ROBERT'S 80TH BD PARTY

We drove to Antlers Saturday for a surprise birthday party for my brother, Robert, 80th birthday. We left early and stopped at Waffle House in Gainesville for breakfast. Interesting place run by a tight fisted owner who limited the number of jelly packages on the table and only had one waffle maker running so I had to wait for a while on the waffle. Restrooms had no towels but a stack of napkins to dry your hands.

On the way into Antlers we stopped at the cemetery to find my dad and mother's tombstone and were fortunate when Nancy spotted it. We offered a prayer for them and their descendants. We then found the Church of Christ after showing Nancy where we were living when WWII broke out.

Tommie brought Robert to a truly surprise party. He refused to get out of the car and his kids had to go out and bring him in. Had most of his family there  including his daughter Elizabeth and her daughters Nicole (who reads this blog) and Bryce who is living with Robert and Tommie, granddaughter Ricci, grandson Cody with his four sons, as well as his son Bobby and his new wife, plus a number of Antlers residents. I got to visit with one of the graduates of my class of '44 who brought me up to date on who are left. Not many. Several have died in the last year.

Robert's birthday cake had 80 candles. It was a two tiered cake with candles on the top and around the lower tier, but he was able to huff and puff and blow them all out. We then had the professional photographer take a lot of family group photos. One of all the Rodenberger boys had Robert, me, my son Mark, Robert's son, Bobby, his son Cody and four of Cody's sons. Quite a good-looking crew. More photos were taken across the street at the Brantley grade school building where Robert had gone one year when we lived in Antlers in '40-'41 and where Robert's children had gone to school.

It was a great party and we drove back getting home at 8. A long but satisfying day.

TEXAS BOOK FESTIVAL

We drove to Austin Saturday. Stopped for a break in Crawford and the store had no George W. Bush memorabilia for sale. We were surprised because just a few years ago it was filled with items.
Parking at the TBF was impossible. We got there about 12:30 and spent 30 minutes looking. We finally parked at Colorado and 17th street. But it was a beautiful day to walk. We started at the Capitol building where we ate at the Capitol Grill.
We then went to the tents starting with Tent #1 that held the Western Writers of America with Candy Moulton and her husband holding the fort. He told me that they left 8" of snow on the ground and he had justed talked to his daughter on the phone and it was -7 degrees. We continued to walk through the exhibition tents. Most of the usual exhibitors were there except Shearer Publishing. They did have a place on the program with the Italian author of the Tuscany Cookbook flying in for the program. Kathy was there but I missed the program.

Rollo Newsome, Charles and Kay Arnold at the TFS booth.

The exhibit tents this year went all the way down Congress Avenue to 8th street. We walked back up past the Capitol looking at the new statues and memorials. We had our photo taken by a friendly onlooker at the TBF post and Nancy took my photo at the WWII memorial.

2012 LORD'S ACRE

We celebrated the Cross Plains FUMC Lord's Acre along with Sue's birthday on November 10. We got to visit with many friends. We contributed a Mink jacket that we had purchased in Granbury with the supposed history of being a gift from the estate of a Methodist minister whose children donated it for a fund raiser and after going thru three churches came to Granbury. I was able to make the high bid on it at CP and gave it to Sue as a BD present.

On Sunday we attended our old SS class to read the first 4 chapters of Amos. The class has new members and a few who have stayed for the two year journey through the Bible. A few more lessons and they will be through the Old Testament and into Matthew. Nancy and I have been reading the lessons along with the class and even got a lesson ahead we found. We enjoyed attending the church service and I stood with the other veterans recognized on veteran's day.

God was with us driving back Sunday. On the narrow road between Sipe Springs and DeLeon a truck indicating a wide load came toward us. I didn't slow like I should and topped a hill to find a pickup that was stopped in our lane with a car pulled off to the right in front. I couldn't stop and went around both cars to pull off on the right side of the road in time to miss the wide Double-wide coming toward us taking up most of our lane as well as the other side. God was with us. It could have been a real disaster if the wide load had been closer. At 70 mph it is impossible to stop short. We are blessed and I need to be more aware of warning signals in the future.

STATE FAIR WITH SUE

Last year when Sue was taking chemo and radiation for her cancer, we promised her we would take her to the State Fair to celebrate her recovery. She came in Wednesday night so that we could go to the Fair on Thursday when seniors get in free. Of course parking was $15.
We drove thru misty rain all the way there with forecasts of 20% for rain. It stopped as we got there and started sprinkling as we left at 5:30. We enjoyed walking through the Creative Arts building and by 1 were getting hungry. I had promised myself to have a Fletcher's corny dog but the lines were 100 people long so we went into the Food court and I had mini corn dogs. Nancy had to have her funnel cake. 
We went to the Bird Show that was new to me. It is amazing how they can train wild birds to fly from the Ferris wheel down to the stage close to the audience heads.
Like last year we went to the Marine Drum and Bugle Corps concert.

Marine Gunnery Sgt Major is the drum major and told about the year's activities by the Corps. He asked the audience to like the Corps on Facebook and to post his photo.
This year after the concert we rode the arial Tram back to the parking lot. We had a great day getting our walking exercise in.

THE PROMISE AND BOOK FESTIVAL

We had an active weekend. Friday night was perfect for going to Glen Rose to see The Promise. One of the Waples UMC members is a member of the cast. The play is a local production by hundreds that portrays Christ's life from birth to ascension. The huge outdoor stage has a "river" in the front that starts the play as the Paluxy river in Glen Rose with two children looking for dinosaur tracks with their grandfather who then tells them the story of The Promise starting with Mary riding a donkey going to Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus, the wise men with outstanding costumes  delivering the gifts from camels. The play takes a couple of hours and has beautiful scenery. Lazarus is revived. The river becomes the Jordan with John baptizing (by immersion), has the fishing boat for recruiting the disciples and the scene where Christ stills the storm. The scene where the Devil tempts Christ in the desert has unexpected scenes where they disappear in a flash at ground level and appear unexpectedly on top of a very tall column then back on ground level after another flash. The play ends with Christ being ascended to heaven in a dramatic fashion. The audience had several large groups that came in buses from churches, mostly Baptist, but one large contingent were United Methodists from Ardmore, OK.

Then Saturday we went to the lunch at the Abilene West Texas Book Festival where Jon Erickson was presented the A. C. Greene award. He is known for his books on Hank, the Cowdog. He has sold 8 million copies of his self published books, self published to maintain his integrity and philosophy. I know him because he published a book on the modern cowboy that was updated in a second edition where he added a chapter on the cowboy's newspaper The Livestock Weekly where he mentioned my column.

Then Monday night we presented papers for critiques at the Writer's Bloc in Granbury and got good comments to help us.

PIONEER STATUE TO TWU

Yesterday Nancy and I took the Juan Dell statue of Pioneer Woman of the West to give to the TWU Library Lou Rodenberger Collection. They put the statue on a display table in the reading room in the back of the collection. We looked at the new display for Lou that they change every so often. They changed it on September 14 in advance of her birthday on September 21.
They took photos but I haven't received any yet to post.

I bought the statue at an art studio in Santa Fe NM in 1982 for $1500 and had it shipped to Lou at our new Abilene address. This was when I retired from A&M and had a lot of money for one month, drawing accumulated leave pay from A&M and also working as a consultant for General Dynamics in Fort Worth. We had looked at it sometime before and admired it because the artist was from Hockley County. She was from Littlefield and we were married in Levelland which is just south of there. She has many fine bronze statues of western themes. This one is of a pioneer woman holding a rifle in her right hand and using her left hand to put two children in hiding in a tree trunk. We liked it a lot.

BLESSINGS OF RAIN

The Lord has blessed us with rain. Yesterday we had over 1" in about two hours starting at 10 a.m. Last night we had another .08". And the temperature is now Fall like and very pleasant. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get jumper cables to the pickup parked in the pole barn. The battery is dead this morning.

CHOCOLATE BIRTHDAY

I really celebrated my 86th birthday with chocolate. Nancy made chocolate muffins for lunch. Mark took us to Mi Cocina in Fort Worth where I had the Asada Pollo con Mole (mole is a Mexican chocolate sauce) and Mark had the enchilada with mole. Then Kathryn served her famous chocolate cake with candles for me to blow out. They brought their 18 month old granddaughter who bumped over into Mark's mole sauce and had it on her nose. We failed to get a photo of that but it added to the evening.
Monday Bobbe and Yvonne bought us breakfast and gave me a bag of dark chocolate goodies, so I have really celebrated a chocolate birthday!

HEALTHY REPORT

I had my six month physical last week and they called with the blood work yesterday. I am amazingly healthy. My testosterone is up due to Androgel and my chloresterol and trigylcerides are down to normal. This is all due to the great diet that Nancy provides. I think that it help for breakfast to eat fiber in cereal, and to add milled flax seeed, prunes, dates, blueberries, raisins, dried cranberries, and fresh bananas with milk. I add honey and cinnamon and have been drinking special silver-tipped tea leaves that a friend gave us. I add mint from the pot in the front yard for flavor.
I am short on exercise. When it cools off I promise that I will walk more. I have put my chinning bar up and do a few pull-ups now. I don't pull my feet off the floor but do pick up a few pounds of my body. The doctor found that my weight and blood pressure were unchanged also. The dentist office checked my blood pressure before giving me anesthesia and measured it way low using a wrist device. The doctor said that those devices were not to be trusted, but I liked the idea of lower BP. So now with my teeth being super cleaned every time I eat with brushes in place of floss and rinsing with Listerine I should be healthy until another birthday!

POLITICAL CONVENTIONS

We watched to Republican convention and are watching the Democratic convention on CSpan. It was interesting how the Republicans invoked God as being in charge of our nation and that our nation was founded on that precept. Almost every speaker affirmed that belief. Today I watched the opening of the Democratic convention after commentators had observed that the Democrats had left God out of their platform for the first time in history. As they started today's program a Methodist minister offered two amendments to the platform. One accepted God and the other accepted Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. To be accepted for vote required a 2/3 majority. They got that. Then when they voted the chair asked for the vote at least three times and in my opinion half voted No but he gaveled the vote as Yeah. I was surprised that so many of the delegates objected to God in their platform.

It is interesting that the Democrats focus only on government programs as the answer to our problems. They don't mention how they will reduce the deficit or spending. They want to continue all spending and want to pay for it with tax increases. Taxes are paid by those who make a profit and we need more profit in our economy.

They are discussing the energy policies and point how how wind energy has generated 75,000 jobs. Of course the oil companies employ millions of people and are expanding where the goverment will let them drill. One speaker said Obama would support all forms of energy but failed to mention coal. We have enough coal for 200 years of electrical production but due to our fear of carbon dioxide, that provides food for plants, would cause global warming we are shutting coal use. Fortunately gas is now abundant and will provide electricity with less CO2.

Of course nuclear power generates no CO2 but the fear of radiation from a nuclear power plant drives the price way up even though we walk outside in the Sun that is a nuclear power plant and radiates the earth continually. My skin doctor insists I wear a hat outside.

Wired magazine had a great article about Amageddon scenarios that we have had since the DDT scare and how none of the warnings of starvation, cooling or heating of the planet, global warning or viral infections have come true. In every case our invention capabilities and new technologies have always saved us from the catastrophic predictions. I have always argued that we cannot predict technological innovations. But there is always someone who is predicting the end of the world including me. But I know that we will not know the day and it will be a day we least expect when Christ returns for a new earth and new life.

I am reading DECISION POINTS by George W. Bush. It is interesting to read all of the tough decisions he had to make and how he relied on his study of the Bible and advice from preachers as he made his decisions. I am up to the really hard decisions he made about sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. He suffered when any person was killed in war and wrote personal letters to each family during his time in office. President Obama has continued that tradition.

I finished the book SHIP OF GOLD IN THE DEEP BLUE SEA that told the story of applying modern technology to recover the gold treasure that was on a ship delivering gold from San Francisco to New York a few years after the gold rush in California. The ship had been on the bottom at 8000 feet depth for 136 years and the wood and metal parts had largely disintegrated but the inventor and engineers developed new and unusual machines that would work at that depth and recover the gold coins, dust and bars. They found that if the coins and bars were free from blemishes they are much more valuable, so they developed a method of pouring plastic on the gold and removing it without any scratches from the recovery tools. They are still carefully recovering from the wreck today. The book is largely about invention and engineering work. I appreciated Carol Walt telling me about the book. I have worked with inventors and related to the problems they had.

CLEANING OUT THE OLD, DREAMING THE NEW

This week the only excuse we had to get out and go past Braums was when we went shopping and routine doctor visits.  It was Charles' week to visit the dentist and have his six month check up with his primary doctor.  His smile looks good and he has his normal bounce in his step.

It was MK's birthday and we sent an ecard.  Snail mail seems so inefficent now.  I think of the pony express and the wonder of receiving a letter even in my lifetime.  During the Second World War our elementray class made Easter pictures for the trays of hospital bound soldiers. We put our names and addresses on the back of the pictures.  I received a few letters of thank you.  I remember one where the boy that was injured had his eyes bandaged.  The doctor came in to take the bandage off just as the breakfast tray, with my art work, arrived.  He shared with me that they didn't know if he would be able to see or not.  The first thing he saw when the bandage was removed was my Easter chicken.  I have his letter yet in my cedar box.  Maybe somewhere there is a picture of a baby chicken folded in a 'keeper' place.

We didn't plan much for the Labor Day week-end.  But, we did have two dates this week, and on Labor Day we dressed up and held hands while we walked through the new mall in downtown Granbury.  There was a large, nice looking, Methodist Church on the square a few years ago.  The church sold the building and moved to a new area north of town.  I could not imagine what they would do with that beautiful old church.  They added a facing to the front, adobe with arches and patio where there is a large event space with portable air coolers, even outside.  The inside is new, modern, glass with lots of modern art featuring heavy layered paint and bright colors and shapes.  They are building a new restaurant that will be finished before Christmas and there are art shops, photo shop, trendy clothes shop, gift and gourmet food shop and THE REPUBLICAL HEADQUARTERS.

We explored there and admired the new restaurant across the street with an outside patio.  Many were enjoying the cooler morning with coffee and conversation.   It was biker week end and the square was lined with parked bikes. in the street and booths inside the court house square.  It is looking pretty spiffy down town.  The court house was renovated in the last few years and the old Opera House is undergoing renovation now.  There are several new restaurants.  Some of the older places are gone or going and some new, trendy ones have arrived.  Changes, Changes.

We were home in time for dinner.  We had planned a special dinner when we shopped for groceries and things turned out well.  We had roast Rock Cornish hen, Coues-Couse with brocolli and cheese, yellow neck squash with tomatoes, pickled beets, and corn on the cob.  Watermellon for dessert had to wait until after our nap.

We shopped one day and did lots of research, and made the choice to get a weed eater that was gas run, but had an electric starter.  Neither of us can pull a cord and our electric 'eater' died this month.  The grass is green and juicy and tall.  One more good mowing and we can slide into winter.  We redid the flower beds and put down red mulch.  It looks neat. 

The rest of the week was dedicated to the linin closet.  Sorry, I'm back in the closet.  Our church is having a rummage sale and we are dragging out the old.  I have some old army blankets that are tough.  Those will go to the night shelter with our coats we don't use.  I predict a cold winter. 

Our new office closet is wonderful.  Somehow the wireless printers went on strike.  Is it possible to have too many wireliess things in the house?  We called my son John and he is checking it out.  He is the best tech service.  When he was teaching, his computer could look at all of the computers in class and he chould check their work and 'fix' things they were working on.  I have the same thing and it is probably not as new as I think.

I found a new recipe for tomato wine.  Anyone heard of that before?

Have a good week.

GREAT SUNDAY

It is wonderful to be at a stage of life where Sunday is a day of rest and visiting with God.  Sunday morning starts with Sunday School with Vikki, a very good teacher.  She is leading us through Ecceliastes.  This is the second time this year and there is still new stuff to discover.  She told us up front that this book was from the view point of, "Under the sun" and told of a view of life without God or rather from living just on earth with out a God view.  Solomon wrote the book when he had experienced a life of having everything (on earth) he wanted and found meaningless in that aspect.  Life without God doesn't seem as much fun after all,

We met more friends in church.  Our meet and greet always seems to take longer than we should.  When the music goes on we have to sit down.  Pastor Al gave his usual great sermon.  He talked on focus, the correct focus.  I don't know how he always knows just what we need to hear.

After church we went to lunch with Al and his wife, Dr. Sue and a friend from Korea, Chuck.  We found long lines everywhere except Charles' favorite resturant, The China House.  We always eat too much there.  Dr. Sue enjoyed the Mongolian Grill where she could avoid gluten.  Chuck is visiting for a long visit from Korea and we enjoyed trying to communicate. 

Later, after lunch we visited Joann from our church and sang while we were there.  Chuck was perfect in his English when he sings.  What a nice way to learn a language.  I must pay more attention to the Choctaw when we visit Oklahoma.  The church had made Joann a prayer pillow to help her after her recent surgery.  The members tie a knot in the strings on the pillow while they say a prayer for her.  It is a nice way to focus on the recipent of the gift from the church while they are down..  Yep, I listened Pastor Al. 

We were ready for our nap, but stopped and washed and vacuumed the car and took it to Fort Worth where we delivered it to the daughter of a friend.  It was hard to leave it as there were lots of memories and good times on trips with that car.  Isn't life wonderful, when we loose we remember and that stays with us forever.

Monday, we slept late and piddled with chores and had a quick lunch at Braum's.  What a good place.  We needed the nap to rest up from our day of rest, but Charles found time to work on his paper about the western writing of Robert E. Howard.  We missed the curtique session Monday night at Writer's Bloc since he didn't finish and we were just plain lazy. 

YA'ALL COME

Ya’all come.  And ya’all did this week.  We missed Jacqui but have been hearing from her as she settles in on her very own Marshall Island. Kwajalein wasn’t ready for her and she has not received her shipment from the US with her ‘stuff’ yet.  She has a loaner bike and is getting around, swimming, and getting ready for school to start.

We have seen family this week.  John and Carol brought their great grandkids, Lexi and Yi-yi from Wales.  They are talking well and have an accent (but only when they are in Texas).  Friends from church joined us for brunch Wednesday.  Quiché and fresh peaches.  The peaches are just right this week.  How many of them can we eat in one week?  Bradferd was here for lunch Thursday; chili realanos , Spanish rice, beans, and peach pie.  Yep, more peaches.  Victoria stopped in after work and finished the left-over’s and the pie.  She is planning a trip to the Dominican Republic this fall and found out there is a malaria problem.  They will have their preventive shots.

Charles spoke to his grand daughter, Vanessa, this afternoon just before she boarded the plane for Africa.  She is on a mission trip to Kenya; serving as a nurse on this trip and will be giving shots too.  I wonder if they are fighting malaria too.  She was excited.

The Methodist church has a mission to erase Malaria so we have been hearing about that.  I hadn’t realized how wide spread the disease is.  Safe trip to all our family as they return home and travel to help others.

We made a trip to town Thursday morning  and looked at things in Lowe’s, but we didn’t measure things first so we will sometime this week.  Charles wants a medicine cabinet in his bathroom.  They have so many to choose from that may work instead of the existing mirror.  I’m thinking of a walk in bathtub, but not just now when I’m recovering from closet fatigue.

Monday and Tuesday we had over four inches of rain.  The tank water level is up a little and things are getting green again.  My weed eater is suffering from fatigue too and is taking a little longer to power up again. 

 Just for fun we stopped by the Boys and Girl’s Club resale center to see when we can leave donations from our closet cleaning.  They have a new facility on 377 and I really wanted to look around but we didn’t have the time just then.  I DO NOT need new furniture, I need to get rid of some.  I get a certain twinge when I realize that furniture I got new is now over the age limit of 50 years to be considered antiques.

As it turned out, when Bradferd was here he told us he was looking for a good chair for his room that he could use for TV (and a little sleeping) and to study.  We did get to the Boys and Girl’s Club and they had a nice chair in good shape.  I did end up getting furniture, but it’s not going into the house.  It’s living in the van until Bradferd can pick it up with his truck.  Charles says he doesn’t miss the fall school start up.

Kathy called and said she was getting her classroom ready, but it smelled of fish.  Now how?

I climbed up to change the light in the hall and Charles went up the ladder tonight to clean out a blocked rain drain gutter on the roof and was so into fixing he went on to use the WD-40 on the squeaky screen door.  My Hero.  He was busy this morning spraying the tall grass at the entry with weed killer.  We decided on a diet and also that it isn’t eating it’s not moving around enough.   He did his today. 

The Folklore Society is having a week end program in March that sounds interesting.  I want to go to Kearney, NE to see the bird migration about the same time.  Just so we don’t think we are running away from chores.

Thanks to all the good company.  We love to have you. 

RACCOON BATTLE CONTINUES

I have lost every battle I have had with raccoons, but I was told that if I used a chain to hold my bird feeder that the raccoons wouldn't walk down a chain, and if they did I was to add barbs of wire in the links to stop them. Tonight I hung my bird feeder on a length of chain and will see if they put it on the ground like they did recently. The first time I put the feeder up they unscrewed it and dropped it on the ground. I put it back screwed tight and a couple of nights later they had it on the ground and bent. It is a metal with glass panels and now a little bent. I have been bringing it in at night and that works but is aggravating. We will see.

BLESSINGS OF RAIN

We were blessed with more than 3.5" of rain Saturday afternoon and evening here in Granbury. The pond was refreshed but not filled. We needed the rain on the mulch from the tree trimming last week, so God is good.

VISITORS FROM WALES

Last night we had two young visitors with interesting accents. Lexie, age 5 and her little brother, Ieiun(?) age 2, going on 3. Both have grown up in Wales and have delightful accents. Both are very bright. Lexie hasn't started school but can count to 100 and we showed her how to go on to 200, knows her alphabet and other things. Ieiun can count to 30 and loves to sing. He knows the words to Itty Bitty Spider, a Bumblebee song where he gets stung and others. They loved the cat but couldn't get her to play with them. Little brother helped me feed the birds this morning. He is curious and interested in everything and wants to help.

Yesterday Lexie loved the swing seat on the patio and climbed all over it pretending to be a monkey with appropriate sounds. She will make a gymnast. After taking a bath in the whirlpool tub last night and sleeping on the recliners this morning they left to visit Glen Rose and the dinosaur tracks on their way to meet their parents coming in to DFW from their vacation in Las Vegas. They had slight accents in their speech but were curious about everything. It was reported that they looked at a copper penny and said "this must be your king" because all British coins have monarchs pictured on them. We had to tell them we don't have a king, yet. It was a delight to have them around.

OUT OF THE CLOSET

     I'm pleased to announce that I'm done with the closets, except for filing.  I'm never up to date on filing.   I will put it at the top of my To Do list. 
     During the time I was in the closets, we had the professional tree people come in and clear some of the dead trees.  They did about half, but it was just too hot with over 100 degrees every day.  The head man left one day to finish another job and had a heat exhaustion event.  He spent the next few days in bed recovering while his crew finished up here.
     Charles is pleased he can now drive into the pole barn and park his truck.  We have a huge pile of cedar mulch.  One of the crew used his blade weed eater and cleared the sides of a hill by the road and the back side of the dam; places where I can not mow.  The last day we were up and out very early so I could mow before it got hot.  After some neglect, things are looking a little better.
    I finished a first page review for our Writer's Bloc session.  We will have a much published author there to critique our work and offer suggestions.  Charles has a first page in his head, but getting on paper is much harder.  He is thinking of a Route 66 type story about the adventures of a truck driver.  His nephew, Al,  drives a truck and Charles thinks he has had an interesting life.  Way to go Al, tell it all to Charles.
     During all the other activities we had our regular pest control spray outside.  He found the usual wasp nest in a new place behind an outside light and knocked most of it down and sprayed.  Later in the day I was out on the patio sweeping and a wasp in full battle outfit came out of the little patch of mud and went right for my ankle.  He was stinging me to much I couldn't knock him off, OUCH.  It didn't seem to bother me much except for the pain, but my foot began to swell and is just now going down this week.  It gave me a good excuse to slow down and finish my Johnny Boggs book.  Very good book, Purgatoire;  also, very graphic descriptions of a drunk man in all his stink.  That was the hero.  Good read.

CURIOSITY, LIGHTNING AND KWAJ

We have had two days with rain storms but not much rainfall. Two nights ago we just got to bed during the rain when a lightning bolt lit up the ceiling fan with a brilliant white flash. The power went off but came back on immediately. I got up to set the blinking clock and smelled but could locate no sign of smoke in the house. Nancy said to look out the window to see if there was any sign of fire. There was none. The next day I looked all around the house expecting to see damage but could find nothing on the roof or in the trees around the house. It was scary though.

We woke up to watch the NASA channel report on Curiosity landing and were pleased that it was successful. As an engineer I was apprehensive because of the complicated method of delivery. It had never been tried and looked way too complicated. But it worked flawlessly. A great tribute to the computer aided design and manufacturing that has changed the aerospace business enormously in the past 30 years. I look forward to the scientific tests that will be accomplished, although I completely disagree with the purpose of the tests. We are living out Buck Rogers thinking as we keep looking for the people (bacteria) that lived on Mars. Personally I believe that there are no living organisms in space except from here on earth, but that is part of my other blog on creation science.

Today we got to visit with Nancy's granddaughter who is leaving tomorrow to fly to Kwajalein to start working as a math teacher in their high school. The island is 3.5 miles long and 1/2 mile wide with the major recreation activity scuba diving to look at the WWII ships, airplanes and military equipment in the waters around the island. It was a major battle field in WWII. It is located on the equator with moderate tempertures year-round and rarely sees storms that would flood it. She is looking forward to possibly two years there. At least for one. We are anticipating a lot of great stories from her.

RUDDER THE BOOK

I finished reading RUDDER by Thomas Hatfield and posted my comment on Amazon. I was surprised that they posted it because they restrict comments to books that are purchased from Amazon and I bought this book from Glenn Dromgoole in Abilene. I had him sign it because he is mentioned in the book as one of the editors of The Battalion, the student newspaper that Rudder battled with during his entire tenure.

The book is an interesting and detailed look at Earl Rudder's military career, but I was disappointed in the history of his tenure at A&M because no mention was made of Dean Fred J. Benson or of the Aerospace Engineering department, or of Robert Gilruth, who was running NASA during the Apollo program. We worked closely with NASA and Gilruth was often on the campus. He was also often in Washington working with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Dr. Wainerdi is mentioned but he was an assistant dean to Benson who was never mentioned.

It was a great read as I came to the campus the year Rudder was made president and went through all of the history of moving from an all-male military campus to a fully integrated campus with women. My wife, Lou, was one of the first women students and later my daughter was one of the first women to live in a dorm on campus, so I saw the whole thing.

I think the A&M Methodist Church should have been mentioned a little more. He did talk about Rudder growing up in the Methodist church. That is where I met Rudder and where many of his Deans and professors went to church. I taught his children in the first SS class I taught there and then taught the college age SS class for the next 20 years. His successor, Jack Williams was also a member.

CLEANING CLOSETS

Everyone comes to this.  A week of cleaning out closets with the intent of filling them back up with all the stuff that just can not be discarded.  Sigh!  Not a real interesting week, except....  We had lunch with friends in the midst of the sorting table and paper piles.  Yep, paper piles since the office closet has a file closet.  I do not file, except by severe necessity.  Once filed, it is forgotten like it or not it probably will never be seen again.  So I can not file bills to be paid, or anything to do with current taxes.

Next, it is shoes and purses.  Some I have not used for at least three years.  I have a pair of gold heels that I love and have not worn at all.  I love them and can see elegant dinners and even dancing.  Charles and I did boooge some this last month, but I can not do that in heels and stay upright.  Guess my gold heels will go to some lucky girl who actually does elegant dinners with dancing.

Jacqui is ready to fly off to the Marshall Islands to teach  We had a bon voyage party and we had excellent conversations with family we have not seen for awhile.  We will miss her.  A good thing was Clifferd driving us to the party in his new car.  Very nice and still smells new.  I love the GPS in the dash board and the phone that is voice activated (no hands).  It has a sun roof.  Charles read the operating manual and Clifferd said, "now you probably know more about my car than I do."

Church was good this Sunday.  We miss Al and enjoyed Ken.  Good job. Pastor Al is in Korea with his wife visiting family and preaching in their local church with her translating.  I know they are enjoying the visit.  We followed with our quarterly dinner on the grounds.  Can Methodists cook, oh yes.  Charles wanted to take chocolate and we did.      No Sunday School but we would have missed it anyway since son Ernie and wife Suzy were with us and we talked too long over breakfast.  The paper piles were gone.  I think next week will finish the closets.  We found some workers to remove the many dead trees around us.  Last year's dry and hot spell caused cedar mites to kill a good many trees.  The good news is that they are in front of the pole barn and we needed to remove most of them that had grown over the doors there.  Charles will be able park his truck under cover now.

We had a good time at Writer's /Bloc this month and talked about blogs.  I found I need to add key words so the blog shows up in a search engine.  So, here they are:  sex, scandal, elections, politicians, guns, TV stars, murder mystery stories, real and fiction.  That should take care of that.