Lance Armstrong vs. Floyd Landis

by William H. Benson

June 5, 2014

     Floyd Landis rode his bicycle for the United States Postal Team for three years, from 2002-2004, alongside his teammate, Lance Armstrong, who won the Tour de France each of those years. Floyd admits now that during those three years, he cowered to Lance. It was known that “Lance called the shots on the team,” and “what Lance said went.” “He ran his team like a high-powered corporation.”

     Lance wanted to win big, and he did so by doping himself and his teammates. In 1995, Lance had lost a race, and afterwords he told his teammates, “I’m getting kicked and we’ve got to do something about it. We need to get on a program.” He hired Dr. Michele Ferrari, a doping expert, who began to administer synthetic erythropoietin (EPO), a drug that stimulates red blood cell production and can “inflate an athlete’s aerobic capacity by 8 percent.”

     In addition, Ferrari prescribed testosterone, cortisone, and blood transfusions to boost oxygen levels.

“The doping regimen was as rigorous as any training or nutrition plan,” and those with a conscience, those who refused to cooperate, Lance cut from the team, saying that “they were not a team player.”

     When winning his seven Tour de France races between 1999 and 2005, Lance displayed a ruthless disregard for others. One enemy he made said, “He treats people like bananas. He takes what he needs, then just tosses the peel on the side of the road.” Girlfriends, his wife, teammates, and a series of cyclists he cast aside, one after another, without a hesitant thought. His discard pile stands tall.

     In 2005, Floyd Landis chose to ride with another team, Phonak, after he was offered a better contract. During the Tour de France that year, a feud broke out between Landis and Armstrong, who were heard shouting at each other. Armstrong won the race and then retired from competitive racing.

     In 2006, without Armstrong to compete against, Landis won the Tour de France, but then he tested positive for synthetic testosterone, and authorities stripped him of the title and banned him from racing for two years. Landis felt devastated and confused. Why was he punished but not Lance Armstrong, who had cheated and won seven years in a row? 

     On June 10, 2010, four years ago, Floyd Landis blew the whistle. He filed a lawsuit against Armstrong, and provided testimony to the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) of the extent of Armstrong’s doping. Two years later the Department of Justice filed a second lawsuit against Armstrong, demanding a refund of the $41 million that the Postal Service paid to sponsor his team. If successful in its lawsuit, the federal government could collect treble damages, over $120 million.

     When it was known that Floyd Landis stood to receive up to thirty percent of the government’s proceeds because of his role as the whistle-blower, Armstrong said, “This news that Floyd Landis is in this for the money reconfirms everything we all knew about Landis. By his own admission, he is a serious liar, an epic cheater, and a swindler who raised a million dollars from his loyal fans based on his lies.” By then, Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis were bitter enemies.

     Then, the tide turned. Landis’s testimony and the government’s investigation overwhelmed Lance Armstrong and his supporters. After years of doping, lies to cover it up, bullying his teammates, and threatening retaliation to all those who dared accuse him of drug use, Lance Armstrong announced on August 23, 2012, that he would surrender his fight with the USADA.

     “There comes a point in every man’s life when he has to say ‘Enough is enough.’ For me that time is now.” The next day the USADA announced that they would strip Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles and ban him from cycling for life.

     Travis Tygart, chief executive of USADA, said, “The evidence shows beyond doubt that the United States Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalized, and successful doping program that the sport had ever seen.” Lance’s corporate sponsors fired him.

     In January 2013, Lance appeared on Oprah Winfrey and confessed the truth. “I am deeply flawed, and I’m paying the price for it, and I think that’s okay. I deserve this.” He said that he did so because of a “ruthless desire to win, that the level that it went to, for whatever reason, is a flaw.”

     The two law suits are ongoing, but Lance has settled other lawsuits out of court. He may negotiate. 

     Floyd Landis is from Farmersville, Pennsylvania, was born on October 14, 1975, stands 5 feet 10 inches, and weighs 150 pounds. Lance Armstrong is from Plano, Texas, was born on September 18, 1971, stands 5 feet 9 ½ inches tall, and weighs 165 pounds. Other than the fact that one is from the North and the other is from the South, the two men share much in common. Both love to race bicycles.

      Too often in this life, justice is a fantasy. The innocent are jailed, the guilty are voted innocent, and if the truth comes out, it is too late to make a difference or restore a reputation. What can we take from the the Armstrong-Landis feud? In Floyd Landis, Lance Armstrong made one too many enemies.

Nigeria’s Schoolgirls

by William H. Benson

May 22, 2014

     A caveman lives in a cave, carries a wooden club with a stone head, dresses in animal skins, pats his pet dinosaur, and then drags women around by their hair. This stereotype originated in the comics. There is Alley Oop, who carried a mean-looking war club, lived in the kingdom of Moo, had a pretty girlfriend named Oola and a pet dinosaur named Dinny. Then, there is Fred and Wilma Flintstone, Barney and Betty Rubble, Pebbles, Bam-Bam, and Dino, Fred and Wilma’s dinosaur.

     Comics devoted to prehistoric people who dwell in a cave might offer slight entertainment, but a cave is dark, dirty, more appropriate for animals than human beings. Western Civilization asked people to leave the cave, where they existed in a state of ignorance and depravity, and enjoy the daylight, where they could build clean homes without snakes and spiders.

     Yet, for some, this desire to push women back into the cave remains. Weeks ago, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of a pro-Islamic terrorist organization named Boko Haram—which means “Western education is forbidden,”—kidnapped hundreds of girls at a boarding school in Chibok, in northeast Nigeria, and is now holding them in the dense Sambisa forest and in caves in the Gwoza Mountains.

     A video released last week showed that the girls now wear veils and pray. One would presume that they are now enduring the worst forms of brutality deep inside those miserable caves. Instead of chalk, chalkboards, books, lectures, assignments, and tests, the girls are commanded to pray, prepare food for their captors, and suffer physical degradation and abuse. 

     In exchange for the girls’ release, Shekau is demanding the release of 4,000 Boko Haram prisoners that the Nigerian government has captured in recent months. If Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, refuses, then Shekau threatens to sell the kidnapped girls as slaves to men in Chad and Cameroon. Shekau says, “There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell.”

     The fault line between Islamic and non-Islamic Africa runs through northeast Nigeria, and a war is the result. In the past two years Boko Haram has killed some 7,000 people and captured hundreds, but Goodluck Jonathan’s government appears unwilling to crush them for good.

     Yet, his army knows the location where Boko Haram is holding the girls. A reporter name Peregrino Brimah of the Daily Post said that the army, as well as the girls’ relatives, followed the captors up to “the periphery of the camp,” but when the family members urged the army to attack and “rescue the girls, the commanders said they had no orders to do so.”

     Disappointed by the soldiers’ timidity, these civilians stared and saw that the captors had “generators running refrigerators and other equipment, as well as hundreds of motorcycles.” Now that is surprising. Because of Western Civilization’s educational system, those brutal kidnappers enjoy modern-day conveniences, such as gasoline, refrigeration, and motorcycles, but not the captured girls, who are relegated to caves, insulted, sold into slavery, and no doubt drug around by their hair.

     Is it not incongruous to use and enjoy Western Civilization’s inventions, but then want to rip apart the very social, political, and economic fabric that gave rise to their creation? If they want to forbid Western education for others, then they should deny themselves its benefits.  

     In The New York Times, the columnist Nicholas Kristof stated the facts: “In northeastern Nigeria, education is weak, women are marginalized, 2/3’s have no formal education, 1 in 20 has completed high school, and half are married by age 15.”

     Kristof then asked, “What’s so scary about smart girls?” He answered, “There’s no force more powerful to transform a society. If you want to mire a nation in backwardness, manacle your daughters.” Or, I say, shove them into the back corner of a cave.

     Why is this? Kristof argues that once educated, girls postpone marriage, and when they do marry, they tend to give birth to fewer children. This changes a nation’s demography. Where a disproportionate number of boys and young men roam the country, without families or work, political instability is rife.

     Then, in those nations where schools educate their girls and then give them access to worthwhile jobs, such as in Oman and Bangladesh, the birthrate declines, the youth bulge disappears, and stability reigns. Kristof says, “Educate a girl and transform a society.”

     Islamic terrorism will not disappear on its own. One Nigerian complained that the Islamists “bomb our cities, kill our people, spoil our glory, dim our star, and [take] our children. Boko Haram has shown the world that we are a nation of cowards.” While the Nigerian government dithers, the girls sit in their caves, praying, one would think, for their release.

University Graduation

by William H. Benson

May 8, 2014

     On Tuesday, April Fools’ Day, several dozen Dartmouth students gathered in the office belonging to the university’s president, Philip J. Hanlon, and insisted that he respond to each of the items listed on their Freedom Budget. The students demanded a faculty that included more women and minorities, gender-neutral housing and restrooms, and harsher penalties for sexual assaults.

     In their Freedom Budget, they wrote, “We seek to eradicate the systems of oppression” that exist on the Dartmouth campus. These systems include “racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and ableism,” and are “deployed at Dartmouth as forms of institutional violence.” Someone pointed out that these were “broad and somewhat inconsistent demands,” as if several action groups had joined in this sit-in.

    President Hanlon responded with a campus-wide email. “Academic communities rest on a foundation of collaboration and open dialogue informed by respectful debate among multiple voices.” A Dartmouth spokesperson explained to the students that the president raises funds for the university, but others address student concerns. Nonetheless, the students spent the night in the president’s office.

     Linda Chavez, the syndicated columnist, said last week that Hanlon wants to focus his attention on “the campus fraternity system, and his solution—a committee to look into ‘high-risk drinking, sexual assault and inclusivity.’”

     Chavez suggests alternatives: expel all underage students tested with “a blood alcohol level of .05,” and expel those who buy alcohol for minors. “As for the assault,” she writes, “stop the drinking, and there will be fewer sexual assaults,” because drinking and assaults run in tandem. She suggests that student orientation should include “some time exploring the negative consequences of hooking up.”

     Her suggestions resonate with wisdom, but where is the willpower and the leadership on a campus?

     Chavez then makes a perceptive comment: “The promiscuous culture rampant on university campuses leads to a coarser atmosphere and diminished happiness.”

     Really? Has American culture arrived at the same point that Socrates argued 2,500 years ago, that “knowledge of the good,” and acting in the moral and virtuous way, would lead to feelings of inner worth and happiness? He contended that if people wish to harmonize their souls and produce a divine-like state of inner tranquility, then they must exercise control over their inner desires.

     Despite his good heart and his wisdom, the authorities insisted that Socrates drink—not alcohol—but hemlock, the poison that ended his life.

     Last week in the New York Times Book Review there appeared a review of William D. Cohan’s new book, The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of our Great Universities. Cohan argues that the scandal resulted from two programs that Duke instituted in the 1980’s: “import expensive academic talent,” and “pour a deep river of cash into the athletic program.” Cohan points out that no one understood then that the two were “on a crash course.”

     To their athletes, Duke’s coaches passed out hundreds of dollars, supposedly for their meals, but the athletes in turn scorned academic studies, were “openly hostile” to intellectual discourse, and turned to “booze, gambling, and the hiring of desperately poor women for entertainment.” The lacrosse team members were the worst offenders.  

     A high school graduate can find reasons to avoid the university: the cost, the extensive promiscuity, the binge drinking, and a liberal philosophy that condones and blesses every idea or action imaginable.

     But a student can name some good reasons to attend: Shakespeare, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Einstein, the periodic table of elements, anatomy, botany, language study, business, and music. Each area of study outweighs all the negatives.

     As for the cost, consider Ben Franklin’s quote, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

     Graduation exercises begin this weekend, and the fortunate ones, the happy ones, will graduate. They found within themselves the courage to shove aside for a few hours everyday the junk—the trashy ideas, the immoral behavior, the pursuit of perpetual intoxication, and the excessive emphasis upon sports—and concentrate on their textbooks, their notes, their term papers, and their examinations.

     A diploma indicates a laser-like focus, determination, willpower, and un-swervability. “The coarser atmosphere” and its “diminished happiness” failed to lure them permanently into its trap, and so this weekend they are well-pleased. Instead of a sit-in, they will walk across a stage and receive a diploma.

William Shakespeare

by William H. Benson

April 24, 2014

     We know so little of William Shakespeare’s life.

     We know that he was christened on April 26, 1564, and that his father, John Shakespeare, made gloves in Stratford and served as an alderman on the town council. We know that in November of 1582, when Will was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, then twenty-six; that six months later Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susannah; and that in February of 1585, Anne gave birth to a set of twins, Hamnet and Judith.

     We know that in 1592, Will was a noted London playwright, that he purchased real estate in Stratford, that in 1610 he retired to his hometown, and that he died there on April 23, 1616, at the age of fifty-two. We know that he wrote the plays attributed to him in the First Folio, although some dispute that. With those few facts, biographers are forced to improvise, causing one scholar to say, “Every Shakespeare biography is 5 percent fact and 95 percent conjecture.”

     Two crucial questions: “What prompted Will to leave Stratford, and how did he succeed as a playwright in London?” Stephen Greenblatt, a Harvard professor, tried to answer those two questions in his 2004 book, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.

     Greenblatt pointed out that in Will’s early twenties he was a married man with three children and that he might have worked in his father’s glove-making shop. “He had embraced ordinariness, or ordinariness had embraced him.” The only issue that troubled him was the country’s religious quarrel, an issue that disturbed all the citizens of Warwickshire county then.

     At the queen’s coronation in 1559, Elizabeth had proclaimed that England was no longer Catholic but Protestant. Pope Pius V responded by issuing an order to English Catholics “that they presume not to obey her, or her monitions, mandates, and laws,” or they too would face excommunication. The pope indicated that he would not consider it a sin if an Englishman would assassinate the queen.

     One Jesuit missionary in England, Edmund Campion, was caught, tortured, and executed by disembowelment in 1581 for preaching Catholic doctrine and practicing the church’s rites in England.

     Greenblatt explained the possible effect upon Will. “Even if he was altogether untouched by fantasies of martyrdom, even if he had plunged into the everyday concerns of a family man in a provincial town, Shakespeare could not have lived his life as if there were no questions about belief. No one with any capacity for thought at this moment could have done so.”

     And yet, William Shakespeare thrust aside that bitter religious fight, as well as his wife Anne, his three children, his home town, his friends, his neighbors, his work in the glove shop, and left Stratford one day in the mid-1580’s. Ordinariness would embrace him no longer. He may have joined a traveling troupe of actors that passed through Stratford but ended in London, the city that was “a fair all year.”

     Greenblatt believes that upon Will’s arrival in London, he attended Christopher Marlowe’s play, Tamberlaine, as many in London did so at that time, causing Will’s eyes to open wide. This play, Greenblatt wrote, “from its effect upon Will’s early work, appears to have had upon him an intense, visceral, indeed life-transforming impact.”

      Will would have listened to Marlowe’s ten-syllable blank verse: “Nature, that framed us of four elements, / Warring within our breasts for regiment, / Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.” Will would adopt for himself with startling effect in his plays that same iambic pentameter blank verse.

     Will would have watched in amazement as Marlowe’s plot in Tamburlaine unfolded, when “all the moral rules inculcated in schools and churches were suspended. The highest good was not the contemplation of God, but the possession of a crown. There is no moral restraint in the play. Instead, there is a restless, violent striving for supreme power.”

     This was so unlike the morality plays or mystery plots that Will had watched in Stratford, when good men triumph, and evil is vanquished. Will may have said, “I’m not in Stratford anymore.”

     Equipped with a powerful form of language suited to the stage, and a theme of ruthless ambition, Will would write his histories and tragedies, and so he “gave the world some of the most sublime and un-improvable hours of pleasure it has ever known.”

     The writer Bill Bryson wrote in his Shakespeare: The World as Stage, “What must it have been like when these plays were brand new. Imagine what it must have been like to watch Macbeth without knowing the outcome, to listen to Hamlet’s soliloquy for the first time, to witness Shakespeare speaking his own lines. There cannot have been, anywhere in history many more favored places than this.”

     We know so little of William Shakespeare’s life, and yet we have his plays, by far his best part.

Addiction

by William H. Benson

April 10, 2014

     Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Robert Downey, Jr., Britney Spears, the late Whitney Houston, and countless numbers of other celebrities have gone through rehab at least once, and each experienced far less than a full cure. The actor Danny Bonaduce—the red-headed middle son on The Partridge Family—said, “They charged me more than $40,000 for my stay, and I drank on the way home.”

     Treatment centers, such as Betty Ford, Sierra Tucson, and Promises Malibu, offer hope to an individual who suffers from a compulsive addiction, but often those who pay and stay for the required twenty-eight or thirty days regress to the same addictive behavior once they leave and return home.

     The guilt and shame those people feel for failing to stop the drinking or drug use overwhelms them, and so they and their families feel devastated. They accuse each other, or they drown in self-recrimination. Few question the treatment itself, to say, “that treatment was inappropriate for me.”

     The expensive treatment centers can offer exotic forms of therapy, such as riding horses or daily swims in the ocean, but at their base, for the actual treatment, most use principles espoused by Alcoholics Anonymous, the Twelve-Step Program. So entrenched is AA in the social and judicial system that no one dares to question its premises, its methods, or its success rate.

     One person who has taken on AA is Dr. Lance Dodes, who has written a new book, The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind the Twelve-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry. Last week Dr. Dodes spoke on National Public Radio and said that “AA’s success rate is between five and ten percent, which is about the same as if there was no treatment.” On their own, without any professional assistance, some five to ten percent of addicts quit their alcohol consumption or drug use.

     Why is AA’s failure rate so high? Dodes says that some people dislike the emphasis on religion: surrendering the will, admitting that life is unmanageable, and recognizing a higher power. Many who are first exposed to AA “resist these ideas because they exacerbate the powerful sense of helplessness that most addicts struggle with every day.” Dodes also says that “increased spiritual endorsement is not predictive of increased abstinence.”

     Dodes disapproves of the phrases that AA drills into those seeking help: “You have to hit bottom before you can get well.” “One day at a time.” “Stick with the winners—those already in AA.” “90 meetings in 90 days.” “People with addictions have character defects.” “Only an addict can treat an addict.” Dodes says that these “myths” cause more harm than help, that “folklore and anecdote are elevated to equal standing with a data and evidence.” Instead, Dodes pleads for a scientific approach.         

     Of the twelve steps, Dodes says that only one is beneficial, the fourth one, the one on self-examination: “Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

     Why do some succeed with AA? Dodes says that it is because of the camaraderie and the sense of brotherhood that surfaces at the meetings, and that some appreciate that feeling of being included.

     The primary reason Dodes frowns on AA is because it fails to address the underlying psychological issues that create the compulsive behavior. Instead, he believes that treatment should focus on helping individuals recognize the feeling that triggers the compulsion. Dodes argues that that feeling is usually profound “helplessness.” Once the addict recognizes that emotion, he or she can then predict when the urge to swallow a drink or a pill will arrive, and he or she can then manage it.

     Dodes writes, “There is always a more direct response to helplessness; this is the lesson to be learned from understanding addictive acts as displacements. Addiction can be understood, managed, and tended through learning about oneself. Addicts must focus on when the addictive thought first appears. This is the key moment, the pivot point on which everything else turns.”

     Dodes is not without his critics. In his book he devotes more time bashing AA than revealing his own therapy’s details. He lists testimonials from those who have tried and failed at AA, and he assumes that people drink or use drugs for the same reason, that sense of helplessness, whereas others would argue that other reasons lie below the surface, rather than just that one.

     Addiction is a complex and very human issue, controversy surrounds it, but therapists and counselors should investigate other forms of treatment, not rely just upon AA’s twelve-steps. Alcohol consumption and rampant drug use has enormous consequences for individuals and for society: broken lives, disrupted families, hopelessness, and an overwhelmed judicial and social support system.

     Dr. Dodes writes, “The failure of addiction treatment in our country is especially discouraging since there are better ways to both understand addiction and treat it.”   

The Luck of the Irish

by William H. Benson

March 13, 2014

     Thelma Catherine Patricia Ryan is a very Irish name, and she had the red-hair to go with it. Born March 16, 1912, the day before St. Patrick’s Day, in Ely, Nevada, her parents moved to Cerritos, California, when she was a child. After high school, she worked her way through the University of Southern California, taught at Whittier High School, and then married the lawyer Richard M. Nixon.

     Patricia is the feminine form of Patrick, the name of the English missionary who introduced Christianity and the Catholic Church into Ireland in the late fifth century. The Scots have St. Andrew, the English claim St. George, but the Irish point with swelling pride to St. Patrick as their patron saint. He died on March 17, known as St. Patrick’s Day.

     In 1995, the writer Thomas Cahill published his book, How the Irish Saved Civilization. In it, he detailed St. Patrick’s missionary work, and then Cahill described the important work that the Irish monks completed when Rome fell in 492 A.D.

     Cahill argues that when the Germanic tribes—the Goths, Franks, and Vandals—sacked Rome, set afire the libraries and churches, and destroyed the original texts written by the ancient Greek and Roman writers, the monks of Ireland were busy copying them. So, they preserved Plato and Ovid.

     Immediately and ever since, scholars and historians have criticized Cahill’s argument. They counter that Cahill overstated his case, that copies of those texts were preserved elsewhere across Europe, not just in Ireland. Cahill’s historical interpretation may be doubtful, but his book appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for two years.

     The popular perception is that Ireland is an island of green, of shamrocks, of four-leaf clovers, of the Blarney stone, of leprechauns and their lucky charms. The truth is that for centuries the Irish suffered immense depravity, unrelieved poverty, and their share of alcoholism and mental illness.

     On the first page of Frank McCourt’s book Angela’s Ashes, he describes the misery he suffered when growing up in Limerick, Ireland. He writes, “It was, of course a miserable childhood. Nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying school masters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years.”

     What did the English do to the Irish for eight hundred long years? James Godkin answers that question in his book, The Land-War in Ireland, published in 1870. Godkin writes, “All the maladies of Ireland have arisen from injuries inflicted by England in the wars which she waged to get possession of the Irish land. Ireland has been irreconcilable because she was robbed of her inheritance.”

     Godkin argues that the English stole the arable land, and then converted the Irish into tenant farmers who were forced to pay rent to an absentee English landlord. This injustice galled the Irish who were dependent upon that land for their survival and existence.

     Irish proverbs underscore their plight. “Cleaning the house will not pay the rent.” “Rent for the landlord or food for the children.” “Colder than a landlord’s heart.”

     The Irish fought back for centuries, but the English dismissed them. They were convinced that the Irish could not save themselves, let alone all of Europe’s civilization, that they were too busy drinking their pint of Guinness, complaining, and crying out at the injustices that they suffered. The English failed to see that the Irish wanted and needed their land returned to them.

     In 1880, the Land League in County Mayo, in Ireland, requested that the English land agent, Charles Boycott, reduce the rent that year because of poor crops. He ignored their request, and instead delivered eviction notices to the tenants. The Land League responded with a plan to isolate Boycott. The mailman would not deliver his mail to him. The laundry refused to wash his clothes. Restaurants would not serve him. Boycott gave in and moved back to England. The Irish had boycotted him.

     Not all was gloom and misery in Ireland though. The sun does shine some days, and the luck is not always bad. Despite their difficulties, the Irish know how to joke and laugh. Edward Lear developed the humorous poem called the limerick, named for Limerick, Ireland. It has five lines, and the first, second, and fifth rhyme, as does the third and fourth. For example, “There was a young rustic named Mallory, who drew but a very small salary. When he went to the show, his purse made him go, to a seat in the uppermost gallery.”

     Another example, “There was a young lass named Pat, who was a thin girl not fat. When young she married Dick, who played many a trick, and his enemies called him a rat.” Of course the limerick is silly, but it is also lighthearted and so very Irish. (By the way, the very Irish-American Pat Nixon died on June 22, 1993, at the age of eighty-one, and her husband died ten months later on April 22, 1994.)  

     Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day on Monday, and write a limerick.