Memo for the Mayor of New Orleans, the Govenor of Louisiana and the President of the United States:
Would you mind DOING SOMETHING?
…just sayin’.
Enough, already! If I never again hear the name of Cindy Sheehan, that will be too soon. I have no problems with anyone who is opposed to the war, in fact no one in their right mind would be in favor of war. War is messy, people get killed and hurt, and countries get laid waste. But, there are times when even the most hated thing becomes necessary, and this, I fear, is one of those times.
Ms. Sheehan has the right, as does anyone, to protest. But, we have heard her, and it’s time to move on. She has allowed herself to get wrapped up with some not-so-nice organizations, and that is a shame. At first, folks would have said, “OK, she’s in grief over the death of her son.” And, who wouldn’t be? But as things progressed, and we found out that the President had already met with her once, I began to question why he should grant her another meeting. He’s a busy man. Even on vacation, he has to work, his responsibilities don’t end, and she should have had enough sense to realize that her demands were not going to be met, especially by anyone like GW.
As I was writing this, FNC announced that she was leaving because her mother has had a stroke. I’m sorry about her mother, and I feel for Ms. Sheehan, who should have been with her family instead of tilting at windmills while her mom got sick. We can now just hope the other nutcases will leave Crawford and go home, let the President get some rest, and give the rest of us some peace. No doubt, the media will go hunting around for the next thing to talk about hour after hour, boring the crap out of us all.
So, what’s next?
It is a sad commentary on our times that this commercial is such a pathetic sequel of the original.
(NPR has revived an old radio series, inviting members of the public to expound on their personal credo: herewith is my potted list of personal beliefs.)
Women of a certain age should not wear mini-skirts. Ever.
Actual proof of Islam being a religion of peace is pretty thin on the ground, and in the headlines these days.
Teabags are a scourge and invention of the Devil. Real tea is made from loose leaf tea. And the pot is rinsed out with boiling water, first.
Children should not be allowed to call their parents, or any other adult by their first name, unless said adults’ name is adorned with an honorific such as “Aunt/Uncle” or “Mr/Miss”.
95 Percent of any popular culture—books, movies, art, music, and fashion— at any one time is utter crap. In five years or less, everyone will be poking fun at all but that quality 5%. Teenagers arrayed in the latest popular fashions, body-piercings and makeup would do well to keep this in mind.
That William Morris had the right idea: “Have nothing in your homes that you do not know
to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” And as my mother said, “The bigger the house is, there more of it there is to clean.”
Only fools and the impatient pay full retail price. And second-hand will not kill you… how many previous owners do you think that expensive antique has had?
One way and another, the whole world is bigoted and prejudiced. To quote Tom Lehrer
“The whole world is festering with unhappy souls,
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
The Italians hate the Yugoslavs, South Africans the Dutch,
And I don’t like anybody very much!”
The best one can hope for, is to live in a place where they aren’t very much prejudiced about what you happen to be. It’s a human thing— adjust. Relocate, if absolutely necessary.
Children are not possessions, only undeveloped people.
(More to be added, as I think of them.)
I’ve been a little absent from the blog for much of the last 2 weeks, and there are good reasons. We received a settlement from the social security admin, a real surprise, but so very welcome. As a result, I’ve been really busy. Paid off some $5,000 worth of bills, got rid of loans and credit card balances, and purchased a lot of things, some of them toys, that I’ve wanted for a long time. Changed from cable to satellite for TV (Directv, really great), got a satellite XM radio, and finally a new computer. The old one was in really bad shape. The new one, an “Emachines” model T4010, made by Gateway, has a Celeron proc, 2.93GHz, RAM 512MB, lots of extras, really nice. But changing over is really a lot of work and very time-consuming. I took the HD out of the old one, set it up as a D drive, and am slowly copying what I need from it to the new one. Since there are a lot of things I do not want, I’m not just doing a “copy*.*” so the way I’m doing it takes time.
The settlement I received was for my disability. I’ve been disabled since 1995, but the SS folks gave me 1998, don’t know why. Then they gave me back pay, but not all of it. OK, I’ll take what I can get, there’s not a lot of choice. It will be great, though, to have the extra monthly check. For so long, we’ve been struggling, having to borrow and scrape to make it from month to month, I just don’t know what it feels like to be worry-free. But it will be nice to find out. Oh, and we’re finally gonna go on a cruise, one thing Nurse Jenny has wanted to do since we got married. We’re just trying to figure out which one, there are so many to choose from!
Friends, rejoice with us in our good fortune, and thanks for being friends!
You know the drill. You’ve been tasked to put a team together to solve problem X. You gather your team, you gather your resources, you turn some abandoned old hut into your state of the art workcenter. Staff papers and action papers and point papers are all pooled to study problem X. Meetings are held. VTCs happen once the fiber is run to the old hut. There must be TDYs to D.C., Colorado, Hawaii and Nebraska because it’s that serious a problem…we must discuss face to face this serious serious problem. The discovery that the problem is bigger than it seemed is inevitbale. It’s now problem XYZ and Q(?). Everyone’s got the same problem(s) and teams just like yours are set up at key locations for all the commands. The orignal team disbands due to PCS moves and new people come in. Money is projected out for the next five years to ensure success. At some point a smart airman walks into the office with a magazine article from Wired or Computer News with a simple, off-the-shelf, solution to problem X and quietly tries to implement it, but it’s not to be. A Lt Col on loan from the Reserves and who works with Gigantic Aerospace (GA) n his “real” job knows that GA’s Information Technologies section can do a better, more military, solution and the studies begin anew. Manhours are gauged. Software development begins. The company that first released the off-the-shelf software solution is bought out. Software engineering ensues. Testing happens. Tests are studied. The hut gets knocked down and a new building with not enough power outlets and NO phone lines is built…it will be a couple more years before the comm issues are fixed so the military rents office space from GA. More meetings and TDYs occur. One of GA’s subsidiaries (made up of the original, now retired team members) gets the contract. No, military people won’t be able to use the software, this is now serious stuff with an eclectic and stiff learning curve, we need full time contractors on the job 24/7 and they’re all going to need clearances so we should probably hire retirees or actively recruit folks with a fresh new clearance.
The smart airman watches all of this and spits while he goes back to college, goes for his degree, and gets the hell out to form his own group of contractors that he can sell to GA in a couple years.
And that’s just one of the retention problems we’re having.
…end satirical rant…
Anyone speak French? Does that mean what I think it means?
I commented on this post over at Wizbang by Jay Tea earlier today and the thought has stuck with me all day and I think some more discussion is in order:
I think that the average high-school graduate of today is better educated than the men who founded this country and wrote our Constitution and are perfectly capable of grasping the ideas behind it without a lot of external interpretation.
Discuss.
This post over at ASV reminded me of something I saw when we were on vactation. I was shopping with our family at the local WalMart and a kid, couldn’t have been more than 17, walked by. It was what he was wearing the threw me. From bottom up: Doc Martin Combat boots, fishnets, an old plaid shirt tied around his waist kilt-like, a Black Flagg t-shirt, a biker leather with an anarchy “A” and Sex Pistols spray painted in white across the back, face made up like Robert Smith and topped off with a black and red spiked mohawk that must have been 8 inches long.
I stared long enough that he turned and said, “What are you lookin’ at?” I shook it off and simply said, “Sorry, but you look almost exactly like a girl I dated in college. Wear’d you find the Doc Martins?” He shrugged, “They were my Dad’s.”
I know it’s weird, but I’m oddly comforted to know that there’s another generation of punkers around.
And now that we’re out I read/hear from all over the place that Karl Rove was the guy who told the press about Valerie Plame? Really?
I think the word “slimy” applies here.
Update: I want to be clear. My problem here is that Rove and McClellan looked into the camera and lied to me. I don’t care about the definition of “covert.” That’s like arguing the definition of “is.” I simply don’t like being lied to. Don’t care how much I like you otherwise.
Sometimes it just doesn’t go every 88 minutes like it used to. Something happening underground so they tell us.
More on the trip through the park later…we’re not home yet.
In watching Bravo’s Blow Out today, which featured Jonathan Antin going on QVC to sell his product line, I can’t help but wonder whether his people were lying to him, or to us. No, it’s not about the product, it’s about him – total hype. And, if you check out the prices for Jonathan Product, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Oh, and does it matter that QVC is part of the E! network, a co-venture between Disney/ABC and General Electric/NBC (which owns Bravo)?
…And they’re closing all the factories down…
WAIT!!!! Not any more it seems. Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley is emerging as one of America’s fastest growing regions. It is being revitalized by (believe it or not) Latino immigration. Stories like this give lie to many of the fears of the xenophobes.
I am currently watching Bravo’s Blow Out, which is into about the third of fourth episode of its second season. And I can’t help but think what a marvelous Hollywood star machine, and co-marketing vehicle this is. How do I tie into a comet such as this?
This From OpinionJournal’s Best of The Web:
House Party
Liberal blogger Steve Smith observes, intriguingly but inconclusively, that
there is a strong correlation “between a robust housing market and Democratic
voting patterns”:In fact, the correllation [sic] gets stronger the further back you go in
time. While there are a handful of Blue States in the third quartile of the
housing market for 2004, and only one (Michigan) near the bottom, only one
Blue State (Michigan, again) was in the lower half from 2000-2004. Going back
even further in time, every state (and the District of Columbia) that voted
for John Kerry last year, without exception, was among the top 24 states in
the country in terms of the increase in residential property values since
1980. The 27 states with the lowest rate of increase, again without exception,
voted for George Bush. Only four Red States (Virginia, Florida, Nevada and
Colorado), placed in the Booming 24, and Kerry was competitive in each of
those states.I don’t know what it all means, but I thought I’d share that with you.
Mickey Kaus notes this and asks:
Do Democrats produce rising home values or do rising home values make people
Democrats? (The latter seems implausible.) Are both phenomena related to high
education levels and/or a large concentration of universities? And how does
this correlation jibe with the much advertised GOP dominance in the fastest-growing
states, which you’d think would be states with rapidly appreciating real estate?
Explain it away if you can, Michael Barone!Well, we’re not Michael Barone, but here are three factors that may explain
it in part:First, Democrats help produce rising home values by supporting development
and labor regulations that suppress new construction, thus limiting the supply
of housing.Second, geography produces both Democrats and rising home values. That is,
Dems tend to prefer living in old cities that are already built up and that
often have physical barriers to sprawl (i.e., oceans, lakes and rivers). The
housing supply in these places is less elastic than in Republican-leaning cities
like Phoenix and Dallas.Third, low housing prices attract Republicans. As the Los Angeles Times reported
in November (and we noted):In this month’s election, President Bush carried 97 of the nation’s 100 fastest-growing
counties, most of them “exurban” communities that are rapidly transforming
farmland into subdivisions and shopping malls on the periphery of major metropolitan
areas. . . .These growing areas, filled largely with younger families fleeing urban centers
in search of affordable homes, are providing the GOP a foothold in blue Democratic-leaning
states and solidifying the party’s control over red Republican-leaning states.In other words, housing prices are low in Republican areas because there’s
enough land and enough freedom for the supply to keep up with the demand, whereas
in Democratic areas housing is expensive because it is scarce, for both natural
and artificial reasons.
I think the idea merits further investigation.
Well, well, now that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has announced her retirement, it seems the race is on. The news(?) media are salivating all over themselves and rolling around in orgasmic happiness. Democrats in the Senate are gearing up, I hear, for the fight of the century, no matter who President Bush selects to fill her seat on the Supreme Court. Republican Senators, on the other hand, are getting set to push to the wall to get the President’s pick confirmed.
As for me, all I ask is that Sgt Mom pass the popcorn, I’m just gonna sit back and watch these dreary old men (and women) make total asses out of themselves, if they can be bigger idiots than they are now. As I said in the beginning, let the games begin!
I just saw a commercial, sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, which touted beer-drinkers as “the nation’s best moderators.” Oh, give me a break.
Survey after survey has shown that, even among hard-core boozers, those with the greatest tendency towards moderation are those who drink it “straight”, or nearly so – “say, scotch-on-the-rocks, or a very-dry-martini.”
The fact is, the harshness of high-proof beverages produces a self-moderating effect. Save for a few real zoners, the hard-core drinkers consume at 30 proof or less.
Yes, my favorite human piniata, of whom I wrote earlier
“I think they should keep him; for the sheer amusement value. Professor Churchill has inestimable value as the bulls-eye for metaphoric target practice; chained to the academic stocks as it were, focus for scorn, derision, for deconstruction of his fraudulent scholarship, vilely insulting writings and speeches, his questionable status as a “native American”, extremely thin academic qualifications, bullying demeanor, and general fuckwittedness. There is just so much good materiel to work with; we could go on laughing at him for years, picking him up in the intervals between bigger and more transient matters for a little more thrashing, much like my cats derive hours of amusement and exercise from batting around palmetto bugs. I’d rather go back and thrash him every once in a while for practice, than have him all over the media being a martyr.”
According to this, it seems that he would like to encourage the conscripted troops to “frag” their officers. No one seems to have pointed out to the dear professor that the forces have been all-volunteer for simply decades. I know that it is an axiom that the military is always fighting the last war, but it looks like the anti-warriors are fighting the one before that….
(PS— Courtesy of Rantburg the source for all things bizarre)
I’ve been paying $10 for a haircut for the last 10 years. But my stylist has just retired. I shudder to think what I might have to pay now.
On May 18, 1999, Bill Clinton had his hair cut in Air Force 1 on the LAX tarmac, by one of Hollywood’s top stylists, Christophe, reportedly holding up air traffic (delays in air traffic later debunked). The word at the time was that Christophe got $300 for a typical haircut. Jose Eber was just on Cavuto, talking about “the $800 haircut” (he gets $400-500). On a recent episode of Bravo’s Blow Out, Jonathan Antin said he gets $500 for a haircut in his shop, and $5000 for a “housecall.”
It’s a quiet day, today in the neighborhood; the paper was late, it seems most of the town was caught up in some sort of basketball final last night. I assume it was important because of all the little “Spurs” flags flying from car windows over the last few days, and venders of banners and tee-shirts setting up kiosks on various vacant corners. Myself, I was more taken up with transporting buckets of mulched tree-limbs to spread over the plantings in front and back. My neighbor the roofing contractor had two of his trees severely cut back, two weeks ago, and the guys doing the work were feeding the cut limbs into a chipper: I went at asked for half the truck-load, if they had no other calls on it, so they obligingly dumped a goodly pile in the middle of the driveway. There is enough to mulch everything the requisite four inches deep, against evaporation in the summer heat. It is not the no-float cypress stuff, of course— but you can’t beat the price. The gardens are recovering from the colossal hail storm in April, which left shredded leaves like green confetti all over my yard, and stripped the leaves off the firespike and the potted plants along the south side of my house. I have hardly any damage left to show now, and the new roof is right and tight and just about paid for.
The re-roofing continues, at a slower pace in the neighborhood now; at any one time two or three houses have a crew on the roof, peeling off the old, and nailing on the new, with a peculiar slap/thump sound that the mechanical nailers make reverberating over several blocks. I notice that many residents, now that they have a new roof, are painting, and sprucing up otherwise. A bit of fresh new color to the siding between the brickwork, touching up the trim with sparkling fresh paint, planting new flower beds in front. A couple of fancy new fences and decks have gone in also; I think of the storm as the Spring Creek Roofing and General Contractor’s Full Employment Act of 2005. It was always an attractive little neighborhood where most residents owned their homes, and now it just looks that much better.
Our homes, our own little suburban castles… for someone who owns their own little patch of paradise the Supreme Court decision as regards the Kelo case is as a patch of cloud against the sun. Eminent domain? Well, my parents lost the first home they owned, Redwood House, to a freeway, after a long and protracted fight, at the end of which we were about the only family left in a neighborhood that slowly reverted to chaparral covered hillside, but at least we could assume that the freeway was to the greater good of the public. (Yuppified the hell out of what used to be a blue-collar, out of the way little neighborhood way up in the hills once people discovered that it was only half an hour from downtown, instead of two hours, but that’s a side issue.)
Perhaps the municipality of New London will be revived, and new jobs and a solid tax base may take away the bitter taste of having steamrollered over people who had the misfortune to own property which stood in the way of the greater good. It seems that in this one case, a good enough argument was made for the “greater good”, but the precedent is horrifying: Either we own our houses, our businesses and our lands, free and clear… or we own them only temporarily, at the pleasure of a municipal establishment who can suddenly decide one day that someone else can make better use of them.
And it is not so much the big projects like the New London scheme which afford the greater danger to property rights; I think rather it will be the thousand smaller, little civic actions, picking off a small business here, a block of modest homes here, to benefit a slightly larger business, or a local plan by a city council to “fix up” a slightly less than top-drawer neighborhood— nothing so spectacular as outright confiscation as practiced by such experts as Stalin and Mugabe… just the death of a thousand little cuts, insidious, local… and practically unnoticed
“Race you home.” was what the young lady in the gym parking lot said to her young man as they kissed, let each other’s hands squeeze for a moment, before they walked away from each other to climb into their huge, gas-guzzling trucks from hell. Huge monstrosities that the farmers in my family would give body parts to be able to afford.
It was just so…decadent. They actually drove to the gym in separate behemoths. I’m talking the Transformer-inspired Chevy thing and the Dodge with the flaired fenders that almost clear my head. There were no trailer hitches…I was flabbergasted enough to actually look.
I must be getting old. I cringe when I fill the Hyundai and almost weep when we fill the van. I don’t get it. And I won’t ask if I see them again. I don’t have to. I mentioned it to a group of younger folks at work and one of them said, “Me and my husband do that all the time…we like different radio stations.” blink-blink A younger guy kind of nodded like, “Yeah, we do that.”
Is it just me or does that just seem like one of the signs that a culture is imploding?
I am moved by this commentary, from Joseph W. Gauld at the Portland [Maine] Press-Herald:
But our present education system is clearly failing in this responsibility. Former Bowdoin College President Rob Edwards called today’s students “ethically unformed . . . many with anxieties that have been sanctified.”
At our four Hyde Schools, all education is built on the development of character:
Curiosity: I am responsible for my learning; courage: I learn the most about myself by facing challenges; concern: I need a challenging and supportive community to develop my character; leadership: I am a leader by asking the best of myself and others; integrity: I am gifted with a unique potential and conscience is my guide in discovering it.
Once students truly internalize the power of these qualities, we find they are never willing to give them up in life, no matter what the circumstances. And their academic proficiency still sends 97 percent of both Hyde private and public school graduates to four-year colleges.
Since character is primarily developed by example, all Hyde parents and teachers undergo the same process, and they uniformly report the experience transforms their own lives. Their strong growth at Hyde reflects what our educational system had failed to do for them.
But character development is not a part of No Child Left Behind, only numerical results. The resultant corruption is staggering:
Most American schools are fairly safe, it’s true, and the overall risk of being killed in one is less than one in 1.7 million. The data show a general decline in violence in American public schools: The National Center for Education Statistics’ 2004 Indicators of School Crime and Safety shows that the crime victimization rate has been cut in half, declining from 48 violent victimizations per 1,000 students in 1992 to 24 in 2002, the last year for which there are complete statistics.
But that doesn’t mean there has been a decline at every school. Most of the violence is concentrated in a few institutions. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, during the 1999–2000 school year 2 percent of U.S. schools (1,600) accounted for about 50 percent of serious violent incidents—and 7 percent of public schools (5,400) accounted for 75 percent of serious violent incidents. The “persistently dangerous” label exists to identify such institutions.
So why are only 26 schools in the country tagged with it?
The underreporting of dangerous schools is only a subset of a larger problem. The amount of information about schools presented to the general public is at an all-time high, but the information isn’t always useful or accurate.
Thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act, now three years old, parents are seeing more and more data about school performance. Each school now has to give itself an annual report card, with assessment results broken down by poverty, race, ethnicity, disability, and English-language proficiency. Schools also are supposed to accurately and completely report dropout rates and teacher qualifications. The quest for more and better information about school performance has been used as a justification to increase education spending at the local, state, and national levels, with the federal Department of Education alone jacking up spending to nearly $60 billion for fiscal year 2005, up more than $7 billion since 2003.
But while federal and state legislators congratulate themselves for their newfound focus on school accountability, scant attention is being paid to the quality of the data they’re using. Whether the topic is violence, test scores, or dropout rates, school officials have found myriad methods to paint a prettier picture of their performance. These distortions hide the extent of schools’ failures, deceive taxpayers about what our ever-increasing education budgets are buying, and keep kids locked in failing institutions. Meanwhile, Washington—which has set national standards requiring 100 percent of school children to reach proficiency in math and reading by 2014—has been complicit in letting states avoid sanctions by fiddling with their definitions of proficiency.
The federal government is spending billions to improve student achievement while simultaneously granting states license to game the system. As a result, schools have learned to lie with statistics.
But where is the outrage? The Left rails at the excesses of the executives of Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, et. al.. But public school officials across the nation are getting away with nothing more than a promise to “do better next time” – if that. And the children of our nation are being cheated on a scale that makes the employees, stockholders, and pensioners of these companies look little more than slighted.
I want to see some district superintendents, state secretaries of education, and the like, doing the “perp walk.”
Being on the fire department in the small village of York, Maine, was really an experience, and for those who lived there, somewhat of a status symbol. If your origins were from somewhere other than York, it was nearly impossible, thus a statement of acceptance if you succeeded. I was really happy to have been accepted as a “probie,” the one-year probationary period.
It wasn’t all societal, it was serious business. I actually got involved because of a fire that included a fatality. Nurse Jenny, in those days, wasn’t a nurse, but a dispatcher on the York Public Safety Communications Center, and I was the Motorola Tech Rep for the area, involved with supplying the communications equipment and assuring that it all worked. The VFD probationary period was a time of a lot of learning. Fire technology, hydraulics, water pressure, fire ground operations, so many classes, and all that just to volunteer to fight fires.
Parenthetically, I would volunteer to fight fires on a number of departments after York, the last one being while back on Air Force AD, in Monument, Colorado. What I learned in York would make me a good firefighter, and some of it would save my life in some touchy situations.
The “white coat incident” mentioned in part one was really embarrassing, and it was a touchstone of ribbing for a long time afterwards. Well, you gotta have something!
One important aspect of fighting fires is speed. Getting there fast, getting set up fast, getting water on the fire as fast as you safely can. One day, about three months into my probie period, there was a small fire near my house, a situation in which I responded in my car, and got my coat and helmet off the truck. Engine. What am I thinking! Truck is ladder, engine is pumper, for the uninitiated! OK, got my gear on, and grabbing the nozzle, in I went. The fire was out quickly, and I quickly found out my big mistake. Someone told me to get that white coat off, unless I was really a chief in disguise. OOPS! Without thinking, I had grabbed a white coat, which is an officer’s garb. Now, they’re really serious about that. It was the deputy chief’s coat, and my putting it on was the source of so much ribbing and teasing for a long time. You can be assured, from that time on, I paid attention to the color of coats in the locker!
Fighting fires is fun, or at least it is something that gets in your blood. This -Vidalia, GA – is the only place that we’ve lived since York in the 70’s, that I haven’t served on a fire department. Just can’t do it, since getting injured on my job as a paramedic in 1995. I hate to have to stand still when I hear a siren, but we get old, and sometimes we have to ease up on the throttle!
But, as Elroy commented on the last post, those were great days, and the fire department folks in York were some of the finest people I’ve ever served with! York Volunteer Fire Department, I salute you every one!
I’m watching the new series on Discovery, “Firehouse.” Set in Boston, it’s examining, tonight, at least, the house containing Engine 37 and truck (ladder) 26 and their life during one shift, which is 24 hours. Ohh, this brings back some memories, some very bittersweet memories! Anyone who hasn’t been a firefighter can’t have even a clue of what it’s like. The life of a firefighter is like no other on earth, and once bitten, it’s a bug that can’t be shed….I was a firefighter, about three lifetimes ago, it seems, but yes, there was a time,,,,
York, Maine, and the year was 1972. This was the year I began my break in active service, having come home from Thailand and going to the AF Reserve at Pease AFB, NH. Funny, I was assigned to maintain the very same tankers (KC-135’s) that I had worked on only four years before, on active duty! Seems both of us got off A/D at about the same time!. So, here I was, with an impossible dream and a more impossible schedule set up to get me there.
The first dream was to get myself through college, and for that purpose, I was enrolled in New Hampshire College, at Portsmouth (NH) High School, classes at night, and for the next six years I would hit the books hard. Maybe, if my pals Elroy Moulton or George Lariviere, check on here, they might verify that, as Elroy and I were going through much of the same courses together, and for part of the time, I worked with George. Something great clicked between myself and George and Elroy, a friendship that has endured a lot of years, and a closeness of our wives and children as well. Both families have proven to be folks that we love, and that still prevails after all these years…wonderful!
The next dream, to work in the civilian electronics field, was to come true as well, some of that thanks to George, as he was working for a company that was able to supply part of the hope, a small company called General Sound and Visual, Inc. I have to say, the company was really pleasant to work for, all the people great folks, and I have fond memories of that experience.
The fire department….Hmmm, the fire department. One of my neighbors when I moved to York was a fire fighter, and he got me interested. So, I started hanging out with firemen, got to know a few, and one day put in my application to join the York Volunteer Fire Department. You gotta understand; this was a great status symbol in York. Belonging to the fire department was a sign that you had arrived, that you had been accepted into the society of the small village of some 3,000 goode people. Now, being from the south, even though I had spent some 4 years in New England already, made it somewhat of a challenge to become one of the “chosen”. I could have cared less about the “society” aspects, one of my hangouts was a coffee shop across from the firehouse, and I just filled with adrenalin when those trucks hauled tail outta there! I just had to be a firefighter!
Next Time: The White Coat Bites Me!
I called Mayor Pearson-Schneider’s office, and this is not a hoax:
Laguna Beach, CA (PRWEB via PR Web Direct) June 14, 2005 — Mayor Elizabeth Pearson-Schneider announces an effort to aid recent victims of Laguna Beach’s landslides.
“It is the City’s goal to repair the hillside, the infrastructure and the roads in the landslide area. In addition, we want to create a ‘pad’ for each homeowner to build a new home,” said Mayor Pearson-Schneider.
The fundraising effort is called “Adopt a Landslide Family.” Private donors, large companies, associations, unions and others are being asked to raise $150,000 for each of the 20 affected families through their employees, members and other avenues. Families are expected to be homeless for over two years. The funds will be used as follows: $3,000 per month per family for living expenses for 30 months – for a total of $90,000. An additional $60,000 of the funds would be used for geology surveys and initial architectural planning. “We will accept family contributions on a cumulative basis,” added Pearson-Schneider.
The Mayor is partnering with the Laguna Beach Relief & Resource Center, a non-profit 501 (c)(3) charitable organization. Contributions will be tax-deductible.
As none of these homes were worth more than $5,000,000, Mayor Pearson-Schneider likely saw them as a blight on the city anyway.
Update: won’t you join me in offering this to the people of Laguna Beach:
The Tiniest Violin