Don't let winter leave you stranded #Prepared2014

Some parts of the country experience extreme winter weather including blizzards. If a blizzard traps you in your car, do you know how to survive?

Taking the following steps can help you stay safe until you are found:

• Don’t walk around in the snow to look for help. You might lose your way or become exhausted;
• Remember to occasionally check your tailpipe to make sure it’s free of snow.  Clean the pipe to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning when the engine is running.
• Keep yourself moving! A car offers very little room, but exercise is essential; and
• Make the car visible for a rescue! Hang bright colored cloth or plastic from the windows. If the snow has stopped falling, open the hood of the car as a signal of distress.

If you have a cell phone call 911 to ask for help. Do not hang up until you know whom you have spoken with and what will happen next. You can also sign up for wireless emergency alerts before you travel to receive life-saving alerts wherever you are.

Items found in your vehicle emergency supply kit can assist you until help arrives. Take a look at this video from The Weather Channel showing how to prepare your winter car supply kit.

Thanks to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for this information.

Red Badges Day coming

Happy New Year

If you are celebrating this season, please do so responsibly.  Remember those who are less fortunate than you.  Encourage one another.  Enjoy your friends and family.

I plan to be on "Red Badges Day" for at least an hour.  Check my twitter account for where and when.  One can maybe catch me on WX5ASA on Echolink or IRLP Node 8115.

The Section Leadership wishes all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

73

Unbroken ... the movie #tweko

The Japanese are upset.   "Now the same groups are turning their attention to protesting Jolie's big screen adaptation, branding it a work of 'pure fabrication', insisting it has 'no credibility', and accusing the star of racism."

In fact, @CBJapan1 tweeted  "Actually, we are mad as hell. Here's why" 

It seems that Unbroken, the book, had some similarities to the movie.

I am sad the Japanese are upset.  Maybe it is the realization of why American servicemen, to this DAY, will not buy anything with industrial giant names on them.  After all, those same names were either prevalent in the 1940 attacks on the allies or they were names of the slave labor factories where the Allied servicemen were "guests".

For example, Mitsubishi Motors produced the Zero airplane with forced labor, Honda, Nikon, Aso Mining Compay, and Toyota were among the names the servicemen remembered.  Some were found guilty while some were only guilty by association.  How can one ignore "Foreign Ministry investigated and announced on December 18, 2008 that Aso Mining had, in fact, used 300 Allied POWs at its mine during World War II."? 

I am sad the Japanese are upset.  Read the book to see what "The Bird" did to Allied servicemen. The movie audience was shocked by the scenes in the movie.   The movie did not reveal every day of Japanese "treatment".

In case one is wondering, the Germans were just as guilty.  The sentiment was and still is equal among the POWs returning from there.

While the movie mentions faith, there was one omission.  Read the book for the rest of the omissions.

Of course, one does not need to take my word for it.  One can read the movie critics.

Read the book, free at your local library.

I sincerely hope the Japanese get over it.  There are some Allied veterans who still won't forgive, yet at least one Allied soldier, a Christian, has chosen to do just that.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

So Jesus was not born on December 25.  The date was set by Julius 1 and some churches celebrate in January. 

The Holiday ... even the word comes to us from Old English and means Holy Day ... comes to mean so much because of tradition from the Norse and Roman traditions.

Yet, the first century Church did not celebrate the birth of Jesus.  Rather, the first Church would have celebrated His Birth, Death, and Resurrection all at once, probably daily and from house to house.

Christmas cards?  Singing carols?  Christmas trees?  All are traditions born from the Pagans, a word which originally meant civilian.  Even some of the early colonists in America did not celebrate Christmas, as we know it today, and at one point, there was a ban in place.

So what does this mean?  How about having Christmas ALL year long?  If we acted Christ-like, wouldn't the world be a better place?  If we honored the Birth of our King, wouldn't the lines at Walmart be shorter?