Italian Heritage Day: Treasures from Home

Today, the Italian American service group I belong to held it's annual "Heritage Day." It was a great event, with over 100 people in attendance. We had traditional Italian foods available for tasting, one of our members gave an Italian language lesson, and a professional opera singer sang some beautiful arias. I helped pull together a display of items and artifacts from Italy, modeled after the "Treasures from Home" display at the Ellis Island museum. Here are some photos of the items we had on display, including an old football (soccer) jersey, dolls, housewares, documents and more.

Christie's Town Hall

Went to the first Town Hall of the year today, where Governor Christie took questions from the crowd and talked for about an hour about issues that concern residents of New Jersey. He discussed the Christie Reform Agenda and challenged everyone there to join him in making the changes necessary to put New Jersey back on track.  He talked a lot about "shared sacrifice," and how all state workers are going to have to kick in more for their healthcare if we want the system to stay afloat.  The Governor was in fine form today: funny, engaging, and as usual, very quick on his feet.  He's got a tough job to do, but he certainly seems up to the task.

Attended Governor Christie's State of the State address today. The overall message: we're still in a tough spot, budget-wise, but things are better than they were last year at this time. We've made some progress, but still have a long way to go.  Reforms are necessary in order to keep the pension system afloat, and both parties are going to have to work together to get things accomplished this year.  Here's hoping!

Dying Birds in Arkansas: A Theory

Earlier this week, over 1000 blackbirds fell from the sky in Arkansas, dead on arrival. Conspiracy theories abound as to what may have caused this mass flash mob of death. Allow me to add my two cents' worth:

I think it was caused by a military weapon, one that uses sound waves to disrupt the molecular structure of a particular species. First, it was blackbirds. Then, hundreds of thousands of drum fish were found dead in the Chesapeake Bay. Today, it was reported that another 500 birds were found dead in Louisiana.

I'm not buying the "official" theory that a weather disturbance caused this. Perhaps that's plausible for the birds, who are airborne, but what about the fish in the water? And why only that one species of fish?

Several years ago, I did some research on the work of Royal Raymond Rife. He was heralded as "The Man Who Cured Cancer." His work in the 1930s was based on the fact that molecules can be disrupted when exposed to a particular frequency, as evidenced when an opera singer hits a High C and shatters a glass. The molecules in the glass are disrupted at that frequency, so the glass breaks.

Rife speculated: what if we can find the frequency that disrupts the molecules of cancer cells? If we target those cells with a sound wave at that exact frequency, it will obliterate the cancer cells while leaving the healthy, non-cancerous cells intact.

I won't debate the veracity of his research and experiments here, but the bottomline is that at some point Rife fell out of favor with the medical community (supposedly because they realized how much they stood to lose if the lucrative business of cancer treatment/drug therapy/hospitalization were eliminated) and his research was abandoned.

My theory: someone has expanded on Rife's initial research, and has built a large scale Rife Frequency Generator. They have used modern-day DNA technology to hone in and identify the genetic markers specific to certain species, such as red-winged blackbirds and drum fish, and they've also figured out the frequency at which their molecules would be disrupted. They've put all of it together to create the perfect weapon of mass destruction: silent and effective on a large scale.

I hope I'm wrong.