Another sad passing.....

Emmy Award winner Jack Smith has died at the age of 58 after a bout with cancer. Many people recognize Jack from his years as an ABC News TV correspondent, where he covered strife all over the world and more recently as that networks technology reporter. He was the son of legendary broadcaster Howard K. Smith. By all accounts Jack had a stellar career in journalism.

But many of us who knew him, or knew of him, count his exploits and survival in the Ia Drang Valley in 1965 as the true measure of the man. I wouldn't say that I knew him, but I had met him, chatted with him, and took the photo above at the Ia Drang survivors reunion in 2001. Despite his illness, Jack was the featured speaker at this years reunion just last November. He wanted to be with the people he treasured the most one last time. Jack is on the left with his old comrade Bud Alley. Jack was a soft spoken, calm and thoughtful man which belied the terrible violence he had endured.

For those who saw the Mel Gibson film, We Were Soldiers, the movie action in the Ia Drang in November 1965 ended with the 1/7th Cavalry being airlifted out after their 3 day struggle to survive. What is not shown, but reported in detail in Joe Galloway's book "We Were Soldiers Once and Young", is what happened to the 2/7th Cavalry and other units that came to the rescue of the encircled 1st Battalion. Ordered to march several miles to another helicopter landing zone named LZ Albany, these units were caught in a fearsome ambush that resulted in some of the heaviest casualties of the war. Some platoons were virtually wiped out. Jack, while pretending to be dead had a North Vietnamese soldier use his back to support a machine gun while firing at American soldiers, was wounded by an American grenade fired at the machine gunner and then survived the night listening to the enemy shoot his wounded comrades only yards away. Jack's piece for The Saturday Evening Post magazine Death in the Ia Drang Valley [scroll down] is one of the best, most terrifying, riveting and personal accounts of the Vietnam War ever written. I hope that you will take the time to read the article. Without a doubt it proves Gen. Shermans comment that is often misquoted as simply..."War is Hell".

Jack was a very close friend of some of my good friends, and I had hoped that my path in this life would cross his again. This is not to be, but the memory and legacy of his life will be celebrated and remembered by a great many people.

Our First......

The rainstorms that drenched Midland all weekend had not let up Monday morning. The sky was heavy and thunderstorms in the forecast all day.

Sylvia Munoz has just finished writing a card to her son, Robert, who is stationed in Iraq. She's watching television alone when a story on the news catches her attention.

She hears the words Sadr City, Iraq. The name grabs her ear. The Shiite-majority neighborhood in recent days has been torn by some of the most severe violence it has witnessed since it fell to Americans a year ago.

Eight U.S. soldiers died in the conflict, she hears.

"Something made me feel weird about it," she said.

So she next calls her son Gilbert, who recently returned from Iraq himself. She asks Gilbert to look up some information on the Internet.

As she hangs up, she sees two men pull up to her driveway. They were military officials delivering the worst news, not that they had to say a word.

"I knew what they were going to tell me."

And so I learned from The Midland Reporter-Telegram early this morning that the first soldier from Midland had been killed in Iraq. Robert Arsiaga was actually from Greenwood, a rural community once, that now in most ways is really a suburb of the City of Midland. His sister is also in the Army, while his two brothers are Marines, one, as stated above, having recently returned from Iraq. To quote a book, or perhaps a movie in my memory......."Where do we get such people?"

First Lady, Laura Bush was in town visiting her Mother, and made a point to visit Mrs. Munoz at her home. About all I can add is that my heart is heavy with grief and sadness for Roberts family. My heart having been through this before with comrades, personal friends and loved ones some 30+ years before in another time and place.

And then the rains came.....

What a weekend! Friday, the Mrs. and I stepped out for a couple of hours for Jack's Little League opener [he won]. When we stepped back in we almost stepped on, well the mess a sick dog makes when he can't get out into the backyard. Not able to hold it any longer his canine bowels just let go right on the living room floor. Sparing you the details of the mess, I'll just say that the smell was overpowering and it took almost an hour to clean it up. We'll be calling our carpet cleaners on Monday.

Saturday I engaged in manual labor, digging up 10 sickly shrubs and replacing them with new Indian Hawthorne. Lovely. And then the rains came. In West Texas it either makes an attempt to spit a few drops of rain, or it vomits copious quantities. This was the later. A few stray thunderstorms around 10 p.m. and then the main event starting at 4 a.m. Hard rain for four straight hours. This is always a welcome event as, for some reason, rain water makes the lawn grow 100% faster than using city water. But for the past year the joy of heavy rains at the Bedford Dr. estate have been tempered with dread. We have a roof leak. Well, actually, several now. Luckily, before retiring, we had set out our strategically placed bowls and towels. Unluckily, upon arising they were full and overflowing. So for most of the morning we cleaned, mopped and dried out the pantry in the laundry room and other damp spots.

The only humor in the situation resulted in the photo above. Through the deluge we could see a figure across the street, doing what in the downpour? Well, fertilizing the lawn of course. I'm not making fun of our friend Matt, had I not done my yard already I would have probably been out doing the same thing. [note the waves from the flooded street about to break over the sidewalk!]. More rain is expected tonight......and thunderstorms all week.

[Roofing note: lest we appear completely ignorant/indigent, we did have a roofer out to look at repairs three weeks ago. I'm still waiting on the quote....they appear to be three weeks late]

Cobra Update: The Mrs. opines that she'd like to have the Cobra too!

Family entertainment....

You never know what you'll come across on a daily basis. We are recompleting an oilwell in Andrews County, Texas and I have spent the last two days at the well site monitoring the activity. It's looking pretty good thanks. Today we decided to go into the town of Andrews for lunch and to bring some hot chow back to our hard working crew.

It was a moment of serendipity. A friend on my recent fishing trip had been telling me that he recently bought a Shelby Cobra, and I was quite jealous. On the drive to the well, I mentioned the car to my partner Del, who is also a road racing fan, and we spent some time talking about the history, setup and specs of the original Cobra's as built by Carroll Shelby. Then.....not more than two hours later as we were driving through Andrews we saw it. A Cobra sitting in the Ford dealers parking lot. We stopped. We summoned a salesman.

After the sales guy told us about the car and determined that we were not crazy people he offered to take us for a spin. Well, no said we, we rather had in mind driving it ourselves. This rather flumoxed the sales guy. He wasn't supposed to allow that. But Del and I are rather smooth talkers and after Del explained that he used to have Porsche's which he has driven on the German autobahn, and I casually let it drop that I had attended the Bob Bondurant Racing School, we were in. I was up first. Strapped into the racing style harness, double check the position of the clutch and brake pedal [both far to the left] and I was off. If you've never driven a small light car with 500 horsepower in a 427 cubic inch engine, it's an experience you should try to have someday. Driving mainly in town, I didn't set any speed records but I did have the opportunity to be knocked back into the seat when I punched it in second gear. This is the original and most genuine Muscle Car of the genre. It was hard to get out of the seat.

So now I'm back in Midland trying to convince the Lovely Bride that really and truly the main reason that I might consider buying the car is that it would be a great family togetherness experience. After I get an enclosed trailer for the Cobra we could spent countless hours of quality family time traveling the country racing at vintage car events. I think that family time is most important and this car is only a goal towards that end. Wish me luck, I'll need it.

Spring Miscellania....

It seems to me to be the earliest Spring we've had in West Texas in my memory. As you can see by the photo of our patio above, the foliage is well on it's way to looking like summer. The grass is almost green all over and the shrubbery has it's new growth well underway. However the large trees have yet to catch up. The pecans are just now starting to bud, which actually is a good thing for the lawn......letting much more sunshine in early in the season. Timely and beneficial rains have helped along with a very mild winter all in all, with only one bitterly cold spell that I can recall. But, being West Texas, you never know what's going to happen. We had a very large snow on Easter weekend some 8 or 9 years ago.

My fishing trip was a grand success as usual. No fish, due to very windy weather, but no mind, fishing on the fishing trip is secondary. We always just take up where we left off the previous year in our story telling and asking how the people we asked about last year are doing. We ride in boats up and down the river, take photos, play cards and do some minor hiking up the creek that runs into the main river. Sleeping there with 4 or 5 guys out on the enclosed porch is hell for me. The beds are Army surplus steel cots really and are about 6 ft. in length.....I'm over 6'2". Then there are several guys who are terminal snorers, but who always swear that they don't do that anymore, and do. But all in all a great trip. And the big surprise when I returned home was that the "Lovely Bride" and "Wonderful Step-son" had done all the yard work, cleaned the house and painted one of the bathrooms that had been next on my to do list. Marriage is wonderful.

There was, however, a slight pause in our happy family reunion last night. A misunderstanding caused by my slight misstep of almost burning the house down. Further explanation is necessary. Julie had made a delightful chicken dish and had cut the skin off of the chicken halves. Being the frugal sort and wanting to provide our dogs with extra chicken enrichment in their diet, I had put the skin in water to boil, thus making a healthy dog chicken broth. Then, wanting some quality time with young Jack, I proceeded to the PlayStation2 in his room for some Grand Prix racing. I was 6 laps into the Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang when we heard screeming from the direction of the kitchen. Something about, HELP!, SMOKE!, FIRE!. Racing continued. I was .05 seconds behind Michael Schumaker in his Ferrari with only several laps remaining, so obviously I couldn't pit. More screams. Something like COME IN HERE RIGHT NOW! Only 2 laps to go, surely a reply to the screams could wait, so I had Jack yell, "What do you want?". This, obviously, was a mistake as a very upset wife soon appeared in the door with one of those looks that said, "Buster, You'd better get off that toy, now". I did.

It seems that I had left the dogs chicken broth on a little to long and the water had all evaporated leaving burning chicken fat in the pan. I'll admit that there was a lot of smoke, greasy chicken smoke, and it had enveloped at least half of the house but, there was no actual fire. As I told Julie, "Baby, if there had been a fire, I would have quit racing and come to the kitchen. Well OK, a bad fire. But when you have a shot at winning the Malaysian Grand Prix, you can't just stop for small things". I realize now that this too was a mistake.

But things are now back to normal, wedded bliss reigns, the chicken smell is mostly gone from the house, and tonight I won the British Grand Prix at Silverstone by a sizeable margin, with no interruptions.

Will you miss me.....?

I'll be gone for the weekend, fishing right here. It's my annual "Let's Go Fishing" weekend on the Colorado River with a good group of my old fraternity brothers. A pilgimage really since this is the 29th year of it's occurance. I started going in 1982, I believe, and although I have missed making the trip some years I do my damnest to go. Next year, being the 30th anniversary there is talk of going possibly to Costa Rica or some other more exotic fishing locale. On the 25th anniversary, the group went "fishing" at Lake Tahoe.

I don't know many people, except possibly military groups, that have had such a long standing annual affair. Most of my buddies are from either Dallas or Houston, and strangely of the 16 or 17 in attendance most all are either in the medical field or real estate. Besides these two factions there's one engineer, one attorney and me, in the oil and gas business. It's great to not only catch up with good friends, but to hear the news from the big cities, especially Dallas where I lived for so many years.

The website linked above is actually a joke [if you couldn't tell]. A joke website that has been my tradition now for 4 years. But, the picture is real, of the fishing cabin where we stay. Owned by the Carpenter family of Dallas, they consider it a cabin. I suppose that when you own insurance companies, have freeways named after you and you built a whole new super city near Dallas [Las Colinas] you consider something like this magnificent house with two full time cooks, situated on several miles of river front and surrounded by a 10,000 acre ranch....a fishing cabin. Me, I consider it a fishing mansion. For the first several years that I attended we stayed at some maggot infested rat trap called "Lemon's Camp". God it was awful. The kind of place that smelled like the prior guests had cleaned their fish in bed. So thanks to the Carpenter Family, and our attendee Doug, who is on one of their boards for allowing us to stay in their cabin for the last 10 years.

Last year, I had to assure Julie that this was not some kind of wild "guy" thing. All but one of us is married now, and besides we're of an age where a wild time is motoring up and down the river in the big pontoon boat. Sometimes I think that I won't go, but it's worth it for the camaraderie, the excellent food, fishing and to me just to get outdoors in a gorgeous place and take some photos. But I will miss my little family. Julie, Jack and the dogs and I'll be more than ready to come home on Sunday. See you then.

Here are photos from last years trip: Let's Go Fishing 2003
And the 2003 humorous Fishing Foundation website

Images..............Update

Less than 24 hours after completing the story yesterday concerning my "photo duties", I received the following email from Joe Galloway.....

"spent two hours in studio being interviewed today by Oliver North for his "War Stories" program on Fox. his producer would like 5-6 of best LZ XRay digital pix emailed to him. might also toss in 4-5 best of the b&w images from other parts of Nam."

Can do! For those intesested, Joe tells me his War Stories on Fox will probably air sometime in May. I'll update when further details are known.

Images.....

As mentioned here in the past, my close friend Joe Galloway wrote the 1994 NY Times best seller, We Were Soldiers Once and Young later made into the Mel Gibson film We Were Soldiers. In the year preceeding the movie release Joe made the decision to publically display for the first time some of the photos he took during the battle at LZ Xray in 1965. Consequently he had the photo department at "U.S. New and World Report", where he was senior writer, scan his negatives in very high resolution, put them on a CD and ship them to me for use on our website and in printing them for sale.

For the last two years I have been the keeper and processor of these digital images for use by those media, educational institutions and individuals whom Joe authorizes use to. Frankly at times, like before the movie premiered, I have spent considerable time and effort doing custom reformatting, resizing, cropping and cleaning the images. But it sure has been worth it. I've met some really interesting people, along the way.

Prior to the movie release I worked directly with the Paramount Pictures media people providing some of the photos they used in their advertising. I talked on the phone with producers at The Today Show, The History Channel, 60 Minutes II, and even sent some hard copy images FedEx to Dan Rathers home in Connecticut. I had several images blown up to poster sized proportions to take with me to a book signing with Joe and co-author Gen. Hal Moore [Mel Gibson's role]. For magazines, to name just a few, I've emailed or ftp'd images to "The VFW Magazine, "Soldier of Fortune Magazine", "The Digital Journalist" "The Alabama History Magazine" and "The Hong Kong Foreign Journalist Magazine".

And because of Joe's generosity, it is not only to the large scale media that we have provided photos. I have sent custom digital image files to a student at Texas A&M doing a research paper on Vietnam, to cadets at West Point and the Air Force Academy and to an aspiring journalist in Kansas City who had her story on Joe's tours in Vietnam picked up for major newpaper publicaton. We sent photos and personal stories to a high school student in Mountain Home, Arkansas who won an award for her essay on Vietnam and had her story reprinted in the local paper. She sent us a copy. I have sent complimentary photos to Privates, Sergeants, Lieutenants, Captains, and Sergeant Major's who just wanted a photo or were going to use them in unit displays, awards or visual programs. Two Four Star Generals have our photos in their offices. I personally gave one to General Tommy Franks here in Midland and one to my friend the SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Tom Hill. And........one that I sent to Washington for a Medal of Honor ceremony was presented to President Bush.

I bring all of this up because today I was at it again. This time for Joe's publisher, Random House. It seems that they are going to reissue the book in mass market paperback form and want to use new photos to spice up the cover and to better illustrate the storyline . I spent the better part of the morning downloading and setting up the publishers in-house file transfer system on my computer, talked to Ron the publisher and away went more photos. As I said....it's work, but great fun and somewhat of a thrill to see something that I had a minor hand in come out for public consumption. But, of course, the greatest thrill is sending a photo or two to the soldiers who were actually there.

Photo courtesy, Mrs. Julie Craig

When pet worlds collide..!

It's a well known fact that I love animals. I am only half kidding when I say that I know more animals I like than people, and the perpetual quote at the bottom of my emails states, "The average dog is a nicer person, than the average person". So we run a small menagerie of canine, avian and reptilian specimens. Two dogs and at last count 6 desert box turtles, not to mention the assorted species of birds we feed and way to many squirrels. All the creatures are very welcome, except the squirrels who became a detriment when they started to eat the house.

I must exude some turtle like pheremone because all the turtles in our collection have quite literally wandered up to our home. One was actually waiting at the front door when I opened it one day, and two came strolling up the driveway when I was working out front, just as if they knew they were supposed to show up here. Maybe they heard that I'm a very gratuitous turtle feeder. Canteloupe, bananas and occasionally strawberries in season. Tres, the Big Gold Dog, has always gotten along very well with the turtle population, his plan being to basically just ignore them, even when they walk over his feet while he's dozing on the sunny patio.

But then came Julie's dog Daphne. Daphne is, to put it mildly, rather raw and untrained in her habits. Wild is another way of stating it, or possibly, as Julie thinks she is in need of medication for dog attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It was an interesting study in dog behavior traits when Daphne moved in, disturbing Tres' well ordered existance. He tried to ignore her too, but it soon became obvious that this wouldn't work, so he took to turning tail and going whereever she wasn't. They were like two children vying for our attention. Whatever Tres had, Daphne wanted [rawhides, bones, rope toys etc.], whatever Daphne had, Tres definetly had to have. They took to hiding things from each other, or better yet burying them in the backyard.

We have put Daphne on a strict training regimen, and she's actually showing some improvement. But what was worrying me as Spring approached and the turtles came out of hibernation was "how would Daphne react"? She had been sniffing around their holes and even pulled one out before he was ready. Thankfully, after a stern "NO" and a swat on the snout with a rolled up newspaper she seemed to have gotten the message that the turtles were off limits. Until....Julie gave our big male turtle Bob [L. Bob Smitherman, in full] a strawberry yesterday. L. Bob loves fresh fruit. But now that Bob had a strawberry Daphne decided it was her favorite treat too. The photo above graphically shows the confrontation.

Give this round, and the strawberry prize, to L. Bob. Julie helped decide the standoff with another short rap with the newspaper. However, perhaps, a better lesson for young Daphne would have been to leave L. Bob to decide it for himself. Turtles are amazingly fast at times, and L. Bob has got a powerful bite which would have left a lasting impression on Daphnes nose.

Merde en Francais
So now France seems to be in the sights of the Islamofacists. According to a letter purportedly written by a local arm of the peace loving group Al Queda, the letter warrns that, "We will plunge France into terror and remorse, and we will make blood run to your borders." Further describing France as as a country of "wine, pigs, loose morals and nudity," the letter warns that "France will not be secure in its own country nor at its interests abroad."

I cannot help but agree with the assesment of France's morals, and I certainly don't want to see bloodshed, but I wouldn't mind seeing some remorse from the French, for once. Some remorse for believing that if perhaps we were just more respectful of Islam, or just nicer to Arabs, or perhaps sold their dicatators more weapons that then they'd go back to their goat skin tents and leave the civilized world alone.

And what has brought on this sudden vengefulness against the French. They have outlawed the wearing of the Muslim head cover in their schools. Actually more of a "political correctness" move than a slam agains Islam, since religous symbols of all varieties were banned, be they Christian, Jewish or Hindu. Hopefully, the attacks won't happen, but it would be very interesting to see the reaction from the Left if a European country were attacked just for being PC. Who would they blame the violence on then? Oh, I know, somehow the U.S., but sane people would know that they were full of Limberger.

La oveja de España....

Moooooo! says the Spanish cattle to the Islamic wolf,
Please don't eat me, just let me graze peaceably in my field.

Baaaaaa! say the Spanish sheep to the Islamic wolf,
take all my wool, but please don't eat me.

And so another once great empire joins the Neville Chamberlain school of international appeasement. The film clip of British Prime Minister Chamberlain in 1938 is hard to forget, smugly announcing after the Munich conference with Hitler that he had achieved "peace in our times". Just two short years later London was under the Blitz and the free world was in mortal peril.

So now, the majority of Spanish voters have chosen a leader who was against the liberation of Iraq and who like the other once great empires of France and Germany don't understand that this was only one front on the war against terror or that it is a war and a fight to the finish. Mr. Zapatero "vowed that fighting terrorism would be his first priority as he sets about creating an administration that will work for peace." A grand aim, peace, but an oxymoron as long as the Islam fundamentalist movement is alive and naive cowards back away from fighting it. One imagines that what he really means is preventing terror in Spain, the rest of the world be damned.

Terrorism is a faceless thing and the perpetrators are rather amorphus to the general naive public, but terrorism has goals, purpose and demands. Will terrorists in the U.S., Australia, or Spain be satisfied until their demands are met?

We demand that....
*you declare that there is only one true religon.
*you swear true allegiance, in the strictest sense, to Allah.
*only the word of Allah be shown on your TV.
*women should stay at home, or be covered from head to toe in public
*you not drink alcohol in tapas bars.
*women should be stoned to death if they fornicate outside of marriage.
*men be allowed to fornicate outside of marriage with no penalty.
*you repent for the actions of the Crusaders 800 years ago.

Apparently the sheep in Spain think that these terms just might be acceptable......

Iraq: Good news...and some bad

Before my good friend Joe Galloway fled Washington D.C. for the sunnier and more pleasant climes of Kauai for a weeklong vacation he filed this story. Some good news not typically reported in the "mainstream" American media, but worth considering. The bad news being the caveat of what might still lie ahead.

Good news (and bad) from Iraq

By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers

The best news: Between February 19 and March 2 not a single American soldier was killed in Iraq.

This is testimony to the fact that the American military units operating there - even in the midst of a huge movement of soldiers as the old U.S. force of 130,000 is replaced by a fresh new force of 110,000 - have ground down the opposition Sunni guerrillas to a much more manageable level both in terms of numbers and effectiveness.

This wasn't achieved with a few big battles or a few massive sweeps, but rather by a slow, steady weeding out of the bad guys, taking them down or out by ones, twos and threes and primarily doing it with information provided by Iraqis who want to see an end to this war and a future for themselves. Read More >>>>>>

Ten Years.......

It's been rough and rocky travelin',
But I'm finally standin' upright on the ground.
After takin' several readings,
I'm surprised to find my mind`s still fairly sound.

Willie Nelson

It was 10 years ago today that alcohol last touched my lips.........and gullet. Actually ten years and a day, though the anniversary is about one's first completely sober day, so today's the day. I won't go into the whole story with it's sordid details, but I will say if I hadn't given up drinking I would be long dead and gone today. I had had an alcohol related seizure that nearly killed me in 1992 but soldiered on in my miserable condition for another year and a half before something happened and a touch of sanity prevailed.

I will not pat myself on the back one bit for it was family and a few close friends who stuck with me through the deep dark years and it is they who deserve the credit. They and the people at AA who never gave up on me. Those good folks who, at the time, I thought were self righteous idiots of the highest order and who are now some of my closest friends. They are akin to my combat veteran friends, close beyond belief. For too, they are combat veterans also. We share the same horrific stories, the same amusing stories, the stories of friends lost along the way and the friends who have never really recovered from the battle.

I quote Willie Nelson because this stanza from his song "Me and Paul" seems to pretty well sum up my feelings. And because I had the good fortune to meet Willie in 1996 and spend several hours talking with him. One of the subjects was alcohol. Willie had given up whiskey a few years earlier [though he admitted to still smoking herbal remedies] and we both shared the stories of our close calls, misery and amusing andectotes of our drinking history. And, by the grace of God, even after all the abuse I put my body through, my mind and body is still fairly sound.....in some peoples opinion.

The most fitting word for my state today is gratitude. Not only would I most assuredly not be here today, I would not have the wonderful life, wife and step-son, family and friends that I possess today. Thanks to everyone.

Martha, Martha, Martha....!

Personally I'm more than a little shocked that Martha Stewart was found guilty today. Not that she was innocent, just that a jury of her lesser peers would find her so. I would have thought that a jury would have a hard time arriving at a unanimous guilty verdict for America's homemaker.

I do have mixed emotions. I like Martha's style and it's nice to see a divorced housewife make it big. Too, it seems to me that there are bigger fish to fry in the prosecution of corportate criminal mischief. I lost very nearly five figures when my Enron stock took a vacation from existance and many people lost their life savings.....my preference would have been to go after those guys and save Martha for later. But on the other hand, being a law and order conservative, I don't believe that anyone should profit from playing fast and loose with the rules, which Martha undoubtedly did. The saga of Martha is not over though. There will be appeals. Even though she lost $120 million today when her stock plummeted, I suspect she has enough cash left to remain unincarcerated until the next decade.

I know Martha will be busy until the final determination however, so I've decided to pitch in occasionally with some helpful household tips in her absence. Later I'll give you my recipe for a lovely peach parfait and then discuss some options for recovering your car seats with chenille. Stay tuned.

Drain Cam©.........

I won't go into the cause of why we had the Roto-Rooter© guys out to the estate several days ago. Or....the cost involved which was in the three figures. I'll only say that I'm impressed with their services, being one who several years ago thought that the company was only involved in the most basic of services. To wit: Roto-ing and Rooter-ing. Actually they do quite alot more now.

The estate is about 50 years old now and Roto Rooter has been out before so I'm on a first name basis with our service technician, Jose. It's a story for another time, but it's a blessing to live in a town this size and be able to get the same guy to continually come out to work on the equipment of modern life, whether it be electrical, air conditioning or plumbing. They know the history of the equipment and where it is located without a lot of questions asked. All our service guys are nice hard working folks and besides shelling out big bucks for the privelage, it's nice to see them. I even trade photos with my A/C guy, K.C.

Anyway, back to the point. I was really impressed that after cleaning out our lines and installing a drain cleanout point which we lacked, they brought in the high tech plumbing equipment and ran a digital Drain Cam all the way down the line to look for root incursion. It was really a sharp clear picture of our main drain line in it's totality, and being a digital guy, I thought just pretty darned cool. You can check out the results at my latest Mirror Project submission

Fly by the pound.......

In reaction to a recent commuter airline plane crash the
FAA is now recommending that the airlines weigh passengers before boarding. It seems that extra weight in the tail section of the doomed aircraft contributed to the crash.

If my recent experiences of being squeezed in between super-sized travelers are any indication, I think this may be an excellent idea. In fact this may have real promise in readjusting airline rates.....and as an incentive for supersizers to lose weight. Ticket prices could be based on the fliers weight. So as not to be to insensitive, the tickets could be named like clothing is sold. Small, Medium, Large, Xtra Large and Wal-Mart size.......XXXLarge.

This seems quite equitable too. Even though all passengers are taking up [in theory] only one seat, an aircraft uses more fuel to haul heavier loads, and aviation fuel is a very large component of the bottom line cost of a ticket. Why should a 195 lb. man pay the same as a 350 pound traveler? Could this also spawn whole new sectors of air travel? Weight Watchers Air, Lean Cuisine Air.....and "I'm Sorry Sir, you are over our weight limit, may I refer you to Golden Corral All You Can Eat Buffet Air?"

The funeral....

I've just returned from the funeral of a good friend. Nancy and I belong to an organization in which we saw each other quite often, sometimes once a week. After the first of the year, and with our wedding, I haven't been in attendance at the organizations meetings as often as normal so I was surprised three or four weeks ago to see Nancy in ill health. She had been at their home in Santa Fe and fallen ill with pneumonia. But she, along with her husband Tom, seemed upbeat about her recovery. As always, Nancy was full of optimism and vim though with not quite so much vigor.

So it came as quite a shock on attending the meeting yesterday to learn that Nancy had passed away this week. I learned this from husband Tom, who was at the meeting as usual. It turned out that Nancy had been battling cancer for quite a long time. As was her way, I don't recall her ever mentioning her illness and certainly not uttering a word of complaint or sorrow. The organization that brought us together teaches us to help others as a way out of our own problems, and Nancy lived up to this credo as much as anyone I know.

The older I get, the more funerals affect me. They remind me to live life to the fullest and to hope that, when I realize that I am going, that I can be as courageous, accepting, and charitable about my fate as people like Nancy. The funeral service was a tribute to her life and postitive attitude attended by people from all walks of life. One of the healing things about the funerals I attend in the town the size of Midland, is that I get to see friends and acquaintances that I haven't seen in ages. Important people thoughout my lifespan. Like the neighbors who lived across the street from me when I was a kid, high school classmates that I don't run into often or old friends of my parents who knew my as a ten year old. It makes me feel both young and old at the same time, but confirms the continuity of life.

Tax hogwash debunked......

If you believe what some members of a certain political party say, you might think that the poor average Joe Worker bears the brunt of the Federal income tax burden. If you did believe this hogwash, you'd be terribly wrong. This recent release of tax data sets the record straight. The income level with which I'm familiar, the top 25% and above, pays over 83% of all Federal income taxes collected. And not to sound like a millionaire, the top 25% starts at only about $53,000 a year in earned income. The top 1% level of income tax payers shoulders a whopping 36% of total income tax paid.

The entire bottom 50% of wage earners contributes only about 4% to the Federal income tax stream. The top 50% pays 96%. Keep these facts in mind the next time you hear a Democratic candidate whining about the drain that income tax has on Joe Average.

Thanks to Dr. John Ray of Australia for pointing out the facts to America.

Statehood.....

It seems like almost everyday, someone asks me, "Pancho, just how many of our U.S. States have you visited?" This would throw me into a flurry of counting on my fingers and toes and by the time I was finished, the person who posed the question would be long gone.

Now, with the power of the Internet I can generate and graphically display a map of the results and know that I have visited exactly 86% of all current U.S. States. I am a little short on New England states, having only been to Connecticut and Rhode Island to visit a cousin who lives there. I'd like to go to Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire...but except for the history have no real desire to visit Massachusetts, cradle of freedom, but now also home of some really whacko liberals. Why I haven't been to North and South Dakota I cannot explain, except that my travels have just not taken me there. And Alaska, I won't feel complete without visiting there. A photo safari someday I hope.

I wish this computer generated map had some means of displaying the states in which I've lived too. I have permanently resided in Kentucky, Missouri, New Jersey, Louisiana, Hawaii and Texas. If you add the temporary residences of at least three months, add in Georgia, Maryland and a summer in Lower Manhattan, New York. All good places while I was there, but would not care to live in Louisiana or Georgia again as an adult, or Manhattan permanently. Manhattan is a great place to visit if you stay for no more than five days in a four star hotel. Don't do it for three months in moderately placed accomodations....on a budget.

Thanks to The Brazos Cantina for pointing out this instructive map link.

Midland...time marches on

The "oil boom" of the late 70's transformed Midland. By 1979 when this aerial photograph was taken the population had grown by almost 45% above the number when I first moved here. The building frenzy that accompanied the "boom" [or Big Boom as we call it now] was amazing. For new residents, it was hard to find a place to live. Construction of office buildings, retail, and homes had pushed the town well past Wadley Dr. and out to what would become The Loop.

In this image you can see the western portion of The Loop under construction to about the point where the Wal-Mart would be located. Taking advantage of this growth my Dad, along with Gene Abbott, decided to develop a large vacant tract of land along the loop in the NW quadrant of the city, thus the reason for this photo showing the area in the lower center of the image. This would become Fairmont Park. The light colored area was still an actively cultivated cotton field until the time the development began.

The Northern section of the loop is yet to be begun and much of the retail along the route was not yet in place. The dusty spots to the southeast of the Air Park are the Petroleum Center buildings built by the infamous I. David Porras with much of ClayDesta yet to be started. Of interest is the large vacant tract at the bottom of the photo where the "Midland Dr." tag is. At about this time, Texaco had optioned this land to build a large corporate campus to house their regional offices, a deal in which I was involved. But wiser heads prevailed and they moved into the Heritage Center near downtown. And several years later the bloom was off of the rose....the Big Boom was over.

While the Mrs. is away......

The wife and mother is away for the weekend on a ladies church retreat. Deserting us on Valentines Day. We hope she is having a swell time, 'cause the boys at home sure are.

It's just 10 y.o. Jack and me at the house. Last night we had Frito Pie© for dinner with Valentines candy for desert. We then took in a Midland High basketball game and were out till 10 p.m. A rollicking good time. This morning up early for a breakfast of chocolate Ovaltine© and donuts, no showers or change of underwear and then we were off to an 8:30 a.m. basketball game for Jack's youth league. Still no showers and then Jack departed for the movies with his GrandPa. While Jack was out, his girlfriend stopped by and was disappointed he wasn't home. So little time.

Tonight it's out on the town once again, as Jack and I are dining at Luigi's with some Italian cuisine. After that, who knows! Anything's possible with two guys on the loose. We may come home, put our pajamas on over our dirty underwear and socks and watch a manly DVD, like Toy Story II. We do miss Mom, but this bachelor male bonding is a needed thing sometimes.

Northwest Midland.....1961

Due to the amazing depth of interest from all three readers of Streams in yesterday's walk down memory lane, I have posted another photo of Midland as it was in 1961. This of the Northwest quadrant of the city viewed from the intersection of Cuthbert and the Andrews Hwy at the lower right. My Dad had labeled points of interest, and in fact ended up building a Shell service station where I have placed the star. It later became an Amoco station when Eddins-Walcher bought out the interests of Fidelity Oil. The building is still there.

There are some very interesting notes in this photo. Notice the large open area running from the foreground out. This later became the Gibson's Discount Center, an early competitor of Wal-Mart. It was an amazingly large building for the time, and decades later became what is now the Hastings Books and Records space, among other shops. The Safeway was a year or so away from opening and has now morphed thru several transitions into an auto parts store.

This photo also shows the old Superior Oil Camp located approximately in the upper leftcenter of the image, and another of the three drive-in movie theaters in town [again, either the Chief or the Fiesta, the Texan was on Hwy 80]. At the SW corner of the Andrews Hwy. and Midland Dr. the "Ye Olde English Village" apartments are not yet built. Today they have deteriorated, burned, been torn down and a new retail center is going in. The Town and Country shopping center was the new "upscale" suburban shopping venue competing with the Village...now known as "Olde Midland". The large, mostly vacant quarter section of land in the right center held a ranch house, the remains of someones large holdings. I can't remember whose family owned this. Readers are invited to help out on this one.

Midland, Texas ca. 1961

We moved to Midland in 1960 when my Dad left Shell Oil and accepted an offer from old time MIdlander John Starr to run Mr. Starr's company, Fidelity Oil. Mr. Starr was associated with Shell Oil, and among other things had the "jobbership" i.e. concession, to own and operate all the Shell Oil company affiliated service stations in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. My Dad was expanding this concession in 1961 and in doing the marketing plan for the location of the new stations he contracted for aerial surveys of possible locations.

And so in the last several years as my folks were cleaning out miscellania of the past, I ended up with all these now somewhat historic photos. I thought Midland readers would enjoy seeing them, and what Midland looked like in 1961.

This photo was taken just south of Wall Street at the Andrews Hwy, looking straight up Garfield Street. It is interesting to note that the northern border of "civilization" was at Wadley Ave. and that even most of the development north of Golf Course Rd. was fairly new as you will notice that the trees are not yet much grown. In the left center of the photo, the building now known as Bank One is just being built. It was originally the Commercial Bank and Trust building. The newly built, Dennis the Menace Park is two blocks to the south.

Computerism ain't easy sometimes....

This is not another "cranky" rant today. Instead it's one of those areas that when dealing with the Internet and computers is just one of acceptance. Acceptance is the key to my serenity today.

Today I got 20+ rejected emails from all over the world telling me that my email didn't go thru because it contained the MYDOOM virus. The problem is.....I didn't send any of those emails and, no, I don't have the virus on my system. I've run two separate checks using the McAfee online system with DAT files updated daily and also a useful and quick little tool from, dare I say...... Microsoft. This is a handy little utility run from their website that instantly scans your computer for this particular virus. I was clean.

No, not me, but somewhere out there someone with my main [non-published] email address somewhere on his/her computer has MY DOOM. Could it be you? Probably not, but if you don't have virus protection or if you haven't updated since January 26th you might want to visit one of the sites linked above.

For the uninitiated virus worms like MY DOOM send out emails from the infected machine but the senders address is pulled from an email address somewhere on the computer files, be it the address book, or email links on saved webpages. And this worm, generates it's own email addresses and so consequently the sender isn't aware that the email is going out, and the recepient has no idea how some stranger got his address. Fun stuff.

The only bright spot, if one can call it that, of this whole episode was that the McAfee scan did reveal several "backdoor" viruses that have probably been on my computer for years. I spent several hours manually deleting the Registry Keys and files that controlled these. One of which had a "keystroke" recorder function. Don't think it was working because I haven't seen any of it's telltale characteristics, but good none the less to have it gone.

Oy Vey.....!
Julie says that she loves me because I'm so "quirky". I am rather quirky and artsy, mostly in a good way, but I have to remind her in all honesty that sometimes I'm just plain cranky, too.

Today I was cranky because I received FOURTEEN [14] bitmap format pictures in one email. The smallest was 350kb the largest over 500kb. And they were all supposed to be funny. It took 20 minutes for this email to download. During which time I had a hard time uploading files to my server for a website I'm trying to finish. By the time the photos arrived I didn't think that they were funny.

Please don't send large format image files in emails! Please don't send 14 image files in one email. If you send pictures via email, resize them and make them Jpeg format....or Gif. Please don't send Bitmap images in emails. Please........

And while I'm on a cranky roll.....please don't send me the 6 Mb Mpeg or Wav file of your favorite beer commercial with the Subject line reading: "Ha Ha Ha...! Have You seen this?" Chances are I have and I really don't feel like getting an email that takes 30 minutes to download and 20 seconds to play. Sorry, that's just the way I am.

International Effort....

There are those who scorn the Internet as a teenagers plaything or a haven for scams, porn, and useless drivel. True, there is some of that, but also there is the opportunity for international assistance in solving weighty problems of massive proportions. Such as fixing our PlayStation2. It doesn't get much bigger than that.

As mentioned in previous entries, I have become more than a little enamored with the PlayStation2 game, Formula 1 Challenge developed by Melbourne House, who are affiliated with Atari. And the more I became addicted to the racing action the more our PS2 seemed to malfunction, coming to the point of inoperability. Apparently becoming dyslexic, it now can't read the disc. To try and solve the problem I searched online geek gamer websites and found some solutions, but none seemed to work. Eventually I went to the Melbourne House website itself to try and gain some insight into the malfunction and hoping to find a contact email address. But, alas, all I could find were local phone numbers in Melbourne Australia, home of the developers.

I was ready to give up when the idea to both solve my dilemma and further international relations came to me. Internet blogmate Bernard Slattery, aka Slatts lives in Geelong just within a light stones throw from Melbourne. Yesterday I emailed Slatts with my plea for help, asking him to phone the gameboys at Melbourne House and to try to obtain an email address. I was not disappointed, as this morning I received a reply from Slatts saying that he had made contact with them and he supplied the direct email address for one of the games developers. Help is on the way. Slatts says that they are an affable lot and would be glad to answer my questions. At this very moment the fate of our PlayStation and my racing career is in their hands. I hope to be back on the track soon.

Bernie's generosity is appreciated and I told him that I would try and reciprocate with his holy grail of requests from Texas....a gen-u-wine autographed picture of Kinky Friedman . I'll do my best.

Just a short, but sweet, note for today.

How often we Americans, especially in the last year, hear rumblings from abroad about the ill manner in which we are thought of by people in other parts of the world. Well here's a view from Australia that will warm you hearts America. John J. Ray is a PhD.......so he puts considerable thought into his writing. Enjoy.

Dr. Ray on Stupid Americans

Time moves on....

You saw, of course, that TeeVee legend Jack Paar has died. Most Bloggers, being of a younger age grouping probably weren't around when Jack was big news on TeeVee. I hope, however, that those who weren't took a minute to listen to the news reports and learn the immense contributions that he made to the way TeeVee is now for better or worse. I was a young sprout when he was on and wasn't allowed to stay up that late, nor watch "adult content" shows of that type. Which was tame compared to the general content on the tube today. It was in the halcyon days of black and white, when, if you got three TeeVee channels you were lucky or lived in a major market area.

The other major passing I noticed was that of Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch, an NFL hall of famer from the early and mid 50's. I don't remember so much about Crazy Legs as, and this is hard to believe for anyone under 45, but we didn't get NFL games on TeeVee. I always did love his monicker though...he just seemed like the epitome of an NFL player. He and Bronco Nugurski. With names like those, you just had to be good. Also, on a personal note, my Sunday school teacher Hal Dean, had played with Crazy Legs in the early 50's when Hal was an offensive tackle for the Los Angeles Rams. Hal also played for Ohio State when they won their first National Championship where he was coached by the legendary Paul Brown. I saw Hal this last year, crooked broken nose and all, and he still insprired some degree of awe in me, like if I couldn't recite my daily Bible verse, he'd break me down like an old shotgun.

Jack LaLanne....

Ha, Ha, We have a personalized, autographed picture of Jack LaLanne and you probably don't! I know you're jealous!

I remember seeing the original Jack LaLanne Show on black and white TeeVee when I was a kid. Quite honestly, at the time, I thought "what a hokey bunch of hooey", or something to that effect. Here's a guy in a black ballet outfit doing exercises with a chair for a prop accompanied by cheesy organ music of the type that you used to find on Sunday at the original Furr's cafeteria in Midland. Needless to say I didn't watch the show, but perhaps I should have because Jack and his lovely wife/assistant Elaine LaLanne were the originators of much of the fitness business as we know it today.

In fact Jack invented many of the machines which are now common place in modern fitness centers. And he made it OK for ordinary men and especially women to go to such places. He transformed the old boxing style "gyms" into accepted establishments that showed the common man how to exercise, eat right and make fitness a lifelong process. And he hasn't let his age [89 y.o.] slow him down.

For those to young to remember Jack, go to his website linked above. His accomplishments and some of his antics are amazing. Like the time he towed 6 rowboats from Alcatraz to Fishermans wharf, swimming while handcuffed. At the age of 60. The signed photo reads, "To my new friends Wallace and Julie, you two are the greatest! Stay in shape always". As Julie mentioned, I wish he would have quit writing after the first sentence. The second one makes me feel guilty, compared to him!

What the heck happened....?

Over the past 36 hours I have been deluged with calls and emails wondering what the heck happened to Streams online and it's parent company Big Gold Dog.Com. For all 3 people who inquired, here is the answer. The answer can be summed up easily in two words. Network Solutions. You who are web literattzi will know exactly what I mean without further explanation. For those who are not web geek inclined here's how it works.

To have, hold and own a web domain [Dot.Com] you must register with a company authorized to allot web addresses and assign IP numbers. Every domain, be it .net .com .org .tv or .edu is assigned a unique set of numbers. Its IP address. This web address i.e. domain, must be renewed periodically with a monetary payment to the registrar who does no work for this payment, but will jerk your website off the air if not paid. This, in the past, has been through a company separate from the "hosting" company. Network Solutions was the original government sponsored clearing house for this function. After the web became a more mundane everyday place, and because Network Solutions [NetSol] had a monopoly the authorization to allot IP addresses was given to many more private providers. However, I conjecture that NetSol still maintains the bulk of registrations and therefore the records of individual domains. My origininal registrations had to go through them, and were still there.

The problem is, in my opinion, that NetSol was big, unwieldy and still thought of themselves as a monopoly. And so the service and useablity in a word....sucked. And in the main still does. Which brings us to the 36 hour downtime of Big Gold Dog. Com. The domain expired. Expired without a word of written or email notification to me. The problem was in the notification addressses. I had instructed them to change and update these the last time I went through this process on another website. Like many company's who think of themselves as the only game in town, I suppose they couldn't find the time to update the info I gave them, therefore and to wit, I didn't know the domain was due to expire. I manage 15 different domains and websites for companies and friends in addition to kind of having a somewhat real job, so I don't keep all the expiration dates on the forefront of my brain, what little there is left. The only way I came to realize the domain had expired was by the ERROR message in place of my website, and the fact that several people emailed on another account telling me my biggolddog.com address was being "bounced".

Anyway, all is well now, Streams, Big Gold Dog. Com and all affiliate sites are up and running and the domain email is in service again. I know this however, I'm going to use my free choice as a consumer and transfer all my domains over to my good Aussie friends at my host server Server101.Com. Martial, the owner, and his mates in Australia take good care of me. They send notices when credit cards expire or need updating. They send thank you notes for being their customer. They have instituted a really good workable spam suppression system, they are economical and they're good! And I can count on them to inform me well in advance when one of the domains under my care is about to expire. In other words they take care of their customers.

A big fat American problem....

Several months ago I was strolling down the aisle of the Albertson's supermarket when I spied a man in a wheelchair trying to retrieve an item from a frozen food case. He was hard to miss as he weighed in, I conjecture, at well over 350 lbs. As I approached I also noted that he was on an oxygen system attached to the wheelchair. My first thought was one of sympathy for him. It must be hard to be in a wheelchair and obviously in poor health. I was glad to see his wife walk up to assist him. She was hard to miss too. She must have tipped the scales at over 250 lbs. herself.

As I waited for them to finish and give me a chance to get into the display case, my attitude changed. They must have spent 4-5 minutes srcounging around the display case, the ice cream case, all the while loading sugar laden treats into their already crammed shopping cart. A cart I noted which contained super-sized bottles of old fashioned sugar sweetened sodas, "hungry man" extra portion fried chicken dinners, precooked "fat burgers" and a myriad of items that, if you were not in a wheelchair on oxygen.....would put you there.

Now this is America, land of bounty, and our constitution gives us the complete right to sample of this bounty each to our own desired consumption levels even if it means turning ourselves into fat gluttons. However what struck me about this couple was their clothing which had a rather familiar Salvation Army look to it. How could these people afford an overburdened shopping cart full of rich treats? And more importantly how were they paying for their obviously more than average medical care?

I didn't see them check out, so I don't know that they used food stamps or other government assistance, but I would bet a box of Krispie Kreme doughnuts that they weren't paying for their own medical care. And the article referenced below bears me out on this. Read it. You are paying for obesity....to the tune of about $39 billion a year -- or about $175 per person. I don't know about you.....but it sends me off the richter scale to be out $175 so a pair of obese slobs can be given wheelchairs so they can go and empty the ice cream case.

The Cost of Obesity

Mr. Dean's whacked out opus.....

A short note of comment on Howard Dean. Idealism is a noble characteristic. Fanatical whacko'ism is just plain crazy.

Julie had MSNBC on the TeeVee as she drifted off into slumberland last night, and I left it on when I came to bed after winning the Grand Prix Championship on PlayStation2. The program was a recap of the Iowa caucuses and I wanted to see how it came out and how the winners and losers would portray their standings. I saw that Senator Edwards guy, whom I would not recognize if he and I were the only ones in line at the Taco Bell. He sounded sincere and sure enough glad to have come in second. I'm sure he was. No one knows a thing about him, except he is the guy who wants to run a friendly campaign.

And then came the Richard Dreyfus clone, Howard [my shirtsleeves are rolled up 'cause I'm a workin' man] Dean. If I had a suspicion that there is something wrong with his brain before, I'm certain of it now. Ranting about how glad he was to have come in a distant third, he led his minions in a recitation of all the states they are going to visit and how he was going to take back America. To get a good idea about how this all played with the masses, read the comments at Tim Blair, in of all places....Australia. Good by Howie.

Visitor from down under....

Thanks to Slatts! from Geelong Australia for stopping by the the webcam this evening. Slatts! was treated to some exciting action of me personally sitting in my personal chair doing nothing. I think that the cost of the webcam has been vindicated by this cross cultural exchange. As he said in his email while viewing....."I'm glad to know the back of your neck is not red".

Slatts!, or Bernard Slattery as he is known to his wife, is the astute newpaperman who introduced me to my personal sister city of Coober Pedy, Australia. Which brings to mind a rather striking coincidence I had several weeks ago. Two people whom I know from Midland have recently been to Coober Pedy. The first was a close friend of Julie's whom we had dinner with on News Years Eve. He mentioned that he frequently visits "down under" and I, of course, brought up my relationship with Gary and the good folks in Coober Pedy. His eyes lit up when he announced that he had been there several times and except for getting into a fight at a bar within four hours of his arrival there.....he really loves the place. He commented that the folks and ambience there reminded him of West Texas, which is the very thought that I had when I named CP as my sister city. My hunch was correct as it turned out.

Just days after I had this encounter, I was meeting friends at The Gnu Coffee Shop in downtown Midland where I know the owner John. John has been traveling a lot in the last year, and sends postcards to his employees and patrons as he travels. As I was glancing over his latest batch, I noticed a recent one from Coober Pedy. Turns out John is touring Australia and had spent several days there. I hope he didn't get into a fight.....he's not a very big guy. I look forward to his return to catch up on the news from Coober Pedy. Gary, the editor of the online Coober Pedy News has been stymied of late in his access to the news.

This and that.....

I know that secretly some friends of mine chide my foolishness for having a WebCam. Fair enough, it is not a necessity of life by any means. But I like photography and sometimes I do new things in the digital realm just for the challenge and thrill of seeing if I can accomplish the task. Besides, we at home on Bedford Drive have fun with it, so we deem it worthwhile. But now, for the naysayers, comes word that a woman's webcam has saved her life. Kicked by her horse and incapacitated, Bev Holzrichter of Iowa credits her webcam viewers with helping her to receive assistance.

So, if you are a viewer of our webcam, The Bedford Cam© and you see me fall out of my chair in my underwear and hit my head [not to be confused with sleeping at the desk], please feel free to call for help. Now I remember why we got it. It's a medical response device.

*********************

And this in from the Associated Press:
(AP) -- "White men still dominate university professorships at the nation's top science and engineering schools, even where many of the doctoral students are women and minorities, according to the results of a survey released Thursday".

While I'm sure this release is designed to make liberals and minorities seeth with indignation, my thought is that this could mean that women and minorities are smarter than white men. In my experience top engineering and science workplace jobs pay one whole enchilada more than smarmy professorships. Just a thought.

Howard Dean leads the band....

Mr. Dean's Opus...

I don't normally comment directly on things political for several reasons. First, there are people, many people, on the web who do it more effectively than I do and, quite frankly, I get tired of reading about it. However after watching and reading about the campaign of one Mr. Howard Dean, I could no longer hold back from an essay on the subject. The more I see of the man, the more I am struck by one thing.

Mr. Dean is the long lost, and given up for dead, brother of actor Richard Dreyfuss. Not only is the physical similarity striking, but the characteristics and mannerisms of his personna are straight from the Dreyfuss mold. Dreyfuss's stock in trade as an actor is playing the kind of character that immature women find adorable. The bumbling numbnuts who is well intentioned but because of his ineptitude is always held back from being a real success until the end of the film when he accepts who he is and finds limited happiness in that. He plays with distinction the smarmy misunderstood nice guy who gets trampled on by more "type A" personalities. The man for the thinking people of the world, who just don't quite have the skills nor ability to influence things themselves.

And so it is with Howard Dean. His missteps in coherent speech, his quoting of bogus facts, his self acknowledged expertise in such areas as the Bible and national defense, all could be Oscar roles for Dreyfuss. He presents himself as the little guy fighting the system, Mr. Holland trying to give you, the common man, a little bit of his learning. He's smarter than you, he knows what you need. If I were to see Howard Dean on the street, a pudgy little strutting bantam rooster in a short sleeve shirt and tie, I would think........"Band Director". Not that I have anything against band directors, but I don't think I want one to be our President in these slippery times.

Ah Wilderness.....

Mountain lions are running amok! Beware mountain lions. Run, as fast as your legs will carry you, there are wild animals out in the ah.....well wild.

The news media has another story of mayhem among us. I've seen mountain lion attack survivors interviewed, mountain lion rescuers interviewed, mountain lion experts interviewed. The talking heads talk with a tsk, tsk atitude. "While bike riding in the Wilderness area, Joe Q. Public, actually encountered a wild animal." How could this happen? Wild animals in the actual wild attacking poor innocent humans. Something must be done. Now unfortunately, I suppose, a vast majority of the new urban America didn't have a clue that mountain lions, coyotes, woodchucks and the like actually exist in close proximity to humans. They do, and not necessarily by the animals choice. We keep building in their habitat and pushing into their natural territory. What do we expect? Especially in California where in the area of the "incident" a goodly part of their natural territory was burned to the ground partly through human inattention.

In Texas the mountain lion population increase has actually been a success story. Hunted to near extinction, the Sonoran Desert version of the lion is slowly starting to repopulate the Big Bend and Davis Mountain regions of the state. After much hard work I might add. And what threat do they present? One study showed that from 1890 to 1990, there were 11 known mortalities by mountain lions in the United States and Canada combined. I dare say that there are that many traffic deaths in Los Angeles a day.

Much like the "sharks are coming" media frenzy of several summers ago, the mountain lion frenzy is utter nonsense. Just another news event about nothing. I'm sorry for the bikers injuries, but if you want to get the "wilderness experience" on your bike.....be ready for it all.

And in another of my five decades of photography series....here's a close encounter wilderness experience of my own:

Yellowstone Bear, 1963

Previous:
Mesa Verde #1
Mesa Verde #2

More pathetic moaning.....

I know that if you were here, you would ask me how I'm doing today. Since you're not, I'll just tell you. I'm doing just several steps above wretched.

Having continuing sinus problems due to our climate here, it is particularly gauling to have the further and added discomfort of a cold. This too shall pass, but let me describe how I would prefer to spend the weekend. It would be in an oxygen tent hooked up to a strong drip IV antibiotic, laced with morphine. Morphine being named after the the god Morpheus, the god of sleep. I'd like to be knocked out for several days, waking up cured of the cold and sinus infection and completely rested. Instead..... I'll be getting up at 7:30 A.M. to go to young Jack's first church league basketball game of the year. And may a pox fall on the house of the person who scheduled a church league basketball game at 8:30 on a Saturday morning.

Pathetic update...

Updates to this digital space have been few and far between lately. And the news today is pathetic and half hearted. I have excuses for my sloth however, very valid excuses. For one I, once again, have some sort of respiratory distress, better known as a cold. My second one this year, or rather within a year since we just started 2004. Colds in my life have been few and far between and two within a year is unheard of. I blame it on my deteriorating sinuses, dust in West Texas, noxious fumes from Mexico and probably global warming. Cold's render my brain into a fog, even more so than at most times. I have trouble getting started on things, and in fact, have problems delving into the deep thinking required to write something of interest.

My other excuses include, "hey.....I'm married now and I have family responsibilities" and "I've become addicted to PlayStation2© Formula One Gran Prix Racing". Don't bad mouth me for this. If you are a guy, you too would become addicted to PS2 Gran Prix Racing if you had it; if you are a woman just compare it to shopping. The thrill of it will capture you. I've always loved auto racing, and some people know that in my prior, younger life I actually went for a week to the Bob Bondurant Racing School in California where I learned the basic skills of auto racing. I won't dwell on this, but I have to tell you that PS2 Gran Prix Racing brings back the thrills. It is very realistic and requires some skill and practice. Now all I need is a good "racing wheel" that is compatible with PS2. The one I bought is junk. If you or the geek in your life knows of a good car racing wheel controller please let me know....I'll be in your debt.

In other digital news, the WebCam is up and functioning well, although coverage of the household activities is spotty. There have been some great moments of the Big Gold Dog sleeping and if you time it right in the evening, you'll see the bride or me at the keyboard. And for those interested I've got some pictures of The Big Wedding up at: Wedding Photos

Live action webcam......!

You asked for it and now you have it, live action from the headquarters of Streams. I finally got my Christmas "toy" from Julie configured today. The webcam is now running, providing you with the ultimate in reality based media entertainment. You'll see dramatic shots from our office, the hallway behind the office and the view up and down Bedford Drive. Inside you'll see Pancho, Julie, Jack and Tres with occasional appearances by Daphne, the outdoors dog. Outside, you'll see crazed speeding teenagers, crazed speeding 30's something women in their SUV's, dramatic weather shots and squirrels scratching at the windows.

The images are set to update every 30 seconds when the camera is on. We have yet to set a schedule and I'm not sure whether we will leave it on all day, so for now, you're best bet to catch some real action is probably during the evening hours of say.....8 p.m. till 11 p.m CST. And as a real treat, I'll soon be testing out the live "streaming" video capabilities of the system. Perhaps we'll have a news conference soon.

For the Geeks in the crowd, the hardware is a Logitech Pro 4000 camera system with their Image Studio software. The server pull software is by WebCam32 and the reloading capability on the website is via a Java Script I generated with Team Anfy software. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised that when I put it all together it worked like a champ the first time up. I recommend the Logitech camera.....the pictures are, I think, good as compared to other PC webcams I've seen, and it also takes great AVI formatted movies. The WebCam32 software is a snap to use, and has many cool features that I have not yet utilized. Like streaming video. I can't wait. Hope you'll visit us often at: The Bedford Cam

Mr. and Mrs.......

We are now Mr. and Mrs. And what a special day it was! The wedding service, mostly planned and arranged by Julie, was remarkably lovely. Ring bearer and Best Man, Jack, did a great job, I did not faint and Julie at the altar alternated between choking back a tear and a chuckle. Jack, Julie and I kept glancing at each other and grinning like cheshire cats. The woodwind trio was truly exquisite both during the service and at the reception. A wide circle of family and friends gathered to show their support. It just could not have been any better. I am blessed.

WebCam

The Perfect Christmas.....

If not the perfect Christmas, it was the very best one I've had in decades! Early morning present opening with a 10 year old and his grandparents, Christmas dinner with two sets of grandparents, lazy evening with just Julie, Jack and me, and all at our house. No running hither and yon to different activities at seperate locales. Christmas dinner was simple yet elegant and I'm very lucky to be marrying someone who has superior entertaining, culinary and organizational skills.

The gifts to all were not large but very well received and liked. Most went to 10 year old Jack of course. He received several PlayStation2 games [ones I like too......] some football equipment, clothes, and my surprise gift to him [and his dead eye Mom], a genuine Daisy Red Ryder BB gun**. I received some needed articles of clothing, a great DVD biography of Ansel Adams and becaused I whinned that I wasn't receiving any "toys" in the wedding gifts, the beautiful Julie surprised me with a WebCam, something I probably wouldn't have ever bought for myself. As of now it's installed on her powerful newer computer that will not be hooked up to the Web for another week or so. But when it is; watch out. We plan on live shots from the estate and even live interactive broadcasts.

It was a beautiful Christmas. So nice to have a beautiful bride to be and a great step son to be here with me!

**Warning: You may shoot your eye out.

Seven days and counting......

Not long now till I'll be a happily married man! Seven days and a wake up as we termed it in the army. We are making good progress about tending to all the neccesities including, the marriage license. I'm glad that Julie remembered it, it's rather important and in all the hubbub it was a thought very far back in my mind. If we had not gotten it today or tomorrow, our marriage would be in legal trouble. After tomorrow the good employees of the courthouse are not working for the rest of the week and in Texas the paper work has to be completed 72 hours in advance of the nuptuals which are Tuesday next.

But comply with the law we did. A rather good natured experience really.....once we got beyond courthouse security. The first thing that I noticed on the list of "services" in the county clerks office was that I could get a cattle brand registered while I was there, and also purchase an assumed name [I seriously thought about that]. I think that I'm getting a great deal though. A cattle brand costs $16 to register......to get a wife is only $27 more. And to have someone as sweet, beautiful and loving as the bride-to-be is definetly worth the money.

We filled out the forms, pledged that we were not married to any others, were not divorced in the last 30 days and were of legal age and we were done. An interesting thing in Midland County is that most services such as cattle brands, assumed names and the like can be purchased with a check, whereas marriage is a "cash and carry" commodity. When the county clerk presented me with a receipt for my $42 cash marriage purchase I asked her if I needed to save the receipt in case I wanted a refund. Without looking up, she said....No Refunds. Of course I was joking......no refund will be needed. Julie is as good as it gets, end of story!

PS: for our $42 cash purchase we got a really great looking certificate with a genuine embossed gold seal! Marriage is thought highly of in Midland County.

The Wright Stuff.....

It was exactly 100 years ago today that the world changed dramatically courtesy of the Wright Brothers, Wilbur and Orville. For most of us over the years, the brothers seemed like two bicycle mechanics who got lucky with their amateur tinkering. As I've learned over the last several years, nothing could be further from the truth.

The Wrights were serious amateur scientists who were voracious readers. Not only did they "invent" the first succesful aircraft, in fact they invented the science of aeronautical engineering. They constructed the first workable wind tunnel that measured lift and drag which led to throwing out all previous work on wing design. Finding that translating naval propellers into useable aircraft propellers did not work, they designed the first aviation airscrew with the dimensions mimicking the wing shape.

It is stunning to consider the progression of aviation after 1903. Just 12 short years after the "first flight", aircraft had progressed to the point of usefulness in the military. 24 years after Kitty Hawk, Charles Lindbergh flew non-stop across the Atlantic. By 30 years hence, commercial aviation was in full bloom and just 36 years after man first left the ground, Hitler overran all of Europe with a massive airforce. All except England, which was saved by aircraft. 44 years into manned flight and Chuck Yeager flew faster than the speed sound and 66 years after, man landed on the moon. My Grandmother was 5 years old in 1903 and remembered the event......her grandson, my brother, helped design the space shuttle.

Aircraft and aviation has changed the world as much as any one single invention, both for the good and the not so good, but the pace of aerospace development signaled a new way of living, not only in the air but in every facet of our lives.

And I have to think that it was a good thing the Wright's developed their aircraft in the time period they did. It couldn't happen today. Government regulations would prevent such a thing. Think about it.

OSHA would have shut their shop down for safety violations. The EPA would have filed suit to prevent the pollution caused by their homemade engine, and for the destruction of coastal wetlands on the beach at Kitty Hawk. The IRS would have required advanced tax payment on the future earnings from their invention. Leftist PhD's would have filed lawsuits saying that, obviously, two bike mechanics lacking a college education could not have come up with this own their own....it was an idea stolen from some more educated man.

All I can say today is, "Thanks Orville and Wilbur", not only did you prove flight could work, you proved that through reading, study, and hard work anything is possible.

Mucho Dinar-o.....

As reported earlier, good buddy Joe Galloway was recently on a news fact finding trip to points East, the Mid East that is....including Baghdad. I had asked him to bring me a souvenir, such as perhaps an "I Searched for WMD and all I got was this stupid T-shirt", T-shirt. Or maybe a "Lion of Mesopotamia" gimme hat. But Joe did much better than I had hoped for. Knowing me, he sent cold hard cash. The 25 dinar "Bank of Iraq" note pictured above was enclosed with a letter from Joe informing me that this cash donation was both souvenir and wedding present and not to spend it all in one place.

But now my dreams are shattered, my illusions of war looted riches have been squelched today. I read some disturbing financial news on Omar's Iraq the Model. Omar say's, "The exchange price of the Iraqi Dinar improves a little more from 1750 dinar for each U.S. dollar to 1700 Iraqi Dinar for each U.S. dollar". Firing up my $3 [U.S.] calculator I found that at this new exhange rate, my precious 25 dinar note is worth the total magnificent sum of 1.5 cents. I'd be way short even trying to buy a $3 [U.S.] calculator with the note.

But the letter with the Bank of Iraq 25 dinar note arrived the day after Saddam was nabbed, so it does certainly have some historical significance. And I'll be able to follow Joe's advice about not spending it all in one place. No one place will take it.

'A dark era is over'.......

'A dark era is over', when I saw that headline on CNN, I thought that surely they were talking about my experience of the last week. Moving Julie's household out of her old residence and into the new. But no! The good news was that Saddam had been captured at last. There is indeed glorious news today. Saddam behind bars, and I'm through moving.

But as the picture above shows, Saddam's experience and mine were apparently very similar.....making us into haggard disheveled old men, downtrodden by our circumstances, defeated and lacking the will to go on. However while Saddam hopefully will be drowned in a vat of acid, or chopped up in a tree grinder, or maybe burned at the stake, I will recover and be living with a beautiful blonde. Ain't democracy and freedom great!

Reports from the front.....

As recently mentioned, my good friend Joe Galloway made a trip to Iraq to gain some insight into the current state of affairs from the military point of view. Joe has a few stories posted with some interesting comments. Such as.....

"Lt. Col. Chuck Williams of Sterling, Va., the commander of the 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Armored Division, and his troopers are still shaking their heads over a recent incident at a Bradley target range they built out in the desert to keep their gunners sharp.

A troop of Bradleys was out firing on the range when over a small hill came trotting 20 lightly-armed guerrillas who inexplicably had decided to attack the American armored vehicles with their 25mm chain guns and machine guns. The gunners simply switched targets and blew away the guerillas in the blink of an eye".

Read more at: The many faces of war

While in Qatar, Joe had a chance to sit down with the CENTCOM Commander, Gen. John Abizaid. Read Joes interview at: U.S. general reaching out to Sunni minority

A long time ago......

We are getting married in less than three weeks. In a word I'm busier than a no arm paper hanger. The preceeding is a euphemism and not intended to demean no armed paperhangers.

While we're working our tails off moving, cleaning, planning and going half crazy, sit back, relax and enjoy another image from 40 years ago. This is another view of Mesa Verde, Colorado taken in 1963. I guess the Anasazi had a hard time with moving also....what with carrying furniture up the cliff face on wooden ladders.

Image of Mesa Verde, Colorado

A relationship mirrored........

Shortly before I met Julie, my interest in photography led me to The Mirror Project "a growing community of like-minded individuals who have photographed themselves in all manner of reflective surfaces". A quirky photo site owned by Heather Champ in San Francisco the Mirror Project has become immensely popular across the globe and it is now approaching 20,000 posted photos. After Julie and I became an "item" she also got interested in this manner of photographic expression and since then both individually and together we have continued to send in photos of our activities taken in all manner of reflective surfaces from train windows to broken mirrors, front doors, art and cooking pot lids. In effect we have chronicled our time together on the Mirror Project.

Apparently Heather noticed this too for today, after posting a picture of Julie and me with mention of the wedding, I received a nice online card personally done by her. Heather works hard to make the Mirror Project a success and fun for all involved. Like all my online friends, I hope we can meet her sometime soon in San Francisco. We'd like to buy her dinner for all her hard work and for the photo entertainment she's brought to us and others around the world.

[all our photos can be seen by using the "search" function on the Mirror Project website: keywords Wallace or Julie].
Take a look at.........

Heather's wedding wishes card

Five Decades of Images....

It has occured to me from time to time while reviewing thousands of photos I have taken and stored in digital format, and while organizing the many more thousands I have in printed form....that I have been shooting photographic images for over five decades now. I intend to do a retrospective on a web gallery soon, but time is lacking at the present.

While going through an album of my early mementoes with Julie the other night, I came across some of my earliest photos. So from time to time I'll share a few of these with you. The first is an image taken with the first camera I remember owning....the time honored Kodak Brownie which shot in 135mm. format producing square prints. This shot was taken on a family vacation, driving from Midland Texas to the Seattle World's Fair in 1963. The shot is of the ancient Anasazi Indian cliff dwelling at Mesa Verde, Colorado. I was 13 y.o. at the time.

Five Decades of Images

New Tile and a second surprise.....

If you remember this story from last Wednesday you will recall that I thought that it was a great coincidence that the guy who came to install our new carpet was a graduate of the drug and alcohol rehabilitation program that I used to help run. Today we had our new tile installed in the hallways and guest bathroom. How much of a coincidence would it be to have the tile installer also be a graduate of the very same program?

A great coincidence, but it happened. Actually more than coincidence, for I believe that these things happen for a reason. Our chore is to try and figure out that reason. Am I being rewarded for a job well done years ago? Did these guys need help in their business or personal life and were brought to me for some sage advice or as a reminder of what their past was like? Do I need some reminder of what my past was like? I don't know, but as we say, more will be revealed later, I just hope that I'm smart enought to see it.

Randy, the tile installer, is doing quite well, owning his own remodeling business, with a family, a large house and has been clean and sober for almost nine years. He also had three young employees with him for our job, and he made the point of telling me that they are all drug and alcohol free also. Tattooed and piereced, but drug free. Maybe that's my reward. Seeing young men working for someone who will mentor them and help them avoid the pitfall of bad choices that we made. Or maybe I just needed to be reminded not to be to critical of the younger generation tattoo's and all. For I have to admit, the two 20 something young men who worked on our floors were two of the hardest working individuals I've seen in quite some time. They started at 11 A.M. and worked constantly until 10 P.M. taking only about 10 minutes to eat the lunch we went and got for them. One of them made the remark that he didn't want to quit until the job was done right.......and I believe him.

Me healthy? I can't remember...

Although a glass of wine or a mixed drink may be good for your cardiovascular system, a new study suggests that by the time moderate drinkers reach middle age, they may not remember if they are healthy or not.

The American Heart Association's long term study on low to moderate level imbibers showed an increase in brain atrophy in that group by the time they reached middle age. Atrophy as in brain shrinkage and loss of the use of portions of your noggin. Thank God I gave up drinking 10 years ago, although by the time I did certainly my brain had atrophied into negative territory. At least now though, I can smile whenever I see a moderate drinker friend give me that condescending little smirk when they say, "oh a glass of wine is good for me".

New carpet and a pleasant surprise...

The very effiecient Jon at Lowes had us scheduled for our carpet installation today at 9 o'clock this morning. I was disappointed as they arrived at 9:09. Actually I was pleasantly surprised. I've had scheduled appointments with tradesmen who showed up 4 or 5 hours late, without calling, as if the customer had nothing else to do but sit at home for half a day.....I won't mention names but does a cable company with Cox in their name ring a bell?

The pleasant surprise was not that the installation guys were on time but that the face at the door was a familiar one. It was one of those TV sitcom kind of recognitions, not instantaneous, but the kind that take several seconds and then the light bulb appears over your head. And without thinking I actually uttered a sitcom line, "hey I know you". John [named changed] said, "yes you surely do".

I knew John almost 8 years ago when, for a three year period, I was a drug and alcohol counselor working mainly with convicted felons. The people in our program had felony convictions involving drugs and/or alcohol and our program was their last chance to try and straighten out their lives through sobriety before they were carted off to the "bighouse" down at Huntsville. If they completed our 6 month program, they would be put on parole without being further incarcerated. Our program was a half-way house arrangement after these folks had already completed a lockup style 6 months of intensive drug treatment and "re-education" called SAFP, short for Substance Abuse Felonly Punishment.

John was one of the many who made it. I had not seen him since he graduated from our program, but I add him to my list of those I have seen over the years who are doing well. Instead of becoming a statistic of continuing criminal activity, John turned his life around and now owns his own flooring business with five employees. And...they did a great job and were in and out of the house within a half an hour.

Having "been there and done that" with substance abuse, SAFP was an initiative of Governor Ann Richards. It works, I'm proud to have had a part in it, and my Christmas season will be a little brighter knowing that one more person is doing well and won't be spending the holiday season in a cell.

The Retail trade.....

If at all possible I like to support our local small businesses who are in competition with the megastores that proliferate in the retail landscape today. I think that, especially in a smaller city such as ours, it is hard for the locally owned stores to compete against the Wal-Marts, Home Depots and the Lowes of the world.

We have been planning to redo some of the flooring in the estate in advance of the upcoming nuptials, so when I saw an ad last week from a local flooring company saying that, "The holiday season is the best time to get the best prices and quickest service for all your flooring needs".....I thought, that suits our plans just fine! So off to the local merchant I went and saw some samples that would work in our home. I told the salesman that I'd fetch the bride-to-be back and we'd make a decision. This was on Tuesday. We are working with a very quick timeframe but with Thanksgiving the earliest we could return to the store was Friday, which we did. Only to find a sign that read, "Closed for the holidays, back on Monday"! Back on Monday? Don't they know that "Black Friday" following Thanksgiving is the biggest carpet and tile purchasing day of the year.

So, off to Lowe's, the megastore competition, we went where we found a very suitable carpet for 1/3rd the price of the local store [with free pad], a tile that we liked, and Jon, a salesman who worked his tail off for us. Upon hearing of our time dilemma, he suggested the carpet that we ended up buying as it was in stock and could be installed quickly. This was on Friday, and today the carpet and tile installers have already been out to measure for the job. As I was waiting for the tile man to arrive, the phone rang. It was Jon checking with me to make sure his tradesmen had been there. Now that's service!

The point of this short story is that, at least to me, service is still king, whether you are a local company or the national megastore. When you're competing for business, closing your store for five days just doesn't cut it. Quite honestly, I'm not much of a shopper arounder, and if the local store had been open on Friday, I would have probably bought their carpet and tile if they had treated me like Jon did. I wish the local merchants would learn this lesson, either that or stop complaining about the national chains. This lack of consumer awareness is a bad habit in this town.

For my large format digital image printing I have been using a big firm in Dallas to which I FTP my images. I have been trying to use a local imaging firm here for several years. I have suggested that they set up an FTP portal on their server. Not a hard thing to do, but it has not been done yet. And last year in December I finally loaded some smaller images on disks to give them a chance to print these. When I arrived at the store the sign read....."Closed two weeks for Christmas". Two stinkin' weeks? I haven't been back since.

Dispatches from Iraq update: war news must be slow in Qatar where Galloway is today. The only communique I received from Joe were two jokes, which cannot be reprinted here. More later.....