Do you believe in miracles? YES!!

You sure those aren't angels on their bats instead of redbirds?

The 2011 St. Louis Cardinals did the highly improbable almost impossible last night, they clinched the wild card slot in the National League. They were 10.5 games behind the front running Atlanta Braves on August 25.

On the final game of the season last night in Houston, after 162 games spanning six months, these Cardinals sometimes heroic and other times feeble, clinched the final playoff spot with aplomb. Stunning!

This one is for all of us die-hard Cardinal fans and the over 3 million that pour into Busch Stadium every year. The greatest baseball fans on earth.

This Cardinal team tested our loyalty all season long with sporadic play but boy did they deliver in the end. Unbelievable. But, BELIEVE IT NOW!!!

More to come later on the Cardinals...after I sober up from my Budweiser bath.

Go Cards!

Boardwalk Empire Season 2

Notwithstanding, creep Bill Maher, I love HBO. Its famous tag line, "It's not TV it's HBO" is never more apparent than the greatly anticipated return tonight of the multiple Emmy winner, Boardwalk Empire, Season Two.

In case you missed the 13 episodes of Season 1 of BE last year, you can catch up quickly by ordering live streaming on video feed. For tonight on HBO, resumes the multiple compelling and complex story lines of BE. For those of you who don't have HBO, get it. This HBO show along with so many other brilliantly conceived and acted shows are worth the added fees and your time on the couch. It's the purest and edgiest form of entertainment that TV has to offer.

BE is set in the 1920's Prohibition era in Atlantic City, New Jersey, a corrupt city official treasurer, Enock "Nucky" Thompson played by Steve Buscemi, the "funny looking guy" who met his fate in the wood chipper in the 1996 Coen movie classic, Fargo, is the main character (he's the one on the right in the bottom picture above). Charming. Powerful. Dapper. Corrupt. Lovable. Duplicitous. Damaged. Ruthless. Violent. Smart. Conniving. Rich. Amoral. Sounds like one of the many incarcerated governors from the state of Illinois. Nucky is the show...for now. The man on the left in the same picture, Jimmy Darmody, the limp legged psychopath, Nucky's "laundry man", may prove to be Nucky's worst nightmare in Season 2.

Surrounding Nucky and his iron hand stranglehold on all things happening in Atlantic City, is a multi-layered drama unlike anything ever conceived on film...oops, excuse me, much like another HBO classic, The Sopranos. No suprise there, the creator of BE, Terence Winter, also was the creator of The Sopranos . His talented fingerprints are evident everywhere in BE. The casting. The language. The script. The faux yet authentic-looking sets (see above top picture, set constructed in Brooklyn). The violence. The sex. The music. The costumes, The muted tones. The intrigue. The visuality. The abject sinfulness. The historical realness. It's all there and its all captivating, raw, entertaining, intelligent and addictive.

So give your football tired eyes a time out and strap yourself in and watch something very special tonight and every Sunday night for the next 13 weeks. But, quickly change the channel back to football after the show because you never know when Bill Maher's ghastly presence will pop on the screen and ruin everything and make you ill.

In fact, tonight we're having a BE party at the house. Among others, I'm playing Federal Agent, Nelson Van Alden. My son is playing bootlegger, Chalky White. I'm sure Johnny Torrio, Margaret Shroeder, Arnold Rothstein and Mr. Harrell will show up in some form or another.

Enjoy the show.

Postscript: If the country could survive the turbulent out of control roaring twenties, surely, we can survive what's befallen us now.

Hiking Quandary

No, hiking in and of itself is not a quandary but the name of a mountain in Colorado that a group of us just summited this past weekend. It's called Mt. Quandary, in the the Ten Mile Range aka Mosquito Range of the Rocky Mountains, named by miners who were perplexed by the rock they found on its slopes.

Mt Quandary, 14,265' elevation, is one of 54 peaks over 14,000 feet, known as 14ers, in the state of Colorado. Needless to say, Colorado is abundantly mountain blessed. And for an encore, the good Lord blessed Colorado with 584 peaks in the 13,000' range. Colorado has the most tallest mountains in our country, seemingly, most of them within eyesight of one another. The center of Colorado may possess the highest concentration of tall peaks in the world.

Since there are so many of these towering peaks near densely populated areas, what do alot of Colorado city folk do for fun? They climb the 14ers. Many have climbed all 54 14ers. Its a badge of honor, if you will. Some hikers, not many, have climbed all 14ers in a climbing season. Some hike up and ski down in the winter. Some climb up and take the train down like Pikes Peak. Some, certifiable crazies, excuse me, run up and run down the mountain path. Why do they hike, climb, ski or run these peaks? #1. Because the peaks are right there, beckoning. #2. Because they are so close to the major cities of Colorado. #3. Because Coloradans are mountain tough as hell.

This was my first taste of climbing a 14er. So, I picked an "easy" rating hike for my first one. Knowing that my feet have never walked up a path to that elevation and that my lungs will be tested, this would be new territory for me. With 10 essentials, from water to stocking cap, I trudged up the mountain path with my young posse of 20 year old college students. My godson, Griff, a sophomore at CU, was part of our hike up to the summit. Griff, a fellow flatlander from California, encouraged me and to exhorted "let's do it."

The book on Mt Quandary is that it is an "easy" hike. A difficulty category A-1. 3,300 foot elevation gain. 6 hours up and down. Translation from Coloradese to normalcy, "easy" in the mountains for a Coloradan equals foot sole grinder for normal flatlanders. It may be easy for a titanium-soled Denverite or alligator-skinned Boulderite but for a sandal-wearing beachcomber from Monterey, it was foot rock-boarding torture.

They don't call this jagged imposing range the Rockies for no reason. The path to the top of Mt Quandary was 85% loose rock, talus, cobble, scree and most of it was unstable. It was like barefooting on huge ponderosa pine cones. Not fun. In contrast, the Sierras paths have a dirt base mostly for us wimpy California hikers. Rockies paths have a rock base for goats (see above picture) and for he-man and she-woman Coloradans.

The hike up the mountain passed through and by autumnal-colored Aspen trees, dense pine forests and stunningly beautiful vistas and many intrepid hikers of many stripes all canopied by brilliant sunshine and a cooling wind. After a pleasant first mile climb in the trees, suddenly we emerged out of the forested darkness into the twilight zone of a bare sun-baked severe rock slope on a pathway to heaven...and heaven was way up there. But you have to go through hell to get there. Kinda sounds like a metaphor of life, death and resurrection. "Let's do it" rang aloud in my ears again. No surrender. I continued forward. Gulp.

Casually, my eyes left the trail ahead of my next step and I looked up and there she sat in all her singular and stark glory, Mt Quandary. Double gulp. And what's that I see about halfway up the 45 degree slope through my binoculars? Fellow hikers, as small as ants so insignificant against that slope, making their final push to the top. Heads down, one foot in front of the other, going up and sometimes sideways. About an hour or so later, I too arrived at the top of the mountain well past my young friends earlier arrival. Feeling OK and overjoyed that I made it, my buddies welcomed me at the top. A terrific moment of life(see bottom picture above).

We rested for more than hour at the top with no apparent nasty weather coming in from the west. There were at least 60-80 other hikers arriving and departing at the summit. Encircling us in a 360 degree WOW moment rose at least 19 other 14ers. A sea of some tallest mountains in North America all within sight of our resting spot on top of this world. Sadly, a picture could not capture the essence. It was all around us. And it was glorious. Thanks be to God!

What goes up, must come down. I was feeling good and energized at the top. Although, that feeling was evanescent. The descent was very difficult for me. I developed large blisters on both big toes. Each foot contact with rock was painful which happened to be every 3 feet. Due to the pain, the trip down seemed interminably long and my time reflected that. Frankly, the descent was harder than the ascent. It colored my experience...unfairly. It's not the mountains fault I had crummy boots. All the while thinking, if this is considered one of the easier 14ers, what's a "difficult" category 4-E hike like? Going up Maroon Peak backwards with your eyes closed and no boots on.

So am I going to do hike another 14er? Would I encourage other greenies to attempt a 14er? That is my quandary. I'll assess after my blisters heal.

And about those Coloradans who hike these beasts regularly on those rocky near vertical trails...I'm not worthy...yet. You're a special breed!

Sand Hills

How's that for an understatement? That is the Sand Hills Golf Club sign post in the above top picture. At mile marker 55 on NE97 10 miles outside Mullen, Nebraska, sits this humble yet handsome little wood sign. Only the chosen and the fortunate few know what magic lies ahead. A hint. Look at bottom top picture. Golfing nirvana awaits for the appreciative.

Sand Hills Golf Club is ranked in the top 5 of any poll you will ever read in this country. In the world, Sand Hills ranking is just as impressive. It's in tall cotton with the likes of: Cypress Point, Pine Valley, Royal County Down, Royal Melbourne and Royal Dornoch. Not bad company. But really, rankings and sprankings aside, how can one or an army of raters even attempt to put a grade on perfection? For that is what Sand Hills Golf Club is, a golf setting and experience in its perfect purest form and unlike any other.

Arguably, Sand Hills is the most organic golf course in the world. Set amongst the most surreal landscape of raw mountainous dunes, perfect sand base, abundant underground water supply from the Ogallala aquifer, no trees and infinity views, Sand Hills 18 golf holes appears to have emerged naturally from 18 separate yet connected corridors. Certainly, man helped disrobe the golf holes set amidst the rolling and heaving dunes, that seemingly were waiting to be discovered by genius. And genius arrived in the form of golf course architect Bill Coore and his design collaborator and partner, PGA professional, Ben Crenshaw in 1990.

The risk-taking visionary and Managing Partner of Sand Hills, Dick Youngscap, hired Coore and Crenshaw to find 18 golf holes that would work on his 8,000 acres of western Nebraska sand hills. Finding golf holes for Coore and Crenshaw was not a problem; they found over 130 potentially magnificent golf holes. The dilemma for them was paring 130 plus down to 18.

After several site visits, Coore and Crenshaw, decided on #1 and #18. The other 16 were out there waiting to be linked to the two bookends. After more thought and field work, they finalized their routing into the masterpiece of what you see today. #1 is one of the most compellingly beautiful and strategic opening holes in the world. #18 is also one of the most brilliant finishing holes in the world. The holes in between are some of greatest succession of golf holes ever realized. Frankly, there isn't much to complain about Sand Hills except maybe your game.

Because the site was so adaptable to golf, the construction costs were minimal. With a perfect sand base, each hole from tee to green were essentially built on USGA green specs. The greens themselves were built right on the native sand without greensmix and drainage. The natural contours and landforms of each hole already existed and needed very minimal shaping by a small power rake. The bunker cavities and edges were carved out of the existing faces of the sand dunes with a backhoe. The only import in construction was the irrigation system which accounted for 85% of the total construction cost. Not only did a fabulous golf course emerge from the dunes with this careful approach, it cost next to nothing to build and disturbed very little of the native habitat. A win win all around for everybody involved.

For the serious golfer, playing Sand Hills is one of life's rare treats. Each hole is different and magnificent. Every golf hole sits glowingly in its own room yet linked to the whole in continuum. There is no signature hole here. All holes are spectacular. The dunes-induced fairways average over 70 yards wide due to the wind corridor the valley sits in. The mercurial wind can come from various directions and Coore and Crenshaw factored that into their design. The windswept and wild looking bunkers both pot and huge are very daunting and beautiful in their wise placement on each hole. The variety of greens is brilliant design. Most of the greens are large that range from mellow contours on #10 to the dramatic contours on #2.

There were many appealing aspects to my experience at Sand Hills...almost too many to mention. Unforgettable and lovely come to mind while walking the tee to fairway paths through the wild wind buffeted Nebraska grasslands with grasshoppers a-chattering and jumping every which way. In fact, walking the golf course was one of the most appealing aspects of Sand Hills. It was dreamlike. The total experience really effected me deeply. Call it a spiritual awakening to a transcendent being or whatever, but, in the simplest terms, my personal experience at Sand Hills was so much more than golf itself. It was otherworldly.

So, I asked myself, is Sand Hills heaven? No, it's western Nebraska.

Go Huskers.

Happy Golfing!

Ballyneal

The top picture looks like a setting for an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Eerily similar to his 1959 classic, North by Northwest, starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint. Remember the crop duster scene in the middle of nowhere trying to take Roger Thornhill's head off? Speaking of nowhere...from the believe it or not department, this god-forsaken road leads you to one of the finest golf courses in our country (see bottom picture). Chances are you have never heard of it. Ballyneal is it's name and here is my story of it. So get comfy and enjoy.

Ballyneal, Gaelic for "place of O'Neal", lays across the sandy "chop hills" of Northeastern Colorado about a 2.5 hour drive from Denver. The closest town is Holyoke, population 2,200. Ballyneal is the brainchild of longtime owner of the property and rancher, Rupert O'Neal. The O'Neal family loved golf and farming, I think in that order. Jim O'Neal, Rupert's younger brother, loved golf so much he left the farming business and studied golf management at Ferris State U. He is now the head pro at the Meadow Club in Marin County. Meanwhile back at the farm, the older boy, Rupert, as is the Irish custom, got saddled with running the farm, yet remained antsy. Rupert liked farming and settled into farming as his successful profession but the pull of golf always tugged at him. He wanted to do more with the unusually fabulous land his family owned. He saw potential for a golf course on his property. So, Rupert developed a plan built on a dream. But, his dream needed validation from an expert before implementing the plan.

Rupert called Tom Doak in 2004, an eccentric and accomplished golf course designer of famed Pacific Dunes in Bandon, Oregon, to visit and walk the site to see if his dream had merit. Was it worthy? Doak was floored at what he saw. He saw a golf course architect's dream site. It was links golf in the raw without an ocean nearby awaiting his deft touch. For a links golf course, God supplied all the requirements. Sand. Dunes. Wind. Fescue. Fauna. Flora, notably, the ubiquitous yucca plant. Rolling and heaving contours. Endless horizons. Simply, it was a huge canvas on which to glorify what God had already created. Doak was in ecstasy. Rupert's dream was validated.

Rupert signed up Doak shortly after that initial visit and with the necessary funding in hand, design and construction started. Two years later in 2006, Ballyneal, opened to instant acclaim. Golfweek ranked it recently as the #5 Best Modern Golf Courses in the last 40 plus years. Golf Digest has already included it in its cherished Top 100 in the country. To many, it is one of the truly great inland links golf course in the world already and it's only 6 years old. So what to do you for an encore? Plans are on the table for another course, called the Upland course, designed by ex-Doak associate, Bruce Hepner.

This past week, I visited Ballyneal. I traveled down that dusty road pictured above after a 2.5 hour drive from Denver and wondered what will be at the edge of nowhere. After those last dusty bumpy miles, I found somewhere. Ballyneal.

A simple little wooden road sign inscribed with BALLYNEAL on it, announced itself to me. The main entrance signaled by towering grain silos led me up another dirt road to the Ballyneal community. From the high point, all I saw in the distance were hundreds of square miles of grasslands interrupted with random greenish/brownish ribbons of golf fairway paralleling large grass covered sand hills with splashes of blown out exposed sand cavities (bottom top picture). I saw endless blue sky. Distant infinity. And nothing else. No water. No trees. No towns. No people. No cars. It was pure links. This must be Ballyneal.

Further up the entry road, I was directed to a handsome clubhouse. Much to my amazement, after seeing no one for miles, I saw dozens of golf bags readying for their rounds. It was 8AM in the morning and I wasn't alone anymore. Soon, I found out that this place, Ballyneal, has a following not only locally but coast to coast. The large group of the day were from New York.

Quickly, I registered and got on the first tee to beat the cigar-chomping New York Yankee-loving pilgrims from the Big Apple. With my capable caddie, Cornbread, we were off on our quiet odyssey on Ballyneal. It was 8:30A on a beautiful sunny day for golf in late September.

The first hole a shortish par 4 uphill is one of the great opening holes in all of golf. Straightforward getaway hole with lovely character. The design features of that hole along with the special nuances of Ballyneal portend what is to follow for the other 17.

At Ballyneal, you walk. It's a very easy course to walk and very pleasant. Carts are not allowed except if you are certifiably impaired. There are no tee markers on the tees. You drop your peg where your caddy tells you to drop it. Fairways are wide, even Charles Barkley could hit those fairways at 60 yard plus. With buried buses in the fairways in the shape of natural dunes, there is more movement in those fairways than Shakira on the dance floor. The bunkers are elegant, varied, strategic, directional, penal and scruffy. No formal bunkers here. The native sand is heavy and almost inescapable once in it and to be avoided. But, they sure look pretty in the morning casting those steep-faced shadows. The greens are huge with buried elephant mounds here and there. And, above all else, the greatest design feature of Ballyneal, like most links courses, is the wind.

The designer's strongest ally is wind. Wind is in abundance at Ballyneal. It wouldn't be considered a linksland without a turbo-charged wind machine to make shots interesting...and to make you think. Quixotic all the time. Calm. Steady. Fierce. In your face. Behind you. Cross. Blustery. Cold. Warm. Hot. Although I caught Ballyneal in a relatively mild wind mood, I could just imagine how fierce the wind could howl across those exposed plains.

The dominant fescue playing surfaces at Ballyneal were very good. The fairways were hard, fast and the turf was not over-watered and was not thick. Divots were small and clean...no beaver pelts. The teeing grounds were ample and varied. The fescue greens were perfect and stimping at a reasonably defensive 10-11 because of the excessive movement in the greens. Good maintenance decision. Any faster, the putts would never stop.

In sum, Ballyneal was a treat to play. Very fun. Beautiful. Challenging. Peaceful. Quiet. One cautionary bit of advice, when you play Ballyneal keep the ball low out of the rude wind. Golf at Ballyneal is not an aerial game but a low flight ball game. The firm conditions on the deck will assist even your worst lowest shots. Also, sharpen your putting, particularly, off the green. I putted with great results from as much as 35 yards off the green. Tom Watson says, on links courses "always putt the ball from off the green, your worst putt will be better than your best pitch/chip." At Ballyneal, wiser words were never spoken.

Ballyneal may be a destination into the boondocks but in this case the capture was much greater than the pursuit down dusty roads. You will not be disappointed. A visitation is worth every mile. Ballyneal is a new age marvel with an ancient pedigree.

Happy Golfing.

Obama's "Greengate" Headache, Solyndra

Green jobs...fiddlesticks.

I'm sure many of you know of the recent Solyndra debacle emanating out of Silicon Valley. News of it's young life and sudden demise has been headlines all over the world for the last month. For those of you who may have missed the story, here goes.

Solyndra, a six year old solar panel maker and a poster child for the Obama Administration's inane love affair for "green jobs technology" with revenues of $140 million in 2010, folded under the weight of puny market share, intense competition from China and a $530million gift loan from the Obama White House's Department of Energy. It's business model was so appealing to Mr. Obama and his vision for clean tech jobs, that the President visited the facility in Fremont, California in May 2010(see picture above) and explicitly blessed its purpose on earth, by saying, "the future is here." Solyndra's promise of jobs while serving as a gleaming example of the Obama green energy platform was clearly the darling of his Presidential agenda, second only to mandated health care. Note the word "was".

Earlier this month, Solyndra flopped badly and quickly. Solyndra now shuttered, wasted $530million of taxpayer money that we don't have to spare on a bet that it would succeed. 1,100 people lost their jobs, any back pay and medical benefits. If that wasn't bad enough publicity for a nagging unemployment-haunted Obama White House, the FBI raided Solyndra's corporate offices earlier this month grubbing for evidence of fraud and corporate malfeasance (see picture above). Meanwhile, the "greenies" have gone underground. The Obamaistas are equally in hiding on this one. But that's just part of the story.

At the end of President George W. Bush's presidency, the Solyndra issue and low interest guaranteed loan was on the table awaiting the green light for a viable green project. To his credit, the embattled and bruised President Bush shelved the loan for the next President to consider. Mr. Bush didn't think it had merit. He saw the value of photovoltaic cells but smelled rotten eggs on this deal.

After President Obama was elected and took ownership of the Oval Office, Solyndra rose from the ashes atop the to do list. With new liberal momentum and a chance to show the world that the USA was the new author of the fashionable green technology fad, Mr. Obama seized the day and fast-tracked the obscene loan amount to a sputtering bottom line company that even Mr. Obama's own Office of Management and Budget (OMB) advised against such a deal. Do you think politics was at play here? Totally.

Quickly, Solyndra with new funds in hand and flush with cash, set out to build another huge plant off the banks of the I-880 (aka the Nimitz freeway) in southern Alameda County in full view of all the commuting honest hard-working taxpayers of the East Bay. (Bet they didn't know they had a stake in that black hole?)

Solyndra hired the most revered, experienced and expensive commercial/industrial builder in the Bay Area, Rudolph and Sletten, and proceeded to build a new state of the art robotic facility, known as FAB 2, to the cost of $733million. FAB 2, augmented the existing plant known as, FAB 1, a perfectly suitable plant just down the street, opened to much gleeful fanfare and liberal smugness in September 2010. In fact, I passed it many times on the freeway and marveled at it's apparent glistening new age presence. What is that? I muttered. However, I had my passing doubts. A solar panel company in a new magnificent shrine to technology in Fremont? However, little did I know it was a shell of something much more sinister.

In the Presidential race of 2008, a well-connected billionaire, George Kaiser, natural gas man and philanthropist from Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a top money rainmaker for Barack Obama. His fund raising efforts and that of his many fellow billionaire brethren paid off handsomely for Obama and for them. Mr. Obama was elected 44th President of the United States. Along with being one of the richest men in the world through inheritance and gas, Kaiser also invested in risky business ventures. One such venture was the capital funding of Solyndra. Kaiser became the largest private investor in Solyndra. Shortly after Obama's inauguration in 2009, Kaiser's Solyndra received a gift from the Obama White House. It was a Get Well card with a $530million guaranteed loan enclosed for the expansion of his struggling enterprise. Payback, if you will, but with strings attached. Message given to Solyndra: make this work and make me look good, 2012 is just around the corner. However, Solyndra's wellness became fleeting...quickly. Best laid plans went awry. Mr. Obama failed once again...he was not pleased. Sometimes crony capitalism lays an egg, Solyndra case in point.

With a complicit Mr. Obama and governmental agencies approbation, the company is now toast. Promises broken. No new jobs. No customer demand. No lower manufacturing costs. No new state or local revenues. Loan default. Bets lost. Reputations trashed. Credibility damaged. Mr. Obama bloodied.

However, all this aside, stunningly, Mr. Obama's commitment to his pals overshadows even this spectacular default. It has been reported that any assets remaining from the dissolution of Solyndra under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy protection statute, will be paid to the investors first, that includes the billionaire investor, Kaiser. What's left will be returned to the taxpayers who footed the loan. Frustratingly, we take it on the chin...again. When will this madness end?

So, as the FBI carts away thousands of company records from Solyndra in the hopes of finding something that will exonerate the White House's perceived ineptitude and criminality and shift blame and guilt to others (a common refrain from the Obamaistas), Mr. Obama with teeth a-shining and mouth a-blazing rhetoric touts his new feeble plan of job creation. But, honestly, is anybody listening to him anymore?

In closing, a bit of pedestrian advice to Mr. Business Owner, just in case the President calls you for a visit to your company, noting his dubious track record in business and creating jobs the last 33 months, you may want to decline the offer. His cold icy touch seems to be the kiss of death. Latest example: S O L Y N D R A.

Question is, will this story, "Greengate", result in Mr. Obama's own self-inflicted political death blow, or, will he deftly foist this humiliating loss upon others? Only time will tell.

And winter is coming...

F D N Y

There are many images seared into our memory of September 11, 2001. Warm sunshine. Blue sky. Suddenly, planes. Fireballs. Smoke. Ash. Detritus. Figures leaping. Buildings collapsing. Dust-encrusted faces of the living, shocked, terrified, lost. The jagged aftermath. Photos of the missing. And finally, darkness. A photo album created by evil strangers of the worst images forever branded on the living...always to be remembered and never forgotten.

On that tragic day, 10 years ago tomorrow, 2,983 innocent people were slaughtered in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Washington DC and New York City by crazed Islamic fanatics in an attempt to cripple our democracy. Our innocence as a country was lost that day but our courage was emboldened. The symbol of that fateful day was the beyond courage first responders, firemen, police officers, EMTs, priests in New York City who ran headlong with purpose afoot into the fiery inferno to help others in need. Pause and think about THAT for a moment.

In the South Tower, fireman Mike Kehoe, pictured above, was photographed in one of the stairwells on his way up to danger while others were going down to safety. This iconic image of Mike's face flashed around the world which became the heroic symbol of what these first responders faced that day. They hustled up those stairwells with 100 pound packs to save those who couldn't save themselves. His pensive face became the face of heroism for all of those brave but terrified firefighters. Many of Mike's fellow firefighters died that day as the South Tower then the North Tower unbelievably collapsed. Paradoxically, the global face of this tragic heroism, Mike Kehoe, made it out alive. Sadly, to this day, Mike is wracked with punishing guilt that he made it to safety while many of his buddies didn't make it out alive.

This past month, I visited the fabulous Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. Among the many treasures of that library is a structural beam from the remains of the North Tower, pictured above, emblazoned with FDNY 343. It was donated to the library by the New York City Fire Department with the following inscription:

"At 8:47AM on September 11, 2001 Emergency Reporting System Box 8087 transmitted a call for help to Battalion 1 of the Fire Department of New York that an aircraft had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Ultimately, thousands of New York City firefighters responded to the call to rescue victims trapped in the North and South Towers. When America was under attack by terrorists on this tragic day, 343 firefighters perished. From the rubble of the North Tower this 14 foot structural beam was recovered. Weighing approximately 1,200 pounds, the beam is imprinted with FDNY 343 representing those 343 firefighters who made the ultimate sacrifice."

Mike Kehoe and his buddies at WTC, the "Let's Roll" team on United 93 above Pennsylvania, the bravery of those who helped the innocent victims at the Pentagon are heralded as forever heroes.

I love and admire them all greatly. I pray for those they left behind.

ALWAYS REMEMBER.

GOD BLESS AMERICA.