Blog Survey...

Because my brother attended this fine institution and following the lead of noted social scientist and web developer Eric at The FireAnt Gazette, I have taken the MIT Blog Survey. Are you man or woman enough to do the same?

Ya just gotta' laugh...

I had to laugh at the conversation at the estate today. What else can you do?

I had been working in the yard all morning wearing my gardening shoes. These are the expensive $5.98 slip on models from Albertson's that I can hose off before coming into the house.

As I finished up the yard and was returning to the bedroom to deposit my shoes, the Bride spied me. The conversation went thusly.......

Bride: "Go take those shoes outside, they're wet and they stink"!

Me: "Well I hosed them off and anyway you're not the boss of me"!

Bride: "I most certainly am too"

I took the shoes outside as I had no rejoinder for her assertion.

Update.....

Short update at that. My Dad has been in the hospital for one week today and we're hopeful he'll be getting out this afternoon. Out meaning, again hopefully, out to rehab. He was weak when he entered Midland Memorial last Friday and lying around down there hasn't helped, so a few days working on rehabilitating his strength seems to me to be in order.

And don't forget, if you're home tonight, to watch my good buddy Joe Galloway on The History Channel's, Mail Call with R. Lee. Ermey. The show is scheduled at 9 o'clock p.m. Central Standard Time.

Other Matters.....

Posts have been few and far between here at the Blog. Not that I haven't had the time, it just that my mind has been otherwise occupied. My Dad has been in the hospital since last Friday.

A lifetime of smoking has left it's mark on him. Not that he hasn't had troubles in the last decade because of this, but as he approacheds his 83rd birthday, each bout of respiratory troubles becomes more serious. He has had troubles breathing before but last Friday it worried even him, so we decided that a stay in the hospital was the prudent course of action, to see if we couldn't reduce the fluid in his lungs and to have him get some rest. There has been some progress and the plan is for him to go home tomorrow.

An interesting coincidence concerning my Dad and his WWII service occured during this time, which, in a strange way made us both feel a little better. Some time ago I made mention of my Dad's war record and the fact that he had served in the 45th Infantry Division in Italy. Earlier this week I received an email from a local newsman who reads this journal. He said that he had seen the reference to the 45th Division and that his Dad had served in the 45th also, with "K" Company in the 179th Battalion. My Dad served in "A" Company of the 179th. A small world. Serving in the same battalion is quite a coincidence.

My most interesting blog update has actually been elsewhere, at Neo-Neocon where I helped fill in some details about the Bush family and their "mansions" in Midland. An interesting take from a former liberal!

Race Day.....

A big race weekend for me with some amazing stories.

First, from Saturday morning until Sunday morning was the 24 hours of LeMans. One of my favorite races, it involves all manner of sports cars in several classes from the unrestricted custom built racers dominated by Audi variants through Corvettes, Porches, Panoz and this year great runs by Aston Martins. The big news was that an American team won the overall trophy for the first time since 1967. That fact stunned me. No American team has won in the 38 years since Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt did so driving a Ford GT40. Fairly amazing really. 38 years ago, our own Chaparrals were running at LeMans.

The second and more remarkable story was the complete snafu of the American Formula One Gran Prix at Indianapolis. If you didn't catch the race, what was left of it, or haven't heard it was a complete bust. Only hours before the race was to begin, one of the two tire suppliers, Michelin, announced that the racing tires they supplied to most of the field were unsafe. A point highlighted by the crashes of several drivers at the high speed turn 13 during practice.

As controversy swirled, Michelin offered to supply new tires, the Indy race committee offered to modify the track to slow down traffic at turn 13 and the Michelin equiped teams said that they would not allow their drivers to compete unless the safety of their drivers could be insured. The Formula One Administration held firm to their rules that no new tires could be supplied and that the track could not be altered at the last minute. The outcome was that only the 6 cars supplied with Bridgestone tires started the race. The finishing order was a foregone conclusion as two of the six starters, the Ferrari's, were top contenders and the other four cars had been finishing at the rear of the ranks all year. And so it was.

The whole event was a fiaso and will not bode well for future Formula One events in the United States. It was a sad day for drivers, teams, Formula One in general and for the fans in particular.

Bookish.....

Here's a revealing little exercise I've received from Neo-NeoCon and the Red Falcon. It involves, as you can see, books.

1) Total number of books I own:

This is very difficult and if I knew I'd tell you, but my books are scattered all over creation. They are in seperate bookcases, shelves and warehouse units. I have books from my childhood, from college courses and all stages of adulthood. If I had to wager a guess on the total number of books I own, it would be over 600. I have gotten rid of at least that many.

2) Last book I bought:

My best guess is that I last bought a bundle of T.R. Fehrenbach's books several years ago when Julie and I went to San Antonio and had the chance to spend a morning with T.R. We took copies of "Lone Star", "This Kind of War" and "Comanches". T.R. was kind enough to autgraph them all for us.

3) Last book I read:

I know this one without doubt. I just this week, finally, finished Gene Cernan's "Last Man on the Moon". A great story of his personal life as an astronaut and the early space program. Gene autographed it for me.....through my brother.

4) Five books with notable influence on me:

a] "We Were Soldiers Once....and Young" by Joe Galloway and Hal Moore-- a big influence since I ended up becoming great friends with the author and many of the key characters in the book. Autographed by authors and numerous characters.
b] "Comanches" by T.R. Fehrenbach-- a great, detailed history of the region I live in. I have an autographed copy.
c] "Son of the Morning Star" by Evan S. Connell-- a great story told in an almost mystical manner.
d] "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien-- This would be on my list if it only contained the first chapter, the description of the things they carried. Some of the best prose ever written. Another autographed copy.
e] "A Rumor of War" by Phil Caputo-- A vivid personal journey of one young man's war in Vietnam. Autographed volume.

5) Five people to hand this meme off to:

The usual cast of characters mostly with a local flavor, some of which may have already been thru this bookish exercise. They can simply note the archive link!

Julie aka The Bride
George at Sleepless in Midland
Eric at the Fireant Gazette
Jimmy at Sticky Door Knobs
Lisa, far away at A Broad from Abroad

Friday Night....

Here I sit at my computer while the Bride sits 5 feet away at her's, the time made more cheery by the newly purchased Classic Moody Blues CD. "Once upon a time" is the track playing right now. I like the Moody's especially the very early tunes that really sound like a different band than what the MB's ended up being. The bride bought this Moody's CD and another "best of" album tonight, The Best of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. TJB hits stretching back to 1964, thru the easy listening 60's, a few from the 1970's and then a selection of Herb's hits from the era I call, "Disco Herb". Actually some of these are quite good, like "Rise" and although Alpert was obviously playing to the disco pop crowd of the time, these are more than just disco mania. More jazzy and just very artistic.

The Bride purchased these CD's on our stop at Best Buy after dinner. At Best Buy we ran into blogger Jimmy Patterson. It was rather coincidental that after having spent Monday with two of the other active Bloggers in Midland, I had the chance to chat with a third on Friday. The meeting gave us a chance to talk about our defective, but hopefully mending hearts, and for Jimmy to update me on the idea that several of us will be blogging for the newspaper online soon.

All of this took place after Julie and I had a romantic dinner for two at a local eatery of some fame, Chez IHOP. We hadn't been to the IHOP in quite some time, and after having been to all of our favorite restaurants recently we decided that a pancake supper was in order. I had been gone from IHOP all too long I suppose for I discovered, with both joy and regret, that I now qualify for the Senior Citizens "Early Bird" Special, a free entree with any entree purchased between 3 and 6 p.m. I might add that the age at which the IHOP defines a "Senior Citizen" is ridiculously low. Somewhere Jerry Seinfeld is laughing.

Imaging....

I love photography and I think I'm most happy when taking new images, reviewing and reworking old images of mine, or as now, helping other people with images for their use. Three projects undertaken in the last several days. Most recently I've begun to work thru the shots Julie took on her recent trip to London and Paris. We have downloaded her digital shots and I've put a few of them up at our London Images website. More will be posted in the next several days, as she captured most of her images on 35 mm. cameras. Scanning and posting of those is coming.

Last night I got one of those "emails out of the blue" that happens when you have many photographs catalogued on the web. I received a request from a young man in Oregon who wants to use several of my Chaparral Racing photos on a website he is developing for a major game, Gran Turismo 4, played on PlayStation2. It just so happens that I have the GT-3 version of this racing game and he flattered me by saying I had the best Chaparral pictures on the web...so I OK'ed his usage of my images for free. It didn't hurt that he also has just gotten out of the army!

The third project is another one of those very interesting ones that I get to do through my good friend, author Joe Galloway. Last week I received an email from the producer of Mail Call, with Gunny R. Lee Ermey on The History Channel. Joe will be appearing on Mail Call to talk about the battles of the 1st Cavalry Division in the Ia Drang Valley, Vietnam in 1965. To go with his, and others, distinguised oratory they needed pictures. Since I handle many of Joe's digital image files, it was my pleasure to get the photos to the producers at Digital Ranch Productions. The episode will air June 24th at 9 p.m.

Bloggers....

Two "old pro" bloggers, Eric Siegmund [C] and Wallace Craig [R], get together with a rising star of the blogosphere, Burr Williams [L], to discuss a new website for Burr's organization the Sibley Nature Center. To my knowledge this is the first group photo of Midland bloggers. Burr has only recently started blogging but already has a good base of support at his interesting and colorful journal, El Llanero. The website that we discussed will be interactive and full of more useful information about West Texas.

Land of the Rising Sun...

I don't believe that I've ever had my picture [and that of the lovely bride] posted on a Japanese based website. Until today. Thanks to the guys at Chinpunbeifun we will be now be recognized on the streets of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka which is good because nobody pays much attention to me here. This brings me full circle as my association with the Japanese is long standing. When I was a freshman, our high school foreign exchange student, Takao Umino, was from Japan. When I lived in Hawaii, I regularly drank beer on Friday afternoons with many nisei and sansei gentlemen down at Sunset Beach. Later in life I loaded up on Japanese electronics.

It's rather interesting but I met the Chinpunbeifun bunch through the comment section of Roger L. Simon's blog. When they started their own online journal, Roger was kind enough to mention the new site which quickly drew me there. It was a treat having them display a few of my Japanese related aviation photos. Next I plan on sending picutres of some of my rather old Japanese woodblock prints.

And I'm very gratified to see that they had an interest in our new blog for Burr Williams and the Sibley Center. I think that Burr is going to be a hit in Blogville.

They're home.....!

The Bride and child are back from London and my joy is boundless! I missed them ever so much. Here's Julie as she descends the airport stairs with her friend Sue Ellen who accompanied Julie and Jack back from Houston. It was a poignant reunion and I had the opportunity to show the travelers all the things in Midland that had changed since their departure. Well, OK, nothing much has changed but the weather is much hotter than when they departed. I'm glad they're home, the dogs are glad they're home. Hopefully home for awhile.

Tidbits....

I haven't felt a strong urge of late to update this here journal. I think that the death last weekend of good friend and good blogger, Mike Reed, aka Bunker Mulligan, has drained my will to blog. Or perhaps it's the prolonged absence of the Bride and Child, aka my family. Never-the-less here are a few tidbits and actually some quite good news on several fronts.

--The Bride and Child are resting up in Houston after returning from London and will be home tomorrow. A much too prolonged vacation for me, but I know that they had a good time and what do they say? "Absence makes the heart grow fonder". Undoubtedly.

--While at the heart surgeons office today, my cell phone rang and it was none other than the former treasurer of Texaco. David retired from Texaco several years ago and now heads up a large investment group whom I have been talking to about funding a large project that my partner Del and I have been working on for three years. David wanted me to know that they are very interested, so much so that he wants us to conference call tomorrow with him and a very large pension fund he represents.

--Fun this morning getting a new blogger up and running. Local folks will be very familiar with Burr Williams of the Sibley Nature Center. Burr is probably the most knowledgable one person about the history, people, places and the plants and animals of our area, the southern Llano Estacado. He's a great writer, interesting person and rather a character whom I like very much. The blog will be in addition to his weekly newspaper article and hopefully we will have all his interesting stories from the past archived. His Blog will expand and soon be relocated to the Sibley Center's own domain, but for now pay a visit at El Llanero

Hopefully I can add more meaningful dialogue in the days to come, but you never know with the bride just back........

D-Day.....

It was 61 years ago today that the world's largest and arguably most important military operation, "Overlord", took place. It is imperative that we remember this anniversary each and every year. Soldiers who were 17 years old when they landed on the beaches at Normandy are now 78 years old. Most are older than that now and many are gone. My own dad, a veteran of the famed 45th Infantry Division, is now 82. He missed D-Day because he had landed on the beaches of Italy a year earlier. These men are leaving us all to quickly.

The most common visual image thought of today about D-Day is of the landing craft hitting the beaches of Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword. My favorite image, however, is the one above of the supreme commander, General Eisenhower, as he delivers a parting address to the airborne troopers of the 101st Airborne Division.

Having been an airborne trooper with many night jumps myself, I can only image the trepidation of these men as they prepare to jump into the dark knowing full well a goodly portion of them would never see home again. In those days of more primative communications, the best they could have done was to write a final letter home, having not heard the voices of their loved ones, in some cases for years.

As I think of D-Day 61 years ago, I think of all the men who fought all over the world all those years ago. We owe these men a tremendous debt.

Bunker Mulligan...

It was with extreme sadness that I learned of the death of Bunker Mulligan this evening. Bunker Mulligan was the Blogging ID of Mike Reed of Corpus Christi. His love for the game of golf showed in his Blog and his Blogging and generated the name he chose for his online journal. I thought it was a great one. Mike was a fine and interesting human being who made many friends on and thru the Internet. I am grateful to have been one of them. His postings generally cut to the core of the subject and he had a way of explaining things in an in-depth, yet simple way.

Mike was a military man, a retired Air Force officer. There is something about the military experience that binds people together, even Bloggers, perhaps that's why we became such good friends. And friends we were. Besides our Blog postings, Mike and I sent emails back and forth almost every week. Some commenting on weighty topics, most just about our families, friends and our life experiences. Mike has three sons, two in the military and one who is a police officer. He was extremely proud of them all. What a great legacy to Mike's life of service.

Mike apparently suffered a fatal heart attack on Friday, a fact made all the more poignant to me because of my recent heart troubles. Mike was one of the first to email and then phone Julie offering his support for me while I was still in the hospital and the first to telephone me when I got home. I appreciated that more than words can say. He called several times to cheer me up and then sent Hugh Hewitts book, "Blog" as a way of saying get back to doing what you were doing which in fact I have.

In all honesty, I will regret for the rest of my life not having met Mike in person and spending time with him. Blogging, for me, won't be the same without him.

Mike, mission accomplished, and well done!

Hell-o London....

If you notice the date/time stamp below you'll see that this message is being posted at the genuinely awful hour of 3 a.m. About the time I went to bed this night the thunder and lightning made it's appearance. Around here that means two crazed dogs, so as I lay in bed anticipating their panting, shaking and low guttural whining I struck upon the idea of calling Julie in London. At 2 a.m. here it is 8 a.m. to the Limey's.

Using the phone in our office I was able to get the infamous hotel telephone answering tree as described below. Once again I hit #6, "other lines" and was caught in the perpetual motion machine of message replay that had frustrated me earlier in the day. Desperate to talk to the bride, after missing her this afternoon, I grabbed the cell phone and went thru the same procedure. Voila within in minutes I had the sweet bride on the line, sounding sleepy but as clear as if she was in the next room. How wonderful it was to hear her voice and as the thunder boomed in the night in Midland hear of their adventures in London and Paris. All is well with them, but they are sore and tired from the excursion to Paris and the climb up the Eiffel Tower. We spent about 45 minutes on the phone, cost unknown, but cost is no object when you have not talked to your beloved in 5 days. The longest I've ever gone without hearing her voice.

Explanatory note: I had tried several times to call Julie at the hotel using our office phone. I could dial thru to the hotel, get into the menu tree but when I selected #6 "other lines" I would go back to the main menu. I finally have decided that we have a defected #6 button on our office phone though it appears to work fine on other direct dial numbers. The phone tree just doesn't like it!

Mystery travelers reappear.....

The bride, child, mom-in-law and entourage left Atlanta on Sunday night. I spoke with them after they had boarded the plane for London and were awaiting takeoff. I was glad for this one last chance to speak with them and was left with the promise of a phone call upon their arrival at the hotel in London.

Four days pass.......

There has been no phone call nor email and frankly I had that gnawing kind of worry. What if? I think that Julie's Dad had the same feeling as he called last night in his common jovial mood, but after the "how are you's", his first question was, "well have you heard from them". I think that he had that gnawing feeling too.

So last night I was very relieved to see that the bride did find the time to post an entry in The Yellow Bug News of their gay adventures in London and Paris. Along with the news was a note for the husband, that's me, to call the hotel. Having thought of this, I had done so, but the number for the hotel I was left with turns out to be the reservation phone number which consists of a robot phone tree and no exit to an operator. So off to the hotel website for a phone number. They should be scolded, the only number listed is the ubiquitous phone tree line. I spent 30 minutes "googling" around and finally found another website for the hotel that does have an email address. I have emailed and requested a main desk number with an operator attached. No reply as of yet.

It could be that if I ever talk to them I'll get bad news, having read the line in Julie's post... "but it would be great if this was home". A comment designed to not give much encouragement to husbands left in what was thought to be the "home". Perhaps I'll use my next week of solitude to rethink my future.

Update: as coincidence would have it, Julie was on the computer in London at the same time I was posting the above. Having read her "comments" I decided to give the phone tree line one more shot. Miraculously, this time when I hit #6, other lines, I got thru to the main desk loud and clear. Unfortunately there was no answer in the Craig or Dulin rooms so I am still without verbal commo. But glad to know they're having a good time and all is well.