The Real News

Sometimes we don’t get all the real news here in Allen. That’s why we have the “Advocate.” For instance, you may have noticed that all the networks as well as the press are agonizing over the loss of the Amazon Rain Forest. The area, they say, produced 20% of the oxygen for our great planet earth. With the demise of the forest we would surely be walking around a little bit oxygen starved and blue lipped. Well, thanks to the Advocate, you can now breathe easy. So say the scientist, our good mother earth contains so much oxygen from its years of stowing it in oceans and atmosphere that we have plenty. Also, the poor old rain forest only produces about 0.0001% of our oxygen. Thanks to us, you can now relax.

But there are some things of concern. Noah’sArk for instance. Another ark has been built in Tennessee and built according to the original’s specifi cations. (Those specs were left in the Bible in case you wish to use them.) But this guy built this thing and charges admission to the public to come aboard and look. But now the county he built it in is suing him for money. He didn’t evaluate it enough. Needs to be paying more taxes. The original Noah didn’t have this kind of trouble because when it fi nally did go to raining it drowned all his critics--including the county tax assessor.

There is also the matter of the Lunar Rover put on the back side of the moon by our now tariff stricken Chinese friends. Called YUTU-2 the new rover has “roved” around on the back side of the moon in the dark. Hasn’t found much of anything except it is, as we expected, dark back there. They were looking for water. They found instead, a sticky gel in spots; also found some orange spots. I don’t know if they took any pictures or perhaps they forgot their fl ashes on their cameras. So much stuff to remember. And no, there is no water.

Lastly there are the obituaries. You have to take the Advocate if you want to see who all died. Each obit is read and checked over by readers (even if they have already seen it) for accuracy and to see who this or that person married and to check to see how old they “really” were. One obituary missing in most of the local papers is that of Herman Wouk. Wouk was born May 27, 1915 and died on May 17, 2019. He was just a few days shy of being 104. Besides his long life, Wouk was very productive early on in his life as a Comic, writer, and director of early day radio programs, such as Fred Allen’s. He wrote several books. Some of which I read.

Most notable of his works was the Canine Mutiny, A Hole in Texas, and a rather long book called “War and Remembrance.” Like the Canine Mutiny, this one was made into a movie. It was broken up and became a very popular mini-series. War and Remembrance is a favorite novelized story of WWII. I think Herman will be missed by plenty of people as will his writing.

Meanwhile, I hope you will be able to go to church Sunday. It’s the thing to do.

Wayne Bullard, DPh

waynebullard@sbcglobal.net