Carl Crossman Blog

In the Rhine river of Germany, a remnant of the past lay waiting to destroy the future. A 1.8 ton British bomb that had been dropped in World War 2 lay unexploded. This caused a risk to all the citizens of Koblenz, a city in Western Germany. It was successfully defused on Sunday by a team of experts.

The discovery was due to low water levels in the Rhine due to a lack of rain. The finding of the bomb led to an evacuation of nearly 45,000 citizens who left their homes early Sunday morning while the bomb was dismantled. Everyone is now back in their homes and feeling a little better about the future.

The current governor of Texas is Rick Perry. He has managed to make some people mad by proposing a Christian prayer event at Houston’s Reliant Stadium on August 6th. A group of people have protested the event saying that it has violated the First Amendment. The group is filing a suit to stop the event.

Perry maintains that he has every right to organize the event and plans to go ahead as scheduled. He says that Americans have the right to assemble even if it’s for a religious event. We will have to see what the result from the court is to tell the end of this story.

The world was saddened to hear that former first lady Betty Ford died Friday. Mrs. Ford was well known for her role in bringing women’s issues to the forefront during her reign as first lady. She is also well known for opening the Betty Ford Center for substance abuse and all her work on the issue of abuse and treatment.

Mrs. Ford will be buried with her husband Gerald Ford at his presidential museum in Grand Rapids Michigan. The funeral will be attended by several notable people including former fist ladies Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, and Hillary Clinton.

For centuries, we humans have been fascinated with the stars, the planet and our galaxy. The space program has been a wonderful advancement for mankind, with men on the moon, satellites orbiting earth and the space shuttle.

Today I read about a new discovery published by scientists in a trade magazine called, Nature. They have found 10 Jupiter-sized objects that they are calling rogue planets because they cannot connect the planets to any solar system. They are just free floating in our galaxy instead of orbiting a star.

This is fascinating to me and I have a ton of questions. I hope to get a copy of the full article so I can read more or find contact information of someone with enough firsthand knowledge to answer my questions.

This must be the year of extreme weather for my part of the country. The winter was harsh, but it looks like spring is going to be even rougher.

We have had rain every 2 or 3 days for the past two months. Not just light spring rain, but vicious storms with wind and sometimes hail. I have to start wondering about that ozne layer and if we are just seeing the start of a century of extreme weather?