Neck of the woods

“Old John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave,

While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;

But tho he lost his life while struggling for the slave,

His soul is marching on.

John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true and brave,

And Kansas knows his valor when he fought her rights to save;

Now, tho the grass grows green above his grave,

His soul is marching on………….” John Brown’s Body (Pete Seeger)

“Three French investigating magistrates will travel to Ramallah in the West Bank to exhume the remains of the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat so they can take tissue samples to determine what killed him. Mr Arafat died at the age of 75 in the Percy military hospital near Paris in November 2004 from an unexplained illness. There was no autopsy and the French doctors who treated him never announced the cause of his death. New evidence emerged from an investigation in July by the Al Jazeera TV network when the Institut de Radiophysique, in Lausanne, Switzerland, said it had discovered significant traces of the rare radioactive element polonium-210 on the late leader’s clothing and toothbrush provided by his wife…………”

I hear there was a joke (a bad joke) going around late in 1967, after the Israelis captured the West Bank. Someone speculated that maybe Easter would be cancelled that nest year because they had found………. Told you it was a bad joke.
Back to Arafat: now, if I were irreverent and rude I’d speculate: suppose they try to exhume Arafat and the body isn’t there? What would that mean? But since I am not irreverent or rude, I shall not pose that question.
Cheers
mhg
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