Mark Knows It All

Please visit: Mark Knows It All, the Web Site There is an order in life. The sun comes up in the morning and the moon comes out at night. Christmas comes in the winter and Easter in the spring…and so on. These are things on which you can count. It gives one constancy. Several weeks ago, my secure world was disrupted. Armstrong Cable changed my cable line up. What happened to Channel 62? Whenever I travel, I am always glad to get home to my own cable company’s channel lineup. Armstrong Cable has always had a certain symmetry to it channels. This divinely inspired natural order was probably created on the sixth day. After all, God rested on the 7th, and probably wanted to watch some television. So…NBC, CBS, and ABC were on Cable 2, 4 and 7. CNN was on cable 3. HBO was always on cable 5. Cable 6 was always some stupid station like Disney or something else. Channel 8 was ESPN. As Armstrong added stations, it followed a natural progression. USA, Nickelodeon, and TNT were next on the lineup...

Make sure to visit: Mark Knows It All; the Web Site This is Easter weekend. I struggled for a long time to find a way to present my feelings, in the context of Holy Week, about the Barack Obama/Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy that has dominated the news. So I pulled Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" Speech, given at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, and actually read the thing. What a powerful testament to a vision of America for all of us. I challenge you to read this speech, and not have tears in your eyes at the end. Rev. Wright and Senator Obama, this is the hope and the promise of America. "…..It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a...

Don't forget to visit: MARK KNOWS IT ALL, THE WEB SITE; www.markknowsitall.com I keep telling my wife that there is a whole world out there we know nothing about…and I found part of that world last weekend. After two days of winter weather, Sunday broke forth glorious full of sunshine. The day started normal enough. I went to church, sang in the choir, went out for breakfast, you know…Mark things. Then my son suggested that we should do a father and son thing…”Let’s go to the gun show!!” Gun show? As in bang, bang? The last time I shot a gun was at Camp Fitch in 1958. I scared myself, missed the target and wet my pants. They gave me a merit badge if I promised to stay off the shooting range and direct my skills towards the art and crafts tent. I still have the hammered ashtray, as well as my virginal, “no-holes in it” shooting bulls-eye…so they could show my parents that they tried....