Americans Built the Greatest Nation on Earth

U.S. Navy submarine R-14 with a crew of 28 searched the ocean in 1921 for U.S. Conestoga, a tug boat which had disappeared about 100 miles from Hawaii. They looked for the missing tugboat for so long, about two weeks, that they eventually ran out of fuel and, because they lost radio communication, were also unable to transmit radio messages about their location. Suddenly the search and rescue mission became a rescue mission itself. 

Fortunately, the chief engineer, Lieutenant Roy Trent Gallemore, came up with a plan to sail out of their predicament. The crew made sails out of any available fabric, bedsheets, towels, hammocks, stitched them together, and attached them to frames made out of metal beds. They connected the sails to the highest points on the deck.

The sub sailed with a speed of three knots across the Pacific Ocean for three days and managed to reach Hilo harbor in Hawaii.

The chief engineer Roy Trent Gallemore, who had harnessed the wind to save his crew was promoted to Lieutenant Commander of the U.S. sub R-15.

Conestoga’s wreck was found off the coast of California in 2016. It is believed that it had sank in a storm in 1921 on its way to Pearl Harbor.

John Wayne Was a Real American Patriot Who Disliked Communism

In 1952 Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin ordered the assassination of John Wayne because he did not like the patriotic American’s criticism of communism.
A plan was set in motion and the FBI alerted John Wayne and offered 24/7 protection of his home. Not one to back down from danger, John Wayne refused. 

When two KGB agents came to the studio lot pretending to be huge fans, he allowed them into his office. As they suggested that they go outside the studio to talk, he agreed, but when they turned around to exit, he pulled out his gun and pulled the trigger. Fortunately for the two KGB men, he had loaded blanks into his gun. They were arrested by FBI agents who were listening from a nearby room. 

The KGB agents were so scared of Stalin for having failed the mission to kill John Wayne, that they asked for asylum in the United States and spilled all the beans to the FBI - they knew Stalin would have killed them upon return.

After Stalin’s death, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev personally met with John Wayne and apologized for the assassination attempt on his life.

Brimming with Christmas Spirit

Wikipedia photo

I recently met a young couple giddy with the jubilant spirit of Christmas. It was a rare encounter as Christmas traditions are under assault and condemned on the altar of progressivism and Islam. He wore a red and green elf vest and a Santa hat over his regular clothes and a big smile of good cheer. His lovely wife had donned a beautiful red dress with sparkling tinsel on the left collar. He told me how much he enjoyed Christmas and decorating trees which he left up every year late into January, even past the Russian Orthodox Christmas on January 6.

We started talking and I told them about our Christmas celebration and our fir tree, thin and puny on branches and ornaments, but high on spirits. They listened politely but then I realized from the expression on their faces and the look in their eyes that neither one could relate to the description that followed.  They were millennial young and recently married.

I told them how we decorated the blue spruce with real candles, apples, cookies, and home-made shiny paper ornaments, with a few and rare Bohemian glass ornaments, and how we lit the tiny candles every night for a few minutes - they were clipped as far to the outside branches as possible to avoid catching the tree on fire. To mom’s exasperation, Daddy would nail the base of the tree stand to the parquet floor. A few oranges, apples, and cookies were hung on each branch with colorful string, and chocolate bonbons and plump raisins filled home-made cardboard tiny baskets decorated with red and green crepe paper.

Larger cities decorated a huge tree in the center of town with colorful lightbulbs and organized a winter carnival with rides on St. Nicholas Day, December 6. New Year’s Day was a secular holiday decreed so by the Communist party but Christmas was not really a holiday at all.

People who lived in villages stuck to tradition and celebrated Christmas. Priests opened the modest and very cold churches for services on Christmas Eve. I attended services with my aunt Leana who was a deacon and a cantor. Churches in the mountainous areas were more active so far away from the prying eyes of communists.   

Caroling, donations of food to people less fortunate, and having an extended family meal to celebrate Christmas was the highlight of our year.  During certain days, we went from house to house with elaborately prepared plates of food and baskets of goodies for those less fortunate, widowed, old, or sick.

Villagers learned to care for each other in good times and bad.  They bartered services and things they had in excess with other neighbors since money was so tight. People learned to adjust to their communist-imposed poverty in so many creative ways.

My parents, my secret Santa (Mos Craciun), would put a small food item by my pillow which I would find on Christmas morning – an unwrinkled apple, a fragrant orange from Israel, a green banana from Greece, or a bittersweet chocolate bar. Christmas was good for us kids because we were oblivious to our state in life. We had no idea how hard adults struggled to make ends meet.

How could I make this well-off American couple understand that Christmas was a gift of prayer and time to be with the extended family to share love and abundant food that was otherwise missing the rest of the year?

Nobody can comprehend that an entire nation can be held hostage for decades and suffer so much in a fight for survival every day to find food we take for granted here, bread, milk, butter, flour, sugar, rice, cooking oil, and needful things such as toilet paper, vitamins, and basic medicines. It is hard to believe when the shelves in America’s grocery stores are brimming with food.

As Oleg Atbashian said in his book, Hotel USSR, after he legally immigrated to the U.S., he cried when he saw the abundance surrounding him, not tears of happiness, mind you, but of anguish for all the unnecessary and cruel pain the proletariat endured for decades at the hands of communist autocrats who enjoyed making the population suffer for many generations through constant shortages of food, long lines, lack of basic necessities like hot water, heat, having to depend on bribes, black markets, kickbacks, and bartering to survive.

An artist, Atbashian entered an art supplies store in Manhattan and wrote, “Rows upon rows of shelves brimmed with products that catered to every artistic need. No gatekeeper was checking permissions, and no Artists Union card was required to make a purchase… After the first floor, I went to the second, and then to the third. And then I imagined how different my life could have been and broke down in tears.”

Americans are so unappreciative of and spoiled by their abundance created through the hard work of many past generations, that they have no idea how other people live or that life can be any other way but good. But this American knows better and my Christmas spirit will always grow inside our Christian home and in my heart.

 

Symphony of White

Two of the strongest memories from my early childhood are the muddy yards and roads soaked into deep ruts by rivers of steady pouring rain and the pristine whiteness of the winter wonderland stillness when the dirt and mud are covered by a blanket of gleamingly white and fluffy snowflakes, blanketing snow glittering in the bitter and biting cold sunshine, accumulated and piled high above my head.

I could not imagine a prettier color than alpine white in the majestic Carpathian Mountains set in a wild and rocky terrain ringed with blue-green spruce.

Our snow at Christmas in grandpa’s yard was stained red with the splashed blood of the sacrificed pig raised to feed our entire extended family that otherwise would starve.

My memory brings back the red poppies in the fields of green and yellow wheat, guarded by a man armed with an axe; he meant business when he chased kids trampling government wheat in search of the bountiful and beautiful flowers that had more “useful purposes” to the guard’s communist bosses. The bright red was inviting us to pick them and take them to our moms to add a splash of color in the otherwise dreary and utilitarian grey space we called communist apartment homes. Picking wild flowers in a small bouquet was such an innocent delight which flooded my eyes with God’s beauty.

A sea of red hammer and sickle communist flags dominated the landscape when the population was forced out into the streets, rain or shine, to march in praise and glory to the dear leader and his wife.

Yellow and white were the fields of chamomile flowers we picked and dried to make tea, a soothing greenish liquid that relaxed us at night and helped clean infected wounds.

Our uniforms were plain shades of green, grey, brown, and navy. For a proper contrast, our school shirts were blue, freshened in the wash by hand with a cube of blue dye when they faded.  Hands would look blue for a while as we did not have latex gloves to shield the skin while doing laundry.  Girls as young as five were taught how to properly wash clothes.

Our hands would turn chocolate brown when it came time to pick and shell the green casing of walnuts which had not dried completely on its own. The purple plums we gathered for brandy and the juice we squeezed out of grapes in the fall to make wine stained our hands magenta.  

We cried crocodile tears when the pungent and juicy yellow onions had to be pulled by hand from the ground. We dug potatoes with a hoe and brown became embedded under fingernails for the duration no matter how much we washed our hands. The smell of fresh dirt and the worms we dug up with the potatoes was overwhelming. When it rains and the first drops fall on dry dirt, the smell reminds me of digging up potatoes from the soil which we then spread evenly on the floor of the cellar to dry up.

Grandma’s flower garden blossomed in summer and autumn with fragrant roses, dahlias, narcissus, tulips, chrysanthemums, lilacs, peonies, and lavender.  She was proud of her garden located close to the cast iron water pump that brought fresh ground water from the deep well. I helped by pumping enough water to nourish her precious blooms twice a week. Grandma and mom looked at the plants as God’s colorful gifts that filled the soul and eyes with beauty. The colorful and scented blooms were mom’s treasures.

Grandpa gave me a box of watercolors one year and, without consulting mom, I painted a small red rose on the wall by the couch where I slept. Each morning, when I first opened my eyes, I saw the rose.

We did not have any paintings or pictures on the wall except my parent’s oil portrait from their imaginary wedding. It was a fantasy wedding portrait as they were too poor to have a proper wedding and a formal dress. I wish I had that painting today! It had been long confiscated by God knows who.

Nature’s colors amazed me and I often dreamed that someday, when I could afford to, I would never wear anything else but bright colors, teal, pink, purple, lavender, grass green, magenta, orange, white, and reds.

I often wander in the woods to capture on camera nature’s palette. Fall is a symphony of yellows, browns, greens, and maroons that take my breath away. My husband laughs that I must have photographed the same trees for the last ten years but to me, each autumn brings another shade of color that I have not seen before with my naked eye. And the sun adds that little sparkle, a glint of gold, orange, pink, and cerulean blue streaking from the soft white clouds.

The fragrant green fir trees at Christmas and the tiny real candles we lit, the few glass ornaments, brought a warm glow of yellow light, joy and color to our otherwise drab existence.

One summer mom bought enough material for a new dress. It was not often that I got a new dress. Everything had to be altered, let out, let in, and hemmed to last several seasons. The print was small red roses with green leaves set in a black background. My seamstress aunt‘s masterful fingers created a work of art without a paper pattern. Every time I wore it, the splash of color made me feel special and I rode on a cloud of happiness all day, bathed in the hues of red and green.

My wardrobe today is an eclectic splash of cheerful and sunny colors. It’s not hard to find me in a crowded airport. To me, black is for somber occasions and funerals; navy is ceremonial; and brown is best served in dark chocolate.

The whiteness of snow is still so pristine that no garment can possibly match it. But I wear white long after Labor Day, a bright spot in a crowd of winter.

Church and State

Orthodox Church built after the fall of communism
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

People in general do not seem to agree on much these days, split between their own confused ideas and the latest narrative promoted by the deceitful main stream media, beholden to the globalist ideology of Democrat Socialism and Cultural Marxism.

Often the thought processes of the voting masses are incoherent because their knowledge, the reality, and their basic instincts of survival and safety are perverted by the globalist agenda but they are too ignorant to realize that what they espouse is quite contradictory. So they vote into Congress frightening Millennials like Alexandria Occasio-Cortez, who will now have the power to fundamentally alter our collective future in the distorted image of her disordered and ill-informed mind.

It’s not just the political representatives who are working against the wishes of the people. The Christian clergy of all stripes are organizing on behalf of foreign invaders looking for welfare and against the best interests of the American people.  

Educators and academics are happy to shape the minds of young people in their own globalist Marxist vision. They’ve been indoctrinating us for decades that we cannot mix Church and State, we must tear down any symbol of Christianity that might offend others, while bending over backwards through threats and the courts to accommodate a few offended atheists, many offended Muslims, and other refugee “stock” as the U.N. defines them, mushrooming all over the world with help from the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR). https://www.unhcr.org/

Citizens in European countries are ahead of the curve in this indoctrination into Cultural Marxism, a world-wide phenomenon driven by controlling globalists with large pockets, aiming to erase borders and to destroy every country’s sovereignty. Ordinary people with good intentions are voting for their own demise, for the Socialist Democrats, who are short on knowledge and long on propaganda, corruption, and deceit.

Romanians fight bitterly over investment in the construction of Orthodox churches. They want instead to improve the declining education of their children, to build hospitals and roads which they were denied under Ceausescu’s bleak communist regime. Decades of communist indoctrination and terrible medical care has confused their priorities. The soul of a person or a nation cannot be healed through Marxist ideology and globalist education. Faith and church are needed.

Eastern Europeans admire the wonderful education system in Western European countries as a model of “global citizenship.” But they fail to see how morality has decayed there and how they’re losing their national identities, histories, and their borders to the demands of Angela Merkel’s EU.

European Union “globalist policies” (diversity, multi-culturalism, manufactured global warming, aggressive anti-fossil fuels environmentalism, border destruction, the right to unimpeded migrant movement across national borders) have destroyed smaller countries with “progressivism” that has instead regressed western civilization and allowed invaders from third world nations to take over. “While Europe slept,” Europeans lost their national independence and control over their respective nations’ monetary policies.

Romanians bemoan the fact that too many Orthodox Churches are being built, that the cost of one church could help build five badly needed kilometers of interstate.

The church was instrumental in founding universities across Europe and in the printing of books and educational materials.  The oldest universities in Europe were run and staffed by priests. And where would we be today if beautiful cathedrals were not built over the centuries by very poor and rich parishioners alike who donated to the construction funds?

Perhaps Romanians should be outraged not by the expenditures to build churches but by the 3,000 euros spent each month for every corrupt politician in Parliament, a financial waste that dwarfs any spending for the building of a church that would preserve the soul and character of the nation for generations to come.

People need both cathedrals and hospitals to care for their souls and their bodies. Churches must not be just museums for tourists, or places for baptisms, weddings, and last rites.

Additionally, the building of a school or of a library does not guarantee a proper education or the storing of real knowledge and ideas - both can be just places of indoctrination.

Why are we visiting in awe the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican, all gold-leafed and marbled with sarcophagi, religious statues, paintings, colonnades, murals, mosaics, and objects d’art, reaching sky-high to Heaven? Poor people suffered for the glory of God, the Church, and the Pope. Good or bad, it is our collective history, our collective civilization which has evolved over the centuries of human existence.

Atheists complain about megalomaniacal priests and too many churches, but who is to say what is too much? Priests have always been vectors of faith, education, and of the political class in order to steer society’s mind and soul in the desired direction. A few higher ranked priests like the current Pope have used their faith podium to dabble in the “scientific consensus” of climate change and social engineering.

Others argue that people can pray anywhere, they don’t need a golden church to do so, and money is much better spent on education. What kind of education would that be? Common Core Standards? Building a fancy library does not guarantee that people will suddenly start reading.  And what would they read and study?  “Progressive” propaganda?  Will they read the classics? Will they learn about documented and archived history or revisionist history? Will they learn civics? Will they learn national pride and to appreciate God and country?

Many former Iron Countries citizens have left their homes and are building the library of the future in other countries, influencing the spread of Cultural Marxism they call Socialist Democracy, a sad perversion of reality which naïve humans believe blindly.

Church and State have been intrinsically connected throughout history and separating them is destroying the essence of who we are. We cannot separate the influence of the church from the foundation of the state no matter how many times atheists and their corrupt lawyers sue.

 

USMCA Sneaking the Law of the Sea Treaty through the Back Door?

Photo credit: Canada Free Press.com

The legal dictionary defines sovereignty as “the power of a state to do everything necessary to govern itself, such as making, executing, and applying laws; imposing and collecting taxes; making war and peace; and forming treaties or engaging in commerce with foreign nations.”

It is thus quite surprising that the new USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada) trade agreement which is to replace NAFTA contains a new chapter (24) on Environment which was not in the NAFTA agreement. The three Parties recognize Sustainable Development (SD), the lynchpin of Agenda 21 now morphed into Agenda 2030, as an essential ingredient without which trade cannot exist. https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/files/agreements/FTA/USMCA/24%20Environment.pdf

Since USMCA dictates that trade cannot exist without sustainable development and a healthy environment with strict guidelines, USMCA then must logically follow the 17 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which are promoted by U.N. and all its affiliated agencies as follows:

1.      No poverty

2.      Zero hunger

3.      Good health

4.      Quality education

5.      Gender equality

6.      Clean water and sanitation

7.      Affordable and clean energy

8.      Decent work and economic growth

9.      Industry, innovation, and infrastructure

10.  Reduced inequalities

11.  Sustainable cities and communities

12.  Responsible production and consumption

13.  Climate action

14.  Life below water

15.  Life on land

16.  Peace, justice, and strong institutions

17.  Partnerships for sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Sustainable Development and biodiversity are found in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement which President Trump has denounced. Article 24.15 of USMCA clearly states that “The Parties recognize the importance of conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, as well as the ecosystem services it provides, and their key role in achieving sustainable development.”

In article 24.18, Sustainable Fisheries Management, regulating “marine wild capture fishing,” USMCA agreement subordinates the United States to U.N.’s international authority and its many organizations.

“Each Party shall base its fisheries management system on the best scientific evidence and on internationally recognized best practices for fisheries management and conservation as reflected in the relevant provisions of international instruments aimed at ensuring the sustainable use and conservation of marine species.” (USMCA, art. 24.18, p. 1)

Sustainable fisheries must abide by the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the United Nations Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of December 1982 relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, and many others. (USMCA, art. 24.18)

A.J. Cameron stated that the “same people in the Obama Administration who crafted the TPP also crafted USMCA. USMCA back-doors many of the tenets of the reprehensible trade agreements to which we were told by politicians that we would not become a member.”

The Brexit vote was based on issues such as the fishing restrictions placed upon Britain by the European Union. Not only did they destroy the British fishing industry but also any other industry dependent on it. The British fishing industry was forced to cede to the fishing industry of other countries that could not compete with the U.K.

The European Union and 162 countries have joined the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) which was adopted in 1982 and now called simply The Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). There were two earlier versions of U.N. treaties with rules that seek to control the oceans: UNCLOS I in 1958 and UNCLOS II in 1960.

President Reagan rejected the treaty in 1982 because it demanded technology and wealth transfer from developed countries to developing nations as well as adopting regulations and laws to control oceanic pollution. Jurisdictional limits on oceans included a 12-mile territorial sea limit and a 200-mile exclusive economic zone limit. The treaty aimed to “regulate economic activity on, over, and beneath the ocean’s surface.”

“Negotiated in the 1970s, the Law of the Sea Treaty was heavily influenced by the New International Economic Order, a set of economic principles first formally advanced by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in the 1970s and 1980s,” calling for redistribution of wealth to the benefit of third world countries.

Treaties must represent U.S. economic and security interests. According to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), our economic and navigation rights are not going to be affected by the fact that the U.S. Senate has not ratified LOST. He found the loss of national sovereignty and mandatory dispute resolution included in the treaty quite troubling.

The International Seabed Authority (“the Authority”) has the power to distribute “international royalties” to developing and landlocked nations. “So hypothetically, a U.S. company that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing clean and safe deep-sea mining machinery would be forced to give a portion of its profits to countries such as Somalia, Sudan, and Cuba – all considered to be developing nations by ‘the Authority.’”(Sen. Mike Lee in the American Legion Magazine)

The former Democrat Senator and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, Mark Begich, supported the ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). He believed that it provided rules to handle future underwater minerals, gas, and oil exploration and shipping on new water routes opened by receding Arctic icepack, all under the United Nations aegis. The global warming theorists believed that the icepack melt would be a constant in the future.

According to the Heritage Foundation, innocent passage through an area is already protected under “multiple independent treaties, as well as traditional international maritime law.” Few countries deny passage to the U.S., given its naval superiority.

Under LOST, “intelligence and submarine maneuvers in territorial waters would be restricted and regulated.” It is thus not in the national security interest of the United States to ever ratify this treaty.

LOST requires policies that regulate deep-sea mining, rules and regulations to control and prevent marine pollution, and control of corporations who cannot bring lawsuits independently. They must depend on the country of origin to plead their case in front of the United Nations agency.

President Reagan objected to the Principle of the “Common Heritage of Mankind,” which instructed that marine resources belong to all mankind and cannot be exploited by one nation. https://www.heritage.org/commentary/the-law-the-sea

According to Heritage Foundation, the UN “Authority” must regulate mineral resources by asking companies to pay an application fee and to reserve an extra site for the “Authority” to “utilize its own mining efforts.” https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/un-sea-treaty-still-bad-deal-us

A corporation must also pay an annual fee, up to 7 percent of its annual profits, and share its mining and navigational technology. Mining permits are granted or withheld by the “Authority” which is composed of mostly developing countries.

Under LOST, any kind of maritime dispute, fisheries, environmental protection, navigation, and research must be resolved under this treaty through mandatory dispute resolution by the U.N. court or tribunal which limits autonomy. But disputes should be resolved by U.S. courts.

When Congress approves the USMCA agreement, the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) will also be ratified through the back-door, by including it in the USMCA.  Which senator is going the read this massive bill?

“After less than two years of negotiations, the USMCA was released early on October 1, 2018 on the USTR website for the public to read. It runs for 1,809 pages — 1,572 pages for the treaty chapters, 214 pages for additional annexes, and 23 pages of side letters.” https://www.thenewamerican.com/print-magazine/item/30541-what-s-wrong-with-the-usmca?vsmaid=1929&vcid=11070

Senators like Orrin Hatch (R-UT) are eager to pass USMCA trade agreement. But we must inform our senators that any future “free trade” agreements must be discussed transparently. Those running for office should be forced to go on record whether they will support USMCA or oppose it. We must not pass this massive USMCA trade agreement in order to find out what’s in it as Nancy Pelosi famously said about the not so Affordable Care Act. There is more than just “free trade” in this huge USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada) document.

Politics at the Beach

Beach road to the left
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018

I was hoping that I could get away from politics during our vacation and just enjoy the beach, the white sand, the sea gulls, the dolphins, and the Floridian sunshine. But politics hit me in the face in one form or another in this area overflowing with snow-bird Democrats from New York, New Jersey, and Ohio.

Last year NGOs used young, beautiful, and half-clad women on the beach to advocate for legalizing marijuana.  This year we were assaulted by greens urging naïve pedestrians in affluent areas to fill out questionnaires to save marine life. Tugging at their heart strings, it was an easy sell for donations to various environmental and conservation groups. 

Waiters and restaurant owners had replaced plastic straws with paper straws – glossy and expensive signs “educated” us at each table that drinking without a straw each time saved a turtle.

One day a mature and well-preserved lady with her husband was high-fiving an elderly New Yorker wearing a blue t-shirt with her favorite candidate for Florida governor. They told her, they were very eager to vote early as well for the same candidate.

I muttered under my breath the word “commies;” the couple heard me and replied that they hoped I could not vote. Tangling with total strangers who have no idea what communism is or how awful it was to live under the communism they yearn to bring to this country was not my idea of fun on vacation. But I am not one to back down from an argument with useful idiots who argue and vote for their own demise. The rich ones think that the scourge of communism will somehow bypass them only because they are “enlightened-thinking” Democrats who deplore their opponents with divergent opinions as Neanderthals with pea brains.

As Project Veritas latest video release revealed, there is nothing American about this particular campaign, just a run of the mill progressive (read communist) assault on a “cracker” state as one of the campaign staffers said in the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di3WRRHRWlE&feature=player_embedded&fbclid=IwAR20L4DZ4j11AVtvISueOJx6wTl6MONZ5zIum4AAYNjrsNUWNzZPcCvw4-w

Often the longest and most protracted political battles are the local ones. One determined resident managed to get on the ballot the three-year long battle over access to a beach road that had been opened to the public for decades but one hurricane had blocked one small section and that gave the city planners the idea to give that section to a rich developer who was planning on building high-rise condos that could sell for mega-bucks. He mentioned that one nearby condo had sold recently for $4.5 million.

The locals had been up in arms fighting to keep this beach road open to the public. Beach-goers contribute large amounts of revenue to the local economy in the form of tourist taxes, hotels, restaurant meals, and other vacation amenities.

 

Mike's rocky strip where he plans a wooden pier for walkers

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018

 

A local man, who, by his admission, cannot even afford to live near this beach, had bought a small rocky strip of land jutting out into the ocean. Mike flies the American flag proudly and lowers it every afternoon at sunset in a moving ceremony.  A carpenter by trade, he told me that he had spent close to half a million dollars in legal fees to defend everybody’s right of access to the beach, but especially the handicapped. This particular access is very close to the beach, a few steps to be exact.

 

Mike lowering the flag at sunset with Dave

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018

 

One single handicapped parking spot is now covered by a mound of sand. That is another minor battle as the mound had been sitting there for a while. The plan was to spread the sand on the eroded beach but turtle nesting season was in full swing and the county was waiting, irritating the nearby condo-owners who wanted an unobstructed view of the ocean.

On October 31, the top layers was spread but the bottom part of the mound would have to be taken away to be used in construction since the scraping of the bucket would contaminate the sand with asphalt thus rendering it unusable for the beach.

In a soft but determined voice, he told me that he used to bring his mother to the beach in a wheelchair every sunset until she passed away. Not having children and a family of his own, he wants to leave this strip of land to the public trust in perpetuity so that people could enjoy the ocean. He plans on building a wooden platform on the rocks to allow wheelchair access to the handicapped and to our veterans. He hopes that on Tuesday, the voters will resolve the fate of the beach road in their favor.

The voters will decide on the charter amendment to preserve county-owned parks, preserves, beach and water access and waterfront vistas (ordinance no. 2018-036). Currently the Board of Commissioners has the authority to sell any county-owned property and to vacate roads and rights of way.

“The amendment would prohibit the county from selling or giving away any county-owned parks and preserves, and prevent the county from vacating any road segments or rights of way along any beach, river, creek, canal, lake, bay, gulf access or waterfront vistas." https://www.scgov.net/government/communications/county-charter-amendment-summary

 

Scooter of the Beach

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018

 

A local celebrity resident, Scooter of the Beach, has been giving video reports on social media daily for the last three months about the status of the red tide bacteria which killed so much marine life, turning water brown, red, or dark green, and causing respiratory irritation and cough on the beach, affecting tourism this summer on a 100-mile stretch.

“Red tide is a common name for a worldwide phenomenon known as an algae bloom (large concentrations of aquatic microorganisms—protozoans or unicellular algae) when it is caused by species of dinoflagellates and other algae. The upwelling of nutrients from the sea floor from massive storms is most likely the cause of these events.”

But locals blame red tide on individual fertilizer use and others on the discharges into the ocean of byproducts from a sugar plant.