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I had forgotten what it was like to bicycle up a hill! You see, I’ve been living in Florida for the last five years; Florida does not have hills. The Florida average elevation is only 100 feet above sea level. Only Delaware is lower at 60 feet. The highest point in the city of Lakewood, in the panhandle, is the highest point in the state at 345 feet above sea level, the lowest of any state’s highest point. I believe the highest non-natural point in the state is a landfill at about 375 feet.

It’s interesting traveling by bicycle. In an urban area like Sarasota, Florida, I can usually get just about anywhere in about twice the time it takes to drive it in an automobile, up to about twenty miles or so anyway. Often in the winter I can do much better than that since we have all the “snowbirds” and traffic comes to a crawl. With all the bike lanes I can really make time under those circumstances.

There is an almost total lack of hills in Sarasota. The biggest hill is the Ringling Causeway Bridge that goes out to Longboat Key, I would guess it is about 150 feet high and is a good workout pedaling over it.

The one surprise I did get when moving to Florida was the amount of headwind one encounters. In some ways it is worse than hills; it is steady and has the uncanny ability to change direction when you do, so you’re always riding into it. In many ways it can be more tiring than hills; at least with hills there is an occasional downhill for a reprieve.

Today I managed to ride around my old stomping grounds in New Hampshire. I rode from my daughter Áine’s home up to the Hampstead, NH area where we lived for 26 years. There were hills galore. A few miles out I realized my front derailleur (the front gear shifter that moves the chain to different gears) had a broken spring and it wouldn’t downshift into the lower ranges. Not long ago I had replaced the derailleur because it had a broken spring; this one didn’t last six months.

The broken spring reminds me of an earlier piece I wrote about all the junk we buy these days is made in China; proving once again that it looks nice, but it is still junk. Of course they don’t make them in this country any longer, so now we’re stuck with the junk ones. I stopped at a hardware store along the way and purchased a spring for an appliance and rigged it to work in place of the original unit. This spring was made in the USA; it will probably last for the life of the bike.

Once the shifter was repaired I was able to attack all the hills and it was a joy to do so. I’ve always loved climbing hills. It was exhilarating and after 20+ miles I was ready to call it a day. I had spent the afternoon wandering aimlessly around the area; attacking hills wherever I could find them, it was bliss.

Now if I can do a bit of hiking before I return to Florida I will have had my minimum dosage of hill climbs.

“Keep yer cottin’ pickin’ hands to yerself.” How many times did you hear that, or some variation of it, during your childhood? I was raised with the belief that I wasn’t supposed to touch anything that wasn’t mine. I remember thinking I couldn’t dry my hands when visiting friends because the towels weren’t mine and I didn’t bring one. Ultimately, I would wipe them on my pants or shirt.

Time and again I was warned that I couldn’t touch the television. In the fifties a TV essentially had two knobs, one to select the three stations that were receivable and a volume control. There were a few others that adjusted things like roll and sync, but today’s kids would have no clue about those. Mainly there was the channel knob and the volume, but kids were not supposed to touch those. Understandably, the parents didn’t want kids touching this new electronic marvel because it usually cost more than a new car and it was far more mysterious.

Usually, by the time we kids reached somewhere around the teens the adults realized we were better at tuning in the TV than they were and then we became the “remote” control. “Hey son, could you change the channel to the news?”

It was right around the time that I reached the “remote” stage in my life that I started feeling a bit liberated…I could take control of things, I could change things (even if it was just a TV channel) and sometimes nobody complained. I still wasn’t very outgoing and in school I was still lost in a sea of kids, hoping nobody would spot me. I lived in constant fear of being called upon to answer a question, or even answer “here” in roll call.

As I’ve mentioned in an earlier posting, in the seventh grade I was kicked out of the Parochial School and entered the Connecticut public school system. In Burlington, CT at that time the schools were bursting at the seams with baby-boomer kids. To handle the masses the school system built an Annex to the main school. It had four classrooms, two for seventh grade and two for eighth grade.

In the seventh grade I would spend the morning in the English, Latin, and History class, and then in the afternoon we would switch classrooms for Math, Music and Science classes. This meant that each student essentially had two desks, the homeroom (morning) desk and the temporary (afternoon) desk. The homeroom desk was considered “your’ desk and you were considered a “visitor” at the afternoon desk.

Trusting soul that I was I would leave my personal treasures in my morning desk; things such as treats, favorite writing implements, comics, gum, squirt guns and other things vital to survival in the seventh grade.

As the year passed things started disappearing from my desk. Whoever was sitting at my desk in the afternoon had found it a treasure trove of massive proportions. I was starting to feel like a government agency without funding. I complained to the teachers of course, but nothing ever came of it, so, I complained to my mother.

My mother always had simple solutions to things; if something mechanical didn’t work properly she would kick or whack it, her file cabinet was a box with all the papers dropped in it and if we had a medical complaint, like a sore foot, she’d tell us to walk on the other one. When I told her someone was taking my things from my desk and nobody would do anything about it she told me to put a mousetrap in the desk. Since objects in the desk could only be reached from the seat (the top didn’t flip up) this would be perfect, the perpetrator would not be able to see the mousetrap.

Unfortunately I was always one to execute plans so that they would never fail. I figured if a mousetrap was good, then a rattrap HAD to be better! That was it, a rattrap. I found one in our cellar and brought it to school the very next day. I was full of myself, for a change, I couldn’t wait for afternoon class. This was it, I was circling for the kill, the Coup de grace.

I waited it seemed for hours. I anticipated hearing a “snap” as the trap engaged and slapped my invisible opponent across the knuckles; that would teach him (it never occurred to me that it might be a “her,” girls never did that sort of thing, did they?). After considerable time I started imagining that my plan had been foiled, surely my opponent must have stumbled upon my defensive weapons system and disarmed it and would now steal that as well; the world just wasn’t fair, but I kept thinking that it was still a pretty good idea.

BANG, YEOOOOWWWWW!!!!!!! A blood-curdling scream filled the hall between the classrooms. This was no ordinary cry of pain this was death being summoned. I could imagine the hooded scythe carrier approaching with haste and maybe too late. I sat innocently enough, after all, I didn’t do anything wrong, I merely had a rattrap in my desk, what harm could there be in that?

Shortly, after a mob-scene of teachers from all over the building descended on the hapless victims classroom, my homeroom teacher came looking for me. She asked me to come with her, and with a look of complete surprise I complied. It seems a student had been injured and there was some suspicion that I may have had something to do with it.

Poor Steve, he was a nice enough fellow. His real name is being withheld because a few years later, after getting back from Vietnam he died in a tragic house fire and it wouldn’t be fair to pick on him. I guess he had accidentally managed to slip his hand in my desk and fell victim to my weapons system. I don’t recall now, but I know he had some seriously injured fingers, perhaps broken and I know he wore bandages on his hand for some time, but oddly enough I never had anything else missing from my desk.

I don’t recall my punishment; I was so elated it didn’t really matter. Drawing and Quartering wouldn’t have changed my mind. Strangely, it was one of the few times in my life when I screwed up that my mother really didn’t get on my case about it. Secretly, I think she was proud of me. You can be certain of one thing, Steve learned what it meant to “Keep yer cottin’ pickin’ hands to yerself.”

Guns In National Parks

We need guns in National Parks. I often hear the argument that if we just had more guns in the hands of citizens we wouldn’t have as many crazy shootings. Following that logic, wouldn’t it make sense to have more cars on the American highways so we would have fewer fatalities? I don’t think so.

We are already the most heavily armed citizenry on the planet. According to my quick search on the Internet, approximately half of all the households in the US have guns. Breaking this down further there are something like 70-80 million handguns, about 130 million rifles and shotguns and over a million assault weapons. These numbers can be quite speculative since nobody knows for certain. The reality is, there are a lot of guns in this country. We know how many cars there are, how many airplanes we own, and how many times a day we flush toilets (Toilet Flush Meter) but we don’t know how many guns we have.

The good news is most people are well behaved with guns; otherwise it would be anarchy. The bad news is there are a lot of people who don’t behave with these weapons.

Anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 people die each year in the United States from gunshots. Around half of that number is from self-inflicted suicide wounds and the other half from homicides or intentional killings, such as confrontations with police. Nearly 70,000 people are injured with non-fatal wounds from shootings each year.

Something on the order of 80 people a day die from gunshot wounds in this country. I suppose one could argue that those numbers aren’t all that bad, after all, there are about 300 million people in the country. I would venture that argument is fine as long as you’re not one of the victims.

I cannot begin here to argue the why and how of most of these needless deaths, but maybe I can address the issue of what we could do to bring some sanity to all of this. If I were in a position to do so I would commission a group to assemble from all sides of the issue: The Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence, The National Rifle Association, various police organizations, gun clubs; essentially anyone interested. I would lock them all in a room and supply food and water until they all hammer out a workable agreement that is satisfactory to all.

Most organizations that have a view on this issue can scream at the top of their lungs about their views, but they’re not accountable, they merely espouse ideology and fund lobbyists, instead of actually trying to solve the problem. How about actually putting them in a position to come up with a solution that actually works?

There would have to be a few ground rules of course:

1. The solution has to be realistic; not pie-in-the-sky. For example, we can’t outlaw guns; there is a good possibility that the majority of existing weapons are already unregistered, so there would be no accountability.
2. Some sort of licensing program would more than likely be the result. The program should make it easy enough for gun owners to get the license and yet have enough “teeth” in it to make the license effective. Why is there such vehement opposition to keeping records and being a registered gun owner? Why are we letting conspiracy nuts make the rules?
3. Manufacturers would have to share responsibility in the process. Producing guns that are not for hunting and sport does nothing to reduce crime. Why do they even make these weapons: profit of course.
4. Take a serious look at the second amendment to the Constitution. Most of the time it is quoted out of context. It is even etched in concrete at the NRA Headquarters out of context, the words, “A well regulated militia,” for some reason gets left out. Why is that? If the 2nd Amendment is all that they say it is, then everyone that wants a gun should be in a militia and we can send them off to fight our stupid (and not so stupid on rare occasions) wars.
5. Since it is impossible to get a handle on the guns out there I suspect any solution will have to look at ammunition supply. Like an automobile without gasoline, a gun doesn’t work well without ammunition. Like gasoline, ammunition is expendable and needs replacing; a gun lasts practically forever, not so ammunition. Maybe all new weapons manufactured should be of new calibers and over a very long time the older calibers can be phased out, except for serious hobbyists and collectors of course. I don’t have the answers, these are just ideas.

When I was a kid, people could go to Sears and Roebuck and buy dynamite. Our neighbors used it to remove stumps and dig wells. Finally somebody realized that this probably wasn’t such a good idea (dynamite, not wells and stumps) and they put a licensing process into place. The same holds for automobiles, planes and other things that can hurt lots of people, but guns get the slip on this one.

I don’t understand the fascination with these weapons. As a kid I did some hunting (and fishing) but got bored with it. I haven’t done either since my early twenties. In the military I qualified as a marksman and I suspect I could still hit the target if needed. It was fun for a while, but I never felt the need to pack heat to go to the local convenience store. I know people who won’t leave home without their weapon. Have we become that paranoid? Is this country really that dangerous? What are they afraid of; I would guess other gun owners.

I just finished walking all 2,176 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mt. Katahdin in Maine. I encountered 3 rattlesnakes and 38 bears and even in those encounters the need for a weapon never popped into my head, I just didn’t need one and chances are if I had one an animal or fellow hiker may have been injured or killed for no good reason.

I’m certain that a few of the thousands of hikers I encountered on the hike carried illegal weapons. I would venture that not many did, the weapons and ammunition are heavy and useless on a hike but there are those that just can’t leave home without them. The proof is in the numbers: nearly five million people hike some portion of the trail every year, not to mention all of the other trails in the nations parks. Violent attacks on hikers are practically non-existent; they don’t have guns to shoot each other. Will that change with the change in the law, probably not dramatically, but I can safely predict there will be more dead animals and more killings and murders than there were before. Time will tell.

In the military we would get chewed up and down if we called our M16 a “gun.” The drill instructor would jump all over us; ranting that it is not a “gun,” it is a “weapon.” It is a weapon; it ultimately serves one purpose, to kill. That is why these things came into existence and until the general public realizes that is why these weapons exist they will continue to be viewed as toys.

I take Memorial Day very seriously. I find it disgusting that it is for most a day to go shopping. My own brother was killed in action as a Marine in Vietnam; somehow I just don't make the connection between shopping and dying for ones country.

Lately there have been tributes to America’s fallen circulating on the Internet. At first blush it seems a tribute to those unfortunate troops that never came home. There are spectacular photos of the gravesites all over Europe; they’re very impressive. However, what troubles me is the text accompanying the photos, and the underlying message; that somehow, those countries, home to those grave sites, are somehow disrespectful of the USA. There is an inference that they have forgotten our sacrifice and that they “owe” us something. I would argue that they have not forgotten at all.

One of the things that always angered me about the previous (Bush) administration was the "Freedom Fries" nonsense and the disrespect for the countries that have these grave sites for our hero's. I have been to some of those sites and they honor our dead as they would their own. They showed me nothing but respect when I visited there. True, the cemeteries in these countries are managed by the US based American Battle Monument Commission, but residents of those countries handle most of the local maintenance and care.

In 1984, my father was to celebrate his 70th birthday. He was a highly decorated paratrooper in WW II, with both the 82nd and 101st Airborne. He spent a good number of the later years of his life suffering from the wounds received and from nearly freezing to death in Bastogne, Belgium. A number of months before his September birthday I took it upon myself to write to the cities of Bastogne, Belgium, Ste. Mère-Eglise (Normandy, France), Nijmegen, Holland and others to ask if they could somehow send him a birthday card.

I immediately received WAY more than I requested. I received packages from the mayors of these cities and more. They were full of medallions, personal letters of thanks, birthday wishes, photographs and all sorts of honorable documents from these places he fought. They were heartfelt, touching and honest.

Sadly, a few days before his birthday on September 28th, 1984, he passed away in the night. I think what broke my heart more than anything else was that I was keeping everything to give it to him on his birthday. He never saw any of it. If there were anything that I could relive in my life, it would be to give him all that I received.

Additionally, on his birthday I received telephone calls from many of the Mayors of these cities. It nearly killed me to hear them call to offer birthday wishes to him and then have it turn to condolences. I'm getting emotional and teary eyed now just thinking about it.

When I saw all the bashing of these places when they merely disagreed with our bogus invasion in the Middle East it destroyed me. These countries knew we had made a mistake and we flushed them down the toilet because they voiced a different opinion than the one we wanted to hear. As an American, and an ex-GI myself, I was ashamed and embarrassed. I saw these people in a very different light, they still maintain the graves of some of my relatives, in some cases better than we maintain our own, and paid the greatest honor to my father in his final days...I for one will never forget that.

I just realized that it has been a long time since I have written anything here. Since I’ve returned from the hike it seems there have been a million things to get caught up on and I’m just not caught up yet.

Much of my time lately has been consumed working on my book about the hike. I’m calling it 300 ZERO’s. It is best to take a day off every now and then when hiking long distances. Hikers refer to this as taking a “Zero Day,” since they do zero miles for the day. I had the heart surgery right in the middle of my hike and had to take 300 zero days; hence the title. I’ve finished the first pass on the book, now I am going through with a second pass and making it readable, cohesive, organized and correcting things. The first pass is just an attempt to get everything into text. The second pass is much more difficult, it requires careful reading, editing and taking out the stuff that really isn’t important.

It’s tough taking things out, everything is important in a writers mind but the publishing world just wants to see what will sell and keep the story moving. I can see their point to some degree. I recall reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values.” Even though the book sold 4 million copies, in twenty-seven languages, I thought the middle of the book, for about 100 pages dragged on.

I suspect I wasn’t the only one that thought this. I read on Wikipedia that 121 publishers originally rejected it before finally getting it published; this was a Guinness Record for a bestselling book. It looks like it might be a long road to getting mine published.

You’re wondering, “What will be in the book, what’s it about?” Good question, I was hoping you’d ask. Here's the short story: I set out in May 2007 from Springer Mountain in northern Georgia and attempted to hike to Mt. Katahdin in Maine before winter arrived. Unfortunately, (or fortunately as the case may be) I walked as far as southern Virginia where I finally concluded that the chest pains I had been having almost since the beginning of the hike might be trying to tell me something. I returned to Florida for a quick check-up; figuring I would lose a week or so of time from the hike getting things sorted out and then ended up in surgery for a six-artery bypass and ended up taking 300 zero days before heading back to the trail.

I managed to get back on the Appalachian Trail in May of 2008 and now I am here in Florida finishing a book about the experience. The book is loaded with goofy moments; bear encounters, rattlesnake attacks and moments of fighting off the opposite sex. If you think you might be interested in reading about the adventure, do leave a comment at the end of this with an email address and I’ll let you know when it is available. At some point I will create a blog dedicated to the book and all it entails, but I don’t have time at the moment.

Til’ next time, take care. I promise I will try to post here more often.

Volunteers. I did an online search on the word “volunteers” and was amazed at how many do volunteer for things. To narrow the search I had to eliminate things, such as sports teams with the word “volunteer” in it. Incidentally, did you know you can a search to NOT find things? For example, in my first pass at searching most of what I found had to do with basketball teams bearing that name. To eliminate them from the search merely put a minus sign in front of basketball, like this “ –basketball “ in the text you’re searching. This tells Google or other search tools that you want it to eliminate anything that if finds with “basketball” in it. Since many of the hits also had “tickets”, I told it “–tickets” too. This negation process can really help with a search.

Anyway, I digress. I found that almost every state in the union has had groups known as “volunteers” at one time or another. Most went off to the Revolutionary War, Civil War and World War I. Today of course we have an all “volunteer” military. I volunteered during the Vietnam War, but I volunteered for selfish reasons, I liked electronics and wanted to use my talents while in the service; a volunteer often got to choose a military career field they were interested in rather leaving the choice up to the clerk in the draft office. I was certain I would get drafted sooner or later.

Today I still volunteer for all sorts of things. Most of my volunteer time goes to non-profits; organizations that I feel I can make a difference with. Sometimes I feel like I’m shoveling against the tide; the challenges can be so daunting. I plod on, hoping against hope that somehow, some way I will make a difference. If I don’t make a significant difference I hope that my influence may inspire others to make a difference.

One of my favorite activities is doing volunteer work for a local community low-power FM radio station, WSLR.org. Recently they called and asked if I could do some repair work on the studio control panel. I had attempted to repair a few switches on it previously and hoped that some lubricating spray would help the switches revive for a while; but it was not to be. The station manager ordered a new circuit board to replace the one giving difficulty. The board controls the station microphones and phone line connections. It doesn’t affect external Internet feeds. I knew I could work on the board while the station used an Internet feed and didn’t need the microphones for live operators.

Working on the studio control board is a challenge. The whole panel lifts up like the hood of an automobile and under it there is a myriad of circuit boards, wires and components. Additionally, the part that lifts up, the underside of the hood if you will, is festooned with an array of stalactite like circuit boards hanging down from it! Adding to the challenge is the fact that the station only has one operating studio board. If the power is turned off to the board, the station goes of the air for the duration of the maintenance period. The station is 24/7 so it is difficult to get “off air” time to do things.

Each afternoon from 5-6 PM the station has a feed from Amy Goodman on Democracy Now . I figured I could get in there and do what is known as a hot swap; changing the board while the power is still on. There isn’t any particular danger in this, the voltages I’m working with are low, but if I drop a tool, or short something, the station can be off the air for some time, making a bad situation worse.

On the chosen afternoon I peddled my bicycle up to the station to do the board swap. I ended up getting there late and wasn’t able to start the work until 5:15; my window of opportunity was already closing. In the rush to get there I had worked up a serious sweat and my body was really hot; the sweat was pouring off of me. Foolishly, I decided to go ahead with the operation, instead of waiting until the next day.

I popped up the hood and located the board in question. With the power on, I carefully inserted my metal tools in amongst the boards and with the cool temperament of a bomb disposal technician I successfully extracted the errant board. I could hear Amy Goodman still talking to me in the monitor so the station was still on the air. Sweat was in my eyes and I was concerned it would drip onto the circuits so I requested some towels to keep drying myself. I think some of the sweat was from nervousness, it never seemed to subside; even when I knew I was cooler.

Now the difficult part, I had to get the new board in and connected. Unlike many boards in the system this board doesn’t plug in, it is mounted with bolts and has numerous wires and plugs that go into it. With sweat-blurred eyes I ever so carefully slipped the new board onto its mounting posts and with the delicacy of snake charmer I carefully bolted down the board. Next, I connected the various cables. The last cable that had to be connected is a special cable made of what is known as “flat ribbon cable.” The connector for it is very tiny and the pins on it are extremely fragile. They can take some bending, but over time they’re prone to snapping off. This control panel has a few miles on it and with the aging of the materials due to heating I knew I was playing with fire. The sweat was blurring my vision, I was essentially working almost upside down and the clock was running. As I picked up the cable/plug to insert it I saw one of the pins on the cable disintegrate and fly off into space. It landed harmlessly on the table, but now I had one pin of 16 gone from the cable. How important was it, I couldn’t tell, and didn’t have time to go get the system drawings and see which function that one line served; I only had minutes left.

I successfully inserted the plug and buttoned the system back up; hoping against hope that the broken line wouldn’t affect things too dramatically. The good news was, the microphones and CD players still worked, the station was still on the air! The bad news was the station operators could not hear their show in their headphones. In addition, the telephone lines couldn’t be transferred to the airtime show. The show following Amy Goodman was my wife’s show, Jane Blanchard’s, WOMEN MATTERS and of course a portion of her show was done with a call-in correspondent that does the news with her. Jane had to wing it, and trooper that she is she succeeded.

Now I was under the gun to get things repaired. I left the studio and went out to various local electronic stores, such as Radio Shack and Best Buy hoping they’d have the connector I needed, but they didn’t.

All I could do was wait until the next day, and hit the local electronics supply store (thank goodness we still have one). They were closed for the day when I broke the pin. I purchased some spares the next morning and was back at the station the following evening for Amy Goodman again. This time, I arrived early, studied the drawings so I could determine exactly which pin had broken to determine if there was a work around and took some time to relax and get mentally ready for the task ahead.

I managed to carefully unplug the broken plug and take a close look at it. The connecting plug needs a special tool to attach it to the cable; of course I didn’t have the tool, but I’ve had success doing such things in the past using two needle nose pliers. Fortunately, the new plug was identical to the one I was to remove. I was now at the point of no return. I could see that if I attempted to take off the old plug it would probably disintegrate and then I would HAVE to install the new plug, there would be no alternative. I decided to do it! I pried at the old one and as predicted, it fell apart.

My theory was that I could remove the old one carefully and slip the new one into the same position and clamp it on. The plug is known as an “Insulation Displacement Plug;” there is no soldering, it “bites” into the cable and makes the connection under pressure. The “tooth” marks from the old one were nice and clean. I slipped the new connector on and ever so carefully aligned it with the old tooth marks and slowly; as slowly and carefully as I could brought pressure to bear on it and gradually it sunk it’s teeth into the old marks and then replied with a tiny “click” as the grips on the sides mated.

Before plugging it back into the new board, I plugged it into the old board that I had removed and the cable seemed to be functioning so I carefully, more carefully than I have ever done in my life, inserted the plug in the new board on the studio panel. Instantly I heard audio roaring out of the headphones on the table next to me; Amy Goodman never sounded so good! Victory!

I buttoned things up, sat down in the operator’s chair and breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t exactly a Jack Bauer moment on the TV series “24,” but the personal pressure was there. My last 24 hours were as stressful as any I had experienced over my working career. I knew there were all these folks that work at the station that depended on having that panel working; no panel, no show. Other volunteers were depending on this volunteer to do my part correctly; I couldn’t let them down.

Volunteering can be serious business. For all of those volunteers that went off to war, it was serious, for all the volunteers that work at blood banks, homeless shelters, animal shelters, rape crisis centers, suicide hot lines and so on, it is serious business. If you spend most of your time in front of a television wasting time, consider being a volunteer; throw yourself into something. You may discover that you could find real-life thrills that far exceed anything that the fantasy world of television has to offer; I certainly did.

I've had an Opinion Editorial posted on a web based Op Ed site. I originally started writing it for here in my journal but decided it was too political. It's about taxes and Ponzi schemes. If you'd like to read it see this link:

Taxes and Ponzi schemes

You can enter comments at the bottom of the piece.

Thanks and Enjoy.

I have a friend. Actually, I have a few but this is about an extraordinary friend. We shouldn’t measure friends in quantity, just quality; then again I suppose that makes them all “extraordinary”. We should never think of “friends” collectively. Each and every one is unique and special. In our mind's eye we never envision true friends as a faceless crowd, rather, we tend to picture each and every one individually and that is as it should be.

My friend, who as the expression goes, “doesn’t have a pot to piss in,” is generous and caring to a fault and is always there should I need her. No matter the situation, she is always funny and can joke about the worst that life throws at her. I know that things must get to her, but she never burdens me with her problems. Occasionally she asks for help but only when there is nowhere else to turn. These days there are fewer places to turn.

One thing that she shares with me is her animal friends. She has a number of “rescue” dogs and cats. Her home is a sea of eyes, paws, claws, barks and meows. The pack and the pride are always glad to see me, even the shyest ones in the bunch and they clamor and jockey for the best petting positions every time I visit; which isn’t often enough.

I can’t sit down anywhere without at least two or three dogs or cats, or both vying for my lap. I only have two hands to dole out attention with and they’re usually kept busy for the entire visit.

My dogs passed a few years ago and haven’t been replaced. My lifestyle is just too busy now and animals need attention; attention I just wouldn’t be able to give. Thanks to these visits I get my ration of animal attention—I recently realized that I’m not giving them the attention, they’re giving it to me. They make me feel wanted and the center of their universe. I’m the receiver, not the giver—what an emotional high!

My friend is the lifeboat that keeps these animals afloat; without her care and loving I shudder to think where they would be. Each one of them was rescued from a dead-end situation. I just want to say thanks for being my friend, and more importantly, for being their rescuer, you’re making the world a better place one paw at a time. It’s wonderful to have such a special friend.

I’m not going to live forever. Surprised? I hope not? I have some thoughts on what my self-delivered eulogy should say and I’m sharing them with you here today. I think it would be so appropriate if we could deliver our own eulogy, after all, who knows us better than ourselves? Of course we could record something and play it back, but that is so much like watching a re-run; I’d love to be able to do it “real-time!” Anyway, if I could talk to you from the other side, here is what I would say:

“I speculate the rumors of my death were not all that exaggerated this time? They had to get it right eventually. Hopefully I went quietly, I hate to think I made the front page of the National Enquirer: “Florida Man Killed Attempting Sex With 18 Foot Alligator…”

If I could sum my life up in a sentence it would read; “He lived for the moment, racing motorcycles, bicycles, hiking, a serious Ham Radio enthusiast, devoted Toastmaster, loved good food and helping others.” I tried to live by one rule; “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

My family will go on. My family—that still sounds a bit odd to my ears. I never pictured myself married with a family. It is a concept that always seemed was for other people. I was never going to get married and in some ways, I never did. I’ve spent the majority of my life with my best friend, Jane. We have two wonderful kids and they’re merely an outgrowth of the love that the two of us have for each other.

We were never supposed to be able to have children and I had come to accept that. Then one night at our local Chinese restaurant I opened my fortune cookie and it said I would, "be expecting a bundle of joy in August.” Jane had planted it there with the staff and was beaming at me across the table.

All these years later, she still beams. As we’ve grown together over the years we haven’t grown up. We seem to laugh more and suffer each other’s pranks more than ever; it’s what life is supposed to be. Years ago we made an agreement to love and cherish until death do we part; and that is what I’m addressing here; the “part” part.

I can envision a scenario where Jane goes to the local paper to write my obituary. Jane is very efficient and economical. When the ad rep tells her the fee for a submitted obituary is $1.00 per word she’ll pause, reflect, and then say, "Well, then, let it read, 'Dennis Blanchard died.' " "Sorry, ma'am, replies the editor," but I'm afraid there's a seven-word minimum on all submitted obituaries."

Flustered, Jane thinks for a minute and then instructs the ad rep to write, "Dennis Blanchard died. Selling Ham Radio station..."

I want everyone to know that I never died — rather, I lived! Dying wasn’t a particularly frightening notion for me, its part of living and have I lived! Sometimes I’ve pondered: given the choice would I like to win a big lottery jackpot, or live life over…without a doubt I would do it again, it has been one hell of a ride! Money could never buy my wealth — memories of travels, accomplishments, failures, kids and the love of my life, there is no purchase of that; it is earned.

This is not a time for despair, this is a time for fond memories, stories about all the good times and food, yes, food! This is a celebration of a life and I loved any celebration that involved food. Good food is good comfort and that’s what is needed now. Put away the hankies grab a knife and fork and live for the moment; that would the best tribute I can think of.

I consider myself a true-blue American. I pay my taxes, I do volunteer work for a number of non-profits, and I've done my time in the military. I don't see any of this as exceptional, just my duty as an American.

Often I see things go by on the Internet or in letters-to-the-editor that castigates immigrants; one side of me goes along with the sentiment, but another part of me finds it repugnant. I'm a descendant of immigrants, my own mother was from somewhere else so I feel an affinity with immigrants. I don't care that the current focus of all this attention have different colored skin, or speak another language. I find most come here "legally" and they're here for the same reason that my predecessors arrived on these shores; freedom and work.

I don't blame them for coming, I would do likewise in their circumstances. Of course those that are here illegally are a different story, but I always have to ask myself; why did they come? Many of these people die attempting to get here. They're here because Americans hire them! If nobody hired them, they wouldn't come. It's the same with the so called, "War on Drugs;" if nobody HERE bought the drugs, they wouldn't smuggle them in, so we Americans have some guilt in all of this too.

Then I see a news item like the one that follows and I realize that we Americans should start doing some real soul-searching. We have created a monster and the monster is about to devour us. I do mean "We," as in, "We the People;" for too long we've elected officials that have been complicit in all of this and it is time WE stopped it. It is once again Americans screwing Americans, not the immigrants; they're merely pawns in a very vicious side of Capitalism that knows no bounds.

AP Finds foreign workers being hired during bailout so Americans can be let go.

I’m usually optimistic. I’m not a “doom and gloomer,” but we all have our breaking points, and I am about to reach mine. Thus far in this journal I have tried to be upbeat, after all, I tend to be an upbeat sort of guy. However, with the world as I know it falling apart practically day-by-day, I figured it was time to speak up and make note of a few things, and really stick my neck out and make a few predictions. Those that know me well, know that I have a pretty good track record at predictions, this time I will put them out there for the world to see and judge. For the record, I’m a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. I believe we need social programs, but we need to be sensible in our spending on them. Doesn’t that make sense? I think most manage their home budgets this way, why not nationally?

First of all, a few observations and comments:

The Economy

Our economic system is built on trust. Most economic systems are, unless they’re managed systems, such as what the Soviet Union had. The managed systems do function, but underneath the hood they usually operate with serious graft, corruption, slave labor, cheating-the-system and some amount of barter.
A system built on trust can only work if the participants actually do trust each other to a great degree. Take traffic lights for example; we drive through a green light because we trust the folks at the red light to stop. When they don’t the system breaks down and there is a crash. A crash is very different from an “accident.” Accidents are usually caused by some unforeseen, unexpected event, a perfectly good tire explodes, or a deer runs out into the road, that sort of thing.
Anyone that has been paying attention for the last thirty years could sense that trust eroding. During the Reagan years we were promised that “Trickle Down Economics” was the panacea for our economic woes, if only the rich had more money through less taxation, somehow some portion of their wealth would “trickle down” to the rest of us. Unfortunately, to sustain life as we know it in the ranks of the poor and even the middle class, it takes more than a trickle, it takes a steady flow. The trickle has turned into a very slow drip. I think the case is closed on that theory.

Conservatives have argued for years that there is too much regulation of industry and business, if there were less regulation, all would be roses. A recent editorial in the Boston Globe by conservative writer, Jeff Jacoby, argues that more regulation is not what is needed and that the current Bush Administration has actually passed more regulatory laws than his predecessor. Mr. Jacoby also fails to look at exactly what sort of regulations have been on the increase, I think he will find they have to do with watching the citizens of this country more closely, union busting, changing environmental laws and eliminating rights for folks, particularly women. He sites the Sarbanes-Oxley bill that was just signed by the President as one example. However, that bill merely closes the barn door after ALL of the cattle have escaped. It is intended to put more oversight in place to try and prevent another Enron, or WorldCom. Someone should explain to them that all that loose money that was lying around in those years has dried up, that’s why these corporations are now looking for bailouts; they’ve spent everything (or stolen everything) that could be taken. This economy is no "accident", this is a "crash".

CEO's

The public no longer trusts the CEO’s. There was a time, not too many years ago when we did. They would even get on television and talk to us, Lee Iacocca of Chrysler, Victor Kiam, of Remington and are two that come to mind; we trusted them and I think they trusted the employees and customers, it felt good. I worked for a company for 25 years, Digital Equipment Corporation, and almost without exception the employees worshiped the ground that the CEO, Ken Olsen walked on. He was a leader, a man of integrity, we trusted him.

There are very few of these leaders left today. Now, it is about golden parachutes, mergers and getting out while the getting is good. We don’t trust them.


Politics

I don’t think I have to offer much detail here, there is hardly any trust left in the political landscape. There are a few glimmers of hope, some local, some national but I’m afraid the mess is getting so large that they will be overwhelmed and swept away in the flood. As I said in the beginning, I tend to be optimistic but I also tend to be realistic and it seems these days facts are to be ignored or twisted to suit some view.

Take the recent presidential election for example. I believe both the final candidates were upstanding individuals that were due a great amount of respect. Sen. Obama is a relative newcomer to the political landscape, but is savvy, knowledgeable and a worthy candidate. Sen. McCain is one of my longtime heroes. I’ve read all of his books (I read everything I can get my hands on). He has an outstanding record, but I think he made the same political mistake that Sen. Gore made running against George W. Bush, he let his managers run too much of his campaign. If Sen. McCain had stuck to his guns and not let his managers mold him into something he was not, if he had been his usual feisty self, he would have come across as a true maverick. Instead, he controlled his temper, talked softly and didn’t have any fire. I may not agree with his politics, but I think he is a decent human being and truly wanted to work to make this country a better place, in fact, I’m certain both candidates really wanted that. Sen. Obama on the other hand managed his campaign directly and proved an effective leader in that respect.

Sadly, too many politicians today have different goals, the power of high offices corrupts and leaves them feeling that they are somehow “special” and deserve special treatment. They forget they put their clothes on the same way we do. It is difficult to trust someone that feels they are better than you are.


The Military

I don’t trust some of the military leadership any longer, maybe I never should have. Think about it, what is the military’s purpose: to wage war when necessary. The key word here is “necessary”. Unfortunately military leadership is in the business of military business and I think all too often we end up in conflicts because it justifies the military existence and encourages more military spending. The American public has been convinced that it should be scared, very scared. Scared of what? We’re the last standing Super-Power. What has conflict looked like for the last forty years? It hasn’t been on the scale of World War Two, it usually involves guerilla actions and insurgents.

We practiced “Shock and Awe” in Iraq and now we’re paying the price for that. Not only did we destroy their infrastructure, we’re now paying to rebuild it, was that intelligent or what? Our leadership was itching to try out all this military hardware and nobody, civilian, or military put up any flags of caution, we couldn’t wait to show off the hardware!

I’m not “anti-military”; I did my military duty. It is often forgotten what the oath to military duty is, here it is;


“I, [name], do solemnly swear, that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.”

Nowhere in there does it say anything about doing the bidding of a President, or attacking anyone. It is ALL about DEFENDING the Constitution. The founders were very clear about this. Too many kings and rulers had set a poor example, and the founders wanted to do it right. Iraq was a lie, and the military leadership of this country knew it and didn’t make any effort push back or seek a peaceful solution, they lost my trust.

Leadership

There have always been untrustworthy leaders, CEO’s, police, politicians, teachers etc.; they’re all humans. However, there was always enough good leadership around to allow us to trust the system overall; that trust has been violated too many times recently. This is why the banks are failing, Wall Street is falling and the political leadership of this country is in a nosedive.

Predictions

I’m going to stick my neck out here and make a few predictions for 2009:

o ECONOMY: the economy is going to get much, much worse. How much worse? I think actual unemployment will hit perhaps 25% or more. Remember, the current numbers don’t even show those that lost their jobs and had their unemployment run out (I speak from personal experience there, when mine ran out, I was no longer “unemployed”). I don’t trust the numbers!

o COLLEGE LOANS: School loans for college students are going to collapse, much like the housing mortgage debacle. There are hundreds of thousands of graduating students out there, right now, that owe tens-of-thousands to hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in school loans. They are graduating into a workplace that has no jobs for them. If they do land something, it is working at a coffee shop for minimum wage. They can’t afford a place to live, never mind paying off the loan. For years the financial community has been pushing for a loosening of regulations on school loans so they could start charging interest before the student graduated, and to loan at rates that are similar to credit card rates—they managed to get this, setting up this system to crash like the mortgage industry.

o GOVERNMENT BANKRUPTCY: Towns and cities and perhaps states will go bankrupt as well. Too many of them had their funds invested in the current malaise and they have nowhere to turn to get bailed out. The Feds will print more money to bail themselves out, and inflation will climb, but the rest of us are in for a rough ride. Will the incoming administration be a match for the mess they’re inheriting, we shall see.

o SOCIAL SECURITY: Social Security will become a scapegoat. The Bush Administration pushed for years to force us to have some portion of the Social Security funds invested in the stock market. Think about that, isn’t it funny how that proposal disappeared off the radar screen? I guarantee the next time the Republicans get in, way in the future, once the economy has been set straight, they’ll be back with that idea again. I don’t know if I’ll live long enough to see it, but it will be back.
We’ll be told that because times are tough, sacrifices will have to be made, people will have to work to an older age before retirement, there will be less paid out for Social Security and it will really get tough for older folks that have nothing else.
We’ll be told that Social Security is not a retirement program; what is it, a vacation account? Its been called socialist, a redistribution of wealth, elderly welfare and so on. Odd, it seems to have worked pretty well for millions of Americans for a long time. At the same time this is going on, most pension plans will be completely eliminated, 401k’s have become 201k’s and only a few retired CEO’s will have Golden Parachutes to save them.
I find it amazing how much money this country can find to go bomb another country, one that was no threat to us, and yet, we can’t seem to find funding for social programs, schools and national healthcare.

o TAXES: Taxes will go up. I believe the Democrats will have to raise taxes, we’ve been living in the Republican make-believe world of “borrow and spend”, now we will go back to the more realistic Democratic world of “tax and spend”; at least that is honest, I would rather pay my bills than leave them for my kids. There is no free lunch.

Enough ranting, I just had to get this off my chest. I’ve been watching my country go down the tubes little by little since 1957, when Eisenhower (It wasn’t Kennedy, check the Vietnam Memorial) got us into Vietnam. Ever since then we seem to have lost our way, our direction as a nation. I can only hope that in the next few years we wake up, and start digging back out of the hole we’re in.

It’s November 4th, 2008, Election Day! This election has dragged on far too long, at least two years. Is this really necessary; I doubt it? Other countries get it over in a few weeks, or at least a few months, here it has become an industry. The media of course loves it; it sells papers, magazines and brings in tons of advertising dollars to radio and television. Of course there is the less obvious business as well, tee shirt sales, buttons and all sorts of printing. It truly is big business, but is it worth it?

We’re a nation of political junkies, sadly, too often the voting decisions are not based in reality. I would venture the majority of voters are too steeped in their ideological beliefs to actually sit down and really look at the ballot from a cost/benefit standpoint, or maybe look at it from an engineering, or management angle. This country now views the election process as it views NASCAR or NFL football; it is a RED or BLUE decision, “My Team” mentality. The book What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank makes the point that the political leadership of this country has figured out how to make folks vote against their very own best interests.

The technique is quite simple actually, get people worked up over some issue that is emotionally based and quite visible and expend lots of energy exploiting the issue, while in the background the really serious, budget-breaking issues get little attention.

For example, illegal immigration, there’s a real hot button. I have friends in New Hampshire that are really worked up about that one. However, what is the reality? Are there really that many illegal immigrants in New Hampshire? How about Montana? Of course one could argue California and Texas have a fair number, but nationally? According to the Department of Homeland Security there are somewhere near 10-11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States. We have a population of around 300 million people in the US, meaning that there could be as many as 3.7% of the population that are here illegally. Keep in mind that of that number, many are children and elderly parents.

The most common argument against this population of immigrants is that they are taking away American jobs. Really? Which jobs? Picking fruit, cleaning gutters, mowing lawns? Thirty years ago I worked for Agway at a fertilizer plant in Massachusetts, we delivered bulk fertilizer blends to local farms. Without exception, the farmers were all complaining because each year, when the fruit harvests were ready, they had to fly folks in from Jamaica to pick the fruit, Americans just wouldn’t take the jobs. They had to pay for airplane tickets, house the Jamaicans and fly them home again, and that was still cheaper than getting Americans to do the job. I’m certain these farmers jumped at the chance to have illegal (or otherwise) immigrants do the work.

I would argue the real underlying animosity towards the illegal immigrants is not about jobs it is about racism. They tend to be Hispanic and some number are from India or China. They’re not Caucasian. They speak another language. During the 70’s I had many of my own relatives coming to this country from Ireland and Australia, they would come to visit and just stay, things were more lax then. They were here illegally. Finally, during the Reagan administration there were so many of them that they offered an amnesty program (lottery based) for the illegal Irish immigrants to become citizens, and most of my relatives did. It didn’t get much press, and as illegal immigrants, they never had much resistance, why would they, they were white and spoke English. They were not easy targets. The racists in our culture hadn’t zeroed in on them; the same is not true for the other nationalities.

I’ve drifted from my original argument here intentionally. Notice how we have completely gone astray from the original topic: Voting. It was easy to do; we started down the path of illegal immigrants and were able to leave the issue of voting far behind. I could have picked any of the “wedge” issues: flag burning, gay marriage, abortion, the homeless, etc. and in no time at all had your blood pressure up and your mind totally distracted, regardless of which side of any issue you might be on. It becomes the RED vs. BLUE team mentality. We’ve become so polarized in this country we can’t sit down and negotiate, discuss, discourse and resolve issues, it has become “my way, or the highway”, “you’re with us, or against us” etc.

When did we become so blinded by our beliefs? Why, as a nation, can we not actually work to solve problems, rather than paint them as RED or BLUE problems or issues? Perhaps we’ve allowed our leadership too much latitude, too much power, we’re not involved as much as we should be.

Perhaps we’re not smart enough? Think about it, one in five Americans is illiterate! Twenty percent! According to the Humboldt Literacy Project, “More than 20% of adults read at or below a fifth grade level— far below the level needed to earn a living wage. The National Adult Literacy Survey found that over 40 million Americans age 16 and older have significant literacy needs.” They’re poorly educated, they can’t read and they’re expected to vote? How many can read, but just barely, how many never did get a decent education? How can we expect our population to select good leadership, when the “followship” is so poorly prepared?

I’m not offering answers to any of this. My point was to get us thinking about what is really going on in this country, to draw us away from the team mentality and start us thinking about solutions, rather than slogans. We can do it, but we have to do it together, and we had better start SOON!

I've finished the Appalachian Trail hike. I'm at my daughter's place in New hampshire at the moment and will be back in Sarasota on Oct. 15. At some point in the future I will get back to updating this journal, but until then, do check out my trail journal, http://www.trailjournals.com/k1ypp

In case you're wondering, "where the heck is Dennis"; I am out hiking the Appalachian Trail. Internet access is rare to non-existent, so it is a rare day when I can actually get on and enter anything. More often than not if I get to update anything, it is my trail journal, which is at http://www.trailjournals.com/k1ypp .
I should finish in mid-September to early October and at that time you will find me back here with more useless information about things that don't matter. See you down the trail!

St. Patrick’s Day

I was born on a Monday. As of this writing (12 March, 2008), I have been alive for 22276 days, 10 hours, 35 minutes, 33 seconds; or a total of 1924684533 seconds, at least according to this website: How long you've lived. What do you know I am approaching the two-billion second mark, that should call for a party!

So, what does this have to do with St. Patrick’s Day you ask? Well, for those of you that don’t know me, I was born on St. Patrick’s Day, in 1947. I was born very premature, I weighed around two pounds; in those days most didn’t live very long at that weight.

At that time the prevailing medical theory was to put a premature infant into very high oxygen content, I think it was around 90 percent. The goal was to ease stress on the young lungs and get as much oxygen into the system as possible without working the lungs too hard. The unfortunate side-affect of such high levels was that most preemies ended up blind or very near blind. My mother had been a nurse in Europe and they had found that it was much better to put the infant in something like 60 percent oxygen (I could be way off on these numbers).

Even though she had just delivered a baby, she got into a battle with the hospital and refused to allow me to be put into the high oxygen content. She was from Belfast, Ireland, a war bride, and that temper just may have saved my vision. She gathered me up and took me home! Somehow, I don’t know how, she had just come to this country so she had few contacts, she found an incubator and set it up at home and got me into what she felt was the appropriate atmosphere.

The hospital sent the police to our residence to check out the “kidnapped” baby and since all seemed under control, they left things alone, they had no interest in being caught up in combat with my Mom; as I grew older I came to realize few did!

Oddly, as the years went by, I came to dread my birthday. My favorite color is green, but it has nothing to do with St. Patrick’s Day, I’ve always had a love of being outdoors and most living things out there are green, so that was a natural attachment. So, it wasn’t the “green” that bothered me, I think it was more the fact that nobody seemed to forget it was my birthday. It is a phenomenon that I cannot really explain, but for some reason, people always seem to remember if you have a birthday on St. Patrick’s Day. Then again, there are two other days that seem to stick in people’s minds as well; April 15th and February 29th.

Back to St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve never really understood all the commotion around this particular day and saint. There are lots of saints, I suspect one for every day, why Patrick? Granted, there was a huge influx of Irish immigrants following the potato famine, and then again in the early 1900’s, but lots of others came during that time as well. I suppose it goes to good marketing and maybe a bit to the outgoing nature of the Irish as a group. Also, the Irish tended to group into the cities in large numbers, whilst many of the other groups tended to be more agrarian, and moved into more rural areas, dispersing their influence to some degree.
Today it seems to be a holiday much like that of Christmas, far removed from any original theme and a reason for celebration very independent of any logical connection to its roots. Oddly, when I have been in Ireland during St. Patrick’s Day, it didn’t seem anywhere the big event that it does on these shores.

I guess I will never fully understand it. The only solution, as I see it, is to join in the fun, have a few pints of Green Beer and celebrate turning 2,000,000,000 seconds old, but then that will be a lot of beer, I have to wait about two and one-half years for that jolly event, maybe I’ll just celebrate turning 61 this year! Here’s to you…clink!!!!

In this season of elections and candidates telling us what they will do, I find it fascinating that many times they seem to copy each other. Yes, they twist it a bit, change the color perhaps, or in some way, try to put the idea across as original. I tried this once in a land far away, and long ago…

It was third grade. After school I had a choice: I could do my reading homework OR I could do my mathematics homework, so naturally I went outside and played until dark (and beyond).

Now, did I look like a kid that could get in trouble?

Next morning I slept in until the last minute, gobbled down some form of breakfast and made it to school. The playground bell rang and we all poured into our classes. There was usually a few minutes of mayhem before the class actually began and it was at that moment that my mind finally started to focus on homework…Ohhmmyyyggooddd, the vocabulary homework, I forgot!

I had a new friend in third grade, Bobby Coffee. We were a perfect fit, he had stayed back, and I shouldn’t have advanced, we were made for each other. “Pssst, hey Bobby, can I borrow your homework, I forgot mine?” “Sure” said Bobby (he had high standards too, he went on to become a police officer).

In a mad rush, I copied his homework! A medieval scribe would have been in awe of my work, it was a masterpiece, I was so proud of it, I had my homework.

The nun came in, Sister Mary Hang'em-high and class started, she collected the homework…all was well.

The next 24 hours were pretty much a repeat of events, although, I may have done some homework, I don’t recall, it usually depended on the weather.

The next morning class started as usual. Sister Mary Hang'em-high came in, sat down, gave the class a bit of a weak smile and then called out “Mr. Blanchard, and Mr. Coffee, please come up here to the front of the class."

Hmmm, I didn’t like the looks of this? Bobby and I looked at each other and marched up to the front. She looked me right in the eye and then asked: “Mr. Blanchard, why is it you didn’t pass in your homework yesterday?” My mind raced! I thought of perhaps a quick excuse about, “but I did” or something to that effect, but didn’t know where this was going, so just shrugged and tried to look stupid, which I found rather easy.

Next, she turned to Bobby and asked him: “Mr. Coffee, why is it you turned in TWO copies of your homework yesterday and Mr. Blanchard didn’t turn in any?” I guess it was a really good copy, so good that I even copied Bobby’s name and forgot to put mine on it!

I don’t recall the punishment, I suspect we were hung by our thumb’s in the school cellar for a few days, but I did learn a lesson by it. There are two possible morals here and the candidates would be wise to heed them:

1. If you’re going to copy, do it carefully, and don’t get caught.

2. Do your own homework, it may look like everyone else’s, but you can put your name on it with confidence. ( I strongly suggest this one!)

(Sorry this is so long, it just poured out)

1953. Actually, it was September of 1953 and I was starting school. I was six and a half years old and heading off to school in the next town over, Bristol, Connecticut. My brother and I had lived like some primitive animals up until that point. We lived in a very rural area and since we had no kids as immediate neighbors, it was basically just my brother and I to keep each other company.

Living in a very wooded area, we were passionate about spending our time in the woods. That was our sanctuary, my Mom hated the outdoors so we had most of each day to ourselves to explore and have our adventures quite alone.

All that changed with school. I had to wear full clothing (shirt, pants, underwear, sock AND shoes). We were of the opinion that humans were not meant to do such things. At the time my Mom was convinced that I would get a better education at a parochial school, so I was sent off to St. Joseph’s in Bristol. We lived in Whigville, about six miles away from the school.

My father usually went off to work quite early, when he was healthy enough, so another means had to be found to get me to school. Although she didn’t get along too well with the fellow next door, she was able to work out a deal with him to transport me each morning; my Dad would pick me up after school.

That first morning was exciting I suppose, but I was quite apprehensive about going off all day without my brother, and in fact with nobody that I knew, including the neighbor. His name was Mr. Lowry and I was quite frightened by him. To me, he was very old and smoked a stinky cigar all the time; he reeked of it. My Mom walked me to his yard. He worked for a propane company and drove a very old pickup truck; I think it was a late 30’s Chevy. It was so noisy inside we didn’t talk much and he drove me directly to the school and dumped me out at the parking lot, which doubled as the playground when school was in session and parking for when church was in session.

As his noisy truck drove off, I realized that the noise didn’t subside, but changed in nature. The playground was alive with kids, most much bigger than I and all seemed to be in something of a frenzied state! I had never seen large numbers of kids together before, and never knew that screaming and hollering was what kids did when they got together, eventually I would perfect that skill, but for the time being it was quite intimidating!

The schoolhouse was a large brick, square, two-story affair. There were four classrooms on the first floor and four on the second. Immediately next to it was a convent for the nuns and next to that, the church. The Nuns! I had never seen anything quite like that. They wore these big, black gowns, with black head covers and white front pieces to elevate the head cover. Wow! In all my years out in the woods, I had never seen anything quite like that.


(Hmmm, yeah, maybe that photo is a bit over the top? :>)

Trembling, I made my way to the corner of the building and put my back to the wall, and slide down to hide myself as much as possible; a technique I had mastered in the woods to hide from large animals. It worked well here, nobody noticed me. I suspect now that Mr. Lowry was supposed to tell someone I was there, but he hadn’t and my cover was working well.

I was calming myself and contemplating my next move, when it happened! Just above my head was a very, very large bell. It RANG! This was no ordinary bell, this bell could be heard for many city blocks and I was merely feet from it. I can’t really describe my reaction, it was a combination of being totally frozen and at the same time, disintegrating into a million pieces into a million directions. As I came to my senses again, after what seemed like an eternity, I realized that hundreds of kids that occupied the playground were now running directly at me, and I do mean directly.

There was no obvious escape route, so I held my ground, figuring I would have my back covered at least. Oddly, as they would just get to me, they would pass by, and go around the corner, just missing me. When the yard had emptied out, my curiosity got the better of me, where did they go?

I peered around the corner and saw them forming up lines. Being quick to catch on (rarely) I figured that must be what I have to do, so I joined up with one of the lines and we marched into the building. I felt something like Dorothy’s pals in the Wizard Of Oz, where they all marched into the wicked Witch’s castle with the Winkie soldiers…Dum-da-dum-dum, Dum-da-dum-dum(b)?

Little did I know that I was about to become a true “babe in the wood”!


We marched down a dark hall, and then into the biggest room I had ever seen. The Nun there spoke, up until that point I didn’t know they had voices as well. She told everyone to find a seat, that wasn’t too difficult, there were seats everywhere, or so it seemed. To be as far away from the nun as possible I rushed to the back of the room and sat in the strangest seat imaginable. It had a board in the front of it, with a hole on the right side and a grove along the top (the hole was for the ink bottle). The board was attached to the seat with a metal bar. It was like having you own personal table attached to your chair.

I didn’t dare look at any of the kids around me, for fear they would spot me, I seemed invisible, none paid the slightest attention to me.

For the next several hours I was quite happy in my own little world. The nun seemed to talk quite a bit, but I didn’t really understand what she was talking about, so paid her little attention, a skill that I seemed to master for most of my subsequent school years. When the sun was getting pretty high in the sky (I didn’t know how to tell time yet), that infernal bell rang again! Even inside the building it was formidable! All the kids got up in unison and scrambled from the room. I didn’t have anywhere in particular to go, so I just stayed seated.

It was at this moment that the nun took notice of me; I figured she would scramble out the door to play with the rest of the kids, but to my dismay, she didn’t. She fixated on me and asked me my name. She asked me a few other questions; I don’t recall what they were. She then picked up a paper on her desk, checked it, and then told me I should come with her. I was cornered, what choice did I have?

We walked down that dark hall again and we went into another equally large room. Here there was a woman, dressed in familiar women’s clothing. It was lunchtime and the nun had only now realized she had one too many students. I suspect she had asked if anyone didn’t belong in her class, but how was I to know, I didn’t keep the roster?

It turns out I was in the third grade classroom! All of the other kids had been together for two years now and we all good friends, how was I to know?

In later years I was to discover that I was really a fish out of water. All of my classmates lived in the city, had gone to kindergarten (I had not), most could already read, count and tell time, I knew none of these things. I wandered through the first seven years of education totally lost. It really was a sad state of affairs.

Finally, at the end of the seventh grade the nun running the school had a conference with my Mom and decided I might be better off in a public school. I was placed in the public school system in Burlington, CT. They had school buses, another adventure to be sure, but more on that another time.

(Here is a picture of the school (far right) from an old Bristol postcard)

My experience in the first three months of eighth grade was in many ways similar to my first grade experience. Nobody asked ME anything. I was put in with the advanced eighth graders, they were doing second year Latin, I had never had Latin, they were working on algebra, I had no clue, they were studying things I had never seen before. I was lost and wandering mentally. Finally, at the end of three months, when I was failing most subjects, they called in my Mom and sat me down and found out that I was academically a disaster. They dropped me back to the standard level classes and made an effort to bring me up to speed and had some success, but only minimal.

When I finally took an interest in learning on my own, somewhere around 14 years old, I actually started the learning process. At that point I realized that I needed to know many things that I did not know and made a serious effort to learn. For example, because I had never been to kindergarten and started in first grade with students that already knew the alphabet, counting and simple math, I never acquired those skills.

I recall in the library, as a freshman in high school, secretly teaching myself the alphabet, I didn’t know it, and was too embarrassed to admit it! I had been an avid reader for years, but had never actually learned the alphabet. During one study period in high school a friend showed my how an equal sign actually worked in an equation, I had never understood the significance of sign changes when bringing a value from one side of an equation to another, it was a revelation!

Should someone have caught this much earlier on? Yes. Are there kids lost just as I was in today’s system? I’m certain of it. Will No-Child-Left-Behind fix this problem, I doubt it. I was able to get through all the tests we had and stayed afloat, barely, because I could memorize enough stuff to stumble into the next level. One of the presidential candidates wisely says that “You don’t make a pig gain weight by weighing it” What I really needed, and it never happened, was for someone, anyone, to actually sit down with me and find out just where I was at, they didn’t even know where I was on my first day of school, I was in the wrong class, and in many ways I stayed there for most of my grammar school education.

What saved me was my love of reading, an interest in radio technology (starting as a young teen) and an opportunity in the Air Force to take a number of correspondence courses. In the Air Force I took high school algebra, math and other related courses because I knew I needed to achieve mastery of them if I was to progress in later life.

If I had not gotten involved with amateur radio at an early age, I don't know where my life would have taken me, but thanks to that motivation, the story ends well.

I mentioned in an earlier posting that there would be more about a radio that I received as a gift. I believe the year was 1960, but it may have been 1959. I was fascinated with transistor radios. My folks managed to get a six transistor portable radio for me for Christmas that year.

Six transistors; I have to put that in perspective. Most small, portable radios today will typically have a few thousand to as many as a few hundred thousand transistors in them. The transistors are not individual devices; they’re usually incorporated in an integrated circuit. It is difficult to even see a modern transistor with the naked eye, should one open an integrated circuit, but the transistor of the early sixties was built into a housing that was about the size of an M&M. Prior to the transistor most electronic devices used vacuum tubes, they were usually the size of an average cell phone today.

At the time I started taking an interest in such things I was about 12-13 years old. My Dad had tinkered with radio before WW II, but when he went off the war, the rest of his family figured he wouldn’t survive it and got rid of any radio equipment he had. He managed to collect a few things in the fifties and didn’t really have any place to keep them, so they were in the attic of our small home. One day, while my folks weren’t home, I was in the attic looking for something and found one of his radio receivers tucked under a blanket. Not certain what it was, I plugged it in and heard all these signals, it was really exciting, and I had discovered a new world, quite on my own.

Later I asked him about it and he dragged it down from the attic and showed me around the “short waves”; I was hooked! I had to have a radio of my own, hence the Montgomery-Ward six-transistor radio. It only received AM, but I treasured it! I would lie in bed at night, when I was supposed to be asleep and put the earphone on and tune around to find new stations. There were stations, WWVA, KDKA, WOW, stations in California, Arizona, Canada and Spanish speaking stations to be found. It was so exciting to know so many places in the world could be reached through this little box of electronic components.

For the next year or two I became very interested in what exactly was in that “box”. I started building rudimentary radios, using vacuum tubes. I would scrounge old radios, take them apart and build new radios for specific frequencies or performance that the old radios could not muster. I know I should have been paying attention in school and devoting that time to my schoolwork, but that was so very far behind where I wanted to be, the learning couldn’t wait. I was in a parochial school and they were stuck in the last century; I needed science and mathematics that was now, not late 1800’s. I did terribly in school and later I suffered for it, more on that another time.

Eventually I took a real interest in the radio amateurs that I was hearing on the air. These folks could actually put their own radio station on the air! One evening, after driving Dad crazy about this, he took me to meet a local radio amateur or “ham” as they are also known. I don’t recall his name now, but that meeting had a profound, lifelong impact on me. I had to have my own station.

I set to studying for the license and in the meantime tried to figure out how to build a station. By now I was 14 and raring to go. Right about that time I ended up getting pneumonia and fell very ill. I was in the hospital for several months and almost died. When I came home and was in recovery I became a total pain for my Mom. I was listless and had no motivation. Finally, one Tuesday night she drove me to a local radio club (radio station call letters: W1DHT), pulled up outside and dumped me there and drove off! It was a brave thing to do; she didn’t know anything about the place.

Many of the men I met there that night are now deceased, but they became my new “school”. There I learned how to use mathematics, physics and electronics to create the world I sought. They were a wealth of information and new and unusual electronic components that I had heretofore not had access to.

With this newfound knowledge I built my first radio station. The transmitter was a Morse code affair, using three vacuum tubes. I was so, so, proud of it. The receiver used four tubes and was very primitive by today’s standards (in fact even by 1960 standards), but I built it!!!

I recall my first radio contact. It was with Larry, KN3TLX (his call letter) in Pennsylvania. I would come home from my early morning paper route and get on the radio before school. I would turn on the homemade (homebrewed in amateur jargon) radio equipment, let the tubes warm-up and then hunt for someone to talk with. I heard Larry calling CQ (a general call when one amateur wants to hook up with another). With sweat pouring down my brow I answered his CQ and darned if he didn’t come back to me! I had written down everything I was going to send ahead of time because I was so nervous I didn’t think I would remember what to send. I sent my location (Bristol, Connecticut), my name and his signal report (how well I was hearing him). We closed with a “73”, which is ham shorthand for “good luck and I’ll see you again”. When it was over, I was a new human being. There was no turning back now; I now had my own radio station!

As good fortune would have it, I went on into an electronics career, one I have never for a moment regretted, and it has been a great ride. It all started with the radio in the attic, and then the gift of a six-transistor radio.

Some forty-plus years later I was at an Amateur Radio Convention in Dayton, Ohio. Jane and I had a small Ham Radio Company named “Jade”, for JAne and DEnnis. I was watching the various folks walk by our booth; most were wearing nametags that had their call letters on them. I noticed one go by that said “K3TLX”. I ran out into the isle and greeted this fellow, sure enough, it was Larry, and we had never met in person. Back in the days when we first met on the air we had an “N” in our call letters (Mine was KN1YPP) that indicated we were Novice operators. Once we upgraded to a higher-class license the “N” was dropped. It turns out that Larry was a young lad like myself back then and had a similar experience.

So what is really important about the gifts of Christmas is not so much the quantity, but rather the love and care that goes into the giving. I don’t think we actually hit it on-the-head that often with picking the right gift, but when it happens, it can have a life-long influence, it certainly did in my case…thanks Mom and Dad.

Last week, I went on a Caribbean Cruise on the ship “Mariner of the Seas”, a Royal Caribbean vessel. A good time was had by all, how could one not enjoy a cruise. It was heartening to see so many different nationalities working together on the ship, something like sixty countries comprise the crew.

All week it kept haunting me; how come there are very few Americans on the crew? I was told there are a few that work at high level positions, and I suspect that may be true in some of the technological jobs on the ship, such as engine maintenance, communications equipment etc. The reality however is that there are very few Americans on board because the wages are low, and I guess that doesn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was how little of the ship itself has any American origins.

I hunted high and low, and found nothing that was made in the U.S.A. Since I didn’t have access to the really neat things, like the engine room, the bridge etc. it can’t be considered a very conclusive search. Everything was made somewhere else. The ship itself is constructed in Finland. I found items made in Italy, England, Germany, Japan, China etc., but could find nothing made in my homeland. At last, I did find one thing: toilet paper! Yes, right there in my room I finally found an item made in the U.S.A.

I excluded foodstuffs from my search. Since we boarded in Florida, much of the food is supplied locally at the port, so things such as Coke and vegetables had U.S. origins. Of course even that data is skewed these days, much of the food we eat is also imported, for example, the oranges were from Brazil.

One hundred years ago, in all likelihood, the ship itself may have been made in the U.S. We had great shipyards at that time, turning our all sorts of craft. A vast number of Americans were involved in that industry, now it is merely a historical artifact. The only Americans involved with the ships seem to be the passengers, spending our money out to foreign corporations, increasing the trade deficit.

Everywhere one looks these days the strangulation of the American worker is happening. Over most of my lifetime I have been a diligent shopper, I have ALWAYS checked the labels and would seek out American made goods, even if it cost more (and it usually did). Things really started to erode about thirty years ago, people just stopped caring. All that mattered was price! We became very good capitalists, our only concern was price. If we could get shoes made in Italy much cheaper than the ones made in Maine, we bought them. Automobiles made in Japan were made well and cheaper, we bought them. Then we started buying our fruits and vegetables from overseas and eventually we started buying just about everything from overseas.

Now certainly some things make lots of sense to import, and healthy trade keeps nations friendly, but when we give up making everything here and buy everything from somewhere else, we’re in real trouble. We are a wealthy country, but slowly and surely we are shipping our wealth across our borders. Gradually we're bleeding ourselves dry. Add to that the national debt that is now on the order of nine trillion dollars (and increasing at about a million dollars a minute) and one can see that this cannot go on forever.

A few days ago I went into the local supermarket and picked up some garlic. They switched to a new supplier. In the past they had a bin of garlic and one would take what they needed. Now they have it prepackaged, with three in a bundle. I looked at the package and it said “Made In China”. It was $1.29. Hunting around I did find another U.S. grown prepackaged garlic for $.89, but it only had two in the package, and the package wasn’t as nice as the one from China. I’ll predict we won’t see the U.S. grown one much longer. Could someone please tell me why we have to get garlic from China, about 7,600 miles from here, when I know I can get it from just a few states north of here? In fact, it grows very well in Appalachia, and I know they can use the work.

In the past, our country has had other bad economical times, but we always had one strength that we could fall back on for recovery: our manufacturing base. Folks, that is very rapidly disappearing. Our mightiest manufacturing base is starting to fold; the Big Three Auto manufacturers are being eclipsed by Japan.

Recently a company here in the central Florida area announced a layoff of about 800 employees. They’re moving their operation to China. The CEO of the company publicly stated that he wasn’t too concerned about the employees finding new jobs; he figured they’re skilled and surely they will find something else. The job market around here is abysmal; the average wage here is usually just about half of what is found for similar work in the Northeast. True, the cost of living is somewhat lower, but not that much lower!

So, who are the movers and shakers in our business world that decide these jobs should go overseas? I would like to be able to point fingers, but the reality is, we send these jobs overseas, we the consumers. People flock through the doors everyday to stores like Wal-Mart and never give a thought to where the products come from, or who will lose their job with each purchase made in the big-box stores. All that matters now is price.

This would be an interesting experiment: Set up a study where a group of consumers want to buy some hot new product. Explain to them that this particular product is so difficult to make that a human being actually dies in the process of making the product (it would have to be something expensive of course, like an automobile, boat, etc.). I’m convinced that there are those that would buy the product, especially if they thought the death was somewhere in the third-world. In fact, over time, it would become a non-issue, because “everybody’s doing it”. I could be wrong, but sadly, I suspect I’m not.

Friends, we are driving the jobs out of this country as quickly as we can, and you know what, at some point, when enough jobs are gone, we won’t be able to afford the products that are in the stores, and in fact, I think we’re already approaching that point, look at all the debt out there. This is scary, really scary.

Speaking of holidays, when did Christmas become so important that we MUST start shopping for it in September? Really? I can’t believe it, this year I was in our local Dollar Store and they were putting Christmas junk on the shelves in late September. What is this madness?

 
When I was a kid we were excited about Christmas for all the usual reasons, time off from school, being outdoors in winter, a few presents, a big holiday meal and that sense that another year was starting soon. I don’t recall my parents being particularly stressed about it, after all, we didn’t have much money anyway, so the choices were limited.

 
My favorite gifts were usually books. One year I got a complete set of books about adventures, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, 20,000 Leagues Below the Sea, Treasure Island etc. I recall spending most of the following year reading, and re-reading those selections. I traveled the world with the characters in those books, felt their excitement, joy, their fears and grew with them.

 
Another year it was ice skates, they opened a whole new world for me. I loved the thrill of flying along on local frozen ponds and being outdoors in the winter, it was so liberating. In 1959 it was a six-transistor radio, which sparked my interest in electronics, more on that another time.

 
There was never that much under the tree, not with a father that was never very healthy, due in great part to injuries from WW II, and a Mom that had to support us, and take care of my Dad’s poor health.

 
The point is, we never expected much under the tree, it wasn’t quantity, it was the quality. It was a special time of the year.

 
Now, I see all this cheap junk from China lining the shelves. Its purpose is only to make a sale and eventually end up in a landfill, to be replaced by more junk to continue the cycle. Thanksgiving used to be the start of the Christmas season, now, it is turning into perpetual Christmas, why is that?

 
My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. The Madison Ave. folks haven’t figured out a way to overly commercialize it yet, I guess there isn’t much glamour in selling turkeys. Thanksgiving is wonderful, it is about family, food and time together. In a sense, Christmas was that way years ago, but the commercial world managed to turn it into a buying frenzy, instead of what it is supposed to be, an exchange of a gift and quality time together. How do we bring that back, is it lost forever, I hope not.