July 2002

July 31, 2002

Well, I guess I did not catch Dan napping! Thanks for the correction, Dan:

Correction, we were married in 1980, 9 months before Courtney’s Birthday on May 9th, 1981….close but thanks anyway.
Dan
I thought that it looked funny when I wrote it, I have corrected it on the family data page as well. I went to the Devil Rays game alone last night, it was a super game, they won 10 to 3 over Baltimore!!

I do not usually do jokes, but this one struck me funny:

Two married buddies are out drinking one night when one turns to the other and says, “You know, I don’t know what else to do. Whenever I go home after we’ve been out drinking, I turn the headlights off before I get to the driveway. I shut off the engine and coast into the garage. I take my shoes off before I go into the house, I sneak up the stairs, I get undressed in the bathroom. I ease into bed and my wife STILL wakes up and yells at me for staying out so late!”

His buddy looks at him and says, “Well, you’re obviously taking the wrong approach. I screech into the driveway, slam the door, storm up the steps, throw my shoes into the closet, jump into bed, slap her on the butt and say, ‘You as horny as I am?’ . . . and, she always acts like she’s sound asleep!”

Patricia Combs Oaks, Johnson City, Tennessee:

One hot and humid day, while my husband was away on business, I realized I was going to have to do a chore that was normally his: mow our extremely hilly lawn. It was threatening to turn into a jungle.
       After several false starts, I got our ancient lawn mower going. Struggling to push the machine uphill, I grumbled under my breath. This was my husband’s job! Why did he have to travel so much? Why didn’t he take care of the mowing before he left?
       At the top of a rise, I looked up to see my 12-year-old son standing there, a smile on his face and a tall glass of ice water in his hand. “Here, Mom,” he said, “have a drink. Want me to rest you? Dad lets me mow on the flat places.”
       I accepted the ice water and went to sit in the shade of a tall tree. As I sipped my drink, I watched John Thomas. He didn’t seem to be following the normal mowing pattern. And he kept grinning at me as he worked. What’s he doing that makes him so happy? I thought to myself.
       After a while, he stopped mowing. “Hey, Mom, could you come over here?”
        I stood up grumpily. As I walked across the lawn, I noticed that he’d missed a sizable spot. “John, you didn’t. . .” The irritable words faded. For the spot I thought he’d neglected had been carefully and meticulously mowed into the shape of a heart.
       “Like it, Mom?” he asked with a big smile. “Now I’ll finish the job.”

July 30, 2002

This sounds like something Denise would have done (she did throw away all of dad’s antique Christmas stuff he gave me, but I could not retrieve it like this guy tried to):


Sweater in Your Trash?
A man squeezed into a nine inch trash chute in an apartment building to retrieve a favorite old sweater thrown away by his wife. He got stuck between floors when he was unable to climb up the knotted bed sheets she lowered into the chute. After his rescue, the basement doors were unlocked for him to retrieve his sweater — a hand-knitted gray-black present from his mother.

July 25, 2002

David and Jean wrote:

Hi John,  Just to let everyone know. One of our foster boys, Mark, has moved. He preferred the life of rural Maine over the “city” life in Rockland Maine. He has moved to a new foster home in Bucks Harbor. His brother, Stephen, did not want to move so is still with us. There is probably lots more to be said but I will leave it at that, we are very happy for Mark. Foster parenting is a day to day thing.

Love Jean & David

A Florida Power and Light crew was putting in some lines for an addition to the Orlando airport and found that they weren’t the only ones using this culvert. The alligator was 18′ 2″ and the total rattlesnake count was 87!! 

tAKEN A QUIcK sToP BY THE ROAD….

July 20, 2002

I just found this interesting piece (my underline):

Nothing made by man lasts forever

No manmade institution is eternal, despite our best efforts. When it comes to durability, nature can still do better than us. No nation has outlived a California redwood tree. In fact, some of our “great empires” (those of Napoleon and Hitler, for instance) didn’t last as long as the oak in your backyard!

Along that line, I say the USA will someday fall, but not in the same way Rome did, since our challenges are different. Nor is a lack of morals the only factor involved. Rome survived depraved emperors like Caligula and Nero, and even saw better times after them. If morality was the problem, then everything would have been fixed when Constantine embraced Christianity, and who knows–Rome might be the capital of the world today. Instead, the orgies and gladitorial games went on, only ending when people (especially the barbarians) got tired of them.

Among the factors cited in Rome’s fall are declining morals, high taxation, decreasing Roman population, smarter and more numerous barbarians, and economic slumps. Do we have all of those problems today? Whether or not we do is something we can debate for a long time to come.

Let me make a comparison by years. Rome lasted for 1228 years, whereas the USA is only about a third as old, if you count American history from the founding of the Virginia colony. Maybe that means we’re facing the decline of the American Republic, not the decline of the American Empire. If history repeats itself, have we had anyone like Scipio Africanus, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, Cato, Catiline or Cicero in our lifetime? If so, does that mean that our equivalents of Julius Caesar, Augustus, Diocletian, etc., are still in the future?

Raseneb

(Chess score today, Jim 3, me 9!)

July 17, 2002 E-mail I received:> If you had bought $1000.00 worth of Nortel stock one
> year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.
52 week high $9.05, 52 week low $0.017-17-02 value $1.43$1000 of $9.05 shares would be 110 shares; at $1.43: $158, at $.01:$1.10  > With Enron, you would have $16.50 of the original
> $1,000.00.  52 week high $49.85, low $0.107-17-02 $0.1020 shares now worth $2
> With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left. 52 week high $16.06, low $0.057-17-02 $0.1062 shares $6.22, low $3
> If you had bought $1,000.00 worth of Budweiser (the
> beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer,
> then turned in the cans for the 10 cent deposit, you
> would have $214.00.
> Advice – drink heavily and recycle.
If you bought $1000 of each ($3000 cost) and sold at the low, you would have $6 left, about enough for a hamburger at McD’s.

July 16, 2002

Donald wrote:

Not for the Home Page..BUT I COULD NOT RESIST!.

Hard to believe, but another year has passed… (For those who don’t know
about it, the Darwin Awards are awarded every year to the person(s) who
died in the stupidest way, thereby removing him or herself from the gene
pool…)

The nominees are:

NOMINEE No. 1: [San Jose Mercury News]
An unidentified man, using a shotgun like a club to break a former
girlfriend’s windshield, accidentally shot himself to death when the gun
discharged, blowing a hole in his gut.

NOMINEE No. 2: [Kalamazoo Gazette]
James Burns, 34, (a mechanic) of Alamo, Mich., was killed in March as he
was trying to repair what police describe as a “farm-type truck.”  Burns
got a friend to drive the truck on a highway while Burns hung underneath so
that he could ascertain the source of a troubling noise.  Burns’ clothes
caught on something, however, and the other man found Burns “wrapped in the
drive shaft!”

NOMINEE No. 3: [Hickory Daily Record]
Ken Charles Barger, 47,accidentally shot himself to death in December in
Newton, NC.  Awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed,
he reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith & Wesson .38 Special,
which discharged when he drew it to his ear.

NOMINEE No. 4: [UPI,Toronto]
Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown
Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane with his shoulder and plunged 24
floors to his death.  A police spokesman said Gary Hoy, 39, fell into the
courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was
explaining the strength of the building’s windows to visiting law students.
Hoy had previously conducted demonstrations of window strength according to
police reports.  Peter Lawyers, managing partner of the firm Holden Day
Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was one of the “best and
brightest” members of the 200-man association.

NOMINEE No. 5: [Bloomberg News Service]
A terrible diet and room with no ventilation are being blamed for the death
of a man who was killed by his own gas.  There was no mark on his body but
an autopsy showed large amounts of methane gas in his system. His diet had
consisted primarily of beans and cabbage (and a couple of other things).
It was just the right combination of foods.  It appears that the man died
in his sleep from breathing the poisonous cloud that was hanging over his
bed.  Had he been outside or had his windows been opened, it wouldn’t have
been fatal.  But the man was shut up in his near-airtight bedroom.
According to the article, “He was a big man with a huge capacity for
creating this deadly gas.”  Three of the rescuers got sick and one was
hospitalized.

NOMINEE No. 6: [“News of the Weird”]
Michael Anderson Godwin made News of the Weird posthumously.  He had spent
several years awaiting South Carolina’s electric chair on a murder
conviction before having his sentence reduced to life in prison. While
sitting on a metal toilet in his cell and attempting to fix his small TV
set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted.

NOMINEE NO. 7: [“The Indianapolis Star”].
A cigarette lighter may have triggered a fatal explosion in Dunkirk,
Indiana.  A Jay County man using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of
a muzzleloader was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his
face, sheriff’s investigators said.  Gregory David Pryor, 19, died in his
parents’ rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 p.m.  Investigators said Pryor was
cleaning a 54-caliber muzzleloader that had not been firing properly.  He
was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.

NOMINEE No. 8: [Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario]
A man cleaning a bird feeder on the balcony of his condominium apartment in
this Toronto suburb slipped and fell 23 stories to his death.  Stefan
Macko, 55, was standing on a wheeled chair when the accident occurred, said
Inspector D’Arcy Honer of the Peel Regional police.  “It appears the chair
moved and he went over the balcony,” Honer said.

AND FINALLY: (now, these two guys don’t count because they aren’t
dead…yet, but this is a goodie, nonetheless)
[Arkansas Democrat Gazette] Two local men were seriously injured when their
pickup truck left the road and struck a tree near Cotton Patch on State
Highway 38 early Monday morning.  Woodruff County deputy Dovey Snyder
reported the accident shortly after midnight Monday.  Thurston Poole, 33,
of Des Arc and Billy Ray Wallis, 38, of Little Rock are listed in serious
condition at Baptist Medical Center.  The accident occurred as the two men
were returning to Des Arc after a frog-gigging trip.  On an overcast Sunday
night, Poole’s pick-up truck headlights malfunctioned.  The two men
concluded that the headlight fuse on the older model truck had burned out.
As a replacement fuse was not available, Wallis noticed that the 22 caliber
bullet from his pistol fit perfectly into the fuse box next to the steering
wheel column.  After inserting the bullet, the headlights again began to
operate properly and the two men proceeded toward the White River bridge.
After traveling about 20 miles and just before crossing the river, the
bullet apparently overheated, discharged and struck Poole in the right
testicle.  The vehicle swerved sharply right exiting the pavement and
striking a tree.  Poole suffered only minor cuts and abrasions from the
accident, but will require surgery to repair the other wound.  Wallis
sustained a broken clavicle and was treated and released.  “Thank God we
weren’t on that bridge when Thurston shot his balls off or we might both be
dead” stated Wallis.  “I’ve been a trooper for ten years in this part of
the world, but this is a first for me.  I can’t believe that those two
would admit how this accident happened,” said Snyder.  Upon being notified
of the wreck, Lavinia, Poole’s wife asked how many frogs the boys had
caught and did anyone get them from the truck.  (Way to go, Lavinia.)

July 12, 2002

Darrell joins the frey (who is next?):Ok, now Donald does write a book when he get’s going. But, you can tell he has a lot of passion for life and everything he is doing, we’ll let him go on a little bit. So that inspired me to write a little about our summer so far. It’s been great. Justin started things out by dropping in with Jody and Breanna during the first week in June. He is doing really well in the Air Force. He was selected as corpman of the week and his picture was in the base newspaper (he’s promised to send me a copy).  Jody’s daughter is really sweet 4 year-old and the whole family seems to be doing well. Clovis, New Mexico is a long ways from nowhere but they seem to stay busy on base.

 On June 16, we took a 7 day cruise to the Grand Caymans, Cozumel, and New Orleans. The ship sailed out of Tampa, a Carnival Cruise…we had a lot of fun. Gained some weight from food and more food,. We were pampered beyond expectations. We hit the beach in Cayman Isands, snorkeled in Cozumel and a strolled up Bourbon Street in the French quarter of New Orleans! It was a great trip!   

 We decided that since we haven’t taken a real vacation since our honeymoon, we would take two vacations. I had a hectic 4th of July with work, so that night we packed the camper and at 2 a.m. we headed north. We spent 5 days relaxing in Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park in Georgia, about an hour southwest of Atlanta. We hiked with the puppies all over Pine Mountain. We intended to start out with short hikes but I guess I should have paid attention in – map reading merit badge class- in the Boy Scouts. After taking several different trails, I discovered each one took us further from our campsite. We ended up hiking about 7 1/2 hours that day, much longer then intended. The puppies walked or were carried most of the way (see photos). We rested the next couple days, sightseeing and really relaxing around the campfire at night, under a brilliant carpet of stars. We mastered map reading after that and had a couple of good hikes. I’m afraid I had to tell Marilyn all the stories about hiking as a kid and Mt. Katahdin trips. Dad was always setting the pace back then, and we tried to keep up. It brought back great memories! We had great weather, a little on the warm side…but all in all a successful and relaxing trip.

 Back to work today, but feeling more refreshed and relaxed. Hope to hear from the rest of you about “what you did this summer” Love to you all, Darrell and Marilyn and kids

July 11, 2002

David and Jean sent a picture:

I am hoping this is at their lot on Pocomoonshine Lake not out back of their home in Rockland!

Donald does not write for a while, then writes a good book:

John
   I see I haven’t written in a while.  I also have some pictures to share.
If anyone wants prints let me know as I have a photo printer and can send
you one.  Also, I can send higher quality pics by email if you want.
   Dad and Betty had good visits in CA and WA.  Amy, Darren and Sarah
joined us for a day over in Seattle at Pikes Place market.  Here are the
Bakers and Betty and Dad arriving in downtown Seattle…


And the gang at the Market…


A shot of three generations…


One of my favorite of Sarah, she looks like a little angel…


… and going forward…


Stephen and Stephanie at a restaurant in Pioneer Square…


   Jeanne and I had a good 4th of July with friends here in CA, down near Santa Cruz, where hundreds of people shot off thousands of fireworks for about 3 hours on the beach.  I had never been in the middle of such a barrage before.

   It was one of those holidays where you wonder what’s going to go wrong next.  Had a blowout on the motorhome on the way down and AAA couldn’t change it.  A friend took me out in the Pacific on his 1979 28’cabin cruiser with his girlfriend’s 12 year old son for some salmon fishing.  We got a little over a mile out when the boat broke down (probably a broken shaft spline key).  Dragged anchor for 1/2 mile and I was concerned that we would beach until it snagged.  Waited 2 hours for a tow boat.  In the 6′ swells I got very seasick and felt like I was trying to turn myself inside out.  It all turned out OK, though.

   Stephanie just came back from her trip with Stephen to Sue & Al’s in Vermont.  She had a great time.  She is still planning to go to college in CA this fall.

   Stephen is having a good time in VT too.  He is learning a lot and doing a lot.  He should be going back to Seattle next month, then down here to visit me in August.  Busy summer for the kids.

   My most fun has been flying.  The following section is for my brother pilots.  I had a great time soaring the beach in San Francisco (Ft. Funston), ranging from 300′ to 900′ over the ocean.  I usually stay near the launch area but the conditions were very good and soon I followed a pilot south along the cliffs and spent a lot of time over the Westlake neighborhood of San Francisco and down to the town of Pacifica. I was going for duration so I soared for 3 1/2 hours, my longest flight yet.

   Here is a picture taken by my friend Vince Endtner over Westlake. 

 I have the same model glider, except mine is blue where his is red.  The red item in the lower part of the picture is playground equipment.  The Golden Gate Bridge would be below his left wing if it were visible but it is not due to the haze.

   A couple of weeks later I went with a group of pilots to near Reno NV and had a great weekend.  Friday evening there were showy thunderstorms around Reno but just a few sprinkles at the campgrounds. On Saturday morning it was overcast with some cumies underneath and south winds. There was talk of bagging the trip because the conditions were not favorable for the local launches. A pilot suggested that we check out the launches north of Reno so the group of 15 or so pilots went past Peavine (where the LZ has been taken over by a subdivision) up to Red Rock. By then there were the prettiest cloud streets possible in the sky towards the north.

   At the Red Rock Zulu launch the winds were from the northwest at 35 or so peaking at 40, but we set up and waited. When winds dropped to 20-25 Steve Rodrigues launched on his Ram-Air and then I launched on my Atos at 17:36. Big fat thermals and lifty air helped us climb out. There were cloud streets north of us but the cumies had dissipated above.

   In blue sky Steve and I got to (my readings) 10,276′ (launch is 5589′ so this was 4687′ over launch, 5140′ over the valley floor) with max 1082 fpm up. The rest of the group flew but they did not catch the big air and stayed near launch. After a 2:08 flight I landed in the sage at sunset (I didn’t like the top landing situation). This was my personal best for longest thermal flight, highest MSL and gain over launch.

   On Sunday the morning was blue and we went to McClellan. Some pilots went over us at 12K which invigorated the group setting up. Cumies set up again to the north but didn’t reach McClellan. I launched in moderate west winds at 14:28 and got up again, this time to 9610′ (launch is 7144′ so this was 2466′ over launch, 4552′ over the valley floor). Most everybody got high on Sunday. Several WOR pilots headed XC but I don’t know how far they got.  I wanted to get home before 10PM so I landed after 40 minutes.

   I had never flown either site before.  Since then I have flown Hull Mountain about 3 hrs north of San Francisco, a place where the LZ is 7 miles from launch!  Had a great weekend there as well.

   Best to All,
      Don


July 7, 2002

I got pictures!!!!!! Lil’ Nate’s 2nd birthday (born 5-1-2000)

And one of family:

True love!


July 6, 2002

Welcome new “sign on’s” Dan and Candy, and Nathan, Christine and Lil’ Nate! Welcome! I have added Dan and Candy’s and Nathan and Christine’s weather to the weather display below.

I went to Sarasota today but did not find what I was looking for. Jim came over and we played chess. I won the first two games, he won 4 then I won the last. Guess we are pretty well matched. I am writing the report to the court for my GAL kids today, then tomorrow I am going to help Jim with repairs on his boat, then in the afternoon help my neighbor fix his!!

I could use some new pictures Dan and Nathan, come on!

July 5, 2002

Darrell sent the following:

I have decided to editorialize in BOLD

Subject: AMEN& RIGHT ON!!
After hearing that the state of Florida changed its opinion and let a Muslim woman have her picture on her driver’s license with her face covered, one American had had enough. This is an editorial written by an American citizen, published in a Tampa newspaper. Did quite a job, didn’t he?

IMMIGRANTS, NOT AMERICANS, MUST ADAPT.  

I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or his culture. 

Offending someone’s culture: if you went to Europe and wanted cereal for breakfast, or other countries and wanted milk to go with your meal and they did not have it, would they be “offending your culture”? If they insisted on having you stand in line and wait for something that we take for granted here, would they be “offending your culture”? If they did not pray before a meal would they be “offending your culture”? In all of these things our “culture” is just what we do, if they do them differently, that is the spice in life and we accept it. We are the only country that I know of who changes it’s rules because someone complains, in fact we do not have a democracy in that regard, the oddball gets the rule changed to his liking, we do not let the majority rule!

Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Americans. However, the dust from the attacks had barely settled when the “politically correct” crowd began complaining about the possibility that our patriotism was offending others.  I am not against immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone who is seeking a better life by coming to America. Our population is almost entirely comprised of descendants of immigrants. However, there are a few things that those who have recently come to our country, and apparently some born here, need to understand.  This idea of America being a multicultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. 

I do not think that we have in any way “diluted our sovereignty” we indeed have our sovereignty fully intact. “National identity”?  I do not know that anyone cannot identify an American.

As Americans, we have our own culture, our own society, our own language and our own lifestyle. This culture has been developed over centuries of struggles, trials, and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom.  We speak ENGLISH, not Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society, learn the language! 

The key here is “if you wish to become part of our society”. Those who do wish to become part of our society do learn the language, the problem is those who do not want to become part of it. Donald learned Italian when he was in Italy

Additionally, there are many visitors to our country, as we go to visit theirs. These visitors to our country are many times criticized by some of us for not learning our language: if they need to learn English to visit us, the same should be true for us visiting them. I did not learn French before visiting France, German before visiting Germany, etc. There is a big difference, and we need to be tolerant of those visitors and recognize the difference.

 “In God We Trust” is our national motto. This is not some Christian, right-wing, political slogan. We adopted this motto because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, a fact which is abundantly documented. 

This goes for “Under God” in our pledge, as well. The link I put up on the site last month http://home.att.net/~poofcatt/july.html showed that a whole slew of people want to keep under God in our pledge, there were 140,000 that had viewed the site when I found it, now two and a half million people have seen it!. 

It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools.  If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.  

And tolerance is expected.

If the Stars and Stripes offend you, or you don’t like Uncle Sam, then you should seriously consider a move to another part of this planet.  

I met a lady who works for a company here in Tampa  whose president and vice president  cheered on 9-11. They were working here, making money and enjoying our country’s benefits yet have harsh words for us. Several big name people also have spoken out saying that they want to leave (now that they have made their big bucks). Go figure……..and go away!

We are happy with our culture and have no desire to change,  [yes we do, all the time] and we really don’t care how you did things where you came from. 

Yes we do, and if we like it better than the way we have been doing things, we will adopt it; don’t be so critical!

This is OUR COUNTRY, our land, and our lifestyle. Our First Amendment gives every citizen the right to express his opinion, and we will allow you every opportunity to do so. But once you’re done complaining, whining, and griping about our flag, our pledge, our national motto, or our way of life, I highly encourage you to take advantage of one other great American freedom: THE RIGHT TO LEAVE. 

or adopt our way of doing things. Sorry, but if we want our freedom to express our opinion, we will always have to listen to other’s difference of opinion. We do not have to like their opinion, or change ours, but if everyone who had a different opinion had to leave, there would only be one person left in the entire USA! 

Those who are in the position to effect all of us, and do so detrimentally, will be delt with in the long run! And those who would do us harm, you have the right to leave, and we have the right to help you pack!

If you agree, please pass this along.

Heather sent along a picture of her little one in Scotland:

Emily (born 9-13-01) as sent by David!

July 2, 2002

I have added a script (at the bottom of this page) that checks your computer to see if there are any parasites on it, there was on mine! If you do not see anything below the table of our yearly get together’s that is great!

Everybody ready for July 4th?


Quick Spreadsheet

 
2002Dad’sFebruary 2
2003John’s1st week in May
2004Donald 
2005David and Jean’s Housewarming party,
       Pocomoonshine Lake, Princeton, Maine
 
2006Darrell & Marilyn 
2007Dan 
2008Sue and Al