Ghosts

Had a weird thing happen last night.   Dead asleep when all of a sudden the overhead lights in the bedroom turn on! WTF???    I had to get up and physically click off the switch.  There is no other way to turn on or off the lights!!   Yea - you tell ME!

Ghosts in the Auditorium

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Weather - looking forward to thunderstorms tomorrow night and still looking for some heavy rain in the 1/2 range. It's going to be an active spring week with all sorts of weather weirdness. After the system flies by Wednesday the temps will drop with a sunny high of 36 on Friday warming to 56 on Sunday and near 60 a week from now.  Stay tuned for anything.
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Mel Jacob top right

As many know my father in law is a living Survivor of the USS Indy and has been interviewed a few times for two upcoming movies. He lives in Sun Prairie.

Two movie companies are working on projects. One company is working on a "Band of Brothers" style series about the events that lead up to the massive Navy cover-up which ended with the court marshal subsequent suicide of the crews much loved Captain McVay.

Captain McVay was the only Captain of a warship ever to be court marshaled and the Navy made him the scapegoat for their bone head blunders.

We found out this weekend that Warner Brothers and Robert Downey Jr has hired Nicholas Cage to play Captain McVay in their version of the event.  This one will center on Hunter Scott. A 12 year old who was watching Jaws and was fascinated by Robert Shaw's account of what happened.

Hunter Scott (center)

He decided to make a school project and in the coming years read over 800 documents and interviewed 150 survivors about the sinking. The more he researched the more he was finding a giant cover up.

The movie will tell the story of

"the young boy researching the tragedy as part of a History Day competition and learning how the warship was sunk by torpedoes with the crew stranded for five days and eaten by sharks."

His constant nagging to politicians finally started to draw attention and his testimony in front of Congress resulted in passage of a Congressional resolution, signed by President Bill Clinton in October 2000, exonerating McVay.  

He is now in the Navy as a Submarine hunter.

If you are looking for a fantastic book on the sinking of the Flag Ship of the Pacific Fleet and cover up this is the best I have read so far.  There are a couple of photos of Mel in the book

In Harm's Way: The Sinking Of The USS Indianapolis

And if you have an extra hour this is a really really good accounting of the incident by one of the last two Marines (Mel is the other Marine).  There are not many survivors left, we lost a couple more in the last few months. Maybe 20 left?

They will have their 70th reunion in Indianapolis in early Aug.

https://youtu.be/O9KEirureew

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I want to thank the Columbus Theater Association for their night of comedy and all proceeds going towards the renovation of the Auditorium.  Hilarious.  Before Saturday Night I had only seen two comedians live. Steve Martin in a sold out Coliseum (when was the last comedian that could draw 10,000 people for one show) and Lewis Black twice. So I had no idea who these two people were who's job was to make me laugh.

HOME RUN.  Seriously.  How is Daryl Moon not famous. I bet there were 40 people in attendance and a great time was had by all. What a hard job making people laugh but it was 2 hours of laughing. How do they do that!!

So what is happening with the Auditorium?  The problem was that they do not want to collect money, hire an architect, use up the funds, wait 6 more months for more money look for another engineer/architect start all over and so forth. They want to do this in one motion, not with many small ones.

So while it seems nothing is happening it's just a different philosophy.  They don't want to stop and start and stop and start as money filters in.  They have attended conferences in Chicago on how to so this correctly and know what they are doing.

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You will see things happening at the Columbus Deer park with some renovations and more trees getting planted.  What do they eat??? Who takes care of them ?

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Don't forget - tomorrow

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I was at One Barrel Brewing in Madison Friday. They are brewing a recipe by the winner of the Sun Prairie Worthogs year long competition set to be released May 6th.  I will have to take May 6th off from golf league that day I guess.

Nice brewery (one of 5?? now in Madison?) on the corner of Atwood and Willy Street.

Have a great Monday

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There is a hard rumor that the Columbus 151 Speedway is closing The Columbus 151 Speedway "has been bought for the purpose of training police offers and rescue in high speed chases and maneuvering".

Madison College is presumed to have purchased it (MATC so some of us)