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FeaturedPermalink Reply by Craig Henry on March 11, 2013 at 0:22

Wow, that's cool Charles!

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FeaturedPermalink Reply by Charles Sample on April 6, 2013 at 0:45

For my light reading, I read Louis L'Amour.  I especially like his western stories.  But I have read all of his books, even his short stories, most of them multiple times.  My family vacations out west have taken me to several of the places where his stories are set.  He did such a good job of describing the the scenery that, after seeing it, I could almost feel myself there watching the action.

One of his books even has a connection to one of my ancestors.  My gggggGrandfather, Col. Frederick Hambright, was a commander of a milita unit before and during the Revolutionary War.  He was one of the commanders at the Battle of King's Mountain.  The British commander at the battle was a Col. Ferguson.  In L'Amour's story (fiction) Col Ferguson was on his way to the battle site.  He stopped at the main charactor's home and when he left, Col. Ferguson gave him a rifle he had invented.

At the battle site, my gggggGrandfather was probably as responsible as anyone for Col. Ferguson being killed.  Col. Ferguson sent a messenger to General Cornwallis asking for reinforcements, but my gggggGrandfather captured the messenger.  The messenger told Col. Hambright what Col. Ferguson was wearing.  Col. Hambright told his men to mark Col. Ferguson with their rifles.  Mark him they did.  He was hit eight times.

Historically Col. Ferguson did invent a breach loading rifle.  Fortunately for our side, Col. Ferguson's troops were armed with the standard Brown Bess musket of the British army instead of his breach loading rifle.  The outcome of the battle could have been different. (We won.)  Historians generally credit it as the turning point of the war.

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Permalink Reply by Michael D. on April 7, 2013 at 21:11

I rarely go to bookstores these days but I had an appointment and was early so I decided to pop into the Barnes & Noble. What immediately caught my eye was a book entitled The Sociopath Next Door, The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us by Martha Stout, PhD. Yikes is all I can say! The underlying theme of the book is that "One in 25 Americans secretly has no conscience and can do anything at all without feeling guilty. Who is the devil you know?"

After reading the book you really begin to reflect on people you hear about, on certain situations, about events that have occurred, etc. Stout says "Absolute guiltlessness defies the imagination." Reading this book was unbelievable!

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