans.ca | Canada Switchboard | Essay | Un-Happy Birthday, Canada

I wonder why they call it Black Sturgeon Lake?
CBC News: Manitoban struggles 90 minutes to land huge sturgeon

And he had the class to let the big fish go. My nominee for Canuck of the month!

The envelope please...
Apparently all you mugs are allergic to posting comments as only one person attempted to guess the twenty lines listed below

1. "I bet I can eat 50 eggs"

2."We're on a mission from God"

3."Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"

4."Where do you want me to hold it?" - "between your knees!"

5."Saigon, shit, I'm still in Saigon"

6."We deal in lead, friend"

7."Goooooood Morning Vietnaaaaam!"

8."That's mighty big talk from a one-eyed fat man" "Fill your hand you son-of-a-bitch"

9."Peel me a grape, Beulah"

10."I'm out of order? You're out of order! The whole damn system is out of order"

11."Was you ever bit by a dead bee?"

13."Never get out of the boat"

14. "The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club."

15."Quick, close the doors, there's a traitor inside trying to escape"

16. "Who are those guys?"

17. "What are you rebelling against anyways?" "Whaddya got?"

18. "I love children, could never eat a whole one, but I love the little tykes"

19. "The new phone book's here! the new phone book's here!"

20. "I crap bigger than you"


and the answers......


1. Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke

2. Dan Akroyd and John Belushi in The Blues Brothers

3. John Belushi in Animal House

4. Jack Nicholson's famous toast scene in Five Easy Pieces

5. Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now

6. Steve McQueen in The Magnificent Seven

7. Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam

8.Robert Duvall and John Wayne in True Grit

9.Mae West in Diamond Lil

10. Al Pacino in And Justice For All

11. Walter Brennan in To Have and Have Not

12. Ha-Ha! Tricky me - there is no number 12!

13. Fredrick Forrest in Apocalypse Now

14. Brad Pitt in Fight Club

15. Errol Flynn in Robin Hood

16. Robert Redford and Paul Newman in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"

17. Marlon Brando in The Wild One

18. WC Field in The Bank Dick

19. Steve Martin in The Jerk

20. Jack Palance in City Slickers

Isn't he dead yet?

The rest of the freakin' story from a moldering racist warmonger

In Your Ear
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
String Cheese Incident
One Step Closer
Yellow Bus Records, 2,800 yen
The most common, and occasionally even justified, complaints leveled against so-called jam bands are that too much emphasis is placed on long, meandering instrumental solos and that after a while all the songs sound the same.

Neither applies to One Step Closer, the latest studio effort from the Colorado-based String Cheese Incident. While longtime fans may bemoan the lack of bluegrass-flavored tunes, One Step Closer is by far the band's most cohesive and democratic album to date. All five members of the band contribute at least two songs, all take turns as lead vocalist and, with the exception of keyboard maestro Kyle Hollingsworth, all play guitar on at least one track.

To a some extent, String Cheese Incident have taken up the mantle of the Grateful Dead as touring torchbearers of hippie counterculture. Like the Dead, they've always been primarily a concert experience with live recordings being preferred over studio work by most fans. One Step Closer may change that.

Grateful Dead collaborators John Perry Barlow and Robert Hunter are partially responsible for the album's two most atypical songs. Barlow teamed with SCI's mandolin and fiddle whiz Michael Kang to pen the catchy U2 pastiche "Give Me the Love" that kicks off the disc, while on the ambitious "45th of November" Hunter and Hollingsworth fail to reach the heights the former scaled with Jerry Garcia.

The album's title track is a typical SCI uptempo, upbeat bit of sunshine from guitarist Bill Nershi, who also cowrote ballad "Big Compromise" and the rootsy "Farther" with singer-songwriter Jim Lauderdale. Other standouts include the rocker "Swampy Waters," a song that wouldn't sound out of place on a White Stripes album, and bassist Keith Mosley's radio-friendly "Sometimes a River."

No eight-minute guitar solos here, just tight rock grooves and catchy hooks. For those who still prefer live Cheese, the Japanese edition of One Step Closer includes a companion disc with eight live tracks recorded at the 2004 Bonnaroo Music Festival, enough to tide the faithful over until the band revisits Japan for dates in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka at the end of September.

North Mississippi Allstars
Electric Blue Watermelon
Buffalo Records, 2,500 yen
Another group of Bonnaroo stalwarts, the North Mississippi Allstars, blend elements of '70s rock, hip-hop, and traditional southeastern U.S. fife-and-drum music with a heaping dose of energetic delta blues on Electric Blue Watermelon.

Slide guitarist Luther Dickinson and brother Cody (drums) combine their high-intensity attack with rock-solid bass guitarist Chris Chew to reenergize the blues genre. The brothers, sons of top Memphis-based producer Jim Dickinson (Ry Cooder, The Replacements), have been recording since their teens, working with blues greats like R.L. Burnside and most recently backing up John Hiatt on his latest album, the excellent Master of Disaster.

Electric Blue Watermelon starts at full gallop with the driving blues of Charley Patton's "Mississippi Boll Weevil," downshifts into a bluesy hip-hop groove as the band teams up with rapper Al Kapone on "NoMo." Other guests include Lucinda Williams, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Robert Randolph on tracks that run from Stones'-style rock shouters to jangly pop. "Bounce Ball," a fife-and-drum track by the late Otha Turner--a Dickinson family mentor--closes the album with the relaxing chirping of north Mississippi hill country crickets. An only-in-Japan track "Dragonslayer" tacked on the end, returns the listener to the present day.

(Jun. 30, 2005)

Happy Canada Day eh!

Yup, that time of the year again to celebrate all things Canuck. So kick back with a few Molson's or a nice cold CC and Canada Dry, make yourself a backbacon sandwich with a side order of poutine and enjoy watching Strange Brew or a tape of an old hockey game. Or just throw some Neil Young/Stompin' Tom Conners/Tragically Hip/Frere Brothers or even (gulp) Bryan Adams on the boom box and enjoy the right to smoke and/or marry what or who ever you want.

(Koo-loo-koo-koo-koo-loo-koo-koo!)

The kids are NOT all right

A very scary bit of info from a well written NYT editorial about how the U.S. doesn't really care who it locks up. or even who it shoots

Off the radar

Since neither AP or Reuters seems to have covered this, I suppose it is up to the blogosphere to let people know that Forbes has been taken over by liburils that hate America

"US acknowledges torture at Guantanamo; in Iraq, Afghanistan - UN
06.24.2005, 11:37 AM

GENEVA (AFX) - Washington has, for the first time, acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said.

The acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, said a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on on condition of anonymity.

'They are no longer trying to duck this and have respected their obligation to inform the UN,' the Committee member said. "



Like Claude Raines in Casablanca, I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

"Does not play well with others"

The latest Pew survey has some interesting numbers on what other countries think of the United States and its foreign policy, as well as what they think of each other and what they think other countries think of them. A massive number of Canadians (more than 90%) apparently think everyone likes us. The most interesting part is the steady slide in world opinion of the United States. Almost every country in the report likes the US less now than five years ago, except (and don't forget them) Poland.
Apparently there is one thing that Americans and Middle Eastern Muslims agree on - that the United States should be more religious.

Extremely talented and incredibly readable



Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
By Jonathan Safran Foer
Houghton Mifflin, 368 pp, 24.95 dollars

With his latest novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer maintains a connection to his award-winning 2003 debut Everything is Illuminated. Like his previous novel, his latest is told mostly in the first person by an idiosyncratic narrator and concerns the effect that mass death on a historic scale has on the narrator and his family.

In Everything, most of the narration comes from a Ukrainian translator who is guiding Jewish American college student Jonathan Safran Foer as he searches for the Ukrainian woman who hid his grandmother during the Holocaust.

Extremely Loud follows the quest of precocious 9-year-old Oskar Schell to unravel the mystery of a key left behind by his father, who was killed in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.

Foer has brilliantly captured the voice of the eccentric young self-described "inventor, jewelry designer, jewelry fabricator, amateur entomologist, francophile, vegan, origamist, pacifist, percussionist, amateur astronomer, computer consultant, amateur archeologist, [and] collector of: rare coins, butterflies that died natural deaths, miniature cacti, Beatles memorabilia and semiprecious stones."

His constant inner monologue and odd dialogue ring true, reflecting perfectly the rambling, scattershot and utterly nonlinear thinking and speech of an intelligent and traumatized young boy. In Oskar, Foer has created a younger, 21st-century version of Holden Caulfield.

While Oskar spins his story of what happened after his father died and his dogged efforts to track down all 262 people named Black in the New York city telephone directory to inquire about the key, the reader is treated to an array of characters worthy of J.D. Salinger or Wes Anderson: Oskar's centenarian war correspondent neighbor, his father the professional jeweler and amateur copy editor, the various Blacks of New York, and especially his grandparents, survivors of the horrific World War II bombing of Dresden, Germany. Characters are as often as not the sum of their quirks: Oskar will only wear white, his elderly neighbor keeps biographical files of thousands of important people that consist of a single word, his grandfather is a compulsive writer who scribbles on walls or even shirt sleeves, if no paper is at hand.

Oskar's grandmother provides some of the narration in a few relatively straightforward autobiographical chapters about her childhood and how she came to America. Oskar's grandfather, a mute, half-crazed sculptor the boy has never met, tells part of both Oskar's story and his own, a quirky and emotional tale reminiscent of some of Kurt Vonnegut or Paul Auster's best work.

There are a number of well-executed set pieces in the book, some tragic, some comic. Oskar's conversations with his mother and the passages about him listening to his father's dying words from the World Trade Center, recorded on the Schells' answering machine, are as heartbreaking as Oskar's correspondence with various prominent people is hilarious. One of the shortest of the latter is:

"Dear Stephen Hawking,

Can I be your protege?

Thanks,

Oskar Schell."

Foer's writing is by turns sentimental, playful, sly and experimental, but always engaging. While the background of the events in the novel is tragic and the characters' motivations and outlook often heartrending, the author always manages to lighten the mood with a dose of whimsy or wry humor at unexpected moments. Foer explores a variety of themes: the importance of expressing love and not keeping secrets from loved ones, surviving and coming to terms with grief, the allure of mystery and the thrill of discovery.

The use of photos, unusual text layouts and other visual stunts is interesting and not without impact, but overall adds little to an already appealing and expertly rendered novel.

Rick Mercer's Blog

BOURQUE NEWSWATCH - TOMORROW'S NEWS NOW !

Top 100 film lines

The American Film Institute has released a list of what it considers the top 100 film lines of all time which of course means lines from U.S. films only. As usual, crappy 80s and 90s movie and older schlock like "Gone with the Wind" are over represented while great lines from earlier classics are absent . Also appearing are some lines from plays like A Street Car Named Desire that became films. Lines like "Snap out of it" from Moonstruck and anything from steaming piles of crap like Dirty Dancing, Dead Poets Society and Terminator 2 should have been thrown over the side for better lines like:

1. "I bet I can eat 50 eggs"

2."We're on a mission from God"

3."Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"

4."Where do you want me to hold it?" - "between your knees!"

5."Saigon, shit, I'm still in Saigon"

6."We deal in lead, friend"

7."Goooooood Morning Vietnaaaaam!"

8."That's mighty big talk from a one-eyed fat man" "Fill your hand you son-of-a-bitch"

9."Peel me a grape, Beulah"

10."I'm out of order? You're out of order! The whole damn system is out of order"

11."Was you ever bit by a dead bee?"

13."Never get out of the boat"

14. "The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club."

15."Quick, close the doors, there's a traitor inside trying to escape"

16. "Who are those guys?"

17. "What are you rebelling against anyways?" "Whaddya got?"

18. "I love children, could never eat a whole one, but I love the little tykes"

19. "The new phone book's here! the new phone book's here!"

20. "I crap bigger than you"


A virtual cigar to whoever can name all the actors speaking these line and which the movies they come from. No googling. I did it all off the top of my head after a 14 hour shift, so I take no responsibility nor do I make any claims of complete accuracy.

Blog of Note
A soldier's eye view of Iraq
A Soldier's Thoughts

Kudos to the Talent Show
Ross over at the Talent Show explains something to the intellectually disadvantaged that is pretty blatantly obvious to anyone with both a penis and more than a half dozen working braincells - that rape is evil, "no" means "no, goddamit keep your meathook to yourself" and there is no such thing as "asking for it"
Read it The Talent Show: I Am Not My Cock

'Meet me at Hachiko'
Legend of loyal dog grows with 2 English books
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Let's meet at Hachiko"--is there a Tokyoite who hasn't heard or uttered that phrase at least once? The life-size statue of the world's most famous Akita dog is also the capital's most famous meeting place.

On my first day in Tokyo, I met my landlord there, and years later arranged to meet my wife there on our first date.

The location of the statue in front of one of the busiest train stations in the world may have something to do with the popularity of the spot as a rendezvous, but the touching story of canine loyalty that inspired the bronze figure has achieved iconic status both at home and abroad.
===
Foreign friends
The tale of Hachiko has spawned countless books in Japan and even inspired the hit 1987 film Hachiko Monogatari scripted by Kaneto Shindo and directed by Seijiro Koyama. The publication of two children's books last year in the United States has spread the legend of the faithful canine overseas.

Hachiko, The True Story of a Loyal Dog (Houghton Mifflin), a picture book aimed at young children, was written by Pamela S. Turner and lavishly illustrated by Yan Nascimbene. The award-winning book is told from the point of view of an old man relating his boyhood memories of Hachiko to his grandchildren.

"It's a really touching story and it would be really easy to go over the top and make it really schmaltzy, so using an older narrator made the restraint logical," the author told The Daily Yomiuri between presentations to students at the American School in Japan during a visit to Tokyo this spring.

Turner, who lived in Tokyo from 1990 to 1996, was looking for a writing project after her return to the United States and was surprised and delighted to find that at the time no one else had tackled the story in English. Authenticity was important to Turner and many of Nascimbene's watercolor illustrations are based on photos taken from an old book about Hachiko given to Turner by an official at Shibuya Station.

A Japanese translation of the book was released in the spring.

Coincidentally, another Hachiko book was released last autumn. Hachiko Waits (Henry Holt and Co.) written by Leslea Newman and illustrated by Tokyo native Machiyo Kodaira, is aimed at slightly older readers, but uses the same literary device of a young boy who befriends Hachiko.
===
Immortalized in bronze
The current 91-centimeter bronze statue and its 127-centimeter stone plinth is the second monument to mark the spot the faithful canine maintained his daily vigil. The first, a much larger 162-centimeter statue on a 180-centimeter stone base, was created by celebrated sculptor Teru Ando.

According to the artist's eldest son, Takeshi Ando, 82, his father became interested in sculpting a typical Japanese dog sometime around 1930. An acquaintance suggested Hachiko, by then well known in the neighborhood (see sidebar). The dog was repeatedly brought to Ando's Yoyogi studio to model. When the dog's story hit the newspapers, Ando's efforts to sculpt him were mentioned, making him an obvious choice when the movement to honor Hachiko with a statue gained momentum. Ando also presented a replica of the work to Emperor Showa.

The statue was sacrificed to a wartime scrap metal drive in 1944 and Ando was killed in a massive U.S. bombing raid on May 25, 1945.

After the war, Shibuya was a bustling commercial area and a chaotic hub of wheeling and dealing black marketeers. Takeshi Ando told The Daily Yomiuri in a recent telephone interview that local merchants and Shibuya residents wanted something beautiful and moral to provide them with inspiration in the difficult years immediately after the war. A committee was formed in 1947 and Ando's eldest son was commissioned to re-create his father's work.

"I could have made the same sculpture with my eyes closed," he said. While his father had striven to create a statue of an ordinary Akita, Takeshi said he wanted the dog's faithfulness andloyalty to be evident in its eyes and bearing.

"I wanted to create something beautiful to help the country rise from the ashes," the war veteran-turned-artist said.

His creation was unveiled on Aug. 15, 1948. The statue is now nominally owned by the Shibuya Ward government, which took over ownership from Hachiko Dozo Iji-kai (Hachiko Statue Preservation Association) in 2002. The association, made up of local business owners and companies with offices in the neighborhood, is funded by donations from its members and contributes to the maintainence of the symbolic statue.

One of the current corporate members of the association, Tokyu Department Store Co., went into business the same year the current statue was erected. It has operated a small Hachiko-themed souvenir shop near Shibuya Station since 1992.

According to shop employee Hiromi Sugimoto, the store serves between 100 and 200 customers a day, with stuffed plush toy replicas of Hachiko and paw print-patterned hand towels being the biggest sellers. She says that visitors from out of town looking for a souvenir of Shibuya, especially children on school trips, are the main buyers of Hachiko goods.

By far the most common Hachiko souvenir is a photograph taken next to the statue. Spend any time at all around the statue and you can't help but notice the steady stream of people posing for snapshots in front of Shibuya's most famous denizen.

A similar statue erected in front of JR Odate Station in Akita Prefecture in 1935 was also sacrificed for the war effort, but was replaced by two statues. One is of a group of Akita pups called 'Young Hachiko and His Friends" erected in 1965, and the other is one similar to the Shibuya statue that was installed in 1987.

===
History of the breed
Genetic research performed at Tokyo University indicates that the Akita dog, along with the chow chow and Hokkaido breeds, came to Japan from the Asian continent before the archipelago was separated from the mainland by the Sea of Japan. Other common Japanese breeds such as the Shiba were brought later by settlers from China and Korea to the Hiroshima area.
Akitas were used as hunting dogs, especially in northern Japan, with mated pairs used to track large game such as deer and wild boar. The dogs were trained to hold the quarry at bay until hunters arrived. Later in the Edo period (1603-1868), the dogs were often pitted against each other in organized fights.

The lord of Odate Castle in what is now northern Akita Prefecture is known to have been a devotee of dog fighting and the demand for larger and more powerful dogs increased in the 1890s, leading to crossbreeding of Akitas with the bigger Tosa breed.
Concerned that the purity of the Akita breed was being lost, Odate Mayor Shigeie Izumi formed the Akita-Inu Preservation Society in 1927 and the Akita was officially recognized as a national monument in 1931.

Rabies epidemics in 1899 and 1924 nearly resulted in the extinction of the breed as many dogs were destroyed.

During World War II, the government confiscated most dogs to use their fur for military garments. Massive food shortages led to many dogs being killed for food or left to starve as anyone seen feeding a dog was considered a traitor. Barely a dozen Akitas survived the war and they were often crossbred with German shepherds in the late 1940s, when they became a popular pet for U.S. soldiers to take home.

The first Akitas to be introduced in North America belonged to blind and deaf American lecturer and activist Helen Keller, who requested and was given an Akita named Kamikaze-go after learning of Hachiko's story when she visited Japan in 1937.

The dog succumbed to distemper less than a year later and was replaced by Kenzan-go, one of Kamikaze-go's older brothers bred in Odate that became Keller's constant companion. She praised the breed for its contribution to peace when she visited Japan again in 1947.


Traditional canine values
Moving stories of loyal dogs abound, from the true story of Edinburgh's Greyfriars Bobby, the famous Skye terrier who stood by his master's grave for 14 years, to fictional canine heroes such as Old Yeller from Fred Gipson's novel of the same name, immortalized in the 1957 Disney film, and Buck from Jack London's The Call of the Wild.

While cynics may speculate that it was the regular handouts from yakitori vendors that kept Hachiko coming back--a number of wooden skewers were found in the dog's stomach after he died--it is the element of unyielding loyalty that has earned Hachiko his place in the nation's cultural pantheon.

"The story of Hachiko is particularly appealing to the Japanese because of the high value Japanese culture traditionally places on fealty to the group, boss or master--even if the master is absent in death," said Jesse Glass, a professor in the Foreign Language Department at Meikai University in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture.

History bears out Glass' analysis. In 1936, the story was included in moral education textbooks for primary schools as an illustration of loyalty to one's master, intended to encourage patriotic fealty to Emperor Showa.

Turner agrees. "I think the story of Hachiko strikes a chord with Japanese because of the value Japanese culture puts on the faithful retainer. The most famous story in Japan is the story of the 47 ronin, who are celebrated not for winning a battle or for their bravery, but for being faithful to their master, even after his death and even when it meant their lives...Hachiko embodies these great traditional Japanese values of loyalty and faithfulness," she said.

Ando denies the statues were ever conceived as symbols of loyalty to the Emperor or embodiments of fealty, but says they were meant as iconic representations of the universally appealing values of unconditional love and devotion.

Yasuo Maruyama, deputy stationmaster at JR Shibuya Station, explains Hachiko's appeal this way: "The story tells of a sense of duty and for people today, that kind of morality is being lost. That's why the story inspires people."

He said the busier people become and the more they miss this sort of loyalty and sense of duty in their daily lives, the more the story of Hachiko means to them.

A dog's life

The male Akita later named Hachiko was born in Odate in northern Akita Prefecture in November 1923 and given to Hidesaburo Ueno, a professor at the School of Agriculture at Tokyo Imperial University (now Tokyo University) by a former student who knew of the professor's affection for the big, strong dogs traditionally bred in the town.

Hachi, so named because he was the eighth dog Ueno had owned, would accompany his master from home to nearby Shibuya Station each morning and then come back each afternoon to await his master's return on the 3 p.m. train. On May 21, 1925, Ueno suffered a fatal stroke at work. Despite a few initial efforts to send the dog to be adopted by new owners, Hachiko continued to go to the station every day to wait for Ueno and would spend his nights sleeping on the porch of the late professor's house in Shibuya.

Cared for by Ueno's gardener Nenokichi Takahashi and the stationmaster, the big cream-colored dog became a fixture at the station, often begging food from the numerous street vendors in the neighborhood.

Despite becoming nearly lame from arthritis in his last years, Hachiko continued to show up at the station like clockwork just before 3 p.m. each day, waiting until dark to return home.
His fame spread beyond the district in 1932, when he was the focus of a series of newspaper articles. Contributions poured in from across the country and even from overseas, and a statue was unveiled at the faithful dog's regular waiting spot on April 21, 1934, bearing the words "Chuken Hachiko" (Loyal Dog Hachiko), using an affectionate diminutive form of the name Hachi.

On the evening of March 7 the following year, the dog was found collapsed at his post in front of the station and died early the next morning.

The story headlined newspapers across the country and a day of mourning was declared.
Hachiko was stuffed and mounted and can still be seen at the National Science Museum near Ueno Station in Tokyo, but his bones are interred with those of his master in Aoyama cemetery.
Copyright 2005 The Yomiuri Shimbun

How Canada is different from the United States
example #436, 202

What the heck, it worked for the Spartans, eh?


Military has first gay wedding in N.S.
Canadian Press
Tuesday, June 14, 2005

HALIFAX -- The Canadian military is marking its first gay wedding.

Two men, who do not want to be identified, exchanged vows in a small ceremony at Canadian Forces Base Greenwood in western Nova Scotia.

It was the first time the military presided over a same-sex union after introducing guidelines in 2003 dealing with the contentious issue.

The two men, one a sergeant, the other a warrant officer, were married last month by a United Church minister because the base chaplain is Anglican and couldn't officiate.

see the whole story at here

or here

And a snappy salute to Sgt. Canuck over at Jesus General for the recon work, well done soldier!