We never fully understand the extent of human tragedy.

Today's Tids Issue 3,547

Opening Stuff:

If all of the disparate terrorist groups and all of the middle eastern countries, and all of the various rebel groups…and Syria and the USA and Russia and Turkey and Iraq  and the UN all somehow came to agreement about peace in Syria, it would be at least a decade before the place was inhabitable again. Syria was a country of 24 million people and now half are displaced. 4 million have left as refugees leaving 8 million to live hand to mouth and escape the bombs and bullets. These are real people who used to live and work and raise families in real cities and towns just like us. The cities and towns are rubble. There is nowhere to go.

One good thing about having an imagination, you can go where nobody has gone before…and avoid the crowds.

The Question:

Shakespeare wrote a lot of plays about kings. Name five of his King plays. Speed Bonus: Ok, name the two Civil War iron clad ships and which was South and which was North.

The Headlines:

--Bernie Comes From Behind To Beat Hill In Biggest Northern Industrial State To Date; Trump Survives Multi Front Assaults To Win Strongly In Mich and Miss.

--Futures For US Markets Look Pretty Good.

--Illegal Immigrant Nabbed After Killing Spree That Left 5 Dead In Two States.

--Iran Missile Firings Seen As New Warning To Israel: Missiles Marked, “Israel Must Be Wiped Out”.

--*New Norovirus Hits Chipotle Workers In Boston; Stock Falls.

Maybe Donald Trump could unite his developer buddies to rebuild all of the cities and towns in Syria if and whether the war stops. The general consensus is that the new cities will have to be built adjacent to the old ancient masterpieces, now piles of ruins. The remnants of great civilizations past are unusable.

We have got to stop ranking everything. That came to mind when  somebody said that Peyton Manning’s farewell was the greatest of “All Time”! Zowie…how good is that! And, how does anybody know? Somebody is always ranking something as best in history from chocolate cake to athletes to acting performances and everything in between. (I was going to say politicians, but there are no best of all time.) Or were there? See, we always rank everything in the context of our own lifespan. And therein lies the problem, we really don’t know about rankings, because we really don’t how good other have been within their society that existed at the time. So, lets forget about subjective rankings and even many statistical related enumerations. Let’s just applaud a job well done.

There were some very good moments last night on The Voice. XTina’s spontaneous duet with the excited contestant Joe Maye was outstanding, and the slide guitar exhibition by Matt Teddar had me smiling. I also particularly liked folk singer Owen Danoff and Charlie Puth seems to have potential. I also liked Maya Smith and Country boy Justin Whisnant.

The political landscape is v-e-r-y interesting. Hillary seems to be strongest the Deep South (Mainly becaue of the Black Vote, they say) where the Repubs have won handily in recent campaigns. Bernie has shown her weakness to be in the northern industrial sates where the Repubs have struggled lately. Another ingredient in that analysis is the fact that Trump is pulling over many of the blue collar Dems typical of the core in these Northern Rust Belt power States. All in all it is shaping up nicely for a very interesting General election, that is, if Trump can make it all the way home. His lead in delegates is not huge and he is a long way from the finish line of 1,237 delegates. There are 2420 delegates up for grabs with several big “Winner Take All” states coming up next Tuesday.

*Maybe God is saying New Englanders are not supposed to be eating Mexican food. Which, is just fine with me.

The Dancing with the Stars cast was announced yesterday and in case you missed it, it has among others the ubiquitous Henry Rivers Aka Geraldo Rivera. Say it ain’t so Walter Cronkite. They are Ginger Zee and Val Cherkivsky, Antonio Brown and Sharna Burgess, Doug Flute and Karina Smirnoff, Wayna Morris and Lindsey Arnold, Von Miller and Witney Carson,  Nyle Demarco and Peta Murgatroyd, Jodie Swentin and Kep Motsepe, Mischa Barton and Artem Chigvintsev, Maria Maples and Tony Dovolani, Paige Van Zant and Mark Ballas, Kim Fields and Sasha Farber and Geraldo Rivera and Edyta Sliwinska. The “Dancin’ fans made me do it. I would have finished the Tids an hour earlier if the dancing partner’s names were easier to spell.

My first email message every morning is from Omaha Steaks. You’ll know I have lost if it changes over to Yorba Linda Asparagus.

The Answer:

Well, we had Richard II and Richard III and Henry IV through VIII minus VII. Hamlet was a Prince but close to a king and the play is all about revenge for his father the King against his uncle the King. And then there was poor King Lear. Did you know that Shakespeare had to postpone King Lear until King George died because the play was deemed too close to the insanity of the reigning King. Speed Bonus: The USS Monitor was the North’s ship and the CSS Merrimack the South’s. You may wonder why the South named their ship after a river in Massachusetts. They didn’t. In reality, the South’s ship was named the CSS Virginia, which was built upon the remnants of the old USS Merrimack.

Find the warmth under the sun and hop ingot your dreams